Original subtitles

[gentle piano music]

- I was on duty that day

when our detective chief inspector called me

to accompany him to a house.

At that moment, I didn't know why.

It was about a five-minute drive

from the police station to his bedsit room.

[gentle piano music]

- The walls were covered in pictures of Hitler,

Nazis, and swastikas.

We found poisons in there.

And he had jars with wasps and bees and substances,

which were, you know, he'd caught in a macabre situation.

♪ There's something sweet about death ♪

- Under the bed, some foolscap paper, which, on reading it,

they soon realised that it was a diary of events.

[gentle piano music]

- [VO] November 4th.

"F" was ill over the weekend suffering from vomiting,

abdominal pains, diarrhoea, et cetera.

The doctor has said that the illness is due to a virus,

and that there is quite a lot going around.

Is somebody setting up in competition to me?

♪ Nobody wants

♪ To talk about it

- [VO] November 10th.

"F" must have a phenomenal tolerance to the compound,

for he is still obstinately alive.

If he survives the third week, he will live.

This would be inconvenient.

♪ Bow your head and show respect ♪

♪ You know it's a gift, but it must be said ♪

- [VO] November 16th.

"F" is now seriously ill.

It is likely that he will die within a few days.

It will be a merciful release for him.

It is better that he should die.

From my point of view, his death will be a relief.

It will remove one casualty

from what is becoming a crowded field of battle.

[gentle piano music]

- When the police got hold of Graham's diary,

there must have been a light bulb moment

when they were reading through this thing

and realised that "F" is Fred Biggs.

Fred Biggs is dead.

They must have thought, "We've got him.

Graham Young is a murderer."

- [VO] If I were to be detected,

I should have to follow the maxim,

those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

♪ There's something sweet about death ♪

[gentle piano music]

- [VO] Dear sir,

for some considerable time prior to my admittance here,

I was an ardent student of both pharmacology and toxicology.

[delicate music]

However, due to the stresses and strains placed on me

by my almost incessant studying of these subjects,

I became the victim of a nervous breakdown,

which necessitated my hospitalisation here.

Now, however, that my discharge is

in the foreseeable future,

I would be greatly obliged if you would inform me

of certain obstacles to what was

to have been my intended career,

as the offence with which I was initially charged

was involving the misuse of certain highly toxic drugs.

Am I liable to be refused university entrance

in pharmacology?

Hoping to hear from you soon.

I remain yours faithfully,

Graham Frederick Young.

[gentle music]

- John Hadlands was a very interesting organisation.

It was essentially a family company, originally.

We were about 70 people when I first arrived.

It really specialised on producing

and selling equipment for the photo analysis

of mainly scientific and technical film work.

A role opportunity had come up for the trainee storeman.

It was proposed that we might be interested in him

because he was intelligent,

and that he just needed an opportunity.

He'd come from a rehabilitation and training centre.

The reasoning as we understood it was

that he'd had some sort of mental problems in the past,

and that he needed a chance.

- [Narrator] The day before Young arrived

for an interview with the firm,

the training centre wrote to Hadlands

about the potential new employee.

- The placing report on Graham Young said this:

This man has an above-average intelligence.

He is very conscientious in his work,

able to work to instructions given to him,

as well as on his own initiative.

- He was interviewed by Mr. Foster, I believe.

On his application form, there was a nine-year gap.

He put this down to psychological problems,

having lost his mother at a young age.

- [VO] My mother died in very tragic circumstances

whilst I was in my late teens.

This caused me to have a mental breakdown,

and I've been in hospital ever since.

- He didn't expand on his psychological state.

Mr. Foster still wasn't too happy,

so he asked for the training centre at Slough

to confirm what he had said.

And they did,

and they sent him a letter basically giving him

a clear bill of health.

- This man has suffered a deepgoing personality disorder,

which necessitated his hospitalisation

throughout the whole of his adolescence.

He has, however, made an extremely full recovery,

and is now entirely fit for discharge.

- [VO] Dear Mr. Foster, I'm pleased to accept your offer

and shall therefore report for work on Monday,

May the 10th, at 8:30 AM.

May I take the opportunity to express my gratitude to you

for offering me this position?

I shall endeavour to justify your faith in me

by performing my duties in an efficient

and competent manner.

Until Monday week, I am yours faithfully,

Graham Young.

- Graham joined in May 1971.

He came in as a trainee storeman,

and that was when I first came across him.

His function would've been to assist in the finding of parts

for various items in the stores.

He would've also been involved in the packing

and dispatch of equipment once it was finished.

He was always tidy and well-dressed for most of the time

and kept himself to himself,

but he came across as being a bit of an oddball.

I knew that there were occasions

when if you got him on particular subjects,

he could be very verbal, and in doing that,

he could articulate himself very well indeed.

[Hitler speaking in German]

- He brought in books on Hitler

and would extol the virtues of Hitler

in no uncertain terms if you got him on the subject.

This obviously raised considerable eyebrows

because there were one or two people

who'd got very distinguished military service

and had a very different view of that.

[sombre piano music]

- It was a very nice,

family-orientated factory to work, from all accounts.

All the employees were given a midday meal,

and they had tea at 11 o'clock in the morning

and three o'clock in the afternoon,

brought around by a tea lady, Mrs. Bartlett.

[tense music]

- There was an outbreak of illness,

and nobody thought anything of it.

Other than that it was probably some sort of flu thing.

I happened to be in the main administration building one day

and looked out, and saw somebody come out

through the storeroom doors very, very fast

and then be very violently ill on the grass outside.

It was traumatic, to say the least.

Nobody was clear what it was

other than that it seemed to be spreading.

It started to be a cause for concern and puzzlement too.

[tense music]

- Some of them suffered hallucinations,

palpitations, stomach sickness.

Their hair started to fall out.

The rash of illnesses that occurred there prompted a lot

of the employees to believe that the place was jinxed,

and that something horrendous was going on.

But they didn't quite know what.

And many of them actually started to hand

in their resignations as a result of it.

- A lot of people were complaining of violent headaches,

sickness, a lot of pain, tummy pains.

There was a suggestion that it was a bug in the water,

and hence they named it the Bovington bug.

[synth music]

- There was also a suspicion that perhaps it was something

to do with some leftover chemicals from the war.

Maybe even heavy metal poisoning.

But that seems to have been discounted

in favour of the theory that it was a bug, a virus.

But it turned out the virus was Graham Young.

[synth Music Continues]

- Bob Egle was the first one who became so serious,

he was put into hospital.

That was a worry, obviously.

- He was working at the time as a storeman.

He'd been married to his wife for many, many years.

He was coming up to his retirement.

- Bob was a lovely man.

He'd had a very strong military background.

He was a Dunkirk hero.

He was quiet, unassuming,

very pleasant, and very helpful.

[gentle piano music]

When Bob died, there was a terrible feeling of sadness.

Nobody knew the real reasons why.

What we could go on was the basis that it was believed

that it was some sort of virus known as the Bovington bug.

- Young volunteered to represent the workforce

at the cremation in company of Mr. Foster.

- Graham expressed disquiet.

He said it was a pity that Bob Egle, a Dunkirk veteran,

who'd been through the horrors of war,

should die in the way he did.

- There were other people who were being ill

for one reason or another,

and there was very severe pain suffered

by one or two of them.

And it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't think,

"I'd be better off dead."

[gentle piano music]

- Fred Biggs was taken ill soon afterwards,

and he also suffered dreadful symptoms.

- Bob Egle died in the summer of 1971,

and then Fred Biggs died in November.

And now members of the Hadlands workforce

were getting very fearful.

- The two men who died,

they were said to be dying from the fingertips

and the toes upwards.

They went very numb in their fingers and toes and legs,

had dreadful cramps and pains in their head.

♪ There's something sweet about death ♪

[sombre piano music]

- We were called into a meeting.

It was reiterated that Fred had died.

- The doctor who worked with the company told them

that they were working through the options,

what could be causing the series of illnesses

and now two deaths.

And at that point, Graham speaks up

and starts remonstrating with him

and asking a lot of questions.

