List of major crimes in the United Kingdom
This is a list of major crimes in the United Kingdom that received significant media coverage or led to changes in legislation.
List of crimes
Legally each deliberate and unlawful killing of a human being is murder;[1] there are no crimes of assassination or serial killing as such, for example.
Assassinations
See also the category assassinated British People. .
| Date | Name | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1812 | The assassination of Spencer Perceval | London, England | Shot by John Bellingham. Only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated. |
| 1978 | The assassination of Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif | London, England | Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif was Prime Minister of Iraq in 1968. He was assassinated on 9 July 1978, in London. His gunman was quickly captured and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1979; Naif was reportedly killed on the order of Saddam Hussein. |
| 1978 | The assassination of Georgi Markov | London, England | Markov was a Bulgarian dissident writer assassinated on 11 September 1978, in London. A micro-pellet containing ricin was fired into his leg via an umbrella wielded by someone with probable links to the Bulgarian secret police. |
| 1985 | The assassination of Gérard Hoarau | London, England | Hoarau was an exiled opposition leader from the Seychelles and was head of the Mouvement Pour La Resistance (MPR) that sought the peaceful overthrow of the France-Albert René regime which had come to power on 5 June 1977 in a coup d'état. He was assassinated on 29 November 1985, in London. |
| 2006 | The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko | London, England | Litvinenko was a Russian dissident and ex-agent, poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 on 1 November 2006, and who died 22 days later. His killer(s) remain unknown, but a link with Russia's Federal Security Service is suspected. |
Child killings
19th century
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | Eastbourne manslaughter | 1 | Eastbourne, England | 15-year-old Reginald Cancellor died at the hands of his teacher, Thomas Hopley. Hopley used corporal punishment with the stated intention of overcoming what he perceived as stubbornness on Cancellor's part, but instead beat the boy to death. The case became an important legal precedent regarding the use of corporal punishment in schools. |
| 1867 | The murder of Fanny Adams | 1 | Alton, Hampshire, England | Fanny Adams was a young English girl murdered by solicitor's clerk Frederick Baker in Alton, Hampshire. |
1940s-1990s
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1946 | Murder of Muriel Drinkwater | 1 | Swansea, Wales | Muriel Drinkwater, 12, was raped and murdered in the woods in Penllergaer, Swansea. The case became known as the Little Red Riding Hood murder. In 2008, a DNA profile of the suspect was extracted from her clothes, possibly the oldest one in the world to be successfully extracted in a murder investigation.[2] |
| 1953 | Teddington towpath murders | 2 | Notting Hill, London, England | Two girls went missing in Teddington and were found the next day, having been raped and murdered. After the country's biggest manhunt at the time, Alfred Charles Whiteway was arrested and charged. He was found guilty at his subsequent trial and hanged. The case was described at the time as "one of Scotland Yard's most notable triumphs in a century".[3] |
| 1968 | Murder of Roy Tutill | 1 | Surrey, England | Roy Tutill, 14, was raped and murdered on his way home from school. The case went unsolved for 33 years, until Brian Field was convicted of the crime after DNA evidence surfaced. In 2001, Field was sentenced to life in prison.[4] |
| 1968 | The Mary Bell case | 2 | Newcastle upon Tyne, England | Mary Flora Bell was convicted in December 1968 of the manslaughter of two boys, Martin Brown (aged 4) and Brian Howe (aged 3) earlier that year. Bell was ten years old at the time of one of the killings, and eleven at the time of the other. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to a special approved school, being released from custody in 1980. |
| 1973 | The David McGreavy case | 3 | Worcester, England | David McGreavy was a lodger in the home of his friends, Clive and Elsie Ralph. While minding the Ralphs' three small children, Paul (age 4), Dawn (age 2) and Samantha (age 8 months), McGreavy murdered the children. He then mutilated their bodies with a pickaxe and impaled them outside on the spikes of a wrought-iron fence. McGreavy, called the "Monster of Worcester" in the press, later pleaded guilty to all three murders and was sentenced to multiple life terms with a minimum term of 20 years. |
| 1978 | The Carl Bridgewater Case | 1 | Wordsley, West Midlands, England | The body of 13-year-old paperboy Carl Bridgewater was found in the house of a local elderly couple who had been out for the day. It was presumed by police that Bridgewater had disturbed a burglar while delivering a newspaper to their home and was dragged into their living room where he was killed with a shotgun blast to the head. The following year, a group of men - widely referred to in the press as the Bridgewater Four - were convicted of the crime, three for murder and a fourth for manslaughter. The defendant convicted of manslaughter subsequently died in prison but the three convicted of murder were released in 1997 when their convictions were quashed on appeal. Nobody else has ever been charged. |
| 1981 | The Murder of Karen Price (Little Miss Nobody) | 1 | Cardiff, Wales | Karen Price was a 15-year-old Welsh murder victim who disappeared in 1981. After the discovery of her body in 1989, British facial reconstruction artist Richard Neave used her skull to create a model of her physical appearance. The reconstruction and the matching of DNA in the body to that of Price's parents allowed her body to be identified. The case was cited as one of the first instances in which DNA technology was used in this way. The police later concluded that Price had run away from home and turned to prostitution. In 1991, Idris Ali and Alan Charlton, who were alleged to have managed her solicitation as a prostitute, were charged with her murder. Ali's charge was eventually reduced to manslaughter, and he was released in 1994. Charlton is still serving a life sentence. |
| 1983 | The murder of Colette Aram | 1 | Keyworth, Nottinghamshire England | Colette Aram, a 16-year-old trainee hairdresser, was abducted, raped and strangled as she walked from her home to her boyfriend's house in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, on 30 October 1983. The killer, Paul Stewart Hutchinson, was finally brought to justice more than 25 years later, receiving a life sentence for murder in January 2010. |
| 1984 | The murder of Mark Tildesley | 1 | Wokingham, Berkshire, England | Seven-year-old Mark Tildesley disappeared while visiting a funfair in Wokingham, Berkshire, on the evening of 1 June 1984. He was lured away from the fair and his bicycle was found chained to railings nearby.[5] In 1990 it emerged that Mark had been abducted, drugged, tortured, raped and murdered by a London-based paedophile gang on the night he disappeared. However, his body has never been found.[5][6] |
| 1988 | The murder of Sharona Joseph | 1 | Borehamwood, Hertfordshire England | Twelve-year-old Ciaran Collins lured two-year-old Sharona Joseph away from her sister's birthday party, suffocated, murdered and then sexually molested her. At the time of sentencing, Collins was the youngest person every convicted of murder in Britain. |
| 1993 | The murder of James Bulger | 1 | Walton, Merseyside, England | Two-year-old James Patrick Bulger was killed in February 1993 by two 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, after they lured him away from a shopping centre to a nearby railway line where they tortured and beat him before leaving him on a railway track to die of his injuries. After the discovery of Bulger's body two days later, Venables and Thompson were found guilty of murder in November that year and sentenced to be detained indefinitely. They spent eight years in custody before being released on life licence in 2001. Venables was recalled to prison in early 2010 for breaching his licence conditions, having been caught possessing child pornography. |
| 1994 | The murder of Richard Everitt | 1 | London, England | On 13 August 1994, 15-year-old Richard Everitt was stabbed to death in London in a racially motivated attack. Everitt's neighbourhood, Somers Town, had been the site of ethnic tensions, and although he was not involved in gangs, he was murdered by a gang of British Bangladeshis who were seeking revenge on another White British boy. The murderer was not apprehended, as members of the gang fled to Bangladesh. Badrul Miah and Showat Akbar were tried in 1995 as the ringleaders of the gang and were given life sentences, with minimum terms of 12 years and three years in custody respectively.[7] |
| 1994 | The murder of Daniel Handley | 1 | London, England | Nine-year-old Daniel Handley was lured away from his East London home in October 1994 and murdered by Timothy Morss and his partner Brett Tyler. They were sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1996 after admitting the murder. They had sexually abused Handley before murdering him and abandoning his body near Bristol, where it was found five months later. The trial judge described the pair as "vultures" and recommended they should never be set free. After their trial, it was revealed that both had convictions for sexual offences against children. When the pair (along with two others), received 50-year tariffs imposed by Home Secretary David Blunkett in 2002, this was overturned within 24 hours by the European Court of Human Rights. |
| 1996 | The Michael Stone Killings | 2 | Surrey, England | Michael Stone was convicted in October 1998 of the July 1996 murders of Lin Russell and her six-year-old daughter Megan, who were killed in a hammer attack. He was also convicted of attempting to murder Mrs Russell's nine-year-old daughter Josie, who suffered serious head injuries. He has continued to assert his innocence since his conviction. His original conviction was overturned on appeal but a second trial in 2002 resulted in another guilty verdict after another prisoner claimed that Stone had confessed to the killings while on remand in jail. His most recent appeal, in 2004, also failed. |
| 1997 | The murder of Billie-Jo Jenkins | 1 | Hastings, East Sussex, England | 13-year-old Billie-Jo Jenkins was murdered on 15 February 1997 at the home where she lived with her foster parents. Her foster father, Siôn Jenkins, was charged with the murder and later convicted, but maintained his innocence. An appeal in 1999 against his conviction failed, but after a second appeal in August 2004 it was quashed by a court as unsafe and he was released on bail pending a retrial. The juries in two subsequent retrials were unable to reach verdicts, and a not guilty verdict was recorded in 2006. Nobody else has been arrested since his acquittal and the case remains unsolved. |
2000s-present
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | The murder of Victoria Climbié | 1 | London, England | 8-year-old Ivorian girl, Victoria Adjo Climbié (2 November 1991 – 25 February 2000), was tortured and murdered by her guardians (including her aunt), who were found guilty of murder and jailed for life the following year. Her death led to a public inquiry and produced major changes in child protection policies in England. |
