Original subtitles

(tense dramatic music) (footsteps tapping)

- [Narrator] What is it like to come face to face with evil?

To confront your worst nightmare?

(victim screaming)

When a killer comes calling,

there's often no escape.

- A man who can kill is evil beyond belief.

- [Narrator] To truly encounter evil

is a rarity most will never experience.

- I believe in you.

And I've experienced people that are evil.

- [Narrator] But for those unfortunate few who do,

and survive to tell the tale,

the mental scars often never heal.

- [Victim] I couldn't breathe, my eyes felt bulging.

All I could see was his face on my face

and he was just staring into my eyes.

- [Narrator] We meet the men and women

whose lives have been forever altered

by their brush with the beasts who live among us.

This is "Encounters With Evil."

(pensive dramatic music)

In tonight's programme, murderers who kill for thrills,

looking to break the last taboo

and take a human life for the sheer excitement

of that murderous moment.

- The offender is killing for the sheer pleasure.

They're killing for kicks,

they're killing because they're enjoying it.

- The thriller wants to have the notoriety,

he wants to have the pleasure and fame.

- By killing more than one,

or by killing them in a different way, a strange way,

then they make sure that they will be talked about.

- [Narrator] Coming up, the Backpacker Killer,

Australian serial murderer Ivan Milat.

- These people who have done this to these girls,

they are just proper animals and they ought to be shot.

- [Narrator] Colin Ireland, the Gay Slayer,

who chose to become a serial killer

as a New Year's resolution.

- [News Reporter] Tonight Colin Ireland starts

a very long period in prison,

knowing that the judge has recommended he never be released.

But first, the depraved life of Dennis Nilsen,

the killer who lived with corpses for company

and butchered 15 innocent men to get rid of their bodies.

- There is no doubt that there was a thrill element

in what he did.

(tense dramatic music)

- [Narrator] What makes a person become a multiple murderer

or serial killer is a question forensic psychologists

and criminologists wrestle with

their entire professional lives.

There are some developmental red flags,

that if caught early enough,

can point towards such gruesome behaviour in later life.

- But when we look at multiple killers and serial murderers,

we find that there can be a number of motivations

behind their evil acts.

These can range from motives such as sexual sadistic desires

through a desire to be in control or to contain people.

Or there could be a whole range of other reasons,

sometimes related to childhood,

sometimes related to other inadequacies in their adulthood.

- [Narrator] But then, there are the killers

who confound all theories,

whose upbringings appear on the surface

to have been relatively stable.

Dennis Nilsen is one of those,

a mild-mannered civil servant by day,

by night, a perverted necrophiliac,

who would chop up the bodies of his victims

and flush them down the toilet.

In a hidden reign of terror,

Nilsen slaughtered up to 15 young men.

- Nilsen was born in the far north of Scotland, Fraserburgh,

in November 1945,

the son of a troubled marriage.

He'd a Scots mother and a Norwegian father.

They certainly did not get on.

- He spent the early years of his life in this house.

According to his mother, he was a quiet boy,

little, if anything, marked him out from the ordinary.

- He had no tactile relationship with his mother,

for a start.

His mother told me that she was never able to cuddle him.

That made him isolated.

- [Interviewer] How do you think Dennis was able

to become involved in this kind of problem

and then be able to live from day to day?

- Well, that's the bit I don't understand.

I just don't understand how this could go on

and nobody knowing anything.

I mean, I don't know any about 10 years of his life.

- When Nilsen was four, his father left, unceremoniously.

But he developed a close relationship with his grandfather,

whom he idolised,

between the ages of four and six.

- [Narrator] When Nilsen was six, his beloved grandfather,

a trawler man, died at sea of a heart attack.

Dennis learns of his grandfather's death

in the most brutal fashion.

The news is not broken to the young boy gently.

- His mother took him to see his grandfather's body.

But Nilsen didn't know his grandfather had died.

And so this small boy is ushered in to,

in a very Scot's tradition, to see the body,

which has a tremendous impact on him.

- And nobody had prepared him for the fact

that this was going to be a dead grandfather.

So his understanding of love,

which had been concentrated on that man,

and his understanding of death,

which was now concentrated on that body, fused.

- Somehow in Nilsen's thinking,

he somehow associates his grandfather with death,

and death being a lovely state to be in.

