A True crime Podcast

In a quiet Derby block of flats, two men were found stabbed to death in their own bathtubs. A pink rose was left on a pillow. A discarded note confessed to the killings and was signed “the Angel of Mercy.” The man behind it, Andrew Dawson, had already murdered a 91-year-old shopkeeper nearly three decades earlier — and was free on life licence when he killed again. Host Alexander Lawson tells the...

A mother of three meets a stranger one afternoon in Surrey. Hours later she is dead on her living-room floor. The man who killed her has already murdered once before — in Spain — and the system had let him walk free. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson tells the full story of David Baxendale: a two-decade history of knife violence, a 2001 murder in Spain, a catastrophic relea...

A quiet farmhouse set ablaze just days before Christmas. A couple shot dead on one of Britain’s most beautiful coastal paths. Five teenagers held at gunpoint in a field. For more than twenty years, John William Cooper lived freely among the people of Pembrokeshire — a darts player, a local face, even a contestant on the TV show Bullseye. Behind that ordinary exterior was a cold-blooded killer. In...

An 89-year-old widow trusted the odd-job man enough to make him a cup of tea in her own kitchen. Minutes later he beat her to death with a projector case for £25. Twenty-five years earlier the same man had forced a hotel worker to strip naked and stabbed him 35 times. George Norman Johnson was released on life licence — and killed again. Host Alexander Lawson examines the brutal double murders tha...

In May 2010, CCTV captured a desperate chase through a Bradford flat block. A woman flees. A man follows with a crossbow. He fires. Then he turns to the camera and raises a finger. That moment exposed Stephen Shaun Griffiths — a criminology student obsessed with serial killers who murdered three women and called himself the Crossbow Cannibal. Host Alexander Lawson examines the disappearances of Su...

In 1982, Wilbert “Tony” Dyce raped and stabbed Norma Richards, then killed her 9-year-old and 7-year-old daughters in their Dalston flat. He daubed NF symbols to fake a racist attack and got away with it for nearly 3 decades… until DNA and one journalist caught him. Full story on the podcast. #TrueCrime #UKTrueCrime #ColdCase #DalstonMurders #JusticeServed

In 1989, nineteen-year-old Desmond Lee smothered his landlady to death in Bradford. He served fourteen years of a life sentence and was released on licence in 2004. Less than five years later, while still under supervision, he killed again. On this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson examines the two murders committed by Desmond Lee — the first as a teenager, the second while on...

On 3 April 2010, John Nigel Maden dialled 999 and calmly told the operator he had just finished killing his 12-year-old niece. When asked why, he replied: “Because I felt like it.” In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson examines the calculated torture, rape and murder of Tia Rigg in Cheetham Hill, Manchester — a crime driven by Maden’s obsession with violent child pornograp...

In the early hours of 30 December 2002, a rough sleeper searching bins in Camden found a woman’s legs… then more body parts nearby. Two women had been strangled, photographed after death, and dismembered. Their killer lived just streets away — and police had already found a third woman’s body in his flat nearly a year earlier. This is the story of Anthony John Hardy, the Camden Ripper. Join host A...

A 68-year-old man in a balaclava walks up to a Bradford front door at dawn with a sawn-off shotgun. Six shots later, one man is executed and another barely escapes with his life. But this was no ordinary pensioner. Thirty-eight years earlier, Ernest Leslie Wright had beaten a man to death with an iron bar in a caravan on a Buckinghamshire airfield — then tried to burn the body while the victim’s p...

In September 2006, the body of a young Polish student was discovered hidden under the floorboards of a Glasgow church — bound, gagged, and stabbed sixteen times. The quiet handyman who worked there called himself Pat McLaughlin. His real name was Peter Britton Tobin. What followed was one of the most far-reaching investigations in British criminal history. Operation Anagram would uncover the murde...

A woman calls the police, terrified her ex is going to kill her. Officers already know the truth: he has murdered before. He strangled a previous girlfriend, buried her body, served fifteen years, and was deported back to Britain. Eight days after that desperate call, he answers the door when police arrive and tells them she’s not home. They believe him. They leave. Her body is later found under a...

