Jill Wendy Dando was an English journalist, television presenter and newsreader. She spent most of her career at the BBC and was the corporation's Personality of the Year in 1997. At the time of her death, her television work included co-presenting the BBC One programme Crimewatch with Nick Ross.
The murder of Wendy Sewell was committed on 12 September 1973. Wendy Sewell, a 32-year-old legal secretary from Bakewell, Peak District in Derbyshire was found beaten, sexually assaulted and murdered. In 1974, 17-year-old Stephen Downing was convicted of the murder of Sewell. Following a campaign by a local newspaper led by Don Hale, in which Sewell was purported to be promiscuous, Downing's conviction was overturned in 2002. The case is thought to be the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, and attracted international media attention.
The White House Farm murders took place near the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England, during the night of 6–7 August 1985. Nevill and June Bamber were shot and killed inside their farmhouse at White House Farm along with their adopted daughter, Sheila Caffell, and Sheila's six-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas Caffell. The only surviving member of the immediate family was the adopted son, Jeremy Bamber, then aged 24, who said he had been at home a few miles away when the shooting took place.
Barry Michael George is an English man who was found guilty of the murder of English television presenter Jill Dando and whose conviction was overturned on appeal.
In England and Wales, life imprisonment is a sentence that lasts until the death of the prisoner, although in most cases the prisoner will be eligible for parole after a minimum term ("tariff") set by the judge. In exceptional cases a judge may impose a "whole life order", meaning that the offender is never considered for parole, although they may still be released on compassionate grounds at the discretion of the home secretary. Whole life orders are usually imposed for aggravated murder, and can only be imposed where the offender was at least 21 years old at the time of the offence being committed.
The Lady in the Lake trial was a 2005 murder case in which Gordon Park a retired teacher from Leece, near Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England, was jailed for life for the 1976 murder of his first wife, Carol Ann Park.
Don Hale is a British author and journalist known for his investigative work and campaigning against miscarriage of justice in specific legal cases.
HM Prison Full Sutton is a Category A and B men's prison in the village of Full Sutton, near Pocklington in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Full Sutton is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and held 572 inmates in March 2024. The prison's primary function is to hold, in conditions of high security, some of the most difficult and dangerous criminals in the country.
Robert Woffinden was a British investigative journalist. Formerly a reporter with the New Musical Express, he later specialised in investigating miscarriages of justice. He wrote about a number of high-profile cases in the UK, including James Hanratty, Sion Jenkins, Jeremy Bamber, Charles Ingram, Jonathan King, and Barry George.
Nottingham Crown Court, or more formally the High Court of Justice and Crown Court, Nottingham is a Crown Court and meeting place of the High Court of Justice on Canal Street in Nottingham, England. The building also accommodates the County Court and the Family Court.
Barry Askew was a British journalist, editor of several provincial papers, including the Lancashire Evening Post and briefly of the News of the World.
Jeremy Nevill Bamber is a British convicted mass murderer. He was convicted of the 1985 White House Farm murders in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, in which the victims included Bamber's adoptive parents, Nevill and June Bamber; his adoptive sister, Sheila Caffell; and his sister's six-year-old twin sons. The prosecution had argued that after committing the murders to secure a large inheritance, Bamber had placed the rifle in the hands of his 28-year-old sister, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, to make the scene appear to be a murder–suicide. The jury returned a majority guilty verdict.
Mark Alan Williams-Thomas is an English investigative journalist, sexual abuse victim advocate, and former police officer. He is a regular reporter on This Morning and Channel 4 News, as well as the ITV series Exposure and the ITV and Netflix crime series The Investigator: A British Crime Story.
Crimes That Shook Britain is a television series first aired in 2008 on Crime & Investigation UK, focusing on uncovering the truth behind crimes that shocked the nation. Some episodes were also rebroadcast in random episode order from 2014 to 2019, on Channel 5 originally under the title Britain's Worst Crimes.
Robert Brown is a Scottish man who spent 25 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, the murder of worker Annie Walsh.
Jacqueline Susan Ansell-Lamb and Barbara Janet Mayo were two young women who were murdered in separate incidents in 1970. Both women were last seen hitch-hiking along motorways in England, and both were sexually assaulted before being strangled to death.
Chris Clark is a British amateur crime writer who writes chiefly about serial killers and their supposed links to unsolved crimes. He is a retired police intelligence officer who worked in the King's Lynn area for Norfolk Police, although his career was somewhat unsuccessful and he had three applications to join the new National Criminal Intelligence Service rejected in 1993, with the commanding officers unimpressed by his record and applications. In 2022, his book Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders, which was jointly written with journalist Tim Tate and alleged links between Peter Sutcliffe and unsolved murders, was made into an ITV prime-time documentary series of the same name.
Gary Arthur Allen is a British convicted murderer serving life imprisonment for the murders of Samantha Class and Alena Grlakova, two sex workers who he killed 21 years apart, in 1997 and 2018. Allen first stood trial for Class's murder in February 2000, but was acquitted by a jury at Sheffield Crown Court. He then went on to assault two sex workers in Plymouth within days of his acquittal, and would later confess to murdering Class during an undercover police operation staged in 2010. It was not until a change in the law regarding the rules of double jeopardy in England and Wales, whereby a defendant could not stand trial twice for the same crime, together with other cases involving the double jeopardy rule, and after he committed the second murder in 2018 that Allen was brought to justice. Following a seven week trial in 2021, also held at Sheffield Crown Court, he was convicted of both murders, and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years. He will become eligible for parole in June 2057.
