Halloween Special Part 1: Nigeria’s House of Horrors & The Real Life ‘Candyman’ | #473

0:00happy halloween it's that time of year everyone very specifically the time of year where it is week one of our annual story swap tradition here at red handed where hannah and i every week obviously if you guys have been listening to at least one episode of red handed before you have stumbled across this one we'll know that we usually do one case told between the two of us but here no no no it's something different because hannah and i basically spend all year keeping our eyes open for the most terrifying but true we do try to do that, unless we've been duped, but we haven't been. I haven't been this year, so we'll see. Terrifying stories that we can find and we keep them a secret, keep them under our Halloween

0:56bonnets until this time of year. And honestly, I think every year it gets harder and harder. I feel like it takes a lot to scare us at this point as well. So even ones that might be scary, I'm sort of like, is that that bad? I did feel quite unwell after learning about the one I've got to kick us off today. So high, high claims. So the story I've got for us, it takes us to the spooky depths of the Soka Forest in Abaddon, Nigeria, where in 2014, an abandoned building was found containing several decomposing bodies, human skeletons, and starving, chained survivors who had been held captive there. The so-called Ibadan House of Horror was believed to be linked to actual real-life human flesh sacrifice rituals

2:00paid for by powerful Nigerian politicians. But even to this day, we still don't know exactly what was going on there. But we certainly know that whatever it was, it was very, very dark and also very, very secret. Until now. Because Hannah, I'm sorry, but I am taking you into those woods. Okay. No, no, you are not going to want to eat not in here. In March 2014 a motorcycle taxi driver named Kazim picked two people up for a scheduled ride in the middle of the night. He drove the two passengers to their chosen destination a roadside footpath leading into the Soka forest in Ibadan, Nigeria. And to say this was a strange trip would definitely be putting it mildly, because there were no residences

2:53or businesses along that stretch of road, and at that time of night, all you could see was the pitch darkness of the densely packed trees ahead. But Kazim wasn't getting paid to ask questions, so he just went where he was instructed to go. When he pulled off the side of the road for his passengers to dismount, he thought that would be the end of it. But instead of paying their fare and leaving, the two passengers dragged Kasim off his motorcycle and into that dark forest. When Kazim didn't appear the following morning, his community of fellow motorcycle taxi drivers, known as Akadas, started to worry about him. And those fears only intensified when one of them actually got a phone call from Kazim.

3:44He was speaking so fast that they could barely understand what he was saying, but his terror was absolutely clear. Kazim said he was trapped underground with a group of eight people who had also been kidnapped, and they could hear people walking around above them. Kazim was in a nervous frenzy, especially since his phone battery was also about to die. But the Akadas urged him to calm down as much as he could and give them more details about exactly where he was so that they could come and help. Kazim told them about the two passengers that had brought him to the edge of Circa Forest the night before, describing two burnt-out cars that marked the entrance to the footpath where they'd wanted to be dropped off.

4:26Going off this information, the Akadas launched an impromptu search mission to find their missing friend. But they had no idea about the horrors they were going to witness. The group actually managed to find the footpath just as Kazim had described it. Nearby was a small river, and under a bridge they spotted Kazim's motorcycle, but there was no sign of him. The Akadas walked further towards the forest, and that's when they saw a dilapidated old building, surrounded by dense brush and rusted over cars. It looked abandoned and, well, incredibly fucking eerie, so obviously they approached with caution. When they called out to see if anyone was inside, there was no response, just silence. At the back of the building, they found a rusted piece of metal covering a gap in

5:19the wall. It looked like the closest thing that this place had to adore. And when one of the Akadas, it has to be said very bravely, pushed it aside, they were met with a scene straight out of a horror film. At the centre of this warehouse-like chamber, they saw an elevated slab of concrete that was splattered with what looked like blood. The stench of decomposition was also unbearable. And the place was literally just swarming with hordes of flies. The horrified Akadas found the source. It was dozens of rotting human corpses. I think I would just be like, look, at this stage, this is above my motorcycle delivery man pay grade and I'm going home. Yeah, I don't know how the rest of this story I'm about to tell you goes down because I don't know why they don't just leave and call the police.

6:19Now, obviously, maybe they just don't have much faith in the police. Maybe they're not the kind of, they just don't want to get involved with law enforcement. But I just cannot believe they carry on going. The ground in this place, not only are there piles of rotting human corpses, and this is all true, by the way, this is all true. Just because I said that we still haven't got to the bottom of what was actually going on here, like who was responsible for all this, like what was going on as like the accusations of money rituals, like human sacrifice, etc. This is all real. This is verified. This has been reported widely in like, you know, by reputable news sources. This is not just like some sort of creepypasta. I cannot believe they

6:57carry on going because the ground was also littered with dry skulls that seem to be at least a few years old. So this had been going on for a very long time because there's also the rotting currently rotting corpses but I guess I don't know is this worse yes probably because the most shocking part of all was that around the room's edges the Akada saw 15 people sat shackled to each other with leg irons alive people they were catatonic emaciated and barely conscious but they were alive now the akadas and i guess that is probably why they carry on like i guess if you just saw a bunch of dead bodies you could more easily run out of there even if your friend was you believed stuck in there but you're looking at 15 people who are alive. Now the Akadas would

