Great Crimes and Trials Series 3: Set 2

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History Documentary hosted by Robert Powell, published by BBC in 1995 - English narration

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Stabbings, shootings, genocide, torture, abduction, robbery, serial killing and mass suicide are just a few of the horrific crimes explored in Great Crimes and Trials. True stories carefully researched and reconstructed with actual archive footage. Cases which have become almost legendary in the annals of crime and detection. Serial killers, gangsters, assassins and war criminals - Great Crimes and Trials sheds light on crimes that shocked the world, bringing back memories of some of the most notorious cases of the twentieth century. The murders of John Lennon and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, the unsolved Zodiac murders and the treasonous crimes of Lord Haw-Haw are all covered here in exacting detail, alongside other shocking stories of murder and mayhem. From the violent mob rule of the thirties to the fairly recent phenomenon of the serial killer, the motives, behavior patterns and killing techniques of some of the world's most evil felons are explored. Their detection, capture and trials are examined to give a complete picture of how crine and justice have evolved through the twentieth century. Narrated by Robert Powell, Great Crimes and Trials combines new and archive interviews to reconstruct each story, analysing the individual and his motive, explaining how the crime was committed and showing breakthroughs in investigations alongside details of the trial. With its researchers gaining unprecedented access to picture libraries and over 250,000 hours of archive footage, these are the definitive accounts of these appalling murders. Produced by Nugus/Martin Productions Ltd for BBC Worldwide Television

[edit] Heidnick and Dahmer: Killers for Company

The Philadelphia murderer who ensnared his female victims one by one. He locked them into a dark cellar where there was no escape from his manic desires or his brutality.
In November 1986, Gary Heidnik kidnapped six women and kept them captive in his basement. There he raped, tortured, starved and electrocuted his victims, killing two, then fed their bodies to his remaining captives. On March 23, 1987, Philadelphia police officers responded to an astonishing 9-1-1 call from Josefina Rivera. Claiming to have been abducted, raped, beaten, tortured, and held captive in a basement for nearly four months, she had managed to convince her captor to be allowed to see her family. She used the opportunity to escape and led the police to her abductor waiting at the gas station: Gary Heidnik. What they uncovered in Heidnik's basement was a prison that had claimed the lives of two women, with another three women held captive. Heidnik was convicted in court of two counts of first-degree murder, five of kidnapping, six of rape, four of aggravated assault, and one count of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse. He consequently made many suicide attempts in prison. On July 6, 1999, Heidnik was executed by lethal injection.
In 1991, in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, two police officers are flagged down by a handcuffed man, Tracy Edwards. He, too, claimed to have escaped from a would-be abductor, leading the police back to his house. It was thus almost by accident that police had finally caught one of the most infamous serial killers of all time, for the man's name was Jeffrey Dahmer.

[edit] Judge Joe Peel and the Chillingworth Murders

Footprints in the sand, blood on some steps and an empty Florida beach house after the disappearance of a local Judge were the only clues the police had to go on in this celebrated case. On the morning of June 15, 1955, judge Curtis Chillingworth failed to turn up for a scheduled hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida. A carpenter arriving at his house that same morning found the door open and the house empty. Both Chillingworth and his wife Marjorie had disappeared, never to be seen again. It would take nearly five years for a chance boast to unravel the mystery behind the Chillingworths' disappearance and its mastermind: another judge, Joseph Peel.
Joseph Alexander Peel was born in West Palm Beach and was married with two children. He became a lawyer in 1949 and three years later was named the city's only municipal judge. On 14th June 1955, Peel ordered a man to kill Judge Curtis E Chillingworth and his wife Marjorie. On 30th March 1961, jurors took five hours and 24 minutes to find Peel guilty of accessory to murder. The prosecutor wanted the death penalty, but the jury recommended mercy and Peel was sentenced to two life terms.

[edit] Sacco and Vanzetti: Anarchy and Murder

They avoided conscription in the First World War by fleeing to Mexico and their political stance was that of anarchy. But did their politics make them into murderers?
The end of the Great War in 1918 did not mean an end to conflict and strife around the world. New communist and anarchist movements sprouted all over the world, emboldened by the success of the Russian Revolution and the promise of a better world. The United States of America was no exception, but few could have imagined that the trial of a shoemaker and a fishmonger for murder would become one of the most significant trials of the twentieth century, at the center of the battle between those who wished to overthrow what they saw as an unjust system and those who wished to preserve the status quo.
On April 15, 1920, a paymaster for a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts, was shot and killed along with his guard. The murderers, who were described as two Italian men, escaped with more than ?15,000. After going to a garage to claim a car that police said was connected with the crime, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the crime. On July 14, 1921, they were convicted and sentenced to die. Anti-radical sentiment was running high in America at the time, and the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was regarded by many as unlawfully sensational. Authorities had failed to come up with any evidence of the stolen money, and much of the other evidence against them was later discredited.

