Knives and Nasties
31 March
Courtney Valentine-Brown was murdered by Ian Slater and Alex Stephens, aided by Kelly King and Stuart Pearson. Joe talks about how cellphone data was used to track the perpetrators movements, and Sandra channels all of her impressions through Bane.
Joe got his information from:
- TV Mini-Series (2020): Murder 24/7. Episodes 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3.
- The photos can be found on BBC News. The photos of the perpetrators are from the Essex Police.
Sandra got her information from
- Article on the Crown Prosecution Service website
- Article on I News, by Deepika Rajani
- Article in Essex live News, by Hope Woolston. This is also where the photo of Courtney can be found.
Audio transcript
Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.
Speaking of tone of voice, Niklas... They had like a scheduled zoom break time at his work, and Niklas was eating birthday cake, and people were like
do you have cake like us he was like
yeah
i have cake every monday no reaction
someone was like is that a joke he was
like yes
obviously it's a joke i don't bake cakes
every monday
and they were like we can't tell with
you because you've never
changed your tone of voice
understandable
the thing is with both me and niklas is
that
people can't tell when we're being
sarcastic
you need to watch the harry potter
movies more
and just channel your inner snape is
obviously line is pretty obviously
riddled with snape
so what you're trying to say is that i
should always
end my sarcastic sentences with
obviously
yeah but maybe work on your snape
impression and
less of your bane impression
so
okay so it's wednesday which means that
it's time to talk about crime you were
listening to
midweek murders and i'm your host sandra
and i am your host sandra now
i was so proud of me getting through
that
and then you ruined it
and i'm your host joe this week we're
going to talk about the murder of
courtney valentine brown my sources were
an article in essex live news by hope
woolston an article on the crown
prosecution
service and an article on eye news
by depica roshani my source was
a three-part
documentary called murder 24
7 on the bbc
oh that's it that's it yeah sorry i mean
that was
three hours of my life and technically
six hours of my life because i watched
it twice
it's a camera crew that followed the
police throughout the entire course of
the investigation
so it's pretty much first person
evidence
of the whole thing so in this case i
don't think you can get
a better source than from the old
proverbial horse's meth you know
i'm shy courtney valentine brown
was a 36 year old man living in a rented
flat
on roots hall drive in
south and on sea the police were called
to his residence
following several reports of a
disturbance
on the 21st of february 2019
shortly before midnight when they got
there
they found a gruesome scene and an
unresponsive
courtney who was badly injured
the flat was in a state of disarray with
blood smears and splatters
all over the walls and toppled furniture
as well as a broken hob in the kitchen
the police and paramedics tried to tend
to his injuries
but courtney sadly passed away at 1
20 a.m so now i'm going to ask you about
the state
of oh god straight in there and that's
all i have
now i have more i just for once thought
about
asking you before getting to all of the
other stuff
so what was the state of courtney's body
so like you said there was blood found
all over the walls
all over the sofa they also found blood
on the washing machine in the kitchen
which was a separate room
paramedics were called to the scene they
performed emergency first aid and
courtney was taken to hospital as a
verbatim quote he was losing blood
as fast as they could replenish it so
he would have been having blood
transfusions to try and pump in as much
blood as possible to get him back to his
normal level but he was just bleeding
that out
straight away and unfortunately they
couldn't arrest the bleeding
in time to be able to save him so he
went into cardiac arrest
and passed away didn't they cut an
artery in the thigh the pathologist
found that the cause of death was a stab
wound
to the right thigh they noted
that the blade had passed all the way
through the front of the thigh and there
was an
exit wound at the back of the thigh
that's
one hell of a blade that's like a
machete
and it gets worse it gets worse oh no
oh no so there was a two and a half
centimeter entry wound at the front of
the thigh
they also found that there was a lot
of muscle damage inside of the thigh
and the exit wound was almost
180 degrees in comparison to the entry
wound
so what they determined from that is
that whilst
the suspect was plunging the knife
they were also twisting it oh no
oh that's so gruesome so they'd almost
turned the blade but it would have been
90 degrees rather than 180 i think that
was
a misquote from the police officers like
you said
they severed courtney's femoral artery
femoral artery that's the one that
supplies all of the blood flow
to your legs so from that evidence the
pathologist determined that the blade
was at least 17 centimeters long
they managed to determine that from the
depth of
courtney's thigh so it was at least
17 it could be longer they
