1973 murders in the United Kingdom

Rosemary Pauline West (née Letts; born 29 November 1953) is a British serial killer. She is now an inmate at HM Prison New Hall, Flockton, West Yorkshire, England, after being convicted in 1995 of ten murders.

Frederick Walter Stephen West (29 September 1941 – 1 January 1995) was an English serial killer who committed at least 12 murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, the majority with his second wife, Rosemary West.

Robert John Maudsley (born 26 June 1953) is an English serial killer responsible for the murders of four people. He committed three of these murders in prison after receiving a life sentence for a single murder. He was alleged to have eaten part of the brain of one of three men he killed in prison, which earned him the nickname Hannibal the Cannibal among the British press and “The Brain Eater” amongst other prisoners; however, the Press Complaints Commission records that national newspapers were subsequently advised that the allegations were untrue, according to the autopsy report. Since the death of Ian Brady, Maudsley has become the longest-serving British prisoner and the earliest person still living to be subject to a whole life order.

Brian McDermott was a schoolboy who disappeared in Belfast in 1973. He was last seen at Ormeau Park on September 2, 1973. He failed to return to his home on Well Street in the lower Woodstock Road area of Cregagh, Belfast. A week after he went missing, the River Lagan was lowered and a sack containing some of his remains was found.

Peter Wilson (1952 - 1 August 1973) was a man from Northern Ireland who was abducted and killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The IRA never gave any explanation for his abduction and murder. His body was not found for 37 years, and he was listed as one of the Disappeared by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains.

Thomas Niedermayer, OBE (1928–1973) was a German industrialist, who was kidnapped by, and died while in the hands of, the Provisional IRA in 1973. He was managing director of the Grundig factory in Belfast, and the West German honorary consul for Northern Ireland.

James Stirratt Topping Kennedy GC (1930 – 21 December 1973) was a Scottish security guard for British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) in Glasgow. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1975 after he was killed by armed robbers who were attempting to steal BREL's payroll. He also received the Glasgow Corporation Medal of Bravery.

Joseph William Kappen (30 October 1941 – 17 June 1990), also known as the Saturday Night Strangler, was a Welsh serial killer who committed the rape and murder of three teenage girls in Llandarcy and Tonmawr, near his home town of Port Talbot, in 1973. Kappen is also suspected of committing a fourth murder in February 1976.

David Anthony McGreavy (born 1951) is an English convicted murderer who in a drunken rage killed three children, aged four, two and nine months, in the United Kingdom in 1973. He was in the news in 2013 when an anonymity order imposed in 2009 was lifted based on findings that there was a public interest in his application for parole and that there was no immediate danger to his life. He was held in a vulnerable prisoners' unit, where he spent most of his 40 years in prison until he was released on parole in December 2018.

William J. Staunton (1928 – 25 January 1973) was a British resident magistrate killed by the IRA.