Join us for an academic exploration into the complex relationship between British culture and the serial killer figure.
This conference brings together academics to discuss how the serial killer figure has featured historically in this landscape, into a contemporary setting. There will be distinct, unique and nuanced perspectives shared from leading voices in the industry to offer ground-breaking research and theories into British culture and society.
The event will open with a keynote address from Professor David Wilson who is a leading expert in Criminology and serial killer culture. The rest of the day will consist of varied papers that address both well-known names within British serial killing history - such as Fred and Rose West - to lesser known names, alongside explorations of queer theory, representations of evil, and the ethical queries that relate to true crime.
Schedule
This schedule is subject to change.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 9:00am – 9:30am | Arrival and networking |
| 9:30am – 9:45am | Address from Charley Barnes to contextualise the symposium, the need for it, and its relevance to a wider true crime culture within academia, followed by an introduction for David Wilson, keynote speaker |
| 9:45am – 10:30am | Keynote speaker, David Wilson |
| 10:30am | Speaker 1 – Professor Darren Oldridge – “The Lust of the Savage”: Jack the Ripper, Murder News, and Victorian Popular Science Abstract: From his emergence in 1888, the figure of “Jack the Ripper” has absorbed myriad cultural assumptions and fears. These have included anxieties about the effects of mass media, criminality in “darkest London”, the dangers of medicine, and sexual pathology. This paper shows how Victorian coverage of the Whitechapel murders borrowed from contemporary ideas about evolution and disseminated them to a large audience. It argues that this process indicates the widespread acceptance of the new biology, but also exposed some of its darker implications: the threat of “degeneration” and the supposedly bestial qualities that lurked in humankind. |
| 10:50am | Speaker 2 – Daisy Steinhert – Repackaging Fred and Rose Abstract: In 2022, Netflix released Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, a documentary about the sexual abuse allegations against children’s television entertainer Jimmy Savile. In Spring 2025, a comparable version of the Fred and Rose West story was released, also on Netflix, titled Fred and Rose: A British Horror Story, which followed the same true crime documentary format. Tanya Horeck notes that true crime documentaries in a networked era have a strong emphasis on the “affective turn,” in which public meaning of the crimes on screen is derived from the subconscious “anxieties raise[d] regarding what is at stake in the public circulation of “private” family images (38)”.This paper builds on the same framework to examine the affective and ethical dimensions of repackaging British serial killers to market to an international audience. I aim to argue that, in the case of Fred and Rose: A British Horror Story, any public interest value of this repackaging is undercut by the multi-networked affective context in which it was released. I will draw on other examples of Fred and Rose West in the media, specifically 2011 BBC drama Appropriate Adult, and 2020 ITV documentary Rose West and Myra Hindley: Their Untold Story. Alongside Horeck’s writing about true crime documentaries, I will draw on the work of Sara Ahmed and Zizi Papacharissi to argue that Fred and Rose: A British Horror Story is best understood through an affective media framework. |
| 11:10am | Speaker 3 – Beverley Gilbert – The vilification of the women accomplice: The case of Maxine Carr and how the female partners of murderers have been represented in British news media? Abstract: The vilification of women who act as accomplices in cases of murder reflect deeply ingrained societal biases that overlook the complexities of their situations while reinforcing toxic stereotypes about female offending. Societal judgements can overshadow legal considerations and gender-specific victimisation narratives (Skott et al., 2018). Women who lie to protect their partners often do so due to fear or coercion, yet this is not considered by the courts, by the media nor society. In the case of Maxine Carr, an accomplice to the notorious Soham murders in 2002, this case exemplifies the phenomenon of vilification that women experience when involved in high profile crimes. Carr, convicted of perverting the course of justice for providing a false alibi to her boyfriend has been portrayed by the media and societal narratives as equally culpable for the atrocities he committed, despite her relatively minor role (Jones and Wardle, 2008). This vilification can be understood through the lens of media representation and societal expectations regarding female behaviour. Throughout the case, Carr was visually constructed in a way where her character faced moral degradation (Jones and Wardle, 2008; Barlow and Lynes, 2015).The vilification of Maxine Carr serves as a critical study for understanding patterns of how women associated with men who engage in extreme violence are represented and perceived within society. Women are considered as ‘doubly deviant’ as they breach expected criminal and gender requirements (Lloyd, 1995). These narratives have implications for how justice is administered and how fairly women who offend are treated. |
