Case 281: Bibaa Henry & Nicole Smallman
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In early June 2020, the City of London was in the middle of its first lockdown issued in response to the coronavirus pandemic. For almost three months, UK residents had been ordered to stay at home to prevent spreading the virus dubbed COVID-19. When the weather was good, people would catch up with their friends and family outdoors where there was less risk of spreading the virus in the fresh air.

But during the first week of June, temperatures were cool, prompting members of the public to want to socialise indoors instead. The UK government reminded its citizens to remain cautious and continue meeting outside as much as possible.

Biba Henry was a respected social worker who took the community's health and safety seriously. So as her 46th birthday approached on Friday June 5, she decided to celebrate with a sunset picnic in a local park instead of a party at home. Restrictions on movement meant that only loved ones who lived within walking distance could attend, and it would be a fairly small gathering.

Undeterred, Bieber sent text messages to friends with an invitation to attend: "Please bring a blanket, lights, snacks, and a drink of your choice. Let's have a catch-up, play some sophisticated music, watch the sunset, and take it from there."

Included with the text was a Google Maps screenshot of the party's destination, a 250-acre park with open fields and small woods called Friant Country Park. It was located near Bieber's home of Wembley in northwest London. One person who was able to attend the celebration was Bieber's younger half-sister, 27-year-old Nicole Smallman.

Nicole, who was a freelance photographer and artist, lived in the neighboring town of Harrow. Despite their 20-year age difference, the sisters were close, and Nicole helped Bieber prepare for the picnic. That evening, the two went to a supermarket to purchase snacks, then headed to Friant Country Park in Bieber's Purple Audi.

Video footage from London's expansive CCTV network captured the two walking into the park side by side at 7:39pm, chatting together and smiling as they carried their supplies. The sisters selected a spot at the top of a hill, scattering cushions and blankets around. They had also brought some fairy lights and glow sticks to add a party atmosphere and provide light after the sun went down.

As Bieber's friends started to arrive, the sisters waved the lights in the air to draw their attention. The spot where they were seated afforded a scenic view of London, and everyone snapped photographs of the pink and purple streaked sky as the sunset and dusk fell. There was singing, dancing, laughing and chatting, as well as lots of eating and drinking. When it became dark and the hour grew late, Bieber's guests began to depart.

One by one, the partygoers said goodbye and headed home, until just Bieber and Nicole remained. Left alone to enjoy some time together, the two sisters chatted, danced, and snapped photographs of themselves playing with the fairy lights. Throughout the night, Nicole had been texting her boyfriend Adam via the messaging platform WhatsApp.

At 1:04am she sent him a message that read: "I'm dancing in a field" accompanied by an emoji of a woman dancing. She followed up with another text: "Going home soon." The following morning of Saturday June 6 Wilhelmina Smallman decided to text her daughters, Bebo and Nicole, to see how their picnic had gone.

Wilhelmina, who went by the nickname Mina, had been unable to attend Biber's party as she lived in the coastal town of Ramsgate, located almost 80 miles east from London in the county of Kent. But Biber and Nicole had made sure to send Mina photos from the celebration the previous night. Their family was close-knit. As well as Biber and Nicole, Mina had a third daughter, Monique, who lived in Holland.

Bieber and Monique were Mina's children from her first marriage to Herman Henry, a retired boxer. Nicole was her only child from her second marriage to Christopher Smallman. Bieber and Monique were close with their stepfather, and everyone got along extremely well. At 11.23am, Mina sent her daughters a text message in response to some pictures they'd sent of the picnic. Loved the photo. Good turnout.

She added that she hoped they'd had a lovely time and asked them to tell her all about it later on. To her surprise and concern, Mina didn't hear anything back from either of her daughters. Meanwhile, Nicole's circle of friends were also growing concerned. Her boyfriend Adam had asked her to let him know when she arrived home safely, but she never did. Adam got in touch with Nicole's housemate Emma, who said Nicole hadn't come home.

The lack of contact was strange. Nicole loved animals and had a pet bearded dragon lizard whom she adored. If she ever planned to be away for a longer period of time, she would provide instructions for his care such as when to feed him or change his heat lamp. But she hadn't done so this time. Emma contacted some mutual friends to see if they had heard from Nicole. None of them had.

After Adam repeatedly called Nicole without success, he tried to trace her phone with a tracker app to no avail. Hoping that Nicole had decided to stay at Bieber's house, Adam travelled there to check. No one was home. By the time Saturday evening rolled around, Adam and Nicole's friends were becoming increasingly upset.

When the women's mother Mina conferred with Adam and realised nobody had heard from Bieber or Nicole, she knew something was wrong. At 10:42 that night, Mina called the police to report her daughters missing. She told them what the situation was, how long it had been since anyone had heard from Bieber and Nicole, and provided a detailed description of where they were last seen. But Mina got the impression that the police didn't share her concern.

They listened to her but didn't seem to share her sense of urgency and didn't indicate they would do anything to look for the women. That night, Mina and her husband Christopher couldn't sleep. They continue trying to call and text Bieber and Nicole throughout the night, typing out one message after another: "Where are you?" "Getting quite worried here. Please let us know you are okay."

When Sunday morning rolled around, the women's loved ones knew they would have to do something. It had been more than 24 hours since Bieber and Nicole had been seen. Hoping that getting the word out on social media might help, Nicole's friends posted about Nicole's disappearance on Facebook. They shared a photo of Nicole beneath the heading "Missing". They also started phoning hospitals in the area to see if they had any patients matching the women's description.

As the police still hadn't sent out search parties, Christopher Smallman made the decision to drive to London to conduct his own search. Nicole's boyfriend Adam had the same idea. Like Mina, he had called the police the previous night to report his girlfriend missing but hadn't gotten anywhere. The police had told them they would pay a visit to Bieber's flat, so Adam and his mother had gone there to wait for them.

