Murdertown

In 2014 a local woman goes missing after a night drinking in the pubs of the town. CCTV finds her walking home, arm in arm with another local drinker. He just happens to be a former butcher. Police soon realise he has put his trade to use, by dismembering his poor victim and hiding her body parts around the town. It's a crime with no obvious motive, and one which shocked the whole community. He was a man with a past – he once set fire to his primary school, and was found by firemen sat in the middle of the blaze paying the piano. It's a dark story – that we're still unpicking. Pontypridd is labelled the murder capital of Wales for the volume of crimes there in recent years.

1994 an evil gang kill a woman who manages a building society and tie up her husband, before robbing the building society of large sums of cash. Cops are baffled. But something doesn't quite add up. Despite making a tearful plea for help, the injured husband's story doesn't tally. Cops soon start to suspect that the ‘gang' are a hoax, and that Gordon Wardell has murdered his wife Carol in a bid to get money.

Throughout the early 90s young boys would be found dead after sniffing glue and being trapped in derelict buildings which caught fire. But when it kept happening, cops got suspicious. They soon found they were actually being systematically murdered by a man called Steven Grieveson, dubbed the Sunderland strangler in a case which still haunts the town. His is a name few will know, but he's regarded as one of the most dangerous killers in the UK.

Melanie Road, 17, was murdered on her way home from a nightclub in Bath in 1984. She had been out with her boyfriend and friends, but Melanie had been sexually assaulted and brutally stabbed 26 times on her way back home. A milkman found her body the following day. After multiple lines of enquiries and arrests, the police weren't able to find the killer, and despite recovering a large amount of DNA evidence at the scene, the case went cold. Over the next 30 years, the police continued to review the case and check the DNA database for any matches but no real breakthrough. There were 100s of potential suspects who were checked against the database but not a match. The real breakthrough came in 2014 when the DNA database returned a familial match, leading the police to married father Christopher Hampton. This man had brutally murdered Melanie on the night in 1984 and had been at large for 30 years.

In July 1999, the remains of Wendy Upton were found in nearby woods; she was identified using dental records. Upton had been reported as missing nine months previously.

In April 2015, 24-year-old student Karen Buckley went missing whilst on a night out with friends in the West End of Glasgow. Emilia visits the location where Karen was last seen and learns about the investigation that tried to find her.

In 1979, a young woman went missing, having last been seen in the city centre. The police assumed Sally Ann McGrath had simply run away, and it took nearly eight months for her body to be found. The investigation into her murder took even longer.

Joan and John Stirland, a couple in their fifties living on the Lincolnshire coast, were found murdered in 2004. The investigation into the deaths eventually led to the downfall of one of Nottinghamshire's most feared underworld figures.

Emilia investigates Evie Adams' murder in 2019. The victim's boyfriend, who was already being investigated over two separate deaths, quickly came under suspicion.

Emilia examines three murders which shook Beenham in the 1960s. One of the murders went unsolved for 40 years, until detectives vowed to finally seek justice.