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  Archived Madmen & Women: Axeman of New Orleans | BTK Strangler | Elizabeth Bathory | Paul Bernardo & Karla Komolka | David Berkowitz | Lizzie Bordon | Ted Bundy | Andrei Chikatilo | Mary Ann Cotton | Jeffrey Dahmer | Albert DeSalvo | Albert Fish | Kendall Francois | John Wayne Gacy | Eddie Gein | Green River Murders | H. H. Holmes | Edmund Kemper | The Railroad Killer | Jack the Ripper | Richard Ramirez | Harold Shipman | Peter Sutcliffe | Coral Eugene Watts | Aileen Wuornos | The Zodiac Killer

Special Reports: Kids Who Kill | Forensics | Serial Killer Cannibals | Male vs Female | Serial Killers and Monsters

Note: unless otherwise stated, all reports researched/compiled by Absynthe


Axeman of New Orleans    

He came in the Night. The legend of "The Axeman of New Orleans" is a brutal tale of savage murder and false accusations. It is also a case of a mysterious serial killer that remains unresolved to this day.

In 1918, three Italian grocers and their wives were slaughtered by an axe-weilding assassin. The police found evidence of a break-in. A wooden panel had been chiseled out and removed from the kitchen door. It lay on the ground, the discarded chisel on top of it. A pile of men's clothing lay in the middle of the bathroom floor and an axe was found inside the cast-iron bathtub, leaning against one side. From all appearances, it had been hastily washed clean of blood, although some still clung to the blade and the tub. Also at the crime scene was a man's straight razor which police concluded was used on the victims as well, almost severing one of their heads.

Jake and Andrew Maggio, brothers of the victims lived in an adjoining room, they were both arrested. Jake was released the next day, while Andrew remained in jail several days after it was discovered the razor used in the killings belonged to him. He was released a few days later when there was not enough evidence to convict him.

Soon, however, a connection would be made to previous murders: Police discovered a message written on a sidewalk near the scene of the Italian grocery store owner's attack, reading, " Mrs. Maggio is going to sit up tonight just like Mrs. Toney." Toney was a reference to earlier victims and Mrs. Maggio and her husband were the latest. Both had been struck once with an axe and had their throats slit. Mrs. Toney and her husband had also been brutally murdered by an axeman.

Since the attacks had all been on Italian grocers and their wives, there was soon talk of the Mafia. Organized crime in New Orleans was in its hey day. There was rumor of a splinter group of the Mafia called "The Black Hand" which was believed to be responsible for numerous killings. The Mafia leaders denied the accusation saying they would never murder women.

The soap opera aspect of the slayings began in June of 1918 when Louis Besemer and his partner Harriet Lowe were attacked. Besemer survived but Lowe died, but not before she pinned the assault on Besemer despite the fact he was also seriously wounded. He was later acquitted on all charges. It must have been fairly obvious Besemer was innocent given the fact that on the same evening as Lowe's murder, The Axeman had struck again when he nearly killed a woman named Schneider, who was nearing the end of a pregnancy. She managed to survive and gave birth to a healthy baby girl soon afterwards.

On August 10, 1918, Joseph Romero was killed by The Axeman. As usual the perpetrator had chiseled out a door panel to gain entry and discarded his weapon immediately after leaving the residence. In March 1919, he struck again when Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia were attacked along with their infant daughter, The Axeman only managing to kill the small baby. In both the Romano and Cortimiglia incidents the murderer was seen, but descriptions led police no closer to a solid suspect. Then Rosie Cortimiglia identified her assailant out of the blue. Her own neighbors Iorlando Jordano and his son Frank. Rosie's husband Charles disputed his wife's claim but the two men were found guilty anyway in May of 1919. Eventually, Mrs. Cotimiglia changed her mind in late 1920 and police grudgingly released the Jordano's. She admitted that she had lied simply because she bore a grudge against the two men. Fortunately that debaucle of justice was corrected .

The Axeman had already made it obvious he was still on the loose by severely injuring grocer Steve Boca and Sarah Laumann, 19, in seperate instances. His trademark method of entry and habit of leaving his bloody axe lying just outside after hacking his sleeping victims left little doubt that the he was still on the prowl for prey. New Orleans is famous for its superstition and imagination. Rumors abounded that The Axeman was not human, he was a cloaked phantom. In March, 1919 the authorities recieved a letter much like the missives written by Jack the Ripper. Never authenticated, it simply fueled the mystery.

Titled "HELL" this is the letter:
Esteemed Mortal,
    They have never caught me and they never will. They have never seen me, for I am invisible, even as the ether that surrounds your earth. I am not a human being, but a spirit and a fell demon from the hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the Axeman.
    When I see fit, I shall come again and claim other victims. I alone know who they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe, besmeared with the blood and brains of him whom I have sent below to keep me company.
    If you wish you may tell the police not to rile me. Of course I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense at the way they have conducted their investigation in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to amuse not only me but His Satanic Majesty, Francis Josef, etc. But tell them to beware. Let them not try to discover what I am, for it were better that they were never born than to incur the wrath of the Axeman. I don't think there is any need of such a warning, for I feel sure the police will always dodge me, as they have in the past. They are wise and know how to keep away from all harm.
    Undoubtedly, you Orleanians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am, but I could be much worse if I wanted to. If I wished, I could pay a visit to your city every night. At will I could slay thousands of your best citizens, for I am in close relationship to the Angel of Death.
    Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to visit New Orleans again. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a proposition to you people. Here it is:
    I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of those people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.
    Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and as it is about time that I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse. Hoping that thou wilt publish this, and that it may go well with thee, I have been, am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed either in fact or realm of fantasy.
The Axeman

The New Orleans people took the letter seriously and held a wild party and jazzed it up as the Axeman requested. There were no murders that night.

His slaying's ended as quickly as they started, and he killed for the last time on October 27, 1919, splitting the head of a man named Mike Pepitone. The Axeman seemingly disappeared after the Pepitone killing, but on December 2, 1920, a New Orleans man by the name of Joseph Mumfre was shot to death on a Los Angeles street by Pepitone's wife. She claimed that she had seen The Axeman flee after her husband's killing and had located him. That man was Mumfre, so the distraught widow tracked him down and killed him. Mumfre was in fact a career criminal who was in and out of jail throughout his adult life and was free during all The Axeman's attacks. There was reportedly some circumstantial evidence that led many to believe Mumfre did kill Pepitone, but he was never linked to any of the other murders, which remain unsolved to this day. Mrs. Pepitone served three years of a ten year sentence for murder in Los Angeles.

There were no more Axe Murders in New Orleans and no one knows who the Axeman really was.

Read about the Axeman of New Orleans at the Crime Library
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BTK Strangler

A self titled serial killer, The BTK Strangler [Bind, Torture, Kill], is linked to eight unsolved homicides that terrorized Wichita Kansas between 1974 and 1986. After years of silence, the killer surfaced again in March (2004), sending cryptic messages and a letter to the Wichita Eagle newspaper with information on an unsolved 1986 killing...

The letter contained a copy of the victims driver's license and photos of her body. Also enclosed were photocopies of three pictures of the crime scene, with slight differences in each. These pictures could only have been taken by the killer as the body was transported by medical technicians before investigators could take any.

It was the first communication from the killer known as the BTK Strangler since the late 1970s, and police said it linked the serial killer to the 1986 slaying. The other seven slayings were in the 1970s, with BTK claiming responsibility for those deaths in letters to the newspaper and a television station.

Police have received thousands of tips from the public since March. But the identity of the BTK killer remains unknown. According to the Wichita Police, the following information about the killer has been made public:
  • BTK's father was killed in World War II, and he was raised by his mother, with his grandparents caring for him while she was at work. When he was about 11, his mother began dating a railroad detective.
  • His grandfather played the fiddle and died of lung disease.
  • BTK's communications include accounts of a cousin named Susan who moved to Missouri, and of a woman he knew named Petra who had a younger sister named Tina.

    The BTK murder timeline:
    On January 15, 1974, four members of the Joseph Otero family were brutally murdered in their home by an unknown intruder. Joseph had retired from the Air Force the previous August, and was a mechanic and flight engineer at Cook Airfield. Julie had been recently laid off from her job as a short term assembler for the Coleman Co., and was recomended for rehire. Two of their five children, Joseph Jr., and Josephine were the remaining victims of this attack, while the older three children were at school. The phone lines were cut, the family dog had been put out in the yard, and the killer used venetian blind cords that he brought with him to bind the victims, then strangled them. He took the Otero's car, leaving it less than a mile from the home. Officers at the crime scene described it as the worst they had ever seen.

    Less than two months later, Kathryn Bright and her brother Kevin were confronted in her home by a man who tied them up, cut the phone lines, and told them he needed a car because he was wanted in California. Kevin was able to work his bindings loose and grab the gun from the attacker, who then retrieved it and shot Kevin twice. Kevin was able to escape while the attacker was in another room, but by the time help was summoned, Kathryn had been fatally stabbed 3 times.

    In October of the same year, someone called the Wichita Eagle, directing them to a letter at the Wichita Public Library. It was from the killer, claiming the Otero killings, and offering details of the crimes as proof.

    The next time the killer appeared was March 17, 1977, when he showed up at the home of Shirley Vian. It is thought that her children may have opened the door to him. He tied Shirley up with venetian blind cords that he brought with him, then strangled her while her children were locked in another room (some reports say closet, some say bathroom). He later commented in a communication that the children were saved by their crying and by the ringing of a phone.

    On December 8, 1977, a phone call was made from a phone booth in Wichita.
    Dispatcher: Dispatcher
    Caller: Yes, You will find a homicide at 843 S. Pershing. Nancy Fox.
    Dispatcher: I'm sorry, sir, I can't understand you. What is the address?
    2nd Dispatcher: 843 S. Pershing
    Caller: That is Correct

    Nancy Fox's body was found by police in her home. The killer had entered after smashing a rear window, and her purse contents were dumped out and her drivers license was missing. Her phone line was cut, and she was bound with her own pantyhose. She was fully clothed, but her murderer left physical evidence behind.

    Two more communications followed within the next several months. A poem titled "Shirleylocks" and addressed to the Wichita Eagle was misdirected at the newspaper to the classified section due to confusion that it was a Valentines ad. The other was the more directly titled poem "Oh! Death To Nancy". Both of these poems were rewordings of other works.

    On April 28, 1978, the killer waited in the home of 63 year old Anna Williams. It is believed that he entered through a basement window. Fortunately for her, he grew tired of waiting, and left before she returned home around 11:00 pm. She found that she was missing $35, and some articles of clothing and jewelry. Two months later she received what was possibly an original poem titled "Oh Anna, Why Didn't You Appear?", along with an article each of her clothing and jewelry. The next day, KAKE TV received a duplicate of these items.

    In December of 1987, a letter was received by a woman whose husband and two daughters had been murdered and suspicion had fallen on BTK. The letter purported to be from BTK and claimed not to be responsible for these killings.

    Nothing more was heard from the killer until March 19, 2004 - A letter arrived at the Wichita Eagle containing a photocopy of Vicki Wegerle's driver's license and three pictures of the crime scene that apparently were taken by her killer. (Relatives said the license was the only thing missing from Wegerle's home.) The BTK case was once again a full-scale investigation.

    April 7, 2004: An anonymous letter containing a photo of an unidentified baby was received by Wichita's KSN-TV station. Apparently believing it could be a clue from BTK, the station immediately publicized the photo in an attempt to identify the baby. Apparently it was unsuccessful.

    May 5, 2004: Wichita's KAKE-TV station received a multi-page letter from BTK, with the heading "The BTK Story" and a chapter titled "P.J.'s." The letter also included word puzzles and hints at his method of gaining access to the homes of his victims.

    June 17, 2004: The Wichita Police Dept. received a letter from BTK that apparently included more details of the Otero murders.

    July 17, 2004: A suspicious letter was discovered at the main branch of the Wichita Public Library and turned over to the FBI. It was eventually determined to be an authentic communication from BTK, although the contents have not been revealed.

    Aug. 21, 2004: The Wichita Police Dept. announced that the folklore song 'Oh, Death' was used in an English literature class at Wichita State University during the 1970s, taught by Dr. P.J. Wyatt. Since BTK used an adaptation of that song in a 1978 letter, police theorized BTK had a relationship of some kind with Wyatt, who died of cancer in 1991.

    Nov. 30, 2004: The Wichita Police Dept. revealed new information about BTK's alleged background.

    Dec. 14, 2004: A package containing the driver's license of victim Nancy Fox was found in Wichita's Murdoch Park by a nearby resident. Reports indicate that nearly a week earlier on Dec. 8, an unknown man called a local QuickTrip convenience store to draw attention to the package. The park was immediately searched by police, however nothing was found.

    Who is this killer who revels in the media attention, emulates the Zodiac Killer and taunts the police with cryptic messages and evidence only the killer would know? Why did he disappear from 1978 until 2004? Will he kill again? No one knows but the BTK Strangler. Until then, lock your doors and be very wary of strangers.

    UPDATE: March 1,2005 - On Friday, the 25th February, the Wichita police arrested 58 y/o Dennis Rader who the police believe to be the BTK Strangler. Rader's daughter, believing her father to be the suspect, offered her DNA to the police. That DNA susbsequently matched DNA found at the crime scenes. Two new victims have been found raising the suspected number of killings from 8 to 10. If Rader is found guilty, he most likely will not recieve the death penalty as all the known murders were committed prior to 1994 when the death penalty was put into place in the Wichita penal system. There are however suspicions that another murder was committed after the 1994 date. Rader's Bail was set at 10 million dollars. No trial date has been set.

    Read more at the Crime Library or follow breaking news at Catch BTK

    UPDATE: On June 28th, 2005 Dennis Rader pled guilty to ten murders dating back to 1974. In a matter-of-fact manner, the 60 year old recalled the murders and referred to them as 'projects' or 'hits'. Expected to receive life in prison, the BTK killer is allowed priviliges to speak to the media and to Kristin Casarona, a Topeka woman who plans to pen a book about the famous Wichita killer.
    Go here for a complete update on the trial.
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    • Elizabth Bathory - The Blood Countess

    Elizabeth Bathory was born in 1560 into one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Transylvania. She had many powerful relatives - a cardinal, princes, and a cousin who was prime minister of Hungary. The most famous Bathory was King Steven of Poland 1575-86.

    At fourteen Elizabeth gave birth to an illegitimate child, fathered by a peasant boy and conceived at the chateau for her intended mother-in-law, Countess Ursula Nadasdy. Elizabeth and Count Ferencz Nadasdy had been betrothed since she was eleven years old. Elizabeth was married to the Count when she was 15, he was 26. The count added her surname to his, so the countess kept her name. They lived at Castle Csejthe in the Nyitra country of Hungary. The count, whose nickname was "The Black Hero of Hungary" spent a great deal of time away from home fighting. While he was away, Elizabeth's manservant Thorko introduced her to the occult.

    Elizabeth eloped with a dark stranger briefly, but came home. Luckily the count forgave her. Back at the castle, Elizabeth couldn't stand her domineering mother-in-law. She began torturing the servant girls with the help of her old nurse Iloona Joo. Her other accomplices included the major-domo Johannes Ujvary, Thorko, a forest witch named Darvula, and a witch Dorottya Szentes.

    In 1600 Ferencz died and Elizabeth's period of real atrocities began. First, she sent her hated mother-in-law away. Elizabeth was very vain and afraid of getting old and losing her beauty. One day a servant girl accidentially pulled her hair while combing it -- Elizabeth slapped the girl's hand so hard she drew blood, which fell onto her own hand. She immediately thought her skin took on the freshness of that of her young maid. She was sure she found the secret of eternal youthful skin! She had her major-domo and Thorko strip the maid, cut her and drain her blood into a huge vat. Elizabeth bathed in it to beautify her entire body.

