Episodi

  • Jack the Ripper Part 2: Martha Tabram

    Jack the Ripper Part 2: Martha Tabram
    Oct 13 2026
    Four months after the death of Emma Smith, another woman was murdered in Whitechapel.Her name was Martha Tabram.And although her murder would later become tangled up in the story of Jack the Ripper, I want to resist doing what history so often does with these women: reducing them to a name on a list.Before Martha became a murder victim, she’d already lived quite a life.MarthaMartha was born in Southwark on 10th May 1849, the youngest of five children.In 1869, she married Henry Samuel Tabram, a furniture warehouse foreman. They went on to have two sons: Frederick, born in 1871, and Charles the following year.But the marriage wasn’t a happy one.Martha drank heavily and, by 1875, Henry refused to continue living with her. For several years he continued to give her money, but their relationship deteriorated. Eventually, when Martha began living with another man, Henry stopped supporting her altogether.That other man was William Turner.Martha lived with Turner on and off for around nine years but, again, alcohol caused problems.William later told the inquest into Martha’s murder that whenever he gave her money, she spent it on drink. He said they would continually split up and get back together again until, around three weeks before Martha died, they broke up for the final time.By August 1888, Martha was living at a common lodging house, 19 George Street in Spitalfields.She tried to make money selling trinkets and other small items on the street. For women living as Martha was, there was often no single way of making an income. She needed money for drink, for food and, crucially, for somewhere to sleep. When selling stuff wasn’t enough, prostitution could be another way of finding the few pence needed to get through the night.Martha was five feet three inches tall, with dark hair and a dark complexion.She was 39 years old when she died.On Monday 6th August 1888, Martha went out into Whitechapel.It was Bank Holiday Monday.And it would be the last night of her life.The MurderMuch of what we know about Martha’s final hours comes from another woman, Mary Ann Connelly, who was more commonly known as Pearly Poll.According to Pearly Poll, she had known Martha for around four or five months, and the pair would sometimes go out together looking for men willing to pay them for sex.That evening, she said they met two soldiers.One was a corporal and the other was a private.From around ten o’clock until shortly before midnight, the four drank together in several pubs around Whitechapel. Their final stop was the White Swan.At around 11.45 p.m., they separated.Pearly Poll went off with the corporal, while Martha went with the younger soldier.That was the last time she was seen alive.It’s worth keeping one thing in mind here.Pearly Poll’s account became central to the police investigation, but it was never independently verified.Detectives later visited the pubs where she claimed the group had been drinking but couldn’t find anyone who remembered seeing them together. Martha’s sister-in-law did remember seeing Martha going into the White Swan, but said she appeared to be alone.That doesn’t mean Pearly Poll was lying. The soldiers may already have been inside.But it does mean we should be careful about treating her account as fact.What we do know is that sometime during the early hours of Tuesday morning, Martha ended up inside George Yard Buildings, a large block of cheap rented rooms and home to dozens of working-class families and lodgers.At around 1.40 a.m., Elizabeth Mahoney returned home to Geroge Yard Buildings with her husband. Shortly afterwards she went back downstairs to buy some food.She noticed nothing unusual.At around two o’clock, PC Thomas Barrett was nearby when he saw a soldier.Barrett asked what he was doing and he told him he was waiting for a friend who had gone off with a girl.That may be important.Or it may have had absolutely nothing to do with Martha.At around 3.30 a.m., another resident, Alfred Crow, came home.As he made his way upstairs, he saw somebody lying on the first-floor landing.It was dark.And in a building like George Yard, finding someone sleeping in a communal area wasn’t unusual, so Alfred assumed the person was homeless or drunk and carried on to his room.More than an hour passed.Then another resident, John Reeves, came down the stairs on his way to work.By then there was more light.And this time there was no mistaking what was there.A woman lay on her back on the landing.And underneath her was a large pool of blood.John went looking for a policeman and found PC Barrett, the same officer who had spoken to the soldier a few hours earlier.PC Barrett made his way to George Yard Buildings where he could see that the woman appeared dead.Her hands were clenched.Her clothes had been pushed up towards the middle of her body.Her lower body was exposed.Her legs were apart.The position gave Barrett the impression that sexual activity might recently have taken place.As ...
