The Metropolitan Police of the mid-twentieth century, in particular The Flying Squad and Obscene Publications Squad, has been described as 'the most routinely corrupt organisation in London'. Larger-than-life characters such as Ken Drury and Alfred 'Wicked Bill' Moody routinely fraternised with underworld figures, paid off witnesses and struck dodgy deals to get their man – regardless of whether he was innocent or guilty. And the problem went far beyond a couple of 'bent' ...

They were an elite group of renegade Fleet Street crime reporters covering the most notorious British crime between the mid-1930s and the mid-1960s. It was an era in which murder dominated the front and inside pages of the newspapers – the 'golden age' of tabloid crime. Members of the Murder Gang knew one another well. They drank together in the same Fleet Street pubs, but they were also ruthlessly competitive in pursuit of the latest scoop. It was said that when ...

Neil Root is the author of seven non-fiction books and has twice been longlisted for CWA Gold Dagger Award. He has also written for a variety of outlets including BBC News Magazine, Press Gazette, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.

On December 2nd, 2006, the naked body of a woman was discovered in woodland just south of the Suffolk satellite town of Ipswich. Over the next ten days, four further bodies were found. All were naked - prostitutes who worked in Ipswich's red light district - and all five had been strangled. This work presents the story of the Ipswich Killer.

In March 1999, just months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson was assassinated when a bomb exploded under her car. The attack was claimed by a loyalist paramilitary group but, over the last ten years, there have been several government enquiries into Nelson's murder. The latest one, which has been ongoing since 2005, has dramatically alleged that there may have been some security service collusion in the killing. Rosemary Nelson came to prom...

Political idealism? Financial reward? The thrill of the chase? What drives a person to risk their life by entering the deadly world of high-level espionage?A unique investigation of the most important cases of the twentieth century, this exploration of the world’s most glamorous and dangerous job – including information newly released under the Freedom of Information Act – will keep you enthralled until the last page. Find out the dark secrets of:• Sidney Reilly, considered...

The last time that anyone heard from 35-year-old Claudia Lawrence, a chef at the University of York, was when she sent a text message to a friend on 18 March 2009 at 8.23 p.m. She has never been heard from or seen again, and her disappearance is a mystery that endures to this day.What happened to Claudia that early spring evening - or was it early the following morning on her way to work? There had been nothing abnormal about her behaviour before she vanished, and there were no sig...

Murder has transfixed the popular press for centuries. But it was only in the second half of the twentieth century that murder began saturating front pages and making these monsters what we today recognise as modern celebrities.It was three serial killers, caught and executed in the few years after the end of the Second World War, who precipitated a level of public furore never seen before. Neville Heath, a 'charming' sadist who killed two women; John George Haigh, the Acid Bath Ki...

Peter Rachman dominated housing in post-war London - he owned vast swathes in the west of the city, accumulating huge wealth as his tenants lived in squalor and fear of his hard-nosed collectors and enforcers. He was also at the heart of the city's murky, post-war underworld.In Slumlord, Neil Root pulls back the curtain on this seedy world to paint a portrait of a fascinating man whose path intersected with figures as diverse as Christine Keeler, the glamorous society girl at the h...

Heather Barnett's mutilated body was discovered by her son and daughter on their return home from school in Bournemouth one November afternoon. The police quickly ascertained that the murder was premeditated and meticulously planned down to the last macabre detail: the killer had not left one single piece of DNA evidence -- even the bloody footprints from a distinct pair of trainers did not lead out of the house but ended in the front room, without any further trace. As a bizarre and sicke...

On Sunday 15 November 2009, detectives hunting one of the most prolific sex offenders in Britain finally made an arrest; 17 years after the first terrifying attack took place. Delroy Grant, the 'Night Stalker' first struck in 1992, raping an 84-year-old woman in her flat in Croydon. What followed was a sickening series of horrifying sexual assaults on elderly victims across south London, Kent and Surrey. All the victims lived alone and were woken in the night by a man dressed in black, his...

More true crime cases that are the most evil of the evil, where the perpetrators have been sent to prison without the possibility of parole – ‘never to be released’.