Murder Trail

CRIME & INVESTIGATION – Sunday 17 May, 8.30pm

David Carpenter’s violent spree began in 1961, when he attacked a woman with a hammer, for which he was sentenced to 14 years in prison; following release and further periods in jail; he was finally freed in 1977. Moving to San Francisco, he moved on to murder in 1979 in an execution-style killing in a State Park. Only by chance did one of his victims survive, which eventually led to his arrest and subsequent death in the gas chamber, but at least 10 had died at the hands of a man about whom the judge said, “if ever there was a case appropriate for the death penalty, this is it.”

CRIME & INVESTIGATION – Sunday 19 April, 8.30pm

After nearly two years of investigation and a stake out, cops Bob Kelley and Jerry Thompson finally got their serial killer. Aileen Wuornos was America’s first female serial killer – a prostitute and lesbian who hated men. She lured her victims to deserted spots with the promise of sex and then in cold blood gunned them down. When her lesbian lover helped police to obtain a taped confession, Wuornos told all in shocking detail. She was sentenced to death for the murders of seven men.

Sunday 22 March, 8.30pm on CRIME & INVESTIGATION

Serial Killer Sunday!

On July 27 1996 Ivan Milat was sentenced to life for the murders of seven backpackers, including two young British hitchhikers, Joanne Walters and Caroline Clarke. Victims were brutalised, often raped and then shot or stabbed before being dumped in the remote New South Wales bush. Known as the ‘backpacker murders’ this case was to take Superintendent Clive Small and his team three years to solve. The prosecution’s star witness was a young British tourist, Paul Onions. Onions had accepted a lift from Milat but escaped when the killer pulled a gun on him.