Season 08 Episode 32: What the Water Took From Us
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Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jeff Perlman. And I'm Rick Jervis. We're journalists and hosts of the podcast Finding Sexy Sweat. At an internship in 1993, we roomed with Reggie Payne, aspiring reporter and rapper who went by Sexy Sweat. A couple years ago, we set out to find him. But in 2020, Reggie fell into a coma after police pinned him down, and he never woke up.

Then I see my son's not moving. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, it's Richard McLean-Smith here with a quick update before we dive into today's episode.

Unexplained is very excited to be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November, joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the world of true crime and the paranormal. Four nights in the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left, Scared to Death, and many more. Live shows, meet and greets, creepy stories under the stars, and you can be there too.

But don't wait, rooms are nearly sold out. Head to CrimeWaveAtSea.com/Unexplained to grab your fan code and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see you on board. What is it about water that haunts us? Perhaps it's the way that great bodies of it, lochs, rivers, canals and ponds, sit like amorphous entities beneath the moonlight, quiet,

patient, indifferent. Perhaps it's the thought of what they might conceal. Their mirror-like surfaces offering the perfect metaphor and sometimes genuine hiding place for whatever unknown horrors might lurk within its depths. Perhaps it's to do with water's awesome power to overwhelm and destroy.

We see footage on the news of tsunamis and extreme weather events. We know what it means when a region reports higher than average rainfall and can almost feel the creak of the levee when a storm assaults the coastline. It's the ultimate irony that the most abundant element on Earth, the one thing other than air which is non-negotiable for survival, is also a deadly killer.

Just as gods are granted the power to give and take life, we might do well to see water in just those same terms. In 1941, T.S. Eliot wrote in The Dry Salvages that the Mississippi River was a strong brown god, unhonored, unpropitiated by worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting,

and that in keeping his seasons and rages the river was also a destroyer, reminder of what men choose to forget. It was Eliot's contention that attempts to outgrow the natural world would wreak havoc of the kind we see today as a result of global warming.

It should therefore come as no surprise that in almost every culture around the world, from the Japanese Kappa to the figure of Poseidon in Greek mythology, water is depicted as a jealous and unforgiving supernatural force. We ignore it at our peril, and if we fail to pay it due deference, it has the power to claim us and our loved ones and drag them impassively to its depths.

You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. The English legends of Pegg Powler and Ginny Greenteeth, from the northeast and northwest of England respectively, might at first give the appearance of a more frivolous take on the subject of elemental destruction. Both are spirits, or old crones, said to haunt inland waterways,

Both prey on children and old people, using their elongated arms, talon-like fingers, sharp teeth, long straggly hair, and green skin to petrify and ensnare anyone unlucky enough to encounter them. The presence of duckweed is usually an indication that either Ginny or Peg is close by.

keeping their presence mostly to rivers and ponds, with occasional forays into haunting canals and sewer systems in more industrialised urban landscapes like Liverpool and Newcastle. Both have been invoked to warn people away from dangerous bodies of water, and both can trace their origins within a long folkloric tradition stretching as far back as the 13th century.

Some scholars, however, think that the legends date further, noting striking similarities between the figure of Grendel from the 10th century epic Beowulf and the Welsh myth of Hafren or Sabrina, who was drowned in Britain's longest river, the River Severn, and cursed to haunt its waters forevermore. But not all stories to do with Ginny Greenteeth or Peg Powler are quite so esoteric.

On 13th January 1860, a recently constructed iron bridge over the River Tees near Yarm in North Yorkshire collapsed into the water, leading many locals to believe that the spirit of Peg Powler had somehow been angered

A local paper wrote at the time, The new bridge was built adjacent to the old one, but Peg Powler, the mythical spirit of the River Tees, objected to the effrontery offered by these newfangled ideas, rose in her wrath, and before the much vaunted new way was opened to the public, it collapsed at midnight on January 12th, 1860.

The implication, of course, is that, like T.S. Eliot's depiction of an ancient water god disturbed by modern industrialization, the figure of Pegg Powler rose up in anger to foil modern man's tampering with the order of the natural world.

Not only do mortals in this story fail to show respect to the spirit of the river, they are punished for their transgressions through physical violence and economic sabotage.

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I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into...

Call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks largely to more advanced public understanding of scientific natural processes, the prevalence of myth-busting on social and traditional media, and sustained government efforts to clean up and make safe dilapidated waterways, stories about Pegg Powler and Ginny Greenteeth have mostly been forgotten. And yet, many urban legends of this nature have not been completely consigned to history.

