Trigger Warning: This episode discusses the murder of a child and racially motivated violence.

On 21 August 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Louis Till boarded a train from Chicago to Mississippi. He carried a small suitcase, his father’s ring engraved “L.T.” — and the excitement of a summer adventure.

Four days later, he was dead.

What happened to Emmett in the Mississippi Delta became one of the most infamous lynchings in American history. Abducted in the middle of the night by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, brutally beaten, shot, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck, Emmett’s murder exposed the lethal reality of Jim Crow America.

Emmett Till’s death became a catalyst. Rosa Parks later said she thought of Emmett when she refused to give up her bus seat. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked his name in sermons. Activists would later call themselves the “Emmett Till Generation.”

Justice in a courtroom never came and Emmett Till never saw his fifteenth birthday.

But his story helped ignite a movement that reshaped America.

:

• Timothy B. Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till

• National Museum of African American History and Culture

• FBI Historical Case File: Emmett Till

• U.S. Department of Justice (2021 Cold Case Closure Report)

• Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board (2025 document release)

• PBS American Experience

• Library of Congress Civil Rights History Project

• White House Proclamation (Emmett Till & Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, 2023)

• Congress.gov (Emmett Till Antilynching Act)

• Chicago History Museum

• Mississippi Free Press (2025 records release coverage)

• Murder in America episode 55

Sources

A hedgerow on a hill. A winter field. And a 74-year-old man who doesn’t come home.

On 14 February 1945, in the quiet Warwickshire village of Lower Quinton, Charles Walton set out to cut hedges on The Firs farm. By dusk, he was dead — brutally beaten, slashed, and pinned to the ground with his own pitchfork.

Within hours, rumours spread that this was no ordinary murder.

Some called it ritual.Others called it witchcraft.The newspapers called it Britain’s strangest killing.

In this episode, we unpack one of the UK’s most unsettling unsolved crimes — the case that inspired The Wicker Man and became Chief Inspector Robert Fabian’s final investigation.

Charles Walton’s murder remains Warwickshire’s oldest unsolved homicide.

There is no grand memorial.Only a headstone in All Saints churchyard:“Killed on Meon Hill.”

Sources

• Darryl Howe, The Cotswold Murder Files: The Killing of Charles Walton

• Robert Fabian, Fabian of the Yard

• Vice News – “The Unsolved ‘Witchcraft’ Murder That Shocked Britain”

• Our Warwickshire – Local history archives

• Warwickshire Constabulary archival material

• Gerald Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft

• James Morton, The Who’s Who of Unsolved Murders

• BBC archival reporting

The only solicitor ever hanged for murder in Britain.

Hay-on-Wye. 1920s respectability.A provincial solicitor.A dying wife.A poisoned rival.And Britain’s most famous forensic pathologist taking the stand with absolute certainty.

Herbert Rowse Armstrong — known locally as “Major Armstrong” after his WWI service — was a pillar of society in Hay-on-Wye. Churchwarden. Freemason. Clerk to the justices. A respectable man with a prosperous home at Mayfield in Cusop Dingle.

In 1922, he became the only solicitor in UK history to be executed for murder.

But did he do it?

• Martin Beales, The Hay Poisoner

• Stephen Bates, The Poisonous Solicitor

• Law Society Gazette (2022 retrospective)

• Ross Gazette centenary article

• Hektoen International – forensic analysis of Spilsbury

• Leamington History Group – profile of Spilsbury

• Aquila Blog – forensic legacy review

• Project Gutenberg Australia – public domain account

• Murder Maps Podcast (S5E5)

• She Done It Podcast episode

• Poisoner's Cabinet podcast

Sources 

This week we are going way back - to 1766 - for a story that sounds ridiculous… until it very much isn’t.

At Nottingham’s historic Goose Fair, amid rising food prices and fears of scarcity, tensions boiled over when outside traders began buying up vast quantities of cheese. What followed was one of the strangest  and deadliest  public disorders in British history: wheels of cheese rolling through the streets, the mayor knocked down in the chaos, arrests, smashed windows, the Riot Act being read… and eventually dragoons firing into the crowd .

Plus, as always, we finish with a slightly chaotic quiz - this time on food riots through history. Because nothing says light educational entertainment like revolution sparked by carbohydrates.