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    22 min
  • Yorkshire Ripper: The Legacy

    Yorkshire Ripper: The Legacy
    Oct 6 2026
    Mention the Yorkshire Ripper investigation to almost anyone and several things will come to mind.Most will think first of the murders. The crimes were truly abhorrent.Others will remember the mistakes made during the investigation.But for me, as someone who investigated murders years after Sutcliffe was caught, I find myself thinking about something very different.Not what happened during the investigation.But what happened because of it.In the early hours of 30th October 1975, detectives were called to Scott Hall Road, Leeds, after the body of a woman was discovered on waste ground beside the carriageway.She had been struck repeatedly to the head before being stabbed numerous times.At that stage, there was nothing to suggest the investigation would become one of the largest murder enquiries in British history.The victim was identified as 28-year-old Wilma McCann.As detectives began building a picture of Wilma’s life, they established she was a mother of four young children who lived just a short distance away. In fact, her home could almost be seen from where her body was found.Their enquiries revealed that Wilma occasionally engaged in sex work to make ends meet. When she failed to return home, her eldest child took the younger children out to look for her. A neighbour later found them cold and distressed at a nearby bus stop.Detectives had very little forensic evidence to work with, as DNA profiling was still years away.Standing beside Wilma McCann’s body, detectives had no reason to believe they were investigating anything other than a single, brutal murder.But as further attacks occurred, detectives began to recognise disturbing similarities. The victims were attacked at night, often after being alone with the killer. He typically struck them from behind with a hammer before using a knife, and many of the women were known to engage in sex work.The consistency of the attacks left detectives in little doubt they were dealing with a serial killer.Serial murder is rare in the UK. When it does happen, it attracts enormous media attention.As the investigation grew, the media gave the unknown killer a name. Drawing comparisons with the Whitechapel murders a century earlier, they dubbed him the Yorkshire Ripper.That name, combined with the way many of the victims were portrayed in the media as sex workers, made the attacks seem as though they were happening to ‘other people’.But in June 1977, that belief was shattered.The next victim was 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald, a shop assistant who had spent the evening with friends before beginning the walk home. She never made it. Like the women before her, she was attacked from behind with a hammer before being stabbed. Her body was found the following morning in a playground. She became the seventh victim of the Yorkshire Ripper.As detectives, we often talk about public confidence and public fear. Jayne’s murder had a huge impact on both. Until then, many people believed the killer was targeting a particular group of women. That changed almost overnight. Suddenly, nobody felt quite as safe as they had before.For detectives, the similarities to the earlier murders were obvious. But there was one crucial difference. Jayne wasn’t involved in sex work. That was a significant development in the investigation.When police investigate a serial killer, they’re not just trying to catch them. They’re also trying to prevent the next murder. An apparent change in the killer’s choice of victim meant the measures already in place had to be reassessed.Over the next three years, a further six women were murdered, bringing the total number of victims to thirteen. Some were involved in sex work, others not.There were also attacks where the victim survived. These women became an invaluable source of information that might help identify the killer. How he spoke. The words he used. How he approached his victims. How he escaped. Even what he smelled like, whether he smoked, or whether he appeared familiar with the area. Individually, those details might seem insignificant. Together, they could help bring detectives closer to catching him.Importantly, if detectives developed a credible suspect, these women might be able to pick him out in an identity parade.Now, you may be asking yourself, “why hasn’t he been arrested by this stage?”There were five years between the first murder and the last.At least thirteen women were murdered, and around half as many again who survived the attacks.That meant around twenty opportunities to secure the evidence needed to catch him.All those crime scenes with the potential for clues. Countless witnesses, including some who might be able to pick the suspect out. Surely, they had opportunities to catch this killer?And it is a perfectly reasonable question to ask.The thing is, every opportunity to find that breakthrough piece of evidence also generated more information for detectives to assess, record and follow up.In many ways it’...
