The Women Who Solved Their Own Murders: Little Bridge Farm

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Alexandra Morgan, Little Bridge Farm, Cranbrook, Braxie
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Little Bridge Farm, Mark Brown
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Little Bridge Farm, Mark Brown, Braxie
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Mark Brown
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Mark Brown, Little Bridge Farm
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Little Bridge Farm, Mark Brown, Braxie
7. 30:00 – 35:00: Mark Brown, Leah Wear, National Ugly Mugs
8. 35:00 – 40:00: Little Bridge Farm, Mark Brown, Leah Wear
9. 40:00 – 45:00: Mark Brown, Little Bridge Farm, Leah Wear
10. 45:00 – 50:00: Leah Wear, Mark Brown
11. 50:00 – 55:00: Mark Brown, Leah Wear
12. 55:00 – 59:05: Mark Brown, Leah Wear

Notable quotes from "The Women Who Solved Their Own Murders: Little Bridge Farm"

• Police uncovered a note and a hidden box full of clues to her whereabouts. A remote place called Little Bridge Farm.

  about Little Bridge Farm · at 0:14

• Advised. Alexandra Morgan was a 34year-old dog groomer and devoted mother of two living in Cranbrook in the southeast of England. Her friends describe her as warm and…

  about Cranbrook · at 1:41

• Customer. She told Rose about the spa break that she was heading on. In fact, she was going to be driving a long way for it, almost 5 hours all the way up north to York. But…

  about York · at 3:20

• Knew that she had been doing sex work in order to support herself and her two children. She'd been doing it for a little while now. She went under a fake name, Braxie. And on…

  about Braxie · at 4:34

• Name for a place that is now notorious for the nightmare that followed when Alex Morgan arrived. The man driving that gold Jaguar leading Alex to the farm, I'm sure you…

  about Mark Brown · at 5:26

• Others, often at enormous personal risk and without any recognition. And this is exactly why organizations like National Ugly Mugs exist. They're a UK- based charity working…

  about National Ugly Mugs · at 32:04

• Prescription made out to a woman that they weren't yet aware of. These meds belonged to a woman named Leah. Now, that wasn't Mark's partner. It obviously wasn't Alex Morgan.…

  about Leah Wear · at 33:20

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Mark Brown — Person · Primary perpetrator (referenced subject) · 30 mentions · first at 5:40
  Central figure accused/convicted of murdering Alexandra Morgan and Leah Wear; owner/renter of Little Bridge Farm and key driver of the episode’s narrative.
• Alexandra Morgan — Person · Primary victim (referenced subject) · 2 mentions · first at 0:02
  Missing mother whose disappearance and murder investigation anchors the episode; her actions (notes, burner phone) provide key investigative leads tying events to Little Bridge Farm and Mark Brown.
  November 14th, 2021 was the last time Alexandra Morgan was ever seen alive.
• Leah Wear — Person · Secondary victim (referenced subject) · 11 mentions · first at 33:30
  Second woman linked to Mark Brown; her disappearance predates Alexandra Morgan’s and is used to establish a pattern of coercion, isolation, and alleged serial offending.

Companies & orgs

• National Ugly Mugs — Company · 2 mentions · first at 32:10

Concepts & topics

• Braxie — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 4:43

Places & events

• Little Bridge Farm — Place · 16 mentions · first at 0:20
• Cranbrook — Place · 1 mention · first at 1:45
• East Sussex — Place · 1 mention · first at 0:40
  Hello and welcome to Outlaw Podcast. I'm Ellen O'Neal and in today's episode we're in East Sussex, England in 2021 on a remote plot of land named Littlebridge Farm. Don't be fooled by the idyllic.
• York — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 November 14th, 2021 was the last time Alexandra Morgan was ever seen alive. She dropped off her children at her mom's house and told everyone that she was heading off for a spa break. But that was a lie. On a search of her home, police uncovered a note and a hidden box full of clues to her whereabouts. A remote place called Little Bridge Farm. A place filled with dark, twisted secrets. and a man that was on track to become a serial killer. [snorts] Outlaw. Hello and welcome to Outlaw Podcast. I'm Ellen O'Neal and in today's episode we're in East Sussex, England in 2021 on a remote plot of land named Littlebridge Farm. Don't be fooled by the idyllic name. Littlebridge Farm was a site of pure horror owned by one man with depraved predilictions. He would lure vulnerable women back to his makeshift bedroom in a shipping container and ruin their lives, even end their lives. These women would be ushered into a steel room

1:08 with nothing more than an airbed and a grim toilet, and there were only locks on the outside of the door. Now, before we get into this case, I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that we talk about in this episode. We will however be covering a lot of sensitive topics including drug addiction, mental health issues, at home pregnancy termination, domestic violence, coercion and control, animal abuse, rape, and murder. Viewer discretion is always advised. Alexandra Morgan was a 34year-old dog groomer and devoted mother of two living in Cranbrook in the southeast of England. Her friends describe her as warm and protective. Her children were her whole entire world and she was desperate to give them a happy and stable life. Something that she had struggled to give herself. Alex had suffered from various mental health issues that she had tried to

2:07 self-medicate with drugs only to become dependent on those substances which made her whole situation 10 times harder. But now that she was a mom, she was trying so hard every single day to give those kids the life that they deserve while caring for herself better than she ever had before. And on the evening of November 13th, 2021, Alex drove to her parents house to drop off her kids and her dog because she was heading off on a muchneeded spa break for 3 days. She didn't get to do things like this often. She never treated herself or took breaks. So, her parents were more than happy to relieve her of some of her responsibilities for a few days. She would be heading off bright and early the next morning, so she kissed her kids goodbye and headed home to bed. But in the early hours of November 14th, just as the sun was rising, Alex got out her phone and Googled, "Can a phone be tracked without a SIM card?" Around 7:20

3:02 a.m. she hopped in her white Mini that she had only just bought a couple of months ago in August, which she adored, by the way. She was so proud of that car. She headed to the petrol station to fill up the car. And when she went in to pay, Alex had a chat with the manager, Rose, who she knew quite well at this point, just from being a regular customer. She told Rose about the spa break that she was heading on. In fact, she was going to be driving a long way for it, almost 5 hours all the way up north to York. But Alex was a little bit worried about her car, even though she had only just bought it. It wasn't in great condition, and the engine kept cutting out. Rose, who worked at the petrol station, was actually quite worried for Alex getting all the way up to York on her own. And she also found it odd that Alex had only put 10 worth of fuel into the tank as well. Surely for a 5-hour drive, she'd need way more

3:52 fuel than that. You'd probably need just short of a full tank, right? I mean, I wouldn't know. I'm a whole 26 years old and I can't drive. But Rose clocked it and she thought that Alex was I don't know. I guess being a little bit reckless with this long drive. I guess at the time it was just a strange detail. But later on when everything was laid out piece by piece, it becomes chillingly clear. Alex never had any intention of driving all the way up to York. When she hopped back in her white Mini and drove away, she drove in the opposite direction. Rather than going towards the north, she went south because that spar break never existed.

