In June 2005, Janet Brown was 45, living in a converted barn outside Hexham in Northumberland, her elderly parents in the farmhouse next door. She was fiercely independent, she loved her dog, and she was happy travelling alone. On 1 June she booked a ferry to France, sailing on 18 June. She never made the crossing.

Because Janet had no office expecting her on a Monday, and a long habit of solo travel, her absence explained itself. No alarm was raised. No missing person inquiry was ever opened. Her partner, Donald Graham, wrote letters and cards to her parents in her name, telling them she had made a new life abroad. Olive Brown died in January 2007 and Eric Brown in March 2008, both still believing it. Graham attended both funerals, then forged Eric's will, with Janet's forged signature as the attesting witness.

What brought it all down was a clerk at the Skipton Building Society noticing that a signature did not match. A fraud inquiry became a missing person inquiry. A missing person inquiry became a murder inquiry. In June 2014, a jury convicted Donald Graham of murder without Janet's body ever being found. Life, minimum 32 years. He has never said what he did with her.

Solo episode this time.

If you have information about the whereabouts of Janet Brown's remains, please contact Northumbria Police, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Cassandra McDermott was 19 years old, loved by a houseful of sisters, and had just found the strength to leave a violent boyfriend. On 26 November 2001, while her mother was on a holiday Cassandra herself had insisted she take, she was beaten and left to die on a bedroom floor in Norbury, south London.

In 2002, her ex-boyfriend Mario Celaire stood trial at the Old Bailey. The jury deliberated for less than 3 hours and acquitted him. Under the rule against double jeopardy, a principle around 800 years old, that verdict could never be revisited.

5 years later, in Walthamstow, a 19-year-old woman called Kara Hoyte was attacked with a hammer and left for dead. She survived. She could not speak. Her mother sat beside the hospital bed and began writing names on a whiteboard.

This is the story of what Kara Hoyte knew, what she did with it, and how the Criminal Justice Act 2003 turned a permanent acquittal into a retrial. It is also the story of a family who built something in Cassandra's name.

Content note: this episode discusses domestic abuse and fatal violence against women. Details are kept to what the story requires.

Support: in the UK, the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline is 0808 2000 247. In Ireland, Women's Aid is 1800 341 900. The Cassandra Centre can be found at cassandracentre.org.uk.

Two men stepped over Ricardo Anderson as he lay dying. One man stayed and held his hand. He was convicted of murder.

Nottingham, 28 April 2023. Ricardo Anderson, 22, is stabbed through the heart in a flat at High Cross Leys. CCTV in the foyer below captures what happens next: the man who stabbed him walks past his body and keeps walking. Another man, David Francis, stops, stays, holds his hand and raises the alarm. A year later, both are serving life for his murder.

The only person who claimed to see the knife go in was Katrina Intress, a vulnerable witness who died 8 days after signing her statement. She was never asked a single question about it. In July 2026, the Court of Appeal ruled on what her words could and couldn't carry, upheld one conviction, and quashed the other, finding the case against Francis should never have reached a jury at all.

This is the story of Ricardo, of Katrina, and of how the law decides who was truly part of a killing.

Contains discussion of violence and drug use. Listener discretion advised.

Bailieborough, Co. Cavan. 5 September 2013.

Patricia Kierans was 54. She had walked away from a 33-year marriage, started again, and the day before she died she chose her new partner's door over any other. For months she had been telling people she was frightened. She showed neighbours the shotgun hidden under the mattress. She left her home because of it.

This episode is the story of what happened that morning in a town where everyone knows everyone, and of the 7-hour armed siege that followed in the Square Bar that night. It is also the story of a warning that no one had the power to act on until it was too late.

Content note: this episode covers domestic homicide, a firearm and an armed siege. There is no graphic detail, but please take care while listening.

If the show helps you, a rating and a review genuinely help other people find it.

In the early hours of Sunday 2 April 2023, Vincent Jordan was lured to a flat in Nottingham by a woman he knew. He went to bed. He fell asleep naked. He had no idea three men were on their way through the door.