7:48later say that they didn't have much time to process what was actually going on so they don't really sit and think or have a conversation about what to do naturally so they quickly get to work trying to release the captives from their chains and the moment they did several of these 15 people who were still there and still alive and had been chained up, seemed to come back from the brink of death. But they basically just try, push past them to get out of this warehouse, to get out of this building, run into the woods, run outside, as you would naturally. And this is really tragic. Apparently one unlucky woman, very, very unlucky woman, the minute she was unchained and she tried to run away, she literally dropped dead because she couldn't move. So she was so

8:30close to escaping and that's where her story ends. But outside the Akkadis came across another seven severely malnourished people because now they're exploring the rest of the area around there. All these people are just running outside and they see these other seven people wandering around through the underbrush in the woods like quote-unquote disorientated ghosts. The terror and trauma these people had gone through was very, very clear to see. But the Akkadis still needed to know what the hell was actually going on here. What had happened? And crucially, could whoever was behind it come back and catch them all too? Presumably yes, because they don't know that you're there and you freed all of their captives.

9:15Still, the Akkadis, for some reason, still don't back down. Still don't just like take these people that they've rescued or call the police or get the fuck out of there. They keep looking around. And during their search, they found clothes and personal belongings scattered all over the place, from school uniforms to shoes, bank cards and keys. They also noticed that on the side of the building with a metal door, there was a small path stretching into the wooded distance. This wasn't just a footpath, it was large enough for a single vehicle to pass through. So the Akadas split up in different directions, hoping they might find someone who could explain what this place was supposed to be used for. Again, it just feels like the person you're going to find there is not going to explain

10:03things to you. They're either a victim or they're the killer. And they're not going to be thrilled. But who am I to question what these very, very brave men did? So according to the locals who lived nearby in the Soka forest, they only ever saw one vehicle using that path over the past 10 years. Apparently it was a black Jeep with tinted windows that appeared almost every night of the week between the hours of 8pm and 10 years. Apparently it was a black jeep with tinted windows that appeared almost every night of the week between the hours of 8pm and 10pm. And each time that jeep came around, the residents claimed that they heard harrowing screams coming from the direction of the supposedly abandoned

10:38warehouse. And this is where people might be wondering, well if people, local people, residents in that area who lived near the woods had heard all these screams coming, why didn't they report it to the police? Like, why was this place like a secret? Why was it allowed to carry on? Well, they had actually reported their concerns, as you would after a decade of hearing fucking screams coming from a fucking house every single night to Oyo State Police multiple times over the years from multiple different people. But the locals were just brushed off every time and told not to worry about it. But for the Akadas, searching for their friend, naturally they were like, okay, this is probably where Kazim has ended up.

11:22Now this was clearly something far bigger and more sinister than any of them could have imagined and I guess the reason they're also still continuing to look is because they are now convinced this is where Kasim was because it fits the description. He sounded terrified, this is terrifying but they still haven't found him. So they're still continuing with their search and it looked increasingly like they may have stumbled across something for which there had been many whispers about around the city of abaddon that this place might just be the location of a terrifying practice for black magic human rituals again not something that was a secret, but not something that had been proven before, but really, really fucking looking like that. Now, this was initially,

12:12at least widely by a lot of people in the city, dismissed as just pure folklore. But sadly, the sinister practice was, and still is, all too horrifyingly real across West Africa. You just need to know where to look, or I guess where not to look. Because it's actually fairly common in this neck of the woods to consult healers for things like potions or charms to ward off ill health, to enhance fertility or attract fortune. Many West African belief systems involve the use of spiritually charged objects to influence certain events or people, whether that's positively or negatively. But most of the time, it doesn't get into truly dodgy territory. So this concept of using this sort of black magic stuff,

13:01it does exist, but it's not like everybody doing it is jumping straight to human sacrifice. But it would definitely be an absolute lie to say that that doesn't happen because there are cases like this where bad apples, people in this game, take this practice to absolutely horrific extremes. And these twisted inversions of traditional African animism rituals are practiced only by the most brutal witch doctors but they exist and in these circles there's a long-standing belief that using human blood and human body parts for a ritual can enhance its potency and you can understand the logic there right a lot of these rituals, they're literally called money rituals in a lot of places, are aimed at gaining material wealth. So that could be power,

13:51it could be success, it could be winning a political election, it could be money, whatever, right? So the bigger the sacrifice, not necessarily that you're making, but that you're providing, it stands to logic that that would mean that the spell you're casting, the potion you're making but that you're providing it stands to logic that that would mean that you the the spell you're casting the potion you're creating whatever it is is more potent and what could be more potent or more of a sacrifice than killing a human and like the other case that we did earlier this month with the witches of guarituba children are obviously gonna be the most prized because they're purer more innocent it's a it's a it could be considered more of a

