First Blood

1 season available

Examining some of America's most notorious serial killers through the prism of their first known kills to reveal what drove them to the moment when violent fantasy and curiosity became a devastating reality.
Aileen Wuornos: The Damsel of Death
S1 E1

In 1989, Richard Mallory is found shot dead in the brush off the side of a Florida highway, just the first of seven murdered men found in a similar setting; their predator is Aileen Wuornos, a woman fleeing from her troubled past.

Robert Hansen: The Butcher Baker
S1 E2

Before he hunted down his first victim in the wilds of Alaska, Robert Hansen was a successful businessman with a family in Anchorage, but his intense feelings would build into a dark desire to exert the ultimate control over 17 victims.

Danny Rolling: The Gainesville Ripper
S1 E3

Known primarily for the murders of University of Florida students, a man's first murders were in his hometown of Shreveport, La.; the man dreamed of having a loving family as an adult, but his dark fantasies drove him to destroy a family instead.

Richard Ramirez: The Nightstalker
S1 E4

One of the most well-known serial killers, Richard Ramirez terrorized Southern California in the mid-1980s, where anyone could be a target of the sadistic murderer.

Anthony Sowell: The Cleveland Strangler
S1 E5

African American women in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Cleveland were vanishing; Anthony Sowell found the control he was so desperate for when he overpowered his first vulnerable victim -- a woman only hoping to connect with a friendly face.

Ed Kemper: The Co-ed Killer
S1 E6

The articulate and boastful killer is remembered for terrifying the coastal town of Santa Cruz, where he picked up and dismembered hitchhiking college students in the early 1970s.

Sheila LaBarre: Sheila the Peeler
S1 E7

In rural Epping, N.H., everyone knows Sheila LaBarre as an eccentric widow who loves her rabbits; her turbulent childhood in Alabama, a coma-induced vision, and the death of her wealthy husband all send Sheila on a warped mission to kill.

Henry Louis Wallace: Bad Henry
S1 E8

Someone is killing young African American women in Charlotte, N.C., and the police seem unable to stop it; what the police don't realize is that the cases all have a commonality, which is a connection with Henry Louis Wallace.

Arthur Shawcross: The Genesee River Killer
S1 E9

Exploring what shaped serial killer Arthur Shawcross' trajectory from "Artie Oddball" to murderer; he might have been known for killing women along Rochester's Genesee River, but his first murder was years earlier.

Ronald Dominique: The Bayou Strangler
S1 E10

Growing up gay and effeminate in the hypermasculine bayou was tough on Ronald Dominique; an inability to connect and a sexual assault in jail may have cemented his decision to kill his first victim, tragically the beginning of years of murder.