jeremy: ⁓ Hi, this is Jeremy Vine. I'm with Mark Williams Thomas. We are doing our first thirty minute crime. It's great to have you with us. And today, Mark, we're discussing Peter Murrell.

Mark: Yeah, Jeremy, our first Together podcast and video. I think it's fascinating and we are going to enter a completely new area of talking through crime in 30 minutes, giving people kind of our thoughts, but also behind the headlines. And what better to start with than the Peter Murrell case, the ex-husband of the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. What a fascinating case. And what's fascinating is not just in terms of of what he bought and some of the gifts are astonishing but actually the mindset of why he did it.

jeremy: What I mean, this is the thing, and I this is where I really want your wisdom, Mark, as a as an ex-police officer, somebody who investigates the whole time. I cannot work out what's going on with this guy. What wha you know, he he looks to me as he walks down the street, he's a he's a pretty big guy, hasn't got any hair, he doesn't look vain, he doesn't have turkey teeth, he's he's married to Nicola Sturgeon, he's accepting the Dennis Thatcher role of being number two. And yet on the side he's buying what you would call vanity items by the score, by the dozen. Can you t explain this mindset to me?

Mark: Yeah, I think it's very interesting, isn't it? Because here's an individual in two of the police interviews who basically said nothing. He just didn't accept it. He didn't talk about it. So everything to date, we haven't heard a response from him when, ⁓ you know, that whole aspect of kind of why did he do it? It leaves us in a position where we don't really know because he's never properly engaged and it's only through his lawyers that we've had some kind of understanding what's going on. Let's break it down. So. Has he got a compulsive buying disorder? In other words, this is an individual who needs to go and buy items and as buying items, it gives him some kind of high, some kind of accelerated feeling. There's also bipolar. Was he in a position where it was creating a hypomania for him? So he was comfort shopping. So he was buying these items to kind of like encourage his confidence to be in a position where he's over-elevated. perhaps even ADHD, you know, the extent to which he is buying stuff. That was potentially a dopamine fix for him. So it enables him to actually satisfy his position. A borderline personality disorder? I think so. I think there's some kind of borderline personality disorder because what he's done is he's been incredibly reckless, but reckless to a degree where he eventually knows he's going to get caught. He's not a stupid man because actually he's done a lot of manipulation.

jeremy: Mm.

Mark: A lot of the invoices that he's raised, you know, have been invoiced raised against an item that he's bought for his own use, which actually have been changed to kind of like be a company or a political purpose. So fascinating. But what is kind of the ceiling and the icing on this cake is this fascinating purchase of the motorhome.

jeremy: Yeah, absolutely so so here's the thing. I looked into the motorhome, hundred and twenty grand. How many what miles has it got on the clock? Did you see this? Do you know how many? Four. Four. So yeah.

Mark: No, no, no, no, tell me. No, it's a brand new.

jeremy: So he's go he's driven it from the dealership to his mum's house. He's parked it down the side, and there's a whole conversation about how Nicola Sturgeon didn't sit. She went to the house, she thought it was by a wall or something. And and then he goes out and he buys guidebooks to camper tours of Scotland, camper tours of Wales. So he's got certainly got the idea, this kind of not a fantasy, but this ideation of in the future Nicola and I will get in the motorhome and drive. Either way. And I it's very interesting you talk about bipolar and ADHD as well. Because I wasn't, I wasn't necessarily going down that track. I was thinking more that we've got somebody who simply hates being number two. And he sees this, his wife is a bit of a rock star in politics. He's the Dennis Thatcher, he's the supplement, and he decides he's going to do something that A shows that he's got agency and power, and he's going to use the SNP's money to do it. And the second thing, and this is, I don't know if he knows what if he. Even thought this through in his own mind is that when the balloon goes up, he takes her down as well. Because although she's not been prosecuted and the police have been all over it, it leaves this awful taint for her. How does she walk past an 80 grand Jaguar in her own driveway and not say, Darlin, where's the money? You know, the guy's earning 90,000 a year after tax. I put this is how obsessed I am with the case. I put it into my my phone. That's 62 grand after tax, right? How does he buy that car?

