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EVANS SKINNER CRIME ARCHIVE

True Crime

Delia Balmer

Living With A Serial Killer

Ebury Press (October 2017)

Balmer Living With A Serial KillerWhen Delia Balmer entered into a relationship with the attentive John Sweeney, she had no idea he was a serial killer.

At first he was caring but over the course of their relationship he became violent and controlling. On more than one occasion he held Delia hostage and tortured her. Chillingly, he also confessed to the murder of his previous girlfriend. After one serious assault, Sweeney was released on bail, and left her in the utmost fear knowing that he would return to finish her off. After a final frenzied attack leaving Delia on the brink of death, Sweeney went on the run. Astonishingly, it would take the police six years to capture and convict Sweeney of multiple murders


William Beadle

Jack the Ripper Unmasked

John Blake Publishing ( 2009)

The highly respected crime historian and Chairman of The Whitechapel Society builds a compelling case for identifying horsemeat butcher, William Bury, as Jack the Ripper.  Bury came to live in Whitechapel in 1887, a year before the killings of five prostitutes.  The murder and mutilation of his own wife, a former prostitute, bore many of the hallmarks of the Ripper’s modus operandi.


Paul Begg and John Bennett

The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper

Penguin (November 2013)

In this comprehensive account of the Whitechapel murders, leading crime historian, Paul Begg, establishes all the essential and verifiable information available on the case, and explores the myth of Jack the Ripper in literature, theatre, film and in our culture. His meticulous research illuminates the desperate physical and social conditions in the East End during the 1880s, ideal for the killer’s purposes. He details the real lives of the murdered women, and why they were selected to be victims; examines the evidence against the known suspects; and assesses the opinions of senior policemen at the time on the killer’s identity.


Paul Begg and John Bennett

Jack the Ripper

CSI: Whitechapel

André Deutsch ( 2012)

Illustrated by Jaakko Luukanen

Includes over 30 new CGI artworks recreating the crime scenes in stunning detail

Begg & Bennett Jack the Ripper CSI WhitechapelA brilliant visual CGI concept, backed up with expert analysis, which allows the reader to experience all the locations and physical circumstances of the five Ripper murders, exactly as the victims, the witnesses, the police and the Ripper himself would have done, a century and a quarter ago.


Paul Begg, Keith Skinner and Martin Fido

The Complete Jack the Ripper A to Z

The ultimate guide to the ripper mystery

John Blake Publishing ( 2010)

Quite simply, this is the Jack the Ripper “bible”, the indispensable book of reference written in an easily accessed alphabetical format by three renowned authorities on the case, and utterly dependable on every detail and aspect of it.


James Carnac

The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper

A recently discovered manuscript written in 1929

Bantam Press ( 2012)

Carnc The Autobiography of Jack  the RipperThis fascinating manuscript from 1929 purports to be written by James Carnac, confessing to being Jack the Ripper.  It is unique for being the earliest known account of a serial killer’s crimes to be written in the first-person.  The manuscript was discovered by Alan Hicken amongst the many items, which he had acquired for his TV, Radio and Toy Museum in Montacute, Somerset, from the family of the illustrator and children’s author, Sydney Hulme Beaman, now chiefly remembered for his Toytown stories, featuring Larry the Lamb.  The text is an original and compelling narrative.  If the Whitechapel murderer is not its actual author, he is almost certainly its principal source of information on the crimes.


John Clarke

Costa Killer

The true story of the return of the Holloway Strangler

Constable & Robinson ( 2005)

A teenage girl was found dead in 2003 on the Costa del Sol having gone missing on the night of a local fiesta. Her murder bore remarkable similarities to that of another teenage girl nearby four years previously, and the Spanish police slowly groped towards the awful possibility that they were dealing with a serial killer.  The author obtained exclusive interviews with all those closely involved for this in-depth investigation of the case.


Russell Edwards

Naming Jack The Ripper

Sidgwick & Jackson (September 2014)

Edwards Naming Jack the RipperBringing together ground-breaking forensic discoveries – including vital DNA evidence – and gripping historical detective work, Naming Jack the Ripper constructs the first truly convincing case for identifying the world’s most notorious serial killer.

In 2007, businessman Russell Edwards bought a shawl believed to have been left beside the body of the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. He knew that, if genuine, the shawl would be the only piece of crime scene evidence still in existence. It was the start of an extraordinary seven-year quest for Russell as he sought to authenticate the shawl and learn its secrets. He had no idea that this journey would take him so far.

