Hi, it's Helen here. An overall Christmas break, we are revisiting some of our favourite episodes, particularly the ones that celebrate the people who have inspired us. And that means that today we are bringing you the story of Mina Smallman, an incredible woman who has courageously pursued justice following the tragic murder of her two daughters, Bieber and Nicole. Speaking to Mina was a really special experience for me and I really hope that her story and her approach to life inspires you too.
Before we start, a quick warning, this episode contains references to violence, abuse and suicide. Mina Smallman has been many things in life, a teenage mother, a mature student, a gifted teacher, a trailblazing church leader. But standing outside the Old Bailey in London a few years ago, with a wall of cameras trained on her, she became an activist.
We know about your dirty linen and it only protects the bad people, expose them, deal with them, charge them, get them out of the police force. In June 2020, Mina's world fell apart. Her eldest and youngest daughters had been found dead in a London park. Just when she thought things couldn't get any worse, they did.
You know, you go to London to start to prepare the funeral of your dead children and then you're forced to have a meeting to tell you that police officers that should have been protecting the area had actually taken selfies.
Any mother could be forgiven if they retreated away from the public glare to grieve and seethe in private. But Mina took a different approach. If you've got a rotten piece of fruit, in a fruit bowl, it contaminates everything around it. So we need to drill down and get the rot out once and for all.
This is a story about Mina's life, how it prepared her to cope with such a terrible series of events and gave her the tools to keep going and to keep fighting. As a teacher and a priest, I have given my life over to raising boys and girls up that people looked down on and didn't think that they could ever be anybody. Now I'm doing it for my girls.
From the Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in focus, Mina Smallman versus the Metropolitan Police. A fight for justice. The first time I saw her, she was all mine. It was the first time I met eye to eye with somebody that I would love forever and they would love me. Mina Smallman was just 17 years old when she gave birth to her first daughter, Bieber.
I think of Bieber when we were at Family Dues and I remember her dancing with her grandma and me on the dance floor to Hay-Fattie-Bumbumb and that was one of her favourite songs and she would be there till the last song.
Whereas Monique, my middle daughter, she disappeared one day and she fell asleep under all the coats people put on the bed. Bieber was born in 1974 and Monique followed shortly after. Nicole or Nikki came along much later in 1992 after Mena met her second husband, Chris.
Beeba was my little Spitfire. She was the one that was going to try something and do something that she shouldn't just for the hell of it. Whereas Nikki was complete reverse. She was like angel child. Never did anything wrong. Never had complaints. She was a hippie. Didn't care about clothes, loved animals, a real joy, a gentle person and true loyal friend.
Despite the age gap, the sisters were very close. Oh, they loved it a bit and wanted to take her out in the pram and wanted to bath her and all the rest of it. Love doing it. We did a lot of family things together. I mean, we're a party family. I'm not your typical vicar. I do love house music and reggae and you name it. I love it.
And so parties at ours were fun, mixed generations, and you kind of grow up together, and the gap just gets smaller. And in fact, in Nicki's second year at university, she went to live with Bieber in her flat, and it grew from there, really. Bieber went on to be a social worker, with a special talent for identifying women who needed help.
She was like those sniffer dogs when the partner who shouldn't be in there because they put at risk the child. The woman might be saying, oh, no, it's not here. And she would know instantly because that woman's behavior in the child, the atmosphere in the house.
And she would sniff it out, but she was extremely popular. She wasn't easygoing, but people got that she really cared about them. And she progressed and she deserved to progress because she was good at what she did. Nikki was still finding her way in life, but she loved the arts and music.
I don't speak RP, but she did. She spoke like the Queen, but not in a put on way. And she had a deep singing voice as well.
And photography was her love, singing was her love. And she set up acoustic nights, so she became a promoter inviting different acts to come and perform at open nights.
Take me back to the nights of the 7th of June 2020. So it was a couple of months after the first COVID lockdown and Bieber wanted to celebrate her birthday with Nikki and a group of friends. What did she have planned? Well, her birthday was on the 5th of June. And you were allowed to meet outside with a group no bigger than 10. The party took place at Frank Park in Wembley, which is quite an expanse.
and the point was just to have freedom I think everybody had been really locked down and she bought all these solar lights and they were dancing, they were having drinks just looked like they were having fun and in fact they were having so much fun that when it got dark it started to get cold and people started to leave
And Nikki and Bieber, they were having so much, they wanted to dance in a field with lights, which they did. And there's like a quite an iconic picture of them doing just that. So it was just the two of them.