| 2000 | The murder of Sarah Payne | 1 | East Preston, West Sussex, England | Sarah Payne, a seven-year-old girl from Surrey, was abducted and murdered by convicted paedophile Roy Whiting in Littlehampton, West Sussex, in July 2000. Her body was found 15 miles away just over two weeks later. Whiting was found guilty of her murder in December 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment with the judge saying that it was a rare case in which a life sentence should mean life. The trial judge's recommendation was later replaced by a 50-year minimum term by the Home Office, just before politicians were stripped of their powers to decide when or if a life sentence prisoner could apply for parole. Whiting's sentence has since been set at a 40-year minimum term by the High Court, which means that Whiting cannot be considered for parole until the age of 82. At the end of Whiting's murder trial, it had been revealed that he already had a previous conviction for abduction and indecent assault on an eight-year-old girl in 1995, and that he was on the sex offenders register. |
| 2000 | The murder of Damilola Taylor | 1 | Peckham, London, England | While on his way from Peckham Library, 10-year-old Nigerian-born Damilola Taylor was found with a cut to his left thigh and bled to death within a half hour before arriving at a local hospital. Four teenagers were tried for murder in 2002 but cleared. A second trial in 2006 saw two other suspects - brothers Ricky and Gavin Preedie - found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison, but both were released within four years. |
| 2001 | The Torso in the Thames case | 1 | River Thames, London, England | The discovery of a human torso floating in the River Thames on 21 September 2001 was eventually revealed to be the remains of a recently arrived Nigerian boy, between the ages of four and seven. Although the child is thought to be a victim of a ritual killing, the London Metropolitan Police Service have yet to apprehend those responsible. The identity of the torso has never been established. |
| 2001 | The murder of Danielle Jones | 1 | East Tilbury, Essex, England | The conviction of 15-year-old Jones' uncle Stuart Campbell primarily relied upon forensic authorship analysis of text messages sent on the victim's mobile phone. Jones was last seen alive on 18 June 2001. Her body has never been found. Five months after her disappearance, police charged Campbell with murder. He was found guilty in December 2002 and sentenced to life imprisonment as well as 10 years for abduction. After the trial, controversy arose when it was revealed Campbell had prior convictions for indecent assault on other girls of similar ages. The use of forensic authorship analysis of text messages in the case provoked research into its use in other cases. Police also found bloodstained stockings, which had traces of DNA belonging to Campbell and his niece, in the loft of Campbell's house in Essex. |
| 2002 | The murder of Amanda Dowler | 1 | Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England | 13-year-old Amanda Dowler went missing on her journey home from school. Her body was discovered six months later in Yateley, Hampshire. The investigation gained national media coverage and was the largest investigation undertaken by Surrey police. Levi Bellfield, who had been convicted of two other murders and an attempted murder (all committed after Amanda's disappearance) in February 2008, was found guilty of the murder in June 2011 and received an additional life sentence. Shortly after Bellfield's trial, it was revealed that her mobile phone had been hacked by News of the World reporters a while after she went missing, and they had deleted text messages from her inbox, giving her parents false hope that she was still alive (it is believed that she died the same afternoon or evening that she went missing). These revelations, along with numerous other phone-hacking allegations, contributed to the newspaper's closure. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the News of the World, later awarded the Dowler family £3 million in compensation. |
| 2002 | The Soham murders | 2 | Soham, Cambridgeshire, England | Two ten-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, were murdered by local school caretaker Ian Huntley after luring them into his home on 4 August 2002. The search for the two girls was one of the longest undertaken by British authorities. Their bodies were found two weeks after their disappearance and Huntley was jailed for life for the murders in December 2003. In September 2005, his minimum term was set at 40 years by the High Court, meaning that he cannot be considered for parole until at least 2042 at the age of 68. His partner, Maxine Carr, had been found guilty of perverting the course of justice and received a prison sentence of three-and-a-half years. She was released under a new identity in May 2004. |
| 2003 | The murder of Jodi Jones | 1 | Dalkeith, Midlothian, Scotland | Jodi Jones was a 14-year-old girl who was murdered by her teenage boyfriend, Luke Mitchell. She was brutally attacked and stabbed. He was subsequently jailed for life. |
| 2004 | The murder of Kriss Donald | 1 | Glasgow, Scotland | Kriss Donald was a white 15-year-old boy abducted, tortured and murdered by an Asian gang in a racist attack. Daanish Zahid became the first person in Scotland to be convicted of racially motivated murder in relation to the attack. Imran Shahid, Zeeshan Shahid, and Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq were also given life sentences. Zahid Mohammed received a 5-year sentence for abduction. |
| 2007 | The Death of Baby P | 1 | London Borough of Haringey, North London, England | Peter Connelly (also known as "Baby P", "Child A" and "Baby Peter") was a 17-month-old boy who died in London after suffering more than 50 injuries over an eight-month period, during which he was repeatedly seen by Haringey Children's services and NHS health professionals. Baby P's real first name was revealed as "Peter" on the conclusion of a subsequent trial of the child's mother's boyfriend on a charge of raping a two-year-old. His full identity was revealed when his killers were named after the expiry of a court anonymity order on 10 August 2009. His mother has since been released from prison. The case caused shock and concern among the public and in Parliament, partly because of the magnitude of Peter's injuries, and because he lived in the London Borough of Haringey, North London, under the same child care authorities that had already failed ten years earlier in the case of Victoria Climbié. This had led to a public enquiry which resulted in measures being put in place in an effort to prevent similar cases happening. |
| 2007 | The murder of Rhys Jones | 1 | Liverpool, England | The murder of 11-year-old Rhys Milford Jones occurred on 22 August 2007 in Liverpool, England, when he was fatally shot in the neck. A local 18-year-old, Sean Mercer, received a life sentence for the murder in December 2008 and the trial judge recommended he should not be considered for parole for at least 22 years. |
| 2008 | The murder of Ben Kinsella | 1 | Islington, London, England | Ben Michael Kinsella, aged 16, was murdered by a gang of black teenagers in Islington, London after an argument in which he was described as "blameless". The significant media attention around his murder (the 17th stabbing death of a teenager in London during 2008) led to a series of anti-knife crime demonstrations, a raised profile for the government's anti-knife crime maxim "Operation Blunt 2", and a review and change of UK knife crime sentencing laws. The members of the gang were later jailed for life. His sister, Brooke Kinsella, an actress whose credits include a role in EastEnders, has since been at the centre of a media campaign against knife crime. |
| 2010 | The murder of Tia Rigg | 1 | Manchester, England | Tia Rigg was a 12-year-old girl who was murdered by her uncle, John Maden, who had an 'obsessive interest' in pornography depicting paedophilia, rape and torture. On 3 April 2010, Maden called Tia's mother on the pretext of having Tia come over to his house and babysit his 10-year-old daughter. When Tia arrived at Maden's home, he drugged her with Olanzapine, a powerful antipsychotic tranquilliser. He then inflicted a 'horrific catalogue of sexual injuries' on Tia before stabbing her in the stomach and strangling her with a ligature made from a guitar string. Maden then dialled 999 to admit the killing; when asked why he stated "because I felt like it". Arrested and charged with rape and murder, he pled guilty on 4 October 2010 and was sentenced to life and was told that, due to the sheer depravity of his crime and the agony and terror Tia must have suffered, he should never be released. |
| 2012 | The murder of Daniel Pelka | 1 | Coventry, West Midlands, England | Pełka, aged 4, died of a head injury on 3 March 2012. His mother, Magdalena Łuczak and her partner, Mariusz Krężołek, both Polish nationals, were found guilty of his murder in 2013 and jailed for life, with a minimum term of 30 years. Łuczak and Krężołek starved the child, beat him, locked him in a room, force-fed him salt and waterboarded him. He weighed only 1st 3lbs - a similar weight of a baby less than a year old - when he died. A serious case review was held, as Social Services failed to act sufficiently on complaints from individuals, including staff at Daniel Pelka's school, who were concerned that he was being deprived of food. Both Łuczak and Krężołek died in prison within three years of their conviction. |
| 2012 | The Allenton house fire | 6 | Allenton, Derby, Derbyshire, England | The Allenton house fire occurred on 11 May 2012 in 18 Victory Road, a residential street in Allenton, Derby, Derbyshire. Six siblings were killed in the fire. The children's parents, Mick and Mairead Philpott, were later arrested and charged with murder, along with their friend Paul Mosley. In December 2012 their charges were downgraded to manslaughter. On 2 April 2013, Mick Philpott and Paul Mosley were found guilty by unanimous verdicts, while Mairead Philpott was found guilty by majority verdict. Mosley was jailed for 11 years and the Philpotts both received life sentences. |
| 2012 | The murder of Tia Sharp | 1 | New Addington, London Borough of Croydon, England | Tia Sharp was a 12-year-old girl who was reported missing from the home of her grandmother, Christine Sharp, in New Addington, on 3 August 2012. When police discovered her body in the loft of the house seven days later, they arrested Christine Sharp and Stuart Hazell on suspicion of murder. Hazell was Christine Sharp's partner and a former boyfriend of Tia's mother, Natalie. Sharp was quickly eliminated from inquiries but Hazell was then charged with Tia's murder and five days into his trial at the Old Bailey the following year, changed his plea to guilty. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 38-year minimum term. It is believed that Hazell had become 'sexually fixated' with Tia, and that he smothered or strangled her when she said she was going to tell her mother after he tried to make sexual advances towards her. |
| 2012 | The murder of April Jones | 1 | Machynlleth, Powys, Wales | April Jones, a five-year-old girl from Machynlleth, Powys, Wales, disappeared on the evening of 1 October 2012, after being sighted willingly getting into a vehicle near her home. Her disappearance generated a large amount of press coverage, both nationally and internationally. Five days after she was last seen, a local man, Mark Bridger, was charged with April's abduction and murder. He was found guilty of all charges on 30 May 2013. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be released. April's body has never been found, but police found skull fragments and blood in Bridger's home, which was matched to April Jones and indicated that she had suffered "unsurvivable injuries" at the hands of 47-year-old Bridger. |
| 2014 | The murder of Breck Bednar | 1 | Grays, Essex, England | Breck Bednar was a 14-year-old boy who was murdered on 17 February 2014 in a flat at Rosebery Road in Grays, Essex. Lewis Daynes, 19, was due to stand trial at Chelmsford Crown Court on a charge of murder but admitted the offence before the jury was sworn. Daynes, a computer engineer, was believed to have met Bednar while playing online video games. In January 2015, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years. |
