The chilling brutal murder of Alice Ruggles

On the 12th of October 2016, a desperate call was made to emergency services by a lady called Maxine McGill. Clearly in distress, Maxine explained to the operator that she couldn't get into her flat, so she climbed through an open window, and there she found her flatmate covered in blood on the bathroom floor. She says, Please help me, she's not breathing, I'm scared. And the call handler reassures Maxine that emergency services are on their way and sit tight. Maxine then says, We knew this was coming.

We knew he'd do this to her. Her ex is a psychopath. This is the chilling case of Alice Ruggles. Hello everyone and welcome back to Unthinkable, a true crime podcast. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you are all well. So the case today, it's really sad and it's scary. And this was actually recommended to me by a lady who messaged me on Instagram called Lucy Dixon. So thank you, Lucy. And please continue to send me um recommendations. I do have a list of stories I want to cover, so I'll add any recommendations to it.

Right, so let's get started. So Alice Ruggles, so she was born on the 24th of December in 1991 to parents Sue Hill, who was a doctor, and Clive Ruggles, who is a professor in astronomy. Now Alice has three siblings: an older sister called Emma, an older brother called Nick, and a younger brother called Patrick. The family live in Leicestershire, and it was a happy home. They were a very close family, and Alice is described by her friends and family as vibrant, warm, and a deeply caring person. She was kind and clever, and her bright personality could light up a room.

Now Alice was very outgoing and she was bubbly and she had an active social life. Alice and her friends were regular social media users, posting regular photos of nights out, dancing, drinking, and having fun. She attended Church Langdon Primary School, going up to Leicester High School for girls, and then went on to study at Northumbria University in Newcastle on time, where she completed her undergraduate degree. Now, after she graduated, Alice remained near Newcastle in Gateshead. She lived in shared accommodation and she began working full-time as a product coordinator and a PA for Sky, and she loved her job.

Now in October 2015, this was while she was on holiday in Sri Lanka, Alice receives a Facebook message from a young man naming himself as Lance Corporal Triman Dylan, who goes by the name Harry. Now he commented on one of her photos saying she was the most naturally beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Now Triman, aka Harry, was born in India. I couldn't find much about his childhood or his family, only that he was only a child, and because his father served in the military, the family moved around a lot.

He began a university degree in India before moving to the UK in 2010 to complete the final two years of his studies, and this was at the Queen Margaret and uh University near Edinburgh. And it was whilst he was completing his studies that he joined the British Army. When he contacted Alice, he was actually serving in Afghanistan, where he was deployed on a non-combat role. So after receiving the message from Harry, and I wasn't sure what name to use for him, but he does refer to himself as Harry, so I'm just going to go with that.

So after receiving a message from Harry, Alice checked out his profile, and it turns out that one of her friends, Jen, actually knows Harry. They go to the same university. So Alice decides to reply and introduce herself. Now following her response, the pair began exchanging messages frequently. They began FaceTiming each other daily, and Harry is being so nice to Alice. He's complimenting her, telling her how amazing she is, and that he can't wait to meet her in person, saying all the right things.

Some might say he's love bombing her. Now the pair would finally meet in person in January 2016, and this was when Harry returned to the UK during a short period of leave. According to friends, Alice was charmed by Harry and she felt a connection with him straight away. Harry spent two weeks with Alice and the pair were inseparable. Alice told her friends that she'd never felt like this about anyone before and she was smitten. And Harry seemed just as taken by Alice, and she seemed so happy. Her friends described Alice at this time as beaming.

After this brief visit, Harry returned to Afghanistan, where he stayed for the next two months to complete his deployment. They kept in regular contact, and by now they'd both told each other, I love you. And Alice actually told her mum that she thinks he's the one. So we get to April 2016 and Harry returns to the UK permanently. He is stationed at Glen Cross Army Barracks in Midlothian, just south of Edinburgh. And this is about a two and a half hour drive from where Alice is living, near Newcastle.

Alice's friends remember this wasn't too much of an issue because the pair had been maintaining a long-distant relationship since they first connected back in October. And they would visit each other regularly. They both made trips between Edinburgh and Newcastle. They spent weekends together and socialised with each other's friends. However, behind the scenes, this seemingly budding relationship, things were starting to take a turn, and it all seemed to happen very quickly. Just a few weeks after Harry returned, Alice confided in a friend that Harry would get angry at her if he called her and she couldn't answer her phone.

It was like when they were apart, she had to be available at all times, and she said it felt a bit controlling. But things soon escalate, and this is drastically. Harry began demanding to know where she was at all times, and if he couldn't get hold of her, he would jump in his car and drive down from Edinburgh unannounced and show up in places while she was socializing with friends, wanting to know exactly who she was with and what she was doing. And this did bother Alice, of course it did, but she tried to manage it the best she could.

