All language subtitles for An.Amputation.Obsession.The.Monster.and.the.Surgeon.S01E01.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-RAWR_track4_[eng]

Those who knew him
thought it was a remarkable story.

He went from being
the one who performed amputations

to the one having the operation.

In fact, the story turned out

to be so dark, mind-boggling and bizarre,

I would not have believed you
if you had said that this is a novel.

We all have our own vision in our heads
of what a criminal is.

Neil Hopper didn't fit that bill.

An NHS vascular surgeon
who'd performed hundreds of amputations…

He was quite a sort of local celebrity.

We're very lucky today
to have, uh, Mr Neil Hopper.

And he's gonna be talking…

But the Neil Hopper
that we saw in the public eye

was hiding a dark secret.

He was an active member
in an underworld community.

And he realised there was a whole world
out there of people like him.

People performing
these horrific procedures.

It's like a Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde thing.

It put this thought in his mind,
and then it just grew

until it just became irresistible.

This web of deceit started to be exposed.

I believed what he said
because he was a doctor.

It was very shocking.

It's a story of greed, deception

and the very dark side of humanity.

Truro is a small city.

It's only about 20,000 people.
So it's a nice, little place.

There's all the history,

and there's a river
and lovely walks you can do.

And it is quite close-knit.

There is a strong sense
of Cornishness and pride.

Truro is also my home.

My name is Olivier Vergnault.
I'm a senior reporter with Cornwall Live.

And I'm French. I was born in Paris.

I came to England in 2007.

I've been a journalist for 26 years.

I'm a general news reporter,

so I cover everything from What's On
to court to business to car crashes.

Or maybe, um, interview somebody
who has lost their home in a flood.

You know, everything.

In the summer, it's more fun

because some people
park their cars on the beach,

and that's really funny.

Especially when the tide comes in.

Cornwall is
a beautiful holiday destination.

But looks can be deceiving.

Like anywhere, there are dark secrets
that lie just below the surface.

And sometimes as journalists,
we report on that darker side of life.

Some of these cases stay in my mind
and in my head more than others,

and the Hopper case is one of those.

I'd first heard of him
through a documentary

that followed him around at work.

Hi, how are you guys?

So who have we got first?

So Neil Hopper,

he was a well-regarded vascular surgeon
and consultant

at the Royal Cornwall Hospital
that's known as Treliske.

Hello. How are you?

Um, how are your legs doing?
How are they feeling?

He was one of these people
that really helped others

and put himself 100% for his patients.

Ouch. That's pretty nasty, isn't it?

Up here, you know,
in people's esteem as a professional.

Hi. How are you doing?

I remember Neil had a very
sensitive and patient-centred approach.

How much sleep did you get last night?

I thought
that was fairly touching actually,

that he would be, you know,
quite so caring about his patients.

I'm Harvey Chant.

I was a consultant vascular surgeon
in Royal Cornwall Hospital.

I first met Neil Hopper
when he came down to Cornwall in 2013.

I probably worked with him for ten years.

He was the sort of guy
that just wanted to get on with the job

and didn't want to set the world alight,

and I kind of rather took to him
because of that.

My first day working with Neil, walking
down one of the corridors of Treliske,

and again,
just being friendly and saying,

"Let's go have a cup of coffee."

And we're chatting away about things,
and he said, "Well, to be fair,

you've got to be slightly mad
to do this job."

And I completely agreed.
Really, you know, it's absolutely…

You do have to be slightly mad
to do the job

if you think about what is expected
of a vascular surgeon.

Probably 95% of amputations
are done by vascular surgeons.

And you could see
Neil was particularly competent.

Okay, pointy stick.

- Crikey, look at that.
- Hmm.

And one of the things
I noted about Neil particularly

was that he was very keen on anatomy,

and I was always struck
by his level of knowledge in anatomy.

- Well, check in her vein.
- Okay.

And Neil was very good at knowing

exactly where a blood vessel
would be during an operation,

where the nerves would be in an operation,
and how to get to them.

So, I rapidly developed
a lot of confidence in his practice

from the surgical point of view.

- That's done it, isn't it?
- Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, just a little
tiny bit of tidying up, but…

Yeah, thanks, hon.