The day after the party, Mina was at home in Ramsgate on the Kent coast with her husband Chris, when she received a phone call. As far as I was concerned, they were home living their lives. But Adam phoned. So Nikki's boyfriend. Yes. That was about eight o'clock p.m. Have you heard from Nikki?
He said, I've been phoning the police. I've phoned the hospitals. I had a conversation with her about one o'clock in the morning. She said, I'm in a field dancing with lights, but I'm going home soon. I'm getting a cab. I'm going home. But she never showed. He'd actually said, I've been to Bieber's flat and I've been ringing the bell. Nobody's answering. So I said, I'll phone the police.
So what did they say to you the call handler when you phoned 999? She said, who was there? And I said, well, I don't know who else was there, but my granddaughter was there. And I said, I have phoned her, but she knows nothing. She left fairly early. And we're concerned. I said, actually, this isn't part of their normal pattern. And it's been a while. So it was about 24 hours later, 24 hours after the picnic. Yeah. Yeah.
And I assumed that they would put in place what they were supposed to do. She didn't say to me, I wouldn't worry. But what in actual fact happened? She spoke to my granddaughter, unbeknownst to me, she said to my granddaughter, is your nan a bit of a warrior?
Bieber's daughter, Nina's granddaughter, told the call handler that no, she wasn't a warrior, far from it. Did you assume that the police were going to search for the girls? Yes, absolutely. And then what happened next? I thought Adam wasn't getting a response because it's an anxious boyfriend. Yeah.
I gave them that much leeway. And I imagine, you know, if a mother phones and says about their ages and this is out of character, I would expect them to take it seriously. Yeah. Didn't happen. After a sleepless night with no word from the sisters, Bieber and Nikki's family and friends were so anxious that they began their own search. I was control room in Ramsgate. My husband was en route to London to the park.
Chris, mean as husband. We're still in the car when the women's friends reach the spot where the picnic had taken place. Within five or ten minutes, Adam's father finds a knife. Not sure about timings, but the next call I get is from Adam. And he says, mean, I need you to sit down. I found them. And they're gone.
All I can remember is giving out this long how screen. And I recognize it. It's a primal screen. It comes from your solar plate. It's something you do when the core of your soul has been ripped open. And once I got over that,
I then realized, oh my goodness, Chris is on his way there. And I don't want him to find out by just turning up there. So I called him and I said, are you driving? He said, yeah, I'm driving. And I said, pull over. He said, well, I'm nearly there. Tell me, what is it wrong to tell me? I said, please pull over. So he pulled over. He said, have they found them then? And that tone of optimism in his voice,
And I said, yeah, they're gone, honey, they're dead. And he just, it's a moment I'll never forget. And it's a moment where there was an absence of any hope. And hope has always been my driving force that
I am better than you say I am. I can do this. I will do that. And the drive there is you're pushing yourself because you believe in yourself and things can come good. But that absence of all hope is something I hope nobody ever really feels.
People often ask me more than how she's carried on after such violent losses. The answer, she says, is that everything in her life prepared her for tragedy. She didn't have an easy childhood. Born in 1956 in London, to a Scottish mother and strict Nigerian father, she grew up, she says, in dirt and chaos. Her parents' marriage was volatile, with her older sister having to intervene in their physical fights.
But before that, when Mina was still a baby, she was fostered by a white family in Essex. It was a storybook playing in the garden, shelling peas, going to Walton on the nays, staying on holiday. They had a caravan that looked a bit like a hovers loath, idyllic, and I was loved, and I was unusual. I was the only mixed-race child in the area. When Mina was five, she was suddenly told that she was going home.
And so picture this, one minute, you're living with a white family, stay at home mum, cooks everything fresh, all the linens washed, Monday was washing day, the scrubbing board, the ringer, the roast dinner, all of the stuff. And next thing I find myself in Cricklewood, North West London, living in an Edwardian house, three floors, each floor having a different family,
no garden, no windows in the hall. And if ever Dickens book set the scene where child who's lived in light and freedom suddenly enters this house and the feel of trepidation and doom as I walk through that house, I remember it now is unimaginable. It was a premonition of what was to come.
And why had your parents just requested you back? Yeah, they loved me and they wanted me. Mina's parents split up and she was left largely with her mother who resorted to sex work to pay the bills when her factory wage couldn't last the month. My mum was this wild Scottish woman with personality that could fill a room, glamourists and vivacious jazz singer.
