There are more than 83,000 prisoners in jail in the UK. But hundreds of convicted murderers are released every year. Sputnik looks at some horrific crimes from the 1990s and asks whether the killers are still on the loose.

In September last year John Tanner was jailed for assaulting his girlfriend in the small town of Whanganui in New Zealand.

The case of itself was not very newsworthy but true crime afficionados of a certain age may remember the name John Tanner - in 1991 he was jailed for life for murdering his 19-year-old British girlfriend, Rachel McLean at a flat in Oxford.

— Iain McDougall (@Iain_McDougall) 14 April 2018

​Tanner, who was then 22 and a student at Nottingham University, had appeared on television and appealed for help in finding Rachel, who he claimed to have last seen when he boarded a train at Oxford station.

In fact Tanner had murdered her after a row and hidden her body under the floorboards of her apartment.

Amazingly Tanner only served 12 years in a British jail for Rachel’s murder and returned to his native New Zealand shortly after his release.

Sentencing him to two years and nine months imprisonment for injuring with intent, Judge Philip Crayton, sitting in Whanganui District Court, told him: "Mr Tanner, it is, of course, and never has been acceptable for violence within a family context. You have one significant aggravating factor, it is your previous conviction for murder.”

His girlfriend, in her victim impact statement, said she wanted to stand by Tanner and hoped he would get help for his anger management issues.

Those same issues which had led him to kill Rachel McLean on 14 April 1991.

So could there be other John Tanners out there?

Killer Richard Elsey Who Posed As An SAS Officer

On 15 January 1994 Mohammed El-Sayed, a 44-year-old chef, was killed in Bayswater in west London. His throat had been slit.

Two young men - Richard Elsey and Jamie Petrolini, both 19, were jailed for life at the Old Bailey in October 1994.

The trial heard that Elsey had convinced his accomplice he was an undercover SAS officer and said Petrolini had to “slot” the Egyptian chef, who he had picked at random.

— Sameer Padania (@sdp) 8 February 2009

​Petrolini said he believed the killing was a legitimate initiation test which he had to pass in order to join the elite commando unit.

The pair, who were both students at Oxford University, were jailed for life.

But in 2012 Petrolini’s murder conviction was quashed and replaced with a manslaughter conviction on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Petrolini, by then diagnosed with schizophrenia, was transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

Elsey, who would now be 44, is believed to have been released.

In 2015 a play based on the case was performed at the Fringe festival in Edinburgh.

Julie Cheema and the Hired Hitman

On 3 October 1990 Mohinder Cheema was shot dead at the off licence he ran in Hounslow, west London.

Suspicion originally fell on a local Asian extortion gang, the Tooti Nungs, but it later emerged that his wife Julie Cheema, 44, had hired a hitman, Robert Naughton, 20, to kill him so she could be with her 19-year-old lover, Neil Marklew, 19.

— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) 1 July 2019

​In his book Hitmen, author Wensley Clarkson said Julie sought sex elsewhere because her wealthy husband’s chronic asthma made him unable to perform in bed and his wife became “increasingly obsessed” with her suspicions that he was planning to cut her out of his will.

She was jailed for life in 1991 but Cheema and Naughton are almost certainly out now. She would be 69 and he would be 49.

Train Station Killer Thomas Stewart

On 10 January 1992 Richard Lyddon, 36, a trainee nurse from Taunton, Somerset was stabbed 10 times in the men’s lavatory at Reading railway station, west of London.

His killer was Thomas Stewart, 41, a dye maker from Reading, who was drunk.

— rob manuel (@robmanuel) 2 July 2019

​Stewart was jailed for life in 1993 but was released a decade later and then arrested in 2013, on the basis of DNA evidence, for raping a Bristol University medical student in 1980.

Stewart, by then 56, was jailed for 10 years.

Judge Carol Hagen told Stewart: "I regard the risk you posed as real and continuing."

Under UK law prisoners usually serve half of their sentence and are then released but it is not clear if Stewart has been freed again.

Arms Dealer Stephen Schepke and Contract Killer Stephen Playle

On 5 March 1992 David Wilson, a 47-year-old businessman, was shot dead in the garage of his luxury home in Brinscall, Lancashire, while his wife Barbara and daughters Michelle, 28, and Lisa Marie, 26, were held captive.

In October 1993 contract killer Stephen Playle, 33, and arms dealer Stephen Schepke, 44, were jailed for life for the murder.

They were ordered to spend a minimum of 20 years in jail but this was later cut on appeal to 18 years.

— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawBBC) 6 January 2018

​The man who ordered the hit was 39-year-old American criminal Michael Austin, who often hid behind a false persona, Hector Portillo, who he claimed was a Mexican Army general.

Austin, who lived in New Jersey, wanted to silence Wilson after the Englishman was questioned by detectives about a cigarette fraud they were both involved in.

He was also jailed for life but was given a 24 year tariff.

All three are now eligible for release or may already be free. Austin would have been deported to the US at the end of his sentence.

Psychiatric Nurse Who Attacked Vulnerable Women

In April 1991 Jo Ramsden, a 21-year-old afflicted with Down’s Syndrome, was sexually assaulted and murdered at Hunters Lodge, a care home, in Lyme Regis, Dorset. Her body was dumped in the countryside and only found a year later.

— The Sun (@TheSun) 1 July 2019

​Michael Fox, 48, a retired psychiatric nurse, from Bournemouth, was convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting nine vulnerable women but was never charged with killing Jo.

He was jailed for life in 1994 and in 2003 was transferred from Broadmoor psychiatric hospital to a “medium secure” unit - Chadwick Lodge in Buckinghamshire, and later released.

Notorious Child Killers Jon Venables and Robbie Thompson

In February 1993 two-year-old James Bulger was abducted from the Strand shopping centre in Bootle, Liverpool, while his mother Denise was distracted.

He was led away and taken to a freight railway line, where he was stoned and beaten to death and had blue paint splashed on him.

James was left for dead and his little body was severed by a train.

Robbie Thompson, and Jon Venables, who were both 10, were convicted of murder in November 1993 and detained during Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

— Nine News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) 24 June 2019

​Their minimum tariff was set at eight years, which caused public outrage.

It was later increased to 10 years by the Court of Appeal and to 15 years by Home secretary Michael Howard.

But this was later overturned and both were released in 2001 and given new identities with draconian restrictions banning the press or any member of the public from revealing their new names.

In 2010 Venables, by then 27 and living in Cheshire, was jailed for two years for possessing child pornography images.

He was released again in 2012 and the following year an image was posted on the internet purporting to show Thompson as an adult.

Both men, who are now 36, are free and their identities are protected by a lifelong anonymity order, which was unsuccessfully challenged by James’ father Ralph Bulger in March.