thought that it probably was longer
because there were no
hilt mark bruising that you would expect
to see
from the handle of the blade so if you
stab someone quite aggressively
and cause that kind of rupturing to
major blood vessels
you would expect to see the bruising
from the handle
of the blade on the front of the thigh
but there was none of that evident at
all so it was
at least 17 centimeters but most likely
bigger than that they also found that he
had suffered
quite a severe head wound that was
attributed to
blunt force trauma they also found
significant defense wounds on courtney's
person
so both of his arms had
cut marks on them consistent with a
knife attack
and his right index finger
was almost severed that implied
to the investigating officers that he'd
grabbed the blade
he would have grabbed the knife blade
side
to try and defer any kind of attack
and it almost cut his finger off oh god
he was subject to quite a sustained and
brutal attack yeah so the police
interviewed courtney's neighbors and
they told the police that they had seen
courtney's landlord
31 year old kelly king entering
courtney's flat the same night
accompanied
by three men carrying knives and
a baseball bat one of the neighbors said
that
she had heard a lot of crashing after
kelly
and her gaggle of ruffians had entered
courtney's flat can we talk about the
old lady
so police officers did a door-to-door
knocking
to try and find out if any of the other
flat residents had heard any kind of
disturbance
so they visited the lady that lived
underneath
the flying question bless her she was a
just
turned 90 year old lady
she still had her birthday balloons and
they were like
have you just turned 90 and this lady
was like
what what
turned around she was like oh oh yes
i've just had
- not sure how reliable you're gonna
be my dear
they asked her if she'd had any
disturbance from the night before
so she said this is a quote verbatim
it was like two japanese wrestlers
coming through the ceiling
the interview went back and forth and
then she clearly had no
idea what had happened she just heard
this banging yeah
and then she said
it was like someone was committing
murder up there
oh no [ __ ] we should put you on the
investigation
team just wanted to put her out there
because i loved that old lady i thought
she was great
yeah there was one point where she was
considering hitting the ceiling with a
broom
keep the noise down my cats are trying
to sleep
okay so after getting this information
the police found
kelly king at the home of a man named
ian slater
who they suspected had been one of the
men who had
accompanied kelly based on eyewitness
testimony
kelly was then taken to the police
station
and interrogated but she withheld any
information and only answered the
questions
with no comment the police didn't have
a choice but to release her on bail
as they couldn't formally charge her of
the crime
due to lack of evidence fifty-year-old
ian slater
from lee on sea surrendered himself to
police
and he was arrested on suspicion of
murder on the 24th
of february three days after the crime
yeah why did he surrender himself
the theory and the documentary did put a
bit of
emphasis on this they were contacting
his known associates
and basically putting the pressure on
ian
to know that he was being looked for
by the police so he would have had no
doubt in his mind
that the police knew that he was
involved in some way
and they wanted to speak to him okay and
because
in his opinion he wasn't guilty of the
murder
because he didn't deal the final blow
that caused courtney to lose his life he
probably
thought that if he went into the station
gave this evidence that he was going to
give
and gave it willingly he wouldn't be
involved
with the prosecution is my thoughts
behind
why he turned himself in okay so ian
then
gave the police the name of his
accomplice
alex stevens he sound like a canary
police asked a question he gave him an
answer with
loads of detail he says that the
intention
was for them to go to kelly's flat where
courtney is staying
and throw him and his drug associates
out
and so ian in his interview said
that he needed someone to come with him
as backup so he was going to take the
pit bull
as he called him so the police officers
well
who do you mean by the pit bull and he
said alex
stevens they ran the name alex stevens
in the police database
and they got 16
pages of police records against alex
stevens
drug possession drug dealing possession
of dangerous weapons
gbh afraid what is gbh
grievous bodily harm oh my god why
isn't he in prison he has been in and
out
gbh generally doesn't get a very long
term depends on if the gbh is with a
dangerous weapon
which will get a longer sentence than
gbh just with
fisty cuts he had a massive rap sheet
and was also imprisoned previously
for i think manslaughter
why isn't he in prison it's probably
because he's so pretty
you see though i saw the photo i saw
the mug shots they don't do injustice
i'll be honest
okay you find him attract all right he's
a handsome guy
i will give him that during ian's
interview
he also said and quote it was supposed
to be
verbal it's not believable
because they did carry weapons going in
there
they did so after ian had given that
interview
there was a call to the general
