John Bindon was a modern legend. A powerful figure in London's underworld, his film-star looks, charm and talent brought him worldwide exposure. His story reads like the plot of a movie in which Big John himself might have landed a part. Usually typecast in tough-guy roles, his on-screen persona was chillingly close to the real-life one.
Big John's good looks and charisma led to encounters with stunning women, most famously Princess Margaret, and numerous high profile relationships. But most of all, Big John was a warm-hearted, complex man, utterly devoted to those who gave him respect and always prepared to be the last line of defence to those closest to him. He emerged from a poor, working class London childhood and fraternised with the Krays and the Richardsons, but eventually turned his back on crime to play major parts in films such as Mick Jagger's Performance, The Who's Quadrophenia and Michael Caine's Get Carter. This is a truly moving story about a man who was many different things to many people, but never anything but himself.
Killing Goldfinger charts the extraordinary rise and spectacular bullet-riddled fall of John Palmer, the richest, most powerful criminal ever to have emerged from the modern British underworld. During the late 1990s, Palmer was rated as rich as The Queen by the Sunday Times Rich List.
Palmer earned his nickname Goldfinger after smelting (in his back garden) tens of millions of pounds worth of stolen gold bullion from the 20th century's most lucrative heist; the Brink's-Mat robbery. Palmer then used his share of the millions to become the vicious overlord of a vast illegal timeshare property empire in Tenerife. At the same time, Goldfinger financed huge international drugs shipments as well as some of the most notorious UK robberies of the past 30 years, including the £50m Securitas heist in Kent in 2006 and, many believe, the Hatton Garden heist in 2015.
Palmer vowed to hunt down all his underworld enemies. But in the end it was those same criminals who decided to bring his life to an end. Murdered in June 2015, with charges of fraud, money laundering and worse pending, this book tells his murky story for the first time.
As outrageous and bullet-riddled as the hit Netflix series Narcos, Killing Goldfinger tells the true story of Britain's underworld kingpin, who turned the sunshine holiday island of Tenerife into his very own Crime Incorporated and then paid the ultimate price.
For decades, America has been considered to be the natural home of serial killers.
Infamous names like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer are internationally known and feared, and rightly so. But what if, just south of the border, there was a far more active network of serial killers? What if the perfect storm of crime, fuelled by this nation's deadly narco wars, has turned Mexico into an ideal hunting ground for many of the most bizarre and blood thirsty serial killers the world has ever seen? Serial Killers of Mexico delves into this criminal underbelly to tell the stories of the psychopathic loners, professional narco assassins and the overwhelmed law enforcement trying desperately to hunt them down.
“If I was a serial killer looking for new victims, I'd head over the border to Mexico because life is cheap there and the police have got so much other sh*t to investigate, they don't bother with random killings.” - A FORMER FBI AGENT
Biography of Jack Spot, king of the 1950s London underworld who inspired both the Krays and the Richardsons.
One time king of the underworld, Jack Spot was known as one of the most powerful criminals in Britain – amassing incredible wealth, and being associated with a string of women, throughout his 30 year career.
From taking to the streets of London in the thirties and associating with the pantheon of criminals who led the 60's organisations, Jack Spot's tale is a gripping cocktail of dastardly crimes and glamourous associations.
He was looked up to by some of Britain's most notorious faces – such as the Krays and the Richardsons who saw him as a mentor and genius in the craft of crime.
The true story of London's toughest, deadliest street gangs: the events, the rules and the real top boys.
Are the streets of London some of the deadliest in the world?
What's the truth behind the headlines?
And who are the real top boys?
The Real Top Boys reveals the lives of the street gangs who have taken over, and now rule, dozens of corners of the UK's capital.
Bestselling true crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us on a tour of the housing estates and volatile neighbourhoods where pride, rivalry and revenge are the codes people live and die by. He talks to the criminals who have helped create this chilling modern-day underworld and recounts the vicious turf wars that changed the map, unravels the rules and rights of the streets, and charts the rise and fall of many of the game's key players over the decades that have transformed the city.
Featuring interviews with real-life gangsters and told in a gripping story that lays bare the hard life in this world, The Real Top Boys is the ultimate account of gang life in London and a jaw-dropping look at who really runs the streets.
WITH A FOREWORD BY NIGEL McCRERY, CREATOR OF SILENT WITNESS
Going beyond the popular TV show, this is the true story of forensic science from those who solve crimes without witnesses.
How do you identify a serial killer?
What are the tell-tale signs of guilt?
Can we now solve the unsolvable?
