A NEW documentary has examined what led notorious Bradford serial killer Stephen Griffiths to murder three women in the city a decade ago.

Griffiths, the self-proclaimed Crossbow Cannibal, was given three life sentences in 2010 for the murders of sex workers Susan Rushworth, Shelley Armitage and Suzanne Blamires.

The Bradford University Phd student of criminology, then aged 40, told police in interview that he he eaten parts of all three women.

TV series Making a Monster sees forensic psychologists and psychiatrists share their insights into the mind of a serial killer, with the next episode focusing on Griffiths.

TOP STORIES: 

Clinical forensic psychologist, Dr Eric Cullen believes that Griffiths was "unusual in serial killing because there’s not very much in his childhood or formative period to suggest the monster that he was to become".

He adds that he was trying to establish a "relatively normal life" but that his fragile ego was damaged after he was rejected by a woman.

He also details how Griffiths had told a probation officer years earlier that he was going to go on and kill.

"He’s trying to have relationships with women. They are failing because he already has of some of the early signs of mental obsessional compulsive behaviour and as soon as these women see this the relationships fall apart.

"His ego strength is sufficiently fragile in terms of confidence with women that he then turns his back on relationships and increasingly isolates himself.

"Because of his criminal history, as well, I understand that his relationship with his family broken down as well, so that no longer is also the potential for at least some sort of positive intervention in this deterioration of his lifestyle.

"At this stage in his life, he’s probably lost. He’s probably sufficiently engaged in this isolated, inner reality of a morbid increasingly obsessional fascination with knives and violence and death and the links between them and especially his fascination with and growing respect for serial killing."

Dr Cullen adds that following his degree is psychology from Leeds University, he is able to begin a Phd at Bradford University in his early 30s in criminology, focusing on serial killers.

"This is perfect for Griffiths, this is ideal. He can with formal, official, academic sanction, pursue his pathology. He’s isolated himself now so completely in a flat, he is in his inner world."

He adds that Griffiths had attempted to "present an image of someone on menace", taking his pet lizard for a walk and wearing black leather.

"He was conspicuous but no one took seriously. Friends would dismiss him as relatively harmless, which must have galled him, because that was throwing contempt, that was still seeing the Stephen Griffiths character - that was the loser."

Of Griffiths being caught by police, he add: "Griffiths is arrested because he was made no attempt, unlike most serial killers, to avoid arrest.

"He is satisfied, he has come out, he has cast off this weak body of Stephen Griffiths and he has become the notorious, infamous, potentially famous, serial killer that he wants to be."

Making a Monster: Stephen Griffiths is on the Crime+Investigation TV channel, from Monday, March 2, at 9pm, and on demand.

For more information on the programme, click here.