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Six murders, years of rumours, and a two-word warning that still chills Glasgow: “Be aware”. We take you back to the 1990s, when women working the city’s streets began sharing whispers about dangerous clients and suspicious vehicles, and when each new killing deepened the sense that someone was hunting the most vulnerable. Alongside the headlines sits the reality of the time, shaped by poverty, addiction, homelessness and thin support services, and by a public conversation that too often forgot these women were people first.

We walk through the cases most often tied to the Glasgow sex worker murders: Diane McInally, Karen McGregor, Jacqueline Gallagher, Leona McGovern, Tracy Wilde and Margot Lafferty. You’ll hear why investigators struggled to build clear evidential links, how limited forensic technology and fleeting encounters made suspects hard to trace, and why criminologists caution that similar victims do not always mean a single perpetrator. That uncertainty is part of what makes these unsolved murders in Scotland so haunting, and why families have lived with decades of questions.

We also dig into what changed and what didn’t. The Be Aware campaign shows both fear and solidarity, while later scrutiny of policing and prejudice raises uncomfortable issues about who gets believed and protected. The conviction of Ian Packer for the 2005 murder of Emma Caldwell reignited debate about missed chances and the cost of not listening to marginalised women, strengthening calls for cold case reviews and modern DNA-led investigation.

If you care about true crime that treats victims with dignity and asks hard questions about justice, press play. Subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review, then tell us: do you think these killings point to one offender, or a wider failure to protect?