Hoaxed · Tortoise Media

Episode five: The Healer

October 20, 2022·28 min·1 clip

Abraham Christie wears a large silver spoon pendant around his neck — the exact instrument the Hampstead children said he used to beat them.

1. Episode five of 'Hoaxed' (Tortoise, 2022) documents journalist Alexi Mostrous's attempt to locate and confront Abraham Christie — the man at the centre of the Hampstead conspiracy hoax — in Marrakech, Morocco. 2. Mostrous is accompanied by producer Gemma Newby and works with a Moroccan fixer named Nadia (name changed), whose local contacts prove critical to the search. 3. The episode's driving question is whether Abraham Christie has genuinely escaped justice, and whether the police will have another opportunity to question him. 4. Intelligence gathered before departure places Abraham in the Medina district of Sidi bin Sliman, near a mosque with a distinctive triangular roof, and associates him with a young man named Zakaria who appears alongside him in Instagram photographs holding large marijuana plants. 5. Nadia traces Abraham through her contacts within days of receiving the dossier, finding a friend who had visited his riad to purchase cannabis; Abraham sells cannabis for a minimum of 100 euros per transaction and describes himself as a healer rather than a dealer. 6. The contact describes Abraham as 'super cultivated,' well-read, and charming — a characteristic others who knew Abraham in the 1990s also noted, describing him as a 'weird mix of mystical savant and hardened criminal' whose favourite book is Frank Herbert's Dune. 7. A critical detail emerges at the end of the bar interview: the contact describes Abraham wearing several kilos of silver jewellery, including a large spoon pendant approximately ten centimetres long. 8. Mostrous immediately cuts to audio from the children's September 2014 police interview in which they describe Abraham giving them 'spoon licks' — repeated hits on the head with a spoon — establishing a direct physical link between the pendant and the alleged abuse. 9. A second body of evidence surfaces in parallel: Abraham's former stepchildren have posted messages on an anti-hoax blog since 2015 alleging that Abraham physically abused them, their siblings, and their mother Cindy for years in the 1990s — abuse that included being hit with a large silver spoon. 10. The stepchildren allege that Abraham forced one of them to falsely accuse their biological father of sexual abuse to social workers — an exact parallel to what happened with Ella's children a decade later. 11. A public Instagram dispute in 2022 between Abraham and his former family over the Moroccan riad produces further on-the-record abuse allegations, including claims of broken ribs and beatings severe enough that the children 'were unable to sit down for days.' 12. One line from Abraham's stepson resonates with Mostrous throughout the episode: 'to make him stop, just say what he wanted to hear.' 13. Abraham has denied all allegations of serious abuse, admitting only to 'disciplining' and 'smacking' his children; Mostrous notes that one official document does reference Abraham's violence toward his ex-wife, though comprehensive documentation is limited. 14. A warning from a former family member before the Morocco trip — 'he can be very violent' — escalates the sense of risk as the journalists attempt to locate the riad. 15. Nadia unexpectedly enters Abraham's riad alone after engineering a meeting with Zakaria; she describes the space as dirty and unsettling, noting she felt a threatening presence throughout the visit. 16. Abraham is not at the riad — Zakaria tells Nadia he is 'out of the country,' and specifically that he is in the UK, a revelation that frustrates and reframes the entire Morocco operation. 17. The episode uses a restrained, documentary-style audio format, with Mostrous narrating from field recordings made in real time; ads from unrelated sponsors are inserted at multiple points and are clearly audible in the transcript. 18. The tone is measured but the stakes are personal — Mostrous repeatedly states his frustration that Abraham has evaded justice and expresses admiration for Nadia's fieldwork. 19. Listeners who followed the Hampstead hoax case or are interested in investigative podcast journalism tracking down individuals who have evaded criminal accountability. 20. Listeners unfamiliar with the Hampstead hoax case may find the episode difficult to follow without prior episodes' context.

As heard by us

A careful, bruising chapter about old allegations resurfacing in new and uglier forms.

This episode follows Abraham Christie through older allegations of violence, then brings in a stepchild's testimony and the later Instagram fight over the Moroccan Riyadh, making the pattern feel less like background and more like the point.

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Why you'd press play

If you want the family history around Abraham Christie, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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