But the police never showed up and couldn't say when they would arrive. Accompanied by his parents, Adam decided to go to Friant Country Park, the place where the women were last known to have been. Once at the park, Adam met up with a friend of the sisters named Nina Resmat who'd attended the picnic on Friday night.

Nina had also been concerned after being unable to reach the women and had cycled to the park by herself hoping to find something. She'd spent about 30 minutes riding her bike around the enormous park looking for her friends. Nina took Adam and his parents to the top of the hill where Bieber's celebrations had been held. The spot was a five-minute walk from the Valley Drive entrance to the park.

It was surrounded by sprawling fields which were dotted with ponds and framed by denser areas of woodland. No sign of the picnic held two nights earlier remained. All of the blankets, cushions, and fairy lights that had been strewn around the top of the hill were now gone. The lack of items belonging to the sisters left the impression that they'd most likely packed up their things and left the park, rather than something happening to them while they were still there.

Regardless, the group still decided to search their surroundings. They split up and began scouring the area. While Adam and his parents went in other directions, Nina combed through the large field at the base of the hill looking for anything out of place. Then something caught her eye. A mingled pair of expensive designer prescription sunglasses lay on the ground, glinting in the sun.

Nearby was a long patch of flattened grass. Nina's heart sank. She immediately recognized the glasses as belonging to Bieber. The state of them didn't suggest that Bieber had left the park safely and of her own accord. Uncertain what she should do now, Nina picked up her phone and called the police to report what she'd found.

They told her to hand the glasses in to them, so Nina picked them up and hopped back on her bicycle to go to the nearest police station. She continued to communicate with Adam via text. He'd found nothing, and when he messaged Nina saying that he didn't know what to do, she replied, "If you can bear it, just keep looking." Adam and his parents continued to search.

They called out the women's names, hoping desperately for a reply, while searching through scrub and vegetation. Adam spotted a second pair of sunglasses, but didn't touch them. Then, Adam's father called out to him. Adam rushed over to the location his father was searching. Nearby was a long trail of flattened grass, and lying on the ground was a black-handled knife with a 12cm blade.

It was engraved with the brand name "Taylor's Eyewitness" and looked clean. Despite the clean blade, the sight left Adam panicked. Pulling out his phone, he dialed 999, the emergency services number, and began explaining the situation to a dispatcher while running along the stretch of flattened grass at the same time. The trail led towards a strip of wooded area with a row of trees.

Poking out from beneath some undergrowth was a pair of shoes. Adam ran around to a gap in the bushes. Diving into the undergrowth, he was met with a horrifying sight. About one foot away from him lay the bodies of two women intertwined together. It was Biba and Nicole. Both lay on their sides and they were positioned top to toe.

It looked as though they were locked in an embrace with their limbs wrapped around one another. Bieber's clothing had been pulled up over her head. She had been stabbed eight times and her back was covered in abrasions from being dragged through the rough undergrowth. Nicole's clothing had been yanked up above her abdomen and she too had abrasions and stab wounds.

But Nicole's injuries were far more extensive than her sister's. She had been stabbed 28 times. Her eyes were open and as Adam looked at his girlfriend's face, he knew that she was dead. He fell to the ground and let out several guttural screams, which was heard by the 999 dispatcher on the other end of his phone.

His parents also heard Adam's cries of distress and raced over towards him, but he leapt up to stop them from having to see what he'd seen. He handed his phone to his father and ordered his parents not to go into the bushes, then collapsed once again. After hearing Adam's screams, a man in another area of the park flagged down a police officer and directed her towards the noise. She found Adam and his parents in a state of shock.

The officer and a colleague entered the scene where the sisters' bodies lay and confirmed that both were deceased. Officers from London's Metropolitan Police descended on the park. With the ground stretching for 250 acres, they were facing an enormous crime scene.

To preserve the area where Bieber and Nicole's bodies lay and to prevent it being contaminated before forensic experts had a chance to examine it, officers set up a series of cordons. The innermost cordon framed the hedgerow where the women's bodies were. Mina Smallman was at home waiting anxiously for news when her phone rang with a call from Adam. She answered and Adam told her, "Mina, Mina, I need you to sit down.

"We found them, but they're gone." Mina began to scream uncontrollably. After her cries eventually subsided, she remembered that her husband was driving to Friant Country Park. She phoned Christopher and broke the news to him that their girls had died. Although they knew there was no longer any way to help Bieber and Nicole, some of their loved ones felt a desire to go to the park and be there for them in the only way they could.

A small group gathered at the bottom of the hill before the cordons started and watched as forensic units arrived and officers went to and from the scene. As detailed in the BBC documentary "Two Daughters", one of Bieber's relatives was extremely distraught and begged the officers to let him see Bieber. "We can't do that," one of the officers replied, "but we will look after them. We will take care of them. We will respect them."

We will promise that." Several officers were installed at the innermost cordon to guard the sisters' bodies until they could be removed for autopsy the following morning. Forensic tents were set up so that members of the public wouldn't see the bodies being taken from the park.

Further examinations confirmed that whoever had killed the two women had dragged them by the feet into the bushes and deliberately positioned them in the way they were found, perhaps as a way to further degrade them. 46-year-old Beba Henry had sustained six stab wounds to her chest, one to her groin, and one to her back. The knife used in the attack had penetrated her lungs and heart, with one chest wound measuring 15 centimetres deep.

This particular injury would have rendered Bieber unconscious within seconds. She had no defensive wounds, indicating that her killer had caught her by surprise. Her 27-year-old sister, Nicole Smallman, would have been witness to her sister's attack. Unlike Bieber, Nicole had numerous defensive injuries and her attack had been far more brutal, likely because she had tried to fight back

She had been stabbed 28 times and had injuries to her chest, back, thigh, hip, shoulder, arms and hands. Investigators appealed for anybody who had been at Friant Country Park on the evening of Friday June 5 or early morning on Saturday June 6 to come forward.

