Murderers and Their Mothers

S01E04: Harold Shipman: The Angel of Death

Dr Harold Shipman, was Britain's most prolific serial killer with at least 215 known victims. Was Shipman simply addicted to murder, playing God by killing many of his elderly female patients with overdoses of morphine, or did his upbringing and the circumstances of his mother's death turn him into a mass murderer?

Overview

Do the warped and damaged relationships of murderers and their mothers lie at the root of many of the world's most notorious killers? In these ten episodes, journalist Donal MacIntyre examines ten cases of murder in which the culprits' childhoods and maternal influences set them on the path towards their unspeakable crimes.

Episodes

S01E01 Daniel Bartlam: The Coronation Street Killer

March 26, 2023
At just 14 years old Daniel Bartlam savagely killed his mother with a claw hammer and then sought to cover his tracks by setting fire to her body. Daniel's deep resentment of his mother following...

S01E02 Fred and Rosemary West: Killer Couple

April 2, 2023
Fred and Rosemary West raped, tortured, murdered and dismembered twelve young women including two of their daughtersin one of the most shocking cases of serial killing Britain has ever seen. But why did the Wests...

S01E03 Jed Allen: The Wolverine Killer

April 9, 2023
The case of Jed Allen, a young man who on the surface had a happy, stable life. Yet in May 2015 he would kill his mother, step-father and six year old half-sister in a brutal...

S01E04 Harold Shipman: The Angel of Death

April 16, 2023
Dr Harold Shipman, was Britain's most prolific serial killer with at least 215 known victims. Was Shipman simply addicted to murder, playing God by killing many of his elderly female patients with overdoses of morphine,...

S01E05 Joachim Knychala: Frankenstein

April 23, 2023
Joachim Knychala, the Polish serial killer who earned the ghoulish nickname 'Frankenstein,' attacked his victims with an axe, butchering and desecrating their bodies after death. MacIntyre and criminologist Dr Elizabeth Yardley explore Knychala's twisted relationship...

S01E06 Dennis Nilsen: The Kindly Killer

April 30, 2023
One of Britain's most infamous killers, Dennis Nilsen murdered 15 young men, some as young as 14,in London during the late seventies and early eighties. Nilsen held on to the corpses of his victims for...

S01E07 Robert Black: The Lone Killer

May 7, 2023
Serial child-killer Robert Black worked as a delivery driver, preying on young girls up and down the country. Black's own childhood was fraught with violence and abandonment. MacIntyre and Dr Elizabeth Yardley piece together Black's...

S01E08 Leszek Pekalski: The Vampire of Bytowa

May 14, 2023
One of Poland's most notorious serial killers, Leszek Pekalski confessed to murdering dozens of people - men, women, and children, who were mostly savagely bludgeoned to death before being raped - although he later recanted...

S01E09 Adam Lanza: Sandy Hook School Shooting 46m

May 21, 2023
In December 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother Nancy before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School and shooting dead 20 children and six teachers in one of the bloodiest mass shootings in American history....

S01E10 Richard Kuklinski: The Iceman Killer

May 28, 2023
Richard Kuklisnki, known as the 'Iceman,' claimed to have killed up to 250 in his three-decade-long career as a hitman for the mafia, all of which he kept separate from his average middle-class existence. How...

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