A terrifying true crime series following the investigation into one of the UK's most dangerous sexual predators starts tonight.
Manhunt: The Night Stalker centres on the horrific crimes perpetrated by Delroy Grant whose 17-year spree left thousands of elderly people in London, Kent and Surrey living in fear between 1992 and 2009.
The four-part series is based on the Diaries of Colin Sutton, the real-life detective who worked tirelessly on the case to bring Grant, known as the Night Stalker, to justice.
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It's thought that Grant attacked as many as 600 people, whose ages ranged from 68 to 93.
In 2011, at the age of 53, Grant was found guilty of 29 offences, including burglary, rape and sexual assault.
He was sentenced to four life sentences and ordered to spend at least 27 years behind bars.
By the time he was caught, many of his victims, some of who suffered with serious physical or mental illness, had already died.
Starring Martin Clunes as Detective Chief Inspector Sutton, it is a sequel to the 2019 series, which told the real life story of how the murder of Amelie Delagrange on Twickenham Green in 2004 was eventually linked to the murder of Marsha McDonnell in 2003 and the abduction and murder of Milly Dowler in 2002.
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Speaking ahead of its release, the series' writer Ed Whitmore said that reading through the victims' accounts was an incredibly distressing experience.
He said: "When you read victim account after victim account and, at a certain point, you just have to put it down because the terrible thing is that so many lives of these elderly victims ended in the most awful circumstances.
"Although technically he wasn't a murderer, there's no doubt that he hastened their ends in what he did and there's no sort of redemption there.
"Many of the victims died before he was apprehended.
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"So the awfulness of that I found particularly hard to bear [was] the injustice of it and just the sort of extraordinary fact that he was offended so, so regularly - not exactly the same streets, but he would reappear in the same streets and they just couldn't catch him."
Sutton also explained that reliving the investigation was a difficult process.
"I found it emotional in the same places where it was emotional when it happened for real and happened the first time, which is probably testament to the scripts and to the acting, I suppose," he explained.
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"I think these stories need to be told. I think there's a great good that's done by telling these stories and in some ways that's to reassure, to show people that even when these wicked people do these really wicked things, there are still good people who can do something about it.
"You have to have thick skin to do the job that I did for so long, but very occasionally there are some things that do pierce that and stay with you.
"And in one or two occasions in this case, the scene will stand out to people as the one that is still at the front of my mind every time that I think about this case."
Manhunt: The Night Stalker is on tonight on ITV at 9pm.
Topics: Police, UK News, True Crime, Investigation, UK Entertainment, ITV