Nottingham’s Most Notorious WOMEN | Full List of Crime Cases

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]In 1936, a woman who called herself a nurse was hanged outside a Birmingham prison while 10,000 people stood in the street below chanting for her life to be spared. In 1998, a woman shot both her parents, buried them in the back garden, and spent the next 15 years sending their relatives Christmas cards.

[00:00:21]In 2023, a woman stabbed a 74 year old army veteran more than 30 times, pushed his body into a cellar, covered it with cardboard, and was caught on camera dancing in the street outside his flat afterward. These are not stories from true crime novels. These are Nottingham cases, real courts, real sentences, real people who lost their lives at the hands of women who lived on the same streets in the same city.

[00:00:48]Today we are going through 10 of the most notorious cases involving women from Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.

[00:00:54]Fully verified, fully sourced, every single one ending in a conviction. Some of these you will have heard of, most you will not. Section one. Nurse Wadingham, the woman who killed for a will. Doraththa Wadingham was born in 1899 on a farm just outside Nottingham.

[00:01:13]She had no nursing qualifications. She had never trained as a nurse, never passed any medical exam, and had no right to call herself one. The only medical experience she could point to was a period of work as a ward maid at a workhouse infirmary near Burton on Trent during the First World War. A ward, someone who cleaned floors and emptied bed pans. That was the full extent of her medical background. None of that stopped her from opening a nursing home.

[00:01:41]In 1935, Doraththa converted her house at 32 Devon Drive, Nottingham, into a private care facility. She ran it alongside her partner, Ronald Sullivan.

[00:01:52]The County Nursing Association, the official body responsible for approving such places, looked at what she was doing, and gave it the stamp of approval. This was not a loophole. It was not a technicality. The system was simply not designed to catch someone like her. There was no legal requirement for a nursing home operator to hold a nursing qualification.

[00:02:13]Doraththa walked straight through that gap. The county nursing association then sent her her first major patients. A woman named Louisa Bagui, aged 89, and Louisa's daughter, Ada, aged 50. Ada had multiple sclerosis, a condition the people of 1935 called creeping paralysis. She could not walk. She needed full-time care. The nursing association placed both women with Doraththa for 30 shillings a week.

[00:02:42]Before the bagules arrived, another patient at the home had passed away from a condition requiring large doses of morphine. A quantity of that morphine was left over on the premises. Doraththa kept it. Ada Bagui had a will. It left her estate worth around £1,600 at the time to her mother and two cousins.

[00:03:04]Doraththa changed that. She got Adah to sign a new will, one that left everything to Doraththa and Sullivan on the basis that they had provided good care. Doraththa then destroyed the original document. She also arranged for Ada to write a note stating that when she passed away, no relatives were to be told. Later analysis of this note by handwriting experts suggested it had been tampered with, that the instruction about relatives had been squeezed into the document after the original letter was written. Theresa Bagui, the 89year-old mother, passed away in May 1935.

[00:03:38]Her death was expected given her age, and nobody looked closely at it. She was buried without suspicion. Adah Bagui lasted until September 1935. She had been in good spirits right up until the end. A friend visited her on 10th September and found her cheerful, making plans. The next day, Ada went into a coma. She passed away on the 11th of September. The stated cause of death was a brain hemorrhage. Doraththa moved fast. She immediately pushed for Ada to be cremated. This required two doctors to sign the paperwork. The first doctor signed off. The second was a man named Sirill Banks, the medical officer for health for Nottingham. Banks did not like what he saw. He was suspicious of the nursing home in general, suspicious of the cremation request, and suspicious of the note from Ada requesting it. He refused to sign and ordered a postmortem instead. The postmortem found no trace of anything that could have naturally caused Adah's death. What it did find was morphine. Over three grains of it in her stomach, her liver, her kidneys, and her heart. Sirill Banks then ordered the exumation of Louisa Bagui's body, the same thing, morphine poisoning. Both women had been given lethal amounts of morphine. Doraththa and Sullivan were both arrested. The trial opened at Nottingham Shurizes on February 24th, 1936. Sullivan was released on the second day. The evidence against him personally was too thin to proceed.

[00:05:08]Doraththa faced the rest of the trial alone. The prosecution was led by Norman Burkett, one of the most respected barristers in England at the time. The defense argued that Doraththa had simply been following a doctor's instructions when giving aid morphine for pain. The doctor named in that defense flatly denied it. He said he had never given Doraththa morphine tablets for Ada under any circumstances.

[00:05:32]The jury heard the forensic evidence.

[00:05:35]They heard about the rewritten will.

[00:05:37]They heard about the cremation note that appeared to have been altered. On February 27th, 1936, Doraththa Wadingham was found guilty of murder. The jury recommended mercy. She was a mother of five. Her youngest child was 3 months old at the time of her arrest. She had been breastfeeding that baby while on remand. Despite the recommendation, the sentence was death. On the 16th of April 1936, Doitha was taken to Winston Green Prison in Birmingham. She confessed to the crime in the hours before her execution. Her hangman was Thomas Peeroint with his nephew Albert Peer Point assisting. Outside the prison, 10,000 people had gathered. They were not there to celebrate. They were there to protest. Crowds chanted against the execution of a breastfeeding mother. It was one of the largest public demonstrations against the hanging Britain had seen in years. It changed nothing. The execution went ahead.

[00:06:36]Doraththa Wingham was 36 years old when she was hanged. She remains one of the last women to be executed in Birmingham before capital punishment was abolished in England. The case of Doraththa Wadingham raises something that runs through nearly every story in this video. How someone can present themselves as a trusted caregiver while doing the opposite behind closed doors.

[00:06:56]The next woman on this list did exactly that, except she kept the act going for 15 years, fooling not just the authorities, but everyone around her right up until the moment the bodies were found in the back garden.

[00:07:10]Section two. Susan Edwards, 15 years of lies.

