24 Hours in Police Custody's most jaw-dropping moments: From a 'dead' man coming back to life to finding a body in a shallow grave on camera, as the hit series marks 10 years on TV
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The cold-case murder victim who turned up alive. The dopey drug runners who inadvertently filmed their crimes on their own CCTV. And the heart-stopping moment detectives realised a blackmailer they were hunting was one of their own. They're just some of the real-life crime thrillers brought to us on 24 Hours In Police Custody, the Channel 4 reality show that's been dropping viewers slap bang into the middle of cases as they unfold in real time for the past ten years.
![[One of the most shocking moments came in a 2021 episode, The No Body Murder, when police reopened the case of Lithuanian farm labourer Ricardas Puisys who had gone missing in Cambridgeshire in 2015]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/14/16/94085787-14284043-image-a-9_1736871531842.jpg)
The show's gripping premise is the law that states the clock starts ticking as soon as a suspect is arrested, and that officers have just 24 hours to collect enough evidence to charge them or they have to release them. Cameras follow Bedfordshire police officers based in Luton (sometimes working with the neighbouring Cambridgeshire force) as they go about their business, covering all manner of crimes.
![[Having been enslaved by Lithuanian gang masters, Puisys had run away and was living off-grid, feeding himself out of supermarket bins]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/14/16/94085795-14284043-image-a-10_1736871548747.jpg)
'We can go from major drugs importers bringing in tons of cocaine to poor drug-addicted prostitutes,' says series creator and executive producer Simon Ford. 'You could barely script some of it. We've had drug dealers being interviewed with their phones lying on the desk, and suddenly they get calls asking for drugs and the police officer's going, "Who's that? Who's that?".
![[The Major Crimes Unit sifted through clues and followed up new evidence, and were utterly astonished when the trail led them to Puisys, who'd been living rough in the woods all that time]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/14/16/94087135-14284043-image-a-34_1736873342782.jpg)
'Crime writers I've talked to have said, "You've got so many scenes we wouldn't even dare write because they'd seem too preposterous. Yet they actually happen for you guys.". Now, as the show celebrates its tenth birthday, there's no better time to celebrate some of its most astonishing cases...
![[In the 2018 episode Shallow Grave, cameras were rolling when the body of Luton mother-of-three Natalia Doherty, 50, was found 12 years after she'd disappeared]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/14/16/94085859-14284043-image-a-11_1736871621758.jpg)
