Crime is the dark side of civilisation. The under belly of human failing and greed.Within societies, down through the ages, it has appropriated its rules and taken what it wants by foul and unfair means.`Crime Classics' examines all manner of crimes and murders from the past. It carefully recreates the complete crime through thorough and pains-taking research. The cases range from the assassinations of Lincoln and Julius Caesar to the more obscure, such as Bathsheba Spooner, who killed her husband Joshua in 1778 and became the first woman tried and executed in America.Your host each week, is Mr. Thomas Hyland - `connoisseur of crime, student of violence, and teller of murders' and played by Lou Merrill.