Barry Ryan

The cozy villages of Midsomer County reveal their most sinister secrets in these contemporary British television mysteries. Blood wedding: Cully's wedding day is fast approaching, but a series of bizarre murders at an upper-class wedding leave Barnaby distracted. Shot at dawn: A long-standing family feud erupts into violence after a disgraced soldier's name is placed on a World War I memorial. Left for dead: Barnaby discovers a potential link between...

In the fourth episode of this series, British crime writer Martina Cole examines the life and times of female serial killer Rosemary West. Rosemary West was born in Barnstaple and, after her parents split up, spent time with her father, who repeatedly sexually abused her. She met Fred West, a man who had already killed two girls and, with Rose, would kill ten more, usually lodgers at their house, but family members too. Fred West killed himself in...

In the sixth episode of this series, British crime writer Martina Cole examines the life and times of female serial killer Elizabeth Bathory. Born in Hungary in 1560, Countess Bathory was a lesbian who, with her son, two sons-in-law, and several female helpers, got young girls to come to her castle on the pretext of finding them work and then tortured and killed them. She was eventually found out and died virtually walled up in her castle. It is claimed...

In this first episode of this series, British crime writer Martina Cole tells the story of Myra Hindley, dubbed the most evil woman in Britain by the tabloid press, who, in company with the petty criminal Ian Brady, with whom she was besotted, killed five children in the 1960s, burying their bodies on moorland. Despite her claims that she had reformed whilst in prison, Hindley was denied release and died in jail at sixty.