After undergoing extensive forensic testing by one of the country’s top scientists, the shawl was not only shown to be genuine, and stained with Catherine Eddowes’ blood, but in a massive breakthrough the killer’s DNA was also discovered – DNA that would allow Russell to finally put a name to Jack the Ripper . . .


Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow

Jack the Ripper

Scotland Yard Investigates

Sutton Publishing ( 2006)

Two highly esteemed Ripper authorities, both former police officers, have applied their professional perspectives and techniques to uncover clues that had remained undetected since 1888.


Stewart P. Evans

Executioner

The chronicles of James Berry,Victorian hangman

Sutton Publishing ( 2004)

Evans-ExecutionerBased on previously unpublished material, Stewart Evans has written a richly detailed biography of the dedicated and meticulous Victorian hangman, who executed over 140 men and women.


Keith Skinner and Stewart P. Evans

Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel Murders

The true story through contemporary documents

Public Records Office ( 2002)

Sixteen key documents held in The National Archives have been selected and faithfully reproduced for a dossier forming a publication of great appeal and usefulness to students and general readers alike.


Keith Skinner and Stewart P. Evans

Jack the Ripper

Letters From Hell

Sutton Publishing ( 2001)

Evans-Skinner-Letters-Fron-HellA stunning colour-illustrated book, which reproduces and comments on every letter in The National Archives purporting to have been written by the famous serial killer.


Keith Skinner and Stewart P. Evans

The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook

An illustrated encyclopedia

Constable & Robinson ( 2000)

Evans & Skinner The Ultimate Jack The Ripper SourcebookAn invaluable reference book, which brings together in one volume all the primary sources relating to the Whitechapel murders – official records, pathologists’ reports, witness statements, extracts from police notebooks, and the entire contents of the Scotland Yard files, covering the formal investigations in 1888 and the years that followed.


Penny Farmer

Dead In The Water

Bringing down my brother’s killer after his 38 years on the run

John Blake Publishing (August 2018)

Dead in the Water

This is the true and horrifying account of the brutal torture and murder of the author’s brother and his long-time girlfriend forty years ago. In July 1978, two bodies were found in the sea off the coast of Guatemala, and proved to be the remains of Dr Chris Farmer and his lawyer girlfriend, Peta Frampton, young graduates, aged twenty-five and twenty-four, from Greater Manchester. After suffering a three-day ordeal in which they were tortured, they were then thrown overboard while still alive from the yacht on which they had been crewing, their bodies weighted down with heavy iron engine parts and their heads covered in plastic bags. For nearly forty years, no one was charged with these savage murders, even though the names of the yacht, the Justin B, and its owner, a Californian named Silas Duane Boston, were known.

But this is also the story of how Chris’s sister, journalist Penny Farmer, and her family, tracked down the killer and assembled the evidence against him, leading to the arrest of Boston in California in December 2016. By now in his seventies he was charged with two counts of maritime murder. He pleaded not guilty, but among the evidence that Chris Farmer’s family, the police forces in both the UK and the USA, as well as the FBI and Interpol, had so patiently collected, was the shocking eyewitness testimony of both of Boston’s two sons who, aged thirteen and twelve, had been present when the murders took place.

Regrettably, Boston will now never face justice, for he effectively took his own life in prison in April 2017. But for the families of Chris and Peta, they have at least the satisfaction of knowing that, through their own efforts over many years, this serial killer did not escape being made to face his crimes.


Freddie Foreman and Tony Lambrianou

with Carol Clerk

Getting It Straight

Villains talking

Sidgwick & Jackson ( 2001)

Foreman & Lambrianou Getting It StraightCarol Clerk persuaded two of the Kray Twins’ most formidable and best known henchmen to get together and talk candidly about old times.  Freddie Foreman, often referred to as the Krays’ ‘Managing Director’, and Tony Lambrianou, who disposed of the body of Jack The Hat McVitie after Reg Kray had murdered him, take a chilling, but fascinating walk down the memory lane of 60s gangland.


Stephen Fulcher

Catching a Serial Killer

My hunt for murderer Christopher Halliwell

Ebury Press (June 2017)

Fulcher Catching A Serial KillerOn the evening of Saturday, 19 March 2011, D.S. Stephen Fulcher receives a life-changing call that thrusts him into a race against time to save missing 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan, who was last seen at a nightclub in Swindon. Steve knows from experience that he has a small window of time to find Sian alive, but his hopes are quickly dashed when his investigation leads him to Christopher Halliwell.

