Murder, Mystery and My Family: Case Closed?

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Top criminal barristers Sasha Wass and Jeremy Dein reinvestigate historical cases.

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Sasha Wass

Jeremy Dein

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Murder, Mystery and My Family: Case Closed? Series 2: Seddon

Seddon

Case Closed? Series 2

BBC One - Murder, Mystery and My Family, Case Closed? Series 2, Seddon

The barristers revisit their investigation of a high profile poisoning case in 1911.

Barristers Sasha Wass and Jeremy Dein revisit the case of a wealthy female tenant, poisoned by her landlord following a financial deal made shortly before her death in 1911.

Leading criminal barristers Sasha Wass and Jeremy Dein return to their investigation of a notorious poisoning from 1911, when a wealthy lodger suddenly died. Did the landlord have murder in mind?

London, 1911. Insurance salesman Frederick Seddon arranged a hasty funeral for his tenant, Miss Eliza Barrow, who had, it was initially believed, died from diarrhoea and exhaustion after a brief illness.

Miss Barrow’s relatives were shocked to discover that not only had the family not been informed, but that Eliza had signed over her extensive assets and properties to the landlord, Frederick Seddon, whom she had known for less than a year, in the belief he would look after her recently adopted 10-year-old son, Ernest Grant. Eliza’s body was exhumed and found to contain fatal levels of arsenic. Frederick Seddon and his wife Margaret were arrested and charged. Seddon claimed Miss Barrow accidentally killed herself by consuming the poison from insect repellent fly papers in her living quarters. Mrs Seddon was acquitted and returned to the couple’s five children, but in March 1912, Frederick Seddon was convicted of murder at the Old Bailey and sentenced to death.

107 years on, Seddon’s relative Paul wanted to find out if the controversy that had persisted in his family for generations was justified. Was Frederick Seddon capable of murder? Sasha and Jeremy explored the toxicology evidence and probed the financial dealings between Miss Barrow and Frederick Seddon immediately prior to her death. Was this a miscarriage of justice based on circumstantial evidence and a questionable motive?

Now, a year after their review of the case, Jeremy and Sasha are catching up with Paul to find out where his own research has led him. Can information from a distant relation, the theory of a crime writer and new information discovered by the biographer of Seddon’s infamous defence barrister shed further light on the case?

Murder, Mystery and My Family: Case Closed? Series 2

BBC One

Barristers Jeremy and Sasha follow up on some of the cases they have re-examined.

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