In short
The 1989 Hillsborough disaster at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield (FA Cup semifinal Liverpool vs Nottingham Forest), focusing on how a crowd crush in pens 3 and 4 led to 97 deaths, the police/match-command failures, and the later reversal of blame from Liverpool fans to police.
Guests
No external guests. Hosts Josh and Chuck; they credit UK writer Kyle for the research.
Guest backgrounds
Not applicable (no guest interviews). Kyle is described as “one writer from the UK” who prepared the episode.
Key claims
Gate C was opened despite warnings; match commander David Duckenfield was unqualified and failed to inspect/close the central tunnel (Freeman tactic). Police and emergency response were disorganized; barriers failed; no timely pitch delay. A long cover-up blamed “drunk” Liverpool fans, supported by altered witness statements and tabloid narratives.
Notable examples
2:52 p.m. Gate C opening; 3:05 game start; barrier collapse at ~3:05; photographer David Cannon’s images helped prompt stopping the match. Death toll: 95 initially, 700 injured; Tony Bland (1993) and a 2021 death later. Taylor Report (1990) and Hillsborough Independent Panel (2012) shifted findings to unlawful killing; 2015 Duckenfield admitted responsibility.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOBackground of the Hillsborough Disaster
2:42 to 3:44
The context of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.
“We'll get to all that, but let's, I'd say we kind of give everybody some background about what's going on here.”
The Event Leading to the Crush
3:44 to 5:42
Details about the crowd management issues at Hillsborough.
“but this is just a normal cup semifinal game.”
The Opening of Gate C
5:42 to 7:49
How the opening of a gate contributed to the disaster.
“They have to use these seven turnstiles.”
The Lethal Crowd Crush
7:49 to 11:00
The progression of the crowd crush leading to tragedy.
“There's a bunch of people who are about to get crushed out here, and we need to relieve some of this pressure.”
Aftermath and Reflections
11:00 to 14:00
Discussion of the aftermath of the crush and its implications.
“And officers, some of them are telling people to move back.”
The Human Cascade and Immediate Response
14:00 to 19:59
Learn about the tragic crowd crush at Hillsborough and the chaotic emergency response that followed.
“I mean, I think if we mentioned it, I said I brought it up because I had asked Kyle to write this.”
Police Cover-Up and Public Perception
21:54 to 28:00
Examine the police's cover-up efforts and the resulting public narrative blaming Liverpool fans.
“So right after this, the police basically immediately started trying to engage and successfully, as we'll see for a while, engaged in a cover up.”
Public Perception Post-Disaster
28:00 to 29:19
Learn how public opinion blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster initially.
“And of course, they were responsible for this, right?”
The Taylor Report Findings
29:20 to 30:48
Discover the key findings of the Taylor Report and its impact on safety.
“And he made, you know, safety recommendations in the final report.”
Inquests and Public Sentiment
30:49 to 32:48
Understand the controversial inquests and the treatment of victim families.
“Obviously, the victims' families are, and they're the ones, you know, who kept this alive all these years until they, you know, finally got some measure of accountability, I guess.”
Show all 17 chapters
Private Prosecution and Accountability
32:49 to 33:57
Learn about the private prosecution against police and its ramifications.
“Well, what turned out, what he did inadvertently was show that alcohol was not a factor in this, really.”
The HIP Report and Public Opinion Shift
33:58 to 35:57
Explore how the HIP report changed public perception and led to new inquests.
“And this was, I think, 10 years earlier.”
Legal Outcomes and Continued Impunity
35:58 to 37:55
Examine the legal outcomes following the new inquests and ongoing accountability issues.
“And this inquest said, go figure it out.”
Changes in Stadium Safety Regulations
40:45 to 42:02
Find out how the disaster led to significant changes in stadium safety.
“quite clearly that the police response and the emergency response was just terrible.”
Impact of the Hillsborough Disaster on Football
42:02 to 45:06
Learn how the Hillsborough disaster led to major changes in stadium safety and the football industry.
“You know, you hear something like that as a family member of a victim and it's, I don't, I don't know how that feels, actually.”
The Hillsborough Law and Accountability
45:07 to 48:29
Explore the proposed Hillsborough law aimed at ensuring truth and accountability among public officials.
“because he made a direct promise that he would see through the Hillsborough law, which would, it was pretty important legislation, or it would be if they get it passed through.”
Listener Corrections and Insights
48:30 to 50:45
Hear listener feedback and corrections from previous episodes, including a discussion about famous movies.
“Who knew that James Bond and Austin Powers were going to make an appearance?”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Josh Clark:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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1:13Chuck Bryant:Stuff at Sea is a five-night, adults-only sailing trip that brings the Stuff Podcast universe to life on board. This voyage is a culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Sailing round trip from New York City to Bermuda on October 2nd to 7th, 2026, this voyage drops you straight into the iHeart Podcast Stuff universe. On top of the adults-only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings, behind-the-scenes sessions, themed activations, and more unmissable onboard moments. Learn more at virginvoyages.com slash stuff.
1:49Josh Clark:Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:59Chuck Bryant:Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And it's just us, and that's okay. And this is our ongoing Studies Abroad edition.
