Officer’s Report (Draft) – 7th August 2023 – Matthew Roberts

The Puppet Mistress Murders have now been stopped for good, but the cost has been huge to this city.

There are many questions to answer, but perhaps the most pressing is how they were allowed to go on as long as they did.

From our best estimations, Poppy Reynolds, who we now know to be the previously anonymous Puppet Mistress moved to London in July 2022 from an unidentified location. She gave many different locations to various people, but each does not contain any evidence of her having lived there, so we are unsure of her origins. This is still being investigated by forces across the UK.

It is hard to believe that she has caused so much damage in just over a year in London. It is hard to reconcile with the various failures across the force that allowed her to continue to commit crimes, even after she was initially apprehended.

It is believed that Reynolds began luring victims back to her flat in August of 2022, and would kill and mutilate their bodies, believing that she could create dolls from their corpses.

Strange noises and regular disturbances were repeatedly reported by a neighbour of Reynolds, Elizabeth Spears. From what I can find, Spears made over two hundred calls to the emergency services in an attempt to raise alarm about the actions of Reynolds but was routinely ignored.

There are pages and pages of call logs where Spears can be seen asking for assistance, almost begging, and shamefully, it appears that she was not taken seriously throughout this ordeal.

The morgue is full of bodies from all over the city. There is one woman to blame and one woman who tried to stop her. Elizabeth Spears did everything that she could, but I have since discovered that her calls were always going to be unanswered.

I am not sure if this report will be filed. I have been warned off by my superiors, even threatened, so perhaps this will end up lost down the back of a file cabinet somewhere.

Perhaps, so will I.

The calls from Elizabeth Spears were monitored but never acted on, because Poppy Reynolds was being watched. She was the only known connection between the human world, and the creatures known as The Light Stealers.

Nobody knew how the relationship began, but she formed a friendship with one of those… things, and the government wanted them, so higher ups across the Met were ordered to watch, and to wait, so that they could capture it.

Reynolds was allowed to go on killing, in the pursuit of power. The government hungered to harness a dark evil, and they looked the other way until they could lure Reynolds and her fiendish friend out into the open.

Reynolds began to make mistakes, driven mad by the pursuit of a love that would last. She took that… thing out into the open, and the force was able to confirm its existence. It was only then that the order to arrest Reynolds was given.

That was supposed to be the end. Officers stormed the building and dragged Reynolds, kicking and screaming into custody. I was there that day. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Bodies everywhere, perfume barely masking the muggy, heavy scent of death.

Only one of the victims was still alive. She was chained to the bed, quiet as a church mouse, just staring up at the ceiling with a blank expression.

She’s been identified as a woman who went missing months ago with her girlfriend. It’s believed that she had a short relationship with Reynolds, and became her obsession. Her body was covered with injuries, and I can’t explain why, but her empty, endless stare frightened me. It’s like she’s alive, but there’s nothing inside of her.

A little girl was hidden under the table, her big eyes brimming with terrified tears. There was no depth that Reynolds wouldn’t sink to. We were unable to identify the child, and we still haven’t been able to.

The girl was taken into care, and Reynolds into custody, but the creature got away.

All the death had been for nothing. We didn’t get the creature. Reynolds was held for a little while, but they let her out, as part of another hair brained scheme to capture the creature.

I argued again and again with as many senior officers I could find, but they all had their orders. Reynolds was to go free, in exchange for her luring the creature in and giving him up.

No justice for the victims. No justice for the woman who had been ignored when she tried to save them.

Nobody would pay. Well… almost nobody.

The only person who paid the price for the crimes of Poppy Reynolds was the woman who tried to stop her.

The creature was captured this morning, and by the afternoon, Reynolds’ home was a bloodbath.

They let her keep the bodies, and the woman that somehow made it out alive. They actually let her keep them all imprisoned in her flat. They made a deal with a dangerous, disgusting killer.

I begged my superiors to see sense, but they were blinded by duty. They had their orders and they made a deal with the devil so that they could follow them.

There was a fight. The survivor appears to have finally killed Reynolds and escaped. We found her a few miles down the road, silent and stained with blood. She wouldn’t speak, and she hasn’t since.

She’s been hospitalised. I don’t see her ever being released. Maybe it’s the best place for her.

We went to Reynolds’ home, and discovered her body. Finally, justice, in a sense, but next door, was Elizabeth Spears, long forgotten, and never thanked for what she had tried to do.

We almost didn’t find her, but among the carnage, I noticed that the smell of death wasn’t just confined to Reynold’s home.

We broke down the door and sat at the table, silent and still was Elizabeth Spears.

There was nothing left of her eyes, but they followed me all the same. Torn out and replaced with buttons, like that children’s movie. You know the one. Why? I couldn’t say. Maybe Reynold’s couldn’t stand being watched anymore.

She watched as we placed her body into the cool, cruel black plastic. She watched as we closed the zip and shielded her from what we had allowed to be done to her.

I don’t think I’ll ever get the sight of her body out of my head.

She had been there for weeks, but she still looked pristine, in a sense. Reynolds always embalmed her victims, for the full doll experience, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but still, it was unsettling.

Dried blood trailed down her chest from a stab wound in her neck, but her face was made up, gaudy, glittery make up smeared across her cheeks and eyelids. Dressed all in white, with her hair in pigtails, and around her neck, a crudely drawn sign with a scrawled insult.

“Tattletale.”

One last doll. One last act of revenge against the only one who tried to stop her crime spree. One last person failed by those who were meant to protect them.

She must have been there for weeks, all alone, and none of us had even thought to look for her. She was the only one who tried to stop Reynolds and she was the only one who suffered along with the other victims.

Nobody will ever know.

The livestream she posted has been scrubbed from the internet. The flats were both deep cleaned, and now they’re full of new families.

The last victim, Marilyn, as she insists on being called, was blamed for murdering Reynolds and she’ll probably be locked up in that hospital forever. They just played it off as a domestic dispute. Nobody even knows that a serial killer was on the loose.

As Elizabeth said in her livestream, it’s easy to get lost in this city, and that’s all the victims have become. Their families can’t make sense of it because it doesn’t make sense, but nobody is listening to them, just like nobody listened to Elizabeth.

There are a few rumblings every now and then about the case, but it never goes anywhere.

It’s like it never happened.

The Puppet Mistress murders are over, but nobody will ever know the truth. Perhaps, that is the greatest crime of all.