Series 2 trailer
Professor David Wilson returns to investigate more of Britain's most notorious serial killers. Killers Behind Bars series 2 starts on Thursday 14 March at 9pm on Channel 5.
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Professor David Wilson returns to investigate more of Britain's most notorious serial killers. Killers Behind Bars series 2 starts on Thursday 14 March at 9pm on Channel 5.
Comments (52)
2 months ago
Nigel Davies
Why are so mant violent criminals who plead insanity released so soon? The psychs have a lot to answer for!
5 months ago
Obvious professor is Obvious
I just think our profilers are rubbish. The Fbi profilers appear to have been useful in countless cases, including high profile serial killer cases where the profilers helped give stupefied officers a place to start. I'm even shocked at the relative success of geographic profiling, like where is the killer likely to live considering where their crimes took place. But from what I've seen and read the FBI profilers advise caution, whereas that Britton guy had no caution only hubris. I don't think they make the mistake of substituting real police work with profiles. They're only clues. Also when asked how he gets these guys to talk, John Douglas one of the original profilers, said you have to use different techniques with different criminals. For example when he spoke to John Wayne Gacey he lowered himself to his level and groomed his ego. Notable he said you wouldn't have known which of them was the psychopath if you were a fly on the wall. To get the green river killer to talk they used a female agent/profiler who played to Ridgeway's ego, made him feel important. And you have to remember this guy was obsessed with women and hadn't seen one in ages. All these various successes are a result of their "behavioural Science" unit. Maybe we're just not doing it right. I'm not ready to right it off, it might be useful in some ways, but it's usefulness should not be overestimated.
8 months ago
Megana
I get what he is doing. He is making the links clear in order that journalists, police are able to look further that immediate evidence to find serious criminals. This is a brilliant tactic- it will filter across from viewers and encourage links between regional police, public, and information. Look past the CSI graphics and ridiculously fast pace.
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11 months ago
lol kat
really good love it cool keep it up want more just do a nouther episode
11 months ago
Independent Reviewer
The Independent published a very negative review of the first episode in series, which is quite critical of Prof. Wilson the presenter: http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/last-nights-viewing--killers-behind-bars-the-untold-story-channel-5-jimmy-and-the-giant-supermarket-channel-4-7844884.html
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11 months ago
S Clarke
Agree with many of the other comments. An irritating self-important presenter producing nothing new and putting too much value on flimsy theories. Also, annoying camera shots cutting from one closeup to another. I feel sure the police would have covered his research at the time anyway.
11 months ago
lily amelia
Tobin did not always kill his victims.. Case of 2 young girls held hostage in flats near \portsmouth, hants, mega damage to them, in 90's.\vile bastard, hope he rots in agony
11 months ago
Helena Dubois
I'm surprised he has managed to publish a book about Peter Tobin being responsible for the BIble John murders in glasgow when they have DNA and a bite mark found on one of the victims. Peter Tobin is in prison - if he was Bible John we would have his DNA and a match.. But we don't! As this most obvious of flaws conviniently not mentioned, it casts doubt over his other "findings"... Thank God he is only a professor and not in an actual position of power.
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11 months ago
Clarice Starling
Interesting programme-shame about the narcissistic criminologist presenting! He's all me, me me, my 15 books, my theories, my university! Get over yourself and just give us the cold hard facts! Your theories are just hypotheses and not everyone has to agree with you just because you're a prof!
11 months ago
Wendy
This is one of the most disengaging presenters I've come across. He also forces his students into agreeing with him. Boring. I've given up watching.
11 months ago
Tony
More facts less drama pls, Criminologist meets Psychiatrist in abandoned warehouse ???? Expert long view, then close up, eyes only as he speaks. Serious subject matter, should be treated in a serious way. Not as entertainment with lots of camera angles for effect.
11 months ago
k
CrimGradTutor- perhaps you should therefore be questioning the credibility of the establishment you are working for, if they are willing to take on the comparably 'uneducated' generation that you speak of.
11 months ago
CrimGradTutor
As a tutor teaching Criminologist Graduates all I can say is: "the standard of education we now expect to be demonstrable by UK Educated School-Leavers attending our courses is, sadly, comparable with, err, the levels demonstrated by the utterly uneducated of 25yrs ago" :D
11 months ago
Shirl
Entertaining tv program but he failed to prove that Tobin was prolific produced one maybe victim hardly proof is it?
11 months ago
Criminologist
CrimGrad An intersting reply. Where do you stand on the fact that research shows that offender profiling is worse than useless: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/14/psychological-profile-behavioural-psychology
11 months ago
Dan
We all seem to missing the big question with the Prof; why doesn't he do his shirt cuffs up!