What are the similarities between the deaths

of these two individuals?

Could the men who've been very ill be suffering

from thallium poisoning?

- The meeting concluded,

and the rest of us went off for the weekend.

In the meantime, the doctor had obviously gone

and talked to the management,

and he said, "Who is this man?"

They explained that he was a trainee storeman.

The doctor was somewhat surprised.

Trainee storeman and he's talking those sort of terms?

- The company doctor and John Hadland, the company director,

have a conversation and begin to realise

that they need to know more about Graham.

Who is he? And where does he come from?

So they call him into the office, and they ask him.

And they're so demanding

that eventually he drops a bombshell.

- [VO] Broadmoor. I was in Broadmoor.

[ominous music]

- In November 1971,

and it was probably just going five o'clock

when Detective Constable John Preston took a phone call.

He put his hand over the phone and said,

"I've got a man here from John Hadlands in Bovington."

That's what started the whole inquiry off.

That evening, Detective Chief Inspector John Kirkpatrick

and Detective Sergeant Robert Livingston met

with Mr. Hadland and Mr. Foster

at Hemel Hempstead Police Station.

And having heard their story of the two deaths

and all the illnesses in between,

it was quite obviously this was a murder case.

[gentle piano music]

- On the Monday, I turned up for work a little bit late.

I was pulled in, and there were another three or four people

in the room, and it was explained to us

that somebody had been arrested.

That's one of those moments

when people's faces just go white.

The realisation that actually this is a deliberate thing

that's been going on, not something that's just a virus.

We weren't told who it was.

Obviously, went out, talked to a few people. Who's missing?

It was fairly quickly concluded that it was Graham Young.

[sombre music]

♪ All the suffering will all boil down ♪

- Graham was born and grew up in Neasden,

which is a fairly nondescript London suburb.

♪ All the suffering will burn this time ♪

[gentle music]

- Well, his mother died when he was very young,

and I think that probably had an impact

on him psychologically.

[gentle music]

- Graham's mother died when he was very young,

and I think this has had a massive impact on his life.

I mean, anyone who loses a mother at a very young age

is going to suffer from trauma that they're gonna carry

with them throughout the rest of their life.

[gentle music]

- When we look at Graham Young's actual childhood,

to me, it seems quite fragmented,

and I think he was quite displaced.

Graham went off to live with his aunt and uncle,

whereas his sister went off to live with their grandmother.

[gentle music]

- It's understandable that Graham at that time he was living

with his aunt felt quite pushed out

from that core family unit.

He felt like he was an outsider from the beginning.

[gentle music]

- This could have psychologically scarred him

because he might have had this core belief

that he wasn't wanted.

And sometimes, children, when they're that young,

they can actually blame themselves.

We know that Graham would wet the bed until the age of 10.

Graham also used to rock himself to sleep

to the point that he made so much noise

that the neighbours even complained.

[gentle music]

- Fred, the father, married again, a woman called Molly,

so, Young now had a stepmother.

As the years went on, it was quite apparent

that the two didn't get on that well.

- Initially, his relationship

with his stepmother was apparently very good.

But it quickly became, once he got a little bit older,

also a rather fraught relationship.

And he complained to friends

that she treated him very badly,

destroyed his belongings without good reason,

locked him out of the house to prevent him from snacking

whilst his father was out at work.

- He was noticeably a very inward-looking character.

He was an introvert.

He was capable of being humorous,

but his general demeanour at school was a person

who was sullen, morose, very much in his own world.

[ominous music]

- It was at secondary school

that I became friendly with Graham Young.

We had a little bunch of friends.

We used to stand smoking on the corner at school.

And we all gelled as we were all a bit like that.

A bit different to the other kids.

[tense music]

He started wearing rather peculiar clothes.

He used to start coming in in a black overcoat.

That progressed to black leather gloves and then boots.

It became apparent that it was actually Hitler

that he was obsessed with.

- He idolised Adolf Hitler.

He was very much into the Nazi cult.

When he was old enough,

he actually wore a Hitler-style moustache.

- He used to carry around in his pockets

in his overcoat "Mein Kampf,"

which was obviously rather a sinister thing.

But I didn't know what it was at time.

- Graham's selection of reading material really

is an insight into his soul.

He, at a very young age, would read biographies

of people like Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell,

Joseph Stalin, and, of course, Adolf Hitler.

It really feels like Graham was more attracted

towards tyrants and despots.

- He was always in Neasden Library as a youth,

studying or reading about various poisoners.

- All boys have their heroes.

Graham Young's hero was Dr. Crippen,

who was a notorious poisoner of the early 20th century.

But he was also interested in William Palmer,

who was a noted poisoner from the Victorian era.

For Graham, Palmer and Crippen were idols, icons.

[ominous music]

Graham's stepmother, Molly, showed concern

about his reading habits when he was very young.

But when she discussed it with a librarian,

she sort of reassured her by saying that it wasn't unusual

for children to show interest in that kind of subject.

- He was developing enough knowledge

about the ways that these poisons work

and the appropriate dosages that he was in a position

to start putting his plans into action

and actually using the chemicals.

- [Narrator] There are many branches of science,

and for a young man or woman,

they offer opportunities undreamed of, even 50 years ago.

- His father, he bought him a chemistry set.

With this tool, this chemistry set,

he started to experiment.

- I think he was bordering on genius with his abilities.

I had a common interest with him,

because I was not good at anything much apart from science.

We did do experiments, you know, with my chemistry sets.

His interests were to do with heavy metals.

One of them I can remember was thallium.

- He was known as the mad professor

because he was always talking about scientific matters.

His fellow pupils knew him as an odd ball.

- We'd go out in the local area walking around.

We would knock on people's doors.

If they were nice to us, then nothing would happen.

If they were nasty and said sort of, you know,

"What do you want, little boy? Go away."

we'd go back there later.

He used to go in the garden,

and a lot of these houses had sunflowers.

He used to inject the stems of the sunflowers

with a hypodermic syringe.

You could see them droop.

[desolate music]

- He started experimenting on the family cat

and also frogs and other creatures.

He moved on to human beings after that.

- Graham was a little bit of a loner at school,

but he did have a few school friends,

including a boy called Christopher John Williams.

In early 1961,

he starts his experiments with antimony on Chris.

And I would say that that's because he's accessible.

So he can poison Chris by doctoring his food at school.

[ominous music]

- Pure antimony by itself is a silvery white metal

that you can find in nature mixed with other metals,

but it's present in other compounds

like antimony potassium tartrate,

which is also known as tartar emetic.

A dose of that would've caused vomiting,

tummy aches, stomach cramps, diarrhoea.

With continuous exposure,

the symptoms can get worse and more deadly,

and it can even lead to coma and death.

So it really depends on how long the exposure is

and how much.

- [VO] I gave him two or three grains at school.

I can't remember how I caused him to take it.

I think it was probably on a cream biscuit or a cake.

He was sick after taking it.

I gave him a second dose in May in the same way,

and in the following month I gave him another two doses,

always two or three grains and on food at school.

- A grain is an old-style pharmaceutical measurement,

which is equivalent to about 65 milligrammes.

- Very few people offend using such a method,

but one of the things we know about people who poison

is that they poison those close to them.

[gentle music]

First of all, they like to watch the effects

and what's gonna happen once they've administered

that poison.

And that's part of the pleasure,

is to actually see how the poison

that they have administered

is causing pain to the particular victim.

So it's very obvious that he picked victims close to him

so he could stay within their proximity

as they were suffering.

- Anybody that was close to Graham,

anybody that he had a reason to be around,

was a potential target for his poisoning.

- He used to bring in a bag of fairy cakes.

He would offer these things around,

and most of the friends used to snap them up and eat them.

One day I was particularly hungry.

I said to him, "Graham, can I have one of your cakes?"

I said, "I'm starving."

In a sinister voice, he said, "Not for you."

[gentle music]

He was obviously dishing out poison.

- Once Chris starts becoming so ill

that he has to take time off school,

it becomes harder for Graham to do what he really wants

to do, which is to continue poisoning,

but from a position where he can observe the effects

on the victim.