In April 2008, a 71-year-old woman was attacked on her own doorstep in central London. The man who tried to rape and slash her had been in Britain for less than four months. His name was Simon Wilson. Born in the UK, raised in Australia, he left a trail of extreme sexual violence and murder behind him — including the savage killing of Joan Randell in 1992. When Australia deported him after 16 year...

A convicted murderer walks free after serving a life sentence. The system calls him a model prisoner. Just eight weeks later, another woman is dead — strangled and stabbed in a Middlesbrough kitchen. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson examines the case of Douglas Gary Vinter: the 6ft 7in bodybuilder who murdered his colleague Carl Edon in 1995, was released on licence, and t...

In the winter of 2006, five women vanished from the streets of Ipswich. Their naked bodies were later found dumped in streams, ponds and woods — some posed with arms outstretched like crucifixes. The man responsible was Steven Gerald James Wright, the Suffolk Strangler. But his killing began seven years earlier with the murder of a 17-year-old girl walking home from a nightclub. In this episode of...

In March 2007, David William Tiley murdered his disabled fiancée Susan Hale in their Southampton flat. He bound her, sexually assaulted her, stabbed her to death… then lived with her decomposing body for over a week. He turned on a fan. Sprayed deodorant under the bedroom door. Texted her friends from her phone. Went shopping. Pretended everything was normal. Then her carer, Sarah Merritt, arrived...

She lived just 54 days. In that short time, her father subjected her to repeated physical and sexual abuse before ending her life in a flat in Kettering in November 2005. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson examines the case of Andrew Randall — the man who admitted murdering and sexually abusing his seven-week-old daughter Jessica. From the horrific injuries discovered after...

One by one, taxi driver Rahan Arshad carried his three young children downstairs in their pyjamas and England kit… and murdered them with a £1.99 rounders bat. Moments earlier he had already beaten their mother to death in the bedroom of their quiet Cheadle Hulme home. Then he covered the bodies, left the house, and flew to Thailand on a ticket he’d booked weeks in advance. The decomposing remains...

A man with a violent past is released… and kills again. Stephen McColl murdered his friend and his girlfriend in Greater Manchester. The system failed. The victims paid the price. In this episode of True Crime Files, Alexander Lawson reveals the full story of the attacks, the court case, the life sentence, and the questions that still haunt the justice system. If you think you know UK true crime,...

A 15-year-old girl steps out to make one quick call. She never comes home. Three days later her remains are found in five bin bags on a London estate. The killer? A former butcher, serial rapist, and predator who had already walked free after years of attacking women. This is the full story of John McGrady — the “Beast of Belfast” — and the night he decided to go out and “look for someone.” Hosted...

Three days before her 18th birthday, 17-year-old Jeshma Raithatha left school and started the same walk home she always took. She never made it. Hidden in the undergrowth, a man dragged her into a concealed den, strangled her, raped her, and stabbed her through the heart so she could never identify him. Her body wasn’t found for eight days. By then the killer had already fled the country. His name...

In September 2004, a 24-year-old loner from Surrey put on a hockey mask, picked up a knife, and set out to become Britain’s next infamous killer. Inspired by horror films, Daniel Julian Gonzalez murdered four strangers and left two more fighting for their lives in a terrifying 72-hour rampage across London and the south coast. His mother had already begged the system for help, asking one chilling...

A son walks into his mother’s kitchen and finds her severed head on the floor. The man standing over her — naked, knife in hand — calmly says: “We’ve had a little argument.” That man was Glyn Trevor John Dix. Twenty-five years earlier he had raped and shot another woman dead. The system released him. He married the mother of his former cellmate. Then he butchered her. This is the full, disturbing...

A young mother’s body is found nearly naked in a Lancaster flat. Around her neck: a shoelace, twisted tighter and tighter… with a fork. Paul Culshaw already had convictions for rape and attempted murder. In 2004 he struck again — and this time he made sure she could never tell. Host Alexander Lawson reveals the chilling crimes of the man the judge called an “enormous danger to women,” the whole-li...

February 2003. A millionaire, his young wife, their two baby boys, and a grandmother vanish overnight. Weeks later, bodies start washing up on the English coast. Trussed. Dumped at sea. The children are never found. This wasn’t random. It was a cold, calculated plan to seize a freight company and turn it into a drug-smuggling front. One of the men who helped make it happen was William Horncy — a f...