[edit] The Trunk Murders

Trunks left in railway left baggage departments eventually revealed their grisly secrets. Only when the police re-examined vital evidence did the murderers get caught. A breakthrough for early forensic science.
As the Charing Cross railway station in London began operating on the morning of 10 May 1927, station staff noticed an unpleasant smell coming from an unclaimed trunk. Prising it open, they were presented with the horrifying sight of five severed body parts from a woman's body. The person responsible had eliminated most evidence that could be used to identify her. But he had not removed everything, and was eventually caught.
In 1934, police were conducting a house to house search in Brighton. At number 52 Kemp Street, they discovered a trunk containing a body in an advanced stage of decomposition. The body was soon identified as 42-year-old prostitute, Violette Kaye. The resident of the house, Tony Mancini had long since disappeared. When the police later picked up Mancini, he told them that he had discovered his girlfriend Violette dead on her bed, apparently killed by one of her clients. He panicked and hid the body in the trunk. But the police didn't believe his story, when they discovered the charred remains of a hammer in his basement. Mancini was charged with murder on 17th July. At the trial five months later, the jury returned with a verdict of not guilty. 42 years later, Mancini finally confessed to a British newspaper that he had indeed murdered Violette.

[edit] Browne and Kennedy and Other Police Killers

Two criminals were trapped by a village 'bobby' and decided to shoot him dead. The detection of the pair led to both going to the gallows.
On his way home from duty, police constable George Gutteridge was passed by a speeding car. Ever diligent in his duty, he waved down the speeding car in order to write them a ticket. Four hours later, Gutteridge was found dead, in a pool of blood, apparently in the process of writing the ticket. He had been shot four times in the face, two of them once in each eye.
The brutal killing of PC Gutteridge shocked the nation and set off a manhunt, with Scotland Yard soon on the case. The subsequent trial and conviction of the killers, Frederick Browne and William 'Pat' Kennedy, marked the first time in British history that the then-new science of forensic ballistics was used to secure a conviction. PC Gutteridge was not the first British policeman to be killed in the line of duty, nor would be he be the last.

[edit] The Siege of Sidney Street

A robbery and the killing of three policemen by anti-Russian anarchists brought Home Secretary Winston Churchill and the Scots Guards onto the streets of London in the search for 'Peter the Painter'. The Siege of Sidney Street (also known as the Battle of Stepney) reached its end on 3rd January 1911 and was one of the most notorious events at the time in the East End.
It all began in December 1910, when a gang of Latvian revolutionaries attempted to rob a jewelry store in Houndsditch, London, resulting in the deaths of three police officers and the Latvian gang leader. On 3 January 1911, having arrested most of the Latvian gang, police tracked the last two members to 100 Sidney Street. Armed to the teeth and with superior weapons to the police besieging them, Fritz Svaars and William/Joseph Sokoloff were going to go down fighting. By daybreak the stage had been lit for the great drama which was about to unfold over the next few hours.
At noon one o'clock the house was seen to be on fire. The anarchists had not much longer to live. One of them was observed at a back window blazing away with two pistols. A little later one of the pistols was seen to jam. Now the soldiers redoubled their efforts sending a hail of shots screaming through the windows of number 100. Sokoloff peered out through the maelstrom; a volley of shots ripped his head apart. Svaars mourned him with a barrage of return fire, but it was to be his final flourish because now the burning house had begun to cave in. He was last seen lying on a ground floor bed with his face in a pillow. The ceiling then collapsed and that was the end of him. By 2pm the siege of Sidney Street was over.

