The title means not only killer of children but a child who killed. In 1921, Harold Jones murdered an 8 year old girl in the Welsh town where he lived. Freda Burnell was not only strangled but was raped first. All the circumstantial evidence pointed towards him but people simply refused to believe a 15 year old boy and one of their own at that could commit such a crime.
Jone was tried for the murder, and as claimed here, undoubtedly correctly, due partly to some perjured testimony as much as an impressive array of character witnesses, he was acquitted, returning home to a hero's welcome.
Less than 3 weeks after his acquittal he murdered again, this time the victim was an 11 year old girl who had pointed the finger at him. Her body was soon discovered in the attic where he had stashed it – no formalities with arrest warrants in those days – and Jones was tried again for murder. This time he pleaded guilty rather quickly, not because of remorse but because he wanted to be tried as a child rather than as an adult, which would surely have led to his execution.
He was released in 1941 and died in 1971. That might have been the end of the story but as suggested here – and elsewhere – he may have gone on to become a serial killer, the man behind the London "nude murders" in 1964-5.
There is a fair amount of speculation in this documentary as well as a silly experiment, but this particular speculation is certainly not unintelligent. Today, Jones would have been brought to book after the first murder, and if he had committed a second after his inevitable release, that would almost certainly have been the end of his reign of terror.
Jone was tried for the murder, and as claimed here, undoubtedly correctly, due partly to some perjured testimony as much as an impressive array of character witnesses, he was acquitted, returning home to a hero's welcome.
Less than 3 weeks after his acquittal he murdered again, this time the victim was an 11 year old girl who had pointed the finger at him. Her body was soon discovered in the attic where he had stashed it – no formalities with arrest warrants in those days – and Jones was tried again for murder. This time he pleaded guilty rather quickly, not because of remorse but because he wanted to be tried as a child rather than as an adult, which would surely have led to his execution.
He was released in 1941 and died in 1971. That might have been the end of the story but as suggested here – and elsewhere – he may have gone on to become a serial killer, the man behind the London "nude murders" in 1964-5.
There is a fair amount of speculation in this documentary as well as a silly experiment, but this particular speculation is certainly not unintelligent. Today, Jones would have been brought to book after the first murder, and if he had committed a second after his inevitable release, that would almost certainly have been the end of his reign of terror.