    Over the next 10 years Elizabeth's evil henchmen provided her with new girls for the blood-draining ritual and her blood baths. But one of her intended victims escaped and told the authorities about what was happening at Castle Csejthe. King Mathias of Hungary ordered Elizabeth's own cousin, Count Cuyorgy Thurzo, governor of the province, to raid the castle.

    On December 30, 1610 they raided Castle Csejthe. They were horrified by the terrible sights in the castle - one dead girl in the main room, drained of blood and another alive whose body had been pierced with holes; in the dungeon they discoverd several living girls, some of whose bodies had been pierced. Below the castle, they exhumed the bodies of some 50 girls.

    Elizabeth was put under house arrest. A trial was held in 1611 at Bitcse. She refused to plead guilty or innocent and never appeared at the trial. A complete transcript of the trial was made at the time and it survives today in Hungary. Johannes Ujvary, major-domo, testified that about 37 unmarried girls has been killed, six of whom he had personally recruited to work at the castle. The victims were tied up and cut with scissors. Sometimes the two witches tortured these girls, or the Countess herself. Elizabeth's old nurse testified that about 40 girls had been tortured and killed.

    All the people involved in the killings, except the Countess Bathory and the two witches were beheaded and cremated. The two witches had their fingers ripped out and were burned alive. The court never convicted Countess Elizabeth of any crime. Stonemasons were brought to Castle Csejthe to wall up the windows and doors of the bedchamber with the Countess inside. They left a small hole through which food could be passed. King Mathias II demanded the death penalty for Elizabeth but because of her cousin, the prime minister, he agreed to an indefinitely delayed sentence, which actually meant solitary confinement for life.

    In this way she lived for three years, almost wasting away with cold and hunger without showing the slightest sign of repentance. Countess Bathory wrote her last will and testament on July 31st, 1614. Later in the year, she was found face-down on the floor, dead, by one of her guards. The date is reported as either August 14th or the 21st. Elizabeth Bathory, the "Blood Countess" was dead. The local folklore says that she is one of the legendary ghosts that still haunt certain areas in the Carpathians.

    *Note* There are some connections between the Bathorys and the Draculas. The commander of the expedition that helped Dracula regain his throne in 1476 was Prince Steven Bathory. A Dracula fief, Castle Fagaras, became a Bathory possession during the time of Elizabeth. Both families had a dragon design on their family crests.

    Full Case Details: Crime Library
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    Paul Bernardo & Karla Komolka - Ken & Barbie

    No one would ever expect Karla Komolka to become a psychopathic killer. She was a pretty girl with blonde hair who did well in school.

    Born on May 4, 1970 in Port Credit, Ontario, Karla had loving parents and grew up in a family with two sisters and several pets. She lived in a nice home in a middle class neighborhood.

    Karla was a normal teenager. Her friends flocked to her house where they sat around the pool, listened to music and talked 'girl talk.' Karla seemed to be a normal teenager. There were never any outward signs to indicate to those that knew and loved her that she had a psychopathic personality.

    In October 1987, at age 17, Karla met Paul Bernardo at a pet convention in Toronto. The couple engaged in sexual intercourse the same day. From that moment on, Karla was obsessed with the handsome, young accountant. Paul, dominating the relationship, quickly took control of her life telling her what to wear, what music to listen to, and what she could and could not do. What Paul said was law. Karla seemed to be happy with this arrangement and once stated that she would do ANYTHING to make Paul happy.

    It is not known whether Karla was aware that Paul was committing a series of rapes in Scarborough at the time. Karla did know that Paul wanted to claim her younger sister Tammy's virginity, they had long talks and fantasized about the younger sister. Karla stole Halothane, an anesthetic used on animals, from the veterinary clinic where she worked. She was prepared to fulfill Paul's fantasy.

    On December 24, 1990, Karla administered Halothane to Tammy while their parents slept upstairs. Paul had intercourse with the fifteen-year-old while Karla commited sex acts with her sister. They video taped the entire episode. But something went horribly wrong! The Halothane, intended for animals was much too strong and Tammy died on her way to the hospital one week before her sixteenth birthday. The official cause of death was aspiration. Tammy had choked to death on her own vomit. Karla grieved her sister for a short period of time but soon her thoughts were completely filled with her upcoming wedding to Paul.

    Indifferent at having killed her own sister, a happily engaged Karla Homolka and her fiancé rented a bungalow in the quiet suburb of Port Dalhousie and began prowling the city for young girls. On June 15, 1991 Paul Bernardo abducted 14-year-old Leslie Erin Mahaffy and brought her to their home where they held the girl hostage for several days, sexually assaulting her over and over. They recorded this on video tape and in one scene Homolka pretties herself for the camera before raping the girl. Soon tiring of the teenager, they killed her and Paul Bernardo cut up her body with a chainsaw. On June 29, a couple canoeing on a lake at the edge of the city of St. Catharines found parts of Leslie Mahaffy's body in shallow water, encased in cement. The only way her body could be identified was from dental records.

    On the same day that the girl's body was found, Karla Homolka was married in a lavish ceremony, resplendent in an all-white wedding dress and riding with her husband in a horse-drawn carriage at Niagara-on-the-Lake.

    On April 16, 1992, Kristen French was abducted from a church parking lot in St. Catherines Ontario, on her way home from school. Paul and Karla took her to their home. Kristen knew where the house was and could identify them. She would have to die.

    Karla and Paul made Kristen their sex slave. They tortured her unmercifully in ways too horrific to mention. These indignities continued for several days. The couple killed Kristen on Easter Sunday, before Karla's parents came for dinner. On April 30, Kristen's body was found in a ditch not far from the grave of Leslie Mahaffy. Her beautiful long, dark hair had been cropped. Because she had not been dismembered, police didn't link the two crimes.

    Paul Bernardo's name continued to surface time after time in connection with the Scarborough Rapist. In February 1993, a blood analysis done at the forensic laboratory in Toronto pinpointed Paul as the perpetrator. Had the forensic team tested his blood when it was first taken several years before, Paul would have been in jail when the girls were murdered.

    After the blood analysis, the police put Paul under surveillance. They learned that Karla had filed assault charges against him for physcial abuse. Their crimes began to unfold but Karla presented herself as the abused victim and she left Paul in January 1993.

    In February, the Ontario Green Ribbon Task Force, which had been formed to solve the 'Ken and Barbie,' murders, decided to interview Karla. They took her fingerprints and questioned her about a Mickey Mouse watch in her possession that was very similar to the one worn by Kristen French when she disappeared. She was detained for five hours. At this time she realized that investigators had linked her husband to the Scarborough rapes.

    Karla knew her time was up. She told her uncle that Paul had committed the rapes and murdered Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. She failed to admit that she was an active and willing accomplice.

    In mid-February, Paul was arrested on both the rape and murder charges. On February 19, armed with a search warrant, the police searched the couple's Port Dalhousie home. They found a video of Karla engaged in sex with two women. A week later, Karla's lawyer and a plea-bargain specialist for the attorney general cut a deal with her. She would be sentenced to twelve years in prison for the deaths of each of the girls. The sentences would be served concurrently. It would prove to be the worse plea-bargain in Canadian history.

    In exchange for the reduced sentence, Karla agreed to tell the absolute truth about what had occurred in the wood frame house in Port Dalhousie. Prosecutors didn't realize that the entire plea process on Karla's part was a blatant lie.

    Paul's trial didn't take place for two years because he had placed his lawyer, Ken Murray, in an unethical position. Paul had given him the videotapes that he and Karla had made of their sexual escapades. After Ken Murray was removed from the case, he turned the videotapes over to police. On September 1, 1995, Paul was convicted on all counts. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for twenty-five years. Karla was sent to jail to serve her twelve-year term. Paul's appeal was set for 2000. The appeal was denied. Karla was eligible for parole in 2001.

    On March 8, 2001, Karla went before the National Parole Board after undergoing psychiatric evaluation. The findings were exactly the opposite of what was found when she was first arrested. Experts testified that they believed Karla was a psychopath. She has shown no remorse for any of the crimes, including the death of her sister, Tammy. She still portrays herself as a victim.

    The National Parole Board denied Karla's application for parole. They ruled as follows: "The board believes that, if released, you are likely to commit an offense causing the death of or serious harm to another person before the expiration of the sentence you are now serving."

    Again in 2003, Karla was up for parole: The National Parole Board ruled Jan. 17, 2003 that Karla Homolka must stay in prison until her sentence is completed in July of 2005. The board's decision represented the third time that Homolka's request to be transferred to a half-way house was refused.

    Two reasons for the refusal were given. One reason was her sexual relationship with another convict at the detention center. The other reason stated by the board was her refusal to participate in rehabilitation programs.

    In 2005, when she has served her full sentence, she will be released without being eased back into society. Under Canadian law, she cannot be kept in prison indefinitely. A psychopath will once again be free to murder, torture, and rape.

    More information on Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka can be found at the Crime Library

    UPDATE: July 4, 2005 was independence day for the most reviled woman in Canada - Karla Komolka. After serving a 12 year sentence for the rape and murder of teenage girls including her sister, the 35 year old, who now calls herself Karla Teale, plans to settle in Montreal.

    Sentenced in 1993, Komolka was convicted of manslaughter and given the relatively light sentence of 12 years for her role in the rapes and murders of Ontario teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. In return, she agreed to testify against ex-husband Paul Bernardo who is now serving a life term for two counts of murder in a Toronto Prison.
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    David Berkowitz - Son of Sam

    "I didn't want to hurt them, I only wanted to kill them" That was a statement given to police by David Berkowitz. He was describing an attemped attack he made on two women in 1975 a full year before he began his Son of Sam killings. He hadn't yet bought the famous .44 revolver then. This time he was using a knife and was too cowardly to go through with it when the women fought back.

    Like other serial killers of the late 20th century there is an occult connection. This, of course is a twisted perverse version of true Paganism and or Wicca. Much like modern terrorists and their false version of Islam. In fact the Son of Sam story might not ever be truly solved. But what we know is that David Berkowitz committed at least some of the murders during the period of July 1976 through July 1977.

    He bought the .44 caliber revolver on June 12 1976 in Houston Texas. He was accompanied by John Wheat Carr aka John Wheaties. John's brother Michael and their father Sam Carr were Berkowitz's neighbors. The Carr family were deeply entwined in the murders. Sam Carr was the "Sam" whom Berkowitz claimed to be the son of. It was The Carrs' family dog that Berkowitz claimed gave him his orders. They were all suspected to have been involved in the Four Pi Movement, a murder cult that practiced animal sacrifices in the area. Another interesting note is that six of the seven shootings fell on recognized "satanic holidays" practiced by the this same cult. John carr died under mysterious circumstances six months after David Berkowitz's arrest. And it was the death of his brother Michael on October 4 1979 that lead the NYPD to reopen the Son of Sam case. That case is still open.

    Rather than get into any more of the strange details surrounding the Son of Sam let's discuss the facts. David Berkowitz had not yet known the pleasures of a woman, any woman, at the time he was arrested. He was a virgin. There were seven separate shootings. Six people were killed, seven were injured. Of the injured one woman was paralyzed and a man was blinded permanently. Berkowitz narrowly missed being found insane and stood trial. He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 365 years in prison.

    In July of 1979 he was attacked in prison and his throat was slashed. His attackers were not identified (big shocker there). Uunlike Jeff Dahmer, he survived his attack. He didn't become a freak prison bitch like Richard Speck. So the only other option was of course to "find Jesus". You can read his thoughts about such things as the DC sniper case at forgivenforlife.com As of this writing I haven't visited the above website. But if you're interested in the world of serial killers, curiousity would seem to dictate a visit. Let's do this again soon shall we?
    ...as compiled/reported by FatDaddy
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    Lizzie Borden - took an axe...

    Lizzie Borden took an ax
    And gave her mother forty whacks,
    When she saw what she had done
    She gave her father forty-one.

    We all know this child's rhyme, but do you know the full truth behind the story? It was actually 19 and then 10 whacks...

    Lizzie Bordon, born in July 19, 1860, was accused of brutally killing her father and step-mother. The long hidden hatred for the woman ended with a 5-inch hole in her head and the skull being basically hacked to ribbons. Her father was then attacked with such fever as to slice through his cheekbone, sever an eye in half, and covered the room with blood spatters... Spatter patterns that in todays criminal science labs would show that there was no way for the attacker to come away clean. Yet in less than 10 minutes Lizzie changed, removed all traces of blood from her person, and scour the keen blade and handle.

    The facts of the case are quite interesting:
  • the same day of the murders she tried to purchase the quickesst-acting poison available and was positively identified in doing so.
  • lizzie, by her own time line, would have been in the house while her step-mother was killed and yet heard and saw nothing
  • three days after the murder she burned a dress in the kitchen stove, a fact unknown until quite some time later
  • she gave varying reason for being in the barn and even told the police that, on the hottest day of the year, she had gone into the sweltering hayloft and spent 20+ minutes searching through boxes for a lead sinker [a penny item in any store]
  • no footprints other than the investigators were found to be disturbing the dust in the hayloft
    BUT...
  • later scientific tests failed to show the slightest trace of blood on the weapon even in hidden crevices
  • in less than 10 minutes, ALL traces of blood were removed [if they were ever there] from Lizzie...and her hair was NOT wet, merely 'sweaty' around the edges...

    A jury of her peers found her innocent...but was she? Is it easier to say they were wrong and this was just a case of the 1800's version of Johnny Cochran? Or is it just that we have so few women in our historical horrors that we want to cling to the possibility that she, a well bred socialite, could turn into a savage murderer?

    What are your theories, thoughts and comments???
    Full Case Details: http://www.crimelibrary.com/lizzie/lizziemain.htm
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    • Ted Bundy - Ladies man

    Theodore "Ted" Bundy, all American boy, considered handsome by most - and one of America's most famous serial killers. Born to an unwed mother, Ted never knew his father. He was lead to believe his grandparents were his parents until he was four years old. This charade is believed to have caused a confusion that stayed with Ted through out all of his life. He admitted he always felt like an outsider, never fitting in.

    In 1967 Ted met a girl that was everything he ever dreamed of in a woman. This relationship would change the rest of his life. After this girl, who he was madly in love with and planned to marry, broke off the relationship Ted was devastated. He lost interest in everything including school and life in general. He was obsessed with this woman and this obsession led to events that would change Ted's life and shock the world.

    Clean-cut serial killer Theodore "Ted" Bundy confessed to 28 killings, but other estimates indicate that he killed as many as 33 to 100 female victims during the1970's. Often he sexually assaulted his victims with such instruments as crowbars or hairspray bottles. While under arrest, Bundy managed to escape twice, one time living for months on the run in Tallahassee.

    Ted a one time law student, served as his own defense attorney, but not even his smooth talking demeanor could save him from a death sentence.

    Ted Bundy was executed January 24, 1989. The hundreds of people holding a vigil outside the prison held up signs such as "Burn Bundy Burn", and celebrated once news of his death was announced.

    Was Ted Bundy killing these women as revenge for a lost love or was he just crazy? Read more about Ted Bundy at The Crime Library
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    Andrei Chikatilo - the Rostov Ripper

    "What I did was not for sexual pleasure. Rather it brought me some peace of mind."

    Chikatilo was the worst serial killer in Russian history, murdering at least 53 young girls and boys before he was captured November 20, 1990.

    Andrei Chikatilo grew up in the town of Novocherkassk, in a area steeped in the macho culture of the Don Cossacks. By the time he reached puberty, females loomed large in Chikatilo's fantasy life. He wanted them meek and submissive. But the reality was far different. He found it hard to establish a relationship with girls, who tended to laugh at his clumsy attempts to woo them.

    It was to compensate for his lack of sexual prowess that he turned to the task of self-improvement through education, graduating from Rostov University with a degree in Russian Literature. Even during his compulsive army service he studied at the Lenin Library while his comrades were out chasing girls.

