Before we begin a warning, today's episode contains graphic descriptions of violence

and references to suicide.

Back in the late 1990s, in the northwest of England, two apparently ordinary couples,

with decades of peaceful, canubial coexistence between them, were each found dead in their

marital beds.

At a surface level, they look like murder suicides, but if you probe slightly deeper into the

evidence, it's like swish cheese, it's full of holes.

These cases are part of a new book by my colleague David Collins at the Sunday Times.

For listening to stories of our times and the times and the Sunday Times, I'm David

Aronovich.

Today, the hunt for the silver killer, Part 2, New Blood.

In Part 1, we heard how two elderly couples in Wilmslow, one in 1996 and the other three

years later, were found dead in their bedrooms in apparent murder suicides.

Police suspected the husbands had violently killed their wives for some unknowable reason

and then proceeded to take their own lives.

That was and still is the official verdict on the deaths of Howard and B. Ainsworth and

Donald and Oriole Ward.

Back in 1999, Christine Hurst, who worked in the coroner's office, was not convinced

by this official verdict and said so.

But despite raising her concerns, there was little progress.

Soon, Christine had a new deputy, Stephanie Davis, and one day in 2013, Christine decided

to show Stephanie the old files.

...