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In-house can advertenties bevatter. 18+. All the rules are for use. visit our show notes. It's more than a month after the coronation weekend incident, and Detective Gavin Collins is round at Alfred's house. In the weeks following her arrest, Moira has been keen to retrieve her belongings from the garden flat. We did think naively now that having been arrested that day, there'd be some transformative aspect, she would realise that she'd gone too far and that she'd be sorrowful or regretful or something that showed us that there was a kindness there or empathy there. But nothing, it's just got worse and worse. Moira had been told not to contact Alfred, but that hadn't stopped her. The phone call, oh, the endless phone calls. Paul's diary alleges that the calls became so frequent Alfred was forced to unplug his landline She was leaving messages on the landline and there were so many it couldn't take any more so he just unplugged it And then there were the text messages I think one day she sent him 17 texts It was a torrent Within about five minutes and they were just abusive so that would be the text and then the phone would ring. So when the phone rings in Alfred's kitchen they all have an idea who it might be. Detective called and said, shall I answer it? And he said, oh yes please and it was Moira and she said, can I speak to Alfred please? And he said, no you can't. This is Sussex Police. You have been told not to contact this number. Do not contact this number. But this wasn't the last they'd be hearing from Moira. I'm Hannah George. And I'm Taylor Glenn. This is Toil and Trouble, Episode 5. Uncaring. The events of the past month had been deeply unsettling for the whole family. The texts and emails hadn't stopped. They swung wildly from the threatening to the mundane. Check downstairs fridge for food and curry. Go and do an eating reading and see how you get on. I'm going to report you. Brandiose nurse. You are a dirty old man. I will be making my own allegations without you. See you in court. He would record them and send them to me to say, I've just had this, what do you think we should do? And I said, just send me everything and I'll record it for you. So it proved to be quite useful. But there were endless streams of invective from her. Nasty, salacious, vindictive, cruel. But during his police interview, one crucial detail had emerged that changed everything. Sat across from Alfred in the police station, the packet of cheesy cheddars between them, Detective Collins had asked him one last question. Is there anything at all that you haven't mentioned to the police? Anything at all? Because this is your chance, this is your opportunity. Is there anything that you haven't told us? And he said, well, I did change my will. Alfred had changed his will to favour Moira And we were just so Devastated We assumed it would be Aunty Patsy's children We didn't know anything about his finances But it seemed very strange to us That somebody who had smashed objects in his house Somebody who'd caused so many problems that even if he had changed his will at the beginning because it was all going well, that he hadn't changed it back or it hadn't occurred to him that, you know, it just seemed incredible to us. We just couldn't understand it. That was almost more shocking than seeing the damage, was thinking oh he still hasn understood that that what she came for Well she came for whatever she could get And in the end it turned out that that was the house or part of the house We don't know. We didn't actually see the documents. His school and his library. Job done. We just were just speechless, really. Sometime later, when they'd had time to think about it all, Paul and Anna asked Alfred about the well. All the family documents go through his son-in-law and he's a solicitor. And that has always been the way everything's been done. And Alfred would know that. So it was very unusual. So Alfred chose to go to a next door neighbour and the chap there witnessed their signatures on a will. All of that seemed incredibly strange. And because Maura was a barrister, you would think that that equally some chap that they didn't know was signing these legal documents. So that was another part of what we came to see as this very scheming. Nefarious. Nefarious, underhand way of doing things. if Alfred wanted to make Mora a beneficiary of his will, and that's absolutely none of our business, then the proper way of doing it would have been to contact our family solicitor and to have done it through that. And we would never have known a thing about it because he's very good at confidentiality. And maybe Alfred, it was all Alfred's idea. And maybe that was, you know, part of it. So who are we to know? But it seemed to us to be slightly underhand. And certainly within three or four days, we were back with him again, with the lot at that time. He told us that he'd torn it up. Whatever that document was, he had now shredded it. But Moira didn't know that, and she emailed the family. We have this peculiar to the family message saying, take me out of the financial gain from the sale of the house, but could I still have the Order of the Morning Star School and the library? and it seemed to us at that point that was a very odd thing to say. She has thrown possessions out of the window. She's kicked down his bedroom door. She's thrown books at him, but she's bartering with the family that she could still take on the Order of the Morning Star and the library. So the Order of the Morning Star is gifted from Madeleine Montalban to Alfred and Patsy. It's not in our gift. The estate of Madeleine Montalban would decide what would happen to the Order of the Morning Star. So that was nothing to do with this. The library, if she was the last person on earth, she would not get a leaf of a book from Alfred. Because that's what happens when you abuse elderly people, is you don't get to ask for anything. We understand from sources close to Alfred that at one point, Moira was