True Detective

Bordering Los Angeles, Orange County, California, gets its name from its vast orange groves, whose fragrant blossom fills the air for miles around. This was the home of Steven Gordon, 23, who worked for a time at Disneyland and revelled in the Californian dream. Gordon was also a paedophile. In April 1992 he was jailed

In June 2020, a frail old man of 74, with hollowed cheeks and myopic eyes, was wheeled into the hastily converted ballroom of Sacramento State University. Rising from the wheelchair, he stood before a makeshift socially-distanced court in a visor. In an orange prison jumpsuit, the defendant admitted his guilt to 13 murders with additional

Brett Pearson’s schoolfriends laughed when he told them he wanted to kill his parents. No one took that kind of brag seriously. It was just teenage angst – all cheap talk and empty threats. And this was especially true in the wholesome little Oregon town of Keizer where Brett and his family lived. Four miles

So who was Mark Chapman, if he wasn’t a paid assassin?  It’s too facile to write him off as a “deranged fan,” as has often been suggested. He was an ardent Beatles fan, like millions of others of his age. Months after the murder he announced that he killed Lennon to gain prominence for promoting

The romantic idyll of the middle-aged couple came to a tragic end that hot day August 3rd, 1990. In the morning Peter Heron drove off to his office. Ann, who had a part-time job as a care assistant, wasn’t working that day, so she went shopping.  Before her husband left home that day she asked

Roy Dumas, 58, shuffled to the door to answer the call. He was a Second World War soldier disabled by a mortar blast. Now in failing health and weighing hardly more than seven stone as a result of his wounds, it took him some time to turn the key to lift the latch. As the

The 911 call came from Chacey Poynter. She claimed her husband had been shot, so she was understandably distraught. Chacey waved down the police cruiser as it arrived on County Road 2595 in Hunt County, North Texas, about 40 miles north of Dallas, on September 9th, 2016. “My husband – he’s been shot in the

Special Constable Sharon Gilbert raised an eyebrow when, in the middle of a murder hunt, volunteer searcher Ian Huntley casually asked her: “How long does DNA last?” Sharon said later: “I just thought it was strange, very strange. It is just not what a normal member of the public says to someone who is sitting

Sarah Butler wasn’t a sex worker. The 20-year-old was from a good family that she loved, and being paid for sex simply wasn’t something that she would normally consider. However, Sarah was also a typical college student, struggling to pay her way, and desperately in need of money to continue her studies at New Jersey

Today Finborough Road in West Brompton, Fulham, south-west London, is an extremely expensive place to live. But just after the Second World War little had changed since the early 1920s when this was a run-down area, and the crazed fantasist Ronald True murdered a prostitute in her Finborough Road flat. In the late 1940s the