1996¶

Ray Archer¶

The dates for Ray are from June 1995 to the end of 1996 and beyond, so I’m keeping it all together in 1996.
And given Mahadev’s recent interest in him, it probably deserves a little more effort.

Meeting Ray at Glastonbury in 1995¶

Ray was living with his friend Pat in Rosebery Gardens, Crouch End, when I met him in June 1995 at the Glastonbury festival.
We had all gone down together in Simon Collins’s van; Simon was with his German girlfriend (if I remember rightly).
Simon Collins, incidentally, appeared to despise me for no reason - this is extraneous maybe but perhaps indicative of all my “friends” knowing more about me than I did, and all of it likely sordid.
Ray was working at a call centre in Archway with Arul Joseph - who certainly knew a whole load of sordid stuff about me I was unaware of - and a bunch of others, some of whom were at Glastonbury with us.

Incidentally…

I had a very strange experience in Glastonbury that year.
The evening we arrived, I had what felt like a vision of bumping into Howard in a show tent.
Howard was the man I reported to the police that had set me up with Winston May and the rape gangs in 1989.
I had heard a crowd jeering and walked into this tent and gone through the crowd and seen him taking all his clothes off.
As he was taking his underwear off, he saw me and reached out to me saying Katie, Katie, as if asking for help.
(Katie is how everyone knew me at that time.)
I said something like, it had to be you Howard didn’t it, turned and left the tent.
It was very dreamlike; perhaps I was sedated in Glastonbury that year too.

Ray lost his job at the call centre a few months later, and he couldn’t pay the rent and ended up homeless.
By winter he was living in various accommodations, and sleeping on people’s couches, and we were apparently boyfriend and girlfriend so I was helping him as much as I could.

The punk piercing woman¶

One time, he was staying with a woman in Hornsey.
It was above the Rape Crisis Centre… or near there, maybe on the next block.
This woman, Ray told me, was into some strange sexual stuff with piercings and something that made a really loud noise like a nail gun going off on a regular basis.
You could hear it coming from her room.
She was super punk and had bright pink hair, a lot of it shaved off.
She was in bed when I met her and she didn’t say a word to me, not even a hello as I recall.
Was she producing porn? There may have been a camera set up but hidden. I remember some powerful lights but I thought it was decoration.
Ray asked me to stay with him there one night.
He was apparently living in the front room of the apartment which she didn’t use at all.
It was a bare room with no personal belongings in it, not even Ray’s, just a bed and a clothes rail for laundry.
I guess it’s likely the woman was a hooker, or producing porn from her bedroom.
Ray described to me what she was doing as her hobby, or lifestyle maybe.
As far as I know, I only stayed there one night with him.

On the busses¶

Ray and I took busses everywhere.
One time, it was on the 263 at North Finchley, my hat just disappeared.
We were sitting on the top deck at the back of the bus, and my hat was gone!
And I believe Ray must have stolen it because I was wearing it just a moment before - like swiped it while I was not looking and put it in his coat or something.
So I ask him where it is, and he doesn’t know.
I’m drunk, I think, I’m certainly not 100% - we drank a lot and at that time I was permanently dissociated from sexual trauma.
Was Ray pimping me out sedated around town - like Sandra will do too nearly thirty years from then in Lourdes?
Was this how he was making some money for himself?

New Years Eve with Emet and his girlfriend¶

Emet was someone Ray worked with at the call centre.
We went to a squat party in Kentish Town on New Year’s Eve with Emet and his girlfriend - although we may have just met them when we were ready to leave.
We left the party and went back to her house.
She lived in a little council flat in Kings Cross, so we walked there along the canal.
She looked a bit like Mrs Torrence from the Shining, no, she looked a lot like Mrs Torrence.
She didn’t have a bed or a proper spare room for guests - which I didn’t find out until I was there - so we had to sleep on the floor.

