8 | Bonnie and Clyde

You're listening to, I am not Nicholas, an audible original, episode 8, Bonnie and Clyde.

“My producer Helen and I are on the road in the U.S., and a recording of Louise, Nicholas”

Rossi's so-called widow, the woman who helped orchestrate his fake death, has just landed in Helen's inbox. It's come from a reliable source who doesn't want his or her identity made public. It could change the direction of this entire story. Helen?

Well, I have to play some of it please. So, I was driving and you know, and then the next thing was all I could hear was Miranda's voice.

Basically, the priest was explaining that he had done his search for him all on Monday,

the first in, obviously, a lockdown. He's explaining why the priest has bespooned Nicholas's memorial service.

“So, he had Nicholas's memorial and also has nothing memorial this week, and he's kind”

of so both of them, because he feels that it's not difficult at this moment until a bit later. And this is absolutely groundbreaking. That voice of Louise, who was the wife of Nicholas Aliverdean, is Miranda, oh my god. I mean, I really actually thought at one point she was, and then I thought she wasn't,

and we've been asking all these people when they thought it was a voice disguised as a machine, and you know, it was Nick, it's Miranda. This was so hard to process when I met Miranda with Arthur at their plan Glasgow. I couldn't work out what was going on with her. Did she really believe that her husband was an innocent, Irish man called Nicholas

Arthur at night? I thought it's some level she must know that Arthur was really the American fugitive Nicholas Rossi. That was maybe just an denial, but this recording?

“Miranda is caught up in this deception, and that's why she is going with the fact that he's Arthur”

night. And my reaction then was just sort of off the scale. Everybody thinks it's Nick for the voice recording machine. It's Miranda. The idea that she may have been ringing right in journalists, priests and politicians,

trying to jute them into thinking Nicholas Rossi was dead, and was therefore helping him escape justice. Gosh, it was so hard with the image people who had been close to her had. She was never negative. She was only positive, she was only joyous, very, very innocent sight to her.

Genuine, they just have the pretzels interested in girl. Miranda could have been deep, yes. I don't think she really knew very much about this video. But there were other aspects of her character. They also thought that could expand why she might have done this,

or rather made it easier for Nicholas to convince her to do this. In my opinion, subservient. Perhaps living for somebody else. And I also wondered whether Nicholas had coerced Miranda into making that call. His ex-wife Katherine had told me he could be extremely controlling and abusive.

Everything he did was from manipulation. You feel like your soul is being sucked out of you, with how much passion he puts into his anger.

Okay, I'm going to play two clips. Here's the first one.

It's their original recording of Louise. You've just heard my reaction to. She's posing as Nicholas's widow, making funeral arrangements. Everyone in the US who I've talked to is convinced it's Nicholas using a voice changing up. Here it is.

west country accent, most probably from a rind or near the city of Bristol. You decide. This is Miranda talking to me in Scotland. So offer had been getting progressively ill after he contracted Covid and this is Louise.

Basically, the priest was explained in that he had done his search.

He did all on Monday, the first thing obviously the lockdown. Miranda, we felt that perhaps an opportunity to start in a new city would be good for us as a couple, you know, and give us an opportunity to sort of move forward and Louise. So it was his first opportunity to see how in practice social distancing, the collection of names, obviously addresses of people that attend etc.

I'm back to Miranda. I knew what Covid could do and the damage it could do.

“What do you think? I know what I think, but I'm no longer sure I trust my own instincts.”

After all, I'm so deeply involved. This is unbelievable. We were after ring in a settler. So while we're still on the road in the US and immediately after we have first heard the recording, we start to gather second opinions. We begin by ringing in a spoon or executive producer back in the UK.

Hi, Anas. Can you hear us? Anas? Yes, I can't hear you. Okay, yes, plan to our calendar. Can you do that? I've already said.

So he has Nicholas's memorial and also another memorial this week. And he's kind of so focused on it because he feels that he's not comfortable at this moment until a bit later, but it's a change at the end of August. It's a hundred percent. It's a hundred percent.

Oh my god! She's got very distinctive voices. Larry, Larry! Nobody knows this, Anas! Nobody! Nobody!

“We are confident that it's Miranda, but that's not enough.”

This needs to be copper, bottomed. We need an expert opinion. So we get in touch with a forensic voice analyst in the UK. Dr. Frederica Holmes. She says it will take her several days to get back to us with a report.

