The Disturbed Man Who Broke into Buckingham Palace

hello hello welcome back to another episode of the casual criminalist as always hello there i am your host your casual criminalist we threw casual in the title because criminalists would imply that i actually have any idea what i'm doing i just read scripts that's kind of my thing that's my job i cold read i've never read this before what happens callum a wonderful scriptwriter has written me the script on michael fagan the buckingham palace prowler however i have to say i am vaguely aware of this isn't this a dude who just ra he like two or three times just broke into buckingham palace and was just going through the raw families and the queen i think i don't think he killed anyone he was just a bit of a weirdo and he managed to get do it like several times which is quite amazing i think i made a video on him on one of my other channels where he came up somewhere at some point but today obviously this is the casual criminalist we're going to go way deeper into it thank you callum for putting it together i'm going to read it jen afterwards our wonderful video editor is going to add in some memes some sounds some the soundscapes one of my favorite things about listening to this show afterwards because you know i want to make sure it's good is i just love the the music like i love the kind of background stuff that goes on it's like oh i like that i like that it builds the atmosphere for me i'm a fan of my own show is that weird i feel like you know it's not really my show i just see her and read it callum and gems really do the hard work just show up and read a script let's do it as a somewhat bigoted scot of the independence persuasion one thing i can't wrap my head around is you you're southerners love of the bloody royals wait is callum scottish how am i just learning this now i i don't know where callum lives in japan of all places so yeah i just realized i don't know why callum lives in japan or how i didn't know keller was scottish it's kind of amazing the internet's amazing i don't even remember where i found callum [Music] but uh apparently callum is scottish we just learned that and also i have to say like i don't know after brexit i'm like yeah scottish independence seems inevitable and right if i was scottish i would want this i'd want to be independent and now after brexit i'm like hell yeah sorry hell yeah it's a terrible scottish how does a scottish person talk as a scottish sean connery scottish person i always try to think of people who have accents when i try and do an axes probably why they're so sh it's probably a terrible technique that is not very good at all always throwing the parade singing about them talking about their babies collecting little cups and teaspoons with their faces on them you lot are obsessed yeah i love making fun of the cups and plates that every time there's like a raw wedding or something they make like special plates and cups these you know these big companies and a friend of mine used to run a china shop like uh that would sell all types of china like thousands of different things of china and it'd always be sending me the latest not literally the products but it'd send me like hey check out this new royal plate that people are buying and i'll be like that and it'll be like i know isn't it people buy it though and so naturally you'd expect quite a lot of time and money has been put into protecting those beloved blue bloods from harm right well wrong as it turns out this was once very far from the case as proven by one infamous incident from the summer of 1982. it was then against a backdrop of mounting civil unrest that buckingham palace suffered one of the biggest security breaches in modern history history which could have put the head of the british empire's very life in danger oh no i mean yeah i don't know i'm a bit of a republican to be honest like i don't care about the royal family people are always story there's just why is it such a conversation and also i feel americans might you you might even be more obsessed with our royal family than we are like they're always coming up like there was that oprah interview and it's like oh my god turns out the raw family they're all old and a little bit racist it's like surprise i mean i don't like it it's just like what did you expect they're super old this is the story of how one man with nothing but his wits and a touch of drugged up derangement managed to break into one of the most sacred places in england her royal highnesses bed chamber a rude awakening now after indulging in a bit of light stereotyping in the intro i should add that i've got nothing against her majesty personally the old bird has been through a hell of a lot of her in her tenure as our undisputed god empress almost detecting a bit of sarcasm there callum almost 70 full years of wars political upheaval and very public family issues we're looking at you prince andrew oh my god i can't believe i didn't know this i feel like the worst british person ever but i knew about the epstein and like the prince andrew scandal you know allegedly alleged alleged whatever allegedly's i need to use and i knew about this scandal and all this stuff and i was like man this prince andrew guy he seems a bit rotten doesn't he allegedly i didn't realize he was the queen's son i was like i just assumed he was like you know one of those roles you're like who are they like princess beatrice no idea who she really is isn't she must be like someone's cousin or something like that you know no one really cares unless she gets married prince andrew's a son and he was up to that allegedly that jeffrey epstein oh my god like people were accusing him of being like a people smuggler or like a sex criminal smuggler or whatever you want to call it not me i would never accuse him of that but people were allegedly doing that oh my god you gotta you know you've got to be careful around this thing the royal family powerful you know whatever you want to say they're powerful they have a lot of money even when compared so i was amazed i felt like a terrible british person not knowing that prince andrew was the queen's son which is intense like that's our future king's brother that's our future future king's uncle oh my god even when compared to all that what happened at 7 15 a.m on july the 9th 1982 would undoubtedly prove one of the strangest and most unsettling episodes in her reign i disagree i think finding out her son was hanging out with jeffrey epstein sex criminal was probably more unsettling than a guy breaking into a bed chamber when was she there i don't remember we're going to find out callum's going to tell us the story man this is a wild ride so far our most likely immortal head of state had just turned 56 at the time well into what would be one of the toughest eras of her