| 2014 | The murder of Alice Gross | 1 | Hanwell, London, England | Alice Gross was a 14-year-old girl from Hanwell, west London, who went missing on 28 August 2014. The search for her was the largest deployment of Metropolitan Police officers in a search operation since the 7 July 2005 London bombings, involving 600 officers from eight forces. Police subsequently identified Latvian immigrant Arnis Zaļkalns as the prime suspect. He went missing from Ealing, London, on 3 September. Gross' body was found in the River Brent on 30 September. Four days later, Zalkalns' body was found in dense woodland in Boston Manor Park. The cause of his death was hanging. It was revealed that he had a previous conviction for murder in Latvia. |
| 2015 | The murder of Becky Watts | 1 | Bristol, England | Rebecca 'Becky' Watts was a 16-year-old student from Crown Hill in the St. George area of Bristol, who went missing on 19 February 2015 and whose dismembered body was found on 2 March in Barton Court. |
| 2016 | The murder of Paige Doherty | 1 | Clydebank, West Dumbartonshire, Scotland | Paige Doherty was a 15-year-old student from Clydebank, Scotland who went missing on 19 March 2016. The search for Paige began after she failed to arrive at her weekend hairdressing job in Kirkintilloch, 12 miles away. Her body was found on the roadside near Glasgow's Great Western Road two days later. She had been stabbed 43 times in the head and neck and suffered more than 150 wounds. The last sighting of Paige was on CCTV at a deli shop in Clydebank, owned by John Leathem, who later admitted to murdering the teenager. Paige's mother, Pamela Munro, set up a charity in Paige's name to teach children self-defence. |
| 2018 | The murder of Alesha MacPhail | 1 | Rothesay, Bute, Scotland | Alesha MacPhail was a 6-year-old schoolgirl from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, Scotland who was reported missing from her grandparents home on the Isle of Bute at 6:25am on 2 July 2018. At the time of her disappearance, Alesha was staying with her father, Robert, as well as her grandparents, Calum and Angela MacPhail. It is claimed that Alesha's mother, Georgina Lochrane, 23, who could not be contacted immediately after Alesha went missing, found out about her daughters' disappearance and later death, on the social media platform Facebook. After three hours searching, Alesha's body was found in woodland on the site of an abandoned hotel, the Kyles of Bute Hydropathic Hotel, around 20 minutes walk from her grandparents' home. Police Scotland immediately urged local parents to be vigilant and to keep a close eye on their children after confirming that Alesha had been murdered. [8] On 5 July 2018, a 16-year-old was charged on suspicion of murder and rape at Greenock Sherriff Court. The motive for Alesha's death is unknown and the case is ongoing. [9] |
Individual murders
19th century
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1823 | The Radlett murder | 1 | Radlett, England | William Weare was shot and his throat cut by John Thurtell, the son of the mayor of Norwich. The body was disposed of in a pond in Elstree. 17 books were written about the murder in the following year. |
| 1840 | The murder of Lord William Russell | 1 | London, England | Russell's Swiss valet, François Courvoisier, murdered Russell after being accused of theft. Russell was the uncle of future prime minister Lord John Russell. A provincial doctor, Robert Blake Overton, wrote to the latter suggesting checking for fingerprints, but the suggestion, though followed up, did not lead to routine use of fingerprinting by the police for another 50 years.[10] |
| 1856 | The trial of William Palmer | 1+ | Rugeley, England | A doctor who was convicted of one murder and suspected of more in one of the most notorious cases of the 19th century. The Central Criminal Court Act 1856 was passed to allow him to have a fairer trial in London rather than in his home town. |
| 1886 | The Pimlico Mystery | 1 | Pimlico, London, England | Following the suspicious death of Thomas Edwin Bartlett, his wife Adelaide was charged with murder. It was found that Bartlett's stomach contained a fatal quantity of chloroform, although this had not caused any damage to his throat or windpipe. Adelaide Bartlett was later acquitted, possibly because the prosecution were unable to explain the death, or how she could have committed the crime. |
| 1897 | The murder of William Terriss | 1 | London, England | A well-known actor, Terriss was stabbed to death by a deranged fellow actor, Richard Archer Prince, outside the Adelphi Theatre, where Terriss was appearing. |
1900s-1940s
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1929 | The Podmore case | 1 | Southampton, England | During a murder investigation regarding the discovery of the body of Vivian Messiter, an insurance agent for the Wolf's Head Oil Company, pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury used early forensic techniques to conclusively prove guilt and convict William Henry Podmore. |
| 1931 | The Vera Page Case | 1 | Notting Hill, London, England | In yet another case investigated by Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the body of Vera Page was found after she had been raped and strangled. Although Percy Orlando Rush was named as a prime suspect, no one was ever charged with Page's murder. |
| 1934 | The Brighton trunk murders | 2 | Brighton, England | Two unrelated, although similar murders took place in Brighton. A dismembered woman was found in an unclaimed trunk at a local railway station in June 1934. A second body was discovered later that year, following the disappearance of local prostitute Violet Kaye. When police conducted a house-to-house search near the railway station, her body was found in a trunk in the possession of her boyfriend Tony Mancini. He had since fled the area, before being eventually apprehended. He was later found not guilty. |
| 1935 | The Francis Rattenbury murder | 1 | London, England | Rattenbury was murdered in his sitting room by blows to the head with a carpenter's mallet. His wife confessed, but chauffeur George Percy Stoner admitted to the housekeeper that it was actually he who had carried out the murder. |
| 1946 | The Thomas John Ley case (The Chalk Pit Murderer) | 1 | Wimbledon, London, England | While residing in London, former Australian politician Thomas John Ley abducted the supposed lover of his mistress, barman John McMain Mudie, with the help of two other men. They tortured him before dumping his body in a Surrey chalkpit. Ley and accomplice Lawrence John Smith were arrested soon after, and sentenced to death. Both men's sentences were commuted with Smith sentenced to life imprisonment, while Ley was declared insane and sent to Broadmoor Hospital, where he died within months. Investigators were able to amass substantial evidence among his belongings as well as forensic evidence to convict him. |
1950s-1990s
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1955 | The Ruth Ellis case | 1 | Hampstead, London, England | Ruth Ellis, a London nightclub manager, shot and killed her fiancé David Blakely outside a Hampstead public house on 10 April 1955. She surrendered to police upon their arrival. Despite evidence of the involvement of another lover, Desmond Cussen, she was tried and convicted of murder for which she would be the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom, later in 1955. |
| 1961 | The James Hanratty case (The A6 Murder) | 1 | Clophill, Bedfordshire, England | In August 1961, an unidentified man abducted scientist Michael Gregsten and his mistress Valerie Storie. The man forced them to drive him around suburban North London before having them stop at a lay-by on the A6 where he shot the pair. Storie survived the attack but was left paralysed. A police investigation led to the eventual arrest of car thief James Hanratty. Although later convicted of the murder, the Hanratty case has since been disputed. Hanratty was hanged in April 1962, one of the last people to be executed in Britain before the abolition of the death penalty three years later. |
| 1973 | The Stephen Downing case | 1 | Bakewell, Peak District, Central England | This case involved the conviction and imprisonment in 1974 of a 17-year-old council worker, Stephen Downing, for the murder of 32-year-old legal secretary, Wendy Sewell, in the town of Bakewell, Derbyshire the previous year. Downing served 27 years in prison before his conviction was overturned in 2002; he had been ineligible to apply for parole at an earlier stage as he had always denied the murder. The case is thought to be the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, and attracted worldwide media attention as the "Bakewell Tart" murder. |
| 1974 | The Lord Lucan case | 1 | London, England | Lord Lucan's nanny Sandra Rivett was found beaten to death in the basement of Lucan's London home. Lucan subsequently disappeared and was never found, despite a large-scale manhunt. He was officially identified as the murderer in an inquest in 1975 and declared dead in 1999, although his body has never been found and no facts about his supposed death have ever been established. |
| 1975 | The Murder of Lesley Molseed | 1 | Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England | Lesley Susan Molseed (born Lesley Susan Anderson) was an 11-year-old schoolgirl from Turf Hill, who was murdered on 5 October 1975 on Rishworth Moor between Rochdale and Ripponden in West Yorkshire. Stefan Ivan Kiszko, a 23-year-old local tax clerk of Ukrainian and Slovenian parentage, was wrongly convicted of her sexual assault and murder in 1976 and spent 16 years in prison before he was finally released in 1992. He died the following year, aged 41. The circumstances of his ordeal was described by one MP as "the worst miscarriage of justice of all time". Ronald Castree, a retired local taxi driver, was eventually found guilty of the crime on 12 November 2007 and jailed for life. |
| 1979 | The Murder of Teresa de Simone | 1 | Southampton, England | One of the longest cases of a miscarriage of justice in British history. A three-year police investigation resulted in the arrest of Sean Hodgson, a pathological liar who confessed to numerous crimes, including ones he could not have committed and crimes that did not appear to have happened. Hodgson was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of the murder in 1982. After serving 27 years he was exonerated and released in 2009. DNA analysis of semen samples from the original crime scene showed that they could not have been his. In 2009, on the basis of DNA from his exhumed body, police named a deceased man, David Lace, as the likely killer. Lace had confessed to police in 1983 that he had killed de Simone but officers refused to believe him. Lace committed suicide in 1988. |
| 1986 | The murder of Linda Cook | 1 | Portsmouth, England | Portsmouth barmaid Linda Cook was murdered in December 1986 and Michael Shirley, an 18-year-old Royal Navy sailor, was wrongly convicted of the crime. His conviction was eventually quashed in 2003 by the Court of Appeal after DNA recovered was proven not to be his. It was the first occasion in which the Criminal Cases Review Commission supported an appeal on the basis of newly available DNA evidence. Cook's murder remains unsolved. |
| 1991–1992 | The Michael Sams case | 1 | N/A | Michael Sams was a rapist, kidnapper, extortionist and murderer who murdered 18-year-old Leeds woman Julie Dart on 9 July 1991 and then kidnapped Birmingham estate agent Stephanie Slater on 22 January 1992, though he later let her go. In July 1993, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for Dart's murder and Slater's abduction. Sams had denied the charges in court but confessed to police in prison three days after he was found guilty. |
