Behind the Crimes with Robert Murphy

Who is Banksy? It is a question that has taunted the art world for two decades. As a graffiti-artist, he has committed criminal damage. Which is why I’m including him in Behind the Crimes. I uncovered a ‘lost’ interview with the secretive stenciller. When researching the artist’s background, I came across an old report which had lain in a tape archive for more than a decade and a half. Even the jo...

#Subscribe for free extras - robertmurphy.substack.com How long would you wait for justice? What about fifty years? Liz Roberts was assaulted as an eight-year-old girl. She didn’t tell her parents - even though her father was a high-ranking murder detective. A decade later Liz became a policewoman herself. But Liz still kept the attacks a secret, thinking her force wouldn’t believe her. After all...

For fourteen years, a man described as looking like ‘a Ghoul’ terrorised a huge area across the North and East Midlands of England. Detectives thought he was behind at least seven attacks on women. In one case, he even superglued his victim’s eyes shut so she wouldn’t see him. He was forensically-aware and left few clues at the attack-sites. Desperate, three forces combined to run Operation Lynx....

Isla Traquair, the TV presenter and journalist, has made history with her ground-breaking podcast ‘The Storyteller: Naked Villainy.’ In this interview she tells Behind The Crimes host Robert Murphy about the case of murdered geneticist Dt Brenda Page, how her killing was overshadowed by her work as an escort and how Isla has been granted audio recordings from a British trial for the first time to...

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 innovative undercover sting, using young rookie police officers as decoys to catch him. This was a monumental gamble, putting the lives of their youngest,...

If you’ve found the ITV drama The Long Shadow compelling, you’ll be fascinated by this box-set podcast. My mini series, Deadly Deception - about ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ Peter Sutcliffe - was so well-regarded it was promoted globally by Substack. It features an interview with former Det Chief Superintendent Chris Gregg. Chris has a unique story having worked on both the 1970s ‘Ripper’ inquiry and then b...

## Subscribe at robertmurphy.substack.com to see trailers, video interviews and images from the drama. ## How do you dramatise for television the story of Britain’s most notorious serial killer? How can you devise and write compelling scenes while remaining faithful to the facts, respectful to his victims and mindful of the families left behind? Behind the Crimes is an independent reader-supported...

Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com For ten years, a spy operated in the midst of suburban Yorkshire. Secrets were passed to Soviet Bloc agents about Britain’s V-bomber’s radar-jamming device. But was the real spy the prime suspect - a Royal Air Force engineer? Or was the main player his beautiful, unfaithful wife? The case was finally solved after Det Sgt Michael Burdis discovered the o...

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 Julie and Gary were able to rebuild the investigation. There...

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, had a career, a good social life… and a lover 8 years her junior. Freddy Bywaters leapt from the shadows and stabbed her husband to death. Edith was terrified. She didn’t want her husband dead, she h...

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...

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...

West Yorkshire, 2004. Chris Gregg is now at the height of his career - a detective chief superintendent establishing West Yorkshire Police’s elite Homicide and Major Enquiry Team. The next few months are busy. But at the back of his mind is unfinished business: tracking down Wearside Jack, the Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer from nearly 30 years previously. Chris has failed to persuade senior officers to...

June 1979. The tape recorded by the man known as ‘Wearside Jack’ is played to the Yorkshire Ripper team. ‘I could feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck’ says Chris Gregg - a detective constable at the time - as the chilling Sunderland accent fills the room. The inquiry pivots. Unbeknown to lead detective George Oldfield, the lines of inquiry have already got the serial killer in the ne...

March 1978. Britain’s biggest manhunt. West Yorkshire Police detectives are desperate to find the man who has killed seven women. The man nicknamed ‘The Yorkshire Ripper.’ Det Con Chris Gregg is a rookie officer in the incident room when a letter arrives, claiming to be from the serial killer. The handwriting is spidery. The language is taunting. Chris doubts that it is from the genuine killer, bu...

In June 2014, Anthony Walgate was found dead in a street in Barking, East London. The Metropolitan Police Service said there were no suspicious circumstances: it was another sad overdose. But the 23-year-old fashion student’s mother, Sarah Sak, and his friends refused to believe detectives. Then, months later, two more young men were found dead nearby. Still, the police refused to link the deaths...

Roy and Joan Clarke were found dead in their home in Melksham, Wiltshire, in December 2004. They’d 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 the loving parents? And a deep-dive of the suspect’s computer reveals a sinister fantasy to kill. Twenty years on, and Roy Clarke’s daughter is...

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