title: Kennedy and Khrushchev: 7. Eyeball to eyeball
author: The Bomb
contenttype: podcast
publication: The Bomb
published: 2026-01-12T01:30:00
sourceurl: http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download-rss/proto/http/vpid/p0mqj9s6.mp3
word_count: 5613
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It's why our world-class School of Medicine and adult and children's health systems work together, pioneering treatments, teaching the innovators of tomorrow, and delivering the best possible care today. Stanford Medicine, advancing knowledge, improving lives, Stanfordmedicine.org. Today 23rd October 1962. In a box at the Bolshoi Theater, Nikita Krishchev and his colleagues sit in a row. It's grand. All crimson, velvet, and gold. The audience waits for the show to begin. It's the Russian opera Barry's god enough. I'm not the only one. Krishchev has invited everyone to the opera for the optics to have a calming effect on the people to show that all is well. There is no danger. Nothing to worry about. He is in control. But he later recalls. We ourselves were very anxious at the time. On stage the operand folds. The Tsar, Barry's god enough, fears that there is a plot against him. All that he does for his people seems to go wrong. And his reign unravels as he struggles to maintain control. He dies, leaving Russia in a state of chaos and civil war. From the BBC World Service, this is the bomb. Season 3, Kennedy and Krishchev. With me, Nina Krishchev. And me, Max Kennedy. Episode 7, I Ball to I Ball. Twenty-four hours earlier, Monday evening, my great-grandfather Nikita Krishchev is at his home in the land in Hills, and he leaves her part of Moscow. Then, he hears the news. Kennedy is preparing to make an address on TV. There are reports of a crisis in Washington, and speculation that it's about Cuba. They have probably discovered our missiles. Krishchev tells his son Sergei. He urgently calls his Presidium members to the Kremlin. They gather in the old senate building next to Red Square. It's pretty clear to the Russians that the Americans have finally discovered this secret. The reaction of his fellow polyprym members is really, well, you know, this is Krishchev's problem. He led us into this, and it's up to him to find a solution. Michael Dobbs, author of One Minute to Midnight. They don't say that aloud, because, you know, in the Soviet system, you didn't express any opposition to the leader, but that's very much their feeling. Krishchev and his fellow polyprym members gathered around this huge table. Krishchev is having second thoughts that he's sort of sent all these troops and missiles off to Cuba. And now he's wondering whether it's going to lead to nuclear war with the United States. The text of Kennedy's speeches on its way from the US Embassy in Moscow. And they'll get it before the President speaks on TV. As they wait, they talk. So here we go. Comrade Krishchev says that he just found out that Kennedy's preparing some statement. And then we have Malinovsky, who's the Minister of Defense. He says here, Kennedy is preparing for speech at 2 a.m. Our time. Radion Malinovsky reassures the group that if America announces an invasion of Cuba, the Kremlin will have time to prepare. It won't happen for 24 hours, but Krishchev is convinced an attack on Cuba is imminent. He's trying to second-guess the American President. The point is we didn't want to unleash a war, he says, to the room. We wanted to intimidate and restrain the United States. And then we have this. In connection with the fact that we have not yet concentrated all that we wanted in Cuba, we are giving an instruction to plea. If it was, of course, the head of the Soviet forces there, that in case of an American invasion of Cuba, Cuba declares war and announces that they will use tactical nuclear weapons. The tactical weapons include short-range Luna missiles with nuclear warheads for use on a battlefield. They cannot reach the United States, but firing just one of them into the air would mean a huge fireball, 31 miles from the launch site, a crater more than a hundred feet wide and deep, hurricane-force winds in the epicenter. Human beings within one kilometer would probably be killed, and those that survived would die within two weeks of radiation poisoning. In the former Soviet archives, there is a draft of a document authorizing general plea of to fire the Luna missiles in case of attack. But then, in the end, they send an instruction to plea of not to use any weapons, including tactical nuclear weapons. With these notes, it says that Khrushchev then announces a break. They get back and says, oh my god. No, no, no, no, no, no tactical nuclear weapons, but it's interesting that we're sure to consider that. So, in the end, we don't have a full clarity, and that is simply because this is not a verbatim record, but some kind of a summary. Marshal Rajon Malinovsky prepares a number of documents depending on how things would develop. Serhi Plohi, author of Nuclear Folly. But one of them suggests that the commanders on the ground have the right to use nuclear weapons that disposal if attacked. And my understanding is that if there would be a strike on the