101 non-emergency police line and a
couple of people had been reporting
that there were drug deals happening in
their local area
that they wanted the police to
investigate and they gave a location for
those drug deals
and when the police searched that
location they found
that one of the homes in that area was
registered
to a mr alex stevens
so they raided it so given that alex had
quite an extensive rap sheet they
obviously went in
all guns blazing kicked down the door
found alex trying to run away in the
back garden
immediately arrested alex so obviously
as known
drug dealer alex had multiple
phones eventually they seized
15 from his flat police officers
obviously searched the house
collected all of the evidence on a bed
and
one of the officers was like well
there's a white flip phone that's gone
missing
where's the white flip phone alex has
been taken away
at this point so it's just a girlfriend
in the flat they searched their bags and
she was like i haven't got anything on
me you've already searched me oh
[ __ ] hell and they're like no we
haven't searched you we've searched your
bags
what's that in your pocket it looks like
a mobile phone she's like i haven't got
a mobile phone in my pocket it's my [ __ ]
how there was a mobile phone in my
pocket sorry
and they were like that's not the white
flip phone where is it we're missing it
if it doesn't turn out we're gonna have
to do a strip search on you she was like
what on me i haven't got it it's not on
me there's
all of the pockets all of her bags all
of her possessions
and couldn't find this white phone that
the officer was adamant that he'd seen
so she was sitting down on the sofa just
as they were considering what to do
and then the phone started ringing
she was like i was in my pocket this
whole time it's not my fault you didn't
find it
which i just thought was hilarious i
really enjoyed that made me laugh out
loud
they do three interviews with
alex and as her
his legal advice he remains
completely silent they did get a
little bit of a breakthrough so alex
asks
if he can make a phone call i presume
he calls his brother but the call is
made by a speakerphone
so the officers can all hear and one of
the sentences that raises
officer suspicions is have you been
round
mums yet so then they obtained a warrant
to be able to search
alex's parents dress and they seized
a hoodie that showed dark spatters
which could possibly be blood but they
couldn't test it presumptively because
that would have destroyed the evidence
a pair of trainers which did test
positive for blood and a baseball bat
if you remember courtney suffered
a blunt force trauma to the head which
would have been conducive
with a baseball bat there we have it
so when alex was arrested they seized
a backpack and in ian slater's
interviews with the police he said
that alex had a rucksack
with him that he used to put the weapon
back into when they recovered that
rucksack they found
blood inside the bag and two
mobile phones with blood on them
when they looked at the cell mass data
they found that alex's
phone was pinging a cell mast
all day in one location a couple of
hundred meters away from his home
so they knew that he'd been there for
about 12 hours
the next activation they got was at 23
35 p.m which was at the mast
pointing towards the crime scene the way
that they know that it's
pointing towards somewhere is that that
phone
mast will show you at which direction it
send
data into and i feel it worth pointing
out that
the offense occurred at 23.53
so they already had some evidence to
show that alex had
been in the vicinity of the crime scene
but it wasn't yet enough to be able to
charge him they still didn't have the
murder weapon and they still didn't have
anything to link him
to being in that location so they went
back to
ian in one of ian's interviews ian said
that alex had brought along an associate
and ian only knew him as
fatty wow so we had
been brought along by kelly as muscle
ian had brought along alex as muscle
and alex had brought along fatty
as muscle oh yeah now at this point the
police
get a big old piece of juicy
luck so in the uk
there's a tv program called crime
stoppers
don't know if you're aware of it i've
never seen it but i know about
it it's essentially a tv program
that talks about serious crimes that
have occurred
and all of the evidence that's available
to the police
so this case would have been included on
the episode
they would have said anybody with any
information call the police
so a member of the public calls in
and identify his fatty as
a mr stuart pearson
so that coincided with the evidence that
they had already
that was that four people had entered
the flat ian
was positively identified kelly was
positively identified
ian identified alex and
the fourth person was identified by an
eyewitness
as stewart so they went to the house
that
stuart was registered as living act and
lo and behold stewart was there so they
arrested him on suspicion of
murder while
he was being interviewed he admitted
to meeting up with alex on the day of
the murder
but denied all involvement of the crime
said that he'd met him
at about 8 or 9 pm that alex
had taken his phone had
gone off to secure some cocaine
and then come back and given stuart his
phone back
