real life crime and murder : Most liked Posts

Bread said:

I'm embarrassed to admit that I think he's a bit fit.

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First thing that came to my mind when I read your comment

BaxterBillions said:

Jesus wept, a lot of misandry on hereYes men commit crimes against women but it's a small minority and men are more likely to be actual victims of violent crime. It's just that when a woman is killed, it is far more likely to receive media attention, particularly if the victim is photogenic. Get a sense of perspective, will ya!

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92% of women killed in 2020-21 were murdered by a man. There was also a 13% increase in sexual assaults, and those are just the ones that were reported. I know plenty of people who didn’t bother to report their assaults because they didn’t think the police would believe them/take them seriously.
60% of murdered women knew their killer (usually a partner/ex) compared to 44% of murdered men.

There has been a HUGE increase in gang related murders in recent years and they are mostly males.

So yes, men are more likely to be killed. But it’s very rare for a man to be murdered (and potentially raped) by a stranger while just walking home.

It’s very easy to throw out the “not all men” view and say that we’re all being paranoid, but whilst women are being murdered and raped by the police force that is supposed to be protecting society, then I think it’s fair play to be a little bit paranoid.

Maybe you should get a sense of perspective.

Email from Kent police - no evidence that my mum was victim of that disgusting piece of shit Fuller. Such a relief, but so sorry for everyone else who might not get good news/has already had the bad news.

I’m a bit done with the ‘not all men’ response tbh.

I’m sorry, am I reading this correctly or am I hugely mistaken?
His own father is a methamphetamine user and a porn star…but his biggest concern when he heard that his son was a mass murderer, is that he might be gay??

WHAT???
America is the most backwards country in the world and nothing could convince me otherwise.

I've been fascinated with murder for as long as I can remember and I read and watch a huge amount of material on the subject.

Since I medically retired five years ago, my interest has only grown, especially with local newspapers reporting live from court on bigger cases and the ability to look at victims and defendants on social media, it's probably at obsessive levels now. In the UK, we don't actually find out the full details of the case until the first day of trial (which is absolutely how it should be) when the prosecution lay out their case but I do like to try and piece things together before then if I can. Social media is an absolutely goldmine for this. That's what interests me to be honest - people's relationships, interactions and motives.

The way I work is that I will read about a new murder on the BBC news website or maybe I'll see something on one of the local newspapers if I'm following a trial. I then have a look at Facebook and see if I can work out if it's likely to interest me. You can usually work out what kind of case it it - I'd say 85% of the time it will turn out to be drug related in some way. I'm particularly interested in cases involving the homeless community and vulnerable victims as I tend to feel these are the people that have been maybe forgotten in some way by society. I'm pretty hardened but those are the cases that really get to me and obviously child murders. I also really enjoy (if that's the right word) purely circumstantial cases and no body trials.

If it piques my interest, then it goes on my "trial calendar" (like I said, no judgement ) and I'll follow it through until conclusion. I had to start this as I was losing track! Certain local newspapers - Liverpool Echo, Essex Live, Teeside Live and Coventry Live are very good - usually do live reporting on bigger cases where one of their journalists sits in court and reports what's going on every day. I love this! It really gives you a feel for the case and the whole court process. I like to think I have a good understanding now of the legal system and sentencing guidelines (all self taught)

I check court listings to keep track of my trials and read judge's full sentencing remarks once the case is over (they are usually published in high profile cases and are very illuminating) I also have a list of unsolved cases, missing people, cases waiting for charges to be brought and inquest outcomes which I check on periodically.

I only have one active trial I'm following at the moment, which is due to restart again tomorrow after the Christmas break, and I have one new one starting tomorrow which I suspect will turn out to be drugs related. The week after, I have six new trials scheduled to start! Happy to share details and discuss if anyone is interested.