We want her to analyze the similarity of the voices, but also tell us whether the calls could have been made using a voice changing up. In the United States, even the police don't think it's Miranda making these calls. And they have top forensic people at their disposal. So maybe, just maybe, there is a voice up.

Do this! Or maybe, they just don't know their British accents very well. Hi, my name is Georgia. I'm from Bristol. I've lived there all my life. Georgia is a carer who looks after the mother of a friend of mine. And for the benefit of non-British listeners, she agrees to help me explain the Bristol accent.

It's just the way that everything is pronounced. With the R's, it's really accentuated in every single word that you say.

“That's how you can tell someone's bestowed in it.”

Like, for instance, "Water" is like, like, "Water." It's really the R. You can really hear it. It's really pronounced with a bestowed accent. And that's with every word. And then there are the other Bristolisms. The words and phrases that are a bit different to the rest of the UK.

Like, how you'd say, thank you.

It would always be like, "Oh, cheers, me," or "Cheers, me lover."

It'd always be "Cheers." Or "Cheers, mucker." But would you actually say "Cheers, me lover" to, like, a taxi driver? Or a bus driver? No, a taxi driver or a bus driver. You'd say "Cheers, drive."

As a driver, but you'd say "Cheers, drive." That's what everybody says in Bristol. Miranda isn't what I'd call broad Bristolian. He has never hurt me, never touched me. He doesn't abuse me. I love him, a hundred percent.

Not compared to Georgia. He has never hurt me, never touched me. He doesn't abuse me. I love him a hundred percent. Miranda doesn't do those Bristolian ear signs. She never says "Arthur."

It's always "Arthur." But she does have what you might call a residual accent. Which means that there are still some telltale signs of Bristolian in the way she talks. Like missing the G, are words ending in in.

I was left here, I know in waiting for the first call from the hospital

and getting in touch with them.

The priest was explaining it with very difficult incident.

And then there's the way she pronounces her all in certain words. You know, you know. That all is very Bristolian, just like Louise.

“And that's why, as soon as I heard that Louise recording,”

I recognized the accent. I wanted to scream at Helen. Listen to her.

And so, Georgia, listen, thank you very much.

Cheers, my lover. Bye, Cheerio. Bye, bye, bye. Anyway, that's just our late person's guide to the Bristol accent. And the report we've been waiting for comes through from voice analyst Dr. Frederica Holmes.

“What conclusions can you draw that they are the same person?”

Okay, I think in summary, and taking into account the nature and the limitations of the recordings that I was supplied with. I think there are similarities that go beyond what you would expect to find. I think there is moderate, not strong, but moderate evidence to suggest that the speaker in the reference recording is the same as the speaker in the television. And if somebody says, "Is it possible that it's another speaker?" Then the answer to that has to be, "Yes, that is possibility."

I do think it's the same speaker, but there's a limit of what we can do with it because of the nature and extent and quality of the recordings. So, these are the constraints that I will put around my conclusion.

Dr. Holmes, with the recording that you heard of that roughly 90 second phone call,

was there anything that led you to believe that that recording was from our voice aldering up? I think the technical quality of the recording was slightly suboptimal in as much as it was a relatively poor quality telephone recording. But I didn't see any evidence that would make me think that this was somehow not natural or had been digitally manipulated. Have you come across any sort of apps that are so effective that they can really fool people and thinking that a man sounds like a woman but with a particular accent like with a Bristol accent in this case?

I just don't find that plausible. I mean, you can change the pitch, you can change the resonance characteristics, so you can filter a voice, a male voice in a way that might make it sound more like a female voice. The idea of changing the accent characteristics in a way that passed anything other than a very cursory listening is just not plausible. Given that people in the US might find it particularly difficult to pinpoint a UK accent, do you think it's entirely plausible that that recording you heard was an American man with a voice changing up?

No, I don't think it's a plausible suggestion at all. I mean, do I think it's plausible that some people would believe that it might be, yes, quite possibly, but then people have been watching too much CSI. I think if we take the conclusion of voice analysts expert Dr. Holmes that there is evidence that this is the same speaker together with the circumstantial evidence that the calls were probably made either by Nicholas Rossi or someone close to him. It's looking like Miranda made those calls on when I think back to the interviews in their apartment in Glasgow.

