Hatton Garden ITV

ITV’s Hatton Garden drama has been engrossing. The language is ripe and the cast – including Timothy Spall and Kenneth Cranham – is excellent. The Diamond Wheezers who burgled the underground safe-deposit company in London’s jewellery district in 2015 is a fascinating true-crime story. While pulling off this shocking theft, the veteran lags are also gasping, collapsing, falling asleep and taking plenty of toilet breaks. That light-hearted side is excellently done, scripted by Jeff Pope and Terry Winsor. Pope in […]

Books 0 1 min read

Murder by the Sea: David Ellis

The CBS Reality series continued to rake through the dark side of our seaside towns this week. This time it was the sad case of Swansea landlord Alec Warburton, who was murdered by his callous tenant, David Ellis. Ellis had a number of grubby convictions behind him, including sexual offences against a girl. He was also a liar and seems to have lied about his financial situation to convince Mr Warburton to rent a room to him. Swansea is a […]

Television 0 1 min read

Murder by the Sea: Mamie Stuart

The third episode of Murder by the Sea on CBS Reality is about a case that is 100 years old. The murder of Mamie Stuart was all made all the more unhappy because this was a crime in which the killer escaped justice. Mamie, a 26-year-old chorus dancer, disappeared in 1919. She had married to a man called George Shotton in 1918. They met soon after Mamie had finished a tour on stage and she had returned home to Sunderland. […]

Television 0 2 min read

Jack the Ripper – The Case Reopened BBC1

When I was on the last day of filming for BBC4’s Dark Son back in August, the film’s presenter and top criminologist David Wilson was chatting about the Jack the Ripper documentary he had just made with Emilia Fox. He was talking about how the programme shed new light on the case. Let’s face it, the Ripper industry of books, conventions and fansites can be tawdry. Many new publications are boring and often exploitative. However, having read David’s A History […]

Geographic profiling 1 1 min read

The Yorkshire Ripper Files

I remember as a student being woken by the radio alarm to news that police had finally arrested the Yorkshire Ripper – after long six years of hunting him. That was 1981. Big news. The murderer had spread fear across the North of England with his cowardly, obscene hammer attacks on women. The media had started by loyally reporting police efforts to catch the culprit, but this switched to doubts and criticism. Politicians turned on the police. The Reclaim the […]

Serial killer 3 1 min read

Dark Son on BBC4

This intriguing documentary is now scheduled for next Tuesday (12 Feb) at 9pm on BBC4. Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is a 90-minute look into one of the most appalling and unsolved serial killer cases in British history. In 1964-65 a kerb-crawler murdered six women in west London. He left their naked bodies in the River Thames or various outdoor secluded spots. Scotland Yard mounted its biggest ever manhunt but could uncover no strong suspects. The killer […]

Hammersmith Nude Murders 1 1 min read

Murder by the Sea – John Cooper

John Cooper was a man with a powerful streak of badness in him. A bully, a psychopath and a vicious killer, he terrorised an area of Pembrokeshire for two decades. He is the subject of a forthcoming episode of CBS Reality’s Murder by the Sea (Tuesday, 29 January, 10pm). As a contributor to the series, I must say Cooper made the biggest impression on me for the heartless, chilling nature of his crimes. He was jailed for 30 counts of […]

Television 0 1 min read

Dark Son now on BBC iPlayer

Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is now available to view on BBC iPlayer. I have been talking about this documentary for a while now. It was almost a year ago that I got involved with filming some sequences for this re-examination of the unsolved Hammersmith Nude Murders. My involvement was sought because of findings in my book The Hunt for the 60s Ripper. This employed some modern policing theories to understand why Scotland Yard’s biggest ever manhunt […]

Hammersmith Nude Murders 0 2 min read

Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer on BBC

Here’s the trailer for the documentary I’ve been talking about for several months. Dark Son will go out on BBC Wales on 12 January and on BBC4 on 22 January. The revelations will be ‘astonishing’, according to Professor David Wilson, the leading criminologist who presents the film. It is remarkable that since I wrote The Hunt for the 60s’ Ripper in 2017 this film has been made exploring fresh angles. Leading criminologists, former detectives, a genealogist and writers have come […]

Television 0 1 min read

Voice of a Killer – January 3

This new series about how police question suspected killers begins on CBS Reality on Thursday 3 January.  I am a contributor to it and had to do a lot of research on the six cases included. Watching or listening to lengthy questioning sessions was tedious at times. Unlike TV dramas, there usually isn’t much drama. At the same time it requires patience for those vital moments when a callous killer may give themselves away. They vary considerably here, from chilling […]

Television 0 55 sec read

Please take a look at my Substack – www.personsunkown.net – for in-depth features on true crime and non-fiction books on the subject

Available from Amazon
Watch out for Murder by the Sea volume 1, being published in July 2022
The Hunt for the 60s' Ripper

Available from Amazon

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‘A fascinating piece of work… His writing is fluid and engaging, providing page after page of detail, analysis and understanding on this intriguing case’
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***** CrimeSquad
‘… achieves what all great non-fiction crime books set out to do: be impeccably researched, highly readable and show sensitivity towards the victims. Highly recommended

About me

Why do people commit crimes? How are they caught? Or not caught? These are questions I think we are all interested in to some degree. I'm a journalist and author delving into cases old and recent, as well as a contributor to documentaries such as Murder by the Sea, Voice of a Killer, The Real Prime Suspect and Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. I'm currently working on a book about corruption and how the hit BBC drama Line of Duty echoes real-life wrongdoing in the police.