going to continue the teachings of the Order of the Morning Star in Alfred's stead. But managing a magical legacy is far from simple. Magical teachings have the potential for great growth and great learning, but also great destruction. And you can't be an individual looking after someone's magical legacy. and be ignorant to that. This is Dr. Kate Sherrill, writer and paranormal historian. You would understand the very inner workings of a person to be able to look after their legacy, but also you've got to be made of stern stuff to know when people are coming in to exploit you solely for what you guard, and people that would come in to gain knowledge to then go and take it away and bend it for their own nefarious means. So it's a great responsibility, and not necessarily one that many of us would want to take on or really could take on. Because even though it's a historic legacy, it's a very active thing as well. And occultism, although it's not what the media portrays it as, it is a dangerous field. And it can be used to control people and to manipulate people. And to make sure that doesn't happen and to preserve someone's authentic legacy is a very testing, very, very testing thing. But the school wasn't the only thing Moira had asked for. She asked Alfred for a landlord reference, and we thought at that point that the penny might have dropped, that giving somebody who had been charged with criminal damage of your home a landlord reference might not be a sensible thing to do. But the landlord reference and the request for the Order of the Morning Star correspondence course and an entire library were greeted with total disbelief. It had been a very difficult month and things were starting to take a toll on Alfred. One morning, he phoned to say that he had just gone to the freezer at the bottom of his fridge to get something out. come back up, forgot the fridge door was open cracked his head on it and was bleeding and he was crying, sobbing and I said, do you want me to come over? He stopped and said no it's fine, I'm just not feeling too good at the moment so that's how bad it had begun it had got through to him, of course it had as it would do anybody He was also concerned about his memory We began to do memory tests and things with him and he had a better memory than we do he doesn't have dementia. And she was never his carer. And he's absolutely adamant that she was never his carer. So when she sent the debt collector... The debt collector. According to Paul and Anna's diary, in late February of 2024, Alfred received an email from a debt collection on behalf of their client Barbara Moira Lane The email demanded payment of within 24 hours or they would begin legal proceedings But it did not specify what the debt being collected was for. It was only when a representative rang Alfred at home that it all became clear. And we said to Alfred, where is Moira's contract of employment? If this is a debt, where is the paperwork to go with this debt? Knowing perfectly well that there was no such paperwork. And then a few weeks later, they turned up. A chap arrived at the door and he said he was collecting a debt for non-payment of wages for Moira to be a carer. And Alfred said, Moira has never been my carer. No, you have to go away and it's part of a police case. And so we reported that to Sussex Police, more police resource. Although contact from the debt collection agency stopped once the police got involved, for Paul and Anna, the damage had already been done. Moira commissioned a debt collector to turn up to the home of an 82-year-old vulnerable adult to take money that he did not owe her because she worked full-time as a legal editor for a company in London. She was not his carer. The idea of Moira as Alfred's carer was something his neighbour David, who, it should be said, did not witness the will, also found absurd. Any suggestion that, you know, he was somehow senile is ridiculous. And he certainly doesn't need a carer. He's perfectly fit. He doesn't need assistance of a stick or anything like that for somebody of his age. I think he eats well. He gets plenty of exercise. He's absolutely of sound mind, probably because he keeps himself so busy with his reading and his course and his teaching. He's absolutely 110% mentally and physically fit, does not need any sort of care at all. But someone, somewhere, clearly thought Alfred needed help because a steady stream of post was arriving and none of it was addressed to Alfred. In September of 2023, Moira was re-arrested for, in the words of the police, an ongoing escalation of her actions. At the same time, she was formally charged with assault, criminal damage and stalking. The case was going to court and a hearing date was set. As part of her new bail conditions, Moira was not allowed to enter Rye, and she was required to wear an electronic tag. Alfred and his family finally felt like they could breathe. But then, a mysterious slew of emails started to arrive, delivered to Alfred's account. Thank you for using Trusted Care to contact Shandon House Care. Thank you for submitting a brochure request to Beechwood Grove. Thank you for submitting a brochure of requests to Eastbourne Gardens Care Home. Thank you for taking the time to contact us. A member of our team will be in touch shortly. They appeared to be sent from care homes in the local area, responding to requests for more information about their facilities and dementia care. They were all addressed to members of Alfred's family, his stepdaughter, Paul and even Anna. Good morning, Anna. Thank you for your inquiry regarding your uncle Alfred. If possible, can you give me a quick call back? But their names were often incorrect, using Alfred's surname or Patsy's maiden name, and the brochures were sent to Alfred's home where only Alfred lived. According to the diary, Alfred started getting calls direct from Carehopes, one even saying his nephew Paul had inquired about a place for him. The family have been clear. They did not send these inquiries. They reported it to the police. At