The sun was barely starting to go down on the Summer evening in 1961 when Michael Gregsten and Valerie Storie pulled off the road into the cornfield at Dorney Reach, Buckinghamshire. They frequently went parking there — or “trysting” as was often said at the time. 

Sometimes others had the same idea, but on this particular Tuesday evening it was just them and the faint sound of cars passing along the road behind. They sat in the grey Morris Minor for half an hour, smoking and chatting without the faintest idea that anyone else was there. It was the tapping on the drivers side window that startled them (Part 1 of 2).

Through their line of soft toys, Dena and Lee hoped their self-created character ‘Sean the Leprechaun’, on which their toys were based, would earn them a fortune and be developed into a hit animation film for children. Following a holiday in Florida, Dena convinced her husband that, they would be earning £50 million through a deal she had struck with the Walt Disney company.

Over the course of three days at Winchester Crown court the jury decided if the evidence the prosecution presented was sufficient enough to prove that Matthew Hamlen stabbed, robbed and bludgeoned to death 77-year-old Georgina Edmonds on the wet and grey afternoon of January 11, 2008. 

Hamlen had been in custody for the past 12 months since he was charged with murder, but always denied his involvement (Part 2 of 2).

Kiln Lane is a narrow road flanked by woodland, crossing the River Itchen, and winding south-east from the village of Otterbourne to the quiet hamlet of Brambridge in the south-east of England. Although isolated, measuring roughly a mile, the road is used a commuter route so a considerable amount of traffic passes through it during peak travel times. 

Shortly before 6pm, on Friday, January 11, 2008, police were alerted to an address on the thoroughfare, close to the river bank (Part 1 of 2).

At the end of May 1998, nearly two months after Sylvia Fleming went missing, building developer Patrick Haughey was woken early one morning by the telephone. Police needed access to a four-bedroom detached house he was developing on Circular Road in County Tyrone.

Ruth and Dean Neave lived on Redmile Walk in the Welland Estate of Peterborough. Social services were highly involved with the family. The children were placed on the at-risk register, and Ruth was vocal with authorities about not being able to cope — she even threatened that she might hurt her children.

In the 1980s, cases of consumer terrorism had reached a peak. You may have heard about the Tylenol murders in America. Seven people lost their lives when they consumed tablets from bottles purchased in chemists and supermarkets. They had no way of knowing the pills they swallowed were randomly laced with potassium cyanide. A few years later, the United Kingdom had its own scare when lethal contaminants were hidden in everyday products.

After a shooting on a small holding that left one man dead and two injured, Albert Dryden was arrested and taken into custody (Part 2 of 2).

On a smallholding in the North-East of England, a three-year planning dispute between a former steelworker and the local council was streamed-live to millions of homes across Britain. The confrontation, which left one man dead and two injured, would result in a police siege against a gunman who had amassed an armoury of weapons that included a cannon that was ready to be mounted to the front of a car (Part 1 of 2).

We will be releasing our new book ‘They Walk Among Us’ on Thursday, May 30, 2019, in paperback, ebook and audiobook. Ten brand new intriguing and unsettling cases that we have not covered on the podcast.

Pre-order your copy at Penguin or Audible 

On October 28, 1986, after a total of nine and a half hours of deliberation, the jury had to decide if Jeremy Bamber was guilty of killing his family, blaming the murders on his sister in order to inherit his families estate. (Part 3 of 3) 

Fourteen months after five members of the Bamber family had lost their lives, Jeremy Bamber was pleading not guilty to their murders at Chelmsford Crown Court during the start of October 1986. (Part 2 of 3)

PC Michael West was hoping for a quiet night operating the switchboard for Chelmsford Police Station, until he received a hurried call in the early hours of August 7, 1985. (Part 1 of 3) 

One month before the trial was due to take place at the Old Bailey on May 2, 1978, Joyce McKinney and Keith May, now daily fixtures in the tabloids, disappeared.

The now 21-year-old Kirk Anderson was standing outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Ewell, Surrey on September 14, 1977. He was getting on with his day but had no idea he was being watched by the woman he had broken off a relationship with in his late teens. (Part 1 of 2) 

As more punches were thrown Christopher struggled but it was no use. He was now on the ground and felt something around his neck. He heard an engine slowly getting louder. It was the sound of the sit-on lawnmower.

In a moment of realisation, he knew he was either going to be strangled to death or mutilated.

The following excerpt was found in Gregory Davis' leather-bound dairy in 2003: "Quit job tomorrow. Get Mick killed. Get Stuart to withdraw cash every day. When all gone, kill him. Repeat Mick plan ad infinitum all over country and world in Las Vegas and swanky bars."

Around 9 am on Monday, October 28, 2002, police officers were called to a warehouse on the Huyton Industrial Estate in Brickfields, Merseyside.

Just before sunset on Saturday, June 18, 1988, a local patrol car slowed as it travelled eastbound along the M50 motorway. Walking along the hard shoulder was a young girl carrying a baby. The officer pulled in and asked if the girl was alright. Eleven-year-old Georgina explained that she was looking for her older sister, Marie. Their car had broken down a little way up the road and Marie had left to use the emergency phone some time ago — but she had not come back.

The Rooney Family lived on a travellers site in Drinsey Nook, Lincolnshire. They splashed out on plastic surgery, driving top of the range BMW cars, while wearing expensive Rolex watches and designer outfits. They enjoyed luxury holidays to Mexico, Barbados, Egypt and Australia. An aerial shot of the land where they lived, pictured green fields surrounding a collection of single-story red brick homes with a few dilapidated caravans nearby. 

The reasons the Rooneys were able to enjoy the extravagancies they did, lived in those caravans.