4:30 It was a cover story. Alex had been keeping a secret from everyone that she knew that she had been doing sex work in order to support herself and her two children. She'd been doing it for a little while now. She went under a fake name, Braxie. And on that day, she was heading to meet a regular client, a man that she had been speaking to for some time, both online and in person. They'd had this arrangement multiple times before. It was someone that she thought she could trust because they'd engaged in this a few times now and it had always been fine. So, she drove about 30 minutes south just outside of Hastings and pulled over for a few moments and then a gold Jaguar slowly passes her car. Alex then revs hers back up and follows the gold Jaguar down a narrow isolated country lane. Both cars eventually disappear into the same place, Little Bridge Farm. An adorable name for a place that is now notorious

5:28 for the nightmare that followed when Alex Morgan arrived. The man driving that gold Jaguar leading Alex to the farm, I'm sure you guessed, was her client for the next few days, a man named Mark Brown, that, like I said, she had serviced before. He was a 41-year-old construction worker from Brighton. He had a long-term partner of 14 years that he lived with, but he was meeting up with Alex and paying for her for sex regularly. And not even just Alex, this man was chronically soliciting sex workers behind his partner's back. And what makes it worse, he had kids with that woman as well. But he presented himself as this perfect family man, the perfect husband, the perfect father. But no one truly knew how shady he was and how shady he had always been. Actually, he had been known for cheating on his partners and spending all of his money on drug binges. And when his mother passed away, she left him a huge inheritance. And

6:28 instead of using that to support the people that he claimed to love and, you know, setting himself up or buying a house or taking his family away on holiday, he used his mother's inheritance to bankroll his secret world. With that inheritance money, Mark started renting Little Bridge Farm, an isolated plot of land about 5 miles away from his family home. His partner was aware of this. She knew about Little Bridge Farm and I think she'd even been once or twice, probably thinking that it was some sort of construction project or somewhere for her husband, not her husband, her partner to go to get his work done. Little did she know, the sole purpose of renting Littlebridge Farm was so that Mark could regularly cheat on her and hide things from her. He would hunt for sex workers online under the username Fisty Mc Rapist.

7:22 Yep. A disgusting username in general, but especially considering that this is someone who is actively asking women to have sex with him. It's not like an edgy 4chan name or something. This is the very intentional first impression that he was giving directly to the women that he was looking to meet. He had made his desires clear and that was some level of nonconsensual interaction. So thinking about the dynamic that we have here, someone paying for sex from another individual who has voluntarily offered that up. You might think that that's an inherently consensual dynamic, but of course that's not strictly true. To me, this username hints that he is going to try and push sex workers boundaries.

8:04 He's still going to try and find a way to scratch the itch of that depraved desire to rape. And with a username like that, you'd dread to think what else he might desire. and what else he might be capable of. Mark Brown had been sweettalking Alex Morgan for a little while now. Not only was she one of the regular sex workers in his rotation that he would solicit, but he had recently messaged her out of the blue with an incredible job opportunity. He said, "I don't know if you'd be interested, but a job has come up that I could use you on.

8:37 3 to 5 days in a hotel that I'm guarding. I won't say too much on this, but it's risk-f free and worth a lot of money, over 100k. He told her that the job would involve her spending three to five nights with a hotel guest. I guess like as a guard, she would get a car to use during that time. She would get some shopping money, but above all, like I said, it was going to pay £100,000. That is life-changing money. Money that could finally give her and her kids some security. And Alex was so excited for this chance at financial freedom. She was immediately googling things like, "What can I do with 100k? How much can you earn running a sunbed shop in the UK? How much tax would I pay on 100k?

9:18 Minimum deposit for a house in 2021?" Like, she had so many plans. She was going to use that money to really further her and her children's lives. Mark reassured her on that job again, saying, "You'll be 100% safe at all times, sweetheart." with Alex responding, "I trust you and thank you again for doing what you're doing. I really appreciate it." So when she drove up to that isolated farm track towards Littlebridge Farm, she believed that she was stepping into a new chapter. Instead, she was walking straight into a trap. A few days go by and no one hears from Alex Morgan, but everyone of course puts it down to the fact that she was away on this spa break. Maybe she was also doing some kind of digital detox as well and staying off her phone. But when November 17th rolled around and she didn't turn up at her parents house to pick up her kids, they immediately knew that something had to be wrong. She was

10:12 a very responsible mother who loved her kids more than anything in this world. The idea of her forgetting to pick them up or just dragging out her trip without telling anyone anything was just out of the question. Without a doubt, something must have happened to her if she wasn't there for her kids. In a panic, her parents got in touch with the police the very next morning to report Alex missing. By now, her phone was only going straight through to answer machine, so it had been turned off. Again, very, very unlike her. I mean, it's very unlike any mother to consciously stay uncontable.

10:46 The police went to Alex's house, but of course, she wasn't there. And in a quick sweeping search of her home, they didn't really find anything concerning or even seemingly significant. There were no signs of forced entry or an abrupt escape or anything like that. But despite there being no physical clues or hints to something awful happening, police clearly had a bad feeling from the start. So the case was escalated to the major crime unit and detectives started trying to piece together a timeline of Alex's last known movements.

11:18 The only information that they have to go off right now is what Alex had told her parents about where she was going. a spa break five hours away in York. So, police now know that they have to try and track her car to see if she actually made it there, if she made it all the way to York. So, they begin the painstaking process of trolling through hours and hours of CCTV, dash cam footage, ring doorbells, literally anything that might have caught a glimpse of Alex on the move. And in the meantime, investigators were able to track her phone up until the point that it switched off. And that was at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday the 14th, before she'd even arrived at Littlebridgeidge Farm.