reign it was a summer morning much like any other the security guard posted to her majesty's door had clocked off as usual at 6am where one of her top footmen took took the corgis out for a walk and an overworked maid was cleaning out some of the 204 bedrooms wow the queen herself was sitting up in bed mulling over what to do this day maybe i'll have my jester dance for scraps of meat maybe i'll bomb some more of those pesky hoggies her queenly musings were rudely interrupted by the creek creaking of door hinges her majesty snapped to attention her view of the door obscured by a velvet curtain drawn around her bed which seconds later was dragged to the side to reveal some guy some guy standing there without any shoes and blood dripping from one hand in that same hand was a shiv made of glass queenie froze and then exclaimed in the poshest voice to magical what are you doing here i can't believe this actually happens can you imagine like i imagine like the american head of state like the president's it's like the idea that you could get anywhere close to that dude although several of them have been assassinated um i'm sure kings have been assassinated and stuff in british history i can't name any of them because i don't know we don't study it and i don't care um but it's like that this is like the secret service the guy basically rolls around in a bomb-proof cage the beast that car made a video about it on one of my channels wild they keep his blood in the boot in case he needs like an emergency blood transfusion crazy i mean allegedly it's all like this is what we speculate in there maybe this information's been released but it's not been confirmed or denied but that's so cool the palace prowler origins so what was he doing there who was this wild-eyed maniac that now had one of the most powerful people in the world at his mercy well i really meant it when i described him as just some guy he wasn't some kgb agent or an ira hit man far from it his name was michael fagan and he was an out-of-work painter decorator from islington in london the oldest child of a working-class family the 30 year old was a father of four recently separated from his wife frustrated and at a loss had taken to wandering around the streets of the capitol at night with a can of lager in hand searching for a sense of purpose it's like yeah that's where i find my purpose wandering around london getting drunk in the street a bobby comes up what are you doing out here looking for purpose my friends looking for purpose please don't arrest me one such night he just happened to wander down to the city of westminster pass the residence of the windsor family it was still early in the morning and the area around buckingham palace was empty it would be several hours yet before the crowds of tourists arrive to prod those guards in the big daft hats michael had the street all to himself by the way those guys in the hats uh the queen's guard i think they're called is that right oh my god i sometimes i'm such a terrible british person i really am uh the queen's guards they they don't have to like remain perfectly still they could like totally leave or tell you to do stuff or whatever um they don't have to be perfectly still they generally are but they can um they can leave like there's a there's a video of some woman going up and like making faces and the guy just fully snaps to attention and just wanders off somewhere else it's like okay don't be next to the queen guards queen's guards he looked up at the splendor of the sprawling palace in the early light of dawn or 775 rooms of great british glory and a bold notion came to him bet i could climb that moments later he was clambering over the raw-time perimeter fence completely unseen he climbed up 14 feet to the top of the fence heaved himself over the barbed wire on top and swaggered across the palace lawn with the strength and bravado that only cheap tesco lager could give he then scrambled over 70 feet up a drainpipe to an open window on the upper floors unfortunately said window led to the bedroom of a chambermaid who screamed as she saw his charming face pop up over a windowsill thinking on his feet fagin scrambled through the window while the maid ran for help and found a hiding spot in one of the rooms adjacent by the time they arrived our man was successfully concealed in the chambermaid like a video game npc with terrible eye ai declared hmm i must have been imagining things oh my god it does sound like one of those old james bond games i love those like original playstation james bond games you know not gold and i but like uh whatever came after that like slightly later than that and you'd be playing the missions and it'd be like you'd be like blasting away you'd kill like 50 guards and then you'd be quiet for a little bit and hide behind like at a wall and be like i guess i was imagining things and carrying i was like what imagining 50 of your friends die mate is that okay the police chalked her sighting up to an over about active imagination on account of the fact that she had intended to say it several nights before as i often feel compelled to say i'm not making this up what are you up to chambermaid why are you going to a seance is this thing is this something people actually do i know they do but is it is like come on let's not do that by the way i'll use this opportunity to plug another show that i do called decoding the unknown which is uh basically where i make tons of fun out of all that sort of stuff decoding the unknown it's on uh apple podcast wherever you get your podcasts also youtube and uh what have we discussed we've discussed so many things whenever it's like ghosts or aliens or you know conspiracy theories that are i mean obviously some conspiracy theories are true most aren't and we look at the ones which are most ridiculous it's a fun show it's like this similar format afterwards fagin in his jeans and lager stained sweatshirt was able to wander through the palace unrestricted he'd later tell a courtroom i walked straight in i was surprised i wasn't captured straight away i could have been a rapist or something i knew i could break the security system because it was so weak the amazing thing was he was right fagin was able to swagger around the halls with impunity right into some of the most sensitive areas of the palace after a few minutes of wandering around the literal home of the british royal family he happened across a corridor with the names of royal princes and princesses on the door prince andrews don't go in there it's nasty allegedly and for replacement to house royalty it was pretty underwhelming fagan said the palace was very ordinary with dusty decorations and squeaky floorboards i don't think they spent too much on decoration bit embarrassing for the queen that an unemployed bloke from islington thought her