2:12Josh Clark:That's right. And we, you know, this is about the Hillsborough disaster, which was the very unfortunate and super sad and somewhat infuriating, deadly crush that happened at an English football stadium in 1989. So we enlisted Kyle, our one writer from the UK, to put this together for us. And he did a great job and used all the appropriate letters and terminology and his spelling and stuff, you know?
2:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I was going to say, no Zs throughout. They were all Ss.
2:45Josh Clark:Yeah.
2:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he did a wonderful job with this, summarizing like a really big, giant story that had we done this episode, like when we first started, it would have been totally different because around 2015, the public opinion, the entire basically worldview of what happened at this tragedy completely flip-flopped and the truth finally came out. We'll get to all that, but let's, I'd say we kind of give everybody some background about what's going on here. The whole thing took place, like you said, in 1989 at Hillsborough Stadium. That's in Sheffield, which is in South Yorkshire, which is a county in Yorkshire.
3:27Chuck Bryant:And normally this is the home of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. That's where they play at Hillsborough. But this day it was actually hosting a FA Cup semifinal. That means it was all England teams. And it was between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. So far, so good. but this is just a normal cup semifinal game. It's a big deal, way bigger than the average Sheffield Wednesday football club game. But, you know, so far it's pretty normal.
3:54Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. They had, Liverpool had more fans, and I'm not sure how it is now, but in 1989 at least that was the case. I think it probably still is. But they were allocated the smaller end of the stadium, and the entrance, and, you know, as you'll, a lot of times with disasters like these, you're going to see like a series of steps that happen to kind of ensure unwittingly that something terrible goes down. And this was sort of the first one was they allocated the larger fan base, the smaller end of the stadium, and the entrance to that was at the end of Leppings Lane, which was a street that dead-ended into the stadium.
4:37Josh Clark:And not only did it dead-end, but it bottlenecked. It got more narrow as you got toward that dead end. So and that the turnstiles there, which is where you get in that part of the stadium, there were seven of them. They were old. You know, this is an older stadium and they didn't you know, they just couldn't move people through as quickly as like you would be able to today.
5:01Chuck Bryant:Exactly. And, you know, under a normal game for Sheffield Wednesday, this is not that big of a problem. This was a very big problem this day because there were 10 ,100 fans who were just the ones who had standing room only tickets. Yeah. In what are called pens, right? So they're ultimately like basically little terraces with a bunch of little tiny steps on them and some railings, which are called crush barriers. And you just stand in them. You just pack everybody in. but they're supposed to say like, okay, there's no more than this many people can go into this pen. No, no more than this many people can go into that pen, whatever.
5:40Chuck Bryant:So there's 10 ,000 people who are all going into these pens. They have to use these seven turnstiles. And so very quickly, even outside of the stadium, a bit of a crush starts to happen in part because the cops aren't doing anything about having people form a line or cue. They're not directing anybody to do anything. It's just get in where you fit in. And whoever gets there first is the one who gets through that turnstile that moment.
6:07Josh Clark:Yeah. But, you know, there's plenty of surveillance footage and stuff out. And it was not, you know, as we'll see, the story that was kind of cooked up to evade, I guess, being responsible for this, which is what they were. Yeah. Was that, you know, it was an unruly crowd of drunks. Hooliganism was a thing much more back then. They've basically eradicated that now for the most part. And if you look at the footage, it's, you know, it's a bunch of kids, a lot of teenagers. It wasn't super expensive back then to get into soccer and football games like this. It was six pounds to get in for standing room only.
6:46Josh Clark:And they were lively. They were having a good time, but it didn't look like anything threatening at that point at all. They were people just like, you know, kind of trying to get into the stadium to see a game they were excited about. Yeah.
6:58Chuck Bryant:And all of this really kind of starts about 10 minutes before kickoff. That's when people are like, come on, let's go. We got to get in. And like by this time, that crowd had backed like the lines or whatever had backed up into Leppings Lane pretty far. People wanted to hurry up and get through. Right. But like you said, everybody was generally good natured. Kickoff was set at 3 p.m. And at 10 till 3 p.m., there were still 5 ,000 Liverpool fans who were outside on Leppings Lane trying to get through these seven turnstiles. And so at this point, the cops, at least one cop, the guy who was in charge of managing this side of the outside of the stadium, got in touch with the guy who was running all of the police for this soccer match.
7:44Chuck Bryant:His name was David Duckenfield. and the guy outside said, hey, we need to open a gate. Forget the turnstiles and tickets. There's a bunch of people who are about to get crushed out here, and we need to relieve some of this pressure. Please open this gate. And he did that once. Duck and Field ignored it. Did it twice. Duck and Field ignored it. The third time, it was almost frantic, and Duck and Field finally said, okay, go ahead and open gate C. They did that at 2.52 p.m., and all of a sudden, And just an enormous mass of people stream into essentially the foyer of the stadium. So now you go from a crowd crush outside of the stadium to a potential crowd crush just inside the stadium.
8:24Josh Clark:Yeah. And so and we'll get to more about David Duck and Field, the match commander and his qualifications and stuff, I guess, in a minute. But one thing we did not mention is these pins, and this was partially to kind of keep hooliganism down, they were fenced within the seating area. So once you got to this large standing area, there were different numbered pins within that that were, you know, fenced off from each other. So they were literal pins. And when people started flowing through, when they opened Gate C, they were all passing through toward this, you know, the central part of the field down this long tunnel.