Soviet installations that most likely those documents would be signed. But they hold back on authorizing plea of to use such weapons for now. They greet to wait until they have seen the text of Kennedy's speech. In Washington, as President Kennedy prepares to deliver his televised address, he seeks support from key figures, like his predecessor, President Eisenhower. He talks about how we may be proceeding with the military option here before too long. Fred Logoval, President Kennedy's biographer. It's interesting in part because I think he's privately decided he's not going to do that. He's telling Eisenhower what he thinks Eisenhower wants to hear. I think by the 22nd of October, Kennedy has decided we're going to have a blockade and we're going to find some kind of political solution. But the fact that he mentions the military option as being likely is in his own way pretty interesting on that day in particular. And with that interlocutor with Dwight Eisenhower on the other end of the line. Eisenhower has criticized him for the first time really a former president, criticized a current president on foreign policy. Yeah, I think what's important here is that Kennedy knows when they begin speaking, he's going to speak to the nation that night. He knows that Dwight Eisenhower wants him to proceed with the military option. Kennedy isn't much more worried about it. He says at one point, what are the chances general that if we take out the missiles, it'll start a nuclear war. And Eisenhower says, I'm not very concerned about that. I'm not worried. Very worried. All right. You got to use something. Something may make these people shoot them off. I just don't believe this well. Yeah, that's great. And then, of course, I'll say this. I'd want to keep my own people very alert. Yeah. No, hang on tight. Yeah, great. Very tight general. All right, all right, all right. In the hours leading up to the broadcast, the Oval Office is transformed into a television studio. Black fabric is draped over the resolute desk and stretched with masking tape, a dark board and the presidential flag hanged behind President Kennedy. Good evening, my fellow citizens. At 7 p.m. Eastern time in the United States, the broadcast begins. Americans are expecting an announcement about a foreign policy problem, more than 100 million tune in. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that in prison island. President Kennedy explains the threat that the Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles pose and that they could strike Washington, D.C., Mexico City, or anywhere in the southeastern United States. Additional sites not yet completed. Appeared to be designed for intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Capable of traveling more than twice as far and thus capable of striking, most of the major cities in the Western Hemisphere. Ranging as far north as Hudson's Bay, Canada and as far south as Lima, Peru. And he makes clear his sense of being deceived by the Soviets, both publicly and privately. He mentions the meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andre Grameco, in particular, and accuses him of making false statements. The public phase of the missile crisis has begun. It's out in the open and it is terrifying. People gather around television sets wherever they happen to be. A photo from the time shows a somber group watching the speech on a wall of TVs in an appliance store. For many of those watching, nuclear war now seems imminent. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the course of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth. But neither will we shrink from that risk. At any time, it must be faced. I know that some action should be taken, but he's going to have to tread very likely short of war. It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. I just hope they don't grab me, that's okay. A great many people today are extremely worried and perhaps a lot of it frightened by what has happened and have some thoughtful feeling that something dreadful may happen quite quickly suddenly. I'm worried for my kids mostly. He announces to the world the action that the United States is taking. A naval blockade of Cuba. He calls it a quarantine. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba will be subject to search and turned back if found to be carrying offensive weapons. But the US Navy won't be stopping ships that carry basic necessities to Cuba. I call upon Chairman Kusia to haul and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and the stable relations between our two nations. President Kennedy calls for the prompt dismantling and withdrawal of missiles before the quarantine can be lifted. These steps are only the beginning. The United States will increase surveillance of Cuba. If work on the missile site's continues, they'll be further action. He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction by returning to his government's own words that it had no need to station missiles outside its own territory and withdrawing these weapons from Cuba. By refraining from any action which will widen or deepen the present crisis and then by participating in a search of peaceful and