They described the location where Bieber and Nicole had been and said that if anyone had seen or heard anything suspicious, then it was especially important that they share what they knew. Quote,

Several witnesses did come forward. At 1:45am on the morning of Saturday June 6, a local woman named Elaine Williams had been at home watching television when she suddenly heard a disturbance from the direction of the park. It sounded like a man shouting. This was followed by two female voices shouting back. Then Elaine could only hear one woman's voice, followed by a blood-curdling scream.

To Elaine, it sounded like a massive argument between two groups who didn't know each other. Later that morning, a man named Martin Ridgeway headed to the park armed with several bin bags. Martin was a member of Barnhill Conservation Group and would spend time picking up rubbish as part of that work. As he made his way through the park looking for litter, Martin came across a large pile of abandoned belongings.

There were several cushions, two backpacks, a large blue hold-all bag, a white paper bag, and some food packaging. Some of the items were covered in red marks which Martin assumed were ketchup stains as there were several empty saucepots amongst the detritus. He threw the belongings away in some park bins. Police were later able to track these items down.

The following morning of Sunday June 7, shortly before Adam Stone and his parents commenced their search of the park, a woman named Linda Guerrero was walking her pet beagle Bambi through the grounds. As she passed some bushes near the top of a hill, Linda noticed two bodies entwined on the ground. From the angle where she was standing, Linda could see the bare back of one of the individuals.

She assumed they were a couple asleep in an embrace. Sometimes unhoused people would sleep rough in Friant Country Park, so Linda wasn't particularly alarmed by the sight. She called out, "Are you okay? Are you alright, mate?" When there was no reply, Linda continued on her way. She later phoned Streetlink, an organisation that helps rough sleepers in London to report the incident.

It wasn't until she learned of Beba Henry and Nicole Smorman's murders that she realised the significance of what she had seen. Friant Country Park remained closed off to the public while police scoured its grounds for further evidence. A heavy downpour of rain across London on Saturday June 6, the day before the sisters were found, led to fears that evidence had been washed away.

This rain was also the reason that the knife recovered at the crime scene appeared to be clean. But when investigators picked it up, they saw the underside was stained with blood. Testing revealed that the blood belonged to two different people: Nicole Smallman and an unidentified male. Thanks to London's comprehensive network of CCTV cameras, investigators had been able to trace the sisters' actions in the lead-up to the picnic.

They had been captured on camera shopping for picnic supplies at a co-op supermarket, and one of the items they purchased was a bottle of tonic water. The bottle was subsequently found in a bush near the women's bodies. It had blood on it. Other bottles of rosé and prosecco recovered at the scene also had traces of blood on them. A pair of blue latex gloves was also found.

One of the gloves was heavily stained with blood and damaged along the center, as though slashed with a knife. If the killer had been wearing the gloves, it appeared that they had suffered an injury during the attack, most likely when Nicole Smallman had fought back. Investigators were able to obtain a DNA profile from the blood on the bottles, the glove, and the discarded items that a member of the public had thrown away.

It was from the same unidentified male as the blood on the knife. This individual's blood was also found on some vegetation near the women's bodies, from one of Nicole's feet, and on Bieber's trainers, hand, and leggings. This blood had likely been left when the killer dragged the women by their feet into the bushes. There was no record of this person in the National DNA database. Divers searched a pond in the park for possible evidence.

They recovered two smartphones which had belonged to Bieber and Nicole. Their killer had seemingly taken them from the scene and subsequently disposed of them. A forensic examination would reveal that the last contact they'd had with friends or family was when Nicole texted her boyfriend Adam just after 1am on the Saturday morning.

Between 1:26am and 3:48am, someone had repeatedly tried to gain access to Beba Henry's phone. Its screen had been turned off and then on again at least 130 times. Thanks to a step counter on the phone, police could see that whoever had been holding it had walked about 1.3 miles during that time, before switching the phone off and throwing it into the pond.

Also found on the device were a number of photos that the sisters had taken throughout the night. There were shots of them celebrating with their friends and then pictures of just the two of them after everyone else had gone home. Bieber and Nicole had set up a timer on the phone's camera, draped themselves with fairy lights, and snapped more than a hundred pictures as they laughed and danced in the dark. The final photograph was taken at 1.13am.

In this image, the women appeared distracted. Instead of posing like they had in the other shots, both were looking to their left as though something in that direction had drawn their attention. Detectives suspected that this was the moment their attacker had made himself known. No one who knew Bieber and Nicole could think of anyone who would want to harm them.

Bieber was a highly respected and popular senior social worker at Buckinghamshire Council, who went above and beyond for the children she worked with. Bieber had her own daughter, whom she adored, and was about to become a grandmother for the first time. She made friends easily and was well-liked for her positive demeanour. Nicole worked as a freelance photographer and shared her sister's upbeat outlook on life.

Her parents often joked that she should have been born in the 1960s, as she was a flower child at heart who cared deeply about social justice, animals, and the natural world. For the past six years she had been in a relationship with her boyfriend, Adam Stone. The couple had lived together with Adam's parents for a while, but Nicole had recently moved into a flat with a housemate. Nevertheless, the pair remained as close as ever.

Prior to Nicole leaving for Bieber's party, Adam had made sure to give her money so she could catch a cab home. Bieber and Nicole also had good relationships with their family members who were highly respected members of the community. Their mother, Mina, was a retired archdeacon in the Anglican Church. Mina's father was Nigerian and she had been the first black woman to hold that title.

There was nothing in either of the women's lives that pointed to them being targeted by someone they knew. This appeared to be confirmed by the killer's DNA recovered at the scene. The fact that it belonged to an unknown male suggested to police that the sisters had been victims of a random attack. Detectives went public with this information, telling journalists that the women were murdered by a stranger and they needed the public's help to find him.