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    24 min
  • Jack the Ripper Part 1: Emma Smith

    Jack the Ripper Part 1: Emma Smith
    Sep 29 2026
    Jack the Ripper is probably the most famous unidentified murderer in history.More than 130 years after his crimes, books are still being written about him. Documentaries are still being made. And people still walk the streets of Whitechapel trying to work out who he was.But that’s not where I want to start.Before we get anywhere near suspects, I want to look at the crimes.That’s how I approached murder investigations during my career. The crime scene came before the suspect, not the other way around.So, over this series, I’m going to take you through the murders associated with Jack the Ripper.What happened.What the witnesses said.What the police knew.And what I make of the evidence.Who he may have been.Then you can make your own mind up.And our story doesn’t begin with one of the five women most commonly associated with Jack the Ripper.It begins four months earlier.With a woman named Emma Smith.WhitechapelTo understand what happened to Emma, and the women who followed her, you first need to understand Whitechapel.In 1888, London was the most populated city in the world and the capital of the British Empire, but those living in Whitechapel saw little benefit from that.Sitting immediately to the east of the old City of London, it was one of the poorest parts of the capital.There was a lack of housing, severe overcrowding and high unemployment.Those fortunate enough to find regular employment could expect long working days for little money.For others, work was casual. You might earn something that day, you might not.And without money, finding somewhere to sleep became another problem.For a few pence, a common lodging house provided somewhere to spend the night.Conditions varied, but at the bottom end that could mean little more than a filthy mattress, packed into a room with dozens of others.If you couldn’t afford that, there was the workhouse.Or the street.Poverty brought with it all the problems you might expect.Crime.Alcohol.Violence.Prostitution.The population was also changing. Large numbers of immigrants had settled in the East End, including Jewish families fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire.The Whitechapel of 1888 was a hard place to live.And for women like Emma Smith, it could be an incredibly dangerous one.Whitechapel is also an area I know well.Before I joined the murder teams, I spent several years policing this part of London.And although more than a century had passed, in many ways the Whitechapel I knew still had echoes of the place these women lived in.Poverty.Overcrowding.Crime.Addiction.Prostitution.I saw all of them first-hand.I also led teams investigating robberies and later rapes in the area, so I got to see a side of Whitechapel that most people never do.That experience matters when I look at these murders. I know the streets. I know the area. And I know that many of the problems we associate with Victorian Whitechapel didn’t simply disappear with time.Emma SmithWe don’t know a great deal about Emma.She was over forty and described herself as a widow.She had two children, a son and a daughter, who were living in the Finsbury Park area of London.Even those who knew Emma seem to have known little about the life she’d had before Whitechapel.She told friends that more than ten years earlier she’d left her husband and broken away from her previous life.When asked why, she apparently said that the people she’d left behind wouldn’t understand.Whatever had happened, by the spring of 1888 Emma was living at 18 George Street, a common lodging house in Whitechapel.On the evening of Easter Monday, 2 April, Emma went out.For most of that night, we don’t know where she went or what she did, but shortly after midnight, another woman from the lodging house saw her.Her name was Margaret Hayes, who saw Emma talking to a man.Margaret didn’t know who he was. All she could later say was that he was of medium height, dressed in dark clothing and wearing a white scarf around his neck.It was the last known sighting of Emma before she was attacked.And when you’re investigating a murder, the last person known to have been with the victim is someone you’re going to want to find.The man with the white scarf was never identified.There was something else about Margaret’s account that stands out. She herself had already been attacked that night.Two men had approached her. One asked her the time before another struck her in the mouth.Margaret got away.She later described there having been some “rough work” in the area that night, which gives us some idea of the streets Emma was walking through.At around 1.30 in the morning, Emma was making her way through Whitechapel.Ahead of her were two or three men.One appeared to be a youth of about nineteen.Emma crossed the road.She never explained why.Perhaps there was something about the men that worried her. Perhaps a woman alone in Whitechapel in the early hours needed no other reason. We don’t know.What we do know is that the...
