Welcome to the author website for my book about the November 1991 murder of my father, Terry Daddow. The book is now underway, so this is the hub for everything related to its progress.
On this site you will find: a book blog; a blog about serious crime and victimhood; reviews of true crime books and tv shows; and information about my academic tutoring services. I welcome your comments and feedback. If you have thoughts specifically about my father’s case – or if you remember following it at the time – I would appreciate hearing them.
Oliver Daddow was born in 1974 and grew up in Tenterden, Kent. He studied BA(Hons) Philosophy, Politics Economics at the University of Oxford (1992-1995), followed by an MA in International Relations (with Distinction) at the University of Nottingham, where he went on to complete a PhD in British European policy (awarded in the year 2000).
Away from true crime, Oliver remains engaged with his academic life through private, one-to-one online tuition for university students at all levels of study, across Politics, International Relations, Public Policy, Communication and Discourse Analysis.
It is well established that Jean Daddow and her son Roger Blackman concocted ten different plots to assassinate Terry Daddow before he was shot in November 1991. My research confirms the existence of a 'new' plot that began well before all the others, not long after my father married the Black Widow. From early 1990, Jean Daddow was secretly lacing my father's food and drink with cocktails of Class A drugs. Already suffering from depression, the illegal drugs caused him to have a slow, inexorable mental collapse, which no medical professional could explain. Isolated and made helplessly reliant upon his doting wife, dad could be more easily picked off when the woman he described as his 'nurse' deemed the time was right. This story of murder is also one of coerce and control, centring on a drug-riddled eleventh plot.
This blog reflects on a transformative breakthrough relating to an unexpected primary source I have been able to track down for the book's research.
Henry Nowak's family called for his murder not to be used to stoke division, tension or race hate. Yet far right activists and politicians in and outside the UK have cynically done just that. Such politicisation is hard to avoid but no less reprehensible for it. If your thoughts really are "with the family of the victim" then listen to Henry's family's wishes and stop using his tragic death to fuel a culture war. Trigger warning: violence and distressing content.
This blog reflects on the importance of primary sources in writing true crime. It ends with a call on the government to keep these vital documents longer to promote informed crime writing and robust investigative reporting in a healthy democracy. In human terms, these records may be the only record the families have left to help them understand how a victim lived and died.
Traumatic bereavement affects people in a multitude of ways, but the precise manner in which it alters or changes one’s life are not well understood. As my book about the murder of my father explains, experiencing the murder of a direct relative changed me as a person, and changed my life irretrievably and forever. Intriguingly, other victims who speak out in the aftermath of the murder of a loved one seem to go through a similar type of life-altering experience.
This blog discusses the notion of authorial credibility, which comes in different forms, depending on who you are and what you write about. The more credibility you have to write about a given issue, the more readily publishers and readers will want to invest time and resources in your book.