Mark: Yeah. But it's not just that Jeremy, it's also the other items in the house. What do we have? We had 110 pounds for a pencil sharpener. Must have been a pretty amazing pencil sharpener. Video games, watches, Mont Blanc pens. I think he spent over 5,000 pounds on two coffee machines. know, clearly grand coffee machines.

jeremy: And why doesn't she ask? Yeah. Luxury watch, nine thousand three hundred, silver wine coaster, jewelry box, as you say, coffee machine, dice and vacuums. The big one, the one that's really embarrassing, is he bought two hairdryers. Now is he pointing them at both sides of his head like that or what? I don't know. You know, was it a hot day? Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, he bought her a necklace, didn't he? He bought her a necklace after they'd been on a trip and he bought the necklace and she wore the necklace. I mean, some of the items and the salt and pepper pot, I have to say, I who spends that on items of a salt and pepper pot? mean, this is where his purchasing, his buying of items was on the grandiose scale, wasn't it? He wasn't buying items because he kind of needed them.

jeremy: Yep. In Shetland. Hmm.

Mark: think he was buying items because there was some need to satisfy some kind of disorder within him. I'm not making any excuses for him, but clearly something had built up in him that caused him to need to go and buy these items. And I think you're right. I think he was very much the number two and he probably struggled with that to some degree. And maybe, you know, a politician's partner is at times probably quite isolating and you're pretty much on your own and you're in the back. We don't know what their level of relationship was like. So he was probably looking for something that he wasn't getting elsewhere

jeremy: Yeah. Now I I mean the timing of their marriage, they got married, I believe, before she became SNP leader. And I always think with with Nicola that you're looking at I don't know if you like your your 1970s rock, Mark, but I you know the story of Genesis is fascinating. So they have this incredible lead singer, Peter Gabriel, and Peter Gabriel suddenly leaves, write this writes the song Salisbury Hill, goes off into a solo career. Genesis have got nothing now. They've got little lost their singer, and they're about to start a hunt for one, and then the

Mark: Yes. Yeah.

jeremy: Guy on the drum says, Well, can I have a go at it? And it's Phil Collins. And to me, that was Sturgeon. So, yeah, it is well, well, yeah, you'd never expect. So, the drummer, obviously, Alex Salm the lead singer of Genesis, he leaves, and the drummer takes over, Sturgeon. And you never think the drummer's gonna be that good, and she was. And I I wonder if he was so shocked by that that's when it all began.

Mark: Yeah. And it's fascinating that story, isn't it? You're right. And I think there is. Yeah, I think there's quite an interesting parallel to draw, isn't it? Because I do think if you talk to a lot of people, unless they're into the 70s rock, they think Phil Collins was Genesis. They wouldn't necessarily know about Peter Gabriel. Of course, they were very, very successful prior to Collins coming involved. So I think there is

jeremy: I love it. Let's divert into that. Because when I got married to my my lovely wife Rachel, I was very alarmed that she had Phil Collins tapes. And I said, Are you, you know, you aware of Genesis? And she said, Yeah, of course I know he was the lead singer. I No, no, no. Before that, the lamb lies down on Broadway. Foxtrot, selling England by the pound. You know, so it's kind of funny, isn't it? But I think that I don't know how that analogy works, except that I think it was so shocking how good she was at politics. I wonder if that's what broke him. Who knows?

Mark: She became very powerful. She became incredibly powerful. She became the voice of Scotland. And I think if you look at the politicians within Scotland in the recent times, she sits right at the very top of that. And I think there's also some criticism because she was asked in 2021 when initially concerns were raised about their parties.

jeremy: Mm. Yeah.

Mark: finances and she was very clear to say there are no issues with the party's finances. Now, she's an intelligent lady. At that point, one would hope and one would have thought that she'd have actually gone to her husband who was in charge of the finances and other parties and go, do you have an issue? Where did this come from? And done a proper audit to see where that has happened. Now, he was obviously very careful and very, ⁓ very, very manipulative in the way that he did because he used two of his

jeremy: Yeah.