house was a it's so true that's like she'll be in court have that stricken from the record your honor as he wandered past the bedrooms at some of the most powerful roles in britain and i'll tell you if i know who they are princess anne no prince charles yes princess diana wait oh this is 1982. of course we're back in the day we're back back in the day um so yeah it'd be natural i don't know these people i do know princess diana though yes apparently raw couples sleep in separate bedrooms at least charles and diana did that's for shizzle he started to wonder how the hell he had been caught how hell he hadn't been caught yet no alarms no cameras no armed bodyguards you'd come up against stronger security at the average council estate but for the moment he had bigger concerns than that i found room saying diana's room charles's room they all had names on them but i couldn't find a door which said wc all those bedrooms but no toilet in sight an old mikey had been hitting the lager pretty heavily all night the situation was getting urgent not wanting to sully the palace by pissing on the dusty old floor he searched around frantically for a distreet discreet and dignified place to relieve himself he failed surely it's buckingham palace aren't there going to be vases filled with like vases phases phases bars bars i'm from the south it's vases uh there's gonna be like bars is filled with like fancy flowers and can't you just piss in one of those i would all i found was some bins with corgi food written on them this is like it's almost like if you were writing a fictional account at buckingham palace i was breaking my neck to go to the toilet what do i do pee on the carpet so i had to pee in the corgi food surely there's got to be some kind of treason these dogs must have had some kind of noble title or something that makes it illegal to piss on their breakfast and i love the way he makes it sound like the only reason reasonable logical decision too i couldn't find the toilet so i had to piss in the dog food that's the kind of logic that only makes sense the most hammered guy at the house party yeah and it'd be defending it you know that dude everyone knows him and he'd be pissing in the dog food and be like no i had to what other choice did i have what other choice come on and everyone's like mate you had loads of truck there were plenty of options it's like i had a friend we went to we went to chernobyl we were and we were taking a tour around that town next to chernobyl and he had to take it and we just don't see him in the tour group like a good 20 minutes and i mean this is a tour group where they're like very specifically stay on the path don't wander off the path there's pockets of radiation and my mate just goes off and he takes it in the woods it's like dude you couldn't hold it there was no other option is that man i think we just ate something bad last night none of us were none of us had any other troubles i just think he wanted to take it in the woods at chernobyl to be honest why are we saying this i mean oh yeah yeah yeah but he's also not necessarily that guy he's not that classic guy but this is that was his story that made him that guy wow that was a tangent anyway after dealing with his most media problem fagin turned his mind to what to do next he didn't want to disturb any slumbering royals but he was curious to have a peek behind some of these doors picking one of them for a look he wandered into the office of the royal secretary where a large pile of gifts sat on top of the desk as it turned out it broken in just two weeks before the birth of future king of england prince william for our non-british listeners that's the taller gorky one not the ginger one with the filmstar wife among the gifts for the baby boy and his parents was a bottle of wine for dad to be prince charles with the adrenaline starting to dull his buzz michael thought to himself i'll have that i bet it was nice wine as well i don't think prince charles gets sent much not nice wine he searched around for a corkscrew but to no avail so he just pushed the cork inside and switched straight from the bottle ugh it's probably like thousands of pounds worth of wine to his disappointment their taste in wine was as poor as their taste in decor it was a cheap californian he later told the independent oh bullsh i just this guy's like playing it up because it makes a good story right no one sends prince charles cheap californian wine bottle in hand lord mike the mad lad continued his adventure into what he called the throne a throne room with three gilded chairs laid out in a row in front of him so he did what every one of us would do in that situation i sat on the thrones like goldilocks and the three bears sat on a literal throne producing millions of pounds worth of royal art hanging on the walls sipping on cheap wine and munching on tidbits from the royal cheese stash the intruder started to think right this get a bit silly now imagine waltzing through the white house in the early morning drinking ronald reagan's vodka and playing around with a big red russian on his desk it just wouldn't happen mate i would just like go go out the way i came in and maybe come back another night and enjoy some more people would be like did someone drink this wine secretary did you drink the wine he's like no i know where the bottle thing is i would have pushed it in i drank the wine because i was waiting for someone to come i couldn't find anyone sold it and i went out and went home no he actually met i don't remember like i'm vaguely familiar with the story as i said at the beginning from covering it somewhere else at some point but wait i can't believe he just actually managed to leave i thought he must have got arrested did some time and then came back and did it again later he was actively trying to hand himself over but even then he couldn't find anyone to report himself to so several hours into his illegal adventure in the royal palace have amused fake and just retraced his steps back to the open window slid down the drainpipe hopped back over the fence and went home to rest you'd wake up and be like did that really happen last night how drunk was i did i break into buckingham palace and drink prince charles's wine holy sh i can't believe i can never tell anyone about this because obviously the first rule of casual criminalism you do not talk about your crimes actually the first rule is don't write down your crimes but close second is uh don't tell other people about your crimes he had come from and gone from the palace completely unhinted the only sign of his visit was an empty bottle of wine left on the corridor floor i'm assuming one of the serfs got a few lashings for that you know what you'll not have noticed though on his visit he never met the queen where was the part of the story was the