| 11:30am | Speaker 4 – Gillian Harrop – Dressed to kill: Does the concept of the British ‘gentleman’ help killers to love bomb their victims? Abstract: The proposed presentation explores how the cultural construction of the ‘British gentleman’ can operate as both a mask and a mechanism in enabling coercive control, particularly through the practice of love bombing. Traditionally, the British gentleman has been framed as a figure of restraint, politeness, and protective masculinity, however these very attributes, such as chivalry, attentiveness, and seemingly boundless devotion, can be weaponised by those who seek to dominate. Drawing from real life UK murder cases such as Ian Stewart and Stephen Port, the presentation will explore how murderers have utilised the classic figure of the ‘gentleman’ to gain trust, overwhelm victims with attention, and obscure early signs of abuse. This will further highlight how exaggerated demonstrations of care and protection can silence suspicion and accelerate entrapment of victims. Through the application of forensic psychology to this topic, the presentation will consider how the enduring allure of the British gentleman figure can obscure violence while also helping to facilitate it, and the implications for police investigations and violence prevention. |
| 11:50am | Speaker 5 – Diana Ortega Martin – From Murderer to System: Reframing Violence and Crime in The Long Shadow (2023) Abstract: Looking back to the 1970s to explore the roots and decay of the national identity crisis has emerged as a trend in contemporary audiovisual fiction. Media productions share a tendency to revisit the 1970s as a decade of a shifting order and profound transformations. In the words of Stuart Hall, the period: “Described a shift in the balance of social and political forces and in the forms of political authority and social regulation institutionalized in society through the state” (84). These ideas of the 1970s’ transformation and crisis have also permeated true crime fiction. The horrifying case of the Yorkshire Ripper has inspired countless works within the crime genre. While the adaptation of David Peace’s Red Riding novels focused on the authoritarian and corrupt practices of law enforcement in West Yorkshire Police, ITV’s The Long Shadow (2023) has reframed the crime genre’s usual tropes towards a richer and more sensitive approach to mass murder and crime. This proposal aims to delve into how the series reframes the genre, shifting the focal point from the murderer’s depiction to the systemic violence that the targeted victims and their surroundings suffered. Examining the relationship between state responsibility, violence, and identity will reveal how the series offers a more nuanced and critical approach to the period while vindicating crime fiction as a gendered and class space for empathy, healing, and restoration. |
| 12:10pm | Question and answer with Speakers 1-5 |
| 12:30pm | Break for lunch* |
| 1:30pm | Speaker 6 – Kerry Hadley-Price – A Perilous Time in a Perilous Landscape Abstract: Known as the ‘Swinging Sixties’, the 1960s was a time of economic, political and social change where the hippie culture, more liberal ideas about sex and drug-taking rode on the back of post-war euphoria. Perhaps the sense of comparative social safety following World War II resulted in children as young as five or six years old being encouraged to play outside, and walk to school unaccompanied. But the peace, free love and perceived social safety were blighted by an uprise in a new kind of crime carried out by serial killers: child murder. Raymond Leslie Morris, Cannock Chase Murderer (1965-67), is now considered one of Britain’s most notorious child killers. Morris, from Walsall, was convicted of the rape and murder of seven-year-old Christine Darby but remains the chief suspect in the killings of Margaret Reynolds (6) and Diana Tift (5). All three children were taken from urban areas of the Black Country, and their bodies were buried on Cannock Chase, designated an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ (AONB) in 1958. Caroline Fraser’s Murderland: Crime & Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers (2025) focuses on specific industrial environmental conditions that, she argues, resulted in an upsurge of serial killing in the Pacific Northwest of USA in the 1970s. This paper will examine a similar connection between environment and criminality, using the media representation of Morris’ case focusing on the link between features of the Black Country region and features of ‘serial killers’, taking into account the industrial and historical timeframe. |