SOURCES

George Rude - The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848

Nottingham Goose Fair - CooksInfo

https://www.cooksinfo.com/nottingham-goose-fair

The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century

https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/50/1/76/1458023

Explore the Archives catalogue

https://www.inspireculture.org.uk/heritage/explore-the-archives-catalogue/

Cheesed Off! Nottingham Food Riots, c.1750-1800 - The University of Nottingham 

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/home/featureevents/2023/cheesed-off-nottingham-food-riots-c.1750-1800.aspx

Damn his Charity, we'll have the Cheese for nought!

https://files.libcom.org/files/cheeseriotsebook.pdf

Local Studies & Family History

https://www.nottinghamcitylibraries.co.uk/our-services/local-studies-family-history/

The Role of Local Authorities in the Provincial Hunger Riots of 1766

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/albion/article/role-of-local-authorities-in-the-provincial-hunger-riots-of-1766/2ACB9C12E4196A979D7C94D243A61391

Morals, Markets and the English Crowd in 1766

https://www.jstor.org/stable/650966?utm_source=chatgpt.com

The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition in England, C. 1550-1850

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Politics_of_Provisions.html

Cheese riots and dragoons: The complete history of Nottingham Goose Fair – Notts TV News | The heart of Nottingham news coverage for Notts TV

https://nottstv.com/cheese-riots-and-dragoons-the-complete-history-of-nottingham-goose-fair-2016/

Nottingham Rising | People's Histreh

https://peopleshistreh.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/nottingham_rising_peoples_histreh_digital_edition1.pdf

Visiting Nottinghamshire Archives

https://www.inspireculture.org.uk/heritage/archives/visiting-archives/

This week, Isla takes the reins while Dee tries (and fails) to sit quietly.

We head to Aberdeen, New South Wales - not Scotland - and to a case so shocking it changed Australian sentencing history forever.

In March 2000, John “Pricey” Price failed to turn up for work. He had warned colleagues the day before:

“If I don’t come in tomorrow, she’s killed me.”

He was right.

What police discovered inside his home was described by the sentencing judge as:

“Beyond contemplation in a civilised society.”

Katherine Knight became the first woman in Australian history to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

• Wikipedia

• Murderpedia

• Australian Associated Press

• The Daily Telegraph (Australia)

• Emma Kenny (YouTube)

• Blood Stain (book)

• Man Eater (book; available at Criminally Good Books 👀)

• ITVX – Crimes That Shook Australia

• Inside Story

• Twisted Minds

Sources

Can you ever imagine confessing to murder… to catch the real killer?

This week we revisit one of the Netherlands’ most haunting cold cases: the 1995 murder of 15-year-old Nicole van den Hurk. What began as a teenage girl cycling to her early-morning supermarket shift in Eindhoven became a decades-long investigation filled with false leads, forensic controversy, courtroom drama - and one of the boldest (and riskiest) gambits we’ve ever seen in true crime.

Nicole disappeared on 6 October 1995. Her bike was found in a river that same day. Her body was discovered nearly two months later in woodland. She had been brutally attacked. The investigation stalled. Suspects were arrested and cleared. Tips poured in. And then… nothing. For over 15 years.

Until her stepbrother did something extraordinary.

And after 25 years, someone was finally held accountable.

If you enjoy the episode, please rate, review and share — it genuinely helps more than you know.

And we’d love to know:

Would you ever falsely confess if it meant catching the real killer?

Sources

• Killing of Nicole van den Hurk – Wikipedia

• All That’s Interesting – Nicole van den Hurk’s Murder Went Cold

• NL Times court coverage (2015–2018)

• Daily Express interview with Andy van den Hurk

• Case notes and trial reporting

On the morning of 5 July 1995, gunshots shattered the calm at 1 Snoopy Place in Santa Rosa, California, the office complex of Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts. Instead of gentle beagle wisdom and existential children, the lawn outside the studio became a crime scene when Ronald “Ron” Nelson, Schulz’s long-time business manager and licensing powerhouse, was shot by his wife of nearly three decades, Shirley Ann Nelson. What unfolded was not just an act of shocking workplace violence, but the spectacular implosion of a marriage, an affair with a younger colleague, and a very 90s courtroom battle over whether this was calculated attempted murder or a tragic “crime of the heart” .

The case left lingering questions: how much should emotional devastation mitigate attempted murder? How much weight should victim forgiveness carry? And why did the narrative of a “broken-hearted” older wife resonate so strongly with jurors? We explore the bizarre collision of cartoon innocence and adult catastrophe - proof that even at Snoopy HQ, life is rarely black and white… even if the comic strip is .