11 months ago
CrimGrad
As a Criminologist graduate.. I found the series so far highly interesting. I chuckle to myself as most do not appreciate the work of a criminologist as in fact the theory can aid the police in investigations which most people are unaware of. As a criminologist you are able to present many theories to explain criminal behaviours. Speaking to non-criminologists they always ask the question of where is the evidence.. I think mostly people are not satisfied unless DNA is linked.. Professor D Wilson creates some excellent theory based opinions stating common facts between victims where possibly Jessie could have been linked. These evidence based assumptions Wilson is making is to help the police with past cases. The police use criminal profiles (which criminologist sometimes help with) which explores common characteristics of location, the victim and also when the offender is unknown making a profile of what the offender could look like. Anyone finding this series interesting I would highly recommend studying criminology! You will be amazed of things you thought you knew about criminals when actually you will be questioned upon what is right and wrong there is no way of knowing. This is where theories and factual based theories change your perception completely.
11 months ago
Fran
Obviously many people watching this programme have no background knowledge of Criminology. This programme portrays a theoretical exploration of criminal behaviour in society, not a definitive explanation of it. Although I do agree that Prof. Wilson is not the most exciting of people to present such theory.
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11 months ago
Bim Bam
Agree with 'Jimbo' - ego, ego, ego!
11 months ago
Jimbo
I don't even know why I watched this one - should have known from the first episode it'd be a load of rubbish. So repetitive, such nonsense. I'm so glad I'm not one of his students
11 months ago
James
Ruth. If he was just presenting it as a theory then that would be fine, but he isn't. He is presenting it as fact. Where is the evidence that Tobin was in Eastbourne? He goes to talk to one person off camera-who trying to recall events from over 30 years previously says there was a Scotsman named Peter at his church. This is flimsy beyond belief-yet the presenter then says he has proved Tobin was in Eastbourne in 1980. No, he has proven he might have been-but it would need several eyewitnesses to give descriptions of the person & for some firm evidence he was there.
11 months ago
Donna Lambton
shame, this is an interesting programme, can't stand the presenter.
11 months ago
Crime Science
Ruth "Serial killers have probably killed more people than they have been conviced of killing" is his so called "My Theory". So investigations of serial killers from the time of Jack the Ripper have never though of Wilson's "My Theory" before? Have a look at the Monty Python (youtube) video entitled "My Theory" its spot on!
11 months ago
Ruth
Why do most of you jump in with critical personal comments on the presenter and the fact there is no hard evidence? If you had bothered to watch the documentary properly, or even if you just had the basic common knowledge of criminology, you would realise that he is simply investigating a possibility based on similarities. He is not 100% saying Tobin killed the other woman, he is just following up a THEORY which he mentions several times. Only when the case is reopened, which again the presenter says at the end, can HARD EVIDENCE be looked at. It is his job to look at theories, he is not a forensic scientist. So stop being so critical of a person when you haven't even thought about it properly. I think he seems like a very knowledgeable, interesting guy.
11 months ago
Mel
neil c he mentions his book 2 minutes in! lol! as for most other people don't waste your time watching it & then commenting if you don't like it! It's only TV after all! ;)
11 months ago
Neave
Enjoyed watching this programme and thought in the air time they have they gave us as much evidence and information as they could. Its a shame for familys of missing people that the powers that be can't put the funding into investigating cold cases. As for the personnal comments made about the proffessor fella I think you people are missing the point about what the programmes about, I don't think the proffessor blokes really after fans and followers, to be liked or not. He just happens to be the one doing the series, it could be any proffessor of criminology looking at things like this.
11 months ago
Louis
I hope he is not as tactile with his patients as he is with family members of the victims in these short documentaries. I think some professional boundaries are needed.
11 months ago
Crime Science
What is the good professor's "My Theory" exactly? See here: http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/DAVID%20WILSON%20WATCH
11 months ago
James
Criminology is a very useful tool. I doubt this guy is the best we have & if he is then I would be seriously concerned, but more likely he is the besr known-because he has some charisma, writes best selling books & appears on telly. I am sure there are other travel experts out there-but Simon Calder is alway the one the media go to for a quote. It would be interesting to know what the police think of him. My guess is they prpbably see him as a bit of a pain. I wonder if they have checked this Eastbourne angle out, if the only person that can help them is a vicar-trying to remember stuff from 1980 then I doubt it. The people running the operation did say there were a lot of gaps as to his wherabouts at certain times in his life that they needed to fill & 20 miles is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility. But sadly with the evidence gone-it is highly unlikely anything could ever come of it. As for him admitting to 48 murders-well yes it could be true, but I am sure Wilson will be well aware that Henry Lee Lucas & Otis Toole admitted to hundreds of murders-many of which they could not have possibly committed. Many criminals confess to murders thye did not do. This can be for ego purposes, to waste police time, to torment families, or possibly just to get people to leave you alone in jail.