[edit] Leopold and Loeb: Killing for Thrills

Two Chicago rich kids who killed for kicks. A tragedy of three young lost lives, a dead fourteen-year-old victim and the imprisonment of two teenage killers, unfolded in Chicago in 1924. The murder trial of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold that shocked the nation is best remembered decades later for the twelve-hour long plea of lawyer Clarence Darrow to save his clients from the gallows.
On May 21, 1924, 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks, the son of a wealthy Chicago watch manufacturer was kidnapped. A ransom note was sent to his family, but the Franks family could not have known that Bobby was already dead. He had been murdered shortly after being kidnapped by the sons of two of Chicago's wealthiest families, Nathaniel Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb, whose only motives were to see if they could commit the "perfect crime" and prove their intellectual superiority as self-perceived Ubermenschen.
Leopold and Loeb vastly overestimated their superiority, however, and were soon caught. Their subsequent trial would go down as one of the most sensational in American criminal history, and also served as a platform for the arguments about capital punishment.

[edit] The Zodiac Killers and Other Unsolved Serial Murders

The San Francisco and New York Zodiac killers ended their reigns of terror without being caught as did the man who became probably America's worst uncaught serial murderer - Seattle's 'Green River Killer'.
Not all serial killers are caught. From 1967 to 1974, "Zodiac" claimed at least 37 victims, though only 5 were confidently attributed to him by police. As he eluded police time and time again, he sent taunting letters and cards to the San Francisco press. Four of these were cryptograms, of which only one was ever solved. 16 years after his last letter, the sign of the "Zodiac Killer" would resurface in New York City. Meanwhile, the cities of Seattle and San Diego was also dealing with their own elusive serial killers.

[edit] The Assassination of Robert Kennedy

By the time he ran for President in 1968, JFK's brother had made many powerful enemies. When he was gunned down, apparently by a lone killer, many questions remained unanswered.
What motives lay behind the shots that killed JFK's brother? Was the assassin really a lone gunman, outraged at Senator Kennedy's pro-Israeli stance, or were others involved? Robert Kennedy's strong support of liberal government policies, and his attack on criminal involvement with the powerful Teamster's Union, certainly made him extremely unpopular in some powerful circles. Kennedy's message, his political life, and very public murder are all documented here through an array of film footage that offers a fascinating retrospective of a tireless social crusader, his allies and his enemies.

[edit] Pol Pot and the Killing Fields of Cambodia

Following the Khmer Rouge take over of Phnom Penh, a nightmare experiment to create a workers' utopia led to the brutal death of millions herded into forced labour.
The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970-1975). 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79.

[edit] The Malmedy Massacre and Other Nazi War Crimes

The cold-blooded massacre during the Battle of the Bulge of 124 US troops by Germany's elite 1st SS Panzer Division was the worst atrocity suffered by American forces during the Second World War.
The Malmedy Massacre, or the shooting of 84 American soldiers who had surrendered, took place on December 17, 1944, the second day of the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, during the summer of 1945, the U.S. occupation authorities rounded up over 1,000 former soldiers in the 1st SS Panzer Division and interrogated them. Seventy-five of them were originally charged as war criminals in the Malmedy case. One of those who were charged was 18-year-old Arvid Freimuth who committed suicide in his cell before the trial started. Charges were dismissed against Marcel Boltz after it was learned that he was a French citizen. That left 73 men who were ultimately prosecuted by the American Military.

[edit] Ma Barker and Other Public Enemies

For more than twenty years Ma Barker and her 'boys' terrorised the mid-west of the US, robbing scores of banks and killing dozens of people. Together with Alvin Karpis, the Karpis-Barker gang became one of the most formidable criminal gangs of the 1930s.
They did not hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, even innocent bystanders. They robbed a number of banks, hijacked mail deliveries, and soon turned to the lucrative field of kidnapping. The kidnappings, however, would lead to the gang's end, as the FBI had by this time organized a group of highly skilled agents called the "flying squads" who specialized in hunting down the leading public enemies. The year 1934 alone saw the deaths of John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd and Lester "Baby Face Nelson" Gillis.
In addition, others killed violently in the 1930s were Jack "Legs" Diamond, Dutch Schultz, and John Dillinger. The capture of Karpis essentially ended the age of the big-name depression-era criminals. The country had gradually started to recover from the Great Depression and economic times had improved, and law enforcement agencies had improved as well.

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Video Codec: x264 CABAC Main@L4
Video Bitrate: 1 218 Kbps
Video Resolution: 702x576
Display Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Frames Per Second: 25.000 fps
Audio Codec: AAC (LC)
Audio Bitrate: 160 kb/s VBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages: english
RunTime Per Part: 26 min
Number Of Parts: 12
Part Size: 199 MB - 344 MB
Source: DVD
Encoded by: cwjian90 for MVGroup

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