Harry Maurice Roberts (21 July 1936 – 13 December 2025) was an English career criminal and murderer who in 1966 instigated the Shepherd's Bush murders, in which three police officers were shot dead in London. The murders took place after plainclothes officers approached a Standard Vanguard estate car, in which Roberts and two other men were sitting in Braybrook Street near Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. He killed two officers, while one of his accomplices shot dead the third.

After Roberts spent nearly 48 years in prison, in 2014 the Parole Board for England and Wales approved his release, at the age of 78. Having far exceeded his minimum term of 30 years, he was one of the United Kingdom's longest-serving prisoners, having remained in custody since 1966. His release was controversial due to the nature of his crime.

Roberts was born in Wanstead, then part of Essex, on 21 July 1936, where his parents ran The George public house. As a child he became involved in crime by helping his mother sell stolen goods on the black market.

In his late teens, Roberts was sentenced to detention after using an iron bar to attack a shopkeeper during a robbery. Roberts served a 19-month sentence inside Gaynes Hall borstal, and was released in January 1956.

One week after leaving the borstal, Roberts was called up for national service and joined the Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own), with whom he saw action during the Mau Mau uprising and Malayan Emergency. Of his service in the jungle he said that this was where he learned to kill and that he had "personally killed at least four". Roberts has claimed that he reached the rank of sergeant while in the Army although others have given his rank as lance corporal. Journalist and former armed robber John McVicar said that Roberts "gloated" about his killings while in prison, and had "acquired a taste for killing prisoners [of war] on the orders of his officers" in the Army.

After leaving the Army, Roberts returned to his criminal activities, and in partnership with Jack Witney carried out "dozens" of armed robberies, targeting bookmakers, post offices and banks. He said, "The most I earned was £1,000 from a single job. Witney was the eldest, the boss: he knew the best places to rob. [John] Duddy joined us later." In 1959 Roberts and an accomplice posed as tax inspectors to gain entry into the home of an elderly man. The man was bound, robbed, and beaten about the head with a glass decanter. Roberts was arrested, and at his trial the judge, John Maude QC, said, "You are a brutal thug. You came very near the rope this time. It is to be hoped you do not appear before us again." Roberts received a sentence of seven years.

Following the shootings in August 1966 of 41-year-old Police Constable Geoffrey Fox, Detective Sergeant Christopher Head, aged 30, and 25-year-old Temporary Detective Constable David Wombwell in Shepherd's Bush, west London, to avoid capture Roberts used a tent to hide in Thorley Wood near Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, until the winter set in and he moved inside farm buildings. He was familiar with the area from visits there as a child. A £1,000 reward was offered for information leading to his arrest. Roberts used his military training to evade capture for 96 days, but was finally caught by police while sleeping rough in a disused airfield hangar on Blount's Farm, Sawbridgeworth, near Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire.

Roberts was convicted of all three murders and sentenced in December 1966 to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 30 years.