[sombre music]

- That's when his career really got underway,

and then he turned his attention to his own family.

♪ I'm not afraid, it's just begun ♪

[sombre music]

- [VO] I started experimenting at home,

putting sometimes one, sometimes three grains

on prepared foods, which my mother, father, and sister ate.

I must have eaten some of this poisoned food occasionally

because I became sick as well.

I know after eating these prepared foods,

my family were all sick.

My mother went to the doctor about her sickness.

- Graham poisoned his sister's drink,

and she sensed there was a bitterness

in the taste of the drink and didn't drink at all, in fact.

And then on the way to work,

she started suffering hallucinations on the bus.

As a result of that, she was taken to hospital.

[tense music]

- Graham poisoned his sister with Belladonna,

a flower also called nightshade.

It has a long history of being used

as a medicine in low doses,

as a poison in higher doses,

and it was used in the Renaissance

to dilate the pupils of the ladies.

That was considered very beautiful.

And it has very bad side effects,

and the most notorious one is hallucinations and delirium.

- Graham was really very enterprising

when it came to obtaining poisons.

He seems to have begun by going around various chemist shops

in the neighbourhood and rummaging through their bins,

and taking whatever bottles and boxes of poisons

and potions that he could find, including ether.

Then he began using his pocket money

and going in and legitimately buying chemicals and poisons.

He used fake names, including M.E. Evans and also Hawley,

which is clearly a reference to Dr. Crippen.

And the interesting thing is he went to a local chemist,

Edgar Davis, and they didn't realise

that he was still a child.

They thought he was an appropriate age, at least 17,

to be able to buy poisons.

And because he had so much chemical knowledge,

they assumed he was a student

and therefore there to purchase poisons legitimately.

[ominous music]

- He was somebody that was clearly fascinated

with chemistry and poisoning,

and people around him were becoming ill.

But then on the other hand, nobody would suspect somebody,

especially a boy that young,

to actively be trying to hurt and poison people around him.

- Poison as your choice of weapon is invisible.

You can't see it. He's not carrying around a knife.

He's not carrying around a gun.

And so he can be quite clever,

quite cute about how and when he administers his poison.

And I think it enabled him the freedom

to poison people at certain times,

stop, allow things to settle down,

and then start again with another victim.

His stepmother bore the brunt,

because she, of course, replaced his mother in the home.

- Graham was regularly dosing Molly with tartar emetic,

which is antimony,

and that is going to cause diarrhoea, vomiting.

But with the long-term use,

it led her to lose a great deal of weight,

about four stone in a few months' time,

and to become very weak and to start losing her hair.

So much so that she had to stop work.

And at that point,

she was at home far more frequently with Graham,

and he started to look after her as a kind of carer.

He would go to the chemist shop to get her medications.

He would bring cups of tea to her.

But of course, all the time,

he was dosing her to watch the effects.

And eventually, she began to become extremely weak.

- With those who poison,

they often take a really keen interest

in what's happening to the victim.

They often start to play nurse,

and they become this kind of caring personality.

It's all part of this control, getting pleasure, really,

from watching someone in such pain.

- [VO] Since the beginning of this year,

I have on occasions put antimony tartrate solution

and powder on foods at home,

which both my mother and father have taken.

They have become ill as the result of it.

My mother lost weight all the time through it,

and I stopped giving it to her about February of this year.

[ominous music]

- If you think about if you go to a GP or a hospital

with vomiting and diarrhoea,

the first assumption is not gonna be,

"Oh, you were poisoned with antimony."

You're gonna think you have a stomach flu, food poisoning.

So unless you knew specifically what you were looking for,

you can be confused by other diseases and other problems.

[ominous music]

- Not only was Graham readily dosing Molly,

but she was also suffering from the aftereffects

of a rather serious bus accident,

where she had been thrown out of her seat

so that her head hit the ceiling of the bus,

causing neck problems.

So she suffered with all of that for months,

until, finally, Graham seems to have decided

to try a different poison on her.

[dramatic music]

- Thallium is one of those famous poisons

that is talked about in literature,

and it was used by many other famous poisoners,

because it is the perfect poison.

They call it the poisoner's poison

'cause it's flavourless, colourless.

Very small amount will have a very serious effect,

and the symptoms are not specific enough

that you would not think about poisoning if you saw them.

- Graham realised that he had the power of life

and death over people.

He poisoned Chris Williams for a period of weeks

until he had to stop,

but he had that boy's health in his hands.

He poisoned Molly for months

and constantly had her health and wellbeing in his hands.

And then at Easter,

he made the decision that he would kill her.

He dosed her with the enormous dose

of 20 grains of thallium.

So if you do the maths,

20 grains of thallium is just over a gramme,

which in modern terms is going to be quite a large quantity

that you could easily see if you had it in a spoon.

But he managed to hide it in her food,

and that was a killing dose.

- Dying from thallium poisoning would've been

a very painful death.

The way that the nerves get attacked progressively

in your body.

I've seen it described as burning, pain, and needles.

It seems quite horrifying,

and not just painful, but also slow.

So that would've taken a while to cause the effects

that would finally be fatal.

- When Molly died in April 1962,

Graham's reaction was one of deep sorrow.

He cried a lot.

He stuck very close to his father for the whole week.

He went into Molly's bedroom

and played her music boxes, crying.

When his father went to make the funeral arrangements,

Graham went with him.

But interestingly, it was Graham who suggested

that Molly's body ought to be cremated.

And that is indeed what happened.

She was cremated,

and her ashes were scattered at Golders Green.

And of course, that was perfect for Graham

because it meant that there could be no traces left

of his crime.

♪ Nobody wants

♪ To talk about it

- The cause of death was attributed

to the accident she had been involved in

some time earlier with a bus.

[sombre music]

- Graham actually went to collect Molly's death certificate,

and I do wonder whether, in his own dark mind,

this was almost like some sort of award or achievement

or like a symbol for the end of his experiment.

♪ There's something sweet about death ♪

- [Narrator] Each new chemical experiment is a further step

in learning to apply chemistry to practical problems.

- Molly's death didn't deter Graham.

If anything, it seems to have emboldened him

to want to carry on with his macabre experiments.

- Graham's father went into hospital

soon after Molly's funeral,

and he was desperately ill,

suffering terrible sickness, as I recall,

and various other horrendous symptoms of poisoning.

That's the point at which he became very suspicious

about Graham and stopped him visiting him in hospital.

[sombre music]

- By May 1962, Graham's science teacher was beginning

to realise that the illnesses amongst Graham's friends,

the recent death in Graham's family,

the fact that his father had been committed

to hospital suffering from gastrointestinal problems,

all of this was rather suspicious.

So one day after school,

he looked inside Graham's desk and discovered poisons,

and that led him to be deeply suspicious.

So at that point he goes to the headmaster,

and between them they decide that they need

to contact the authorities.

So the very next day, a child guidance counsellor,

a psychologist who was working with the police,

had an interview with Graham.

They told him it was a careers guidance interview.

And during the course of this discussion,

the psychologist realised that Graham's interest

in poisons was such

that it was just a little bit suspicious,

and they thought that there's a link here between this boy,

his interest in poisons and poisoning,

the death of his stepmother, the illness of his father.

That very day, a police detective went to the house

to talk to Graham.

The detective arrested Graham

on the suspicion of having poisoned his sister.

And this was very, very shocking.

A child of this age to be actually under arrest

by the police brought in for formal questioning

is very unusual.

- He openly admits that he's poisoned a friend,

his own sister, and his own father.

It feels like he's even talking about his actions

with a hint of pride.

- [VO] I can't think of anyone else

that I've given poison to.

And I know that the doses I was giving were not fatal,

but I knew I was doing wrong.

It grew on me like a drug habit

except that it wasn't me who was taking the drug.

I realised how stupid I've been with these poisons.

I knew this all along, but I couldn't stop.

- For him, watching poisons act

on other human beings was like a drug.

It was an obsession,

something that he really couldn't do without.

It gave him a sense of power and control,

which he actually admitted to,

that it was the power that he was really obsessed with.

