Though always tragic, murder cases generally have fairly predictable scenarios. Generally speaking, murderers are driven by a motive – either for profit, to exact some kind of revenge or to silence a witness to mask a previous crime. However, there’s one type of offender that really tests the criminalists resolve – the serial offender.

When a serial killer, rapist or saboteur is picking off victims at random, investigators have nothing to predict what the offender might do next. One of history’s most gruesome killers was Jack the Ripper, who terrorised the East End of London in 1888. His apparently motiveless slaying of prostitutes began and ended entirely without warning. The fact that the crimes went completely unpunished merely adds to the myth.

Forensic science has come a long way since then. Just over a century later, in 1989, handsome, charming charity working graduate Ted Bundy was executed in Florida. He murdered 15 young women in a spree of rape and violence that lasted from 1974 to 1978. In that time he deceived the police and escaped from prison twice, always returning to his volatile murderous ways. 

He was finally convicted when the prosecution successfully matched his dental records with bite marks on one of his victims.