Mark: colleagues credit cards, didn't he? That they didn't know anything about. So what he did, as do many criminals, is he isolated the finances so he had control of them. And as a result of that, of course, he was able to manipulate. I mean, he effectively used party political funds to run his life.

jeremy: I know, I know. Yeah. Well, you know, the funny thing, we're getting onto the Nicolasturgeon area, because and this is this is what is the the really, really gray twisted part of this is that on the one hand you say, how can she not have known? On the other hand, you say, well, the police would have gone in with that view and they will have gone through it, and it's been what, two million pound inquiry or something, and in the end they said, we've got no charges. Because genuinely, it looks as if she didn't. Now, there is a famous thing called willful blindness where you just don't see the thing you don't want to see. And it happens all, you know, a pilot who doesn't want to look at the fuel gauge is the classic thing. And I s I've been backwards and forwards on this, and I think in the end, I've got to go with the police's thing, which is they look, you know, they Spent ages, they would have tried to do her. I actually let me ask you this, okay? Do you think Police Scotland had it in for them? And I asked that because when they first put their tent in the garden, people were saying, ⁓ my god, they dug up a body. I mean, it really looked like that the police force wanted to bring them down in every way. And also they didn't have to release the full list of items either. 125 pages. And I wonder if they released it because they just want to hurt them as much as possible. But then they didn't charge her. So I'm left thinking, maybe they've actually done a fair inquiry here.

Mark: Well, it took… mean, this is an inquiry, Operation Branch Ford, that cost in excess of £2 million. So it was a huge financial inquiry by the Scottish police, obviously having to come out of their own funds. It doesn't come out of central funds. It's not a murder. So it comes out of their police force funds. And, you they've obviously gone to town in relation to it. I think the use of a tent in the front garden, I basically… If weather in Clemham weather, which we know is very very common in Scotland Do you want to put a tent there because actually gives you somewhere to go takes you away from prying eyes as well So you can talk so I can totally understand why they put a tent on the front garden and they justified it I think fair enough. I think the motorhome is the very significant thing And why it's so significant is that it's the biggest purchase that he made he made it for and had it for you know from 21 into 23 when it was eventually seized by the police And at no stage did she know about it. Now, I accept that because it was parked at the mother's address. He was the only person who got insurance for it. ⁓ He did talk to other party members about potentially, you know, would it be a good idea to kind of buy a motor home so that we could use that for party ⁓ business? So he obviously floated it. And I suspect he would have floated that with Nicola as well.

jeremy: Yeah.

Mark: But whether he went far enough to, and obviously the response that he got from Nicola and the response he got from the party is, well, we don't need one, we can hire one. And of course, if you're going to get that response from a question, you're then going to back off and not go further with it. So he definitely, I think, tested the water with her. The problem is, is when you are surrounded with such high value items, you must say to yourself, hang on a minute, where is the money coming from for that? And as a... As the leader of a party, I really have to question why are you not across what your party finances are? Because ultimately...

jeremy: Well, I think I think it became yeah, in in answer to your question, I think it became political quite quickly. Now, y as you rightly mentioned, th there was a meeting where she said, ⁓ let's be very careful suggesting anything is awry with the SNP's finances. And there was an edge to what she said. She was sitting at home and it was a Zoom meeting, and it might have even been just r rather recent to COVID. And people were put off by that. And then you had these resignations of Joanna Cherry and other people. So you had all the finance people going 'cause they felt they weren't being able to see the book. And Nicholas Sturgeon saying nothing to see here. In the meantime, she's actually wearing the necklace he's bought in Shetland with the SNP's money. Now I know the police were, I think he tried to run this defense on the motorhome. I bought it for the party. And you can imagine that that might run, but they obviously said there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any leaflets in it, of any sense of it appearing anywhere with anything of the SP on it. You know, he'd put it down his mother-in-law's passageway. I mean, there's no way it's being used for the SP, and he bought this guide. books for going on tour in Scotland. So, but of all the thing you see, I just as a as a cop, if you don't mind me calling you or former cop, ⁓ because I know it's such an American word, you guys hate it. But have you ever seen a criminal like this before? I can't think of any case like it.

Mark: Now, I think it's, there are lots of people who go and buy things, who take money from other people. know, 400,000 pounds is a phenomenal amount of money. You know, they normally get caught in the hundreds and things like that because, of course, don't forget how long this has been going on. You know, this has been going on for the best part of 12, you know, 10, 12 years. So a very, very long time. I think as a result of that, he got...

jeremy: Mm, ten years.