The suspect they were looking for had likely suffered an injury during the attack which resulted in significant bleeding. If anyone had seen somebody injured or acting suspiciously around the Friant Country Park area, they were urged to report what they knew. A few leads trickled in. Local residents said there had recently been a man hanging about the park following women. He was aged in his 50s.

While pursuing these tip-offs, police arrested several different men, but all of them were later released without charges. Some people, including the sister's mother, Mina, felt that the brutal double murder wasn't receiving enough press attention to generate worthwhile leads. Although London's media had reported on the crime, it wasn't receiving front page coverage or a national spotlight.

Users of the online forum Websleuths complained that they hadn't even heard about the murders until stumbling across a thread on the website. The subdued nature of the coverage seemed at odds with the terrifying nature of the random attack. Then, two weeks after the murders, news broke that finally seemed to capture the press's attention. Casefile will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors.

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In June of 2020, 32-year-old police constable Jamie Lewis had worked as an officer with the Metropolitan Police Service for just over nine months. Prior to joining the Met, as it was known, Lewis had spent several years with the British Transport Police. At 3:30am on the morning of Monday June 8 2020, Lewis arrived at Friant Country Park with a number of his colleagues.

The bodies of Beba Henry and Nicole Smallman had been found in the park roughly 15 hours earlier, and officers were needed to guard the scene overnight until the bodies could be safely removed. Janie Lewis and several colleagues were assigned to the cordon closest to the sisters' bodies, which weren't visible from where they were standing. The officers were told the general location within the thicket where the women lay, but weren't shown the bodies.

None were wearing full barrier forensic clothing. They were not to search the woodland area. Their job was simply to keep watch and to make sure no one entered the scene in order to preserve its integrity. Each of the four officers was given a separate post to guard and told they must remain in place until colleagues arrived to relieve them. Under no circumstances were they to enter the bushes where the women's bodies lay.

At 3:50am, about 20 minutes after arriving at the park, Jamie Lewis took out his phone and opened the messaging application WhatsApp. He then typed a message to a group chat labelled "The A-Team". "Me, Izzy, Dennis and Matt are living the Wembley dream." He attached a photo of a forensic tent set up at the park, then hit send. The group chat consisted of 41 different Metropolitan Police officers.

One soon sent a reply: "Enjoying the sunrise?" Lewis responded: "Unfortunately, I'm sat next to two dead birds full of stab wounds." Another officer replied with a joke about Lewis' use of the slang term "birds", referring to women. He asked: "Who's been out stabbing pigeons?" Lewis responded by sending a photograph he'd taken of Bieber and Nicole's bodies, despite being instructed not to breach the cordon.

One of Lewis' colleagues from the North East London Police Station, 45-year-old Police Constable Dennis Jaffa was also using WhatsApp to message nine of his friends in another group chat. He sent the group a Daily Mail article about the double homicide and informed them that he was at the scene now. He would try to take some photos of the bodies to share with them. Over the next several hours, Lewis and Jaffa repeatedly left their posts to walk back and forth to chat with each other.

Both breached the cordon to take multiple up-close photographs of Bieber and Nicole. Jaffa took four photographs, while Lewis took two. Lewis edited one photo in the social media app Snapchat to superimpose his face next to the bodies, as though he'd taken a selfie with them.

Both men shared some of their photos with friends who didn't work with the police and told them that the two victims were a 14-year-old and a pregnant 20-year-old. It is unclear where they obtained this incorrect information. Lewis referred to Bieber and Nicole as "two stabbed up dead women". When Jaffa was asked by a friend if the crime scene was bad, he replied: "Not really. I've seen worse."

Lewis also showed the photos on his phone to several different people in person. Two of these were police officers, one was a female probationary officer. She was disgusted by the photographs and told Lewis his actions were inappropriate. At least one member of the A-Team WhatsApp group who had been sent similar photos agreed and reported the matter to their higher-ups at the Metropolitan Police.

On Friday June 19, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, also known as the IOPC, was alerted. Three days later, Lewis and Jaffa had their phones seized and were arrested for misconduct in public office. During an examination of Jaffa's phone, it was found he'd also used a racist term to refer to South Asian men. When Lewis received a text using that same term, he made no objection.

The Met issued a press release about the arrests and the story quickly made headlines across the UK. Bieber and Nicole's family had the news broken to them in person by a member of the IOPC. For Mina Smallman and the sisters' other loved ones, this was the final straw. They had felt from the start that Bieber and Nicole's case hadn't been taken seriously. First, there had been the delayed police response when they were reported missing.

Mina put this down to racism and classism. Both her daughters were of Nigerian heritage and Biba lived in a public housing flat in Wembley, a predominantly black neighbourhood. As she told the BBC, quote,

Cases involving missing white women from middle-class backgrounds seemed to be taken more seriously by the media as well. Mina Smallman would later note that the story about the officer's misconduct generated far more media attention than the women's disappearance and murder had. But that didn't mean Mina thought the misconduct was unworthy of attention.

The news that her daughter's dignity had been further degraded by two people charged with protecting them was utterly devastating for the grieving mother. As she said in an interview with The Guardian, Mina hadn't even imagined what her daughter's bodies looked like until she learnt officers took photos of them. She was already barely holding on by a thread, and now she suddenly began having images flash through her mind of what the crime scene might have looked like.

Her pain somehow deepened. Mina told the BBC, quote, "'This has taken our grief to another place. If we ever needed an example of how toxic it has become, those police officers felt so safe, so untouchable, that they felt they could take photographs of dead black girls and send them on.' It speaks volumes of the ethos that runs through the Metropolitan Police."

Bieber and Nicole's friends and family were horrified to think that while they had been standing vigil at the park, desperate for one final glimpse of their loved ones, members of the police were taking dehumanising photographs of them and making crass jokes. In the BBC documentary Two Daughters, one of Bieber's cousins stated, "'Those two police officers did something worse than them being murdered.'

In the wake of the misconduct allegations, the family and the public's trust in the Metropolitan Police Service took a severe hit. Despite this, detectives continued working to solve the case.

