Sinister South

In the summer of 1998, 30-year-old mother and DJ Avril “Miss Irie” Johnson was brutally murdered in her own home in Tulse Hill. Armed men forced their way in, tied up her family, and executed Avril i…

We're back in Victorian South London with a case so grim it became known as the Barnes mystery. In March 1879, widow Julia Martha Thomas hired a new servant, Kate Webster - a decision that would prov…

We're back! Season 3 is a go... what does season 3 do differently from season 2 you ask? Well... nothing really! HOWEVER... We're back with a big ol’ case – the brutal murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in…

We start this week chatting about Hannah’s all-consuming new farming obsession (no, not in real life – in a mobile game) and Rachel’s daughter delivering the line of the year to a would-be eight-year…

Camberwell, South London. A quiet flat just off the main road. Nothing about it stood out—least of all the man inside. But for over a decade, Frederick Diji was running a romance scam so insidious, o…

A teenage boy. A knock at the door. And a mother who made a devastating choice.

In this episode, we tell the story of 17-year-old Levi Ernest-Morrison — a kind, funny, and thoughtful boy from Sydenham…

A teenage boy. A knock at the door. And a mother who made a devastating choice.

In this episode, we tell the story of 17-year-old Levi Ernest-Morrison — a kind, funny, and thoughtful boy from Sydenham…

On a quiet summer night in Tooting, five litres of petrol were poured through a family's letterbox and lit. By morning sisters Nabiha and Maleha Masud were dying in hospital. The attack came without …

In this week’s episode of Sinister South, we revisit one of the most harrowing chapters in modern British policing – the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. On 22nd July 2005, just two weeks a…

In the winter of 1988, 22-year-old Lorraine Benson left a work Christmas party in Clapham Junction and never made it home. Her murder shocked South London – not just because of its brutality, but bec…

In February 2011, 21-year-old Gagandip Singh was found in the boot of his burning car on a residential road in Blackheath. At first, police thought it might’ve been a stolen vehicle, torched for the …

In this episode, recorded amid cat flap dramas, church hall trauma, and a frankly terrifying inflatable dinosaur, we dive into one of the most disturbing and under-reported cases in South London’s hi…

This week we bring you the devastating story of two women, Naomi Hunte and Fiona Holm, both murdered by the same man: Carl Cooper. Both had warned police. Both were ignored. And both were lost becaus…

After a slightly chaotic opening involving anxiety spirals, pocket-based trouser strategy, and a traumatic passport photo, things quickly turn grim as we cover the brutal 2020 murder of 25-year-old R…

A man shot in his kitchen. A Ming vase in a JD Sports bag. An iPad dumped in the Thames.

This one has it all: a failed assassination, a Geneva museum heist, and three South London men who left a digit…

In the summer of 2020, the quiet suburb of Mitcham was shaken by an unthinkable tragedy. Five-year-old Sayagi Sivanantham was found critically injured in her family’s flat, and what followed would un…

This week, we’re off to Twickenham (yes, it is in South London—Han’s learning geography as we go), where a wealthy widow was found brutally stabbed and partially burned in her own home in 1936. Laura…

In the early 1990s, South London was a hotspot for gangland violence, with organised crime families like the Arifs and Brindells locked in a deadly power struggle. In this episode, we explore the int…

She travelled to London with dreams of adventure, language, and independence,  but instead, 21-year-old Sophie Lionnet found herself trapped in a house of delusion and cruelty. 

In this episode, we un…

In August 2012, 76-year-old Elizabeth Coriat was found dead in her Forest Hill flat. She had been killed – and decapitated – by her own son, Daniel. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, know…