9:06Josh Clark:I think Kyle said it was 23 meters long to get to pins three and four, which were basically midfield. And there was plenty of room on the pins on the outside. But because nobody was directing traffic, nobody was relaying information, no one knew this. And those central pens were already full at 10 till when that big crowd of people started to make their way to that spot.
9:29Chuck Bryant:Right. So, again, because it was standing room only, it didn't tell you what pen you had to go to. You could go to whatever pen. But since that tunnel was straight ahead, that's where people naturally went. And like you said, those pens were already full. So as this tunnel, this crush of people, this crowd of people after opening gate C floods in, connects with the people who are already coming through those seven turnstiles, Almost all of them start to go through this tunnel, and that tunnel opens up on two pens that are already full of people, way over capacity already. As they found in retrospect, there was about a thousand more people that they allowed onto each pen than they should have based on the kind of crowd control safety stuff they had in place.
10:12Chuck Bryant:So it was already dangerously full before those people from Gate C even made their way down the tunnel. But when they did, they encountered this mass of other people. But there were people behind them who didn't know this at the back of the tunnel, in the tunnel. And they all wanted in, too. So everybody was pressing forward. And then all of a sudden, a crowd crush happened in those two middle pens. That's right.
10:35Josh Clark:So it's about five till kickoff at this point when people like later described just sort of a change in how things were going. You know, like I said, it was people generally happy to go see the soccer game. And by 2.55, it becomes clear that, like, something's wrong. Four minutes later, it was a lethal crush had developed in those two central pins. And officers, some of them are telling people to move back. Like, this is part of the problem is the officers themselves are very disorganized and not sharing information. So some officers are telling people to move back. They're saying they can't move back because there's people behind them.
11:16Josh Clark:and those fences that were installed to, I think that was in 1977 to prevent the hooliganism, were keeping people, like once they got in, from being like, oh, wow, it's getting like super crowded. Let's move to these outer pins where there's plenty of room. People started climbing fences and stuff. And this is where it gets really, really out of hand. Like the panic starts to set in. People are trying to drag people over the fences to safety. Some of the gates of the pins were opened by the cops at that point. but it's developed into like a real dangerous mess. Right.
11:49Chuck Bryant:And so inside the pens, there's those railings that they're kind of like intermittently staggered in the pens, right? So if you walk into one of these pens and you're facing the field, you'll eventually come to a railing. And that's a crowd barrier or crush barrier, which means that if a crush develops, that barrier is supposed to stop it from going any further than the barrier. So the people behind the barrier, life's going to suck for them. but the people in front of that barrier will be safe, right? It's like limiting crowd crushes. Well, the problem is, is one of them was very, very old, at least one, and it gave.
12:23Chuck Bryant:So there's a whole crush of people who are pressed up against this and a whole bunch of people on the other side of it too. And now one of those barriers fall and that crush of people just basically spills into this other group of people in the same pen and people, it just fell over. It was like a wave of people that overcame the people who were standing on the other side of that barrier that broke.
12:45Josh Clark:Yeah, so all this time, the match starts on time. Word is not, again, communication was just kind of chaotic. And no one got word down to the pitch that, hey, maybe we should delay this game and get this under control. And at 3 p.m., the game starts. At 3.05, those barriers, at least the one in pin three had given away, and a human cascade starts. And this is when, you know, the devastating stuff, we're not going to read a thousand accounts of people getting, you know, squeezed to death because it's pretty awful. But, you know, what happens in a situation like that is you can't breathe because you're so packed into one another that you can't expand your chest out to get a breath and you generally die of asphyxiation or like your heart stops.
13:40Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah. And this happened to a lot of people in this. We talked a lot about this phenomenon in the crowd episode. And I think in the Black Friday episode, too.
13:52Josh Clark:Yeah, the crowd one was what inspired this episode.
13:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because we talked just we just touched on it just a little bit. Right.
13:58Josh Clark:I don't even know. I mean, I think if we mentioned it, I said I brought it up because I had asked Kyle to write this.
14:04Chuck Bryant:Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. But when there was like when this crowd, this human cascade happened, people got pushed over. And, you know, there's a natural human reaction to try to get upright again, which means that you were standing on people beneath you. And so people got trampled in addition to the people who were pressed up against the other crush barriers or against the fence. There's some really disturbing photos that were taken very close up of the people pressed up against the fence. Did you see those?
14:34Josh Clark:I saw them when I was in high school in Sports Illustrated. Like, I remember this vividly. I didn't go back and revisit a lot of that because it's super upsetting.
14:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it really is upsetting. And there's a guy who took a lot of these. His name was David Cannon. And he was at least partially responsible for getting the police to finally stop the game. The reason why they wanted to stop the game so bad is because they think that that crush or that movement that caused the human cascade was in response to one of Liverpool's players. just missing a goal. And so they're like, we need to stop the game, right? So this guy, David Cannon, got them to stop the game, or at least he tried. He's one of the main photographers who was there at the time. So his pictures are, like you said, it's very disturbing to see this because you can hear people describe it, you can read descriptions of it, but when you see the people pressed up against the fence like they were, it really comes home how horrific this was.
15:32Chuck Bryant:It's like you can kind of finally start to imagine yourself in that position.