14:31heinous thing to do to kill one of them so you're like i'm really fucking serious about wanting that money or that political success or whatever it is and sadly that's why i mean they found school uniforms there they found school uniforms there like it, it's not beyond the realms of belief that there were also children involved in this. So really, really horrifying stuff. So yeah, if one is interested in this kind of thing, looking for this kind of a potion, this kind of witchcraft, black magic ritual, whatever we want to call it, and you happen to be in Nigeria, well, there are wicked spiritual practitioners out there who are more than willing to do the whole business for you, offer you a package deal, if you will. So kidnap, maim, and murder a person at the altar for you, for a price. These witch doctors work within a web

15:29of kidnappers, traffickers and butchers who are employed to gather the necessary parts for these sinister rituals. Many of the victims tend to be poor women or young children who are plucked off the streets and taken to remote sites to be murdered and mutilated. They're basically treated, as horrific as it sounds, as walking ingredient bags because basically different bits of their body will be hacked off and sold based on specific needs for an individual client's ritual. So think of how people, I guess, have a rabbit's foot for luck. But here you might use a child's tongue for something. It's truly, truly horrific. And what's even worse, as if we need to make it worse, is that the victim's suffering is often prolonged because it's

16:26believed that their screams of pain increase the practitioner's power. So this is some very, very dark stuff. It's not like a quick kill and then we're just using the bits afterwards, like we just need the product, we just need the body. No, the process of the kill itself is a part of the ritual. And more often than not, the person's blood kill itself is a part of the ritual. And more often than not, the person's blood will also be drained while they're still alive. Because again, it's more potent that way. So across West Africa, if a corpse is found with missing hands, feet, teeth or other internal organs, and especially if it's shown signs of having its blood drained, it's a surefire sign that that person may well have been the victim of a ritual sacrifice.

17:18But let's get back to the Soka Forest. The Akadas were trying to establish if this is really what had been going on, and if it'd been going on right under everybody's noses, because like we said, the locals had been reporting this to the police for quite a while and naturally they were absolutely terrified by what they learned because some mechanics operating close to the warehouse told them that they feared the human parts trade had been operating from that location for years they also said they had seen several posh looking black jeeps approaching the site on a number of occasions, and heard what sounded like screams from inside. One local woman even insisted that she'd reported her suspicions around the derelict building several times over the years to the state police.

17:59Once, officers told her that the building was designated to take care of destitute and mentally ill people who'd become a nuisance in the city. So now it seems like not only are the police brushing them off and ignoring it, they're outright, it seems, lying about what's going on and where those screams are coming from. Another time, to another resident who had complained, apparently the police had just shrugged and said it didn't fall under their jurisdiction, even though they're the state police. This warehouse that we're talking about, by the way, is just a kilometre away from the busy Lagos-Ebadan highway, so definitely very much under their jurisdiction. Just because it feels like it's in the middle of nowhere,

18:40it's actually not in the middle of nowhere. And even more damning, this patch of land was owned and leased out by the literal state government. So yes, it really feels like the police are involved in this. So just to understand this in a bit more context, basically parts of the forest were once occupied by construction firms employed by the government, who had just let their ramshackle building sites fall into disuse when projects ended. State officials claim that the contract for the company formerly operating from that site had lapsed long ago, so it had been officially abandoned for over a decade. During this time, they said rogue actors had started taking advantage of it. Now, that doesn't exactly explain why the state's

19:25authorities had seemingly turned a blind eye to the worrying reports about the place for so long, or why they were also lying to locals telling them that it was some sort of impromptu, derelict-looking, insane asylum, which is obviously also not the truth, or why it took a group of justice-seeking Ocadas to finally shine a light on the so-called House of Horrors in March 2014, a decade after dodgy-looking things had started occurring there. And it certainly didn't look great that some of the survivors themselves, because remember, the Akadas saved a bunch of people who did manage to get out of there, and some of these survivors purported to have been kidnapped by people who claimed that they worked for the Oyo state government.

20:09Now, whether this is actually true is unclear, but it cast even more doubts on whether the state's authorities had been complicit in covering up the scandal. Now, one of the survivors that the Akadas freed was a woman named Titi Adeni Okpesi. Now Titi claimed that she'd been sitting outside her house when she was suddenly forced into a car by men who claimed that they were there to arrest her. Her family was away in Lagos at the time so there was no one there to help her. She was knocked unconscious and woke up to find herself shackled in that warehouse in the forest. She could hear the sounds of moaning and screaming, but couldn't tell if it was people being killed or women giving birth. Titi was chained up in

20:51that festering hellhole for weeks. Once, she said a man had come in and unshackled one of her fellow captives before leading him to the centre of the room, forcing Titti and the other prisoners to watch in powerless terror as he took out a cleaver and chopped off the victim's foot. The man with the cleaver, now shackled, the now bleeding man missing his foot, backed the wall before leaving with said foot. According to Titti, another woman in the den said she'd given birth to a baby just two days before the Akardas had stumbled across the den, but that the baby had been immediately taken away by the captors, and they never found out what happened to her. When the Akardas raised the alarm in March 2014, it was the first time law enforcement had actually responded to a report

21:43from the forest in a decade and presumably they're only coming because now it's not somebody saying we can hear weird things or there's a weird jeep with people screaming people saying we've been inside and there's a fucking bunch of people dead in there and people who have been tied up so yes bad stuff but if you were hoping that it would be because um you know they were actually about to bring about some sort of change than think again. Because at first, Oyo State Governor Abiola Ojemobi visited the site and gave a speech reassuring citizens that they do all they could to catch those responsible, saying, quote, those behind this dastardly act will be punished by God. Oh, but we too will punish them when we get them.

