Today on Pushing Up Lilies, we’re diving into the chilling case of the Hunt family murders.
On the evening of July 9th, 2024, Carol, Hannah, and Louise Hunt were brutally killed in their own home in Bushey, England. The weapon? A crossbow—an unusual and terrifying choice that only adds to the horror of this tragic event.
Join me as we unravel the details of this heartbreaking case, explore the twisted motives behind such a heinous act, and discuss the manhunt that led to the capture of the prime suspect, Kyle Clifford.
This is one episode you won’t want to miss.
* Listener discretion is advised.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I’m your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True Crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Hey guys, we are back this week back in town.
0:35 Done with vacations.
0:38 So glad to be home.
0:40 Vacations are always fun.
0:41 But I’m always so ready to get back.
0:44 I always think about all the things that I need to do and places I need to be and sometimes after a few days of vacation, it’s hard to enjoy yourself because you just start, I don’t know, worrying about stuff and thinking about stuff.
0:58 But anyway, I’m sure y’all can all relate.
1:02 It’s been super-hot here.
1:05 I think the heat index is supposed to be 108 and I saw the cutest thing y’all the other day at my med spa here in Denton, we have our front door kind of overlooks a courtyard and the courtyard has squirrels all over the place because it’s covered in trees so we can sit.
1:28 Sometimes I have big windows in there and we can sit and just watch the squirrels play.
1:33 And it’s kind of cool, but we had three that were just like jumping around outside the front door the other day.
1:40 And literally one of them lopped down on his belly, arms and legs extended right in front of the front door.
1:49 And you could tell that it was because he could feel the air conditioning coming from under the door.
1:55 It was so cute because he was just jumping around running and playing.
1:58 Then he was like, I’m exhausted and he just like flopped in front of the door.
2:03 It was so cute.
2:05 I got a picture I put on my Facebook page because I thought it was adorable, but its hot even though little squirrels are miserable.
2:13 I am super excited though.
2:15 I got to tell y’all a couple of really cool things.
2:18 My YouTube channel is, I haven’t sort of recording yet.
2:23 I’m probably going to do that today, but there are some recordings of previous episodes on it.
2:32 It is Pushing Up Lilies channel, but the name of the channel is Brains, Body bags and Bedside Manner.
2:41 We can talk about nursing, we can talk about gross death stuff, we can talk about whatever we want to.
2:49 I have a lot of morticians, a lot of people that work at crematories, police officers, all kinds of different professions that are interested in talking as well as family members who have been involved in issues regarding death with their loved ones who want to talk about those stories.
3:11 That’s exciting.
3:13 I’m going to be having giveaways on there as well.
3:16 I thought that that would be kind of fun and maybe help to get a little more interaction to have some fun giveaways.
3:24 I do have some stuff already lined up to give away on my first recording.
3:28 If you can, please, please, go to brains, body bags and bedside manner on YouTube and subscribe, I would very much appreciate subscriptions and if you can go ahead and listen to some of the recordings on there, I would appreciate that as well.
3:46 That’s going to be a lot of fun.
3:48 Ok.
3:49 Next y’all, my Patreon is up.
3:53 It is under my name Julie Mattson, M A T T S O N, Pushing Up Lilies and look for it under Patreon.
4:03 And there are going to be several different categories that you can subscribe to if you want to be an investigator, which is $5 a month.
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4:37 Now, that is going to exclude the cereal box subscription for now, it might later include that, but for now, it will exclude the cereal box subscription, which is up and coming.
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5:02 So early access, you will get a monthly bonus episode, and you will be able to join our Patreon chat group, which is really a great place to talk in real time about events that are going on in your area or in the world or just discussions.
5:24 It’s kind of cool cause we all have the same interests, right?
5:28 It’s fun to chat about stuff that’s going on and get each other’s opinions and yeah, so that’ll be a lot of fun.
5:37 If you are a sleuth, there’s a $20 fee a month for that and you will unlock special video content that will be available only to people who pay the $20 a month.
5:49 We’re also going to have a monthly group video chat via stream yard where we can like discuss the latest episodes and share our thoughts.
5:58 This is called wine with me.
5:59 What we’ll do is grab a glass of wine or whatever your favorite drink is, and we will video chat.
6:06 We’ll just have a good time.
