How does a “true British gentleman”, complete with love of cricket and handlebar moustache, end up dead at the bottom of a waterfall in New Zealand with his limbs bound and lashes to his buttocks? This is the question that faced police in 1989, when a tourist boat found the body of 51-year-old cricket umpire Peter Plumley-Walker floating at the bottom of Huka Falls.

To find out the answers you need to come with us on a journey down under involving a 19-year-old sex worker, her 35-year-old boyfriend, and their budget bondage basement.

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As far as the people of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, knew, Davy Tweed was a sporting hero, dedicated public servant, and good Protestant family man. But his stepdaughter Amanda Brown knew what this public façade masked: a volatile, unstoppable juggernaut of physical and sexual abuse, who made her family’s life a living hell.

In a very special episode, we directly hear from Amanda herself – who tells us exactly what it’s like to walk down the street with your abuser, while people shout ‘hero’ at him.

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Bleeding from the eyes, foaming at the mouth, and bashing themselves to death against the rocks. That was the fate of six skilled hikers in the Russian mountain range Khamar-Daban – at least according to the single survivor Valentina Utochenko. Yet if the Russian authorities are to be believed, it was just a simple case of hypothermia.

With speculation over what happened still rife, this mystery has been chalked up to everything from secret Novichok testing to accidentally ingested magic mushrooms. We know what we think, but you’ll have to listen to find out.

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On 19 May 2024, Ebrahim Raisi – “The Butcher of Tehran” and President of the Islamic Republic of Iran – died in a helicopter crash. Immediately, theories of who had killed him and why, swept the worlds’ media.But while his passing inspired this episode, we’re also going to look at his many thousands of victims – and in particular how his actions led to the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. It was a single death which sparked protests that challenged the mullahs of Iran like never before.

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The world’s most infamous nuclear disaster officially killed just thirty-one people, but in reality it’s death toll is incalculable. Raining radioactive debris over a city, and melting the skin off the on-site workers, the explosion and subsequent meltdown at Chernobyl reactor 4 is one of the most devastating man-made accidents in history.

This is the story of how fear, bureaucracy, and lies first brought down a nuclear power station, which then brought down a nation.

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Imagine finding out that your partner of six years – the love of your life, the father of your children – had never existed. That during all of your most intimate moments, they’d been spying on you, taking notes to report back to their superiors. That’s what happened to dozens of innocent British women in 2011, when they uncovered the SDS – a super-secretive unit of London’s Met Police.

To infiltrate groups of (mostly harmless) left-wing activists, these officers went undercover, routinely starting long-term sexual relationships with female members, for years at a time. They groomed these women, sometimes even fathering children, only to eventually disappear without a trace. H&S plunge into the gross, ethically murky waters of undercover relationships.

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Kidnapping might seem like an odd solution to low levels of education, but for The Democratic People's Republic of Korea it seemed like a perfect plan. Whisk away international intelligentsia to your hermit kingdom and reprogram them to become perfect North Korean citizens, capable of pushing forward your scientific endeavours – or more importantly, directing a cult classic knock-off Godzilla movie.

Unfortunately, it is a plan that hasn’t gone down overly well with the rest of the world. So how did it happen? And is it still going on today?

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When Christine Mackinday and her boyfriend were interrupted in bed by her ex-fiancé – a 200-pound ex-MMA fighter who had legally changed his name to War Machine – she had every reason to fear for her life.

This is the wild true story of Jonathan Koppenhaver: self-proclaimed “Alpha Male”, failed UFC fighter, wannabe pornstar and reality-show embarrassment – and his inevitable, tragic, violent revenge.

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