glo with the glass shiv and the blood well that dramatic little episode is still coming up see the michael fagan had maxed out his stealth stats or the security at buckingham palace in the 1980s was among the absolute worst in the world because he was actually able to make it back inside multiple times it's actually incredible that little wine and cheese party i just described was only the first of two entries and if it left that nobody would have ever known anything of it the name of michael fagan would be absent from the history books and it would have spent the rest of his days desperately trying to convince people of his wild story down the pub this sounds like it's like one of those bill murray things that you hear about apparently bill murray just would go up to people in i feel like it was central park just behind them cover their eyes like you know like just got behind people random random stranger in central park cover their eyes from behind and the person would be like whoa whoa what's going on you turn around it's bill murray and uh all bill murray will say no one's ever going to believe you just walk off and i'd be like bill murray that's kind of creepy but also legend but as things turned out he wasn't able to stay away and his story would soon be planted on the front page of every newspaper in the land yeah why would you if you got away with it twice and you're just like yeah yeah i just gotta cruise along for a third time especially when you're kind of trying to get caught you'll be like i might as well just push it to the max why not oh is there really gonna be that much trouble i mean sure breaking and entering you're not gonna go to prison for a very long time although wait he's got a bloody shiv in his hand so maybe that's gonna lead to more time in jail if i remember it rightly though he doesn't go away for very long if at all maybe i'm wrong on that it's been a while spoiler alert simon how about you don't ruin the video for everyone else just as you try and remember what happened a royal appointment that first break-in i just described happened on june the 7th 1982 and it signaled the start of a very busy summer for fagan just three days after chugging down cheap royal wine at the palace he continued on with his complete mental breakdown in spectacular fashion he nicked a car in islington in an attempt to drive up to stonehenge and track down his estranged wife i hope because she lives somewhere near stonehenge rather than like he's just gonna go to stonehenge he's gonna give him some answers you know the mystical stones his mission was unsuccessful and it only landed him a spot in brixton jail for the next three weeks quite the contrast to a royal palace i'll bet while on the inside fagan cast his mind back to the palace and he started to wonder what other discoveries might lie behind all those hundreds of closed doors what else might he be able to get away with in his own words i went back because i thought that's naughty that's naughty that i can walk around there very naughty indeed michael call it curiosity call it a full blown mental unwinding call it whatever you want whatever the case michael fagan was dead set on getting into the palace again and so when his family came to pick him up or free man on bail from brixton jail he set his mind on returning when his family came to pick him up at the prison gates and asked what he wanted to do with his freedom after three weeks locked up he told them he was going to visit his girlfriend elizabeth's regina regina is i don't know why but it's what we call the queen like so in all british legal cases it's you know it would be so and so and or v versus like but said and and are r stands for regina because in the uk when you go to court uh assume it's a criminal case not not a civil case it's you versus the queen you and regina the second break-in was if you could imagine it more ridiculous than the first this time fagin approached the palace a little later about 6 45 am on july the 9th his plan should have fallen apart right away when a policeman street patrol spotted a disheveled drunken bloke scrambling up the palace fence the officer radioed it into the palace police and well then he just got on with his day not my palace not my problem apparently everybody else was as lazy fair about drunk men wandering the grounds as he was because nobody at the palace followed up on the reports not even when michael fagan once again strolled across the palace lawn and hauled himself up a drainpipe not even when he tumbled through an unlocked window to the gallery of the royal stamp collection triggering it triggering an alarm as he fell to the floor the guards on duty instantly assumed it must have been a false alarm and switched it off guys this is what happens in a bad movie not in real life these were no ordinary stamps either lizzy's stamps are estimated to be worth a combined 100 million dollars no way that's crazy how much is the queen worth like is she a billionaire i mean i know these net worth sites are kind of bullsh but maybe they've got an idea for the queen 600 million 600 million dollars okay roughly um which makes a very poor compared to some other royal families i met the uh the prince of liechtenstein who's like worth billions and that's a tiny country come on queen get it together yeah so wait if her stamp collection's worth 100 million she's got a sixth of her net worth in stamps that seems like a not very balanced portfolio to be honest doesn't it fagin could have made off with a fortune in little sticky pictures of stuff but his mission wasn't about theft he tried doors out of the stamp museum and found them all locked so instead he climbed out the window and continued up the drainpipe all the way to the palace roof why is the window to the stamp collection unlocked just lock it keep it locked it doesn't need fresh air it's a stamp collection there he decided to take off his sandals and socks which is the part of the story that i can find absolutely no explanation for which means it's the one thing i'm obsessing over most after inexplicably and continuing on barefoot he strolled across the roof tiles to an open window which led to the office of sir peter ashmore ex-vice admiral and master of the household you know you're pretty gangster when it's like the person who runs your household who i assume like you know keeps everything in order is a previous vice admiral and a knight it's like if i had someone run a household they'd probably just be like i don't know doing my laundry stuff like that you know like a housekeeper they wouldn't be a vice admiral although i imagine this dude's not really doing any laundry the staff of bakken and buckingham palace is probably quite extensive isn't it it's not like he's he's probably he's probably it's like being the boss of a company or something