- [Narrator] When the drug wears off,

he wants that pleasant feeling again.

But he finds he has to keep increasing the dose.

The more he uses,

the more he needs to get that same feeling of wellbeing.

- During the course of the police interview,

Graham finally revealed

that he had a large collection of poisons.

He had his own chemistry set,

which was a gift from his father, in his room.

He had some other of the poisons

that he'd managed to procure and buy,

but he also revealed to detectives

that he had quite a large stash of poisons kept

in a hut near a local reservoir.

And not only that,

he kept other stashes of poisons in a hedge.

So he had at least three different locations

where he kept his large collection of poisons.

And of course, we ought not to forget that this is a boy

of only 14 years of age.

He's like an evil genius.

He's actually thinking ahead, thinking,

"Well, what if somebody finds my stash here?

Well, if I keep it here,

that one perhaps will never be found."

He's very clever. He thinks ahead.

He's always really got an eye on what he wants,

which is to have poisons,

to use poisons to be able to observe their effects,

and not be suspected.

- [Narrator] Orderly storage is very important.

Some products may deteriorate. Others are highly flammable.

All must be catalogued efficiently and handled with care.

- Graham was remanded in custody

to a young offenders institution at Ashford in Middlesex.

And of course, while he was there,

he was interviewed by one of the prison medical officers,

who later recalled that Graham said

he was missing his antimony.

He was missing the sense of power that it gave him.

And that clearly indicates

that Graham was sort of suffering from withdrawal

at that point, the sense of power and control.

It's like he had an addiction.

His addiction was to poisoning other people.

And when he was remanded in custody

and unable to feed that addiction,

he started to feel a bit edgy.

It really started to affect him in a negative way.

- We know that in the weeks leading up to his trial,

Graham attempted suicide on two occasions:

once by poisoning himself,

and once by attempting to hang himself using his own tie.

Generally speaking, hanging tends to be quite final,

and is a very severe and effective method

of suicide compared to, for example, taking an overdose.

Graham doesn't strike me as an attention seeker in general.

Throughout most of his life, in fact, he was the opposite.

He was much of a loner.

He was quite withdrawn, he was quite isolated.

The exception being he did actually take pride

in his poisoning activities.

- Graham was initially charged

with having administered a noxious thing

with intent to cause grievous bodily harm

to his sister Win.

And then over a week later,

two additional charges of administering a noxious thing

with intent to cause grievous bodily harm were laid

against him with respect to his father

and his school friend, Chris Williams.

The police and members of Graham's family had suspicions

about the nature of Molly's death,

but of course, there was no evidence.

Her body had been cremated.

So his plan had worked. He'd gotten away with murder.

♪ I keep my hopes up

♪ And I'm walking the streets over bodies ♪

- Graham actually asked his sister

to bring in the newspaper articles, et cetera,

related to his trial.

So to me, this show some elements of narcissism.

He's obviously quite proud of his own work.

♪ This is the moment

♪ It's the moment we take from the main line ♪

- He was quite excited by his infamy,

by his newfound notoriety.

He clearly revelled in the fact

that he was known to members of the public now,

and that the news media were interested

in what he was doing.

He found status.

A status that he maybe didn't have

as a child helped him feel rooted,

that he was important at something.

♪ I keep my hopes up

♪ And I'm turning the stone into stories ♪

- After Central criminal court

for those offences as a 14-year-old,

he was sentenced under the mental health section 59

to Broadmoor Mental Asylum,

not to be released for 15 years.

- Broadmoor in the 1960s was a lunatic asylum.

When we look at the history of Broadmoor,

we can see the most prolific, criminally insane offenders

in England and Wales being sent there,

being housed under its roof.

Graham Young grew up on the fringes of his family.

Lots of people in prison find themselves feeling quite

at home in prison

because they develop very important relationships.

And I think Graham felt quite content at times

in being in Broadmoor.

- Graham was apparently the youngest person

who'd been sent to Broadmoor since 1885,

and I think his situation was extremely unique.

The vast majority of people

who would be in high-secure hospitals like Broadmoor

would've committed physical violence.

And that's simply because when we look at mental illnesses,

you know, intense paranoia or hearing voices,

the sufferer is much more likely to lash out

with violence rather than do something

that's calm and calculated such as poisoning.

- [Narrator] In order to know exactly

which substances we have,

we can analyse them and find out the elements they contain.

- Graham was assessed by three different psychiatrists

within weeks of his admission to Broadmoor.

Two of them felt quite certain that he was suffering

from some form of psychopathic disorder.

The other, the third,

thought that it was some form of incipient schizophrenia.

The fact that the three of them did not agree

on the diagnosis suggests

that Graham was a very, very complex case,

and that the way forward

with him might never have been entirely clear.

- When he was sent to Broadmoor,

he was visited by his aunt and his sister.

He admitted to them

that he had poisoned his stepmother.

- [VO] I gave Molly 20 grains

of thallium the night before she died.

I put it on a trifle.

I knew she would die the next day

because I gave her so much.

And I gave Daddy antimony.

They're completely different poisons.

One stops the kidneys from working, that's antimony,

the other disintegrates the bones.

That's why they didn't find out.

- All we know about Molly's death

is what Graham has chosen to share with us,

because there was no evidence other

than what he told his family.

- The officers and the inmates became paranoid

about Graham's presence in the institution.

And they were particularly concerned

when he was out in the grounds at Broadmoor

because at that time,

there were many, many laurel bushes.

- Laurel is a very common decorative plant that contains,

in the leaves and in the seeds, cyanide.

So with access to the right equipment,

it could have been very easily distilled

into what is called laurel water.

- In August 1962, a fellow patient was found to have died

from the effects of cyanide.

But there was no evidence

that Young had actually distilled this poison,

and the final decision was

that this patient had died from suicide.

But with hindsight, I think we have to have a little bit

of suspicion that Graham may have had something

to do with this.

- The officer inside Broadmoor,

he disclosed that people had become ill

since Graham was admitted.

And it was later discovered

that he had actually poisoned the tea

in the tea urn in fact,

and that people had gone down sick as a result of it.

And there was also a suggestion

that he poisoned one of his fellow inmates

because he'd been snoring a lot and keeping Graham awake.

- [VO] The sight and sound of the pain it gave them,

you might say it was a sexual pleasure.

- For him, it was all about power.

You know, he actually was quite turned on in some ways

by having that level of control

over someone's life and potential death.

And for him, it was about how far he could push it.

- [VO] Dear Chris, I hope that you are keeping well.

Just a few lines to let you know how I'm getting on.

It's not too bad a place here.

The food is pretty good,

and there are things to occupy me some of the time.

There is television to watch at night

and the wireless to listen to during the day.

There's also billiards and snooker, et cetera.

How are things with you?

I get occasional reports about you from my spies in Neasden.

[tense music]

- When he was in Broadmoor,

Graham wrote to his friend Chris Williams,

whom he'd been poisoning not very long earlier,

and behaved as though there was really no problem.

It sort of gives us a few insights into Graham's mind,

really into the mind of a psychopath.

Because again, it seems like he's trying to exert control,

but from a distance,

keeping Chris close by writing to him

and not ever really acknowledging

that he's caused this boy harm.

- There's no indication of an apology

or any kind of remorse.

And I think that shows us Graham's mind state.

So not only was he so indifferent

and did he lack any kind of regret in his actions,

but also, I think he struggled

to understand what is socially acceptable.

I think he had very poor social skills.

- Graham first attempted to get parole in 1965,

but the members of his family told the psychiatrist

that they would not accept

to have him come home to live with them.

And Graham at the same time had not been behaving in a way

that led the psychiatrists to believe

that he was ready for release.

But the thing about psychopathy is that,

and Graham had already shown this,

psychopaths tend to be very clever,

and they're also able to learn

from their environment and to take cues.

So he began to watch the other patients,

and just to learn and figure out,

what do I need to do in order to be released?

And when he started to behave in a way

that showed the psychiatrists

that he was apparently turning a corner

and heading towards cure,

that meant that he could see light at the end of the tunnel.

