Murder Maps - Season 5

Series: Murder Maps

4.1

(12)

Episodes

Rating

Year

2019

Language

English

Publisher

3DD

About

This drama-doc series takes you back in time to the most shocking and surprising murder cases in history. Our presenter, Nicholas Day, guides us into the world of the killer as we see how police ingenuity and early forensics helped bring them to justice.

Related Subjects

Episodes

1. Jack The Ripper Part 1

44m

We all think we know the story of Jack the Ripper. The most famous serial killer in history, the man who murdered five women on the streets of Whitechapel – and got away with it.

In this two-part Murder Maps special, we re-examine those notorious crimes. We reveal how the story we know today was shaped by the sensationalist press of 1888. And we strip back decades of rumour and misinformation to reveal the true lives of the five women slain. 

With contributions from world renowned Ripper expert Donald Rumbelow and writer Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five - the only book to tell the lives of the victims, these documentaries are the true story of the Whitechapel Murders as never heard before.

2. Jack The Ripper Part 2

44m

3. The Siege of Sidney Street

44m

In the early twentieth century, a new technology changed the way we consume the news forever. No long would we rely on words or still photography alone; moving pictures had arrived. The cameras would be there for the grand funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901. They would be there for the flights of the first powered aircraft, and for the 1908 Olympic Games. And in 1911, they would be there to record police, soldiers, and Winston Churchill, join a gun battle on the streets of London, a battle, which would last six hours, and would see four hundred rounds of ammunition fired, and would come to be known as… The Siege of Sidney Street the first breaking-news story in history.

4. Bluebeard

44m

The First World War took the lives of countless soldiers on the front line. But one man in Paris too old for combat saw this as an opportunity. Henri Landru targeted the lonely and vulnerable women left behind by the war. He seduced them with promises of marriage and lured them to houses outside Paris where the women vanished. With the police uninterested in investigating the disappearances, two women took it upon themselves to pursue Landru. 

This episode tells their story. How they tirelessly gathered evidence against the killer. How they pestered the authorities to investigate. And how they made sure Landru finally faced justice for his crimes.

5. The Hay Poisoner

44m

Herbert Rowse Armstrong went down in history as The Hay Poisoner. Convicted in 1922 of murdering his wife with arsenic, he was the first and only solicitor to be hanged in the UK. 

But was he guilty? Was he a cunning poisoner, or was he a grieving husband wrongly accused? Much of the evidence against Armstrong was circumstantial and the scientific testimony remains disputed. In this episode we examine both sides of the case and ask whether the British justice system made a terrible mistake.

6. Amelia Dyer

44m

Amelia Dyer was perhaps the most prolific killer in British history. She earned a living through murder. And her victims were babies. There was a grim trade which flourished in the Victorian age. In a time when unmarried mothers were shamed and shunned, giving up children to a 'baby-farmer' was often the only option. Dyer promised mothers that for a fee she would adopt the babies and raise them as her own. In fact, she neglected and murdered them. In this episode we tell the shocking story of Dyer and of Evelina Marmon, one of the desperate young mothers she deceived.

7. The Cleveland Torso Murders

44m

Cleveland, Ohio was a notorious city in the 1930s. The Great Depression had hit it hard. Crime and corruption were rife. And there was a serial killer on the loose. This episode investigates the unsolved murders committed by the Butcher of Kingsbury Run. The Butcher killed at least twelve men and women, dismembering their bodies and scattering them across the city. Few of the victims were ever identified and nobody was brought to justice. But as this episode reveals, the investigation of legendary lawman Eliot Ness did have a suspect, a man whose identity has remained a secret for decades.

8. The Richmond Murders

44m

It was a crime which shocked Britain. In 1878, a widow was killed in her own home - and the killer was her own servant. This was a murder which struck at the heart of Victorian society, at the sanctity of the home and the rigid divides between the classes. For the young Kate Webster did not only kill and dismember her employer – she stole her clothes, her property and her identity. And to the Victorians that was almost more monstrous than the murder itself.

9. Mary Pearcey

44m

Until its closure in 2016, Madame Tussauds' Chamber of Horrors was one of the museum's oldest and most popular attractions. And for decades, staring out at visitors was the waxwork of a notorious Victorian double killer, the murderer of a young mother and baby - a woman named Mary Pearcey. In this episode, we reveal how the trouble Pearcey began an affair with her victim's husband. How she inserted herself into the family's life. How she lured her rival to her death. And how she got Madame Tussauds to pay for her defence.

Extended Details

SeriesMurder Maps

Closed CaptionsEnglish

Artists

Nicholas DayActor

Alan MossActor

Donald RumbelowActor