22:24But we're off the hook really, because God will do it in the end. Just in case we don't catch them. Don't worry about it. But it all turned out to be pretty much hot air. And the Akadas still couldn't get in touch with their friend Kazim. And repeatedly they begged the police to excavate the site to unearth the full extent of what had been going on. But their calls all went unanswered for weeks, until they finally realised that nobody was going to help them. Fuelled by the authorities' suspicious lack of action, rumours quickly spread that the ritualists operating at the warehouse were actually being protected by top government officials in the state of Oyo. After all, these types of rituals are often commissioned by African

23:11elites, including wealthy business people and politicians, in order to gain wealth, power, status, whatever. Perhaps the government had been paid to turn a blind eye. Or even worse, was the call coming from inside the house? The scary warehouse. And as you can imagine, this case triggered all-out riots in March 2014 from the community of Ocada drivers and angry locals who demanded answers about the mysterious site. But sadly, their efforts again came to nothing. The police never excavated the site, and four years later the warehouse was just demolished to build a secondary school. Can you imagine? Oh my God. I know. It's fucking terrifying. And to this day, Kazim's fate remains unknown. Also, no one has ever been convicted, or all this time later,

24:15for the crimes that took place in the Soka Forest. And sadly, this isn't all that unusual, because culprits behind these sort of ritual killings in Africa are rarely caught or prosecuted. It's not just because the authorities lack resources to properly investigate these crimes but across western Africa the belief in witchcraft runs so deep that many law enforcement officers openly admit to being afraid of pursuing ritual killing cases of going after the offenders because they feel like well they could just kill somebody and put a big fucking crazy hex on me. In most African countries, there's actually no explicit legislation relating to ritual murders. So they're never officially recorded as anything

24:56other than your common garden variety homicide. That is, if they're investigated at all. But over 100 cases of ritual killings were reported across Africa in 2025 alone. But in all likelihood, that number is even higher. Now, we'll never know just how many people lost their lives in the abandoned house of horrors or who was truly responsible for what happened because the government are never, ever, ever going to investigate. The police are never going to investigate. They wouldn't even excavate the site. Like what were they scared they were going to find? And I don't believe this is one of those situations where they're like, oh, we don't want to do it because we don't want to give Nigeria a bad name. Like what? Like that's not the reason.

25:38The reason they're not doing it is because they are either scared. Oh my God, my bag just fell over. And I like genuinely, my heart went through. I was like, what the fuck is in this room with me? Don't. But yeah, they do not want to open that can of worms. They don't want to go down that road either because they were involved or high level people. And like we said, this isn't something that your average middle class family can afford. This is for the elites. This is for people who have a lot of money, a lot of power already to try and consolidate that. So there's absolutely going to be people, high-level people that are involved in this. And I think absolutely they were covering up for them. Or they're scared. That's the best case scenario, is that they're just too scared,

26:18which is still such an unbelievably ridiculous concept. Worst case is the head of state is like, well, I can't really dob in my own witch doctor, can I? Exactly. And he knows where I live. It could be so many things. And so, yeah, they're never going to get caught. So for all we know, whoever was responsible for this horrific, and it couldn't have been one person, it's a group of people. Like we said, these witch doctors don't operate on their own. They have a group of people that are kidnappers, torturers, murderers, traffickers, all of these people working together in a network. So absolutely, for all we know, and I think I do know that they definitely are still doing this, they're still absolutely out there secretly plying their sick trade

26:58in another hidden place somewhere in some other woods somewhere in Nigeria. So if you go down to the woods today, you might just be in for another big surprise well good job I refuse yes no thank you it's absolutely shocking like I I'm just like very interested in that kind of concept of like money rituals and we've talked before about like Muti rituals, very similar concept when we did things like the Victoria Klimbie case. I'm just generally interested in this kind of thing, but it's very rare that you get one specific case where you can talk about it. It just seems more of like typically a concept that you know is happening. It's not being investigated either because like we said, politicians, elites, higher ups are involved

27:43in it. And so they're covering it up all because of this fear. But this was a really rare case and that's why I wanted to cover it because we actually had a solid story here of one of these house of horrors being discovered, victims being rescued from it, people who had been maimed, who had body parts cut off saying, this is what was fucking happening to me. And still for nothing to be be investigated a pile of corpses and they were still like oh god will get him don't you worry so yeah had to cover this story and yeah it's truly I think it's it's so crazy that as I'm saying it it still sounds like I've just found a creepy pasta like but this is real this actually fucking. It just blows my mind. And it

