Behind the Crimes with Robert Murphy

#Subscribe for FREE: robertmurphy.substack.com # Jackie Malton was a policing pioneer, joining a British provincial force in 1970, then transferring to the Metropolitan Police where she served in the Fraud Squad, Flying Squad and murder squads. She was often the only woman serving in each team. In this episode, she describes how she overcame homophobia and misogyny, clashed with corrupt officers a...

It was the early 1990s and Lynda La Plante was desperate. She had a few TV drama successes under her belt, but everything she was pitching was greeted with a ‘no’ from commissioners. Then, in a pitch meeting, she dreamt up Prime Suspect when the TV boss said she wanted a ‘cop show with a female detective and a murder.' But to create Det Ch Insp Jane Tennison, Lynda needed to research true crime. E...

For extras subscribe at: robertmurphy.substack.com Samantha Robins was the Intelligence Manager on the Major Crime Team at Surrey Police in May 2010 when, late in the evening, the call came in: a young mother had been murdered in her home. What followed was a multi-pronged inquiry. Sarah Thomas was a 38-year-old mother of three who was found in her flat in a quiet English village. Her boyfriend ra...

Janice Hallett has created three of the most inventive crime books of recent years. When I first started reading ‘The Appeal’ I was a bit dubious. How could a crime novel with big characters really be told through emails and messages? Then I got into the book… Next came The Twyford Code with a main character, a prisoner Steve Smith who can neither read nor write, who reveals his story through tran...

#To watch this interview - subscribe at robertmurphy.substack.com# Det Insp Paul Franklin was in charge of the inquiry to bring the murderous, cheating husband Emile Cilliers to justice. But it wasn’t easy. There was little direct evidence that Cilliers had tampered with the parachute of his wife, Victoria. There was no CCTV nor DNA. And Victoria did not support the investigation into her husband....

#To watch this interview - subscribe at robertmurphy.substack.com# Emile Cilliers made global headlines in 2018 when he was convicted of the attempted murder of his wife Victoria. He was an upstanding army sergeant, a family man, who led a debaucherous double life of sex clubs, girlfriends and payday loans. He tried to murder Victoria by tampering with the gas meter in their home. When this failed...

#Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com# Laura Lippman spent more than 20 years as a journalist working in Texas and Baltimore. She has won Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Barry, Nero and Shamus awards (among many others) for her 25 novels - which include 12 featuring the private investigator Tess Monaghan Her latest, Prom Mom, has a loose inspiration by the 1997 case of Melissa Drexler a New Jerse...

#Subscribe for free at robertmurphy.substack.com # This was Penelope Jackson’s final chance. The evidence against her seemed overwhelming: the glib 999 call admitting the killing of her husband, her further confessions on police body worn footage. In court, even her friends had described her as overbearing and domineering. Now it was her turn to take to the witness stand to give her version of eve...

#Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com# To friends, David and Penelope Jackson were like most other retired couples living in the West Country. They had a good life: a nice home, an active social life and a penchant for foreign cruises. But in February 2021, Penelope killed her husband after a birthday celebration. She then called 999 saying ‘I stabbed him once, then he said I wouldn’t do...

Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com Award-winning crime novelist Denise Mina has written the latest Philip Marlowe book: The Second Murderer. To research the book, she spent months studying Los Angeles in 1940, deconstructing Raymond Chandler’s distinct sentence structure and recreating his unique humour. Denise’s career straddles both crime fiction and true crime. She has won many award...

To coincide with the launch of my true crime book ‘Decoy’ I’ve updated and reissued this podcast featuring a rare and exclusive interview with Chris Gould. In the 1970s, the city of Bristol was terrorised by a man nicknamed ‘The Clifton Rapist.’ The stranger-attacker assaulted seven women over a two-year period. PC Chris Gould suggested a daring honeytrap: Avon and Somerset Police should set up an...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit robertmurphy.substack.com Subscribe at: robertmurphy.substack.com Nearly 20 years had passed and forensic scientist Dr Colin Dark received a call asking if he’d like to take on the case of Hilda Murrell. What clues had been left at the scene? How could they be analysed using modern techniques? And what truths would emerge about the theo...