He was well-liked by the theatre team.

I would say that we…
we got on pretty well as colleagues.

He just came over
as a very dedicated family man

with an interest in camper vanning
and, uh, watching films when he could.

Life was going pretty well for Neil.

But on a camping trip over Easter in 2019,

a turn of events would lead to
Neil Hopper's life being changed forever.

So, I went on
a camping holiday with my family.

We went to the River Dart.

Um, the first night we were there,
um, my daughter and I became unwell,

feeling a bit sick, um,
and decided to abandon the camping trip.

And over the next couple of days,

we sort of lingered around
and felt a bit fluey and achy.

Um, and then, um, one night,
I went to bed a bit early,

having had a hot toddy
and a couple of paracetamol.

He was on his own at home,
not feeling too well.

A friend came to check in on him,

and that's when they found him
very, very unwell and ill,

and he had to be rushed to hospital.

And that's when
his own colleagues here in Truro,

from his very own team,

worked their hardest to-to help him.

I have some flashbacks
of being in the emergency department.

I got better pretty quickly
with fluids and antibiotics,

but my… my feet were
quite painful and quite blue.

I first knew
about Neil and his leg problems

when I was on a sabbatical in Preston.

I knew that he had been ill
and he had developed sepsis,

and his feet had lost their blood supply.

It was a very strange situation

that his colleagues
in Royal Cornwall Hospital

had to go and see him in intensive care
and look at his feet

and work out what they could do
about the damage.

Seeing your own, uh, colleague
that you know well

with two black feet,

almost certainly
a very troubling experience.

Sepsis is basically the body's response
to a severe infection.

If sepsis does develop,

one of the responses the body has
is to start losing blood pressure.

And when you lose blood pressure,

your blood supply to the tissues
around the body starts dropping.

Your fingers and toes, uh,
can have so little blood supply

that they start to die off

and cause your fingers or toes
to start looking black

and look a little bit like
they've been damaged by frostbite.

I was transferred across
to Derriford Hospital

for some hyperbaric oxygen therapy,

where they put you in the… um, the tube,

the chamber that they use
to treat the bends in divers

to try and boost the amount of oxygen
getting down to my feet.

So I had that for a couple of weeks,
which was pretty horrendous.

That was three hours a day
sat in a metal tube.

They tried for days to-to save his legs,

and a lot of, um, skills
and personnel and equipment.

I think there was no stone unturned

in terms of, uh, making sure
every bit of treatment was offered to him.

But eventually the decision was taken

to undergo amputation,
and he dealt with that very well.

I was relieved
when it finally happened

because I was finally gonna get better.

I was finally out of the woods.
I was not feeling ill anymore.

In my career, I think I've only
ever done one bilateral amputation,

removing both legs at the same time.

So for that to be happening
to a vascular surgeon

is, of course, um,
beyond the realms of usual.

You can imagine
how upset people felt for Neil

and the family and everybody else around.

It was a very difficult process
to go through

and difficult to put someone through.

I went home
and just felt like I'd fallen off a cliff

because I'd gone from being fussed around
and people looking after me all the time,

you know, always somebody to chat to.

There was always a nurse
coming in and out,

one of the health care assistants,
to being at home on my own with no legs.

It was… It was pretty awful.

But I also remember him saying that,

you know, "I'm not gonna go
into the hospital in a wheelchair.

When I go back to work,
it will be walking."

And, you know, true to his word,

he really was very keen
and determined to do so.

He started recording
his own personal journey,

and he posted it online.

I've just been discharged from hospital,

um, and I was admitted unwell
with sepsis of unknown cause.

Um, thankfully, six weeks later, I'm okay,

um, but there were some complications
of my, um, hospital treatment

and I lost both my legs below the knees,

which is quite ironic, given my job.

Here I've got shrinkers on.
You know, it's incredibly weird.

I'm currently, um, just killing time,

waiting to be fitted with prosthetics

so that I can get back to living
as normal a life as possible.

I met Neil
after he had lost both his legs.

He wanted to get back to work,

so he wanted to get rehabbed
as fast as possible.

He seemed a little bit reserved,
a little bit quiet,

but the more he'd done,
the more his confidence grew.

We started off with weights.

