Series Eight

Case 72 Mary Ann Cotton. The Black Widow Murders. 1873. 21 deaths over many years, including three husbands & her own children by poisoning, so that she could  claim the insurance money. Justice finally caught up with her dark deeds.

Case 73 The Vanishing Of Mamie Stuart 1919. A young woman disappears without trace, and her husband is implicated but never charged. The mystery is only solved in 1961 with a chance discovery.

Case 74 The Disturbing Murderers Leopold & Loeb Chicago 1924. Two teenage friends decide to find out what it would be like to kidnap and murder an innocent victim as a social experiment.

Case 75 The Prince of Poisoners Dr Palmer. Rugeley 1856. Greed, accumulated debt and a wayward lifestyle led to a catalogue of premature & unexplained deaths. His desperate acts finally exposed, it all ended with a famous trial, and the gallows.

Case 76 Murder of Sweet Fanny Adams Hampshire, England 1867. A lazy hot summers day and three children are playing in a field near where they live, where they run into a strange man. One of them is forced into an adjacent hop field and brutally slayed and dismembered.

Case 77 The Valet Who Murdered His Master. London 1840. A disgruntled Peer upsets his valet which leads to a bloody killing, a staged robbery and a houseful of staff under suspicion and a killer at large.

Case 78 The Sinister Blood Countess Hungary 1600. Known as the perhaps the most prolific female serial killer of all time until the authorities stepped in to halt her blood lust.

Case 79 The Forbidding Crossdresser Killer Margaret Allen Lancashire 1948. A woman from a difficult upbringing self identifies as being a man and falls foul of expected societal norms of the time and eventually falls into debt. A spur of the moment decision results in a tragic outcome.

Case 80 The Deadly Mystery Red Barn Murder Of Maria Marten. Suffolk 1827. A shallow grave discovered in a barn outside a quiet village reveals the remains of a young woman who supposedly left months earlier to get married.