    In the mid-seventies he moved to a new job, teaching literature in a boarding school in nearby Novo Shatinsk. There he saw the early sexual encounters between young boys and girls. He grew frustrated and embittered, mad with jealousy and rage. It was not long after this that children began to go missing.

    The series of murders began in 1978, when the body of a girl was found in the woods near Rostov. A child molester was arrested and executed for this killing, but when more killings of the same type continued, the police realized they had convicted the wrong man.

    Chikatilo was first apprehended near the scene of one of his murders in 1979, but managed to convince the police that he was a innocent nature-lover. Five years later he was picked up again, this time with a knife in his attache case, but managed to talk his way out of being arrested by again claiming that he was out in the woods studying nature. In the summer of 1984 he spent three months in prison for theft of government property. After he was released, and as if in revenge for his incarceration, he killed eight people in a single month.

    The butchery was so appalling that top investigators were sent from Moscow to help in the hunt. They confessed they have never seen anything like it. The killer first cut the victims tongues to prevent them from crying out, before bursting their eardrums and gouging out their eyes. While they were still alive he would finally acheive sexual gratification by carrying out bizarre operations. The boys had their testicles removed, the girls their wombs.

    Originally Chikatilo had sought his victims in the loney forest strips, but in 1989 he managed to get a good job as head of supplies at Rostov's Lenin locomotive repair plant. This job gave him the perfect excuse for hanging around the trains and station, looking for his young prey, picking them up in railway carriages or even on buses.

    Chikatilo was in the train station when observed by under-cover officers, trying to pick up children. They searched his bag, and found Vaseline, dirty towels, rope, and a kitchen knife. His blood was tested, and he was found to be A-blood. The killer was determined to have AB-blood; from tests done on seman samples took from some of the dead victims. He was released. Chikatilo was said to have a rare blood disorder, where the Blood and semen type are different.

    It wasn't until the death toll had reached twenty that the police realized they were dealing with a "super-killer". During the long hunt for him, hidden cameras had photographed thousands of men walking with teenagers, and policemen acted as decoys in trains and other public places. The officers at the stations began to take the names of anyone who looked suspicious. One of the names that kept coming up was Andrei Chikatilo. An officer on the case contacted Andrei's work, and found that Chikatilo was absent on the days of the murders.

    Chikatilo was finally caught seven days after burying his last victim. On November 6, 1990, he was stopped for a routine check by a policeman who noticed blood on his face. When a body was found a few days later, Chikatilo was placed under surveillance. On 20 November he was spotted approaching two boys. The decision was made to arrest him immediately.

    Once the suspect was taken to police headquarters for questioning, he confessed to being the killer they were looking for; who by this time was known as the "Rostov Ripper". Chikatilo even took officers to sites in the forest where he had hidden some of the bodies and recreated the crime scenes. The officers were appalled and sickened with the nonchalance or which Chikatilo spoke of the horrible crimes.

    Andrei Chikatilo admitted to at least 53 murders, and having had sex with at least one corpes. This man with a university degree in Russian literature, a wife and children, and no apparent background of child abuse, clearly had a savage heart. As he said of himself, he was apparently "a mistake of nature."

    On February 15, 1994, when his appeal was turned down, he was taken to a special soundproof room and shot behind the right ear, ending his life.

    Full Case Details: Crime Library
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    British Serial Killer: Mary Ann Cotton

    Mary Ann CottonFrom a Victorian England children’s nursery rhyme: Mary Ann Cotton– She's dead and she's rotten! She lies in her bed with her eyes wide open. Sing, sing! "Oh, what can I sing? Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string." Where, where? "Up in the air – selling black puddings a penny a pair."

    Mary Ann Cotton was Britain’s first female serial killer. Living in Victorian era Britain she used poison, specifically arsenic, to kill her victims. Suspected of murdering as many of twenty-one people including her children, mother and husbands, she was considered the most prolific serial killer in British history before Dr. Harold Shipman. Her modus operandi was less flamboyant than that of Jack the Ripper, but nonetheless deadly.

    Born Mary Ann Robson in October, 1832 in the village of Low Moorsley in Tyne and Wear, Northern England, her father was a staunchly religious miner and a strict disciplinarian of Mary Ann and her younger brother, Robert. When Mary was eight, the family moved to Murton. A year later, her father, who continued working in the mines, fell down a deep mine shaft and suffered an early death.

    Life was harsh for a working class family in the 19th century, especially for one whose head of household had died prematurely. Children would often be sent to workhouses and separated from their families. No doubt Mary Ann had ominous nightmares about her fate. This fear may have planted a seed that may have been the driving force for Mary Ann’s future choices. Mary Ann’s mother remarried, but her stepfather was cruel and she hated him. Mary Ann was smart enough to realize that her stepfather’s salary had been her only saving grace. It became ultimately important to her that she always have money no matter what the cost.

    Mary Ann left her home at age 16 and worked as a housemaid for a prosperous family. Her work was competent, but she soon became the subject of a sexual scandal because of her illicit meetings with a church scholar. She stayed in service with the family for three years then trained as a dressmaker. Never shy and always in the company of men, Mary Ann soon found herself pregnant and married the father, William Mowbray, in 1852. During the first 4 years of the marriage, Mary Ann bore 5 children, 4 of which died soon after birth. The infant mortality rate in the 19th century was high so their losses were simply considered coincidental and unlucky. Mary Ann was unhappy and continued to nag William because there was never enough money. Probably to make more money and get away from Mary Ann’s nagging, Mowbray took a job in Sunderland several miles away. He returned home in 1865 with an injured foot. Mary Ann nursed him through his injury, but within a month he was dead from a sudden and mysterious stomach illness. The family doctor visited Mary Ann intending to console the grieving widow only to find Mary Ann dancing around the room wearing a new dress she had bought with her husband’s insurance money.

    After Mowbray’s death, Mary Ann moved with her remaining two children to Seaham Harbour where she had an affair with a local man, Joseph Nattrass. Nattrass was engaged to another woman and Mary Ann tried her best to break up the relationship, but this time she did not get her man…not yet anyway. Mary Ann left Sunderland after Nattrass’ wedding and after burying her 31/2-year-old daughter. During her 13 years of marriage to William Mowbray, Mary had bore 9 children, 8 of which had now died of a mysterious ‘gastric illness’. Her remaining child, Isabella was entrusted to the care of her maternal grandmother while Mary Ann started work at The Sunderland Infirmary, House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever, Dispensary and Humane Society where she scrubbed the floors with a mixture of soap and arsenic. While working, she met and married a former Sunderland Infirmary patient George Ward who mysteriously developed a stomach ailment and died in October of 1866, within months of their marriage. Mary Ann staunchly accused the physician treating her husband of malpractice. She was shifting the focus away from herself. Later at her trial, many questioned why no one took note of this woman’s trail of dead husbands and children, but the fact was Mary Ann moved often and never used the same physician. Not only was Mary Ann Cotton deadly, she was sly as a fox.

    Mary Ann decided it was time to move on, erasing any trail behind her. She was now alone, having never retrieved her only child, Isabella, from her mother’s home. In November 1866, she applied for a job as a housekeeper for a Pallion shipwright James Robinson, whose wife Hannah had recently died. She was hired and on December 23rd, under her care, the youngest of the Robinson children died of ‘gastric fever’. The unsuspecting shipwright turned to Mary Ann for comfort after losing his wife and youngest child. Mary Ann obliged and was once again pregnant. Any marriage at this time was deterred as Mary Ann’s mother became ill and summoned her to take care of Isabella.

    By the time Mary Ann arrived, her mother was feeling better, but Mary Ann took charge of the household. One of her very first tasks was to clean and scrub the walls and floors with her special cleaning solution of soap and arsenic, which she always seemed to have an ample supply. Nine days after her arrival, Mary Ann’s mother developed a sudden ‘gastric fever’ and died. After burying her mother, Mary Ann took Isabella and returned to the Robinson household. By the end of April, Isabella and two more of the Robinson children had died of a mysterious gastric ailment.

    Despite the loss of three of his children, James Robinson never suspected Mary Ann of any misdoing. He married her in August, their first child Mary Isabella was born in late November. Mary Isabella fell severely ill in March 1868. Despite her recovery, James became suspicious of his wife. Mary Ann was demanding money from him and constantly nagging him to secure life insurance. He questioned his remaining children and they told him Mary Ann had coerced them to pawn valuables from the house and give her the money. Furious, James threw her out into the streets. She took Mary Isabella with her. In late 1869, after wandering the streets in the kind of life that Mary Ann had anxiously feared, Mary Ann and her daughter visited an acquaintance. During the course of the visit, Mary Ann asked her friend to watch the girl while she went out to mail a letter. Mary Ann never came back, Mary Isabella was returned to James on the first day of 1870.

    The first few weeks of 1870 were desperate ones for Mary Ann living on the streets alone with no money. Was her nightmare coming true? We can only imagine what was going through her mind in the midst of her desperation. Things began looking up in February when Mary Ann was introduced to Frederick Cotton. Frederick was also a grieving widower who had lost two children. His sister Margaret was acting as substitute mother of his household. Unfortunately, Margaret died suddenly in March from a mysterious gastric ailment. The door was wide open for Mary Ann to move in and that she did after discovering herself pregnant with Frederick’s child. Mary Ann and Frederick were married in September despite the fact that she was still married to James Robinson. Bigamy was now part of her growing list of crimes.

    Quickly, Mary Ann set up housekeeping in the Cotton home. Remembering her earlier desperation she secured life insurance for her husband and his two remaining sons. In 1871 Mary Ann gave birth to a son, Robert. Her interest in Frederick was waning. She discovered her former paramour Joseph Nattrass was recently divorced and living in nearby Auckland. Under a false pretense, she insisted the family move to Auckland. By December of that year, Frederick succumbed to a bout of gastric fever. Joseph Nattrass began living with the family in March 1872, but Mary Ann’s fear of being poor still nagged at her. She began working as a nurse for John Quick-Manning, an excise officer recovering from smallpox. She must have thought Quick-Manning was a better catch than Nattrass because she soon was carrying his child. A marriage was hindered by the remaining Cotton family and Joseph Nattrass. Mary Ann began working furiously as any sociopath could. Frederick Jr. died in March of 1872 and the infant Robert died soon after. Joseph Nattrass was severely ill when Mary Ann convinced him to revise his will and leave everything to her. He soon died never suspecting Mary Ann of anything but love and devotion.

    James Robinson was the only husband that had escaped a relationship with Mary Ann with his life. All other husbands, children, and most stepchildren had succumbed to gastric fever or stomach ailments, except for young Charles Cotton and Robinson’s children. Fortunately, the Robinson children were safely away from Mary Ann’s motherly care, but Mary Ann still had the insurance policy taken out on Charles. In the spring of 1872, Mary Ann sent Charles to the local chemist to buy arsenic. The chemist refused to sell it to him as he was under the age of 21, which was the law at the time. Undeterred, Mary Ann asked one of her neighbors to buy it for her. In July Charles died of gastric fever.

    Perhaps Mary Ann had stayed in one place too long, or her crimes were catching up with her, but the neighbors were gossiping. A local government official, Thomas Riley went to the police after his suspicions about Mary Ann. He told the police Mary Ann had consulted him about sending Charles to a workhouse. He told Mary Ann that the only way the boy could go would be for Mary Ann to accompany him. After declining Mary Ann made the statement, “I won’t be troubled long. He’ll go like all the rest of the Cotton family.” Riley said the boy looked to be in perfect health, yet had died 5 days later.

    Mary Ann was becoming more careless and rousing more suspicion; within hours of Charles’ death she went to the insurance office to collect money even before fetching the physician to sign the death certificate. Informed that she could not collect insurance money without a death certificate, Mary Ann proceeded to call the doctor. She was surprised to learn there would be no death certificate until a formal inquest was performed. The inquest showed no unnatural findings and Mary Ann might have gone on killing and collecting insurance monies, but the press fueled by gossip and rumors took hold of the story and painted Mary Ann as a ruthless killer. By this time Quick-Manning was looking at Mary Ann in a different light. Fearing his own demise, he severed all relationships with her.

    Mary Ann felt like it was time to move on, although friends advised her that leaving Auckland would make her look guilty. Unbeknown to her, the doctor who treated Charles kept some of his stomach contents and they tested positive for arsenic. The doctor went to the authorities with his results. The authorities ordered Charles’ body to be exhumed and tested further. The body of Joseph Nattrass was also exhumed after 6 other corpses were accidentally dug up because the church sexton could not remember where Joseph’s grave was situated. There was talk of other exhumations, but the courts had enough evidence and decided to proceed with her prosecution in the death of Charles Cotton. The trial was delayed until the delivery of Mary Ann’s daughter fathered by Quick-Manning.

    The trial of Mary Ann Cotton began in March 1863. The prosecution had numerous witnesses who testified that she purchased arsenic and many who detailed the sudden deaths of those who in previous days appeared perfectly healthy. There was also the statement she made about Charles being ‘in the way’ of her marriage to Quick-Manning.

    The defense argued that Charles could have inhaled the arsenic from fumes used in the dye of the green wallpaper in the Cotton home. The judge dismissed this frail theory and the jury retired for only 90 minutes before finding Mary Ann Cotton guilty of murder in the death of young Charles Cotton. Mr. Justice Archibald donned the black cap and passed sentence upon her, saying: "In these words I shall address you, I would earnestly urge you to seek for your soul that only refuge which is left for you, in the mercy of God through the atonement of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It only remains for me to pass upon you the sentence of the law, which is that you will be taken from hence to the place from whence is that you came, and from thence to a place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and your body to be afterwards buried within the precincts of the gaol. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul." On hearing her sentence Mary exclaimed "Oh no! Oh no!” She had to be carried from the dock in a state of collapse.

    Mary Ann maintained her innocence and wrote a letter to James Robinson. She insisted everything was his fault for putting her on the street with her baby in her arms. She begged him to bring her child and two remaining stepchildren to prison to see her. He sent his brother in law in his place. Despite her anger that James did not come, she asked about the children and asked that petitions be circulated for her support. Her child by Quick-Manning was adopted. She wrote a letter to the family stating, “Kiss my babe for me”.

    Mary Ann was led to the scaffold on March 24th, 1873. It is rumored she made the warders wait while she brushed her long dark hair. The elderly hangman misjudged the logistics of the hanging and it took Mary Ann Cotton a full three minutes of struggling before she died.

    The exact number of deaths at the hands of Mary Ann Cotton is unknown. Perhaps some of the deaths were natural, we may never know. The following is an estimate of those that died while living with Mary Ann: ten of her children by various husbands, three of those husbands, five stepchildren, her mother, Cotton’s sister Margaret, and her lover Nattrass. Her motives were typically sociopathic in nature and determined to be money and the desire to get rid of those who stood in her way.

    The last house where Mary Ann Cotton lived and killed is still occupied on Front Street in West Auckland. A three-story building with a pink front can be clearly seen from the A68 as you pass through the village. On Halloween it is said that if you sing the children's rhyme at the top of the page over her grave, you can hear children crying. Faces have been seen in the attic window of the house that holds the mysteries of Mary Ann Cotton.

    More info at The Crime Library
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    Jeffrey Dahmer - Milwaukee Cannibal

    Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the most infamous serial killers in America. Dubbed the Milwaukee Cannibal, Dahmer had an obsession with death that began in early childhood. Jeffrey would take small animals, torture and skin them, use chemicals on them to remove their flesh down to the bones. He cut the head off of a neighbor's dog and left it in the woods hanging on a stick.

    By the time he was 16, he was already an alcoholic. Fellow classmates described him as an unusual guy, who was always trying to get attention. At the age of 18, his parents divorced, neither wanting him to live with them. Jeffrey moved in with his grandmother, where he committed some of his murders. Jeffrey then went to live by himself, in infamous apartment 213, where his death lab was discovered.