- It was the experience of seeing his grandfather

in his coffin at the age of six

that he subsequently suggested

incited in him the idea of necrophilia.

That gave him a fascination with dead bodies.

A fascination which he was to live out.

- [Narrator] 30 years later

and Nilsen's psychological issues

manifest themselves in the most hideous way imaginable.

- It was about eight o'clock

and the police came to the front door

and said, could they go in my garden?

So I said, yes, there's no reason why they shouldn't.

Then they said,

"There's something unpleasant going on next door."

- [Narrator] "Unpleasant" is an understatement

for the horrific murders that had been taking place

in the neighbouring house.

- In his own rather fastidious way,

he decided that he would skin them,

chop their heads off, boil bits of the body

so that the skin would come away from the skeleton,

and flush some bits of it down the loo,

including some of the smaller bones,

and hang onto the heads.

(tense uneasy music)

- [Narrator] It was this fastidiousness

and attention to detail that was to prove Nilsen's downfall.

- I was called to 23 Cranley Gardens

because there was a blocked drain.

Lifting the manhole cover was...

(exhales) The smell was unbelievable.

I was down there at least five or six times

and by that time, I'd recognised, you know,

various body parts that were most definitely human.

- [Narrator] Nilsen is arrested by police

on his return from work.

He displays no emotion.

- Are you Dennis Nilsen?

- Yes.

- I'm Detective Chief Inspector Jay

from Hornsey Police Station.

I've come about your drains.

- [Narrator] He seems almost relieved

the police have turned up.

- The man currently being questioned by police

is a 37-year-old civil servant Andrew Nilsen,

known to his colleagues at work as "Des."

For the past six months, he's been working here

at the Manpower Services Commission

in London's Kentish Town.

- [Narrator] Inside Nilsen's top-floor flat

in Cranley Gardens, North London police

discover a crime scene so grim,

it seemed almost unbelievable.

- [Peter] As soon as you opened the door to his apartment,

the smell of death came out of the doors.

He knew what was in there,

and he knew that we were gonna find what was in there.

- [Narrator] With deadly calm, Nilsen told the police

that the remains of the bodies of several men

were in two plastic bags in the front room.

- [Peter] I put my head inside the front room

and there was this distinct smell of decomposing flesh.

- [Narrator] Taken to the police station,

Nilsen begins a gruelling 31 hours of police interview.

What drove him to kill?

The police were about to find out in quite explicit detail.

- He was looking for a meaningful relationship.

He had quite a few sexual experiences with different men,

but what he wanted was a long-term relationship.

And then we'd come to the first murder.

That wasn't planned in a sense,

he picked up a 14-year-old boy,

trying to buy a drink in a pub at 14.

And Nilsen bought the drinks for him,

and then he said, "Why don't you come round to my place?"

They had a few more drinks

and then strangled him with a necktie.

He masturbated over the boy several times.

He washed him, he cared for him,

and then he put him under the floorboards.

(tense dramatic music)

- [Narrator] After Nilsen had unburdened himself,

the police carried out further investigations

into other locations he'd previously lived.

- The search then moved here, to another house,

a few miles away in Cricklewood.

From what they had learned,

the police started looking for up to 13 more bodies.

It's believed they could be tramps

and vagrants from a nearby hostel.

- [Narrator] Here, it wasn't the drains

that contained human remains.

- We have found considerable items of bone this morning

and this afternoon,

and we will continue with the search tomorrow.

I'm not scientifically minded,

but I would think that probably one piece is from a hip

and a small part of a rib.

(tense thoughtful music)

- [Narrator] Pathologists found the identifiable remains

of some six bodies.

The true extent of Nilsen's depravity

was becoming sickeningly evident.

After his first murder,

Nilsen was locked into a loop of repeating behaviour

for the next five years.

A psychosis of killing, fueled by alcohol.

More and more bodies

would end up underneath his floorboards.

- He felt safe when the person he was admiring

could not resist it, his admiration.

Could not answer back, could not say "Don't,"

could not object.

An inability to make contact with human beings,

except by killing them and turning them into things.

And things are much more easy.

- [Narrator] Keeping the corpses for company

was what he wanted.

The killing was almost a necessary evil.

