Professor David Wilson, one of the UK’s leading criminologists, presents the second series of the crime talk show. In this episode, he turns his attention to family annihilation, the rare and shocking phenomenon where a parent kills their own children.

Together with investigative journalist Fiona Walker, David uncovers two family annihilations that occurred on the same day in Scotland in 2008. Fiona travels to Buckhaven in Fife, where Rab Thomson killed his son and daughter in their home, to uncover the events leading up to the murders, while David is in the Campsie Fells, where Ashok Kalyanjee took the lives of his two sons.

In the studio, Fiona and David use psychiatric reports and little-known details about Thomson and Kalyanjee to try to understand how these events occurred and what was going through the minds of these men.

David presents his theory on the four types of men that commit these crimes to Professor John Devaney, head of social work at the University of Edinburgh. John’s research has focused on child homicide and domestic abuse, and they discuss how both profession and time of year can play a part in family annihilations.

David’s last guest is Ann Marie Cocozza, who co-founded a charity that helps the families of murder victims after her nephew was murdered in 2004. Ann Marie tells David about the little-known trauma inflicted on families in the aftermath of a murder - the loss of home, of personal items, and the earth-shattering grief that comes from losing someone by murder. Show less