Must Listen: Best British true crime podcasts

Are you a fan of true crime podcasts?

Podcast coach Clare Freeman has chosen four of her favourites British True Crime pods as part of 5 Live's Must Listen, which airs every Monday at midnight on the Sarah Brett show.

Clare has picked: The Missing Cryptoqueen, Missing, Unheard: The Fred and Rose West Tapes and All Killa No Filla.

Plus you can listen to an interview with reporter Jo Black, who presents 5 Live's Killer in the Congregation documentary.

The Missing Cryptoqueen

Dr Ruja Ignatova persuaded millions to join her financial revolution. Then she disappeared. Jamie Bartlett presents a story of greed, deceit and herd madness.

Clare says…

"I really credit Jamie Bartlett and Georgia Catt who’ve put this together.

"It feels like the series is very current, it’s adapting to what’s happening – even as they release it - which is really exciting. They could have just written the script for this and put it out in April but they’re moulding and changing it as they go.

"For me, it is the best podcast series I’ve listened to in a couple of years. It’s absolutely fascinating."

Unheard: The Fred and Rose West Tapes

The 12-part series features the tapes of journalist Howard Sounes, who broke stories on Fred and Rose West while working as a national newspaper journalist

Clare says…

"It’s more like a reporter’s insight really.

"This is somebody who was working on the beat as a reporter on the Sunday Mirror, back in 1994. He picked up the call - he was just a general news reporter - and it turned out to be a tip-off from someone about these strange goings-on in Gloucester.

"At the time he had a Dictaphone, so he was recording everything on these cassette tapes, these micro-cassette tapes, and of course it turned out to be a huge story, one of the biggest stories he’s ever worked on.

"Now he’s an author, he’s dug out those tapes from storage and you get to listen to them."

Missing

Hosted by best-selling crime writer Tim Weaver, this show investigates the world of missing people – who disappears, why they disappear, the pressures of life on the run, and who tracks them down.

Clare says…

"A quarter of a million people go missing every year in the UK, 80% are found in the first 24 hours, and 99% of cases are resolved within a year. It’s just this 1% where they remain unsolved, and that’s what [Tim Weaver] is looking at.

"Tim Weaver is an author, and he’s written several books on crime.

"It’s really interesting how deep and detailed he gets in, looking at it from all angles and even, nearer the end of the series, setting himself the task of whether he can disappear.

"There is one particular episode where he interviews an expert who helps people go missing. The months and months of planning that goes into it is eye-opening."

All Killa No Filla

Clare says...

"I just had to throw something in which was going to make us laugh a bit.

"I always end up listening to this when I’m doing my supermarket shop. I end up just walking around the aisles chuckling away to myself.

"Rachel Fairburn and Kiri Pritchard are two female comedians who in between their tours just sit down and talk about murderers. They pick one per episode and delve into a bit about who they were and what they found out about this person.

"The conversation goes off on a bit of a wander, they get easily distracted. Some of it is very rude and there’s plenty of swearing which, would we expect anything else from comedians?"

Killer in the Congregation