In 1849, a man suddenly disappeared in Bermondsey. The discovery that he had been brutally murdered enraptured the press and the public. Even Charles Dickens was totally engrossed in the story of the sinister Marie Manning.

At the time of Jack The Ripper, London was home to some of the most terrible individuals the city has ever seen. One of the very worst was the elusive Borough Poisoner, George Chapman.

Having killed his wife and buried her in the basement, Dr Crippen believed he had escaped on a ship to Canada. But the police managed to hunt him down and bring him to account for his terrible crime.

George Smith had many aliases. He needed them for his many wives who he would soon murder in order to claim the inheritance. Catching this chameleon would be a gargantuan challenge.

Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were in love. But the young couple were convicted for murdering her husband in a case that shocked society and fascinated Alfred Hitchcock.

It was WWII and London was rocked by the Blitz from the planes flying above. But down on the streets below another terrible danger lurked in the shadows. A serial killer was on the loose.

As Europe recovered from the damage of WWII, soldiers made their way home from the front line. But one man, brought back all the savagery and brutality of the fighting.

Pt. 1 John Christie brought death to everyone around him. He managed to pin his terrible crimes on another man who would be sentenced to death. He eluded capture for years.

Pt. 2 John Christie brought death to everyone around him. He managed to pin his terrible crimes on another man who would be sentenced to death. He eluded capture for years.

On a hot summers day in 1934, a horrifying discovery was made in a trunk at the left luggage office of Brighton Train Station. Two days later, a similar case was found in Kings Cross Station, London. A major police investigation began which would take an unexpected turn in the search for a murderer.

As police investigated the disappearance of wealthy widow, Olive Durand Deacon, in early 1949, they could not have imagined the gruesome confession told to them by the man they had brought in for questioning.

In the summer of 1953, the world watched as Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. The day before the coronation however, a body of a teenage girl was found floating in the River Thames, and another would surface just days after.

Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in Great Britain. Her act of murder divided the nation, the repercussions of which were far reaching and would affect great change in the judicial system that condemned her.

Peter Manuel was a Scottish serial killer who killed at least eight people between 1956 -1958 around the Greater Glasgow area in Scotland. Manuel had previously been in prison for a string of sexual attacks but on his release it didn’t take long for his psychopathic behavior to escalate.

Born in 1832 the story of the Black Widow is a tale of classic Victorian murder. Cotton travelled around the north east of England marrying lonely men getting them to take out life insurance and then murdering them. Arsenic was her preferred means of killing.

Dr Ruxton was an Indian born physician. He lived a quiet, respectable life in Lancaster but had a violent jealous streak. He had accused his wife of infidelity for years but in September 1935 Ruxton’s jealousy got the better of him. He beat, strangled and stabbed her to death then did the same to the housemaid who witnessed the killing.

Three police officers were murdered in Shepherds Bush on Friday 12th August 1966 by Harry Roberts and two others. After the killing they went on the run and a huge manhunt ensued. One assailant was captured within hours, the second was found 4 days later in Glasgow but Roberts hid in Thorley Wood near Bishop Stortford and used his army training to survive for three months until he was finally arrested.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.