11:57 Of course, at this point in time, police don't know what Little Bridge Farm is. They don't know where she's gone, but we know that that was before she actually drove up and followed that gold jaguar. So, my guess is that Alex had turned it off herself. But anyway, this gave police even more direction to focus in on cameras in that general area that she was heading. I mean, it was a big thing for them to learn that she was in the opposite direction of York. She'd told everyone that she was going up north, 5 hours away. But now they're finding out that she'd actually gone even further south than where she lived. Soon enough, they found some CCTV footage from close to Little Bridge Farm that showed Alex in her white Mini being led down a country road by a gold jaguar. So, police knew they had their lead. As they kept watch, they noticed that the gold jaguar left a few hours later, and the white Mini didn't follow, but it was

12:49 seen leaving at half midnight that night. But since it was so dark by then, it was practically impossible to see who was driving that vehicle. Was it Alex Morgan herself, or was it someone else in her car? Now, immediately, police are sent to Little Bridge Farm to check it out. And by now, it had been a good week since Alex Morgan was last seen. So, they were acting on every single lead that they got as fast as they possibly could. It was late at night by the time they got this lead, but the police were sent out and so because it was so dark and it was so cold and and spooky, like the body cam footage is so eerie. It's pitch black outside and just by the light of their torches, police are peering into these out buildings.

13:33 They're kicking in doors. They're looking through storage containers, but there was no one around and nothing weird going on by the looks of things. Of course, the white Mini wasn't there, and there was no sign of Alex Morgan at all, but then mid search, a white van pulls up at Little Bridge Farm and pops out Mark Brown. I highly doubt he expected to see the police there, and I can only imagine the way his heart dropped when he saw their vehicles. But police immediately came over to speak to him and he was as cooperative as he could be. I think he was trying to play a game from the very beginning. He was trying to stay cool. He gave over his name, his real name, and he told them that this was his land. He rented this land for work. They told him that they were looking for Alex Morgan, a missing mother of two. Did he know anything about that? Well, family man Mark Brown admitted to them that he did know Alex

14:26 Morgan. Well, he actually hadn't known her by that name. Up until now, he didn't know who Alex Morgan was. He knew who Braxie was because he had met up with her often. He told them that he had met her on an escort website about five months prior. He'd gotten in touch. They'd slept together a few times since then, but it was usually at Alex's own home. He admitted though that the last time that they had met up for sex was on the 14th, the day that she was last seen, the day that her phone was switched off, the day that her car was at Little Bridge Farm. But Mark insisted that after their meet, she got back in her car and drove off and went about her life. He said that everything had seemed fine as she was leaving the farm, but he didn't know where she was headed and he had no information about her whereabouts right now. Well, police weren't entirely convinced from Mark. So, they asked him

15:17 if he could give over a DNA sample along with his fingerprints, and he agreed. They didn't have anything to test all of this against right now. They had no ev evidence. They had no clues. But police knew that when evidence and clues did come in, they wanted to have Mark Brown's samples handy to be able to immediately test it against any evidence. Mark had told the police that Alex hadn't stayed for very long at all. Maybe just 45 minutes. But they already knew that that part couldn't be true because her Minnie didn't leave the farm for hours, almost like 24 hours later.

15:50 That's a lot chuffing longer than 45 minutes. If Mark was telling the truth about her leaving safely, how could he have gotten the timing so drastically wrong? And that was when police noticed in the CCTV footage when the white mini is seen leaving again, it suddenly has different license plates. Those were not Alex Morgan's plates. And after enhancing this insanely dark, grainy footage of the car leaving, they were finally able to see who was behind the wheel. And you guessed it, it wasn't Alex, it was a man. Interestingly though, it wasn't Mark Brown. But whoever it was, it was clear that something had happened to Alex Morgan on Littlebridge Farm. Why else would her car have swapped license plates being driven away by a random man only for her to never be seen again. Somehow police managed to identify the guy that was driving her car out of the farm as a man named Darren. He was a friend of Mark

16:45 Browns. And when they contacted him, he told them the complete truth that he was just doing a favor for his friend that night. Apparently, Mark had called him up and asked him if he could help him move this white mini off of his property. And so Darren did without asking any questions really. He even told the police that he ditched it four miles away on a dead-end residential street at Mark's instruction. What the [ __ ] Mark had called up a friend in the middle of the night, calling in a shady ass favor, asking someone to essentially get rid of Alex Morgan's car. So, police wasted no time and immediately arrested Mark Brown on suspicion of murder.

17:24 Despite there being no sign of Alex's body and no real tangible evidence that she was actually even dead, but everything else was just screaming suspect. Back at the station, Mark was answering no comment to every single question. every single thing he was asked. No comment. No comment. No comment. So investigators needed to find another way to get information. Speaking with his family and friends revealed even more to be suspicious about. His partner openly told the police that Mark had called her that afternoon on the day that Alex went missing from the farm. He was asking her to drive over there and bring him a bottle of bleach. And she did. And she never really asked any questions about it. She assumed that he was just doing, I guess, like quite a big cleanup job after a day of work. He worked on cars a lot, which means a lot of paint and a lot of grease and various fluids that I wouldn't even understand

18:17 or know the name of. A bottle of bleach wouldn't really be an insane ask until now with the context of a missing woman and a murder investigation. And while Mark was in custody, a thorough search had taken place of the wider farm and its surrounding areas, and some very interesting discoveries had been made. Multiple weapons were found, buried in piles of just pure clutter. That's one thing that needs to be said, actually. This fell lives like a hoarder, both at Littlebridgeidge Farm and in his family home with his partner and with his kids.

