The Profiler with Kerry Daynes

On 18 December 2022, 32-year-old Natalie McNally was murdered in her home in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, stabbed, beaten and strangled while 15 weeks pregnant with her son. Her boyfriend, Stephen McCullagh, appeared to have the perfect alibi: at the exact time of the attack, he was hosting a six-hour 'live' YouTube broadcast, watched by thousands. In this episode, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes reveals how McCullagh had actually pre-recorded the stream four nights earlier, slipping in chilling ‘hints’ at the murder he was about to commit, before slipping out to kill Natalie and returning home undetected. Drawing on CCTV, digital forensics and a harr...

On 26 August 2016, 19-year-old Shana Grice was murdered in her Brighton home by former colleague Michael Lane — a man she had reported to Sussex Police multiple times in the months before her death. In this first episode of the new season, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes reveals how officers dismissed Shana's complaints, branded her a liar, and even fined her £90 for wasting police time, while Lane, a serial stalker with a hidden history of predatory behaviour, grew increasingly bold. Drawing on interviews with journalists who covered the case, and secret recordings Shana made herself, Kerry traces the eight-stage 'Homicide Timeline' that led...

In the final episode of our summer specials, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes talks to Steve Keogh, a retired Metropolitan Police detective inspector who spent twelve years on Scotland Yard's Murder Investigation Team and helped convict around 100 killers. Steve reveals how murder squads achieve an extraordinary 90% clear-up rate, why smartphones have become a detective's most valuable piece of evidence, and what working the devastating aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings taught him about trauma and resilience. He also shares the theory it took him thirty years to develop: that virtually every murder is driven by one of just three underlying motives...

In this special episode, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes sits down with Dr Cliff Lansley, the body language expert often called the “Human Lie Detector,” to unpack the real science of spotting deception. A former motor mechanic turned behavioural analyst, Cliff spent a decade working alongside the late Dr Paul Ekman, the world's foremost expert on facial expression, before developing SCAnS, the Six Channels Analysis System now used by police, lawyers and intelligence services. Kerry and Cliff pick apart real police interview footage from three of Britain's most notorious killers — Harold Shipman, Ian Huntley and Wayne Couzens — to reveal how a micro...

In a special summer episode, Kerry Daynes is joined by journalist and TV documentary maker Jeff Anderson as she revisits one of Britain’s most obscure legal landmarks: the 1964 execution of Gwyn Owen Evans and Peter Allen, the last two men ever hanged in Britain. The pair were convicted of the brutal murder of 53-year-old delivery driver Jack West in Workington, Cumbria, a robbery that spiralled into violence. Kerry and Jeff trace the chaotic trail of evidence that led police straight to the killers within 48 hours, and Kerry offers her psychological assessment of Evans — a compulsive fantasist whose lies exte...

While the team spends August preparing fresh cases for the autumn run, hosts this special ‘Ask Me Anything’ episode of The Profiler. The questions, posed by producer Jeff Anderson, come from listeners who signed up to Kerry's weekly email, covering stories already featured on the podcast, live news events, and Kerry's own career and life.

Topics covered:

The UK government's plan to release thousands of prisoners early to ease overcrowding, and why Kerry believes it shouldn't go ahead in its current form — she makes the case for deporting foreign nationals eligible for removal and clearing the re...

On 14 May 2018, pharmacist Mitesh Patel called 999 from his home in Middlesbrough, telling the operator his wife Jessica had been attacked during a burglary. But as forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes reveals in this Season One finale of The Profiler, the true story was one of coercive control, a secret gay double life, and a chillingly calculated murder plot. Drawing on 999 recordings, CCTV footage, and interviews with detectives and journalists, Kerry unpicks how a ‘loving husband’s’ carefully staged crime scene unravelled — exposing a hidden relationship, a plan to start a new life in Australia, and a motive rooted in greed and betr...

By April 1989, John Cannan had been convicted of kidnapping and murdering Bristol newlywed Shirley Banks, raping another woman, and attempting to abduct a third at gunpoint — crimes that led one psychiatrist to conclude he could “dispose of a human life with as much emotion as you and I throw away a toffee wrapper.” But was Cannan also responsible for the 1986 disappearance of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, missing three years before his trial? In Part 2, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes examines the number plate that almost gave Cannan away, revisits a 2000 police re-interview in which his meticulous alibi collapses hour by hour...

