Without judgment, Crimes of Passion will unravel the events that take love to its darkest place. Not that we might ever be able to explain, only that we might find a way to understand how someone, who seemingly functions in other areas of their lives, might lose their balance enough to commit the unthinkable in a passionate rage.

These crimes are not pre-meditated. In all stories, the perpetrator has no previous convictions, and has shown no violent tendencies. Driven by love or in most cases, the potential loss of love, these people lose themselves for a deadly moment of time to all logic or sense of right and wrong. For some it’s only a moment, for others a slow walk into the halls of what many a defence attorney would define as insanity. Less a study of the criminal or pathologic mind, the series is about people like you and me who venture away from themselves.

We can all recall moments in our lives when driven by an intensely dark and passionate moment, we might have been capable of anything. We like to think it could never happen. We wrap ourselves safely in the knowledge that our better selves, our logical mind, will always win out. That no matter what we might be thinking, in any given moment, our choice to act or not act is always within our grasp.

The Malotts lived together for 20 years with two children in Leamington, Ontario. When Margaret and Paul first got together, they lived with her five children from a previous marriage. During this time, she was forbidden by Paul to hold or be affectionate toward them. Paul eventually coerced Margaret into giving her mother (the children's grandmother) custody of the children and forbade her from having any contact with them.

After years of moving around, the two settled in Leamington, Ontario and a pattern of intense abuse ensued whereby physical beatings often preceded degrading sexual acts. Paul was a drug dealer who often associated with drug users and always carried a knife, with which he occasionally threatened Margaret. When she tried reporting him to police, Margaret discovered that he was also a police informant. When the police told him of her complaints, the beatings escalated.

Shortly before 23rd March 1991, Paul left and began living with Carrie Sherwood, 23, while occasionally visiting the family home where Margaret continued to live with her mother-in-law. On Saturday, 23rd March 1991, Margaret called her estranged husband and asked him to take her shopping, as she did not own a car.

After breaking into a room where Paul kept a collection of guns, she placed a handgun and bullets in her purse. Paul drove her to the Kingsville medical centre where she was to pick up a prescription for drugs that he planned to mix with cocaine. The store was closed and upon returning to the car, Margaret (later claiming to be in fear of getting hurt again) began firing the handgun at Paul as he sat in the car, killing him. At 3:15 pm Margaret took a taxi to Sherwood's home and upon entering, shot the woman (who escaped) and called the police.

In trial, an expert testified that Malott was one of the worst cases of domestic violence he had ever seen. Yet after an emotional deliberation, jurors fought back tears as they delivered a sentence that found her guilty of second-degree murder and of attempted murder. She received the minimum sentence of 10 years for the murder charge and a concurrent term of four years for the attempted murder charge. The Supreme Court of Canada rejected an appeal and Margaret is currently serving time in jail.