28:26proves furthermore how much this is definitely happening. Because if this had happened anywhere else, this would be front page news. It'd be like the biggest story that ever happened. This wasn't even that big. Yes, there was the riots and things like that, but nothing happened. Still nothing happened. You would think this would be a turning point no it just it didn't become the watershed moment that people thought it would be in Nigeria and it's very sad since I think about a lot when we this was years ago in lockdown we spoke to Emily Kenway when she was um had just released her the truth about modern slavery book and she's doing really interesting stuff about carers now anyway something she said in that interview that I've never, ever forgotten is like,

29:10she's like, everything and everything you can think of happens. Somewhere in the world, it happens. That doesn't mean that policy should change because of those outlying things, which I thought was a really interesting way of putting it. But I think like with stuff like this, people tend to ignore it because they think that it can't possibly be true and then it must be sensational or like puffed up in some way and like it just no it isn't no no and the sad thing is the law enforcement and people like that who are in charge there are under no illusions they're not thinking it's not happening they're like it is happening we don't want to fuck it we don't want to we're either super involved or we don't want and people like that who are in charge there are under no illusions. They're not thinking it's not happening. They're like, it is happening.

29:45We don't want to fuck it. We don't want to. We're either super involved or we don't want to be involved at all. And that's their reasoning. So yeah, really, really horrific stuff. And I'm surprised we even had this much information about this story, if I'm honest with you. Usually when you come across stuff like that, it is really difficult to piece together any sort of narrative. Absolutely. But that's all I got for you guys. Bad stuff. Well, mine's possibly not as like body horror. Uh-huh. But it's quite mirror heavy i love mirrors in terms of like why we're afraid of them have you watched oculus that's a good horror film no i haven't actually it's about a big mirror it's quite good so speaking of sarita barla I'm also almost certain that as a

30:46spooky little child you either I think we are more likely to have played Bloody Mary than we are Candyman Oh yes I did do Bloody Mary of course I did Bloody Mary who didn't do Bloody Mary? Unless you were doing Candyman obviously. Maybe am I right in thinking maybe they're both quite American. I don't know. I feel like we definitely did Bloody Mary though at school. So it's like, you look in the mirror, you say Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, and then she appears behind you. Yeah, definitely did it. Never saw her though, but was definitely scared. I never did. I was too scared. I was too scared to even play the game Fair fair We had one in my like bearing in mind this was a very Catholic school

31:30so maybe it was a bit different and if you're talking about Bloody Mary in terms of like historical she was a Catholic so obviously we fucking love her What's her story? Who is she? Queen of Scots isn't it? Oh Queen of Scots okay Mary Queen of Scots Bloody Mary or are they Queen of Scots Okay Mary Queen of Scots Bloody Mary Or are they two separate people? I think they might be And then we get told off I think they're two separate people So I think they're cousins I did recently watch The new Dan Snow With Professor Suzanne Lipscomb Tudor's thing on Disney Plus And it's very good I think they're cousins yes Mary I bloody Mary and she's called that because she killed nearly 300 Protestants which

32:11obviously for Catholics we very rarely get a monarch that does the murdering usually we're the ones getting murdered so we were quite pro her yeah so she's Elizabeth's sister daughter of Catherine of Aragon and then I I believe that Mary, Queen of Scots, is their cousin, who's played by Saoirse Ronan. Is that her name? Saoirse Ronan? In that biopic of Elizabeth with Margot Robbie. So they never actually meet, but she's the one who's like queen for a day and then she has to kill her. Anyway, they're two separate people, but I get it. So it's the one that kills all the people. That's Bloody Mary. Okay. In my school, she didn't. So the idea is she's supposed to appear behind you in the mirror,

32:52right? Yeah. In my school, that wasn't the case. She turned the taps on. Oh, that's more fun. Did anyone ever have that happen? Did anyone ever say it happened to them oh i'm sure i'm sure but i was never there to witness it so i don't have first hand there's also a harder lie to tell if other people are in the room with you like the tap has to go off but in like the version where you just see her behind you you could just scream and be like oh my god i saw her because you're the only one who's meant to be able to see her because you said it it's a bold bold uh upgrade on the story or it might have been that you took you turned the taps on and then it ran red don't know I mean I honestly I feel like I did it when I was a teenager but I don't if I'd want to do it now like I feel

33:40like I have increased in my like chicken shittedness as I've gotten older for sure and like I think even when where were we were we were like should we play the elevator game and I was like absolutely fuck no I do not want to play the elevator game I do not want to do it like that reddit post about the elevator game I and how something came back or oh I still think about that sometimes I still think about that sometimes well it I'm gonna have to do to revert to the American version is it is candy man I still think about that sometimes. I still think about that sometimes. Well, I'm going to have to revert to the American version. It is Candyman. Okay, got it, got it. Which, of course, there is a horror film franchise built upon Candyman.