    Jeffrey killed homosexuals and male prostitutes, and lured them to his apartment by offering them money in exchange for sex or posing nude.

    Dahmer was finally caught when one of his intended victims escaped and alerted the police of Dahmer's actions. What police found in his apartment shocked the nation. There were photos of dead bodies, some dismembered. A head was found in the refrigerator, 5 skulls were found in a box, a kettle on the stove was full of hands and male genitalia. Police also found a drum full of chemicals, and 3 decomposing torsos. Other body parts were scattered around the apartment. Dahmer's tools included a chainsaw he used to dismember his victims.

    The police found no food in Dahmer's apartment...he had been living off his victims. Dahmer confessed to these murders and other atrocities.

    Dahmer was found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was murdered by a fellow inmate while in prison, and was found with a mop handle stuck in his eye. A controversy surrounded the use of his brain for research. A judge ruled against it preventing a possible look into what makes a serial killer kill.

    Want a glimpse into Dahmer's demented psyche?
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    Albert DeSalvo - Boston Strangler

    He wasn't like Tony Curtis at all. A lot of people don't think he was the "Boston Strangler" either. What Albert DeSalvo was, was the "Measuring Man" and later the "Green Man".

    His demands for sex as often as six times a day, and his wife's refusal to comply, led him to begin victimizing women for his own desires. As the "Measuring Man" he would go to random houses claiming to be a representative for a modeling agency and would proceed to talk his victims into measuring them for his company. During these measuring sessions he would grope the women. There was no rape at this point in his career. Although there was a claim of numerous seductions by DeSalvo later in his life.

    An arrest for assault, lewd conduct, and attempted breaking and entering led to his confessing to all the measuring man assaults. It seems he liked confessing, I believe it was more bragging than confessing. It would be this love of confessing that got him the Boston Strangler title. (Too bad someone didn't neuter him at this time) He had already molested a 9 year old girl while in the army but the family refused to press charges. Amazingly he was convicted on the breaking and entering charges only.

    The predator was paroled after eleven months and was now raping women during his work day. His repairman clothes got him the name "Green Man". In the spring of 1961 Albert DeSalvo launched a campaign of rape in a four state area. Over the next couple years sexual assaults were reported in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. In this same time frame 11 rape/ murders were committed in the Boston area.

    The first five to happen had victims that were older, the youngest one was 55 years old. The next three were women in their 20s. The last of these women was repeatedly stabbed. The second of these victims was covered with her blanket lying in her bed instead of laid out in a pose or left on the floor with the strangulation tool tied around their necks. The next victim was 58 years old like the first five victims. And then the last two were young women in their 20s again.

    Ten months after the last strangler victim was found DeSalvo was brought in for questioning about a rape case and immediately confessed to 300 rapes he had committed since 1961. He was committed to Bridgewater State Hospital for observation. He belonged in prison for being a sexual predator, but there he was lounging in the cuckoos nest. That's where he met another prince of a fellow named George Nassar. A few months of this famous friendship resulted in DeSalvo confessing to the eleven murders.

    Students of the strangler case believe that Nasser was the real strangler. Or at least that he committed some of the murders and had a partner in the killings. You can't help but wonder who was more pleased at DeSalvo's confession addiction, George Nasser or the police, who had a quick resolution at last to an embarrassing situation.

    Well, George Nasser collected a reward for help in "capture" of the strangler. F. Lee Bailey got more famous negotiating a deal so DeSalvo never went to trial and instead served a life sentence for the "Green Man" assaults. The Boston Strangler got made into a movie the following year in 1968. Bales of facts got swept away. And little baby justice? Well nobody's seen her in a long, long time children.
    ...as compiled/reported by FatDaddy
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    Albert Fish - Cannibal Extrordinaire

    Albert Fish aka The Brooklyn Vampire, The Grey Man, and a real life model for Hannibal Lecter.

    Albert Fish was born in Washington DC in 1870. At the age of 5 he was placed into an orphanage by his mother who was alone and out of work. At the orphanage, there was documentation that he took sexual excitement in being abused which fuelled his mind for his fascination with sado-masochism.

    At age 7 his mother took him out of the orphanage because she had obtained a job. Shortly after he had a severe fall off a cherry tree which caused a head injury from which he would have permanent problems with such as headaches and dizzy spells. Could this head injury have caused his radical, bizarre behavior? Possibly, there is a theory that many serial killers began stalking and murdering their victims after trauma to the head.

    At the age of twenty he moved to New York, by then he had been involved in numerous masochistic-homosexual relationships. He began raping children and particapated in bizarre sexual acts.

    In 1910, he commited his first murder and act of cannibalism. From then on he indulged in torturing and killing children. In the 1920's Fish travelled across 23 states posing as a house painter.This was a perfect opportunity to commit his perverted acts on children.

    Fish also frequently read the bible and said that god-like voices had told him to kill. He also liked inserting needles into his body near the genitals, acts of pain sexually excited him.

    On 28 May 1928 a man calling himself Frank Howard made acquantices with the Budd family. One day Mr Howard asked if he could take Grace, their 10-year-old daughter, to a party. The Budds allowed him and they never saw their daughter or the old man ever again. The elusive Mr Howard was in fact the 58-year-old Albert Fish, who formulated the idea to kill Grace Budd so he could use her body for acts of cannibalism.

    Six years after the disappearance of young Grace, the Budd's received an anonymous letter from the murderer who admitted to killing Grace and afterwards cooked and ate her body. The police tracked the letter back to some apartments where they matched the writing of the letter to Albert Fish who was a tenant.

    Albert Fish was also the 'Brooklyn Vampire' because in his confession he claimed to be overcome by blood lust and a need to kill. He claimed the lives of four children in 1932-34 and was sent to trial for the murder of Grace Budd. His defense was insanity. Even though the gray haired, gray bearded man looked like he could not hurt a fly, the jury found him guilty and Fish was sentenced to death.

    At Sing Sing Prison on 16 January, 1936 Albert Fish, who described the death sentence as 'the supreme thrill of my life,' was electrocuted. The first electrical charge failed as it was short circuited by all the needles Fish had inserted in his body over the years. Albert Fish had committed hundreds of sexual assaults and 16 or more murders and an indeterminable amount of cannibalistic acts.

    Read more about the Grace Budd murder and the trial of Albert Fish at The Crime Library
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    Kendell Francois - Close to home...

    Compiled by FatDaddyOtis, and much too close to home!

    It all happened a block from Vassar College. The Kendall Francois Murders occurred in a house that sits a block from the campus of the venerable Ivy League College, founded for the higher education of women in the 19th century. That's where Kendall Francois strangled women that were known to be prostitutes. This is probably one of the most stomach churning cases I have ever seen, because it happened in the city where I lived.

    During 1997-1998 women began disappearing from the city known as Poughkeepsie, NY. It took until about the fifth one for anyone to take notice because these weren't members of the PTA or The Junior League. They were hookers, skanks, white trash, or whatever else the local IBM people talked about during their constant engineering or middle management meetings at the Big Blue HQ on the shores of the Hudson River. The families of these women were tireless in making the community take notice, it was not easy. They cared, these were not the above mentioned epithets to them. To them they were mothers, daughters, sisters, but at first still nobodies. Yeah it took a while for anyone to take this seriously.

    I am not blaming the police here, not at all. The person to blame is sitting in prison, unfortunately not on death row, but that comes later. What I'm saying here is that it was very interesting to watch the public reaction to the ongoing case, and how the great liberal Wicker Men and Women were so outraged. They wrote to the local fish wrapper that poses as the area newspaper venting this indignation. Until that is, that it turned out to be a black man that killed these eight white women. The silence was deafening then. It doesn't sell newspapers, nor does it make for good party chat to speak of racially unpopular crime. It was thought that he killed a black woman as well, but that was a unrelated disappearance.

    Let's get to the facts of the case. Kendall Francois strangled 8 women after hiring them for sex. He was a school monitor at a local middle school during some of his murder spree. My son attended this same school during this period. He earned the nickname "Stinky" while working here and was let go in 1998 because of his behavior toward the female students. His M.O. was usually the same: drive to Main Street in Poughkeepsie, pick up a small-in-stature woman with offers of payment for sex or crack cocaine, and strangle them. He weighed about 400 pounds and his victims generally weighed one hundred or one hundred twenty pounds. Not much of a battle to be had.

    The stomach churning part is what he did with the bodies. He kept the bodies of eight women that he killed right in the family home. The smell of a dead human being is quite pungent you say? Well you're right, it is. He told Mom, Dad, and little sister that some raccoons died in the attic and he couldn't find the carcasses. Hey! Maybe they're under the body of that woman that you killed and stashed behind the couch! A total of nine bodies, all women, were eventually found in the Francois home. The ninth was identified as a resident of New Rochelle. Seems he was branching out.

    His mistake was letting a victim talk him out of killing her with an offer of sex for free. She escaped from his disgusting custody afterwards and went to the police. He went willingly to the police station later that day. He was charged and booked, and then the police got the warrant and the true face of horror was revealed. His family, clueless as they were(and without a sense of smell it would seem), through an attorney, asked for "privacy and personal respect". Now that makes me want to gag.

    The next part is as revolting to me as the dead body scene. The State Court of Appeals gave our good buddy Kendall, a get out of death row free card by ruling that a defendant may not plea prior to the DA's filing of a death penalty case. So his plea of guilty, after withdrawing the inital not guilty plea would get him a life sentence rather than the death penalty. Dutchess County DA, William Grady, took the prudent move in then withdrawing the Death Penalty request just to make sure this low life went away. He had a bird in the hand this way and would not have to face the criminals best buds at the State Court of Appeals. Desecration of dead bodies that you killed doesn't carry any weight with those guys. He was found guilty, and with any luck will only leave prison feet first.

    This festering pile of garbage should be residing in HELL but prison will have to do. For a closer look at this case go to Crime Library. It ain't pretty.
    ...as compiled/reported by FatDaddy
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    John Wayne Gacy - the Killer Clown

    John Wayne Gacy, Jr. killed thirty-three boys in Chicago between 1972 and December 1978.

    When Gacy was eleven years old he was playing by a swing set when he was hit in the head by one of the swings. The accident caused a blood clot in the brain. Gacy suffered blackouts until the age of sixteen when the clot was discovered and he was given medication to dissolve it. During this time there were documented behavior disorders such as theft and assault on young boys.

    As and adult, Gacy was a successful building contractor and regarded as a family man who loved children, he would even visit hospitals posing as 'Pogo the clown.' What caused this man to hunt down young men, torture, rape, and murder them - then bury their bodies? Was it insanity or pure evil?

    Gacy would go cruising in his car for victims, usually posing as a police officer with a red light on his car. He would then chloroform the victims, take them back to his house where he would rape them, strangle them and bury them in the crawlspace under his house.

    Gacy was finally arrested in 1978 when a boy he had invited to his house, Robert Piest, had disappeared. Robert told his parents that he had been offered a job by Gacy, and when he failed to return, the police were notified. When the police went to Gacy's house they were alerted by a strange odor and searched his house over a period of several months.

    Twenty seven bodies were found buried in the crawlspace beneath his house, one body was buried beneath his garage and one preserved in the concrete of his patio. Two other bodies were found in the Illinois river, one of them was the missing Robert Piest. Gacy explained that he disposed of the bodies in the river because he was running out of room in the crawl space beneath his house. The last body found on Gacy's property was buried beneath his recreation room. The Gacy house was destroyed and reduced to rubble after the removal of the last body. All but nine of the bodies were identified.

    Gacy made three confessions, but declined to testify at his trial for murder. The Jury who tried him were told by a psychiatrist that Gacy was suffering from a personality disorder that did not amount to insanity. Seeing this, on the 13 March 1980, Gacy was sentenced to life imprisonment, but this was changed to a death sentence. Just after midnight on 10 May, 1994 Gacy was executed by lethal injection at Stateville prison in Joilet, Illinois.

    Find out more about the infamous Killer Clown at Crime Library
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    Ed Gein - Butcher of Plainfield

    AKA - The Butcher of Plainfield, The Plainfield Butcher, The Mad Butcher, The Plainfield Ghoul.

    Ed Gein was an unusual character, born on a farm and raised by a domineering mother. In the space of a few years his entire family died and he was left to raise the farm all by himself. In the next few years he became a grave robber, a necrophiliac, a cannibal, and also took up arts and crafts with body parts. He is seen as one of the most bizarre serial killers of the twentieth century. His crimes also inspired the movies Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs, among many others.

    Born in 1906, Ed Gein and his brother Henry were raised by a domineering mother on their 160-acre farm seven miles outside Plainfield, Wisconsin. She was a very religious woman with a protective attitude towards her boys and a definite conviction of sin. She discouraged them from women and kept them busy with farm work.

    Gein's alcoholic father died in 1940 and a few years later his brother Henry [1944], while fighting a forest fire. Shortly thereafter his mother suffered her first stroke, and in 1945 she had her second stroke from which she never recovered. Ed was left alone.

    It was then that he sealed off the upstairs, the parlour, and his mother's bedroom by boarding it off and set up his own quarters in the remaining bedroom, kitchen and shed of the big farmhouse. He stopped working the farm because a government soil-conservation program offered him a subsidy, which he augmented by his work as a handyman in the area.

    In his spare time Ed read books on human anatomy and Nazi concentration camp experiments. He was quite interested by it all, especially the female anatomy. Alone in the farmhouse he thought endlessly about sex, until one day he saw a newspaper report of a woman who had been buried that day.

    Gein enlisted the help of an old friend named Gus. Gus was a weird loner too, and quite definitely odd. Gus was Ed's trusted buddy, and agreed to assist Ed in opening a grave to secure a corpse for "medical experiments". Gus helped dig the graves. The first corpse came from a grave less than a dozen feet away from the last resting place of Gein's mother.

    Over the next ten years Ed did the same, checked the newspaper for fresh bodies, always visiting the graveyard at the time of a full moon, got the whole female corpse or just the parts he wanted, filled in the grave and took his 'trophys' home.

    His experiments with the dead bodies was bizarre. He would construct objects from the bones and skin and would store the organs in the fridge to eat later. He also committed acts of necrophilia on the bodies. He even dug up his own mothers corpse.

    What Ed Gein didn't reveal to Gus was his own growing desire to become a woman himself; it was for this reason he'd studied anatomy, thought about the possibilities of an "operation" which would result in a change of sex, desired to dissect a female corpse and familiarise himself with its anatomy. The closest he would get to this is dressing up in his full woman bodysuit, complete with mask and breasts constructed entirely of human skin. His collection of trophies grew, and so did the range of his experimentation and obsession.

    Then Gus was taken away to the asylum, and Ed was all alone again. Ed thought that fresher bodies would be better for his collection so he turned to murder.

    Ed Gein's first victim was Mary Hogan. Mary Hogan was a 51-year-old divorcee who operated Hogan's Tavern at Pine Grove, six miles from home. She was alone when he came to her on the cold afternoon of December 8th, 1954. He shot her in the head with his 32-caliber revolver, placed her body in his pickup truck, and took her back to his shed.

    There may have been other victims in the years that followed, but nothing definite is known about Gein's murderous activities until that day on 16 November, 1957, when he shot and killed Bernice Worden in her hardware store on Plainfield's Main Street. The sheriff Art Schley and captain Lloyd Schoephoester set off for the farm, seven miles outside Plainfield.

    Gein's Residence:
    There was no electricity in the dark house so they conducted their inspection with oil lamps, lanterns, and flashlights.

    The place looked like it had not been cleaned in years, there were piles of rubbish everywhere. The few rooms that weren't nailed off were littered with books, old papers, magazines, utensils, tin cans, cartons and a lot of other junk.