| 1992 | The Rachel Nickell murder case | 1 | Wimbledon Common, London England | Rachel Nickell was the victim of a sexual assault and murder on Wimbledon Common, London, on 15 July 1992, witnessed by her two-year-old son Alex. She was stabbed 49 times. On 18 December 2008, Robert Napper pleaded guilty to Nickell's manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Colin Stagg had originally been charged with the murder in August 1993 but cleared a year later. |
| 1992 | The Murder of Suzanne Capper | 1 | Moston, Manchester, England | 16-year-old Suzanne Jane Capper was kidnapped, imprisoned for seven days and tortured by six individuals. She was eventually driven out to a remote location by four of her captors, where she was stripped naked, covered in petrol and set alight. Despite horrific injuries, Capper was able to wave down a passing motorist for help. In hospital she was able to give the names of her six assailants and their addresses before falling into a coma. She died four days later. All the assailants were sentenced to long periods in jail, with the main perpetrators given life. |
| 1993 | The murder of Stephen Lawrence | 1 | Eltham, London, England | A Jamaican-born architecture student, Stephen Lawrence was attacked by a group of white males and stabbed to death while waiting for a bus in Eltham, south-east London. Although several people were arrested for the attack, none were brought to trial due to lack of evidence. Two local men in their thirties, who had both been teenagers at the time of the killing and were among those originally arrested, were eventually found guilty of the murder in January 2012 and jailed for life. |
| 1999 | The Jill Dando Murder | 1 | Fulham, West London, England | Jill Dando, a television presenter for the BBC and host of Crimewatch, was murdered by an unknown gunman outside her home in West London. After a high-profile investigation by the Metropolitan Police, neighbour Barry George was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2001. In August 2008 he was acquitted after the jury found the police's case too weakly founded. Nobody else has ever been charged in connection with the murder. |
2000s-
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | The Murder of Ross Parker | 1 | Peterborough, England | Ross Parker was a 17-year-old white male, murdered in an unprovoked racially motivated attack. The murder occurred 10 days after the September 11 attacks. Three men were all found guilty of his murder in unanimous verdicts and sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| 2003 | The Murder of Shafilea Ahmed | 1 | Great Sankey, Warrington, Cheshire, England | 17-year-old Shafilea Iftikhar Ahmed was murdered by her parents in an apparent honour killing. |
| 2005 | The Murder of Sally Anne Bowman | 1 | Croydon, South London, England | Sally Anne Bowman was violently murdered and raped near her home in Croydon, South London, just two weeks after her 18th birthday. Mark Dixie, who was arrested the following year following a DNA match, was found guilty of the murder in February 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 34 years. |
| 2006 | The Murder of Tom ap Rhys Pryce | 1 | Kensal Green, London, England | Thomas Mervyn "Tom" ap Rhys Pryce was a 31-year-old British lawyer who was robbed and murdered by two teenagers as he made his way home in Kensal Green, northwest London, on the evening of 12 January 2006. The two, Donnel Carty and Delano Brown, were jailed for life later that year. |
| 2006 | The Murder of Nisha Patel-Nasri | 1 | Wembley, North London, England | Nisha Patel-Nasri was a Metropolitan Police special constable and business owner who was stabbed to death outside her home in Wembley, north London on 11 May 2006. Her widower Fadi Nasri, alongside Roger Leslie and Jason Jones, were subsequently found guilty of her murder in May 2008. |
| 2007 | The Murder of Garry Newlove | 1 | Warrington, Cheshire, England | A 47-year-old sales manager, Newlove died after being beaten outside his Warrington home by a group of teenagers who were under the influence of alcohol. Former Chief Constable Peter Fahy called for the legal age of buying alcohol to increase to the age of 21 as a result of his murder. His widow Helen Newlove condemned the Government for failing to get to grips with youth disorder afterwards. Newlove had gone outside to confront a gang of youths who were vandalising his car. He died in hospital two days later. Three teenagers were found guilty of the murder and received life sentences with minimum terms of between 12 and 17 years in February 2008. |
| 2007 | The murder of Sophie Lancaster | 1 | Bacup, Rossendale, Lancashire, England | Sophie Lancaster was the victim of a brutal attack along with her boyfriend, Robert Maltby, while walking through Stubbylee Park in the Bacup area of Rossendale, Lancashire. She later died in hospital as a result of her injuries. The police said the attack may have been provoked by the couple wearing gothic fashion and being members of the goth subculture. Two teenagers were later sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. |
| 2008 | New Cross double murder | 2 | Sterling Gardens, New Cross in South East London, England | Two French research students, Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, were murdered in Sterling Gardens, New Cross in South East London. The victims, who were apparently playing computer games when attacked, were bound and stabbed more than 240 times. Dano Sonnex and Nigel Farmer were later found guilty of the murders and jailed for life. |
| 2010 | 2010 Northumbria Police manhunt | 2 | Northumberland, England | Moat, armed with a sawn-off shotgun, shot three people, his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart, her new partner Chris Brown, and police officer David Rathband, two days after his release from prison: Brown died, Stobbart was badly injured and Rathband left blinded. After six days on the run, Moat shot himself dead after a six hour standoff with police. Rathband later committed suicide. |
| 2010 | The Murder of Joanna Yeates | 1 | Bristol, England | Yeates went missing in December 2010 after an evening out with colleagues. Following intensive police enquiries, her body was discovered on Christmas Day 2010 in Failand, North Somerset. She had been strangled. The case dominated UK news coverage. The police initially arrested Yeates's landlord but Vincent Tabak, a 32-year-old Dutch neighbour of Yeates, was arrested in January 2011. He admitted manslaughter but this plea was rejected by the prosecution and the jury found him guilty of murder in October 2011 and he was jailed for life. |
| 2012 | The Murder of Gemma McCluskie | 1 | Regent's Canal, Hackney, London, England | McCluskie, an actress whose credits had included a minor role in EastEnders, went missing from her East London flat, where she lived with her brother Tony, on 1 March 2012. The headless torso of a woman was recovered from Regent's Canal in Hackney on 6 March, and was later identified as McCluskie. Her head was subsequently found that September. On 28 September 2012, Tony McCluskie pled guilty to his sister's manslaughter. However, he was later convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| 2013 | The Murder of Lee Rigby | 1 | Woolwich, London, England | On the afternoon of 22 May 2013, a British Army soldier, Drummer (Fusilier) Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was attacked and killed by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. Rigby was off duty and walking along Wellington Street when he was attacked by the two men, who ran him down with a car, then used knives and a cleaver to stab and hack him to death. Both are British of Nigerian descent, raised as Christians, who converted to Islam. On 19 December 2013, both men were found guilty of Rigby's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment the following February: Adebolajo was given a whole life order and Abebowale was ordered to serve at least 45 years in prison. |
| 2013 | The Murder of Jayden Parkinson | 1 | Didcot, England | 17-year-old Jayden Reeanna Parkinson was strangled to death by her boyfriend Ben Blakeley. She was pregnant with Blakeley's child. Blakeley was jailed for life.[11] |
| 2014 | The Murder of Ann Maguire | 1 | Leeds, England | The 61-year-old teacher was stabbed to death on 28 April 2014 while teaching a Spanish lesson at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds. The perpetrator, William "Will" Cornick, who was 15 years old when he committed the murder, was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years at Leeds Crown Court on 3 November 2014. |
| 2018 | The Murder of Steven Donaldson | 1 | Kirriemuir, Scotland | On 7 June 2018, the body of 27-year-old oil worker Steven Donaldson, from Arbroath, was found in the car park of the Loch of Kinnordy Nature Reserve near Kirriemuir, Angus, by dog walkers at around 5am. On 15 June, three people were charged with his murder; 23-year-old Callum Davidson, 23-year old Steven Alexander Dickie and 19-year-old Tasmin Glass, all from Kirriemuir and ex-pupils of Webster's High School. [12] The three are accused of arranging to meet Mr Donaldson at a play park in the Angus town "with the intention of assaulting him". It's claimed they repeatedly struck him on the head and body with unknown instruments "whereby he was incapacitated", then transported him to the nature reserve. The charge further alleges they repeatedly struck him on the head and body with a knife, baseball bat or similar instruments and repeatedly struck him on the head and neck with "an unknown heavy, bladed instrument" before setting fire to his car and Donaldson himself which ended in his death. [13] The Preliminary hearing was held at Glasgow High Court on Friday 12 October with all three defendants pleading not guilty and a trial date set for 1 April 2019 at Edinburgh High Court. Glass was granted bail at the hearing[14] a decision which has been met with anger and disappointment in the local area resulting in a Facebook page being set up seeking justice for Steven. [15] |
Killer medical and pseudo-medical staff
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1856–1865 | The Catherine Wilson murders | 1-7 | Kirkby, England | Nurse who was sentenced to death for killing one patient, but suspected of six other deaths. Described by the judge as "the greatest criminal that ever lived." 20,000 watched her hang at Newgate Gaol. |
| 1910 | The Hawley Harvey Crippen case | 1 | Holloway, London, England | Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American-born homeopath, poisoned his wife before fleeing the country with his mistress. However, due in part to the newly developed wireless communication, Crippen was apprehended by Scotland Yard detectives on board the SS Montrose shortly before its scheduled arrival in Quebec. |
| 1935 | The Buck Ruxton case | 2 | Lancaster, Lancashire, England | Buck Ruxton, also known as Buktyar Rustomji Ratanji Hakim, was an Indian-born British physician and executed murderer. Ruxton was the perpetrator of one of the UK's most publicised murders of the 1930s, which gripped the nation at the time. Ruxton murdered his wife Isabella "Belle" Kerr and their housemaid, Mary Jane Rogerson. The case is remembered now for the innovative forensic techniques employed in solving it. |
| 1991 | The Beverley Allitt murders (The Angel of Death) | 4 dead & 9 attempted murders | Lincolnshire, England | Beverley Gail Allitt, dubbed by the media as the 'Angel of Death', is a serial killer who murdered four children and injured nine others while working as a State Enrolled Nurse (SEN), on the children's ward of Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, between February and April 1991. Her main method of murder was to inject the child with potassium chloride (to cause cardiac arrest), or with insulin (to induce lethal hypoglycemia). She was sentenced to life imprisonment at her trial at Nottingham Crown Court in 1993 and is currently being held at Rampton Secure Hospital. |