On 28 July 1986, estate agent Suzy Lamplugh left her office in Fulham, west London, for a  house viewing with a client she recorded in her diary as 'Mr Kipper'. She never returned.  Despite one of the largest missing-persons investigations in UK police history, no body has ever been recovered — and no-one has ever been charged. In Part 1 of this story Kerry Daynes revisits the streets where 25-year-old Suzy was last seen, examines the original investigation, and follows the trail of a chilling lead:  just three days before the disappearance a convicted sex offender named John Cannan was freed from a nearby p...

Oxford, April 1991. English student Rachel McLean vanishes from the house she shares with friends, mid-way through a weekend of exam revision. Her tutor calls 999. Her boyfriend — a British-born New Zealander named John Tanner — tells detectives he last saw her at Oxford station chatting to a mystery stranger. He gives a detailed description. He fronts a televised appeal. He plays the grieving boyfriend to perfection. But police soon discover that the ‘stranger’ is a figment of his imagination. And, by the time they arrest Tanner, Rachel’s body has been found under the floorboards of her home. Forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes tra...

In November 2015, schoolgirl Kayleigh Haywood told her parents she was going to stay at a friend’s house. She wasn’t. For the previous two weeks the fifteen-year-old had been groomed online by Luke Harlow, a man twelve years her senior. He had bombarded her with over a thousand Facebook messages persuading her to come to his flat in Ibstock, Leicestershire. After she finally agreed, he plied her with alcohol, assaulted her, then introduced her to a rapist and killer. In this episode, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes examines how two predators — a calculating online groomer and a violent opportunist living...

Three months after Helen Bailey vanished, a search team lowered themselves into a hidden cesspit beneath her luxury home. What they found there ended a twelve-week missing-person search — and led to Ian Stewart being exposed  as a calculating, money-driven killer who had drugged his fiancée with his own sleeping tablets, dumped her body, and then spun a defence about phantom blackmailers. In the conclusion of this story, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes follows Stewart’s trial, conviction and sentence – then rewinds to 2010 as police begin investigating the mystery of his first wife’s death.  Listen now to The Profiler with Kerry Da...

In April 2016, the bestselling children's author Helen Bailey vanished from her £1.4 million home. Her fiancé Ian Stewart called the police, then wrote an open letter begging her to return. But, behind the public grief, he was hiding a terrible secret. Forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes traces how 51-year-old Helen fell for a quiet, unassuming father of two she met on a Facebook bereavement group after her husband’s death. She and Stewart got engaged. But as the wedding approached, she grew exhausted and forgetful. Then, on Monday April 11th, every trace of her online life suddenly went dark. This is the...

On Easter Sunday 2023, retired couple Stephen and Carol Baxter were found dead in the conservatory of their home on Mersea Island, off the Essex coast. Initially their deaths were - until toxicology revealed both had been poisoned with the powerful opioid fentanyl. Suspicion fell on Luke D’Wit, the unassuming IT consultant who had spent a decade quietly embedding himself in the Baxters’ lives as friend, employee and unofficial carer. In this episode, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes profiles a real-life puppet master — a man who built twenty fake online identities to control his victims, forged a will to inherit their...

By the summer of 1997, eight-year-old Jamie Lavis had been missing for nearly a month — and the Manchester bus driver who killed him, Darren Vickers, had vanished too. Tracked down to a North Wales fairground, where he was strapping children in and out of rides, Vickers was arrested, then released for lack of evidence, and welcomed back to the Lavis family home with a celebration party. In Part 2, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes follows the police hunt for Jamie’s body in Reddish Vale Park, the trial that exposed Vickers as a grooming predator and child sexual abuser, and the chilling jail...

In June 1997, eight-year-old Jamie Lavis vanished on his way home in Manchester. As his family launched a desperate search, a local bus driver — Darren Vickers — led appeals, comforted Jamie's mother, and walked the same streets where, days earlier, he had killed the boy. Forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes profiles a manipulative predator who weaponises trust and proximity to deflect suspicion: a killer who didn't run, but moved closer. This is the story of how the search for Jamie was, quietly, being steered by the man who already knew where he was. Listen now to The Profiler, with Kerry Daynes.

Behind every murder is a motive. From revenge to jealousy, from greed to control, identifying what drives people to kill is essential in bringing them to justice.

For thirty years, Consultant Forensic Psychologist Kerry Daynes has unravelled the minds behind the darkest crimes. Now, in The Profiler, she takes you inside some of Britain’s most disturbing murder cases, presenting the full stories with the clarity of a seasoned documentary maker, but also stepping outside the narratives to do what she does best: getting inside the mind of each perpetrator to reveal what made them act th...