BBC - Great Crimes and Trials Series 3 Set 1 (1995) Part 10 Donald Merrett The Murderous Buccaneer

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 10 Donald Merrett The Murderous Buccaneer

A unique case, where a modern day gun-runner and drug-smuggler carried out a twenty-year crime spree murdering his wife, his mother-in-law and even his own mother. For Donald Merrett, the lust for money swept aside any hint of moral scruple. He was not a man to do anything by halves. A poweful hulk of a man, with appropriatly large sensual appetites, he lived the life of a modern buccaneer. But however hard he lived and however far he ran he could never run away from himself. Born John Donald Merrett in New Zealand in 1908, over his lifetime he had many names and probably many more mistresses. Even as a young man he proved to be a dishonest and incorrigible person who would stop at nothing to get his own way, as the suspicious death of his mother would show. Black-bearded, with a gold earring in his pierced right ear and gold bangles jangling at his wrists, the man who called himself Ronald Chesney looked every inch the pirate he claimed to be. In the 1930s he smuggled drugs and arms on a run between Malta, North Africa, and Spain. After the end of the Second World War the fast-moving Merrett had purchased an ex-German Navy E-boat for what he called “cross-Channel activities''. Forger, smuggler, Motor Gun Boat captain, blockade runner, and last but not least, murderer, Merrett's life would eventually end the same way he claimed his mother's had when his sins caught up with him a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The case of Donald Merrett is mostly forgotten today but his murders and the subsequent manhunt in the 1950s were a sensation that spanned two nations, Britain and Germany.

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