So the World Cup is over and the painful memories of England's semi-final defeat against Argentina will stay with us for years. Where did you watch the game? I was lucky enough to watch it in a bar in the Caribbean. In today's episode I explain how detectives in two cold case murders are hoping that two England games in the Euro 96 tournament 30 years ago will jog the public's memory and help solve the crimes. 

In this episode I speak to Simon Michael, a former barrister turned novelist, who is sometimes known as "Britain's John Grisham". We had a fascinating discussion about the differences between true crime and crime fiction and Simon - who has written the Charles Holborne series of novels - explained how many of his books were based on real criminal trials. We also talk about plotting novels and about whether AI will replace human authors.

This is the second part of my interview with Thomas Herdman, the Canadian businessman who has been waiting for more than five years to go on trial in France accused of setting up Sky ECC to help organised criminals do their deals in secret. He tells me the real reason why the FBI wanted to close down Sky ECC and tells me why France's legal establishment has cast him as the digital bogeyman and needs to find him guilty in order to "save face".  

In this episode I have an exclusive interview with Thomas Herdman, who is awaiting trial in France four years after he was arrested and accused of being behind an international criminal enterprise at the encrypted app Sky ECC. Herdman tells me he is innocent and is the victim of France's war against privacy. During the French Revolution, Cardinal Richelieu said: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." Herdman tells me: “That’s what’s happening to me.” 

Last week Jamie Varley was given a whole life sentence for the murder of Preston Davey, a 13-month-old boy he was in the process of adopting with his boyfriend John McGowan-Fazakerley. I covered the trial, which heard shocking evidence that the little boy was sexually abused for weeks or months prior to his death. In this episode I tell you the full story, including the moving words of Preston's biological mother, but I have deliberately omitted the most obscene and disturbing evidence.  

This is an exclusive interview with Zac Law, from Yorkshire, who tells me how he discovered one day that one of his American friends on the app Discord, Travis Dyer (pictured), had killed himself and then later found out that three other people he knew on the app - including "Jimmy" - had played an active part in encouraging Travis to shoot himself and had even watched it on a videocall. Dylan Phelan - who was "Jimmy" - was jailed for six years on Friday (12 June) at Leeds Crown Court for encouraging Travis's suicide. 

I have been following the machinations of the Turkish and Kurdish underworld in London for almost a quarter of a century and this seems like the perfect time to tell the story. The reason I am doing this episode now is because of the conviction (on Friday 5 June) of Beytullah Gunduz, one of the leaders of the Hackney Turks - one of two violent feuding gangs in London. The other being the Tottenham Turks. So come with me as I explain the bitter history behind this feud and tell you about the recent extortion trial which ended with a guilty verdict for Gunduz.

I have been following the machinations of the Turkish and Kurdish underworld in London for almost a quarter of a century and this seems like the perfect time to tell the story. The reason I am doing this episode now is because of the conviction (on Friday 5 June) of Beytullah Gunduz, one of the leaders of the Hackney Turks - one of two violent feuding gangs in London. The other being the Tottenham Turks. So come with me as I explain the bitter history behind this feud and tell you about the recent extortion trial which ended with a guilty verdict for Gunduz.

Nicola Tallant, top Irish crime journalist and author of Groomed: Coercion, Control and a Cold-blooded Murder, joins me to discuss the horrific murder of Katie Simpson, a 21-year-old showjumper in Northern Ireland who fell into the clutches of Jonathan Cresswell, a horse trainer (pictured) who was also her brother-in-law. This is the government review she mentions in the episode: https://www.justice-ni.gov.uk/publications/katie-simpson-review 

Polly Rippon, a former court reporter with the Sheffield Star who now teaches journalism at Sheffield University, joins me to discuss the art of court reporting and why it is so important. We talk about why trials are covered differently than they were in the past, why it can be dangerous for untrained people to cover cases, and some of the social issues which have only been unearthed by court reporting. This, by the way, is the Sheffield case I mention during the first part of our talk. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1190207.stm