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    16 min
  • Dr Crippen: The Eyes of the World

    Dr Crippen: The Eyes of the World
    Sep 22 2026
    I investigated many murders during my career, more than I can count. But very few sent ripples much further than the communities in which they took place.Occasionally, though, I found myself at the centre of the country’s biggest news story.When your investigation dominates the headlines, the pressure is unreal.Every decision is scrutinised. Every delay criticised. Every mistake magnified.That attention ratchets up another level when a killer is identified and the manhunt becomes public.Suddenly, you’re not just trying to solve a murder and bring a killer to justice. You’re in a very public race against time. Every hour that passes without an arrest, fuels more speculation, more criticism and more questions about whether you’ll ever catch the person responsible.But it isn’t the criticism itself that keeps you awake at night.Throughout my career, the people I always felt most accountable to weren’t senior officers, politicians or journalists. They were the victim’s family. They had placed their trust in us at the darkest time of their lives.What you fear is that the constant public scrutiny begins to erode that trust. That they start to wonder whether the criticism they’re reading or hearing might be true. If that relationship begins to suffer, that’s when the pressure really hits.As I read about Walter Dew’s hunt for Dr Crippen, I couldn’t help wondering whether he felt that same burden of responsibility.The more I learned about his investigation, the greater the sense of kinship I felt with him. More than a century after Dew pursued Crippen, I found myself leading an international manhunt under remarkably similar circumstances.A celebrity reported missing.Murdered by her partner.The suspect fled abroad before the full picture emerged.The most heartbreaking difference was that my investigation also involved her two young sons.In almost every other aspect, the parallels were remarkable.In January 1910, American-born music hall singer, Cora Crippen, disappeared. A friend raised her concerns with the police, but initially not much appeared to have been done to locate her. But in July of that year, after the intervention of a police superintendent who had been contacted by friends of Cora, Chief Inspector Walter Dew visited the marital home and spoke with Cora’s husband, Dr Hawley Crippen.Just over a century later, concerns around the controlling behaviour by the partner of former Eastenders actress, Sian Blake, were raised by her family. As a result, police officers visited her home and spoke with her partner, Arthur Simpson-Kent.Both men gave seemingly plausible explanations as to their partner’s whereabouts.Crippen told Dew that Cora had left him for another man and travelled to America. Simpson-Kent said Sian had taken their two sons to visit a friend in Cambridge.Both homes were searched.Neither search revealed evidence to raise suspicion that either woman had come to any harm.For Walter Dew, verifying Cora’s whereabouts would have been extremely difficult, given the technology available in 1910.In Sian’s case, nobody could contact her after a text message was sent to her sister purportedly from Sian explaining that she needed to get away from everything. Sian was then officially reported as a missing person, along with her two sons, Zachary aged 8 and Amon aged 4. An investigation that was initially conducted by local police. Several weeks later, in the first week of January, her case was referred to us as the on-call murder team. A local superintendent feared serious harm may have come to them. Sadly, he was proven to be right.As detectives, you are taught to continually question the narrative.To never become fixed on one theory.What seems certain one day can change completely the next.Although Dew had accepted the explanation given to him, something about the story seemed to bother him. However, when he returned to make further enquiries with Crippen, the man had vanished.Whatever doubts Dew had been harbouring were now being confirmed by Crippen’s disappearance. After all, if he had been telling the truth, why would he run?Fearing what may have happened to Cora, he ordered a thorough search of the home, which led to a gruesome discovery.Below the brick floor of the basement lay the dismembered remains of a woman.Dew was convinced these were Cora Crippen.When Sian’s case came into my team, none of us believed we were being handed a simple missing persons case. One of the biggest alarm bells for me was the fact Sian had advanced motor neurone disease. She could just about care for herself, let alone the two boys. Added to this, by then, Simpson-Kent had disappeared, with all attempts to contact him having failed.Colleagues revisited the family home, intent on a more thorough search. They quickly discovered evidence of a violent incident, with substantial traces of blood having been painted over, in an apparent attempt to hide a crime.Within a few days of us taking ...
