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The Castle, The List, The Girl: Strangled By Obsession · Scary Paranormal Stories

0:03
Speaker 1: The morning of January eleventh, two thousand sixteen, a fifty
0:07
Speaker 1: four year old man sat with his phone and tied
0:10
Speaker 1: to list rope, polyethelene sheets, gloves, adhesive tape. He wasn't
0:17
Speaker 1: building anything, he wasn't renovating the farm. He was planning
0:21
Speaker 1: to kill some one he claimed to love. Her name
0:25
Speaker 1: was Georgina Simmons. She was twenty three years old, and
0:29
Speaker 1: by the following afternoon she would be dead, strangled inside
0:34
Speaker 1: the bungalow where she lived, wrapped in plastic, and driven
0:38
Speaker 1: to his far in the boot of his car. What
0:42
Speaker 1: happened between the moment Peter Morgan typed that list and
0:46
Speaker 1: the moment Georgina's daughter waited at school to be picked
0:49
Speaker 1: up and no one came is a story about obsession
0:53
Speaker 1: so complete it stopped recognizing itself as violence. Something felt
0:58
Speaker 1: different long before January. The signs were always there, but
1:04
Speaker 1: no one was looking in the right direction. There is
1:07
Speaker 1: something about this case that I haven't been able to
1:09
Speaker 1: set down since I first read through the details. It
1:13
Speaker 1: isn't the wealth, or the castle or the court verdict.
1:17
Speaker 1: It's the list. The sheer domesticity of a shopping list
1:21
Speaker 1: written to end a life. Peter Morgan was born the
1:24
Speaker 1: eldest of three children in a farming family near Usk
1:28
Speaker 1: in South Wales, a landscape of green hills and working
1:32
Speaker 1: land that teaches you from childhood that patience and ownership
1:37
Speaker 1: are the same thing. He left school early. He worked
1:41
Speaker 1: for his father, and for years his world was no
1:44
Speaker 1: wider than the three hundred acre family farm that surrounded him.
1:49
Speaker 1: He didn't become wealthy through inheritance, he built it. In
1:53
Speaker 1: the final years of the two thousands, he pivoted from
1:56
Speaker 1: farming into selling prefabricated poultry share, and somehow that pivot
2:02
Speaker 1: made him a multi millionaire. By the time he was fifty,
2:07
Speaker 1: his fortune was estimated at more than twenty million dollars.
2:11
Speaker 1: He retired early. He had a wife of over twenty
2:14
Speaker 1: two years, Helen Morgan, and two daughters. He had a
2:18
Speaker 1: sixteenth century castle in Wales worth over a million dollars
2:23
Speaker 1: by every external measure. The architecture of his life was complete.
2:27
Speaker 1: Then came Amsterdam. In two thousand six, Peter traveled to
2:31
Speaker 1: Amsterdam and for the first time paid for sex. Something
2:36
Speaker 1: shifted in him after that trip, something he either could
2:40
Speaker 1: name or chose not to examine. He came home and
2:44
Speaker 1: said nothing, but the trip had opened a door he
2:48
Speaker 1: would never close again. By May of twenty twelve, he
2:52
Speaker 1: was browsing escort websites in Wales. That was when he
2:56
Speaker 1: found Georgina Simmons. She was twenty years old, former burlesque dancer,
3:02
Speaker 1: a mother. She had her own private language for the
3:05
Speaker 1: men in her life, and she would eventually give Peter
3:08
Speaker 1: a nickname that captured their entire dynamic in three words.
3:13
Speaker 1: She called him rich Peter, not because she was mocking him,
3:18
Speaker 1: because there was another Peter in her life, and this
3:21
Speaker 1: was simply how she told them Apart in her own mind.
3:25
Speaker 1: The poor Peter was Peter Dyne, her partner, the father
3:30
Speaker 1: of her daughter. The rich Peter was the one who paid.
3:35
Speaker 1: That first meeting cost Peter Morgan one hundred fifty British
3:39
Speaker 1: pounds approximately one hundred eighty dollars for a kiss. He
3:44
Speaker 1: paid it without hesitation, and then he came back. The
3:48
Speaker 1: rational explanation for what followed, that this was simply a
3:53
Speaker 1: transactional arrangement between two consenting adults, stopped working almost immediately.
4:00
Speaker 1: Peter didn't want a transaction. He wanted possession. Over the
4:05
Speaker 1: next three years, he escalated. He paid for exclusivity, He
4:10
Speaker 1: bought her luxury cars, he paid for cosmetic surgery, He
4:15
Speaker 1: gave her jewelry. He moved her into a windmill property
4:19
Speaker 1: while his wife, Helen was away, and when Helen discovered
4:22
Speaker 1: that Peter had been bringing escorts to their family home,
4:26
Speaker 1: she filed for divorce. Twenty two years of marriage ended
4:31
Speaker 1: in part by a man who had by then spent
4:35
Speaker 1: up to ten thousand dollars to make one woman his alone.