15:37Josh Clark:Yeah, it's pretty bad. That's why I didn't go back and look. At 3.06, it was the superintendent who actually got the game stopped. He went down to the pitch and actually went to the referee. They had a couple of minutes before signaled to the police control box to stop, but it kept on for two more minutes. So that's when the superintendent finally like literally went on the field and told the referee like you got to stop this game. This isn't because, you know, everyone thought it was just like rowdy fans. And he was like, no, this is not what's happening. The match commander, Duck and Field, requested more cops to come.
16:13Josh Clark:It was called Operation Support. And no one was explaining why or what's going on, though. So once the officers and, you know, communications are are not what they are now, certainly. It's not an excuse, but they were not getting briefed on exactly what was going on. And so a lot of the cops there assumed that the fans were just rowdy and were trying to, like, storm the fence to storm the field. And they formed a cordon on the pitch to kind of keep that from happening. And again, some of them are opening gates, like they see what's going on, and some are trying to help the fans. But other cops are either ignoring them or, like, shoving people back in.
16:53Chuck Bryant:Right, or standing there facing this crowd crush in a line, a cordon, with other cops. So imagine that, like just how surreal that would look because they didn't understand what was going on. So eventually they they managed to open some gates, which allowed the the crowd crush to ease up. And so the crowd crush was bad enough. The like the after effects, like immediate after effects were it just continued to go badly. The police response, the emergency response was just so uncoordinated that it surely, I think they proved it cost the lives of scores of people. I think in the end, 95 people died.
17:39Chuck Bryant:700 were injured. Two more people died years later. So really, 97 people died from this crowd crush.
Read the full transcript
17:46Josh Clark:Yeah, 37 people were teenagers. 27 were parents. There was one 10-year-old. that died. He was very ironically, I guess, and sadly, the cousin of Stephen Gerrard, who became a big star for England in their soccer team. But I think the oldest, I think that was the youngest at 10, and the oldest was a 67-year-old whose brother was playing for Liverpool. And it's, yeah, again, you know, to read through each account is a little too depressing for this show, but you did mention the two that died years later, I think Tony Bland died four years after in 1993. He had brain damage up until that point. And then what they count as the 97th victim didn't pass away until 2021.
18:34Josh Clark:But they said it was due to, you know, these life changing injuries that he suffered from this.
18:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think also brain damage as well. Andrew Devine. So there were there was like an immediate response to this. right? Despite what we'll see, Liverpool just taking all of the blame for this, Liverpool fans, there was like a public response. One of the things was Paul McCartney jumped in because this is a Liverpool team and he's from Liverpool. I don't know if you knew they're not, Chuck, but he, I guess, released a charity single, a cover of Fairy Cross the Mercy. Have you heard that song? It's a good song.
19:15Josh Clark:I didn't think it was that great, but I think it was a great act.
19:19Chuck Bryant:Did you listen to the, I didn't listen to the 89 one that they released as a charity single. Did you listen to the original? Because that's very good.
19:27Josh Clark:Oh, no, I listened to the one that pertained to the show.
19:31Chuck Bryant:Well, at any rate, it's a good song originally, and it was, like you said, a very cool act. There were also tons, like you can also see photos of just the whole entire soccer pitch covered with flowers, just as in memoriam. It was just, there was a good public response, but ultimately public opinion was much more venomous.
19:56Josh Clark:Yeah, I guess that's probably a good time for a break. And we'll come back and talk about that venom right after this.
20:11Josh Clark:I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America.
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21:54Josh Clark:All right. So right after this, the police basically immediately started trying to engage and successfully, as we'll see for a while, engaged in a cover up. They wanted to, you know, not be on the hook for this. And the hooliganism that I talked about had been blamed. I thought we had done an episode on hooliganism, but I don't think we ever did, did we?
22:17Chuck Bryant:No. Surely we talked about it in our soccer episode, but I don't think we ever did one just on that.
22:21Josh Clark:Yeah, it was on the list for a while, but maybe we should wait in case things change again. Okay. But that was the narrative that fed the public, basically, that match commander. And I guess we should go ahead and talk about David Duck and Field a little bit. He's the one that first started saying that gate was forced open by Liverpool fans. like he denied even opening that gate. This guy was not qualified for this job. I think previous commanders had did things like go down before the game, like hours before, check things out, walk around, identify choke points or potential hazards, because this had happened a couple of times before, one time in this very stadium, I think in 1981.
23:05Josh Clark:And so it was top of mind, or should have been, and he did not do that. He never, like, actually inspected the grounds beforehand. And he kind of went missing from about noon to 2 o 'clock on the day and never accounted for his whereabouts.
23:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he had never commanded a match at the stadium, let alone a semifinal match, just even a regular match. He'd never commanded it, so he had no idea what he was doing. He was also a very arrogant person, so he felt like he could just do it naturally. He didn't need to familiarize himself. and he had served as a rank and file patrolman or PC like 10 years before. That was the last time he'd worked a match and he was definitely not in charge of it. So he was very much out of his league and it took him decades to finally acknowledge that. Instead, he helped lead this police cover-up that shifted all the blame unfairly and untruthfully toward the fans for Liverpool and off of the cops who were really responsible for the tragedy.