But she didn't have a maternal bone in her body and she was extremely volatile. She drank black tea and she would stir her tea for a long time. And then just for fun, she'd put it on the back of your hand. Right. That sounds like child abuse. It is. Yeah.
But that was supposed to be funny. Right. She was an oxymoron as a human being. In one case, you've got someone who has no idea what personal hygiene should be for your children, for yourself. And then you'd be sitting in a posh tea house having high tea. Right. What's been very confusing for a child? Children like routines, don't they? Absolutely.
Mina had experienced love and security with her foster family, only to swap a life of comfort to one of neglect. She developed an armour to protect herself from life's disappointments and hardships, but underneath, she was desperate to be loved. Age 13, seeking a new family and children of her own, she got into a relationship with a 17-year-old apprentice electrician, and they went on to have two children, Bieber and Monique.
But in her 20s, as their relationship cracked and she became a single parent, she decided to go back to school.
weren't listening in the lesson and I would end up disciplining them and just saying if you don't want to be here then go home. I've paid for this course and you will be quiet because I want to hear. And little did I know that all the lecturers were conspiring say she's a born teacher.
The lecturers were right, and after studying drama, English and voice at the Central School of Speech and Drama, she became a teacher, one of those naturals who can silence a room with a look. But she was also particularly good at working with children who were lost or struggling, and was determined always to look for hope in even the most unpromising students. There was one little boy who stood out.
He's a very unusual boy, quite small, physically small, sullen. He comes into school at year eight, which is about 12, 13. He could not write. He couldn't read. And his handwriting was completely legible.
And he was extremely sensitive about it. He would refuse someone to sit with him. I'm this believer that if you can find a kid, especially if they're failing, one thing that they're good at, you can build from that because from that they get the confidence. And we had a day where it was, tell us about your hobbies. Yeah.
And he came up and he said, well, I'm going to do magic. This is what I do. He transformed. He went from that boy to completely open, doing the tricks. He had the mannerisms and the whatever.
and he got his place in that form group as he's a magician. She learned to see the difference between a naughty child and a desperate child and the importance of really seeing a person. I'm hoping if you're a teacher
or you're someone who has a sphere of influence in someone's life that you'll see beyond their limitations and try and develop their skills. I think that's what a teacher and a parent and society needs to do.
you're clearly really good at getting the best out of children and I could be somebody that's got the best out of you and allowed you to feel completely yourself as your husband, Chris, who's, I can see him through the glass. He's just given me a fist pump. And you've been through such a lot in your life and being strong is clearly important to you, but you can't wear that armour 24-7. Tell me about Chris, how did he change your life and make you feel completely able to be yourself?
Chris is extraordinary, really. I mean, he's behind me. I can't see him because he'll be saying, yeah, more and more. He's extraordinary because he is entirely himself. He's not pretentious in any way. And he gives me the courage to be me. I love him to bits. He was my gift.
though Nikki was Chris's only biological child with Mina. He loved Bieber and Monique. They were his daughters too. They adored him and would send father's day cards to him as well. After working as a teacher, you were ordained in the Church of England in 2006, becoming a priest and then the Archdeacon of South End. You became the Church of England's first female Archdeacon from a black and minority ethnic background. Yes. How has your faith helped you deal with the difficult things that life has thrown at you?
It's been a life raft, really. All of those transitional moments. I've been a committed Christian and it's got me through. There is something there. There is a good. There is an evil. We do have choices. Mina says that without her faith, she would be an angry, bitter and twisted woman. Life hasn't been easy. She's attempted suicide on more than one occasion.
As a church leader, she says God gave her the courage to shed even more of her armour. And it was through that experience that I said, right, I'm going to walk through life with my arms wide open. And yes, I know some bad people will get in, but I won't be missing out on all the wonderful people. And that is a blessing, really.
If it's okay, we're going to return now to what happened in the days after Bieber and Nicole were killed. You told us that the call handler, a woman, rang your granddaughter and asked if you were a bit of a warrior. What do you know now about what was going on behind the scenes at the 999 control room and beyond? So, what in actual fact happened, she, after that conversation, went back to the detective who was supposed to be leading the missing persons
and told him, look, I don't think we need to worry about this. They'll turn up. Should we let this one go? And the detective said, yeah. And he actually told that at that particular time, there were two policemen who were on their way to Nikki's house to see if she was there. And the procedure is if someone is missing
You cannot take them off a missing list until you see them with your eyes. So if you turn up at their house and someone answers and they say yes, she's in there. They can't just accept that they have to eyeball them. But the call handler had said, let it go. So they stood down. Mina found out that the police initially made reference to Bieber as a suspect, which she perhaps understandably saw as evidence of racial profiling.
