Steve Keogh: Murder Unpacked

Exploring how murders are investigated.

Hosted by former Scotland Yard homicide detective Steve Keogh, Murder Unpacked explores murder investigations to understand how detectives think and work. www.murderunpacked.com

  1. 2d ago

    Ruth Ellis: The Handover

    Ruth Ellis The last woman to be hanged in the UK. More than seventy years later, her name still provokes debate. Most recently, the debate has been ignited by the decision to grant her a posthumous conditional pardon. Understandably, almost every discussion centres on one question: Should she have been executed? However, as I read about the case, I found myself thinking about something I’d experienced many times during my own career. On the evening of Easter Sunday, 10th April 1955, Ruth Ellis took a taxi to a flat in Hampstead where she believed her former partner, David Blakely was going to be. When she arrived, she saw David’s car pulling away. Ruth then walked about a quarter of a mile to the Magdala pub in Hampstead, where she found David’s car parked outside. Ruth waited outside, until about 9.30pm when David came out of the pub and headed towards his car with a friend. She then walked over to David with a revolver in her hand and began firing at him. Although David tried to get away, he was struck several times and collapsed to the ground. A woman at the scene was also injured, when a bullet or bullet fragment struck her hand. Having discharged the firearm, Ruth made no attempt to get away. She just stood there, allowing an off-duty police officer, who’d been inside the pub, to disarm and detain her. She was recorded as saying to this officer, “I am guilty. I’m a little confused.” Local police officers then arrived, and she was taken into custody. David was taken by ambulance to hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. A later post-mortem examination showed several vital organs, including his heart, had been struck. It also found one of the shots was fired at extremely close range, causing powder burns on David’s back. At the police station Ruth continued to admit having shot David. With witness evidence, Ruth’s own admissions and the medical evidence establishing the cause of death, detectives charged Ruth Ellis with David Blakely’s murder. On the face of it, the police had a very strong case and would have had no problem producing the evidence to prove it. But an important element to any murder investigation isn’t just evidencing what happened, it’s seeking to understand the reasons behind it. To understand why these events unfolded as they did, detectives needed to look at the relationship between Ruth Ellis and David Blakely. There is a principle in murder investigation: if you want to understand how a person died, you first have to understand how they lived. Most murders aren’t random, and they rarely happen without a motive. The answer to why a person died can usually be found by examining their life and the people in it. So, even in a case that appears as straightforward as this, where the killing was witnessed and Ruth admitted what she had done, detectives still had that important job to do. To build a picture of not just what happened that night, but what led to it. In late 1953, Ruth was the manager of a nightclub called The Little Club in Knightsbridge. It was there that she met David, who was a racing driver. They started a relationship that moved quickly. Despite being engaged to another woman, David moved into Ruth’s flat above the club. Their relationship quickly became volatile, with regular arguments and reconciliations. Alcohol became a major factor in fuelling these arguments, particularly because David was considered a heavy drinker. Jealousy was another recurring theme. David disliked the attention Ruth received from men at the nightclub, while Ruth struggled with David’s relationships with other women during theirs. In 1954, Ruth fell pregnant with David’s baby. She made the decision to have an abortion. During her trial, Ruth said David had regularly assaulted her and that she was often covered in bruises. In early 1955, Ruth began a relationship with another man, Desmond Cussen. Despite this, she and David remained emotionally attached. Ruth became pregnant again and maintained that David was the father. Toward the end of March 1955, Ruth said David punched her in the stomach during an argument. She subsequently suffered a miscarriage. By early April 1955, the relationship was effectively over, although Ruth made several attempts to contact David. On 10 April 1955, those events culminated in Ruth following David to the Magdala pub in Hampstead, where she shot and killed him. By then, detectives had gathered far more than an account of a shooting. They had assembled the fullest picture they could of the events that led to David Blakely’s death. From that point, the investigation was no longer in their hands. And for me, that was the hardest part of a murder investigation. I sometimes find it difficult to articulate exactly what it feels like investigating a murder. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done in policing or beyond. The one word I come back to is responsibility. The sense of that can, at times, feel overwhelming. At the heart of every murder investigation is a victim whose life was taken from them too early. Alongside them is a family trying to come to terms with that fact. The immense responsibility I felt was to those people. That sense of responsibility was never greater than when I was the Case Officer on an investigation, where the role is both the day-to-day running of the enquiry, and ensuring the evidence is good enough to make an arrest, obtain a charge and obtain the conviction. When I performed this role there was so much weight on my shoulders that I considered it ‘my job’. As Case Officer I would meet the victim’s family, which only intensified the feelings of responsibility. Sitting opposite people when they’re in those early stages of grief, when they’re trying to process the worst news of their lives, when their future looks so bleak and uncertain, I couldn’t help but get caught up in their emotions. I wanted nothing more than to be able to take away their pain. But I knew I couldn’t do that. The best I could do was seek answers to the questions they were desperate to know. Why did this happen? Who did it? What happens next? I couldn’t get their loved one back, all I could do was get them the justice they deserved. It was the motivation I carried into every investigation, which often lasted months, sometimes even years. It’s why I found myself living, eating and sleeping an investigation. I was thinking about on the way to work and on the journey home. When I was eating dinner with my family, putting the kids to bed or watching TV, thoughts of the investigation wouldn’t be far from my mind. When I lay in bed, I would be running through the investigation. What are we missing? What line of enquiry should we follow? In fact, I used to do some of my detective work at night, when the world was quiet and I wasn’t distracted. More times than I can remember I’d bound into the office the next day with an idea of how we can move forward. There were periods when the investigation took over my life. I would find myself working crazily long hours, finishing after midnight and back in for the early morning meeting, day after day, week after week. I didn’t see my own family. My health suffered. The bags under my eyes were more like suitcases. But I did it anyway, and gladly. And it all comes down to that responsibility I felt for doing the best possible job I could for the victim and their family. So, when I’d been doing all of that for so long, invested so much of myself, and pulled together as much evidence as I possibly could, the case was finally ready for trial. I handed that responsibility on. Responsibility that passed from lawyers to barristers and, ultimately, to the court. And all I could do was trust in the system. That all those subsequent people would do what was expected of them. And the result would be the right one. One that reflected what happened. The problem was that experience had taught me the system didn’t always get it right. So rather than trusting the system to get it right, I found myself hoping it would. But why is that? What was it about the … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com