| 1:50pm | Speaker 7 – Eleanor May Thorpe – Queer Killers, Queer Victims, and The Fictionalised Narrative: Four Lives (2022) & Des (2020) Abstract: This paper considers the interplay between the British serial killer true crime narrative and cultural interaction with queer victims and queer killers, noting theorists such as Dyer (2015), Schmid (2005), Earnshaw (2017) and MacDonald (2013). In dramatizing real events, biopics and docudrama often celebrate historical figures, whereas the serial killer true crime narrative navigates a fine line between celebration and disgust. Docudrama narratives typically engage with broader issues such as systemic prejudice or threat, before resolving in a way that reinforces the cultural significance of the represented figures and events. To entertain whilst conveying intended messages, these narratives are frequently fictionalised to guide audiences in reading the reflected events within a short runtime. In the serial killer narrative, whilst it is the infamy of the killer that influences the production of the media, their actions are justly demonised. In these narratives it is not just the killer that is positioned as a threat to victims but the system that fails them. This paper will consider BBC’s Four Lives (2022), detailing the story of ‘The Grindr Killer’ and his victims, and ITV’s Des (2020), detailing the story of Denis Nilsen and his victims; this paper considers how the fictionalisation of British serial killer true crime narratives impacts reading and messaging, with particular focus on highlighting queer marginalisation and the cultural view of the queer killers and victims. |
| 2:10pm | Speaker 8 – Jonny Smith – Finding the Evil Within: Regionalising the British Serial Killer & the Limits of Television Realism Abstract: While American screen culture has long embraced cinematic dramatisations of real-life serial killers, British representations have largely remained within television. ITV’s true-crime dramas This is Personal (2000), Shipman: Doctor Death (2002), See No Evil (2006), and Appropriate Adult (2011) construct Britishness through the codes of regional realism and a restrained televisual aesthetic. These dramas avoid sensationalism, aligning viewers with victims and investigators, and, as Earnshaw (2017) notes, navigate cultural taboos through omission and critical distance. Building on Phillips’ (2017) observation that the genre operates in a ‘productive lacuna’ between ‘titillation and disgust’, this paper argues that such strategies act as a form of cultural hygiene, expelling the killer from the symbolic national body as an aberration. By contrast, Gordon Burn’s docu-fictions Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son (1984) and Happy Like Murderers (1998) collapse this boundary. Through granular detail and immersive narration, Burn re-absorbs what television seeks to exclude, embedding Sutcliffe and the Wests within the textures of British life and implicating class, regionality, and society-at-large in the production of violence. Comparing these representational logics, the paper examines how each medium grapples with the role of British modernity in the creation of the monstrous ‘other’. It contends that the contrast between television’s moral reassurance and Burn’s visceral, unsettling intimacy exposes the limitations of screen realism and the capacity of literature to expose the unspeakable cultural undercurrents that televisual realism leaves untouched. |
| 2:30pm | Speaker 9 – Clare Smith – Curating Crime – The Ethics and Challenges of Displaying Objects and Archive Relating to Serial Killers Abstract: In 2025 the Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum turned 150. To mark this anniversary I curated a public exhibition from the Crime Museum’s collection. This included objects connected to John Christie, George Joseph Smith (The Brides in the Bath killer), Jack the Ripper and Gordon Cummins (The Blackout Ripper).The Crime Museum is not open to the public but the Police Museum is so this would be the first time some of these objects had been seen by the public. In this paper I will consider the ethics of displaying material relating to serial killers, if it should be done and how it can be done. Comparisons will be made with commercial True Crime Museums and exhibitions. The public appetite for True Crime has seen a marked change in visitor expectations and knowledge of British Serial Killers. Visitor knowledge is very much around Netflix and American crime history so this expectation needs to be considered and understood. With boundaries shifting via Television and podcasts of what is acceptable to show the ethics of display and issues around vicarious trauma become ever more important. I will also consider the collective unconscious around Serial Killers, who remains in public memory such as Jack the Ripper and who fades away such as the Blackout Ripper. This is often related to television and film presentation. I will try to assess who is driving the narrative of content for these killers – the content curators or the audience. |
| 2:50pm | Question and answer with Speakers 6-9 |
| 3:30pm | Event close, followed by a final hour of networking opportunities |
| 4:30pm | End |
*lunch will not be included in the £10 ticket fee