Serial killers
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Serial killers: Laurie talks to Ian Cummins, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Salford, about the media and cultural responses to the child murders committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley two decades earlier. The Moors Murders were to provide an unfortunate template for future media reporting on serial killing, including the crimes committed by Peter Sutcliffe - the Yorkshire Ripper - as described in a new study by Louise Wattis, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at Teesside University. Sutcliffe murdered 13 women in the North of England between 1975 and 1980. Dr Wattis discusses the way in which these crimes shed light on how we think about fear of crime, gender and serial murder and the representation of victims and sex workers.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:36.1 | I'm Laurie Taylor and this is a Radio 4 podcast for thinking aloud. |
| 0:40.8 | What is the cultural legacy of the Moors murders? What does a study of the Yorkshire |
| 0:46.2 | Ripper tell us about gender and about crime? Find out here. Anyone in my criminology classes at York University in the 80s and 90s |
| 0:55.3 | may remember that the book I co-wrote with Stan Cohen on the experience of |
| 0:59.7 | long-term imprisonment was based on the discussions we'd conducted in the |
| 1:03.7 | maximum security wing of Durham prison with members of the cray and |
| 1:07.7 | Richardson gangs with train robber Bruce Reynolds and other well notorious |
| 1:12.2 | villains. But in those |
| 1:14.3 | university seminars I always admitted any mention of the small number of |
| 1:18.0 | conversations I'd also had with an occupant of Durham prison who was kept locked |
| 1:22.2 | away from all those other prisoners on a |
| 1:24.4 | higher landing of the security wing. For I was only too aware that any public |
| 1:29.1 | revelation of my meetings with Ian Brady would propel a veritable tribe of eager reporters onto the York University campus. |
| 1:38.7 | Which is why I'm so pleased to discover a new book which explicitly sets out to explore the relationship between serial |
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