This is a list of major crimes in the United Kingdom and Crown dependencies that received significant media coverage and/or led to changes in legislation.
Legally each deliberate and unlawful killing of a human being is murder; there is no crime of assassination or serial killing as such, for example.
| Date | Name of incident | No. of deaths | Location | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1867 | 1 | Alton, Hampshire, England | Fanny Adams, 8, was brutally murdered, eviscerated and dismembered by Frederick Baker, a local solicitor's clerk. The murder indirectly gave rise to the working-class expression "sweet Fanny Adams" in the mid-20th century. | ||
| 1946 | 1 | Swansea, Wales | Muriel Drinkwater, 12, was raped and murdered in the woods in Penllergaer, Swansea. The case became known as the Little Red Riding Hood murder. In 2008, a DNA profile of the suspect was extracted from her clothes, possibly the oldest one in the world to be successfully extracted in a murder investigation.[1] | ||
| 1953 | 2 | Notting Hill, London, England | Two girls went missing in Teddington and were found the next day, having been raped and murdered. After the country's biggest manhunt at the time, Alfred Charles Whiteway was arrested and charged. He was found guilty at his subsequent trial and hanged. The case was described at the time as "one of Scotland Yard's most notable triumphs in a century".[2] | ||
| 1968 | 1 | Surrey, England | Roy Tutill, 14, was raped and murdered on his way home from school. The case went unsolved for 33 years, until Brian Field was convicted of the crime after DNA evidence surfaced. In 2001, Field was sentenced to life in prison.[3] | ||
| 1984 | 1 | Wokingham, Berkshire, England | Seven-year-old Mark Tildesley disappeared while visiting a funfair in Wokingham, Berkshire, on the evening of 1 June 1984. He was lured away from the fair and his bicycle was found chained to railings nearby.[4] In 1990 it emerged that Mark had been abducted, drugged, tortured, raped and murdered by a London-based paedophile gang on the night he disappeared. However, his body has never been found.[5] | ||
| 1993 | 1 | Merseyside, England | A 3-year-old boy was abducted from New Strand Shopping Centre, Bootle on 12 February, having been lured away from his mother while shopping. Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both aged 10, walked James 2 miles (4 kilometres) to a railway line in Walton, where he was tortured and murdered. The police later apprehended Thompson and Venables as CCTV images showed the boys leaving the shopping centre with the toddler. At Preston Crown Court Thompson and Venables, both then aged 11, stood trial and were found guilty by the jury. Justice Moorland sentenced Thompson and Venables to serve a minimum of 8 years at Her Majesty's pleasure. After serving 8 years both Thompson and Venables aged 18 were released back into the public on lifelong license and given new identities. | ||
| 1993 | 1 | London, England | On 22 April, 18 year-old Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a hate crime at a bus stop. | ||
| 1994 | 1 | London, England | On 13 August 1994, 15-year-old Richard Everitt was stabbed to death in London in a racially motivated attack. Everitt's neighbourhood, Somers Town, had been the site of ethnic tensions, and although he was not involved in gangs, he was murdered by a gang of British Bangladeshis who were seeking revenge on another White British boy. The murderer was not apprehended, as members of the gang fled to Bangladesh. Badrul Miah and Showat Akbar were tried in 1995 as the ringleaders of the gang and were given life sentences, with minimum terms of 12 years and three years in custody respectively.[6] | ||
| 2000 | Murder of Victoria Climbié | 1 | London, England | Victoria Climbie was an eight-year-old girl who died on 25 February 2000 after being taken to North Middlesex University Hospital in Edmonton, London suffering from malnutrition and hypothermia. Originally from the Ivory Coast, Victoria was taken to first Paris then London by her aunt Marie Thérèse Kouao in a form of informal foster care common in her society. In July 1999, they moved in with Kouao's partner Carl Manning. Over the following months, Victoria experienced severe abuse and was twice admitted to hospital. The couple believed in Witchcraft and that Victoria was demonically possessed. After her death, Kouao and Manning were found guilty of her murder in January 2001. The authorities were accused of failing to sufficiently intervene to protect the girl.[7] [8] [9] [10] | |
| 2007 | 1 | London, England | Peter Connelly was a 17-month-old infant who was found dead in his family home in Haringey, North London on 3 August 2007. Peter had suffered serious injuries prior to his death including a broken back, fractured ribs and a blow to the face which knocked a tooth out of his jaw. The boy had various interactions with the authorities in the months prior to his death including being briefly taken out of his mother's custody at the end of 2006. His mother Tracey Connelly, stepfather Steven Barker and stepuncle Jason Owen who were all members of the same household at the time of Peter's death were found guilty of causing his death in November 2008.[11] [12] | ||