  2. Oct 27

    Jack the Ripper Part 3: Polly Nichols

    Just over three weeks after Martha Tabram was murdered, another woman was found dead on the streets of Whitechapel. Her name was Mary Ann Nichols, but she was commonly known as Polly. And as always, before we get to what happened to her, I want to start with the woman herself. Polly Polly was born Mary Ann Walker in London in 1845. Her father was a blacksmith and, at the age of eighteen, she married a printer called William Nichols. They went on to have five children together. For a time, they appeared to have something resembling a settled family life. But the marriage eventually broke down. Exactly why depends on whose account you believe. William later blamed Polly’s drinking. Her father accepted that alcohol had become a problem, but claimed William had started a relationship with the woman who had nursed Polly after the birth of their youngest child. Whatever the truth, by around 1880 the marriage was effectively over. The years that followed were difficult. Polly moved in and out of workhouses and cheap accommodation. There were periods when she seems to have been homeless. Her drinking continued. And there is evidence that she was earning money through prostitution. William had initially continued to support her financially after they separated but later stopped when he discovered she was working as a prostitute. But Polly’s life wasn’t simply one long downward spiral. There were attempts to start again. Only a few months before she died, the matron at Lambeth Workhouse found her employment as a domestic servant with a family in Wandsworth. And for a while, things seem to have gone well. Polly even wrote to her father, telling him she had settled into her new job, that the family were nice people and that she wasn’t being worked too hard. It sounds like a woman who believed she might finally be getting somewhere. But it didn’t last. A few weeks later, Polly left the house after stealing clothing from her employers. By August she was back in the world of workhouses and common lodging houses. By the end of that month, she was staying around Whitechapel. Polly was about five feet two inches tall, with brown hair beginning to turn grey, brown eyes and high cheekbones. Her friend Emily Holland described her as a clean woman who kept herself to herself. She was 43 years old. And on the night of Thursday 30 August 1888, Polly needed fourpence. The price of a bed for the night. The Last Night It had been a wet night, with heavy rain, thunder and lightning over London. Polly had been drinking and sometime around half past one in the morning, returned to a common lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street. But when the deputy asked for the fourpence needed for a bed, Polly didn’t have it. So, she was told she would have to leave. You might imagine she’d have been worried, but apparently not. Polly, who was wearing a new bonnet, laughed and told the deputy, “I’ll soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet I’ve got now.” And out into the night she went. Around an hour later, Polly was seen again. Emily Holland had been returning to the lodging house when she came across her near Whitechapel Church. Polly was clearly drunk. She was staggering and at one point slumped against the wall of a shop. Emily tried to persuade her to come back with her, but Polly refused. She told Emily that she’d already earned her lodging money three times that day and spent it. She seemed confident she could earn it again. Then Polly headed off along Whitechapel Road. It was around 2.30 in the morning. And that is the last confirmed sighting we have of her alive. What happened over the next hour or so, we simply don’t know. Where did Polly go? Who did she meet? Was she walking the streets looking for somebody willing to pay her for sex? Given her history and the fact she was specifically looking for money to pay for a bed, I think that is likely. But whatever happened during that missing hour, at some point Polly ended up in a narrow street called Buck’s Row. And she wasn’t alone. Buck’s Row There is something we need to understand before going any further, because the movements of the policemen that night become important. In 1888, uniformed constables didn’t simply wander around Whitechapel waiting for something to happen. They worked beats. A beat was a defined route through a particular area. The routes were measured, recorded and allocated to individual officers. At night, beats were generally shortened because that was when most crime took place. More officers were put onto the streets, and the idea was that the same areas would be passed through more frequently. The beats also fitted alongside one another. That mattered because there were no radios. If an officer suddenly needed help, he needed another policeman to be close enough to respond. They also carried whistles which could be used to summon assistance. At night they also carried lamps and, as we are about to see, those lamps could be used to signal another officer nearby. At around 3.15 that morning, PC John Neil passed through Buck’s Row as part of his beat. There was nothing there. Around the same time, another officer, Sergeant Kirby, also passed through. Again, nothing attracted his attention, which is important. Because roughly half an hour later, a man called Charles Cross walked into Buck’s Row on his way to work. Charles was a carman, essentially a delivery driver, employed by Pickfords. As he made his way along the street, he noticed something lying near a gateway. At first, in the darkness, he thought it was a piece of tarpaulin. Then he moved closer and saw it was in fact a woman. As Charles stood there, he heard another man approaching, Robert Paul, also a carman on his way to work. Robert later said his first reaction on seeing Charles standing in the dark was concern. This was an area where robberies and gang attacks happened. But Charles called him over and the two men went to the woman lying on the ground. Her clothes had been pulled up almost to her stomach. Lying on the ground next to her was a bonnet. Charles felt her hands, which were cold, and he thought she was dead. Robert touched her face and then placed a hand on her chest. He thought he might be able to feel some movement. Maybe she was still breathing. The street was dark and neither man could see any injuries. They were also late for work so, rather than stay, they decided to find a policeman. A few minutes later they came across PC Jonas Mizen. And Mizen happened to be doing something that sounds rather strange today. He was knocking people up. Before alarm clocks became commonplace, people still needed some way of getting up for work. And one solution was to pay somebody to wake you. Residents would sometimes pay a police officer a small amount each week, and he would remember which house needed waking and at what time. It was officially allowed, provided it didn’t interfere with their police duties. So in the early hours of 31 August 1888, while Charles and Robert were looking for help, PC Mizen was knocking on doors to wake local people for work. The pair told him about the woman in Buck’s Row. Then Charles and Robert continued on their way. Meanwhile, PC John Neil was coming back through Buck’s Row on his beat. Only this time, something had changed. There was now a woman lying beside the gateway. Neil raised his lamp and, unlike Charles and Robert, he could see what had happened. There was blood coming from her throat. He touched her arm. Although her hands were cold, her arm was still warm. Neil knew another constable should be nearby. PC John Thain was working an adjoining beat, so Neil used his lamp to signal him. Thain saw the signal and came across. Neil then sent him for Dr Henry Llewellyn. By the time the doctor arrived, there was nothing he could do. The doctor could see that she’d had her throat cut. Polly was dead. He instructed the officers to remove her body to the mortuary so she could be examined more fully. The Scene Police checked the surrounding area. There was no trail of blood suggesting she had been killed somewhere else … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com

  3. Oct 20

    Chris Watts: Truth or Lies?