permanent solutions. The speech sends shockwaves around the world. Do you remember that time, Evan, when you were young? Yeah, I was in sixth grade and we were all scared to death. We were all watching. President Kennedy made it pretty clear he was not going to permit those missiles to be in Cuba. And so then what? Robert Kennedy's biographer, Evan Thomas. You know, do we go to war to take them out? I mean, how bad is this going to get? There's a great fear of nuclear war. Generally, certainly, as an 11-year-old, I felt it. From school, we talked about it. We did these stupid duck and covered drills where we would get under our desk as if that was going to save us from nuclear war. And I think we all were vaguely... No, we were aware that this was absurd. That getting under our desk was not going to save us from a hydrogen bomb. And we could all be incinerated by this. Yeah. Really, really terrifying. In Moscow, Premier Khrushchev has been given the text of Kennedy's speech. His mood improves. Cuba is saved, he announces. It's not a war against Cuba, but some kind of ultimatum. There's a huge, a huge sigh of relief. The war has not happened today. That has given Kennedy more time to work out a diplomatic solution, but it also gives Khrushchev more time to work on a diplomatic solution. Khrushchev dictates the main points of a statement on the blockade immediately. He denounces it as an act of piracy. The meeting of the Presidium continues throughout the night. The note-taker can hardly keep up. Issue a Soviet government statement, a protest. The USA is on course for preparing and unleashing the Third World War. American imperialism is trying to dictate its will to everyone else. We protest. All countries have the right to defend themselves. They turn to what to do about their ships. Khrushchev doesn't want the United States Navy boarding Soviet ships. He also doesn't want to escalate the situation. The ships that were still far away from Cuba that can't get to Cuba before the blockade, the quarantine, is introduced, they turn back. Khrushchev orders the ships that are still carrying the longer range nuclear missiles to turn around and not risk a confrontation with the United States. But there were some ships that were delivering, let's say, potatoes, agricultural machinery and so on and so forth. Oil, those guys would keep going. And those ships with the missiles and military equipment that were close to Cuba and can beat the timeline, they should speed up. Of the ships ordered to remain on course for the island and try to beat the blockade, one, the Alexandrovsk is of particular concern to Khrushchev, Michael Dobbs. It's a ship that usually carried refrigerated fish across the ocean, but it's now carrying the nuclear warheads for the medium-range missiles that can hit Washington and New York. The CIA has located the ship. It's taken photographs of the ship, but it's completely unaware of the contents. But as far as the Soviets are concerned, this is the key vessel that cannot be allowed under any circumstances to fall into American hands. The Alexandrovsk carries an extremely dangerous cargo. It has 68 nuclear warheads on board, some to be paired with missiles already on the island and others for missiles they're on their way. But just to put that in perspective, one megaton is the equivalent of one million tons of TNT that's about 80 times the explosive power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. As the Alexandrovsk arrives in Cuba, there's huge storms in the ocean and Gelforce winds are buffeting the vessel, threatening to smash the warheads against the bulkheads. The warheads are all stored in coffin-like containers below decks. And at one point, nuclear safety officers have to struggle for three days and nights to prevent these containers smashing against the bulkheads. Khrushchev orders everyone to remain in the Kremlin overnight in case the situation changes. He walks back down the red carpeted corridor to his office. He lies down on the couch, still wearing his suit. That night, there will be no sleep. Taxes was waiting on the refund you needed yesterday. All right, your car repair is going to run about three grand. Now, taxes is getting back on the road with turbo tax in credit karma, where you can get your refund up to five days faster and get personalized guidance to take every dollar further. Now this is taxes. Intuit credit karma with turbo tax. Deposit of federal refund into credit karma money account and early submission of refund data by IRS required. Terms apply, banking services provided by MVB Bank Inc. Member FDIC, credit karma is not a bank. True crime meets history with a twist in a new series of Lady Killers. Join me as we travel back in time to investigate the most astonishing Lady Killers of the 19th and 20th centuries. We visit the scene of the crime and we delve deep into their lives to ask how did they do it? Why did they do it? What drove them to it? Watch Lady Killers with Lucy Wersley on BBC.com. