'The call that started my never-ending nightmare' (2025)

Richard Ziemacki speaks to the Manchester Evening News about the murder of his brother Stuart Everett. Last week, his sibling's killer Marcin Majerkiewicz was jailed for life.

When Richard Ziemacki received a birthday card in the post, he didn't think anything was out of the ordinary. His brother Stuart Everett regularly kept in touch and wrote to him on special occasions.

Richard didn't know the horrific truth - that his sibling had been brutally murdered by his housemate days earlier and his body cut up and dumped at green spaces across Greater Manchester.

Mr Everett's killer Marcin Majerkiewicz tried to buy himself time and pretended the 67-year-old was still alive. He was the one who had sent Richard a card, signing his brother's nickname, Benny.

He then messaged Richard, 69, using his Mr Everett's phone, impersonating his victim. Majerkiewicz texted as 'Benny', saying he was moving house.

He even messaged his own phone, posing as Mr Everett, writing: "I'm sorry things turned out this way and you are only just finding out. This is what it's like with health. It was bound to happen."

In reality, Majerkiewicz was busy dumping body parts - at least 27 - in plastic bags at spots across the region. Only around a third of Mr Everett's body has been found.

The investigation began when remains were discovered by a member of the public at Kersal Dale in Salford on April 4 last year. They were put in a bunker, wrapped in cling film.

The murder probe launched that day rapidly grew, becoming unprecedented in its scale. Last week, Majerkiewicz was jailed for life. He was ordered to serve at least 34 years.

Now, in an interview with the Manchester Evening News, Stuart's brother Richard has spoken of the moment he received the call from police than started his 'living nightmare'.

'My phone started ringing and ringing'

Richard last spoke his brother, also known as Roman Ziemacki, on March 25 - two days before it is believed he was murdered. They met in person just over a week before at the Cheltenham Festival.

"We had a conversation and an exchange on WhatsApp," Richard, who lives in Derby, said of their last conversation. "The remains were found at Kersal Dale on April 4, which was the day before my birthday.

"It was about four or five days after that when I was coming in from the garden that my phone started ringing. An officer was on the other end. He was very straightforward about it all, and said some remains had been found in an area of [Greater] Manchester, which they believed could be of some relation to me.

"He said they wanted to allocate some liaison officers to come and see me. But I said that Stuart had been contacting me and that I even got a birthday card from him. I said he was alive.

"From that moment on, my phone started ringing and ringing. I realised he hadn't been in touch for about a week, which was very unusual for Benny.

"I had a birthday card from him and a video saying he was moving so I didn't believe him [the police officer]. But, eventually, it hit home and I knew the police wouldn't be ringing me unless it was something definite.

"He was very meticulous with his cards. He used to send everybody a card and would always put scratch cards in there. When I received the card, I just looked and said 'oh, there's one from Benny here'. I basically read it and then just put it with the rest of them.

"He was murdered on March 27 and this card arrived on April 5 or the day before. This is what led me down the path of believing he was still alive.

"But when the liaison officers came, we started thinking about it. I looked at the card and thought, 'that's not his writing' and 'that's not the sort of thing he'd put in it'. It became a piece of the evidence. And it was a good piece of evidence, because Majerkiewicz's fingerprints were on it."

In the days that followed, police revealed further body parts had been found at five more locations. Green spaces became crime scenes as the investigation gathered pace.

Body parts were found wrapped in clingfilm at two of the locations - Kersal Dale, where a lower torso, pelvis and thighs were found; and Linnyshaw Colliery Woods, where bones, muscle tissue, and parts of a skull were recovered along with the front and back of a skull days later, and a hacksaw in a reservoir.

Further remains were found at Blackleach Reservoir, in bin bags on land off Chesterfield Close in Eccles and also Boggart Hole Clough.

It is thought Majerkiewicz, 42, murdered Mr Everett with a hammer in his bedroom at the house he shared with Mr Everett before sawing his body up. In court, the killer admitted disposing of body parts, but denied murdering him.

'What horror movies are made of'

"It's just unbelievable that somebody was pretending to be my brother and sending me a birthday card and then sending me messages on my phone," Richard added. "How horrible and inhumane that is, to treat the family of the person who's been killed in such a manner.