Well, the assumptions they were making was that this wasn't out of character. They were two women of colour. What were they doing in a park? Probably up to no good. Could have been prostitutes, sex workers. In a gang, they just thought, better not. Even when they found the knife, they phoned.
There were still no police cars on the way to the area. They didn't dispatch anybody. Nope. And it wasn't until Adam had found the bodies that they sent the police car when the bodies had been found. It's shameful. Really shameful. Yeah.
And then just as you were still reeling from the news about what had happened and trying to plan Bieber and Nicole's funeral, it was about to get worse. What did you find out and how did you find out? Well, we'd gone to London to plan for the funerals.
There was a lot to do and I received a phone call from our flow, the family liaison person to say, look, the IOPC would like to come and see you. And that's the independent office, please conduct. Yeah. And we said, why? And she said, I'm not a liberty to tell you, but you really do need to see them.
And so I was really anxious and Chris said, I mean, I just think about it. What on earth could they tell us that could be worse than the news that we've had? And I thought, I felt my shoulders go down. I thought, yeah, you're right. You're right. And when they came in,
They told us that the two police officers that were tasked to protect the crime scene had gone in to the crime scene and taken WhatsApp pictures and selfies. And one of the despicable was a mentor to a female mentee
he sent her the pictures as well. So he thought, oh, she'll enjoy this. Yeah. And shared them with their WhatsApp friends. So these police officers or other people? Police officers, some civilians. One group was 41. The other group was 30 something. And it wasn't just a spare at the moment thing. Even when they had their break, they went to a cafe and they were sharing them in the cafe.
How did you react? What did you say to the IOPC and the senior police officer who was there? Everything in me went back to being this teenage, brought up, hard knock. It's unrepeatable. I'm sure they would have said it was expletive after expletive because it was the commander who insisted on coming.
And I could see him out the corner of my eye, and he was dying to say something, to be involved. And he turned to me and he said, lessons will be learned. And he said that. And I lost it completely. I said, lessons will be expletive, expletive, expletive, expletive. And I just thought the gloves are off.
The IOPC concluded that the service provided by the police was unacceptable, but that there was no evidence to suggest this was due to discrimination. And you decided to go public and speak out about this horrendous violation. Up until that point, I hadn't had an image of anything. But the image I have and keep on having is of, you know, in the deep south when they used to lynch people,
and you would see smiling faces around a hanging dead body and also of game hunters of old holding elephant tusks or standing with their foot on the neck of an elephant. Those police officers dehumanized our children
They were nothing to them. That was widely covered in the mainstream media. And in fact, it got a lot more attention than the murders themselves. Why do you think that was? The shock of it, there wasn't a person who couldn't get that that was so wrong on so many levels. It's so murder, I mean. Yeah, but remember, you've got the baddies. We know what baddies do, but then you have the police.
who are there to protect. They're the ones who take an oath to treat everybody as equal, that they are there to serve, yet they can do that.
And taking the lid off that was really important. If ever we wanted to know how toxic the culture in the metropolitan police has become, this is it, because they felt so safe, so secure, so untouchable that they could do something like that. And it's proved to be true.
Less than a year after her daughters were killed, Sarah Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a serving Metropolitan Police Officer, Wayne Cousins. Vigil's were held in her memory, with condolences sent from the Prime Minister and Royal Family. Prompting Meena to ask, where was the Vigil for her girls? Where was the public and political show of compassion? I think there's two sides to me. There's Mum, and then there's Activist.
As Mum, I am broken beyond words. I think the two run hand in hand. And that's what gives me purpose. Coming up, Mina comes face to face with her daughter's killer.
25 days after Bieber and Nicole were killed, an 18-year-old man was arrested in South London on suspicion of their murders. And he denied the charges against him in July 2020, which meant that the case had to go to trial at the old Bailey.
And before it started, you were told what his motive was. And it's unfathomable in a way. So you were told that his motive was to win the mega millions super jackpot and that he'd drawn up a contract with a satanic demon and signed it in his own blood. And he had promised to perform six sacrifices a minimum every six months for as long as he was free and physically capable in return for wealth, power and a guarantee that he would not be caught.
