| Date |
Name |
Deaths |
Location |
Summary |
| 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. |
| 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 murders eventually stopped and the murderer was never apprehended. |
| 1910 |
Dr. Crippen case |
1 |
Holloway, London, England |
Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American-born doctor, used his position in a London pharmaceutical company to poison 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 onboard the SS Montrose shortly before its scheduled arrival in Quebec. |
| 1911 |
The Siege of Sidney Street |
6 |
East End, London, England |
A shootout between unarmed London constables and a group of Latvian anarchists led by George Gardstein left three officers and Gardstein dead. British authorities then laid siege to the anarchists' safehouse on Sidney Street, meeting fierce resistance from the three anarchists inside. A fire broke out after a six-hour battle and, while the bodies of Fritz Svaars and William Sokolow were found, their leader Peter Piaktow was not located. |
| 1915 |
Brides in the Bath Murders |
3 |
Leicester, East Midlands, England |
George Joseph Smith, a con artist and bigamist, murdered three of his wives before being arrested and executed on August 13, 1915. |
| 1929 |
Podmore Case |
1 |
Southampton, South East England, England |
During a murder investigation regarding the discovery of the body of Vivian Messiter, an insurance agent for the Wolf's Head Oil Company, Detective 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 charged with Page's murder and it remains unsolved. |
| 1934 |
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. Mancini had since fled the area. He was eventually apprehended by authorities, but was found not guilty. |
| 1946 |
The Chalkpit Murder |
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. |
| 1949 |
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 forging documents turning the murder victims' possessions over to himself. Haigh was eventually caught after the disappearance and eventual murder of socialite Henrietta Durand-Deacon. Although apparently believing the police would be unable to prosecute him without her body, investigators were able to amass substantial evidence among his belongings as well as forensic evidence to convict him. |
| 1952 |
Bentley and Craig |
1 |
Croydon, Surrey, England |
Derek Bentley and Christopher Craig were arrested by the Metropolitan Police following a shootout with police in which one constable was killed and another wounded. Although Craig shot and killed the constable, his accomplice Derek Bentley was charged with the murder and hanged. |
| 1953 |
10 Rillington Place |
8 |
Notting Hill, London, England |
John Reginald Christie strangled and then dismembered seven women in his Notting Hill apartment, including his own wife. The murders of two of his victims, the wife and daughter of a neighbour, were blamed on the husband Timothy Evans, who was wrongfully convicted and executed. Christie was eventually arrested in 1953 and hanged several months later at the same prison as Evans. |
| 1955 |
Ruth Ellis |
1 |
Hampstead, London, England |
Ruth Ellis, a London nightclub manager, shot and killed her fiance David Blakely outside a Hampstead public house where 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 Great Britain. |
| 1935-1956 |
John Bodkin Adams |
163+ |
Eastbourne, East Sussex, England |
John Bodkin Adams, then Britain's richest doctor[1], was arrested in 1956 for killing two women, Edith Alice Morrell and Gertrude Hullett. After a 17 day trial at the Old Bailey, he was controversially acquitted of the first murder and the second indictment was dropped, an event the presiding judge later termed "an abuse of power" by the prosecutor.[2] Political intervention has been suspected.[3] 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 of Adams sinister behaviour had started circulating in 1935.[4] If such figures are true, it would make the Adams case Britain's most serious case of an error of impunity. |
| 1961 |
The A6 Murder |
1 |
Clophill, Bedfordshire, England |
An unidentified man abducted scientist Michael Gregsten and his assistant Valerie Storie, with whom Gregsten had been having an affair. 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. Only Storie survived the attack. 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. |
| 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. |
| 1963-1965 |
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, the two were convicted of murder with Brady sentenced to life imprisonment before being committed to a mental health institution, while Hindley remained in prison until her death in 2002. |
| 1966 |
Shepherd's Bush Murders |
3 |
Shepherd's Bush, West London, England |
Three plainclothes police officers of the Metropolitan Police's CID Division are killed while questioning three criminals parked near Wormwood Scrubs Prison. |
| 1965-66 |
The Kray-Richardson Gang War |
8 |
North-South 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" McVite, 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 thirty years imprisonment. |
| 1969 |
Bible John |
3(?) |
Glasgow, Scotland |
Three women are found to have been strangled between 1968 and 1969 by an unidentified serial killer known only as Bible John. Although police investigated the murders for over twenty years, the murderer was never identified. |