- [VO] My dearest Win,

many apologies from your wicked, neglectful brother

for failing to write to you

for such an unconscionably long time.

I have, however, some good news to import to you.

I had an interview with the estimable Edgar last Friday,

and he told me whether

or not a formal recommendation has yet gone in.

I've had several conversations

with the home office about you,

and I've got things moving at the end.

He also said, "I'm going to discharge you

in the latter half of this year."

As you see from my quotes, the pot is now almost boiling.

- On some level,

he thought of all of this as a bit of a joke.

He wasn't really taking

the whole process particularly seriously.

- He's thinking of himself as this sort of anti-hero

that's gonna come back out of prison

and continue on his quest, you know,

to right the wrongs of his childhood.

Being different was actually a form of power.

- [VO] Just think, Win, another few months

and your friendly neighbourhood Frankenstein will be

at liberty once again.

♪ Stop defending what you've done ♪

- Does he mean Dr. Victor Frankenstein,

or is he referring to Frankenstein's monster?

I would say that he's referring to Dr. Victor Frankenstein,

the evil genius who is a scientist doing research,

doing science from motives that he thinks of as pure.

So one suspects that Graham was really desperate

to get back out into the world

and really start experimenting again with poisons.

- He seems to have got on reasonably well

with staff at the beginning,

but he said to a particular nurse,

"I'm going to kill one person

for every year that I've spent in here."

♪ I'm not afraid, it's just begun ♪

[ominous music]

- He stated that categorically to a nurse,

and in spite of it, he was released.

Having originally been given a 15-year term in Broadmoor,

he was released after eight.

- His doctor had determined

that he should be released.

Subsequently, all the agencies got together,

and it was agreed that should be the case,

that he didn't cause any risk to the general public.

- Broadmoor is a hospital. It's not a prison.

And so everybody is there for treatment of overt symptoms.

So if Graham wasn't displaying anything like aggression

or paranoid thoughts, there's not really a clinical reason

to keep him there longer.

[tense music]

- Graham is released,

and, by all accounts, well, by his account,

he had no intentions of going back to his bad habits.

But he happened to be drinking in a pub outdoors one day,

and a number eight bus passed him.

He was in London.

And he instantly was brought back

to his childhood neighbourhood

because he knew the number eight bus

would go past the chemist, Edgar Davis',

where he'd been buying poisons in the early 1960s.

And that apparently seems to have acted as a trigger.

Clearly he'd been thinking about it

throughout his time in Broadmoor.

He learned to control and manage his instincts,

and to hide them from the psychiatrist entirely,

or he wouldn't have been released.

He wanted to be a famous poisoner,

and he couldn't really help himself.

He had an addiction. Graham Young was addicted to poisoning.

- [Narrator] In a profession where the health of a nation

and human life are concerned-

- Thank you. - there can be no margin

for error.

- Having left Broadmoor,

Graham initially went to live with his sister, I believe,

who had showed tremendous understanding in view of the fact

that she'd been one of his early victims.

And then he found lodgings in Hamel Hemstead.

- He applied for and got a job working in the stores

for a photographic supply company called Hadlands

in Bovington, in Hertfordshire,

a job for which he was well suited.

- [VO] I have privately studied chemistry,

organic and inorganic pharmacology,

and toxicology over the past 10 years,

and have, therefore, some knowledge

of photographic chemicals and usage.

- Graham applying for a job in a company like this

is like a kid applying for a job in a sweet shop.

Absolutely perfect for a man like him.

♪ It'll be like home

[gentle uplifting music]

- Graham Frederick Young, who was then 24,

was the prime suspect.

Enqueries were made at the criminal record office

at Scotland Yard to find

that the same Graham Frederick Young had,

in 1962,

been convicted of administering poison

to his father, his sister Winifred,

and a school friend.

[sombre music]

- Well, because we were informed

that he had a sister living in Leverstock Green,

which is a suburb of Hemel Hempstead,

I went and saw his sister to find out where Graham was.

And of course, she told me that he was staying

with an uncle or aunt in Sheerness.

She obviously knew that Graham had been up to poison again.

That's why we were looking for him.

We got the Sheerness police to arrest him.

When they did arrest him, for murder, as they told him,

he said, "Which one?"

[sombre music]

- Later on that Saturday evening,

Mr. Kirkpatrick and some others took him back

to Hamel Hempstead,

arriving at about six o'clock the following morning.

- Most of the witnesses were telling people

that they felt sick after drinking tea

or coffee made by Graham Young.

- It appeared that it would've been

a relatively straightforward process.

Somebody going to the tea lady, picking up a cup of coffee,

and taking it back to their colleague.

There would've been plenty of opportunity

to stop along the way along the corridor quietly

and just drop in this thallium,

which was tasteless and invisible.

And whoever was on the receiving end of it

wouldn't have been any the wiser

from knowing that they just had a dose.

- Graham could actually target particular individuals.

So once he had his supply of poisons,

he had members of the workforce that he could poison.

And he had easy access to them

because he would bring them cups of tea,

which he had, of course, doctored with chemicals.

- I was tasked with interviewing Mr. Jethro Batt,

one of the victims.

He was hospitalised in Harlow

at the Princess Alexander Hospital.

I was told not to inform him

that Mr. Biggs had died on the Friday

because his condition was such

that it might have sent him backwards.

He looked bad, beginning to lose his hair on his head.

Jethro quite often stayed doing overtime

at John Hadlands until seven o'clock.

Graham Young also stayed pretty regularly.

And instead of him having to wait until half seven

for a bus back to Hamel Hempstead,

which was about two and a half miles away,

Jethro kindly offered him a lift.

It was always Jethro's habit,

about quarter past six, half six,

to make himself a cup of tea.

This particular evening,

who comes in carrying two steaming cups of tea, but Young?

This surprised Jethro 'cause he'd never done that before.

- Graham actually made a joke at that time

along the lines of, "Well, I'm not gonna poison you."

Maybe he just didn't care.

Maybe he felt quite cocky, quite confident,

given that nobody had seemingly found out

about his poisonous past.

[hopeful music]

- Over that weekend,

Jethro took very bad with aches and pains in the limbs.

He had hallucinations, delirium.

He said he was in a World War trench

with bayonets coming down on him.

He was also on a mortuary slab.

- At this time, I was getting this feeling

that somebody had put on an old, you know,

the old duelling glove, the mail glove,

you know, the metal glove,

and they'd somehow got right inside my ribs.

And they were grabbing hold of what was inside

and just squeezing and twisting like that.

And that's no word of a lie.

- That's when you asked me for the gun, wasn't it?

- Yeah, that was.

- When he got to the point of asking

for a gun to shoot himself.

You know, he was in that

agony. - He did that?

[sombre music]

- Now, Jethro, if he'd have finished that tea,

he would've been dead within a week, from all accounts.

If we hadn't already got a suspect,

Graham Frederick Young would've been top of the list

based on what Jethro had told us.

His lodgings were tracked down and was searched.

There were files, poisons, books on poisons.

The wall, he had Third Reich, depictions of death,

and they found, although they didn't know what it was,

but in the top pocket of a jacket hanging up

behind the door was a file of white powder.

That turned out to be a file

that he had said later

retained as his exit dose.

[dramatic music]

- And then the full nature of Graham Young was exposed.

That he was a guy who was utterly fascinated

by extreme right-wing ideology and toxicology.

They were his twin obsessions

and really amounted to his entire life.

- [Narrator] It is human life with which he is dealing,

the most precious commodity of all.

- They searched his flat or bedsit

and found a diary that he'd been keeping.

He began keeping this thing on the 12th of October,

and the last entry was the 17th of November,

two days before Fred Biggs died.

And this thing was a revelation because they could see

that all of his colleagues at Hadlands were referred

to using just their initials.

So "J" for Jethro Batt.

- [VO] October 21st. "J" has also worsened.

His symptoms have developed more slowly,

but he's now experiencing severe pains

in the feet and legs, causing difficulty in walking,

and further pains in the stomach, back, and chest.

I feel rather ashamed of my action in harming Jeff.

