Born to Kill?

BORN TO KILL is a British-made True Crime series documenting the life and crimes of prolific serial killers from the western world (1960's to Modern day.)

Christopher Slade gives this series a stark, eerie mood with his narration. Exclusive interviews and historical footage provide factual information for each case with additional explanations by psychologists and criminal profilers. The series looks closely at the upbringing of each killer and tries to identify significant life events that may have influenced their desire for murder.

As an introduction to serial killers, Born To Kill is a good starting point, documenting the most important facts and unique traits that identify each killer. I found it a reliable source that led me to some lesser-known cases.

Rather than B-Grade re-enactments and dramatisations, The video content is consistently high quality and features fresh interviews backed by actual footage.

Born To Kill dares to ask the age-old 'question: Nature or Nurture ? Are these criminals BORN TO KILL or are they the product of their environment, mis-shaped by a combination of traumatic incidents and events. There

-GENETICS (inherited traits) Provide an individual with a spectrum.

-ENVIRONMENT (development and otherwise) determines where the individual lies on that spectrum.

It's not a question that can be answered easily or even accurately, so it's pointless and embarrassing to hear professionals express their opinions. It's more likely to conclude that these anti-social criminals are the result of both natural and nurtured conditions. Some may have been born into a life of disfunction, unable to escape their destiny, but no one is born with a gun in their hand.

There are more important questions that could've been asked, such as:

• How could these killers be stopped before committing murderous crimes ?

-What factors have allowed serial killers to exist in our society ?

-What has each case taught us to lessen or prevent these crimes from happening in future ?

I mean, you get the most basic facts on a large number of serial killers, and that's fine. Then you have the "experts" on nature and nurture saying the exact same thing at the end of every episode: There's the absolute clown criminologist David Wilson, who thinks socialization is the be all and end all of a phenotype, a theoretical paradigm that was already obviously wrong-headed in 2005; and then you have forensic psychologist Helen Morrison, who is supposed to be the nature expert, but all she ever talks about is "mutations" driving serial killer personalities. It's as if she doesn't understand the concept of heritability at all. I won't go into how the question of nature vs. nurture as it is discussed in this series is entirely nonsensical, just read a book on behavioural genetics.

So it's basically what you'd expect from a pulpy 2005 documentary series that crams everything on a serial killer into 45 minute episodes. The only reason to watch it is the sheer number of abridged biographies.

I have been completely fascinated by serial killers from a young age, how can they do what they do?,how can they have regular lives by day and commit heinous murders by night?, What makes them tick?,Is it nature or nurture?, If you have asked yourself this or just have a general interest in serial killers/crime then this is the show for you, It's hands down the best documentary series on serial killers I have ever seen,Over the last twenty years I have watched dozens of shows on this subject matter and none of them are anywhere near as engaging as "born to kill",They show clips of interviews with the killer in question,Court appearances and even police interrogations in a few,They really delve into how each serial killer came to be,What they did,How they got away with it for so long and what happened once they were caught, I highly recommend this series.