- Title: Dispatches: Marriage Contract
- Date: 13th October 1993
- Summary: An investigation into the increased incidence of professional killers hired for the murder of a marriage partner. The programme focuses in particular on "the sinister development with the police,who,on receipt of information from an informer that someone is planning to `get rid' of their partner,often `set up' the crime by themselves posing as the hit man and pressurising the man or woman to carry on with their plan even when they say they want to back out,and threatening them if they withdraw". Several such cases,where the guilty party was convicted of attempted murder,as given,where taped conversations were used as evidence. A contrast is made between the state of things in the USA,where there is a `defence of entrapment' when it is believed that covert policing has incited and increased crime.
- Description:DISPATCHES investigates the growing number of cases in which a contract hit man has been hired to use a bullet to end a marriage. But when the would-be killer turns out to be an undercover policeman...has he forestalled a crime which was bound to happen anyway,or has he invented a crime that would not otherwise exist?
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:Unspecified
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:13/10/1993
- Rights:On Request
- Decade: 1990s