He then began making subtle remarks about her appearance. He messaged Alice asking if she had lots of hair on her forearms because it looked like she did in a photo and he doesn't like it. He criticized the size of her nose. Alice messaged a friend saying that she and Harry had gone into a big argument, explaining that he was taunting her over how attractive Victoria's secret models are and that she didn't look like them. And remember, in the beginning, he was telling her how beautiful she was, and now, you know, he's criticizing her.

So within weeks of Harry returning to the UK, Alice's friends are starting to notice a change in her. She'd become quieter about their relationship. Where she'd previously been happy and beaming about their new relationship, she now wasn't really discussing it at all. So we aren't sure of exactly how bad Harry's treatment was of Alice at this time because she stopped talking about it, but it's clear it's massively affecting her. And Alice seemed to be more self-conscious and anxious, and she's not as vibrant and happy as she once was.

Friends later say that she started withdrawing from the friendships, often cancelling plans and becoming increasingly hard to get hold of. And this is all happening in such a short space of time. They'd only been together a matter of months, and it's already taken such a toll on Alice and her life. Now, Alice's family, every year they would holiday together in Cornwall. They did this every year, and it was a nice way of getting the siblings back together as they all lived in different parts of the world.

So it's nice to have the whole family back together. On seeing Alice, her family knew straight away something was wrong. She'd lost weight, she wasn't her usually bubbly self. Her father stated that she had a faraway look on her face. Her brother described her as a little bit less Alice. But ultimately, they couldn't speak to her about what was going on because Harry was with her. Whether she invited him or he invited himself, it's unclear. But her family later stated that they couldn't talk to her in private because Harry wouldn't leave her side.

He inserted himself into every conversation, even speaking for Alice at times. So Alice was completely and utterly worn down by the situation and she was literally at breaking point. In August 2016, so this is six or seven months into their relationship, Alice receives a message from a woman on Facebook. The message reads, Do you realize your boyfriend is cheating on you? This message also provides undeniable proof that Harry has been meeting up with women from dating apps. He'd been seeing other women the whole time.

He's been suffocating Alice, demanding to know where she is and where she's going, but it's him that's cheating. And for Alice, she's had enough. At this point, she ends the relationship permanently, and good for her. And she's nice about it. She tells Harry she can't trust him anymore and they won't be happy together because of this. And she even apologizes. And then it begins. So Harry unleashes the most awful strain of harassment towards Alice. Hundreds of messages relentlessly a day on Facebook, iMessage, WhatsApp.

He leaves her voice notes, voicemails, emails, and this is constant, and we are talking hundreds of messages and phone calls a day. She tries to block his number, but then he would start to message her friends and her family, or he would use his friends' phones to contact Alice. Her friends have to block them. Her friends and family have blocked him on social media because he just won't stop. And then he hacks into Alice's Facebook account. He changes the password so she couldn't get in on it, and he uses this access to read Alice's private messages, to track her and contact her friends.

He even threatened to post compromising photos of Alice that he said he'd taken in secret. It's emotional blackmail, isn't it? Now Alice has made it clear she doesn't want to be with him, but Harry still wants complete control over her. So we know with Facebook you can't actually ever speak to anyone who's going to help you, can you? So Alice ended up having to close that account down and she started a new account that was hidden from Harry. Now, by September, Alice is just in despair. She doesn't know what to do.

Her friends have been urging her to call the police, but Alice simply responds with, I don't want to make him more angry. Now Alice's sister, she lives in Germany at this time and deciding to get away from it all, Alice goes to visit her sister for a long weekend. And this is to get away from Harry. And this break does her the world of good. She's in contact with friends, saying that she's having the best time, and she's sharing pictures of her smiling and just looking a whole lot lighter. She isn't posting anything on Facebook just in case Harry has found her new account, so she's WhatsApping between friends and family members.

Then she messages that she'd actually met a guy that she's interested in. Now this is shared between close friends and her family. Nothing is put on social media. But Harry, well he finds out. Turns out that he'd hacked into Alice's phone and he'd been reading the messages the whole time. Now his behaviour escalated even further. He continued to hack into Alice's devices, spying on her and watching her every move. He even tracked down her new love interest and contacted him on social media in an attempt to sabotage the relationship.