4:39
Speaker 1: Georgina moved into the Castle, the sixteenth century castle that
4:43
Speaker 1: Peter owned. She had her own bedroom in a medieval
4:47
Speaker 1: stone building worth over a million dollars, and she told
4:52
Speaker 1: her friends her plan clearly save money and eventually go
4:57
Speaker 1: back to Peter Dine, the poor Peter, the one she
5:00
Speaker 1: actually loved. That detail changes how you read everything that follows.
5:05
Speaker 1: She wasn't building a future with Peter Morgan. She was
5:09
Speaker 1: using the architecture of his obsession as a waiting room,
5:13
Speaker 1: and he, with his farms, his cameras, his listening devices,
5:18
Speaker 1: was watching the waiting room from every angle without her knowledge.
5:22
Speaker 1: In November of twenty fifteen, Georgina learned that Peter Dyne
5:27
Speaker 1: had been dead for seven months, he had taken his
5:30
Speaker 1: own life, and no one had told her. She found
5:36
Speaker 1: out at his funeral, which means she missed the burial
5:40
Speaker 1: the morning, the chance to say anything at all. The
5:44
Speaker 1: man she had been quietly saving money to return to
5:47
Speaker 1: was already gone, and everything she had been waiting for
5:50
Speaker 1: collapsed at once. What followed was not a clean grief.
5:55
Speaker 1: Georgina began drinking. She was using drugs and some and
6:00
Speaker 1: we're in the wreckage of that loss. She started blaming
6:03
Speaker 1: Peter Morgan, not for the death itself, but for what
6:07
Speaker 1: his money and his world had cost her. The version
6:10
Speaker 1: of her life she had been protecting, the one where
6:13
Speaker 1: she eventually went back to the man she actually loved,
6:17
Speaker 1: was gone and Peter Morgan was still there. That same autumn,
6:21
Speaker 1: at Peter Dine's memorial, Georgina met Tomas Ballinger. He was
6:26
Speaker 1: Peter Dine's closest friend. There is something almost unbearable in
6:31
Speaker 1: that detail that the person Georgina turned to in her
6:35
Speaker 1: grief was the person her grief had introduced her to.
6:40
Speaker 1: She and Tomas began seeing each other in secret. Peter
6:44
Speaker 1: Morgan did not know, or so she believed. This is
6:48
Speaker 1: where the listening devices become more than a detail of obsession.
6:52
Speaker 1: Peter Morgan had installed surveillance equipment, microphones, cameras in and
6:58
Speaker 1: around property connected to Georgina. The legal status of those
7:03
Speaker 1: recordings was never established at trial. What is established is
7:07
Speaker 1: that on the tenth of January twenty sixteen, Peter Morgan
7:12
Speaker 1: heard something through one of those devices. He heard Georgina
7:16
Speaker 1: and Tomas talking. They were making a plan. They wanted
7:20
Speaker 1: to get the paperwork for the Bungalow, a property Peter controlled,
7:24
Speaker 1: sell it and use the money to leave, to leave Wales,
7:28
Speaker 1: to leave Peter Morgan together. He sat with that information
7:32
Speaker 1: for one night. The next morning, the eleventh of January
7:36
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, Peter Morgan picked up his phone and typed
7:41
Speaker 1: a list, not a message, not a note to himself
7:44
Speaker 1: about feelings or fears, a list of objects, ropes, sheets
7:49
Speaker 1: of polyethylene, gloves, adhesive tape. That is the moment the
7:54
Speaker 1: defense's entire argument collapses before it can even begin, because
8:00
Speaker 1: what followed at the trial was a claim that Peter
8:03
Speaker 1: arrived at the bungalow the next day hoping to negotiate,
8:07
Speaker 1: that he brought cash and an insurance policy naming Georgina
8:11
Speaker 1: as beneficiary, but he wanted to persuade her to stay.
8:15
Speaker 1: But that list existed before any conversation. Before he knocked
8:19
Speaker 1: on the door, before a single word was exchanged, the
8:23
Speaker 1: decision had already been made. The cameras at his own
8:27
Speaker 1: farm recorded him that same day, the eleventh, walking into
8:32
Speaker 1: the workshop and retrieving a metal post and a length
8:35
Speaker 1: of rope. He was not preparing an argument. He was
8:40
Speaker 1: preparing The morning of the twelfth of January, Georgina called
8:45
Speaker 1: her best friend Alix Bucher. They spoke on the phone,
8:51
Speaker 1: a call like any other ordinary by every measure that matters.
