Capable of charm and mass murder

Harold Shipman

The question mark's the thing in Born To Kill? (tonight, 9.25, TV2). The series sets out to examine whether infamous killers - Fred West last week, Harold Shipman tonight - were predestined to turn out that way.

This is an imprecise science, based on looking back into killers' pasts and, through a blend of conjecture and criminology, arriving at what amounts to more questions.

Fred West and Dr Harold Shipman were both capable of charm.

As every reader of the thriller knows: the serial killer usually does have charm. And he (it is mostly he, although next week Born to Kill? looks at Myra Hindley, and Rosemary West will be forever horribly entwined with Fred) has stuff in his background which forensic psychologists and criminologists will pore over for decades.

Shipman, who is estimated to have killed at least 283 people, mostly elderly women patients who loved and trusted him, was a nice guy and the perfect killing machine.

He couldn't have been a killer, says the series presenter and yes, criminologist and forensic psychologist, Dr David Holmes, because he's a bit like us.

In other words, killers don't usually look like killers until after we know they are - and then people claim they can see something in their eyes that gives the clue.

There were clues with Shipman. A journalist who latched on early to something funny in the small English community where Shipman did his work talked to two elderly women who said , "Oh, you mean Dr Death. Well, they say he's a good doctor but you don't last long."

Shipman killed, and filled out the death certificates of women with names like Ivy and Winifred and Edith. When he was 17 his loving mother died at home of lung cancer; the local doctor would visit with his comforting syringes of morphine. Shipman killed the nice ladies at home; he would visit with his morphine.

After his mother died the young Shipman ran all night. This, speculates Holmes, could have created a euphoric high from the release of endorphins. He could have experienced pleasurable feelings associated with the death of his mother. Or he could have just liked killing old ladies.

Fred West had more clues in his background: his parents both sexually abused him, he had a motorbike accident which further scrambled his already strange mind. He met Rosemary, whose father was still visiting to have sex with her after she married Fred. People said Fred West was a jovial fellow who got on well with everybody.

In other words, he didn't look like a serial abuser and murderer. Except in retrospect.

As these things go, Born To Kill? is light on the sensationalism; it can't totally avoid it because of the nature of the investigation. And it has to rely on reconstructions, for obvious reasons. There are no recordings of Fred and Rosemary West. We hear Shipman in a taped police interview: all he says is "No".

Both West and Shipman killed themselves in prison. Nobody will ever know why they did what they did. Perhaps they didn't know themselves. Born to Kill? doesn't know either.

The Wests remain beyond human comprehension. Which, you expect, will pretty much apply to all of the killers the series will attempt to examine.

The only surety is that this won't be the last attempt to provide some sort of answer.