GUILTY UK - Gemma McCluskie, 29, found dismembered, Shoreditch, London, 2 March 2012

badhorsie

Mouth operational, brain elsewhere...
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Yikes, this is horrible. "A 35-year-old man has been arrested after a female torso, feared to be that of a missing former EastEnders actress, was found in a canal in London.

The body, which was found in the Broadway Market stretch of Regent's Canal in Hackney on Tuesday, is feared to be that of Gemma McCluskie, 29.

The arrested man is believed to be her brother Tony McCluskie.

Ms McCluskie, who starred as Kerry Skinner in 2001, disappeared from Bethnal Green, east London, last week." More at BBC link and the inevitable detail at the Daily Mail link

Her brother, Oh my :cry:
 
Headless in Hackney - yikes indeed.

The brother was at least talking a good game earlier; we shall see.
---
Earlier Mr McCluskie had told how he had last seen his sister at home last Thursday afternoon.

He told the press his sister's disappearance is 'completely' out of character and that she had never been missing before.

He added: 'We are going out of our mind with worry. She is a bubbly, outgoing, strong and independent woman.'
---
from badhorsie's DM link above
 
Huffington Post article adds on a bit:
The search, which was organised by her cousins Kyri Sambridge and Nikki Tsindides, stretched from the East End to South London in an attempt to find any information about her whereabouts.
---
Kyri, 27, told London24: "We got an important clue when we went into a kebab shop on Hackney Road, two minutes from where she lives. They told us she came in there at 8pm last Thursday.

"Until then the last time she had been seen was in the afternoon on the same day by her brother Tony at home."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...unt-for-former-eastenders-star_n_1326989.html
 
Brother arrested after police find headless corpse in hunt for missing EastEnders actress Gemma McCluskie (Mirror)
The body has not been formally identified but detectives believe it is Gemma, 29, because of a distinctive tattoo.
---
"The whole thing is scary, dreadful," said Margaret O'Carroll, 88.
---
"The news will hit her [mother] very hard indeed. She really loved Gemma. She was like a little angel. Ever since she was young and she was in EastEnders.

“People from round here don’t usually do things like that. It’s a bit different isn’t it? She had celebrity status around here growing up and I think she liked that.

“She worked as a barmaid down the road. I don’t think she’s been involved in acting for a long time.”
more at link above
 
I'm wondering (shudder) where the head and limbs have got off to; and also wondering if police will ask for extended questioning time for the brother, or release him, or charge him. Arrest came very quickly after the torso discovery.
 
I'm wondering (shudder) where the head and limbs have got off to; and also wondering if police will ask for extended questioning time for the brother, or release him, or charge him. Arrest came very quickly after the torso discovery.

It seems the kebab shop tripped him up somehow.

What's up with people in England murdering and then putting bodies in canals? Is there an especially large number of canals?

All I know of the East End is what I saw on TV. The "Vic" and all.

May Gemma RIP the poor woman.
 
It seems the kebab shop tripped him up somehow.

What's up with people in England murdering and then putting bodies in canals? Is there an especially large number of canals?

All I know of the East End is what I saw on TV. The "Vic" and all.

May Gemma RIP the poor woman.
Now I'm stuck with the image of missing body parts....and kebabs, lol. (Faints.)

My East End knowledge mainly consists of Whitechapel in the roaring 1880s with Jack the Ripper lurking about. Regarding Bethnal Green, I do know - read this again the other night - that 173 died at the tube station there, trying to escape German bombing, in 1943; a woman and her child slipped on the downward steps and others couldn't stop, forced by the pressure of the many behind them. Hackney, just adjacent and where the torso was found, also suffered considerable bomb damage during the war.
 
Now I'm stuck with the image of missing body parts....and kebabs, lol. (Faints.)

My East End knowledge mainly consists of Whitechapel in the roaring 1880s with Jack the Ripper lurking about.



(Waiving smelling salts) All kinds of folks cutting up bodies. I can't imagine.

Maybe this Greewich then is part of East End? It says she was seen at a bar 54?


http://www.facebook.com/thepark

Jack The Ripper scares me just saying the name.

How is it humanly possible for your own brother to cut up your body and throw you in a canal? That Crossbow Canabal was bad enough. Who btw has once again attempted suicide.

Poor girl. Her family has to be devastated.

It appears anyone looking for her or who had seen her report to the arrested brother.
 