[00:07:15]Susan Edwards grew up in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Her father was William Witchery. Her mother was Patricia Witchell. By the time Susan was an adult, she had married a man named Christopher Edwards. And the two of them had built a life together, not a wealthy one. They were in debt, serious debt, the kind that follows people around and shapes every decision they make. There was also something darker in Susan's past. During the trial, the judge accepted that Susan had been subjected to sexual abuse by her father during her childhood. That history did not excuse what came next, but it is part of the picture. By 1998, Susan and Christopher had been planning what to do about the Witcher for some time. Detectives who later investigated the case described it as premeditated, a decision the couple had worked toward over a period of years. The motivation was money. The Witcher had assets. Susan believed an inheritance had been taken from her by her stepg grandmother years earlier and the resentment had never left. On the Mayday bank holiday weekend in 1998, Susan and Christopher drove to Blenhim Close in Foresttown, Mansfield, where William and Patricia Witchery lived.

[00:08:27]What happened inside that house ended with both of Susan's parents being shot twice in the chest. They were then wrapped in a duvet and carried upstairs.

[00:08:36]The bodies stayed in the house overnight. In the early hours of the following morning, neighbors saw Christopher in the back garden digging.

[00:08:44]He later admitted in court that he had been digging a grave. He hit a cable in the first spot and had to move further down the garden where he dug a second hole a meter deep. The bodies, still wrapped in the duvet, were carried down from the bedroom and buried. When the banks opened the following Tuesday, Susan withdrew £40,000 from her parents' account. That was the beginning of 15 years of theft.

[00:09:08]Over the years that followed, Susan and Christopher siphoned off William and Patricia's pensions, their benefits, and eventually sold their house. The total amount stolen came to $245,000.

[00:09:21]A significant portion of that money went on Hollywood memorabilia, signed photographs, autographs, collector's items. They spent £20,000 on a single signed photograph of Frank Soninatra.

[00:09:34]They bought signed photographs of Gary Cooper. This was not a side interest. It was where a substantial chunk of the money went even as the couple themselves remained in debt. Meanwhile, Susan maintained the fiction that her parents were alive. She wrote Christmas cards.

[00:09:51]She sent letters to relatives on behalf of her parents, signing their names. In 2007, she wrote to a family member explaining that her father was getting elderly and that her parents had been traveling around Ireland for the good air. In 2011, she wrote to another relative saying her parents were enjoying a second youth full of zest for life. She kept this up for over a decade. Nobody close to the family had any reason to doubt her. The Witcheries had kept themselves to themselves.

[00:10:23]neighbors remembered them as people who rarely went out, never chatted, never socialized much. Susan used that isolation to her advantage.

[00:10:33]The story began to unravel in 2013 and not because of any investigative breakthrough. It unraveled because of a birthday. William Witchley would have turned 100 that year. When someone approaches their 100th birthday in the United Kingdom, official services make contact. Notifications get sent. Checks are done. Suddenly, people were looking for William Witchell, a man who had been lying in a back garden in Mansfield for 15 years. Christopher and Susan were in France when the pressure began to build.

[00:11:06]They made contact with police themselves and returned to the United Kingdom.

[00:11:11]Officers arrested them at St. Pancress International Station in London in October 2013.

[00:11:17]When police went to the house in Benham Close, they recovered two sets of human remains from the garden. DNA testing confirmed they were William and Patricia Witchery. Postmortem examinations showed both had been shot. The trial took place at Nottingham Crown Court in 2014.

[00:11:34]Susan admitted during the trial that she had shot her mother, claiming she had lost control in the moment. Her defense was that her mother had shot her father first and that Susan had reacted.

[00:11:45]The prosecution argued both victims were shot deliberately and that the entire thing had been planned in advance.

[00:11:51]Christopher and Susan both denied the charge of taking a life, but Susan admitted the manslaughter of her mother on the grounds of provocation.

[00:11:59]The jury did not accept the defense.

[00:12:01]Both were found guilty. Both were sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 25 years before either could be considered for release. The judge noted when sentencing Susan that she had suffered abuse at the hands of her father as a child, but that this did not reduce the gravity of what she and Christopher had done, particularly the sustained deception that followed. 25 years of minimum sentence, 15 years of sustained lies before that. And throughout all of it, the Hollywood memorabilia kept accumulating in their home while two people lay buried 3 ft underground in a Mansfield garden.

[00:12:38]Before we move on, if you're enjoying this analysis, please consider subscribing. It helps the channel tremendously. Susan Edwards managed to hide what she had done for 15 years by controlling the information around her.

[00:12:51]The next woman on this list could not hide anything. What she did was discovered within days. But the details of how she responded in the hours after the act and what she did next made her case one of the most disturbing to come out of Nottingham in decades.

[00:13:06]Section three. Sarah Hansford, the veteran who trusted the wrong person.

[00:13:12]Barry Spooner was 74 years old and lived alone in a flat on Gladstone Street in Forest Fields, Nottingham. He had served 12 years in the British Army with the Royal Signals Regiment. After leaving the military, he worked for British Telecom. His family described him as kind, gentle, and someone who would go out of his way to help anyone who needed it. That quality, that willingness to help, is what cost him his life. In 2020, Barry took pity on a woman named Sarah Hansford. She was 44 years old, had nowhere stable to live, and was struggling. Barry let her move into his flat. It was an act of basic human decency towards someone who appeared to need it. What followed was 3 years of sustained predatory behavior. Hansford had a long criminal history before she ever met Barry Spooner. By the time she moved into his flat, she had accumulated 24 court appearances for 46 separate offenses. Those offenses included assaulting her own grandfather, a man she had previously targeted for money to fund her drug habit. In 2019, she had been sent to prison specifically for extorting her grandfather. When she was released the following year, probation services assessed her as a high risk of harm to her grandfather and a medium risk to the general public. She was released on license. One of the conditions was that she had no contact with her grandfather. Nobody stopped her from moving in with Barry Spooner.

