Murderers and Their Mothers: The Debrief

One of Poland’s most notorious serial killers, Leszek Pekalski confessed to murdering dozens of people - men, women and children. Pekalski’s mother was a violent alcoholic who drank heavily while pregnant with Pekalski and his twin sister. The children were subjected to extreme physical violence at the hands of their mother and grandmother on a daily basis, neglected and often starved.

Adam Lanza killed his mother before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School and shooting dead 20 children and six teachers in one of the bloodiest mass shootings in American history. Many blame his mother, Nancy – a gun enthusiast who did nothing to remove her arsenal of weapons from the family home – for refusing to get Adam the help he so badly needed.

Serial child-killer Robert Black worked as a delivery driver, preying on young girls up and down the country. Black’s own childhood was fraught with violence and abandonment. His biological mother left him shortly after his birth, while his alcoholic foster mother neglected and physically abused him. Join MacIntyre and distinguished criminologist Dr Elizabeth Yardley as they unpick the psychology of one the most complex killers.

Joachim Knychala, the Polish serial killer who earned the ghoulish nickname ‘Frankenstein’, attacked his victims with an axe, butchering and desecrating their bodies after death. He brutally murdered five women and attempted to murder another seven over eight grisly years. Knychala grew up in poverty, with a mother who rejected him and often had sex with boyfriends in front of him and a grandmother who meted out violent punishments on a daily basis. MacIntyre and criminologist Dr Elizabeth Yardley explore Knychala’s twisted relationship with his mother and grandmother to discover whether they were the cause of his murderous misogyny and why he was hell bent on becoming Poland’s most notorious serial killer.

One of Britain’s most infamous killers, Dennis Nilsen murdered fifteen young men, some as young as 14, in London during the late seventies and early eighties. Nilsen held on to the corpses of his victims for weeks on end, keeping them in pristine condition and talking to them on his return home from work and sleeping beside them. His horrific crimes were only revealed when a plumbing company found human remains in his drains. But what led this seemingly normal civil servant to start killing for company? How big a role did his lonely childhood in an isolated Scottish fishing village play? And how devastating was his cold and religious mother’s inability to feel any love for him or to acknowledge his homosexuality? Join MacIntyre and distinguished criminologist Dr Elizabeth Yardley as they unpick the psychology of one of the country’s most complex killers.

Donal MacIntyre investigates some of the world’s most notorious killers asking if they were born evil or whether their dysfunctional relationships with their mothers turned them into monsters. Dr Harold Shipman, was Britain’s most prolific serial killer with at least 215 known victims. Was Shipman simply addicted to murder, playing God by killing many of his elderly female patients with overdoses of morphine or did his upbringing turn him into a mass murderer? His mother was a domineering and controlling mother who worshipped the young Harold and made him believe that he was better than everyone else. When she died a painful death relieved by morphine, did this sow the seeds of Shipman’s murderous career? Join Donal and criminologist Dr Elizabeth Yardley as they examine one of the most disturbing, unique and perplexing criminal cases in British history.