| 1998 | The Harold Shipman murders (Doctor Death) | 250+ | Hyde, Tameside, England | Over a period of three decades, Dr. Harold Shipman murdered approximately 250 people around Greater Manchester and North Yorkshire between 1970 and his arrest in 1998 after he attempted to forge a new will in the name of one of his victims. He was found guilty of 15 murders at his trial in January 2000, and told by the trial judge that his life sentence would mean life. He committed suicide in prison in January 2004, 18 months after an inquiry concluded that he had killed over 200 people. |
| 2011 | The 2011 Stepping Hill Hospital poisoning incident | 22 | Stockport, Greater Manchester, England | A series of homicides at the Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, Greater Manchester, which began in July 2011 and were committed by Victorino Chua. |
Multiple murders
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1865 | The Edward William Pritchard case | 2(+) | Glasgow, Scotland | A doctor who was hanged for murdering his wife and mother-in-law by poisoning. He was also suspected of the murder of a servant but was never tried for it. |
| 1915 | The George Joseph Smith case (Brides in the Bath Murderer) | 3 | Leicester, East Midlands, England | George Joseph Smith, a con artist and polygamist, murdered three of his wives before being arrested and executed on 13 August 1915. |
| 1951–1952 | The John Thomas Straffen case | 3 | Bath, Somerset, Broadmoor, England | John Thomas Straffen who was the longest-serving prisoner in British legal history. He killed two young girls in the summer of 1951. He was found to be unfit to plead and committed to Broadmoor Hospital; during a brief escape in 1952 he killed again. This time he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Reprieved because of his mental state, he had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment and he remained in prison until his death more than 55 years later. |
| 1970–1974 | The Ronald Jebson Murders | 3 | Epping Forest Greater London. England | Ronald Jebson killed Susan Blatchford (11), and Gary Hanlon (12). Their bodies were discovered in a copse on Lippitts Hill, after they went missing from their homes in Enfield, north London, in March 1970. 30 years after the murders, Jebson confessed to the crimes; he was already serving a life sentence for the 1974 murder of 8-year-old Rosemary Papper. Jebson remained in prison until his death in April 2015. |
| 1985 | The White House Farm murders | 5 | Near Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England | The White House Farm murders took place near the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, on 7 August 1985, when Neville Bamber, a farmer and magistrate, his wife June, their adoptive daughter, Sheila Caffell, and her six-year-old twin sons, were shot and killed during the night inside the Bambers' farmhouse. After the murders, the ex-girlfriend of Neville and June's adoptive son, Jeremy Bamber — the only surviving member of the immediate family — told police that Bamber had implicated himself. The prosecution argued that, motivated by a large inheritance, he had killed the family and placed the gun in his unstable sister's hands to make it look like a murder-suicide, which the police had originally treated the crime as, and which had been widely reported in the media immediately afterwards. |
| 1993–2004 | The Peter Bryan case | 3 | East London, England | Peter Bryan is a cannibal who committed several murders between 1993 and 2004. |
| 2011 | The Ding Family murders | 4 | Wootton, Northamptonshire England | Four members of the Ding family, Professor Jifeng "Jeff" Ding, his wife Helen Chui and their daughters Xing and Alice, were found murdered at their home in Wootton at 6:00 pm on 1 May 2011. They were thought to have been murdered two days earlier between about 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm, 29 April 2011 — the day of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton and an additional Public Holiday. Anxiang Du, a businessman from Coventry who had been involved in a legal dispute with the Ding family, was named as the prime suspect in the case. Du fled the murder scene in the Ding's rented car; he drove to London and travelled to Paris by coach. He continued through France, Spain and finally to Morocco, prompting a worldwide manhunt. He lived in a partly built block of flats for 14 months before he was arrested and extradited to the UK. Du was tried at Northampton Crown Court in November 2013. He was found guilty of the murders and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 40 years. |
| 2014 | The Grindr Murders | 4 | Barking, Essex | Stephen John Port is a convicted serial rapist and serial killer, and is responsible for murdering at least four men and committing multiple rapes. Port received a life sentence with a whole life order on 25 November 2016. Police announced they are now investigating at least 58 deaths connected to the use of gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) in response to the Port case. |
Murdered police officers
| Date | Name | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1940 | The Death of Jack Avery | Hyde Park, London, England | War Reserve Constable Jack William Avery was a war reserve police officer who was murdered in Hyde Park, London, on 5 July 1940, having served less than one year with the Metropolitan Police Service. Avery was stabbed in the groin by Frank Stephen Cobbett, after Avery approached him having been advised by a member of the public that Cobbett was acting suspiciously. 42-year-old Cobbett, of no fixed address, was originally sentenced to death for murder, but after an appeal served fifteen years penal servitude for manslaughter instead. In 2007, Ian Blair, then Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, unveiled a memorial to Avery close to the place where he was attacked in Hyde Park. |
| 1952 | The Derek Bentley and Christopher Craig case | Croydon, Surrey, England | Derek Bentley and Christopher Craig were arrested by the Metropolitan Police following a shootout in which one police constable was killed and another wounded. Although Craig shot and killed the constable, his accomplice Derek Bentley was charged with the murder and hanged. |
| 1959 | The shooting of Detective Sergeant Raymond Purdy | Kensington London, England | German petty criminal Guenther Podola shot Purdy while fleeing arrest. Podola was the last man executed in Britain for killing a policeman. |
| 1966 | The Shepherd's Bush Murders | Shepherd's Bush, West London, England | Three plainclothes police officers of the Metropolitan Police's CID Division — Constables David Wombwell and Geoffrey Fox and Detective Sergeant Christopher Head — were killed while questioning three criminals parked near Wormwood Scrubs Prison. The three men, John Whitney, John Duddy and Harry Roberts were later arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Duddy remained in prison until his death in 1981, Whitney was paroled in 1991 but was murdered eight years later, and Roberts remained in prison for 48 years until he was finally released on parole in 2014. |
| 1969 | The Linwood bank robbery | Linwood, near Glasgow, Scotland | A bank robbery in Linwood, near Glasgow, where three police officers were shot in the aftermath (two fatally); two officers were later awarded George Medals. The lead robber, Howard Wilson, served 32 years in prison for the robbery, the murder of the two police officers and the attempted murder of the third; he was paroled in 2002. |
| 1971 | The death of Gerry Richardson | Blackpool, Lancashire, England | Gerald Irving Richardson, GC was a police officer in the Lancashire Constabulary and one of the highest-ranking officers to be murdered in the line of duty in Great Britain. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1972. |
| 1975 | The Murder of Stephen Tibble | West Kensington, London, England | 22-year-old PC Stephen Andrew Tibble, QPM, was fatally shot by Liam Quinn, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, during a chase through Central London on 26 February 1975. |
| 1981 | The Death of Kenneth Howorth | London, England | Kenneth Robert Howorth, GM, was a British explosives officer with the Metropolitan Police Service who was killed whilst attempting to defuse a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Oxford Street. |
| 1984 | The shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher | St. James's Square, London, England | WPC Yvonne Fletcher was one of 12 people hit by bullets fired from the Libyan embassy in London while she was policing a demonstration outside. She died on her way to hospital. The other 11 people who were hit survived. Nobody has ever been charged with her murder, but this crime prompted Britain to end its diplomatic links with Libya. |
| 1984 | The Murder of Brian Bishop | Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England | PC Brian John Bishop was shot in the head by an armed robber in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, on 22 August 1984. He died from his injuries five days later in a London hospital. |
| 1985 | The Murder of Keith Blakelock | Broadwater Farm, London, England | PC Keith Blakelock, a London Metropolitan Police constable, was killed on 6 October 1985 during rioting on the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, north London. Violence broke out after a local black woman died of heart failure during a police search of her home the previous day. It took place against a backdrop of unrest in several English cities, including Liverpool and other districts of London, and a breakdown of relations between the police and black communities. Three local black men including Winston Silcott were convicted of PC Blakelock's murder in 1987, but their convictions were quashed in 1991, although Silcott remained in prison for a further 12 years for another murder, which he claimed to have committed in self-defence. |
| 1993 | The Death of Hugh Moore | Bushey, Hertfordshire, England | Commander Hugh John Moore, QPM, of the City of London Police, died from heart failure on 4 December 1993, eleven days after a violent struggle with a man who he had attempted to arrest. |
| 1995 | The Death of Phillip Walters | Ilford, East London, England | PC Phillip John Walters, of the Metropolitan Police Service, was shot dead while investigating a domestic disturbance in Ilford, east London, on 18 April 1995. Walters responded to reports of a domestic disturbance at a flat in Empress Avenue, Ilford, with his colleague Sergeant Derek Shepherd, who he had partnered in the job for the eighteen months since he entered service. Upon arrival, the pair discovered three men beating the male occupant of the property; it later transpired that they were hired to beat the man who was the former boyfriend of a woman. As the suspects attempted to escape, one produced a Smith & Wesson handgun and shot Walters in the chest as he was tackled by the officer. The bullet penetrated Walters' heart and he died later in hospital. |
| 1997 | The Death of Nina Mackay | Straford, East London | PC Nina Alexandra Mackay, of the Metropolitan Police Service, was fatally stabbed on 24 October 1997 by a paranoid schizophrenic man she was attempting to arrest. She is the only female police officer in Great Britain to have been stabbed to death while on duty and her killing was the first of a female officer since the murder of Yvonne Fletcher in 1984. |
| 1999 | The Murder of Raja Ahmed | Miles Platting, Manchester, England | PC Raja Bashrat Ahmed, of the Greater Manchester Police, was murdered when his motorcycle was deliberately rammed into the path of a moving lorry. Career criminal Steven Draper was jailed for life for murder in 2000. |
| 2003 | The Death of Ged Walker | Bulwell, Nottingham, England | PC Gerald "Ged" Walker was a police dog handler with Nottinghamshire Police who was killed in the line of duty in Bulwell, Nottingham. On 7 January 2003, PC Walker was dragged 100 yards and fatally injured by a stolen taxi as he reached into the vehicle to attempt to remove the keys from the ignition. He died in hospital two days later from serious head injuries. In December 2003, 26-year-old drug addict David Parfitt was convicted of PC Walker's manslaughter and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. He had been on licence at the time of the incident for a previous robbery offence. |
