True Crime with Elli Mac

On 6 February 2018, in the Govan area of Glasgow, 47-year-old Julie Reilly was captured on CCTV inside an Aldi supermarket. Julie was a mother of four, known by those around her as a caring and trusting woman.

After leaving the store, Julie disappeared. When days passed without any contact, her family reported her missing.

Then, two months later, the investigation took a shocking turn. Human remains were discovered.

Two thigh bones were found in different locations across Glasgow, and DNA testing confirmed they belonged to Julie Reilly.

But the rest of her body was still missing. What had happened to Julie? Who had done this to her? And would investigators ever find the rest of her?

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On the evening of March nineteenth, 2013, Ashlee Smith was halfway through her shift at Pizza Hut when her phone rang.

Just hours earlier, she had walked out the door after leaving her two young children in the care of her sixteen-year-old boyfriend, Dylan Schumaker.

At that time, both boys were unharmed. There were no bruises. No signs of distress. Nothing to suggest that anything was wrong.

Now, on the other end of the line, Dylan’s mother was telling Ashlee she needed to come home immediately — that an ambulance was already on the way for her toddler son.

Her twenty-three-month-old son, Austin Smith, was in critical condition.

By the time she reached the house, an ambulance was already pulling away, rushing Austin to hospital without her.

What had unfolded during those few short hours inside the home — and would Austin survive?

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00:00 Case 1 - Karissa Boudreau

19:50 Case 2 - Amy Hebert

45:32 Case 3 - Garnett Spears

01:09:37 Case 4 - Rekha Kumari-Baker

01:23:23 Case 5 - Jailyn Candelario

01:52:27 Case 6 - Patricia Ripley

02:07:45 Case 7 - Joshlin Smith

02:50:43 Case 8 - Ayesha Ali

03:18:44 Case 9 - Naomi Hill

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When a 911 call came in at 12:34 a.m. on October 4th, 2012, from seventeen-year-old Jake Evans in Aledo, the dispatcher wasn’t met with panic. She was met with calm.

On the other end of the line, Jake, speaking clearly, admitted to the unthinkable. He told her he had just shot his mother. And his sister.

How could someone so young sound so composed after committing such violence? What could possibly lead a seventeen-year-old to turn a gun on his own family?

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When 85-year-old William and 63-year-old Patricia Wycherley vanished from their home in the quiet village of Mansfield, no one seemed to notice or question their disappearance. Their bills were being paid on time, the house appeared to be looked after, and their family continued to receive postcards signed by the couple, which assured everyone they were alive and well.

Fifteen years passed without any suspicion, and eventually, the Wycherleys’ house at 2 Blenheim Close was sold to a new family, who moved in unaware of the secrets hidden beneath their feet.

It wasn’t until William Wycherley’s 100th birthday that questions began to surface. When an attempt was made to organize a congratulatory telegram from the Queen—a tradition for centenarians in the UK—there was no response from William. This prompted further investigation into the couple’s whereabouts, leading to the shocking revelation that the Wycherleys had never left their home.

Their bodies had been buried in their own back garden, where they remained hidden for over a decade and a half.

Who had murdered this elderly couple? And who was pretending to be them, sending letters out to loved ones, saying they were alive and well?

​​This is a difficult case to tell. To protect the victims, no names are used, and some identifying details are withheld. Even so, it is important to tell this story carefully and truthfully, because what happened did not occur in isolation. This case exposed profound failures across child protection, healthcare, and safeguarding systems—and led to significant changes in how such cases are now handled. In its aftermath, multiple independent inquiries were launched to examine how authorities missed years of warning signs.

The case became known as the Sheffield case, and was widely labelled by the media as the “British Fritzl.” The comparison was drawn to the Austrian case of Josef Fritzl, which had come to light only months earlier and shocked the world. In that case, it was revealed that Fritzl had held his own daughter, Elisabeth, captive for 24 years, resulting in the birth of seven children. The Fritzl case revealed unimaginable abuse hidden behind the façade of an ordinary family home, forcing the public to confront the reality that extreme harm can exist undetected for decades.

The similarities prompted outrage, disbelief, and urgent questions: how could something like this happen again—here, in the UK?

At the centre of this case was the conviction of a 54-year-old Englishman. For more than 25 years, he evaded detection by authorities. He fathered seven surviving children.

What makes this case particularly harrowing is not only the scale of the abuse but the number of times it could have been stopped.

This is the story of how it wasn’t.

00:00 Case 1 - Mary Bell

17:40 Case 2 - Tyler Hadley

38:47 Case 3 - Alex & Derek King

01:03:22 Case 4 - Eric Smith

01:35:38 Case 5 - Brenda Spencer

02:03:49 Case 6 - Zander Lyda

02:38:01 Case 7 - Noah Crooks

03:03:38 Case 8 - Corey Breininger

​​On a quiet September afternoon in 2003, in a small New Zealand town, Jeanna stood waiting at the bus stop for her children. The doors opened, but only one child stepped off. Storm was there. Six-year-old Coral was not. Coral-Ellen Burrows had not come home from school. As it would soon emerge, she had not even made it there that morning.

What followed were ten days of unanswered questions and growing dread. A town stopped everything to search. Farmland, creeks, roadsides, and bush were scoured. Helicopters circled overhead. Volunteers walked until their boots were soaked through. Then came the first chilling discovery. Coral’s backpack, found floating in a creek, had her lunch still inside.

Then, ten days after Coral vanished, she was found, but not in the way anyone had prayed for.

What happened to Coral-Ellen Burrows? Where had she been that day? And who took her?

In Christchurch, on the South Island of New Zealand, 22 August 2011, 15-year-old schoolboy, Hayden Miles, disappeared after drinking with older people in the city. That night, he never came home.

For 111 days, police searched while his family waited for answers. Then the tragic discovery was made.

Hayden had been killed, dismembered, and sealed inside bin bags. His body parts were found buried in Christchurch cemeteries and at the very location where he had last been spending time.

So how did a vulnerable teenager vanish without a trace? Who were the people he was with that night—and what really happened behind closed doors?

It was the final days of the year, that quiet stretch between Christmas and New Year’s when the city usually slowed down. Instead, Edmonton was about to face one of the worst crimes in its history.

On the evening of Monday, December 29, 2014, police were called to a home in southwest Edmonton for a weapons complaint. Inside, they found a woman dead. At first, it appeared to be a single homicide.

But hours later, officers were sent to a second house in north Edmonton to check on the occupants. When they entered, they found seven more bodies inside the home, including two young children.

The person believed to be responsible was missing.

As police worked through the night, they were left with urgent questions—where was the suspect, what had happened in the hours leading up to the killings, and why had so many lives been taken?