18:51 There is [ __ ] everywhere. But in and amongst all of this just stuff were a few guns. There was also a pond on the farm and a search of it revealed something truly awful. I will tell you now that it wasn't Alex, but it was a dead body. Not a human, a dog. It was a little Pomeranian. It was clearly there on purpose. I mean, finding a dog's body in a lake would always be tragically sad, but also probably explainable by natural causes if it was a wild dog or maybe it drowned or something. But this couldn't be further from the case. This poor baby had a 12 kg dumbbell chained to the end of its lead. It had to have just been thrown in this pond intentionally and killed, murdered. So, what on earth could explain why such a barbaric thing had taken place on Littlebridge Farm? And the horrors just kept coming. They discovered a smaller shipping container inside one of the big ones that was clearly set up to be like

19:55 a little bedroom. It had an air bed, a gross toilet. It had basic facilities like a microwave, a kettle, a toaster. And I guess maybe it's not that weird in itself to have a basic makeshift crash pad at your work if you're working really late hours if you're in construction. I don't know. I don't know. Some people might want to do that. But it was when investigators noticed that it only locked from the outside that this shipping container bedroom suddenly became a lot more sinister. Had Mark Brown been keeping someone in there? Had he kept Alex in there on the day that she disappeared? A further search of Mark Brown's family home found an array of weapons, again buried in heaps of clutter and rubbish, some handcuffs, and not like sexy handcuffs.

20:42 They were like industrial [ __ ] handcuffs, actually, and a surplus of cable ties and duct tape. Now, officers had spotted a hell of a lot of zip ties and duct tape back at the farm, but they hadn't thought too much of it there because, you know, he's a workman, a fixer uper. It's quite normal to keep those things stocked up for a job like this, but not in your family home, right? And then it gets downright insane when the officers get to the attic space of Mark's home and they discover bags upon bags filled with human feces.

21:16 What are you talking about? Genuinely, this guy was keeping bags of [ __ ] in the attic of his home. And his partner didn't really seem to know anything about it. She didn't seem to smell it or notice it. Like I wonder if the hoarding conditions of the house just gave it a a consistent funky smell, so you'd become a bit like nose blind to it after a while. Or there is every likelihood that she actually had clocked the smell and she was uncomfortable with it, disturbed by it, but was unable to do anything about it. The kind of guy that Mark Brown was consistently cheating on her and and well, everything that you're about to see in this case makes me wonder if this was an abusive relationship that he had with his partner. Maybe she wasn't allowed to clean the house or Mark would go crazy.

22:04 Maybe he didn't let her up in the attic room. These are just theories, but I think with all the other evidence surrounding Mark Brown as a person and his character, I wouldn't put it past him to be putting his partner through an abusive hell behind their own closed doors. This was a woman raising children in a house that is quite frankly a biohazard. I can't imagine any mother would be okay with that risk to their kids, which makes me think that she was being forced to live however Mark wanted them to live. But bags of human feces kept up in the loft is just so [ __ ] insane. I've never heard anything quite like that. And we have no idea why he was doing it. Let me tell you now, we have tried. We have tried to figure out what he could possibly have been doing. Mark has never made any comment on the crap bags. So that just does end up being like one insane and unexplained detail about this case. But

22:58 I think it certainly hints to whatever mental state Mark Brown was in. Just not quite right. not a functional human being in society. The search of his home was frankly bizarre for so many reasons, but it was the search of Alex Morgan's home that was truly revealing. Although, like we said before, there was nothing really out of the ordinary going on, at least not at first glance when they first searched it. But that changed when officers began looking closer at certain things. They discovered a note that Alex had left behind for her sons. And when they read between the lines, they realized that Alex Morgan had left a trail of clues to help police solve her own murder. In Alex's living room, propped up in front of the TV, was a very brief handwritten note to her eldest son that read, "Let's go rollerblading with a little smiley face." On its own, obviously, it didn't look like much, and that's exactly why

23:54 it was overlooked in the first place. But investigators decided now to follow this clue quite literally. In one of the bedrooms, they discovered a box filled with rollerblading equipment, boots, shin pads, the lot. But that wasn't the only thing in there. There were bundles of cash, tens and 20s that added up to £2,000 along with another handwritten note. This one read, "Saved this money for you. Kiss kiss. Check post code TN345NY Rock Lane opposite Bartletts. That was the postcode for Little Bridge Farm. Alex Morgan had genuinely left a trail of clues to her whereabouts. It seems that she had had the foresight, probably a bad feeling about where she was going and who she was meeting with to know that she should probably leave something behind for her kids because she might never make it home again. How heart-wrenching is that? She clearly felt like something could well happen to her when she went to Little Bridge Farm

24:59 that day, but she went anyway because this man had promised her a job that would set her up financially for life. She could provide for her kids for life and it was worth the risk for her. She went despite all the red flags, despite the horrible gut feeling it seems that she had because she needed that money for her family. And he knew that. He knew that that was how he could lure her in. Alongside the cash and the note in this uh rollerblading box, detectives also found a burner phone. On one of the handwritten notes was a pin code to get into the phone. And very quickly they realized that this was Alex Morgan's work phone. She would text her clients from this one as Braxie planning meetups and jobs. Of course, it had almost all of her correspondence with Mark Brown just waiting there on it for the police to access. The earliest exchange that the two of them had dated back to June 8th, 2021, which is just over 5 months

26:01 before Alex would go missing. Their first meeting was at her house and after that they arranged at least seven more meetups. As we said before, this was a man that she seemed to trust enough to repeatedly service. But the fact that she left behind so many clues shows that she probably never really trusted this man at all. I mean, let's not forget the first impression she probably ever got of him was his insidious username, Fissy McRapist. He had been upfront about his sick perversions since the very start. Alex knew the whole time that she was engaging with a likely very dangerous individual. And now she was missing, having left behind £2,000 for her sons.

26:45 A huge amount of money for her, mind you. They really did not have that kind of money to just leave laying around in cash unless she felt it was absolutely necessary, which I guess she did in this case. And tragically, she was right. The police relied on those handwritten notes and those clues left behind by the victim herself in order to piece together what had happened to her. And soon it would be confirmed exactly what that was. Up until this point, they had assumed that she'd been murdered, but now they were about to find some physical biological proof that Alex Morgan was no longer alive. Mark Brown worked as a freelancer in construction.