Queen’s Avenue¶

Ray finds a bedsit in Muswell Hill in Queen’s Avenue probably in November 1995.
I had left the film company in West London and gone to work for Quadrant Gas in The Strand.
I live with him there for a little while, probably for about 3-6 months, and then decide to go back home after he pukes in the bed one night.
The caretaker came round to collect the rent every week, and he may well have been the same man that was caretaking the flat in Warrior Square, Hastings, for me and Brian in 2001.
He certainly looked exactly like him, but I can’t remember the names.
While I was staying there, we seemed to know no-one else in the house.
It was like a ghost-house.
When I officially went back home, I went round to see him one evening and was surprised to find everyone in the house knew everyone else, doors were hanging open, like they were all family.

Mr Siniestra¶

One of the neighbor’s was called Siniestra.
Siniestra had that gypsy look, like the man who nearly had his hand in my bag that Christmas, and like Hala and the rest of them, even Auggie could a relation.

Lena¶

I invite Ray to a work’s event one evening.
The company gives us free tickets to open dress rehearsals in the West End.
We see a musical about the electric chair - I kid you not.
Lena, a woman who works with me on the same floor, is there.
Ray meets her and they get talking.
They’re talking about bands and music, and she apparently is dead set on being a famous singer.
Ray says he’s setting up a band and she’ll be the lead singer.
He calls the band Toe Jam - which is appropriate.
He asks me to play keyboards and he’s going to play guitar.
She gets the bus and visits us in Queen’s Avenue for a “band practice” one evening.
I’m thinking that these two have totally lost the plot.
Lena can’t sing a note and is going on like she’s going to be a star.
I think she must be crazy while Ray is just being polite; but Ray was not a polite man like that so it really didn’t make any sense.
She never visits again.
I believe she got the job at Quadrant Gas through the same recruitment agency as I did, on the Archway roundabout.

Visiting Ray’s parents in Smethwick¶

Ray tells me we’re invited to his parents house in Smethwick in the West Midlands for the weekend.
They want to meet me apparently.
We get the coach from Golders Green.
Ray and I stay in the guest bedroom which has a big double bed and not much else in it.

Is Ray’s dad a pornographer?¶

As I walked into the kitchen, I noticed Ray’s family had put The Sun’s page 3 boobs on display on the kitchen wall; which was a bit embarrassing, I thought.
I understood Ray’s dad had a small business as a photographer and he worked from home.
His dad talked about a series of photos he’d done of the local ducks, in a park which Ray and I visited on a walk.
In the little cubby area where he did his photography, next to the sitting room, there was a photo of a young black woman on the wall and she was half naked.
The photo was cut off just above the boobs, so it was obvious there was no way she was actually wearing anything on top even though you couldn’t see her breasts.
I asked Ray about her, and he told me that this was his dad’s job, portrait photographer, and that the woman lived down the road.
A local sitting duck?
We know from our more recent investigation into the British and Spanish porn-gangs that sitting duck is a criminal pornographer’s meme, isn’t it.

Looking at their photos¶

On the first evening of our visit, Ray’s dad shows us hours and hours of family photos he’s put on VHS!
Hours, like over three hours we all sat in the living room and looked at these photos and I thought I might die of boredom, but I was polite.
Was it a test? It felt like one. I think I was wondering if they were making sure I wasn’t a rude person, but for good reasons.

A party at their house¶

The next evening they had a party - I don’t think I was aware of it until the morning or even afternoon of the same day.
A sprinkling of relatives and friends came round.
Was it someone’s birthday? I can’t remember.
Did Ray introduce his uncle to me and tell me he was a swinger? I think he did.
There was a lot of drinking…
It was late on, and I was drunk and probably high on something as I was a bit out of it - as in non-exuberant which was my default - and Ray’s mum comes up to me and says, they want you to go upstairs, and I ask, Who? and she says Ray.
So I go up the stairs and into the guest bedroom, and his dad and uncle are sitting on the bed and the dad says come over so I go over.
And the next thing I remember is waking up completely naked in the bed and it’s late at night and I cannot find any of my clothes.
Ray is asleep and I’m saying, where is my underwear, and he’s pretending not to hear me.
Whoever undressed me couldn’t have cared less that I would not be able to find my clothes.
Was that because of my test score?

