Episode 85 - Interview with Laura Richards, BSc, MSc, MBPsS
Episode 85
Friday, November 28, 2025 • Duration 35:00
In this episode we are joined by Laura Richards, host of Crime Analyst podcast and criminal behavioural analyst. Laura is also an advocate and campaigner who worked for a decade at New Scotland Yard. Laura's previous roles include former Head of the Homicide Prevention Unit as well as former Violence Adviser to the National Police Chief's Council and the Home Office.
Laura has been the architect of law reform to better protect victims on eight occasions, spearheading law reform on stalking and coercive control in England and Wales and more recently America and Australia and has won many awards for her work.
Laura has created the brilliant podcast Crime Analyst which has brilliant analysis and in-depth expertise on a range of cases which centres the victims and tells their stories.
Check out Crime Analyst and find out more about Laura here:
In March 1974 39 year old Pamela Panes and her three children Graham aged 7, Angela aged 6 and Adrian aged 4 were killed by husband and father Roger Panes in Hampshire in the UK. Roger then took his own life.
The Panes family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren religion. Before the murders, Roger had been forcibly “shut up” — or shunned from the religious community he’d grown up in. His own wife and children were instructed to shun him as well. That isolation pushed Roger into a downward spiral: first an attempt on his own life, then the decision to murder his whole family.
A family were taken, and the community were left with questions about the role of religion in their murders.
On 12 November 1976, 36-year-old Renee MacRae and her 3-year-old son Andrew vanished near Inverness. That night, her BMW was found burning in a layby on the A9. Blood in the car pointed to murder — but no bodies were ever found.
For over 40 years, it was one of the UK’s most haunting cold cases.
Then, in 2019, police arrested William MacDowell — Renee’s secret lover and Andrew’s biological father. In 2022, he was found guilty of murdering them both. He died five months into his sentence, taking the truth of what he did and where Renee and Andrew were - with him.
This is part one of the story of Renee and Andrew MacRae.
In July 2013, 53-year-old Marie-Josée Benitez and her 19-year-old daughter Allison vanished without a trace from their home in Southern France. The last person to see them alive was Francisco Benitez — Marie-Josée’s estranged husband and Allison’s father. He claimed they’d left for a trip to Toulouse. They never came back.
What followed was a chilling chain of revelations. Francisco was already linked to the disappearance of another woman in 2004. Just weeks after his wife and daughter vanished, he took his own life. Then, investigators discovered traces of Allison’s blood in a freezer at the military barracks where Francisco worked.
Marie-Josée and Allison were never found. But the evidence pointed to one clear theory – that they had been killed by father and estranged husband Francisco.
This is the story of Allison and Marie-Josee Benitez.
In July 2010, just days after returning from a family holiday, 31-year-old Vicki Case and her two baby daughters — 2-year-old Phoebe and 1-year-old Nereya — were brutally murdered in their own home. The man who killed them was the person who should have loved and protected them the most: husband and father, Andrew Case.
After taking their lives, Case then took his own life. He left behind devastation and unanswered questions. While reports suggested he was under financial pressure, the police struggled to comprehend what could drive a man to kill his entire family. In a never heard before twist, some sections of the media sought to excuse his actions — attributing the murders to an anti-smoking medication Case was taking, as though anything could justify the deliberate, calculated killing of his wife and children.
In March 2004, in a quiet suburb of Melbourne, Australia, Anna Kemp and her 20-month-old daughter Gracie were brutally murdered by the very person who should have loved and protected them the most — husband and father, John Sharpe. Armed with a speargun, he shot Anna and Gracie multiple times, killing them in cold blood. Anna was also pregnant with their second child who she had named Francis.
After killing his whole family, Sharpe appeared in the media, tearfully pleading for their return and spinning the lie that Anna had left him, taking Gracie with her. But behind the cameras was a killer, hiding in plain sight. His deception didn’t last and Sharpe was sentenced to 33 years in prison for the calculated, monstrous slaughter of his own family.
In February 1995, the quiet town of Springfield, Missouri was devastated by a brutal familicide. Cheryl Feeney and her two young children — 6-year-old Tyler and 18-month-old Jennifer — were found savagely murdered in their own home. The crime scene was bizarre, chilling, and left more questions than answers.
Husband and father Jon Feeney was away at a teacher’s conference when the murders took place. But it wasn’t long before suspicion fell squarely on him. Despite a trial that captivated the nation and a verdict of not guilty, many remain convinced that Feeney got away with murdering his family.
In December 1987, over the course of a single week, Ronald Gene Simmons brutally killed 14 members of his own family. They included wife Becky, his children Gene Jr, Loretta, Eddy, Marianne, Becky, Billy, and Sheila, his grandchildren Barbara, Trae, Sylvia, and Michael, his daughter-in-law Renate, and his son-in-law Dennis.
Not content with slaughtering his family, Simmons then murdered a former co-worker, Kathy Kendrick, and an innocent bystander, Jim Chaffin and wounded many other people in the process.
It remains one of the deadliest familicides in American history. Simmons was executed by lethal injection in 1990.
In February 2018, in the quiet town of Derrylin, Northern Ireland, a fire tore through a remote bungalow. Inside were the bodies of four family members — Denise Gossett, 45, her children Sabrina, 19, and Roman, 16, and Sabrina’s baby daughter, 15-month-old Morgana. The only survivor was Denise’s partner, 33-year-old Daniel Allen — the man responsible for their murders.
Allen was a violent, coercive, and controlling man who forced the family to live under different names, isolated them from the outside world, and moved them from place to place to maintain his grip on them. His campaign of terror ended in a deliberate act of unspeakable violence. Today, Allen is serving a 29-year life sentence — one of the longest ever handed down in Northern Ireland — for the brutal, calculated murder of an entire family.
Kim Davis co-hosts the Slaycation podcast alongside husband Adam Davis and friend Jerry Kolber. The podcast – which I absolutely love – explores cases of murder, mysterious deaths and disappearances while on vacation – or holiday as well call it in the UK. I highly recommend that you check it out and add it to your podcast list.
Kim is a trained social worker specialising in domestic abuse and has worked in domestic abuse shelters in her career. She has expert insight into the impact of domestic abuse and the behaviours of domestic abuse perpetrators.
She is also a fan of true crime and does the majority of the research for Slaycation – trying to find an answer to why people commit such horrific crimes.
This is our interview with Kim Davis from Slaycation podcast.
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