In June 2005, Janet Brown was 45, living in a converted barn outside Hexham in Northumberland, her elderly parents in the farmhouse next door. She was fiercely independent, she loved her dog, and she was happy travelling alone. On 1 June she booked a ferry to France, sailing on 18 June. She never made the crossing.

Because Janet had no office expecting her on a Monday, and a long habit of solo travel, her absence explained itself. No alarm was raised. No missing person inquiry was ever opened. Her partner, Donald Graham, wrote letters and cards to her parents in her name, telling them she had made a new life abroad. Olive Brown died in January 2007 and Eric Brown in March 2008, both still believing it. Graham attended both funerals, then forged Eric's will, with Janet's forged signature as the attesting witness.

What brought it all down was a clerk at the Skipton Building Society noticing that a signature did not match. A fraud inquiry became a missing person inquiry. A missing person inquiry became a murder inquiry. In June 2014, a jury convicted Donald Graham of murder without Janet's body ever being found. Life, minimum 32 years. He has never said what he did with her.

Solo episode this time.

If you have information about the whereabouts of Janet Brown's remains, please contact Northumbria Police, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Cassandra McDermott was 19 years old, loved by a houseful of sisters, and had just found the strength to leave a violent boyfriend. On 26 November 2001, while her mother was on a holiday Cassandra herself had insisted she take, she was beaten and left to die on a bedroom floor in Norbury, south London.

In 2002, her ex-boyfriend Mario Celaire stood trial at the Old Bailey. The jury deliberated for less than 3 hours and acquitted him. Under the rule against double jeopardy, a principle around 800 years old, that verdict could never be revisited.

5 years later, in Walthamstow, a 19-year-old woman called Kara Hoyte was attacked with a hammer and left for dead. She survived. She could not speak. Her mother sat beside the hospital bed and began writing names on a whiteboard.

This is the story of what Kara Hoyte knew, what she did with it, and how the Criminal Justice Act 2003 turned a permanent acquittal into a retrial. It is also the story of a family who built something in Cassandra's name.

Content note: this episode discusses domestic abuse and fatal violence against women. Details are kept to what the story requires.

Support: in the UK, the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline is 0808 2000 247. In Ireland, Women's Aid is 1800 341 900. The Cassandra Centre can be found at cassandracentre.org.uk.

Two men stepped over Ricardo Anderson as he lay dying. One man stayed and held his hand. He was convicted of murder.

Nottingham, 28 April 2023. Ricardo Anderson, 22, is stabbed through the heart in a flat at High Cross Leys. CCTV in the foyer below captures what happens next: the man who stabbed him walks past his body and keeps walking. Another man, David Francis, stops, stays, holds his hand and raises the alarm. A year later, both are serving life for his murder.

The only person who claimed to see the knife go in was Katrina Intress, a vulnerable witness who died 8 days after signing her statement. She was never asked a single question about it. In July 2026, the Court of Appeal ruled on what her words could and couldn't carry, upheld one conviction, and quashed the other, finding the case against Francis should never have reached a jury at all.

This is the story of Ricardo, of Katrina, and of how the law decides who was truly part of a killing.

Contains discussion of violence and drug use. Listener discretion advised.