34:20And the legend in America is if you say Candyman five times, we just do three, which are really lazy stuff, then you summon this serial killer with a hook hand and he's standing behind you, right? Okay. Candyman, very good horror franchise. Very good horror film. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very good. The Oridge came out in 1992 and it's set in the Chicago housing projects where the vengeful ghost of an African-American man who was murdered for his interracial relationship in the 19th century, stalks the residents and he slashes them with his horrible hook. But did you know that one of the film's most iconic scenes, the one where the Candyman strikes from inside a bathroom medicine cabinet mirror, that is actually inspired by a

35:08real life murder. Oh, why? That's the worst bit. They're looking in your fucking bathroom mirror and there's somebody, well, I was going to say behind you, but in this it's inside it behind it that's even worse and the real true life murder that i have for you on my half of the bargain this week is the chilling story of a woman called ruthie may mccoy oh my god that's nearly my name little ruthie oh no Oh my God, that's nearly my name. Little Ruthie. Oh no. That's just a Sue away. A Sue skipping a jump away from my name. Oh no. And it is going to ruin your nighttime toilet trips that you love so much and also just um just painted the entire bathroom like a very deep plum color and the walls already painted that color but i was like do you know what

36:13i feel like we need to go a bit more extra in this room and paint the ceiling that color as well because this room can handle it it's a big fucking window in here and it will look more extravagant and now oh my god when i go in there at night it is like going into a black cave to wee. Because I can't turn the lights on because then it will wake me up. So I have to sort of go in a semi-zombie comatose situation into this black cave to wee. And so I've made a real bad call there. So this is great. Let's go. Keep it coming. So let's go back to April 1987, to the notorious public housing projects on Chicago's near west side. It was there that 52-year-old Grandma Ruthie Mae McCoy had lived for the past

36:56four years. The run-down ABLA buildings, which stands for Adam, Brooks, Loomis and Abbott, were infamously known for gang violence, antisocial behaviour and crime. And the Abbott buildings where Ruthie lived were considered the worst of all. Destitute cocaine and PCP addicts lived on every floor, with gunslinging drug dealers keeping the narcotics flowing and the residents living in fear. Ruthie had mental health issues all of her very own. She was struggling with paranoia and anxiety. And living in a building like that didn't exactly help. Ruthie's apartment was at the end of the corridor on the 11th floor. She'd already changed the locks on her door multiple times since she moved in. When Ruthie rang 911 at about 8.45pm on the 22nd of April,

37:54Chicago's dispatchers were all too used to calls from her apartment block, but they never could have predicted what she was about to tell them. Ruthie wasn't reporting someone getting past her bolted front door. Ruthie claimed intruders were trying to enter through her bathroom wall. A fearful Ruthie told a dispatcher that the people next door had thrown her medicine cabinet down. She said, I'm on the other side. They want to come through the bathroom. The dispatcher must have been confused by what Ruthie meant. So they logged the call as a disturbance with a neighbour rather than an urgent break-in attempt. Officers hadn't yet arrived at the scene when another 911 call came in at 9.02pm. This time it was from a woman who said she had been walking down the 11th floor hallway

38:47when she heard gunshots coming from inside apartment 1109. This was followed by another report of gunshots and shouting just two minutes later. 25 minutes after Ruthie's original call, four officers finally arrived at 9.10pm. They pounded on her apartment door to get no answer. And when the dispatcher tried to call Ruthie's phone, the officers could hear it through the locked door, ringing and ringing and ringing, but nobody ever picked it up. A spare key from the project's office didn't fit the lock. So, with no other way into Ruthie's flat, officers had to resort to speaking to neighbours in the hopes that one of them might have seen or heard something useful. But in the project, snitches really did get stitches.

39:49The only information the police could get out of anybody that night was that the lady from apartment 1109 always answered her door. Until tonight. Still, at 9.48pm, officers gave up and left the building. Perhaps they thought Ruthie's call was just the confused ramblings of a mentally ill old lady. And the reported gunshot sounds had come from somewhere else. It wasn't uncommon to hear shots in that neighbourhood, after all. But the next evening, police got another worried call from the Abbott Project. This time from Ruthie's neighbour and friend, Deborah Lasley. Ruthie would always stop for a chat by Deborah's apartment on her way out of the building each morning, and when she returned in the afternoon. So when she didn't appear, on the 23rd of April as usual,

40:39Deborah felt in her gut that something was terribly wrong. Six police officers and several security guards from the Chicago Housing Authority returned to Ruthie's apartment that evening. But when the officers suggested breaking the door down, the housing guards told them not to. Tenants could sue for damage, and they'd have to deal with all the headache of getting someone to secure the door again afterwards. So the police just let it go. Again. But to Deborah, it didn't make sense for her friend to suddenly disappear when she'd been making real strides in improving her life lately. Ruthie had been attending group therapy sessions and crafting workshops three times a week, and was even taking classes to finally earn her high school diploma.