The suspect's DNA hadn't matched anyone in the National DNA Database, so detectives asked the National Crime Agency to run it against their records for a familial match. This time, there was a hit. On Tuesday June 30, detectives discovered their suspect was related to a man named Kamal Hussein who had previously received a caution.

The DNA indicated the suspect was a close family member of Kamal's, most likely his child. Kamal was from an Iraqi Kurdish background and had four children with his ex-wife who resided on the south side of London in Eltham. All of the children were school aged, with the eldest being just 18 years old. Kamal had often worried about his firstborn, who was a boy named Daniel.

Kamal would tell a neighbour that Daniel had gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd and he was concerned about the direction he was heading in. Daniel had been in his early teens when his parents split up. It had been an unhappy household prior to the divorce, characterised by yelling and arguments. Both the police and paramedics had attended the property on more than one occasion.

After his marriage ended, Kamal relocated to North London, settling into a residence in Kingsbury, just a short walk from Friant Country Park. But his son Daniel's issues continued. In October 2017, when Daniel was 15, his teachers discovered that he had been accessing far-right propaganda and looking for images of corpses on school computers.

He was subsequently referred to PREVENT, the UK government's counter-extremism program. PREVENT was designed to stop vulnerable individuals being groomed by and drawn into terrorist organisations such as the extremist Islamist group ISIS. Adolescents such as Daniel, who were isolated and from immigrant backgrounds, were seen as especially susceptible to being radicalised.

Daniel Hussain was assigned a mentor and was discharged from Prevent just over six months later in May 2018. Supervisors determined they had, quote, "...no outstanding concerns at that time with respect to violent extremism or terrorism." They continued to provide support and conducted two further reviews of Daniel over the next year.

No additional need for concern was identified and no further interventions were deemed necessary. Armed with the DNA evidence of a familial tie between Kamal Hussein and their suspect, detectives raced to gain access to CCTV footage from various cameras surrounding Kamal's home.

It turned out that although Daniel still lived with his mother in Eltham, he had been staying with his father at the time when Beba Henry and Nicole Smallman were murdered. Within an hour and a half, investigators had recovered some incredibly alarming footage. On the afternoon of Wednesday June 3, two days before Beba's birthday picnic, Daniel Hussain left his father's address and headed to an Asda supermarket in Collandale, North London.

Security cameras captured the slight, dark-haired young man wearing a blue jacket and light jeans as he browsed the aisles of the store. He selected a tailor's eye witness knife block which contained a set of five black-handled kitchen knives, along with some chewing gum, cans of drink, lemons, and two candles. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hussain was wearing a face mask as he shopped.

When he took the items to the checkout to pay for them, a clerk asked to see some proof of age due to his purchase of the knives. Hossein pulled out his passport and removed his face mask so he could be identified. Hossein returned to the ASDA later that day to buy some extra strong Unibond power tape.

Two days later, on Friday June 5, Hossain left his father's home again and caught a bus to a Morrison's supermarket to collect some items he'd purchased the day prior on Amazon: a balaclava and two folding shovels. Hossain also bought some alcohol. At 8:40pm, CCTV cameras on Lakespur Close captured Hossain entering the northeast corner of Friant Country Park.

This wasn't far from the Valley Drive entrance where Bieber Henry and Nicole Smallman had arrived one hour earlier. As he strolled into the park, Hossein was carrying a rucksack and clearly wearing blue latex gloves and a mask. The next time he would appear on camera was almost seven hours later at 3:08am when he was captured leaving the pitch black park and heading in the direction of his father's house.

Hossain had removed the pants he'd been wearing earlier and tied his jacket around his waist, leaving his lower legs exposed. His right hand was tucked tightly into his jacket's waistband. CCTV cameras tracked Hossain back to his father's home, which he reached at 4:07am. After he knocked on the front door, his father opened it and Daniel Hossain disappeared inside.

At 1am on Wednesday July 1, officers armed with tasers descended on the home of Hussain's mother. The double-storey brown brick townhouse was one of several identical attached residences that sat side by side in a row on a quiet cul-de-sac. It was mere hours after detectives had discovered the familial DNA link and the incriminating CCTV footage.

They knocked on the door and after a few moments, a light flicked on inside. A skinny young man pulled back a sheer curtain to look at the waiting officers, then opened the door. The police immediately ordered him to raise his hands and informed him that he was under arrest. Daniel Hussain lifted his hands, placed them on his head, and silently stepped over the threshold. Officers handcuffed him and transferred him to Wandsworth Police Station.

Multiple injuries were visible on Hussain's right hand. His middle finger had a deep cut near the tip which had been stitched up, and he also had several stitches a centimetre or so below his first finger. When asked about the cuts, Hussain replied, ''I was getting robbed.'' Records would show he had visited a hospital the day after the murders and presented with the cuts to his right hand.

He initially told staff he'd been mugged the previous night, but he later told the plastic surgeon who treated his injuries that the mugging had been two or three days earlier. He didn't want to report the crime to the police. Hossein then told detectives that he had autism spectrum disorder and problems with his memory. After that, he refused to speak further. He answered every question the detectives asked him with the same refrain: "No comment."

While Hossein was being interviewed, officers searched his mother's home. In Hossein's bedroom, they found a blue latex glove that matched the ones found in Friant Park. In his wardrobe, they found the balaclava and one of the folding shovels that Hossein had bought one day before the murders. The other folding shovel was never found. Nor were the jacket or the trousers Hossein had been wearing on the night in question.

A book of spells was found in Hussein's room, along with some hand-drawn pictures of what looked like occult symbols. Officers also found a piece of paper taken from a loose-leaf folder that was covered in handwriting. It was headlined, Agreement. Below that was what appeared to be a kind of contract. It read, For the mighty king Lucifuge Rofficale.