24:17Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So we'll get to kind of what happened in a timeline sense as this goes on in a minute. But initially, the police watchdog recommended that there was like a disciplinary case would be brought against Duck and Field. That did not happen at the time. And he was medically retired two years later on full pension, basically to evade these like discipline from this incident. the case again that the cops built was that people were drunk they got there late it was the Liverpool fans a lot of them didn't even have tickets and they were trying to just force their way in and over the years they found out that they had gone back in even this is how despicable it gets not only did they cook up this narrative but they went back in and and cooked the books and altered witness statements and removed comments about that were unfavorable to the police and how things were handled.
25:18Josh Clark:And they like torched it, basically.
25:20Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And the force was very regimented, I saw. Right. So there wasn't there wasn't going to be any dissent. There wasn't going to be any secret tip offs to the press about what really happened by any of the police constables, you know, under these guys charge. Right. So the top saying this is what happened. That's what everybody on the police force is going to say what happened. And so that's what the media heard. And the the British tabloids typically have like a fairly bad reputation. And they really showed up for it for this one. the whole idea that the soccer fans, especially the Liverpool fans in particular, were responsible for this.
26:05Chuck Bryant:They just beat that drum incessantly. They called the fans, and by extension, the victims, beasts, yabs, which means thugs, vile. And then The Sun printed a front page article called The Truth, I think within a day or two after this, that really drove this home, like just how despicable the tabloids could get about this stuff.
26:30Josh Clark:Yeah, they said things like there were fans that were urinating on cops, that they were looting the dead at the time. And this was not the case. And The Sun ended up apologizing in 2012 and has been boycotted in Liverpool ever since. I still don't think they've sold The Sun there. even after the apologies. But this was the 1980s, and things were different back then. The hooliganism was much more prominent, so it was a narrative which was easy for people to believe in England, and when they were reading it, people were like, yeah, this is the typical sort of antisocial underclass, is how Kyle put it.
27:16Josh Clark:They're trying to get in without tickets, drunk at three in the afternoon. It was a different kind of, it was a different sport back then in a lot of ways as far as, as we'll see, the kind of money that poured into the sport in the 1990s after this, certainly with the start of their Premier League in 1992 and ticket prices rising and stadiums modernizing and just big money and big business. It just was a lot more just kind of small time and old school and quaint back then. And so people were ready to accept this narrative, you know, kind of as it was being fed to them.
27:55Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Britain has a classist streak running through it. And this certainly fit that idea, that supposition that lower classes were drunk and violent. And of course, they were responsible for this, right? But so the public accepted this. The Thatcher government obviously was totally down with this idea. And that's just how it went. Like that was it. As far as everybody was concerned, thanks to the police reports, thanks to the government stance, thanks to what the media was saying. What happened was a bunch of drunk Liverpool fans who didn't have tickets stormed the gate and 97 people ended up dying as a result.
28:36Chuck Bryant:Shame on Liverpool and its fans. That was the public opinion on this for years.
28:43Josh Clark:That's right. So in 1990, we get our first independent report. It was called the Taylor Report for Lord Justice Taylor. And they, I mean, this was kind of right after, and they did come out blaming the police failure to control the crowd, first off, and Duck and Field specifically for failing to close this tunnel. Like if he would have closed that tunnel and it would have fed people to the empty pens and that could have that probably would have avoided this whole thing, despite like having way too many people down there. If they would have been fed to those emptier pens, this probably wouldn't have happened.
29:22Josh Clark:Sure. And he made, you know, safety recommendations in the final report. But very key, it didn't have anything in there about like like, hey, these people were all just victims and they had no part in and sort of making this happen. That didn't come along until much later.
29:40Chuck Bryant:No, for sure. Closing that tunnel, too, or his failure to close the tunnel, too, was even worse than it seems because that was actually such a widely used technique for police superintendents who were in charge of overseeing matches over the years that one of them had his name on it. It was called the Freeman Tactic. And it was as simple as closing that middle tunnel and opening the entrances to the less full pens. And so that just shows you how little of a grasp Duck and Field had on the concept of safety at a football match that he was responsible for overseeing. He didn't even know about the Freeman tactic, if you ask me.
30:21Chuck Bryant:And like rank and file cops who worked matches before knew about the Freeman tactic. It was like that was a huge deal. In addition to all the people dying as a result, the fact that like everyone knew that you should do that and Duck and Field didn't is a big deal.
30:36Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And a year later, after the Taylor independent report, the Taylor report, these inquests are coming back with verdicts. Accidental death is basically what they all were, you know, decided upon. And it was very controversial. Obviously, the victims' families are, and they're the ones, you know, who kept this alive all these years until they, you know, finally got some measure of accountability, I guess. The coroner ruled out evidence relating to deaths. Anything after 3 p.m., he ruled out evidence because he said everybody was either dead or brain dead by 3.15. and there was like actual proof that would come out later that some people survived until 4 p.m.
31:22Josh Clark:and a lot of people would have survived for that 45 minutes had they gotten emergency services in there in an orderly manner.