| 2004 | The Death of Michael Swindells | Birmingham, England | DC Michael Swindells, QGM, was stabbed to death on 21 May 2004 in Birmingham whilst attempting to arrest a suspect who had earlier threatened members of the public with a knife. The killer, who suffered from a mental illness, was later detained indefinitely for manslaughter. |
| 2005 | The Murder of Sharon Beshenivsky | Bradford, West Yorkshire, England | Sharon Beshenivsky, a West Yorkshire Police constable, was the 89th police officer and the sixth female officer to die in the line of duty in England and Wales, and the second female officer to be fatally shot (after Yvonne Fletcher in 1984). She was shot dead by a criminal gang during a robbery in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Her colleague, PC Teresa Millburn, was also shot in the incident, receiving serious wounds to the chest. Closed-circuit television cameras in Bradford tracked a car rushing from the scene and used an automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system to trace its owners. Six men were later found guilty of killing PC Beshenivsky and sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| 2007 | The Murder of Jonathan Henry | Bedfordshire, England | Jonathan Henry was murdered in Luton, Bedfordshire, whilst on duty and responding to reports of a stabbing in the town centre. |
| 2012 | The Murder of Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone | Mottram in Longdendale, Tameside, Greater Manchester, England | PC Nicola Hughes and PC Fiona Bone were two Greater Manchester police constables killed during a "routine call" in response to a burglary in Mottram in Longdendale, on the edge of the Hattersley housing estate, in Tameside, Greater Manchester, on 18 September 2012. Hughes and Bone had completed three and five years of service at the time of their deaths, respectively. It was the first time two female officers were killed on duty in the United Kingdom. Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy called the killings "cold blooded murder". Dale Cregan admitted murdering both officers, as well as two other men in an unrelated incident earlier in 2012, and was sentenced to life imprisonment the following year. |
Organised crime
See also category Organised crime groups in the United Kingdom .
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1965–1966 | The Kray-Richardson Gang War | 8 | London, England | A gang war between the Kray twins and the Richardsons resulted in the gangland slayings of several underworld figures, including Frank Mitchell and George Cornell. |
| 1968 | The Krays | 8 | London, England | Jack "the Hat" McVitie, a small-time drug dealer and an associate of the Krays, was attacked and stabbed to death by Reggie Kray after being invited to a private party. Although McVite's body was never found, Reggie and Ronnie Kray were arrested with other members of their organization with the Krays being sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 30 years. Ronnie Kray died in prison in March 1995 from a heart attack, while Reggie Kray was released on compassionate grounds just over a month before his death from cancer five years later. |
Robbery
| Date | Name | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1963 | The Great Train Robbery | Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, England | After using railway signals to stop a Royal Mail freight train en route to London, Bruce Reynolds leads a 15-man group to storm the train and successfully escaped with £2.3 million. However, because the culprits left their fingerprints behind, police were able to trace thirteen of the robbers to their safehouse in Oakley, Buckinghamshire. Several members of the group, Ronnie Biggs, Ronald "Buster" Edwards and Charlie Wilson, managed to escape from prison soon after their trial. Biggs returned to Britain in 2001 after spending more than 30 years on the run, but was returned to prison for eight years before being released due to ill health in 2009. He died in December 2013. |
| 1983 | Brink's-Mat robbery | Heathrow Airport England | Six armed robbers broke into the Brink's-Mat warehouse in Heathrow Airport and got away with £26 million in gold bullion with the inside help of security guard Anthony Black. |
| 2000 | The Millennium Dome raid | Greenwich, London, England | On 7 November 2000, a criminal gang attempted to steal the flawless 777 carats (155.4 g) Millennium Star diamond valued at over £200 million, from an exhibition at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, London. Five men were later sentenced on various different robbery charges. |
| 2004 | The Northern Bank robbery | Belfast, Northern Ireland | £26.5 million was stolen from the Donegall Square headquarters of Northern Bank by a large armed gang. |
| 2006 | The Securitas depot robbery | Tonbridge, Kent, England | The largest cash robbery in British history, netting £53,116,760 in cash. The majority of the suspects were arrested. |
| 2009 | The Graff Diamonds robbery | Bond Street, London | Two men wearing prosthetic make-up steal £40 million (US$65 million) of gems in an armed robbery on Graff Diamonds, a jewellery store in Bond Street, London. |
| 2015 | The Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary | Hatton Garden London, England | In April 2015, the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company, an underground safe deposit facility in London's Hatton Garden area, was burgled. The burglary occurred during a period in which both the Easter Bank Holiday and Passover coincided. The police first announced that the facility had been burgled on 7 April, and reports based on CCTV footage state that the attack on the facility commenced on 2 April. The theft is being investigated by the Flying Squad, a branch of the Specialist, Organised & Economic Crime Command within London's Metropolitan Police Service. |
Serial killings
19th century
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1827–1828 | The Burke and Hare murders | 17 | Edinburgh, Scotland | William Burke and William Hare sold the corpses of 17 victims to provide material for dissection. |
| 1865–1873 | The Mary Ann Cotton murders | 21 | England | Believed to have murdered up to 21 people, mainly by arsenic poisoning. Many of her victims had married her.[16] |
| 1896 | The Amelia Dyer case | 247 (attributed) | Reading, Berkshire London England | Amelia Elizabeth Dyer (née Hobley), was the most prolific baby farm murderer of Victorian England. She was tried and hanged for one murder, but there is little doubt she was responsible for many more similar deaths — possibly 400 or more — over a period of about 20 years. |
| 1888 | Jack the Ripper | 5+ | Whitechapel, London, England | At least five prostitutes were murdered and mutilated by an unidentified serial killer, dubbed "Jack the Ripper" by the press. The killer was never apprehended. |
1900s-1940s
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1935–1956 | John Bodkin Adams | 163+ | Eastbourne, East Sussex, England | Dr John Bodkin Adams was arrested in 1956 for the murder of two women, Edith Alice Morrell and Gertrude Hullett. After a 17-day trial at the Old Bailey that gripped the nation, he was controversially acquitted of the first murder and the second indictment was dropped by the prosecutor, an event the judge later termed "an abuse of process". Adams was struck off for drug offences, lying on cremation forms and fraud. Pathologist Francis Camps suspected Adams of killing 163 patients between 1946 and 1956, though rumours regarding Adams' behaviour had started circulating in 1935. The case established the doctrine of double effect, whereby a doctor giving treatment to relieve pain may shorten life. Secondly, due to the publicity surrounding Adams' committal hearing, the law was changed to allow defendants to ask for such hearings to be held in private. Finally, though a defendant had never been required to give evidence in his own defence, the judge underlined in his summing-up that no prejudice should be attached to a defendant not doing so. |
| 1943–1953 | The John Reginald Halliday Christie Killings | 6-8 | Notting Hill, London. England | John Reginald Halliday Christie murdered at least six women — including his wife Ethel — by strangling them in his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. Christie moved out of Rillington Place in March 1953, and shortly afterwards the bodies of three of his victims were discovered hidden in an alcove in his kitchen. Christie was arrested and convicted of his wife's murder, for which he was hanged in 1953. |
| 1944–1949 | The John George Haigh case (The Acid Bath Murderer) | 6-8 | London, England | John George Haigh murdered six people and disposed of their bodies in drums of sulphuric acid. He then forged documents turning the murder victims' possessions over to himself. Haigh was eventually caught after the disappearance and eventual murder of socialite Henrietta Durand-Deacon, apparently believing the police would be unable to prosecute him without her body. |
1950s-1990s
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1956–1958 | Peter Manuel (The Beast of Birkenshaw) | 7-9 | Glasgow & Lanarkshire, Scotland | Peter Manuel was an American-born Scottish serial killer who was convicted of murdering seven people across Lanarkshire and southern Scotland between 1956 and his arrest in January 1958, and is believed to have murdered two more. Prior to his arrest, the media nicknamed the unidentified killer "the Beast of Birkenshaw". Manuel was hanged at Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison; he was one of the last prisoners to die on the Barlinnie gallows. |
| 1963–1965 | The Ian Brady and Myra Hindley case (The Moors Murders) | 5 | Oldham, Lancashire, England | Five children were killed in the area of Greater Manchester over a two-year period by serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. After being turned in by Hindley's brother-in-law David Smith, Brady was found guilty of three murders and Hindley of two at their trial in May 1966, for which they received life sentences. They admitted the two other murders 20 years later. Hindley remained in prison until her death in November 2002, while Brady was held at a secure mental hospital until his death in 2017. |
| 1968–1969 | The Bible John Murders | 3(?) | Glasgow, Scotland | Three women were found strangled between 1968 and 1969 by an unidentified serial killer known only as Bible John. Although police investigated the murders for over 20 years, the murderer was never identified although serial killer Peter Tobin is a suspect. |
| 1973–1978 | The Robert Maudsley case (Hannibal the Cannibal) | 4 | Robert John Maudsley was a serial killer responsible for the murders of four people. Jailed for life for a single murder in 1975, he committed three of the murders in prison. He was reported to have eaten part of the brain of one of three men he killed in jail, which earned him the nickname "Hannibal the Cannibal" among the British press. | |
| 1974–1975 | The Patrick Mackay case | 5-12? | Dartford, Kent, England | Mackay was a serial killer who confessed to murdering 11 people in London and Kent. |
| 1975–1981 | The Peter Sutcliffe Murders (The Yorkshire Ripper) | 13-20+ | Yorkshire, England | Peter Sutcliffe, known to the press as the "Yorkshire Ripper", murdered 13 women and attacked seven others in the north of England between 1975 and 1980. Captured in January 1981 and sentenced to life imprisonment later that year, he was imprisoned at Parkhurst Prison until his transfer to Broadmoor Hospital later in the 1980s after he was violently assaulted by another inmate. |
| 1978 | The Peter Dinsdale killings | 26 | Hull, England | Dinsdale was one of Britain's most prolific killers. He confessed to a total of 11 acts of arson, and was convicted of 26 counts of manslaughter. 11 of these were overturned on appeal. Lee was imprisoned for life in 1981. |