As for TV, I love 24 Hours in Police Custody. There's a two part special on tomorrow and Tuesday about a trial I actually followed so I'm looking forward that. Also, I don't usually follow cases in Scotland (or Wales) - I'm busy enough with England - but I did follow a no body trial there involving a vulnerable victim with learning difficulites. There is a programme on BBC2 this week about it on Wednesday - Murder Trial: The Disappearance of Margaret Fleming.

ITV did a couple of really good real life crime dramas last year - Manhunt and A Confession - and have a new one starting on Wednesday called White House Farm about Jeremy Bamber. I think it will be interesting to see what slant they take on it given Bamber still proclaims his innocence. I'm not sure he is but I do believe his conviction is unsafe.

My favourite USA real life crime shows are:

Cold Justice
The First 48
Disappeared
On The Case with Paula Zahn
Shattered
Reasonable Doubt
48 Hours
Dateline

So, there you go. My obsession laid bare.

Let's get chatting

ReadySteadyGrift said:

First victim named. RIP Barnaby

England U18 Hockey player is named as second Nottingham rampage victim

The second university student to be killed in a string of horrific attacks in Nottingham on Tuesday has been named locally as England's under-18s hockey star Grace Kumar.

www.dailymail.co.uk

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Honestly, the way the DM report is abhorrent. Approaching the victims father the day his son has been brutally murdered. And what has the price of the families home or the cost of the private school he went to got to do with the price of fish?? They make me sick.

Jaysus lads you would think the poster was the criminal here! She's not doing anything wrong and is acting with good intentions. It's also really interesting and a great opportunity to learn. She's been very brave to post and doesn't deserve this reaction.

A few observations about that Cardiff case

1. The police, chasing or not, did not kill them. The bus that they stoved the dodgy electric bike into, (that had two grown youths on it when it's built for one, while they were going at great speed, and without helmets) is what killed them. Highly likely that this would have happened sooner or later without any chasing needed.

2. The police aren't in the habit of undertaking chases using vans. Very high probability of rolling the thing when taking a corner, vans also don't fit down busily parked residential streets very quickly either.

3. What were the lads running from? What's the background / history? How come nobody is asking this? By any chance were they "promising footballers"? "Loveable rogues"?

4. Why are the media repeatedly using picture 1, taken some years ago. When a far more current picture of the pair is very much available. It provokes a slightly different reaction doesn't it.


There's something sinister going on in the background with this case, especially obvious when you take note that it is the "cute little lads" photo that is repeatedly being used. You can also ask how come so many people were on the scene and ready to riot so quickly that the emergency services had to evacuate the area resulting in the lads' bodies being left on the pavement for hours. It's clear that it's being used to further some sort of anti-police agenda. Just not clear yet who is doing the manipulation.

I just read that James Bulger would be 33 today. I know that crime is long ago and solved. But sort of felt like it deserved a mention.

The only person to blame for the murder of Abby and Libby is the man who killed them not the parent, sibling, grandparent who dropped them off. They weren't toddlers, it was daytime in an area they probably knew well. Yes, the trail does look creepy, it does look remote but that is probably why the girls wanted to go there to get good pictures.

I am sure the family beat themselves up everyday for their decision but so would they had they dropped them at a shopping centre or at school and the girls had been abducted from there.

I got pulled over by the police last year (turns out for no reason they said they just wanted to check I was okay because I was driving after midnight??) and I swear my heart was in my mouth and I immediately thought of everything I’ve ever done wrong (didn’t scan a pack of prawns once at the self checkout in Asda) and also started sweating thinking what if they find a dead body in my boot??

Can’t even IMAGINE how I would have felt had I actually just committed murder a few weeks prior

OnlyHereForTheLolz said:

Am I the only one who thinks the McCanns aren’t innocent?

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Do I think they actually killed Madeleine? No.

Do I think they were EXTREMELY negligent parents to leave their 3 very small children alone, regardless of how far away the tapas bar was? Yes, and so I suppose to all intents and purposes they aren’t innocent, and they have to live with it.

ordinaryjelly said:

His name is James Goff. I never really google him but I do have this link saved from his most recent appeal.