Following the investigation as it develops hour-by-hour, Steve’s gripping inside story of the cat-and-mouse situation that ensues shows how he hunted down Halliwell – his number-one suspect – which led him to the discovery of Sian’s body and another victim, Becky Godden-Edwards, who had been missing since 2002.

Catching a Serial Killer is a thrilling, devastating and absorbing look at a real-life murder case and potentially one of the UK’s most prolific serial killers.


John 'The Neck' Houchin

The Guv’nor and Me

My Life with Lenny McLean

Ebury Press (January 2021)

Houchin The Guv'nor and MeDon’t cross The Neck.

As the right-hand man to ‘The Guv’nor’ himself, Lenny McLean, John ‘The Neck’ Houchin is a living legend and is now telling his story for the first time. John trained daily with Lenny in the gym to achieve his huge bulk and neck, all 23 inches of it, required to frighten the hell out of troublemakers. As the enforcers for the Krays and the Richardsons, they worked together regularly over many years ‘sorting out’ whatever needed sorting. These are the mean streets of London back when swift justice as well as fearless loyalty were the order of the day.

A new insider take from one of the most notorious characters of the time, this book is full of chippy dialogue, gangster banter, the biggest brawls, old school honour codes and pithy reflection on the changing times – from the hard men to the high life.


Muriel Jakubait

with Monica Weller

Ruth Ellis

My sister’s secret life

Constable & Robinson ( 2005)

Jakubait Ruth EllisIn 1955, Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, was found guilty of murdering her boyfriend, David Blakely.  Ruth’s sister, Muriel Jakubait, tells us that behind Ruth’s glamorous lifestyle, there was childhood abuse and cruel manipulation.  In the shadows was Ruth’s jealous other lover, the controlling and duplicitous MI5 operative, Desmond Cussen.  It was Cussen, who taught Ruth how to shoot and clean guns, plied her with alcohol, supplied her with the fateful weapon and drove her to the Hampstead pub, where Blakely was drinking.  Ruth Ellis is a powerful story of deadly deception at the height of the Cold War.


Reg Kray

with Peter Gerrard

Reggie Kray’s East End Stories

The lost memoirs of the gangland legend

Sphere ( 2010)

Kray East End StoriesThe manuscript, rediscovered ten years after Reg Kray’s death from cancer in 2000, is his memoir of his East End childhood in Bethnal Green, his days as a semi-pro boxer, and the forming of friendships, which would endure through to the Kray Twins’ reign of terror in the 1960s and beyond.


Reg Kray

A Way of Life

Over thirty years of blood, sweat and tears

Sidgwick & Jackson ( 2000)

Kray A Way of LifeReg Kray was prison royalty.  The sun shone on those he befriended, but other less fortunate inmates caught a shower.  As he was reaching the end of his life, he wrote an account of his 30 plus years of incarceration in Category A prisons.  Both touching and tough, it stands as a unique documentary of life in Britain’s most secure jails.


Roberta Kray

Reg Kray

A Man Apart

Sidgwick & Jackson ( 2002)

Kray A Man ApartIn Reg Kray: A Man Apart, Reg’s widow Roberta writes frankly about the man she knew so well.  Drawing on previously unseen documents, including letters and prison medical and officers’ reports, she describes the problems he faced and overcame,as well as the reactions of the authorities to one of the longest-serving Category A prisoners in the country.  Roberta sheds new light on his personality, his conflict with Ron, and his first marriage to Frances.  She also details her own relationship with Reg, from their first meeting in 1996 to their marriage in prison, and the trauma of his dying from cancer in October 2000.


Carol Ann Lee

Something Wicked

The Lives, Crimes and Deaths of the Pendle Witches

John Blake (July 2024)

Lee Something WickedOn 20 August 1612, ten people from Pendle were executed before a vast crowd at Lancaster’s Gallows Hill. The condemned and their associates had endured six months of accusations, imprisonment and torture; their treatment was such that one of the group died in Lancaster Castle’s dungeons, while awaiting trial.