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6:18 You will also get all the detective perks.
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6:30 Now, the big, big, big one is the forensic expert and that’s going to be $30 a month.
6:37 And with that, you get a free merchandise item every month and I can guarantee you that item is going to be worth more than $30 if you love podcasts and you love surprises.
6:52 I recommend this.
6:54 You will also get recognized with a monthly shout out on the podcast and you will also get all the sleuth perks and that’s going to include early access bonus content.
7:11 A chance to take place in the discussion group exclusive videos.
7:16 You can participate in the wine with me monthly group video and you’ll get 10% off all murder merchandise, y’all like this is going to be so much fun as a welcome gift.
7:31 We’re going to kick things off with an exclusive behind the scenes video and that’s where I’m going to discuss the making of the episodes and just share some personal insights into the world of investigations.
7:45 And that’s going to be just a thank you to everybody that’s for, you know, your support and enthusiasm and I so much appreciate it.
7:53 We have so many followers now, the numbers are growing so fast.
8:00 The number of people who have reached out and wanted to be on episodes is amazing.
8:09 This is going to be a lot of fun.
8:11This is going to be challenging for me.
8:12 However, because I do have two jobs and I am in grad school, the videos are going to be a lot of fun, going to be a blast.
8:21 I highly recommend the forensic expert membership because you are going to love the monthly mailings.
8:32 And with that, you know, I will have to have an address because we want to have a place to mail your goodies again.
8:40 The cereal box is up and coming soon.
8:44 I’m super excited about that.
8:45 I’m having so much fun looking for things that I just know y’all are going to love anyway on to bigger things.
8:53 I wanted to talk to you about a story.
8:55 It’s very recent.
8:57 This happened just last month, Carol Hunt and her daughters, Hannah who was 28 and Louise who was 25 were found fatally injured in their quiet suburban home in Bushy Hertfordshire, which is in the UK on July 9th.
9:18 Just last month, the husband of Carol who is 61 and father of the girls, is John Hunt.
9:27 He was a BBC racing commentator and was I believe supposed to be a commentator for the Olympics in Paris.
9:35 But because of this event, he was unable to do that.
9:39 The couple also had another daughter, Amy, who was not in the home at the time of this attack when all this happened.
9:47 Now, it’s believed that the women were tied up and gagged for several hours before they were shot with a crossbow.
9:55 There are conflicting stories.
9:57 There are stories that say they were not tied up, but there was evidence that they had been when they were found because there were ligature marks on them.
10:07 Difficult to confirm because there are several different reports of each.
10:13 I’m not sure which I don’t want to time myself.
10:18 Forgive the pun to one or the other.
10:22 Hannah, who was 28, owned a beauty business called Hannah Grace Cosmetics and Louise was 25 and she launched a dog grooming business out of their home during COVID and it was called Groom and Glow.
10:39 This happened at around 6:30 at night on July 9th, neighbors heard screams, and they thought that it was a child screaming from a nearby home.
10:50 They had no idea that it was coming from the hunt.
10:52 Residents, Carol had stab wounds to her chest and abdomen while Hannah and Louise had crossbow boat injuries.
11:04 I don’t know how familiar y’all are with crossbow but in the UK, it is not or in Britain, there’s no less needed to own one, but it is illegal to carry it in public unless you have a reasonable excuse.
11:20 I don’t really know what a reasonable excuse for carrying a crossbow in public would be because let me tell you those bows, the blades are sharp.
11:29 I am a bow hunter.
11:31 Not many of you know that I haven’t done it in a while, but I had a blade that was in the console of my car.
11:41 I don’t even know why it was because I guess I’d gone on a hunting trip and left it in there, but reached my hand in there and literally thought I sliced my finger off.
11:52 I could not stop the bleeding, and I’m used to blood.
11:56 I see blood every day.
11:57 I just don’t like to see my own.
11:59 I don’t know how many of y’all are like that, but I really, I don’t like to see my own blood anyway.
12:05 He and I texted an unnamed person to say that she had been tied up and asked them to call the police and she did tell them that the suspect was still there.
12:17 She was still alive with a crossbow bolt in her chest when the police arrived.
12:23 Thus, she had also managed to call the police and give her address before the call was disconnected.
12:30 Kyle Clifford is 26 years old and is believed to have recently been in a relationship with Louise having met her on an online dating site.
