London-based journalist and non-fiction crime author
I was surprised and delighted to be contacted recently by Frank Quinn, the son of one of victims in the Hammersmith Nude Murders case. This was, of course, the unsolved serial-killer investigation from the 1960s that I cover occasionally on this blog, having first written about it in The Hunt…
Of the six cases featured in the latest Murder by the Sea series, Louisa May Merrifield’s is the one I would most like to research further. The Blackpool Poisoner was the final episode on CBS True Crime’s British series last week, and it is fascinating. In 1953 Louisa went to…
It is hard not to feel great sympathy for Rhianne Morris, who appeared on this week’s Murder by the Sea. She was the girlfriend of Barry Rogers, who, with his mother Penelope John, went to jail in 2018 for murdering his grandmother, Betty Guy. It is clear Rhianne is still…
ITV’s Hatton Garden drama has been engrossing. The language is ripe and the cast – including Timothy Spall and Kenneth Cranham – is excellent. The Diamond Wheezers who burgled the underground safe-deposit company in London’s jewellery district in 2015 is a fascinating true-crime story. While pulling off this shocking theft,…
Just finished Miles Goslett’s account of the Dr David Kelly affair and it is a disconcerting read. Dr Kelly was the British scientist and weapons expert who was caught up in the controversy over whether Iraq really had missiles that could threaten Britain with mass destruction in 45 minutes. This…
The CBS Reality series continued to rake through the dark side of our seaside towns this week. This time it was the sad case of Swansea landlord Alec Warburton, who was murdered by his callous tenant, David Ellis. Ellis had a number of grubby convictions behind him, including sexual offences…
When I was on the last day of filming for BBC4’s Dark Son back in August, the film’s presenter and top criminologist David Wilson was chatting about the Jack the Ripper documentary he had just made with Emilia Fox. He was talking about how the programme shed new light on…
I remember as a student being woken by the radio alarm to news that police had finally arrested the Yorkshire Ripper – after long six years of hunting him. That was 1981. Big news. The murderer had spread fear across the North of England with his cowardly, obscene hammer attacks…
I started watching the Netflix true-crime series, but decided to switch to John Grisham’s book to better absorb these events. The author says in the series that you could not write this story as fiction because no one would believe it. It’s a really shocking tale of a vicious miscarriage…