LUTHER BOSS: DID I MURDER A MAN?
Writer believed he had stabbed victim
THE creator of hit telly drama Luther lived in fear for years believing he had stabbed a homeless man to death.
Neil Cross said he had a clear memory of killing someone on his way home after a drunken night out when he was 16.
The 51- year- old, who penned the BBC crime series starring Idris Elba, said he had “no sense of it being a dream” and checked a knife he carried at the time for blood.
He admitted he had even trawled old newspaper cuttings to ensure it never happened.
Cross dropped the bombshell during the virtual launch of his new ITV drama The Sister.
Adapted from his novel Burial, he said it was inspired by his macabre memory of a murder that never happened.
Explaining where he got the idea, Cross said: “I was very young. I was 16 or 17 and I was out of my head on rough cider in Bristol. I was making my way back to my sister’s house and there was a shortcut and you could either walk round a very long road or you could take a shortcut through the woods.
“I woke up with a very, very clear memory of coming across a homeless man asleep on the steps who I randomly stabbed to death. I woke up the next morning and there was no sense of it being a dream.
“Even now there is 1% of me which is troubled by the memory of it. So yeah – that was the inspiration.”
Cross’s four- part series, which airs on ITV across consecutive nights from October 26, tells the story of Nathan, played by Russell Tovey.
Asked about new Luther shows, Cross said: “We’re going to make more.’’