Inhalt

Copyright

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

References

CHAPTER ONE

The canals were vital in establishing Manchester as an important and vibrant industrial city. They were used to transport building materials and coal and became a vital artery for the city's commerce and lifeblood. Those canals are still there of course but we now largely live in what you might describe as a de-industrial age. Manchester, like many cities in Britain, was forced to change and adjust to these new circumstances as best it could.

Many waterside areas in Manchester have been redeveloped but there are still many backstreet canals which serve as a link between the old industrial past and the modern age. They evoke a time when industry began to fade and wither and the canals were neglected. A visit to some of these canals is like a red brick Victorian trip back in time. Only the ubiquitous graffiti plastered over the tunnels, walls, and buildings of the canal zones betray the modern era.

Many people walk past these canals in their day to day working lives and at night when they go into town to drink or eat or watch a film at the cinema. If you live or work in central Manchester then it would be impossible for you not to have walked past a canal in your daily life. In recent years a ghoulish local legend which revolves around these canals has begun to flourish and seems unlikely to ever go away. The legend gains traction each time there is a new death in one of the many canals in the city.

The legend concerns a shadowy serial killer who is sometimes called Jack the Dipper or Jack the Dripper but is more commonly known as The Manchester Canal Pusher. The shortened version is used most commonly. In true crime circles (or true crime circles relating to Manchester at least) the killer is simply known as The Pusher. If even half of the deaths attributed to the pusher are real then we are looking at one of the most prolific serial killers in history.

However, establishing anything at all is complex in this case. The most obvious problem is that the existence of the 'pusher' has never been proven. That does not though necessarily mean that the killer doesn't exist. True crime history is full of cases where the police refused to accept the possibility that a serial killer was responsible for a suspicious spate of deaths but were proven completely wrong when a serial killer DID emerge as the culprit. Those who believe in the existence of the canal pusher would argue that the Manchester police are making the same mistake.

In short, the Manchester canal pusher is an alleged serial killer said to be active modern day Manchester. The killer in question, as his name would obviously suggest, is alleged to randomly push people into the murky waters of one of the many canals in the city's waterways. The killer strikes at night when there are less people around and he (the few eyewitness survivors of this alleged killer have all said it was a man who pushed them into the water) can hide under cover of darkness. The pusher targets lone individuals and the statistics suggest that - should he exist - young men are his favoured victims.

This is all rather alarming and worrying - not least for the people who live or work in Manchester in close proximity to the canals. But is this story fact or fiction? The existence of the pusher has never been verified and the police in Manchester tend to roll their eyes whenever this alleged phantom is mentioned. The official police line is that they simply don't believe the canal pusher exists. But is this misdirection? As we shall see, some would contend that the police know more about this case than they have ever been willing to divulge.

As for the existence of the canal killer, on that opinion tends to be divided - even in Manchester. There are plenty who think the pusher is little more than a modern urban myth. Others though would contend that the deaths in Manchester canals of recent times can not all be readily explained away as tragic and unfortunate accidents. Where is the real truth? Does it lay on one side or the other? Or is the truth somewhere in the middle ground? The basic legend goes that this mysterious canal pusher (who has naturally never been identified) has pushed dozens of people into Manchester canals and a large number of these people then died as a consequence.

The canals in Manchester are surprisingly deep in places once you get out in the middle, freezing cold at the best times (let alone alone the winter - when they are ABSOLUTELY perishing and likely to contain ice), and don't always have spots where you can easily pull yourself back up and clamber to safety. If you were to find yourself in one of these canals in the depths of winter your muscles would seize up and make the task of surviving such an ordeal difficult to say the least.

To state the obvious, these canals are potentially very dangerous so if someone unexpectedly pushed you into one at night in the freezing cold you could be in a lot of trouble - especially if you can't swim very well. First of all, you would be in shock and probably panic, you'd be frozen, it might be dark too so you wouldn't be able to see very well, and with ALL this going on you'd then have to find sufficient strength and the mental clarity to locate a logical place to pull yourself back up to dry land.

