Actress Vicky McClure is fronting a new Sky History show called Britain's Murder Map, which examines unsolved murders, miscarriages of justice, and milestone cases that have changed the law. The show includes five episodes covering historical murder cases such as Burke and Hare, John Christie's murders at 10 Rillington Place, the 1959 murder of Kelso Cochrane, and Dr Hawley Crippen. One episode focuses on the 1959 murder of Kelso Cochrane, a 32-year-old carpenter stabbed to death in Notting Hill in May 1959 while on his way home from Paddington General Hospital after injuring his thumb at work.
Witnesses saw a group of five or six white youths encircling Kelso Cochrane, with one jumping on his back, and two Jamaican men ran to help and took him to hospital. Kelso Cochrane died from a stab wound to the heart. No one has ever been charged with the murder of Kelso Cochrane, and the Metropolitan Police says the file on the case is not available to the public because the case is still open.
I'm just an ordinary person. I'm the viewer. I might have an extraordinary job, but at school I didn't take to history, science, maths, all those kinds of things. It wasn't me. I was always wanting to just perform.
Vicky McClure believes something is being hidden in the Kelso Cochrane case due to files being redacted, hidden, or locked away. The show aims to shed light on these unresolved mysteries, exploring how such cases have impacted British legal history and public consciousness. Each episode delves into the details of the crimes, the investigations, and the lingering questions that remain decades later.
For instance, the Burke and Hare episode examines the 19th-century body-snatching murders that led to the Anatomy Act of 1832, while the John Christie case looks at the wrongful execution of Timothy Evans and subsequent legal reforms. In the Kelso Cochrane episode, the program investigates the racial tensions in Notting Hill at the time and the lack of justice for his family, highlighting how this murder became a symbol of racial injustice in post-war Britain. The Metropolitan Police's stance on keeping the file closed adds to the intrigue, as McClure and the show's producers question what might still be concealed and why, decades after the crime.
As an actor, you have to educate yourself on whatever it is you are playing. Therefore because of Line of Duty, I have done work with the real police outside of the show, and that made me interested in crime.
I'm really nosy! I'm one of those really nosy people, I like to know everything. I like context. So for me, this was all about questioning whatever it was I was being told.
Well, something's being hidden. Why would somebody redact, or hide or lock files away for a period of time? What's really, really heartbreaking about that particular case [is] it feels like there was so much evidence.