    What those police officers also found in that house was bizarre and extreme. A small inventory: two shin bones, four human noses, a quart can converted into a tom-tom by skin stretched over both top and bottom, a bowl made from the inverted half of a human skull, nine "death masks" (from the well preserved skin from the faces of women), ten female heads with the tops sawn off above the eyebrows, bracelets of human skin, a purse made with a handle of human skin, sheath for a knife made in human skin, a pair of leggings made from human skin, four chairs with the seats being replaced by strips of human skin, a shoe box containing nine salted vulvas of which his mother's was painted silver, a hanging human head, a lampshade covered with human skin, a shirt made of human skin, a number of shrunken heads (Ed always joked that he had a collection of shrunken heads), two skulls for Gein's bedposts, a pair of human lips hanging from string, Ed's full woman body suit constructed with human skin and complete with mask and breasts, Bernice Worden's heart in a pan on the stove, and the refrigerator which was stacked with human organs.

    The bodies of 15 different women had been mutilated to provide Gein's trophies. Gein often brought house gifts of fresh venison to his neighbours although Gein admitted he had never shot a deer in his life.

    Gein was examined extensively at the Central State Hospital for the Criminally insane. He was found insane. The reasons for his actions were believed to be caused by the love/hate relationship he had with his mother. It is said that Mary Hogan had more of a passing resemblance to his mother.

    Gein denied being a cannibal or necrophiliac, but he did admit to grave robbing.

    The case created a sensation because of the true nature of the crime. Thousands of people drove to Plainfield to get a look at the 'murder farm'. Eventually the place was burned down by the Plainfield citizens as they regarded it as a place of evil. It is still a topic of contention in the town today - 50 years later...

    At Christmastime, 1957, Gein was judged insane and he was committed to Waupan State Hospital for a life sentence. Gein died of cancer on 26 July 1984, at the age of 78. He was buried back in Plainfield next to the graves of his family.

    What motivated this man to murder, eat and wear his victim's skin? We may only be able to theorize as to the possibilities feuled by his demented mind. Read more about Ed Gein here and make your own conclusions
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    *caught/solved* Gary Leon Ridgeway - Green River Killer

    "I killed so many women, I have a hard time keeping them straight."

    Gary Leon Ridgway was good at one thing, he would tell investigators, "and that's killing prostitutes." His obsession became his "career".

    Ridgway, like many serial killers, took pride in the details. He chose his victims carefully, spending hours before and after work "patrolling" Pacific Highway South and other stretches known for prostitution. He'd pull his truck into a convenience store, sometimes popping the hood to throw off suspicion, and then watch "the traffic," waiting for young women and girls who looked easy to kill and wouldn't be missed.

    He preferred to strangle them. Guns and knives "would have been messy." Choking was "more personal and more rewarding," he would later say.

    Within the space of six months in 1982, six bodies had been discovered in or near Washington State's Green River. The police realized they had a Serial Killer on their hands. One of the largest task forces ever formed began the search for the 'Green River Killer.'

    It would be over 20 years before that killer would face his justice.

    Between September 1982 and April 1983, approximately 14 girls disappeared. Gary Ridgway was named a suspect in one of the murders. He was identified by one of the victim's boyfriends who saw the victim get into a truck matching that of Ridgway's. When investigated by police he denied ever seeing the murdered woman and passed a polygraph.

    Very little progress was made in the '80s in the search for the Green River Killer. However, distinct patterns began to emerge that allowed the team to create a more accurate profile of the killer and his movements. The killer seemed to have several dumping grounds where he would dispose of the bodies of his victims. Nearly all the bodies discovered were found partially buried or covered with garbage or foliage. Most of the bodies had been found off of isolated roads in or near illegal waste dumping areas. The FBI's profiler John Douglas concluded that the bodies were dumped in the areas because the killer thought of the women as "human garbage."

    By 1984, the murders seemed to have diminished. The investigative task force was shaken up and the public was angry that the killer had not been caught. There were bodies turning up at a greater distance from the others. There was no doubt in the investigators' minds that it was still the work of the Green River Killer.

    On April 8, 1987, the police had a suspect, obtained a warrant, and searched the man's house. According to the Seattle Times, the police also took "bodily samples" of the suspect so that they could compare them with the evidence they had from the Green River victims. However, there was insufficient evidence to arrest him and the man was released from police custody. The suspect was identified as Gary Ridgway.

    By 1991 the task force was reduced to just one investigator named Tom Jensen. After nine years, roughly 49 victims and $15 million dollars, the task force still had not caught the Green River Killer. The investigation became known as the country's largest unsolved murder case. The case remained dormant for 10 years.

    In 2001 a new task force was formed in the Green River Murders investigation. This team included DNA forensics specialists. The bodily samples taken in 1987 from Gary Leon Ridgway matched those found on three of the victim's bodies. On November 30, Ridgway was intercepted by investigators on his way home from work and arrested on four counts of aggravated murder.

    Ridgway, born in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 18, 1949, worked for a computer company at the time of his arrest. During the time of the murders, he was employed as a truck painter for 30 years at the Kentworth truck factory in Renton, Washington.

    Ridgway had an unusual sexual appetite. His three ex-wives and several old girlfriends told the reporter that he was sexually insatiable, demanding sex several times a day. Often times, he would want to have sex in a public area or in the woods, even in the areas where some of the bodies had been discovered.

    Ridgway was also known to have been obsessed with prostitutes, a fixation that bordered on a love-hate relationship. Neighbors knew him to constantly complain about prostitutes conducting business in his neighborhood, but at the same time he frequently took advantages of their favors. It was possible that he was torn by his uncontrollable lusts and his staunch religious beliefs. According to one of his wives, he became a religious fanatic, often times crying following sermons and reading the Bible.

    November 5, 2003, Gary Leon Ridgway confessed to the murder of 48 women, most of them murdered in the 1982-84 time frame. By confessing and cooperating with authorities, Ridgway recieved 48 consecutive life sentences without possiblity of parole and escaped the death penalty in Washington State, but two of the murders were commited on Oregon soil, so he may still have to face the death penalty in other jurisdictions.

    Ridgeway's detest for women and especially prostitutes can be seen here in his plea bargaining statement:
    "I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex. I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught."

    Is it really over? Do the authorities have the only killer? Did Ridgway confess to more murders than he committed for the fame? There are many questions still to be answered.

    For full case details visit the Crime Library
    For a list of the murder victims and Time-line check out Komo 1000 News
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    H. H. Holmes - America's 1st Serial Killer

    "Like the man-eating tigers of the tropical jungle, whose appetites for blood have once been aroused, I roamed about this world seeking whom I could destroy"

    Howard Holmes (AKA Herman Mudgett, AKA The Torture Doctor) appears to have been forgotten by many true crime enthusiasts. At the same time he was committing his crimes, "Jack the Ripper" was terrorizing London. There are several different accounts of Holmes's activities, not the least of which is the doctor's own confession written in 1896.

    Dr. Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett on May 16, 1860 in Gilmantown, New Hampshire. Holmes was beat regularly by his drunken father and the local neighborhood bullies. At an early age he was fascinated by all aspects of surgery. He would often capture stray animals and perform strange and crude experiments on them.

    Herman graduated high school at the age of 16, married Clara Loveringat, at the age of 18, and graduated medical school at the University of Michigan, located in Ann Arbor in 1884 at the age of 24. While studying medicine at the University of Michigan, he had an eerie fascination with the dead. He would steal corpses, render them unrecognizable with acid, and then collect on the life insurance policies he had previously taken out under fictitious names. Herman got away with several of these frauds before a nightwatchman caught him removing a female corpse. He was subsequently kicked out of the university for "unusual activities".

    Herman moved to the Chicago suburb of Englewood in 1886, after abandoning his wife and committing a variety of felonies, even defrauding one of his in-laws. He had a reputation as a swindler, but intended to make a new start and took on the alias: Henry Howard Holmes, AKA: "Dr. H.H. Holmes". In 1888 Holmes was hired as a chemist at a popular Englewood area drugstore.

    In 1890 the proprietress of the drugstore, an elderly widow, mysteriously disappeared. Holmes quickly took over the business, and began selling patent medicines of his own invention by mail order, including fake "cures" for alcoholism. Holmes eventually amassed a nice fortune. He met and marrired Myrta Z. Belknap, without even bothering to divorce his first wife. Myrta soon became pregnant, left him within a year, and moved in with her parents.

    In 1888, Holmes bought a vacant lot across from his pharmacy business and began to build a "hotel". During construction Holmes changed contractors several times and shuffled the workers around frequently so that no one was ever able to get a clear idea of the floor plan or what the building was really intended. Most of the rooms had gas vents that could let off lethal or sleep inducing gases, and the controls were installed in a closet in Holmes's bedroom. Many of the rooms were soundproof and could not be unlocked from inside. It was a three-story building with shops on the first floor and a bizarre labyrinth of windowless rooms, false floors, secret passages, trapdoors, a well equipped surgery area as well as several instruments of torture. One such device was an "elasticity determinator," a contraption he claimed could stretch experimental subjects to twice their normal length. Those who viewed it said it appeared to be a medieval torture rack. A few rooms were lined with asbestos, and the place was filled with doors that opened to brick walls, stairways to nowhere, an elevator without a shaft and a shaft without an elevator. There was an airtight and soundproof vault, human-sized greased chutes leading from the living quarters to the cellar. The bedrooms had peepholes and were equipped with gas pipes connected to a control panel in Dr. Holmes' closet.

    Upon completion of the "castle" as it was now referred to, Holmes soon tapped into a city water line in his cellar, mixed the water with vanilla, and sold it for 5 cents a glass as an elixir called Linden Grove Mineral Water. He was eventually caught but no charges were ever filed. On another occasion he purchased a huge safe on credit, then moved it into his castle, he built a room around it with only a tiny exit. When creditors eventually came to haul it away, humorously they couldn't get it out.

    During the Great Chicago World Fair in 1893, (the entrance to which was only a few blocks from Holmes's establishment), the city filled with visitors, Holmes would rent rooms and/or lure girls and young ladies to his "castle" where he would attempt to seduce them before drugging them. They were then popped into one of the empty shafts that ran through the building. The hapless girls would come round only to find themselves trapped behind a glass panel in an airtight death chamber into which Holmes would pump a lethal gas. Afterwards the body would be sent down a chute to the basement which contained vats of acid and lime and, in the center of the room, a dissecting table. Holmes would cut up the corpses, removing particular organs which took his fancy and dispose of the remains in the vats. After killing them, he would often sell the bleached skeletons to medical universities.

    In 1894 Holmes wed Georgiana Yoke, again not bothering to divorce his previous wife. His charm and good looks wooed countless women, and enhanced his talents as a schemer.

    Only one man knew the truth of what was going on in the "castle", Herman Pitezel, Holmes lackey and accomplice. A weak man, Pitezel was easily controlled by Holmes. Despite his cleverness, Holmes was going broke. He knew his Chicago gig was almost up. In desperation, Holmes murdered two visiting Texan sisters and, rather than quietly dispose of their remains, he set fire to their house in an attempt to get the insurance money. The insurance company refused to pay and the police began an investigation into the blaze. Strangely, the police work was not pursued vigorously enough to produce any evidence of Holmes bloody activities; but the killer did not know this, and so he fled.

    Soon Holmes turned up in Texas, where he traced relatives of the sisters he had murdered. Having integrated himself with them, he tried to swindle them out of a $60,000 fortune. They were suspicious so he again took to the road, this time on a stolen horse. Police caught up with him in Missouri where, using the name H. M. Howard, he was charged with a further fraud attempt. With the help of a crooked lawyer, he was granted bail, and promptly left town.

    Holmes next turned up in Philadelphia where he concocted an elaborate scheme. Herman Pitezel took out a life-insurance policy on himself for $10,000 with Holmes as beneficiary. The plan was that Pitezel would "disappear" to Philadelphia and Holmes would produce a false corpse, identify it as Pitezel's and share the payoff with Pitezel's family. Instead, Holmes burned his pal alive in Philadelphia and collected the money. But someone tipped off the police about the scheme, and Holmes fled with the Pitezel's eldest daughter. Telling Mrs. Pitezel that her husband was hiding in a nearby city, Holmes convinced her to follow him, and for months the trio moved separately and together around the United States and Canada, taking the four other Pitezel children with them.

    During the group's wanderings Herman Pitezel's body was discovered near Indianapolis, and Holmes killed three of the five Pitezel children. The bodies of Alice and Nellie Pitezel were found in a cellar in Toronto, the girls had been stuffed into a trunk and gassed. Now their are three different versions as to how the police caught up with Holmes. The first is that detectives traced Mudgett through his mother who told them the whereabouts of her son. The second is that while jailed in Missouri, Holmes shared a cell with the infamous train robber Marion C. Hedgepeth, "The Handsome Bandit", perhaps wanting to brag about his own criminal prowess, Dr. Holmes told Mr. Hedgepeth about the Pitezel scam, and Hedgepeth squealed. And the third is that, aided by Mrs. Pitezel, the police captured Holmes.

    At any rate Holmes was charged with murder. The police searched Holmes' Castle in Chicago, and found numerous human fragments, including several complete skeletons. Holmes continued to protest his innocence loudly and plead not guilty to killing Pitezel, and his trial began on Oct. 28, 1895. Holmes fired his lawyers and questioned the prospective jurors himself. Nevertheless, he was convicted in the "trial of the century", of first degree murder on November 4, 1895, and sentenced to death. He quickly became known throughout the land as: "Holmes, the Arch Fiend".

    "I was born with the devil in me. I couldn't help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing. And I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world. He has been with me ever since." (From Holmes' Confession)

    In 1896, while awaiting execution, Holmes received an offer from the Hearst newspaper syndicate to write a confession. In the confession Holmes claimed to have killed 27 people. Investigators could neither confirm nor disprove Holmes's assertion because the contents of the iron tanks and crematory, although recognizably human remains, could not be differentiated. Holmes later recanted his confession and several people he had claimed to have murdered turned up alive. "The confession is a mixture of truth and falsehood. Holmes never could help lying," said George Graham, Philadelphia's district attorney at the time.

    On May 7, 1896, at Philadelphia's Moyamensing Prison, as he stood with his head in the hangman's noose, Holmes loudly exclaimed: "As God is my witness, I was responsible for the death of only two women! I didn't kill Minnie Williams! Minnie killed-" But at that moment, the trap door sprung and Herman Webster Mudgett, aka Harry Holmes, died. Holmes body was laid in a pine box, the box was then filled with cement. The coffin was buried 10 feet deep in a suburban Philadelphia cemetery, then covered with another thick layer of cement. Upon his death, the New York Times reflected, "It takes a very convinced opponent of capital punishment to maintain that any better disposition could have been made of the wretch Holmes".

    It can be noted as a post script and to add a bit of the macabre to the story that Holmes was a descendant of many of the founding families of Hampton, NH, including the Batchelders, Sanborns, and Dearborns. Holmes was also distantly related to the well known Frank and Jesse James brothers.

    The superstitious may wish to note that within a few years of Holmes death a great number of people associated with the case, prison officials, lawyers, and relatives, died suddenly, some of them under unexplained circumstances. Holmes castle burned down on August 19, 1895, yet the cause of the fire was never determined.

    The Holmes "crime of the century" was the subject of "The Holmes-Pitezel Case", a "True Detective" story, published in 1896 in Philadelphia by permission of the district attorney and the mayor. More recently he was the subject of Erik Larson's best selling novel 'The Devil in the White City' and several motion pictures about him are in the works - including John Borowski's 'H. H. Holmes'. For more information on this film visit the site.

    Just how many people Herman Webster Mudgett, aka Harry Holmes, truly murdered is unknown. This is a secret he took with him to his grave and we will never be certain of the exact number of victims that lost their lives to this diabolical torturer and murderer, America's first documented Serial Killer.

