We'll get into your true crime show in just a moment. Here's what's new from the Always True Crime Network. On the True Crime Enthusiast, we head to Leicester, where an explosion in 2017 claimed five lives and uncovered a chilling plot linked to an insurance scam. British Murders examines the disturbing case of Phoenix Nets, whose body was discovered concealed in two suitcases in the Forest of Dean. And in our newest series, Codename Badger, The Mystery Deepens. In the latest episode, we find out what happens next for Josephine and her family after a stranger arrived on their doorstep and changed their lives forever with a shocking revelation. If you're looking for your next true crime listen, we've got you covered. Line it up to play straight after this one. So be brave, be just. you about the next series that will have you hooked after listening to Toil and Trouble. Codename Badger uncovers the true story of a mysterious spy who appears at the door of a grieving widow, claiming her husband's death is not all that it seems. What follows is a lifetime of secrecy, espionage and control. But who's telling the truth? Here's episode one. I would quote you from Cicero, who said long ago, A nation survives its fools and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within. I know much more than I did 39 years ago about the events before and after, but not all of course. It's 1955 and Royal Navy's submarine HMS Untiring lies in a dock in the harbour at Tor Bay in England. Inside the vessel, several uniformed men attend a meeting. They're not planning post-wartime manoeuvres or covert ops. Rather, a party. And even the planning of the party is something of a party. The pink gins are flowing. One of the men is Robbie Mills. He's a dark-haired and handsome 38-year-old army major. Robbie's gregarious and sociable and perfectly suited for his job on this night. organising a get-together with comrades. As the night draws to a close, they begin to make their way unsteadily to land. The submarine's at the surface, but they have to walk down a gangplank to the port. But it's raining, and the sea is rough. The gangplank pitches from one side to another. This short walk will be his last. One minute Robbie's there. the next he's gone they're metres from shore but before the nearby crew can do anything he's vanished beneath the dark waves he's pulled from the water alive but it's too late within 24 hours Robbie Mills is dead but his death is just the beginning I'm Eugene Henderson, and this is Codename Badger. A story of secrecy, espionage, and control that spans a lifetime. This is Episode 1, The Stranger. Robbie leaves behind his wife, Josephine, and four young children. Investigators tell her how he died, falling from the gangplank as he left the submarine. The swell had made it unstable, and his wife has no reason to disbelieve them. But within weeks of her husband's death, a stranger knocks on the door of Josephine's cottage in Devon. And what he tells her about the death of Major Robbie Mills will change her life forever. But in fact, he did say to you, Joe, didn't he, that he didn't think he'd last very long? He was big, powerful, dark. I was trained in a very, very hard field, came a killer, came a parachutist. The man knocking on Josephine's door introduces himself as Captain John Cattell, Robbie's best friend. During the war, Robbie was stationed at the Army's command centre in London, a vast information hub, bringing in wartime updates. When the war ended, Robbie returned to the family quarry business. but that wasn't the end of his military career he remained in the army part time the man at the door is dashing and charismatic he and Josephine haven't formally met but she thinks she remembers him from social events but he's not just paying his respects he has an urgent message for Josephine her husband was not all he seemed and his death it was no accident John tells her Robbie's work was really a cover story In fact, he and John both worked for the military secret service But Robbie had got into trouble His lifestyle had caught up with him Josephine knows exactly what he's talking about The fact that Robbie was a womaniser is not a well-kept secret And he was a social animal Always the last to leave a party John says this was Robbie's downfall that those who run the show felt he was a liability. He'd like to tell them all, only it's dangerous for both of them, possibly deadly. Your children won't remember the traumas we all had when Robbie was alive and the desperate attempt he was making to sort out life and to live it. But in fact, he did say to you, dear, didn't he, that he didn't think he'd last very long. That is John Cattell's voice. Investigating this story, we were given access to hours of tape recordings. In this one, he's talking to Josephine, who he calls Joe. I think I've probably told children that at some time or another. It seemed that's upset with the idea, apart from the fact that he was worried what would happen to us. The problem was that Robbie was involved in certain work. he wasn't able to talk about. And although he was not employed by the government, he was certainly responsible to them even after the war, as you probably realize now. But of course I am saying nothing that I should not do for fear of repercussions Yes I realise that you can then say about half of what really matters Josephine is a petite brunette with a slender frame and fresh complexion. She looks much younger than her 