Always True Crime

Shaun Walmsley was serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of Anthony Duffy when he managed to escape from custody during a hospital visit. In this episode of the UK True Crime Podcast, I look at the murder which led to Walmsley being sent to prison, and the remarkable circumstances surrounding his escape. How did a convicted murderer manage to get out of custody, and what happened next? I r...

Death can be a very strange thing indeed - from death by doughnut to the bus driver who couldn't tell an antelope from a human being, via ghastly tales of the occult, cannibalism and extreme reasons for murder - from The Cosby Show to using too much toilet roll - for this time around on the Enthusiast, I have curated a good hour plus worth of accounts of these from around this strange globe of...

On the 14th of November 2002. 14-year-old Adam Morrell of Loughborough in Leicestershire told his dad he was going to stay at his friends’ house, something that boys do every day in every city. But with the group growing bored, it said, that his death was decided by a childish game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and after two days of torture, his body was scattered across the canal and fields, with no...

In March 2021, 33-year-old Sarah Everard disappeared while walking home from a friend’s house in south London. Her disappearance sparked a desperate search by her family and friends, as detectives worked to establish what had happened during the short journey she should have been able to make safely. But as the investigation unfolded, it uncovered a deeply disturbing case that would shock the coun...

Two teenage girls were snatched from the roadside in Berkshire. One managed to escape, but the other was subjected to a violent and terrifying attack. The cases remained unsolved, and the man responsible escaped justice. But years later, a horrific murder would reveal a chilling connection and begin to unravel the secrets of a killer. In this episode of the UK True Crime Podcast, I look at the cri...

Today I’m joined by Matt Foot, a criminal defence solicitor and Co-Director of APPEAL a legal charity that fights wrongful convictions as we discuss some of the cases that have raised serious questions about our criminal justice system. We begin with Sam Hallam, who was just seventeen when he was convicted of murder. He spent seven years in prison before his conviction was quashed, and Matt repres...

In almost ten years of making the UK True Crime Podcast, I’ve only covered male victims of domestic abuse once before. The vast majority of domestic abuse victims are women abused by men, and that reality should never be overlooked. But in this episode I wanted to tell the stories of two men who suffered horrific abuse at the hands of their female partners. Both cases are deeply upsetting, and bot...

Concluding Series 11's opening tale, and in November 2021, David Fuller stood in the dock of Maidstone Crown Court to face trial for the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce back in 1987, the Tunbridge Wells 'Bedsit' murders, as well as charges relating to the harrowing, disturbing offences that he had catalogued himself committing against the bodies of women and children in the...

On Friday the 3rd of August 1951, 49-year-old housewife, Mabel Tattershaw went out on a date with 19-year-old Herbert Mills. She was smitten with him, but as a chronic gambler who was obsessed with making an easy fortune, smashing the authorities and beating the odds, she had no idea that she would be the part of his plan to place the biggest gamble of his life. Location: 'The Jungle' near...

In February 2019, three men were murdered in their homes in Exeter, Devon, in a series of attacks that appeared to have no obvious motive. Eighty-year-old Anthony Payne and 84-year-old twin brothers Dick and Roger Carter had lived ordinary lives, with no known connection to one another. So why had these three men been targeted, and what linked their deaths? As detectives investigated the Exeter mu...

In this episode from Sunderland, I tell the story of Barry Sewell, a man whose life became caught up in a rumour with devastating consequences. The case raises important questions about the dangers of unsubstantiated allegations, how quickly rumours can spread, and what happens when people decide to take the law into their own hands. When does suspicion turn into vigilantism, and what happens when...

In October 2006, 77-year-old widow Tilly Campbell was found dead in her home in Donaghadee, County Down, Northern Ireland. The fire brigade had been called to her property, but it soon became clear that Tilly’s death was not the result of a fire. She had been murdered, and what initially appeared to be a tragic accident would soon become a murder investigation, with her next-door neighbour emergin...

