Season 1 - Episode 19 [TWAU Plus]

WARNING: THIS IS PART TWO OF A TWO-PART STORY. PLEASE LISTEN TO SEASON 1 - EPISODE 18 FOR MORE DETAILS ON THIS CASE. Upon his release in 1987, Michael Peterson had spent almost a decade and a half in prison. He had served the majority of his sentence in solitary confinement, but now the 35-year-old was a free man and had taken up bare-knuckle boxing under his new name, Charles Bronson…

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Season 1 - Episode 18 [TWAU Plus]

There is only one prisoner who will go down in history as being Britain’s most notoriously violent inmate. This is not a label you get overnight, and despite a couple of short-lived moments of freedom, he has been in prison since 1974, with the majority of those years held in solitary confinement. He has spent time in the notorious “Hannibal Cage” at Wakefield prison due to his violent outbursts. The walls are made of reinforced concrete, and sheets of bulletproof glass allow the inmate to be observed 24 hours a day. The cage within a cage has a table and chair made entirely of cardboard, and meals are slid through a 1-foot gap in the cell door. There is no human contact, not from the guards, and certainly not from other inmates. He is alone except for the rare visit from a solicitor, and this meeting is conducted through a steel net. Prisoner BT1314 now spends his days in a cell 12 foot by 6 foot. While many stress he has never murdered anyone, that isn't for the lack of trying. Michael Peterson has been known under many names, but the most familiar of all… is Charles Bronson…

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Season 1 - Episode 17 [TWAU Plus]

In 2004, Sydney Blackwell, a retired accountant, and his wife Jacqueline, an antiques dealer, lived in the village of Melling in Merseyside. It's an affluent area with green fields, old churches and quaint cottages. They shared their home with their 18-year-old son, Brian. As Sydney sat in his favourite chair, his son attacked him with a claw hammer and then preceded to stab his mother over 15 times…

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Season 1 - Episode 16 [TWAU Plus]

WARNING: THIS IS PART TWO OF A TWO-PART STORY. PLEASE LISTEN TO SEASON 1 - EPISODE 15 FOR MORE DETAILS ON THIS CASE. Stephen Port was arrested on October 15, 2015, for the murders of 4 men. They were all found in Barking in East London and had all died in strikingly similar circumstances. All had deadly levels of GHB in their system, and the police had initially believed this was either accidental or self-inflicted. The family and friends of the young men did not think that they would choose to take their own lives, and it was only due to the sheer force of will on their part; they managed to convince investigators to look beyond their initial findings. After new evidence had been uncovered, the police had their suspect in custody…

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Season 1 - Episode 15 [TWAU Plus]

St Margaret’s Church is located in Barking, in East London. The church is surrounded by grassland and lies on the same grounds as an abbey which has fallen into ruin. During the summer of 2014, the churchyard would be the location where two young men would be found, weeks apart. Both had died from an apparent overdose of GHB, otherwise known as liquid ecstasy. Both men, in their early 20s, were similar in stature and openly gay. The police attributed the first death to an accidental overdose and the second to suicide, with neither of them being deemed suspicious. According to police, the two young men had known each other. The second had taken his life as he couldn’t live with the knowledge that the first man had died from a drug overdose while the two men were having sex. One year later, a third man fitting the same description as the previous two was found dead, next to the churchyard. While the police still believed the three deaths to be a coincidence, it was the body of a fourth man found dead only 500 metres from the churchyard, in June 2014, that would lead investigators to the front door of Stephen Port…

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Season 1 - Episode 14 [TWAU Plus]

Canterbury is a Cathedral city located in Kent in the South East of England. The city lies on the River Stour, and within the city walls, the gothic Canterbury Cathedral dominates the skyline. On March 29, 2016, the emergency services received a phone call from 54-year-old Foster Christian. He claimed that he was assaulted at home, by some of his housemates. Foster, who had a cut above his right eye, insisted he was acting in self-defence; however, two people had been stabbed to death, and two young men, aged 20 and 16, were severely injured… The incident was said to have started over a cup of tea…

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Season 1 - Episode 13 [TWAU Plus]

The Humber Bridge nature reserve is in the east ridings of Yorkshire and is a scenic place where families spend the day. It's also the location of rumour and legend, like that of the headless man that stalks the woodland at night.  The legend has a grain of truth as a motorcyclist was beaten to death there in 1963, though wasn't decapitated as the rumour suggests. It isn't the only story about the park. The phantom of a vanishing cyclist is said to be regularly seen. It is said a cyclist had died by plunging over the edge of the quarry, and his ghost continues to replay the tragedy. Another urban legend is that the black mill, a windmill that stands in the park, was a safe place for witches in Victorian times, which made it a spot for practising Satanists in the 1980s… 