31:30Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah. Those are the people I was talking about earlier. So the coroner essentially was just basically going along with the sentiment, the public sentiment that these people, surely it wasn't the police who were responsible, right? Yeah. In addition, though, to being disorganized, they were also like really cruel to the families. And this this stuff came out in these reports, including the HIP report in the trials that like if you were a victim family member, you were sent to a gym, a nearby gym that had been turned into a morgue. and the first thing that you encountered was standing out waiting outside in the cold before they led you in and handed you a stack of Polaroids of the victim's dead bodies, right?
32:16Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, they had to look through those to identify their own. It was pretty brutal.
32:21Chuck Bryant:But it wasn't even like, are you looking for a child? Are you looking for a man? And they were sorted. It was like, here's the stack of Polaroids. Look through them until you find your loved one. the parents of the children who died, they weren't allowed to hold or kiss them because they were told that they were property of the coroner. And the coroner himself seems to have been on the cover up to some degree tangentially because he ordered that all of the deceased, including the children, have their blood drawn to be tested for alcohol content to support this police narrative. Well, what turned out, what he did inadvertently was show that alcohol was not a factor in this, really.
33:01Chuck Bryant:Like, there were very few drunk people, and the ones that were drunk weren't all that drunk.
33:06Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, in a weird way, it's good that he did that, you know?
33:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So, like you said, the families of the victims organized and tried to keep this thing alive and, you know, keep the public from solidifying their opinion about what had happened. and they managed to get a private prosecution, I guess, laid or charged against the police for the incident. Didn't know you could do that. Apparently you can still in the UK, America, some other places, but a private group of people can get a court to prosecute people. And that's what they did. And this found that Duck and Field, they couldn't reach a verdict on him, whether he was criminally responsible or not.
33:48Chuck Bryant:One of his deputies was acquitted and the judge in this case said, that's it, Duck and Field will never face another retrial. Like, this is it. He's not responsible, even though we failed to reach a verdict, which is a weird thing to do. But that happened in 2000.
34:03Josh Clark:Yeah. Charges against Sheffield, the actual football club that wasn't even playing that day, but he played in that stadium, Sheffield Wednesday, and the Sheffield City Council, and the safety engineers, the Eastwoods, were ruled out. And this was, I think, 10 years earlier. So they were already off the hook. So that was all in 2000. Twelve years later, in 2012, there was another report, the HIP report, the Hillsborough Independent Panel. And that brought about some new inquests, more sort of digging into this thing about, like, what happened with the police. And this is the one that really started to kind of turn the tide as far as the public goes.
34:45Josh Clark:And one of the reasons it happened was because MP Andy Burnham was at a 20-year memorial service and was just lambasted by the crowd. People chanting justice for the 96 really had a hard time at that event. So he's the one that was like, let's open this back up. 450 ,000 pages of information. And this is when they really kind of started to make things right.
35:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that panel apparently kept like releasing information piecemeal and the press just kept reporting on it. And very quickly, the public was like, oh, wait, we've been wrong. It wasn't these drunken Liverpool fans. They were mistreated. The families of the victims were mistreated. Survivors were mistreated. It was actually these cops. And the cops had lied to essentially cover up their responsibility. Like the public opinion just completely shifted. And so that HIP report led to new inquests, and the inquests found that the 96 victims and later on the 97th victim were all unlawfully killed.
35:53Chuck Bryant:So it wasn't accidental anymore like the first inquest found. They were unlawfully killed, which meant someone is criminally accountable for their deaths, right? And this inquest said, go figure it out. Like, this is our, we're saying, we're recommending that somebody is responsible for this.
36:11Josh Clark:Yeah, it also found that 41, I was looking for the number earlier, but 41 of the 96 who died, they said, quote, had potential to survive if the, you know, rescue had been a little more organized. Because I don't think we said the first ambulance arrived on the scene at 316. and even when the ambulances had been called, they didn't know the severity of the situation because I think one cop called for a big mass of ambulances to come, but it wasn't described what was happening. So they refused that initial, the medical services refused that initial huge rush of ambulances and just sent some. They also didn't set up a triage on the field.
36:52Josh Clark:We'll get to that in a little more detail, But 41 of the 96 would have survived, they determined, which is just a brutal number.
37:01Chuck Bryant:Yeah. In 2019, after all this stuff had come out, public opinion changed. Duck and Field was dragged back into court. Remember that one judge had been like, he can't face a retrial. Well, they were like, well, circumstances have changed enough now that he's definitely going to be tried again. and he was found not guilty of gross negligence manslaughter. And then they also heard evidence about the altering of the police reports to make it favorable for the cops and make it unfavorable for the Liverpool fans. And those guys got off too. So now we have a place where the inquest, the government inquest, is saying these people are unlawfully killed so someone's criminally responsible.
37:45Chuck Bryant:And the courts are saying the people who are responsible are not criminally responsible. So nobody is liable anymore. Nobody's responsible officially.
37:55Josh Clark:Yeah. And then the final, well, who knows it's the final report because they seem to still be happening. But last year in 2025, an independent office for police conduct report came out and basically reiterated that nobody was going to be held, like actually held responsible. you know they it wasn't as cold-hearted as it sounds they were basically saying like hey this is 36 years later all 12 of these officers are either have either passed on or have long since retired and I got the sense it was like can we can we put this all behind us now and not throw
38:35Chuck Bryant:these old cops in jail essentially but yeah I think the families were like well they're still responsible even though they're old and the reason that they got old is because you took 14 years to conduct this investigation yeah for sure let's take a break chuck and we'll come back and finish up huh yeah let's do it i turned off news altogether i hate to say it
39:06Josh Clark:but i don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. He's dribbling the ball with everything on the line. He's driving down the pitch. He's facing price hikes and cuts past him. Carrier Contracts tries to block him. Oh, he leaves him in the dust. He's at the edge of the box. He cuts past the non-stop group chat trash talk. He clears on goal and he shoots. No! Unlimited data for $25 a month forever!