thankfully for fagin the master wasn't in the moment so it was free to pot around his room as long as he pleased while simple curiosity might have been what inspired him to go back fagan was also wrestling some deeper stuff at the time in the ex-admiral's office some darker ideas began to creep into his mind yes darker than pissing in dog food fagan spotted a glass ashtray on the desk and decided to smash it on the floor cutting his hand in the process crime just got more severe if you breaking in and not really doing anything and don't really have the intention to do anything different if you break in and do something it becomes burglary right it's been a long time since i studied this stuff but i know it makes it a more serious crime like maybe it went from trespassing to burglary which is like big difference he grabbed the thickest sharpest beast and stepped out into the corridor dead set on finding the bedroom of her majesty obviously fagan had no idea where in the palace to find the queen's bedroom but he knew he probably had as much time as he needed quote i was walking barefoot through the palace he'd lost his shoes on the roof as the and there was a woman doing the hoovering she didn't say anything just looked at me and must have thought i was part of the palace staff this is incredible oh yeah that's just the shoeless guy who comes in to fix the plumbing with a bloody shard of glass again someone really has to fix the ai on these then pcs without a minimap to help him this is very very nice callum very nice fagin had to devise his own navigation system using the paintings on the walls i'm assuming by that he meant the fancier the paintings the closer to the queen's quarters he was it really does feel like he's playing a game doesn't it along the way managed to trip yet another intruder alarm which was promptly deactivated by the guards after about 15 minutes of searching he found the room he was looking for partly down to dumb luck there are 700 rooms in the palace and the first one i went in was her bedroom he said even though the room was labeled as such fagan couldn't quite believe that such a normal little bedroom would house the most powerful person in the country the nondescript brown door in no way for his expectations of a royal bedroom no jewels or gilded frame the queen's bedroom fagin not donald trump's he carefully turned the handle and eased himself inside the room was small far too small for a monarchy thought there was definitely something with someone in there a curtain covered the bed but he could see the silhouette of someone lounging back against the pillows behind it again he thought it was too small for a monarch surely the queen was taller than that spoiler our minuscule monarch is a little over five three wow the queen is short i never really thought about that yeah she does seem short doesn't she how about that probably shrinking as well she's really old he crept over slowly so as not to wake whoever was sleeping there he thought about turning back and sliding out the door again but curious he got the better of him bagan shifted the curtain to the side to take a peek to his surprise it was in fact the queen and ever even more to his surprise she wasn't sleeping as stunned lizzy was sat bolt upright and looked the trespasser right in the eye the two of them were just as startled as each other michael fagan stood there with no shoes and blood dripping from his hand and the queen was sitting on the bed in a nightgown right where we left them at the beginning of the story now about that shot a shout of glass was michael fagan planning on assassinating the queen in the style of a prison vendetta not quite the shiv was meant for himself being in quite the dark place emotionally fagin planned on slashing his own wrists in front of her majesty but when the moment arrived that notion evaporated he was stuck like a deer in the headlights michael fagan you weirdo so what am i gonna do i'm gonna kill myself in front of the queen because it's like people who jump in front of cars or uh you know involve or like in front of trains on the tube i'm like why why'd you have to ruin someone else's day or month or year or potentially life that's gonna be some ptsd right there why'd you have to do that to someone else like don't kill yourself for one but then don't make someone else's life a misery those poor bloody tube drivers who should be replaced by machines but anyway they're not having a good time like just drop off a building or something like that again i don't want to say like number one don't kill yourself but look don't involve other people in it after a few seconds her majesty blurted out what are you doing here which is a reasonable question when anyone breaks into your bedroom roll or not fagin was dumbstruck the queen tried pressing the emergency bell by her bed but her police guard on the door had clocked off at 6am as per established protocol according to lizzie's own account she even tried calling the palace police on the phone but since she maintained her usual calm and collected demeanor they never treated it with much urgency seriously at this point the ira must have been kicking themselves that they never had this idea first it's almost as if her protectors wanted something terrible to happen to her it is amazing it is absolutely amazing that this was possible amazing with no help immediately available queen elizabeth ii then as fagan later explained went past me and ran out of the room her little bare feet running across the floor that left our goldilocks alone in the queen's bedroom with a few spare moments to once again digest how seemingly normal and uninspiring royal life was quote she never had a foreposter bed and she's got a little thing where she does her teas and coffees just in case you'd ever wondered about these things so like in a little hotel it's so weird you're the queen just be like bring me coffee at least this time michael fagan wouldn't have to search for someone to turn himself into the queen had finally managed to someone some help and they were on their way back to apprehend the intruder had this story unfolded over the other side of the atlantic a dozen secret service agents would have swarmed into the room and blasted a couple hundred rounds into our kindly drunk yeah he would have been destroyed it absolutely destroyed but in britain we do things a little less cinematic than that more downton abbey than white house down yes jolly good old chap without a police guard the queen's only line of defense against killers and kidnappers was a polite manservant and a few fat little welsh dogs as she ran down the corridor elizabeth's headfoot mum was just returning from walking the corgis she took the dogs off his hands and sent him in to deal with fagin there's a man in there go deal with him what was his