BBC - Great Crimes and Trials Series 3 Set 1 (1995) Part 14 John Bodkin Adams and Other Infamous Doctors

Stabbings, shootings, genocide, torture, abduction, robbery, serial killing and mass suicide are just a few of the horrific crimes explored in Great Crimes and Trials. True stories carefully researched and reconstructed with actual archive footage. Cases which have become almost legendary in the annals of crime and detection. Serial killers, gangsters, assassins and war criminals - Great Crimes and Trials sheds light on crimes that shocked the world, bringing back memories of some of the most notorious cases of the twentieth century. The murders of John Lennon and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, the unsolved Zodiac murders and the treasonous crimes of Lord Haw-Haw are all covered here in exacting detail, alongside other shocking stories of murder and mayhem. From the violent mob rule of the thirties to the fairly recent phenomenon of the serial killer, the motives, behavior patterns and killing techniques of some of the world's most evil felons are explored. Their detection, capture and trials are examined to give a complete picture of how crine and justice have evolved through the twentieth century. Narrated by Robert Powell, Great Crimes and Trials combines new and archive interviews to reconstruct each story, analysing the individual and his motive, explaining how the crime was committed and showing breakthroughs in investigations alongside details of the trial. With its researchers gaining unprecedented access to picture libraries and over 250,000 hours of archive footage, these are the definitive accounts of these appalling murders.

Part 14 John Bodkin Adams and Other Infamous Doctors

A kindly Eastbourne doctor was arrested for poisoning wealthy old women for money. Although acquitted after an amazing trial was he a mass murderer? For the profession of doctor to work in society, people need to trust them. Most honour that trust but a few abuse it, some in horrific ways. One such scoundrel was John Bodkin Adams. Between 1946 and 1956, 163 of John Bodkin Adams' patients died while in a coma. 132 of 310 patients had apparently left Adams money or items in their wills. Adams was at one time the richest doctor in all England. He was tried and acquitted for the murder of one patient in 1957. Was he a kindly doctor whose treatments to relieve pain for his ailing patients in their final days had inadvertently hastened their demise, as he claimed? Or was he one of Britain's worst serial killers in history? The case of Dr John Bodkin Adams is a contentious one due to the fact that the general practitioner was never actually found guilty of murder or professional negligence. However, years after his own death conflicting views remain about whether Bodkin Adams was guilty of murder or euthanasia. To some he is regarded as a forerunner of the medical mass murderer Dr Harold Shipman, while others believe that he simply carried out mercy killings at a time when painkillers were the only way to alleviate terminal suffering. Doctors are no more immune from the urge to murder than any other people. One of the century's notorious cases was that of Hawley Harvey Crippen in 1910, episode also covers other famous doctor murder cases, like Dr Sam Sheppard, the trial of Dr Jeffrey MacDonald and Dr Carl Coppolino sentenced of poisoning his wife.

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