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com. Find out more at BBC.com slash unlimited. The crisis is out in the open and the reconnaissance flights over Cuba become more visible, more brazen too. The president needs better pictures. So six crusader jets roar over Cuba at a thousand feet, taking photographs at much closer range than the U2 spy planes. Their film picks up trucks, missiles, and long tents, even the faces of individual soldiers and workers clamoring over the unfinished roof of a bunker for nuclear warheads. Here's Renata Keller, author of The Fate of the Americas. And the low-level flights are especially disturbing to the Cuban population because it almost looks like they're at the level of the trees. And so whenever people hear them coming, they wonder, is this an invasion? Is this an attack? Or is this an unarmed reconnaissance flight? So it does terrorize the Cuban population. In Washington, my father, Robert Kennedy, writes in his memoir of a sense of relief among the group the morning after the TV address. We had taken the first step. It wasn't so bad, and we were still alive. In the Oval Office in the evening, President Kennedy signs the two-page proclamation authorizing the U.S. Navy to intercept Soviet ships. In the photographs taken to project the image around the world, he's a vision of determination. White handkerchief in his breast pocket, the flag behind him. But behind the scenes, there's uncertainty. How will the blockade really work? My father initially sees it as an opportunity to stop and search any Soviet ship, even if it has turned around and to take photographs of the missiles they are carrying as evidence. But the others in the room urged caution. The president is worried that boarding any of these ships could lead to escalation. He begins to have second thoughts about how it's actually going to be implemented. Michael Darbs, author of One Minute to Midnight. His Secretary of State Dean Rusk talks about what he calls a baby food scenario. The Soviet ship comes along and refuses to stop and that American forces board it. And it's all a public relations disaster because they find out it's not a shipment of missiles, but a shipment of baby food. So then Kennedy starts trying to talk this through and he says, well, the Soviets are going to keep going and then we're going to have to try to shoot their rudder off or the boiler and then we're going to try to board it. And that's going to involve the use of force, perhaps some machine guns. And we're going to have one hell of a time getting on board that ship. And of course, Kennedy had experience of serving in the Navy during World War II, which I think informed him in his reaction to the kind of difficulties they were going to face if they actually started to try to board Soviet ships. Dean Rusk drafts a letter to Khrushchev, urging Soviet ships to stay away from the quarantine line. The president signs it, adding a line at the end. I am concerned that we both show prudence and do nothing to allow events to make the situation more difficult to control than it is. After the meeting, the president and Robert Kennedy are left alone to reflect. Now they're just brothers again. It looks like hell. It looks real mean, doesn't it? The president says to his brother. My father consoles him. There isn't any choice. They know he could be removed from office if he fails to act. They are really walking along a knife's edge in every way. It's not just the possibility, even the imminent likelihood of nuclear war, but domestically, politics are really hard at this moment. This is Ted Widmer, the editor of Listening In, the secret White House recordings of John F. Kennedy. We remember JFK as extraordinarily popular, and I mean he was by some measurements, but he did not win his election by very much at all. So he's looking at a really tough re-election battle in 1964, and we shouldn't forget also how bad the Bay of Pigs was. It was a failed invasion. It looked impetuous, it looked weak, and you know, the worst thing of all is it failed. So if he fails again in the fall of 1962, it might be impeachment. It might be a huge stinging loss in the congressional elections in the midterms of November 1962, and then he's a kind of lame duck president who maybe can't even get nominated for re-election in 1964. So that shows how close they are and how many things are up in the air as they're wrestling with this crisis. La Isabella is a small port on the northern coast of Cuba, isolated, surrounded by mangrove swamps, open to hurricanes. But it's the closest port to the Aleksandrovsk, with its high-risk cargo of nuclear warheads as it approaches Cuba. The ship is expected to dock at the larger port of Mariel along the coast, but the Soviets think the United States Navy is tracking the Aleksandrovsk. The ship is ordered to change course and head to La Isabella. Michael Dobbs. It's a flea-bitten port, open to hurricanes, and here it is, you know, more explosive power than has ever been used in the history of warfare, is suddenly located in this tiny little port on northern Cuba. Fidel Castro at least understands what's at stake here, and he sends his biggest artillery pieces to protect this port and to protect the warheads. The Aleksandrovsk, its cargo and its crew, have survived that lentic crossing. It sits in port and waits to be unloaded. There's another meeting