He had forged fake WhatsApp messages claiming they were from Alice, saying that she still loves him. Oh, it's so insane. Oh, also, I I just I don't know how he's doing these things. How does he know how to hack into phones and accounts? Like, like, how is he doing this? Now, on the 30th of September 2016, something happens that drives Alice to finally call the police. That evening, she's at her ground floor flat on Rawlings Road, which she shares with Maxine McGill. Maxine's not home, so Alice is there by herself.

And then there's a knock at the door. Alice answers, but there's no one there. She looks up and down the street but can't see anyone, so she closes the door and goes back to what she was doing. And then there's another knock on the door, and again there's no one there. This happens three times. Now Alice, she makes sure she locks all the doors and windows, and she's about to call her flatmate when there's a loud knock on her bedroom window. And he's there. He'd climbed into the back garden, I've been staring at her through the bedroom window.

Like how utterly terrifying is that I've just gone really cold. Poor Alice. She's watching him, not knowing what to do, and then he moves to one side, revealing flowers and chocolates, and then he walks away. It's chilling. So Alice calls the police, and you can hear the phone call on YouTube if you want to listen to it. And she's just the sweetest. You can hear just from her voice how lovely she is. And she says she's looking for a bit of advice. Um, she says her ex-boyfriend sends lots of messages, even though I've told him to stop.

She explains that he hacked into her devices, and now he's turned up at her flat trying to scare her. Um, and she says that her friends have been telling her to call the police, but she's been putting it off. But now she's concerned, and the police officer tells her that this is classed as harassment, which is a crime. Um, Alice received a home visit from the police, and they took a formal statement and reassured Alice that she was not wasting police time, and they told her to contact them immediately if he contacts her again.

So police issue Harry with a PIN, a police information notice for harassment. And I spoke about this pin in one of my previous episodes. I think it was the murder of Molly McLaren, which is equally as harrowing as this one. But so a pin for those that don't know, this is an official warning that a complaint has been put in of harassment, and if they continue to contact the victim, they will be arrested. Meaning, after Harry receives this warning, if he makes any contact with Alice, they'll arrest him.

Well, if you haven't guessed, they don't arrest him, and he continues to contact Alice. In fact, the night that he made his way down to Newcastle to leave the chocolates and flowers, Harry called Alice on his way back home, but she didn't answer, obviously, but he left a voicemail saying he didn't want to kill her. He just he said, I just wanted to bring you chocolates and flowers. I want you to know that I'm not intending to kill you. Now after police make contact with Harry and issue the pin, Harry is furious.

He launched an aggressive character assassination of Alice. He bombarded Alice and her family with late-night texts claiming Alice was a horrible person and she's disrespectful towards him, that she was the problem and that she's lying. He messages Alice's mum. He said she called me a psychopath, but I'm not. She told me she doesn't want to see me again because she thinks I'm going to kill her. He said I drove down to Newcastle to give her flowers and chocolates, and she called the police on me.

And then he tried to pull on the heartstrings by stating, I cannot live without her, I cry every day, my heart has been ripped out of my chest. And then he ends the message saying, Please help me. Now Alice's mother, she tries politely to handle the situation. She sent him a message advising him to accept that the relationship was over. She told him that the relationship with Alice had failed and that he needed to move on. Now at this time, it's likely neither Alice nor her family recognized that this behaviour was the classic dangerous profile of a criminal stalking.

They didn't realise the danger Alice was in. Like his wife, Alice's dad thought the late-night messages should be handled politely. They believed Harry was simply a young man who was over-emotional and struggling with the breakdown of their relationship. Now, a few days later, on the 7th of October 2016, Alice receives a parcel in the post, and her heart sinks when she realizes it's from Harry. It's just relentless, isn't it? Oh, she must be so utterly drained by this. Now, inside the uh parcel, there's a selection of photographs of the two of them during happier times, and this is accompanied by some personal belongings and a letter, and the letter is designed to guilt trip Alice.

In it, he falsely claims that her reporting him to the police resulted in him being locked in a room at his military barracks and that his laptop, iPad, and phone were confiscated, which is nonsense because he was using these very items to harass Alice and her family. He also wrote, I'm sending you everything back that reminds me of you, as you now belong to another man, and I won't contact you again. Immediately after opening the package, Alice wheeled on by her flatmate Maxine, she called the police again.

Alice explains that her ex had ignored the PIN and has sent her a package in the post. She said that he'd written a letter and said that he wouldn't contact her again, but she reiterates that he has said this in the past many times but continues to contact her. Because Harry had written the note effectively as a goodbye letter rather than threatening, the police logged the interaction as a non-emergency breach of the PIN, and it was wrongly logged as a completely new separate crime. So the officers that originally handled Alice's report weren't alerted that the PI placed on Harry had been breached.