27:24 So he mainly did things on his own up at Littlebridge Farm. But around the time of the investigation, he had been contracted to work on a specific construction site. So police got in contact with the other men that he worked with to ask them some questions. And the site manager had some really useful information for police. He said that in the days after Alex's disappearance, Mark had asked if he could dispose of something from home in the skip at work, which I guess is kind of normal. If there's a big skip at work and you have something big at home that you're struggling to dispose of, it makes sense. So his manager said, "Yeah, sure. Bring it over. Chuck it in the skip." But now, you know, with all the context that we have of this investigation, that is not a [ __ ] normal thing to do. It looked like he was trying to secretly discard of something that wouldn't get tied back to him. So, the next step was to dumpster

28:14 dive and find out what what Mark had disposed of on that day. It turned out to be an oil drum that was badly burnt. Like a whole hole was burned through the bottom. It seemed it was like a homemade furnace, a homemade incinerator used to burn and dispose of something. And then when the drum was sent off for forensic testing, the results were heartbreaking. Seven pieces of human bone fragments were found. They were too small to extract DNA from. But you know what they did find? A ring warped from the fire was retrieved and identified as Alex Morgan's favorite ring that she wore every day. She'd even taken a photo that morning before she set off to Little Bridge Farm and she was wearing it in that photo. So, we can use that confirmation of the ring to probably confirm that those human bone fragments were Alex Morgans's. But then we get complete confirmation because as they kept looking, they found some teeth,

29:21 human teeth that were compared and matched to Alex's dental records. This was proof that she was dead, that her body had been burned on Little Bridge Farm until there was barely anything left. Also, on that construction site, they found a crisp packet with a car key hidden inside. It was the key to Alex's white Mini. Mark had tried and failed to cover his tracks, but in fact, this just allowed police to confirm that he was their killer because how else would her car key end up on his construction site. So with that, on November 28th, 2021, 2 weeks exactly after Alex had disappeared, Mark Brown was charged with her murder, which is big considering that there was no body and no proof technically that she was murdered. I mean, there's proof that she's dead and there was proof that she had been burned in a barrel, which is [ __ ] horrid, but no physical tangible proof that she had been murdered by another human

30:25 being. And I think that says everything about how sure the police were about Mark Brown and how strong all of the circumstantial evidence that they had really was. But what if I told you that Alex Morgan wasn't the only missing woman connected to Mark Brown? Detectives didn't know it yet, but they were about to uncover a whole new level of dark depravity. When speaking with the construction site manager, he told police the most horrifying thing. That the last time he had seen him, Mark had quite plainly said to him that he thought he was going to be arrested soon. Arrested for murder. What are you talking about? Could you imagine a coworker turning to you and saying that?

31:06 But it actually gets worse. He said that he'd be arrested for murder and then after a slight pause, he added, "Double. I'll be going away for 25 years to life. I'm going to have to go down for this one. 25 years to life. Hello. The absolute insanity of his confidence and brazenness aside, Mark is confessing to double murder here. Police had only ever been aware of one case. One missing woman linked to him. But now it seems that they'd only scratched the surface of this dangerous lying criminal sat in front of them. Mark Brown was a calculated, stone cold killer whose crimes relied on one thing above all else, his victim's vulnerability and isolation. As sex workers, the industry exposes them to so much that time and time again, sex workers are essentially solving crimes from the front lines.

32:01 They are flagging dangerous men. They're sharing information. They're warning others, often at enormous personal risk and without any recognition. And this is exactly why organizations like National Ugly Mugs exist. They're a UK- based charity working directly with sex workers to research patterns of violence, to share critical safety information, and to provide support for people in adult industries. They design and deliver practical safety tools. They issue warnings about dangerous individuals. And they advocate for people who are so often ignored when something goes wrong. Without protection, without visibility, without support, the same risks in sex work repeat themselves again and again and again. If you'd like to read more about their work or donate to fund the crucial work that National Ugly Mugs do, the link will be down below in the description of this episode along with our link tree which has again a bunch

32:56 more helpful resources, helplines, organizations if you need them. Now, back to the case where detectives have just learned that Mark Brown has confessed to his construction manager that he is responsible for not just one but two murders. Now that he was in police custody, Mark's white work van was seized. And inside, detectives found a packet of medication with the prescription made out to a woman that they weren't yet aware of. These meds belonged to a woman named Leah. Now, that wasn't Mark's partner. It obviously wasn't Alex Morgan. So, who was Leah Wear? And what was her medication doing at Littlebridgeidge Farm? Police looked into all of the missing person's reports in the area, but there wasn't anything about a missing Leah wear. Or at least that's what it seemed like until they dug a little bit deeper. They got in contact with all the people that she knew and well, it turns out that she

33:51 actually was missing just not reported. No one had seen or heard from Leah Wear in months. But weirdly, this was kind of within her character. You know, you hear it all the time in true crime cases where families know immediately that something is wrong because the victim is usually really good with their phone. They're really good at staying in contact and then suddenly they stop, so they know that something's wrong. Well, Leah wasn't really that kind of person. She didn't keep people updated all that much. Her loved ones found out what she was up to and they found out that she'd moved onto a farm actually just through looking at her social media posts. She seemed like quite a spontaneous person.

34:29 Leah Wear was an animal lover to her core. She had grown up on a farm, so it made a lot of sense that she would end up moving back onto one as an adult. She just loved caring for animals and riding horses. One of Leah's life mottos was that you can trust animals, but you can't trust people, which is sad to hear how jaded she was with people and relationships, but it is lovely to hear that animals were like a safe space for her. She always knew that she had love in the form of her animals. But Leah had always struggled with her mental health.

35:02 She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and it really wre havoc on her life quite frankly. In her 20ies, she got pregnant and had her first child. Then she went on to have two more. So she was a mother of three, but none of her children were in her care anymore due to how much she was struggling with her mental health. Her kids lived with their dad, and Leah was honestly heartbroken over not being able to care for them, which only exacerbated her sadness and her want to self soothe with drugs. Her mental health is honestly the main reason that she was relatively estranged from her family at the time of her disappearance, and therefore why she wasn't reported missing. Leah had kind of voluntarily gone off the radar a little bit. She always had phases like this throughout her life through her 20s and now into her 30s where she would just kind of take herself away from everyone in order to be alone and to