Subscribe at robertmurphy.substack.com On March 21st 1984, Hilda Murrell disappeared. It would take police three days to find her - yet her body was in the obvious place. She had been murdered. But by whom? Now the conspiracy theories started: Did the British government want Hilda dead because of her awkward questions about a new nuclear power station? Was she killed because of her links with nava...

SUBSCRIBE: robertmurphy.substack.com Screenwriter George Kay (Hijack, Lupin, The Long Shadow, Criminal UK) was talking with his mother about a potential project: would he be interested in writing a script about the Lord Lucan mystery? Then, she dropped the bombshell: he had a personal link with the other Lucan nanny Christabel Boyce. George wanted to speak with Christabel - she would be a primary...

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE: robertmurphy.substack.com In her book ‘A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan’ writer Laura Thompson suggests six possible scenarios of what happened on the night of November 7th 1974. Was Lady Lucan the target? Did Lord Lucan carry out the killing himself or - as with the rest of his life - did he get help? And speaking of help, did his rich, powerful gambling fr...

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE: robertmurphy.substack.com Within a few moments on the night of November 7th 1974, Lord Lucan killed his children’s nanny, tried to murder his wife - and then disappeared. But that attack had been brewing for months, years even. And still - half a century on - people argue about what really happened. Was his estranged wife really the target? Was it Lucan in the cellar with the l...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit robertmurphy.substack.com #Subscribe for free at robertmurphy.substack.com # Margaret Backhouse survived - it was a miracle. The car bomb seemed amateur but it was effective. Why would anyone want to target an elegant farmer’s wife in a quiet, safe English village? Detectives then heard about a hate campaign against her husband Graham....

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE at robertmurphy.substack.com In June 1984, 17-year-old Melanie Road was murdered as she walked home from a nightclub in the beautiful city of Bath, England. The investigation became Britain’s biggest manhunt, yet despite 96 arrests, her killer was never found. Twenty five years later, Det Sgt Julie Mackay joined Avon & Somerset Police’s cold case unit. ‘I always knew I would fin...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit robertmurphy.substack.com This suspect had already escaped from police custody once. Now he was wanted for a triple murder. He was living wild off the land and Britain’s newspapers had joined the police hunt. The suspect was even taunting the inquiry, writing to journalists describing police as ‘boy scouts.’ Then a detective had an inge...

In October 1998, Jenny King vanished. The 22-year-old had been on a night out at a club near her home in Kingswood near Bristol, in the South West of England. Police realised the office worker was in a good, stable relationship. She had no enemies. And no-one would want to harm her. But a friend of Jenny’s came forward. In the hour before Jenny disappeared, she had said something about a ‘psycho e...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit robertmurphy.substack.com Eugène-François Vidocq was the real-life Paris detective who inspired Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin and Maurice Lablanc’s Lupin stories. He revolutionised criminology: developing undercover techniques, using science and surveillance to bring Paris’s crimewave under control and setting up a system of...

It was the occasional smell of weed which made detectives suspicious at first. Then a mystery delivery alerted police to the former nuclear bunker in the middle of the English countryside. But when detectives mounted a raid on the underground fortress, they had no idea if they could get through the atomic blast doors. And when they did - what would they find? What followed was a moment of high-ten...

To welcome new listeners to Behind The Crimes , every day this week I’m highlighting some of the incredible stories we have covered in the last year. This is a replay of an episode from June 2023. In the early hours of October 4th 1922, a woman who was about to become Britain’s most notorious murder suspect walked home from the theatre with her husband. Edith Thompson was 28, she was beautiful, ha...

NB. As a welcome to new Substack subscribers, this is a reissue of an episode released in 2023. Roy and Joan Clarke are found dead in their home in rural England in December 2004. They’ve been stabbed in a ‘ritualistic-style’ attack. Det Ch Supt Paul Howlett’s suspicions fall on one man. But does his prime suspect have the opportunity to kill? There is little evidence at first. But the country’s t...

NB. This is a replay episode - first released in July 2023. What does it take to be a cold case detective? How do you solve a case from the past when all the files have vanished? All Julie and Gary had was one sheet of paper: a laboratory submission form. Nothing else. They didn’t know the details of the attack, who the victim was, what or where it happened. But by methodically reviewing the case...