"Perform a minimum of six sacrifices every six months for as long as I am free and physically capable. Sacrifice only women. Build a temple for you. Do everything that I have promised. For me. Win the Mega Millions super jackpot. To receive fruitful rewards in return for the future sacrifices I make to you. The rewards could consist of wealth and power."

"To never be suspected of any crimes by the police, and also that the police will never know of any crimes that I have done and that I will do." At the bottom of the page were the words "Signed by" followed by spaces for two signatures. One was for King Lucifuge Roffical and was left blank. The other was assigned to Daniel, who had signed his name in blood.

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Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content. DNA tests would confirm that the blood on the contract belonged to Daniel Hussain. His fingerprints were also all over the document. Research would uncover that Lucifuge Roffical was a demon named in the 18th or 19th century book The Grand Grimoire.

This occult text contains instructions for summoning demons and contains a, quote, hierarchy of hell, a list of different evil supernatural beings and their roles. According to the Grand Grimoire, Lucifuge Rofocale is supposedly in charge of hell's government and treasury. Investigators realised they had just uncovered a motive.

Hossein had seemingly believed that if he murdered victims as sacrificial offerings to a demon he believed in, then he would win the lottery, gain power, and escape police attention. Hossein's misogynistic views led to him deciding to only target women. Another document found in Hossein's possessions was a handwritten letter to another demon named Queen Bileth.

In this note, Hossein requested that the demon make a particular girl at his school fall in love with him and believe that he was the only person for her. He also wanted to be more attractive to women romantically. In exchange for these things, Hossein would burn incense every two weeks, make offerings of sweet drinks and chocolate, burn red candles, and shed more blood.

Based on these documents, it was clear that Daniel Hussain had intended to kill more women. Yet in the four weeks since Bieber and Nicole's murders, there had been no further slayings. Detectives believed this was due to the hand injuries Hussain sustained during the crime. He was unable to even make a fist with his right hand, which prevented him from attacking more victims. It was also exactly what had brought him to their attention.

Daniel Hussain refused to provide police with a blood sample but agreed to let them take a swab of his cheek. After this swab was tested for DNA, it was confirmed that the blood of the unknown male at the scene was a billion times more likely to have come from Hussain than from anyone else. He appeared stunned upon learning they were able to receive these results when he had refused to give them his blood.

On Thursday June 4, the day before Bieber's party, Hossain had set up an online betting account with LottoGo.com, which ran bets on the Mega Millions super jackpot. His bank records indicated he had placed 5 Mega Millions bets and 1 Mega Millions Syndicate bet on Sunday June 7. This was the lottery named in Hossain's blood signed contract and its price total was 321 million pounds.

Next to the contract, officers found three lottery tickets purchased on Tuesday June 9. Hossain had also purchased some online scratch card games. In total, he had spent 162 pounds and 88 pence trying to win the lottery in the days after the murders. None of his attempts were successful. An examination of Hossain's electronic footprint showed that he was fixated by the occult.

Just a few hours prior to his arrest, Hossain had gone online and logged into a forum that was owned by an American man named E. A. Karwedding. Karwedding was a misogynist, a neo-Nazi, and a kind of occult influencer. Unlike more mainstream pagan religions such as Wicca, which emphasise nature-based spirituality, Karwedding's occultism encouraged violence and harmful practices.

The forum he ran was part of a larger website where Cowetting sold merchandise, shared spells and occult instruction, and offered one-on-one classes to followers. In his writings, Cowetting encouraged people to commit ritualistic murders, instructed them on selecting victims, and described how to kill someone with a knife.

Coetting was affiliated with a self-described satanic neo-Nazi group in the US called the Order of Nine Angles, or ONA. While most people who identify as Satanists are atheists who don't believe in deities at all, ONA members do believe in the devil and other demonic entities.

Between 2019 and 2021, seven young men sentenced for neo-Nazi charges had been radicalised by the ONA's content. Daniel Hussain had joined Coetting's forum two years earlier in March 2018. At the time, he was being assessed and supervised by the counter-terrorism program Prevent. They were monitoring him for signs of Islamic extremism, but nothing was found.

After Prevent stopped checking up on Hussain, his obsession with demons only grew, as did his misogyny. In one post to Coetting's forum, Hussain described himself as a psychic vampire and said he felt a natural connection with some supernatural beings and demons. Hussain bragged that he was skilled in some areas of magic but needed to practice more to keep up his abilities.

He said he particularly loved Satanism and Norse magic and was a big fan of E. A. Coetting. He had even learned his first spell, which was a love spell, from Coetting. Hossein asked other posters for advice on creating demonic packs. It appeared that Hossein's contract with Lucifuge Ruffical had been directly inspired by Coetting's work.

Coetting told his followers that this particular demon was the one to enter into pacts with, but added they would also have to take real-world action to ensure their wishes would be fulfilled. He provided detailed instructions for writing up such pacts, including that the contract writer should request wealth and sign the document in their own blood. The pacts should also be brought before the demon by candlelight,

When Hossain bought the knife he used to kill Biba and Nicole, he also purchased some candles. Kolwedding's real name was Matthew Lawrence and he was based in Utah. He had a number of prior convictions for drugs and weapon possession charges. At the time of Hossain's arrest, Kolwedding had a large social media following, with 128,000 followers on Facebook and 87,000 YouTube subscribers.

After the link between Karwedding and Hossein was made, a public backlash would lead to these platforms removing Karwedding and his content. However, as of the date of this episode's release, e-commerce site Amazon still sells numerous books co-authored by Karwedding. Detectives were unable to uncover the extent of Daniel Hossein's radicalisation as he refused to provide the passwords to his laptop and iPad.

He had also thrown his phone away so it wouldn't fall into police hands. This prevented the police from accessing 80% of Hussein's data. The UK's Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, took the matter to the US courts in an attempt to force Apple to hand over the data.

