Great Crimes and Trials

It was a crime that shattered America. A case so improbable that nobody ever dreamed it could happen. Despite a ransom being paid, after 72 days the body of American legend Charles Lindbergh’s kidnapped baby son, was found murdered. A German carpenter was tried, sentenced and sent to the electric chair, but to this day it is not known if he acted alone…

He started out as a violent street thug, but soon became a ruthless leader, who rose to the top of the Mafia. He always kept one step ahead of the law and infamously once boasted, ‘I buried hundreds of guys’. Even when finally imprisoned he found a way of securing his freedom.

On St Valentine’s Day 1929, the brutal massacre of six gangsters in a Chicago warehouse signalled the emergence of Al ‘Scarface’ Capone as the undisputed Godfather of crime. He was vain, violent and notoriously ruthless. A man who won ultimate respect by exacting total fear.

His name struck fear into the hearts of New Yorkers and brought terror to the streets. He unleashed all his hatred on the one group which he considered had rejected him the most - women.

Within weeks, the hillsides around Los Angeles became the scene of a terrible carnage - more than ten strangled corpses. The police soon realised they were no longer dealing with a serial murderer but hunting something frighteningly new - two killers, who were out on a ‘spree’.

In the world of gangsters, he was notorious, ruthless, a man destined to become a legend. He turned to crime out of boredom and soon found it was too addictive to give up. He blazed a trail across the States, robbing banks with a violent and authoritative ease.

Charles Manson was the ultimate hippie leader with a difference. Together with his cult followers he pioneered a new revolution - a helter-skelter of bloody, calculated and remorseless killing that brought a new, sinister meaning to the term - ‘The Family’.

It was a crime that defied the imagination. In November 1978, deep in the jungles of Guyana the Rev Jim Jones gathered nearly 1,000 devoted followers around him, and with a simple promise persuaded them to commit the greatest ‘revolutionary’ mass suicide of the 20th Century.

American army doctor Jeffrey MacDonald seemed to have everything going for him, good looks, charm, a commission in the Green Berets, a pretty wife and two daughters. Then one night his wife and children were horrifically murdered. Had it not been for the determination of one person - his father-in-law - justice might never have been done.

He was young, handsome and successful - the ideal of American manhood. But when his wife was found battered to death, for him the American dream turned into a nightmare. Convicted of murder, it took him 12 years to establish his innocence and have his conviction overturned

In June 1946 after six years of war a girl was found whipped and murdered in a cheap London hotel. The hunt was soon on for a suave and sinister ex-RAF pilot who showed little remorse or concern when he was sentenced to hang.

Women began to disappear in the Seattle area in the first half of 1974. Almost on a monthly basis after that other women mysteriously vanished - then on the grass hillside near Lake Sammanish the remains of some decomposed bodies were found. It was not until July 1979 that a jury found attractive graduate Bundy guilty and mercifully ended the reign of a savage multiple sex-killer who brutally murdered over twenty girls.

He was the double murderer who insisted on being executed. The question always remained: how badly did he want to die, and why? It was good that he believed in reincarnation as on 17th January 1977 after years of legal moralising his wish was granted and he was strapped to an old office chair and shot dead by a firing squad in Utah.

He was a man determined to demonstrate his German purity. In 1934 he became a member of the SS. He killed not only Jews en masse, but was also responsible for the calculated deaths of twenty-seven RAF prisoners… Eventually, in 1959 he was discovered hiding in Argentina by Israeli agents, who kidnapped him and flew him to Israel for trial.

Seven bodies were found in the crawl space under his home. Eight more were quickly uncovered in other parts of the house, some in trenches covered in quicklime. Eventually, the remains of twenty-eight were discovered. When he had run out of burial space he started dumping bodies in the river. His victims were male and the disappearances continued until the thirty-third killing brought the police with a search warrant to the house.

As civil war raged across Russia in 1918, the deposed Tsar and his family were imprisoned. On 16th July they were massacred and buried secretly in the forest. Almost immediately though, rumours sprang up that not all the imperial family were dead…

When an unassuming US doctor living in London in 1910 fell in love with his secretary, he was tied to a wife who he hated. His solution was murder. Dr Crippen and his mistress fled abroad and when a body was discovered in the cellar they tried to escape across the Atlantic. But one of the world’s first radio transmissions enabled the police to foil them.

In 1963 a mail train was ambushed in England. In one of the largest robberies ever, the gang got away with more than £2.5 million in used bank notes. The stories of police attempts to recapture some of the robbers still hit the headlines today…

For three years Albert DeSalvo stalked the streets of Boston, leaving behind him a hideous trail of human destruction. It was a crusade of evil, of a maniac who might never have been caught had it not been for his confessions to another prison inmate.

In 1949 John George Haigh escorted Mrs Olivia Durand-Deacon down to his factory in Crawley, where he shot her in the head and then heaved her into a previously-prepared vat of acid. Charged with murder, he said he had also disposed of seven other victims the same way - including his parents - and often enjoyed drinking their blood….

He had an obsession with disinfecting his flat. When he moved out, four bodies were discovered there and two more in the garden. When arrested it became horrifically clear that he had also killed a mother and child in 1949 - a crime for which another man had already been hanged.

When the kidnapping of a 17-year-old girl was linked to the brutal murder of three British subpostmasters the police knew they were dealing with a ruthless and callous killer. For the girl, the abduction ended in unimaginable horror. For the police it would take another eleven months and a chance encounter before the ‘Black Panther’ was eventually cornered.

In late October 1964, thieves stole 22 gems from New York City’s Museum of Natural History. Three of the stones were so famous they would be impossible to sell. Within 48 hours, aided by confidential police sources, two men in New York and another two in Miami were arrested.

Despite a massive police operation, he seemed to anticipate their every move. He loved to taunt and mock the detectives and killed with impunity. Eventually, he was trapped by bluff, but never caught. To this day no one has been charged.

It was the first in Britain for centuries. In a cruel and callous kidnapping a woman became the innocent victim of mistaken identity. After many efforts to catch her abductors, the police were led to a lonely farmhouse - and two brothers with a ghastly secret.

The reign of terror that followed the first murder of a Leeds prostitute in 1975, cut a trail of fear across northern England. The ‘Ripper’ never struck twice in the same place. But thankfully, one evening he made a mistake….