"I haven't digested [what happened] and I haven't gotten over it. It's a year that's just gone in my life - a year of my life has been lost. I do get emotional about things... thinking about how it happened and what Marcin did to my brother, and how any human being can do what he did.

"To actually murder somebody and then go to the lengths that he did, to disguise that he'd actually done it, and then dispose of his body in several, numerous places to try and get away with it. It's like what horror movies are made of.

"To find out that your own flesh and blood, your brother, had been murdered, and certainly to then find out they'd been dismembered - I just couldn't believe it."

Richard said his brother had lived in the rented Salford property on Worsley Road for around 10 years. He said were 'rumours' about Mr Everett being in a romantic relationship with Majerkiewicz, but that it was never confirmed.

He said that from what he knew, the housemates got along well for a number of years, but that Mr Everett kept much of the detail private.

Richard added: "Benny used to think he was the boss of the rented properties. He always used to take the role of being the man who organized everything in that house and for whoever was with him, they would just let him get on with it.

"I never knew until police said he may have possibly been with Marcin. But I don't know whether that was definite or not. I was pretty stunned when I heard it.

"Obviously, they had lived together for a number of years. I didn't know a huge amount. Benny just told me he used to work at a chicken restaurant and worked his way up to being a manager.

"He used to say he'd done really well for himself, working long hours and what have you. He'd say he had a headache because they'd had a bottle of vodka the night before. But apart from that, he didn't really say much.

"He just described him as being somebody who just got up, went to work, finished work, did a bit of shopping and went to bed at the same time every night, doing things on a regular basis.

"He just said whenever he needed any hand in the house to do anything, Marcin would always do that. They must have got on well with each other, or else it wouldn't have lasted so long."

'I couldn't believe it... that's bits of my brother'

A pathologist found Mr Everett had been subjected to a 'sustained, severe force blunt force physical assault in the form of repeated strikes to the head with a heavy blunt implement'.

Prosecutors said Mr Everett was murdered on the night of March 27 or into the early hours of March 28 last year inside the house. Heavy blood staining was found on the carpet of Majerkiewicz’s room within the house.

A huge trawl of CCTV footage by police revealed Majerkiewicz had dumped the remains at Kersal Dale two days before they were found. Further CCTV searches revealed he made trips to further 'deposition sites'.

"I couldn't believe what I was listening to and reading," Richard said. "More body parts are being found daily. I was thinking, God Almighty, that's bits of my brother. You just can't imagine how somebody, a jolly nice fellow, who literally you'd last seen days before he died, was dead and disposed of all over the city.

"The nightmare still hasn't ended. The nightmare started when I got that call and it's still ongoing now. And then every time there were reports about what was happening, your life just stops.

"It's still ongoing, because only 35 per cent of his body has been found - which means 65 per cent hasn't, and the person who did it probably knows where the other parts are. A lot of those have probably been scavenged by wildlife, but there is also a distinct possibility that parts of my brother will still be found somewhere.

"That just shows what kind of person he was. He knows where he deposited them, but he still hasn't said."

The net closed on Majerkiewicz after police analysed his phone data and viewed thousands of hours of CCTV, placing him in the vicinity of Boggart Hole Clough and Kersal Dale.

Horrifying footage showed him travelling across parts of north Manchester and Salford with shopping bags, later revealed to have been used to carry body parts.

They had an accurate description of a suspect, before catching up with Majerkiewicz - after spotting him by chance - on Eccles Old Road. They arrested him on April 25 carrying a bag for life. Inside were Mr Everett's bank cards, phone and cleaning equipment.

"I thought [the murder] was all pre-planned and premeditated," Richard said. "And there was definitely a plan to escape and get out of the way. If it wasn't for the police constable who saw him on April 25, he may have gotten away with it. He may have disappeared, and that would've made it so much more horrendous.

"The investigation would have still carried on without a doubt, but it may still not have been solved now."

'I've got nothing'

The police provided Richard with a video link to his home for the majority of the trial. He added: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing. How somebody casually walking down the road was with 17 kilos of my brother on one occasion, just walking and sitting next to somebody on a bus. How can someone so callously do that?

"To me, he knew what he was going to do. Once it happened, he knew he was going to do what he did, and he did it all so methodically just to get rid of him.