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    21 min
  • Meet the Murder Team: Family Liaison Officer

    Meet the Murder Team: Family Liaison Officer
    Sep 15 2026
    As I sat there on the sofa, sitting across from me was what I could only describe as a broken family.Two parents who moments before had their whole world come crashing down around them.It was the message no parent ever expects to hear.I’m so sorry to tell you this but your son has died as the result of an assault.Murdered.Not even out of his teenage years.Less than an hour after he left the house saying he would see them later.Then my fellow murder detective and I rock up, telling them he wouldn’t be coming home.Ever.No matter how many times you deliver that message, it never gets easier. In fact, it probably gets harder because you know the impact those words are going to have. You’ve seen the devastation they cause.And there was no doubt those words had caused complete devastation.As a detective I had developed ways of dealing with most of what I saw in my career. The side that I found most difficult was witnessing the trauma of parents who have lost a child through murder.It was probably from being a parent myself. Some part of me wondering how I would cope in that situation (I’m not sure I could).It was that empathy I put down to what happened next.As I sat there, looking at this distraught couple, caught up in their emotions, I said something I had no place in saying.Out of nowhere I told them we would get them. That we would catch the people responsible for killing their son.You see, the thing is, how could I possibly promise that? How could I guarantee that would happen. Yes, we solve most murders, but there are those we don’t.I knew as soon as I said the words I shouldn’t have, and I regretted it straight away.If one of my detectives had said that I’d have had a go at them. You can’t promise something that isn’t in their gift.Thankfully, we did go on to catch his killers. And convict them. But at that time, I had no way of knowing that would happen.It was the only time I ever did that. But it was proof to me what I always knew.Being a family liaison officer wasn’t for me.It’s an unfortunate fact that some of the most important advances in policing come from the mistakes of the past.It often takes high-profile failings to adopt a better way of working. Which is how family liaison officers, or FLOs, came about.In 1992, one of the Metropolitan Police’s darkest moments occurred when 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in Eltham, South-East London.The subsequent investigation into Stephen’s murder came under immense criticism, resulting in a public inquiry, chaired by Sir William Macpherson, that shone a light on numerous failings.One of those was the way in which investigators treated Stephen’s family.Up until then, how detectives engaged with bereaved relatives was far less structured than it is today.The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry became a catalyst for change.The Macpherson report made a number of recommendations about how police should work with bereaved families, including the use of designated and trained family liaison officers.Family liaison developed significantly in the years that followed and has since become a central part of murder investigations.So, that’s how the role developed, but what do they actually do?Well, let me dispel one myth straight away. A myth not only held by people outside of the police, but also many on the inside.They’re not there to look after the family.They’re most definitely not counsellors.They’re investigators.Detectives from the investigation team, whose role is to gather information that can assist the investigation.And for me, that’s at the heart of what makes this such an incredibly difficult role.But rather than me explain why, I want to try and put you in their place.Imagine you’re a detective on a murder team that has just taken on a new investigation.The victim is a 15-year-old who was stabbed and killed less than two hours ago.You have been allocated the role of lead family liaison officer. You will be assisted by a deputy, but the overall responsibility for that strand of the investigation is yours.The rest of the team have convened for their first meeting, where they will receive a briefing from the detectives who first attended the crime scene, but your initial meeting with the boy’s family is too important to wait for that briefing to conclude.As you make your way to their family home, you’re running through in your mind what will be required of you when you arrive.You know that you’re there to get what information you can that will help the investigation. You will want to build as good a picture as is possible of the boy’s life. Which school he went to. Who his friends were. Where he hung around. Had he had any issues recently. Was he involved in any criminality or gangs. What was his phone number. How did he normally travel around. And as far as they know, where had he been prior to the murder.If they’re open to it, you would like to look in his bedroom for anything that may...