(Waiving smelling salts) All kinds of folks cutting up bodies. I can't imagine.
Maybe this Greewich then is part of East End? It says she was seen at a bar 54?
http://www.facebook.com/thepark
Jack The Ripper scares me just saying the name.
How is it humanly possible for your own brother to cut up your body and throw you in a canal? That Crossbow Canabal was bad enough. Who btw has once again attempted suicide.
Poor girl. Her family has to be devastated.
It appears anyone looking for her or who had seen her report to the arrested brother.
That's what I was thinking about the brother - sure, get in a flash argument, things get out of hand, something happens.....bad enough certainly, but sever her head, arms, and legs? Can't see it.

Greenwich ("Home of Greenwich Mean Time") I think is a little closer to central London. southeast a bit. Its postal code is SE10 and Hackney and Bethnal Green have E codes, so it's not far away but not East End.
 
It seems the kebab shop tripped him up somehow.

What's up with people in England murdering and then putting bodies in canals? Is there an especially large number of canals?

All I know of the East End is what I saw on TV. The "Vic" and all.

May Gemma RIP the poor woman.

Yes, there are a lot of canals. Before trains it was the transport system so it probably figures that there will be times murderers use them. A fair few bodies are found in them.....

Greenwich is not that far from the East End, but a little more up- market.....(My daughter had her wedding reception in Greenwich and does not live far from it.)

Hackney is not far.

Here is a link to one of the better newspaper reports.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/07/gemma-mccluskie-disappearance-body-canal


and to a newspaper where the reporting is geared to popular appeal rather than the intellect

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ss-brother-arrested-headless-torso-canal.html
 
P.S It is fairly common for the police to rest as fast as possible and then release the suspect if they can find no reason to hold them. I think that they get it wrong as often as they get it right. It could be the brother who harmed Gemma; but so many times they arrest someone and it turns out to be the wrong person, and then the life of the person arrested is wrecked as well. I will wait until any trial before making assumptions.

All I see at the minute is that he saw her in the afternoon, and that she was in the kebab in the evening. That does not really say he murdered her. I can imagine him seeing her and her being elsewhere, and him just not knowing about it. It may be the police have more evidence than that though. It is enough to question as a suspect no more on its own.
 
This is so sad, if the brother did it then that’s just awful. Her poor family having to face losing one member and knowing another one may be to blame.
 
OT Trivia Alert

Greenwich could not be called the East End by any stretch of the imagination.
London is riddled with canals, underground brooks and rivers.
Kensal Green Cemetary in West London even has a canalside gate where funeral barges would deposit bodies for burial
 
More horrid details courtesy of the Daily Mail

"Neighbours of a missing EastEnders actress reported hearing a loud argument at her home hours before she vanished, it was reported today.
The revelation came as the brother of Gemma McCluskie, 29, was still being questioned by murder detectives after a headless body was pulled from a canal.
The dismembered torso, feared to be that of the actress, was discovered floating a short distance from her home.
Sources said the body was naked and the arms, legs and head had been cut off with a sharp tool."
 
Hmmm.....was wondering, if brother is the culprit, how he'd managed to sever the body into six pieces in a Bethnal Green maisonette while the mother was living in the home also, but the DM piece says
A neighbour, who did not want to be named, said: 'Their mother is very sick with brain cancer. She is in and out of hospital but was back in when Gemma disappeared.
which could allow for some freedom (of a sort) and time for heinous doings.

Police divers continue today to search for the head and appendages - police divers, or "frogmen" as the Sun vividly described them. Haven't heard that term in thirty years.
 
Oh this is just horrible. I'm a HUGE Eastenders fan and watch it everyday (cept Wednesday's of course). I remember she was Kerrie Skinner and went out with Robbie, Bianca's brother I think? That was a long time ago.

So now the question is - where is the rest of her?

RIP Gemma - you will be missed.

Mel
 
'More forensic tests needed to identify canal torso' (BBC)
A post-mortem examination on a female torso, feared to be that of a missing former EastEnders actress, has proved "inconclusive", police said.
---
An examination was held at Poplar Mortuary earlier but police said further investigations were needed.
---
Police said an incident room had been opened in Barking, and further forensic tests were needed before formal identification could take place. This could take some days.
---
 
London is riddled with canals, underground brooks and rivers.
Kensal Green Cemetary in West London even has a canalside gate where funeral barges would deposit bodies for burial
I think Regent's Canal, where the torso was found, links with the Thames via Limehouse Cut (the oldest canal in London dating from the late 18th c.).

Kensal Green Cemetery famously appears in G.K. Chesterton's great "The Rolling English Road"'s last stanza:
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
ETA:
And, on the topic of transporting bodies, there's this amazing article
from Fortean Times (recommended to anyone who enjoys graveyard lore):
London’s Necropolis Train
For bereaved Londoners in 1850, finding a cemetery where
their loved ones could be left to rest in peace was no easy matter.
 

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