True Police

Former Chicago police officer and Outfit associate Fred Pascente is the man who links Tony Spilotro, one of Chicago's most notorious mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives in the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago's Near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by Hanhardt.

Will Johnnie Veal—convicted of the murder of two police officers in 1970—be granted parole after 50 years in prison? How can he convince the parole board he’s reformed when he insists he’s innocent? What is prison time even supposed to accomplish? These are the questions that propel The Parole Room forward as it builds toward Johnnie’s 20th parole hearing—after 19 rejections.

Rookie cop Carrie Santero has always been fascinated by serial killers. As a teenager, she wrote a letter to Charles Manson in prison - and received a chilling reply. Then she came face to face with a child murderer in her small Pennsylvania town, an encounter that haunts her to this day. Now, as a detective in training, she finally has her chance to make a difference; to hunt down a psychopathic sadist who embodies the very nature of evil itself.

In August 2009, a 39-year-old policewoman went missing in Tamil Nadu. A month later, her heavily decomposed body was discovered in a drain by a graveyard. She had been brutally violated and killed. As the investigation started, the police detected a pattern in more than a dozen unsolved rape-and-murder cases with mutilated bodies of women turning up in graveyards, drains and empty fields along the highways. It didn’t take the police too long to find out that the perpetrator was a trucker named M Jaishankar.

During the Cold War, stories of espionage became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imagination of readers and filmgoers alike as secret police quietly engaged in surveillance under the shroud of impenetrable secrecy. And curiously, in the post-Cold War period there are no signs of this enthusiasm diminishing.

Back in 1950 Pamela Rhodes became one of the first policewomen in the country. But the force's new female recruits faced a sceptical public in rural Yorkshire and even before they stepped out on the beat there were the prejudices of older male officers to overcome. Yet from the first Pam was thrust into the front line. From runaway bulls to investigating ladies of the night and cases of vice, her innocent eyes were quickly opened.

In 1984, Jean Road, a 49-year-old mother of three, awakes at home in Bath, Somerset, and wonders where her 17-year-old daughter Melanie can be. Her bed hasn’t been slept in. Just then, Jean and her husband, Tony, hear someone shouting through a loudspeaker: ‘Does anyone know Melanie?’ Jean runs to the police car outside only to discover that her daughter has been murdered in a nearby street as she walked home from a club in the early hours. Britain’s biggest manhunt begins.

Babes in the Wood by Graham Bartlett with Peter James takes us to the heart of a murder case that shocked the nation. Both gripping police procedural and an insight into the motivations of a truly evil man, it is a unique account of what became a 32 year fight for justice. On 9 October 1986, nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway went out to play on their Brighton estate. They would never return home, their bodies discovered the next day concealed in a small clearing in a local park. This devastating crime rocked their close-knit community and the whole country.

Detective Inspector Avison Fluke is a man on the edge. He has committed a crime to get back to work, concealed a debilitating illness and is about to be made homeless. Just as he thinks things can't get any worse, the body of a young woman is found buried on a Cumbrian building site. Shot once in the back of the head, it is a cold, calculated execution. When the postmortem reveals she has gone to significant expense in disguising her appearance, Fluke knows this is no ordinary murder.

The Cornish Scoop is a novel, but I’ll be totally honest, there’s very little I’ve had to imagine, as I have experienced the majority of the content in this book in my career as a police officer. Treavey is a Cornish police officer who is just out of his probation in 1994 and making it alone in the big wide world of policing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this very much reflects the time and locations of my own policing experience, so I will leave it up to you which parts are made up and which are true. Remember that life tends to be stranger than fiction!

Jack Dawe is an unconventional street cop. His ability to not act or look like a "Copper" enabled him to infiltrate the drug networks of the UK. This no-holds-barred, explosive, and, at times, humorous account of undercover policing takes the listener through a journey of crime, violence, and deception. This memoir is a true story of poacher turned game keeper. A veteran of 30 years’ service as a soldier and police officer, Jack reveals how he grew from a young thief into a soldier in search of danger and adventure across the world.

When young teacher Anna Blackwell is found dead in her home, the police think her death was suicide or a tragic accident. After all, Stonebridge is a quiet country village in the Scottish Borders, where murders just don't happen. But Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez soon arrives from faraway Shetland when his ex-wife, Sarah, asks him to look into the case. The local gossips are saying that her new husband, Tom, was having an affair with Anna. Could Tom have been involved with her death?

Acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan follows Russell Poole, a highly decorated LAPD detective who in 1997 was called to investigate a controversial cop-on-cop shooting, eventually to discover that the officer killed was tied to Marion “Suge” Knight’s notorious gangsta rap label, Death Row Records. During his investigation, Poole came to realize that a growing cadre of black officers were allied not only with Death Row, but with the murderous Bloods street gang. And incredibly, Poole began to uncover evidence that at least some of these “gangsta cops” may have been involved in the murders of rap superstars Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur.

When Ella Watson, a woman of wealth and status, is brutally stabbed to death in broad daylight, it sends a shockwave through the Lake District community. Later that day, Keira Bradley meets the same fate. But whereas Ella’s murder is a tragedy, Keira’s death on the notorious Beacon Estate is just another statistic in a dangerous place.

Investigating how a severed hand ends up on the third green of a Cumbrian golf course is not how Detective Inspector Avison Fluke has planned to spend his Saturday. So when a secret protection unit from London swoops in quoting national security, he's secretly pleased. But trouble is never far away. A young woman arrives at his lakeside cabin with a cryptic message: a code known to only a handful of people, and it forces Fluke back into the investigation he's only just been barred from.

In 1998 an Alku, Minnesota, family of five was brutally murdered in their sleep. The event shook the insulated community but, without any solid leads, was relegated to the cold case files, where it moldered for twenty-five years. Until today. Agent Harry Steinbeck hoped never to return to the northland, a place that holds terrible memories of his sister’s abduction. But when a recent homicide is connected to Alku’s unsolved mass murder, he and cold case agent Evangeline Reed have no choice but to investigate.

In the midst of one of the worst winters Chicago has seen in years, the body of missing teenager Ella Reynolds is discovered under the surface of a frozen lake. She’s been missing for three weeks...the lake froze over three months ago. Detective Sam Porter and his team are brought in to investigate, but it’s not long before another girl goes missing. The press believes the serial killer Anson Bishop has struck again, but Porter knows differently. The deaths are too different. There’s a new killer on the loose.

True crime podcaster Trinity Scott is chasing breakout success, and her brand-new serial may get her there. Her subject is Clayton Jay Pelley. More than two decades ago, the respected family man and guidance counselor confessed to the brutal murder of teenage student Leena Rai. But why he killed her has always been a mystery. In a series of exclusive interviews from prison, Clayton discloses to Trinity the truth about what happened that night beneath Devil’s Bridge. It’s not what anyone in the Pacific Northwest town of Twin Falls expects.

Simon McLean takes the listener on an often hilarious, sometimes scary, always fascinating journey through the ranks of the Scottish police: from his spell as a rookie constable in the hills and lochs of Argyll; through his career in Rothesay; and to his ultimate goal: The Serious Crime Squad in Glasgow. Once there, listeners are taken into the squad room and ride along as terrorists are pursued, murderers brought to book and armed fugitives confronted; always peeking behind the veil of professionalism and order portrayed to the public.

Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging and Baltimore will reach its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people.