Case studies

Hunt for the 60s’ Ripper on YouTube

Just wanted to flag an interview I’ve done about The Hunt for the 60s’ Ripper for Crime Country, a new YouTube channel. It’s been launched by Nick Barksdale. He also runs the hugely popular Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages channel on YouTube, which has 109,000 subscribers. We chat for around 45 minutes about the case of the West London serial killer who eluded Scotland Yard’s biggest ever manhunt in 1964-65. We talk about why the investigation failed and […]

Hammersmith Nude Murders 0 28 sec read

Dark Land: Hunting the Killers

Coming to BBC iPlayer this evening is this new four-part series. It uses contemporary experts to reinvestigate notorious cold cases to unearth possible clues to the killers’ identities. I am a contributor to one of the films, which explores the murder of showgirl Mamie Shotton, who went missing in 1920. Her body was found 41 years later in a cave on the Gower coastline. The ‘dark land’ referred to here is Wales because all the crimes occurred there. The first […]

Serial killer 1 2 min read

The Shipman Files: A Very British Crime Story

I wrote a feature for the Mirror‘s We Love TV mag this week and wanted to flag up this series. It’s a three-part look at the appalling Harold Shipman case made by filmmaker Chris Wilson for BBC Two. It is 20 years since this family doctor was exposed as probably the worst serial murderer in modern times, but it’s hard to watch these films and still not be shocked today. This is a serious, well-made series of documentaries, sensitively speaking […]

Serial killer 0 1 min read

Des – ITV’s account of Dennis Nilsen

As the second wave of coronavirus lockdown looms, we all need cheering, so ITV’s three nights devoted to a drama about serial killer Dennis Nilsen this week may be approached with trepidation. Nilsen was found guilty of murdering 15 boys and young men between 1978 and 1983. The case still has the power to dismay us, being a perplexing tale of loneliness and inexplicable horror. Most of the victims were not even missed. ITV’s series, starring David Tennant as Nilsen, […]

Serial killer 0 1 min read

Murder by the Sea’s most fascinating case? You decide…

Vote for the episode of Murder by the Sea that you found most fascinating

Television 0 30 sec read

West End Girls by Barbara Tate

Barbara Tate’s memoir West End Girls is a totally absorbing and revelatory memoir about the author’s two-year stint working as a maid for the Queen of Soho – aka 1940s prostitute Mae. It’s a remarkable glimpse at a lost Soho – grubby, still a residential neighbourhood with small businesses, seedy and with an air of criminality. Barbara is a wide-eyed 21-year-old who has escaped a miserable childhood and has ambitions to be an artist, when she is invited by Mae […]

Books 2 57 sec read

A Beatle at The Bush

Little while ago @FlipLondonTours tweeted a pic of Paul McCartney filming a scene for A Hard Day’s Night in 1964. He’s seen going into The Bush on Goldhawk Road, London. The scene was never used in the final film, but the picture gave me a jolt because I wrote about this pub in The Hunt for the 60s’ Ripper without knowing of this Beatles connection. It was the boozer in which the serial killer’s final victim, Bridie O’Hara, was last […]

Hammersmith Nude Murders 2 56 sec read

The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury

A painstakingly researched and totally absorbing account of a once sensational, now forgotten, murder from 1935. Alma Rattenbury and her young lover, George Stoner, 18, faced the hangman in an Old Bailey trial following the murder of her husband, distinguished architect Francis Rattenbury. The case shocked, horrified, electrified the nation and went on to inspire plays and TV dramas. Francis Rattenbury was a rather ratty old husband, pushing 70, his best years behind him. Alma was a flamboyant 43-year-old, a […]

Books 0 1 min read

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark TV series

Michelle McNamara, who died in 2016, wrote one of the most fascinating true-crime books of the last 10 years. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark charted her obsession with a case about an unknown perpetrator she called the Golden State Killer. The crimes graduated from burglaries to rapes and then murders. They were chilling in their sadism, remorselessness and sheer volume. McNamara was a graduate in creative writing who had an interest in true crime. She ran a website called […]

Serial killer 0 1 min read

The Real Prime Suspect series 2

I watched the opener of Jackie Malton’s latest series last night and thought it was a particularly sensitive and interesting episode. The case was the heartbreaking kidnap of Muriel McKay from her home in Wimbledon in 1969. It was extraordinary for several reasons. Muriel was the wife of Alick McKay, a newspaper executive and right-hand man of Rupert Murdoch. In 1969 Murdoch had just begun his move into expanding his newspaper interests into Britain from Australia, having recently bought the […]

Television 1 3 min read
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.