It was the middle of summer — Sunday, July 22, 1990. At 11.30 pm, a musician, Gordon Wilson, was walking back from a late-night recording session on Holloway Road in London. He noticed the women and presumed they were just in a deep sleep. He was in a rush, and the last train was due to leave from Holloway Road underground station. Wilson didn't pause on his journey; it was dark, and he had no reason to think he needed to…
THIS IS A CASE UPDATE. PLEASE LISTEN TO ‘SEASON 5 - EPISODES 13 & 14’ FOR MORE DETAILS.
The crime was compared to ‘Single White Female’, the 1992 film where a young woman imitates everything her new flatmate does, what she wears, even how she cuts her hair — then the obsession turns deadly…
In the years following the murders of Alexander and Dorothy Wood, urban legend surrounding the case spread, with unsubstantiated claims published in the newspaper pages across Britain. Rumours suggested that the killer had posed the bodies, their glassy open eyes staring out through a basement window. It was said, they were positioned to face the direction of the church across the road, where they stayed until they were discovered...
Valentine's day in 1945 began like any other day for 74-year-old Charles Walton. Despite his advanced years and rheumatic joints, which required Charles to walk with a stick, he had worked as a labourer when local farmers had work available. He left with the tools for the job, a pitchfork and slash hook. It was at the edge of Meon Hill, an isolated spot around a mile from the main road, where they found his body…
Maida Vale, West London, 6:20 pm, Sunday, March 24, 1996 — George Fraghistas locked his blue Lincoln Continental in a secure car park on Lanark Road. He walked to the exit. He had plans that evening and wanted to prepare. George was just about to open the door of the dimly lit concrete building, when a man suspiciously dressed for a spring day, in an anorak, gloves and a balaclava, took him by surprise and tried to wrestle him to the ground. George shouted, made a scene, put up a fight, but the assailant overpowered him. The element of surprise gave his attacker an advantage. For a brief moment they were alone, then a car stopped nearby. Three men hurriedly got out...
*** LISTENER CAUTION IS ADVISED ***
“The defendant had become so acutely conscious of what was contained within that freezer, and the risk of discovery – if not just from the odour that emitted from the freezer, that it appears that he had chosen to abandon the address” - Duncan Penny QC, Southwark Crown Court, July 2020
The weather was beginning to warm up a little in Belfast, and the kids had been playing outside together for hours. It was a Sunday, no school that day. Sonia Forsythe briefly came back through the door in the early evening to refuel, telling her mother that she would be going out again at 7:20. She ate her dinner and left the house earlier than planned, around 7 pm. She opened the front door and stepped out onto Sydney Street West, off Shankill Road. Sonia would never walk back through that door again…
In 2018, one week after the new year's celebrations, a middle-aged woman enters Cheadle Heath police station in Stockport. She had travelled almost 5 miles on foot from her home in Reddish, Greater Manchester. She has a blank expression on her face. In a quiet and subdued voice, the woman calmly tells an officer that she has killed someone. The body is buried in her back garden…
An off-duty police officer is arrested and charged with murder in May 2020. He claims it was an accident. The victim, a mother to two children, worked as a nurse. The pair had been having an affair for the last decade. But after they agreed to meet in a pub car park in West Parley, South-East Dorset, a row erupted. The police were told a struggle ensued, leaving one of them dead. A jury at a crown court in Salisbury were to decide whether or not Timothy Brehmer intended to strangle Claire Parry (Part 2 of 2).
PLEASE LISTEN TO ‘SEASON 5 - EPISODE 24’ FOR PART ONE OF THIS TWO-PART CASE.
*** LISTENER CAUTION IS ADVISED ***
"If you apply that amount of force, significant force, resulting in severe injuries, for at least ten seconds, what else could you have intended than at very least a really serious injury" — Richard Smith QC, Salisbury Crown Court, October 2020 (Part 1 of 2).
*** LISTENER CAUTION IS ADVISED ***
It was a typical room for a teenage boy in the 1980s; football programmes on his desk with his homework, a well used Amstrad HI-FI system with a tape cassette and radio, used to record the top chart hits on a Sunday, hitting the pause button before the DJ fades back in. Posters of his favourite musical acts covered the walls; Mel and Kim, T'Pau, Madonna, Samantha Fox — standard fare in 1988. His single bed, pushed against the wall of his cosy room, with his black pyjama bottoms tucked neatly under his pillow to wear the next night, but there would not be a next night…
*** LISTENER CAUTION IS ADVISED ***