What if, on top of all of this, you had just painted the town red and were completely sozzled and drunk to boot? You really would be in desperate trouble wouldn't you? If I was inebriated and someone suddenly pushed me into a cold canal at night I'm not too sure I'd fancy my chances of getting out in good time. At the very least it could potentially be a very frightening and difficult task to get back to safety. The canals obviously vary in depth. Some of the canals can get very deep and be difficult to climb out of. Other canal stretches are shallow and would be (you imagine) fairly easy to climb out from.

The canal killer though is said to be very knowledgable when it comes to these canals. He knows exactly where the most perilous locations are in the waterway system of the city. This then is the MO of the alleged killer who lurks around the canals of Manchester. Unsuspecting victims are pushed into the canal and the cold weather (or so the killer might hope) does the rest. But how many of the deaths in Manchester's canals were what you would classify as suspicious? That is a salient question, as we shall see.

In 2012 a design student named Souvik Pal was pulled from the Rochdale Canal, off Whitworth Street in Manchester. He had been missing for three weeks after attending a New Year's Eve party. Souvik Pal was supposedly the 86th person to die in the Manchester canals since 2007 - a remarkably high number if statistics are to be believed. The inquest into this tragic death delivered an open verdict. It was never established how or why Souvik Pal ended up in the canal. Here's the thing though - CCTV captured him with a mysterious man the night of his death.

Frustratingly, the mystery man with Souvik Pal that night could not be seen clearly and so was never identified. The two men are believed to have attended a Warehouse Project club night that evening. However, CCTV later captured the mystery man walking back alone. The evidence suggests then that he might potentially have pushed Souvik Pal to his death. We don't know that for sure but it can't be dismissed as a possibility either.

The police view on Souvik Pal's death is that it was simply a tragic accident. Staff at the club that night say he was behaving erratically and might have taken drugs. One of the complex things about the pusher theory is attempting to deduce what happened in each individual canal death. This is obviously a task that is nigh on impossible in instances with no witnesses and no CCTV of the actual stretch of canal in which the victim died. Souvik Pal's death was what you might describe as ambiguous and even suspicious. There are many more incidents like this in the dark modern history of Manchester's canals.

A year earlier in 2011, a 39 year-old woman named Catherine Sharman was found dead in the Bridgewater Canal. She had cycled into Manchester from Cheshire before her tragic death. The police said her death was an accident but confessed they have no idea what actually happened. Catherine Sharman was a fit and healthy woman who cycled often. It was puzzling indeed to think of how this ordinary woman ended up in the canal. Neither drugs nor drink could be attributed as factors in this death. She was simply cycling through Manchester. She wasn't even on a night out. Catherine Sharman did not though fit the general profile and MO of the alleged killer's victims.

If he exists (which is obviously a rather big IF) the Manchester canal pusher would appear to target men. In terms of gender, men greatly outweigh women when it comes to deaths in Manchester's canals. The gender split is tricky to draw firm conclusions from because men greatly outnumber women when it comes to canal accidents. But are the figures for male deaths in Manchester's waterway system unusually and suspiciously high? Some (though there is clearly not a consensus on this) might argue that they are. Could a killer be targeting young males and using the canals as his preferred murder disposal location?

The canal system stretches for about ten miles through the heart of Manchester. If you spend time in the city centre you are never too far from this water system. Those canals are all over the place. The strange legend of this alleged killer gained fresh traction in 2015 when The Daily Star (admittedly not the most high-brow or believable of publications) published a two page article about the mysteriously large number of deaths attributed to Manchester's canals. The basic thrust of the article was that an unusually high number of people had died in the canals since 2006 and this was highly suspicious because (so went the gist of the article) surely not all of these deaths could have been mere accidents. What if someone was deliberately pushing them in?

It is here that the theories and stances on the Manchester canal pusher wildly diverge. The police apparently don't have too much time for stories of a serial canal pusher at all. They do not believe this particular Manchester legend has much basis in fact. You could say they don't think it has ANY basis in fact at all. When there is a fresh canal death in Manchester (which, sadly, is something which happens on a fairly regular basis) one can see the weariness of the Manchester police when - yet again - they have to rebuff tabloid speculation that the phantom canal pusher might be back in action. In such scenarios the police are quick to point out that, in their considered and professional opinion, there is NO canal pusher at large in Manchester and that waterway deaths are usually simply tragic accidents or robberies that went wrong.

Though the police dismiss tales of a prolific canal pusher

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 02.05.2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-1295-3

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