    As I approached the car I gestured for the driver to join me on the pavement. In the UK, the police don’t normally speak to you through the window, it’s much safer to both be standing. That way you can see their hands, and they’re not able to suddenly speed away in the car. This was early in my career, when I was still in uniform. The man was on his own, and so was I. I hadn’t stopped him for anything he’d done wrong. It was just what we call a routine check. I can’t even remember now what brought him to my attention. So, here we were. I introduced myself, with the usual smile I always gave to people. It’s far better talking to a relaxed person than an agitated one. He smiled back, but there was something not quite right about him. He gave me his name, date of birth and address, all of which seemed to come naturally to him. But my gut was telling me there was something off. Do you have ID on you? A driver’s licence, credit card? No No problem, I’ll check the car. It wasn’t registered to anybody. No worries. If you give me the phone number of someone you know, I’ll get my control room to give them a call so they can confirm what you’re telling me. He couldn’t remember one (and this was before the days of mobile phones). The more I pressed, the more his smile faded. I was starting to get a bad feeling. I was on my own and looking at the size of him, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out if things went south, so I discreetly asked for back up. Then I brought out my trusted curve ball question. So, what star sign are you? He just looked at me. Then I saw his eyes flicker over my shoulder. I knew what was coming. He suddenly turned and was about to run, when I jumped on him, both of us going to the floor. I’m glad I wasn’t in the position of today’s police, with people filming arrests and plastering them all over the internet, because I’m not sure how dignified I’d have looked rolling around on the floor with him. Thankfully, my back-up didn’t take long to join me, and we soon had him detained. Why had he tried to get away? The name, date of birth and address he’d given me were all false. He was wanted for stabbing someone a few days earlier. I had no idea when I stopped him. But that’s not the point of this story. It was nothing special. In fact, I could’ve chosen any number of similar incidents. The point is, I was using something a mentor told me when I first joined. Don’t try to prove a person is lying, try and prove they’re telling the truth. Because that’s the best way to unmask a liar. And it was something I carried with me throughout my career. Monday 13th August 2018 At around 1.40pm on this day, Officer Scott Coonrod was sent to 2825 Saratoga Trail in Frederick, Colorado, to carry out a welfare check. It was the home of Chris and Shanann Watts, and their two daughters, Bella aged 4 and Celeste aged 3. A friend of Shanann, Nickole Atkinson, had called the police out of concern. When the officer arrived, Nickole was there and told him she had dropped Shanann home at around 1.48am after a business trip to Arizona. Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant, had not been feeling well, had failed to attend a 10am doctor’s appointment and was not responding to calls or messages. Nickole had gone to the house with her adult son, Nicolas. They had seen Shanann’s Lexus in the garage, with the children’s car seats still inside. She had already contacted Chris Watts who had agreed to make his way home. When Watts arrived, he gave Officer Coonrod permission to enter and search for Shanann, Bella and Celeste. They were not there. Other items belonging to Shanann were found in the house. Her purse was there. Her wallet contained her driving licence, cash and bank cards. Her mobile phone was found between cushions of a sofa in the upstairs loft area. Watts gave police permission to examine it, and Officer Coonrod recorded that there had been no outgoing calls from the phone that morning. Nickole told him that it was extremely unusual for Shanann to leave without her phone because she used it for work and normally took it everywhere. Watts’ account was that Shanann had arrived home from her trip at around 2am. He had been asleep and woke at around 5am to get ready for work. He and Shanann then began talking about separating. According to Watts, the conversation was civil. They weren’t arguing, although both were emotional. He said they had been talking about separating for several weeks. He said that at around 5.27am he backed his work truck towards the garage to load tools. Shanann was still in bed at that point and had told him she was going to take the girls to a friend’s house. He said he hadn’t asked which friend. He then drove to an Anadarko oil-well site beyond Hudson, where he was alone for a period of time. Later, Detective Dave Baumhover asked Watts to walk him through the period when he had last seen Shanann. Watts gave a broadly similar account, but the detective recorded the separation conversation as taking place at approximately 4am, with both of them upset and crying. Watts again said Shanann had told him she was going to a friend’s house, and that he backed his truck into the driveway at approximately 5.27am before leaving for work. Detective Baumhover noted that the master bed had been stripped of its bedding, which was lying on the floor. The bedding was checked for signs of foul play, but nothing was found. The officers reported seeing nothing inside the house, vehicles or garage that gave the appearance of an altercation. Officer Coonrod began checking with neighbours to establish whether anyone had seen somebody coming or going. A neighbour showed him footage from his home CCTV system that showed Nickole’s car leaving at 1.48am. At 5.27am, it showed Watts’ work truck backing into the driveway and leaving a short time later. The rear of Watts’ truck was obscured by the garage from the camera’s view. It also showed no other vehicles coming or going from the house. Officer Coonrod also recorded some observations about Watts. He described his demeanour as nonchalant. He said Watts asked whether he should go and look for his family. Officer Coonrod told him to remain there for the time being. He noted that Watts didn’t ask again and didn’t appear overly concerned. He also said Watts mentioned the garage door being left open at least three times, which the officer found unusual. Nickole gave a different assessment. She told the officer she thought Watts appeared extremely nervous. Shanann’s mother called while Officer Coonrod was at the house. She was adamant Watts had done something and told him to check the GPS on Watts’ work truck. The officer was able to establish that the work truck did indeed have GPS. Officer Coonrod also canvassed the neighbourhood. Nobody he spoke to reported seeing vehicles coming or going or anything unusual. At the same time, he asked residents to provide footage from any CCTV cameras they may have had. He also circulated a welfare-check BOLO for Shanann and the children, meaning other officers in the area knew to be on the lookout for them. Shanann’s phone was transported to Frederick Police Department for examination. By the end of Monday, police hadn’t located Shanann, Bella or Celeste. Tuesday 14th August 2018 By Tuesday morning, Shanann and the girls still hadn’t been found, and the investigation was beginning to grow. Frederick Police requested assistance from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI. Officers continued searching the house and surrounding area, including using search dogs and a drone. Nothing was found that explained where Shanann and the girls were. But there were other things they could check. The previous day, police had established that Watts’ work truck was fitted with GPS. So, CBI Agent Tammy Lee contacted Watts’ workplace and requested the GPS information from the truck. Police were also continuing to investigate information coming in from the public. There was a reported sighting of Shanann and the girls, but when investigators viewed the CCTV footage they were sati… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com