• Ramon G. McLeod, “Charles Schulz’s Manager Shot,” San Francisco Chronicle (July 6, 1995)

• “Shooting suspect arraigned at hospital,” San Francisco Chronicle (July 1995)

• “Wife free on bail in alleged murder try,” News-Times / SF Examiner wire (Nov 10, 1995)

• “Mistrial called in ‘Peanuts’ manager’s shooting,” San Francisco Chronicle (May 30, 1996)

• “Plea Bargain in ‘Peanuts’ Shooting Case,” San Francisco Chronicle (Feb 19, 1997)

• “Woman Who Shot Spouse Is Sentenced,” San Francisco Chronicle (Apr 17, 1997)

• Press Democrat archives (Aug 1995 onwards)

• Jake Rossen, “The Attempted Murder at Peanuts Headquarters,” Mental Floss (2016)

• “Shirley Ann Nelson’s Peanuts Murder-Suicide Attempt,” Oxygen Crime News (2022)

Sources

On a spring night in 1987, private investigator Daniel Morgan was murdered in the car park of a South London pub. What followed wasn’t just a homicide investigation, it became a decades-long saga involving five police inquiries, collapsed trials, allegations of corruption, and one of the most damning independent reports ever published about the Metropolitan Police . 

As detectives chased suspects, arrested associates, and built cases that repeatedly fell apart, something more troubling began to emerge. The story widened beyond one violent crime into uncomfortable questions about police integrity, tabloid journalism, and institutional self-protection . 

This episode isn’t just about what happened in a pub car park, it’s about what happens when institutions close ranks. It’s gripping, frustrating, and at moments so chaotic it almost defies belief. Almost.

• Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Report (2021)

• The Guardian – “Daniel Morgan murder: inquiry brands Met police ‘institutionally corrupt’”

• The Guardian – “Daniel Morgan: a timeline of key events”

• The Guardian – “Jonathan Rees: private investigator who ran empire of tabloid corruption”

• The Guardian – “Murder trial collapse exposes News of the World links to police corruption”

• The Guardian – “Daniel Morgan: Met to reportedly pay family £2m over ‘corrupt’ investigation”

• The Independent – “Daniel Morgan murder: What happened in the case of the murdered private detective?”

Sources

We head to Melbourne for one of Australia’s strangest and most disturbing true crime cases - the murder of millionaire Peter Shellard.

Shellard was wealthy, eccentric, litigious, and openly antagonistic toward almost everyone around him. He lived in a sprawling heritage mansion, feuded endlessly with neighbours, and seemed to enjoy pushing boundaries just to watch things burn - sometimes literally.

But his death wasn’t the result of one of his many vendettas.

It came from much closer to home.

Sources 

• ABC News (2007) – Partner found guilty of murdering millionaire

• ABC News (2007) – 18 years jail for car dealer murder

• ABC News (2010) – Court overturns murder conviction

• Brisbane Times (2007) – De facto wife of millionaire jailed for his murder

• NZ Herald / News.com.au (2017) – Greed, vengeance and death in Australian millionaire’s mansion

• 9Honey / Nine News (2017) – The bondage-loving millionaire murdered for his fortune

• Deadly Women (2011), Season 5, Episode: “Love to Death”

• Casefile Podcast

• https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jun/21/spite-buildings-when-human-grudges-get-architectural-in-pictures

Dee takes Isla on a truly bonkers journey into wartime espionage, where the British government decided the best way to win a major strategic battle was to weaponise a dead body - with the enthusiastic help of history’s most famous forensic pathologist.

Yes, this episode is about Operation Mincemeat - the WWII intelligence plot so unhinged it involved:

• A corpse with a fake life

• Love letters, overdraft notices, and an engagement ring receipt

• A submarine

• A mildly disappointed dad

• And Bernard Spilsbury, applying forensic science not to solve a crime… but to commit the perfect lie

If you’ve listened to the podcast before, you already know Spilsbury - Dr Crippen, Brides in the Bath, forensic icon, and occasional menace.

Here, Spilsbury was asked one key question:

“Bernard, could we make a poisoned corpse look like it drowned… convincingly enough to fool the Nazis?”

Reader, he said yes.

He used forensic science, not to catch a killer, but to gaslight an entire enemy state.

Sources 

• Hektoen International – “Forensic Medicine and Sir Bernard Spilsbury” 

• NPR: Operation Mincemeat film review The National Archives 

• Imperial War Museums

• MI5

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission

• BBC History 

• History Today 

• Smithsonian Magazine