Death sentence upheld for man who killed Bible school teacher in 1994

The Ohio\u00a0Supreme Court has upheld\u00a0the death penalty\u00a0of a man who was found guilty of killing an 88-year-old Bible school teacher in 1994.

eu.cincinnati.com

We rarely talk about his crime. Only when the appeal was going on. I have never asked him if he is guilty or not. I have written to him for 15 years. He had seen me through 3 pregnancies, four international house moves and a whole load of life in-between. I send him photos every month and always tell him of the news and stuff. He knitted baby blankets for all of my children. I am unwell but i hope to get well enough to visit him.

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Well I have googled him, just as I suspect everyone reading this thread will have by now.

So from what I can gather he, with premeditation, stabbed to death a defenceless 88 year old woman, for the price of a fix of crack. A woman who had already paid him to deliver her furniture. A women who he identified as vulnerable, like a true predator, and whom he returned to under cover of darkness because of his greed for more money. He stabbed her over a dozen times and left her dead and naked for her own daughter to find. He then made great efforts to cover up his tracks.

Detailed account here.


It’s your business who you are friends with. That is nothing to do with me. But my god, it would take a shitload of baby blankets for me to overlook that.

‘Not all men’ but it’s always a man.

- Michelle Hanson stabbed to death by Alexander Carr
- Maureen Gitau went missing and feared murdered by Mark Moodie
- Cynthia Turner stabbed to death by her husband Legitte Reid
- Anju Ansok and her 2 children murdered by husband and father Saju Chelavalel
- Ailish Walsh stabbed to death by her partner Liam Taylor
- Natalie McNally stabbed to death and a man arrested and bailed
- Sabrina Cooper murdered by Tony King
- Stacey Warnock murdered by John McLaughlan
- Francesca Di Dio and her partner Nino Calabro murdered by Andrea Cardinale
- Courtney Boorne murdered by Liam Cain
- Elle Edwards murdered by Connor Chapman
- Stephanie Hansen murdered by Sheldon Rodrigues
- Gabriella Rudin murdered by her husband Martin Rudin


They were all women killed in December 2022 alone.
At least 108 women were killed in circumstances where a man or men were the principal suspect/charged with the crime in 2022. One woman dead every 3 days at the hands of a man.

And to add, not because they were involved in any drug related/gang related behaviour or feuds. Because they were living their life

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/cri...dge-unmathallegadoo-east-london-b1054466.html

Sana Muhammad killed by her ex husband failed by Met Police

I've done this before but will do it every time I have to. All you need to know about Charlene Downes is contained in this article from the times written in 2013 - it's now paywalled so I've transcribed it. I would also go as far as to say that I am 99% certain that she will never be found and her case will never be solved.

Too little cared for and too little mourned

"There goes Charlene Downes, ten years ago today, skipping towards the bright lights of Blackpool. Never to be seen again.

It was late autumn, the final night of the season. During the evening, the 14-year-old was spotted in a bar at the seaside resort’s North Pier. Someone bought her a vodka and Coke. She left with a young friend. They headed for a dark, waste-strewn passageway lined on each side by the rear entrances to several takeaway food premises.

This was “Paki Alley”, where chips and alcohol were in plentiful supply for children smart enough to know that one good turn deserved another. Arcades and kebab shops were a cheap escape from teenage boredom but on that particular night, November 1, 2003, a crime took place which meant that Charlene never came home.

A decade on and the unsolved murder has barely registered with the mainstream public. By contrast, Britain’s far-right parties have taken such an interest in the Downes case that banners demanding “Justice for Charlene” were raised on football terraces by sections of hardcore fans.

Their focus was triggered by a 2007 criminal trial at which it was alleged that the child was killed by a Jordanian kebab-shop owner who later disposed of her body with the help of his Iranian business partner. No remains were discovered.