  4. Oct 13

    Jack the Ripper Part 2: Martha Tabram

    Four months after the death of Emma Smith, another woman was murdered in Whitechapel. Her name was Martha Tabram. And although her murder would later become tangled up in the story of Jack the Ripper, I want to resist doing what history so often does with these women: reducing them to a name on a list. Before Martha became a murder victim, she’d already lived quite a life. Martha Martha was born in Southwark on 10th May 1849, the youngest of five children. In 1869, she married Henry Samuel Tabram, a furniture warehouse foreman. They went on to have two sons: Frederick, born in 1871, and Charles the following year. But the marriage wasn’t a happy one. Martha drank heavily and, by 1875, Henry refused to continue living with her. For several years he continued to give her money, but their relationship deteriorated. Eventually, when Martha began living with another man, Henry stopped supporting her altogether. That other man was William Turner. Martha lived with Turner on and off for around nine years but, again, alcohol caused problems. William later told the inquest into Martha’s murder that whenever he gave her money, she spent it on drink. He said they would continually split up and get back together again until, around three weeks before Martha died, they broke up for the final time. By August 1888, Martha was living at a common lodging house, 19 George Street in Spitalfields. She tried to make money selling trinkets and other small items on the street. For women living as Martha was, there was often no single way of making an income. She needed money for drink, for food and, crucially, for somewhere to sleep. When selling stuff wasn’t enough, prostitution could be another way of finding the few pence needed to get through the night. Martha was five feet three inches tall, with dark hair and a dark complexion. She was 39 years old when she died. On Monday 6th August 1888, Martha went out into Whitechapel. It was Bank Holiday Monday. And it would be the last night of her life. The Murder Much of what we know about Martha’s final hours comes from another woman, Mary Ann Connelly, who was more commonly known as Pearly Poll. According to Pearly Poll, she had known Martha for around four or five months, and the pair would sometimes go out together looking for men willing to pay them for sex. That evening, she said they met two soldiers. One was a corporal and the other was a private. From around ten o’clock until shortly before midnight, the four drank together in several pubs around Whitechapel. Their final stop was the White Swan. At around 11.45 p.m., they separated. Pearly Poll went off with the corporal, while Martha went with the younger soldier. That was the last time she was seen alive. It’s worth keeping one thing in mind here. Pearly Poll’s account became central to the police investigation, but it was never independently verified. Detectives later visited the pubs where she claimed the group had been drinking but couldn’t find anyone who remembered seeing them together. Martha’s sister-in-law did remember seeing Martha going into the White Swan, but said she appeared to be alone. That doesn’t mean Pearly Poll was lying. The soldiers may already have been inside. But it does mean we should be careful about treating her account as fact. What we do know is that sometime during the early hours of Tuesday morning, Martha ended up inside George Yard Buildings, a large block of cheap rented rooms and home to dozens of working-class families and lodgers. At around 1.40 a.m., Elizabeth Mahoney returned home to Geroge Yard Buildings with her husband. Shortly afterwards she went back downstairs to buy some food. She noticed nothing unusual. At around two o’clock, PC Thomas Barrett was nearby when he saw a soldier. Barrett asked what he was doing and he told him he was waiting for a friend who had gone off with a girl. That may be important. Or it may have had absolutely nothing to do with Martha. At around 3.30 a.m., another resident, Alfred Crow, came home. As he made his way upstairs, he saw somebody lying on the first-floor landing. It was dark. And in a building like George Yard, finding someone sleeping in a communal area wasn’t unusual, so Alfred assumed the person was homeless or drunk and carried on to his room. More than an hour passed. Then another resident, John Reeves, came down the stairs on his way to work. By then there was more light. And this time there was no mistaking what was there. A woman lay on her back on the landing. And underneath her was a large pool of blood. John went looking for a policeman and found PC Barrett, the same officer who had spoken to the soldier a few hours earlier. PC Barrett made his way to George Yard Buildings where he could see that the woman appeared dead. Her hands were clenched. Her clothes had been pushed up towards the middle of her body. Her lower body was exposed. Her legs were apart. The position gave Barrett the impression that sexual activity might recently have taken place. As per procedure, he sent for a local doctor, Dr Timothy Killeen. Killeen examined Martha and, having confirmed she was dead, instructed for her body to be taken to the local mortuary where he would later carry out a post-mortem examination. There was nothing to suggest Martha’s body had been moved there. Everything pointed to her having been killed on that landing. The soldiers remained the obvious line of enquiry. Barrett was later taken to the Tower of London to see if he could identify the soldier he had spoken to. He eventually picked out two men, but both had alibis. There were problems connecting that soldier to the men described by Pearly Poll. She later said the soldiers she and Martha had been with were Coldstream Guards, while Barrett had seen a Grenadier. Pearly Poll was also taken to identification parades. She eventually picked out two Coldstream Guards she said she was quite positive were the men she and Martha had been drinking with. Again, both had alibis. So, despite considerable effort, the police were never able to identify the soldiers described by either witness. Post-Mortem Before we get to what Dr Killeen found, there are two things worth knowing. First, the doctors carrying out these post-mortems were not forensic pathologists in the way we would understand that role today. They were ordinary doctors, working with the medical knowledge and techniques available at the time. Second, the mortuary was nothing like the sort of place we might picture today. Martha’s body was taken to the Whitechapel mortuary, a very basic facility that could better be described as a shed. So, Dr Killeen’s examination was very different from anything we would expect today. What he found was that Martha had been stabbed 39 times. They were spread across her body. Her lungs had been stabbed several times. So had her liver, spleen and stomach. There were also wounds to her neck and her genital area. But one wound was different. A blade had been driven through her breastbone and into her heart. And Dr Killeen didn’t think that wound had been caused by the same weapon as the others. He believed most of the injuries had been inflicted with a small knife. Something like a penknife. But the stab wound to the heart he believed was made by a much stronger blade, maybe a dagger or a bayonet. And if Dr Killeen was right, two different weapons had been used during the same attack, which is important. That stab wound to the heart would have been fatal. He also said he found no indication that sexual intercourse had taken place. He also found no signs of a struggle. Those are the medical findings. Now we come to the part that interests me most. What do they actually tell us about the crime? What I think happened Whenever I investigated a murder, I was always trying to understand what may actually have happened. Not just how somebody died, but what was happening between the victim and the killer. How did they come together? What happened first? How was the victim controlled? What was the killer trying to achieve? And what does th… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com

