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 ***
Throughout spring 1993, five men were murdered in London at the hands of the same killer. He had met them all in The Coleherne, a bar in Earl's Court. The murderer went back to the victims’ homes and strangled them while they were tied up. The killings were not initially linked by Scotland Yard, however, after the man responsible had called the police explaining that he wanted to be a serial killer, the metropolitan police went public with the information. A single fingerprint and a poorly recorded phone conversation were the only pieces of evidence detectives had until CCTV captured one of the victims making his final journey home in the company of a man that was likely the last person to see him alive. Following an appeal, surprisingly, that man came forward, but confidently denied he was the murderer. He was, however, unaware the police had found his fingerprint at one of the scenes, and the man was subsequently charged with multiple counts of murder. Following a court hearing, he eventually confessed to the string of killings.
A dead body was found in Harrow, Greater London at the end of May 1993. The officers at the scene quickly came to the conclusion that it was death by misadventure. The man, 37-year-old Christopher Dunn, was a librarian who worked at Harlesden Library in Brent, 7 miles from his located on Byron Way in Wealdstone. He was discovered in bed. The death was later ruled undetermined, but detectives thought it looked more like a tragic accident. Forensic analysis was kept to a bare minimum, and with little scrutiny, the police seemed to believe this was how the events unfolded. ‘After all’, the officers pondered, Christopher was dressed in a studded leather harness and a belt. It was assumed that Christopher died during an act of sadomasochistic bondage… (Part 1 of 2).
A text alert bleeped on the mobile phone; another strange and uncharacteristic message from her best friend flashed up on the screen. Over the last couple of days, a number of messages had left the phone and found their way into the inboxes of friends and colleagues much to their confusion. In just a few texts, she mentioned hot tubs, liposuction, cosmetic surgery, and more concerningly, a mystery man, she was going to meet…
"He obviously overreacted and assaulted her. He has no recollection of doing what he did next. This was a frenzied night terror” — Peter Rouch QC, Swansea Crown Court, June 2020
When Sheila Stroud fled the scene with her two accomplices, she thought her problems were over. She could pay off her mortgage, keep her horses that she loved so dearly, and not have to worry about her troublesome ex-partner ever again. She thought that the blaze burning in a Cotswolds beauty spot would bring to end the continuous arguments of an acrimonious separation and allow her to bask in the light of a prosperous future. In reality, her troubles had only just begun...