that night for my father. At 9.30 p.m., he visits the Soviet ambassador, Anatoli Dobrinin. From the White House, it's a short walk down 16th street to the opulent building the Soviet Embassy occupies. A day earlier, when Dobrinin saw the text of President Kennedy's speech, he had turned pale. That was the first he had heard about the missile buildup in Cuba. In the lavish surroundings of the embassy, my father tells the ambassador that the president feels he has been intentionally deceived. He had believed Khrushchev's personal message, the Khrushchev would do nothing to affect his election campaign. Dobrinin does not respond to the allegations. Instead, he counters that the naval quarantine is unlawful. The ambassador doesn't know very much about what's going on. He's been kept in the dark by Moscow himself. And Bobby says, well, I'm not sure how this is going to end, but we're certainly going to stop your ships. And the ambassador applies, that would be an act of war. By Tuesday night, it looks as if all of the channels of communication are breaking down. At this point in the crisis, the two most powerful men on the planet resumed their correspondence by letter. It's a painfully slow process in a fast-changing situation. Because there were so many intermediaries, any letter that Khrushchev was sent into Kennedy and vice versa, it would have to be, according to the diplomatic protocol, to be delivered to the embassy. Then someone would have to put that into the cypher. Then it has to be transmitted through radio waves. Washington, desiphered, printed, delivered to the White House, waiting for the president to have a break or time to read that. And on the top of that, there was, of course, time difference. In response to Kennedy's letter, setting out the terms of the blockade, Khrushchev writes a long emotional reply on Wednesday, October 24th. He says the request to turn Soviet ships back from the quarantine line is an act of aggression that pushes mankind towards the abyss of a nuclear world war. He accuses Kennedy of declaring the blockade out of hatred for the Cuban people. He says it's unlawful and then adds, you are no longer appealing to reason, but wish to intimidate us. He also writes an even angrier personal letter for Kennedy's eyes only, but he sleeps on it and decides against sending it. The following day, President Kennedy responds to Khrushchev's official letter with a blunt telegram. He's going ahead with the blockade. It was not I who issued the first challenge in this case, the president says. So Nina, can you tell me how the letters from the Russian side were drafted? I think Khrushchev was dictating his letters and then they were edited, and then he would add some other narratives into this, but that's why they're so long and that's why they're so impersonal and style because Khrushchev was stressed. He was emotional. He didn't want to get to the war. He wanted to show President Kennedy that was him who isn't the right, and President Kennedy wasn't the wrong and overreacted and so on. So Khrushchev and his letters is very human, more human than Kennedy, because Kennedy is representative of a well-organized democratic system. And Khrushchev is sort of the, I guess, the Soviet czar that tries to resolve a conflict with somebody who may or may not listen to him. Khrushchev's letters are amazing. They're so personal. There's so much emotion coming out of them. And I think President Kennedy and my father made a huge effort to have almost zero emotion. They felt that it was incredibly important to have as few words as possible on each sheet, to have each sentence really tight. And the Khrushchev letters are kind of beautiful in what they show about his mind and how much authority was vested in Khrushchev alone at that time. I would imagine that these letters were very shocking for the American society. I think they couldn't believe it. Because suddenly you have a crisis and you get all this personal, you have more letters. You're just going to touch it. Right. Wow, that's a dissertation. I would imagine, but also the responses, the legalistic responses from what I remember, once again, from grandma that she said, well, because you didn't know how to read this. I mean, there's no emotion involved. And so the Soviet side said, well, that's just not going to be winnable, because they are slapping us with completely inhuman responses. So how are we going to deal with this? In the North Atlantic Ocean, the US Navy deploys an armada of 180 ships in an arc 500 miles from the eastern tip of Cuba, ready to intercept the Soviets. It's 10 a.m. eastern standard time on Wednesday, the 24th of October. At the same time in the cabinet room with the White House, the XCOM gather again for a meeting that my father recalls as the most trying, the most filled with tension. They begin with the ritual intelligence briefing from the CIA director John McCone, and look at the pictures captured by the previous day's low-flying planes. There are 22 Soviet ships still en route to Cuba, and some are nearing the blockade barrier in the sea. Two ships seem to be within a few miles of it. The Kemosk and the Gagarin, with a fully armed Soviet submarine