So lifting heavier and heavier weights.

We got on a spinning bike.

To start off with,
when he was in the wheelchair,

he didn't want anybody to see him,
so we used to sneak him into the gym,

get him on the equipment
and do the exercise.

Compared to other patients, he didn't…

He did not grieve his legs.

It was very, very unusual

because a lot of amputees
are very sad after it's happened

because it's a big shock.

But he never… he never was.

He was always happy-go-lucky.
He took everything as an adventure.

He wanted to try new things.

I always said to him,
"You need to slow down

because you need to grieve about that."

And, "No, no, it's fine. It's fine."

Um, he was very, very different
from everybody else that I dealt with.

Everybody that met him through the gym,
they all followed him because he was…

If you like, he was the superstar of the…
of the gym at the time.

I'm feeling quite strong.
I am getting fitter every day.

Uh, down the gym quite a lot
and doing a lot of aerobic exercise.

So, I'm in about as good a position
to start with legs as I think I can be.

I think if you, um, aim for the stars
and hit the moon, that's fine,

and that's what my feeling about it is.

What really, really was amazing was

he went from a wheelchair
to prosthetics with no stick.

Oh, that's… that's fine, actually.
Let's do the other one, then.

He walked straight away.

I think he was an hour or two
with the physios, and he was walking.

Nobody does that.

See, that's when he's just…
See how well he walks?

So he's on new test sockets,
and he is just walking.

He's not even using the bars.

He's not using anything to help him walk.

He's just walking.

Oh, that's him on his blades.

Once he got his blades sorted,
he never held on once.

He just ran. So it was quite amazing.

With the blades, you have to run
because they bounce.

So you'd fall over.

For a lot of amputees,
that's a really, really hard thing to do,

but Neil was fine.

He lost a lot of weight as well,

doing the gym work and doing the running.

That's actually me filming him.

He always used to say to me
he was a doctor that, um,

never used to do anything.

Drank a lot, didn't exercise,
used to smoke years before.

Um, and then when he had
his prosthetics, it sort of changed.

You could see,

he seemed to have
a new excitement to life.

We've just run and walked almost 4k.

Um, which is the first time
I've properly run on my new legs.

It's brilliant to be able to run,
something I've never really done before.

Yeah, chuffed. I can run. Yay!

He was, um, getting on a bike.

He was doing exercise.
He was getting into the water.

He went kayaking.

So, yeah, I'm doing stuff now
that I never really did before.

I started working with him
in May, June time,

and he was back at work in October.

So Neil got back to work
really, really quick.

And because he was a vascular surgeon
with amputations, he was on TV.

So, we're gonna do
a left carotid endarterectomy.

Um, technically,
should be reasonably straightforward.

Neil was lauded as a hero
when he got back to work.

So, he got back quickly.

He was the go-to person
for amputation experience.

At any one time on our ward,

there would be one or two people
with an amputation,

or looking at having an amputation,

and we would feel,
Neil's the chap to talk to.

And he was using his status to talk about
his experiences with patients.

One of the questions
I get from them in general

is what it feels like.

What are the kind of sensations
that happen after having an amputation?

And it's nice just to talk to them and
tell them that at the moment it feels odd.

Suddenly, people were like,
"Oh, wow," you know?

"Well done you for coming back."

And, you know,
"We wouldn't have expected you to.

But you did, and that's amazing."

So there was that sense of, "I'm a hero.

And I'm helping others by
putting it out there on social media."

I'm a double amputee, and I'm coping.

And, you know, I just hope
that if there's somebody out there

I can help along get through this

to-to make people realise
that it's not great,

but it's not that bad either.

He was championing
being able to come back to work,

being able to fight and carry on, and…

So it was kind of like helping others

who may have had
similar things happen to them.

Despite everything that happened to him,
it was absolutely inspirational.

And suddenly,
it's kind of a feel-good story.

And the label of "hero"
was also put on him by the media.

Now, a surgeon who's amputated
thousands of limbs during his career

has returned to work
after having both of his own legs removed.

It made national news.

He was on the BBC.

Well, Neil joins us now.
I'm so delighted to say, "Morning."

- Good morning.
- He was on ITV.

