Page 156 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
If you think of anything I may have missed, Ellie, let me know. I feel nearer the baby than ever. While Oliver couldn’t be further away. Mand x
Interview with Nikki Sayle, retired police sergeant, at Starbucks, Watford, Friday 13 August 2021 . Transcribed by Ellie Cooper.
[I cut out the usuals. She sounds very old. Seems you got this interview just in time. EC]
AB:I’ve known Don Makepeace for years. Only, it was Mike Dean who gave me your details.
NS:He said you’d be in touch and not to talk to you if I didn’t want to. He’s one of the good guys, and he doesn’t want anyone getting in trouble just for making a wrong decision years ago. Nor do I.
AB:I understand. I’m only interested in this case, nothing else. Nikki – can you please explain what you recall from that interview?
NS:I will. Is your tape running?
AB:Yes. Well, it’s not a tape. [I cut out your brief history of voice-recording technology. EC]
NS:It was the early 1990s, as you said on the phone. I remember this girl because she had a strange story. She said the archangel Gabriel took her in when she’d had a row with her mum. This fella told her she was an angel and that together their purpose was to rid the world of evil. Something like that.
AB:Did she have a baby with this man?
NS:Not that I knew of. What struck me at the time was this girl had left the man, but still believed she was an angel.
AB:How old was she?
NS:Seventeen, which wasn’t asyoungas it is now. Hadn’t been so long since girls got married and left home at eighteen or nineteen. She’d gone to live with this chap voluntarily.
AB:What crime was the girl trying to report Gabriel for in 1990?
NS:He’d told her the Antichrist was waiting to be born on earth andwhen it was, they would look after it to make sure it didn’t do any evil. But while they were waiting, seems he wanted her to conduct fraudulent credit card transactions, which she resisted. He was losing interest and to her this change in him meant he’d been warped by supernatural forces and was in danger.
AB:What did the police think of that?
NS:Laughed her out of the door. It was only because she was obviously vulnerable that myself and Mike Dean listened to her.
AB:OK. So there’d be no record of these conversations?
NS:We didn’t record the complaint. It was all statistics back then. If we came across a case we had no chance of closing, we didn’t open it. But I could see what this was and soon took it away from Mike. It was a woman thing. Best all round if the girl was taken back to her mum.
AB:Go on.
NS:Classic lover-boy technique. This Gabriel made her believe she was in a relationship with him. He’d bought her all the clothes she wanted, shoes, bags, CDs, jewellery. She had the most beautiful necklace of angel wings. Not a cheap one, either. It was no wonder the poor girl was swept off her feet. Luckily her mother had got her the contraceptive jab or she’d have ended up like the Alperton Holly. All Gabriel wanted was for her to go thieving for him, but he kept her under control with the angel story. He was a lifelong fraudster but needed someone young, pliable and with no police record to take all the risks. When she proved herself smarter than that, she was out on her ear and he was on to the next one. But his hold over her was so strong, the girl was still living the fantasy he’d created. We call it coercive control these days. I was proved right years later when the Alperton Angels were uncovered. That poor girl hadn’t been so lucky. Ended up having a kid by him. [There’s a pause here. EC]
AB:It’s a strange MO.
NS:You see it all. I warned the girl he was a con man who only wanted her for what he could get, and to take this as a lesson learned. Told her to get back home to her mum, find a boyfriend her own age. I even dropped her home and that’s another thingsticks in my memory. She asked me to drop her off at the gates of a huge estate down in Surrey.
AB:She was from an upper-class family?
NS:Far from it. Her mum worked there as a groundskeeper. Lived in a little cottage on the outskirts of the land. You’d have to be an impetuous teenager to leave somewhere like that for a grotty flat in Staines. [You both laugh, but I know what you’re thinking here, Mand: part of Gabriel’s MO is to target girls who have links to high society. Money is the root of all evil. EC]
AB:Nikki, this girl’s name was Holly?
NS:She introduced herself as Holly at the nick, but as I dropped her off, she admitted her real name was Ashleigh. With an i, g, h.
AB:When the Alperton Angels case happened, did you report this earlier incident?
NS:Mike and I talked about it, but only to check we hadn’t recorded the girl’s report back then. Gabriel was going down for murder anyway so we decided to keep quiet. The girl, wherever she was by then, wouldn’t have thanked us for dredging it up and dragging her into it.
AB:Mike mixed up the two Hollys when I first spoke to him.