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40:44Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, so not just the HIP report, but a bunch of different reports basically showed quite clearly that the police response and the emergency response was just terrible. And you talked a lot about what the, I guess, the cluster with the ambulances, but the police as well were essentially disorganized, about as disorganized as a group of police can be. And the reason why is because, again, David Duckenfield was just out of his depth through and through, even though he was commanding the match. And I said that he was a rather arrogant type, and he was. But in 2015, for the first time in decades, 20, 25 plus years, as these reports started coming out and public opinion changed, when he was tried eventually, he admitted after seven days of intense grilling on the stand, he finally basically broke down and admitted like, yes, he was responsible for the death of those 96 people because the 97th hadn't died yet and that he froze under pressure.
41:49Chuck Bryant:This is a complete reversal of what he'd been saying the whole time, Chuck. Like he'd been saying it was the Liverpool fans. They were drunk. They were drunk. These guys have been saying it for decades. Now, all of a sudden, the guy in charge says, no, I failed and people died because I was not qualified to command that match.
42:06Josh Clark:Yeah. You know, you hear something like that as a family member of a victim and it's, I don't, I don't know how that feels, actually. I don't know if that would provide some solace to finally hear the truth.
42:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah.
42:17Josh Clark:Or if it just like re-angers you all over again after all these years. Probably both. Yeah. I'm sure there's a lot of mixed emotion about it. But at the very least, that finally happened. I mean, there is something about somebody finally admitting something, like, and not just continuing to gaslight the world and the victims themselves. So I guess that is something. It really changed stadium safety and security after this. The Taylor report, they basically said, hey, no more of these standing room only things. You have to have seats for everybody that's in there. I think it was all the clubs in the top two divisions in 1994 had to move to that.
42:57Josh Clark:And then they established the sports ground safety authority after that to, you know, to oversee like all of these football stadiums over there. Right.
43:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah. This was a major turning point, not just in safety at football matches, but in the game of football itself, because this happened to coincide with England making it into the semifinals in the World Cup in 1990. and, you know, a lot of people who had been former football fans were now caught up in the spirit again. So that brought a lot of people back to being fans of pro football. Those upgrades that the clubs and the stadiums were required to undertake meant that they needed to up ticket prices. Higher ticket prices, like you said, kind of changed the social strata of fans. It just got more expensive.
43:46Chuck Bryant:It got more business-like. Like, soccer changed almost directly as a result of the Hillsborough tragedy.
43:53Josh Clark:Yeah, and that, you know, when the Premier League came on in 92, like, that was a real game-changer. Like, the amount of money that is spent in the Premier League on players, on the teams, on, I think there's a, and I'll probably get some of this wrong because I don't follow the Premier League, but my good friends do, all of them almost. And they were talking about the, you know, you get relegated. if you don't, I guess, when, or I guess if you're in the bottom of whatever category and you don't make that, you don't win that game to stay in the Premier League, you get relegated down to the lower league.
44:29Josh Clark:And so that game to see who gets relegated and who doesn't is called the most expensive game in sports or something like that just because of, like, all the money that comes with, that you miss out on with being relegated or that comes with staying in the Premier League.
44:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah, these guys get paid like thousands and thousands of pounds a year to play. Some of them weigh more than that, even.
44:53Josh Clark:The first joke of the episode.
44:55Chuck Bryant:Let's talk about Keir Starmer, because he is under fire right now. That family or that organization of victims' families, they haven't gone away. They organized and they're still very vocal. And one of the things that they have been doing is putting pressure on Keir Starmer and his labor government because he made a direct promise that he would see through the Hillsborough law, which would, it was pretty important legislation, or it would be if they get it passed through.
45:22Josh Clark:Yeah, I think the whole point, it seems to be, of the Hillsborough law would be to enforce, and it's weird that you have the law to do this, but to enforce truth when cops are dealing with something like this and basically like almost like a whistleblower thing, like, hey, you can come out and tell the truth. Like you don't, like you're obliged to tell the truth. You don't have to go along with this narrative that gets passed down and that loyalty that you were kind of talking about earlier on. I didn't like really dig into the law. I don't know if there are like protections or anything involved, but that law hasn't been passed yet, which is really frustrating.
46:03Josh Clark:Right. Yeah.
46:04Chuck Bryant:Not just cops too, but like any public official has to tell the truth when it was pertains to their work, which actually it is sad that you would need to make a law, but that would be revolutionary to have a law like that in any country, you know?
46:18Josh Clark:Yeah. And I think the hang up may be or one of the hang ups is MI5. And we did a pretty good episode on that at one point that I think Kyle helped us with that one, too. But unless I'm reading this wrong, it seems like MI5 is hanging it up because they're like, hey, listen, like we deal in lies and subterfuge. Like, that's our bag. So we can't be included in this.