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    14 min
  • The Idaho Murders: Why?

    The Idaho Murders: Why?
    Sep 8 2026
    I can’t begin to imagine how many broken families I’ve sat opposite.People whose world has just been shattered by the news a loved one was murdered.If you hear me speak often enough, you will know I found this one of the hardest parts of being a murder detective.We all lose loved ones at some point in our lives. The pain is awful.But if that person has been taken by the actions of someone else, I can’t begin to imagine how much harder that must be.And that’s the thing. No matter how many times I witnessed that trauma, I could never truly know what they were going through.Unless it’s your loved one that’s been taken in that way, how can you possibly pretend to understand?But there was one thing I did learn to expect.One question I heard families ask time and time again.Why?The University of Idaho sits in the small town of Moscow, Idaho, about 300 miles east of Seattle.It’s the sort of university town you find all over the world. Thousands of young people living away from home for the first time, many living in shared student houses.One such house was at 1122 King Road, a three-storey house occupied by female students.On the night of 12th November 2022, those living at the house had been doing what most students do on a Saturday night, they were out socialising with friends.The first to arrive back were Dylan Mortensen (20) and Bethany Funke (20), who had been out separately that night. They each returned to their respective rooms.At around 1.45 a.m. on the Sunday morning, Xana Kernodle (20) came back to the house with her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin (20). The couple had been together for several months and Ethan was staying over for the night. They then went up to Xana’s room on the middle floor.At just before 2 a.m., best friends Madison “Maddie” Mogen (21) and Kaylee Goncalves (21) were dropped back to 1122 King Road by a cab after stopping at a late-night food truck. Kaylee was due to start a new job in Texas and had returned to Moscow to spend time with friends before she moved. That night she was staying with Maddie in her room on the top floor.But what had been a normal Saturday night changed when an intruder entered the house.According to the court records, shortly after 4 a.m. he entered through the rear sliding doors which, because the house was built into a slope, opened directly onto the middle floor.The suspect went to the top floor where he attacked and killed Maddie and Kaylee.The court records then say the suspect came back downstairs, where he encountered Xana before killing her and Ethan, who they say was asleep in Xana’s room.The suspect then left the house before leaving the area in a white car.It wasn’t until much later that the murders were discovered. Emergency services were called shortly before noon.Police arrived and established that they were dealing with a multiple murder, and the investigation began.WitnessesInvestigators needed to understand from the surviving housemates what they may have seen or heard that night. These were the accounts given to police:Dylan MortensenHaving returned home from her night out she went to her room on the middle floor and went to sleep.At around 4 a.m. Dylan was woken by noises from the floor above. She thought this was Kaylee playing with her dog. She also described hearing a female voice saying, “There’s someone here.”Dylan opened her bedroom door but saw nothing.She then heard what she described as sobbing coming from the direction of Xana’s room.Then she heard an unfamiliar male voice say “You’re going to be OK. I’m going to help you.” Dylan told investigators the tone wasn’t reassuring and was said in what she described as a weird way.She tried calling out to her housemates and contacting them by phone but had no response.Dylan then opened her bedroom door again. This time she saw a man dressed in dark clothing with his face partially covered. What stood out to her were his bushy eyebrows.The man continued past her and towards the sliding doors leading from the kitchen.Dylan went back into her room and began messaging Bethany. She told her that no one was answering and that she was confused and frightened. She said the man she had seen was wearing what looked like a ski mask.Bethany told Dylan to come downstairs to her room, telling her it would be better than being alone. Dylan did so, and the pair continued trying to contact their housemates without success.Later that morning, they contacted friends who came to the house. One of them discovered Xana’s body and at 11.58 a.m. a call was made to 911.Bethany FunkeBethany was in her bedroom on the bottom floor of the house.She told investigators that she didn’t recall anything particularly unusual that night, other than hearing what she thought was a firework and seeing what appeared to be a spark underneath her bedroom door.At around 4.22 a.m. she began receiving messages from Dylan, who told her that no one was answering and that she had seen a man ...