Lacking concrete proof of murder, the prosecution was built on hearsay evidence from an unreliable witness and on a police officer’s transcription of low-quality recordings from bugs placed in the flat and car of one of the suspects. Its accuracy was repeatedly challenged by the defence.

On the eve of a scheduled 2008 retrial, after the first hearing led to a hung jury, the case collapsed. Both defendants were acquitted. The far-right’s conspiracy theory — dark-skinned men getting away with the rape and murder of a white girl — gained strength in 2011 when it emerged that an unpublished police report identified more than 60 girls who were groomed for sex by Asian workers at a cluster of takeaways.

Today, Charlene’s disappearance will be marked by a memorial service in the town, organised by the British National Party. Tomorrow, its supporters will stage a demonstration against “Muslim grooming gangs”. Leading the tributes will be her parents, Robert and Karen Downes. They are cherished icons of the nationalist movement. But they sit on a hollow throne.

The truth, hidden until now, is that so many men of all creeds and colours were suspected of sexual offences against Charlene that when she first went missing the police did not know which way to turn. One of the trails led directly inside the Downes family home. Confidential witness statements, social services records and internal police reports reveal that the child protection authorities first became concerned about Charlene’s home environment in 1989, the year she was born.

Then, the family were living in the West Midlands. Police and social services launched a joint investigation because a convicted rapist, jailed three times for buggery and indecent assaults on two young girls, was a regular visitor to the house and was allowed unsupervised access to a child.

Mr Downes, now 52, was “strongly advised” by social services not to allow the man inside his home but the visits were suspected to have continued. A witness told the authorities she saw the rapist “fondling [a child] in the house and that the parents were present”. They deny that any such incident happened.

In 1998, when Charlene was 9, she and another girl alleged that they were being sexually abused by a man “trusted by Mr and Mrs Downes to take them to school”. He was charged with rape but the case collapsed when the other girl failed to give evidence.

Charlene’s parents told The Times that the man seemed trustworthy because “he had a girlfriend”. They rejected a police officer’s report that they “had some knowledge of the abuse but failed to act”.

The family moved to Blackpool in 1999 after Walsall social services threatened to prosecute the parents for wilful neglect and to have the children taken into care. In the North West, a succession of men were introduced to the family after meeting Mr Downes in local pubs. Some stayed overnight or even longer.

They included a man in his 50s who described Charlene, then 13, as his girlfriend, and a 40-year-old who later admitted to police that he paid her to carry out a sex act. Three days after Charlene vanished, a 34-year-old man, staying with the Downes family while on bail, was jailed for crimes that included indecent assaults on three young girls. He admitted indecently touching the missing child.

An account of life inside the Downes home came from an environmental health officer, visiting one morning on council business, who walked into a downstairs room to find Charlene, then 12, lying on a bed in a “skimpy” nightgown. Lying alongside her was a man in his 60s. The girl jumped up and “started to scoop a number of pound coins off the bed”. The man, “shaken and trembling”, began “pulling his trouser zip up and fastening his belt”.

In a witness statement, the council employee described his shock at “the situation I had stumbled into”. He said Charlene was quick to tell him that “it’s OK — he’s my uncle”. Mr Downes then entered the room, apparently unconcerned, and explained that the man was “a family friend”. The incident was reported to social services but “it was decided not to pursue the matter further due to lack of evidence, lack of co-operation from the family and no complaint from Charlene”.

Her parents described it as a misunderstanding. Mrs Downes blamed the council worker for being too “nosey”. They said that the man on the bed with Charlene was “a lovely, nice old man” who had merely been adjusting his trousers. Mr Downes said he did not know, at the time, that any of the men he brought home had a sexual interest in children.

The couple did not comment on a hospital doctor’s report from June 2000, when Charlene was 11, warning of suspected sexual abuse, nor on the 13 visits she made to an NHS walk-in centre over a 12-month period in 2002-03, when she regularly sought help for sexual health problems.

Her mother insisted this week that her husband always sought to protect their daughter. She described the documents seen by this newspaper as “widely exaggerated and untrue”.