name they don't say i'm gonna imagine his name is james go in there and deal with them james as our intruder tells it then a foot man comes in and goes cough canal mate looks like you need a drink surely this vegan guy's making someone get up i know he's probably under oath in court and this is all like testimony but this feels it honestly does feel made up doesn't it i feel like if callum had written this for me and it was april like coming up on april and it'd be like simon by the way that one i wrote for you is just completely made up i'd be like well well played callum you forced me into you know an april fool's prank this gen genuinely feels as if it could be that one i mean i also know because i talked about it before in another video that it's real but it feels like it doesn't it it does feel like it [Music] the aftermath okay i feel like the aftermath section is beginning like two thirds of the way through the script today that footman could teach a master class on de-escalation offer a drunk guy or whiskey and a booyah best mate and i'm about to tell you he did get that drink quote his name was paul weibu which is funny name for someone offering you a drink in it he took me to the queen's pantry across the landing where i presume she cooks her baked beans and toasts and whatever and takes a bottle of famous grouse i was shocked that's the best you got that's what the queen's bedroom has next to it famous grouse really it's like ten quid a bottle i imagine if we take it out oh he's a nice spot to look like 20 year old laphroaig no no no famous grouse maybe it was a cheap californian although this is from his his mouth so we never know another pair of devastating blows to the royals that the unemployed bloke from islington thought their bedrooms and whiskey were a bit as well i is famous grouse though is a bit after a few more swigs of grouse and a chat with a foot man two comically inept palace officials officers arrived to carry out the formalities i don't think they'd arrested anyone for years when one pulled out his notebook the other was so relieved that he had it i think they were just old boys who stood on the gate and let cars in it was a cushy retirement job one of the two old bobbies remembers how to use handcuffs and they took fagan into custody and led him off the premises he never did get to say goodbye to old lizzy once he was at the police station that's when some the somewhat confusing part began so you'd expect that breaking the queen's bedroom with a stabbing implement would be a pretty serious offense i don't think so he's got no intent he's got intent to harm himself which is an intent to harm her intent to harm someone else i think his burglary is probably the crime here i'm not sure though however when the cops began to try to figure out what to charge michael fagan with later that morning they concluded that he hadn't actually committed any criminal offenses at all rather than breaking and entering his little excursion legally fell under the less severe charge of trespassing at the time this was only a civil offence so fagan was never actually charged with a crime wait trespassing is not a civil offense anymore that's it because those those famous signs you know saying trespassers will be prosecuted and it's like it's impossible or apparently it's maybe now a crime but because it's like trespassing is not a crime it's a civil offense so it's like you could say trespassers will be sued but it has like less of a less of a ring to it doesn't it at least in britain i don't know how this works anywhere else and apparently it might not be a crime because callum says at the time fascinating i'm not going to look it up because i don't care that much i'm not planning on doing any trespassing well i lied a little bit after confessing to the first break-in and appearing at the old bailey they did actually charge him with theft for drinking prince charles's wine which seems extremely petty compared to what i was expecting in the end even that charge was dropped when michael was admitted for long overdue psychiatric evaluation end up spending three months in a secure mental health facility see i thought but maybe because he didn't break in he just i thought if you trespassed and then broke something that was burglary but i must be getting something wrong while michael was working through his mental breakdown in a more controlled and secure manner the media was doing the opposite absolutely losing their minds over his story michael was dubbed the palace prowler and the public couldn't quite agree on whether he was a dangerous traitor or an absolute legend he's not a dangerous traitor other than being dangerous to himself he's just a bit of a mad lad he's not he's also not an absolute legend he's a bit of a legend there's definitely legendary elements to his tale i mean and you have to ask me i am the arbiter of legendaryness so that's where i'll say bit of a legend not absolute legend just a bit of a legend his own father reportedly suffered a heart attack from the stress of being hounded by the media yeah but the media it's not like you know you're not getting prince you're not getting hounded by the media in the way that prince andrew gets hounded by the media you're handled by the media being like tell us about your absolute crazy legend son after his release fagin was bombarded with interview requests from the tabloids who were desperate for all the sordid details of his visit which royal couples slept in different beds what kind of nightie did her majesty wear the answer was i tried to keep it sterile and she said she was wearing a liberty print 90 down to her knees even though i didn't notice what it was i don't know what a liberty print 90 is and what does he mean by keeping it sterile that's the most confusing quote i've read ever while the papers were getting to the heart of the really important questions others were concerned with more frivolous things like how could some random guy have casually broken into the home of the british monarchy twice and gotten within beat of one of the most powerful people in the world the answer as you already know is incompetency despite multiple sightings and multiple alarms nobody could really be bothered following up on any of it apparently they were all under the impression it was god's job to save the queen which let all of them off the hook as a reference to our national anthem god save the queen clever callum clever then home secretary william whitelaw even offered to resign over the affair but the queen told him there was no need the same probably can't be said for some of the palace police officers although history doesn't spare a footnote for what became of them i imagine a few of them are still chained up in the palace dungeons that this dare is going to make a dungeon jake they're like at