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    31 min
  • Meet the Murder Team: The Senior Investigating Officer

    Meet the Murder Team: The Senior Investigating Officer
    Sep 1 2026
    As I was running, I could feel my lungs burning and the lactic acid was starting to make my legs scream with pain. But there was no way he was getting away.For the last five minutes I’d been gaining on him, but each shot he fired back at me made me duck for cover.Then came my chance.As he sprinted across the next road, he failed to see the oncoming car.I saw him spin in the air like a cartwheel, landing in a heap on the floor. Although, somehow, he still had hold of the 9mm handgun, almost certainly the same one he’d used to dispatch his victim.I had no time to stop and think. I launched myself at him, kicking the gun from his hand. Then I threw all my weight into a right-hand cross that connected as sweet as a nut with his chin.He was knocked out cold.Before he had a chance to come to, I slapped the cuffs on him.Another killer caught, another case solved.Then I woke up.If the TV is to be believed, that would be just another day for me as a senior investigating officer. Thankfully, that couldn’t be further from the truth (which is lucky as I can’t run and I’m no fighter).So, if they aren’t chasing down killers and throwing themselves across car bonnets, what do they do?Well, a truer reflection of their role isn’t an action hero, it’s the conductor of an orchestra.The Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) plays a strategic role in an investigation. They don’t interview witnesses or interrogate suspects, in fact, they don’t do any of what we might think of as traditional detective work. So, yeah, pretty dull really.But, despite the lack of excitement, it’s one of the most important roles in any murder investigation, and they have the most influence on how successful the murder team is likely to be (or not).During these Meet the Murder Team articles I will introduce you to the various people who make up a murder investigation, and there are quite a few.In the UK murders aren’t investigated by individual detectives, it’s a team of anything from 20 to 100 officers, depending on the specific murder (although most will be at the lower end of that scale.)Each investigator will have a specific area that they’re responsible for. For instance, CCTV, phones, forensics or witnesses. They will be looking to gather the information and evidence from their area that, when brought together, can help solve the crime and convict those responsible.And this is where the SIO plays several very important roles.The first is making sure each of those officers knows what’s being asked of them.The CCTV officer has to know where to look for footage, what time parameters they need to cover and what on there they’re trying to find.The phones officer needs to know whose phone data to secure, how long back they should apply for it, which phone handsets to analyse and what it is they’re trying to prove.And that level of direction is required for every strand of evidence. If not, it would result in everyone running off in different directions, all doing whatever they think is best, not what’s best for the investigation.How do they get those instructions across? The answer is a written strategy.Every area of enquiry has its own document that outlines what is required from it. Where to look for evidence, how to look for it and what they’re trying to prove.If done properly, each of those strategy documents will take hours to complete. So, if you multiply that by each area of enquiry, it doesn’t leave much time for chasing down the killer.When I made the transition from detective sergeant to detective inspector, it was those hours sitting behind my desk I found the hardest. As a DS I’d be out there doing all the good stuff. One of the most rewarding times for me was arresting the suspects and getting to look them in the eye. As DI the closest I got was seeing the photo taken of them in custody.And of all the things I see in crime dramas, it’s that misrepresentation that annoys me the most.Now, don’t get me wrong, I get that it’s entertainment. If they did portray the truth, watching someone like Luther sat in an office for hours, banging away at his keyboard, is probably gonna damage their viewing figures.In fact, when I’ve been interviewed in the past, I often get asked what’s the worst crime drama on TV and, I will usually come back to Luther. Not because it’s badly acted, I actually really like Idris Elba, but because it’s just so blinking far-fetched. One national newspaper that interviewed me even used that as a headline “Murder Detective Names Worst Show on TV.”It did make me worry slightly if I ever were to cross paths with Mr Elba, that he may have got wind of me dissing his show. But we mix in very different circles, so that’s not likely to happen.Well, that’s what I thought, until I was invited to a production company to talk over some ideas for TV. Little did I know before I agreed that it was actually owned by the big man himself. To say I felt sheepish when I walked ...
