#297 - Simply Complicated (Donald & Jean Ramsey, Kentish Town, NW5)

Murder Mile UK True Crime

Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast

True Crime, English, Nglish, E, Uk, Crime, London, Society & Culture, Murder, Killer, True-crime, History, Personal Journals, British

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

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Summary

On Sunday 8th of August 1948 at just after 10:30pm, Jean & Donald Ramsey, a young couple with two children met at this junction to discuss their collapsing marriage. It ended in murder. But how could something so simple be so complicated, as was this the story of a good man who was pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife, or a good wife who was murdered by a controlling and abusive husband?

Date: Sunday 8th of August 1948 at just after 10:30pm (rough time of murder)
Location: junction of Wellesley Road and Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town, London, UK, NW5
Victim: 1 (Jean Margaret Ramsey, nee Butler)
Culprits: 1 (Donald Victor Ramsey)

Murder Mile is one of the best UK / British true crime podcasts covering only 20 square miles of West London. Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated at the British Podcast Awards. It is researched, written and performed by Michael of Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein and Jon Boux of Cult With No Name and additional music, as used under the Creative Commons License 4.0. A full listing of tracks used and a full transcript for each episode is listed here and a legal disclaimer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Murder Mile.
0:11.0	Today, I'm standing on the junction of Wellesie Road in Gryfton Terrace in Kentish Town, NW5.
0:19.0	Five streets south of the murderous Greek mother-in-law, two streets north of the Camden
0:23.6	Ripper's bins, and a short walk from the drunken chemist who foretold of his own death, coming soon
0:30.6	to murder mile. Demolished in the 1960s, as part of the city's post-war regeneration, the original junction
0:40.3	was replaced by the West Kentish Town estate, a sprawling rabbits warren of four-story council
0:46.3	flats, with many residents boxed in by their box-like flat, snoozing in a box bed, glaring at a tetelebox, and gorgian
0:57.0	on boxed meals until they're carried out in a pine box. Some may complain that its
1:02.5	sense of community has gone. But was it any better or safer, back in the days when
1:10.0	we had nothing to occupy us but life itself?
1:13.6	On Sunday, 8th of August, 1948, at just after 10.30 p.m., Jean and Donald Ramsey, a young couple with two young children, met at this junction to discuss their collapsing marriage.
1:29.7	It ended in murder, but how could something so simple be so complicated, as was this a
1:36.2	story of a good man who was pushed to the limits by his unfaithful wife, or a good wife
1:42.8	who was murdered by a controlling abusive husband.
1:47.6	My name is Michael. I'm your tour guide and this is Murder My. Episode 297,
1:56.0	simply complicated.
2:14.6	Born in the late Victorian era, Sophie Butler had been a mother, a grandmother, a wife and a widow.
2:20.3	Like many women, she'd survived childbirth, poverty and two world wars. Yet on the 7th of January,
2:22.3	1949, just four months after the trial,
2:26.3	she wrote an impassioned letter to the coroner at St. Pancras's Coroner's Court.
2:31.3	Ridden in a shaky school, she pleaded for her daughter's case to be reopened.
2:38.7	Dear sir, six months ago my daughter, Jean Ramsey, was stabbed to death by a husband, Donald
	...

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