    For full case details visit the Crime Library
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    Angel Resendez - The Railroad Killer    

    Angel Maturino Resendez, AKA Angel Resendez, Rafael Ramirez, or simply "the Railroad Killer" is one of America's most frightening serial killers because of the random nature of his victims. A railroad hobo, he rode the rails through the central area of America and killed at least nine people as he hopped on and off trains. What is additionally disturbing, beyond the brutality of his stabbings and bludgeonings, was that he was in police custody several times during his crime spree. The nonexistent tracking of the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services} allowed him to get away with having several identities which he used to keep a step ahead of law enforcement.

    Resendez killed for a purpose: survival - to obtain things he needed: alcohol, drugs, a place to hide out, and money. He raped, but "sex seemed almost secondary," according to former FBI profiler John Douglas. Douglas calls Resendez "just a bungling crook… very disorganized," but one whose own disorganization worked well for him. His trail was haphazard and erratic. Resendez had no pre-meditated plan. He had no permanent address and wandered freely through Mexico, Canada and the US. The only common factor in the serial murders was that the killings all took place in close proximity to railroad tracks.

    The following is a list of the nine serial murders attributed to Resendez:
    Victim 1: August 29, 1997/Lexington. KY: Christopher Maier, 21, a University of Kentucky student, and his girlfriend are attacked while walking along the tracks near the college. Maier is bludgeoned to death and she is raped and beaten, almost to the point of death. She miraculously survives.
    Victim 2: October 4, 1998/Hughes Spring, TX: On this cool Fall evening, 87-year-old Leafie Mason is hammered to death by a tire iron by someone who enters her home through a window. Her front door faces the Kansas City-Southern Rail Line tracks only 50 yards away.
    Victim 3: December 17, 1998/Houston, TX: An invader breaks into the home of Dr. Claudia Benton, 39, of the Baylor College of Medicine, when she arrives home, the intruder rapes, stabs and bludgeons her repeatedly with a blunt instrument. Her home is near the rail lines that run through suburban West University Place. When the police recover her stolen Jeep Cherokee in San Antonio. TX, they find fingerprints on the steering column that match those of drifter Resendez, a known illegal alien. Three weeks later, a county judge signs a warrant for Resendez' arrest for burglary – but, strangely enough, not for murder. There is not enough evidence, he says!
    Victims 4 & 5: May 2, 1999 Weimar, TX: Late at night, the Reverend Norman J. "Skip" Sirnic, 46, and wife Karen, 47, are struck to death by a sledgehammer in the parsonage of the United Church of Christ -- located adjacent to the town's railroad. The couple's red Mazda is found in San Antonio three weeks later. Forensic evidence matches the killing of Dr. Benton in Houston.
    Victim 6: June 4, 1999: Houston, TX: Schoolteacher Noemi Dominguez, 26, is clubbed to death in her apartment, located near rail tracks. Seven days later, troopers find Dominguez' 1993 white Honda Civic abandoned at the international bridge at Del Rio, Texas.
    Victim 7: June 4, 1999/Fayette County, TX: Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Konvicka is killed in bed by a blow of a pointed garden tool to the head. She lived in a frame farmhouse not far from Weimar, where a month prior Rev. and Mrs. Simic were killed, and within shadows of a rail yard. Her car has been tampered with, but the killer is unable to find the keys.
    Victims 8 & 9>: June 15, 1999/Gorham, IL: An intruder breaks into a mobile home to kill its two occupants, After shooting George Morber, Sr.,80, in the head with a shotgun, he then clubs to death Morber's daughter, Carolyn Frederick, 52. Their house sits only 100 yards from a railroad track. The next day, a passerby spots Fredericks' red pickup truck in Cairo, IL, sixty miles south of Gorham, being driven by a man matching Resendez' description.

    Most of Resendez' victims were found covered with a blanket; and were small of stature. The killer himself was of diminutive size, but he might well have been a giant for the terror he struck in the hearts of his victims and their families. The emotions of the communities where he struck ran high. In the smaller ones, especially, people who had never locked their doors and windows at night were now bolting them. Children were ushered off the dusky streets by nervous parents, shops closed early, and moonlit strolls ended. No one living near railways felt safe.

    In June 1999, Resendez was placed on the FBI's most wanted list. Calls came from all over the country from people who believed they had seen the Railroad Killer. The FBI recruited Resendez' common-law wife, Julietta Reyes, whom they brought into Houston from her hometown of Rodeo, Mexico, 250 miles below the border. She vowed to do her best to get Angel to turn himself in to authorities. Julietta turned over 93 pieces of jewelry to the FBI that had been mailed to her by Angel, she suspected they belonged to the victims, and she was right. Relatives of Neomi Dominguez and Dr. Claudia Benton, identified several of the pieces as belonging to the victims.

    Unfortunately when Resendez was tracked down he had been deported back into Mexico from El Paso. Because there was no information identifying him as being wanted by the authorities in the INS computer, neither the FBI nor local police were not alerted. Finding the Railroad Killer now seemed to be an immense and unproductive task.

    Resendez had been in custody several times before, and each time, luck kept him out of the system for any length of time. The following is a record of his crimes in the US prior to the killings:
    ¤ Apprehended and tried in Texas for falsely claiming citizenship, for which he did an 18-month prison stint (1986)
    ¤ Arrested for possessing a concealed weapon in New Orleans, receiving an 18-month sentence, but paroled after a year (1988)
    ¤ Earned a 30-month sentence for attempting to defraud Social Security in St. Louis (1988)
    ¤ Pleaded guilty to burglary charges in New Mexico, a crime that gained him an 18-month prison term, though again he was paroled after a year (1992)
    ¤ Was apprehended in a Santa Fe rail yard for trespassing and carrying a firearm (1995)

    After each term of incarceration he was deported back to Mexico, only to re-enter the US undetected. Two years after the last recorded deportation, he managed to show up in Kentucky to kill Christopher Maier.

    The capture of Angel Resendez in July 1999 is credited to Texas Ranger, Drew Carter. Carter, a young Ranger with only one year of experience, conceived the idea that Resendez' sister (whom Resendez idolized), Manuella, could possibly aid in the capture of the serial killer. Sgt. Carter explained that he was working with the FBI and legal prosecutors in Harris County (TX) to offer the fairest deal he could to her brother, under the circumstances. If he surrendered himself, Carter told her, Resendez would be assured of three things: his personal safety while in jail, regular visiting rights so that his wife, sister and others could visit him, and a psychological evaluation. This weeks long relationship with Carter and Manuella resulted in a near miracle… getting a serial killer to turn himself in.

    On July 13th, 1999 Ranger Carter, along with Resendez's sister and her pastor, met on a bridge connecting Zaragosa, Mexico with El Paso. Resendez putting his trust in Carter's promises, stepped out of a truck, met the Ranger on the bridge and both men shook hands. The miracle had happened.

    We may never know why Resendez chose to surrender to the state that holds the record for sending murders to the electric chair, rather than 'losing' himself in Mexico. Some theorize that he was wanted for questioning for murders in Mexico and had no where to go. The FBI has concluded that Resendez may have been responsible for up to 200 more murders, making him one of the most infamous serial killers of all times.

    Resendez was formally charged for seven of the nine murders attributed to him, but was tried only for the murder of Dr. Claudia Benton. On May 18th, 2000, after 10 hours of deliberation, the jury pronounced Angel Maturino Resendez guilty of first-degree, premeditated murder. The Railroad Killer was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Resendez still awaits the death penalty in a Texas prison pending appeals. The 'Railroad Killings' have stopped.

    Update!  1/19/06: The serial killer who rode the rails in search of victims learned his execution date in a Houston courtroom January 6th, 2006. Angel Maturino Resendez had nothing to say as the judge finalized his death sentence, despite his attorney's request that the sentenced be postponed. He is scheduled to be put to death on May 10, 2006 for the 1998 murder of Dr. Claudia Benton of West University.

    Read about Rafael Ramirez at the Crime Library
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    Jack the Ripper - THE serial killer

    Aka 'Leather Apron', 'Whitechapel Murderer' - The most famous serial killer of all time.

    In 1888 the Whitechapel area of London was the scene of some of the most brutal murders ever recorded in history. Five women, all of whom were prostitutes, were horribly and viciously murdered by a man most commonly known as 'Jack The Ripper'. The months of August through November of that year have collectively been named 'The Autumn of Terror'. Yet the case of Jack the Ripper remains unsolved.

    One theory links the murders with Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor, also known as the Duke of Clarence, although the evidence for such a theory is unsubstantial.

    An assertion that the killer could have been a doctor is based on the evidence of weapon and technique. All five women - Mary Ann Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly - were found horribly disfigured, often with organs missing. The first four women to die were in their 40's, while Mary Jane Kelly was only 25.

    Violence to prostitutes was not uncommon and there were many instances of women being brutalized. In April 1888, a woman named Emma Smith died from an infection because a group of men, probably demanding protection money, forced an object into her womb. Life as a prostitute in Victorian London was certainly hazardous.

    A quarter of a mile from the scene of Catherine Eddowes' murder, the words 'The Juwes [sic] are not the men to be blamed for nothing,' were found scrawled on a wall in chalk, and were thought to have perhaps been written by the killer. The murderer is also sometimes thought to have made contact by letter with several public figures: these letters, however, like the chalk message, have never been proved to be authentic, and may have been hoaxes.

    Jack the Ripper may have enjoyed baiting the nation, but he was never caught, and he is not thought to have killed after November 1888. Was he dead, did he just suddenly stop killing, or was he hidden away or perhaps in prison? We may never know. The most recent theory was played out in the movie FROM HELL, starring Johnny Depp. However, the legacy of the most famous serial killer in history remains a mystery and a perennial thriller!

    Read about Jack the Ripper and the numerous theories as to his identity at The Crime Library
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    Edmund Kemper III

    Edmund Kemper towered above his victims at 6'9". His ego was almost as big and when he confessed to murdering six hitchikers he appeared to revel in the details, offering more information than any other serial killer, allowing a little insight into a demented killer's mind.

    Edmund Kemper was a strange child who seemed obsessed with death. Like many serial killers, Ed was domineered by his mother and older sisters while pining for his father who was not there. His sudden spurt of growth was uncomfortable for the shy child who was bullied at school. His mother banished him to the basement when he was 13, as it was deemed innapropriate to share a room with any of his sisters.

    At age 15, Ed was sent to stay with his grandparents on their ranch. One afternoon he was bored, so he picked up his gun he went to go outside. His grandmother who was sitting at the table called after him not to shoot at the birds. He turned around and from a distance of only a few feet he shot her in the back of the head. He fired into her body twice more. He began to drag her body into the bedroom when he heard his grandfather's car drive up outside. As the old man got out of the car Edmund Kemper lined up the gun and shot and killed him with a single bullet.

    It was only now that he started to worry about what he had done. Picking up the phone he called and told his mother what he had done. She told him to call the sheriff which he did. When questioned, he was asked why he had done it, his answer was quite simple: he wanted to see 'how it felt to kill grandma'. Edmund Kemper, juvenile, was never brought to trial but was sent to Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally insane.

    Edmund Kemper grew into a strapping six-foot-nine-inch killing machine. He spent five years at Atascadero State Hospital before being released and pronounced 'cured'. In order to be really cured you have to have something wrong with you in the first place and as far as Kemper was concerned there had been nothing wrong with him in the beginning. He was paroled into the care of his mother but this did not work very well as they constantly argued. Over the ensuing years, Edmund began a murdering spree that earnedhim the nickname of the 'Coed Killer'.

    Kemper admitted enjoying decapitating his victims and having sex with their headless corpses. He also buried heads outside his house with the eyes looking in the same direction as his mother's bedroom window.

    He would often take Polaroid photos of his accomplishments and occasionally would even eat parts of his victims. When questioned later about this he confessed that his acts of cannibalism were because, "I wanted them to be a part of me, and now they are". During this time he was still recieving follow-up treatment and on one occasion he even visited his court-appointed psychiatrist with a head in the trunk of his car. The psychiatrist reported that Ed "was doing really well and was well adjusted."

    Kemper was very attentive to details, picking up female hitchikers, killing them and making sure to keep their identity a secret and destroying or hiding evidence. He probably would have gotten away with these murders if he had not confessed, as there were two other suspected serial killers working in the Santa Cruz, California area in the early 70's. Kemper knew it was too late, he had committed a violent crime in which all evidence pointed right to him.. he had killed his mother in her own home. He could not figure a way to get out of this one, so in his warped mind, he turned it around to his advantage, confessed and actually enjoyed telling his story.

    Kemper confessed that he liked killing women who reminded him of his mother. On Easter Sunday 1973 he went after the root of his problem. Edmund Kemper smashed his mother's skull and then decapitated her.In a state of panic, realizing he would be suspect in the killing, he called his mother's best friend and invited her over. When she arrived he killed her too. He admits that this second killing was to turn the evidence away from him, but soon he knew this was the end. He drove to Colorado, called the police and confessed. At first they thought he was kidding. What they found at his Mother's house made them change their minds.

    At the trial which determined Ed was not insane and that if let go, would kill again, a 5 hour jury deliberation found Kemper guilty of first degree murder on all 8 counts.

    Edmund Kemper was sent to Vacaville Medical facility then to the Maximum Security Folsom prison where he remains today. Striving not to be forgotten in the world of Serial Killers, Ed remains eager to speak of his crimes. He has done extensive interviews with Robert Ressler of the FBI, which were aimed at building the FBI's nascent serial killer profiling program. In 1988, he participated, along with the notorious John Wayne Gacy, in a satellite broadcast during which each killer discussed his crimes. Kemper remains explicit in his description of the crimes and seems to take pride in his status as "genius" serial killer who aided in his own capture and eventual conviction.

    Read more about the Infamous Edward Kempler III at the Crime Library
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    Richard Ramirez - The Night Stalker

    On a balmy summer night on June 28th, 1984 The Night stalker aka Richard Ramirez, a madman who terrorized the Los Angeles area for a year, made his first kill. The victim was 79-year-old Jennie Vincow who was raped, beaten, and nearly decapitated. Her son found her body. She had been stabbed repeatedly and her throat was slashed. A demon with a lust for killing similar to that of Jack the Rippers had been let loose in LA.

    The next attack occurred less than a year later, in March 1985. Maria Hernandez pulled into her apartment parking garage unaware that Ramirez was waiting, hiding behind a pillar. As she stepped out of her car, Ramirez lurched, attacking her and pulling the trigger of his gun as Maria pled for mercy. Maria was lucky, the bullet deflected off of her car keys leaving only a hand wound. Ramirez thinking she was dead fled into the building. Maria, recovering from the attack, ran to the safety of her apartment only to find her thirty three year old room mate, Dayle Okazak dead from a bullet wound fired at close range. The police had no clues; Maria's description of the killer was minimal…"tall, gaunt, dark, maybe Hispanic."

    While searching for evidence in the Okazak case, the police were unaware that the killer was attacking again. Ramirez's next victim, that same evening, was petite Taiwanese-born Tsai-Lian Yu. Ramirez forced his way into her car. He had thrown his own car into idle, entered hers, pushed her onto the pavement, called her 'bitch', then blew her into eternity at point-blank range. Exactly as before, the Night Stalker disappeared with minimal clues as quickly into the night as he came.

    Ramirez's thirst for blood came quicker this time; he waited only 10 more days before killing again. This time his victims were a sleeping couple, the Zazzaras . Found by their son the next morning, the scene was described as a 'bloodbath' While Mr. Zazzara died quickly, his wife Maxine was mutilated beyond recognition. The police now felt as if the killings were related, their greatest fear was that the demon would strike again came true.