Has Ray told his mum we’re visiting to borrow money?¶

The next morning just before we were leaving, I had the weirdest set-up conversation with Ray’s mum.
Before I did, Ray says, “my mum wants to talk to you about something, and make sure you shout your answers loudly because she’s deaf”.
He goes into the kitchen with his dad and they hover at the open door.
Ray’s mum starts talking about mortgage deposits to me. I have zero idea what’s she’s going on about.
Later I wonder if Ray’s whole purpose of inviting me to his parents was to ask them to borrow money under the pretext we were buying a house together.
Perhaps I was supposed to think that.
Totally bogus to leave that conversation to the last minute.
She was definitely saying no, I thought.

Beate came before¶

Ray had an ex-girlfriend Beate, a German woman who worked at the call centre in Archway.
She had also visited Ray’s parents.
Ray called her a German princess; I was never sure if she actually was one or he was taking the piss.

Rhea too¶

He had another close female friend who also worked at the call centre.
Rhea, an Italian woman.
Ray was good at making women feel safe.
Rhea had an invite up to Smethwick one time as well.
Did she have to sit the test too?

Ray meets my dad at the front door of 31¶

I left Quadrant Gas and went to work for a company in Finchley Central, Newcrest, in March 1996 or thereabouts.
Shortly after I started, I got Ray a position there too and he’s such a charmer they all love him.
So Ray is living in Muswell Hill, I’m in N2, and he walks from the house in Queen’s Avenue every morning to my house and knocks for me and we walk to work together.
One morning, my dad answers the door to him.
My dad becomes extraordinarily emotional and enraged when he sees Ray.
And I notice that when Ray sees dad he sort of makes a weird face, like a seductive pout.
Dad totally loses his cool.
I can’t remember the details but it was something like he got so angry he said: don’t bring him around here, and I thought it was maybe because Ray had been a bit camp at the door, but dad knows lots of gay men.
They knew each other - but from when, and where, and in what context - and was I there too without my conscious awareness?
Ray tells me in July 2026 that he met my dad three times, but I only know about this one time.

The male stripper and Worboys¶

When Sarah and I got back from India in April 1997, she and Ray (and some others) found a property to rent opposite Finchley Central tube station on Station Road above a shop.
I went round a fair bit for a while and then something happened with some of the other flatmates maybe as late on as 1998/99 which made me stop visiting and lose touch with everyone.
While I was still hanging out with them, Ray and Sarah had gone out one evening, and they called me and asked me to come along.
I met them for a drink at the Swiss Chalet in Muswell Hill, just the two of them.
So we’re at the Swiss tavern, and it’s closing time or just before, and Ray suggests we go over the road to the nightclub opposite.
We’re all a bit pissed by then, so we go over the road to the nightclub.
It’s full of middle-aged women.
There’s a male stripper performing.
It’s really gross, but we’re laughing.
It turns out Ray knows the stripper and the man invites us all to come back to his for a drink.
So Ray, me, and Sarah get in the back of the stripper’s car after the show.
He’s got a mate with him in the front passenger seat, who says he is also a stripper.
The man in the passenger seat is Worboys; the prolific rapist who also knows Ray pretty well by the way they’re chatting.
And we’re driving down the hill, and suddenly Sarah is non-responsive, and I’m talking to her and she’s not replying, and I ask Ray what’s happened to Sarah, and that’s all I remember.
The car was nearly at the bottom of the Muswell Hill at that point.