Today, a thriving tourism industry exists in and around Pendle, the former home of the so-called witches, yet virtually everything we know about the case originates from a single source: Thomas Potts’ Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, hurriedly published in 1613 and distinctly skewed in favour of the prosecution. Until now…

Sunday Times bestselling author Carol Ann Lee brings an entirely fresh perspective to the story by approaching it as true crime. Having worked in the genre for more than a decade, her research leads to revelatory discoveries, transforming our knowledge of those shadowy figures behind ill-famed names, and the terrible events that befell them.

After four centuries of superstition and surmise, the two central, warring families – each headed by a fiercely independent widow working as ‘cunning women’ – emerge fully formed, as the book uncovers the reality of their lives and their alleged crimes before exploring the trial and executions.

Along the way, we uncover the truth behind some of the story’s most enduring mysteries: the legend of Malkin Tower and the final resting place of the Pendle witches.
This is a ground-breaking book that will take the reader on a spellbinding journey into the dark heart of England’s largest and most notorious witch trial.


Carol Ann Lee

A Passion For Poison

The Extraordinary Crimes of Graham Young

John Blake (August 2021)

Lee A Passion For Poison‘The whole story is so terrible. You will be disgusted and amazed.’
Graham Young, confessing his crimes to detectives

There are few criminal cases more astonishing yet less well-known than that of Graham Young. A quintessentially British crime story, it involves two sensational trials, murders both certain and probable, a clutch of forgiving relatives, and scores of surviving victims.

A Passion for Poison tells the absorbing life of master poisoner, Graham Young, who killed many tens of people in a murderous career, which began as a 13 year-old schoolboy in a North-west London suburb, with the murder of his step-mother in 1960 before culminating in four further life sentences in 1971.

Best-selling true crime writer, Carol Ann Lee takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through suburban streets with which we are all familiar, but where the commonplace – dull, even – soon becomes oppressively sinister. Set against the backdrop of modern Britain, from post-war austerity to the gloom and glam of the 1970s, it sheds light on a rapidly changing society and a gruesome British true crime story.


Carol Ann Lee and Peter Howse

The Pottery Cottage Murders

The terrifying true story of an escaped prisoner and the family he held hostage

Robinson (March 2020)

Lee Howse The Pottery Cottage MurdersFor three days Billy Hughes played psychological games with Gill Moran and her family, while secretly murdering them one by one. Blizzards hampered the police manhunt, but they learned where the dangerous criminal was hiding and closed in on the cottage. A desperate car chase ensued, ending with a shoot-out and the killer’s death. There was just one survivor.

The plot for a great crime novel? No, it all actually happened in January 1977.

The Pottery Cottage Murders is a gripping, fast-paced account of a criminal case that reads like fiction but is terrifyingly true. What took place at a family home on the Derbyshire moors in 1977 made the name Pottery Cottage synonymous with horror: an address briefly as infamous as 112 Ocean Avenue in the US town of Amityville, where a young man had murdered his entire family three years earlier, and the home of married killers Fred and Rosemary West on Cromwell Street in Gloucester.

Afterwards, the determination of sole survivor Gill Moran to prevent any written or dramatic accounts of the case saw ‘Pottery Cottage’ largely vanish from public consciousness, yet those events were important milestones in the history of British crime.  At last, the real story has been told by Carol Ann Lee and her co-author, Peter Howse, the former Chief Inspector, who bravely saved Gill’s life over forty years earlier, as Hughes held her hostage in the final shoot-out on the moors.


Carol Ann Lee

Somebody’s Mother, Somebody’s Daughter

True Stories From Victims and Survivors of the Yorkshire Ripper

Michael O'Mara (March 2019)

Lee Somebody's Mother Somebody's DaughterMuch has been written about the brutal crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and – thirty-five years after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of thirteen women– scarcely a week goes by without some mention of him in the media.

In any story featuring Sutcliffe, however, his victims are incidental, often reduced to a tableau of nameless faces. But each woman was much more than the manner of her death, and in Somebody’s Mother, Somebody’s Daughter, Carol Ann Lee tells, for the first time, the stories of those women who came into Sutcliffe’s murderous orbit, restoring their individuality to them and giving a voice to their families, including the twenty-three children whom he left motherless.

Based on previously unpublished material and fresh, first-hand interviews the book examines the Yorkshire Ripper story from a new perspective: focusing on the women and putting the reader in a similar position to those who lived through that time. The killer, although we know his identity, remains a shadowy figure throughout, present only as the perpetrator of the attacks.

