Simon Ford
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simonford01.bsky.social
Simon Ford
@simonford01.bsky.social
5 followers 3 following 17 posts
Podcaster, journalist, sometime lecturer, and all-round gas bag.
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simonford01.bsky.social
🩸 He murdered dozens… the system let him.
In Part 2 of our deep dive into Andrei Chikatilo: The Butcher of Rostov, we reveal the chilling final chapter.

👉 The execution
👉 The fallout
👉 And why it could happen again

🎧 Listen now on Spreaker:
www.spreaker.com/episode/andr...
An armed guard is escorting Andrei Chikatilo to the death cell. Chikatilo is wearing striped, Soviet-era prison fatigues. The guard, wearing a peaked cap, is pressing a Makarov automatic pistol into the back of the prisoner's neck.
June 16, 2025 at 7:09 PM
simonford01.bsky.social
They’re charming. Cold. Deadly.
But were they born this way? Or made by the world around them?
Psychologists weigh in.
Killers confess.
You decide.
New episode: “Are Psychopaths Born or Made?”
#TrueCrimePodcast #Psychopath apple.co/4k0jn8Y
May 14, 2025 at 8:09 PM
simonford01.bsky.social
Mary Bell never meant to kill them; little Martin Brown and Brian Howe went along with her ‘game’. She squeezed their throats and they went to sleep. It wasn’t her fault they didn’t wake up, was it? What do you think? open.spreaker.com/m5GGxCmPVt1x...
Mary Bell meals over the body of Little Brian Howe, having squeezed his throat until he was unconscious in a macabre and dangerous game she liked to play with little children in the slum district of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This image is reimagined using AI.
January 28, 2025 at 2:10 PM
simonford01.bsky.social
What drove 11-year-old Mary Bell to kill two little boys in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1968? Find out with the latest Psycho Killer #TrueCrime #Podcast.

open.spreaker.com/y7K8L67DHrbJTn…
AI-generated image depicting Martin Brown and Brian Howe, the two little bits strangled by Mary Bell in Newcastle in 1968.
January 24, 2025 at 6:16 PM
simonford01.bsky.social
Think this weather’s bad? It’s nothing compared to January 1977, when ‘Mad Billy’ Hughes shanked his prison escort and went on the run. Freezing and snowblind, he stumbled on Pottery Cottage in the Derbyshire Peak District. Find out what happened next.
open.spreaker.com/eF3ZyMU1jfCi...
William ‘Mad Billy’ Hughes tries to escape from the police in a stolen Chrysler after murdering three people, including a 10-year-old girl, at Pottery Cottage near Chesterfield in Derbyshire in January 1977.
January 5, 2025 at 1:34 PM
simonford01.bsky.social
Subscribe the Psycho Killer true-crime podcasts in 2025. We go behind the mask to get closer to the truth.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...

#truecrime #podcast
A respectable-looking businessman is peeling off one side of his face to reveal the face of a monster—cadaverous and snarling. The image illustrates the dual personalities of a psychopath. Psycho Killer true-crime podcasts are available from all major podcast providers. #truecrime #podcast
January 1, 2025 at 11:46 AM
simonford01.bsky.social
I remember the snowstorms of January 1977; sledging and catching snowflakes on my tongue, unaware, until I saw it on the news, of the life-and-death drama being played out in nearby Chesterfield. #truecrime #podcast
open.spreaker.com/ahjJhiUU92Fk...
William Thomas Hughes, aka Mad Billy Hughes, attempts to outrun the police in a stolen Chrysler, after murdering an entire family near the Derbyshire, England, town of Chesterfield.
December 26, 2024 at 3:48 PM
simonford01.bsky.social


Whatever happened to the child killer, Robert Black?
(Spoiler alert: he’s in here, with us…)
#TrueCrime #Podcast

open.spreaker.com/MVYz4YxtMUpT...
Child-killer Robert Black is being dragged to hell by malevolent daemons. Black is wearing an orange prison jumpsuit with his name, BLACK, stencilled across the chest. He is wide-eyed and screaming with terror.
December 23, 2024 at 2:02 PM
simonford01.bsky.social
They hanged Charles Rotherham in 1817 for murdering Bessie Sheppard near Mansfield. But did they beat a confession out of him? Was he suffering from PTSD? Was his execution a miscarriage of justice? Get the full story here!

open.spreaker.com/KUB9EfB5rJ9q...

youtu.be/L2j8o4QF-3Y?...
Charles Rotherham depicted in the style of Francisco Goya. He is wearing an artillery sergeant uniform from the period of the Napoleonic war he is sitting on a chair with his hands in manacles having been arrested for the murder, in July 1817, of Bessie Sheppard, a country girl who was savagely beaten to death on the road between Mansfield and Nottingham.
December 21, 2024 at 10:20 AM
simonford01.bsky.social
Charles Rotherham was hanged in 1817 for the murder of Bessie Sheppard. But was his conviction a piece of brilliant police work, or a tragic miscarriage of justice? Listen or watch at Psycho Killer: Shocking True Crime stories open.spreaker.com/KUB9EfB5rJ9q...

youtu.be/L2j8o4QF-3Y?...
An English peasant girl from 1817 in the style of Gainsborough. Bessie Sheppard grew up in Papplewick, Nottinghamshire, and was murdered as she walked home from the nearby town on Mansfield. Charles Rotherham, a derelict ex-soldier, was convicted of Bessie’s murder and hanged in Nottingham later that year.
December 18, 2024 at 6:21 PM
simonford01.bsky.social
Journey back in time and immerse yourself in a tale of bloody murder from the age of Wellington—a young girl foully done to death in the heart of Sherwood Forest. Bessie Shepard’s was slain during an age of social and economic upheaval not unlike our own. youtu.be/L2j8o4QF-3Y?...
Bessie Sheppard encounters her killer on the turnpike road between Mansfield and Newstead in Nottinghamshire.
December 17, 2024 at 2:02 PM
simonford01.bsky.social
If you like a true-crime podcast, check out this episode of Psycho Killer about a megalomaniac doctor and his dastardly shenanigans. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...
An artist’s impression of Buck Ruxton’s victim—the subject of this true crime podcast.
December 9, 2024 at 7:34 PM