Confirmation on Worboys - an example of the salmon-mousse distraction techniques

Just in.
So, this tiny comment (check the commits for details) was written during intense distraction activity by the salmon mousses who have been trying to get me to believe they are investigating everything while intending the very worst for me instead.
A man who looks a little like Worboys is made to walk past me in a “meaningful” way.
They may well have done some investigating on this, however, and they should do - it’d be easy to ask Worboys if he knows Ray Archer and the other male stripper from Muswell Hill given he’s in prison.

In retrospect, whenever I saw Worboys’s photo in the news I felt like the face was familiar - and something started bubbling up in late April 2026, but it all came out at Kailash.

The everlasting light¶

Ray drank a lot.
One night after we had split up, but we were still friends, he was on his way home from Finchley Central to Muswell Hill walking through Long Lane.
There were building works at the North Circular Road and Ray decided to steal a workman’s flashing light and bring it to me.
He said it was the everlasting light, and it was mine, and he had to bring it to me.
He kept saying; the everlasting light.
And he does remember it, because I asked him in July 2026.
He was very drunk, but I thought it was lovely - a bit strange, and criminal, but lovely still.

What Byron used to say about Ray¶

Byron Vose, my next boyfriend, after having met Ray probably in late 1997 sometime or even later, used to say: Ray’s a really, really bad boy.
We just thought Byron was throwing words into the air.
Not so anymore.
Do all men share the worst about themselves with each other, knowing no-one will ever tell the women?

Ray and Matt Pompeus¶

Ray and Paul’s brother Matthew become very good chums (yes, the Paul) at some point.
Matt seems to worship Ray: he gets his hair died blond like Ray’s, and starts to speak like him too.
They’ve been hanging out a lot.
I notice it when we’re on our holiday in Benidorm in October 1997 the first time I ever visited Dénia.
Could Ray have told Matt to take us to Dénia in October 1997?
Ray would have known very well about the criminal porn production going on in the region, and I suspect the criminal pornographers he knew in North London are the very same gangs that have been stalking me for more and more sedated rape-porn since 1989.

Something frightens Ray Archer off to New Zealand¶

Ray love-bombs a nurse working for a company using the same building as Newcrest.
The companies shared a reception space and Ray worked as a receptionist and this is how he met her.
She’s from New Zealand, and quick as a flash, Ray and her up and leave the UK to go and live there.
I am not sure of the dates for this, probably sometime in 1998.
It seems highly likely that North London porn-gangs knew exactly what the Lopez-Cano gang had done in September 1997 as they work together so closely.
Did word get around in the porno-sphere, like it does?
Had the salmon-mousse’s lie, and North London’s finest taking full advantage of it, started up already?
If Ray had gotten Matt to take me to Dénia, did he realize that the same gang would be responsible for carrying out my murder?
Was this a step too hot for Ray?
Did he start looking for ways out of dodge?
If so, it strongly suggests that Ray did indeed tell Matt to take me to Dénia (the Las Marinas beach to be precise) in October 1997 - was it for casting purposes? - and the gangs (both of them) started moving in on me from that moment.
Incidentally, Matt got himself a steady girlfriend around the same time Ray left for New Zealand.
And a further incidentally, which I have mentioned elsewhere; one time I went to the Newcrest offices long after I had left my job there - so probably 1998 - and Ray was on reception and he looked at me and I saw an inexplicable fearfulness in his expression.

Ray’s sister¶

Ray has a sister but she has nothing to do with the family.
Ray told me the bad feelings came about because she had married her cousin.
In 2002, in Hastings, when Brian and I go out the one time to Hastings pier which has a nightclub, Ray’s sister and the cousin are on security at the gate.
I had stopped to talk to them while we were on the way out, they told me they were from Smethwick, she looked a bit like Ray, and a lot like some of the photos I’d seen, so I told them I knew a Ray Archer from Smethwick and they told me they knew him well, in a cagey manner from which I deduced she was indeed the sister!
The cousin was dressed like a rockabilly.
What are the chances?