a_baron

There are all kinds of sexual fetishes, including for clothing. And shoes. Christopher Farrow was a shoe fetishist, not a foot fetishist. Weird though not necessarily troubling, but in March 1994, he effected entry into the home of a middle aged woman, raped her, stabbed her to death in a most gruesome fashion, and left her wearing a pair of court shoes, not hers but a pair he had bought especially for...yeah, weird.

Although he left his DNA and blood at the crime scene, Farrow had no criminal record, and it was six years before he came onto the police radar. When this documentary was released, there was a very real prospect he would be too, but in December 2020, it was reported he was not considered suitable for either release or transfer to an open prison, which came as a relief to the victim's daughter, who appeared in this documentary.

Although he was convicted of only one murder, John Scripps murdered two other people for certain, and on the balance of probabilities, at least a fourth. He was a small time professional criminal who in spite of spending several years in prison travelled the world, and in his youth romanced a Mexican teenager whom he married.

In spite of being extremely plausible, Scripps was a nasty piece of work who murdered purely for money. The murder for which he was hanged was that of a South African national in Singapore. When the victim's body was found, it didn't take long for the authorities to both identify the killer and to connect him to the death of two Canadians in Thailand. They were a mother and son; the fourth victim was a young Englishman in the Gulf of Mexico.

This programme includes fairly graphic reconstructions and commentary from Edmond Pereira, the court-appointed lawyer who was given the hopeless task of defending him.

Yes, yet another documentary about Ted Bundy! This one is unique though because it includes the reunion of the Chi Omega Sorority House Massacre forty years on. Not widely known is that Bundy actually targeted two premises that night. Even less widely known is the fact that this trial was the first to be televised nationwide in the US, and not known at all is the claim - almost certainly true - that it was also the first time a search warrant had been issued for a suspect's mouth, as it was put here. In fact, Bundy had bitten the buttocks of one of the sorority house victims, and it was ordered by the court that an impression be taken of his teeth.

Exactly how compelling that particular piece of evidence was, remains to be seen, but there was plenty more where it came from. After that trial, Bundy was tried for the murder of his final victim, a schoolgirl, receiving the death penalty for that also.

We meet many people herein including Bundy's public defender, but there is no mention of Carole Ann Boone the airhead who actually married this monster in the courtroom, nor is there any showing of Carol DaRonch, the woman who was once said to be the only person to survive Bundy, and without whom he might conceivably never have been brought to book.

The consensus appears to be that Bundy was lucky rather than some kind of criminal mastermind, that he made a lot of mistakes, but that the police made many more. While there was absolutely no excuse for either of his escapes, wisdom in hindsight is always a wonderful thing. Four decades and more on, advanced forensics including DNA profiling and not least CCTV would have drastically shortened his murderous career.