    Elderly Harold and Jean Wu slept as an intruder slipped into their residence through a window in the pre-dawn hours of May 14th. A loud 'bang' woke Mrs. Wu and she saw the figure, smoking gun in hand, standing over her. Next to her in bed, her husband Harold had been shot in the head. The killer began beating Mrs. Wu and demanding cash. He bound her hands behind her with thumbscrews, tossed her across the bed on top of her dying husband, then rampaged through the home's drawers and cabinets for money. Terrified and lying on her dying husband, Mrs. Wu could only hear the death moans of her husband, the killer rummaging through the house and and his blasphemous curses at finding nothing of value. The tall, thin, dark man returned to the Wu's bedroom and, violently raped the 63-year-old woman as she lay across her dying husband. The killer complacently zipped his pants, flashed an evil grin and disappeared. Mrs. Wu was in shock when the police arrived and could not tell them what the killer looked like, but later described him as "tall, gaunt, dark, and Hispanic".

    The next attack took place during the darkest hours of May 30 in the home of Ruth Wilson. A blinding flashlight in her face woke her from her sleep. As her eyes adjusted, she could see the distinct silhouette of a pistol barrel across her gaze. A gruff voice demanded, "Where's Your Money?!" Before she could answer, the intruder yanked her up and led her to her 12-year-old son's room down the hall. Using the frightened boy as bait, he insisted that she give him something valuable . She told him where an expensive piece of jewelry was hidden. He seemed satisfied as he studied the diamond necklace in his hands, and Wilson figured he would leave quietly without harming her or her son… she was wrong. The intruder locked her son in the closet, raped and sodomized her, forcing her to do unimaginable things. Miraculously she lived and her son was unharmed. Her description matched those before her: "He was tall, gaunt, dark, definitely Hispanic".

    The attacks continued, causing panic in the usually quiet suburbs of Los Angeles. Fourteen more victims, violent attacks and rapes including the rape of a 6-year-old girl and the sodomization of an 8-year-old boy. "This demon should be sent back to hell!" an LA editorial read. The FBI profilers believed his attacks would increase in number and brutality due to his increasing rage. By mid August, however, Ramirez made an unsuspecting move and left the Los Angeles area, moving North to the San Francisco area.

    On August 18, 1985, Peter and Barbara Pan were found in their blood-soaked bed in Lake Merced, a suburb of San Francisco. Both had been shot in the head. Mr. Pan, a sixty-six-year-old accountant, was pronounced dead at the scene. Mrs. Pan, 64, survived but would be an invalid for the rest of her life. Scrawled on the wall in lipstick were an inverted pentagram and the words "Jack the Knife," which is from a song called "The Ripper" by the heavy-metal band, Judas Priest. Local police determined that the killer had come in through an open window. Fearing that L.A.'s Night Stalker had moved to their precinct, homicide investigators sent a bullet removed from Mr. Pan to a forensic team in Los Angeles. The bullet matched others recovered from two of the Night Stalker's Los Angeles County crime scenes. The police were baffled, could the Night Stalker have been killing in both LA and the Bay Area?

    Ramirez was leaving unusual clues at the attacks and killings, pentagrams, messages saying "I love Satan". Many of the victims described him has having foul smelling breath and rotting teeth. All of them agreed he was Hispanic, dark skinned and gaunt. The hunt was on. The police got a break when the last of his victims, a 29-year-old female whom Ramirez had tied up while robbing her and her fiancé, managed to free herself from the ties and observed him leaving in an orange Toyota station wagon. She immediately called 911. An observant teenager, working on his motorcycle had noticed the orange Toyota as it appeared suspicious. He copied the license number and gave it to police. It was the break they needed. Forensics lifted a print from the automobile and it made a match, Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Ramirez.

    Ironically, Ramirez was caught in a largely Hispanic area of San Francisco. He was trying to steal a car and the proud people banded together and stopped Ramirez cold. Originally, they were trying to stop him from stealing their car, but soon his face was in plain site and they shouted, "It is the Night Stalker! Stop him!" Seven days after his face and name were made public, Ramirez was behind bars.

    On September 20, 1989, The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, was found guilty on 43 counts in Los Angeles County, including 13 murders, and charges including burglary, sodomy, and rape.

    After 4 years of red tape and endless appeals, finally on October 3, 1989, after four days of deliberations, the jury that had found Richard Ramirez guilty said they had voted for the death penalty. He was led from the courtroom smiling. "Big Deal," he said. "Death always went with the territory." Later as he was led in shackles back to the county jail, he added for reporters, "I'll see you in Disneyland."

    As he was led away to death row in San Quentin he asked, "Where are the women?" He then flashed his two-fingered devil symbol at a busload of female prisoners, who called out, "Killer!" He smiled at them.

    Richard Ramirez killed without remorse, performed evil acts and had no compassion for his fellow man. Was he born this way or was he molded this way because of his environment and coincidence? It is known that Ramirez turned to the Church of Satan which teaches that acts of cruelty are sacred. He was an epileptic and this was viewed as a weakness in the male dominated Hispanic culture. He was abused by his father and molested by a male teacher. Could all of these things culminate and turn a 'good boy' into a serial killer? There are many questions in this case that remain unanswered.. Ramirez still remains on Death Row in San Quentin.

    In 1996, Ramirez married one of his 'groupies'. She is Doreen Lioy, a free lance magazine editor who has described herself as a virgin, prior to her marriage to Ramirez. Since death row inmates are not permitted to have conjugal visits, then she may still be a virgin. Ramirez, has said her virginity is what attracted him to her. Doreen Lioy believes her husband is innocent of the charges against him. Lioy, who was raised as a Catholic, respects Ramirez's Satanic worship. This was demonstrated when she gave him a silver wedding band to wear, since Satanic worshipers do not wear gold. As of 2005 their marriage status is unknown and Ms. Lioy has not been available for comment.

    Richard Ramirez has outlived many of his victims that survived his attacks.
    More on Richard Ramirez, Night Stalker at Crime Library
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    Dr. Harold Shipman aka Dr. Death    

    Dr. Harold (Fred) Shipman was adored by his patients most of whom were elderly women, living alone and vulnerable. A Physician who was trusted and respected by more than 3,000 patients was also a killer who struck time after time with no obvious motive. When police began investigating Dr. Shipman in 1998, they struggled to understand this complex killer.

    How could such a prolific serial killer go undected for so long. Suspected of more than 400 murders, his status as having the most victims of any serial killer shot him to the top of the list. How could such a well liked man become such a cold hearted monster? The story began over 50 years ago in Manchester England

    Harold Frederick Shipman was born into a working class family in Nottingham on 14 January, 1946.

    Fred, as he was known, was a confident and clever child, adored by his mother, Vera who openly favored him over her other two children. She ruled his life, telling him what to wear and who his friends would be. As he grew older his life changed dramatically when Vera was diagnosed with lung cancer. For the first time Shipman saw the influence of doctors - administering drugs like morphine to alleviate pain in the last days of a life. Harold played a strong supportive role during his mother's illness and isolated himself from his contemporaries. When Harold was 17, his mother died - she was 43.

    The mystery is why did Harold go on to become a physician who had no regard for human life? Nothing remarkable about Shipman could be recalled by his professors in Medical School. They cited him only as aloof and quiet and described him as a loner. He married at age 19 and fathered two children and set up practice in Yorkshire, England. During this time, Shipman underwent a metamorphosis... he became outgoing and well respected by his fellow medics and patients. He was an outstanding member of the community. The office staff, however, saw a different side of him, he was demanding and belittling to those working under him. Not yet 30, Shipman had become a 'control freak'.

    Warning flags should have surfaced when Shipman began having black-outs and was found to be self-injecting pethidine - a morphine like substance with questionable addictive properties. In 1977, Shipman returned to practice after two years of mandatory drug rehabilitation, this time setting up shop in Hyde, in Northern England where the killing began.

    The exact number of victims is uncertain, an audit estimated 236 deaths, but some officials expect there may be at least 1000 victims. Local undertaker, Alan Massey began to notice a marked similarity in Shipman's patients that died. They were mostly all clothed when he went to pick them up and there did not appear to be signs of illness. Massey confronted Shipman who denied any misdoings and Massey was satisfied, but his daughter, Debbie Brambroffe, also an undertaker was not satisfied. She and Dr. Susan Booth, who had attended some of Shipman's patients and found them curiously deceased with no signs of illness, demanded an investigation. All of Shipman's records appeared in order, the cause of death and treatment matched medical standards. What they did not know at the time was that Shipman had been re-writing the records after death. Further investigation was about to lead to a blow-up in the case.

    Kathleen Grundy was an active 81 year old philanthropist who worked diligently for numerous charities, her sudden death and a suspicious will began more investigation. Ms Grundy's will, determined to be forged, left a considerable about of money to Dr. Shipman. Now there was a motive to match the suspicions.

    An exhumation and post-mortem of Grundy's body revealed a morphine overdose. Further investigation lead to the same conclusion. Most of his deceased patients had been killed by a morphine overdose and it appeared Shipman took, jewelry, money and whatever he wished from the victims. He forged medical documents to cover his tracks, but his time was up.

    The trial proceedings proved Shipman to be a callous man with little feeling toward the bereaved family. He could lie his way into the hearts of his victims, but was vile and rude to the family members especially if they questioned him. He hoarded the drugs - usually morphine he used to kill his patients, often lying to them about what they were recieving. Many probably died thinking they were recieving a mild analgesic or sedative.

    On January 31st 2000, Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman was given 15 life sentences for murder plus four years for forgery, but police believe he may actually have killed up to 508 patients.

    The South Manchester coroner, John Pollard, who knew and worked with Shipman, has his own theory about the doctor's motives:

    "The only valid possible explanation for it is that he simply enjoyed viewing the process of dying and enjoyed the feeling of control over life and death."

    Dr. Harold Shipman used a bed sheet to hang himself in his Wakefield prison cell in 2004 a few days before his 58th birthday. Investigations into suspected murders are ongoing in 2005.

    Read about the Dr. Harold Shipman at the Crime Library
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    Peter Sutcliffe - the Yorkshire Ripper

    In the space of 5 years, Peter Sutcliffe had claimed the lives of 13 victims, attacked 7 others and left them for dead. He claimed to be driven by God's voice emanating from a gravestone which commanded him to kill prostitutes. Sadistically, the Yorkshire Ripper would often beat his victims with a hammer then mutilate their bodies.

    Born on July 2, 1948 in Bingley England, an industrial county of Yorkshire, Northern England, Peter was small, only 5lbs, but healthy in every other way. As he grew into childhood, he was evidently introverted, shy and could not integrate with other children. He was bullied by his schoolmates and skipped school for two weeks hiding in the family attic, reading comics and books by flashlight before his parentw discovered his truancy. As he progressed into adulthood, Peter tried body building and enjoyed repairing motorcycles. He preferred the company of his mother to friends and by the time he was 18 he had never had a girlfriend or showed interest in the opposite sex. At age 20, howerver, he met Sonia Szurma, 16, second daughter of Checkoslavakian immigrants. After pressure from both families, they married 8 years later on Sonia's 24th birthday. Peter had created a life that on the outside seemed exemplary, but no one could imagine the violence and depravity within him.

    Peter's wife, Sonia suffered numerous miscarriages and was finally told she would never have the child they both wanted. It was soon after this news that the attacks began.

    The first victim, Anna Patricia Rogulskyj was visciously attacked on July 4, 1975 with a hammer, she survived, but will never be the same as she lives in constant fear. She told reporters, she wished she had died the night she was attacked. The second victim, also survived a vicious attack within a month. It would be three years and numerous attacks on women and deaths before police would name the attacker The Yorkshire Ripper. It would be two more years before they would know the man behind the name.

    On a cold Friday in January 1981 the Yorkshire Ripper's five year reign of terror came to an end. Beginning in July 1975 The Yorkshire Ripper had killed 13 women and left 7 for dead.

    The Capture
    On the 2 January 1981, two policemen, Sergeant Robert Ring and Constable Robert Hydes were patrolling Sheffield. When they drove down Melbourne Avenue (a popular prostitute area) they spotted a woman climb into a car, they immediately went over to investigate so that they could make a possible arrest for soliciting.

    When the police ran the plates, they were discovered to be false. Sutcliffe and the prostitute, Olivia Reivers, were arrested. Sutcliffe was questioned and told them that his full name was Peter William Sutcliffe, and that he had got the number plates from a scrapyard in West Yorkshire.

    The police were suspicious because he was caught in a car with a prostitute. When Sergeant Robert Ring heard that the 'Ripper Squad' was questioning Sutcliffe, he remembered how Sutcliffe relieved himself near an oil storage tank in Melbourne Avenue. Sergeant Ring rushed back to the scene and discovered a knife and a ball-pein hammer. Sergeant Ring then contacted the station and told them the news, they could not believe it. That night police searched Sutcliffe's house and questioned his wife, in the house they found about 30 weapons in total.

    The next morning while Sutcliffe was being questioned by Detective Boyle, Boyle mentioned the knife and hammer; Sutcliffe asked Boyle if he was leading to the Yorkshire Ripper, when Boyle said he was, Sutcliffe confessed to being the murderer.

    The End
    Over the next few days Sutcliffe gave police his full confession. He admitted killing 13 women in total. Sutcliffe said his main reason for murdering was revenge on prostitutes because one cheated him out of 10 pounds, he was later to change his motives.

    Sutcliffe was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by doctors. Sutcliffe told them that when he was working at Bingley Cemetery he heard God's voice emanating from a gravestone which commanded him to kill prostitutes, even though not all of his victims were prostitutes. They also conducted a handwriting analysis which revealed him to have some schizophrenic tendencies.

    Sixteen weeks later Sutcliffe went to court to face charges. It was up to the defense counsel to prove that Sutcliffe was insane, by this Sutcliffe pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The prosecutors tried to tell the jury that Sutcliffe was sane, by providing a witness; a prison officer overheard Sutcliffe tell his wife that if he convinced people he was mentally ill he "might only get ten years in the looney bin".

    On May 22, the jury delivered their verdict - they found Sutcilffe guilty of 13 murders and seven attempted murders. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment, where he would serve at Parkhurst Prison.

    In 1983 Sutcliffe was attacked with a broken coffee jar by another inmate. The cut required 84 stitches to his face. In March 1984 he was transferred to Broadmoor mental hospital. At Broadmoor, Sonia still visits him, even though she is legally separated from him.

    It may remain unknown if Sutcliffe faked his mental analysis or not, but while in Broadmoor it is said that his mental state has deteriorated.

    The Yorkshire Ripper eluded police for five years, at every piece of available evidence Sutcliffe got past it. Who knows how many more victims he would have claimed if he wasn't caught and why did so many years pass before he was caught?

    Many questions still remain. For example, even though Sutcliffe is a vicious predator of women, he gets some 30 letters a week from women and there are three women who have had an unusual relationship with him. These three women have been in constant contact by mail with Sutcliffe while he has been in Broadmoor hospital.

    Why do women write to and fall in love with vicious sexual predators? Is this unusual and is Peter Sutcliffe unique? Why are women so attracted to bad boys?

    There are many theories, but Professor Petruska Clarkson, a relationship psychotherapist, believes that "some may fantasize that a man like Sutcliffe may be the way he is because he has yet to be loved by the right person - and they may well be the one. This is certainly a way to feel special and unique".

    For more invormation about Peter Sutcliffe, THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER, visit: The Crime Library
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    Coral Eugene Watts aka ‘The Sunday Morning Slasher’

    Coral Eugene WattsCoral Eugene Watts, aka The Sunday Morning Slasher, has confessed to more than 80 murders of women in Texas, Michigan and Ontario, Canada.

    Carl Eugene Watts was born in Fort Hood, Texas November 7, 1953, to Richard and Dorothy Watts. He later changed his name to Coral in honor of the southern pronunciation of his given name. His parents divorced in 1955, his mother moved to Detroit, but Coral spent a lot of time with his grandmother in Coalwood, West Virginia. As a child he had meningitis and ran an extraordinarily high temperature, leaving him with learning disabilities and suspected brain damage. Coral missed a year of school and his family described him as ‘never being the same'. He began having violent dreams that disturbed his sleep patterns. He was restless when he slept because he would spend the night trying to fight off the ‘evil spirits of women’. In fact, he was trying to kill them. During a psychiatric evaluation, Coral talked about his dreams and when he was asked if the dreams disturbed him, Coral replied, "No, I feel better after I have one."