Mark: cockier, you know, he started off buying things and actually because he never got caught, this is what happens as often as criminals, when you get away with it, you then become more confident and more cocky and of course you continue and whatever he was getting from it. I think there wasn't an endorphin kicking for him. I think there was a positive element for him because, you know, he kept doing it. ⁓ But you look at you have to look at the party as a whole and If you look at the party as a whole, did have an issue previously, didn't they? They had the former SNP ⁓ Natalie McGarry, who was prosecuted for embezzling 25,000 from the Women's for Independence and Glasgow Regional Association. you've got a party that's previously got an issue with its own MPs embezzling money. So when a concern is raised to Nicola, the question is, is what did she do in relation to that? She's got

jeremy: Hmm. Like

Mark: amazing items at her house which have come into some value. But of course it's evidence, it's evidence-led. So were the police in a position where they could categorically show that she had knowledge that the items were being bought and that they have to prove this, it's beyond all reasonable doubt, they would have to prove that she had knowledge that those items were bought by party political funds. Now they clearly didn't have that evidence. So even if they thought that that was

jeremy: No. And they would have gone through all his emails. If I mean if if there'd been anything, I'm guessing they would have seen all the communications. I come back, you mentioned it right at the start. The salt and pepper pots. Now, when I heard these were 2,360 pounds, I'm visualizing, you know, when you go to an Italian restaurant, the guy comes out with a sort of giant wooden one. I'm thinking it's got to be five times that size and it's made of aluminium or something. When you look I then call a picture up, it shocks me. They're that size.

Mark: Absolutely. Yeah, Huge. Yeah. Or gold. I day.

jeremy: And they're made of cut glass. And someone said to me, actually thought for I was talking to a former SMP MP about this, who was like rolling his eyes. And he said, you wouldn't get 40 quid for them at a car boot sale. So again, you're looking into the mind, and it must be that they represent something, because he's not gonna whether he's ever used them, I don't know. So he's gonna have them at home and they represent that he got away with it. He got away with taking money from this party. Maybe he hates the party. Maybe he hates the fact the party takes him her away from him. Maybe he resents, maybe the th the party. Is the third person in their marriage, whatever it is, because the damage to the party, we're given all the SNP's values, they're out for to help poor people, they're out to help underprivileged, etc. And then the guy's, you know, trousered two and a half grand on a salt and pepper pod, it's about the worst image optics, as they say, you can ever imagine. So we're back to the criminal mind, aren't we? And back to this thing of I really wanted to ask you about can we think of other cases? Now, the cases I can think of always involve somebody they noticed. Notice this person is going on sexy holidays, you know, that's the clerk in the the pensions firm and they've gone skiing five times this year and they've got an Aston Martin and somebody thinks, wait a minute, and then they find they're taking all the money. I that we've seen that case so many times. This isn't quite the same though, is it?

Mark: No, because it needs somebody to raise the alarm. So when you go on holidays, when you suddenly buy new purchases or something, people become aware of that and then they start to look into it and are like, well, hang on a how can you afford that? How can you do that? So the only person or one of the main people, of course, that would identify spending is Nicola. You know, there isn't anybody else because most of the items he bought overwhelmingly were at his house. I think there was some like £46,000 worth spent on Amazon. that was gifts at his house. So overwhelmingly, the items that he bought were at the house. So the one person that would raise the alarm in respect of his embezzlement is Nicola Sturgeon, his wife. And of course she didn't do that. Was she so distant? Was she literally so absent in terms of what took place at the house that she paid no attention to it? Was she so caught up in her own life? And that's very possible. You know, she was going through At that stage, they were having to raise some more funds, they? They got to position where the funds of the SNP had become quite low, over 100,000, and then they suddenly massively went on a huge peak.

jeremy: Well yeah. Well, he of course, of course, he lent his own money. And then what had happened was they they'd raised six hundred and sixty thousand for independence campaigning. The campaign wasn't needed. The money basically disappeared. A bloke who's a blogger, who's actually a pro-independence blogger, said, excuse me, where's the money? They then st he then panics. The first thing we hear about it is he's lent his own money to the party, he's lent a hundred and ten thousand. Now that you think we now know he was just trying to fill the hole back in, but that was the first. sign something is is wrong here you know ⁓ but by that stage he was done for anyway because all of the great th thing about digital is that the trace of all this stuff is just absolutely 100 certain isn't it you don't almost I mean you just print it out you know

Mark: Yeah, I once they're onto you, once the police are onto you, your footprint is massive. And his footprint was considerable. And actually what he'd done, I mean, if you look in terms of audit trails and you look in terms of, on a minute, how did one person have so much control financially and from an audit trail, you know, without that money being audited by external factors. But of course, he was a manipulator. This is an individual who didn't just simply take the money.

jeremy: Yeah.

