Mary Ann Cotton

20th January 2019 45 mins Season 4 Episode 2

Born in 1832 the story of the Black Widow is a tale of classic Victorian murder. Cotton travelled around the north east of England marrying lonely men getting them to take out life insurance and then murdering them. Arsenic was her preferred means of killing. Once dead she would cash in their life insurance. It was not only her husbands who were the victims, she is also thought to have murdered 11 of her children/step children too. Thanks to the endeavour of a man called Thomas Riley, Mary Ann Cotton was finally brought to justice and hanged for the murder of her final victim, 10 year old Charles Edward Cotton.

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Season 4 · Episode 3

Dr. Buck Ruxton

Dr Ruxton was an Indian born physician. He lived a quiet, respectable life in Lancaster but had a violent jealous streak. He had accused his wife of infidelity for years but in September 1935 Ruxton's jealousy got the better of him. He beat, strangled and stabbed her to death then did the same to the housemaid who witnessed the killing. Ruxton dismembered the bodies to remove identification marks and dumped them across the border in Scotland. Local police were dumbfounded as to who the bodies were, the press had a field day but still no one could identify the two bodies. It was a scrap of newsprint used to wrap the body parts in that was identified as a publication only available in Lancaster. The police soon honed in on Ruxton.

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