By talking to survivors and their families, and to the families of the murdered women, Carol Ann Lee gets to the core truths of their lives and experiences, not only at the hands of Sutcliffe but also with the Yorkshire Police and their crass and ham-fisted handling of the case, where the women were put into two categories: prostitutes and non-prostitutes. In this book they are, simply, women, and all have moving backstories.

The grim reality is that not enough has changed within society to make the angle this book takes on the Yorkshire Ripper case a purely historical one. Recent news stories have shown that women and girls who come forward to report serious crimes of a sexual nature are often judged as harshly – and often more so – than the men who have wronged them. The Rochdale sex abuse scandal, the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, and the US President’s deplorable comments about women are vivid reminders that those in positions of power regard women as second class citizens. At the same time, the discussions arising from these recent stories, and much of the reporting, show that women are judged today as much on their preferences, habits and appearance as they were at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper attacks. The son of Wilma McCann, Sutcliffe’s first known murder victim, told the author, ‘We still have a very long way to go’ and in that regard he is correct.


Carol Ann Lee

The Murders at White House Farm

Jeremy Bamber and the killing of his family. The definitive investigation

Sidgwick & Jackson (July 2015)

Lee The Murders at White House Farm PaperbackAs the media destroyed Sheila’s reputation, the behaviour of her brother Jeremy was raising suspicions in his horrified relatives. Had he committed the murders in order to inherit from his wealthy parents? Dramatic new evidence suggested he had, and he was convicted the following year. He has always protested his innocence.

Drawing on extensive new research, including correspondence with Jeremy Bamber, Carol Ann Lee describes the years of rising tension in the family that culminated in the murders and takes us through the twists and turns of the investigation and trial. Scrupulously fair, The Murders at White House Farm is an absorbing portrait of a family, a time and place, and a gripping account of one of Britain’s most notorious crimes.


John Lee and Rita Smith

with Peter Gerrard

Inside The Kray Family

The Twins’ cousins tell their story for the first time

Carlton ( 2001)

Rita Smith and Jon Lee grew up alongside their notorious cousins, Reg and Ron Kray.  Joe actually lived under the same roof as Reg, Ron, older brother Charlie and their tempestuous parents.  The authors have never before publicly spoken about their family, but within these pages they share their thoughts and personal memories, along with a wealth of Kray family photographs.


Keith Skinner, Seth Linder and Caroline Morris

Ripper Diary

The Inside Story

Sutton Publishing ( 2003)

The Diary of Jack the Ripper purporting to be a manuscript written in 1888 by a Liverpool cotton merchant, James Maybrick, who confesses to the crimes of Jack the Ripper, was a sensational bestseller in 1993. At the time, The Sunday Times tried to expose it as a modern hoax. Yet, despite extensive enquiries and research during the past 20 years, no conclusive proof has yet been offered to identify an alternative author of the Diary, nor has any reliable evidence come to light to explain how or why it was written. Ripper Diary is an intriguing, compelling and fiercely objective investigation of the Diary’s origins and story.


Lenny McLean

with Peter Gerrard

The Guv’nor Tapes

John Blake Publishing ( 2007)

McLean The Guv'nor TapesBareknuckle fighter and East End legend Lenny McLean sat down for months talking to Peter Gerrard to write one of the best-selling books of all-time, The Guv’nor.  This companion to it, contains riveting conversations from the original tapes, raw and unedited.


Paddy Monaghan

with Peter Gerrard

Street Fighting Man

John Blake Publishing ( 2008)

Foreword by Mohammed Ali

A bareknuckle fighter in the same league as Lenny McLean and Roy Shaw, Monaghan has an unbroken record of 114 fights.  Muhammed Ali had this to say about the author: “Paddy and I have been friends since the early 1960s.  He has a great story to tell, and he knows it.  He has written from the heart.”


James Moore

Murder by Numbers

Fascinating Figures behind the World’s Worst Crimes

The History Press (January 2018)
Moore Murder by NumbersWhat is the connection between the number 13 and Jack the Ripper? Why was the number 18 crucial in catching Acid Bath murderer John George Haigh? And what is so puzzling about the number 340 in the chilling case of the Zodiac killer? The answers to all these questions and many more are revealed in a unique, number-crunching history of the ultimate crime. James Moore’s Murder by Numbers tells the story of murder through the centuries in an entirely new way … through the key digits involved. Each entry starts with a number and leads into a different aspect of murder, be it a fascinating angle to a case or revealing insights into murder methods, punishments and, of course, the chilling figures behind the most notorious killers from our past. From the grizzly death toll of the world’s worst serial killer to your own odds of being murdered, this guide will appeal to the connoisseur of true crime and the casual reader alike.