| 1978–1983 | The Dennis Nilsen murders | 15+ | London | Dennis Nilsen murdered several men over a period of five years, including foreign students as well as local homeless men and male prostitutes, who were lured to his apartment and strangled before being dismembered. A number of Nilsen's victims have never been identified. |
| 1982–1986 | The Robert Black murders | 4+ | Scotland & North of England | Robert Black is a Scottish serial killer and child molester. He kidnapped, raped and murdered three girls during the 1980s, kidnapped a fourth girl who survived, attempted to kidnap a fifth, and is the suspect in a number of unsolved child murders dating back to 1969 and the 1970s throughout Europe. On 16 December 2009 Black was charged with the murder of Jennifer Cardy, a 9-year-old girl whose body was found at McKee's Dam near Hillsborough, County Down, in August 1981. He was initially jailed for life for abducting a seven-year-old girl in July 1990, and police soon found evidence to charge him with the murders of three girls during the 1980s. He was convicted of all three murders in May 1994 and sentenced to a further 10 concurrent terms of life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum term of 35 years. |
| 1991–2006 | The Peter Tobin case | 3(?) | Margate, Kent | Prior to his first murder conviction, Tobin served ten years in prison for a double rape committed in 1993, following which he was released in 2004. In 2007 he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years for the rape and murder of Angelika Kluk in Glasgow the previous year. Skeletal remains of two further young women who went missing in 1991 were subsequently found at his former home in Margate. Tobin was convicted of the murder of Vicky Hamilton in December 2008, when his minimum sentence was increased to 30 years, and of the murder of Dinah McNicol in December 2009. He is now being investigated for other unsolved cases of murder dating back to the 1960s. |
| 1994 | Fred and Rosemary West case (The Wests' House of Horrors) | 12(+?) | Gloucester, England | Between April 1973 and September 1979, Fred and Rosemary West lured young women into their home where they were sexually assaulted and murdered. In February 1994 they were arrested after corpses were found buried in the garden and under their house in Gloucester. It is speculated that the pair committed further murders between 1980 and 1992, and may have killed a total of around 30 people, but their only known victim after 1980 was their 16-year-old daughter, Heather, who was murdered in 1987 by Fred West, who hanged himself whilst awaiting trial at Winson Green Prison on New Year's Day 1995. On 22 November 1995, Rosemary West was sentenced to life imprisonment and the trial judge recommended that she should never be released. Fred West had committed two murders during the 1960s before he met Rosemary, including that of his wife. Fred's eight-year-old daughter Charmaine is also believed to have died at the hands of Rosemary West while Fred West was serving a prison sentence for theft in late 1970 or early 1971. |
2000s-
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | The Steve Wright killings (The Ipswich Ripper) | 5 | Ipswich, Suffolk, England | Five women from Ipswich who were working as prostitutes were found murdered around the town in December 2006. Steve Wright, a local forklift truck driver, was charged with five murders and found guilty on all charges in February 2008. He was jailed for life and the trial judge recommended he should never be released. A subsequent appeal against his convictions by Wright was rejected by the High Court. |
| 2013 | The Peterborough ditch murders | 3 | Peterborough. Cambridgeshire, England | Three men were stabbed to death in March 2013, with their bodies found dumped in ditches outside Peterborough. The perpetrator of the murders was Joanna Dennehy, a local woman who was later sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that she never be released. |
Sex crimes
| Date(s) | Name | Victims | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s-1990s | Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal | Unknown | Various United Kingdom | In September and October 2012, almost a year after his death, claims were widely publicised that the radio and television presenter Jimmy Savile had committed sexual abuse, his alleged victims ranging from prepubescent girls and boys to adults. By 11 October 2012 allegations had been made to 13 British police forces, and this led to the setting-up of inquiries into practices at the BBC and within the National Health Service. On 19 October 2012, the Metropolitan Police Service launched a formal criminal investigation, Operation Yewtree, into historic allegations of child sexual abuse by Savile and other people (some still living), over four decades. It stated that it was pursuing over 400 separate lines of inquiry, based on the claims of 200 witnesses, via 14 police forces across the UK. It described the alleged abuse as being "on an unprecedented scale", and the number of potential victims as "staggering". By December 2012, eight people had been questioned as part of the investigation. The Metropolitan Police stated that the total number of alleged victims was 589, of whom 450 alleged abuse by Savile. Inquiries into living people as well as Savile are currently continuing. |
| 1997–2013 | The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal | Unknown | Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England | Although local investigations into the abuse began in the 1990s, some reports were never finalised or made public by the authorities. In 2010, five men of Pakistani heritage were found guilty of a series of sexual offences against girls as young as 12. A subsequent investigation by The Times reported that the child sex exploitation was much more widespread, and the Home Affairs Select Committee criticised the South Yorkshire Police force and Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council for their handling of the case. |
| 2001–2002 | The Antoni Imiela case (The M25 Rapist) | 7 women | South East England | West German-born Antoni Imiela, attacked and sexually assaulted seven women in Southeast England before being captured in 2004. |
| 2006–2013 | The Oxford sex gang | Unknown | Oxford, England | Seven men preyed on pre-teen and underage teenage girls in Oxford. In May 2013, they were convicted of sexual offences including rape, conspiracy to commit rape, arranging or facilitating child prostitution, trafficking for sexual exploitation, and procuring a miscarriage. Their victims were "subjected to sexual violence marked out by its sadism: sexual assaults designed to draw blood, multiple rapes, [and] physical attacks in which [they were] choked". As in the similar Rochdale, Rotherham, Derby and Telford prosecutions, all gang members were from Muslim backgrounds, and the girls were white, leading to renewed discussion as to whether the crimes were racially motivated and whether the initial failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities' fear of being accused of racism. In March 2015, a report revealed that more than 300 people (mostly girls from Oxford), had been groomed and sexually exploited by the gang. It accused the Thames Valley Police of disbelieving the girls and failing to act on repeated calls for help, and Oxfordshire Social Services of failing to protect them despite compelling evidence they were in danger. The report also called for research into why a significant amount of perpetrators of child grooming come from Muslim backgrounds. |
| 2009 | The Black Cab Rapist John Worboys | 12 women | London, England | Known as the Black Cab Rapist, Worboys was convicted in 2009 for attacks on 12 women. Police believe that he may have had more than 100 victims, possibly being Britain's most prolific sex attacker. |
| 2010 | The Derby sex gang | Unknown | Derby, England | A group of men who sexually abused up to a hundred girls in Derby, in one of the most severe cases of sexual abuse in recent times. In 2010, after an undercover investigation by Derbyshire police, members of the group were charged with 75 offences relating to 26 girls. Nine of the 13 accused were convicted of grooming and raping girls between 12 and 18 years old.[17] The attacks provoked fierce discussion about race and sexual exploitation. |
| 2012 | The Rochdale sex trafficking gang (Operation Doublet) | Unknown | Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England | A group of men preyed on underage teenage girls in Rochdale. The men were convicted of sex trafficking, rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child. 47 girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation. The men were all British Pakistanis (except for one from Afghanistan) and the girls were white; as with the above cases, this led to national discussion of whether the crimes were racially motivated, or, conversely, whether the early failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities' fear of being accused of racism. |
| 2014 | The Bristol sex gang | Unknown | Bristol, England | A group of Muslim men who committed serious sexual offences against underage teenage girls in Bristol. In November 2014, they were convicted of offences including rape, paying a child for sex, causing or inciting child prostitution, sexual acts with children and sex trafficking. As in the Oxford, Derby, Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford prosecutions, the abused girls were almost all white and the gang were of Muslim heritage, but were Somali rather than Pakistani. |
| 2014–2015 | The Peterborough sex abuse case | Unknown | Peterborough, Cambridgeshire England | Groups of men who committed serious sexual offences against underage girls, some as young as 12, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. In a series of trials in 2014 and 2015, they were found guilty of rape, child prostitution and trafficking for sexual exploitation, among other offences. The men, who were of Pakistani, Iraqi Kurdish and Slovak Roma heritage, were convicted as a result of Operation Erle, in which Cambridgeshire police investigated sex exploitation in the area following a complaint by a teenage girl against Mohammed Khubaib, a restaurant owner in Peterborough. Police had been alerted by the Rotherham and Rochdale child abuse cases to the possibility of widespread abuse taking place. |
Spree killings
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | The Barry Williams killing spree | 5 | West Bromwich and Nuneaton, The Midlands, England | Foundry worker Barry Williams shot his four next-door neighbours, killing three of them. He then went on the run, shooting at least seven other people, wounding two and killing two, before his capture. He was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and detained in high-security hospitals under mental health legislation, until his release in 1994. In October 2014 he was convicted of further firearms offences, and was again detained in a secure hospital, where he died in December 2014. |
| 1987 | The Hungerford massacre | 17 | Hungerford, Berkshire, England | 27-year-old farm labourer Michael Ryan went on a rampage in the small rural town, shooting people at random (including the fatal shooting of his own mother) with an array of firearms before killing himself. |
| 1996 | The Dunblane massacre | 18 | Dunblane, Scotland | 43-year-old scout leader Thomas Hamilton murdered 16 children and their teacher at a primary school in Scotland before shooting himself dead. |
| 2010 | The Cumbria shootings | 13 | Copeland Cumbria England | A killing spree that occurred on 2 June 2010 when a lone gunman, local taxi driver Derrick Bird, killed 12 people and injured 11 others before killing himself. |
Terrorism
Excludes incidents that happened during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. See also List of terrorist incidents in London.