Mark: took the money and lied and created falseness around it. So if you're going to go and take money and you're going to buy a holiday, don't lie. You know that you're not putting a false trail in. He put a false trail in in relation to so many of his receipts. He was putting receipts in that were for items for his house and he was claiming that they were they were items for the party office. So total manipulation. And over time, as he serves his lengthy sentence, we will either he'll stay quiet.

jeremy: Yeah.

Mark: or he'll realise, do you know what? I'll now start talking about it. It will be very interesting and would, Nicola's not in that position to open up at the moment. She's in an incredibly defensive position. I understand why she's in that defensive position. She feels quite an attacked out. I'm slightly dismissive of her in respect to that because it's, on a minute. Of course people are going to be concerned about what knowledge you have about it. So. I think she's lacking a little bit of humility and understanding in respect to that, because she could say, do you know what? I totally get why people are, you know, I had nothing to do with it. I wasn't involved in any way at all. But I totally understand why there are questions about me, because I would be asking exactly the same questions as well. But she's gone very much on the defensive. She's gone very much on, you know, it's disgraceful. How can you, how can you suggest I was involved in any way? I'm sorry. Of course we're going to suggest that. And the more defensive you are for me as a detective, the more concerned I am about your responses.

jeremy: Yeah.

Mark: Show a bit of humility in respect of all of this. People aren't stupid, of course they're going to ask questions. But he was a ⁓ multiple, he was a manipulator and it will be very interesting to tell over the forthcoming years what tack he takes, because he could become that vengeful husband. And if he feels there's a benefit for him, what is to stop him saying she knew all about it?

jeremy: Well Yeah, th not much is the answer. I'm just going through the list. We we haven't mentioned the twelve hundred pound telescope. We haven't mentioned the robot lawnmower, which is three grand, which is quite an expensive lawnmower. They haven't got a very big garden. And then there's tiny things like glue and shortbread. I mean, I would have thought he could get those as as SMP ⁓ items, but it may be he he ⁓ mislabeled them all in the auditing. And the what one of the problems we've had with auditing over the years, actually, and it's it's it's an ongoing issue, is if you're Peter Murray.

Mark: Yeah.

jeremy: You're the head of the SNP's money, you're quite powerful, you're gonna hire some auditors because you've got to do that under the law. And the auditors know that you're basically employing them, so they don't want to go in crawling over everything and being a nuisance. So, so and yet this has gone back years. I remember doing the case of Arthur Anderson, which was an accountancy firm which had a disaster in this whole area where the accountants and the auditors were basically being, you know, done by the same thing. And and I think this thing of when you pay the auditors, they just basically they take

Mark: city.

jeremy: Tell you what you want to hear. ⁓ But you know, go going back to this type of crime, these the I I think one of the great things we can do on this podcast, Mark, is talk about crimes that stand out because we just don't see Anything else like it. I'm I mean, I've seen financial consultants in Besling, and we've heard about you get people clients being ripped off and all that. And as I say, there's the ⁓ cases like Arthur Anderson, and then there's the the classic where somebody in the office who's quite junior ends up being, you know, a multimillionaire and everyone smells a rat. I the only case I can think of that this reminds me of, and it's such a weird one, is the John Darwin canoe case. And I don't know why I keep thinking, which is a guy who says, I d I hate my life, I'm gonna disappear, and he get buys a canoe, breaks it in two.

Mark: Yeah.

jeremy: Puts it in the sea and then incredibly hides in his own house. But there the wife was in on it. So that's a different one.

Mark: Yeah, I mean, the Darwin case is fascinating, isn't it? And in fact, we should cover it because why it's so fascinating is that you have a situation where the man fakes his death and then lives in the house next door where there's an entrance way, a door, and she's fully aware of everything that takes place. I mean, literally, it is a novel. It's a book that's written, but actually became a real life.

jeremy: Yeah, we should. Yeah. But he sh he could almost Yeah, I mean he could have John Darwin could've walked around with a sign saying, I want to be caught because he actually went and bought a a flat in Lima in Peru with his wife and the estate agent said, If you're happy, can we put you on the website? So this guy who's supposed to be dead appears on the internet buying a flat in Lima. But I mean it's it's something about that the fraud. Yeah, yeah. It's it's just that it's just that pe

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Bye bye, bye bye. Yeah. Thing is, it had gone on for so long though. And he got confidence.

jeremy: Useless embezzlers get caught so easily. I suppose that's the thrust of it. Maybe that's right. Maybe Darwin and and Murrell both got super confident when actually their crimes were s you could see them from space, actually.