11 months ago
samspam
At a time when cuts are leaving question marks over the value of a graduate education Professor Wilson has managed to produce conclusive evidence that criminology is a waste of time and money. If this self-obsessed simpleton is the best criminologist in England my dog is the Pope.
11 months ago
neil c
David Wilson once wrote a book linking Tobin to Bible John. Was totally discredited,not just by the press and the police, but by his own peers and students. Funny how he never mentioned it on this show.
11 months ago
brian knox
i woould eat tobin
11 months ago
Patti
I think Professor Wilson gets his point across very well as a criminologist. I see clearly where is his coming from. Take Peter Sutcliffe. He didn't start cutting his victims up and displaying there bodies, that came much later in his killing spree. Sutcliffe injured his victims first before he built up the desires to kill and display his bodies. Tobin, could have raped first which is exactly what he did...but where did he go from there? I believe he could have killed before, I also think he may have stopped in Lancashire....and other places on his way back and forth to Bathgate. I think it is more likely than unlikely.
11 months ago
Kamawoop
True crime docs are fascinating and I'll watch the rest of this series, however, this presenter is or comes across as an arrogant chancer, desperately trying to sound plausible. First episode had compelling evidence "because victim was found in woodland near water", where as in fact the previous victims had either been found in water, or in woods away from water. If the culprit liked to hamper forensics by disposing of bodies in water, why not this other case when a stream was just feet away?
11 months ago
Neil
Starting to dislike Professor Wilson very much as after watching both programs, no real 'evidence' has been produced and seems to be pure supposition and conjecture. I hope that the remaining programs dramatically improve.
11 months ago
sam
I've watched both programmes and neither present any real new hard evidence - no more than anyone living locally and reasonably aware of the news would have know. I'd be very disappointed if this is representative of the "science" of crimonology or the standard of the students following the courses today.
11 months ago
James
Not very convincing evidence. It seems like many he has come up with a theory & is trying to make the 'facts' fit-you could tell the fact that a couple of people did not agree with him really irked him. Here is my main issue-he went to a church & spoke to a vicar about something that happened over 30 years ago-now, as we didn't see this interview did he push that vicar into saying there was a Scotsman called Peter who went there back then? Is Tobin the only Scot called Peter who was around that large area? Did the Peter the vicar remembered match the description of Tobin? Might it have been a Scot with a similar name like Paul-this is 30 years plus later after all. Also Tobin was notorious for using aliases-would he even have been using Peter? But somehow this mediocre hearsay based on just one man's belief of what happened three decades ago places Tobin in Eastbourne. Then of course there is the startling evidence that Tobin liked to bury his victims-wow, I guess all other murderers just leave their victims lying in the open so people can find them easily? Still, I expect he can get another book of wild speculation onto the shelves.
11 months ago
Saint
Scary to think people like him are just "wandering" the country
11 months ago
Jane
"I've written something like fifteen books." - You just know, he knows exactly how many he's written. It just comes off as arrogant that he pretends to not be certain. The "evidence" he comes up with is compelling anecdotally, but it's all done in a very flimsy for-the-cameras way. I'd prefer to see more hard, irrefutable evidence. It's painfully obvious these "discoveries" of his mean nothing in the cold light of a court room, otherwise they'd be in there, and consequently in papers, not on the TV.
11 months ago
jim o'neill
tobins a creep!
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11 months ago
Damion
I frankly found myself more and more concerned by the obsessive zeal of Professor David Wilson. His language was prejorative throughout - not what I would expect from a real scientist. He sounded more like a religionist trying to convince others that Noah's Ark was really on a mountain in Turkey. I applaud his students for being less keen to accept his conclusions on such tenuous evidence.
11 months ago
Michael Gerrish
Why can't he talk directly to the camera? And why the other gimmicks for a serious documentary series?
11 months ago
Michael Gerrish
Why doesn't he speak directly into the camera? And why the other gimmicks for a serious documentary series?
11 months ago
Marco Negri
Mad Peter Toblerone, cannae wait for this. Gonnae be the best hing oan the telly since crashed their motor into the thames
11 months ago
Marco Negri
Mad Peter Toblerone, cannae wait for this. Gonnae be the best hing oan the telly since crashed their motor into the thames
11 months ago
antony evans
although this is a highly likely hypothesis.and hope the father of the murdered girl finally gets answers. it could be he copied the style of the norwich killing,still not clear why he murdered all five girls in a spree? what pushed him?' ladened with symbolisym.obviously wanted to be caught.cos could not stop