(tense music) (TV static buzzing)

- Having these pretend companions

in the house when he got home, was to him a kind of...

As close as he could get to being like other people.

And he would keep them like that until rigour mortis set in

and they became a bit unbearable.

- Nilsen was clearly a man who enjoyed orgasms.

Those orgasms were part of the complete thrill

he got in the act of murder.

There was clearly intense sexual contact

before the strangulation, before the drowning,

and then long then afterwards with the bodies.

There certainly could be no denying

the thrill he took in it.

- [Narrator] Eventually, he'd have to

dispose of the corpses.

And they'd stay under the floorboards for months,

until there was no more room,

and then he'd made a bonfire in the back garden

and put the human remains on that.

And the neighbourhood children,

not realising what they were watching,

used to dance around the bonfire.

(flame crackling)

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Dennis Nilsen's trial in October 1983

was front page news, a sensation across the nation.

At the time, he was the worst serial killer

the country had ever known.

But his heinous act seemed to surprise his mother.

- He's always my son.

And that's why I want him to know

that we're all concerned about him.

And I just hope he'll get some help

to cope with the situation he's in.

- It was precisely 10 o'clock

when Dennis Andrew Nilsen was led into the dock

to face the bench of three magistrates.

The charge, a single charge,

of murdering Stephen Neil Sinclair was read over to him.

There were objections to bail and no application was made.

(gentle tense music)

- [Narrator] Carl Stotter revealed his own

brush with death in Nilsen's flat.

- I fell asleep and I woke up and he was strangling me.

And I passed out after sort of thing...

I actually thought that I'd got

caught up in the sleeping bag, which he had warned me about.

And I thought he was helping me out, but he wasn't.

And, anyway, I passed out from that

and I remember vaguely hearing water running

and being carried and I felt very cold

and I realised I was in the bath

and he was trying to drown me.

- I think Carl Stotter escaped with his life

for the simplest reason of all, an accident.

I think Nilsen didn't pull off the strangulation part,

realised that he hadn't managed it,

and then had an attack of remorse.

I think Nilsen was capable of remorse,

and Carl Stotter's proof of it.

- [Narrator] Years later, Carl Stotter had a different view

of the reasons he encountered evil

and lived to tell the tale.

- The reason why Nilsen spared me

was because there was no more room

under the floorboards for another body.

- [Narrator] While Nilsen's guilt was obvious,

his defence council argued he was mentally diminished

and the charges should be reduced to manslaughter.

- He may not be insane, but he's not correct,

he's not a human being in the fullest sense.

There was something crucial which is missing.

- [Narrator] The jury returned a guilty of murder verdict

by a majority of 10 to two,

and on the 3rd of December, 1983,

Dennis Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment.

- Summing up at the trial of Dennis Nilsen,

Judge Croom-Johnson told the court,

"There are evil people who do evil things,

"committing murder is one of them."

I think he was rather understating the case.

Nilsen killed 15 young men that we know of.

There is no doubt in my mind

that that is evil at its most incarnate.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Now for Ivan Milat, the Backpacker Murderer,

the Australian serial killer

who brutally took seven young lives.

- Milat is undoubtedly

one of the most dangerous human beings

to have walked this Earth.

He's an individual who kills without conscience,

enjoys the thrill,

and also was willing to kill large numbers of people

without question.

He's an individual that should never be let out of prison.

- [Narrator] Milat is one of Australia's

most notorious serial killers.

From 1989 to 2006, he journeyed across Australia,

following tourist trails on an expedition of murder,

targeting young backpackers as his victims.

- He's incredibly dangerous.

What's also shocking in his case, is the amount of torture

and depravity he inflicted upon his victims, often in pairs,

with often victims witnessing unspeakable tortures

happening to their partners and friends very nearby.

So not only was he a prolific serial murderer,

but also a torturer as well.

(dramatic music)

- [News Reporter] All seven bodies of the young backpackers

were found in shallow graves or hidden under rocks

in the Belanglo State Forest, south of the city.

- [Narrator] Two of the victims were Australian,

while the five others were foreign backpackers;

three Germans and two British girls,

who were the first to be found.

- Today, police revealed that four people have come forward

in the past 24 hours who claim to have seen the girls

in a country town close to the murder site.