Mark: See, this is what happens with criminals. so in terms of committing your crime, you have to have three fundamental elements, which is access, opportunity and motivation. Motivation is obviously the aspect of what drives you to do that. But access and opportunity, you have the access to the person or the property and then you've got to have the opportunity to be able to commit those crimes. What we know about offenders is offenders. will the first time they commit their crime is the hardest time, you know, because they've got all these thought processes in their head. Am I going to get caught? If I get caught, what's going to happen to me? Am I going to go to jail? Okay. So we call that cognitive distortion because in order to do the second crime, they've put that to one side. They've got actually, you know, I'm not going to get caught by the police because they're useless. You know, the chances of going to jail is very slim because jails are full. So they use cognitive distortion. But what also they do is they get confident. So confident, as we all know, unless you keep a check of your confidence and if you become overconfident, that's when the issues arise. That's when the gaps arise in your planning process. What happened with him is that he got more and more confident. He was buying bigger and bigger and bigger items. And in terms of the Darwin's, know, the canoe man, he got to a position he thought, you know what, I've been on the run for so long, ain't gonna catch me. You what's the chances of that happening? And he probably didn't properly understand. because of his age, of what that meant by putting his picture on the internet. became viral and everyone would see it and someone was going to check for that.

jeremy: Well he was caught as a matter of fact, he was caught by doing a classic thing where he walked into a police station in London on the slowest news day of the year and said, I don't know who I am, ended up leading the news and it turned out everyone knew who he was. So so some of these people are quite useless criminals actually, and Peter Murrell would definitely be in that category.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Oh, totally, but useless, but got away with so much for so long because it takes somebody to report it. It takes somebody to be aware and think, actually, do you know what, there's something a bit strange here. I'd love to. You know, the police clearly would have done it. They clearly have looked back as much as they possibly can to find out who within the SNP knew about what was being moved, how money was going in and out. And they obviously felt there wasn't sufficient evidence. mean,

jeremy: Mm.

Mark: Nicola Sturgeon got arrested and the case went to the Procurator Fiscal to make a decision in terms of whether or not there was sufficient evidence to prosecute her. And of course that has to meet the evidence threshold test and they felt that there wasn't. I still think, you know, Nicola, I still think you need, there's some questions for you to answer. I would love you to properly sit down and actually answer some of those questions.

jeremy: Yeah.

Mark: without being defensive, without taking people on and just say, actually, do you know what? I understand why you're asking these questions because it is illogical. mean, let's take the salt and pepper pot. Did he tell you how much that salt and pepper pot cost? Did he explain to you why you needed a salt and pepper pot? mean, have you got a salt and pepper pot? Did you need two new salt and pepper pots? Why did you need the coffee? Who was a fanatic in the house for coffee? Was it you? Was it him? You who made the coffee?

jeremy: Mm. Well, the library as well. You know, she was doing she ⁓ this this may count in her favor, but she was doing interviews about books because she's quite a big book person. And she was behind she had this sort of dressing of the interview with this the shelving system with all these books on, and by the way, an oak ladder. The oak ladder was ⁓ was more than a thousand pounds. The books were pre you can actually order a library, incredibly, I didn't know that. So you order the shelves and the books and everything, and then he buys the ladder. So he puts it all in, and then she sits in front of it and does interviews about books.

Mark: Yes.

jeremy: Now that probably suggests she's she's innocent, actually, because she, you know, if she'd known that that was stolen, she would have run away from it. I mean, just the hot- Do you know what? We're back to the motorhome. Who is it who steals money and to hide their theft buys a socking great motorhome that you can see from space. You can-I mean, I've seen stuff of it. They've now found it when it was beside his mother's house, somebody's managed to get out Google Earth.

Mark: Yeah.

jeremy: And it's it's you could see it there. It's almost as big as her house. And I got one more question for you, okay? As a as a former police officer, you could explain this to me. Is that I because there's always stuff goes on in the background that we can't we can't work out what it is. And I was told by somebody that the police were really pissed off with him because he kept, well, running, you know, running in circles around them and denying everything and vacillating and no commenting and so on. So they then throw A, they throw the book at him, and B, they decide when he pleads guilty, which they know they're gonna do, they put out The full list because they know that the list is devastating. And I wondered whether that holds water for you.