[00:14:39]Probation services were told she had moved in with him. Police were called to the flat on numerous occasions over the years that followed. Reports of threats, reports of theft, concerns raised about Barry's welfare. A coroner later found that police had received seven separate calls relating to the address in the two years before Barry was found there.

[00:14:59]Public protection notices were filed.

[00:15:01]Safeguarding concerns were documented.

[00:15:04]The agencies involved did not connect the dots. Throughout those 3 years, Hansford was draining Barry of everything he had. She used a combination of pressure, threats, and manipulation to get him to hand over his savings. The total taken from him fell somewhere between £20,000 and £24,000.

[00:15:23]The life savings of a 74year-old man gone. Barry's family later said he had been scared of her. He had told people he was frightened. That information never translated into action from the services that were supposed to be monitoring the situation. In late May 2023, Hansford attacked Barry in his own flat. She inflicted more than 30 separate wounds on his body. One of those wounds struck the corroted artery in his neck and caused his death. After the attack, she pushed his body into the cellar beneath the flat and covered it with cardboard boxes and clutter. Then she cleaned the flat. Then she went outside. CCTV footage captured what happened next. Hansford was recorded dancing in the street outside the building naked. She was later seen making multiple trips to the bins, disposing of items from the flat. In the days that followed, she shaved her head and dressed in Barry's clothing. She then went to his bank and attempted to withdraw £300 from his account. She tried a second time and failed. When agencies came to the flat with concerns about Barry, Hansford told them he was away. His body was found on 7th June 2023, nearly 2 weeks after he had been attacked. Officers discovered him in the cellar underneath cardboard and clutter exactly where Hansford had left him.

[00:16:42]Hansford was arrested on the 8th of June, 2023 on suspicion of taking a life. She was charged with that offense along with two counts of fraud by false representation and possession of a blade in a public place. She was also charged with attempted robbery relating to a separate incident on 26th of May 2023 where she had threatened a shop worker with a blade and tried to grab the till before leaving the store. When she later spoke to a psychiatrist after her arrest, she said the following. I knew what I was doing. I did it. I am not sorry. He deserved to die. She pleaded guilty to all charges when she appeared at Nottingham Crown Court on the 4th of December 2023.

[00:17:23]Sentencing her, Judge Nurmal Shant described how she had emerged from the flat after what she had done and danced in the street. He gave her a life sentence with a minimum term of 22 1/2 years before she could be considered for release. Barry Spooner's nephew read a victim impact statement in court. He described Hansford as a vile and evil person. He said the family were brokenhearted. He said he would be forever haunted by the thought of Barry's final moments, knowing that a man who would help anyone was unable to defend himself at the end. After sentencing, Nottinghamshire police was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct for investigation into how the force had handled the multiple warnings about Barry's safety before his body was found. A separate coroner's inquest in 2024 concluded that probation staff had been insufficiently curious about Hansford's relationship with Barry Spooner and that more could and should have been done. Barry Spooner's nephew described his death as the most lonely and undignified end imaginable for a man who deserved the opposite. Sarah Hansford targeted someone who was vulnerable and isolated. The next case involves someone who was supposed to be protecting a person who was vulnerable, a mother and the child who had no one else to turn to. What Katie Crowder did in a bathroom in Mansfield in March 2020 shocked even the most experienced investigators on the case. And the evidence presented at trial made it impossible to look away.

[00:18:55]Section 4. Katie Crowder, the mother who let Gracie die.

[00:19:01]Gracie Crowder was 19 months old. She lived with her mother Katie on Warby Avenue in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.

[00:19:07]She had not yet reached her second birthday. On the morning of 6th March 2020, police and paramedics were called to the street shortly after 6:00 in the morning. Gracie had been taken to her grandparents house nearby. She was unresponsive. Her grandparents had called 999 and were desperately trying to keep her alive. A recording of that call was played during the trial at Nottingham Crown Court. Gracie was taken to Kingsmill Hospital where she was pronounced gone a short time later.

[00:19:37]Katie Crowder was 26 years old at the time. Her explanation to police was as follows. She had filled a bucket with hot water to clean up after the family dog. She left the bucket on the bathroom floor and went to put on some washing.

[00:19:50]When she came back, she said Gracie was on the floor. She claimed she had found her daughter unconscious and had immediately taken her to her parents nearby to raise the alarm. The medical evidence destroyed that account completely. Gracie had deep burns covering approximately 65% of her body.

[00:20:07]The burns were to her face, her torso, her limbs. A home office pathologist gave evidence that those injuries were consistent with a significant quantity of scolding water being poured directly over a child who was sitting in equally hot water. The injuries were not consistent with a toddler pulling a bucket over onto herself. The defense tried to argue the bucket scenario was possible. Expert witnesses were asked whether a toddler of Gracie's size and age could have lifted a bucket heavy enough to cause those injuries. The answer was no. The bucket filled with water to the level required to produce those burns would have been at least as heavy as Gracie herself, if not heavier.

[00:20:45]She could not have done it. Justice Jeremy Baker, sentencing Katie Crowder at Nottingham Crown Court, described what the evidence showed had happened.

[00:20:53]He said it was apparent from the jury's verdict that Crowder had poured a significant quantity of scolding water over Graciey's face and body while the child was sitting in equally hot water.

[00:21:04]He said the medical evidence made clear that Gracie would have experienced intense pain, that she would have cried out, become distressed, and tried to physically escape from the source of the heat. He then said the following. Her passing would not have occurred swiftly.

[00:21:20]Gracie would have continued to suffer pain and distress for a significant period of time, an hour or more. Katie Crowder spent that hour cleaning up. She did not call an ambulance. She did not call for help. She moved through the flat tidying and cleaning while on her 19-month-old daughter was dying. When she eventually went to her parents house on the same street, she arrived sounding panicked and said she was gone. When her parents asked what had happened, Crowder told them she had found her like that.

[00:21:49]Her parents called 999.

