Episode Guide

A politician, a children's clown, a party host, an entrepreneur, a father and a husband: all roles played by John Wayne Gacy to mask his true nature - that of the world's most notorious serial killers in history.

Like the fictional character in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Gacy somehow managed to live a secret life between the best of good and the worst of evil. By day, he was a model citizen. By night, he would become overwhelmed by a seething rage and sexual attraction to teenage boys.

Watch on Sunday 18 April at 10pm

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1962. Within 18 months, eleven women were brutally, savagely murdered in the Boston area. They were old, young, black, and white, with one characteristic in common; they were strangled with their own nylons.

The city was frozen with fear until one day one man confessed to the stranglings. His name was Albert Henry DeSalvo, a 33-year-old construction worker. All of a sudden, the killings stopped.

Watch on Sunday 18 April at 11pm

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John Michie travels to Dundee where one of Scotland’s most terrifying madmen would grow up before carrying a horrific crime.

It was in 1967 that Mone shocked the entire country when, in a deep depression and after drinking heavily, he stormed into his old school, armed with a shotgun. He shot down pregnant teacher Nanette Hanson after holding her and twelve pupils hostage.
 

Watch on Sunday 11 April at 10pm

Jeffrey Dahmer was a homosexual sexual deviant who raped, murdered and ate parts of 17 victims. Like other killers such as John Wayne Gacy, he managed to elude capture while continuing to carry out his crimes.

Like every other sociopath serial killer in history he believed himself to be completely justified in his actions.

Watch on Sunday 11 April at 11pm

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In the late 60's and early 70's the Zodiac Killer single-handedly terrorized both men and women in San Francisco and Northern California. Principally a killer of young couples, he was definitively tied to at least seven murders, although it is thought that he could have killed up to 30 more.

As brilliant as he was evil, the Zodiac's modus operandi was to call the police himself to report his own murders, and then disappear without a trace.

Watch on Monday 12 April at 1am

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John Michie investigates the life of Dennis Nilsen, who murdered 15 young men in London between 1978 and 1983.

John starts his journey in Fraserburgh where he will look at the childhood of a young boy who would grow up to become one of the world’s most notorious serial killers. Nilsen grew up in Aberdeenshire, raised by parents who would regularly lecture him on the impurities of the flesh. John will meet people who remember the family and learn about the events in Nilsen’s childhood that may have contributed to his criminal behaviour.

Watch on Sunday 4 April at 10pm

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Frenchman Michel Fourniret's crimes terrorized Europe in the '80s and ‘90s as he kidnapped, raped and murdered nine young women in a reign of terror across France and Belgium.

What makes this case even more terrible is that Fourniret's wife not only knew about the crimes, but helped her husband to trap his victims. Police did not realise that they were dealing with the French equivalent of Fred and Rose West until their last victim managed to escape.

Watch on Sunday 28 March at 10pm

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In 1995, a Singapore boatman was returning to the pier after a busy night ferrying workers to and from a nearby island when his boat bumped against a floating object. When he took a closer look, what he saw would eventually give him recurring nightmares for years to come. The black bag was tied with blue underwear, and had a human leg protruding out of it.

This is the story of a serial killer who passed himself off as a friendly tourist, and preyed on unsuspecting fellow travellers leaving a trail of death around the world.

John Martin Scripps would befriend them and then bludgeon them with a hammer, cut their bodies up to dispose of them. But his crimes caught up with him Singapore and where he became known as the Garden City Butcher.

Watch on Sunday 21 March at 10pm

For three decades, he created an atmosphere of fear among the residents of Wichita. He bound, tortured and killed ten victims, two of them children.

His chosen method of killing was synonymous with the name he chose: B.T.K. The reign of fear he created ended when Dennis Rader, the self-professed B.T.K was arrested and charged with ten counts of murder.

Watch on Sunday 21 March at 11pm

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When police searched Ed Gein's farmhouse in 1958 it was "like an archeological dig in hell". They found chairs, lampshades and countless other items fashioned from human skin as well as soup bowls cut from human skulls.

Gein entered the nation's subconscious as a monster, a ghoul, a ghost story to tell children to get them to behave. His crimes became a case study in media frenzy, psychoanalysis and criminal profiling. He was then immortalized in movies including Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs.

Watch on Sunday 21 March at midnight

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The Canadian pig farmer turned serial killer, preyed on prostitutes and drug addicts from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside luring them to his farm under the cover of a registered charity, Piggy Palace Good Times Society. Once caught, Pickton confessed to 49 murders and told an undercover cop he wanted to kill another woman to make it an even 50.

Watch on Sunday 14 March at 10pm

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There were no signs; there was no warning. A married man, who no one suspected, would go out at night, on what he believed to be a mission from God, seeking out prostitutes to murder.

Beginning in 1975 and ending with his arrest in 1981, Peter Sutcliffe travelled the north of England frequently for work, never stopping in one place for too long. This lifestyle allowed him to evade capture viciously murdering 13 women, bringing fear and trepidation to Yorkshire and England as a whole. During his years of terror he became known simply as the Yorkshire Ripper.

Watch on Sunday 14 March at 11pm

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For decades the crimes of Jack the Ripper have inspired both horror and intrigue. Theories abound as to the identity of the killer, but few are based on facts.

Laura Richards, of New Scotland Yard's Violent Crime Directorate, re-opens the case of Jack the Ripper. With the benefits of modern criminology and psychological analysis, and the aid of Britain's best detectives, Laura uses 21st century forensic techniques to understand a 19th century killer, dispelling the many myths that have grown up around the case and revealing the truth about Jack The Ripper, the first modern serial killer.

Watch on Sunday 14 March at midnight

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