Stuff You Should Know

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The Hillsborough Disaster

Explore episode Jun 30, 2026
True Crime
The Coroner Who Helped Cover It Up — By Accident

The Hillsborough Disaster · Jun 30, 2026 True Crime

The Hillsborough coroner ordered blood alcohol tests on all victims — including children — to support the police's drunk-fan narrative. The tests instead showed that alcohol was not a significant factor. The coroner also ruled out any evidence of events after 3 PM, cutting off testimony that survivors lived until 4 PM — testimony that might have proven more organised rescue would have saved them.

3m 5s

Where this was said

Early Investigations: The Taylor Report and Inaccurate Verdicts

At 27:45 · chapter starts 26:00

Lord Justice Taylor's 1990 independent report was a partial step toward truth: it clearly identified police failure to control the crowd and specifically blamed Duckenfield for not closing the central tunnel — a move so standard it had been named the 'Freeman Tactic' after the officer who popularised it. Taylor also recommended all-seater stadiums, reshaping English football. But the report did not fully vindicate the fans, and the subsequent coroner's inquests returned verdicts of accidental death. Crucially, the coroner ruled inadmissible any evidence about events after 3 PM, citing his conclusion that all victims were dead or brain-dead by 3:15. This ruling suppressed testimony that survivors lived past 4 PM, and that better emergency response could have saved many of them. The coroner also ordered blood alcohol tests on all victims — including children — to bolster the drunk-fan narrative, inadvertently proving the opposite.

History
Treating Victims Like Evidence: The Morgue Experience

The Hillsborough Disaster · Jun 30, 2026 History

Victims' families were taken to a nearby gym converted into a morgue and handed unsorted stacks of Polaroid photos of dead bodies to search through for their loved ones. Parents of dead children were told they could not hold them — the bodies were 'property of the coroner.' These revelations, exposed in later reports, showed the institutional cruelty that compounded the disaster.

1m 50s

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