34 years. Now she's been left with no husband and four young children. and she is desperately traumatised. Perhaps this enigmatic stranger's entry into her life will be a blessing. The first recollection she had of him, or I have of him, was in about the spring of 1956. That's Josephine and Robbie's eldest daughter, Nicky Hibbin. He came to the door and she invited him in then. When he appeared in the house and chatted to her, and then went away and then came back and he was there back and forth. He was a man who said he'd been a great friend of my father, although my mother didn't really have any recollection of him. Nicky is how this story came to me. I'm a journalist who's been in the newspaper business for over 30 years. I'm very lucky to now live in the southwest of France. And Nicky is one of my neighbours. Imagine a grey-haired, very English doctor Enjoying her retirement She lives in a farmhouse built in 1856 With thick stone walls and dark wood Out back there was once a vineyard Now rolling fields with sunflowers Once it became clear Nicky had a story to tell I enlisted the help of my old friend and radio journalist Andy Clark We met way back at university in the mid-1980s Idyllic, rural France oh well there you go there's always somebody with a leaf blower ruining your plans isn't there you know and you've known Nikki then for a few years now yeah about three or four years yeah so and she's obviously part of this story a big part of this story that we're investigating yeah and it's really an untold part of the story because what happened to her mother over the course of five decades is bizarre. Yeah. Quite incredible. Yeah. Anyway, we're going now. At the gates. Nice bell here. That's a good one, isn't it? Hi, Nicky. Hello. Hi, how are you doing? Hi, thank you. Good. Andy and I joined Nicky in her farmhouse one warm afternoon in June. She handed us a dossier, hoping to solve a mystery spanning half a century, which ruined more than one life and she told us about the spy who came calling. When John Cattell burst into Nicky's life she was only nine. He seemed to sort of slot into the house I think he even sat in my father's chair at the dining table which I didn't like. Nicky's younger brother Andrew remembers John's arrival and the impact it had on Nicky. He was big, powerful, dark and we didn't get to know him very well in those first few visits. He was sort of in and out or in the spare room, you know, and we didn't really see much of him. My mother kept him away from us. Later on, we saw a little bit more of him. He kept visiting and my elder sister, Nicky, did not like him at all. She was possibly nine years old, nine, ten, and I think she did not like him replacing my father. But he was odd in the way he talked with my mother, and it was very, very difficult to understand who he was. It was said that he was a friend of my father's. But, you know, he was an odd character in the family, really. With four young children to raise, Josephine had enough on her plate. But Andrew says her taking in waifs and strays wasn't out of character. She just looked after people. We had other people who needed looking after. There was a travelling sales lady who was selling mops and brooms and things. And my mother felt sorry for her, so she came and stayed and strange things happened like that. My mother was a very, very kind person. And she's entranced with John. She used to spend a lot of time sitting on her bed upstairs where she had a telephone, on the phone to him with a newspaper in front of her, the Daily Telegraph. When John wasn't with her, he was using covert methods to communicate. Looking in the personal column, trying to find or trying to understand secret messages, it seemed to be. She never explained what was going on, but she would sit there for a long, long time and most days as if secret messages were being conveyed through this personal column of the Daily Telegraph. John had had a remarkable military career, beginning in the army. The war was on and everybody who was fit had to go into the army. This is the real John, speaking to an American radio station. I went into the army as a driver in the Royal Army Service Corps. I had been in the officer's training court school, which gave me some advantage. But then he was handpicked for something else. I went before the commission board and was rejected on the grounds that I was not officer material. And so, very unhappy, I went back to being an ordinary soldier. But eventually I was commissioned and I got into an organisation called Special Operations Executive. The Special Operations Executive, or SOE, a clandestine British military unit whose mission was to disrupt and destroy behind enemy lines. The Special Operations Executive was an organisation that was created in July 1940 in order to plug a gap. This is spy expert and author Nigel West. It's worth explaining that at the beginning of the Second World War, the British Secret Intelligence Service operated quite widely around the world, but it operated somewhat transparently through a cover organisation, which was the Passport Control Officers. It became a very important organisation. It trained tens of thousands of agents and operated literally across the world across the Middle East and the Far East John accounts of his time in the SOE were incredible At just 18 he had been working as a driver in the army When an officer approached him and suggested he could be useful in the cloak and dagger