Because it was, um… It was a good story.

And also, he was charismatic.

It was meant to take
about four to six months to get walking,

and I did it in three hours.

- Did you?
- Yeah.

I think he thought
he was doing the right thing

by talking about his experience
really openly.

I ended up having an operation
where they took all my toes off,

um, and then when they did that

they realised that everything
was a lot worse than they expected.

He accepted, like, the glare of the media.
He wanted it in that sense.

So I've developed a squeak in my leg

that happens after I've been wearing it
for too long.

So I'm going to the office now to put on
another sock to get rid of the squeak.

He was an advocate
for people with amputations.

We're very lucky today
to have, uh, Mr Neil Hopper.

And he's gonna be talking to us…

He got more and more confident

with being able to talk
to people about it,

being able to help people with it.

So, I started thinking about
amputations in a different way.

It's not the end of things,
it's the beginning of things.

It's an opportunity to… to start afresh.

Thank you.

He inspired a lot of people
through what he did.

He always came across as,
he wanted to help others

in the same situation
that were worse off than him.

I think it did make him feel better
to help other people.

I think it gave him confidence.

Is there anything about the experience

where you actually feel
it's benefited your life

as opposed to damaging it?

Um, yeah, I-- Well…

It reinforced my place in the universe
in a… in a weird way.

The Neil Hopper before the operation
and the Neil Hopper now,

you know, we're the same person
but quite… quite different.

After the amputations,

he thought,
"I wonder if there's a bit of money,

almost like a compensation thing,
from the insurance I could get."

Things are going okay.

I've even managed…
…to sort out some insurance claims

and personal independent payment claims.

I can afford to live
without the payments,

um, but then there's the other half of me
going, "It's there. It's…

I'm entitled to it. I've paid my taxes."

Um, so, yeah,

I don't think I'm morally strong enough
not to take the free stuff.

So, he looked into it,
thinking he might get ten grand, 20, 15.

Not much.

But suddenly the money was life-changing.

I saw on his social media
that he got the new car,

he got the adaptions, he got the bike.

He got his private legs.

NHS legs are very, very different
to private legs.

He was a doctor, so I thought
he was earning a lot of money.

So I thought he could afford
to get all these adaptions.

So Neil Hopper

had two life insurance policies.

And having lost his legs through sepsis,
he was entitled to being paid out.

He claimed nearly half a million pounds

from the two insurance policies
that he had.

And when you look
at his Instagram account,

you can see
what he was spending his money on.

Some of the money was used
for making adaptations to his home,

repaying his debts,

camper van,
goodies like a hot tub and Jacuzzi.

Nearly half a million pounds
is a lot of money.

He was enjoying his life.

After everything that happened,
he seemed happy having lost his legs,

which is bizarre because most people
would be devastated losing a limb.

Weirdly, I'm doing better than I thought.

Um, actually, I'm worried about the fact
that I'm not worried.

I don't know if there's some cloud
gonna hit me at some point

or whether this is as bad as it gets.

That's when I think
it started to go wrong for him.

The Neil Hopper
that we saw in the public eye

was hiding a dark secret.

So I was working
for the Press Association

as a court reporter.

I had a sort of tip-off

that something was going on
at Westminster Magistrates Court.

So I went down there without really
knowing much about what to expect.

We were warned that, you know,

there was gonna be
some particularly gruesome details.

As soon as I walked into court,
I saw this big guy in the dock

and was handed a long charge sheet
with the name Marius Gustavson on.

Marius Gustavson's originally from Norway,

where he used to work as a postman
before coming to the UK.

And then he set up this website
called the Eunuch Maker,

where he'd advertise what were described
as extreme body modification videos,

which included cutting the genitals,

the penis and testicles off men,
to literally make them eunuchs.

When the case got to the Old Bailey,

there were nine codefendants
he was sentenced alongside.

But Gustavson was the ringleader
of this group of men

apparently willingly having
bits of their body removed.

And these procedures were going on
in Marius Gustavson's basement flat

in a residential part of London.

It wasn't in a medical setting,
and, you know, they'd often go wrong.

It would result in them
needing to call an ambulance

and people rushed to hospital
and patched up with the NHS.

The nature of the evidence,
it was so extreme.