But detectives also concede

that finding whoever's responsible for this hideous crime,

so long after it happened, will not be easy.

- [Narrator] Superintendent Clive Small

would be the man tasked with the seemingly impossible job

of hunting down Australia's most depraved serial murderer.

- When I was given the job,

my initial reaction was probably,

"There's a good chance this won't be solved."

And the reasoning behind that was, you know,

the fact they were backpackers,

the isolation, the time-lapse,

the degradation of evidence at the crime scene.

- [Narrator] Milat's burial site in Belanglo State Forest

was discovered by two runners,

who came across a decomposing corpse.

- [Clive] I got a call at work

and was asked by the then region commander

to go down and assess the situation,

where these skeletons had been recovered

down in Belanglo State Forest.

- [Narrator] A day later,

two police constables unearthed a second body

a few metres from the first.

- [Clive] I think what the crime scenes told me

and what the advice of psychiatrists

and other people we spoke to told me,

was that this was a killer who was particularly vicious,

who was particularly cold,

and who was particularly calculating.

We had a serial killer who we believed

would continue to kill until he was caught.

(soil clattering)

- After the first body was discovered in the forest

and the police were alerted,

it became apparent quite quickly

that there was a second body.

And there were a number of missing tourists and backpackers

who could possibly be the bodies

that had been found in the forest.

- [Narrator] Initial news reports suggested

they were the bodies of two missing British backpackers,

Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters,

who'd disappeared from a Sydney suburb five months earlier.

- [News Reporter] The two missing Britons

vanished from their rented room at Easter

and stopped phoning home regularly.

Their Australian bank accounts

have not been touched since April

and Sydney police have now called in murder squad detectives

to investigate their disappearance.

- [Narrator] Police quickly confirmed that the bodies

were indeed those of Clarke and Walters.

- [News Reporter] Five months after two young Britons

disappeared in Sydney during a working holiday of Australia,

forensic experts confirmed

that one of the bodies found over the weekend

is that of Joanna Walters.

But they'll not be certain that the second

is her friend, Caroline Clarke,

until her dental records arrive from London tomorrow.

The appalling fate they met, however, is beyond doubt.

- The apparent cause of death of Joanne Walters

is a penetrating wound to the chest,

consistent with them being stab wounds.

- The way that Milat killed his victims

was incredibly violently.

You're talking about 10 gunshots to the head,

35 stab wounds to other people.

So different ways of killing, but always with an intent,

which is to totally destroy the area of the body

that he wishes to destroy.

In the case of blowing somebody's head

to pieces, for example.

(gun blasts)

So potentially, he was aware that people

wouldn't be able to trace who those human beings were,

so there was a calculation

but there was also a highly aggressive violence.

- [News Reporter] There was a cloth around Joanne's mouth

and neck area, which suggested she may have been gagged.

The second victim, also a young woman,

suffered an equally horrifying end.

- The preliminary investigation of the other female body

suggests that the cause of the death there

may well be gunshot wounds to the head.

- [Narrator] The violent nature of their deaths revealed

there was an extremely dangerous killer on the loose.

- [Clive] There were several things

that were particularly chilling about the murders.

It's quite clear that in a number of cases, at least,

if not all the cases, the victims did not die immediately

but were alive for a period of time.

- What the police would have been looking at

was a highly dangerous individual who had the power,

the ability to abduct and control not just one,

but two individuals.

- [Narrator] For the parents of Caroline Clarke

and Joanne Walters,

the news of their daughters' encounter with evil

was utterly devastating.

- These are evil-minded people.

And like dogs with rabies, there's only one way,

they gotta be put down and destroyed.

Because the world hasn't got the resources

to keep putting these people in jail.

There's got to be some system

whereby we destroy these people

to put their evil genes anywhere else.

- [News Reporter] Struggling to maintain her composure,

Mrs. Walters fought back the tears

as she condemned her daughter's killer.

- So, all I want to say is that these people

who have done this to these girls,

that they are just proper animals,

and they ought to be shot.

- [Narrator] Despite a fingertip search

of the surrounding forest over the next five days,

no further evidence was uncovered.

Investigators had little hope of an early resolution

to this horrendous crime.

(dramatic music)

Just over a year later, a local man discovered a human skull

and thigh bone in an isolated section of the forest.