35:58 deal with her mental health issues. She found it easiest to deal with in isolation. She didn't tell anyone anything really. They saw on socials that she'd moved to a farm and that she had new animals and that there was a new man in her life, but she didn't really post about the man. She didn't say his name or anything. Her family were just watching from afar. What seemed like Leah at peace, like she'd found a lifestyle that looked like it was making her happy. At least that's what the posts sounded like. To make money, Leah Wear had been doing escort jobs on the same website as Alex Morgan. And that's exactly where she would cross paths with Mark Brown for the very first time on March 25th, 2018, 2 and a half years before Alex's case. Although Mark had initially hired Leah as an escort, this arrangement soon morphed into a relationship. Of course, Mark had his long-term partner and his kids at home,

36:54 but that never stopped him once, did it? He lived in Brighton with his family, but he would rent out a little flat in Hastings about an hour away where he invited Leah to come and live with him or for Leah to go and live there and he would visit her, but then go back home to his wife and kids. literally a fullon double life. Mark would treat Leah quite well in the beginning. At least that's what it seems like. He would buy her things. Honestly, I'm not sure how much money he was making from construction jobs, but it sounds like a decent amount because this fella has two houses. He's buying so many expensive gifts. Maybe he had some of his mom's inheritance left over. I'm not sure. But so many gifts.

37:33 Two of which, a lot of which were animals. Two of which were a horse named Bertie and a gorgeous little Pomeranian dog that she named Lady. And she was obsessed with this little thing. Lady went everywhere that Leah went. Now, those of you eagle-eyed or eagleeared audience members might have made a connection there when I mentioned Lady the Pomeranian. Earlier on in the episode, we mentioned that on a search of Little Bridge Farm, detectives had the pond drained where they discovered a Pomeranian dog's dead body chained to a weight. When I say dead body, I don't even mean dead body. It was just bones that were left. Clearly, that dog was Leah's. It was Lady. It was the gift that Mark had once given her that he had just as quickly taken away and destroyed in the most heartless way possible. as if it wasn't even a living being. Mark and Leah were together for quite some time. Honestly, they did a whole 6

38:32 months in that little flat in Hastings that he rented out for her. Although the landlord, who I believe actually lived in that building, said that they heard the two of them arguing a lot. And then when the lease was up at that place in June 2019, he asked Leah if she would like to move to Little Bridge Farm to be with him there instead. It was only 5 miles away from his family home, so they'd get to see each other so much more. She agreed and he got a static caravan on the property for her to move into. And this is when all the animals start getting gifted to her. And she's posting online about living on a farm and and it genuinely looks really nice.

39:07 It looks really wholesome. It looks really sweet. She seems so happy with all of these animals. But she is completely dependent on Mark Brown at this point. He is her entire income, her entire sustenance since she quit escorting work to be his full-time girlfriend for free. I mean, she always used to call him her sugar daddy. So, he was buying things and and giving her things, but she was so dependent on him. She was relying on him for feeding her, making sure that Little Bridge Farm was livable for her, which it never really was. It was cold. It was gross. It was so very basic. It was survivable, sure, but you'd only want to live like that if you're in dire need of shelter, if you're in a pinch. It wasn't a home. It wasn't a comfortable lifestyle. It wasn't somewhere for you to settle. Leah stopped visiting her friends and family during the time that she was with Mark.

40:00 I think this was, like I said, in part due to her mental health, but also because Mark was becoming increasingly more controlling and possessive of her. He had her all to himself at that little farm whenever he wanted her. He didn't want her to have any more distractions in her life, any responsibilities, anyone asking to see her and taking her away from him. So over time, he applied more and more pressure for her to cut things off with her loved ones. The cheek of that, by the way, when this man has a whole entire family at home that he sees when he's not with Leah, but she can't even have friends or go and see her cousins. Then about halfway through 2020, Leah starts to feel a bit weird, like physically. She's unwell and she can't quite pinpoint it. So, she goes and buys a pregnancy test and it confirms that she is pregnant with Mark Brown's baby. The two of them decided that they didn't want it. They were

40:50 going to terminate the pregnancy from home when Leah was about 20 weeks, 4 months by just doing a truckload of drugs together. Leah is later found in her car. She slumped forward onto the steering wheel and it's clear that something's wrong. An ambulance was called. Leah was rushed to hospital for a suspected overdose. And there they discovered that the drug binge that had almost, you know, made her overdose hadn't worked to terminate the pregnancy. Leah was still pregnant. A few days later, she would successfully terminate it some other way. And I I dread to think what that was cuz I can only imagine it was home done. It was around this time that Mark's partner, his actual partner of 14 years, apparently discovered his affair with Leah. I'm not sure how she found out or how much she knew, but everything was kind of blowing up in late 2020, early 2021. Mark kept telling Leah that he was

41:48 going to leave his partner for her, but it was just really hard, you know, what with the kids and everything. So, he was dragging it and it was dragging it. Meanwhile, she's Leah is not allowed to tell anyone that they're together because of his relationship. She's not telling her loved ones about this man that she's with because of his problems. Leah's frustration and hurt was becoming too much. So, one day she texted Mark saying, "I've never felt so unwanted by someone that I love, and I thought I was your princess, your soulmate." Their life together was a secret, isolated out there in the depths of the woods, contained to a caravan. Well, by now they were actually out of the caravan because the landowner who Mark rented Little Bridge Farm from told them that they didn't have permission for a static caravan. He basically told them to get rid of it. So, they did, but not in any kind of normal way. You'd think that

42:41 they'd like sell it, right? Maybe make a bit of money back off it, but no. Mark Brown literally just burned the damn thing to the ground. Literally set a massive caravan fire on his land and and that was that. No more home. What a really normal way to go about things, right? Now he moved Leah into that makeshift bedroom that detectives had discovered early on in the search for Alex Morgan. The tiny red crate that only had locks on the outside. Leah had been living in there for months before her disappearance. Had Mark Brown been locking her in there when he wasn't there. The living conditions that Leah had to put up with on the farm could hardly even be considered living conditions. This was not a house. This was not a place for a human being to live and thrive. There were no windows.