However, the American judge ruled against their application, finding that the CPS hadn't offered evidence that there was anything on Hussain's devices that would directly link him to the murders. When Mina Smallman found out her daughters died due to their killer believing in demons, she actually felt a sense of strength. As a retired Anglican archdeacon, she found solace in her faith, telling the BBC:

"This is my territory. I understand this. I'm the light. He's the darkness." Daniel Hussain was charged with two counts of murder and one count of possession of a knife with intent. He entered a plea of not guilty. Hussain was adamant that the person shown in the CCTV footage was not him and said his bank card used to purchase the knives had been stolen.

He'd reported the matter to his bank almost two weeks after the murders. Hossain also claimed that the demonic pact found in his room didn't belong to him, though he offered no explanation for how his fingerprints and DNA came to be on it. His trial began one year after the murders, on Wednesday June 9 2021.

Bieber Henry and Nicole Smallman's loved ones testified about how they'd found the women's bodies during a search of the park, while detectives and forensic experts detailed all of the evidence tying Hussain to the double murder. Prosecutors theorised that Hussain had selected the two sisters to be his first victims after having his attention drawn by the fairy lights they were carrying.

He had lain in wait under cover of darkness at the park, watching the two sisters as they danced together and laughed on the hilltop. Then he launched his attack. Hossein didn't testify in his own defence. His legal team pointed to the fact that two Metropolitan Police officers were found to have breached the crime scene to take photos of the sisters' bodies.

They argued that this may have compromised evidence but provided no explanation as to how Hussain's blood could have otherwise been found at the scene. Hussain's behaviour in court disturbed those present. He kept trying to make eye contact with Bieber and Nicole's mother, Mina Smallman, made L-shaped loser signs at a paramedic witness who was testifying, and turned his back on the judge.

After a month-long trial, the jury found Daniel Hussain guilty on all counts. Hussain continued his disrespectful behaviour during his sentencing hearing. Appearing via video link due to an outbreak of COVID-19 on his prison wing, Hussain smiled and tossed his face mask into the air while waiting for court proceedings to commence. He also squatted on his chair throughout the hearing instead of sitting upright.

When it came time for the judge to pass her sentence, Hussain turned away from the camera. Undeterred, the judge spoke about the horror Hussain's actions had inflicted on his victim's loved ones, stating: "I am sure that you performed these murders as part of that bargain which you thought would bring you wealth and power. Well, the wealth and power did not arrive, and nor did it happen that the police never found out about your crimes.

Your DNA was all over the crime scene, there was a vast amount of CCTV to track you and other evidence to prove it was you. You were tracked down and your plan failed. Bizarre though your pact with the devil may appear to others, this was your belief system, your own commitment to the murder of innocent women.

Despite Daniel Hussain citing his autism spectrum disorder as a mitigating factor, the judge found that this had no bearing on his decision to commit his crimes. She sentenced Hussain to life in prison with a minimum of 35 years. Because he was under the age of 21, he could not be given a whole life tariff.

Bieber and Nicole's mother, Mina Smallman, spoke outside court after Hussain's sentencing and expressed her relief at his capture. Quote, If he hadn't been caught, four other families may have been suffering what we have. Although Mina was grateful Hussain had been stopped, it didn't ease her devastation at losing her daughters. She stated,

No one expects their children to die before them, but to have two of your three children murdered overnight is just incomprehensible. Attending court has been heartbreaking. The fear that both girls must have gone through in their final moments, trying to save each other and fighting for their lives.

That boy, Daniel Hussain, has not only shown that he has no respect for the court, but that he has no remorse for what he has done or the pain he has caused. For those who loved Bieber and Nicole, Hussain's senseless motive added to their grief. As a long-time family friend told the BBC: "There was a moment of sheer disbelief. To find out it was to do with the just trying to win the lottery,

It was beyond tragic. It's insulting. If it wasn't bad enough already. Such a banal reason. It was insulting and offensive. Their grief was further compounded by the feeling that they had been let down by the authorities as well.

Although Mina Smallman had nothing but praise for the detectives who solved her daughter's case, she was devastated by the initial delay by police in taking their disappearances seriously and the actions of the Met officers who took and shared photos of their bodies. The fact that so many officers also received these images in group chats and failed to raise the alarm was just as distressing.

At around 9pm on Wednesday March 3 2021, a 33-year-old woman named Sarah Everard left a friend's house near Clapham Common in South London and began walking to her home in Brixton Hill. When she failed to meet her boyfriend as planned the following day, he reported her missing and a search was quickly launched.

CCTV footage would reveal that Sarah had walked for about half an hour before being stopped by an off-duty Met police officer named Wayne Cousins, who was driving a rented car. He flashed his police badge at Sarah and falsely arrested her for breaching COVID-19 guidelines by being out without permission. An investigation would reveal Cousins had strangled Sarah, then disposed of her remains in a pond on a property he owned.

He had been plotting to kidnap and kill a woman for some time, and Sarah had been his randomly selected victim. Sarah Everard's murder led to a widespread backlash across London. For many people, her death was an example of another pandemic gripping the United Kingdom: male violence against women.

Vigils were held in memory of Sarah and to protest the fact that she had been killed while just going about her life as she had every right to do. But the Met Police broke up these vigils and made a number of violent arrests in the process. They said this was because attendees were in breach of COVID restrictions. To many Londoners, the Met Police's actions were unacceptable.

One of their own had been responsible for murdering a young woman, and it appeared that those protesting his crime were experiencing harsher penalties than the perpetrator had in the past for prior offences. News broke that Wayne Cousins had a history of committing sexual assault. He had been accused of indecent exposure on three separate occasions. Each time, police had either failed to investigate or take action against him.

One woman said when she had tried to report Cousins, the police had laughed at her. In 2018, Cousins sexually assaulted a drag queen at a pub. Five officers came under scrutiny for having shared grossly offensive material with Cousins prior to Sarah Everard's murder. One officer involved in the initial search for Sarah shared an offensive meme about her case on social media.