- The only real help the police had in this investigation

were the deposition sites and the bodies themselves.

That the bodies had not been concealed

particularly well was quite telling.

The level of postmortem injury was very important to them.

And also that on some occasions,

the victims had been decapitated

and their skulls had been separated from the bodies

was very useful to the police.

- This is someone that really no one would like to meet

on a dark night in Australia.

- [Narrator] Police soon identified the corpses

as those of Australians Deborah Everest

and her boyfriend, James Gibson.

- The discovery of the last three bodies

provided some more clues

to try and link all of the victims together.

- [Narrator] The manner of these deaths

was perverted beyond belief.

- Given that the male victim of the three

was found with several bullet wounds to the head

and the victims had been stabbed in excess of 40 times,

suggests either one offender is engaging

in a lot of postmortem overkill,

or perhaps there are multiple offenders

and everyone was having a go.

- [Narrator] There were also signature aspects

to all the murders.

Each of the bodies had been deliberately posed face down

with their hands behind their backs,

covered by a pyramid frame of sticks and ferns.

- One of the things that's quite significant about Milat

is the way that he disposed of his victims.

So he would bury them, but the way that he would do it

would involve things like hog-tying the victims

and also covering them in quite a ritualistic way,

like in ferns, for example.

Now, this suggests that it wasn't just the capture

and killing of his victims that was important,

it was actually the whole process.

- It may be that Milat actually

was thinking in terms of misdirection,

in making these little constructions around a body.

Perhaps he just wanted to entirely

mislead the investigation process.

- [Narrator] From the available evidence,

investigators started to develop

a profile of the backpacker murderer.

They were helped by a public appalled

by the depraved details that were emerging.

- Police forces in murder investigations

are able to utilise a number of tools in their toolbox

to try and identify unknown subjects.

CCTV footage is one, forensic evidence is another,

and fingerprints and genetics can all be used.

They also have other semi-scientific,

less well-proved techniques that they can use.

One of which is what we commonly refer to

as criminal profiling, which is, at best,

a semi-scientific or pseudo-scientific way

of taking all of the evidence at crime scenes,

abduction scenes, and deposition sites,

to try and produce a psychological portrait of the killer.

- [Narrator] The team scoured their own

internal police archive and computer files

for vehicle records, gym memberships, and gun licencing.

The profile of the victims

made the hunt even more complicated.

- What confounded a lot of the police inquiries

was the nature of the victims.

They were people who were holidaying, they were backpacking,

they were people who were not in their normal environs,

they were not using their credit cards,

therefore they were less traceable

than they would have been if they'd been on home turf.

- [Narrator] Milat was, in fact,

already in the police system.

He'd been in prison for the double rape of two girls

20 years previously.

But identifying him as the Backpacker Killer

was a different matter.

- The police in the Milat case, their "unsub,"

their unknown subject was on file.

They just didn't know which name

of all the thousands of names they had on file it was.

So they had to cross-reference and triangulate

a lot of little bits of evidence

to try and point to the right person.

- [Narrator] By a painstaking process of elimination,

the vast list of potential killers

was eventually whittled down to just 32 suspects.

The name of the killer was on that list,

and his name was Ivan Milat.

(suspenseful dramatic music)

The publicity surrounding the case,

already labelled the "Backpacker Murders,"

led to a break, a British witness, Paul Onions,

who'd narrowly escaped Milat's clutches four years earlier,

came forward.

- Some of the strongest evidence in the trial

is going to come from the so-far unnamed English hitchhiker

who survived an attempt to rob and kill him four years ago.

- [Narrator] Onions flew to Australia

to help with the investigation.

- Paul Onions' impact was vital,

in that, ultimately, he was able to travel to Australia

and help provide a physical recognition,

identify Milat in a line-up,

that Milat was the man who tried to rob

and abduct him and kill him.

- [Narrator] Acquaintances also told police

about Milat's obsession with weapons.

- Ivan Milat was undoubtedly a psychopath

and he was very proficient.

He had a macabre interest in weapons,

and it's essentially like having that God complex,

a recognition that you are so powerful, so important

that you will decide when and if somebody dies.

- [Narrator] Police now embark on a major operation.

300 officers search houses belonging to Milat's brothers.

Simultaneously, 50 heavily armed officers

raid Milat's house and surround the premises.

