A young mother’s body is found nearly naked in a Lancaster flat. Around her neck: a shoelace, twisted tighter and tighter… with a fork.

Paul Culshaw already had convictions for rape and attempted murder. In 2004 he struck again — and this time he made sure she could never tell.

Host Alexander Lawson reveals the chilling crimes of the man the judge called an “enormous danger to women,” the whole-life sentence that locked him away forever, and the final chapter that ended in a prison cell.

This is the full story of the Shoelace Killer.

February 2003. A millionaire, his young wife, their two baby boys, and a grandmother vanish overnight.

Weeks later, bodies start washing up on the English coast. Trussed. Dumped at sea. The children are never found.

This wasn’t random. It was a cold, calculated plan to seize a freight company and turn it into a drug-smuggling front. One of the men who helped make it happen was William Horncy — a failed accountant turned passport forger turned mass murderer who will never walk free.

In this episode, Alexander Lawson unravels the full story of the Chohan family murders: the kidnapping near Stonehenge, the forced signatures, the slaughter of three generations, the double burial, and the whole-life sentences that followed.

A crime so calculated and cruel it still haunts British true crime.

Listen now on A True Crime Podcast.

In July 2004, a former binman and nightclub bouncer named Mark Richard Hobson became Britain’s most wanted man.

In just eight days he killed four people: his girlfriend Claire Sanderson, her identical twin sister Diane, and frail pensioners James and Joan Britton. One body was left wrapped in bin bags for nearly a week. Another was tortured and sexually assaulted after being deliberately lured to the flat. The elderly couple were beaten with a walking stick and stabbed in their own home.

What followed was one of the largest manhunts in modern British history — more than 500 officers from 12 forces searching while Hobson slept rough under hedges, armed with a stolen kitchen knife.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson takes you inside the calculated killings, the chilling “to-do” lists, the massive nationwide hunt, and the whole-life sentence that means Mark Hobson will never walk free.

Press play. Some stories stay with you long after the episode ends.

In the freezing winter of 2004, Mark Martin told people in Nottingham he had a goal: to become the city’s first serial killer.

Weeks later, three young homeless women were dead — strangled, hidden under rubble, and in one case set on fire.

This is the chilling true story of the Sneinton Strangler: the man who chose his victims because he believed no one would care enough to look for them… and the community that finally spoke up and stopped him.

Philip Peter Heggarty said Derek Bennett was “the brother I never had.”

Then he waited until his best friend was unconscious on the sofa… and attacked him with a hammer.

Twenty-three fractures. One and a half hours to die. A body rolled in a living-room carpet, stuffed into a car, and set on fire.

This is the chilling true story of a charming salesman with 79 previous convictions who finally ran out of masks. A brutal murder driven by pure greed. A whole-life sentence. And a friendship that ended in blood and flames.

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

Listen now — and never look at the word “bruv” the same way again.

In May 1997, twelve-year-old Macedonian schoolgirl Katerina Koneva was followed home from school in west London and murdered in her family’s flat. The killer was Andrzej Kunowski — a prolific Polish serial rapist known as the Beast of Mława — who had fled justice, entered Britain on a fake passport, and continued his attacks.

Host Alexander Lawson traces Kunowski’s decades of sexual violence in Poland, the systemic failures that allowed him to escape, the brutal murder of Katerina, the 2002 rape that finally led to his capture, and the whole-life sentence that ensured he would never be free again.

A harrowing true-crime examination of one of Britain’s most dangerous sex offenders and the child whose life he stole.

A teenage killer released after just 13 years. A £300 contract. A quiet Cambridgeshire kitchen. And the wrong man stabbed to death.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson tells the story of Paul Glen — the bungling professional killer whose catastrophic mistake cost 25-year-old Robert Bogle his life and earned Glen a whole-life sentence. From the brutal 1989 murder of Ivor Usher to the botched 2004 hit in Farcet, this is a case of early release, hired violence, and a fatal case of mistaken identity.

October 1975. A lonely road on Exmoor. A hired gunman shoots a Great Dane named Rinka dead, then turns the weapon on its owner. The trigger jams. The target escapes into the night.

That target was Norman Scott. The man accused of ordering the hit was Jeremy Thorpe — charismatic leader of the Liberal Party and one of Britain’s most powerful politicians.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson unravels the extraordinary scandal that brought a political high-flyer to the Old Bailey. A secret relationship. Blackmail. A botched assassination. And a trial that gripped the nation — the so-called “trial of the century.”

Was it a genuine murder plot, or a desperate attempt to silence a dangerous secret? Listen as the full story of Jeremy Thorpe’s rise, fall, and notorious acquittal unfolds.

Listener discretion advised: this episode contains discussion of alleged sexual assault and conspiracy to murder.

In a quiet Bermondsey council flat lived an ordinary British Rail ticket collector known as Tony. Neighbours saw a harmless pensioner. Few knew that decades earlier, as Andrei Sawoniuk, he had hunted down Jewish survivors in Nazi-occupied Domachevo and personally executed at least 18 of them.

In 1999 he became the first — and still the only — person ever convicted in a British court under the War Crimes Act. A jury travelled to Belarus. Eyewitnesses who had hidden in the woods finally faced him at the Old Bailey.

This is the full story of Anthony Sawoniuk: the collaborator who escaped justice for over half a century… until the past caught up with him.

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

In the autumn of 1995, a quiet cinema owner in North Wales became one of Britain’s most chilling serial killers. Over just three months, Peter Howard Moore — known as the Man in Black — murdered four men in brutal, frenzied attacks.

Host Alexander Lawson unpacks the double life of the man who restored old picture houses by day and carried out sadistic, sexually motivated killings by night. From a lonely cottage on Anglesey to a forest grave and a windswept beach, this is the full story of the crimes, the confession on Christmas Eve, and the whole-life sentence that followed.

A dark chapter of true crime that still unsettles.