Several Met officers opted to give Cousins positive character references during his sentencing for the murder, and female officers came forward to say they felt unable to report inappropriate conduct by male colleagues. Public trust in the Metropolitan Police was at an all-time low. For Mina Smallman, it all felt sickeningly familiar. She felt a tremendous amount of grief for Sarah Everard's family.

In an interview with the BBC, Mina stated: "I know what that family, the parents, will be going through. And it is a hell. You can't begin to understand what it is to lose a child under those circumstances. And then to have a further betrayal. By the very organisation who is paid and we have an agreement with that they will protect us, they will honour us and behave in a way that gives our deceased dignity."

At the same time, Mina couldn't help but notice the stark difference between the amount of attention and public outrage Sarah's case had received in comparison to her daughter's. Where investigators took Sarah's disappearance seriously from the start, Bieber and Nicole's loved ones had to organise their own search parties. This led to the extremely traumatic result of Nicole's boyfriend Adam being the one to discover their bodies.

There was wall-to-wall coverage of Sarah Everard's case, in stark contrast to the amount of attention Bieber and Nicole received. Women's magazine Grazia reflected on the discrepancy between the two cases in an article headlined, Where is the outrage for Nicole Smallman and Bieber Henry? Mina told the BBC, I think the notion of all people matter is absolutely right, but it's not true."

"Other people have more kudos in this world than people of color. That's what gives me purpose. If their lives make a change in the way women are viewed, and black women in particular. Because, in the pecking order of things, we are the lowest on the ladder." The Metropolitan Police issued a statement in response to the public anger against them. It read, in part:

The murder of Sarah Everard is the most horrific of crimes, but we recognise this as part of a much bigger and troubling picture. There have been other murders of women in public spaces, including the killings of Nicole Smallman and Beba Henry. All of these bring into sharp focus our urgent duty to do more to protect women and girls.

They reported that there would be a review of Met Police culture and standards, with an urgent review of all current investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct and domestic abuse against Met officers. They also published a new action plan for tackling violence against girls and women. Jamie Lewis and Dennis Jaffa, the two officers who had photographed Bieber and Nicole's bodies, both pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office.

Lewis was instantly dismissed from the force, while Jaffer had already resigned by the time he faced court. In December 2021, both men were sentenced to two years and nine months in jail. They would later unsuccessfully appeal this sentence.

The Metropolitan Police's then Assistant Commissioner, Helen Ball, said that the men's colleagues were appalled by their actions and that the public couldn't have confidence in their organisation if the force didn't take their behaviour seriously. Quote, "...I'm sorry that our officers behaved in such a hurtful, disrespectful and criminal way. Their actions are shameful."

Three other officers who had received the images without challenging or reporting them all received written warnings but were permitted to keep their jobs. The Independent Office for Police Conduct, or IOPC, held a separate inquiry into how the police handled initial reports that Beba Henry and Nicole Smallman were missing. They found that the Metropolitan Police had failed to follow their missing persons policies and made other errors.

When a friend of one of the sisters called the police asking for help, the call handler was dismissive and referred to one of the missing women as a suspect. Information from a family member as to where the sisters might be was inaccurately recorded and led to an inspector cancelling the report.

The IOPC found that the Met Police's response to the case was below the standard that it should have been. However, they didn't find that this was due to any racial bias against the women. The Met offered an official apology to the women's families, with then-Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick stating…

Mina Smallman responded, quote,

Sorry is something you say when you comprehend the wrong you do and take full responsibility for it. Demonstrating that by taking appropriate proportionate action, which to our minds is not going to happen. The investigation was not handled appropriately. The apology should have been done face to face and not nearly 10 months later. Mina rejects the finding that there was no racial bias behind the Met's mishandling.

Biba Henry and Nicole Smallman's loved ones suffered irreparable damage as a result of their murders. Mina Smallman's sister, the women's aunt, had cancer and suffered a rapid decline after losing her nieces. After she died, Mina said: "You can't exclude that a broken heart doesn't help a person who is terminally ill." The women's sister, Monique, went from being one of three siblings to an only child.

Bieber's only daughter gave birth to her first child, a boy, after her mother's murder. Those who knew Bieber said that her death was a loss to the entire community. She had been a fierce advocate for the vulnerable members of society who came into her care as a social worker. She was also a vivacious and fun person with a larger-than-life personality, described as "just fantastic to be around".

Her father, Herman Henry, said he was in agony without her, describing Bieber as: "A beautiful, outgoing, strong-minded and intelligent woman." Mina Smallman said that although Bieber was barely five foot tall, she had the heart of a lion and a smile that would put the Blackpool Illuminations to shame, a reference to an annual lights festival in Blackpool, England.

Where Bieber was described as a beacon, a friend of Nicole's said she had a gentler energy. Quote: "When she walked into a room, she was like a nightlight. It was subtle, protective, warm." Easy-going and kind-hearted, Nicole was a humanitarian who was passionate about the arts and seen as a joy to be around.

In his victim impact statement in court, Nicole's partner Adam spoke of his devastation at losing her: "To put into words how I feel about losing Nicole is almost impossible, especially in this unimaginable and horrifically violent way. Nicole is my first thought, my second, and every thought thereafter, and if I am lucky enough to fall asleep, then I see her in my dreams. This is all I have left of her."

Nicole was the only child of her school teacher father, Chris, and had been particularly close to him. Mina Smallman told The Guardian: "I remember watching him kissing her newborn head. He was completely smitten. For a man who is not sentimental, it was a beautiful thing to see."

In the BBC documentary Two Daughters, Mina concluded by saying she wanted people to remember how her daughters lived, not how they died. Quote, "'Beeba, the amazing social worker who battled to make sure children were safe, that families weren't broken up, and Nikki, she was just a ray of light everywhere, and I know that will always be the way, and I think that's what we need to do.'

We need to find the sunshine in the rain.