| 2012 | Murder of April Jones | 1 | Powys, Wales | April Jones was a five-year-old girl from Machynlleth, Powys who disappeared after being allowed outside to play without adult supervision on the evening of 3 October 2012. A child witness said that April had climbed into a van voluntarily. The search conducted by police and volunteers to find the girl in the months after her disappearance was the largest police search in British history but achieved no results. Various evidence led to Mark Bridger being suspected of murdering April, particularly the discovery of traces of her DNA in the man's wood-burner. He was found guilty of murdering April Jones in May 2013.[13] [14] | |
| 2014 | Murder of Breck Bednar | 1 | Grays, Essex, England | Breck Bednar was an English teenager of American descent from Caterham, Surrey, who was murdered by 18-year-old Lewis Daynes, an unemployed computer engineer, on 17 February 2014, at Daynes' flat in Grays, Essex. Daynes had befriended Breck through online gaming. Over time, gaining and manipulating the youth's trust and isolating him from his family and friends. On February 16, 2014, Daynes lured Breck to his apartment, claiming he needed Breck's help for his supposed computer software company. The next day, Breck was subjected to a brutal attack, resulting in his tragic murder. Daynes ultimately pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. | |
| 2018 | 1 | Rothesay, Bute, Scotland | Alesha MacPhail was a 6-year-old schoolgirl from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, Scotland who was reported missing from her grandparents' home on the Isle of Bute at 6:25am on 2 July 2018. She was staying with her father, Robert, and her grandparents, Calum and Angela MacPhail. It is claimed that Alesha's mother, Georgina Lochrane, 23, who could not be contacted immediately after Alesha went missing, found out about her daughter's disappearance and later death on the social media platform Facebook. Alesha's body was found in woodland on the site of an abandoned hotel, around 20 minutes walk from her grandparents' home. 16-year-old Aaron Campbell was eventually arrested and charged with Alesha's abduction, rape and murder and sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in jail.[15] [16] | ||
| 2020 | Murder of Arthur Lambinjo-Hughes | 1 | West Midlands, England | Arthur Lambinjo-Hughes was a 6-year-old boy living in Shirley, Metropolitan Borough of Solihull who was murdered by his stepmother. Arthur had been living a somewhat troubled life over a couple of years. During restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, his carers Thomas Hughes (father) and Emma Tustin's (stepmother) behaviour towards him became increasingly abusive causing his physical condition to deteriorate. On 16 June 2020, his stepmother killed him through a severe assault to his head. Tustin and Hughes were later convicted of murder and manslaughter respectively along with other charges.[17] [18] [19] |
Murder is the unlawful killing of another person without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought.
| Date | Name of incident | No. of deaths | Location | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1827 | 1 | Polstead, Suffolk, England | William Corder murdered his lover, Maria Marten, at the Red Barn, where her body was discovered after her stepmother was allegedly visited by Marten's ghost. The crime subsequently became the subject of numerous plays and musical pieces which remained popular into the 20th century. Corder was hanged in 1828. | ||
| 1840 | 1 | London, England | Russell's Swiss valet, François Courvoisier, murdered Russell after being accused of theft. Russell was the uncle of future prime minister Lord John Russell. A provincial doctor, Robert Blake Overton, wrote to the latter suggesting checking for fingerprints, but the suggestion, though followed up, did not lead to routine use of fingerprinting by the police for another fifty years.[20] | ||
| 1947 | 1 | Off the coast of Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) | Eileen "Gay" Gibson, a young actress, died during a voyage from South Africa to Southampton. Her body was dumped through a porthole by James Camb, a ship's steward present in her cabin. Camb claimed that Gibson had died from a sudden illness during consensual sex, but the prosecution contended that Camb had deliberately choked or suffocated Gibson in an act of murder. Initially sentenced to death for the killing, Camb was released from prison in 1959. | ||
| 1974 | Lord Lucan case | 1 | Belgravia, London, England | John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, vanished upon being suspected of murdering his nanny and assaulting his wife. He has not been seen since and was declared legally dead in 1999. | |
| 1985 | 5 | Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England | Five members of the Bamber family were shot and killed inside their farmhouse. The sole survivor, Jeremy Bamber, was convicted of the murders and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison, later amended with a whole life order. | ||
| 1987 | Newall Murders | 2 | Brothers Rodrick and Mark Newall murdered and buried their parents. One brother was arrested in Paris by French police and the other was arrested in Gibraltar by the Royal Navy.[21] | ||
| 1996 | Murder of Stephen Cameron | 1 | M25 motorway, Greater London, England | Cameron was murdered by Kenneth Noye, a convicted criminal on licence from prison, during a road rage incident. Noye was extradited from Spain two years later and sentenced to fourteen years from prison. He is currently on parole. | |