I think he's a really nice fellow

and the nearest thing to a friend that I have at Hadlands.

I hope, although I have no faith in it,

that he will soon recover.

- It was quite explicit the fact that he had initials

for whoever the people he'd poisoned.

And then he'd obviously looked at them

and seen the reaction that his poisons had been given.

And he'd make remarks about he needed to give them more

'cause the reaction wasn't enough or what have you.

- [VO] "J" has developed severe alopecia

and has lost weight.

The hospital is rechecking all the tests previously made.

As yet, they do not suspect an unnatural cause.

Whether or not their tests will prove negative

depends upon a number of factors.

The situation is fraught with danger and uncertainty,

and I must watch the situation extremely closely.

If it seems inevitable that I shall be detected,

then I shall have to destroy myself.

[sombre music]

There is no alternative.

- He suggests that if suspicion starts

to address itself to him, he might have to commit suicide.

Although how serious he ever was about that is unknown.

But it's very clear that he's making notations

as he's carrying out scientific experiments

on a large number of his colleagues.

[sombre music]

- It was a chilling document.

On one occasion, he talks about David Tilson,

who was another victim,

and had become very ill too, lost his hair.

- [VO] "D's" condition continues to deteriorate.

He was admitted to hospital this morning

with paralysis of the legs.

The lower peripheral neuritis is now complete.

What other nerves, at present inflamed,

will become subject to major dysfunction

is not possible to estimate at present.

There is little danger to life,

barring unforeseen complications.

- David Tilson had been taken to hospital very soon

after ingesting some thallium.

And Young was saying in this diary

that he would perhaps take him a miniature brandy

to get on his right side.

- [VO] This would, I think, have been accepted,

and under my direction, hastily swallowed.

The bottle being returned to me

on the grounds entirely logical

that the nurses may otherwise discover the breach

of hospital discipline.

A precedent having been thus established,

I would, upon my second visit,

have produced an identical miniature

to be consumed in like manner.

The latter, however, would've been previously doctored,

and would within 48 hours have brought

about a deterioration of "D's" condition,

which, within a week, would've terminated in death.

- He said in the diary that he was gonna come

and visit me in hospital, which happily he never did,

and give me another dose to see me off,

because I hadn't taken all of the original dose

because I don't take sugar in tea.

And the tea that I was given was sugared,

which is the reason I'm here now talking to you.

And that's the only reason as far as I can see.

- [VO] October 31st.

"D," though he is now discharged from hospital,

is still unwell,

so I do not expect to see him for some time.

His illness was finally diagnosed

as an "unidentified virus."

- The diary gives us as much information

as we're ever likely to have

about Graham Young's actual motives.

One of the most distinctive aspects of thallium poisoning

is the complete loss of hair.

And when his victims started to show signs of alopecia,

Graham began to think, "I need to kill them quickly

so that the alopecia doesn't sort of move to completeness,

because that might lead the doctors to suspect

that it's thallium and not this Bovington bug.

- [VO] November 1st.

Some new developments:

"D" has relapsed and has been readmitted to hospital.

A fresh and, to me, disturbing symptom has appeared.

He has commenced to lose hair,

which, though at present only slight,

is likely to progress to alopecia totalis.

[ominous music]

- He's kind of challenging himself to see

how long he can continue poisoning this man.

How big would the dose be, but yet not kill him?

What would the cumulative effects be?

You can see that Graham is behaving both

as a potential murderer,

but also as a scientist who's deeply interested

in the scientific effects of his actions

with this particular poison.

- [VO] November 3rd. Disturbing events.

Apparently "D's" hair loss was almost total,

and the hospital authorities advanced the view

that "D's" illness may be due to "some kind of poisoning."

This is a very dangerous path for them to explore.

- Diana Smart was employed in the stores

after the death of Mr. Egle

and worked with Young and Mr. Biggs

as a storekeeper or assistant storekeeper.

- I was sent to see Diana Smart, who had been quite ill.

I had to tell her

that we were investigating the sickness at the factory.

A lot of people were putting it down to the water.

So she was rather surprised that I was insistent

on seeing her that night

rather than waiting for the next day,

- [VO] Di irritated me intensely yesterday.

I only gave her sufficient to shake her up,

though I now regret I didn't give her a larger dose,

capable of laying her up for a few days.

- He said about Diana Smart,

"I packed her off because she annoyed me."

And that would result in diarrhoea, sickness,

really strong pains in the stomach.

She had probably said something to him,

or he'd taken her the wrong way.

- [VO] There is much to communicate

since my last entry.

Di, who I afflicted with a mild attack of gastroenteritis

on October the 20th,

was subject to a further indisposition on the 22nd,

the results of which caused violent vomiting

and diarrhoea throughout the weekend.

I believe she's now suitably chastened.

- That was actually outside of his usual mode of operation.

That really didn't fit in with the Graham Young picture,

because he was much more concerned

with the scientific aspects of the process.

- Some of the writing, the prose within Graham's diary,

is almost poetic, but at the same time,

it's quite scientific.

There's not really that much emotion coming from him.

This reflects how indifferent and callous he was

to the lives of his victims.

[sombre music]

- [VO] "F," whom I grew to like,

has been the most recent subject of my attentions.

I've administered a fatal dose

of the "special compound" to him

and anticipate reports of his illness on Monday,

the 1st of November.

He should die within the week.

I gave him three separate doses,

each of about 5/6 grains.

The total absorbed should be about 15/16 grains,

which constitutes a lethal dose.

- The most basic principle of toxicology

is the dose makes the poison.

And what this means is that

with high enough amounts of something,

everything can be a poison.

That's how medicines work as well.

If you take one tablet of your medicine,

it does the effect that it's supposed to.

If you take a whole pack,

it'll have very bad effects.

The same thing happened with these poisons,

and that's why they were used as medicines back

in the day a lot.

If you had a very small dose, you would've been fine.

A higher dose would've been deadly.

[tense music]

- There's really no interest or care

for how the victims feel.

But he's not doing it specifically because he's a sadist,

or at least he would say that's not the reason.

It's because he wants to see how the poisons work.

And he enjoys the power that it gives him.

So the power of life and death,

deciding who will live, who will die,

how long all of this will take.

So yes, there's an element of sadism in it,

but from his perspective, he's a scientist.

- [VO] November 1st.

I can as yet report little of "F."

He was not at work today,

and his wife telephoned to say that he had caught a "bug"

and that she was taking him to the doctor.

As the dosage was divided into three separate quantities

spanning a period of 24 hours,

the onset was likely to have been less dramatic,

but a quite sudden deterioration

is to be expected leading to paralysis,

organic brain disease, and death within a week.

I shall be interested to see what transpires tomorrow.

[dramatic music]

- He is very technical in what he's writing.

It's very cold. You know, it's very short sentences.

And I think he's writing almost a sort of textbook,

a handbook, for himself or for others,

you know, if they want to replicate this behaviour

in the future.

- [VO] November 3rd. "F" is no better.

Apparently his symptoms are, at present,

principally gastrointestinal.

This should extend to include neurological symptoms

within a very short time now.

Such symptoms normally develop within four or five days

from the onset of gastro-enteric upset.

His doctor apparently believes that the illness is identical

to an outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea,

which is presently sweeping the area.

- Graham was very critical of the way

that the doctors were caring for his victims,

the courses of action that they were taking.

And again, this really just shows his kind of snobbishness

for those experts.

The fact that he thinks that he knows better.

Because of course, by this time, he is a specialist.

He is an expert in administering poison.

So he probably has more knowledge

than the professionals do themselves

in this particular area.

- [VO] November 17th. I'm most annoyed.

The latest news from the hospital

is they think "F" is beginning to respond to treatment.

Of course, they're not yet certain

and a relapse is quite on the cards,

but it is still extremely annoying.

He's surviving far too long.

For my peace of mind, it is imperative that he passes on

before total alopecia sets in.

There is little of interest other than this.

I hope that my next entry records the fulfilment

of my wishes, or at the very least,

a sharp decline in F's condition.

- Thallium poisoning is one

of the most complex toxicities known to man.