Alan Moss and Keith Skinner

Scotland Yard’s History of Crime in 100 Objects

The History Press (October 2015)

Moss Skinner Scotland Yard's History of Crime in 100 ObjectsExplore Britain’s dark criminal history through the fascinating objects that have been hidden away in the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard, a collection that, although world famous, is so sensitive it has never before been opened to the public. Each object tells its own story: the briefcase with a concealed syringe owned by the notorious Kray twins; the gun Ruth Ellis used to murder her lover David Blakely; a burnt-out computer from the Glasgow airport car bomb; a picture from the property of serial killer Dennis Nilsen of the grisly drain that was blocked with human body parts; and the gun that Edward Oxford fired at Queen Victoria on 10 June 1840 in a failed assassination attempt. This is an absorbing, shocking and sometimes gruesome journey through 100 objects of criminal history, some of which have never before seen the light of day. Peer within to experience a unique insight into the crimes and criminals that have passed through Scotland Yard.


Alan Moss and Keith Skinner

The Victorian Detective

Shire Publications (August 2013)

Commissioned for the Shire Library series, The Victorian Detective follows the trail of crime investigation from the earliest days before detectives were employed by police forces to the advent of fingerprint science at the very end of Victoria’s reign, and includes profiles on the important detectives of the era like Jonathan Whicher and Frederick Abberline.


Alan Moss and Keith Skinner

The Scotland Yard Files

Milestones in crime detection

The National Archives ( 2006)

The inside story of Scotland Yard’s landmark cases and the groundbreaking techniques that solved them, from DNA to ballistics, fingerprints to Identikit.  Science and detective skill battle with criminal ingenuity in these dramatic, real-life events.


Laurie O’Leary

Ronnie Kray

A man among men

Headline ( 2001)

Foreword by Barbara Windsor

Laurie O’Leary knew the Krays since childhood, and remained Ronnie’s closest friend throughout his life.  Recollecting his wild times with the Kray gang, he describes the colourful characters who made up the Krays’ ever-changing circle of friends and enemies, and reveals the private side of the complex and troubled Ron Kray: how he reacted to being certified insane after a nervous breakdown in 1958, and how he coped with being a homosexual in a hard man’s world.


Marnie Palmer

with Tom Morgan

Goldfinger and Me

Bullets, bullion and betrayal: John Palmer’s true story

The History Press (August 2018)

Palmer Morgan Goldfinger and MeJohn ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer was a multi-millionaire kingpin of the British underworld, who would go on to mastermind a criminal empire to dwarf any crook of his generation. Palmer hit the big time in 1983 with the Brink’s-Mat gold bullion raid, netting £500 million in today’s money for himself and Kenneth Noye – the biggest heist in UK criminal history at the time. While murders and lethal accidents befell at least 20 accomplices and police officers connected to the raid, Palmer somehow remained unscathed. His luck finally ran out on 24 June 2015 when he was shot six times by an assassin. The killer remains unknown and, until now, so too did most of Palmer’s secrets. Few gangsters have attracted as many newspaper column inches in recent decades, but only one woman saw it all from the start and lives to tell the tale. In Goldfinger and Me, his wife Marnie lifts the lid on Palmer’s rise from a deprived childhood in Birmingham to a life of yachts, private jets, helicopters, fast cars, cocaine addiction and infidelity. His criminal exploits in Tenerife as well as his links to the Hatton Garden jewellery heist are also laid bare in this book.


Allan Starkie

A Date With Death

The fatal transformation of Jane Andrews, royal confidante turned killer

Mainstream Publishing ( 2001)

Starkie A Date With DeathThe author, a member of the Duchess of York’s inner circle, was intimate with her dresser, Jane Andrews.  He tracks Andrews from her modest working class roots in Grimsby, catapulted into a jet-setting high life, and leading inexorably to the night when she plunged a nine-inch blade into the heart of her boyfriend, wealthy and popular Thomas Cressman.  Starkie’s story is of passion and fury, which ultimately unhinged ‘Lady Jane’ and drove her to murder.