8:56
Speaker 1: At some point during that conversation, Peter Morgan arrived at
8:59
Speaker 1: the bunger. The call ended. That was the last time
9:03
Speaker 1: anyone who loved Georgina heard her voice. By late afternoon,
9:08
Speaker 1: something was wrong in the most mundane possible way. Georgina
9:13
Speaker 1: had not picked up her daughter from school. A little
9:16
Speaker 1: girl was waiting. No one came. Friends noticed, Alex went
9:21
Speaker 1: to the bungalow. Peter answered the door and told her
9:25
Speaker 1: that Georgina had gone out, without saying where. Alex did
9:28
Speaker 1: not believe him. She reported Georgina missing to the police.
9:33
Speaker 1: Some time after eleven thirty that same morning, while the
9:37
Speaker 1: school day was still under way, while Georgina's daughter sat
9:41
Speaker 1: in class, not yet knowing, Peter Morgan had called Debora,
9:45
Speaker 1: Georgina's mother. He told her he was worried about Georgina's
9:49
Speaker 1: drug use. He said he did not know where she was.
9:53
Speaker 1: He sounded concerned. Georgina was already dead when he made
9:57
Speaker 1: that call. The body was somewhere nearby when he dialed.
10:01
Speaker 1: There is no version of this story where everything makes sense.
10:04
Speaker 1: A man calls the mother of a woman he is
10:07
Speaker 1: just killed to express concern for her well being. He
10:11
Speaker 1: uses the language of care as camouflage. He performs worry
10:15
Speaker 1: with a dead woman a few feet away. Police arrived
10:18
Speaker 1: at Peter Morgan's home in the early hours of the thirteenth.
10:22
Speaker 1: After hours of questioning, he confessed he told investigators where
10:26
Speaker 1: to find Georgina. The cameras at the farm, his own
10:30
Speaker 1: cameras installed as part of the same apparatus of surveillance
10:34
Speaker 1: he had used to watch her while she was alive,
10:38
Speaker 1: had already captured what they needed. The footage showed Peter
10:42
Speaker 1: removing a large bundle from the boot of a car,
10:45
Speaker 1: wrapped in polyethylene and sealed with adhesive tape, and carrying
10:50
Speaker 1: it into the workshop. The same material from his list,
10:54
Speaker 1: the same tape, the same plastic. His own system of
10:58
Speaker 1: control had corded his own crime, frame by frame in silence.
11:05
Speaker 1: The police arrived at Peter Morgan's house in the early
11:08
Speaker 1: hours of January thirteenth, twenty sixteen. He had already called
11:14
Speaker 1: Georgina's mother hours before, performing concern over drug use, while
11:19
Speaker 1: Georgina's body lay somewhere on his property. That call, measured, calm,
11:25
Speaker 1: strategically placed, was not the action of a man in shark.
11:30
Speaker 1: It was the action of a man managing a timeline.
11:34
Speaker 1: Under interrogation, the performance collapsed, Peter confessed to the strangulation.
11:40
Speaker 1: He told officers where to find the body, and then
11:43
Speaker 1: the farm's own cameras provided something no confession could manufacture.
11:48
Speaker 1: Footage of Peter moving through his workshop the previous day
11:53
Speaker 1: collecting a metal post and a length of rope. Footage
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Speaker 1: of him returning later pulling a bundle from the booter
12:00
Speaker 1: his car, polyethylene sheeting, adhesive tape, the shape inside unmistakable.
12:07
Speaker 1: The system he had installed to monitor Georgina's movements had
12:11
Speaker 1: spent its final hours recording his That detail sat at
12:15
Speaker 1: the center of the trial at the Crown Court of Newport.
12:19
Speaker 1: Of Newport, the prosecution did not need to construct a
12:22
Speaker 1: story of premeditation. Peter had written it himself in a
12:27
Speaker 1: list on his phone the morning of January eleventh, ropes,
12:32
Speaker 1: polyethylene sheets, gloves, adhesive tape. He had gone to the workshop,
12:38
Speaker 1: He had loaded his car, he had driven to the bungalow.
12:41
Speaker 1: His defense argued that the Aspergers syndrome dignosis medically confirmed,
12:46
Speaker 1: had impaired his ability to understand social and emotional consequences.
12:52
Speaker 1: The tribunal heard the argument. The tribunal rejected it. The
12:55
Speaker 1: diagnosis was real. The relationship between that diagnosis and the
13:00
Speaker 1: act of wrapping a cord around someone's neck, releasing it,
13:04
Speaker 1: asking a question, tightening it again. That relationship, the court determined,
13:10
Speaker 1: did not exist. On December twenty first, two thousand sixteen,
13:16
Speaker 1: eleven months after Georgina's body was found on his farm,
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Speaker 1: the jury returned its verdict guilty of murder. Peter Morgan,
13:26
Speaker 1: fifty four years old, was sentenced to life in prison.