What followed lasted two hours.

By the time Vincent Jordan escaped that flat, bleeding, onto the forecourt of a petrol station, he had been stabbed 9 times, his ankle was fractured, his hand was broken, and chunks of his dreadlocks had been hacked off and stuffed into a clear plastic sandwich bag. Part of what was done to him had been filmed on a mobile phone and posted to Snapchat. His attackers had been singing.

When the police arrived, Vincent Jordan gave them one sentence. "Attacked by three persons with knives and poles." And then he went silent. He never testified. He never made an impact statement. He gave the system almost nothing.

They were convicted anyway.

In this episode we walk through the planning, the lure, the two hours inside the flat, the police chase 48 hours later that ended with a sandwich bag of hair thrown from a Mercedes, the loaded American military pistol recovered nearby, the trial that one defendant refused to attend, and the April 2026 Court of Appeal judgment where another defendant claimed the trial judge had been poisoning him with liquid radiation.

And we sit with the question at the heart of all of it. When a victim won't tell his own story, who gets to tell it for him? And what do they leave out?

On the early hours of Tuesday 30 August 2022, a 25-year-old man called Brandon Malutshi was shot twice in the legs on the dance floor of a packed East London nightclub. The man who pulled the trigger was Chris Kaba — a core member of the Brixton Hill gang the 6-7. Six days later, Kaba was dead, shot through the windscreen of his car by a Metropolitan Police firearms officer in Streatham. He would never stand trial.

But five other men did. And this episode is about one of them.

Marcus Pottinger was a former security guard at the Oval Space with no gang ties, no record of serious violence, and no apparent connection to the dispute between the 6-7 and the rival 1-7. So why was he the one who walked a loaded handgun past the door staff that night? Why did he use a personal relationship with a female security guard to bypass the search? And why, on his own account, did he "check out" of the conversation at the bar in the seconds before Kaba walked across the dance floor and opened fire?

In this episode we walk through the CCTV, the bag, the side door that wouldn't open, and the three legal theories the Court of Appeal used in March 2026 to uphold Pottinger's nine-year sentence for wounding with intent.

A case the country wasn't allowed to hear about for over two years. Until now.

A note on the door said 'Back in 2 minutes.' She was never seen again.

On Saturday, 16th June 1990, 52-year-old Trevaline Evans locked up her antique shop in Llangollen, North Wales, and stepped out for what should have been a quick errand. Her handbag, car keys, credit cards and jacket were left inside. Her car never moved. No money has ever been withdrawn from her bank account. She has been missing for 36 years.

In this episode, we walk you through the case, the well-dressed "mystery man" seen with Trevaline in the days before she vanished, the original 1990 investigation and the 2001 reopening, the two brothers who claimed in 2019 they had found her remains, the cryptic memorial plaques that began appearing on benches in Prestatyn and Dyserth, and the convicted serial killer whose name keeps surfacing in connection with the case.

The question this episode asks isn't really what happened to Trevaline. After more than three decades, we may never know that for certain. The question is why the most credible lead has gone quiet.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Trevaline Evans, contact North Wales Police or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Sheffield, April 2018. The fire brigade force open a locked front door and find a 52-year-old man unconscious in his armchair. Next door, sharing a wall, lives a 92-year-old woman with dementia.

This isn't a whodunnit. Everyone agrees who started the fire. The question is what to do with a man the system can't quite decide is a defendant, a patient, or someone else's responsibility entirely; and how a juror, on day one of his trial, looked across the courtroom and knew something was wrong.

Listener caution advised.

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Season 5 Episode 6

Two hosts. One case. Two conclusions. Amanda O'Shaughnessy stabbed her partner David Butterworth in 2014 and was convicted of murder. Was she a killer, or a survivor? This week, we can't agree.

If you have not watched or listened to part 1 yet, please do before this one.

In this episode we unpack the consequences Chloe and her family faced for accusing three innocent people of sexually assaulting her in a hotel room.