43:30 It was cold. It was dark. Every surface was steel. There was clutter blooming everywhere. Living there will have surely had her in a constant sense of confinement. and she wasn't having a good time in her relationship anymore. Mark had become very angry, very unpredictable since his partner had discovered the affair. Leah had felt left out in the cold. I mean, quite literally. He was controlling her finances at this stage, changing the root of her benefits to go into his bank account instead of hers. She had nothing of her own, no way of escape if she wanted to. And on top of it all, Mark simply just didn't treat her nice anymore. He used her like a sex object, like a slave that he kept chained up in secret to visit whenever he just wanted to get off. He would push her physical and sexual boundaries. He would gag her, tie her up, put her in the boot of a car to take pictures of her, and even forced

44:27 himself on her sexually on a number of occasions. It's difficult to even comprehend the level of control that Leah was living under. The isolation, the degradation, the constant fear. This wasn't a relationship. This was captivity. And then by May 2021, all communication from Leah wear abruptly stopped. Her family and friends never heard from her again. The last known sighting of Leah was on the 6th of May when she hung out with her friend and dealer, a guy called Jack, who dropped her off at Littlebridge Farm and saw the horrendous conditions she was living in.

45:07 Now, we said earlier that Leah was periodically off the radar due to her tumultuous mental health. She struggled so badly with bipolar that sometimes she would just take herself off and be in very little communication with her loved ones. I'm sure it was very scary for them. In fact, I know it was. I've seen the way that some of them have spoken about Leah publicly. They worried about her so much. They loved her so much, but they always had faith that she would come back again because she had several times before. They thought that this is what worked for her and this is what she needed. But even though they were giving her that space, they would regularly try to check in on her. They would ask if she's okay. They would ask where she is, pleading with her just to let them know that she's safe, that she doesn't even need to have a conversation with them.

45:52 Just let them know. But it seems that as they were sending all of those messages, Leah was already gone. Her cousin made sure to keep texting and letting her know that they were thinking about her. And it wasn't until this case came to light that she went back and looked at the text and realized that at some point months ago, they'd stopped delivering to Leah's phone, and she never knew. Now, it felt like the only way that police could figure out what had happened to Leah was through digital forensics. They managed to get information from her phone network about the locations and the times that her phone had connected to a cell tower. And the final hours of Leah's life and the control that she was under right up until the very end can be traced in chilling detail because Leah's phone only connected to the network when Mark would open that container door. On May 7th, Mark's phone joined Leah's at

46:44 the farm at 6:25 p.m. Then an hour later, Leah would be active for the very last time. Her phone pings the tower one more time at 9:30 p.m. that night, but she doesn't do anything on it. She's not active. No texts, no calls are ever sent again from Leah Wear's phone. Later that night at 10:41 p.m., Mark's phone left the farm. He returned the next morning at 8:30 and Leah's phone once again pinged the network again without activity for the very final time before it was switched off completely just after 2:30 p.m. The times when her phone is connecting to this cell tower but is not active are assumed to be the times that Mark opened that container door and perhaps Leah was already dead inside.

47:32 Police believe that it was on the night before on May 7th that Mark had returned to the shipping container and murdered her inside. Later the next day on March 8th, Mark went to a petrol station and got £10 worth of petrol. Not into his car, not into the tank, but he filled up some jerry cans. It seems that he was planning to burn any evidence. Mark called his sister a number of times on that day and even asked her if she was still looking for a dog knowing that he had to get rid of Leah's dogs. She actually had two, one of which he did manage to rehome with his sister, but he couldn't shift the little Pomeranian lady. That is when police believe that he chained the poor baby to this really heavy weight, took it out into the woods, and either just left her there to die, to starve, and to succumb to the elements, or maybe he threw her into the pond to drown. After Mark had killed Leah, he carried on life as normal. It

48:34 hadn't affected him, even in the slightest. His partner and his kids back home didn't suspect a thing. He was the same man that he had always been. He even went on to steal Leah Wear's bank card, knowing full well that her dead body was laying on his property, and he got a bunch of cash out for himself. For months after her death, actually, long after she stopped contacting her family, Mark was still weirdly collecting Leah's medical prescription from the pharmacy. Now, I don't know what the medication was, whether he had his own motives there, whether he was just trying to get high, you know, off some prescription meds, or whether it was simply to make it look like she was still alive, like she was still going to collect her prescription. Who knows? Surely, if it was the latter, he would be doing more to make it look like she was still alive. He'd fake post on her social media as well. No, I don't know. Either

49:24 way, he's showing just how unbothered he is about this whole thing. The fact that he has to go up to a worker in the pharmacy and say Leah Wear's full name in order to grab her prescription every time. If he was racked with guilt, that would be too anxietyprovoking. But he is so confident that he won't get caught for this, that he doesn't care who hears him say her name in public. It's still unknown exactly how Mark Brown had killed Leah Wear or Alex Morgan for that matter since there were never any bodies recovered, just identifiable fragments.

50:00 We don't know if he shot them with one of his many, many guns, whether he stabbed them or strangled them to death. In fact, Mark Brown had been known to strangle women during sex in ways that completely violated their consent. One woman later said that she was having otherwise consensual sex with Mark Brown once upon a time until he began squeezing her throat so hard that she couldn't breathe and she began to pass out. She said that she was like hitting at his arms and without the ability to speak or scream. She tried to just plead with him with her eyes for him to release his grip, but he didn't until he had finished. He really could have killed her while having sex with her.

50:42 And I wouldn't put it past Mark Brown to have been getting off on that exact fact that she could die for his sexual gratification by his bare hands. So perhaps that was his MMO with Alex and Leah. Who knows? But there's one final chilling element to this case that was discovered during a search of Mark Brown's electronics. Of course, Leah, Alex, and his partner weren't the only women in his life. He was texting multiple. And it was in his text to an old school friend named Elizabeth that he confided in detail that his soulmate Leah wear had died of suicide and he was heartbroken but now she was at peace.