41:35Why would she make a cryptic call to the police and then suddenly go off grid? So, the next day, Deborah officially alerted the Housing Project officials to her concerns. At about 1pm on the 24th of April, two whole days after Ruthie's 911 call, a carpenter was finally sent to drill through the lock. So at last, the door to apartment 1109 swung open. It was eerily quiet inside. Deborah nervously called out Ruthie's name, but got no response. And as she pushed open the door into Ruthie's bedroom, Deborah discovered the chilling reason for her friend's silence. There was Ruthie Mae McCoy, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Ruthie had been shot four times, in her left shoulder, her thigh, her abdomen and through her right arm. That bullet had gone into her chest

42:36and severed her pulmonary artery, which would have caused her to bleed out within minutes. Detectives could only find one used shell, slightly hidden behind the door. A mess of papers, magazines and coins were strewn all around Ruthie's body. Ruthie didn't have that much, she didn't own that much, so the place was practically empty of furniture as it was, so it was quite easy to deduce what had been stolen. A television, a rocking chair, and the landline telephone. And that's odd, isn't it? Because the police heard the phone ringing through the door. No. So that means someone had to have entered Ruthie's apartment after the police left that night. Or, when the police arrived, there was someone still inside.

43:37Just on the other side of the door. Oh no. But perhaps the most unsettling thing detectives noticed was a gaping black hole in the wall above Ruthie's bathroom sink. In the space where a medicine cabinet should have been. Peering into the darkness, detectives saw what looked like the back of someone else's medicine cabinet, just two feet away between the pipes. It was a strange layout, evidently designed for maintenance workers to gain easy access to the plumbing between apartments. And suddenly Ruthie's words on her 911 call came rushing back. I'm on the other side. They want to come through the bathroom. And the more investigators asked around the housing projects, the detectives came to the grim realisation that Ruthie Mae McCoy had been

44:34telling the truth that night. As it turned out, the front door wasn't the only way criminals could terrorise residents in the Abbott buildings. They could also creep up on their victims from within. It emerged that a spate of break-ins through bathroom medicine cabinets had started in the complex in 1986, a whole year before Ruthie's murder. It had become common knowledge that four of the ten apartments on each floor, the two pairs directly across from each other at each end of the corridor, were connected by a narrow enclosed crawlspace between their bathrooms. A space just big enough for a person to slip through. These not-so-secret tunnels were hidden just behind where the medicine cabinet was installed on the wall. And the six nails,

45:34six only, securing the cabinets of the wall were hardly a barrier to someone determined to get in from the other side. So that meant that if you lived at the end of a corridor, it mattered a lot who your opposite neighbour was. Because you might just find them crawling out of the dark cavity on your bathroom wall during your night time wee, Suruti Bala. That's fucking horrific. No thanks. That's like that episode of Luther when he climbs out from under the bed. That's what it makes me feel like. Oh my god. I mean, how did anyone even figure that out? I mean, I guess crime. Criminal reasons. But it's horrific. So don't bother with triple checking the lock on your front door if you live in those buildings.

46:24Terrified Abbott residents started pushing couches in front of their bathroom doors and securing the doorknobs with ropes before they climbed into bed. Fucking hell. And detectives learned that Ruthie had reportedly been petrified by noises coming from the other side of the bathroom mirror for months leading up to her murder. In early 1987, the woman who had lived in apartment 1108 across the hall moved out. And as often happened in these buildings, a group of drug dealers and gang members swiftly claimed that apartment for their own. Ruthie's daughter, Vanita, said that her mum was so afraid of who might emerge from behind the medicine cabinet that she actually started using a bucket instead of going into the bathroom when she needed the toilet.

47:11But, like so many others, she had just never been able to afford to leave. Her government welfare checks were just $154 a month, with the rent for her apartment costing $46, which just left her very little to spare for basic necessities. But ironically, Ruthie had been closer than ever to escaping her nightmare when she died. In February 1987, Ruthie was approved to receive Supplemental Security Income SSI, which is a federal aid program for low-income Americans with disabilities. So just two months before her death, Ruthie was able to cash a life-changing check of $2,000. She finally had the money she needed to move away from the crime and the chaos of the Adler Projects. She wanted to move somewhere where her grandkids would be

48:00safe to visit her, where she wouldn't have to look over her shoulder everywhere she went. But Ruthie's dream never came true. Because instead of granting her her freedom, that money ended up costing Ruthie her life. While she'd only treated herself to a winter coat and a few other items of clothing with her new windfall, word somehow spread that Ruthie had come into some money. And according to her daughter, Ruthie did keep that cash in her apartment. But by the time the police searched the place after Ruthie's murder, it was gone. Okay. Yeah. I was going to say, what was motivating these people to go in and murder this little old lady for a rocking chair and a fucking landline. And I was like, maybe they're just doing it because they want another apartment to take over.

48:48But OK, I guess that wouldn't have been a massive secret that she had got this money, perhaps. And whoever that person was, they also knew about the bathroom mirrors. So who was it that actually killed Ruthie Mae McCoy? Was it a hook-handed burgy man getting his ghoulish revenge with bees on his face for some reason? I can't remember why the bees are in there, but it's really stuck in my brain. Yeah, no, I don't remember. Not quite. Oh. Despite their reluctance to talk to the police, two names kept coming up from Ruthie's neighbours. Edward Turner and John Honduras. 18-year-old Edward was a high school senior whose family lived in the same Abbott block as Ruthie and attended a school for kids with severe behavioural problems.

