What creates a serial killer? Is it possible to predict that someone will become a rapist? Do spree killers share common character traits and childhood experiences? What turns a child into a murderer? And how do they explain their crimes?

To unravel the psychological profile of the world’s most dangerous criminals, consultant forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes, examines some of the most infamous cases and goes in search of in-depth, personal interviews with convicted criminals and killers.

Kerry is not your average forensic psychologist. She’s female, she’s glamorous and she talks in accessible sound bites. She’s passionate about her subject and she’s on a mission to investigate, understand and unravel a psychological blueprint of violent crime.

Each episode of The Making of a Monster will take Kerry on a journey into the minds of violent criminals; serial killers, rapists, fantasists, paedophiles, wife beaters, women who kill, arsonists. It’s a journey with many twists and turns as she builds up a clear psychological profile.

Ian Huntley - Men Who Kill Children

When the anonymous northern stranger Ian Huntley arrived in the Cambridgeshire fenland town of Soham he was plausible and convincing. So impressed was Soham’s secondary school board he was offered a caretaker’s job.

Yet Huntley was anything but the perfect candidate to work with children. He was a controlling and violent man well known to the police after a string of rape allegations.

He preyed on young girls. Manipulative and deceitful, he managed to evade any conviction until the day he murdered two 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.