Hello and welcome to episode 399 of the UK True Crime Podcast, I'm Adam.

Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode where we're looking at the subjects of blackmail.

Reading through a number of blackmail cases, it always strikes me how many

copycat crimes around this area, with people thinking it's an easy way to make money and

they can do it better than those who came before them.

You may recall the case of a former Met Police detective called Rodney Wachello,

who contaminated baby foods and pet foods as part of an extortion plot that made him

30,000 pounds but eventually got him 17 years in jail in 1990. His crimes inspired if that's the right word, the so-called

Mardi Gras bomber Edgar Pierce who watched a program about Wachello on daytime TV

and thought he could do it better. This led him to carry out a four-year

extortion campaign aimed at Barclay's Bank and Sainsbury's before he was caught and sentenced

to jail terms totaling 224 years.

And then there's Robert Dyer who is waiting to see his GP in Dorset,

and he flipped through the pages of old magazines lying around the waiting room,

before finding an article and readers digest about Pierce.

Again, he thought this could be the perfect crime and it led him to conduct a

blackmailing campaign against Tesco's which led to him serving 16 years in prison.

I think we could return to Diet on another occasion as his wife also died in mysterious circumstances.

The inquest heard after a night drinking, Daya suffered a heart attack while his wife, just 31 strangled herself of a ligature

seemingly it was suicide and open verdict was recorded at the inquest.

Please note that in today's story there is some sexual language, vital to the story, that you might

find offensive.

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