"Many people who consume too much alcohol can become aggressive. The prosecution say what the defendant did on July 7 last year… was done in anger and fuelled by drink” — Rachel Brand QC, Birmingham Crown Court, February 2018
PLEASE LISTEN TO ‘SEASON 5 - EPISODE 33’ FOR PART ONE OF THIS TWO-PART CASE. In the final days of spring 2017, the police and paramedics were called to an address in Manchester City centre. At the scene, they found a male in his mid-thirties, incapacitated, left bloody and bruised following an altercation with another man who was barely into adulthood… (Part 2 of 2)
Normawati Sinaga was startled when the phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line told her that they worked for the Greater Manchester Police. Trying to understand why on earth someone would be calling an Indonesian home from the other side of the world, she quickly thought of her son. He was studying in England… (Part 1 of 2)
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…