This documentary examines the bloody career of Vlad the Impaler, the 15th-century prince of Wallachia who took no prisoners in his resistance to the spread of the Ottoman Empire. Known as Dracula, he learned the arts of war as a hostage of the Turks, but asserted his independence by working his own disloyal nobles to death and repelling a Turkish invasion by filling the battlefield with 23,000 imp
The war on drugs has been going on for more than three decades. Today, nearly 500,000 Americans are imprisoned on drug charges. In 1980 the number was 50,000. Last year $40 billion in taxpayer dollars were spent in fighting the war on drugs. As a result of the incarceration obsession, the United States operates the largest prison system on the planet, and the U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is
In the late 60s, Charles Manson convinced a group of "followers" to move in to the California desert to train for the apocalypse. They eventually committed on of the most horrific string of serial murders in modern times. Considered to be one of the definitive documentaries about Manson and his infamous "family," CHARLES MANSON SUPERSTAR tells the killer's story with archival news footage, police
Clive Stafford Smith is a British lawyer who has represented American prisoners on Death Row and, more recently, detainees in Guantanamo Bay. In this programme, he reveals the abuses suffered by Guantanamo detainees and talks to experts in the field of torture, including CIA and US Army veterans. The programme examines cases of false confessions extracted under torture, suggesting that torture is
Georgi Ivanov Markov was born on March 1, 1929 in Sofia, Bulgaria, which came under the control of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1944. Although his father was a "class enemy" of the party, Markov published his first novel at the age of 32 to stellar reviews, and he eventually became an acclaimed novelist and playwright. His life among the privileged elite in Bulgarian society -- including among
Sipho Agmatir Thwala was South Africa's Phoenix Strangler. Although he only operated for the relatively short period of a year from 1996 to 1997 he was to make it a terrifying year for KwaZulu-Natal province and rapidly became the most wanted man in the region.His MO was straightforward – he would lure women to sugar cane fields with the promise of work before raping and strangling them with the
According to popular wisdom, psychopaths are ...crazed and bloodthirsty serial killers. The reality is not ...all so simple. While many psychopaths do commit violent crimes, not all psychopaths are criminals and not all criminals are psychopathic. Psychopaths are found in many walks of life and are often successful in competitive professions. However they are also ruthless, manipulative and destru
The Iceman is an appropriate title for this documentary, because the words of former Mafia enforcer Richard Kuklinski will chill you to the bone. Speaking in the monotonous drone of a man who has numbed himself with remorseless brutality, Kuklinski was first interviewed in 1991, five years after receiving consecutive life sentences for multiple murders. Specializing in the tidy use of cyanide, Kuk
Barely out of their teens, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel, laughed their way through their trial for multiple murder. Did cult tactics make them kill?Some thirty years on, Charles Manson and his infamous ‘family’ still repel and fascinate us. We can't seem to forget the trio of hippie girls who laughed their way through their death penalty trial-and offered up bizarre di