A TAROT card reader has told how a man confessed to murder during a reading after his cards revealed the terrible truth.
Jayne Braiden then kept the killer talking for an hour in his small seaside shop until the police arrived to take him away.
Star Randel-Hanson stabbed his housemate Derek Marney to death and left his body on the kitchen floor for ten days before entering Miss Braiden’s JJ Tarot at Madeira Drive.
The ten cards he chose from a deck of 52 included death and justice – and he collapsed when Miss Braiden, 56, read his third card, the devil.
She said: “He started crying right after that.
“The first was the damn trick – falling out with someone, a really serious argument.
“Then there was the emperor, a dominant male.
“So the devil card obviously means something horrible.
“He collapsed and I said to him: ‘look, I can see here that it’s not good, you have to tell me everything, let’s talk about it’.
“He said, ‘It’s terrible, I killed him.
“He told me he killed him but he didn’t mean to and it was awful.”
Miss Braiden calmly told the 56-year-old she should tell the police and asked if he minded, before stepping out of her shop to do so.
She phoned 999 at 3.42pm, but police arrived at 4.44pm after the call handler downgraded the call to a non-emergency call.
Miss Braiden said officers later said they believed it was a hoax when she called on the May 5 bank holiday on Monday last year.
She said: “The call handler told me it would take up to 55 minutes. I said I couldn’t hold him here.
“I think I thought they would be here in 15 minutes tops.
“Then I came back and asked him if he wanted a drink. So I went to the side and said, ‘don’t ask, but can I have a bottle of water please’ .
“I didn’t give the alarm to anyone else [on the seafront] because they would have freaked out, so I didn’t tell anyone. It would have made the situation worse.
“I gave him some water and we sat down to chat.
“I closed the top door. I had my baton, given to me by a trusted policeman, and a screaming alarm.”
She took notes as Randel-Hanson discussed her relationship with Mr Marney and other parts of her life.
Two officers took Randel-Hanson away, then officers attended his Vernon Terrace apartment and found Mr Marney’s body on the kitchen floor.
Miss Braiden recalled how she then grabbed a coffee and went back to work.
She said, “My friend said, ‘I’m fine,’ and I said, ‘I don’t really know. I don’t want to talk about it, but there was just a really weird “thing.”
“The next person to arrive was CID to say they had found the body.
“I told him, ‘I knew you would’.”
She said she didn’t feel threatened by the killer and felt it was her “duty” to keep him there until police arrived.
Randel-Hanson was jailed for life with a minimum of 15 years last week after being found guilty of murder following a two-week trial at Croydon Crown Court.
“I KNEW I HAD TO KEEP IT THERE – IT WAS MY DUTY”
Randel-Hanson Star KILLER: Star Randel-Hanson
IT IS when Jayne Braiden reached for the devil that Star Randel-Hanson broke down in tears. For ten days, he had gone about his life while the corpse of his roommate lay on the floor of his kitchen.
He had wanted to get it off his chest – turning up at Hove police station one day only to find it closed.
Now the ten cards – including Justice and Death – that he had chosen from 51 stared at him from the small wooden table in the seaside tarot shop. Tarot reader Miss Braiden began to scan them. .
First there was the falling tower. Two people fall. A bad line. Then there was the emperor. A dominant male. And third, the devil. He couldn’t hold back any longer.
“It’s terrible. I killed him,” he said amid tears. Tarotist for 25 years, Miss Braiden has seen it all.
Marital problems, secrets, troubles: people tell him all sorts of things.
But so far, never a murder. Having cast her eyes over the ten cards, she could see before her confession where things were going.
“I saw the line at the end, so I knew it was something he would be sidelined for,” she recalled. Yet even as the confession slipped out of him, she remained calm.
“I said to him, ‘You understand I have to call the police. Are you okay with that?'” she recalled. “And he said yes.”
She stepped out to dial 999 on a beachfront full of families enjoying the holidays.
“I have a man in my shop,” she told the operator. “And I know it’s going to be hard to believe but I just saw that he murdered someone.”
The response: “OK, that’s not a 999 call, I’m afraid. It’s a 101 [the non-emergency number] to call.”
Miss Braiden was not defeated. She pointed out that the killer at her shop had confessed and the body had not yet been found.
He was told someone would be there in an hour. Miss Braiden went over and got a bottle of water. She didn’t say a word about the killer in her shop.
“I wanted to keep it quiet,” she said. “There were lots of children, it was a family day by the sea.
“Me going over there screaming wouldn’t have helped anyone.”
A lot of people would have just run away. But Miss Braiden thought, “I didn’t want him to go because it wouldn’t have been fair to the man who died.”
So she went back inside and gave him some water. They were sitting talking at his table. About a foot between them. She took notes.
“I asked him the name of the deceased, where he had worked, Derick’s friends,” she recalled.
“Where was the wound, where was the knife. He got angry and started crying.
Derick Marney VICTIM: Derick Marney
Randel-Hanson’s trial later learned how he and Mr Marney, 70, met at a Spiritualist church in Brighton. A year later, Mr Marney invited him to move into his Vernon Terrace flat “for company”. Randel-Hanson claimed Mr Marney sexually assaulted him three times.
He said he must have stabbed Mr Marney after the older man confronted him while he was making sandwiches, but denied murder.
In the tarot shop, Miss Braiden did not ask him about the details of the crime. She wanted to keep things calm, keep an eye out for the police.
“I said, ‘If you had gone over there and thrown your gum or something, the police would be there in a second,'” she recalled.
“We laughed a little about it.”
Two police officers arrived more than 50 minutes later and took Randel-Hanson away.
Miss Braiden was a key witness in court, where she showed the cards he had chosen – although those about justice were hidden from jurors. It was in court that she first became aware of the brutality of Randel-Hanson’s attack.
She says that despite their report, she has no sympathy for him.
“I formed a rapport because I had to,” she said. “I knew what I was doing. I knew I had to keep it there. I knew it was also my duty. “And I’m great in service. I can let small things go, but it’s my duty.
FROM GAME TO MEANS OF DIVINATION
TAROT readers claim to use cards to gain insight into people’s past and future.
The tarot is a deck of 78 cards generally (although sometimes less used), classified into major and minor arcana – more or less great secrets.
The 22 Major Arcana cards depict images such as the Devil, Hangman, Justice, Death, and Swords. The minor arcana feature symbols such as wands, swords, cups, and pentacles.
The cards represent different emotions, fates, archetypes, or characteristics used, with the perspective that whatever is dealt will reveal something about the person they are dealt to.
Tarot readers can usually give open readings – where they give a general assessment of the person’s life – or readings that answer a specific question such as, “Should I get married?” or ‘Should I quit my job?’
Tarot cards were originally used in 14th century Italy to play games.
Their use in divination dates back to the 16th century but more strongly to the 18th century, when Giacomo Casanova wrote in his diary that his Russian mistress frequently used playing cards for divination.
Some tarot readers say they should be read as a guide rather than just a prediction of the future, and can help people solve problems in their lives.
The historic practice has persisted well into modernity, with tarot shops dotting main streets across the country.