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Mash True Crime: 'How could a crime like this happen in a nice middle-class English town, and not, I don't know, Detroit?'

Podcaster Jade Grimes doggedly investigates the latest crimes despite her complete lack of qualifications to do so and police pleas to stop

THIS week’s story is so chilling it’ll make you want to swap your summery Starbucks Frappuccino for a piping hot Starbucks Grande Mochaccino. Remember to use my discount code CRIME for ten per cent off your next coffee at any participating Starbucks (not including Scotland or drive thrus).

You’ll know that I try to spotlight cases that don’t get a lot of attention – things like pretty white women going missing in mysterious circumstances. I try to avoid anything too obvious like hate crimes or police brutality, because I know the BBC will cover them.

But this case, though admittedly different from what I normally cover (and a bit boring), really grabbed hold of me, because it happened just 100 miles from where I live.

I think we all assume that murders happen mainly in America. It’s really easy to commit a murder there, and far more socially acceptable. I often thank my lucky stars I was born in Kingston upon Thames and not Killtown upon Mississippi.

Our story this week is of Mr Nathan Muir, who was found dead in his garden in April, having been stabbed. The prime suspect? His wife, Carolyn, who had recently found out about an affair he’d been having with their daughter’s nanny.

Here comes the bombshell. This salacious story didn’t happen in Los Angeles, but in the English village of Sweppley in Sussex.

When I Google image searched Sweppley, I thought I’d see a gangland filled with burnt-out cars and crack dens. Instead, I saw that they have a David Lloyd. Nathan was an estate agent, and Carolyn had a catering business. How could people so upstanding be driven to become a murder victim and murderer, respectively? The British mind boggles that the two of them couldn’t just sit down and discuss their problems over a nice cup of tea.

Naturally, such a bizarre and unnatural story gives you pause. I bet a lot of you, like me, have got questions. What was the motive? If it was the affair, why would Carolyn mind, when Nathan had had at least three other affairs before? How did Carolyn even get her hands on the cake knife thought to have killed him?

Such obvious inconsistencies make you wonder what else the police might have got wrong. Is Nathan actually dead, or did he sustain a simple injury that didn’t even require a trip to A&E? For all we know, he’s in the Dordogne right now, and the mutilated body on the slab is actually that of a New Jersey drug dealer, flown here in error, then dressed in corduroy.

True crime fans, I ask you – what seems more likely?

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My quest to find out if there are deepfake nudes of me online, by a 78-year-old grandmother

By internet enthusiast Nancy Wilkes, who believes Jpeg is a French footballer

THEY’RE doing deepfakes now. Your computer takes an ordinary photo and makes it look like you’re up to hanky-panky you haven’t touched since Butlin’s, Bognor Regis, 1985. 

Politicians are worried. Celebrities are worried. And I’m worried because there’s a picture of me on the internet from when I triumphed in the Chipping Campden Summer Fete Preserve Championship of 2018.

It was a proud day. My apricot marmalade beat Margaret Gerving’s on consistency, flavour and not containing what the judges described as ‘visible insects’.

That photo was everywhere. Front page of the Gazette. Facebook. Library noticeboard. Potentially Moscow. Which means a pervert has inevitably taken it and turned it into a six-way gangbang.

The original photo only showed me from the waist up so my nipples would be below the frame, but artificial intelligence could easily predict their location. And I wish I hadn’t been holding the jar like that. It could easily be a phallus in my two-handed grip.

I look positively ecstatic in that photograph. Granted, that was because my preserve was rated ‘spectacular’ and of ‘perfectly judged consistency’ and I could see Margaret’s sour face, but an algorithm could render my joy considerably less wholesome.

My grandson said ‘Nan, nobody’s making deepfake nudes of local pensioner in beige support stockings’ but my Facebook got hacked to post about muscle supplements so I’m clearly on the radar. Why not me noshing off the vicar?

What concerns me most is the possibility that the deepfake version of me is better looking and has working hips. The local newspaper should investigate. It’s their fault, they have to take responsibility by searching for counterfeit birthday suit grandmothers.

I’ve written to the editor demanding answers and told them search under ‘Wilkes’, ‘Wills’ and ‘hot septugenarian spanked by randy vicar’ because people often spell my name wrong. If they find anything I think they still print out pictures at the library.

I hope they didn’t put Margaret in any of these rude pics. But if the deepfake has won any additional jam competitions, I expect the trophies transferred immediately.

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