Psycho Killer: Shocking True Crime Stories Simon Ford

Travel back in time to the London of Jack the Ripper and meet one of his psycho peers – Walter Chadwick. Following in the footsteps of renowned crime writer Jan Bondeson, the Psycho Killer team probes the backstreets and alleys of a city teetering on the edge of lawlessness. We go in search of answers – and what we find will shock you!

Doctors promise to do no harm. Dr Buck Ruxton did the opposite. The crimes of this Lancashire physician justified the sensational headlines. The case marked a watershed in the acceptance of forensic science as we know it today.

Music credits
'Who's Been Polishing The Sun?' performance by Ambrose and His Orchestra, Decca Records, 1935.
'Lovely To Look At' performed by Eddy Duchin (vocals by Lew Sherwood), Victor Records, 1935.

Dorothea Waddingham was a wicked woman. She poisoned an elderly widow and her disabled daughter for money. A jury found the Nottingham care-home owner guilty and she was hanged for murder. That was in 1936. But why was this mother sent to the gallows, leaving five young children to fend for themselves? Was the death penalty necessary? Why wasn't her sentence commuted to life imprisonment? And does the backstory cast doubt on the safety of Dorthea Waddingham's conviction? The Psycho Killer experts go in search of answers.

The way police forces in England investigate unexplained deaths is to change in response to a "large number of very serious and very basic investigative failings" during the investigation into the serial killer Stephen Port.

Four new categories are to be made "to provide absolute clarity to officers", the Metropolitan Police and the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) have said.

Journalist Simon Ford and ex-serious crime detective Jacques Morrell, discuss the implications.

Mahatma Gandhi said: 'the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members'. In this case, the murders of a mother and daughter in Nottingham represent a damning indictment of British society in the 1930s. Nursing homes were unregulated, doctors played God, and their decisions went unchallenged. It was a toxic soup that nourished the likes of Dorothea Waddingham and Ronald Sullivan, as former homicide detective Jacques Morrell explains.

A detective's powers of investigation. A journalist's nose for a story. Put them together and what have you got? The most authentic true-crime podcast out there!