Very puzzling cases. I.ve had a quick look through some articles/videos etc but not really come up with anything new. I know the area reasonably well as I lived in Herne Bay and Canterbury when I was a student in the late '70s.
Will have to give the podcast a listen but from what others have said it looks like the podcaster is relying on a cache of articles linked over on R%&$£t a few years ago. These are a few of them:
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You will probably get a load of ads and other cr*p but you can eventually read them.
I don't know if the two cases are linked or not. How much did the cops look into this Arthur Hibbert guy?
"Following his [Leppard's] death, Brenda moved to a flat 15 miles away in Whitstable, where she died.
Ex-boyfriend Mr Hibbert – who reportedly tried to rekindle their relationship after Alan’s death – was questioned by police but released without charge.
Nine days before Brenda’s inquest he was discovered in a Ford Escort with a hosepipe leading from the exhaust into the car. He was taken to hospital and recovered.
At the time of the shooting [of Leppard], Mr Hibbert was at a gym in Sittingbourne, 28 miles away.
He told Brenda’s inquest she had been “very depressed” and he had taken her back to her flat on the night before her death. He slept on the sofa and left the next day. When he returned later he climbed in through an open window to check on her – and found her dead. Mr Hibbert, who now works at a garage in Deal, Kent, said he did not want to talk when contacted this week."
They all seem to have been into fitness and bodybuilding:
"The pair [Leppard & Long] were into bodybuilding and competed in competitions. Alan’s third wife – Patricia Leppard, 71, told the Mirror he was a charmer who walked out after she rumbled an affair. Patricia said: “He was a cheating a***hole, but he didn’t deserve to be killed.
“When I met him he was living with an older woman two doors down. He was a serial cheat. When I was told he’d been murdered it was an absolute shock. I know he cheated on women, but he didn’t deserve that. He deserves justice.”
Hitmen blasted Alan Leppard on his doorstep in sleepy village Monkton, Kent in 1991 before his lover Brenda Long was found dead in her bath just nine months later - it has baffled detectives ever since
www.mirror.co.uk
"On Boxing Day she spent time with former boyfriend Arthur Hibbert, who she had previously been in a relationship with for 12 years.
The car dealer was the last person to see Brenda alive, as on December 28 she was found dead in the bath of her flat."
Police are still appealing for information into the shocking unsolved murders of a man and his girlfriend - 30 years on.
www.kentonline.co.uk
From the same article, Nick Biddiss, who led the manhunt for the Monkton gunmen. said "There was no reason to suggest they were involved in any criminality whatsoever. They were tragic victims. It's a mystery. We don't know why two men came to Monkton and blasted away her other half."
If they weren't involved in criminality why did they have various names?
From the above linked Thanet Times article:
"Mr Leppard was known in the village by a variety of names including Alan, Andy, Adam & Brian. His common law wife was sometimes called Diane." She had changed her surname to Leppard by deed poll. And she told the press conference "they had always used their own names."
And from the Isle of Thanet Gazette:
"Neighbours said Mr Leppard, who moved into Terrys Cottage just before Christmas was very quiet and kept himself to himself."
In the same article it is stated that there were "a large number of sightings of a car fitting the description".
The car is indeed an odd one. Why use such a conspicuous vehicle? And why cruise around for a couple of hours? Just who was the Daddy in the Caddy? What about the bloke in the pub a few weeks earlier? Was he there the night of the murder as two men were spotted?
Both Alan and Brenda worked for P & B Metal Components in Swalecliffe (that damn bus ride from Herne Bay through Swalecliffe/Tankerton/Whitstable to the University of Kent campus is forever imprinted on my mind in detail!).
How popular is P&B Metal Components Ltd in Whitstable - View reviews, ratings, location maps, contact details
uk.top10place.com
From the above linked Mirror article:
"Alan, 43, a quantity surveyor, and account manager Brenda set up home in December 1990 after an office romance. They had complicated love lives.
Divorcée Brenda had left her car dealer boyfriend Arthur Hibbert.
Dad-of-one Alan had walked out on fourth wife Wendy after seven months."