Percy Lefroy Mapleton, a deceitful writer obsessed with an actress, resorted to fraud and violence.

Percy Lefroy Mapleton was a talented young writer. But he was also a liar, a thief and a fantasist. By 1881, he had become fixated on a beautiful stage actress. Convinced the two of them belonged together, he concocted an elaborate fraud to win her heart. But Lefroy could not outrun his lies forever and, when exposure seemed certain, he was driven to a darker and more violent crime.

In 1895, Detective Sergeant Robert Kidd was murdered, and convicting his killers required one gang member to confess.

The murder on 18th March 1910 of John Innes Nisbet, a colliery clerk from Heaton who had been carrying miners' pay for Stobswood Colliery. John Alexander Dickman was hanged for the crime, (the last man hanged in a Newcastle jail).

The murder of 28-year-old Geoffrey Charles Dean, a booking clerk at Ash Vale railway station. The murderer was 23-year-old John James Alcott, a railway fireman from Hither Green Depot, who stole £160 from the railway booking office.

In 1957, Countess Teresa Lubienska was murdered at Gloucester Road station; her killer remains unidentified.