Map reveals UK’s deadliest towns… and London DOESN’T top the list – do you live in a danger zone?

THE country’s homicide map has been laid bare, and the nation’s deadliest place is not Birmingham, Manchester or London.

In fact, it is an ordinary commuter belt borough perhaps better known for its riverside walks and film-making prowess.

Unassuming Spelthorne in Surrey – home to towns such as Ashford, Shepperton and Sunbury-on-Thames – has shockingly emerged as England‘s homicide capital.

Cops use the category homicide to describe any killing of one person by another, including murder and manslaughter.

Exclusive analysis by The Sun reveals that the borough recorded six homicides in the year to June, giving it a rate of 5.8 killings per 100,000 residents.

That per capita figure makes the patch – famed for Shepperton Studios – statistically more dangerous than every major city.

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Its grim ranking comes after horrific homicides, including a double murder on a motorway slip road that left two young men dead in July 2024.

Alex Rose, 30, deliberately drove his Ford Raptor pick-up truck into William Birchard, 21, and Darren George, 22, on the M3/A316 slip road in Sunbury Cross.

Rose, from Sunbury, wrongly believed the pair were burglars trying to break into his home.

In reality, they were friends heading out on an e-bike to meet someone at a pub.

After ramming them at more than 60mph in a 30mph zone, Rose dumped his car, called police to report it stolen, and later tried to flee to Turkey with his girlfriend Tara Knaggs, 26.

The pair were arrested in Birmingham Airport’s departure lounge with £4,000 in cash and no luggage.

Rose and passenger Charles Pardoe, 25, were later convicted of murder at Guildford Crown Court and jailed for life while Knaggs was put behind bars after being convicted of assisting an offender.

CPS prosecutor Mary Walford called it “a tragic case of two victims simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

In January, a 27-year-old woman was fatally stabbed in the neck in Ashford.

Lalah Zarejouneghani and a two-year-old child were found with critical injuries by paramedics.

Ms Zarejouneghani was tragically pronounced dead at the scene and the child taken to hospital for treatment.

Milad Ghafari, 34, of Woodthorpe Road, Ashford, was charged with child cruelty.

An investigation into the woman’s death is ongoing.

GRIM FINDINGS

The remaining three homicides recorded by the Home Office in the year to June relate to a harrowing murder-suicide in Staines.

Twins Nikodem and Kacper Swiderski, two, and their three-year-old brother Dominik were killed on August 31, 2024.

Their bodies were discovered alongside their dad Piotr Swiderski, 31 – but it still remains a mystery.

Surrey Police said it was treating the deaths of the children as murder and are not looking for anyone else in connection with the horror.

An inquest is yet to be concluded but an earlier hearing was told that Swiderski was found hanged near to his children’s bodies.

Surrey Police have been contacted for comment by The Sun.

Eden, in Cumbria, is one of the country’s smallest districts, with just 55,000 people scattered across vast rural miles.

The area technically tops the official homicide rankings at 7.2 per 100,000 people, though the figure stems from an M6 motorway crash in which four people died.

Police logged the deaths as homicides because the man who caused the crash by driving on the wrong side of the road did so with the intention to end his own life.

Former Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot Richard Woods, 40, would have been charged with manslaughter had he survived the October 2024 smash.

Hackney, in East London, follows Spelthorne, with a rate of 3.44 per 100,000 after nine homicides were logged.

Then comes Luton (3.08 / seven homicides), Gateshead (3.03 / six homicides) and Gloucester (3 / four homicides) and Blaby in Leicestershire (2.88 / three homicides)

The homicide rates are skewed by small population sizes when analysed by population.

Of the 518 homicides recorded by the police, 101 were in London.

And there were 13 homicides logged in Birmingham, 11 in Bradford and 10 in Manchester. 

The Office for National Statistics said there had been a 6 per cent decrease from 552 offences in the previous year. 

Homicides were the lowest figure since current police recording practices began in March 2003, when 1,047 were recorded, including the 173 victims of serial killer Harold Shipman.

The ghoulish doctor – who murdered at least 250 people over 30 years – died at HMP Wakefield.

Shipman’s known victims were all his own patients – mostly elderly women – and he favoured administering lethal injections of diamorphine, usually during home visits.

He was only caught when he forged the will of his final victim, leading to an investigation – and was jailed for life after being found guilty of 15 murders in 2000.

Knives or sharp instruments were used in 38 per cent of homicides, which is a drop from 43 per cent in the previous year.