In March 2014, police officers arrived at a quiet Lancashire cottage to take a domestic abuse statement. Minutes later a man forced his way in with a hammer, attacked the officers, chased the victim into the street and stabbed her to death in broad daylight.

That man was Paul O’Hara — a convicted murderer already serving a life sentence for killing a previous girlfriend in almost identical circumstances. Released on licence, he slipped through every safeguard the system had put in place.

Host Alexander Lawson examines the two murders, the missed warnings, and the failures that left another woman dead. A harrowing case of predatory violence, institutional breakdown, and lives that should never have been lost.

On a quiet July afternoon in 2013, a 66-year-old Good Samaritan heard shouting from his neighbour’s house and went to help. Minutes later he lay dying on his own front lawn, his throat cut open.

The man who killed him, Ian John McLoughlin, had walked out of an open prison that same morning on his first day of temporary release after more than 21 years inside for murder. He had already killed twice before.

In this episode, Alexander Lawson examines McLoughlin’s three killings, the catastrophic failures that allowed him back onto the streets, and the official inquiry that branded the decision to grant him day release “indefensible.”

A story of missed warnings, systemic risk, and a village that paid the ultimate price.

In the early hours of 20 January 2013, a family in Keighley, West Yorkshire showed kindness to a man they barely knew. They let Anwar Daniel Rosser sleep on their sofa. Hours later, that same man walked upstairs with four knives and savagely murdered their four-year-old son, Riley Turner, as he slept in his bed.

What followed was one of the most horrific child murders in modern British history — a crime so sadistic and brutal that Rosser received a rare whole-life order. He will never be released.

In this episode, Alexander Lawson examines the full story: the betrayal of trust, the appalling violence, the investigation, and the moment a High Court judge decided some people must never walk free again.

Content warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of the murder of a young child, including extreme violence and sexual elements. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

A True Crime Podcast.

She smiled for the camera with a red rope around her neck. Minutes later, 17-year-old Georgia Williams was dead—exactly as Jamie Reynolds had written it in a story he titled with her name.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson examines the case of Jamie Reynolds, the Shropshire shop worker who turned years of violent sexual fantasy into a meticulously planned murder. Reynolds lured the trusting teenager to his parents’ empty house under the pretence of an “artistic” photoshoot, then hanged her, photographed the killing, violated her body, and dumped her in woodland.

Police later recovered thousands of extreme images, altered photographs of other young women, and dozens of written stories detailing similar attacks. Reynolds had already attempted a near-identical assault years earlier. In December 2013 he became one of the youngest people in British history to receive a whole-life prison sentence.

This is the story of a fantasy rehearsed, scripted, and finally performed.

Content warning: Detailed discussion of sexual violence, strangulation, and the murder of a teenager.

Listen now.

In early 2012, a homeless man with a lifelong hatred of Christianity left two people dead in their own homes — just six weeks apart.

First, a 77-year-old retired teacher was beaten with her own walking stick, carefully positioned, and stabbed. Then a vicar opened his door and was told to “hurry up and die” as he bled out on the floor.

Host Alexander Lawson uncovers the chilling crimes of Stephen Farrow — the psychopathic drifter who terrorised quiet English villages, left a note calling Christians “scum,” and was eventually sentenced to die in prison.

A story of obsession, sadism, and two lives stolen in the most calculated way.

In the early hours of 6 June 2011, David Robert Oakes walked into a house in Braintree, Essex, armed with a shotgun, an axe and a list of instruments designed for one purpose. By dawn his former partner Christine Chambers and their two-year-old daughter Shania were dead.

Host Alexander Lawson examines the controlling relationship that led to one of the most sadistic domestic murders in modern British history, the three-hour ordeal that followed, the whole-life sentence that followed, and the police failings that left a family unprotected.

A story of jealousy, power and catastrophic failure.

In 1988, David Cook was jailed for life for strangling Sunday school teacher Beryl Maynard with a dressing-gown cord during a robbery. Twenty-one years later he was released on licence.

Less than two years after walking free, he invited his neighbour Leonard Hill into his bungalow in a quiet Welsh town… then bound, gagged and strangled him with a television flex for petty cash.

Host Alexander Lawson unravels the case of the double killer who was never supposed to get a second chance — and the devastating questions it still raises about the justice system.

A True Crime Podcast.

In a quiet Derby block of flats, two men were found stabbed to death in their own bathtubs. A pink rose was left on a pillow. A discarded note confessed to the killings and was signed “the Angel of Mercy.”

The man behind it, Andrew Dawson, had already murdered a 91-year-old shopkeeper nearly three decades earlier — and was free on life licence when he killed again.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the full story of Dawson’s crimes, from the 1981 killing in Ormskirk to the 2010 double murder in Chaddesden, the failed system that left him unsupervised, and the whole-life sentence that means he will never be released.

A mother of three meets a stranger one afternoon in Surrey. Hours later she is dead on her living-room floor. The man who killed her has already murdered once before — in Spain — and the system had let him walk free.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson tells the full story of David Baxendale: a two-decade history of knife violence, a 2001 murder in Spain, a catastrophic release back into the UK, the ferocious killing of Sarah Thomas in 2010, the flight to the Costa del Sol, the whole-life sentence, and his death behind bars in 2026.

A case that asks the hardest question in true crime: how many chances does a violent offender get before the next life is lost?

A quiet farmhouse set ablaze just days before Christmas. A couple shot dead on one of Britain’s most beautiful coastal paths. Five teenagers held at gunpoint in a field.

For more than twenty years, John William Cooper lived freely among the people of Pembrokeshire — a darts player, a local face, even a contestant on the TV show Bullseye. Behind that ordinary exterior was a cold-blooded killer.

In this episode, Alexander Lawson uncovers the full story of the Pembrokeshire Murders: the brutal double killings of 1985 and 1989, the terrifying 1996 attack, the long cold-case investigation, and the DNA breakthrough that finally brought the Bullseye Killer to justice.