[00:21:52]A police investigation found evidence that Crowder had taken cocaine before Gracie's passing. The exact timing of that drug use was part of the evidence presented at trial, though the toxicology alone did not determine the outcome. What determined the outcome was the combination of the forensic evidence, the expert testimony about the nature of the injuries, and the physical impossibility of the defense case.

[00:22:15]Crowder pleaded not guilty. She maintained throughout the 3-week trial that what had happened to Gracie was an accident. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty. There was no division among the 12 people who heard the evidence. Every single one of them reached the same conclusion. Detective Chief Inspector Rob Routlled, who led the Nottinghamship police investigation, said afterward that the injuries were not something you get hardened to. He said they gave everyone involved in the investigation the determination to find out the truth. He said cases like this are rare and that rarity makes them no easier to process for the officers who work them. Justice Jeremy Baker sentenced Katie Crowder to life in prison with a minimum term of 21 years before she could be considered for release. In his sentencing remarks, he said that what happened to Gracie on that Friday morning was as disturbing as it was tragic. He described Crowder's decision to leave her injured daughter and spend the next period cleaning up rather than getting help as a choice that compounded everything that came before it. Crowder was 26 when she was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court in December 2020. Gracie Crowder was 19 months old when she passed away. She had been alive for fewer than 600 days.

[00:23:34]The senior investigating officer said afterward that the case would stay with him for the rest of his life.

[00:23:39]That is not a phrase officers use lightly. The people who worked that investigation, who processed the medical photographs, who listened to the recording of the grandparents on the 999 call, who sat through 3 weeks of expert testimony about what those burns meant, carried it with them after the courtroom emptied.

[00:23:59]The jury took less time than expected to reach their verdict. The evidence, when laid out in full, left very little room for doubt. Before we move on, if you're enjoying this analysis, please consider subscribing. It helps the channel tremendously.

[00:24:14]Katie Crowder harms someone who had no ability to protect herself and no one else in the room. The case that comes next involves a different kind of helplessness. A woman in her 70s, deaf, unable to walk unaded, and asleep in her own bed when the person who was supposed to be caring for her came through the door with very different intentions.

[00:24:36]Section five. Karen Vamploo, the carer who lit the bed.

[00:24:43]Elizabeth Vamploo was 77 years old. She lived in a small bungalow on Eaton Court in Newark, Nottinghamshire. Her family called her Anne. She was deaf. She used a wheelchair and had very limited mobility due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a serious lung condition that made breathing difficult.

[00:25:03]She needed carers to visit her twice a day just to manage basic daily life. Her daughter-in-law was Karen Vamploo, 44, who lived nearby on King Street in Newark. Karen had access to Anne's home.

[00:25:16]She had a key. She had the access code.

[00:25:19]She had a copy of Anne's will kept at her own house. She had also been given access to Anne's bank account, ostensibly to help manage her finances.

[00:25:27]What Karen Vamploo did with that access was drain the account dry. Financial investigators who examined the records after Anne's passing found that Karen had reduced Anne's bank balance from £27,000 to just £15.

[00:25:44]The money had gone on Karen herself and her family. She had significant personal debts at the time and had been using Anne's accounts to cover them. Anne's bank eventually noticed and placed a block on the account limiting transactions to a£5 cap. That block was put in place the day before Anne passed away. On the day the block was placed, Karen and Anne was seen together at a Santandere branch. The bank had restricted access to Anne's funds. The money was gone. The account was essentially empty. Karen's husband, Mark, Anne's son, had no idea any of this had been happening. He was entirely unaware of the financial exploitation his wife had been carrying out against his own mother. In the early hours of December 15th, 2021, Karen Vamploo left her home on King Street at approximately 035 in the morning. CCTV cameras in the area recorded her movements. She was wearing a hoodie. She parked her car near Eaton Court, but not directly outside Anne's bungalow. She approached the property on foot. She went inside.

[00:26:50]30 minutes later, at approximately 1:13, CCTV recorded Karen running back to her car. She drove home. 4 minutes after arriving back at her house, she got back in the car and drove toward the Eaton Court area again. At 1:25, she called the emergency services to report a fire at Anne's bungalow. Fire crews and paramedics arrived and got Anne out of the building. She had suffered severe burns and smoke inhalation. She was taken to hospital and passed away later that same day, December 15th, 2021.

[00:27:24]Karen Vamploo told police she had become anxious when Anne did not call her that evening as she normally did. She said she had gone to check on her, forgotten her keys, returned home to collect them, and then discovered the bungalow on fire when she arrived back. She said she had tried to get inside to help Anne, but had been forced back by the smoke. The prosecution described this account as a sherade. Fire investigators examined the scene and determined the fire had been started by a naked flame applied to the bottom corner of Anne's bed. Anne smoked inside her home, and the defense pointed to this as a possible alternative explanation.

[00:28:01]The investigators rejected it. The fire had not started from a dropped cigarette. It had started at the base of the bed in a specific location in a way consistent with a deliberate act. Karen was arrested on suspicion of taking a life 2 days after Anne passed away. At that point, there was insufficient evidence to charge her. She was released. It took until September 2023, nearly 2 years later, before specialist forensic evidence was examined and secured to a standard that allowed the Crown Prosecution Service to authorized charges. She was rearrested and charged with one count of taking a life. The trial took place at Leicester Crown Court over 4 weeks. The jury heard the CCTV evidence tracking Karen's movements on the night of the fire. They heard the financial evidence showing what had been done to Anne's account. They heard from fire investigators. They heard Karen's own explanation of events. On May 17th, 2024, the jury found Karen Vamploo guilty of taking Anne's life. There were audible gasps in the courtroom when the verdict was delivered. Sentencing took place on May 20th, 2024. Judge Timothy Spencer told Karen she had done a wicked and terrible thing when she walked into Anne's home and lit the corner of her bed. He described Anne as a woman who was deaf, who had poor mobility, who must have woken to find her bed on fire.

