PRESTEIGNE and Knighton provide locations for documentary recreations in a TV programme about the unsolved 'Jack the Stripper' serial murders in London in the 1960s, being shown on BBC 2 Wales at 9pm this Saturday, January 12.

'Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer' looks at the story of one of the suspects of the murders, Harold Jones who at the age of 15 devastated the South Wales mining town of Abertillery in 1921 by murdering two schoolgirls.

He escaped execution because of his own young age and was given a life sentence but he was released after 20 years in 1941 and was later living in London where six prostitutes were found murdered in or near the Thames at Hammersmith during 1964 and 65.

The women has been subjected to extreme violence and two earlier murders in 1959 and 1963 have also been linked.

Because the bodies had all been found undressed the killer was nicknamed 'Jack the Stripper' in imitation of the Jack the Ripper murders in Victorian London which have also never been solved.

Eagle-eyed viewers will recognise streets in Knighton masquerading for West London and the Judge’s Lodging Victorian court museum at Presteigne as the setting for a reconstructed trial.

But could Harold Jones, the Welsh boy killer, really have matured in later life into a serial killer responsible for more victims than Jack the Ripper?

Criminologist Prof David Wilson and his investigative team tests the theory by using contemporary policing techniques such as geographical and offender profiling to see if the crimes of Jones the boy can be measured against those of 'Jack the Stripper'.

For the outset it becomes apparent there are many chilling similarities and eerie parallels, but will it be enough?