You know, a lot of it was, uh,
difficult to listen to.

And especially when they showed
the video of Marius Gustavson

having his penis removed by one of
his codefendants, who was an escort.

Quite strangely, after he'd cut it off,

he actually said
on this video that, you know,

"That's one for the bucket list,"
which, you know, is very strange.

Puts it on a par with, you know,

swimming with dolphins
or something like that.

It was apparently
quite a lucrative enterprise,

and Gustavson made around
£300,000 in profits off this site

over about four years.

It was accepted that
every one of these people

who had procedures done to them
was consenting,

but it was a degree
to how informed that consent was.

One 16-year-old boy was involved,

and some of the other people
were also vulnerable in different ways.

Drug users and, you know,
mental health problems.

The judge was quite forthright

in his sentencing remarks
about this operation.

He called it
"little short of human butchery"

and was adamant there was
no defence in law to these crimes.

So, the evidence in the case
against Marius Gustavson was overwhelming.

And he was sentenced to life imprisonment

with a minimum term of 22 years
for what he'd done.

His codefendants
got fairly lengthy prison terms.

So in court, we heard that
a victim came forward, Michael,

and alerted police to what was going on.

The judge even praised
the bravery of the victim,

saying, you know, this would still
be going on if it wasn't for him.

After the court hearing,

I received an email
from somebody I didn't know

who referred to himself as Michael.

That's not his real name.

And Michael said,

"Do you want to find out
how I brought down the Eunuch Maker?"

He said he was a victim

and he had been castrated by Gustavson
on the website.

And he wanted his story to be told.

And I was intrigued, I've got to admit.

And Michael lived in West Cornwall,

so I went to see him.

And it was the most unbelievable story.

And also by coming forward,

he helped shine a light
on Neil Hopper's involvement.

I met Gustavson through a mutual friend.

He said his name was Theo.

I now know that Theo is Greek for "god",

and, um, made sense,
as he was playing God.

He was charming, friendly,

seemed like a genuine enough guy.

Seemed relatable.

Didn't seem like a monster.

We had extensive chats on WhatsApp.

I was… …grieving
a couple of very close friends,

and we had pretty deep conversations
for casual hookups.

I certainly felt I could trust him.

Gustavson was into
some pretty extreme BDSM,

but he seemed relatively safe.

Gustavson showed me
his website that he ran

and told me I should join it.

The website was the Eunuch Maker.

It was very extreme, to say the least.

Michael told me
about the Eunuch Maker,

and I thought, "Oh, my God. Wow."

I didn't know this world existed.

People having amputations done to them,
castrating themselves, streamed live.

This is incredible. This is madness.

The website
looked professional enough.

It was just a dot-com website address.

You didn't have to…
It wasn't on the dark web at all.

And I just thought, "Well, if…
if he's running that sort of website,

then obviously it hasn't caused
any alarm bells to ring

with any authorities, so fine."

On that website,
there was a very active community,

and they were very encouraging
to new people.

They were very supportive.

And there are more than
20,000 members on that website,

which is probably
as many people live in Truro.

So it's like the whole of Truro
on a weird website.

These paying members,
they bought videos, they downloaded them.

The more extreme the amputation,

the higher up the ranks you went up
in the little league table.

I was shocked, but equally fascinated.

The world that Gustavson created

was in many ways like a cult.

Um, he was the main ringleader,

and then you had a lot of
very devoted followers.

They were his members.

They were his foot soldiers.

The community on that website
was predominantly gay men.

They weren't degenerates.

They were upstanding members of society,

um, holding down regular jobs

with high responsibility.

There were rumours on the website
that there was actual surgeons on there.

I had it very clearly on my profile

that I didn't want
any permanent damage done,

but at that time,
I was in a very dark place mentally,

and I wanted to feel pain at that time.

And then Gustavson
started putting the idea in my head

that, "Oh, maybe
I should just castrate you."

My initial reaction was, "Fuck no."

Then he told me that there was a
considerable amount of money in it for me.

Gustavson sent a tariff over,

and a castration was coming in at £15,000.

To my… my life at that point,
it was a life-changing amount of money.

And I stupidly believed him.

I never saw a single penny.