Paul Stickler

The Long Silence

The Story of James Hanratty and the A6 Murder by Valerie Storie, the Woman who Lived to Tell the Tale

The History Press (August 2021)

Stickler The Long Silence22-year-old Valerie Storie and her fiancé, 36-year-old Michael Gregsten, were the victims of gunman, James Hanratty, 60 years ago in the notorious ‘A6 Murder’. After a 5-hour ordeal, ending in a lay-by on the A6 in Bedfordshire, Michael was shot dead; and Valerie was raped, shot and left for dead. She survived, but was paralysed and in a wheelchair until her death in 2016. In 1962, Hanratty became one of the last men in the UK to be hanged, so unleashing 40 years of fierce and passionate debate, as many were convinced of his innocence. Valerie, however, was never in any doubt, and easily picked out Hanratty in an identity parade. She always intended to write a book, to which end she had secretly over the years drafted its contents, written hundreds of notes, and made numerous tape recordings. Yet for over 50 years she gave no interviews, despite persistent media pressure to do so. The Long Silence is, in essence, Valerie’s posthumous autobiography, explaining for the first time every explicit detail of those ‘cat and mouse’ five hours, as Michael and Valerie tried on 22 occasions to deter and thwart the apparently indecisive Hanratty.


Neil R. Storey

The Dracula Secrets

Jack the Ripper and the darkest sources of Bram Stoker

The History Press ( 2012)

Storey The Dracula SecretsThough nine years separate the Jack the Ripper murders and the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897, academic historian, Neil Storey, has discovered many fascinating and hitherto unknown links between Stoker’s circle of literary and theatrical friends and one of the key police suspects for the Whitechapel murders.


Bob Taylor

Crimebuster

Inside the minds of Britain’s most evil criminals

Piatkus ( 2002)

The former head of operations in the National Crime Squad, Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Taylor, has an unprecedented 100% detection and conviction record.  His cases include a respectable suburban man with a deadly shoe fetish and the cunning and resourceful murderer of Julie Dart, Michael Sams.  The author takes us behind the scenes of detecting these and many more intriguing crimes during his distinguished career.


Monica Weller

Injured Parties

Solving the Murder of Dr Helen Davidson

The History Press (May 2016)

Weller Injured Parties On 9 November 1966, popular GP Dr Helen Davidson was battered to death in dense woodland while birdwatching and exercising her dog a few miles from her Buckinghamshire home. Her body was found the next day, her eyes having been pushed into her skull.

‘She had binoculars round her neck, spied illicit lovers, was spotted, and one or both of them killed her,’ surmised Detective Chief Superintendent Jack ‘Razor’ Williams of New Scotland Yard. He had received fifty police commendations in his career, yet not one for a murder enquiry. Unsurprisingly, within weeks the police operation was wound down, Williams retired, and another cold case hit the statistics.

Fifty years later, amateur sleuth and author Monica Weller set about solving the murder – without the help of the prohibited files. As she sifted the evidence, a number of suspects and sinister motives began to emerge; it was clear it was not a random killing after all. Weller uncovered secret passions, deep jealousies, unusual relationships and a victim with a dark past. Her persistence and dedication were dramatically rewarded when she uncovered the identity of the murderer – revealed here for the first time.


Wynne Weston-Davies

The Real Mary Kelly

Jack the Ripper’s fifth victim and the identity of the man that killed her

Blink Publishing (August 2015)

Weston-Davies The Real Mary KellyMany researchers have tried over the decades to discover Mary Jane Kelly’s true identity. She was the final and most brutally murdered victim of Jack the Ripper, but almost nothing is known about her family or her earlier life. In this thrilling book, author, qualified surgeon and Mary’s great-nephew, Wynne Weston-Davies, explores the inscrutable circumstances behind the Ripper’s fifth and final victim and how the elusive life of Mary Jane Kelly is wholly intertwined with the mystery of her legendary killer.


Ronnie Knight, John Knight and Det. Supt. Peter Wilton

with Pete Sawyer

Gotcha

The untold story of Britain’s biggest cash robbery

Sidgwick & Jackson ( 2002)

Knight GotchaIn this extraordinary book, the Knight brothers, Ronnie (formerly married to Barbara Windsor) and John, reveal how they planned and executed Britain’s biggest ever cash robbery, lifting a cool £6 million in 1983 from a supposedly impregnable Security Express depot in Shoreditch.  Their co-author is none less than Detective Superintendent Peter Wilton, the cop in charge of the investigation.