The BEST episodes of Murder Maps
Every episode of Murder Maps ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Murder Maps!
MURDER MAPS takes you back in time to some of the most shocking and surprising murder investigations in history. In each episode we visit a different era in London's dark past and through dramatic reconstruction we tell the stories of how the killers were eventually brought to justice. As the series progresses we witness how the police deployed more and more forensic methods in the investigations.
#1 - Dr. Buck Ruxton
Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/27/2019
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.
Watch Now:Amazon#11 - Bluebeard / Henri Landru
Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/28/2019
The First World War took the lives of countless soldiers on the front line. But one man in Paris too old for combat saw this as an opportunity. Henri Landru targeted the lonely and vulnerable women left behind by the war. He seduced them with promises of marriage and lured them to houses outside Paris where the women vanished. With the police uninterested in investigating the disappearances, two women took it upon themselves to pursue Landru. This episode tells their story. How they tirelessly gathered evidence against the killer. How they pestered the authorities to investigate. And how they made sure Landru finally faced justice for his crimes.
Watch Now:Amazon#13 - Mary Ann Cotton
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/20/2019
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.
Watch Now:Amazon#14 - The Siege of Sidney Street (Houndsditch Murders)
Season 5 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/21/2019
In December 1910, the murder of three City of London Police officers and the wounding of two others was, and continues to be, one of the largest multiple murders of police officers on duty carried out in Great Britain. The three officers – Sergeants Bentley and Tucker and Constable Choat - were shot dead whilst trying to prevent a burglary at a jewellers in Houndsditch on the evening of the 16th of December and this incident and the events surrounding it formed the precursor to the famous Siege of Sidney Street in January 1911.
Watch Now:Amazon#15 - Amelia Dyer - The Baby Farmer
Season 5 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/7/2020
Amelia Dyer was perhaps the most prolific killer in British history. She earned a living through murder, and her victims were babies. There was a grim trade which flourished in the Victorian age. In a time when unmarried mothers were shamed and shunned, giving up children to a 'baby-farmer' was often the only option. Dyer promised mothers that for a fee, she would adopt the babies and raise them as her own. In fact, she neglected and murdered them. In this episode we tell the shocking story of Dyer and of Evelina Marmon, one of the desperate young mothers she deceived.
Watch Now:Amazon#16 - Peter Manuel
Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/13/2019
Peter Manuel was a Scottish serial killer who killed at least eight people between 1956 - 1958 around the Greater Glasgow area in Scotland. Manuel had prison for a string of sexual attacks but on his release it didn't take long for his psychopathic behaviour to escalate. He fell under the police's radar several times but each time was let go, free to kill further. Manuel's parents would always give their son an alibi. His father especially would go to great lengths to protect him from justice. When he was finally tracked down and arrested for the murder of a family, who he shot dead in their own home, Manuel sensationally defended himself in court. But it would be his mother's testimony which would prove to be crucial to the outcome.
Watch Now:Amazon#17 - The Trunk Murders
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/12/2017
The first episode examines the horrifying discovery made in a trunk at the left luggage office of Brighton Train Station on a hot summer's day in 1934. Two days later, a similar case was found in Kings Cross Station, London. A major police investigation began that would take an unexpected turn in the search for a murderer.
Watch Now:Amazon#19 - The Richmond Murder
Season 5 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/21/2020
It was a crime which shocked Britain. In 1878, a widow was killed in her own home - and the killer was her own servant. This was a murder which struck at the heart of Victorian society, at the sanctity of the home and the rigid divides between the classes. For the young Kate Webster did not only kill and dismember her employer - she stole her clothes, her property and her identity. And to the Victorians that was almost more monstrous than the murder itself.
Watch Now:Amazon#21 - Jack the Ripper (1)
Season 5 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/7/2019
We all think we know the story of Jack the Ripper. The most famous serial killer in history, the man who murdered five women on the streets of Whitechapel - and got away with it. In this two-part Murder Maps special, we re-examine those notorious crimes. We reveal how the story we know today was shaped by the sensationalist press of 1888. And we strip back decades of rumour and misinformation to reveal the true lives of the five women slain. With contributions from world renowned Ripper expert Donald Rumbelow and writer Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five - the only book to tell the lives of the victims, these documentaries are the true story of the Whitechapel Murders as never heard before.
Watch Now:Amazon#22 - Herbert Armstrong - Hay Poisoner
Season 5 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/4/2019
Herbert Rowse Armstrong went down in history as The Hay Poisoner. Convicted in 1922 of murdering his wife with arsenic, he was the first and only solicitor to be hanged in the UK. But was he guilty? Was he a cunning poisoner, or was he a grieving husband wrongly accused? Much of the evidence against Armstrong was circumstantial and the scientific testimony remains disputed. In this episode we examine both sides of the case and ask whether the British justice system made a terrible mistake.
Watch Now:Amazon#23 - The Bermondsey Horror
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/8/2015
In 1849, a man suddenly disappeared in Bermondsey. The discovery that he had been brutally murdered enraptured the press and the public. Even Charles Dickens was totally engrossed in the story of the sinister Marie Manning.
Watch Now:Amazon#24 - Sheperds Bush Murders
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 7/4/2019
Three police officers were murdered in Shepherds Bush on Friday 12th August 1966 by Harry Roberts and two others. After the killing they went on the run and a huge manhunt ensued. One assailant was captured within hours, the second was found 4 days later in Glasgow but Roberts hid in Thorley Wood near Bishop Stortford and used his army training to survive for three months until he was finally arrested. The notion that someone had killed several policemen shocked the public and attracted a lot of press attention. As the act of murder happened six months after the death penalty had been suspended, many people called for it's return. Two of the assailants died in prison but the gunman, Harry Roberts was released after spending 48 years behind bars.
Watch Now:Amazon#25 - Cleveland Torso Murders
Season 5 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/14/2020
Cleveland, Ohio was a notorious city in the 1930s. The Great Depression had hit it hard. Crime and corruption were rife. And there was a serial killer on the loose. This episode investigates the unsolved murders committed by the Butcher of Kingsbury Run. The Butcher killed at least twelve men and women, dismembering their bodies and scattering them across the city. Few of the victims were ever identified and nobody was brought to justice. But as this episode reveals, the investigation of legendary lawman Eliot Ness did have a suspect, a man whose identity has remained a secret for decades.
Watch Now:Amazon