A superbly targeted resource for those learning about serial killings. Serial Killers and the Phenomenon of Serial Murder examines and analyses some of the best known (as well as lesser) cases from English criminal history, ancient and modern. It looks at the lifestyles, backgrounds and activities of those who become serial killers and identifies clear categories of individuals into which most serial killers fall. Led by Professor David Wilson the authors are all experts and teachers concerning the ever-intriguing subject of serial killing: why, when and how it happens and whether it can be predicted. Taking some of the leading cases from English law and abroad they demonstrate the patterns that emerge in the lives and backgrounds of those who kill a number of times over a period. The book is designed for those studying the topic at advanced level, whether as an academic discipline on one of the many courses now run by universities and colleges or as a private quest for understanding. It contains notes on key terms and explanations of topics such as co-activation, Munchausen syndrome, cooling-off period, psychopathy checklist, social construction, case linkage, family annihilation, activity space, rational choice theory, medicalisation and rendezvous discipline. As the first textbook of its kind it will be an invaluable resource for teachers and students of serious crime.

The definitive and explosive account of a harrowing murder case that has shocked Britain Peter Tobin was already serving a life sentence for murder when he was charged with the murder of two young women - Vicky Hamilton and Dina McNichol, in November 2007. Both girls went missing in 1991. Their bodies were discovered by police in 50 Irvine Drive, Margate - where Tobin once lived. In their new true crime investigation, Paul Harrison and Professor David Wilson examine this shocking case, including full details of Tobin's trial. But perhaps even more importantly, they look into other similar cases around the country. With developments in DNA testing, the police are coming closer and closer to solving a range of terrible and high profile murders. There have been at least five major arrests in recent months, with further arrests sure to follow. Harrison and Wilson investigate these cases, and ask how new DNA tests will change police investigations. But they also ask whether this will be enough to stop murderers in the future, and whether there are larger forces at work in society that need to be addressed before we can stop people from killing again and again.

This book was the inspiration for the ITV drama Dark Angel. As one of the UK’s leading commentators, David Wilson shows how some serial killers stay in the headlines whilst others rapidly become invisible - or “unseen”. Yet Mary Ann Cotton is not just the first but perhaps the 1st’s most prolific female serial killer, with more victims than Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Beverly Allit or male predators such as Jack the Ripper and Dennis Nilsen. But her own north east of England (and criminologists) apart, she remains largely forgotten, despite poisoning to death up to 21 victims in Britain’s ‘arsenic century’. Exploding myths that every serial killer is a ‘monster’, the author draws attention to Cotton’s charms, allure, capability, skill and ambition - drawing parallels or contrasting the methods and lifestyles of other serial killers from Victorian to modern times. He also shows how events cannot be separated from their social context – here the industrial revolution, growing mobility, women’s emancipation and greater assertiveness. And concerning the reticence of ‘human nature’, like Dr Harold Shipman, Cotton was allowed to go on killing despite reasons to suspect her. The book contains other resonances to aid understanding of how serial murderers can go undiscovered despite such things as coincidence, gossip, whispers or motives that become more obvious with the benefit of hindsight. It is also a detective story in which the persistence of a single individual saw Cotton tried and executed, events analysed first-hand from the archives and location visits as the author fills the gaps in a remarkable story. By a leading expert on serial killers; Meticulously researched and highly readable; Fresh interpretations mean this book is destined to be the definitive title on Mary Ann Cotton. ‘An enthralling read David Wilson does not write generic ‘true crime’, but history of the highest order’: Judith Flanders, best-selling author, journalist and historian. David Wilson is Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University. An ex-prison governor he has broadcast for the BBC, Channel 4, Sky and Channel 5 (where he presents ‘Killers Behind Bars’). His books include Serial Killers: Hunting Britons and Their Victims 1960-2006 (2007) and Looking for Laura: Public Criminology and Hot News (2011).

The subject of murder has always held a particular fascination for us. But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizen—a special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely? In The Subject of Murder, Lisa Downing explores the ways in which the figure of the murderer has been made to signify a specific kind of social subject in Western modernity. Drawing on the work of Foucault in her studies of the lives and crimes of killers in Europe and the United States, Downing interrogates the meanings of media and texts produced about and by murderers. Upending the usual treatment of murderers as isolated figures or exceptional individuals, Downing argues that they are ordinary people, reflections of our society at the intersections of gender, agency, desire, and violence.

You've seen Manhunt, now read Geoffrey Wansell's chilling portrait of notorious serial killer Levi Bellfield- the only man in modern British legal history to be given two whole-life sentences. On 23 Jun 2011 the convicted double-murderer Levi Bellfield was found guilty of the murder of 13-year-old school girl Milly Dowler. Milly disappeared on her way home from school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey in 2002. Six months later her body was discovered many miles away. A massive police investigation, the largest manhunt in Surrey's history, got nowhere. Only when nightclub bouncer and bare-knuckle boxer Levi Bellfield was arrested for the murder of another young woman did it become clear to police that they had a serial killer on their hands. This is the full story of the murders, the victims and the pain-staking nine-year investigation and trial by police and prosecutors. It tells of Bellfield's terrifying, controlling personality - a man who went from charming to monstrous in the blink of an eye - and his depraved stalking of young women. Geoffrey Wansell has been acknowledged as one of Britain's leading authorities on serial killers. He was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize (now the Costa Book Award) for his biography of Terence Rattigan, and was appointed by the Official Solicitor to the Supreme Court to write the biography of Gloucester-based serial killer Frederick West.

From Ted Bundy to John Wayne Gacy and David Berkowitz, the 1970s were a time of notorious and brutal serial killers. Find out more about them, along with some you may never have heard of. The Co-Ed Killer, Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler, and Dating Game Killer—in many ways, terrifying serial killers were as synonymous with the 1970s as Watergate, disco, and the oil crisis. This fascinating collection of profiles presents the most notorious as well as lesser-known serial murderers of that decade. Beyond Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz, it includes more obscure killers like Coral Eugene Watts, known as “The Sunday Morning Slasher,” who killed 80 women; Edmund Kemper, the "Co-Ed Killer"; and Rodney Alcala, who is believed to have killed between 50 and 130 people between 1971-1979. Profiles will include: Rodney Alcala: The Dating Game Killer David Berkowitz: The Son of Sam Kenneth A. Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Jr: The Hillside Strangler Ted Bundy John Wayne Gacy: The Killer Clown Coral Eugene Watts: The Sunday Morning Slasher Vaughn Greenwood: The Skid Row Slasher

"On February 9th 1983 Dennis Nilsen was arrested at his Muswell Hill home, after human remains had been identified as the cause of blocked drains. Within days he had confessed to fifteen gruesome murders over a period of four years. His victims, all young homosexual men, had never been missed. Brian Masters, with Nilsen's full cooperation, has produced a study of a murderer's mind which is unique of its kind. 'KILLING FOR COMPANY must stand as one of the most remarkable and accurate accounts ever written of the singular relationship between a mass murderer and a society. Brian Masters, in the writing, has achieved the impossible. Though dealing with sensational and horrific matters he has managed to treat his material with such objectivity and restraint that what we have is not a penny dreadful from the Hammer House of Horror, but a bloody masterpiece' BERYL BAINBRIDGE Observer."