[00:29:28]He said, "Flames, smoke, an inferno, and she, unable to hear, confused, terrified. This was hell." He said that by the time Karen implemented her plan, she had come to regard Anne as a burden, that the financial exploitation was inextricably linked to what followed, that Karen had somehow convinced herself that the fire would prevent the theft from coming to light, and that her husband would inherit money that would solve their problems. Karen Vamploo was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 32 years before she could be considered for release.

[00:30:01]Detective Chief Inspector Clare Dean, who oversaw the Nottinghamshire police investigation, said afterward that Karen had deliberately set a catastrophic and fatal fire, knowing full well that Anne was asleep inside. She described it as a brutal and premeditated act driven by greed. Anne's family described her as a devoted mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, and friend to many. They said she was happiest when spending time with her three granddaughters, who she was immensely proud of.

[00:30:30]Karen Vamploo planned what she did over time and carried it out in the middle of the night when her victim was at her most defenseless.

[00:30:38]The next case on this list is different in almost every way. No financial motive, no planning period anyone could identify, and a victim who had done nothing except exist in the wrong place at the wrong time, in a home that should have been the safest place in the world for her.

[00:30:54]Section six. Paula Usherwood, the woman who set the trap. Michael Anton Oconor was 31 years old. Everyone who knew him called him Anton. He was wellknown in the Meadows area of Nottingham.

[00:31:07]Well-liked and by all accounts someone people trusted enough to ask for help when things got tense. That trust is what put him in the wrong place on the night of 10th November 2021. The Meadows had become the center of a bitter and violent dispute between two criminal groups, each trying to take control of the illegal supply of controlled substances in the area. The group already operating there was led by a man named Leonard Ward. The group trying to move in was led by a rival. Tensions between the two had been building for months and had already produced serious violence before that November night.

[00:31:41]Ward's group decided to act. A team of individuals was brought in from Manchester specifically to carry out an attack on the rival leader. The plan was to lure that man to a meeting in Wilfford Cresant West and deal with him there. A trap was set. Paula Usherwood was 39 years old and lived in Beaston, Nottingham. She was not a peripheral figure in what followed. She was not someone who happened to be nearby. Her specific role, confirmed at trial by the prosecution and accepted by the jury, was setting up the ambush itself. On the morning of November 10th, 2021, the day of the attack, Usherwood met with the intended target in person. She was the point of contact. She was the one who made sure the right person was in the right place at the right time so that the trap could close around him. What nobody planned for was Anton O'Conor.

[00:32:34]Okconor was not a member of either group. He was not involved in the dispute. He had been asked because people trusted him to attend the meeting as a peacemaker, someone who might be able to calm the situation before it escalated further. He went unarmed. He had no idea he was walking into something that had been carefully prepared in advance. The Manchester group arrived. Okconor was outside a property in Wilford Cresant West shortly after 10:20 in the evening. His attackers were masked and armed. The weapons recovered and described during the trial included a firearm, a sword, a blade, an axe, and a hammer. Okconor had nothing. He was attacked and sustained a single wound to the heart. He was found collapsed on the pavement and was taken to the Queen's Medical Center. He was confirmed gone at the hospital. The investigation that followed was one of the largest Nottinghamshire police had conducted in years. The operation called Operation Havsac eventually identified more than a dozen individuals connected to what happened that night. 11 of them were put on trial at Nottingham Crown Court in October 2022.

[00:33:43]The trial ran for weeks. The jury heard evidence about the structure of the two groups, the history of violence between them, the communication between defendants in the leadup to the attack, and the movements of each person on the night itself. On 12th June 2023, nine defendants were found guilty of the act.

[00:34:03]Paula Usherwood was one of them. The prosecution had laid out her role with precision. She had not personally inflicted the wound that took Okconor<unk>'s life, but she had constructed the situation that made it happen. In English law, being part of a joint plan that results in a person losing their life carries the same legal weight as carrying out the act itself.

[00:34:23]The jury accepted that Usherwood was a participant in the plan. that she knew what the plan involved and that her actions on the day were a direct part of it. She was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 30 years before she could be considered for release.

[00:34:39]Anton O' Conor's family spoke after the sentencing. They described him as an inspiration to everyone who knew him.

[00:34:45]They said he was bright, articulate, and in the prime of his life with everything ahead of him. They noted that he became a father after his passing. his partner had been pregnant at the time of his death, meaning his child would grow up never having met him. Detective Chief Inspector Rob Routlled, who led the investigation, said afterward that Anton had been sent into a situation he knew nothing about, that he was unarmed and entirely unaware of the trap waiting for him, and that his death was cowardly in the extreme. He added that those responsible had gone into self-p protection mode immediately after, hiding and removing items that could connect them to what happened, lying to officers and trying to appear helpful while Anton was dying on the ground nearby. The case went further still. A second trial arose from Operation Havsac in 2024, focused on events that happened minutes after Okconor lost his life that same night.

[00:35:40]CCTV footage from the area captured the rival group's leader pointing a weapon directly at Usherwood in a nearby street. Apparently aware that she had participated in the trap set for him.

[00:35:51]The weapon failed to discharge.

[00:35:54]Usherwood survived. She had helped organize an attack on the man who then immediately tried to end her life in the same street on the same night. Nine people were convicted across the two trials. The combined sentences ran to well over 260 years. Before we move on, if you're enjoying this analysis, please consider subscribing. It helps the channel tremendously.