world of the SOE. But first, he would have to undergo the most incredible test of bravery. These are John's words, voiced by actor Guy Harris. We'll tell you when you're hearing the real John. It was a strange kind of initiation, really, when you think about it. Being dropped in the woods at night, armed with two knives, knowing a convicted murderer, also armed with two knives, was in the very same woods. He'd been told he'd been given his freedom if he killed me. I knew this was a lie, but he didn't know that. And what did it matter? It was kill or be killed. I told myself killing this man would be self-preservation, not murder. It was a clear night. I knew that if I backed up to a tree, he wouldn't be able to attack from behind. But then I wouldn't be able to see him coming either. So I climbed and waited and waited. Hours passed. I slowed my breathing and despite my stiffening body, I focused on the sounds around me. I smelt him first. The breeze carried him to me. And then I saw him, tall but slight with blonde hair As he passed beneath me, I jumped for him He went down and I heard him gasp I went down too but was up first We circled each other, knives held low As he lunged I caught his wrist and pulled him forward So that I could kick him and throw him over my head to the ground I was on him, my left knee in his back and left forearm under his chin. I swiftly drew the knife across his throat. I stood over this dying man with no idea of the journey that was about to begin. Initiation complete. Naturally, the details of John's wartime experiences were shrouded in secrecy. But he spoke of receiving the orders for his first mission to the Netherlands in person from Winston Churchill at 10 Downing Street. I said, sir, I don't know how to speak Dutch. Churchill replied, you have a week to learn. He was also handed his codename, Badger. His body showed the scars of battle. He told us that he'd had a bayonet which had sliced his stomach and there was the scar from it. And as a result he had a very small stomach and couldn't really eat very much. He told them he had received the bayonet injury at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944 during Operation Market Garden. the planned ally had pushed through the Netherlands into Germany. On a heavily fortified bridge, he single-handedly captured a machine gun and killed Nazi General Major Friedrich Kassan and three soldiers. It was this action that won him one of Britain's highest military honours, the Military Cross. But he was injured in the gunfire exchange and taken to hospital, where he was captured and his fate seemingly sealed. A German staff car was waiting, and the rope around my neck was tied to the bumper with about two feet of slack. I hung on to the rope and tried to keep up with the car. I'm sure I made a pathetic sight to anyone on the street, and I'm also sure that I was being used as an example of what could happen to those who incurred the wrath of the Germans. Once the car stopped suddenly and I banged into it, My nose was bruised and bloody. John suffered days of brutal torture at the hands of fanatical SS officers. After a trial lasting just 12 minutes, he was sentenced to death for crimes against the Third Reich. Before dawn, he was marched outside to face the firing squad. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. I was reciting the 23rd Psalm over and over to myself. Placed against the wall, I leaned back to conceal the fact I was shaking. I hoped it would be quick. An SS officer came forward and offered me a blindfold, but I shook my head that I did not want it. I heard the click of rifles, and a moment later the order to fire. The volley filled the air and the wall behind me shuddered and I stood there dazed. The shots had deliberately gone over my head. No bullet had touched me. Over the following days, John somehow survived four more mock executions until he was driven to Buchenwald concentration camp, one of the first and largest of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany. By the end of the war, almost 57,000 people died there. He survived for many months, but only just. I didn't know many British troops got to Buchenwald as prisoners. Here's John, speaking to an American radio station. Well, I think there were more than one realised. Henri Pelleve, sounds very French, but only was British and in the same organization as myself. Wing Commander Joe Thomas, the Frenchman, he was also there. Colonel Perkins, he was the man who warned me. He said, this is the worst concentration camp in Germany, have no doubts. I was only there less than six months because we were liberated by General George Patton's Third Army in April 1945. Buchenwald was liberated and John's war was finally over. It's a little more than a decade later when John arrives in Josephine's life. She knows he has a wife and two young children, so the relationship is platonic. He's there on Robbie's behalf, and he seems vulnerable himself. He tells her his experiences as a prisoner of war are still physically impacting him. He frequently vomits up meals unable to hold them down due to the damage the bayonet has done to his stomach Something that rather galled Nicky He had these substantial breakfasts and then a little while later he would make quite a thing of going to the loo and making vomiting sounds as if he was not able to keep it down, which seemed to me very sad because my mother had made him a big meal and if he couldn't keep it down, I