Behind the Crimes with Robert Murphy

It was the early 1990s and Lynda La Plante was desperate. She had a few TV drama successes under her belt, but everything she was pitching was greeted with a ‘no’ from commissioners.

Then, in a pitch meeting, she dreamt up Prime Suspect when the TV boss said she wanted a ‘cop show with a female detective and a murder.'

But to create Det Ch Insp Jane Tennison, Lynda needed to research true crime. Enter Met detective Jackie Malton - and months of research.

This interview coincides with the release of Lynda’s final Jane Tennison book, Whole Life Sentence which takes readers to the detective’s life before Prime Suspect.

In this episode, Lynda talks Tennison, Jackie Malton, the importance of grounding her fiction in fact and research.

Whole Life Sentence is released on July 4th 2024. You can grab a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whole-Life-Sentence-pulse-pounding-Detective-ebook/dp/B0CSTSGNS8

To learn more about Lynda, click here:

https://lyndalaplante.com/

For extras subscribe at: robertmurphy.substack.com

Samantha Robins was the Intelligence Manager on the Major Crime Team at Surrey Police in May 2010 when, late in the evening, the call came in: a young mother had been murdered in her home.

What followed was a multi-pronged inquiry.

Sarah Thomas was a 38-year-old mother of three who was found in her flat in a quiet English village.

Her boyfriend raised the alarm - and was arrested.

But when it became clear he was not responsible for Sarah’s death, suspicion passed to a dark character with an horrific criminal record.

As the inquiry moved through the gears and a major manhunt was begun, detectives started leaning heavily on Samantha and her team of analysts which was sifting through the influx of sightings and clues.

* Who was Sarah’s killer?

* Why had he murdered her?

* Where had he been spotted?

And when the full history of the killer’s criminal record became known, the manhunt became a race against time.

You can learn more about Sam here: https://x.com/SamRobins

Janice Hallett has created three of the most inventive crime books of recent years. When I first started reading ‘The Appeal’ I was a bit dubious. How could a crime novel with big characters really be told through emails and messages?

Then I got into the book…

Next came The Twyford Code with a main character, a prisoner Steve Smith who can neither read nor write, who reveals his story through transcripts of audio recordings.

It is GENIUS!

And now there is the Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, told through research papers left by a journalist investigating a cult. Another triumph.

In this episode Janice talks of how she is inspired by true crime, how she never plots her books and how her previous careers as a screenwriter and speechwriter have helped her as a fiction writer.

To find out more about Janice and her books, click here.

Her latest book, The Examiner, will be available from August 29th.

#To watch this interview - subscribe at robertmurphy.substack.com#

Det Insp Paul Franklin was in charge of the inquiry to bring the murderous, cheating husband Emile Cilliers to justice.

But it wasn’t easy. There was little direct evidence that Cilliers had tampered with the parachute of his wife, Victoria.

There was no CCTV nor DNA.

And Victoria did not support the investigation into her husband.

A new docudrama about the case is being broadcast in the UK. To coincide with this, Paul has given this new interview to Behind the Crimes to discuss how he built the case, the challenges of Victoria becoming a hostile witness, how dangerous Cilliers is - and the long-term impact of the inquiry on everyone.

And it is now the subject of a brilliant three-part docudrama, made by Story Films for Channel4 in the UK:

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fall-skydive-murder-plot/on-demand/75275-002

Victoria has written her own account too.

If you are impacted by issues raised in this interview, please read more here: https://refuge.org.uk/i-need-help-now/coercive-control/

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/coercive-control/

https://survivingeconomicabuse.org/i-need-help/

#To watch this interview - subscribe at robertmurphy.substack.com#

Emile Cilliers made global headlines in 2018 when he was convicted of the attempted murder of his wife Victoria.

He was an upstanding army sergeant, a family man, who led a debaucherous double life of sex clubs, girlfriends and payday loans.

He tried to murder Victoria by tampering with the gas meter in their home. When this failed, he sabotaged her parachute - both her main and reserve canopies.

Somehow, Victoria survived the 4,000-foot drop.

There was little direct evidence: no DNA, no CCTV. No clue that Emile was responsible.

But after taking a spine-tingling call and arresting Cilliers, detective Maddy Hennah became convinced he was the perpetrator.