Mark: Yeah, I mean, they knew what they had was pretty strong, very strong. But of course, as anything, you always want the offender to talk. You always want the offender to kind of like have some kind of communication, say something, discuss something. And when they go no comment, which is actually the common theme for, you know, and it's advised by solicitors to no comment. But he went no comment, he made no comment in respect of anything. And I think the position that the police felt was They were clearly annoyed by the time it had got to them finishing their investigation. called, you know what? This bloke has has taken the mickey from everybody. He's taken public funds and we are furious about it. I think they this becomes a little bit personal at the end. And, it shouldn't do. But as a yeah, as a police officer, I think you can't help but get personally involved in in crime to investigate. We're human and actually sometimes an element of personal.

jeremy: That's what I wondered. Yeah, that's what I wondered.

Mark: personal attachment is a drive. If you're not personally committed to something and you don't think, actually, do you know what, I am going to solve this, I am going to do it, then you just deal it with anything else and perhaps you won't go that extra mile. In relation to every case, if you go that extra mile, it will make a difference. If you just do the job as it is, I mean, this is why police officers, good police officers, are worth their weight in gold because they'll go the extra mile. And that's the same with any job. You know, you have your commitment, you do your hours or whatever it is. But if you put those extra hours in, you put that extra commitment in, you ask those extra questions, you do the extra bits, it makes a massive difference and it becomes personal to you. And obviously, you you've got to be sensible how that personal doesn't take over your life. But I think in terms of ⁓ the police's position, no doubt personal. I have to say, think they've done a good job. mean, that list they created. of all the items. I mean, that is hung draw and quarter, isn't it?

jeremy: Yeah, amazing. It is. I mean, I d some of the smaller stuff, I wonder you put short bread on it. I mean, I can't believe he can't buy shortbread on the SNP's credit card. What we know, as you referred to, we know he had two credit cards for the SNP and basically got in the habit of spending on them and then creating fake receipts. And obviously the fake receipts are what what did him in. And but short bread I would have thought you could put down as an expense. I had thought when I saw this case develop, I couldn't believe that it was an embezzling case. I thought what we were going to discover is that they just were very sloppy. And they'd got this independence referendum campaigning money saved up, three quarters of a ⁓ two thirds of a million pounds, six hundred and sixty, and they then basically spent it on tea and biscuits. In other words, running costs of the SNP. And I think that probably would be false accounting or whatever, or or certainly dodgy, but nothing like this. That's why this is extraordinary. And I don't know, I mean, I don't know, thinking forward to him being in jail, I don't know whether he needs to be put somewhere for his own safety, somewhere isolated. They were talking about Dumbfrees prison. I don't know whether he'll be in danger in there, do you think?

Mark: I think he's a weak man. think he's a weak man. think he probably is quite vulnerable. I think he's vulnerable, not just in terms of attacks from other people, but probably vulnerable from himself. You know, his life has now massively changed. He's had all those, you know, his liberties have been taken away from him. But I think what this does is it sends a message out is, you know, very clearly is that, you know, it might take 12 years, it might take 15 years, but eventually they get caught up. And that actually, that leads us into our next story that we're going to cover. That is the massive story of Jimmy Savile.

jeremy: That's right. So we're we're very conscious. If you joined us for this first half hour, we're really grateful. It's our first one, myself and Mark. ⁓ we just love talking about crime. I love listening to Mark talk about it. And of course, you'll know Mark from the famous TV programme which exposed Jimmy Savile. Alas, we didn't get justice for his victims. That's the sickening thing about it. But it's a case that's is is well, it's still got shockwaves now, Mark, hasn't it?

Mark: ⁓ it's massive. mean, it's changed policies, it's changed attitudes, it's had a ramification effect, which is unprecedented, I think, in terms of certainly television programmes making a difference. The pendulum very rarely sits in the middle. So we had the drift across and there were a number of people who were subsequently interviewed and investigated who shouldn't have been. But I think what I want to do in the next one is let's really unpick. behind the scenes of kind of Savile, how that all came about and significantly what difference it's made to us as a society.

jeremy: All right. Well listen, thank you for talking about Peter Murrell as the case sort of concludes, although there are so there's so much we still need to know. We may return it to it. Great to see you, Mark.

Mark: Yeah. Brilliant. See you next week. Take care and thank you so much. Do please tell your friends all about this and let's just get a community going. We love talking about crime and send us what you think.