- [Clive] When we decided to go in,

there was a very high sense of tension.

We knew that Ivan was certainly dangerous

and there were reasons to believe

that other members of the family were also dangerous.

- [Narrator] The police were successful

in finally apprehending their man.

- Down on your face, quick!

- [Narrator] The distraught families of the victims

travelled from Germany and Britain for the trial.

- I do know, I do know.

- In the charge sheet presented to the court today,

the police say their tests have positively identified

a rifle found at Milat's house

with the weapon used to kill the Britons Joanne Walters

and Caroline Clarke.

- The evidence police found at Milat's house

was overwhelmingly strong.

They'd found a .22 calibre rifle,

they'd found camping equipment.

It was immediately very clear to the police

that he was clearly involved in the abductions

and the killings and robberies of the victims

from the souvenirs and possessions he'd kept.

(tense foreboding music)

- [News Reporter] Ivan Milat,

the 49-year-old former truck driver,

was arrested nine days ago.

Charged at first with armed robbery,

he's now being accused of Australia's worst serial killings.

- [Narrator] At the killer's house

were items he'd kept as trophies

from his vicious death spree.

Most grisly of all, a headband identical

to one found on the decapitated head

of German victim, Simone Schmidl.

- Milat definitely enjoyed having mementos of his victims.

It's the ultimate power.

Because you own something that nobody else has,

that is the knowledge that you took that life.

That is the knowledge that you are potentially

the only person in the world who knows

how they met their end and where they are now.

- [Narrator] Milat's trial, which opened in March 1996,

was to last a gruelling 15 weeks.

- [News Reporter] The man whose gruesome killings

shocked Australia is starting a life sentence today.

Until the end, Ivan Milat, known for his passion for guns,

had protested his innocence.

But the jury, reduced to 11

after a death threat against one, did not believe him.

He was found guilty of all seven murders

in the Belanglo Forest near Sydney.

- [Narrator] The trauma of the trial

was now over for the families of the victims,

though their own brush with evil would haunt them forever.

- What I would ask for now,

for my wife and all our family is a little privacy.

- [Interviewer] Are you almost relieved now

the wait of all these kind of months

of anxiousness are over?

- Yes, it is a relief, in a funny sort of way.

- [Narrator] Ivan Milat was convicted of the murders

and is serving seven consecutive life sentences,

as well as 18 years without parole.

- Sentencing Milat to seven life terms,

the judge says he'd shown

a callous indifference to suffering

and a complete disregard of humanity

which was almost beyond belief.

- [Clive] The most important part here is,

that we had a person in Ivan Milat, who was a serial killer,

who would have gone on killing until he was caught or died.

He's been caught, he'll spend the rest of his life in jail,

he'll never see daylight again,

and that's where he should be.

- [Narrator] Milat's killing career and warped world,

finally brought to a close.

(dramatic music)

Our final story, like our first,

involves a killer who made a conscious decision

to embark on a spree of murders

for the thrill of the kill.

- A "thrill killer" is a term that we use

to try and make sense of those murders

that don't seem to make sense.

The offender is killing for the sheer pleasure.

They're killing for kicks,

they're killing because they're enjoying it

and they're getting better at it.

- [Narrator] Colin Ireland was one such thrill killer.

He also craved the twisted satisfaction

of getting one over on the police.

- I think he was more absolutely arrogant

in absolutely believing that he could outsmart everybody,

not just the police.

- [Narrator] Many violent criminals

hide behind a warped worldview

based on prejudice and ignorance.

- You see serial killers selecting their victims

from those groups in society that are marginalised.

Gay men, runaways, strays, drug users, homeless individuals,

old people, children from disrupted families.

So there are clearly easy soft targets

for serial killers to access.

In Ireland's case, he claims that gay men

were the easiest group for him to get access to.

- [Narrator] Some said Ireland's motives were homophobic.

- He sat on our settee

and said, "I really hate homosexuals."

- [Narrator] Police and physiologists

disagreed that this was the case,

with the man dubbed the "Gay Slayer."

- I don't think it was a hate crime.

He never expressed any great hate against homosexuals.

I think it was simply homosexuals are an easy target.

- You talk about the gay community,

it could have been any other section of the community.