What followed was a long, arduous inquiry leading to a sensational pair of trials.

It has been the subject of my own eight-part podcast series:

And it is now the subject of a brilliant three-part docudrama, made by Story Films for Channel4 in the UK:

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fall-skydive-murder-plot/on-demand/75275-002

Victoria has written her own account too.

If you are impacted by issues raised in this interview, please read more here: https://refuge.org.uk/i-need-help-now/coercive-control/

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/coercive-control/

https://survivingeconomicabuse.org/i-need-help/

#Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com#

Laura Lippman spent more than 20 years as a journalist working in Texas and Baltimore.

She has won Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Barry, Nero and Shamus awards (among many others) for her 25 novels - which include 12 featuring the private investigator Tess Monaghan

Her latest, Prom Mom, has a loose inspiration by the 1997 case of Melissa Drexler a New Jersey teenager who gave birth during her prom, but then something truly awful happened…

Laura discusses the ethics of True Crime - including the aftermath of Baby Reindeer, how being a journalist helped her ‘research to task’ and why Nick Hornby likened Laura to ‘a big American cheeseburger’ (Patricia Highsmith was a steak!)

There’s more about Laura here: https://lauralippman.com/

And subscribe for extras: robertmurphy.substack.com

#Subscribe for free at robertmurphy.substack.com #

This was Penelope Jackson’s final chance. The evidence against her seemed overwhelming: the glib 999 call admitting the killing of her husband, her further confessions on police body worn footage.

In court, even her friends had described her as overbearing and domineering.

Now it was her turn to take to the witness stand to give her version of events.

In the words of her lawyer: ‘She could see no way out, She replaced invisible handcuffs for real ones but at least then she knew where she would be.’

But would the jury believe Penelope?

If you’ve been affected by issues in this episode, please follow these links:

https://www.nelsontrust.com/

https://refuge.org.uk/

#Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com#

To friends, David and Penelope Jackson were like most other retired couples living in the West Country.

They had a good life: a nice home, an active social life and a penchant for foreign cruises.

But in February 2021, Penelope killed her husband after a birthday celebration.

She then called 999 saying ‘I stabbed him once, then he said I wouldn’t do it again so I did it twice more.’

Had she been suffering in silence for years at the hands of a silent abuser?

Or was she fabricating a life of coercive control to wriggle away from a murder charge?

If you’ve been affected by issues in this episode, please look at these links:

https://www.nelsontrust.com/

https://refuge.org.uk/

Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com

Award-winning crime novelist Denise Mina has written the latest Philip Marlowe book: The Second Murderer. To research the book, she spent months studying Los Angeles in 1940, deconstructing Raymond Chandler’s distinct sentence structure and recreating his unique humour.

Denise’s career straddles both crime fiction and true crime. She has won many awards - including the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year two years running and has been inducted into the CWA Hall of Fame.

This podcast was recorded at CrimeFest, May 2024.

The Second Murderer is available here.

Denise’s true crime book about Peter Manuel ,The Long Drop, is available here.

Raymond Chandler’s books are available here.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is available here.

My own true crime books Decoy and the award-winning To Hunt A Killer are available here.

To coincide with the launch of my true crime book ‘Decoy’ I’ve updated and reissued this podcast featuring a rare and exclusive interview with Chris Gould.

In the 1970s, the city of Bristol was terrorised by a man nicknamed ‘The Clifton Rapist.’ The stranger-attacker assaulted seven women over a two-year period.

PC Chris Gould suggested a daring honeytrap: Avon and Somerset Police should set up an innovative undercover sting, using young rookie police officers as decoys to catch him.

This was a monumental gamble, putting the lives of their youngest, least-experienced female officers on the line.

But 12 women volunteered.

As the weeks passed, with no further attacks, commanders made an even more innovative move. And Chris’s career was never the same again.

How was the predator caught and justice achieved? Chris has never spoken in this detail before.

+++ Grab your copy of Decoy here in the UK: https://tinyurl.com/fd759pmh +++

+++ Or here in the USA: https://tinyurl.com/yethzdum +++

Haven’t subscribed yet? Just hit: robertmurphy.substack.com

NB: This is a reissue of a podcast episode first released in November 2023