51:25 700 text messages were exchanged between Mark Brown and Elizabeth where he was making it very clear that his type is vulnerable women. He says, "I only go for drop deadad girls with mental health issues who have at least two kids." Can we talk about his wording there as well? Drop deadad girls. Is the saying not supposed to be like drop deadad gorgeous, drop deadad beautiful? She's, you know, there's another word that's supposed to be on the end. Not just drop dead girls. Did he mean that? Was it a typo? Was it a Freudian slip? I think he maybe meant it. But as the months went on, Mark and Elizabeth were confiding secrets in each other. And Elizabeth had a really tricky home life that Mark pretended to support her through. Mark would confide in Elizabeth as well, telling her that he had a lot weighing heavy on him at the moment. He was so cryptic about everything, but it was pretty damn clear

52:21 what he was talking about. Some bad, horrible [ __ ] had happened, and he was feeling guilty. He wrote one message to her that read, "I'm going to be very careful how I word this. It happened again not very long ago when disposing of something. It's a very unpleasant thing to do. An old oil drum, 5 L of diesel, and hay presto. There's not very much left. It gets hot. Very hot. It glows almost white. The things I have done weigh heavily on my heart, on my head, and my soul. A psychopath with a conscience. It's a joke really. The fact he calls himself a psychopath, so he is admitting that he is sick and depraved, but by following it immediately with the fact that he has a conscience, it seems like he's trying to make himself feel better. Maybe trying to prove that he's not fully truly evil cuz he low-key feels a bit bad for what he's done. He's trying to maybe even make Elizabeth feel bad for him. Like he just made a little

53:23 mistake, not murdered someone. He said to Elizabeth, "I tried to laugh these things off, but it's a very unpleasant thing to do." Laugh it off. And he even goes on to manipulate her, saying, "I've done monstrous things, but I couldn't do anything to you. You deserve better than me. You're amazing." when in reality I think Mark Brown was just lining up Elizabeth, his old school friend, as his next victim. In my opinion, this man was a serial killer in the making. Had he not been caught, he would have killed again and again and again. When the case went to trial in October 2022, Mark Brown suddenly decided to start talking.

54:04 Up until this point, like we said, he'd been all no comment, no comment, no comment to absolutely everything that had been asked of him by police. both when it came to Leah and when it came to Alex. But now he was telling the court a lot more about Alex Morgan. He admitted the fact that she had died at Littlebridge Farm on the day of her disappearance, but he insisted that it was an accident, that it wasn't murder, that according to him, she came over for this escort job. He was leading her into the shipping container, weird [ __ ] little bedroom, but she slipped and fell on a piece of equipment that he had laying around on the floor. She hit her head and began bleeding out. He said, "I had a dead escort on my workshop floor.

54:48 What would it look like? How would I prove that she had had an accident?" He claimed that panic drove him to cover up her death. and he got the idea to make this makeshift incinerator on his property fashioned from an old oil drum in order to burn her remains and get rid of any evidence. So, we have kind of like a halfway confession here. Police don't believe that she died accidentally. They very much believe that Mark Brown murdered her, but of course, he can't deny the evidence of bone fragments on his property. So, he had to confess to at least burning her body. But when it came to Leah wear, when there's absolutely no physical evidence that really ties her and her death and her disappearance to Mark, he decided to admit nothing at all. In fact, he swore to the court that he thought she was still alive somewhere out there. He said that she'd just run off and left him. He even went so far as

55:43 to say that Leah had murdered her own dog before she left. He claimed that he noticed that Lady the Palm had been missing since early April. And then one day he was walking down on the end of his property down by the pond when he saw what looked like lady floating on the top of some branches. So he said that he grabbed this rake to try and pull her out of the water and that was when she came up with a chain around her neck and a 12 kg weight tied to it. He said that he ran straight back into the shipping container bedroom to confront Leah. He said that he told her, "You're [ __ ] sick. You've lost it. I can't cope with this [ __ ] when you're like this. Apparently, Leah just looked at him and said nothing. And so, he just left. He got in his car and drove away and left his girlfriend that had just murdered her dog on his property. But investigators are pretty damn sure that he's lying once again and that instead

56:40 Mark was the one that had left Lady to die or drowned Lady outside chained up after he had killed Lady's owner, Leah. The prosecution spoke about how Mark had been stealing from Leah Wear long after her death with access to her bank accounts. He withdrew money almost daily, sometimes as much as £1,400 in a week, which was the maximum amount, both in cash, some of it even transferred directly to his bank account, as if he wasn't going to get caught. Be for [ __ ] real. Overall, he stole a total of about £12,000, including what he got from transferring her benefits directly into his account.

57:22 The prosecution argued that this was a man without an ounce of remorse in his body, a man that absolutely would kill again if he wasn't locked away from society forever. The jury agreed and they found Mark Brown guilty of both murders without any body, which is a huge deal. Mark was sentenced to a minimum of 49 years in prison, and he was 41 at the time of that sentencing. So, I think it's pretty safe to say that he's not going to be seeing that release day. But, as we end today's episode, I want to bring this back to the two women at the center of this case, Alex and Leah. Alex, a devoted mom, doing everything that she could to build a safer, more secure life for her children. Even in her final days, she was trying to protect them, leaving clues and money, planning ahead just in case the worst did happen. Leah was gentle, caring, deeply devoted to the people and the animals that she loved.

58:20 She deserved kindness, safety, and support when it came to dealing with her mental health issues and everything she was going through. She deserved love and support, not control and isolation and fear. Her life mattered. So did Alex's, but they were stolen by Mark Brown. And that is all we have for today's episode of Outlaw Podcast. Thank you so so much for tuning in. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe, leave a like, leave a comment so that we can continue the conversation. If you're listening on a podcast platform, please rate us five stars. Again, leave a comment. I know that they have comment sections on the podcast platforms these days. And with all that being said, I will see you in the next episode.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "The Women Who Solved Their Own Murders: Little Bridge Farm"?

In order: 0:00 Alexandra Morgan, Little Bridge Farm, Cranbrook, Braxie; 5:00 Little Bridge Farm, Mark Brown; 10:00 Little Bridge Farm, Mark Brown, Braxie; 15:00 Mark Brown; 20:00 Mark Brown, Little Bridge Farm; 25:00 Little Bridge Farm, Mark Brown, Braxie; 30:00 Mark Brown, Leah Wear, National Ugly Mugs; 35:00 Little Bridge Farm, Mark Brown, Leah Wear; 40:00 Mark Brown, Little Bridge Farm, Leah Wear; 45:00 Leah Wear, Mark Brown; 50:00 Mark Brown, Leah Wear; 55:00 Mark Brown, Leah Wear.

What is mentioned in this OUTLORE with Eleanor Neale episode?

9 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Mark Brown, Little Bridge Farm, Alexandra Morgan, Leah Wear, National Ugly Mugs, Cranbrook. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Women Who Solved Their Own Murders: Little Bridge Farm"?

The episode runs 59 min; the transcript is about 10,754 words in 72 timestamped sections.

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