"I wanted to burn down the world."

His hatred was of people.

- [Narrator] What is true is that the victims

of his murderous campaign were all gay.

During his gruesome killing spree in 1993,

Ireland tortured and strangled five young men.

- [News Reporter] Colin Ireland arrived at court,

already charged with one murder and now facing another.

The 39-year-old unemployed man was arrested by detectives

investigating the killings of five homosexuals.

- Colin Ireland is interesting.

One day, I was working in the hospital

and I got a phone call from a well-known newspaper,

asking me to give them some advice on a rather bizarre case.

- [News Reporter] The court also heard that Ireland

telephoned the police and the newspaper,

saying it was his New Year resolution

to kill another human being.

- My understanding of what he said to the papers

was that he had made a New Year's resolution

that he was going to be a serial killer

and he was going to kill at least five people.

And the reason for killing five people

would then put him into the premier league

of serial killers. The first thing I did say to them,

was to treat it as a serious threat.

This guy wasn't a joker, he was a player.

He knew what he wanted to do.

- [Narrator] The first victim of this twisted

and deadly resolution

was 45-year-old choreographer, Peter Walker,

a regular at the Coleherne pub.

- [News Reporter] Ireland met all his victims

in or near a pub in West London,

which is a popular meeting place with the gay community.

- [Narrator] Back at Walker's home,

Ireland suggests some bondage games

and Walker willingly agrees to be tied up.

Ireland then beats the helpless man senseless

and suffocates him.

(blows thudding)

But what was his real motive?

Surely it was not just a casual decision?

- Ireland decided that his life was going nowhere,

that he'd had a number of failed relationships,

he'd been jailed on several occasions

for burglary and theft, and petty offences.

His life was going nowhere,

and he decided he wanted to be a serial murderer.

- [Narrator] Ireland went after men

who were into sadomasochistic sex

on the grounds it would be easy to tie them up

before he slaughtered them.

- His MO was that he would attend gay pubs,

the Coleherne pub mainly, and he would find someone

that he could convince that he was of a similar persuasion

around that particular sexual activity.

- [Narrator] Ireland paid chilling attention to detail

when carrying out his murderous plans.

- Mr. Nutting said the murders had been pre-meditated

and meticulously planned.

Ireland had been extremely thorough,

taking a different pair of gloves to each murder,

to avoid leaving fingerprints.

He'd forced his victims to reveal

the PIN numbers of their cash cards,

to reimburse himself for the cost of the last murder,

and to re-equip himself for the next.

- I don't know if he studied other serial killers,

but he did plan his murders.

And he certainly had an escape clause in his murders.

He certainly carried a change of clothes

and he had something to, you know, commit the murder with.

He did have...

We would say "going equipped" in the police service,

that's what we would say.

- One of the things he did

was, he went back to some guy's house, killed him,

and then stayed there with the body for about four hours,

so that he could go out in the early-morning commuter rush.

So nobody would notice

a man walking out of a block of flats,

seven o'clock in the morning.

They would notice at three o'clock in the morning.

- [Narrator] Exasperated by the police's inability

to connect the dots and solve the crimes,

Ireland calls detectives to taunt them.

- Colin Ireland had phoned up the newspaper

and said that he had actually killed one victim

and could the police go round and deal with the dog?

And then they found the victim

tied up like a Christmas turkey.

- [Narrator] A few months later, back at the Coleherne,

Ireland picks up 37-year-old Christopher Dunn.

(tense music)

They go back to Dunn's house.

and on the 30th of May, he's discovered bound, gagged,

and strangled.

Feelings in the gay community were running high.

- I think they're going to be, in a word, terrified.

I think they're going to be frightened of rumour

and counter rumour.

And they're going to be very worried

that the next person they meet in a club

or a pub could be the murderer.

- [Narrator] Police did not initially link

the first two killings.

- They were in two different districts,

they were in different boroughs.

And I know the second murder

was regarded as death by misadventure.

So I don't believe the police

put two and two together and made four.

- The feelings of the gay communities in Soho

clearly were that someone was targeting them.

But they also felt that they weren't being protected

by the police, who should be there to help them.

The police admitted at the time

that their investigation was flawed

and that they should have done more

to protect the gay community.

- Certainly, gay community in Brixton there was one of fear,

there was one of mistrust, there was one of...

