A Dark City
Delve into the dark heart of Glasgow, a city with history steeped in mystery and violence. A Dark City takes you behind the headlines to explore the city's most notorious murders - stories that shocked the nation, shattered communities and left scars that still linger. From cold blooded killers to infamous gangland slayings, we uncover the chilling details, the victims stories and the impact on Glasgow's streets.
Episodes
48 episodes
Paul Ferris
A judge calls him a danger to society. Prosecutors call him a killer. A jury says not guilty and Paul Ferris walks out of the High Court in Glasgow smiling at the cameras. That moment is the door into a much bigger story about Glasgow’s underwo...
Arthur Thompson
A fortified house on a quiet Glasgow street, bulletproof glass facing the road, and a man inside who believes nobody can reach him. The Ponderosa is more than a home, it is Arthur Thompson’s statement to the city: power made visible. We tell th...
The Lyon's Family
One night in Milton. A cocaine consignment disappears. And Glasgow’s most destructive modern feud begins. We’re telling the story of how Eddie Lyons Sr, an operator who builds power through connections rather than postcode loyalty, makes the de...
The Daniel Family
Thirteen shots in a supermarket car park is the kind of detail you never forget, especially when it happens in broad daylight with families loading shopping into their boots. We start there, with the killing of Kevin Carroll, a key Daniel crime...
The Beast of Ibrox
He didn’t seek fame, he didn’t taunt police, and he didn’t leave neat clues behind. For years, an unknown predator moved through Glasgow Southside with enough local knowledge to isolate women, vanish into familiar streets, and leave a whole com...
Walter Norval
A bomb inside Glasgow High Court. A trial collapsing under rubble. And at the centre of it, not a mythic movie villain but a real man who helped invent modern organised crime in the city: Walter Norval. We follow his story from the Gallowgate, ...
The Billy Boys vs The Norman Conks
A gang war can look like noise from a distance, but up close it becomes a map of a city’s pressures. We take you into interwar Glasgow, where overcrowded tenements, hard industrial work and tight-knit districts create the conditions for razor g...
Lynda Spence
A woman leaves her mum’s birthday gathering in Glasgow, says she will be back shortly, and is never seen again. What follows is the Linda Spence case: a rare kind of Scottish true crime story where the facts are horrific, the evidence is painst...
James White
£126 million on paper. About £118,649.50 in assets the Crown can actually seize. That single gap tells you almost everything about how modern organised crime works, and why so many “big wins” still leave the real money moving in the dark.
Omar Sadiq
A luxury Audi abandoned on Boydstone Road. Hazard lights flashing. Doors left wide. A man bleeding out on the pavement, trying to catch the eye of a passing police patrol. Omar Sadiq’s death looks, at first glance, like the kind of Glasgow gang...
The Welsh Family
A family can be a refuge, but in Glasgow’s underworld it can also be a transmission belt. We follow the Welsh family, a name that never became a documentary title, never chased the spotlight, and still ran alongside the city’s most infamous fig...
The Gillespie brothers
Two of the most wanted men in Scotland vanish on the other side of the world, and the only “official” conclusion is a careful line from police: it might have happened, and they cannot rule it out. We pick up the trail of James and Barry Gillesp...
Marion Gilchrist
A quiet Glasgow stairwell. A heavy thud overhead. Three knocks meant as a lifeline. Then a man steps out of a bedroom doorway, close enough to touch, and walks past without a word. Minutes later, Marion Gilchrist is found murdered on her own di...
Paul Ferris v Tam McGraw
A feud can start with ego, territory, and fear, but it only lasts decades when the stakes are bigger than pride. We follow the brutal, sprawling war between Paul Ferris, a young enforcer raised in Glasgow’s harsh schemes, and Tam McGraw, a prot...
The Paisley Union Bank Robbery
A bank safe in central Glasgow is opened on a Monday morning and it is simply empty. No smashed counters, no injured staff, no dramatic shootout, just a silence where a king’s ransom used to be. We dig into the 1811 theft from the Paisley Union...
Tracy Main
A front door that should be locked sits slightly open, and a family’s ordinary Tuesday in the Gorbals becomes a nightmare that still echoes through Glasgow’s true crime history. We retell the murder of 13-year-old Tracy Main at Norfolk Court, f...
The Be Aware Murders
Six murders, years of rumours, and a two-word warning that still chills Glasgow: “Be aware”. We take you back to the 1990s, when women working the city’s streets began sharing whispers about dangerous clients and suspicious vehicles, and when e...
The Glasgow Green Murders
A city can look familiar in daylight and still keep secrets in its parks after dark. We head to Glasgow Green in the late 1950s, where a short run of attacks leaves three men dead and one young survivor with wounds that never quite fit a simple...
The Oil Drum Execution
A pub car park should be the last place a peace-maker dies, yet that’s exactly where Thomas “Tam” Cameron is gunned down in Bishopbriggs after trying to settle a debt that isn’t even his. We walk you through the Glasgow gangland backdrop of the...
Reece Trainer
A white van screeches into a Milton street as the sun drops over Glasgow. Kids are still outside. Seconds later, a shotgun is raised and John McGregor is shot dead. That brutal moment in 2021 is the centre of this story, but the roots run much ...
Paige Doherty
A Saturday morning routine should not end in a national tragedy, yet that is exactly what happens in Clydebank when 15-year-old Paige Doherty sets off for work and never arrives. We walk through who Paige is beyond the headlines: a small, energ...
Kenny Reilly
A red light in Maryhill. A silver BMW waiting in traffic. A masked man steps out of a black Ford S-Max and fires six shots before disappearing into side streets. That’s the opening moment we can’t shake, because it shows how quickly everyday li...
The Gorbals: Unsolved
Eight murders in one square mile. No convictions. And a trail of families left with nothing but rumours, court transcripts, and the sickening sense that everyone knows more than they will ever say. We take you into Glasgow’s “Murder Mile” in th...