Unsolved Murders In and Around Derbyshire

Scott Lomax

Summary

There is no such thing as the perfect crime. Yet within these pages are thirteen twentieth-century murders whose perpetrators have - so far - escaped justice. Some may still be alive, cold cases awaiting new forensic leads but others have taken their chilling secrets to the grave.Read about the strange theatrical vagrant found brutally murdered in a brick works. Also about the unfortunate girl strangled to death in a derelict building at Christmas; a taxi driver killed by his passenger on a lonely road; a police officers girl friend who was sexually assaulted and murdered on moorland; the dreadful killing of a servant girl; two men shot dead on a quiet highway; the discovery of mysterious and suspicious skeletal remains; and, not least, the callous murderers who allowed innocent men to be stand trial. Famous modern cases are also explored, based on new research. The Barbara Mayo murder is still in the memory of many Derbyshire people as is the Stephen Downing miscarriage of justice. A compelling read for anyone interested in true crime.

Available since: 10/15/2009.

Print length: 176 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Little Sister - My Investigation...

Lana Wood

In this memoir, Lana Wood investigates the mysterious drowning of her sister, the actress Natalie Wood, and clears up the myths and misconceptions behind one of the most notorious celebrity deaths of our time.
On the night of November 29, 1981, Natalie Wood disappeared from her yacht, the Splendour, while visiting Catalina Island with her husband, Robert “R.J.” Wagner and their friend, Christopher Walken. The beloved movie star’s tragic drowning shook America, inspiring troves of magazine covers and media pieces. What was originally believed to be an open-and-shut case of accidental drowning has been called into question over the years, and in 2011 the investigation was reopened. In 2018, at the urging of the public, it was reclassified as “suspicious.”
Ever since, the question has remained: What really happened to Natalie Wood?
Lana Wood, Natalie’s younger sister, long suspected nefarious circumstances surrounding her sister’s death. Her closest confidante from childhood, Lana stood witness to Natalie’s life: the successes, the heartache, and her deepest pain. But there was tremendous fear about investigating the case. Uncertain of what her own search would unravel, and frightened of the possibilities, Lana stayed silent for years, until she no longer could. She realized she was ignoring what was in front of her, and that the best way to honor her sister's legacy would be uncovering the secrets behind the very end of Natalie’s life.
By elucidating previously unknown complications of Natalie’s life, and offering new evidence from key parties involved in the investigation—including the boat’s captain and other witnesses—Little Sister recounts Lana’s search for the truth and brings to light explosive details that have been suppressed for decades. Ranging from the bonds that hold family together, to inconsistencies in interviews with detectives to complications with evidence, this story of sisterhood and mystery presents a fresh perspective on a night that has long been fodder for Hollywood lore.

Show book

The Spy's Son - The True Story...

Bryan Denson

The true account of the Nicholsons, the father and son who sold national secrets to Russia. “One of the strangest spy stories in American history” (Robert Lindsey, author of The Falcon and the Snowman).   Investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist Bryan Denson tells the riveting story of the father and son co-conspirators who betrayed the United States.   Jim Nicholson was one of the CIA’s top veteran case officers. By day, he taught spycraft at the CIA’s clandestine training center, The Farm. By night, he was a minivan-driving single father racing home to have dinner with his kids. But Nicholson led a double life. For more than two years, he had met covertly with agents of Russia’s foreign intelligence service and turned over troves of classified documents.   In 1997, Nicholson became the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage. But his duplicity didn’t stop there. While behind the bars of a federal prison, the former mole systematically groomed the one person he trusted most to serve as his stand-in: his youngest son, Nathan. When asked to smuggle messages out of prison to Russian contacts, Nathan saw an opportunity to be heroic and to make his father proud.   “Filled with fascinating details of the cloak-and-dagger techniques of KGB and CIA operatives, double agents, and spy catchers . . . A poignant and painful tale of family love, loyalty, manipulation and betrayal.” —The Oregonian

Show book

The Big Con

Tony Sales

BONUS Q&A TRACK WITH THE AUTHORBritain's Catch Me If You Can story - only bigger.The extraordinary, unmissable memoir from the man who conned banks and shops out of £30 million and then lost it all.For twenty years, Tony Sales was Britain's biggest fraudster. From cloning credit cards and identities to emptying cash machines and being a confidence trickster, Tony knew how to make money. Charming, funny and bright, Sales could make people believe whatever he wanted them to. Soon he was living a millionaire lifestyle: fast cars, hotels and holidays.As analogue crime turned digital, Sales adapted his skills and became a prolific online fraudster, quickly identifying and exploiting loopholes and weaknesses in the system.    Sales never fails they used to say. Until one day a mistake on a job in Sheffield saw him arrested. Facing a stretch inside Sales did a runner, using his skills to successfully avoid capture for another six years.When the police did finally catch up with him and he found himself inside, Sales decided to turn his life around. As Frank Abagnale Jr. had done in the US, Sales went from poacher to game-keeper and set up a successful business helping governments and financial institutions to prevent fraud.The incredible true story of King Con. This is a life that needs to be heard to be believed.