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Season 1 - Episode 12 [TWAU Plus]

WARNING: THIS IS PART TWO OF A TWO-PART STORY. PLEASE LISTEN TO SEASON 1 - EPISODE 11 FOR MORE DETAILS ON THIS CASE. On May 11, 2012, in the early hours of the morning, a fire raged throughout a semi-detached house in Derby. The fire had spread so rapidly by the time firefighters arrived, and the house was engulfed in flames Six children died as a result. Those responsible for the fire were the children's parents and a family friend…

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Season 1 - Episode 11 [TWAU Plus]

May 11, 2012. In the early hours of the morning, a fire raged throughout a semi-detached house in Derby. Thick smoke escaped through anywhere it could, billowing out onto the street, alerting neighbours who rushed to try and help those trapped inside. The fire had spread so rapidly by the time firefighters arrived, the house was engulfed in flames...

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Season 1 - Episode 9 [TWAU Plus]

The Secret intelligence service, or MI6, are a not-so-secret government agency that collates vast amounts of foreign intelligence and feeds this information back to the British government. The agency has been at the forefront of intelligence gathering throughout both world wars, the cold war and the war on terror. Most secret agents travel the globe leaving no stone unturned. However, far from their cinematic counterparts like James Bond, they do not have a license to kill. So why would this government agency want to assassinate a 14-year-old boy from Greater Manchester?

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Season 1 - Episode 7 [TWAU Plus]

The resort town of Morecambe is situated on Morecambe Bay, a popular seaside resort on the northwest coast of England. This town is home to the Stud Farm Holiday Park, a simple resort with lines of caravans, tents and mobile homes. Most people visit the park to be near the beach, whilst others are a permeant fixture who’d opted to rent or buy a caravan for low-cost permanent accommodation. Some of its residents have been living at the site for over 3 decades, but 2 unconnected knife attacks in two years left some locals thinking twice about remaining at the place they had so dearly called home…

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Season 1 - Episode 6 [TWAU Plus]

During the afternoon of February 19, 2008, a young schoolgirl was meant to return home after a school trip to a local swimming pool. Her disappearance united the community and ignited a nationwide search to find her. For three and half weeks, the complex twists and turns were featured daily on the front pages of national newspapers. Police came up empty-handed until their investigation would lead them, and the wrath of the UK press, to an address less than a mile away from the family’s front door… 

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Season 1 - Episode 5 [TWAU Plus]

Colchester is said to be the birthplace of some of the most famous nursery rhymes we are told as children to make us feel safe and lull us to sleep. However, in the spring and summer of 2014, this Essex town would get a sharp wake-up call as two brutal knife attacks would scare the public so much that people were afraid to walk home alone at night, and some were even too petrified to venture out their front door… 

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Season 1 - Episode 4 [TWAU Plus]

On the morning of Thursday, March 21, 2002, John Darwin took his red canoe, called the Orca, out for a paddle at the seaside of Seaton Carew in Hartlepool. After John didn't return that evening, an extensive search was undertaken across the coastline to find him. The wreckage of his canoe and a double-ended paddle were recovered but with no sign of John. A death certificate was issued and said he’d probably encountered difficulties and, as a result, most likely died at sea. However, the ocean was reported as being rather calm on the day of his disappearance. What at first seemed to be a simple death by misadventure, turned out to be more complex than first imagined…

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Season 1 - Episode 3 [TWAU Plus]

Halloween 2010 - Joanna Brown was waiting at her home in Ascot, Berkshire, expecting the return of her two children after they had been on a half-term visit to their fathers. She was in the middle of a costly divorce, and it was taking its toll on not only her but also her husband. When the children arrived, accompanied by their father, the brutal events that would follow are a stark reminder of how greed can cloud the mind and the fog of madness can so easily seep in...

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Season 1 - Episode 2 [TWAU Plus]

On the evening of Saturday, September 11, 1971, a robbery was taking place on Baker Street in London. Months of planning had finally come to fruition, and Anthony Gavin, Reginald Tucker and Thomas Stephens were just hours away from getting the score of a lifetime. There was, however, one big problem. They were stuck in a tunnel they could barely fit through, and now they were struggling to breathe as it was filling with toxic fumes…

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Season 1 - Episode 1 [TWAU Plus]

On Thursday, January 14, 2016, Sadie Hartley, a 60-year-old mother of two, had spent the day at work. She arrived home in the early afternoon and then set off to her local stables. Later that evening, after returning home alone, there was a knock at the door. The scene that unfolded, though seemingly random in nature, was a targeted effort to end Sadie’s life. It's only when we see behind the curtain we begin to discover the transgressions of someone closest to her was the trigger for this tragic event…

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