Wantage Betjeman Literary Festival

Originally posted on robinjarossi.com 31 10 17 I met an interesting group of readers when I went to speak to the Wantage Betjeman Literary Festival, which concluded over the weekend. Among those asking me questions about the Nude Murders case were a couple of retired police officers and a former nurse. The latter had come to London as a young woman in the 1960s and spoke about the appalling poverty she encountered when making house calls. Home of Betjeman Why […]

The Hunt for the 60s' Ripper 0 50 sec read

Catching a Serial Killer by Stephen Fulcher

Originally posted on robinjarossi.com 13 9 17 This book will leave you wondering at the injustice dished out to a detective trying to bring a vile killer to justice. You may remember Stephen Fulcher’s story from recent headlines. He was the detective superintendent who breached Police and Criminal Evidence rules in an effort to find abducted Sian O’Callaghan. Sian, 22, disappeared after a night out in Swindon in 2011. When Fulcher’s investigators closed the net on taxi driver Christopher Halliwell, […]

True crime books 0 1 min read

The Ripper’s London and how it’s changed

Originally posted on robinjarossi.com on 11 7 17 London is special. Beautiful, ugly, intimate, sprawling. The capital fed my interest in writing about the 60s’ Nude Murders, to explore how the place has evolved. I was a child at the time and my memories are vivid of a Highbury still shattered by the war, paraffin heaters and markets thronging with shoppers. To say nothing of the pop songs on transistors all around, the TV – Corrie hairnets in black and white […]

London 0 3 min read

Ripper book featured in Mirror

Originally posted on robinjarossi.com 17 7 17 This is a double-page spread devoted to The Hunt for the 60s’ Ripper that was featured in the Daily Mirror. The early reviews on Amazon were also encouraging, including this one from an Amazon Top 500 reviewer: ‘This new book, which caught my eye on a supermarket shelf yesterday via it’s excellent front cover, gave me what I can only describe as a complete account of these terrible happenings, and true crime buffs […]

The Hunt for the 60s' Ripper 0 48 sec read

Reopening Swinging London’s Nude Murders case

This was originally posted on robinjarossi.com on 2 7 17 It started as a suggestion for a new true crime magazine. Working as a freelance journalist at Mirror special projects, I wondered if there was a case we could cover that had not been written about a thousand times already. I came across the Nude Murders of the early 1960s. This was a horrific series of killings in London that, despite the biggest ever police manhunt, was never solved. I […]

The Hunt for the 60s' Ripper 0 2 min read

Voice of a Killer Special: The Colonel

I was lucky to holiday in Burgundy this summer. Every afternoon I ignored the heatwave and pool outside, however. I was watching killers being interviewed on my laptop. This was homework for the new series of Voice of a Killer Special, on which I am a contributor. This CBS Reality programme takes an intriguing look at how the police interview murderers. Using real-life interviews, lip-synched by actors, the episodes bring to life the psychologically twisting encounters between detectives and suspects. […]

Television 0 2 min read

Written in Blood: Karin Slaughter

I became a fan of author Karin Slaughter when I was a judge for the Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award a couple of years ago. This is for the year’s best thriller and her entry in 2015 was Cop Town. The story is set in Atlanta in 1974, a time when the police force is segregated on racial and gender lines. I was one of the judges who loved the book and was delighted when it was […]

Television 0 1 min read

Dark Son promo

An industry promo for Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is doing the rounds. It’s a good insight into the forthcoming BBC documentary. This will be a fascinating investigation into Harold Jones’s child murders in Wales in 1921 and his potential links to the unsolved 1960s Nude Murders in west London. As the author of The Hunt for the 60s’ Ripper, which deals with the case, I have been involved with the filming. I was struck by the […]

Television 0 1 min read

Voice of a Killer Special

Welcome to the new home of this blog, covering true-crime writing, books and other subjects. I moved it on Guy Fawkes day in the hope that it would arrive with a small bang at least – which is this trailer. It highlights a new series I took part in call Voice of a Killer Special on CBSReality. It is a fascinating look at killers under the pressure of police interrogation. I have a cameo at the end of the trailer, […]

London 0 47 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

***** Breakaway Reviewers
‘A fascinating piece of work… His writing is fluid and engaging, providing page after page of detail, analysis and understanding on this intriguing case’
Crime Traveller
‘This book is meticulously researched’
***** 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.