In this episode, I’m joined by one of my real true crime heroes in Tom Wood, a retired senior police officer who spent almost 40 years in policing, working on some of Scotland’s most significant murder investigations. Tom has worked on some of Scotland’s most infamous murders and was Officer in Overall Command of a national investigation into the murders of five young Scottish women in the 1970s,...

A gang of armed robbers terrorised Bristol for more than a year, targeting banks, building societies and post offices with shotguns and other weapons. But how did they operate, and how did police finally bring them down? In this episode, I look at the robberies, the victims and the remarkable covert operation that eventually led to the gang's arrest and imprisonment - it is quite a story. I re...

Continuing the opening story of Series 11, and by 2007, the then 20 year cold cases of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce, the Tunbridge Wells 'Bedsit' murders, had been definitively linked by DNA as being the work of the same killer. But - he wasn't on the National DNA database. Skip forward 13 years, and by then, with the advancements in Familial DNA, it was to lead investigators to a v...

On Saturday the 28th of August 2010, 30-year-old Izabela Zablocka telephoned her mother and 9-year-old daughter, Kasia, as she did every few days without fail. That day, she vanished without a trace and would never be seen or heard from again. And although her killer thought they had got away with murder, after 15 years fighting to find the answers, Iza's body was finally unearthed, and the t...

Very occasionally, I recommend a podcast series to you and this is a show I have found really interesting and I hope you will too. This is episode one of Rough Diamond, the new true crime series from Always True Crime. NOTE: I haven't been paid to promote this podcast It starts in the 1960s when London was in the grips of a crime spree…rare diamonds are being stolen. The latest is the Colenso...

In September 1965, six-year-old Margaret Reynolds disappeared while walking to school in Birmingham. Just a few months later, five-year-old Diane Tift vanished while making the short journey home from her grandma’s house in Walsall. Both disappearances sparked major searches, but neither girl was found until their bodies were discovered together on Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. The discovery tra...

Today’s story takes us to Plymouth, where we look at the tragic story of Callum Hill and the events surrounding his death. At the heart of the story is a personal dispute between two men and the seemingly futile idea that problems can be settled by arranging a fight. What begins as an argument driven by pride, ego and a refusal to back down ultimately has consequences far beyond the people involve...

What does nearly 40 years of investigating serious crime teach you about murder? Tom Wood has spent almost four decades on the inside of Scottish policing, working as a detective on some of the country's most notorious cases before eventually becoming a senior-ranking police officer. Now a bestselling true crime writer, Tom joins me on British Murders to talk about the investigations, people a...

A building project that went badly wrong would lead to a lengthy and costly legal dispute between builder Michael Chudley and his customer, Christopher Sear. As the court case dragged on for years, the consequences for Chudley and his partner became increasingly serious, with both of them losing their homes. As the financial and personal pressures mounted, Chudley began looking for someone to blam...

This is episode one of Rough Diamond, the new investigative series from Always True Crime. It starts in the 1960s when London was in the grips of a crime spree…rare diamonds are being stolen. The latest is the Colenso diamond. It’s the world’s largest uncut diamond and one of the Natural History Museum’s most important pieces. When a young window cleaner is arrested a few months after the theft, h...

True Crime Catch Up is back! I'm delighted to say that True Crime Catch Up is back with a brand-new episode, as I sit down with Stuart Blues, for episode one of our new monthly series. If you haven't listened before, it's a chance for the two of us to get together and chat about different aspects of true crime, from individual cases to our own experiences of researching and presenting...

Some true crime cases stay with you long after you've finished researching them. Maybe it's the unanswered questions, the sheer brutality of what happened, the mistakes made during an investigation, or simply the feeling that there’s something about the case you just can't shake. In this returning episode of True Crime Catch Up , Stuart Blues of British Murders and Adam Lloyd of UK Tru...

Sixteen-year-old Ruth Wilson disappeared after travelling by taxi to Box Hill in Surrey. She had skipped school and, after being dropped off, was last seen standing alone in the rain on a quiet bridleway as darkness was falling. Ruth had been experiencing difficulties in her personal life, having recently discovered the truth about her biological mother's death, something that reportedly had a...