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | The 1972 Aldershot bombing | 7 | Aldershot, England | A terror attack by the Northern Ireland-based Official Irish Republican Army, the first of its kind on the mainland, targeted a British Army base in Aldershot. Seven civilian staff were killed. |
| 1974 | The M62 coach bombing | 12 | M62 motorway, West Riding of Yorkshire, England | A bomb attack on a coach killed nine British Army soldiers and three civilians. The attack was carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. |
| 1974 | The Guildford pub bombings | 5 | Guildford, England | Two bombs at a pub in Guildford cause the deaths of four soldiers and a civilian. IRA terrorists were responsible. |
| 1974 | The Birmingham pub bombings | 21 | Birmingham, England | 21 people were killed when bombs went off in two pubs in central Birmingham. Six men were wrongly convicted and spent 16 years in prison before being released in 1991. |
| 1982 | The Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings | 11 | London, England | Bomb attacks against a military ceremony in London killed eleven soldiers. |
| 1983 | The Harrods bombing | 6 | London, England | Six people were killed when a bomb detonated near the Harrods department store in London. |
| 1984 | The Brighton hotel bombing | 5 | Brighton, England | A bomb attack targeting members of the government killed five people. The then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, narrowly escaped injury. |
| 1988 | The Lockerbie Disaster | 270 | Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland | In one of the worst terrorist attacks in the UK, London-New York commercial flight Pan Am Flight 103 crashed near Lockerbie, Scotland as the result of a bomb having been planted in the forward cargo hold. A joint investigation by the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the (U.S.) Federal Bureau of Investigation linked the bombing to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines. He was jailed for life in January 2001 with a recommended minimum of 20 years (later increased to 27 years), but was released on compassionate grounds due to terminal cancer in August 2009, and returned to his native Libya, where he died in 2012. |
| 1989 | The Deal barracks bombing | 11 | Deal, England | Eleven soldiers died after the IRA bombed a military facility in Deal. |
| 1992 | The Baltic Exchange bombing | 3 | London, England | Three people were killed in a bombing targeting London's financial centre, causing severe damage. |
| 1993 | The Warrington bomb attacks | 2 | Warrington, England | Two bombs caused the deaths of two children in Warrington. |
| 1998 | The Omagh bombing | 29 | Omagh, Northern Ireland | 29 people were killed in a bomb attack in Omagh in August 1998 by a dissident group opposed to the Northern Ireland peace agreement signed four months earlier. |
| 1999 | The 1999 London nail bombings | 3 | London, England | A series of nail bombs in London caused the deaths of three people, including an unborn child. |
| 2005 | The 7 July 2005 London bombings | 52 | London, England | Four suicide bombers detonated explosives in camping rucksacks on three underground trains and a double-decker bus, resulting in the deaths of 52 people. |
| 2017 | The 2017 Westminster attack | 5 | London, England | A terrorist attack took place in the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster in London, seat of the British Parliament, on 22 March 2017. The attacker, 52-year-old Briton Khalid Masood, drove a car into pedestrians on the pavement along the south side of Westminster Bridge and Bridge Street, killing 4 and injuring more than 50. |
| 2017 | The 2017 Manchester Arena bombing | 22 | Manchester, England | A terrorist attack took place at the Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017, where singer Ariana Grande was performing. |
Other crimes
| Date | Name | Deaths | Type | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1909 | The Tottenham Outrage | 2 | Armed robbery and pursuit | Tottenham and Walthamstow, England | On 23 January 1909 two Russian anarchists attempted to rob a factory wages delivery in Tottenham, then engaged in a running battle with police for two hours and across six miles into neighbouring Walthamstow, before being cornered in a farmhouse. Both suspects then shot themselves; one died at the scene, and the other in hospital on 12 February. A 10-year-old boy and a police officer were fatally shot during the pursuit, and a number of other civilians and police officers were shot and injured. |
| 1911 | The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street | 6 | Siege | East End]], London, England | A group of Latvian anarchists attempting to break into a jewellers shot and killed three unarmed City of London Police officers. In the process one of the anarchists was accidentally fatally wounded by a comrade. The authorities subsequently laid siege to the anarchists' safehouse, meeting fierce resistance from the three still inside. A fire broke out after a six-hour battle and, while the bodies of two anarchists were found, the third was not located. |
| 1985 | Bradford City stadium fire | 56 | Negligence | West Yorkshire, England | Due to negligence a fire killed many during a football match. The result was a change in law and removal of wooden football stands in many football grounds. |
| 1989 | Hillsborough disaster | 96 | Negligence | South Yorkshire, England | Due to gross negligence a crush killed many at a football stadium. The result was a change in law and removal of standing terraces in many football grounds. |
| 2005 | The Stabbing of Abigail Witchalls | - | Stabbing | Surrey, England | Abigail Witchalls, a pregnant 26-year-old, was left paralysed after being stabbed in front of her young son near their home in Surrey. The police identified a local garden centre worker, Richard Cazaly, as the prime suspect; he died 10 days later after slashing himself with a knife and taking an overdose after travelling to Edinburgh, Scotland. |
| 2009 | Edlington attacks | - | Grievous bodily harm, actual bodily harm, and sexual offences | Edlington South Yorkshire, England | In the village of Edlington, near Doncaster, an 11-year-old boy was found with critical head injuries near to a brickpit, while his nine-year-old nephew was found wandering nearby with knife wounds. Local residents told the media that both boys had been hit with a brick, slashed with a knife, and burned with cigarettes. Two brothers, aged 10 and 11, pleaded guilty to charges of grievous bodily harm with intent and robbery of both victims, intentionally causing a child to engage in sexual activity, and actual bodily harm to third child. Both were sentenced to indefinite detention. |
See also
References
- ↑ "murder". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ↑ Gabriel, Clare (5 November 2008). "Mystery of 1946 murder in woods". BBC News. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
- ↑ Cullen, Pamela V., A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr. John Bodkin Adams, London, Elliott & Thompson, 2006, ISBN 1-904027-19-9
- ↑ "Man jailed for 1968 schoolboy murder". BBC News. 15 November 2001. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
- 1 2 "Cooke: The predatory paedophile". BBC News. 17 December 1999. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
- ↑ "Paedophile gets life for killing boy, 7, at orgy: Homosexual ring abducted children and drugged them for group sex". The Independent. 23 October 1992. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
- ↑ "Fear and loathing after 'racial' murder: Gangs of teenagers have vowed". 16 August 1994.
- ↑ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/alesha-macphail-murder-latest-isle-of-bute-scotland-police-inquiry-a8430051.html
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-44738881
- ↑ Alberge, Dalya (9 December 2012). "Vital clue ignored for 50 years". Independent. London. Retrieved December 9, 2012.
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-28484567
- ↑ https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/angus-mearns/671408/three-charged-over-steven-donaldson-death/
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-45835819
- ↑ https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/angus-mearns/743775/breaking-19-year-old-tasmin-glass-freed-on-bail-in-steven-donaldson-kirriemuir-murder-case/
- ↑ https://www.facebook.com/justice4steven/
- ↑ Flanders (2011) p.394
- ↑ Britten, Nick (25 November 2010). "Asian gang prowled streets searching for rape victims". The Daily Telegraph. London.
- Flanders, Judith (2011). The Invention of Murder. London: Harper Press. ISBN 978-0-00-724888-9.
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