LRN No.33: who owns the murderers next door?

Plus: Sarah Koenig hates true crime

Ten years ago this month, I wrote about Christopher and Susan Edwards, who murdered Susan’s parents, Bill and Pat Wycherley, buried them in the Wycherley’s back garden, and then made it look like the Wycherleys were alive for 15 years so they could collect their pensions and benefits, which they spent on signed photos of Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra memorabilia, and other Hollywood collectables.

One of the pieces of Gary Cooper memorabilia seized when the Edwardses were arrested

Spooked when the DWP tried to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Bill Wycherley after what would have been his 100th birthday, the Edwardses went on the run to France. When they were arrested at the St Pancras Eurostar terminal, they had with them €1, a change of clothes and a suitcase stuffed full of memorabilia.

It was an extraordinary story about recluses, compulsive collecting, parasocial relationships, family secrets and how little we know our neighbours, but I very nearly missed it: I was emerging from maternity leave, and wasn’t looking to write anything about true crime. I saw a very brief item on the BBC News website during the Edwards’ trial which had a quote from the woman currently living in the house where they’d buried the Wycherleys; she said she didn’t want to move because she liked the garden so much. I thought there might be a feature in people prepared to live in houses where horrible things had happened. But when I mentioned it to my editor at the Guardian, she had the sense to tell me to just write about the Wycherly murders. It was published under the headline ‘The Murderers Next Door’.

The response was massive. My article was optioned by a production company, and it got turned into a script, which Stephen Merchant wrote. Other people also wanted to do the same thing. The writer Ed Sinclair got in touch to say the story seemed made for his wife, Olivia Colman, but I told him my piece had already been optioned. We had a good chat on the phone. He seemed nice.

Fast forward a few years, and Sky announces a forthcoming TV series on the Wycherley murders, Landscapers, written by Ed Sinclair and starring Olivia Colman as Susan Edwards. The Stephen Merchant script was effectively killed. When my agent rang the production company behind Landscapers, they said the drama had nothing to do with my article at all. But when Ed Sinclair was interviewed about it ahead of its release, he told the Times it was based on my article. I have never been able to bring myself to watch it.

I am used to my work being ripped off (I have loads of terrible examples where other journalists have lifted entire passages from things I’ve written, but maybe that’s for another LRN). This stung me in a different way. I felt foolish for speaking to Ed at all, then bruised that the production company who had been decent enough to pay me for the right to use my article had wasted so much time and money on the project.

And then I got over it, because although I wrote the article, I do not own this story. If it belonged to any journalist, it would be to Andy Done-Johnson, the local reporter on the Mansfield Chad who covered every inch of it from the police investigation to Bill and Pat’s funeral 15 years after their death.

But it doesn’t belong to him, either. It belongs to the Wycherleys, who are not here to tell it, and the Edwardses, who are. I have been thinking about them recently, because they are due to come out of prison relatively soon. I wonder what they will do with it.

It has been a mad month for me. I am working hard on scripts for series two of The Gift (season? series? Answers on a postcard, please - settle a debate between me and my producer), and I have two big articles out at the end of the month. One of them has taken me 11 years to get on the page, but I am hopeful it will be worth the wait. Slow cooked stories often are.

Things that have caught my eyes and ears:

• Went to see Sarah Koenig talking about ten years of the seminal true crime podcast, Serial, at the Southbank centre, and learned that she (a) doesn’t like true crime and (b) does not listen to any podcasts

• Did not hate Netflix’s Monsters as much as everyone else seems to hate it

• Enjoyed this Sunday Times Magazine piece on the battle for Graceland, complete with a photograph that proves Elvis categorically did not know how to play bass