  5. Oct 6

    Yorkshire Ripper: The Legacy

    Mention the Yorkshire Ripper investigation to almost anyone and several things will come to mind. Most will think first of the murders. The crimes were truly abhorrent. Others will remember the mistakes made during the investigation. But for me, as someone who investigated murders years after Sutcliffe was caught, I find myself thinking about something very different. Not what happened during the investigation. But what happened because of it. In the early hours of 30th October 1975, detectives were called to Scott Hall Road, Leeds, after the body of a woman was discovered on waste ground beside the carriageway. She had been struck repeatedly to the head before being stabbed numerous times. At that stage, there was nothing to suggest the investigation would become one of the largest murder enquiries in British history. The victim was identified as 28-year-old Wilma McCann. As detectives began building a picture of Wilma’s life, they established she was a mother of four young children who lived just a short distance away. In fact, her home could almost be seen from where her body was found. Their enquiries revealed that Wilma occasionally engaged in sex work to make ends meet. When she failed to return home, her eldest child took the younger children out to look for her. A neighbour later found them cold and distressed at a nearby bus stop. Detectives had very little forensic evidence to work with, as DNA profiling was still years away. Standing beside Wilma McCann’s body, detectives had no reason to believe they were investigating anything other than a single, brutal murder. But as further attacks occurred, detectives began to recognise disturbing similarities. The victims were attacked at night, often after being alone with the killer. He typically struck them from behind with a hammer before using a knife, and many of the women were known to engage in sex work. The consistency of the attacks left detectives in little doubt they were dealing with a serial killer. Serial murder is rare in the UK. When it does happen, it attracts enormous media attention. As the investigation grew, the media gave the unknown killer a name. Drawing comparisons with the Whitechapel murders a century earlier, they dubbed him the Yorkshire Ripper. That name, combined with the way many of the victims were portrayed in the media as sex workers, made the attacks seem as though they were happening to ‘other people’. But in June 1977, that belief was shattered. The next victim was 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald, a shop assistant who had spent the evening with friends before beginning the walk home. She never made it. Like the women before her, she was attacked from behind with a hammer before being stabbed. Her body was found the following morning in a playground. She became the seventh victim of the Yorkshire Ripper. As detectives, we often talk about public confidence and public fear. Jayne’s murder had a huge impact on both. Until then, many people believed the killer was targeting a particular group of women. That changed almost overnight. Suddenly, nobody felt quite as safe as they had before. For detectives, the similarities to the earlier murders were obvious. But there was one crucial difference. Jayne wasn’t involved in sex work. That was a significant development in the investigation. When police investigate a serial killer, they’re not just trying to catch them. They’re also trying to prevent the next murder. An apparent change in the killer’s choice of victim meant the measures already in place had to be reassessed. Over the next three years, a further six women were murdered, bringing the total number of victims to thirteen. Some were involved in sex work, others not. There were also attacks where the victim survived. These women became an invaluable source of information that might help identify the killer. How he spoke. The words he used. How he approached his victims. How he escaped. Even what he smelled like, whether he smoked, or whether he appeared familiar with the area. Individually, those details might seem insignificant. Together, they could help bring detectives closer to catching him. Importantly, if detectives developed a credible suspect, these women might be able to pick him out in an identity parade. Now, you may be asking yourself, “why hasn’t he been arrested by this stage?” There were five years between the first murder and the last. At least thirteen women were murdered, and around half as many again who survived the attacks. That meant around twenty opportunities to secure the evidence needed to catch him. All those crime scenes with the potential for clues. Countless witnesses, including some who might be able to pick the suspect out. Surely, they had opportunities to catch this killer? And it is a perfectly reasonable question to ask. The thing is, every opportunity to find that breakthrough piece of evidence also generated more information for detectives to assess, record and follow up. In many ways it’s hard to comprehend just how much work an enquiry like this generates. There were hundreds of detectives working on the investigation, each producing witness statements, reports and countless other documents as they carried out enquiries. The enquiry generated around a quarter of a million names. I can only imagine how many documents and exhibits those enquiries produced. To put the sheer volume into context, at one police station where the enquiry was being run, the floor of the room used to store the documentation had to be reinforced to take the weight. An absolutely colossal amount of information. All on paper. There were no computers. Everything had to be recorded, indexed and cross-referenced by hand. The challenge wasn’t a lack of information. It was finding the one piece that mattered. Added to that, the attacks were carried out across multiple police forces, each with their own investigations. It was hard enough to keep track of the information within one force, let alone across several. So, as much as every attack created new opportunities. It also created an enormous amount of new work. Earlier, I mentioned Jack the Ripper. His murders took place around 90 years before those committed by the Yorkshire Ripper. Yet, in many respects, the methods available to catch a serial killer hadn’t changed as much as you might think. The biggest advance was the use of fingerprints. But if an offender took care not to leave them behind, they offered little help. If we fast forward less than 40 years to the murder investigations I worked on, the opportunities available to detectives were a world apart. DNA. CCTV. ANPR. Mobile phone analysis. Digital forensics. Methods that would have seemed like science fiction to the detectives investigating the Yorkshire Ripper. That’s why I think it’s unfair to judge them by today’s standards. Before I go any further, it’s worth saying that I’ve deliberately not covered every victim and every attack. Not because they’re any less important, but because this isn’t intended to be a complete account of the case. My focus is on the investigation itself and some of the key moments that shaped it. One of those moments came in March 1978. By then, detectives had been investigating for almost three years. Eight women had been murdered, and several others had survived attacks. They were under enormous pressure. Not just from the public, but from themselves. Every day the killer remained unidentified carried the possibility of another attack. And just picture what it felt like being one of those detectives when news filtered through that there was a new victim. I’ve been there. For me, it wasn’t a serial killer, but a series of linked sexual assaults. And over several weeks rather than several years. But each time I heard we had a new victim, it increased the pressure I felt to catch him before he could hurt anyone else. I can only imagine what that must have been like when the victims were being murdered. So, I think it’s important to bear that pressure in mind when looking… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com