Rather than taking any action against Harry, the police officer told Alice they would pass along the message and someone would contact her eventually. After this phone call, poor Alice is distraught. She felt like they'd just palmed her off and that they weren't taking her seriously. She confided in her flatmate that she felt unprotected and she was scared. She messaged her sister to tell her about the parcel Harry sent, and her sister responded saying, Call the police. And Alice said, I have. She said they won't help me.

And then chillingly, she sent another message saying, I'm sure they'll respond once he's effing stabbed me. Now, so we get to the 12th of October 2016. Alice goes to work as usual at her job with Skye, and throughout the day, Alice is messaging with her new love interest. They have plans to meet up the following evening. She's messaging with friends and arranging to meet up with a friend who is flying in from Germany to visit her. Alice appears happy. Maybe Harry stuck to his word and he's finally going to leave her alone.

She hadn't heard from him since the package was delivered. But that same afternoon, Harry, unbeknown to Alice or anyone else, he made the drive back down to Newcastle. He turns into Rawlings Road and parks close to Alice's flat. And he waits. Alice finishes her shift at 5 15 and she gets a lift home with a colleague as she normally does. At 5 30, Alice arrives home. She enters the flat and her flat mate, she isn't home yet, she's been delayed at work, so Alice double locks the front door and she goes into her bedroom to try on a dress for her upcoming date.

And then she goes into the bathroom. Now around 6 p.m., Harry calmly gets out of his car. He climbs over the back wall and he climbs through an open window at the back of the property. Silently he creeps around the flat searching for Alice. Realising she's in the bathroom, he grabs a sharp carving knife from the kitchen. He creeps along the hallway and then he calls.

Harry launches a brutal, savage attack on Alice. He slashed her throat six times. It came out in court that Alice had bruising on her back, indicating that Harry pushed her to the floor face first, stood or kneeled on her back, pulling her head back with her hair before slashing her throat. The attack completely severed her windpipe and voice box, cutting so deep that the knife hit her spine. Defensive wounds found on Alice showed that she had desperately tried to fight back, but her wounds were fatal.

Alice struggled to breathe before collapsing. Harry grabbed her phone before fleeing the scene and leaving her there to die. Harry then immediately got into his car and made the drive back up to Scotland. His phone records show that whilst he was waiting for Alice to return, he'd been browsing on Tinder, messaging women for casual hookups that very night. Is this him trying to form an alibi? Ugh, now so at 6:30, Alice's flatmate, Maxine McGill, returns home. As the door is double locked from the inside, she can't open it.

She knocks a few times and there's no answer. She rings Alice, but again, of course, there's no answer. Now, Maxine, she automatically senses something is seriously wrong. She sees the open window at the back of the property and she enters the garden and climbs through. She calls out for Alice and she's desperately trying to find her. And then she finds her covered in blood, lying on the bathroom floor. This poor woman, can you imagine the horror of finding your friend like this? She immediately calls 999, and the call is absolutely heartbreaking.

You can listen to it on YouTube. It's just so it's like so raw and emotional, and you can hear how terrified she is. Emergency services answered the call and Maxine says, Please, I've come back to my flat. The door was locked, so I crawled through the window. My flat mate is covered in blood in the bathroom. The call handler asks if she's breathing. Maxine responds in a panicked voice, saying, I don't know, I can't look, I'm sorry. The call handler reassures her it's okay and to try and stay calm.

Maxine then calls out to Alice. And then she cries, Oh my god, she's dead, she's dead. The call handler asks if she's breathing, but Maxine cries, she's not, she's not. She says she looks like she's been attacked. And poor Maxine then begins to sob, saying, I'm scared, I'm scared. She says that Alice is blue, and then she says, We knew this was coming. Her ex is an absolute psychopath. The call handler asks her who? And Maxine replies, Harry Dylan. Now the call handler told Maxine to go outside and wait for emergency services who are on their way, and she stayed on the phone with her until the ambulance arrived.

Poor Maxine stayed outside straw and in deep shock while the paramedics entered the flat. And they were met with a scene that was immediately recognised as an unsurvivable, horrific crime, and there was nothing they could do. Knowing a violent murder had taken place, they immediately backed out of the flat to preserve the crime scene and they handed control directly over to the police, ensuring no one else entered the property. Alice was pronounced dead at 7:30 p.m. Maxine identified Alice's attacker and she told them where they could find him at his army barracks in Scotland.

Scottish police were alerted instantly, and Dylan was arrested at his army barracks whilst he was attempting to climb a wall to escape. He was immediately transferred under escort back to the Gateshead police station. And Harry's swift arrest was a direct result of Maxine's statement, Bless her, and she bravely served as the prosecution's star witness during the trial. Now, around 2 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, the 13th of October, two police officers arrive at Alice's parents' house in Leicester.