the first court hearing, Moira pleaded not guilty to the charges, and so the case would go to trial. But despite all that commotion over the coronation weekend, Alfred's neighbours were none the wiser. My wife was in the supermarket and saw Alfred, and he and her just had a bit of small talk for about five minutes as she related it to me. but then suddenly he said um oh do you remember that woman who uh who lived with me and my wife said yeah well what about it david who lives next door to alfred heard about the whole thing second hand and he then went into this long kind of story he said there was a court case and he was going to give evidence next may 2024 and that she was going to be on trial for um various sort of accusations. And my wife came back and told me this story. Obviously, my jaw dropped to the floor. Keen to show Alfred support, David did the only thing he could think of in a time of such crisis. I went round to see Alfred just alone, as we have done over the years, and brought him a couple of beers. We sat there in his living room. He sort of poured his heart out to me, you know, for about three hours. The thing about Alfred is he's such a kind man that up until quite recently, his view on this whole thing is to feel sorry and pity for Maura that he feels she's got obviously issues. And he never took this kind of approach that he wanted to punish her. And he was sort of sorry and regretful about the whole incident and really didn't want to go through all this court case business. The thought of the case going to trial was clearly playing on Alfred's mind. On top of the emotional load the trial was also going to be physically exhausting The trial was set for three days Yes it should go on Alfred having to sit somewhere or be anywhere for three days was just too debilitating for him But for Paul and Anna, it was a chance for them to seek some justice. You get to a point where what Alfred wants, and he's the primary victim, and he lived it 24 hours a day for years. But all of the other family members and all of his friends also became victims of Moira. Whether that was an abusive random email, whether that was being told they weren't allowed to see Alfred, whether that was being physically assaulted, we become this circle of people who are the collateral damage to Alfred's experience. And I think we've tried to be really respectful of him and really respectful of his decisions. But at some point, we also have a responsibility to the wider community. For Moira, the courtroom was somewhere she should feel at home. She was now a qualified barrister. All of her training had been leading to this. We were summoned to a hearing in Brighton and Alfred was unable to travel to Brighton. So we had arranged with Sussex Police, which was really helpful, that he would give evidence via computer from Hastings, which that's the nearest police station to here. So that involved somebody coming from Birmingham to give Alfred a lift. It was all very complex. According to the diary, one of Alfred's friends had taken him to the police station in Hastings, while Paul and Anna travelled to Brighton to attend the hearing in person. So we had a witness support officer who was lovely. We were told what to wear, what sort of things the Sussex Police would help us with, any questions we had, what we were anxious about. So we put on our smartest outfits, got in the car, and we were halfway to Brighton. And I got a call from Detective Collins to say that there'd been a plea bargain. A plea bargain. In England and Wales, that's when a defendant pleads guilty to lesser offences for a more lenient sentence. So the original charges from the second time she was arrested were stalking, criminal damage and three assaults. And what the plea bargain was, was that the three assaults would be held on file, that the stalking was harassment without violence, which was the texts and the abusive messages, which Moira had accepted, and that Moira was pleading guilty to the criminal damage, which was the front door in the greenhouses, so we wouldn't need to go to court. Of the six charges Moira was due to be tried for, she was pleading guilty to two lesser charges. harassment without violence and criminal damage. I said, oh, so we don't have any say in that. And he said, yes, I spoke with Alfred in Hastings Police Station and he's agreed this. And the rationale for that was that it was less stressful for Alfred not to attend a trial, which would be, you know, every day he would be expected to go through this process and that Moira would make all sorts of accusations. In some ways, the plea bargain was a relief. There would be one last hearing in court where Moira would be sentenced and then they could put the whole ordeal behind them. But they also had concerns about the offences Moira had pleaded guilty to. That was quite confusing, really, because there wasn't a clarity about the element of violence in those charges. So somehow the meaning of the charges had been sort of watered down in a way. But we thought, well, you know, obviously they know best. We don't know anything about the criminal justice system. We don't know. And then it went through this huge process where you think, oh, well, that's over then. That's done. But it was far from over. The case would rumble on for many more months. And one local court reporter was there to see it all play out. It's very unusual for someone to sack their barrister, first of all, in a court case, but then also to accuse them of bullying and for that to go to a hearing. I've been reporting courts for more than 30 years. I've never come across that before. That's next time on Toil and Trouble. We put all allegations included in this episode to Moira. At the time of recording, she had not responded. This has been an Audio Always production, presented by me, Hannah George. And me, Taylor Glenn. Toil and Trouble is produced by Louisa Adams. Our assistant producer is Mansi Vithlani. And our executive producer is Elsa Rochester. Sound design is by Craig Edmondson.