13:30
Speaker 1: There is something worth sitting with in the timeline of
13:34
Speaker 1: that verdict. Peter spent years building a world around Georgina.
13:39
Speaker 1: The castle, the cars, the surgeries, the exclusivity arrangements, the
13:45
Speaker 1: surveillance device hidden in her home. He spent one morning
13:48
Speaker 1: writing a list, he spent one afternoon loading a car,
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Speaker 1: and then eleven months of a trial, methodically disassembled every
13:57
Speaker 1: layer of that world, using his own records, his own cameras,
14:02
Speaker 1: his own phone, to show the jury exactly what had
14:05
Speaker 1: happened and exactly when the decision was made. The insurance
14:10
Speaker 1: policy he carried to the bungalow that morning, the one
14:13
Speaker 1: naming Georgina as beneficiary, the one he said was proof
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Speaker 1: he wanted her to stay, was never explained to the
14:20
Speaker 1: satisfaction of any one outside his own account, whether it
14:24
Speaker 1: was a last gesture or part of something colder. The
14:28
Speaker 1: jury had already seen the list written the day before,
14:32
Speaker 1: the policy arrived. After the plan. Georgina's daughter was in
14:37
Speaker 1: school when her mother was killed. She waited to be collected.
14:42
Speaker 1: No one came that absence. A child standing at a
14:46
Speaker 1: school gate the afternoon passing was the first crack through
14:50
Speaker 1: which the outside world glimpsed what had happened. Her father,
14:55
Speaker 1: Peter Dyne, had taken his own life seven months before
14:59
Speaker 1: she knew her mother was gone. Before the school day ended,
15:03
Speaker 1: she was placed into the custody of Georgina's family. There
15:07
Speaker 1: is no version of this story where that child's losses
15:10
Speaker 1: are incidental. Peter Dine's death set the chain in motion.
15:16
Speaker 1: Georgina's grief, her drinking, her attempt to build something new
15:20
Speaker 1: with Tomas Ballinger. All of it moved through the space
15:23
Speaker 1: that lost created. And Peter Morgan, who had spent years
15:27
Speaker 1: installing himself at the center of Georgina's life through money
15:31
Speaker 1: and control and surveillance, was present at every stage of
15:34
Speaker 1: that unraveling. He did not cause Peter Dine's suicide, but
15:38
Speaker 1: he was standing at the end of the road it opened.
15:41
Speaker 1: When I first read through what the cameras on that
15:44
Speaker 1: farm actually captured, I had to go back over it twice.
15:48
Speaker 1: The surveillance footage didn't just place Peter at the scene.
15:52
Speaker 1: It documented the logistics of concealment with a precision that
15:56
Speaker 1: made the whole thing feel less like a crime of
15:59
Speaker 1: passion and more like a project, his own infrastructure, his
16:04
Speaker 1: own record. The case appeared in twenty twenty two as
16:08
Speaker 1: part of a Netflix documentary series. It brought the footage
16:13
Speaker 1: and the testimony to a wider audience. For Georgina's family,
16:17
Speaker 1: that kind of exposure carries its own weight. The story retold,
16:22
Speaker 1: the images circulated again, the private grief made public for
16:27
Speaker 1: a second time. Her daughter, now a young woman, carries
16:31
Speaker 1: a version of this story that no documentary fully reaches.
16:36
Speaker 1: Alex Boucher was the last person to hear Georgina's voice.
16:40
Speaker 1: She was on the phone with her the morning of
16:43
Speaker 1: January twelfth, when Peter arrived at the bungalow. She went
16:47
Speaker 1: looking for Georgina that afternoon, when the school called and
16:51
Speaker 1: no one had come, Peter told her Georgina had left
16:55
Speaker 1: without a word. Alex reported her missing. By then, Georgina
17:00
Speaker 1: had been dead for hours. That final phone call interrupted incomplete.
17:06
Speaker 1: Georgina's voice cutting off as a door opened, is the
17:09
Speaker 1: last record of her that exists outside of what Peter
17:13
Speaker 1: Morgan told police everything after. It is his account, the cameras,
17:19
Speaker 1: and the forensic evidence. The conversation Georgina was having when
17:23
Speaker 1: Peter arrived was not finished. It never was. Peter Morgan
17:29
Speaker 1: sits in prison. The farm still exists, The castle still
17:34
Speaker 1: stands in Wales. The sixteenth century Stone unchanged the list
17:40
Speaker 1: he typed into his phone. On the morning of January eleventh,
17:44
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. Ropes polyethylene gloves tape was read aloud in
17:50
Speaker 1: open court, entered into the record and remains part of
17:54
Speaker 1: the legal file of the Crown Court of Newport, Georgina.
17:57
Speaker 1: Simmons was twenty three years old. This show is made
18:02
Speaker 1: by Obomedia.