[00:36:17]Paula Usherwood played a planning role from the outside, setting events in motion without being at the center of them herself. The next woman on this list was not on the outside of what happened. She was living directly next door to where it took place, and the evidence at trial suggested she made a very deliberate decision in the moments before the attack began. Section seven, Carla Maguire. the neighbor who turned off the cameras. Wilfford Cresant West is a residential street in the Meadows area of Nottingham. It is the kind of street where people know each other, where the same faces appear at the same windows, where neighbors are aware of what goes on around them. Carla Magguire had lived there for years. She knew the area. She knew the people. And on the night of 10th November, 2021, she knew exactly what was about to happen outside her front door. Carla Maguire was 53 years old. She lived at a property in Wilford Cresant West, directly next to the address where Michael Anton Oconor was attacked and lost his life. That proximity was not coincidental. It was central to her role in what happened that night. Her connection to the criminal group involved ran through her family. Her son, Jerome Sheer, was Leonard Ward's right-hand man, a senior figure in the group that controlled the illegal supply of controlled substances in the meadows and that ordered the attack on the rival leader. Her other son, Michael Maguire, also lived with her at the same address. Both sons were convicted of the taking of a life alongside their mother. Jerome received a sentence of 31 years. Michael received 32 years. Three members of the same household, all found guilty of the same act, all sentenced to life. What Carla Maguire did that night was specific and deliberate. The prosecution's case, which the jury accepted, was that Carla Maguire disabled the CCTV cameras at her property in the period just before the attack was carried out. She turned them off. The cameras at her address would have recorded the street outside, the movements of the people involved, the approach to the property next door, the events that followed. By switching them off at that moment, she removed that footage from the evidence that would exist afterward. This was not a technical failure. It was not a malfunction. It was a deliberate act carried out at the specific time when it would make the most difference to what could later be proven about what happened outside her home. The trial at Nottingham Crown Court began in October 2022 and ran for weeks. 11 people were in the dock. The jury heard evidence about how the two rival groups had been operating in the Meadows, how the plan to target the rival leader had been put together and what each defendant's role had been. For Carla Maguire, the evidence focused on her connection to the group through her sons, her presence at the address on the night, and the timing of the CCTV being disabled at her property. On June 12th, 2023, nine of the 11 defendants were found guilty.

[00:39:15]Carla Maguire was among them. She was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 20 years before she could be considered for release. That minimum term is lower than some of the other defendants in the same case.

[00:39:27]Jerome Shear received 31 years. Michael Maguire received 32. Paula Usherwood received 30. The difference in minimum terms reflects the difference in roles.

[00:39:38]The two men at the higher end were active participants in the plan and present at the attack itself. While Usherwood had set the trap in motion earlier that day, Maguire's role was enabling and concealing rather than direct participation. The court accounted for that distinction in the sentence. It did not change the verdict.

[00:39:57]She was convicted of the taking of a life, not of a lesser offense. The jury's position was that disabling those cameras at that moment made her a participant in what happened in the street outside her home that night. The wider picture of that evening is worth understanding. Nine people were convicted of the same act. The combined minimum terms across all nine sentences came to more than 260 years. A further two defendants, Keranne Shepard and Gemma Fear, were convicted of separate offenses connected to the same act and sentenced separately in July 2023. The total number of people convicted in connection with Okconor's death across the full investigation came to 11.

[00:40:38]Anton Oconor had two sons of his own. He had been in the area that night because people trusted him to help. He carried no weapon. He had no idea a trap had been laid. His family in the statement released after sentencing described him as fearlessly ambitious, creative, and tenacious. They said he was an inspiration to all who knew him. They noted that he became a father after his passing. His child was born into a world where his father was already gone.

[00:41:07]Detective Chief Inspector Rob Routlled, who led the Nottinghamshire Police investigation, said that those responsible had gone into self-p protection mode immediately after the attack, hiding items, lying to detectives, trying to make it appear as though they were trying to help as Anton lay dying nearby. He said they fooled no one. Carla Magguire's appeal against her sentence was heard at the Court of Appeal in June 2025.

[00:41:32]The appeal was refused. Her conviction and minimum term were confirmed. She remains in prison. Her two sons remain in prison. The three of them from the same address in Wilfford Cresant West are serving a combined minimum of 83 years between them before any of them can apply for release. The Okconor case involved a large group of people, a long-running dispute, and a man who had nothing to do with any of it losing his life because he walked into something prepared for someone else. The final cases on this list are different in scale but not in impact. A woman who was there when it happened and made a choice about what to do next and a case that takes us back almost a century to a Nottingham street and a plan built entirely around greed. Section 8. Lisa Barlow. She stepped over him and walked out. Devis Anderson was 22 years old.

[00:42:24]His family described him as a muchloved son, a father, a brother, and an uncle.

[00:42:30]He was found in the communal entrance of a block of flats on High Cross Lees just off Huntington Street in Nottingham City Center in the early hours of 28th April 2023.

[00:42:40]He had a single stab wound to the chest.

[00:42:43]Officers and paramedics got to him and worked on him at the scene. He was taken to hospital and confirmed gone later that morning. The attack had happened inside the flat moments before. Courtney McCclary, 54, lived at Highcross Lees.

[00:42:59]Lisa Barlow, 45, also of Highc Cross Lees, was his partner. On the night of 27th April into the early hours of 28th April, Davis's Anderson was at the flat.

[00:43:11]What started as a confrontation inside the property turned into a fatal attack.

[00:43:16]McClary attacked Anderson with a blade.

[00:43:19]A second man, David Francis, 61, was also present and joined in. Anderson sustained the wound to his chest and managed to get out of the flat, making it as far as the communal entrance foyer before he collapsed to the floor. Lisa Barlow was in the flat when the attack happened. What she did next is what the court focused on. CCTV footage from inside the building captured the moments after Anderson collapsed in the foyer.

[00:43:45]McCclary and Barlow came out of the flat. They reached the communal entrance where Anderson was lying on the floor, still alive. They stepped over him, both of them. They did not call for help.

[00:43:57]They did not stop. They walked past him and left the building together, taking the weapons used in the attack with them as they went. Those weapons were never recovered. Barlow was initially charged alongside McCclary and Francis with the act of taking a life. That charge was later revised. She ultimately pleaded guilty to assisting an offender. Her guilty plea was entered when she appeared at Nottingham Crown Court. The sentencing hearing took place on April 29th, 2024.

