Murder

Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 single Murder on the Dancefloor has returned to the Top 10 for the first time in 22 years owing to its appearance in the climactic scene of the Emerald Fennell-directed film Saltburn.The song charted at No 8, with 2.2m streams; prior to the release of Saltburn on Amazon Prime, weekly streams of the song peaked at 293,000, according to Official Charts Company (OCC) data.Ellis-Bextor’s second solo single originally peaked at No 2 in December 2001, when it was beaten to the top spot by Daniel…

The three C’s of current TV documentary programming are celebrity, crime and cults, and the new Lifetime docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard checks off the first two with ruthless, pinpoint efficiency. The subject, a young woman who arranged for the murder of her deranged, abusive mother in 2015, has become a media sensation, the subject of a previous dramatic miniseries (Hulu’s The Act, from 2019) and now a TikTok sensation about to release her own memoir. Let there be no underestimating the…

Sophie Ellis-Bextor is still making sense of how “Murder on the Dancefloor,” a poppy disco song she released in 2001, has become a viral hit thanks to its inclusion in the movie Saltburn. The track plays during the final scene of the movie in which its star, Barry Keoghan, dances nude — a visual that has inspired a trend on TikTok, helping propel the song onto Billboard’s charts. “It actually feels really magical, and if I’m honest, I don’t think I’ve completely processed it really,” she recently told the BBC.…

Theo Lengyel, once an integral member of the avant-garde jazz-metal group Mr. Bungle, is now a murder suspect accused of killing his girlfriend, Alice “Alyx” Kamakaokalani Herrmann, last month. Police in Capitola, California, arrested the musician, age 54, on Tuesday and booked him on one count of first-degree murder in Santa Cruz County Jail. He is being held without bail, according to KRON. San Francisco Chronicle reports that Lengyel had been a “person of interest” since Herrmann, 61, went missing on Dec.…

Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the abuse victim who spent seven years incarcerated for her role in the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, became a free woman on Thursday, leaving prison on parole.  Her release comes three years early after she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for her second-degree murder conviction. During her 2016 trial, Gypsy, now 32, pleaded guilty to conspiring with her boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to murder Dee Dee and then escape to Wisconsin together. Attorneys for Gypsy…

Agatha Christie adaptations are an annual Christmas tradition, as is the nervous anticipation of viewers sitting down to witness the snipping and streamlining of another beloved novel to fit the screen. This year my adaptation of Christie’s relatively little-known 1938 Murder Is Easy joins the ranks of this murderously festive family fare.The original Murder Is Easy sees Christie experimenting with form and themes, class and gender commentary, even some Wicker-Man style folk horror in a darkly romantic comedy with as much…

I n the early morning hours of Sunday, May 27, 2018, Spencer Mugford, 20, and Sofia Mckenna, 21, headed to the Long Island Sound to set off on an adventure. The friends took a small, unlocked sailboat with no mast or rudder from the University of Connecticut Avery Point’s campus marina. The plan was to head out to the New London Ledge Lighthouse, a popular if spooky destination, rumored to be haunted by the ghost of an anguished keeper who’d jumped to his death a century ago. Mckenna left her phone in her…

The murder mystery puzzle book Murdle by US writer GT Karber has climbed the UK bestsellers chart to become this year’s Christmas No 1 book, beating Richard Osman’s The Last Devil to Die and Guinness World Records for the top spot.Murdle by GT Karber. Photograph: Souvenir PressMurdle is based on the daily puzzle website Karber developed in 2021, and across the book’s 100 challenges, readers must use codes and maps to decipher who the killers are. It has sold more than 200,000 copies since its publication in June,…

Duane “Keefe D” Davis has been denied bail since he was first arrested and charged with murder in September in connection to the killing of Tupac Shakur 27 years prior. Last week, his lawyers filed a motion requesting the 60-year-old be released while pending trial, which is scheduled to begin on June 3. Davis’ legal representatives are also requesting that the court establish a “reasonable bail,” according to KTNV Las Vegas. “Duane should not be denied bail in this case. It cannot be said that the proof is evident…

The FX series A Murder at the End of the World reached its conclusion on Dec. 19, finally revealing who’s been responsible for the series of killings at tech billionaire Andy Ronson’s (Clive Owen) remote Icelandic retreat. Warning: Spoilers ahead. Hacker-sleuth Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) discovers that it wasn’t Andy or his captive wife Lee (Brit Marling) but rather his AI assistant-creation Ray (Edoardo Ballerini) who’s sowed chaos among his guests, ordering Lee and Bill’s biological son, Zoomer (Kellan…