"The murder sort of lasted for about a week while he was depositing all these pieces. It wasn't over in a split second. It lasted for a week because that was all part of the murder.

"He was dissected, my brother... cut into all these pieces. Then he proceeded to order a skip to empty his room, empty his belongings."

Cameras near the home captured elements of the clean-up operation, including items being put in a skip on the driveway and a van arriving to remove furniture.

Majerkiewicz threw away a number of Stuart and Richard's treasured family possessions, including mementos from their parents' journey to the UK from Poland after the Second World War.

"Benny adored my mum and dad," Richard said. "He was a mummy's boy ever since he was young, and was really very proud, like I was, of my dad, because he fought in the war. He was very proud of our heritage. When they passed away, he took everything.

"What happened is absolutely unbelievable. Apart from murdering him, Marcin's plan was to erase Benny from the Earth and all traces of him. Part of that was all his belongings.

"All my dad's stuff, plus all the various history of our family, leading back to the 1500s where there was some royalty there, he had it all.

"And what did he [Majerkiewicz] do? He slung it all into black bin bags and got rid of it all. All the history. My family's history, thrown into a dustbin or a skip. I've now got nothing.

"All I have left is a picture on our wall of mum and dad. But there's no trace of my history, my family, any memorabilia or photographs from Christmas and stuff like that.

"It threw away the history of my family. All he wanted to do was get rid of my brother and all trace of my brother and part of that, unfortunately, was the history of my family."

'It's non-stop... like you're being tortured'

The trial judge said Majerkiewicz subjected Mr Everett to a 'grisly, bloody, and macabre' murder as well as undertaking 'a careful, elaborate, and lengthy exercise to conceal the fact that Stuart Everett was dead'.

"From the day I found out, until now, it's been hell," Richard added. "Most days I think of him. It's not like if your mum and dad pass away, and you bury them and then time is a healer. With this, you remember what happened because of the media interest and the court case. It was like a burial every day.

"Every day something was happening which immediately triggered the feeling that, my God, this is still going on - and it went on and on and on and on. It's non-stop, like you're being tortured. How a human being can do that to another human being is just beyond words.

"There's no escape from the fact that it's ongoing. Every day I am reminded of him. I've got his ashes on the mantlepiece at home with a picture and I say 'hello' to him every morning. But at the end of the day, that's my brother in that little casket.

"What he [Marcin] did was inhumane. He had the opportunity to say sorry. He had the opportunity to say 'this is what I did with the rest of the body'. He wasn't thinking about me or the family. It was as if he was untouchable. I don't think he even knows what remorse is."

Richard now plans to travel to Poland with his brother's ashes and bury them alongside their parents, grandparents and wider family.

Discussing his past, he said his brother worked for the Department for Work and Pensions for around 25 years before getting a job calling people on behalf of the NHS for vaccinations during the pandemic. He said the two brothers were 'close' and saw each other multiple times a year and 'communicated regularly'.

"I would speak with Benny probably at least twice a week," Richard said. "We were close. And he used to come and visit us at least a few times a year - mainly because we used to love horseracing and the Cheltenham Festival, and he was a bit of a legend in the local club with me. Everybody used to love him.

"He used to come back for a week in March, and at Christmas time he'd come back for about a week. Other times he would visit for special occasions. This last year, unfortunately, he was due to come back to my daughter's wedding. He booked a room and paid for it, but his room remained empty because he wasn't with us."

Paying tribute to his brother, Richard described him as a 'jovial, intelligent and unique character' who 'everybody loved'.

"Everyone is just very sad at what's happened, how it's happened and how brutally it happened," he added. "And at the lack of remorse his murderer has shown, and the effect it's had on us all.

"Benny was a jovial and unique character who was very intelligent. He had his own interests, specifically music and cricket, and he always kept up with the news. He knew exactly what was going on in the world.

"He loved his family. He was a Catholic and I do believe he went to church occasionally. He loved and adored his parents in his Polish heritage.

"He was such a unique person that liked to live his life the way he wanted. Nobody could tell him how he should live it. He just did his own thing.

"Everyone thought he was a charismatic, intelligent human being, and that was it, really. It makes me smile, thinking of him.

"At the end of the day, the actions of one madman have ruined people's lives. We are going to carry on and do what we always do, but he will never be forgotten."