I suppose they were concerned

whether the police were actually trying.

(sparse tense music)

- [Narrator] Despite heightened vigilance

in the gay community,

Ireland goes on to kill his third victim,

an American businessman, Perry Bradley III.

Again he calls the media to taunt them.

But it's the timing of his fourth murder

that is the most audacious.

- You know, on the same day of a press release, you know,

trying to gain the confidence of the community,

that he commits another murder,

is a slap in the face for the police.

And you know, if he knew that,

it's a horrendously brazen act.

- Here we can see a really clear case

of the killer manipulating the media

in how they report about their actions

and that shows how narcissistic Ireland was.

The deaths weren't important to him, but the headlines were.

- [Narrator] This killing follows the same pattern,

with the victim bound and brutalised,

death by strangulation.

- After each murder, he burned clothing and footwear

and anything else which could be traced back to him,

including the cord he used to tie his victims.

- [Narrator] It was the brutal slaying

of Ireland's fourth victim

that was to give police their first breakthrough.

Ireland got careless.

After being tied up and tortured,

37-year-old Andrew Collier was slain in his own home,

having first watch Ireland kill his cat.

- So what he did with the fourth victim

was that he strangled the guy's cat in front of him

and then put the cat's mouth around his John Thomas,

so they would know, actually he wasn't an animal lover.

- [Narrator] The usually meticulous murderer,

normally so painstaking in cleaning up,

leaves a fingerprint at the scene of the crime.

It was to be his eventual undoing.

- The fifth murder for Ireland, as he saw it,

was a completion of his work.

He'd now killed five victims, which meant to him

he was a successful notorious serial killer.

- [Narrator] It was the murder of 41-year-old chef,

Emanuel Spiteri, that raised the body count to five.

- He had to get five,

that was the magic number for him to start with.

But what was interesting

was, he was actually caught on camera with the victim.

- [Narrator] It's the breakthrough the police need.

CCTV cameras captures Spiteri's last-known movements,

boarding a train at Charing Cross Station,

accompanied by an unknown, heavily-built man.

- Police were able to trace back via CCTV,

and find footage of Spiteri on a train on his way home,

accompanied by Ireland.

This CCTV footage was released by the police

and it clearly spooked Ireland into taking action.

- [Narrator] Aware that his image

is now all over the TV and papers,

Ireland makes a bizarre decision.

- So he went with his solicitor to the police station,

and said, "Yes, I was with him,

"we engaged in various activities, but I didn't kill him."

Unfortunately for him

and fortunately for the rest of the world,

the police didn't believe him.

- He contacted the police

and said that, yes, he was with Spiteri

and he went home with Spiteri,

but there were three men there.

And Ireland had left, leaving Spiteri alone

with this mystical third person who must have killed him.

That, unfortunately for him, didn't work,

because his fingerprints were found

at another victim's house from earlier on in his spree

and the police were able to link Ireland

to all of those murders.

- [Narrator] In custody,

Ireland confesses to all five murders

but offers few clues as to why

he committed such repulsive crimes.

- Ireland essentially said that he wasn't homophobic,

but that he was essentially a misanthrope,

he disliked all of humanity.

He felt he was dealt a bad hand

and he wanted to take revenge on society.

- Being bullied, it's a fairly massive leap, innit?

To murdering five people

after you've convinced them that you're...

You know, you're going round to have a pleasurable moment.

It's quite a leap, innit,

to say, "Well, I was bullied as a child"?

- [Narrator] With a confession in the bag,

there's no need for a trial

and Ireland is sentenced at the Old Bailey

to five consecutive life terms.

The judge, Justice Sachs,

makes it clear that life will mean life,

and he should never be released.

- [News Reporter] Ireland's defence

gave no excuses for his behaviour,

saying he was neither insane

nor suffering from diminished responsibility,

but he'd reached a point where he wanted to be caught.

- When the judge was summing up at the end of the trial,

he said, "To take one life is an outrage,

"to take five is carnage."

And that, I think, is quite a good way

to sum up what Colin Ireland did.

But he won't be doing it anymore, 'cause he died in prison.

- [Narrator] Mourned by few,

Ireland died in February 2012, aged 57, in Wakefield Prison.

(dramatic pensive music)