the tower of london their heads chopped off while no doubt some lost careers over this fast michael fagan actually gained one he enjoyed several years as fame as the guy who broke into the palace which is enough to fill about half a decade of your schedule with media appearances in 1983 even send vocals on a cover version of the sex pistols god save the queen by punk outfit the uh bollock brothers creatively named they are a punk outfit so uh it's the sex pistols i mean jesus when listening to mr fagan's version of that anti-establishment classic i couldn't help noticing that they'd toned down the lyrics a bit it's kind of like a kid's bop version of the original for example when johnny rotten sings god save the queen she's not a human being a man fagin mutters [Music] i wouldn't say he's watered them down or what did he say to a kid's bop uh that's that's kind of fair yeah he's completely changed the meaning of the song the sex pistols you know i guess they're conspiracy theorists they think the queen's a lizard that's such a crazy one there's so many crazy conspiracy theories and uh okay did i mention it already am i plugging the same show twice in one episode but decoded the unknown my podcast we talk about all sorts of stuff like that kind of defeats the whole punk thing but it seems like fagan just couldn't bring himself to say such horrible things about his good pal lizzie by all accounts he was actually quite a big fan of the royals and never intended to do them any harm in the end his image is a lovable naive drunk it helped dispel a lot of the hate that came his way in the media no you can't hate this guy he's just a bit of a legend he's just having a laugh why would anyone hate him his own mother told the papers shortly after his arrest he thinks so much of the queen i can imagine him just wanting to simply talk and say hello and discuss his problems his father added i think he would have put the queen at ease straight away he could smooth talk anyone it does seem he does seem very like cool doesn't he he i mean he spun this into him being a legend somehow how sweet i mean if we can look past the whole ashtray suicide attempt thing and quite importantly after a mistaken report in the new york times shortly after the security breach this basically became the accepted version of events papers reported that fagin and the queen chatted about life while she waited for help to arrive you're actually more likely to find that twisted version of events online than our one lifted straight from the horse's mouth wow okay yeah i feel like the video i made previously we also got the facts right i had not had them chat about life i feel like i'm correct on that i like to think i'm correct on that hopefully fingers crossed someone's probably dug it out or pointed at the comments back boy you think you're so smart you're not so smart i don't give which is why we know fagin there wasn't there for royal therapy in fact when quizzed on his motivations the uh 30 years later during a 2012 interview the independent uh with the independent he revealed a little detail that paints the whole thing in an even more mental light the reason he thought breaking into buckingham palace would be a good idea was drugs copious amounts of lovely lovely drugs see about five months before the incident michael had fried his head with a massive dose of magic mushroom soup quote i forgot you're only supposed to take a little handful two years later i was still coming down i was high on mushrooms for a long long time the prophecy is true don't do drugs kids i bet at the start all right i mean it's your decision but don't don't take insane amounts of magic mushrooms i bet at the start of this episode you thought this was about an actual assassination attempt or something nah man he was just off his face on shrooms which i admit probably means he is the most the most reliable narrator some details of the story drift but drift between retellings but i'll stand by his version of events nonetheless after all the man deserves a certain level of respect no matter what mad stuff any of you have done in a while i bet it's nowhere near breaking into buckingham palace level that's some historic tier stuff yes it is callum and i fully agree and that absolutely feels like the end of the episode except it's not because there are several more pages to go so let's do it where is he now the tale of fagin's royal connection party pretty much ends there however the epilogue to his story is every bit as entertaining the palace prowler's semi-permanent trip wore off at about the same time as his fame once his name had become little more than a pub quiz trivia question newspaper appearances were limited to key anniversaries at the break-in or the few other times he found himself in legal trouble such as the time in 1984 when he served a three-month suspended sentence for assaulting a policeman at a cafe in fishgard wales or three years later when a woman reported him running around on a patch of waste grounds near a london reservoir with no trousers and a huge erection say what you'd like the man has lived in fagan's defense what are you doing running around a reservoir with a massive erection michael son damn in fagan's defense he argues that the second one was a misunderstanding he says he was smoking weed and fishing with his mates and took off his trousers to retrieve a net from the water as for the erection accusations he pleads full flucidity saying this woman can't have been from this planet her husband must be like that and he holds up her thumb and forefinger a tiny distance apart innocent misunderstanding helps the best of us that sounds like a tale that your lawyer spins because i mean honestly it just sounds like a meth adventure doesn't it like you're just on meth just be like ah sorry i wasn't fishing with my mates i was just on meth it's a hell of a drug isn't it innocent misunderstanding happens to the best of us and from what i can tell it was cleared up without any criminal conviction however the same can't be said of his 1997 brush with the law that year michael and his ex-wife yes they reunited years after his royal break-ins were arrested along with their son for dealing heroin holy it's like what are you doing yeah i'm dealing hero with my ex-wife and son don't do that don't do don't deal drugs with your family we'll add that to the list of rules don't involve your family in your crimes if you want to deal heroin do it yourself or just don't don't deal heroin okay he claims some of his customers were important people one was a company director the son of a lord they were all business people and they liked coming to me definitely another story in there mr fagan if bernie chance you're listening i'd be honored to write your tele biography someday that sounds like a legal minefield though callum