[00:44:25]Judge Nal Shant KC presided. He had already sentenced McCclary to life in prison with a minimum term of 19 years and Francis to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 1/2 years for their roles in Anderson's death. When it came to Barlow, the judge confirmed what the evidence showed, that she had been present at the time of the attack, that she had left the scene with McCclary and that she had taken weapons from the scene with him, ensuring they could not be found by investigators. She was sentenced to 2 years in prison. The judge's words at sentencing addressed the loss directly. He said Anderson was only 22 years old, that he had been a muchloved son, a father, a brother, and an uncle, and that mccclary and Francis had cut short his life. He said nothing he could do in that courtroom would ease the pain of those who now had to live without him. Anderson's mother spoke at the sentencing hearing. She said her life changed forever on the day her son was taken. She said the pain felt in her heart every day was a physical pain that never left. The detail that stands out in this case and that was confirmed in open court and reported by multiple verified news outlets is the CCTV footage of Barlow and McCclary stepping over Anderson as he lay in the foyer. He was still alive at that point. He had just been fatally wounded inside the flat they had all been in together. He made it out of the flat and got as far as the entrance of the building. And the two people who walked out behind him stepped over his body and kept moving.

[00:45:55]the weapons left with them. Whatever had been used in that flat to inflict the wound that took Anderson's life went out through that door with McCclary and Barlow, and none of it was ever found.

[00:46:06]That removal of evidence was central to the charge Barlow faced and the conviction she received. The investigation and subsequent trial were confirmed and reported by BBC News, ITV News Central, West Bridgeford Wire, and the Newick Advertiser, all drawing on the Nottinghamshire Police account of events and the proceedings at Nottingham Crown Court. The judge's words and the sentencing outcome are on the public record. Barlow's 2-year sentence stands in contrast to the life terms handed to the two men who carried out the attack itself. The law distinguishes between the act and the covering of it, and the sentences reflect that distinction. But the image the CCTV captured, a 22year-old on the floor of a building entrance, having just been fatally wounded, and two people stepping over him without pausing, is not something that a difference in charge or sentence changes. Davis's Anderson's family said the pain was physical and daily, that it never left. His mother said that at a public sentencing hearing on the record in front of the people who had been convicted in connection with her son's death, he was 22. He was a father. The child he left behind will grow up knowing what happened in that building and what the people around him did afterward.

[00:47:22]Before we move on, if you're enjoying this analysis, please consider subscribing. It helps the channel tremendously.

[00:47:29]The cases covered so far span from 1936 to 2023 and involve women whose roles ranged from the one who planned everything to the one who carried it out to the one who made sure the evidence disappeared.

[00:47:42]The next case goes back to the beginning of this list in a different way. It is the one case where the question of what the woman actually did and why the system failed to stop her long before it did has never been fully answered to anyone's satisfaction. Section nine.

[00:47:56]Dawn, Charles and Tanya Rowley, the women who robbed a man in his own home.

[00:48:03]Not every case on this list ends with a life sentence. Not every case involves planning that stretched across years or acts that shocked an entire city. Some cases are smaller in scale and more common in type. And that commonality is part of what makes them worth including because the kind of crime Dawn Charles and Tanya Rowley carried out in Nottingham happens far more often than the cases that make national headlines and the people it happens to are among the most vulnerable in any community.

[00:48:33]The victim in this case was an elderly man living in Snenton, Nottingham. His name was not released publicly. What is known is that he was targeted inside his own home. that the two women who entered his property took his wallet and that they then used his bank cards at a nearby cash machine and in two separate contactless transactions before the cards were cancelled. Dawn Charles was 41 years old and lived on Snenton Road.

[00:48:58]Tanya Roelly was 47 years old and lived on Chukesbury Drive in Bazford. The two women went into the man's home in Snenton and stole his wallet directly from his property. They then went to a nearby intore cash machine and withdrew £600 using his bank cards. They made two further contactless payments using the same cards totaling more than £100.

[00:49:21]The total taken from the victim came to over £700.

[00:49:25]What caught them was CCTV.

[00:49:27]Nottinghamshire police examined the footage from the man's home and from the shop where the cash machine was located.

[00:49:33]The footage was clear enough to identify both women, but not through facial recognition or any sophisticated investigative technique. It was simpler than that. Dawn Charles had a distinctive tattoo on her right ankle.

[00:49:46]Despite making efforts to hide her face from the cameras, the tattoo was visible in the footage, and the officers examining it recognized it as clearly identifiable. The tattoo placed her at both locations beyond any reasonable doubt. Tanya Rolley was identified through different details in the same footage.

[00:50:03]She was wearing distinctive black boots and a long padded jacket. A gold colored hairband visible in the footage was also significant. When officers searched her home, they found the same hairband there. The combination of the boots, the jacket, and the hairband found at her address was enough to place her at the scene without any ambiguity.

[00:50:22]Both women were arrested. Both were interviewed. Both entered guilty p. Dawn Charles pleaded guilty to burglary and fraud by false representation. She was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court to 2 years and 5 months in prison. She was also banned from making any contact with the victim. Tanya Rolley pleaded guilty to the same two charges, burglary and fraud by false representation and to a further charge of possessing a class A controlled substance. She was sentenced to 2 years and 2 months in prison. She was also banned from contacting the victim. The case was confirmed and reported by BBC News with Nottinghamshire police providing the details of the investigation and the CCTV identification of both women. There are a few things about this case that are worth sitting with. The first is the method of targeting. The victim was elderly and living alone. He was in his own home, the place that is supposed to be the safest environment a person has.

[00:51:22]The two women entered that space and took from him directly. The choice of victim was not random in the sense that anyone could have been targeted. Elderly people living alone in residential areas of Nottingham, as in any city, are specifically and disproportionately targeted for this type of crime precisely because they are seen as less likely to resist, less likely to be believed, and less likely to have the means or energy to pursue what happened to them. The second is how they were caught. Neither woman was caught because of sophisticated detective work or forensic science. A tattoo on an ankle, a pair of boots, a hairband left at home. The kind of details that seem minor, but that when captured on CCTV and examined by officers who know what they are looking for, become the entire case. Charles had tried to hide her face. It did not matter. Roelly had not thought about her boots or her hairband at all. The footage did the work. The third is the guilty p. Neither woman contested the charges once the evidence was put to them. Both admitted what they had done. Both were sentenced and both were banned from any contact with the man they had targeted in his own home.