Show book

Sovok - The Memoirs of a Liar?

Kevin McKinney

Witness first-hand the transition from Soviet Union to liberated Russia and its return to a regime of tyranny and injustice from the perspective of a foreigner who lived through it. McKinney describes his interactions for over twenty years with dissidents, billionaires, artists, cosmonauts, mob bosses, presidents, prosecutors, and prime ministers, while constantly breaking laws and bending rules, as mostly every character in the book also does. He introduces some of the most dangerous, loyal, and hospitable people, and often they're one in the same person.
Described by one literary critic as "Jack Kerouac, narrating the adventures of Thomas Pynchon's character, Tyrone Slothrop, only in Russia," Sovok takes you on a front-row view of the transition from Soviet Union to liberated Russia and then how it went back to today's tyranny.
If a movie plot, it would be a blend of Grand Hotel Budapest, Wolf of Wall Street, Bonfire of the Vanities, Snatch, Eastern Promises, and Everything is Illuminated. By declaring himself a liar, the author prods the reader to question everyone and everything. Through personal stories, one of Sovok's central themes is that a network of loyal and moral friends can circumvent the strictest government regulations and defeat criminal syndicates. Sovok falls into one or a dozen categories of book. The one category it is not is ordinary.
"Everything is so realistic that is seems invented," - Italy
"The impression is incredible. I feel like I'm in reading science fiction, yet I am one of the characters. Events are described not as I knew them, but completely differently. It's as if the author saw them from a different angle, and that the author's angle is truer than the distorted view I saw them from. This is the best thing I've read in many years." - Ukraine
"I am totally, completely, absolutely and entirely fascinated. The things you write about are so well familiar to me. I love it." - Russia

Show book

The Court of Last Resort - The...

Erle Stanley Gardner

Edgar Award Winner: True stories of miscarriages of justice, legal battles, and landmark reversals, by the creator of Perry Mason. In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help—it seemed the fate of the “Red-Headed Killer” hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness. Gardner’s intervention sparked the Court of Last Resort. The Innocence Project of its day, this ambitious and ultimately successful undertaking was devoted to investigating, reviewing, and reversing wrongful convictions owing to poor legal representation, prosecutorial abuses, biased police activity, bench corruption, unreliable witnesses, and careless forensic-evidence testimony. The crimes: rape, murder, kidnapping, and manslaughter. The prisoners: underprivileged and vulnerable men wrongly convicted and condemned to life sentences or death row with only one hope—the devotion of Erle Stanley Gardner and the Court of Last Resort. Featuring Gardner’s most damning cases of injustice from across the country, The Court of Last Resort won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Originating as a monthly column in Argosy magazine, it was produced as a dramatized court TV show for NBC.

Show book

Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths...

Caroline Maxton

True crime stories that span more than 200 years in south London history—from poisonings to passion killings.   We are all drawn to understand the circumstances that lead others to commit unforgivable acts of violence—the moment that turns a caring human being into a killer, the series of events that drive ordinary people to murderous acts of inhumanity, or the slow, premeditated steps of the callous criminal. And the circumstances—and the twisted motivation—behind such violent acts are the subject of Caroline Maxton’s fascinating investigation of individuals whose misdeeds have tarnished the history of the Croydon area.   Maxton investigates a wide range of murders and unexplained deaths, some of which are truly stranger than fiction. The events cover a span of several centuries, and the locations will be chillingly familiar to the inhabitants of Croydon. Local crimes that hit the national headlines, like the Bentley case of 1952, are covered in fresh detail, but the author concentrates on less well-known but equally intriguing, and shocking, episodes: the bizarre ‘mustard and cress’ murder of 1870, the brutal murder of Eliza Osborne in 1877, the Kenley Stud Farm mystery of 1922, the Birdhurst Rise poisoning of the late 1920s, and the notorious unsolved murder of eleven-year-old Miles Vallint of 1959

Show book