to be honest after the judge read out his four-year sentence for conspiracy conspiracy to supply fagan smiled him from the dock and said have a nice christmas that was the last time our drugged up anti-hero was ever sent behind bars his life after release has been relatively quiet still living in london and dishing out the odd interview to the papers every now and then his most recent was in 2020 with emily duggan from the independent who met him in his natural environment sitting in a weather spoons brilliant where the spoons are for our internationalists is a very cheap pub it's like they're all very large they're all very the same very popular with students i drank there a lot as a student they have a ridiculously large selection of beers which is really nice and i think about it now and i'm like yeah i've got to wear this they have tons of stuff the food is rubbish though which is unfortunate but there's tons of good beer and beers to choose from so that's a that's the thing about the weather spoons but they are a bit rough and they're cheap did i mention they're very cheap sitting in a weather spoon's pub sporting sock sandals and an oversized parker and a winter hat with earflaps a contender for the title of britain's most embarrassing grandpa good to see the then 72 year old when was this is he still alive 2020 oh yeah he's definitely still alive i mean he's like 73 now uh 72 year old back up on his feet after a double whammy of a heart attack and covered 19. he's doing well thanks to his kids grandkids and a new partner of 17 years so new partner 17 years okay after seeing the way the chirpy pensioner sprang up and down on his seat duggan asked him if he was still doing drugs well into his old age he replied with a quick sniff and a cheeky grin sounds like the old boy might have one last run at the palace left in him for old time's sake wrap up and that brings us to the end of today's episode a sensational security breach that could have been a hell of a lot bloodier and had another intruder got there first a tale of one man single-minded drugged up noble mission to potter around a palace and a crime of the century which in the end turned out to not really be a crime at all wait wait wait did we just make a casual criminalist video which doesn't have a crime in it i mean other than his later crime of dealing heroin with his family that's amazing i like it he'll probably get less views because every time i put like the cannibalist murderous disappearance of insert young woman's name here it's like 200 000 views baby well with this it's like way less if the story of michael fagan has inspired you at home to do a little bit of drunken trespassing at buckingham palace or another cultural site of your choosing please be aware that we live in a very different era now you'll almost definitely get shot first of all it's now criminal offense to hop that fence and second the powers that be finally implemented some stricter measures to him to protect the queen from knife-wielding intruders in the mid-80s because unsurprisingly fagin wasn't the only one in that era he was just the most famous the year before he got inside a couple of german tourists topped the fence thinking it led to hyde park two months later a young man was found wandering the grounds and taken in for psychiatric care then the same year as fagan a 25 year old guy flashed a knife in his coat pocket to scare off a couple of guards and then strolled inside oh my god rubbish guards the way michael fagan sees it he did the royal household a favor by giving them their biggest scare of all and highlighting how lacked their protocols were he certainly did i'd say that's absolutely legit criticism who knows how differently british history might have gone down if it weren't for this quirky little episode if you're still determined to give it a go yourself which we do not condone you'll need a lot more than just a couple of cans of lager and a pair of brass balls buckingham palace security have added a couple of motion sensor beams extra barriers personal alarm systems cctv and robot butlers with gatling guns built into their arms citation needed okay so that last one's definitely not true but it would be awesome so in a very roundabout way perhaps all the royalists in britain have this one drugged up trespasser thing for safeguarding their beloved monarch superhuman longevity and long may it continue fagin told the independent last year quote i hope she lives to be a hundred if she does i'll send her a 100th birthday telegram we hope the same for you mr fagan god save our palace prowler dismember dependencies number one if you'll prefer a horribly inaccurate sentimental version of this mad story look no further than the netflix drama the crown in season 4 of the sugar-coated royal biopic series they tell the story of how michael fagan incensed with the injustices of thatcher's britain resolved to take his complaint to the very top and at a heartfelt 10 minute conversation with lizzy about hungry kids and human dignity not a single mention of magic mushrooms in the whole thing is it interesting in our story why'd you have to make it extra hollywood fagan himself called it a lot of rubbish and of the actor tombrook who played him i'm actually better looking and he seems totally charmless number two there's one last loot loose entertainer before we finish what happened to the sandals but they slot there on the roof as a reminder of that fateful day no in fact two years after the break in fagan received a package from the palace staff containing the discard sandals and socks freshly laundered and pressed happy endings all around is that true i did just throw it away it's kind of amazing good for you buckingham palace staff this has been an episode of the casual criminalist as always i sure hope you liked it even though there wasn't really any crime in this one other than as i said dealing heroin with your family which well that's a crime can't believe it got three years in prison for that for dealing heroin i thought that was kind of like a 20-year sort of thing in america be like they'd given him the bloody chair uh thank you so much for watching or listening if you are watching make sure you've liked this video apparently the dislike button doesn't do anything anymore so uh that's brilliant you can't dislike it which i guess is good for me so smash that like button uh subscribe if you're on podcast please leave me a review that would be amazing apparently it makes this podcast do better in charts and stuff which gets in front of more people which is nice i like that it warms my heart and thank you for listening or watching and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 146,874

Keywords: true crime

Id: dKa9tEVq1Dg

Length: 49min 7sec (2947 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021