Her father, Clive, was woken by the family's dog. He wakes his wife and the couple make their way downstairs. Seeing two police officers standing there in the middle of the night, you know something terrible has happened. And Clive simply says, Which one? The officers step inside and they say it's Alice. Ugh just so awful, isn't it? It's so heartbreaking for the family. You know, you hear about these sort of cases, but you never think it's going to happen to you. Now back at the police station, Harry is denying everything, of course he is.

He first starts saying, Are you telling me that Alice is dead? Like he knows nothing about it. They ask him if he murdered Alice, and he says no. No, I did not murder Alice. He's acting as though he's been treated unfairly. He says he did come down to visit Alice, but he just wanted answers and to say goodbye. He said he knocked at the door and there was no answer, so when he climbed into the back garden, Alice saw him and she told him to leave or she'll call the police. He told her to calm down and to stop panicking and that he just wanted to talk to her, but she was adamant if he didn't leave he would be arrested.

So he claimed that he just left and Alice was fine. But detectives point out deep scratches on his face and neck, which he explained were caused by a passionate goodbye hug from Alice. So he's not good at this, is he? Now detectives present Harry with the overwhelming evidence, and this is when he changed tactics. So he now admits that he was in the flat when Alice died, but he says she caused the injury to herself. He said that Alice had tacked him with a knife, and it was during during a struggle that Alice had accidentally plunged the knife into her own neck.

Now, of course, nobody is buying this nonsense, so police formally charge Harry Dylan with the murder of Alice Ruggles. Now, the trial took place in April 2017 at Newcastle Crown Court. The prosecution provided an absolutely overwhelming amount of evidence, plus Maxine statements. The accidental death was completely thrown out, and Alice's blood was found in Harry's car, on his clothes, and on a wristband he was wearing the night of the murder. The jury was shown the endless text messages, phone calls, and emails like everything.

They also heard that Harry had a history of stalking, and he actually had a restraining order against him from an ex-girlfriend. So the jury took less than two hours to find Harry guilty of Alice's murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years. Now, Judge Paul Sloan, in his sentencing remarks, stated, You were utterly obsessed with her, you were determined to control her, you knew you cut her throat, and you knew she was bleeding to death, but you did nothing to help her.

You thought only of yourself. The murder was driven by utter self-centered, jealousy-fueled obsession and determination that if you couldn't have her, then no one could. After sentencing Alice's family, they released an emotional statement. Alice's mother said, Justice was served today, but we and Alice's friends will never be the same again. We will live with the knowledge that Alice should still be with us. She was kind, sociable, and she was a fun, loving person who could light up a room. We miss her greatly.

And Alice's poor parents and her siblings, they channeled their profound grief into legislative reform and public safety. They founded the Alice Spruggles Trust. Now, this is a UK-based registered charity and it's dedicated to raising awareness of the dangers of stalking, coercive control, and relationship abuse. Their mission is to prevent what happened to Alice happening to someone else. And this is the thing, many people still misunderstand the dangers of stalking. They see it as more of a minor inconvenience.

And some even see others being stalked as getting a bit of attention. It's romanticized as someone being so in love they won't take no for an answer. But in reality, it's scary. It's dangerous and it's deadly. It's not out of undevoted love, it's about dominance and control. Harry viewed Alice as his possession. He stalked and killed her because he was unable to accept the end of their relationship and that he had lost his power over her. So Alice's flatmate Maxine, due to the severe trauma of finding her best friend the way she did, she was never able to return to the flat they shared.

She returned to Glasgow almost immediately after the merger to be close to her family. She stated that the psychological impact left her constantly on edge, looking over her shoulder and terrified. I do feel really sorry for her. The story of Alice Ruggles does not end with her tragic death. Instead, it continues through her legacy, the Alice Ruggles Trust, and as a direct result of what happened to Alice, the PIN order is now recognised as ineffective and was completely abolished. And it's been replaced with the Stalking Protection Order, which gives police immediate power to arrest when a stalker breaches restrictions.

I want to dedicate this episode to Alice, her family, and her friends. Thank you for listening, everyone. Do let me know what you think of this episode. You can come and talk to me over on Instagram at Unthinkable True Crime. And a big thank you to Lucy for her recommendation and alerting me to this case. It's just a really sad one again, isn't it? Poor Alice. She didn't deserve this, does she? No one does. Next week's episode will be released the day after Halloween, and I've got a Halloween based shocker installed for you.

As always, I like to end by saying in a world where you can be anything, be kind. Take care, guys.

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