12:43 Now, Clifford was found in Lavender Hill Cemetery with chest wounds, and he was rushed to a hospital and underwent lifesaving surgery.
12:53 He was born in Enfield in 1998 and is the third of four Children.
13:00 Now, in my research, I found that his eldest brother Bradley was jailed for life in 2018 after basically mowing down and beating an 18-year-old to death in a fit of rage after his mustang was damaged because a bottle was thrown and hid it.
13:24 Ben Khan who died in that incident had a friend with him who also sustained injuries, but Khan died because he was flown off the moped and then beat by Bradley Clifford.
13:41 So this guy Kyle, who is the one who killed Hannah Louise and Carol had a brother who was in prison for life.
13:52 Kyle served as a trooper, which is equivalent to a private, I guess with the dragoon guards.
13:58 He joined the army in 2019.
14:01 And stories that I can find about him say that he was immature and seemed to have kind of a chip on his shoulder, but he was no longer in the army.
14:10 He was working in security.
14:13 His parents accepted and supported his relationship with Louise and Kyle and Louise had reportedly split up prior to, you know, the murder taking place, and he was distressed by the breakup.
14:30 Now, Louise had posted on Twitter that she admired women who leave their relationships.
14:36 He was arrested on suspicion of three counts of murder and now this is as of July 12th, he remained in the hospital in serious condition.
14:46 The most recent thing I could read was that he was still unable to be interviewed.
14:51 I’m not quite sure what his condition is.
14:55 Now, Kyle Clifford had been introduced to Louise’s family at the beginning of 2024.
15:04 She took him to a cousin’s birthday party in April.
15:08 He had been around the family, I guess for about seven months when this happened, I think they’ve been dating for six months is what I had read in the report.
15:20 You know, he appeared to be a nice guy, however he was very controlling.
15:26 He stopped her from wearing makeup, he stopped her from staying out late.
15:32 He stopped her from having male friends and, you know, friends.
15:37 I’m sure noticed not really a change in her behavior but a change in just her look.
15:44 I mean, I know having kind of remotely been involved in a controlling relationship, it changes you, it changes who you are, and you know, they convince you sometimes that they’re all you deserve.
15:59 It’s kind of a mind game I guess that is played and they convince you that they’re the best you can get and that you need to abide by their rules or they’re going away.
16:14 It’s very narcissistic, but there are a lot of relationships like this which is also very sad and I’m sure that she had absolutely no idea that it was going to come down to this.
16:28 I mean, breakups happen every day and they’re not normally pleasant.
16:35 I know that back when I dated before I got married, I had a lot of breakups that we were like, hey, you don’t ever want this to go anywhere.
16:44 And I’m looking for something long term and it’s not working.
16:48 Let’s just part ways and it was completely amicable and there was no fighting.
16:55 You even had dinner before you’re just like, well, bye.
16:58 You know.
16:58 It was just kind of, it was ok, but a lot of breakups don’t end well.
17:07 We’ve all been there; we’ve all got that T-shirt and don’t want to go back.
17:12 I can guarantee that she had absolutely no idea that he had this amount of rage in him and how horrifying for this family and how horrifying for the father of these girls and the husband of Carol.
17:28 You know, to have to go through this.
17:29 I know it’s hard enough losing one family member but to lose three and to lose them in such a grisly murder is just horrifying.
17:43 I can’t even imagine.
17:45 I’m glad that John Hunt has his other daughter, Amy, and they can support each other.
17:52 I believe there is a GoFundMe account that was started for the family just to kind of help them get through this.
17:59 But I can’t even imagine now they did meet online, and I know there are a lot of couples that meet online, and I guess the scary thing about that is that, you know, the other person wasn’t introduced to you by someone.
18:15 So you really don’t know anything about them.
18:17 I mean, you’re trusting that they tell you honestly about their past and about themselves and their family and you hope that they’re being completely honest, but you never really know because, you know, it does take, they were together for about six months.
18:34 It takes about six months; I think to truly know somebody.
18:38 And I still think that you don’t truly know somebody probably until you live together, my way of thinking may be wrong.
18:46 But I always kind of thought it was better to live with somebody before getting married.
18:50 And I know that a lot of people do not believe that.