Within the first few hours,

you would see more nonspecific symptoms,

like vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach cramps.

After two to five days,

you'll start getting a few more serious symptoms,

and that's when the nerves

in your extremities start being affected.

So you start getting tingly, you start getting pain,

you start getting your balance affected,

and you get almost a burning, very sharp pain in your feet,

your hands, up your legs.

After two weeks, the motor control progressively gets worse,

so it'll start affecting your whole body.

And of course, when it starts affecting your motor control,

it can also start to affect your heart, your lungs,

and that's when it can become lethal.

[gentle music]

I think it would've been very horrible

and prolonged as well,

because it wouldn't be something that kills you right away.

So it would've been a few weeks

of this pain getting progressively worse,

and people not being able to identify what was causing it.

- [Narrator] Care and proficiency are demanded

by the very nature of his work,

by the knowledge that in his hands

is the balance between sickness and health.

Sometimes between life and death.

- I was sent to see Mrs. Egle

to get her permission to exhume the ashes.

I was very worried because it was a big thing

to have to tell a widow who had believed

that he died naturally,

that in fact it was believed he may have been poisoned.

I was anxious all the way.

It wasn't very nice news to give,

but she was very good and very calm, really.

She'd accepted the fact that he had died, you know,

so it wasn't as difficult as it might have been.

I was able to get the statement

and to get permission from her to exhume his ashes.

Luckily, they had not been spread.

- Subsequently, of course,

in Mr. Egle's ashes was found thallium.

- For the first time in British criminal history,

evidence was based on traces of poison found in the ashes.

And that was the first time ever

such a thing had been done during a murder inquiry.

- It is absolutely fair to say

that had his ashes actually been scattered

following his funeral,

his murder would never have been detected,

exactly as Molly's murder was never properly detected.

- I went to see Fred Biggs' wife

to get as detailed statement from her,

which covered all his illnesses

from the time he first became sick.

- Fred Biggs' family were told

that they couldn't bury him yet

because of the ongoing investigation.

Of course, he was subject to an autopsy.

And when they examined his internal organs

and subject them to toxicological analysis,

thallium is detected.

- We knew then that we definitely had two murders

on our hands.

[sombre music]

- Normally, I wouldn't remember

who I met for the first time 52 years ago,

but obviously, Graham Young made quite an impact on me.

He was sitting in what was quite a small cell

at the bottom of the police station.

He was extremely polite.

He was a small man, sharpish features,

very similar to the photograph which he wanted published

because he thought it made him look, I don't know, evil.

But the fact of the matter

is he actually looked like that all of the time.

- [VO] I'll tell you about the two deaths

and about the sickness of the other two.

I cannot tell you the agent I used.

The whole story is too terrible.

You'll be disgusted and amazed.

- His interview, he was really toying with the officers

and playing on the fact that his knowledge

of poisons was such that, you know,

none of us would've been aware of the effects of poison.

- Graham was in his element.

He was cocky, he was proud.

He wanted to explain to the police the effects

of these poisons, and he wanted someone who would listen.

And that's interesting, very interesting.

Because he was rather proud of his achievements,

and he wanted to share them.

Probably he wanted to just show off a little bit.

- He might have tried to convince me

or educate me on poisons and their effects,

et cetera, but it wasn't my interest.

[sombre music]

- In questioning Graham,

the police had noted that his diary referred

to having observed two previously fatal cases.

- [VO] The case interests me greatly

as it affords me an opportunity to observe the effects

of a sub lethal dosage.

My previous experience of the drug has been only

of lethal doses, which in both instances led

to rapid deterioration and death.

- At the point at which this entry in the diary was made,

only Bob Egle had died.

So the police were wondering, who is the other victim?

And Graham confessed. It was my stepmother.

- [VO and Katherine] I killed her with thallium in 1962.

- During the inquiry,

it was known that Young's stepmother had died

when he was about 13.

It was decided initially to look at this again.

For whatever reason, thereafter,

which was above my station,

it was decided not to pursue it.

He was charged, obviously,

first with the murder of Mr. Biggs,

and subsequently with the murder of Mr. Egle;

and then two attempted murders

by poisoning with thallium on David Tilson and Jethro Batt.

He was also charged with various offences

of administering poison to other employees.

- Although the charges were quite complicated

and obviously very, very serious,

Graham Young understood exactly what he was charged with.

He totally understood the level of evidence

that had to be found against him,

that he had to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

And even more so,

he understood the technical side of the trial.

By that I mean, of course,

the scientific evidence, the chemical evidence,

and the details of the finding of the poisons

in either the bodies or the ashes

of the individuals involved.

- [Mr. Harvey] Do you feel any remorse?

- [VO] No, Mr. Harvey, that would be hypocritical.

What I feel is emptiness of my soul.

- In those days, if you were charged with an offence

and were remanded in custody, you had to be returned

to the magistrate's court every week to be resentenced,

so to speak.

So Young would be coming back.

He would be taken by prison van from Brixton Prison.

I always remember when he'd come back after the Christmas,

said, "Oh, Graham, how did your Christmas go?"

And he would never give you a straight answer.

But he sort of thought for a while and then said,

"Well, let me put it this way.

It wouldn't have done Cromwell justice."

And I'm still thinking about that, what he meant.

[sombre music]

- It was my job to go and see Graham Young

at Brixton Prison.

And I used to do that, I would think,

probably two or three times a month.

One day, to my surprise,

Graham produced a tube of sweets from his jacket pocket

and offered me one.

Now, this was an interesting situation for me.

So I looked at him.

I thought, "This man's charged

with poisoning his family and his friends."

And as I looked at him, he said,

"Peter, what are you worried about?

You don't think that I'd poison my lawyer, do you?"

And I said, "Well, no, maybe not."

And I think the only thing that makes sense here

with my reaction is that I was nearly 22 at the time.

I was a young, macho man,

and I wasn't going to have him have one over on me.

So I took the sweet, I ate it, I went home,

and I stayed as close to a telephone as I possibly could

for the next 48 hours.

[sombre music]

- [VO] At present, I exist in a sort of limbo,

my remand having finished and my trial yet to come.

I can imagine how anxious you are

to see the whole thing finished with.

I too wish to see the end of this unfortunate episode.

I trust that it will end in victory.

The alternative would be the finish of me.

- In the intervening decades since his first trial

at the Old Bailey, Graham had learned a thing or two.

In 1962, he pleaded guilty,

and there was therefore very little publicity.

In 1972, he deliberately pleaded not guilty

so that there would be a trial in open court.

And of course, it was subject

to a lot of journalistic interest.

- I think that he's actually quite narcissistic

and quite arrogant,

and I think he wanted the glory of the trial.

- Maybe he was thinking that he wanted

to go down in history, just like his childhood idols,

William Palmer and Dr. Crippen,

both of whom still were talked about, really,

even by members of the public.

I think Graham wanted to be better known than they were,

for everyone to know his name.

That was his ultimate goal. He's reverting back to type.

He's always wanted to be a famous poisoner,

like a comic book villain,

and he wants the world to know what he has achieved.

- [VO] Make me so famous that I wind up

in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds.

I want to go down in history as a really famous murderer.

- Graham Young's demeanour at the trial was interesting

because he was confident throughout.

He was confident because of his knowledge

of the various issues involved.

He was confident because of his knowledge of the products

that he was supposed to have poisoned people with.

And I think, above all, he was confident

because he was exactly where he wanted to be

at that particular time:

at the centre of attention of a serious trial.

- Graham's trial started in June 1972

at St. Albans Crown Court,

and the police felt quite certain

that the diary was going to be foolproof evidence

to convict this serial poisoner.

- [VO] It is set out in diary form,

but it is not a number of entries set out over a period

of days or weeks.

It is a document which was completed on one occasion.

The diary, as it were, was the exposition of a theory,

not one I seriously held, a somewhat fanciful one,

which I outlined for my own amusement,

although that's not a very apt word.

- The excuse he gave for his diary,

as it was called,

was that he was considering writing a book.

And these were just notes.

He was using his workmates just

as possible victims in the book.

