In December 1962, an inquest jury at Ilford heard how a 20-year-old woman had tried to leave a relationship. Her brother-in-law gave evidence that she had told him, more than once, "I am too frightened to tell him." Lois Martin had found someone new. She had plans to get engaged. She wanted to move forward. She never got the chance...
Read moreThe Men Next Door / Drugs, Coercive Control & Cases Mirroring the Pelicot Trial / Rodney Johnston
When Gisèle Pelicot waived her anonymity in 2024 and exposed her husband's crimes to the world, many assumed what happened in Mazan was an isolated case. It wasn’t. A 66-year-old carer from Norfolk subjected a woman to almost three decades of sexual exploitation. He operated in plain sight, using digital networks to recruit men, threatened his victim into silence, and recorded everything…
Read moreUnexplained Death In Glasgow: The Suspicious Case of Mikhail Ackrim
In August 2024, Mikhail Ackrim was found dead and undressed in a Glasgow flat. Street valium and alcohol were in his system, along with suspicious bruising and four stab wounds to his body, inflicted after he died. Police Scotland concluded no criminality. His mother disagrees…
Read moreClose Your Eyes / The Murder of Dawn Rhodes and The Killer Who Walked Free
In June 2016, Dawn Rhodes was killed at the family home in Redhill, Surrey. Her husband, carpenter Robert Rhodes, who cut Dawn’s throat and claimed self-defence, told the police that she had attacked him. In 2017, a jury at the Old Bailey believed him. He walked free. But in 2021, one of the couple's children disclosed the truth to a therapist…
Read moreThe Heatwave Killing: When a Husband Snapped | 1976 / Gary Toms / Harold Evans
In the summer of 1976, one of the hottest on record, a young man's body was found in a ditch on a lonely Leicestershire road. At first, it looked like a hit-and-run. It wasn’t. 25-year-old plumber Gary Toms had been in a relationship with a married woman named Marlene Evans. Her estranged husband, Harold Evans, had spent months watching the relationship develop, attending court for breach of the peace, attempting suicide, and quietly acquiring a pistol. Was this a man pushed beyond breaking point, or a calculated, premeditated murder dressed up as provocation?…
Read moreOne Mother. Two Babies. Seventeen Days / Louise Porton
In January 2018, in a quiet flat in Rugby, a three-year-old girl stopped breathing. Her mother, Louise Porton, told paramedics she had simply found her daughter in bed, unresponsive. No obvious cause of death was found. Seventeen days later, the child’s sister was dead too. Both girls, described by those who knew them as golden, were gone. Porton insisted their deaths were unexplained, but evidence from her mobile phone told a different story…
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