10 true crime cases to uncover on BBC iPlayer

From new insights into high-profile cases to lesser-known crimes, BBC iPlayer has a wide range of true crime series to stream.

There is everything from an in-depth look at the infamous Jack the Ripper case to the tale of a teenage fraudster.

Here are a range of true crime cases you can learn all about on BBC iPlayer right now.

The following contains descriptions of violent crimes that some may find distressing.

It is the stuff of true crime legend. For four months in 1888, a killer stalked the streets of East London, murdering five women and sending clues to the press. The identity of this brutal butcher was never uncovered.

Hundreds of books, series and films have speculated on his true identity.

But few of these previous looks at the case had the access to digital technology that BBC doc Jack the Ripper – The Case Reopened had. Not only do they identify another potential victim, but the show also promises to be "as definitive as could be in naming the killer".

After synthetic cannabis was found in the boot of a hire car he was using, British tourist Karl Williams spent a year in a prison known as "the Alcatraz of Dubai".

There, he claims he was tortured and threatened with a firing squad. Dubai authorities have denied his claims.

How his ordeal ended, and how he coped with life after prison, is shown in High: Surviving a Dubai Drugs Bust.

In 2000, real estate broker James Mosqueda and his fiancée Amy Kitchen were found shot dead at their home in Dallas, Texas. The man convicted was James's cousin, Ivan Cantu, who it was alleged killed the couple over family rivalries and to steal drug money he believed James had in his home.

Cantu was sentenced to be executed, and spent two decades protesting his innocence. As new evidence emerged, his case attracted celebrity support, including from Kim Kardashian.

Life and Death Row follows Cantu's case, hearing from those campaigning to free him as well as the families of the victims.

Staff at a West Midlands tip yard make a gruesome discovery: one of the freezers brought in for disposal contains a dead body.

Forensics get to work to identify the body and make a discovery… a friend of the deceased has known about their death for some time but did not report it.

This is just one of the stories told in Forensics: The Real CSI, which shows the facts behind the fiction of certain hi-tech dramas about solving murders.

Dinah McNicol, 18, vanished in 1991 after hitchhiking home from a dance music festival. For 15 years, no-one was able to find out what happened to her.

But when the body of Angelika Kluk was found buried under the floorboards of a Glasgow church, a stranger-than-fiction story involving an alcoholic priest and a violent handyman was uncovered by authorities.

Could this savage killing provide answers to what happened to Dinah all those years ago? The Hunt for Peter Tobin finds out, showing authorities racing to convict a registered sex offender on the run who may have committed both crimes.

Scottish teenager Elliot Castro first stole someone's bank details when he was 16. Within a few years, he had stolen more than £2.5 million through a series of scams.

Through his crimes, he was able to live a life of designer clothes, five-stars hotels and lavish holidays – until it all came crashing down in an Edinburgh department store.

Confessions of a Teenage Fraudster tells Castro's criminal rise and spectacular fall – and details how he has now turned the tables to become a leading fraud prevention expert.

Dennis Nilsen is one of Britain's most prolific serial killers, killing at least a dozen gay men in north London.

Filmmaker Michael Ogden decided to make a film about Nilsen's victims, whose disappearances he believes were not taken seriously by the police because they were gay, and often living precarious lives on the margins of society.

In The Nilsen Files, he interviews friends and families of these victims, as well as those involved in the case to look at this highly-publicised case from a new angle.

In 2019, Essex police made the harrowing discovery of 39 Vietnamese migrants who had suffocated in a sealed lorry.

What followed was one of the UK's biggest police investigations, which slowly but surely uncovered a huge web of human trafficking that spanned continents.

Hunting the Essex Lorry Killers tells the story of the police who took this case from a single fingerprint to the breaking of an international gang, as well as allowing us to hear from some of the families of those who died.

In 1955 Ruth Ellis was the last woman hanged in Britain for the murder of her racing driver lover.

In this investigative three-part series, The Ruth Ellis Files, film-maker Gillian Pachter re-examines the case, looking at the police investigation and discovers worrying assumptions and problematic omissions.

In 2017, Tony Parsons had gone missing while on a 100-mile charity cycle ride in Scotland. Three years on, and one phone call changes everything.

A woman has called 999 and revealed something truly astonishing: she knows the truth about what happened to Tony Parsons. What began as a baffling missing person case unfolds into a gripping, unprecedented investigation, revealing secrets and lies, a shocking confession and the involvement of twin brothers.

The full story is told in two-part documentary series Murder Case: The Vanishing Cyclist.

All series are available to watch on BBC iPlayer now.

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