Murder Squad – Nostalgia Central

1 9 9 2 (UK)
7 x 60 minute episodes
1 9 9 6 (UK)
2 x 60 minute episodes
1 9 9 7 (UK)
3 x 60 minute episodes

Producer/director Robert Fleming and two documentary crews spent four months with London’s Metropolitan Police murder investigation team to produce this ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary series for Thames Television.

The crews shadowed the police 24 hours a day as they went about their grim business from October 1989 to January 1990 – although broadcasting could not take place until the trials had been concluded.

Debuting on Tuesday 4 February 1992, the series – narrated by Edward Hardwicke – followed five different murder investigations from the moment the investigating officers arrived on the scene, through the post-mortems, forensic analysis and the interviewing of witnesses, to the arrest, interrogation and charging of the suspect.

The opening episode followed the case of 69-year-old Douglas Piper, found battered to death in his council flat in London’s Stoke Newington.

The initial suspect for the murder was a woman. The only mourners at his cremation were murder squad detectives.

Other episodes followed a bomb explosion at a South London hair salon, which uncovered two bodies and an axe, and the search for a seven-year-old boy who disappeared from his school in North London while his mother was on remand for robbery.

The cruellest and most gruesomely bizarre of all was the murder of John Howard (pictured at right), investigated in episode six.

Howard was found in his flat in Camberwell having been tortured to death because of a belief he had money hidden there.

After he had been burgled twice, one of the burglars returned for a third robbery but found Howard dead, sitting on the lavatory. He had been knifed repeatedly in his legs but died from a blow to the head.

He had made it to the lavatory but had died there. He had been sitting there for several days before he was found.

Three of the seven episodes featured affable, self-effacing Detective Superintendent Allen, who admitted feeling no sympathy for the accused at all. “How can I move on to the next case tomorrow if I feel something?” he said. “I might have ten of these a year”.

A two-part special broadcast subsequently aired in 1996, with a three-part broadcast in 1997. Both were produced by John Withington.

Narrator
Edward Hardwicke

Episodes

The Murder of Douglas Piper | The Explosion at New Cross | The Murder of Noel Christopher Part 1 | The Murder of Noel Christopher Part 2 | The Missing Boy | The Murder of John Howard | Life Sentence || The Murder of an Unknown Man | The Murder of Barry Stubbings ||  The Killing of Mr and Mrs Ambasna | The Murder of Raymond Folks | The Knife Killings