“Remember her denials that Arthur had ever been to the US?”

If she was part of the fake death scam, she must have known that was untrue. Remember the moment I asked Miranda outright whether it was her that made the calls. I know you're a middle-name as the wiser, but it just wouldn't happen to have been you that was making those calls. That's laughable, she said, and you can just about make her right saying no. Arthur then jumped in to say, "I was being ridiculous." Right, because honestly, it's like Bonnie and Clyde going on the run as Bonnie and Clyde.

Bonnie and Clyde, at the time when Arthur said this, I felt that to back down the comparison with America's most notorious criminal couple, just the same a bit ridiculous. Whenever I spoke to her, I thought that was the showdown that I had with neck and his flat, and he said, "Oh, do you think we're Bonnie and Clyde? Is that what it is?" Bonnie and Clyde carried out bank robberies together in the 1930s. Their relationship was glamorized in a 1960s film starring Warren Beatty and fade on a way, the bank robbing and the killing seemed to fuel their passionate relationship.

As the trailer put it, they cross like two hot wires. No, I'm not saying Miranda is a modern day Bonnie who think it'd be okay to kill a man for a bag of cash, but I am wondering what has happened to the old Miranda, the very pleasant girl who advised people to bind pink colors.

Back in my hotel at night, I can't sleep.

It's 448 in the morning in Providence, Rhode Island, and I'm walking up with my head spinning, and it's not jet lag, I'm going to be in here in Providence nearly a week. But it's just because of Miranda, you know, I'm just now lying in bed in this hotel room looking at text messages, she sent me, it was just before we met in person. It was March 5th March, and she says, "Please just give us a chance, we're traumatized. I hope this stops. It's ruining our life together."

“I mean, it's unbelievable, it's just, I mean, what made her just get involved in all of this?”

I get my laptop out and play back the video of an interview she and Arthur struck Nicholas, did when he was released on bail.

I hone in on her. Sitting in a TV studio, she looks as if she is suppressing a smile as Arthur spins his unlikely story about growing up in Ireland. I cannot figure her out. What point does she think? This is a met this man, I love him, and I'm going to help him just move on and become a different person than I'm going to be complicit in him dying. And you know, so it answers everything for us and for me, you know, in terms of that clearly why she's standing by her. You know, we were all thinking, you know, she was a victim and how unearthed she could still think that Nick is Arthur.

“But you know, I look at her now and I just think, "My God, my God, it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable."”

Whenever I see Miranda in the courthouse, I've watched her reactions carefully. She's playing this loving loyal wife and she is. There's no doubt about it, but things are changing about her.

She always did look very smart and she's starting to wear glasses. She told me that she didn't need them. She said, "Their my armor."

She's cut her hair very short, it's a lovely bulb and she looks a million dollars. My producer Helen and I head back to the UK and plan how we're going to put our allegations to Miranda. I really hope I get the interview with her. Dear Miranda, BBC Studios have been commissioned by Audible UK to make a podcast series about Arthur's story. We would like to give you an opportunity to respond to some questions we have about your potential involvement in the kiss. Back in Scotland, I've tried calling, emailing, and texting Miranda again to invite her to do an interview.

I didn't tell her I have a recording of her posing as Nicholas Rossi's widow. I just said, I had some new information I wanted to share with her, but she doesn't even reply. So it's time to put the allegations to her street. We believe that you posed as Louise, Nicholas Anna Verdeans, aka Nicholas Rossi's supposed wife, making calls in 2020 to Father Bernard Helie, plus various rude item politicians and journalists informing them about the death in a further commas of Nicholas.

“In journalism, there's a rule that if you want to put serious allegations about someone into the public domain,”

you have to be fair by sending them a right of reply letter, set it at all out, and giving them a chance to respond to the allegations. So that's what I've done. I have uncovered evidence which leaves me with little doubt that you did make those calls. We are considering including this new evidence in our podcast. In the interest of fairness, I would like to give you the opportunity to explain whether there are mitigating circumstances which you would like the audience to know about.

So I send Miranda a recorded delivery letter a couple of tagd emails and a text, who knows what I'll get back. It could be a six-page letter from her lawyer. My guess is, she'll ignore it. And if she does that, I've got permission from my bosses to doorstep her and play her the recording. I really hope I put to her that she is the ways, because my God, what a moment that will be.