  6. Sep 29

    Jack the Ripper Part 1: Emma Smith

    Jack the Ripper is probably the most famous unidentified murderer in history. More than 130 years after his crimes, books are still being written about him. Documentaries are still being made. And people still walk the streets of Whitechapel trying to work out who he was. But that’s not where I want to start. Before we get anywhere near suspects, I want to look at the crimes. That’s how I approached murder investigations during my career. The crime scene came before the suspect, not the other way around. So, over this series, I’m going to take you through the murders associated with Jack the Ripper. What happened. What the witnesses said. What the police knew. And what I make of the evidence. Who he may have been. Then you can make your own mind up. And our story doesn’t begin with one of the five women most commonly associated with Jack the Ripper. It begins four months earlier. With a woman named Emma Smith. Whitechapel To understand what happened to Emma, and the women who followed her, you first need to understand Whitechapel. In 1888, London was the most populated city in the world and the capital of the British Empire, but those living in Whitechapel saw little benefit from that. Sitting immediately to the east of the old City of London, it was one of the poorest parts of the capital. There was a lack of housing, severe overcrowding and high unemployment. Those fortunate enough to find regular employment could expect long working days for little money. For others, work was casual. You might earn something that day, you might not. And without money, finding somewhere to sleep became another problem. For a few pence, a common lodging house provided somewhere to spend the night. Conditions varied, but at the bottom end that could mean little more than a filthy mattress, packed into a room with dozens of others. If you couldn’t afford that, there was the workhouse. Or the street. Poverty brought with it all the problems you might expect. Crime. Alcohol. Violence. Prostitution. The population was also changing. Large numbers of immigrants had settled in the East End, including Jewish families fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire. The Whitechapel of 1888 was a hard place to live. And for women like Emma Smith, it could be an incredibly dangerous one. Whitechapel is also an area I know well. Before I joined the murder teams, I spent several years policing this part of London. And although more than a century had passed, in many ways the Whitechapel I knew still had echoes of the place these women lived in. Poverty. Overcrowding. Crime. Addiction. Prostitution. I saw all of them first-hand. I also led teams investigating robberies and later rapes in the area, so I got to see a side of Whitechapel that most people never do. That experience matters when I look at these murders. I know the streets. I know the area. And I know that many of the problems we associate with Victorian Whitechapel didn’t simply disappear with time. Emma Smith We don’t know a great deal about Emma. She was over forty and described herself as a widow. She had two children, a son and a daughter, who were living in the Finsbury Park area of London. Even those who knew Emma seem to have known little about the life she’d had before Whitechapel. She told friends that more than ten years earlier she’d left her husband and broken away from her previous life. When asked why, she apparently said that the people she’d left behind wouldn’t understand. Whatever had happened, by the spring of 1888 Emma was living at 18 George Street, a common lodging house in Whitechapel. On the evening of Easter Monday, 2 April, Emma went out. For most of that night, we don’t know where she went or what she did, but shortly after midnight, another woman from the lodging house saw her. Her name was Margaret Hayes, who saw Emma talking to a man. Margaret didn’t know who he was. All she could later say was that he was of medium height, dressed in dark clothing and wearing a white scarf around his neck. It was the last known sighting of Emma before she was attacked. And when you’re investigating a murder, the last person known to have been with the victim is someone you’re going to want to find. The man with the white scarf was never identified. There was something else about Margaret’s account that stands out. She herself had already been attacked that night. Two men had approached her. One asked her the time before another struck her in the mouth. Margaret got away. She later described there having been some “rough work” in the area that night, which gives us some idea of the streets Emma was walking through. At around 1.30 in the morning, Emma was making her way through Whitechapel. Ahead of her were two or three men. One appeared to be a youth of about nineteen. Emma crossed the road. She never explained why. Perhaps there was something about the men that worried her. Perhaps a woman alone in Whitechapel in the early hours needed no other reason. We don’t know. What we do know is that the men followed her and, not far from where she lived, they caught up with her. And they set upon her. Emma said she was assaulted and robbed of all the money she had. But the worst of the attack was still to come. A blunt object was forced deep into her vagina. And then, for several hours, we lose track of Emma. The attack happened at around half past one, but she didn’t make it back to George Street until hours later, even though the distance she had to travel wasn’t far. So where was she? We don’t know. She may have been unconscious for some of that time. She may simply have been unable to move because of the pain she was in. Or the timings may not be as accurate as they appear. There is no way of knowing. What we do know is that Emma eventually made it home. When she arrived at George Street, there was no hiding what had happened to her. Her face was bleeding, her right ear was cut, and she was in terrible pain. Mary Russell, the deputy keeper of the lodging house, and another woman, Annie Lee, came to her aid. Emma told them she’d been attacked by several men. They had assaulted and robbed her. And inflicted the injury that was now causing her so much pain. The women could see she needed a doctor; however, Emma didn’t want to go to hospital. But eventually they persuaded her. And so, having somehow made it back to George Street, Emma now had to walk another half a mile to the London Hospital. Now that may not sound that far, but with the injury she’d sustained, it must have been an agonising journey. Mary and Annie went with her and, as they walked, Emma pointed out the place where she said she’d been attacked. And they passed police officers, but Emma didn’t stop. She didn’t tell them what had happened. Neither did the women with her. Why, we don’t know. The London Hospital Eventually, Emma reached the London Hospital where she was examined by a doctor. Despite what she’d been through, she was still able to talk. She told him she’d been attacked by several men and explained what they had done to her. The examination revealed just how badly she’d been injured. There were injuries to her head and face. Her right ear had been cut. But it was the internal injury that was most concerning. That blunt object had been forced into her vagina with enough force to rupture the peritoneum, the membrane lining the abdominal cavity. That led to peritonitis, a serious inflammation of the lining inside the abdomen. Sadly, there was little the doctors could do to help her. Emma’s condition deteriorated and at 9 a.m. on the following day she died as a direct result of those internal injuries. I can’t help but think about what she’d been through. She had been attacked and robbed. She had suffered horrendous internal injuries. Yet, somehow, she had made it back to the lodging house. Then she’d walked another half a mile to hospital. And less than two days later, she was dead. You might imagine that by now the police were already hunting the men responsible. They weren’t. The police had no idea that the attack had happened. Scotland Yard Before we get t… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com