There are still whispers about malevolent beings ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims who stray too close to the water's edge. Many in Britain will no doubt remember the brilliant and haunting public information films released by the suitably Orwellian-sounding Central Office of Information that proliferated on British TV in the 1970s.

The drowning awareness film, Lonely Water, was perhaps the most haunting of them all. I am the spirit of dark and lonely water, ready to trap the unwary, the show-off, the fool. And this is the kind of place you'd expect to find me. But no one expects to find me here. It seems too ordinary. But that pool is deep. The boy is showing off. The bank is slippery. The show-offs are easy.

But the unwary ones are easier still. This branch is weak, rotten. It'll never take his weight. Only a fool would ignore this. But there's one born every minute. Under the water there are traps. Old cars, bedsteads, weeds, hidden depths. It's the perfect place for an accident. Oh, look, there's someone in the water. Quick, give us that big stick. Sensible children. I have no power over them.

"Oh, hey, Mike, that's a stupid place to swim." "Hey, go over and get that thing to wrap him in." "He does not feel cold, mate, and I'll be seeing him there." "I'll be back." The somber narrator was, of course, the grim reaper himself, forever lurking in the background, watching on patiently as one child after another fails to heed his warnings to stay away from the water.

Perhaps the most chilling British urban legend of recent times concerns an alleged serial killer that some believe has been using the warren of isolated waterways that snake through much of England's north-west as a hunting ground for their victims. Police have dismissed this as a modern moral panic, though for those who believe it, this phantom figure is said to be responsible for upwards of 86 deaths.

For more than 250 years, Manchester and its surrounds, such as Salford, has been a northern English powerhouse. In the 19th century, it was there that Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx studied the industrial working classes. So important was their labour for the manufacture and distribution of cotton and linen to international markets.

The city's burgeoning textiles industry earned it the nickname 'Cotonopolis' and required the construction of a vast network of shipping canals, docks and fire ducts to bring raw materials from the New World. Overnight, it seemed, the city was transformed from a sleepy market town into a kind of infernal red brick inversion of Venice.

Instead of gondolas and churches, cobbled squares and famous art expositions, it was schooners and warehouses, dirty terraces and row upon row of red-bricked factories breathing hellfire into the choked streets as the population exploded from just a couple of thousand at the start of the 18th century to more than 350,000 by 1865.

The canals were the arteries that fed the city's heart, though by the end of the 1970s, with the decline of heavy industry, cruelly accelerated by Margaret Thatcher's government of the day, Manchester began a steady decline into unemployment and deprivation.

The disintegration of the city's literal and psychological horizons would later define much of Greater Manchester's local music scene, as exemplified in the timeless work of bands like Joy Division, The Smiths and The Four.

Over time, the canals fell into disuse and disrepair, and what had once been vital transport lanes connecting the city to the rest of the world, suddenly became something far less edifying and much closer to the kind of still water favoured by those dark, legendary figures like Ginny Greenteeth.

By the early 1990s, a new Manchester was beginning to emerge, driven by the city's intrinsically indomitable spirit and blossoming out of the detritus of its former glories. From its resurgent music scene, dubbed Madchester, to the unrelenting success of the city's Manchester United football club, Manchester had once again established itself as one of the nation's most heralded cities.

By 2007, work was well underway to redevelop the Bridgewater and Manchester ship canals to cater to what would eventually become Media City UK, a sprawling 200-acre site in Salford that became home to much of the nation's leading media organisations.

with that came bars and artisanal restaurants glass-fronted hotels and the kind of sophistication that would have been unimaginable on the banks of the manchester shipping canal just a hundred years previously

The redeveloped waterways with their newly installed towpaths became popular walking routes for everyone from young professionals on their way to work to joggers and most crucially for this story, drinkers and nightclub revelers making their way home after an evening on the town.

Greater Manchester is home to over 36 miles of criss-crossing rivers and canals, many of which are lowered from street view to allow for the easy passage of a boat or transport vessel. It stands to reason that, after a few drinks, straying too close to the water's edge could spell disaster. After only a few units of alcohol, your heart rate speeds up,

your reaction time lessens, your inhibitions lower and your hand to eye coordination becomes impaired with increased consumption. Performing even simple tasks like holding a conversation or walking in a straight line can become difficult, let alone the prospect of treading icy treacle thick water having taken a tumble over the edge of an embankment.