18:53 But I always just kind of felt like that was what was best for me because I need to know if I can live with somebody before, I commit to a lifetime with them.
19:01 My husband and I lived together for a while before we got married and I think you just learn, you know, do you like this person enough to make the changes necessary to be compatible and live in the same environment?
19:16 I mean, you either do or you don’t, you know, and you decide, and you do it or you don’t anyway to make changes to yourself for other people is never a good idea.
19:28 I’m quite sure she was afraid of him, and we know she was at the end whenever he came into the house, and she may have willingly let him into the house.
19:37 Having absolutely no idea.
19:39 I don’t know if he broke in or if she let him in or if they were talking or exactly how the whole situation got started.
19:47 But to me that’s just horrifying as far as I can tell in the reports, I’ve read Kyle Clifford is still in the hospital.
19:57 He has been arrested and I don’t know if they have been able to speak with him yet.
20:04 I’m not sure what’s going to happen there don’t know exactly what his injuries are.
20:09 I think I read that he stabbed himself in the chest with the crossbow, so he had chest injury, I believe.
20:17 But good, you know what?
20:19 There were no shots fired by the police.
20:21 He was not injured by the police.
20:24 It was self-inflicted.
20:26 It appeared to be a suicide attempt, and he was actually found in a cemetery.
20:32 I’m sure his family is distraught as well.
20:35 His parents because they have one son in prison for life already and probably another one that will be what a weird lifestyle that would be for parents anyway.
20:46 There are a lot of different ways that abuse can get in the way of relationships, whether you’re dating or married.
20:58 And, you know, I saw a lot of that when I worked as a sexual assault nurse and I see a lot of that now because, you know, we have homicides and a lot of them stem from domestic violence and I know we’ve talked about this before, but it can be physical where someone, you know, slaps you kicks, you holds you down, throws things breaks things threatened you with a weapon trying to keep you from calling for help to keep you away from your friends.
21:28 Somebody who’s constantly checking up on you that psychological abuse, somebody that insults you again tells you no one else will ever love you.
21:39 Tells you what to wear.
21:41Doesn’t trust you jealous.
21:43 Always accuses you of cheating, reading your emails, your text messages, doesn’t want you to make decisions, blames you for the abuse, threaten suicide.
21:55 If you leave, those are signs of psychological abuse.
22:03 I mean, there can also be intimidation involved and the goal of that is just to make you afraid.
22:13 You won’t seek help driving recklessly threatening that if you tell anyone something bad will happen, threatening to hurt your kids or your friends or your family, even stalking, following someone around or constantly calling.
22:34 And then there’s sexual abuse and we all know I’ve seen a lot of that being a sexual assault nurse.
22:41 It’s just sad.
22:42 It’s sad that there’s so much abuse going on.
22:45 That’s why I always like to remind everybody about the national Domestic Violence hotline.
22:51 You can text the word begin B. E. G. I. N. 288788 or you can call 807 997233.
23:06 They also have a chat option, but unfortunately, they usually experience a high volume of calls and chats, but they are there 24 7 and it’s confidential.
23:21 It’s the hotline dot org and that’s the national Domestic Violence hotline.
23:27 If you feel like you’re involved in a domestic violence situation, I encourage you to reach out.
23:34 It sounds like this horrible crime had stemmed from a domestic violence situation involving Louise and Kyle.
23:46 I hope that the upcoming week is amazing for everyone.
23:53 Again, I’m so super excited about the Patreon being up and running.
23:58 Don’t forget our murder merch store at PushingUpLilies.com.
24:04 You can always email me at Julie at PushingUpLilies.com.
24:08 I am really looking forward to the video chats and the Patreon chats.
24:15 I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.
24:17 I think that it’ll kind of give all of us who have the commonality of loving true crime, the opportunity to visit and talk and maybe ask each other questions.
24:30 It will be a lot of fun.
24:32 I encourage you to look at my Patreon and sign up and please subscribe to my YouTube channel brains, body bags and bedside manner.
24:41 I look forward to providing amazing episodes and again, giving out some great giveaways of things that I know y’all are going to love.
24:52 I hope your week is amazing and try to stay out of trouble.
24:56 Try to stay cool.
24:57 Be nice.
24:59 I’ll talk to you all next week.
25:00 Bye.
25:02 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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25:16 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.