Born to Kill (2012)

In 1984, childhood friends Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog embarked upon a drug-fuelled killing spree that would span 15 years. Their predatory crimes struck fear deep into the hearts of the rural Californian community. Dubbed 'The Speed Freak Killers', Wesley and Loren dumped their victims in the remote countryside and down old pioneer wells where they had spent their childhood playing. If the bounty hunters that are searching for more victims are to be believed, they could be the most prolific serial killers in US history. This programme asks whether Wesley and Loren, who had grown up across the street from each other, were born to kill or whether their upbringing turned them into murderers.

In late 1976 and early 1977, female students at the University of California in Santa Barbara were terrorised by a grim series of lookalike murders, so-called because the victims closely resembled one another. Acting out a sick fantasy, Thor Christiansen struck while they were hitchhiking and desecrated their bodies after killing them. Despite a huge police operation, investigators and the community were baffled by the disappearances. The murderer was Thor Christiansen, a youth who had grown up in Solvang, a local community founded by Danish expatriates. From an early age, people had noticed a dark side to his personality. He abducted at least four young women from the college town of Isla Vista, sexually assaulted them after he had killed them, then dumped the corpses. He was caught after a fifth intended victim escaped and later identified him in a Hollywood bar. This documentary takes an in-depth look at Christiansen's character through the first-hand accounts and testaments of the people who knew him best. Detectives, journalists and leading experts in criminal psychology also offer their insight, as the film asks whether abuse of drugs and alcohol set this young man on the path to murder? Or was Thor Christiansen born to kill?

Between May 2005 and August 2006, Dale and Jeff Hausner, later joined by Samuel Dieteman, turned drive-by shootings into sport, keeping score as they picked off their victims at random and terrorised the residents of Phoenix, Arizona. This film delves into their backgrounds and talks to those who knew the terrible trio in an effort to find out what turned them into killers. The Hausners' spree of senseless destruction and deadly shootings began some six months before they met Dieteman. Together they would become known as The Serial Shooters. The blue-collar brothers called it "random recreational violence". While the citizens of Phoenix cowered in their homes and the authorities struggled to find out who was responsible, the killers amassed a victim list of staggering proportions, with animals, property and humans in their sights. When captured, Dale Hausner declared that his name would become as famous as Charles Manson's, but was the desire for fame the motivation for these predatory crimes? Perhaps events in their lives had turned them into monsters? Or were Hausner and Dieteman born to kill?

Douglas Clark and Carol Bundy have been described as "the couple from hell". They acted out their darkest desires, leaving a trail of bloodshed in their wake. They came from different backgrounds. Carol Bundy, a divorcee nurse with two children, had suffered abuse during childhood. Her lover Douglas Clark, the machinist son of a retired navy admiral, came from a privileged home. So what motivated this killer couple's string of sickening murders? Were they both born evil?

Documentary series investigating what drove notorious killers to commit their crimes. This episode investigates a sadistic couple who carried out a series of despicable crimes against young women, including a relative of one of the perpetrators.

Between 1975 and 1981, the Yorkshire Ripper murdered 13 females and brutally attacked at least seven more in the north of England. When Peter Sutcliffe was eventually captured, his family were stunned. The Peter they knew was a quiet, caring, hard-working man. This chilling profile of Sutcliffe’s life and crimes asks whether it was nature or nurture that turned him into a serial killer. Born in Bingley, Yorkshire on 2nd June 1946, Peter was the eldest of six children in a working class Catholic family. He worshipped his mother Kathleen but grew up in terror of his womanising, bullying father. John Sutcliffe considered his small, scrawny eldest son a sissy. At school, Peter was a loner, so with drawn and passive that few of his teachers could recall his face when they were told of his arrest. Sutcliffe went on to become one of Britain’s most prolific and infamous serial killers, exercising a reign of terror over the north of England for five years. During that time he was interviewed by the police numerous times. How did he manage to avoid suspicion? Was Sutcliffe’s hatred for women triggered by events in his life, or was the Yorkshire Ripper born to be a sexual predator and serial murderer?