Add to that the precarious living situation many homeless people find themselves in and it should come as little surprise that between 2004 and 2018 the bodies of at least 86 people, most of them young men, were recovered from the water. Some had been out clubbing before they disappeared

Many were last seen walking near the canal, often after dark, sometimes intoxicated and always on their own. 19-year-old engineering student Suvik Pal was one of them. Having grown up in a strict Indian household before travelling to the UK to study at Manchester's Metropolitan University, Suvik Pal had never been much of a drinker.

much less a regular fixture on the city's famous clubbing scene. Nonetheless, according to his friend, Charlotte Wilson, on New Year's Eve 2012, he found himself out celebrating at a club called Warehouse Project in the Trafford area of the city.

CCTV footage showed Suvak's last movements with friends as they entered the venue, before being escorted off the premises by a security guard, ostensibly for being too intoxicated. Three weeks later, the young student's body was pulled from Manchester's Bridgewater Canal. A 39-mile stretch of water running through Manchester

The autopsy revealed no obvious signs of trauma, no signs of injury caused by a third party and no defensive wounds showing that he'd put up any kind of struggle. Suvik's death was ruled as an accidental drowning but questions remained about the circumstances surrounding it.

Why had it taken so long to find his body between the time of his disappearance and the likely time of his death, which coroners acknowledged had taken place much closer to the end of the three weeks? Where had he been for all that time? Suvik's parents made it clear that they didn't believe he'd simply fallen into the water.

Members of his family even appealed to the Indian government to investigate the possibility of foul play. But with nothing more than a series of patchy CCTV images to go on, the young man's case quickly went cold. He was cremated in his hometown of Bangalore in January 2013.

Nine years earlier, on 17th April 2004, 21-year-old David Plunkett had also been out in the Trafford area of the city. Like Suvik, he too had been out with friends at Daytona Racetrack in Trafford Park. At some point, David's friend Michael realised that David was no longer with the group. Unknown to him, David had been ejected by the event organisers for being too drunk.

When Michael was unable to reach him on the phone, he contacted the young man's parents, Anne and Mike Plunkett. They in turn then attempted to contact David. In the quiet of the night, the deeply concerned Anne and Mike sat in their home trying to call their son. It took Anne three attempts before the call was finally answered, but her son didn't speak, seemingly unaware that his phone had picked up the call.

What struck her first and foremost was the strange quietness of where he seemed to be. No sounds of revelry or traffic, no sound of anything much at all. All she could hear was the sound of him walking and his breathing. "David," she repeated into the phone to no reply. "Can you hear me? Do you know where you are? Are you in Manchester? Do you recognize anything?"

About seven or eight minutes into the call, David's mother heard a series of ghastly screams. Horrified, Anne started crying and handed the phone to her husband Mike, then quickly called 999 on a separate phone, hoping that someone could get to David wherever he was.

As she talked to an officer on the other line, David's screams continued until finally, a short time later, David's phone went dead.

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Get IPVanish now for 70% off a yearly plan with this exclusive offer at IPVanish.com slash audio. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband. It's a cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into...

Call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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The screams Anne Plunkett spoke about were also heard by the police officer on the other line. Though they weren't picked up on tape, the recorder had failed to work. The officer in question would go on to describe the noises as distressing. She later resigned from her post, speaking to the Daily Star newspaper, who ran an early piece on the possibility of a serial killer operating on the Manchester Canal network.

The incident still haunts me to this day. With every death I see reported in the news, I become more and more convinced that these are murders and not accidents. As David's father Mike also put it, the screaming I heard made me feel like David had seen something that terrified him.

Like Suvik, it was a long time before David's body was found, eventually washing up two weeks later in the Manchester Ship Canal. The coroner ruled it as drowning and like Suvik, there was a lot of alcohol in David's bloodstream, so much so that the coroner publicly admonished the organisers of the event for ejecting someone in his vulnerable state when it was known that he would not have had the coordination to look after himself.

The third and one of the most high profile cases for amateur sleuths on the hunt for what many have taken to calling the Manchester pusher is that of Nathan Tomlinson. Nathan was a 21 year old student who disappeared after a Christmas party on 17th December 2010. His last confirmed sighting was at the Mitre Hotel near Manchester Cathedral.

Anecdotal evidence picks up his whereabouts on Victoria Street in the centre of the city where he is said to have hopped a wall before making his way toward Chapel Street in Salford to the west. A man fitting his description was seen asking a passing bus driver how he might get home to Stockport about five miles away to the south. A figure also matching his description was spotted by CCTV walking toward the River Irwell

At that point, no more sightings were picked up of Nathan, speculative or otherwise, after which he is said to have disappeared completely. An agonising three-month search followed, during which time police focused their efforts on the area around the University of Salford, nearby Peel Park and Salford Crescent Railway Station.

