Good evening, listeners, you’re listening to The Truth About Erica, and I’m your host, Andy Noon. Regular listeners will know that each week we delve a little further into the unexplained and so-called ‘accidental’ death of Severn Oaks resident Erica Spencer. Tonight, on week three of The Truth About Erica, we hear about the exact order of the events of that night.
The date is October the 28th, 2017. Erica Spencer and her husband, Jack, have waved goodbye to their two children, Max and Emily, and Jack pours them a glass of wine each as they take their time showering and dressing for their favourite night of the year – the Kaplans’ annual Halloween party. As Erica slips on black ballet pumps, adjusts her long black wig and rings her eyes with thick black eyeliner, a stark contrast to the deathly pale of her face, Jack pulls the white stocking over his head.
‘I don’t know how I’ll drink anything in this,’ he complains.
His wife smiles and smooths down the front of her short white nightdress. ‘You usually manage.’
He doesn’t notice that she hasn’t touched her wine.
The Spencers arrived at the party at around seven thirty p.m. Karla remembers in her statement to police that they were one of the first couples to arrive.
‘They were always on time,’ she told police. ‘And Erica would always show up with a hostess gift. This year she brought a dozen red roses, mixed with a dozen satin black ones – for Halloween. She was so thoughtful like that.’
The party was open house – you see the Spencers and the Kaplans live within the walls of Severn Oaks, one of the most exclusive gated communities in Cheshire. They had no concern that anyone unsavoury might wander in – in fact, it was the Kaplans’ own son Brandon who – at sixteen – posed the biggest threat to the party. The last thing Marcus Kaplan, author of the YOU self-help empire and his wife Karla, Cheshire’s answer to Martha Stewart, wanted was for their teenage son’s friends to crash their party and cause a scene.
They had no need to worry. Brandon Kaplan told police that during the party he was ‘as far away as possible’, which transpired was a friend’s house in Warrington.
By eight thirty the Kaplan residence was full of party guests in their Halloween finery. Karla Kaplan wore a skin-tight black leotard over black fishnet tights, with long black gloves and a circus master’s top hat and long-tailed jacket. Her husband wore a similar circus master outfit: a black tuxedo jacket with a red satin trim, and top hat. His face was painted white, with black make-up around his eyes and stitches drawn from his mouth. There was a mummy, the Bride of Frankenstein and a female Freddy Krueger. Miranda Davenport from number five arrived alone, wearing a witch’s costume and promising that her husband, Alex, would be there soon. Peter King and his wife came as Beetlejuice and the Grim Reaper. Everyone had made a real effort for one of the nights of the year they enjoyed the most. Felicity Goldman walked in with Alex Davenport, the last couple to arrive, at eight thirty-five. Even after twin daughters she claims are the result of a one-night stand, Felicity has an enviable figure and was showing it off dressed as Harley Quinn. Alex appeared to have come without a costume – the only person other than Severn Oaks resident Larry Gorman not to have come in fancy dress.
The night proceeded smoothly, the guests taking full advantage of the free alcohol – over five hundred pounds’ worth that the Kaplans had provided. After the fact, no one would recall what Erica Spencer was drinking, although she had brought two bottles of wine along with her and it was assumed she was drinking as readily as everyone else. Her husband would later find a receipt for those two bottles, along with the Jack Daniel’s she had purchased for him – although he never appeared to realise from the receipt that the wine Erica had taken to the party was non-alcoholic. The post-mortem revealed her blood alcohol level to be 0.24, three times over the driving limit in the UK.
The only potential bump in the road for the Kaplans’ perfect party came at just after nine p.m., when Miranda Davenport demanded to know why her husband had turned up late, sans Friday The 13th costume and at the exact same time as Severn Oaks’ most eligible bachelorette. As he tried to calm down his furious wife, Alex made the mistake of opening his jacket to show her that he was wearing a costume and, with a look that has been described as ‘ridiculously pleased with himself’, revealed a suicide bomb vest. Witnesses say that Miranda hit the roof and insisted that Alex throw the tasteless costume choice away, go home and retrieve the outfit she spent a bloody fortune on and stay the fuck away from Felicity Goldman.
As far as parties went, this one was fairly tame. Severn Oaks, you see, is a community comprised of the most prestigious ‘regular folk’ Cheshire has to offer. These aren’t footballers or Real Housewives (although Karla Kaplan tells everyone she has turned down the show twice). These people are lawyers, business moguls, interior designers to the stars. They occupy the rungs of the corporate ladder people aspired to before reality TV and Instagram Influencing existed. And Severn Oaks was a safe space, concealed behind its wrought-iron gates. Any danger was firmly on the other side. At least, that’s what Erica thought.
The usual suspects tailed off early. Simon and Gilly made their excuses around 10:30, according to Simon.
‘Three hours drinking is more than enough for Gilly. Any more than that and she’s apt to throw up on the AGA and fall asleep the moment her head hits the pillow. And no bloke wants that when they spent all night trying to get their wife drunk enough to forget it’s not a birthday or Christmas, do they?’
Larry Gorman – minus costume – left at eleven, and distinctly remembers a highly inebriated Ben carrying his wife, Martha, down the road towards the house, on his back.
‘He was stumbling around and shouting, “It’s Michelle. Get it? MY SHELL.” I think Martha is literally the only person in the world who thinks Ben is hilarious. Just as well they married each other.’
When questioned about whether he saw Erica before leaving the party, Larry is suddenly quite cagey.
‘It’s like I told the police, we’d all been drinking quite a bit and time gets away from you. I’d go to say goodbye to someone and get caught up in conversation for another ten minutes. So yes, I saw her at one point, before I left, but I can’t be sure what time. She was talking to someone who I thought was Karla – she had the top hat and jacket on, and blonde hair – but I could only see Erica’s face. She had this strange look, a bit mean, I thought. Like a spiteful smile a child would give you before they crashed your favourite monster truck into a wall. And Karla was waving her arm – her right arm, I think – but neither of them was raising her voice. Then, as I left, I ran into Karla in the kitchen and went to thank her for having me. She was wearing a big jumper – I suppose it had dropped too cold for that skimpy leotard – and her hat was gone. So it couldn’t have been her talking to Erica, could it?’
This theme of ‘costume swapping’ will come back to us in our quest to find out what really happened to Erica at this elite gathering, but for now, let’s not forget that we are at a Halloween party. All Hallows Eve, a night when evil spirits come out to play. And it was after the peripheral guests had left the group that the real party began. Unsurprisingly, the Severn Oaks Six are cagey about what happened after the others left them. The following is taken from Peter King’s statement to the police.
‘We just stood around, chatting. Once people started to leave and there were fewer of us, we moved into the formal living room, but people were still in and out. I didn’t even notice Erica leave.’
And from Alex Davenport.
‘I don’t remember much after eleven-ish. Someone suggested drinking games in the living room, and Karla lost her shit because Marcus knocked over a green shot and the carpet is cream, or beige, or whatever. That’s it, I think. Nothing else really happened.’
So we’ve already moved from ‘standing around chatting’ to drinking games. Is this how Erica ended up with a blood alcohol level three times the legal driving limit? But why would she partake in shot games when she had specifically taken non-alcoholic wine to the party? And how did she end up climbing into the tree house that would later be the death of her?
The real question for this week then, listeners, is what happened at that party after the other guests left? And why are the Severn Oaks Six so reluctant to talk about those lost hours? Stay tuned – you might find out.
Next week, part two of The Party – Motive.