police officers were like nah alex has
got 20 phones designed happening
you don't give someone your phone that's
just common sense
stuart pearson obviously knew that the
police were going to check
phone records and locations and things
like that so he tried to come up with a
reason
why he wouldn't be associated
but his phone records showed that
he was at home between 6 p.m
and 11 23 p.m
and then at 11 34 his
phone was activating the same
mast that alex's phone was activating
at the time of the crime so alex's phone
was activating at 11
35 and pearson's phone was activating
at 11 34. both phones
were active and pinging at the mast
by the crime scene pointing towards
the crime scene they then saw that
pretty much
immediately after the offense both
phones were activating the same
original masts so they'd both
gone from home crime scene and then back
to their respective homes
when they did a little more
investigation into pearson's house
they found a knife
so the knife that they found was
approximately 24
centimeters in length the wound was at
least
caused by a 17 centimeter blade
so it matches in that criteria
but they also found it in a pile of
burnt
debris they'd set a fire and chuck the
knife in it because they knew that was
the murder weapon
the knife was sent for profiling
and the officers were actually quite
optimistic they thought that
once they got past all of the city
carbon deposits they might still be able
to recover
some dna or some blood
unfortunately they couldn't however a
bit further
digging into the mobile numbers
of both kelly king and ian slater
they did find some ominous text messages
exchanged between the two so kelly
sends to ian the message final straw
had enough just kicked off they'd better
watch this [ __ ] space
i ain't playing games either to which
ian replies no messing collect
any knives or nasties that you can
without them seeing now the police
officers
had two theories as to what
those messages could mean
the first theory this is the one that i
believe
so ian slater has given kelly the
instruction to remove
any knives or nasties as he put it i
assume any other kind of weapon
that courtney could use in his defense
when they go and attack him the second
theory
is that ian is instructing kelly to get
any knives that are currently in the
flat
for them to use as weapons and i find
that less believable because everybody's
got a kitchen knife
yeah and then a little bit further
digging into the text messages
and they can see that between kelly
ian stewart and alex
there are multiple messages that are
detailing
the attack so they've plotted it and
it's premeditated kind of thing
that's pretty much all i have other than
the sentencing okay
so years later alex stevens and stuart
pearson were
charged with the murder of courtney in
march and in april
police arrested kelly king as well
on the charge of murder so when the
trial
started the events were described as
such
kelly king claimed that she had wanted
to evict courtney
because of an argument about debt
she had then asked slater who was her
partner
to help her get courtney to move out
so they had then recruited stevenson
pearson to come with
and the four of them had gone to
courtney's flat
armed things had surprise surprise
turned violent it was definitely
premeditated attack but i think it's
ambiguous to say that the four of them
attended
armed when only two of them were armed
yeah the whole story about him
owning debt to kelly i'm like
did he though i just want to say that i
have a suspicion that they went there
because they knew
that courtney was a drug dealer
and wanted to rob him yeah given
alex's background he probably definitely
probably definitely has a great use of
english
there was probably ulterior motives
for alex getting involved and it
probably
wasn't solely down to the debt yeah
but i do think it's important to state
that it was
only alex and stewart that were armed
okay
alex was reported as making his money
from robbing drug dealers yeah i
had no idea about that because i just
read the articles
which were very vague yeah they were
incredibly vague
the first thing that came into my mind
was
that this was not get rid of the
competition
yeah okay so on the 29th
of january 2020 ian slater and alex
stevens was sentenced
to 26 years in prison for
murder while stuart pearson and
kelly king received the total sentence
of
nine years for manslaughter
alex stevens was charged with the murder
for dealing the fatal blow ian
slater was charged with murder
because he recruited
alex okay according to bbc news
detective chief inspector daniel
stoughton
said of the criminals for four people to
go
to an address where the victim was going
to leave
anyway and take weapons and assault him
is absolute cowardice and
tragically courtney lost his life
courtney's family stated that we are
heartbroken
over the murder of our dear son brother
uncle and cousin who was tragically
taken away from us prematurely he was
ambitious
cheeky and extremely creative with this
whole future ahead of him
despite his life challenges
yeah so that's the case thank you so
much for listening
to midweek murders we'll see you next
week
bye bye
ciao
Topics
- Courtney Valentine-Brown
- Murder 24/7
- Ian Slater
- Alex Stephens
- Stuart Pearson
- Kelly King