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    9 min
  • The Soham Murders: The Ones You Carry

    The Soham Murders: The Ones You Carry
    Aug 24 2026
    As we made our way through Great Ormond Street Hospital, it took a while to find the place we were looking for.It always did.No matter which hospital I visited, the mortuary always seemed hidden away.And for good reason.It’s the last department anyone wants to think about.Especially here.As many times as I’d walked similar corridors, this felt different.It was different.When I entered the room, the sights and smells were the same as every other mortuary I’d entered before.But not like this.Then I saw him.Three years old. Not much bigger than a baby.If I close my eyes now, I can still see his body lying on that metal table.None of my training had prepared me for this.Yet here I was.Ten-year-old best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman lived just a few streets apart in Soham, a small Cambridgeshire market town surrounded by open countryside.On Sunday 4 August 2002, Jessica went to Holly’s house and spent the afternoon there. Holly’s family were having a barbecue and had guests over.The girls played on the computer in Holly’s bedroom before coming downstairs to eat with the rest of the family.Just after 5pm, Holly’s mum, Nicola, took a photograph of them wearing matching Manchester United shirts.After eating, the girls went back upstairs and continued playing on the computer.Later that evening, Nicola called upstairs for them to come down and say goodbye to the guests who were leaving.There was no reply.She called again.Still nothing.Nicola went upstairs expecting to find them in Holly’s bedroom.The room was empty.The girls had left the house, but nobody knew when they had gone or where they had gone.Jessica’s parents were contacted, but the girls weren’t there either.Family and friends began looking for them, searching around the house before checking places they thought the girls might have gone.As the evening wore on, their concern grew and, at around 10pm, the police were called.Local uniformed officers attended and began a missing person enquiry.They needed to establish when and where the girls had last been seen, obtain their descriptions, identify places they might have gone and understand whether their disappearance was out of character.It was.Officers began searching Soham and the surrounding countryside.A police helicopter was deployed, along with a dog handler, traffic officers and four-wheel-drive police vehicles.Local residents also came out to help.But despite their efforts, Holly and Jessica were not found that night.The following day, the search expanded beyond a local enquiry. Officers began arriving from surrounding forces to help.Public appeals increased, bringing in a significant amount of information. This included several potential sightings of the girls, each of which needed to be followed up urgently.One local resident reported seeing Holly and Jessica between 6.30pm and 6.40pm on Sunday evening. He said the girls had stopped outside his house to ask whether his partner, a teaching assistant from their primary school was at home. After telling them she was away, he watched them walk away towards St Andrew’s Church.As news of the case spread, more members of the public came to Soham to help with the searches until there were hundreds of people there offering their support.As part of the investigation, Family Liaison Officers (FLOs) were assigned to the Wells and Chapman families.After a couple of days, the enquiry developed into a major investigation, with resources reflecting the growing concern for the girls’ welfare.An incident room was established to provide a central point for information coming in from the public.A dedicated intelligence cell was set up to assess the growing amount of information and build a picture of the girls’ lives, people of potential interest and any links between them.The investigation now included house-to-house enquiries, examination of CCTV, vehicle checks, tracing witnesses and assessing every potential sighting of the girls.Specialist advisers coordinated searches of homes, gardens, business premises, waterways and open ground using police dogs, divers, aerial support and specially trained search officers.The photograph Nicola Wells had taken just before the girls disappeared became the image used in national appeals, showing exactly what they looked like and the clothing they had been wearing.Among the information coming into the police was a report from a taxi driver who said he had seen the driver of a dark green saloon car travelling erratically along the A142 from Soham towards Newmarket. He described the driver repeatedly turning towards the back seats and appearing to struggle with two children inside the car. The sighting became a major line of enquiry.Investigators were working to several theories of what may have happened to the girls.One was that harm had come to them. Detectives began identifying and checking known sex offenders in the area, as well as anyone who might pose a risk to children.Another line ...
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    22 min