It would be so understandable if your reaction was to hate him, but you actually say that you forgive him. How? Well, the context of finding out that information, Chris and I deliberately didn't want to know the detail until we were going to the Old Bailey because we didn't want it in our heads. And when I heard about that contract with the demon, I just, in fact, something lifted, I just thought,
I'll know instantly when I go in there whether you really are demon hunting or whether you're just a sad loser. And he was just a sad loser. He looked like all the boys that I taught who wanted to be something big and pretend that they were something that they weren't and had a hole in their life. And he acted out. He was really disgusting. He tried and stare you out.
He did that to you in court. He did, yeah. He was staring me out and I winked at him. I was bald. Yeah, I winked at him and it threw him back and he started shouting. This is during the kind of interval, quite at the time they're all milling around.
He reacted to that because that wasn't what he wanted, but I taught boys for so long. I knew exactly how to get under their skin. And then I said to the flow, I said, yeah, I said, watch this. And then I just scratched my forehead with the L sign on my forehead and he saw it. And he kicked off. She's doing this. And I thought, yeah, no, you can't play me. You cannot play me.
After he was found guilty, Mina was asked whether she'd forgiven him. I did an instantaneous search inside myself. And there was nothing else that I already have. You can't choose that. It's something that happens. Thank goodness. The deity decided that I didn't need to carry that burden because that would take up space in your head.
I don't even think about him. I don't. And someone asked me, but you haven't forgiven the police officers.
And I said, no, and someone was really taken about. I think it was Richard Madley. If he were a good interviewer, he would have asked me why, but he didn't. So I went away and thought about it anyway. And the truth of it is, I think until the work is done in police forces to be the police force we deserve, especially women and girls, that keeps the fire in my belly going.
I don't think about them, but what I think about now is I'm not letting this one go until I'm really sure that we have police forces all through the country that we deserve. Her daughter's killer was jailed for life with a minimum term of 35 years, while the officers who photographed Bieber and Nicole's bodies were jailed for two years and nine months.
Instead of retreating from public life, Mina has channeled her grief into activism, speaking to police forces around the country and using her voice and life story to try to help others working to end violence against women and girls. I know it's exhausting to be the only one. I have women of all different nationalities and cultures burst into tears and they say to me, you see me.
I'm still waiting for some art rally to say, yes, the Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist. I've explained to him why. He's the chief constable who took over after Sarah Everard's murder. And basically, as I was explaining to him, I said, look, this isn't about you understanding what institutional racism is. It is you understanding what it is
I was invited to go to Wiltshire Police. And one of the things I talk about, I say, what's morale like? And this particular person said, morale's terrible. A lot of the police force, you know, when they go out on the street, they can feel that they're not trusted. They're being watched. They don't want to upset anyone. They're trying to walk a fine line. I said, that's really good.
And I said, you know, well, that's really good because now you know how black people feel because that's how a black youth who's not doing anything wrong. That's how they feel. And he took a moment. And he said, you're right. Well, now the police know this is how women feel about you. And they don't like it.
And we've talked about so many dark things today. What gives you hope? That the media are still interested in what I've got to say. I'm encouraged by what Kirstal was saying. He's using the language of collaboration and cooperation. And as long as you're prepared to hear each other,
and to be prepared to change when you've got it a bit warped in your head. You can work together even though you have very opposite views.
and just very final question. We started with Bieber and Nikki. Let's end with them. How would you like them to be remembered, your girls? Not how they left this world. Just how they lived their lives, photographs and episodes of their lives that were high points. And I'd like to finish by saying I talk a lot about Bieber and Nicole, but Monique is the only daughter left.
And I've said to her, you are enough. I've had to tell her you don't have to be at every Christmas. We packed her off to Australia this Christmas for three months and said, go and do your live love, pray. And so she went to an elephant sanctuary. And I want to say to all the siblings who have been left behind,
You are enough. You can never fill that gap and your parents won't expect you to. And to all parents who perhaps have forgotten that child who is still here, they still need you. Very powerful. Meena, thank you so much. You're welcome.
That was Mina Smallman. Her book A Better Tomorrow is Out Now and is well worth a read. And if you enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review. It really helps others to find us.
The Metropolitan Police has previously apologised for the way the force handled the search for Bieber and Nicole, saying that the level of service it provided was below the standard it should have been and no doubt compounded the distress felt by their loved ones. The force also said it was sorry for the truly despicable actions of the two police officers who took photos of the women's bodies. The force said, improving the culture and standards within the Met is a priority for us as we seek to rebuild Londoners' trust and confidence in their police service.
Today's show was produced by Kourt Euser from was presented by May Helen Pitt. Sound Design was by Joel Cox and the executive producer was Homma Kalili. This is The Guardian.