| 1999 | 1 | Fulham, London, England | Dando, a prominent BBC presenter, was shot once in the head at her front doorstep. Her killer has never been caught, although speculation has pointed to Serbian involvement stemming from the Kosovo War. | ||
| 2000 | 1 | West Sussex, England | Payne, aged 9, was murdered by sex offender Roy Whiting, resulting in changes to British child protection laws. Whiting was sentenced to life imprisonment. | ||
| 2013 | 1 | London, England | Rigby, a British Army soldier, was off-duty when he was run over by a car and hacked to death by two men with knives and a cleaver. The killing created a rise in anti-Islam sentiment across the UK, and news agencies were criticized for showing video footage of the murder. The assailants were identified as Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British armed forces. They were sentenced to life imprisonment. | ||
| 2017 | 1 | London, England | Morgan, a British university student, was murdered by a member of her church, Shofah-El Israel, in December 2017. Israel was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2019. Morgan's remains were located after the trial in October 2019.[22] | ||
| 2021 | 1 | London and Kent, England | Everard, a young marketing manager, was arrested by Wayne Cousens, an off-duty policeman, under the pretense of breaching COVID-19 restrictions, then was raped, murdered and dumped by Cousens. He was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| Date | Name of perpetrator(s) | No. of deaths | Location | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1828 | 16 | Edinburgh, Scotland | Murdered sixteen lodgers in order to sell their bodies to an anatomy lecturer. Burke was hanged, while Hare was released. | |
| 1865–1873 | 21 | Sunderland, England | Believed to have murdered up to 21 people, mainly by arsenic poisoning. Many of her victims had married her.[23] | |
| 1888 | 6 | Whitechapel, London, England | Murdered five women. Never captured nor conclusively identified. | |
| 1943–1953 | 8+ | Notting Hill, London, England | Murdered several women as well as Beryl Evans and her infant daughter Geraldine, resulting in her husband Timothy Evans being wrongfully convicted and executed of their murders. Was himself executed in 1953. | |
| 1963–1965 | 5 | Manchester, England | Murdered five children and buried their bodies on Saddleworth Moor. Hindley was sentenced to prison while Brady was sectioned to Ashworth Hospital; they died in 2002 and 2017, respectively. | |
| 1968–1969 | 3 | Glasgow, Scotland | Murdered three young women he had encountered at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow. Remains unidentified. | |
| 1975–1980 | 13 | West Yorkshire, England | Murdered thirteen women. Sentenced to life imprisonment under a whole life order before being transferred to Broadmoor Hospital. Died in 2020. | |
| 1978–1983 | 12-15 | Muswell Hill, London, England | Killed over a dozen people and kept body parts in his private residences. Given a life sentence. Died in 2018. | |
| 1973–1987 | 13+ | Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England | Tortured, killed, and buried a dozen young girls in their family residence in Gloucester. Fred committed suicide before he could be brought to trial, while Rose was sentenced to life imprisonment under a whole life order. | |
| 1991 | 4 | Grantham, Lincolnshire, England | Killed four infants in her capacity as a pediatric nurse. Received thirteen life sentences for the murders and other crimes targeting infants. | |
| 1975–1998 | 15 convicted, possibly up to 250 | Hyde, Greater Manchester, England | Murdered hundreds of patients in his capacity as a general practitioner, and regarded as one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. Committed suicide in prison in 2004. | |
| 2015–2016 | 7 | Countess of Chester Hospital, England | Neonatal nurse convicted in 2023. | |
| Date | Name of perpetrator(s) | No. of deaths | Location | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970s–1980s | Unknown | Durham, England | A prison for young male offenders where more than 1,800 living former inmates have reported sexual and physical abuse by staff.[24] Many of the prison guards are believed to have belonged to a paedophile ring.[25] | |
| 1955–2009 | Unknown | Various | Television personality who used his celebrity status as a BBC Television personality,to sexually abuse hundreds of children and young people over a fifty-year period, with his victims including audience members, patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary, and inmates at Broadmoor Hospital. Crimes did not become publicly known until almost a year after his death in 2011. | |
| 2010 | Unknown | Derby, Derbyshire, England | A group of men who sexually abused up to a hundred girls in Derby, in one of the most severe cases of sexual abuse in recent times. In 2010, after an undercover investigation by Derbyshire police, members of the group were charged with 75 offences relating to 26 girls. Nine of the 13 accused were convicted of grooming and raping girls between 12 and 18 years old.[26] The attacks provoked fierce discussion about race and sexual exploitation. | |
See also: Corruption in the United Kingdom, Gangs in the United Kingdom, List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain and List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United Kingdom.