This is the mother of a child who apparently made regular visits, aged 11, to a Salvation Army soup kitchen and was seen dancing for men outside a pub, aged 12. Her parents explained that she enjoyed going “to church” and often danced to “music that she liked”. It was against this background that Charlene began swapping sexual favours, during the final months of her life, with Asian and Arab takeaway workers.

The Times understands that, three months before she vanished, she was one of two girls driven by Asian men from Blackpool to a lay-by in Blackburn. There, at midnight, she walked down an alley with one of the men, returning an hour later. Back in Blackpool, she was handed an envelope. Her friend asked what was inside and was told it was “what I got for what I did in Blackburn”.

Another Asian man is known to have taken her to Manchester in an old BMW less than a week before she disappeared. Neither incident was connected to the two men who stood trial over her murder.

It can also be revealed that a week before she went missing, a white man with the “motive and opportunity to murder Charlene” gave her £40. He met her again on her final night. A police report described him as a “compulsive, perverted paedophile” living in “a squalid flat knee-deep in pornographic material of all types including those featuring young children”.

Lancashire Constabulary today announces a new investigation, pledging “an open mind” about the murder. Its inquiry will not be short of suspects. Some are white; some are not.

Evidence shows that Charlene Downes was failed throughout her life. Until now, she has also been failed in death. The reports suggest that she was let down by her parents, by care professionals, by dozens of sex abusers, by her killers and by a police force that mismanaged a murder inquiry.

Today, the BNP distorts her story to sow seeds of divisive malevolence. Too little cared for, too little mourned. She deserves better."

thegirlscout said:

These cases are so bloody difficult because I can see both sides. I lived one side when my mum was in an abusive relationship and didn’t leave and it has messed myself and my siblings up really badly and sadly one of my sisters has followed the pattern and ended up in abusive relationships and she has children. To me, I say to her why can’t you see you’re putting the children through the same things we went through but then she will say things like ‘but I love him’ and complain to us about their behaviour but always reply and drop everything for them when they say jump. And I want to shake her! If you want to put yourself through that as a grown adult fine, I can’t stop you, but don’t put your children through it.
The children and her are fine now, but I do worry about the next guy she falls madly in love with. It seems she only measures her worth by some lowlife’s interest in her. Because once these abusers get their hooks into you then it’s so difficult to leave

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I used to work for Women’s Aid. I remember one of my first callers was a woman who was beaten up after letting her abusive ex into her home. He’d been banging on the door for ages, police didn’t respond. So she let him in. I asked her why she did that because it seemed like the worst thing to do. She said if she hadn’t let him in, he’d have gotten in anyway and it would have been worse for her. She was always going to suffer but at least this way the suffering was minimised. That was the first time it really occurred to me that often women make choices because the alternative is far worse. The women get judged but really the problem is a society and legal system that doesn’t take abuse seriously.

I had a friend who had PNP. She didn't harm her child but the impact was so severe when she found herself pregnant a few years later she took her own life. Really we had lost her years before. She had "recovered" but she was a pale imitation of the woman she had been, it completely destroyed everything that made her her. Its an absolutely horrific condition and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I can't feel angry at this woman, just desperately sad that the system that needs to be there to support these mothers isn't available. This could have been prevented.

InTheDollsHouse said:

Is this the one where she’d been to the local shop for nappies or something?

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She wasn’t out for nappies. She had been out at her blokes then popped to Sainsbury’s on way back and was in their for over an hour. She got back to our road at 8.30 and just lit up a fag with 2 small bags of shopping and didn’t look upset or nothing.
Then in panic she said the neighbor was in their babysitting. They wasn’t she’d left them. She was on cctv in Sainsbury’s entering and leaving. And I think they had her on the neighbours ring doorbell as well leaving about 6.30 or something. All in all she was out for about 2 hours.
One of our neighbours had a breakdown over it all. Just such a sad situation. We all thought she’d got away with it, because it had been so long.