guarding between them. The Americans suspect that both ships are carrying missiles, and they are right. As far as the presidents concerned, the Soviet ships are still steaming straight ahead to the blockade line, and a confrontation between the US Navy and the Soviet Navy is imminent. President Kennedy is growing steadily more concerned about what happens when the Navy intercepts the ships. He tells the Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that the confrontation could quickly spiral out of control. But they are interrupted by John McCone. He's been handed a note. Six ships in Cuban waters have either stopped or reversed course. Rusk asks what Cuban waters means. Are they leaving Cuba or coming in? Make some difference, Rusk says, to nervous laughter around the room. It's not clear immediately how they've turned around when they've turned around, and which way they're going on now. So there's a few minutes when the president and his advisors don't really understand what is happening. In those few minutes, the president and McNamara return to the Kemosk and the Gagarin and the submarine in between them. Should they try to force the sub to surface? McNamara says they have to. There's too much danger to American ships otherwise. I think it would be extremely dangerous when you try to attack on this submarine in the situation where we could easily lose the American ship by that means. My father writes in his memoir that this is the time of gravest concern to the president. He recalls that his face seemed drawn. His eyes pained almost gray. We stared at each other across the table. For a few fleeting seconds, it was almost as though no one else was there, and he was no longer the president. But president Kennedy has to make a decision immediately. He says to McNamara, okay, let's proceed. At 1025, McCone returns to the cabinet room to confirm that the six ships heading towards the blockade have either stopped dead in the water or turned back towards the Soviet Union. These include the Kemosk and the Gagarin. We were eyeball to eyeball and the other fellow just blinked, says Dean Rusk. In other words, Christchurch just blinked. He may certainly have believed that at the time, but I later discovered that this was not the case. Michael Dobbs. There was by no means the kind of instant communications that we imagined today. I think I was the first researcher to actually use U.S. naval records to plot the positions of ships. This actually tallied with the information that we have from the Soviet side. We have the minutes of the Politburo meeting where Christchurch orders the return of the missile-carrying ships two nights before. Christchurch ordered his ships to turn around on the evening of October 22, when he first heard that Kennedy was going to impose a naval blockade. At this moment, when Kennedy and his advisors think that the Soviet ships are about to go through the blockade line, what is in fact happening is that the ships carrying missiles, i.e. the crucial ships, have turned around and are headed back in the direction of the Soviet Union. Back in the cabinet room, President Kennedy believes Khrushchev is obeying the quarantine. Nikita Khrushchev wakes up on Wednesday, October 24, to the news that the Aleksandrovsk carrying 80 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb is safely in port at Lizavela. The relief doesn't last for long. The United States Air Command has moved to DEF CON-2, one level short of nuclear war. DEF CON, or Defense Readiness Condition 1, would mean open warfare. The alert level has been raised by General Thomas Power, who oversees the U.S. Air Command's nuclear deterrent force. He deliberately gives the order of unprotected communication lines to his staff in military bases and bunkers across the world, knowing that the message will be intercepted by the Soviet Union. This has been Episode 7 of 10 of the bomb, Season 3, Kennedy and Khrushchev, from the BBC World Service. Next time on the bomb, the crisis threatens to move beyond Kennedy and Khrushchev's control. We had to begin, be ready, try to save ourselves, so that when they landed, they would have resisted. The two previous seasons of the bomb are also available to listen to right now. The producer is Megan Jones, the editor is Chris Ledjard. The production coordinator is Stuart Laws, researched by many Harapin, Isabel Eaton. The story editor is Kate Lee's, music composed by Elizabeth Pernell, the theme is by Trevor Garekis, sound designed by Tim Nielsen at Skywalker Sound. The sound supervisor is Catherine Robinson. The commissioning editor is Simon Pitts. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev is a BBC audio whales production for the BBC World Service. True Crime meets history with a twist in a new series of Lady Killers. Join me as we travel back in time to investigate the most astonishing Lady Killers of the 19th and 20th centuries, we visit the scene of the crime and we delve deep into their lives to ask, how did they do it? Why did they do it? What drove them to it? Watch Lady Killers with Lucy Wersley on BBC.com. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com. Find out more at BBC.com slash unlimited.