  7. Sep 22

    Dr Crippen: The Eyes of the World

    I investigated many murders during my career, more than I can count. But very few sent ripples much further than the communities in which they took place. Occasionally, though, I found myself at the centre of the country’s biggest news story. When your investigation dominates the headlines, the pressure is unreal. Every decision is scrutinised. Every delay criticised. Every mistake magnified. That attention ratchets up another level when a killer is identified and the manhunt becomes public. Suddenly, you’re not just trying to solve a murder and bring a killer to justice. You’re in a very public race against time. Every hour that passes without an arrest, fuels more speculation, more criticism and more questions about whether you’ll ever catch the person responsible. But it isn’t the criticism itself that keeps you awake at night. Throughout my career, the people I always felt most accountable to weren’t senior officers, politicians or journalists. They were the victim’s family. They had placed their trust in us at the darkest time of their lives. What you fear is that the constant public scrutiny begins to erode that trust. That they start to wonder whether the criticism they’re reading or hearing might be true. If that relationship begins to suffer, that’s when the pressure really hits. As I read about Walter Dew’s hunt for Dr Crippen, I couldn’t help wondering whether he felt that same burden of responsibility. The more I learned about his investigation, the greater the sense of kinship I felt with him. More than a century after Dew pursued Crippen, I found myself leading an international manhunt under remarkably similar circumstances. A celebrity reported missing. Murdered by her partner. The suspect fled abroad before the full picture emerged. The most heartbreaking difference was that my investigation also involved her two young sons. In almost every other aspect, the parallels were remarkable. In January 1910, American-born music hall singer, Cora Crippen, disappeared. A friend raised her concerns with the police, but initially not much appeared to have been done to locate her. But in July of that year, after the intervention of a police superintendent who had been contacted by friends of Cora, Chief Inspector Walter Dew visited the marital home and spoke with Cora’s husband, Dr Hawley Crippen. Just over a century later, concerns around the controlling behaviour by the partner of former Eastenders actress, Sian Blake, were raised by her family. As a result, police officers visited her home and spoke with her partner, Arthur Simpson-Kent. Both men gave seemingly plausible explanations as to their partner’s whereabouts. Crippen told Dew that Cora had left him for another man and travelled to America. Simpson-Kent said Sian had taken their two sons to visit a friend in Cambridge. Both homes were searched. Neither search revealed evidence to raise suspicion that either woman had come to any harm. For Walter Dew, verifying Cora’s whereabouts would have been extremely difficult, given the technology available in 1910. In Sian’s case, nobody could contact her after a text message was sent to her sister purportedly from Sian explaining that she needed to get away from everything. Sian was then officially reported as a missing person, along with her two sons, Zachary aged 8 and Amon aged 4. An investigation that was initially conducted by local police. Several weeks later, in the first week of January, her case was referred to us as the on-call murder team. A local superintendent feared serious harm may have come to them. Sadly, he was proven to be right. As detectives, you are taught to continually question the narrative. To never become fixed on one theory. What seems certain one day can change completely the next. Although Dew had accepted the explanation given to him, something about the story seemed to bother him. However, when he returned to make further enquiries with Crippen, the man had vanished. Whatever doubts Dew had been harbouring were now being confirmed by Crippen’s disappearance. After all, if he had been telling the truth, why would he run? Fearing what may have happened to Cora, he ordered a thorough search of the home, which led to a gruesome discovery. Below the brick floor of the basement lay the dismembered remains of a woman. Dew was convinced these were Cora Crippen. When Sian’s case came into my team, none of us believed we were being handed a simple missing persons case. One of the biggest alarm bells for me was the fact Sian had advanced motor neurone disease. She could just about care for herself, let alone the two boys. Added to this, by then, Simpson-Kent had disappeared, with all attempts to contact him having failed. Colleagues revisited the family home, intent on a more thorough search. They quickly discovered evidence of a violent incident, with substantial traces of blood having been painted over, in an apparent attempt to hide a crime. Within a few days of us taking over the investigation, it turned into something we all dreaded would come to pass. Buried in the back garden, we found the bodies of Sian, Zachary and Amon. And it was apparent that they had each died in the most brutal of ways. Both cases were now murder investigations. Both suspects had fled. And both had a head start on the investigators. When you investigate murders, you can become almost numb to the things you see. In many ways you have to. As awful as they are, you have a job to do, and if you got caught up in your own emotions, you won’t be doing that job to the best of your ability. That doesn’t mean, though, you can switch off completely. There are times when it’s impossible not to be affected by what you’re dealing with. When I received that phone call from the scene, it was one of the low points of my career. As much as I feared what may have happened to them, there is always that hope that you’re wrong. That they are alive somewhere. The blood at the house made that unlikely, but there was always the chance the children were alive. To have those hopes taken away was heartbreaking. As a parent, and simply as a human being, I felt sadness, anger and disbelief. But rather than let those emotions negatively affect me, I used them as extra motivation to ensure that I, and we as a team, did all we could to find this man and make sure he faced justice. I do wonder how finding that body affected Dew. As much as he may have suspected Cora had come to harm, I can’t help but think he hoped he was wrong. Did discovering her remains in such a gruesome condition stay with him? We’ll never know. In his memoirs Dew wrote mainly about what he did rather than his emotions. But I do know what came next, because I lived it myself. Once the bodies are found and the suspect has disappeared, everything changes. This is murder. And the person responsible is doing everything they can to escape you. To avoid arrest, to avoid a trial and, ultimately, to avoid justice. Manhunts are part of the job. Suspects run all the time. After all, if they’re caught, they face many years in prison. In Walter Dew’s time, they faced execution. That motivation can add to a person’s determination not to be caught. As detectives, you develop ways of finding people who run. I took pride in the fact that, sooner or later, I always found them. It was that experience that resulted in me leading the hunt for Simpson-Kent. After what he had done to his family, whatever determination he had to get away was matched by mine to ensure he didn’t. What I hadn’t experienced before was leading a manhunt under such intense public scrutiny. Dew may well have felt the same. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? For me, it proved to be very much a double-edged sword. There’s a famous scene in the film The Fugitive where Tommy Lee Jones explains how far an escaped prisoner could have travelled, using that to calculate the search area. Now, that’s all well and good when you’re minutes behind them. But what if they have a day’s head start, as was the case for Dew,… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com

