1956 crimes in the United Kingdom

Mary Elizabeth Wilson (née Cassidy; c. 1889 – 1963), also known as the Merry Widow of Windy Nook, was an English serial killer and the last woman to be sentenced to death in Durham, in 1958. However, the sentence was not carried out as it was commuted to a prison sentence.

Gertrude "Bobby" Hullett (1906 – 23 July 1956), a resident of Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, was a patient of the suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams, who was charged with her murder but never tried for it. Adams was tried in 1957 for the murder of Edith Alice Morrell and the Hullett charge was meant to follow the Morrell case. The Morrell trial featured in headlines around the world and was described at the time as "one of the greatest murder trials of all time" and "murder trial of the century". However, the Hullett charge was dropped by the Attorney General after Adams was acquitted of murdering Morrell - a move that was later described by the presiding judge as "an abuse of process".

Peter Thomas Anthony Manuel (13 March 1927 – 11 July 1958) was an American-born Scottish serial killer who was convicted of murdering seven people across Lanarkshire and southern Scotland between 1956 and his arrest in January 1958, and is believed to have murdered two more. Prior to his arrest, the media nicknamed the unidentified killer "the Beast of Birkenshaw". Manuel was hanged at Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison; he was the second to last prisoner to die on the Barlinnie gallows.

Albert William Goozee (8 September 1923 – 25 November 2009) was a British murderer and paedophile, whose crimes inspired the 1996 film Intimate Relations. In June 1956, Goozee murdered his 53-year-old landlady, Mrs. Lydia Leakey, and her 14-year-old daughter, Norma, in the New Forest, Hampshire. Sentenced at the Hampshire Assizes, Winchester, to death by hanging on the 26th of November 1956, Goozee was given a reprieve four days before his execution was due to take place and was instead detained at Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital. Released in 1971, Goozee, who had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, was subsequently convicted of several further violent crimes, and in 1996 was convicted of indecently assaulting two girls, aged 12 and 13. Sentencing, Mr. Justice Gower said one of the two cases had been "one of the most serious cases of indecent assault that I have ever had to deal with." In October 2009, Goozee again became the subject of media interest when it was discovered that he had been released on compassionate grounds into the care of a nursing home for the elderly in Wigston, Leicester. While there, Goozee began a hunger strike and refused all food and medication. After developing a blood clot in his heart and complications from diabetes, he died on 25 November 2009. The coroner recorded a verdict of death by natural causes.