On the way to the Old Bailey I kept him talking, not giving him the chance to dwell on the ordeal ahead. I bought him a double brandy and gave him one final tip. “Don’t look at the faces in the dock,” I said. “Just look at the jury when you answer counsel...and keep thinking
When Ronald Dixon set out from Heaton, Newcastle, to make his way to London he had one object in mind. That was to break into Buckingham Palace, kill the Queen, and take her place on the throne. For Dixon had convinced himself that he was the true king of England. “I am King Ron,” he
In the early hours of December 30th, 2002, a tramp rummaging for food in a wheelie-bin near Anthony Hardy’s College Place flat in north London found bin bags containing a woman’s legs and the upper torso of another woman. The legs were later found to have belonged to Elizabeth Valad, 29, and the torso to
Lisa Montgomery’s grip on reality was increasingly fragile and her ex-husband used this to threaten a custody battle for the children. She’d been sterilised after the birth of her fourth baby, but fantasised repeatedly that she was pregnant again. On December 16th, 2004, at the age of 36, she drove from her home in Kansas
But for one thing the cause of Leslie Hutchinson’s violent death might have been attributed to a motorcycle accident. His motorbike lay in the road near his body and he had head injuries, as you would expect. But he also had a belt wrapped tightly twice round his neck, and it was buckled. He was
After the rape, when Brittany was satisfied that Todd Smith (no relation) had calmed down and wasn’t paying attention, she texted her mother about what had happened and asked her brother Chris to come back over. When he arrived, he took his gun from the glove compartment of his car to use as a warning,
When Amanda and Larry went to Virginia to get married, it was a modest wedding. Nothing fancy, just a simple ceremony at a small, local church. No frills, no big family do, effectively just a quiet little get-together to tie the knot. Larry didn’t give Amanda anything special, but Amanda gave Larry something – a
Like most owners and their dogs, Joe Rogers and his black Labrador, Buster, would go for a long walk together every day, rain or shine. A favourite route of theirs was to follow the banks of the Merrimack River in Massachusetts for a few miles, while Buster chased a ball or sniffed out sticks to
Kathryn "Kit" Kelly scoured the newspapers’ society pages in search of another wealthy victim. She settled on Charles Urschel, recently married to Berenice Slick, the widow of an oil magnate. Their marriage had made them the wealthiest couple in Oklahoma City. Under Kathryn’s instructions her husband – George "Machine Gun" Kelly – and Bates crept
The police received the emergency call to attend the house at Titcius Road at around 5.30 p.m. on the evening of November 9th, 2015. Officers rushed to the sprawling, 300-acre property worth millions of dollars in one of the most exclusive areas of New York state, and entered the huge, colonial-style, white pillared house. There,