46:41Chuck Bryant:That is our bag, baby. That's right. I missed the baby. You got anything else?
46:48Josh Clark:I got nothing else. Just an awful tragedy. Like I said, I remember this was right after spring break my senior year. I came home and I had been a regular Sports Illustrated subscriber since I was like nine years old. And this was, I think, the cover issue even. And that's where I saw those brutal pictures. If you're into a, it's not like super hard to watch other than you know it's about the tragedy, but they don't show like truly, truly awful things. There's that 12-minute documentary from The Guardian that you sent.
47:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah.
47:22Josh Clark:That really encapsulates it. Although there are some body bags and stuff like that. So I guess there should be a trigger warning there.
47:29Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure.
47:29Josh Clark:But thankfully there weren't like, you know, I didn't see any actual video footage of the fences and the people. Like, I don't know if that exists.
47:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't know either. The photographs definitely do. I'd be surprised if there wasn't any footage there, you know.
47:46Josh Clark:Yeah. I wonder if that photographer won an award for that work. I bet he did.
47:51Chuck Bryant:He should have. especially if he was one of the people helping because you know so many fans helped um you know try to render aid to the people on the field um one thing we probably should mention that um that we didn't is that in 2012 the united kingdom government through prime minister david cameron at the time apologized to the victims families for the double injustice of the loss of life and the blame that was put on Liverpool fans. So at least they had that kernel of something.
48:25Josh Clark:Yeah, solace maybe. Who knows?
48:27Chuck Bryant:Solace, thank you. A quantum of it.
48:29Josh Clark:Wow, you're just throwing around British pop culture references. Who knew that James Bond and Austin Powers were going to make an appearance?
48:36Chuck Bryant:I'm going to star in my own sitcom called Suddenly Anglophile. But it's going to be spelled like I just mangled Anglophile.
48:44Josh Clark:Yeah, or Blackadder. That's another good title. Sure.
48:47Chuck Bryant:Since Chuck made a joke about Blackadder, as foretold in 2008, it's time for Listener Mail.
48:56Josh Clark:I'm going to call this. I screwed up on that Van Gogh episode about the movie. Hey, guys, just finished the Vince Van Gogh episode. Want to let you know the movie with Willem Dafoe is called At Eternity's Gate. This is something I remember now, but I forgot at the time.
49:11Chuck Bryant:Okay.
49:11Josh Clark:You mustn't have seen it, but we're aware of it. More importantly, you must see Loving Vincent. And I think that's what I said it was called.
49:18Chuck Bryant:Okay.
49:18Josh Clark:That's the movie that's animated using 65 ,000 paintings done in the style of Van Gogh by 100 Polish painters. Wow. It's visually amazing and incredibly well done. And the soundtrack includes the song from Don McLean. I think we talked about it in the episode. Vincent, Starry, Starry Night. Beautifully compliments the movie. Highly recommended. My wife and I are huge fans of the show. Have been listening to every episode since almost the beginning. Keep up the amazing work and don't let those naysayers who complain about your sidebars. That's one of the things we enjoy most. And that is from Brian and Alexis in Bethlehem, PA.
49:55Chuck Bryant:Nice. Thanks, Brian and Alexis. We appreciate that. Chuck, since you stepped up and took a correction, I feel like I should admit to one. Oh, okay. In our Le Mans short stuff.
50:08Josh Clark:You mean Le Mans?
50:10Chuck Bryant:That's part of it. The bigger part is that I said Greece is an island. I even went back and double-checked, and everybody's right. It is not an island at all.
50:19Josh Clark:I didn't catch you saying that.
50:21Chuck Bryant:So it's like Germany being landlocked now. My geography skills are starting to match up with my math skills.
50:28Josh Clark:I wish I would have caught that, because I remember very distinctly that you could take a train there.
50:33Chuck Bryant:Well, in the episode, you said, yeah, yeah, it sure is an island. I swear to God, it's an island, Josh. That's right.
50:39Josh Clark:I doubled down.
50:40Chuck Bryant:Verbatim. All right. Well, thanks to Brian and Alexis. And if you want to be like Brian and Alexis, you can get in touch with us too via email at stuffpodcasts at iHeartRadio.com.
50:55Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
51:10Josh Clark:It's America's 250th, but you deserve some presence too. Simon Malls, Mills, and Premium Outlets have can't-miss sales July 3rd to 5th. Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program, for free and get 2.5 times the points in addition to extra savings, cash back, and offers that also work at ShopSimon.com. Grab the fam, head to a Simon Center, and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at simonplus.com. Rewards program terms apply. See simonplus.com for details. Mom, are we there yet? Ten more minutes. Only ten minutes? Can you drive slower? What's up with them today? Lingo Kids.
51:49Josh Clark:That app we downloaded last week? They love it. The games, this funny baby bot character. Kids, we're almost there.
51:56Chuck Bryant:No!
51:58Josh Clark:With more than 4 ,000 interactive games, songs, and shows little ones can't get enough of, Lingo Kids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids. Why didn't we download this sooner? Lingo Kids!
52:09Chuck Bryant:Everything kids love. Download it for free.
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From the publisher
When a crush of football fans killed 97 people in England in 1989, police and officials engaged in a massive cover-up to blame it on drunken fans. Today we tell that story.
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