- [VO] The illnesses were unusual in origin,

and many of us were naturally concerned to know their cause.

A number of things sprang to mind,

one being virus infection.

Something that also sprang to mind,

well, to my mind, at any rate,

was the similarity of symptoms displayed

by people at the firm

and the symptoms of heavy metal poisoning.

In consequence, I decided to elaborate my theory

and suggest circumstances

under which these things could have come about.

- Without a doubt, this so-called diary wasn't a diary,

it was all written on one day,

and that it was meant to be the beginning or the basis

for a work of fiction that he was gonna write.

- [Narrator] The chemist is the optimist of the world.

For him, there is no stick or stone,

but what may yield, under analysis and synthesis,

the promise of some great sickness cured.

[sombre music]

- The prosecution's case was

that he had bought these poisons

for the purposes of poisoning individuals.

Graham always said that he had the chemicals,

he preferred that word rather than poisons,

with him for the purpose

of carrying out chemistry experiments,

which, as we know, he had been doing right and wrong

for many years by then.

The most interesting part of the trial was

when Graham Young was cross-examined by Mr. Leonard,

who was the QC representing the prosecution.

- Graham did show off his intellect,

and he was actually quite bright,

by making the prosecuting barrister look a complete idiot

by asking him a question something along the lines of,

"Do you really believe that a serial poisoner

would do such a thing, Your Honour?"

And the barrister said, "I don't know.

I've never met a serial poisoner."

And Graham said, "Thank you, sir."

- And he bowed at him.

And Mr. Leonard,

obviously realising that Graham had got the better of him,

suddenly shuffled his papers, made some general remarks,

and backed away from the battle.

It was an extraordinary experience.

There's no doubt at all that Graham Young enjoyed his trial.

It was generally a situation that almost his whole life

had been leading up to, I suspect.

And he made the best of it.

- I think in court,

Graham is showcasing the classic signs of a psychopath.

You know, he's arrogant, he's detached.

He's enjoying his notoriety.

He's feeling superior to others.

You know, he's revelling in this type of attention,

but he's also snobbish.

You know, he believes he knows better.

He believes he's above the law,

because until this point, he has been above the law.

Why would this time be any different?

- And so this afternoon,

a quiet, intelligent, rather studious young man

of 24 joined the shortlist of notorious British poisoners

through the ages.

One can now add the name of the man

who studied and idolised them all, Graham Young.

- He was found guilty on six of the eight charges,

and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

- One of the main parts of his instructions

to us was that in the event he was found guilty,

and obviously, a custodial sentence was inevitable,

that he would go to a normal prison

and not be sent back to a mental hospital.

When he got the verdict of a life sentence

and being committed to a normal prison,

he was, strangely enough,

extremely happy with that verdict.

Bearing in mind that he'd been found guilty,

it was exactly what he wanted.

So maybe even at the end of the trial,

he got his way as well.

- I think the fact that Graham was very keen

to go to a prison rather

than a mental institution really highlights the fact

that he was very, very keen to be seen as evil.

You know, this criminal mastermind who, you know,

was in full control of what he's doing.

He was very rational about that.

You know, he didn't want to be seen as someone

who was suffering from severe mental health problems.

Because then, of course,

he's labelled as sick and ill and crazy

when he wants to be fully in control of the situation.

He wants to be the evil mastermind.

- Because of the legal requirements,

the Broadmoor history could not be revealed

at the trial itself

because it would obviously be prejudicial information.

And so the jury was completely ignorant of Graham's past

when they actually came to their conclusions about him.

- At that particular point,

it was announced that Graham Young

not only had previous convictions for poisoning people,

but also that he had been released from Broadmoor after,

I think, less than 10 years in there,

with his psychiatrist stating that he was no longer a risk.

Obviously, this was gonna cause a major political clamour,

and this duly happened.

- Immediately after the case,

the home secretary, Reginald Maudling,

instigated a review of the procedures

for releasing prisoners from Broadmoor

and other similar institutions.

The reforms also included new measures

regarding the sale of poisons over the counter.

- There's a catalogue of mistakes that occurred

that allowed Graham to go on his second poisoning spree

after he left Broadmoor.

The most obvious one is a lack of communication.

I think that the authorities should have had more

of an effort to kind of communicate with each other,

to let probation, the police services,

even his potential future employers know about his history

to keep everybody safe.

- I think, in retrospect,

that was the most staggering aspect of the case.

That first of all, that he had been released,

and should never have been released.

Even his own father argued against his release.

But nevertheless, the psychiatrists at Broadmoor insisted

that he was perfectly safe.

There wasn't even a pause, really,

between his release from Broadmoor

and his poisoning activities.

I mean, he went straight back into it.

It was perfectly natural for him to do that.

And I think that's really the one feature of the case

that people were appalled about.

And I think that's why the government

of the day took it so seriously

and instantly introduced reforms

to make sure that such a thing never happened again.

[grim music]

- Maybe 15 years after the trial,

I went to Madame Tussauds with my children.

I was in there looking around,

and I suddenly found myself face to face with Graham Young,

life size and in wax.

I was totally shocked. I had no idea he was there.

Wasn't somebody I'd expected to see there,

and it was really a very, very strange experience.

- The fact that he was there

alongside people like Crippen and Palmer

and all the rest of them,

that might have appealed to him.

And I'm sure that gave him much pleasure.

- Yeah, he's melted down now,

which is the best idea that could have happened.

- [Narrator] A solution may be safe in a cylindrical vessel

because of its shape.

But in a spherical one,

the result could be disastrous.

- Graham Young died at the age of 42

of a heart attack whilst in Parkhurst Prison.

There are many thoughts that he,

in fact, died of poisoning himself.

- It's just possible that he either died at his own hands,

or was poisoned by his colleagues.

I don't think there's any doubt

that there would've been a lot of disquiet in the prison

about his presence.

- 42 does seem exceptionally young

for somebody to have a heart attack,

unless they've got some sort of cardiac pathology.

So if he did poison himself,

it almost seems like quite a fitting end to the story.

It's almost like he's managed to go full circle.

And if he managed to do it in prison,

that's actually, you know, quite clever.

It's quite an achievement to be able to get the poison in

and to be able to do it in a way

that it wasn't detected in the autopsy.

Almost feels like one final achievement

in being able to outwit the authorities.

- The hardest thing to understand

about this whole experience,

all the activities of Graham Young,

what happened at home and then later what happened

at Hadlands in Bovington,

is exactly why all this was happening.

Most people kill people or attempt to kill people

because they hate them,

are in a major argument with them,

or need them gone for their own financial benefit.

But Graham Young's case was totally

and utterly different from all of those.

He was, in essence, a scientist without any morals,

without any sense of society or how to behave,

and basically started poisoning people

for one reason and one reason only:

to see the effect the poison,

and the different doses of it, had upon individual people.

- [VO] You are suggesting I'm some kind of monster,

a mass murderer who just poisons people regardless.

This is not so.

I suppose I'd cease to see them as people,

or, more correctly, a part of me had.

They became Guinea pigs.

- You could look at him and see

that he was a wrong'un in way or another,

and he did have a sinister look about him.

And that's true of most mass murderers,

really, when you think about it.

They rarely look like choir boys, do they?

[sombre music]

- Graham didn't really see

that what he was doing was utterly and completely wrong.

He was like every other scientist.

He was carrying out his experiments.

So would he have stopped?

I don't see why he would've done.

Normal scientists don't stop, do they?

They go back to work,

and they get going again the next morning.

I think the man was extremely dangerous.

Anybody unlucky enough to be near him

when he was at large was in a great deal of danger.

I was lucky I only ever met him when he was behind bars.

- Had he not been caught, I think Graham would've kept going

because he was obsessive about poisons.

I think that's what he did.

It's as simple as that. That's what he was all about.

And I have no doubt at all

that he would've got the eight victims

that he said he would when he left Broadmoor.

You can imagine, can't you?

I mean, if you were having a cup of tea

or something with Graham Young,

you'd feel uncomfortable about it, wouldn't you?

[gentle piano music]

♪ There's something sweet about death ♪

[gentle piano music]