And I talked to people on the website,

and they'd go, "Yeah, you should do it.
That'd be a good idea."

The seeds had been planted,
and they had been nurtured

over the course of a couple of months

not just by Gustavson, but by
every single member of that website.

So I agreed to the unthinkable.

He was agreeing

to have a castration procedure done to him

live on the Internet

with people paying through
that Eunuch Maker website to watch it.

When he was recounting
what was happening to him,

at the time,
I certainly squirmed in my chair.

I wish I could
go back through time

and shake myself vigorously by the neck.

It was insanity. It was complete insanity.

The whole thing had been filmed.

It was content for his website.

It's all it was.

It was just another update
for his website.

I was utterly broken.

I thought my life was in ruins.

Michael was a victim.

He agreed to it, but it wasn't, like,
100% his own will in that sense.

He said that he was
in a bad place mentally

because his friends had died.

And Michael mentioned it to me himself.

He said was groomed. This is grooming.

This is nurturing you

into doing something illegal,
dangerous… uh, sick.

He was groomed by…
by Gustavson, absolutely.

You cannot consent to being tortured
or… or castrated or mutilated.

There's no consent in law for that.

My pride doesn't want me to admit
that I was being taken advantage of,

but… yes.

Yes.

Looking back,
there was a lot of manipulation going on.

I finally saw Gustavson for what he was.

I saw him as a monster.

He was just a butcher.

It's disgusting
what happened to Michael.

But he had the strength,

despite what happened to him,

to go to the police.

No other victim came forward.

But Michael did.

I knew in my heart of hearts
that this had to stop,

because people would soon be dying
with what was going on on that website.

I decided that I would talk to the police.

They couldn't do anything
unless I made a formal complaint.

So I rang up the Met and said,
"Go for it. I'll give you everything."

And that phone call from Michael

led to the Met's serious crime squad
raiding Gustavson's basement flat.

There was so much stuff
in there, so much evidence,

that the police ended up
searching the flat for days.

When the police raided Gustavson's flat,

they obviously seized all his devices…

and his hard drives
with a huge amount of data on it.

There was a large amount
of video evidence,

a large amount of photographic evidence,

along with what I understand is
thousands of pages of messages

that were sent between him,
the victims and his co-conspirators.

The Met
then investigated Marius Gustavson

and several other suspects.

They realised fairly soon on
it was a very unusual case.

Uh, this was something
very, very different.

My name is Richard Parkhouse.
I'm a senior crown prosecutor,

and I work for the Crown Court unit
for the South West CPS.

We tend to deal with
the more serious offences

that end up in the Crown Court.

I wasn't involved in the investigation
in relation to Mr Gustavson,

but Marius Gustavson
is an important person in our case.

So what we did rely on was
overview statements from the Met Police

just to give a background
about the investigation.

And there were videos
of extreme body procedures.

And one of the definitions
of an extreme image

is an act which could
seriously injure someone's genitals,

so this clearly met
the definition of extreme images.

And there appears to be

an international market
for this kind of fetish.

During the course
of the Met Police investigation,

thousands of messages
and a lot of computers were examined.

There was over 10,000 emails,

because he was notified every time
someone purchased one of his videos.

So it's a huge amount of material
to go through.

Marius Gustavson was eventually charged.

When police examined all of his devices,

they see that he's been messaging
with another person.

There are 5,177 messages between them.

They were talking about further videos
that Mr Gustavson was going to make

about cutting off further body parts

and a keen interest in viewing them
and purchasing them.

So this person was one of his customers,

someone who'd been accessing his videos,

was an email address,

and that email address was subscribed
to the website.

He was using "Admirodoc"
as his profile name.

Following further investigation,

the Met police discovered that
the email address that was being used

was registered
to someone living in Cornwall.

And also, the telephone number that
was communicating with Mr Gustavson

was registered to Neil Hopper.

Neil Hopper's
carrying on as normal.

Hero consultant who has come back
from his own amputations.

And he doesn't know
that he's now been linked

to the Eunuch Maker website…

through the discovery of, like,
hundreds and hundreds of messages.

So you've got the two parallel worlds
and… and suddenly they met.

And that led
to Neil Hopper's world collapsing.