  8. Sep 15 ·  Bonus

    Meet the Murder Team: Family Liaison Officer

    As I sat there on the sofa, sitting across from me was what I could only describe as a broken family. Two parents who moments before had their whole world come crashing down around them. It was the message no parent ever expects to hear. I’m so sorry to tell you this but your son has died as the result of an assault. Murdered. Not even out of his teenage years. Less than an hour after he left the house saying he would see them later. Then my fellow murder detective and I rock up, telling them he wouldn’t be coming home. Ever. No matter how many times you deliver that message, it never gets easier. In fact, it probably gets harder because you know the impact those words are going to have. You’ve seen the devastation they cause. And there was no doubt those words had caused complete devastation. As a detective I had developed ways of dealing with most of what I saw in my career. The side that I found most difficult was witnessing the trauma of parents who have lost a child through murder. It was probably from being a parent myself. Some part of me wondering how I would cope in that situation (I’m not sure I could). It was that empathy I put down to what happened next. As I sat there, looking at this distraught couple, caught up in their emotions, I said something I had no place in saying. Out of nowhere I told them we would get them. That we would catch the people responsible for killing their son. You see, the thing is, how could I possibly promise that? How could I guarantee that would happen. Yes, we solve most murders, but there are those we don’t. I knew as soon as I said the words I shouldn’t have, and I regretted it straight away. If one of my detectives had said that I’d have had a go at them. You can’t promise something that isn’t in their gift. Thankfully, we did go on to catch his killers. And convict them. But at that time, I had no way of knowing that would happen. It was the only time I ever did that. But it was proof to me what I always knew. Being a family liaison officer wasn’t for me. It’s an unfortunate fact that some of the most important advances in policing come from the mistakes of the past. It often takes high-profile failings to adopt a better way of working. Which is how family liaison officers, or FLOs, came about. In 1992, one of the Metropolitan Police’s darkest moments occurred when 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in Eltham, South-East London. The subsequent investigation into Stephen’s murder came under immense criticism, resulting in a public inquiry, chaired by Sir William Macpherson, that shone a light on numerous failings. One of those was the way in which investigators treated Stephen’s family. Up until then, how detectives engaged with bereaved relatives was far less structured than it is today. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry became a catalyst for change. The Macpherson report made a number of recommendations about how police should work with bereaved families, including the use of designated and trained family liaison officers. Family liaison developed significantly in the years that followed and has since become a central part of murder investigations. So, that’s how the role developed, but what do they actually do? Well, let me dispel one myth straight away. A myth not only held by people outside of the police, but also many on the inside. They’re not there to look after the family. They’re most definitely not counsellors. They’re investigators. Detectives from the investigation team, whose role is to gather information that can assist the investigation. And for me, that’s at the heart of what makes this such an incredibly difficult role. But rather than me explain why, I want to try and put you in their place. Imagine you’re a detective on a murder team that has just taken on a new investigation. The victim is a 15-year-old who was stabbed and killed less than two hours ago. You have been allocated the role of lead family liaison officer. You will be assisted by a deputy, but the overall responsibility for that strand of the investigation is yours. The rest of the team have convened for their first meeting, where they will receive a briefing from the detectives who first attended the crime scene, but your initial meeting with the boy’s family is too important to wait for that briefing to conclude. As you make your way to their family home, you’re running through in your mind what will be required of you when you arrive. You know that you’re there to get what information you can that will help the investigation. You will want to build as good a picture as is possible of the boy’s life. Which school he went to. Who his friends were. Where he hung around. Had he had any issues recently. Was he involved in any criminality or gangs. What was his phone number. How did he normally travel around. And as far as they know, where had he been prior to the murder. If they’re open to it, you would like to look in his bedroom for anything that may give answers as to what happened to him. To seize his electronic devices such as a laptop, tablet, phones or games console, to understand who he may have been in recent contact with. Sometimes, the families know before the police what the murder stemmed from. Who was involved. Why it happened. You know your colleagues are relying on you to get as much as you can to help drive the investigation forward. But you also know this family lost a son, a brother, less than two hours ago. They are likely to be in some kind of shock. You know from experience that families can react in a number of ways. They may be in denial, refusing to believe it’s their son unless they see him with their own eyes. They may be angry. Absolutely enraged that this has happened. Feelings they could well direct at you. They may be blaming themselves. What if we hadn’t let him out? Would he still be alive? They may completely shut down, unable to engage with anyone, including you. Or they may be none of these and be at a stage where they have accepted the reality of what has happened. Between the members of the family, they might be some or even all of these. The truth is, you have no way of knowing until you walk through that door. You knock. The door opens. And now you have to work out how to get the information the investigation desperately needs from a family whose world has just fallen apart. Where do you even start? How do you ask a mother whether her 15-year-old son was involved in a gang? How soon is too soon to ask if you can search his bedroom? How do you ask for his laptop? But while you’re trying to work out how to ask your questions, they have questions of their own. Where is he? Can we see him? What happened to him? Why did it happen? Did he suffer? Do you know who did it? Have you arrested anyone? When can we have him back? And there will be questions you simply don’t know the answer to. Others you may know the answer to, but can’t tell them. All while you still need them to trust you enough to answer yours. Because you’re an investigator and that’s your job. But it isn’t your only job. Up until now I’ve painted this role as if it’s a one-way street, but that’s not strictly true. To that family, the moment you walk through that door, you may become the one person they look to for answers. Not because you can change what happened, but because you can help them make sense of it. And that’s your job too. To help them understand. Not just what has happened, but the process to come. To let them know what the investigation team is doing. Where their son is now and what procedures will take place. When they can see him, and when they are likely to have his body released for a funeral. On some occasions the family may become the focus of media attention. The FLO is there to help them through that. As I said earlier, they are not there as counsellors but by the very nature of the role, they can become a pillar of support for the family. But there’s another complication I haven’t mentioned. What if the person responsible for the murder is sitting in that family home? … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com

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About

Hosted by former Scotland Yard homicide detective Steve Keogh, Murder Unpacked explores murder investigations to understand how detectives think and work. www.murderunpacked.com

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  • Creator
    Exploring how murders are investigated.
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Steve Keogh
  • Show Website
    Steve Keogh: Murder Unpacked

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