| 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 livingroom where he was killed with a shotgun blast to the head. Within a year, four men were arrested for the murder, however, the conviction of the men known as the Bridgewater Four has since been subject to controversy over police misconduct and evidence tampering. |
| 1975-81 |
The Yorkshire Ripper |
13-20+ |
Yorkshire, England |
Peter Sutcliffe, known to the press as the "Yorkshire Ripper", murdered seven women in West Yorkshire, as well as up to thirteen others in northern England until his arrest in 1981. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was imprisoned at Parkhurst Prison until his transfer to Broadmoor Hospital after he was violently assaulted by another inmate. |
| 1978-81 |
Dennis Nilsen |
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. |
| 1984 |
The shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher |
1 |
St. James's Square, London, England |
Yvonne Fletcher, a young police officer, was shot and killed under mysterious circumstances while attempting to control rioting protesters at the Libyan embassy. |
| 1987 |
Hungerford massacre |
17 |
Hungerford, Berkshire, England |
Michael Ryan went on a rampage in a small rural town in England, shooting people at random (including his own mother) with an array of firearms before killing himself. |
| 1988 |
The Lockerbie Disaster |
270 |
Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland |
In one of the worst terrorist attacks of the decade, a 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 Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines. |
| 1993 |
The abduction and murder of Jamie Bulger |
1 |
Walton, Merseyside, England |
Two-year-old James Patrick Bulger was killed by two 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, after luring him away from a shopping centre to a nearby railway line where they violently 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 arrested by police and both sentenced to eight years imprisonment. |
| 1993 |
The murder of Stephen Lawrence |
1 |
Eltham, South London |
A Jamaican-born architecture student, Stephen Lawrence, and a friend are attacked by a group of white males and stabbed to death while waiting for a bus in Eltham, an area in south-east London. Although several people were arrested for the attack, none was brought to trial due to lack of evidence. |
| 1994 |
The House of Horrors Fred West case |
14(+?) |
Gloucester, England |
Between 1973 and 1992, Fred and Rosemary West would lure young women into their home where they were sexually assaulted and murdered. This continued until Fred West's arrest in 1992 for the murder of his daughter. Both he and his wife would be convicted for mass murder, with Fred West committing suicide while awaiting trial at Winson Green Prison in 1994. The next year, Rosemary West was sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| 1996 |
Dunblane massacre |
18 |
Dunblane, Scotland |
A gunman murdered 16 children and their teacher at a primary school in Scotland before shooting himself dead. |
| 1998 |
Harold Shipman |
250+ |
Hyde, Tameside, England |
Over a period of three decades, Dr. Harold Shipman murdered approximately 250 elderly women in the area of Hyde, Greater Manchester until his arrest in 1998 after he attempted to forge a new will in the name of one of his victims. Facing 15 consecutive life sentences, he later committed suicide while in custody at Wakefield Prison in 2004. |
| 1999 |
The Jill Dando Murder |
1 |
Fulham, West London, England |
Jill Dando, a television presenter for the British Broadcasting Corporation and host of Crimewatch UK, is 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. |
| 2000 |
The murder of Sarah Payne |
1 |
East Preston, West Sussex, England |
Sarah Payne, an 8-year-old schoolgirl, is abducted and later murdered by Roy Whiting. |
| 2000 |
The murder of Damilola Taylor |
1 |
Peckham, London, England |
While on his way from Peckham Library, ten-year-old 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. The mysterious circumstances regarding this have led to speculation that it might have been a racially motivated attack or an accidental death. While the case remains open, Taylor's death is unsolved. |
| 2001 |
The Torso in the Thames case |
1 |
River Thames, London, England |
The discovery a human torso floating in the River Thames on September 21, 2001 is 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. |
| 2001-2 |
The M25 Rapist |
- |
South East England |
West German-born Antoni Imiela, known as the M25 Rapist, attacks and sexually assaults seven woman in Southeastern England before his capture by authorities in 2004. |
| 2002 |
The Soham murders |
2 |
Soham, Cambridgeshire, England |
Two ten-year-old children, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, were murdered by local school caretaker Ian Huntley after luring them into his home. The search for the two girls was one of the longest undertaken by British authorities. |
| 2002 |
Amanda 'Milly' Dowler |
1 |
Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England |
Dowler was a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl when she was abducted in broad daylight while walking home from school, with no witnesses to the crime. 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. No formal charges of murder have ever been brought against anyone. |
| 2005 |
London Bombings |
52 |
London, England |
Four suicide bombers detonated high explosives located in camping rucksacks on three underground trains and a double-decker bus |
| 2006 |
Ipswich Ripper |
5 |
Ipswich, Suffolk, England |
Five women from Ipswich who were working as prostitutes were found murdered around the town. |
