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Margaret Backhouse survived - it was a miracle. The car bomb seemed amateur but it was effective.

Why would anyone want to target an elegant farmer’s wife in a quiet, safe English village?

Detectives then heard about a hate campaign against her husband Graham. Dark notices left on the farm forewarning murd…

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In June 1984, 17-year-old Melanie Road was murdered as she walked home from a nightclub in the beautiful city of Bath, England.

The investigation became Britain’s biggest manhunt, yet despite 96 arrests, her killer was never found.

Twenty five years later, Det Sgt Julie Mackay joined Avon & Somerset Police’s cold case unit.

‘I always knew I would find Melanie’s killer,’ she says.

It would take seven further years of trying. The investigation saw incredible highs and lows. And as Julie fought for promotion, battled personal crises, she built a deep friendship with Melanie’s inspirational mother, Jean.

The story ends with a courtroom showdown between Jean Road and her daughter’s killer - who Julie brought to justice three decades after the murder.

The story is the subject of the award-winning* book Julie and I have written about the case: To Hunt a Killer.

In this interview, I ask Julie about the investigation, the rollercoaster that is a complex inquiry, her drive to find Melanie’s killer and her adoration for Jean Road.

You can get copies in the USA here or in the UK here.

* Julie and I were winners of the True Crime Awards’ ‘Best New Author’ and were shortlisted for a CWA ALCS Gold Dagger award for best book.

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This suspect had already escaped from police custody once. Now he was wanted for a triple murder. He was living wild off the land and Britain’s newspapers had joined the police hunt. The suspect was even taunting the inquiry, writing to journalists describing police as ‘boy scouts.’

Then a detective had an ingenious idea to set a trap.

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In October 1998, Jenny King vanished. The 22-year-old had been on a night out at a club near her home in Kingswood near Bristol, in the South West of England.

Police realised the office worker was in a good, stable relationship. She had no enemies. And no-one would want to harm her.

But a friend of Jenny’s came forward. In the hour before Jenny disappeared, she had said something about a ‘psycho ex boyfriend’ being in the nightspot.

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Days later, police made an horrific discovery. But at this deposition site they found a set of keys.

Who was this ‘psycho ex boyfriend' and whose door would the keys unlock?

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Eugène-François Vidocq was the real-life Paris detective who inspired Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin and Maurice Lablanc’s Lupin stories.

He revolutionised criminology: developing undercover techniques, using science and surveillance to bring Paris’s crimewave under control and setting up a system of card indexes which would be used for well over a century.

The department he created - the Sûreté - was the forerunner of both Scotland Yard and the FBI.

But who was this almost mythical man? And where does the truth stop and the fiction - which he helped create - begin?

James Morton wrote the entertaining ‘The First Detective: The life and revolutionary times of Eugène-François Vidocq.’ (Link to USA site.)

In this episode - a special bonus for paid subscribers - Morton describes how Vidocq moved from being a criminal himself to setting up one of the world’s most influential crime fighting organisations while inspiring history’s most celebrated fictional detectives.

It was the occasional smell of weed which made detectives suspicious at first.

Then a mystery delivery alerted police to the former nuclear bunker in the middle of the English countryside.

But when detectives mounted a raid on the underground fortress, they had no idea if they could get through the atomic blast doors. And when they did - what would they find?

What followed was a moment of high-tension as the team had just seconds to catch an organised crime group in the act.

And detectives uncovered a unique drugs factory built on a scale not seen before in England.

But this is no crime caper. Soon police saw for themselves the dark side of drugs production.

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To welcome new listeners to Behind The Crimes, every day this week I’m highlighting some of the incredible stories we have covered in the last year. This is a replay of an episode from June 2023.

In the early hours of October 4th 1922, a woman who was about to become Britain’s most notorious murder suspect walked home from the theatre with her husband.

Edith Thompson was 28, she was beautiful, had a career, a good social life… and a lover 8 years her junior.

Freddy Bywaters leapt from the shadows and stabbed her husband to death. Edith was terrified. She didn’t want her husband dead, she hadn’t held the knife.

But why did detectives charge her with murder?

In what ways did her love letters scandalise puritanical Post-War society? And as the hangman’s noose awaited a guilty verdict, how important was that opinion on the jury?

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This podcast is based on an interview with Laura Thompson, whose book ‘Rex vs Edith Thompson, a Tale of Two Murders’ can be bought here in the UK and here in the USA.

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NB. As a welcome to new Substack subscribers, this is a reissue of an episode released in 2023.

Roy and Joan Clarke are found dead in their home in rural England in December 2004. They’ve been stabbed in a ‘ritualistic-style’ attack.

Det Ch Supt Paul Howlett’s suspicions fall on one man. But does his prime suspect have the opportunity to kill? There is little evidence at first.

But the country’s top forensic psychologist warns Paul if the suspect is the murderer ‘it’s not a question of if he will kill again, but when.’

The killer has laid the perfect alibi. Or so he thinks.

The route to justice takes some dark turns.

And twenty years on, and Roy Clarke’s daughter is still seeking answers.

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NB. This is a replay episode - first released in July 2023.

What does it take to be a cold case detective? How do you solve a case from the past when all the files have vanished?

All Julie and Gary had was one sheet of paper: a laboratory submission form.

Nothing else.

They didn’t know the details of the attack, who the victim was, what or where it happened.

But by methodically reviewing the case Julie and Gary were able to rebuild the investigation.

There was a DNA hit linking the attack to another unsolved crime scene.

And the attack had been so terrifying, all the original officers and witnesses had never forgotten that freezing night in January 1986 when they came across a young woman called Samantha who had been subjected to this traumatising assault.

But just when Julie thought justice was within her grasp she faced another challenge: lawyers who were refusing to charge their prime suspect.

The case culminated in a dramatic and emotionally-charged court hearing.

Warning: while this episode does not give graphic or intimate descriptions of this sexual assault, some of the details and imagery may be distressing. Listener discretion is advised.

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Who is Banksy? It is a question that has taunted the art world for two decades.

As a graffiti-artist, he has committed criminal damage. Which is why I’m including him in Behind the Crimes.

I uncovered a ‘lost’ interview with the secretive stenciller.

When researching the artist’s background, I came across an old report which had lain in a tape archive for more than a decade and a half. Even the journalist who had interviewed the then-unknown Banksy had forgotten about it - even though he had seen the artist’s face without a mask.

Today, Banksy could genuinely claim to be the world’s most famous artist. Some of his work sells for tens of millions of dollars.

But no-one knows what he looks like.

So this ‘lost’ interview I discovered has now become an important part of modern art history.

When I found it I had no idea it would set me on a trail that would lead to direct contact with the artist himself.

In this one-off special, I’m telling you the story behind the discovery.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertmurphy.substack.com