[00:52:30]His name was not made public. He was described by police as the victim and the force confirmed that the ban on contact was put in place specifically to protect him going forward. Whatever the impact of what happened to him inside his own home, having two people walk in, take his wallet, and use his money before he even knew what had occurred, he was left with the knowledge that it had happened, that his home had not been secure, and that the people who did it knew where he lived. Dawn Charles and Tanya both served their sentences. The man they targeted in Stenton has to live with what happened in a way neither of them does. nine cases ranging from 2 years to life with a minimum of 32. But there is one more case, one that sits in a different category from everything else on this list. Because the woman at the center of it was supposed to be the person protecting the child, and the system that was meant to catch what was happening had every chance to do so and did not. Section 10. Cayanne Morris and Juanila Smickle. Chenna Walker's last two years. Chené Walker was 7 years old.

[00:53:37]She had mild learning disabilities and kidney problems and had been placed into the care of her paternal aunt, Cayanne Morris, under a special guardianship order in 2011. Her mother, Leanne Walker, had struggled with postnatal depression after the birth of Chennai's younger sibling and had agreed to the arrangement, believing Chenet would be safe with family. The guardianship was made official. Chennet moved into the house on Beckham Road in Bestwood, Nottingham, where Morris lived. What followed over the next 2 and 1/2 years was a sustained pattern of harm that the trial at Nottingham Crown Court heard about in detail across 8 weeks of evidence. Morris subjected Chené to what the prosecution described as a sustained, vicious, and brutal pattern of treatment. The specific acts confirmed at trial and reported across multiple verified sources included hitting Chenet with a hairbrush and a shoe, forcing food and clothing into her mouth, burning her with a hair straightener, and dragging her along the floor. Chenet was banned from using the toilet at times. She was regularly physically punished for things that in any normal home would not have warranted any response at all. Chenet's school noticed. Teachers told police that her personality had changed from what they described as bubbly and happy to introverted and anxious when she was around her aunt. They noted bruising.

[00:54:59]They noted burns. They recorded what they saw and in many cases passed their concerns on to children's services. A serious case review carried out after Chenet's death found that the records of those referrals were often missing on the children's services side, meaning concerns raised by the school frequently did not result in any coherent action being taken. The last time Chené was seen alive outside the house, she van barefoot to a nearby corner shop and pleaded for help. Morris came and took her home. On the night of 31st July 2014, a phone message was sent from Morris to Chenet's mother. It said, "I'm sorry. I wasn't strong enough."

[00:55:40]Paramedics were called to the house in Beckham Road. They found Chennai in her bed. Her legs were covered in bruises and wound marks. A post-mortem examination found more than 50 separate injuries across her body on her face, her arms, her legs, and her back. The cause of death was a brain injury. One of the injuries to her head had been inflicted after she had already passed away. Chenna Walker was 7 years old.

[00:56:06]Morris told police that Chené had accidentally fallen down the stairs. At trial, she did not give evidence. She maintained the denial throughout. The jury heard all of the evidence, the medical findings, the school records, the neighbor accounts, the testimony of those who had seen Chen in the months before her death and returned their verdicts on June 4th, 2015.

[00:56:28]Morris was found not guilty of taking a life. The jury could not be certain to the standard the law requires that the specific injuries that caused Chennai's brain injury had been inflicted by Morris rather than occurring through some other means. She was found guilty of child cruelty toward Chennai.

[00:56:46]Confirmed and sustained cruelty across the period from January 2012 until Chenet's death. Hanila Smeichel, 53, Chennet's paternal grandmother, was also convicted. She was found guilty of cruelty toward Chené and toward three other children. She was acquitted of a charge relating to a fifth child. Morris was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

[00:57:10]Smichel was sentenced to 4 years. Both were sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court in June 2015. The sentencing judge noted that the abuse had persisted in part because Morris had manipulated Chennai into lying to concerned authorities about her injuries. a 7-year-old child coached into covering for the person who was hurting her, telling the people who might have helped her that nothing was wrong. The serious case review published in 2017 found that the support provided to Chen's family had been fragmented. A specialist family support team had been set up by Nottingham City Council to handle cases like Chenise. But the review found that this team had become separated from mainstream planning, meaning Chennai's case was managed outside the normal structures with less oversight and less information sharing between agencies.

[00:57:58]Concerns noted by various professionals, including bruising and questions about Morris's care, were not consistently shared between those professionals. No coherent plan for Chennai's welfare was ever put in place. Chenet had been placed with Morris in 2011. She passed away in July 2014.

[00:58:17]She was in Morris's care for 2 and 1/2 years. In that time, her school raised concerns repeatedly. Neighbors saw her distressed. Her own mother noticed bruising during visits. The system recorded some of it, acted on very little of it, and Chené remained in that house. Her mother said afterward that Chenet had been entrusted to family members she believed would love and look after her. She said instead Chené had been the victim of ongoing harm and that her life had been cut short before she could become the woman she would have grown up to be. Chenet Walker was 7 years old. 10 cases, 10 women, sentences ranging from 2 years to life, spanning nine decades of Nottingham courtrooms.

[00:59:00]The cases are different in almost every way. The motives, the victims, the methods, the sentences.

[00:59:07]What runs through all of them is one thing. Every single victim was in a position where they could not fully protect themselves. Elderly patients, a toddler, a deaf woman asleep in her bed, a man who opened his door to someone in need. A 7-year-old who ran barefoot to a corner shop for help and was brought back. These were real people. These were real streets. And in almost every case, there were signs before the end that something was wrong. If you enjoyed this breakdown, make sure to subscribe.

[00:59:38]Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next