49:3821-year-old John Honduras had already racked up three felonies, one for robbery and two for stealing cars. According to several witnesses, these two men were seen wandering the halls on the night of Ruthie's murder, trying to shift a television and a rocking chair. The clearest idea of what actually happened to Ruthie on the night of the 22nd of April came from a friend of those two guys called Tim Brown. Tim told police that from about 8pm onwards, he had been hanging out with John and Edward at apartment 1108, the one across the hall from Ruthie's. At 11.30pm, John and Edward went into the bathroom and took down the medicine cabinet and through the hole behind it, they saw straight into the bathroom of apartment 1109.

50:26According to Tim, the cabinet in Ruthie's bathroom was already gone. And after Tim told John that an old lady named Miss May lived there, John shrugged and said that it didn't look like anyone was home. And so John climbed up onto the sink and entered into the dark hole leading into Ruthie's apartment. Tim said that he heard a woman's voice shouting, Who's there? before he saw John yanking open Ruthie's bathroom door and bolting into her apartment. Moments later, John banged on the door of 1108 and asked Tim to toss him his jacket. John put it over his head and returned to 1108 through the front door. Which is when Tim saw Edward climbing through the hole in 1108's bathroom and leaping down into Ruthie's apartment.

51:17He realised it was a siege with men surrounding Ruthie from inside and out. Tim reported that Edward shouted, get down, before four distinct gunshots rang out. A few minutes later, John and Edward emerged from Ruthie's flat with a TV and a rocking chair and crucially, they left the door unlocked behind them. Two or three hours later, the two men returned to 1109 to collect the used bullets. And when they returned after about five minutes, John told Tim that he'd only been able to find three of the four shells, which explained the single shell that the police found in the bedroom when they finally got inside two days later. But Tim isn't the most reliable of witnesses. He was a convicted drug dealer who was on probation at the time of Ruthie's murder. And there was also the fact that this was the second version

52:18of events that he had given to police. During his initial questioning, Tim claimed that he wasn't even in the building on that night. And the second version only emerged when officers pressed him with inconsistencies. But even then, there were things that didn't really make sense. Tim said that John and Edward broke in at half past 11, but Ruthie rang 911 at 8.45. And there were two separate calls reporting gunshots made about 9pm. Also, Tim claimed John and Edward left the door to 1109 unlocked for several hours after Ruthie was shot. Which certainly was not the case when police were trying to get inside. And when Tim finally told this story in court three years later, the waters got murkier still.

53:13John and Edward were facing charges of murder, armed robbery, home invasion and residential burglary, and the prosecution's whole case hinged on Tim's testimony. But on the stand, he relayed a version of events where Edward never even came into the bathroom of apartment 1108. Instead, Tim said that he was on the couch in the living room when the shots rang out. When the baffled prosecutors asked him why his story had changed, he claimed he had signed his initial statements under duress and was the victim of police brutality. So Tim's credibility as a witness, totally and utterly fucked. Edward and John's ex-girlfriends both testified that the guys had tried to palm off the TV and rocking chair on them later that night,

53:57but that wasn't enough to prove that they were the ones who had killed Ruthie. And without Tim's testimony, the case was lacking in actual evidence. Any prints had been wiped clean and Ruthie's missing phone and medicine cabinet were never found. So, on the 3rd of April 1990, Edward Turner and John Honduras were acquitted for the murder of Ruthie Mae McCoy and walked out the courtroom free men. Today, most people blame the police and Chicago Housing Authority for this tragedy, just as much as whoever actually pulled the trigger. If the CHA had done more to secure the apartments, Ruthie's killer wouldn't have been able to break in so easily that night. And if the police responded more quickly to her desperate 911 call, she might

54:45have survived to tell the tale. Ruthie's daughter actually tried to sue the CHA for not doing enough to protect her mum, but she lost. At the end of the day, Ruthie's death became another brutal statistic. Two other residents from the same tower block were murdered in the final weeks of April that year, which shows you just how common violent crime was there. Homicides rarely even made headlines, and the police saw the area as such a lost cause that they took a pretty blasé approach to policing it. So, in a way, it was life in the projects that killed Ruthie, not a horror movie monster. But sadly, urban legends are more captivating than urban realities, which is why we've all heard of the ghostly figure of the Candyman.

55:30But until now, none of us knew about Ruthie Mae McCoy. Fucking hell. Poor Ruthie. I know. And I hate that she was like terrified of like the noises she was hearing and then people just thought she was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And I can also see how like Tim being such a questionable character, like I could also completely see how you could make an argument. Like he just had it in for John and Edward and dobbed him in because there's no evidence. Like I don't think it would have been a safe conviction anyway. Wow. I can definitely see how the inspiration worked there for it. I mean, it's literally what happens in Candyman apart from it's a man with a hook and bees on his face, as you said. Wow. That's scary. Scary, scary stuff. I hate that. And all the other residents who know it's

56:21happening and you just be terrified that there is a door you cannot lock into your house oh well i'm terrified i do actually want to go wee now because i'm never going to wee again at night i'll be ordering a bucket no thanks see you next week for part two of our story swap to round off this spooky month. Join us then. Goodbye.