His body was recovered from the River Irwell. Three months later, washing up at a bridge near Meadow Road in Lower Broughton, an inquest into the search for Nathan found that police had failed to do basic investigative work to ensure that his body was uncovered more quickly.

Pathologist Naomi Carter said that although Nathan had water in his lungs, she couldn't determine whether he died before going into the river or whether he drowned. Nathan was found with his phone and wallet, though his coat was missing. And his mother even suggested at one point that she thought the discovery scene might have been staged to make it look as though Nathan had gone into the water of his own accord.

Behind each of these high-profile cases, the men's families insist there is more to the story, and perhaps there is. It wasn't until 2015, when a newspaper published an article featuring criminal psychologist Professor Craig Jackson from the University of Birmingham, that whispers began about the deaths of Nathan, David and Suvik, and possibly scores of others being connected.

The professor was quoted as saying that it was extremely unlikely that such an alarming number of bodies found in the canals could be the result of accidents or suicides, and that it was entirely possible a serial killer was responsible for at least some of the deaths.

A theory arose that because Manchester's waterways had been used over the decades as a cruising area for gay men, an elusive murderer may have been targeting the gay community and catching potential cruisers unaware.

In 2016, British TV station Channel 4 commissioned a documentary called Manchester's Serial Killer, which featured a more cautious, though no less intrigued, Professor Craig Jackson expounding on his theory once again.

Forums exploded with hypotheses and innuendos, and Detective Chief Inspector Pete Marsh of the Greater Manchester Police was even instructed to reopen investigations into all the deaths linked to the theory.

Marsh reported that he did not believe young men or those that were gay made up the majority of the deaths and added that it was his belief that many of the individuals who died on Manchester's waterways had died accidentally.

Skepticism remained however. Almost all victims identified were young men aged between 18 to 30, last seen after dark, walking alone, found in or near one of the city's rivers or canals, with no witnesses, no clear cause of death and no sign of struggle against their likely impending doom.

Rumours of the so-called Manchester Pusher might have eventually died out, were it not for the number of supposed survivors who claimed to have had near-brushes with the elusive serial killer.

One anonymous source calling himself Tom, a 34-year-old cyclist who regularly frequented Bridgewater Canal, felt an arm knock him off his bike and into the water one April evening in 2018. As he struggled to get out, he found that someone was waiting at the edge of the water for him, kicking his hand away repeatedly as he struggled to clamber over the embankment.

By the time he eventually managed to haul himself out of the water, all signs of an attacker had disappeared. He'd heard rumours about the apparent pusher and had likely been on his guard, especially given that there were no lights where the attack was alleged to have occurred. With all that said, Tom freely admitted that he'd heard about the pusher rumours before his near drowning,

and with the shock of going into the water, he may have been in a state of mind suggestible enough for his unconscious to invent a dark figure that was responsible, with no new evidence to go on, and with Greater Manchester Police having effectively shelled their investigation into all searches for a murderer. It's likely we'll never know whether someone, or something, was responsible. Was it murder?

Misadventure? Or something older, colder and harder to explain? Either way, the water doesn't care. Perhaps only one thing is for certain, that wherever water lies, the Grim Reaper is never far away, just watching, waiting. I'll be back. This episode was written by James Connor Patterson and produced by Richard McLean-Smith.

James is a brilliant writer and poet. His debut collection of poems, titled Bandit Country, exploring the hinterland between the north of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the 2022 T.S. Eliot Prize and is out now to buy. So do check it out. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained is an AV Club production podcast created by Richard McLean-Smith.

All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me, Richard McLean-Smith. Unexplained the Book and Audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.

Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your own you'd like to share. You can find out more at unexplainedpodcast.com and reach us online through X and Blue Sky at UnexplainedPod and Facebook at facebook.com forward slash unexplainedpodcast.

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I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jeff Perlman. And I'm Rick Jervis. We're journalists and hosts of the podcast Finding Sexy Sweat. At an internship in 1993, we roomed with Reggie Payne, aspiring reporter and rapper who went by Sexy Sweat. A couple years ago, we set out to find him. But in 2020, Reggie fell into a coma after police pinned him down, and he never woke up.

Then I see my son's not moving. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.