thought as a child, he shouldn't really have eaten it all. There's a picture of nine-year-old Nicky with John around this time. She's in riding gear, tweed jacket, riding breeches and a hat. John is standing next to her with a hand cupped around the back of her neck. he's handsome with brule creamed hair a large moustache and round tortoise shell glasses he's stylish too in houndstooth slacks and a wool jumper but Nicky looks uneasy she is smiling but burly and she looks like the minute the camera's gone she will duck away from the large hand resting on her she'd lost her own father just months before I didn't take to him I didn't she would be very kind to him she would feed him, but she would also give him my father's clothes. I remember taking him upstairs to my father's wardrobe and offering him the shirts and clothes that were in there. And I felt very miffed at the time because as children, we hadn't really been offered anything to remember our father by, whereas he seemed to take priority and I didn't like it at all. So she just welcomed him in. His presence in the house is chaotic. He frequently arrives in Josephine's home with injuries. He would appear at the door with various wounds. It was afterwards we discovered that she would repair his wounds and look after him. There was one time he had a burnt hand and he said it was a petrol bomb he'd been handling. And my brother remembers he came to stay for two or three days and mother looked after his burnt hand. Josephine is captivated by John but also keenly aware that he is the key to unlocking the mystery of her husband's death The chaos he brings to her door will be worth it when she finally gets answers There was general talk that he was in some way covert and he was being followed and he was being, you know, he had car accidents and people were beating him up Then late one night John calls. He would ring her at midnight. You know, she was a widow, four children, stuck in a remote village in Devon, and he would ring her, expecting her to pay for him to be bailed from the police station. He's been arrested. Talkie Herald, 1956. Photographer yielded to temptation. He's been taken in for questioning after a police sting investigating thefts of coins from phone boxes. John's arrested coming out of a phone kiosk with a pocket full of marked coins planted by police. In court, his lawyer says, the accused is described as having an inadequate personality. He's sentenced to six months in Exeter prison. Or is he? West Hungary is rebel control. From the uniforms of border guards, from the flags, the Red Star has been ripped. The hated symbol of communism is effaced wherever found. John says it's a cover, allowing him to leave the country undetected and travel to Budapest, where the Soviet tanks are rolling in. He's sent into the city to collect a precious roll of microfilm. In the process, he shoots dead two Soviet soldiers before making his escape via Vienna and back to the UK. John's spending less and less time with Josephine However he's not home with his wife and children either He's taken a number of flats in smart areas of London Close to the HQ of British Overseas Intelligence But he's increasingly in trouble at work He says the powers that be are using ever more sinister tactics to intimidate him pulling him over, even jailing him in 1969 on trumped-up charges, this time shoplifting olives from an upmarket store on the King's Road in Chelsea. Josephine drives through the night to Malribone Court to support him. She's now working at the RAF Research Centre at Boscombe Down, with burgeoning computer technology, which means she's also bound by the Official Secrets Act. so she understands that the secrets he's carrying about Robbie must go with him to the grave then in 1974 John contacts Josephine he needs cash, a lot of cash more than £2,000 he can't say why but it's vitally important it's a huge amount around £20,000 in today's money but she gives it to him Then, he's gone. The handsome stranger with a secret, who turned up on Josephine Mills' doorstep almost 20 years earlier, has reshaped her entire life. We couldn't process our own grief of losing our father. And left Nicky Hibbin with a mystery she's still trying to solve 70 years later. We were just left in this complete vacuum. Johnny's now gone, and wherever he is, can he get a message through to Josephine? This short tape will be unsatisfactory to people who might hear it in 30, 40, 50 years' time, but at this particular moment, it is not a good idea to say any more. Could he have been killed in the service of his queen and country? I was not very brave, I can assure you. I tried to be. Has his double life finally caught up with him? There's some things I can't say. under pain of imprisonment, without trial, or being detained during her minister's pleasure indefinitely. That's next time on Codename Badger. This has been Codename Badger, an Audio Always production. Presented and produced by me, Eugene Henderson and Andy Clark. Our executive producer is Elsa Rochester. Sound design by Craig Edmondson. To hear the next episode, search for Codename Badger wherever you get your podcasts. Or to listen to all episodes right now, search for Always True Crime on Patreon. Want more true crime? This podcast and loads more are part of the Always True Crime Network. It's packed with box sets to binge and twisted tales you won't find anywhere else. Find your next podcast obsession at always true crime dot com.