Since even before the first season of Silent Witness in 1996, forensic science has played an increasingly important role in the investigation of violent crimes.
With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Bestselling true crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.
And he shows how the silent witness is often the one who screams the loudest.
Going beyond the popular TV show, this is the true story of forensic science from those who solve crimes without witnesses.
How do you identify a serial killer?
What are the tell-tale signs of guilt?
Can we now solve the unsolvable?
Since even before the first season of Silent Witness in 1996, forensic science has played an increasingly important role in the investigation of violent crimes.
With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Bestselling true crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.
And he shows how the silent witness is often the one who screams the loudest.
Best-selling true crime writer Wensley Clarkson has encountered many of the UK's most corrupt police officers by infiltrating the underworld and the secretive lives of these corrupt guardians of the law.
Line of Duty: The Real Story is an astonishing expose from inside the secret world of police corruption, starring a cast of twisted, dishonest cops more chilling than any of the fictional characters watched by vast audiences in the hit TV series. These characters are synonymous with power, violence and even glamour, inhabiting a murky, amoral world leaving bloody chaos in their wake.
So who are the people who are tasked with hunting these corrupt cops, and how has corruption invaded today's UK police forces? In Line of Duty: The Real Story we go behind the contemporary headlines to look back at the history of corruption, and the anti-corruption units that were set up to sniff out the bent coppers among the good.
Referencing real-life historic and notable cases and people, from a range of sources and first-person interviews, Line of Duty: The Real Story tells the truth behind the fiction, and its hard-hitting impact on real life modern policing.
This is the shocking story of a doctor who was addicted to murder: a man who wickedly abused the trust of his patients with horrifying results.
He was a pillar of the community: attentive, kind, never too busy to chat. Yet behind this charming facade lay the world's most prolific serial killer, with at least 200 victims. Small, bespectacled Dr Shipman was making house calls - and then committing murder with bloodcurdling expertise and professionalism. He saw himself as playing God.
This sensational audiobook looks behind the man and reveals how, throughout his 25-year campaign of evil, Shipman continued to be a doting husband and father, trusted and adored by the majority of his patients. Evil Beyond Belief looks at how he was able to get away with murder for so long and - most important of all - why he was driven by a twisted, insatiable lust for death. It also looks at the events leading up to Shipman's suicide and examines the effect that this dramatic event had on the families of his numerous victims.
The Dartford Crossing: a vital transport hub connecting Kent and Essex, the busiest river crossing in Europe, and the site of some of the most vicious organised crime today...
For the last decade, there has been a intense turf war in the south-east of England between two sets of criminal gangs:
On one side, there's the 'Establishment' - the old-school firms that have operated for decades and weaved their way into all areas of their communities. On the other, 'The New Kids on the Bloc' - mainly Eastern European gangs
who have muscled in, boasting they'll crush anyone in their way and dominate the British underworld.
The Dartford Crossing, due to its location between London and the ports of the south-east, has become the epicentre of these battles.
Since Brexit began, the war has become even bloodier as both gangs try to claim new territory before the borders close. In an already terrifying and volatile world of drug smuggling, people trafficking, prostitution and money laundering, all rules are out and the body count is rising...
With research and interviews from both sides conducted by one of true crime's most established names, The Crossing is a ground-breaking and fascinating look inside the UK's newest crime phenomenon.
In what has been described as a true-life blend of "Grumpy Old Men" and "Ocean's Eleven, SEXY BEASTS is an insider account of the 2015 Hatton Garden Heist, in which a group of retirement-age career criminals--the so-called "Diamond Geezers"--robbed a London jewelry vault, in what would be the biggest burglary in UK history.
The Hatton Garden Heist captured the British public's imagination more than another other crime since The Great Train Robbery. It was supposed to make a fortune for a team of old time professional criminals. Their last hurrah. A final lucrative job that would send the old codgers off on happy retirements to the badlands of Spain and beyond. It seemed to be the stuff of legends. Tens of millions of dollars worth of valuables grabbed from safety deposit boxes in a vault beneath one of the most famous jewelry districts in the world.
But where did it all go wrong for this band of old time villains? And how did the gang's bid to pull off the world's biggest burglary turn into a deadly game of cat and mouse featuring the police and London's most dangerous crime lords?
Nobody is better placed to reveal the full story of the Hatton Garden Heist than Britain's best-connected true crime writer, Wensley Clarkson. Through his unparalleled contacts inside the criminal underworld, he's finally able to reveal the astonishing details behind Britain's biggest ever burglary.