    Those who knew Watts in the 1960’s described him as a polite and soft-spoken young man. He was athletic and participated in the Golden Gloves boxing program. Academically, he scored moderately below average. By the age of 15, he demonstrated violent behavior. While working his paper route, he knocked on the apartment door of a woman and attacked her when she opened the door. When arrested he told police he, "just felt like beating someone up."

     In September 1969, prompted by his lawyer, Watts was institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital in Detroit. Within three months, he was evaluated and placed on outpatient treatment by Dr. Gary Ainsworth. In his final review of Watts, Dr. Ainsworth stated, "This patient is a paranoid young man who is struggling for control of strong homicidal impulses. His behavior controls are faulty, and there is a high potential for violent acting out. This individual is considered dangerous."

    Despite this warning from Dr. Ainsworth, Watts continued high school after his release from the hospital. He was involved in sports but continued to decline academically. He was a drug user, a loner, and was often disciplined by school officials for his volatile behavior with female classmates. He graduated at age 19. During this time, he rarely attended outpatient treatment. He was accepted to Lane College on a football scholarship, but due to injuries he was unable to complete his first year, and returned home to Detroit.

    After a second psychiatric evaluation, Watts returned to college and was accepted into a special scholarship and mentoring program sponsored by Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Prior to attending the program, Watts was again evaluated at the outpatient facility, where it was determined that he was still a danger and had a "strong impulse to beat up women," yet due to the right to confidentiality policies, staffers were unable to alert authorities or the college Watts was attending.

    On October 25, 1974, Lenore Knizacky answered her door and was attacked by a man who said he was looking for ‘Charles’. She fought back and survived. On October 30, Gloria Steele, 19, was found dead with 33 stab wounds to her chest. A witness reported speaking with a man at Steele’s apartment complex, who said he was looking for ‘Charles’. Diane Williams reported being attacked on November 12, under the same circumstances. She survived and managed to see the attacker's car and make a report to the police. Watts was picked out in a line-up by Knizacky and Williams and arrested on assault and battery charges. He admitted to attacking 15 females, but refused to talk about the Steele murder. His attorney arranged for Watts to commit himself into the Kalamazoo State Hospital. The hospital psychiatrist investigated Watts' background and learned that at the previous institution, Watts was said to have possibly killed two women by choking them. He diagnosed Watts with an anti-social personality disorder.

    Prior to Watts' trial, he had a court ordered evaluation at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ann Arbor. The examining doctor described Watts as dangerous and felt he would most likely attack again, but was found competent to stand trial. Coral pled 'no contest,' and received a one-year sentence on the assault and battery charges but was never charged in the murder of Steele. In June 1976, he was out of jail and back home in Detroit with his mother.

    In October 1979, Watts was arrested for suspicious behavior in Southfield, a Detroit suburb. Although the charges were dropped, investigators noted that during the previous year, five women in the same suburb were assaulted on separate occasions, but with similar circumstances. None were killed, yet none could identify their attacker.

    A task force led by Detective Paul Bunten was formed to investigate the five murders that occurred within months of each other. Unfortunately there were no witnesses and very little evidence. By this time, Watts had married and was working at a trucking company with his stepfather, who he despised.

    By May 1980, Watts was divorced. His wife stated that it was due to his strange behavior, which included his habit of leaving their home for hours, immediately after they engaged in sex. In a 2002 Star Tribune article it was suggested that it was likely Coral went stalking for new victims during that time. Within months, attacks similar to those in Ann Arbor and Detroit were being reported in neighboring Wisteria, Ontario.

    Over the course of a year, many more women were attacked and murdered. One of them was Detroit News reporter Jeanne Clyne, 44, who was attacked on Halloween Day, 1979, while walking home from a Doctor’s Appointment. Clyne was attacked in broad daylight, along a busy suburban road near her home in Grosse Point Farms. She died from 11 stab wounds. Unfortunately, police were unable to find any evidence leading them to a suspect. Initially, detectives suspected Jeanne's husband, but he was later cleared of suspicion when Coral confessed to her murder.

    On September 14, University of Michigan graduate student Rebecca Huff, 20, was found murdered outside of her home. She had been stabbed approximately 50 times. Her case was unique because it was one of the first murders to be directly linked to Coral Watts. In addition, it prompted one of Ann Arbor's largest murder investigations. However, it took two months before the link between Coral and Rebecca was made.

    On November 15, 1980, an Ann Arbor woman contacted police after she became frightened when she discovered that a man was following her. The woman hid in a doorway and the police observed their suspect as he frantically searched for her. When they pulled the man over in his car, he was identified as Coral Watts. Inside the car they found screwdrivers and wood filing tools, but the most important discovery was a book that had Rebecca Huff’s name on it. Unfortunately it was not enough evidence to convict him. Watts was arrested and his license was suspended. Bunten and his team tracked Watts with a tracking device. They were sure Watts was the killer, but they needed evidence. Apparently Watts knew he was being watched, withholding his urge to kill for two months. Bunten finally brought him in for questioning and after nine grueling hours, Watts failed to admit anything connecting him with the murders.

    By that spring, Coral had enough of Bunten and his task force, and made a move to Columbus, Texas, where he found work as a trucker at an oil company. He drove seventy miles every day to Houston, which became his new hunting ground.

    Bunten forwarded Watts' file to the Houston police, who were able to locate Watts, but unable to find any evidence linking him directly to any Houston crimes. According to a November 2002 Associated Press article, Houston police homicide Sgt. Tom Ladd claimed that it was difficult building a case against Watts because, "he used different methods to kill, never sexually assaulted his victims and chose strangers." He further stated that there was rarely evidence left behind at the scenes because he "killed within minutes of encountering his victims."

    On May 23, 1982, Watts attacked roommates Lori Lister and Melinda Aguilar, tied them up, and then attempted to drown Lister in their apartment bathtub. Aguilar was able to escape by jumping head first off of her balcony. A neighbor saved Lister and Watts was caught and arrested. The body of Michele Maday was found the same day, drowned in her bathtub in a nearby apartment.

    When arrested, Watts was still the major suspect in several murder cases in the Houston area. Harris County Assistant District Attorney Ira Jones came up with an idea that would prompt Coral to confess to the crimes of which he was suspected. In exchange for information and murder confessions, Coral would get immunity for murder. Coral agreed and a few days later, took investigators to the burial sites of three of his victims. Coral Watts eventually admitted attacking 19 women, 13 of which he murdered. Of those he admitted murdering, one was Detroit News reporter Jeanne Clyne.

    Watts also admitted to the murders of the following women: September 5, 1981, Lillian Tilley who was attacked at her Arlington apartment and drowned. Later that same month, Elizabeth Montgomery, 25 who was out walking her dogs died after being stabbed in the chest. Shortly afterwards, Susan Wolf, 21, who was attacked and murdered, as she got out of her car at her home., and in January 1982 Phyllis Tamm, 27, who was attacked as she jogged. Coral claimed that he choked her with his hands and then hung her to a tree branch with an elastic strap. Almost two days later, Coral murdered architecture student Margaret Fossi, 25, who apparently died from a blow to the throat. Her body was found in the trunk of her car at Rice University. Coral said that he took her shoes, the blueprints she was carrying and her purse and burned them. Interestingly, Coral often stole items from his victims and burned them, hoping to "kill the spirit." He claimed that the reason he committed the murders was because the women had "evil eyes."

    Between February and May 1982, Coral confessed to the murders of Elena Semander, 20; Emily LaQua, 14; Anna Ledet, 34; Yolanda Gracia, 21; Carrie Jefferson, 32; Suzanne Searles, 25, and Michele Maday, 20. Strangely enough, he was never charged for any of the murders because of the deal he struck with the Harris County DA.

    Watts admitted to at least eighty more murders in Canada and Michigan. He would not give any details of the murders because he had not been granted immunity for them. There is no denying his cleverness in working the system to get the lightest sentence possible. Coral pled guilty to one count of burglary with intent to kill. The judge decided that the water in the bathtub in the Lister case could be constituted as a deadly weapon, which would result in the parole board not being able to count Watts' 'good conduct time,' when determining his parole eligibility. On September 3, 1982, Watts was sentenced to 60 years in a penitentiary. Before Coral left for prison he told an investigator "You know, if they ever let me out, I'll kill again.”

    In 1987, after a failed attempt to escape prison by slipping through the bars, Watts decided to begin appealing his sentence, even though the appeal lacked the support of his attorney. In October, 1987, unrelated to any of Watts appeals, the court decided that criminals must be told that a 'deadly weapon' finding may occur during their indictment and to fail to do so violates the criminal’s rights.

    In 1989, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, decided that because the Judge failed to inform Coral that the bathtub water could be deemed a lethal weapon, that he would not be required to serve his entire sentence. Watts was now eligible for retroactive 'good time earned' equaling three days for every one day served. This would mean he would be released from prison on May 9, 2006. The man who admitted to killing again if let out of prison would be one of the first confessed serial killers to be legally released in U.S. history.

    The Texas’ Pardon and Parole board denied Watt’s release six times from 1990 and 2004. The families of his victims were fighting the 2006 release with every possible legal maneuver they could find. State police forensic scientists were also hoping to use DNA tests, unavailable in the 1980s, to link Coral with some of the crimes. In the meantime, Michigan, having never agreed to the plea bargain, decided to try him for the Dec. 1, 1979, stabbing death of Helen Dutcher. Coral was finally formally charged with murder. Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan, initiated proceedings to extradite Coral to Michigan to stand trial for Dutcher's murder.

    On November 18th, 2004, the jury returned a verdict. Coral Eugene Watts was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Helen Dutcher and will spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole. Watts reacted to the judgment by rolling his eyes and shaking his head, whereas the victims' families rejoiced after hearing the verdict and "embraced each other”. The trail of terror had finally ended. Watts remains in prison in Michigan, awaiting appeal.

    More info at The Crime Library
    Latest News on Coral Watts
      
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    Eileen Wuornos - Femme Fatale

    "I was definately gonna shoot 'em to let 'em die. Because they were either gonna rape me, kill me or strangle me."

    Aileen Carol Wuornos created a murder trail the entire length and breadth of Florida. Unlike most female murderers who select victims that they know, Wuornos hunted down strangers and killed for the sheer enjoyment of killing.

    Throughout history the majority of female killers have murdered out of greed, passion, or self defence. True female serial killers are rare.

    Aileen Wuornos (known also as Lee) was born on the 29th of February 1956. Her natural mother, only 17 at the time, gave her to her grandparents to rise. Both grandparents were alcoholics, and especially her grandfather was abusive towards her. The family was poor and Aileen often resorted to prostitution in her early teen years, to get enough food to eat at school, and later alcohol and cigarettes.

    By the time she was 14 she was pregnant. It was immediately put up for adoption. After this Aileen dropped out of school and embarked on a lifestyle of prostitution and petty theft to support a growing drug and alcohol problem.

    Eventually Aileen married at the age of twenty-one to sixty-nine year old Lewis Fell. The marriage was short lived and failed, due to Aileen's drunken and violent nature. Her lifetyle after the divorce was to take an even further downhill spiral, she was incarcerated for armed robbery for a year. Other arrests followed for fraud and motor vehicle theft.

    Eventually Aileen was to graduate to a homeless lifestyle of murder and robbery...

    The first murder occured on the 1st of December 1989, a Cadillac Coupe belonging to the owner of a electrical shop, 51-year-old Richard Charles Mallory was found abandoned. Twelve days later Mallory was found some eight kilometres away dumped in bush land and wrapped in a carpet remanant. He had been shot four times and his watch, cash and other personal items had been stolen.

    Police concluded that he had first been shot in his car and the remaining three bullet wounds indicated that he had been shot while trying to escape his killer.

    Nothing occurred for a further six months until a second man, 43 year old David Spears, disappeared while en route to visit his ex-wife and daughter near Orlando. His vehicle had been abandoned and the registration plates removed. Two weeks later, Spears' body was located, he was naked and a post mortem revealed that like Mallory he had been shot with a .22 caliber revolver. In fact, Spears' had been shot 6 times.

    When 40 year old rodeo worker Charles Carskaddon departed Prairie in Missouri to drive himself to Tampa in Florida, he was en route to collect his fiancée so they could return to Missouri together. At some stage his path crossed with that of Wuornos, and the result was fatally predictable.

    His body was found on the 6th of June 1990. He was naked and had been shot nine times. His vehicle was located the next day an hours drive to the north. His luggage and $300.00 in cash were missing.

    Two weeks later 65-year-old Peter Siems, a evangelical missionary, was driving a silver Pontiac Sunbird when he was stopped by Wuornos. Like the others, he was shot dead but to this day his body has not been found.

    His car was seen being driven by two women, one a solidly built blonde, the second a short redhead. Both women were seen to fail to take a bend and crash the vehicle through a fence and into a paddock. The blonde woman was especially abusive to the other woman and to everyone who approached them to help. In the end both women walked off leaving the vehicle behind. It was the same silver Pontiac Sunbird which was owned by Siems.

    Three weeks later on the 30th of July 1990 a 50-year-old truck driver Troy Burress picked up Wuornos, for his trouble, he was shot once in the chest and once in the back as he tried to escape. By this stage, police were convinced that they were hunting a serial killer, but they were mistaken in thinking it was a male.

    When retired policeman 56-year-old Charles Humphrey disappeared on the 10th of September 1990, police were immediately concerned. Two days later his body was discovered in bush land. He had been shot in the back and head. It was about this time that police began to consider the possibility that the 'Highway Killer' could be a woman.

    Finally, 60 year old former Reserve Policeman Walter Antonio was murdered on the 17th of November 1990. He had been shot by Wuornos four times.

    Police set up an intensive search of the Daytona Beach area. A description of all property stolen from the murder victims was checked with pawnbrokers. Luck was finally on the police side when a check of some property was matched with the belongings of Richard Mallory, these items were pawned by a prostitute by the name of Aileen Wuornos.

    An extensive search and undercover operation was put into place. Finally, Wuoronos was arrested at the Last Resort bikers bar on the 9th of January 1991.

    By the 16th of January 1991, Wuornos finally confessed to the killings of Mallory, Spears, Carskaddon, Seims, Burress, Humphreys and Antonio. She stated that they all died because they had either been trying to rape her, refused to pay for sex, or that they were simply all older men who did not have anyone.

    It was always the same story with each of her victims; they were always trying to harm her in some way. Wuornos always managed to justify her killings, at least to herself, by stating that if she had not murdered these men they would have either raped her or some other woman. It was rationalization gone mad.

    After her trial on the 31st of January 1992, Aileen Carol Wuornos, then aged 35, was given six death sentences - more than anyone else on death row. She was held at the Broward Correctional Institute until her execution at Florida State Prison on October 9th, 2002. Wournos, age 46 at the time of her execution was recorded to say from the execution chamber:
    "I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock (Jesus) and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I'll be back."

    Lee had been a "volunteer" for the execution, the probable turning point for Governor Jeb Bush to sign her death warrant. Confined in prison with little human contact, Lee wanted to "Get right with God" and lobbied for her own execution.

    Aileen "Lee" Wuornos was the third woman in Florida history to be executed. Her life and killings have been immortalized in the movie Monster, starring Charlize Theron.

    Full Case Details: Crime Library
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    Zodiac Killer - unsolved!!

    In a letter to the San Francisco police, the famous Zodiac Killer wrote:
    "I am not sick, I am insane.
    This is the Zodiac speaking, I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill..."

    The Zodiac Killer's spree began in 1966 and lasted until 1974. No one knows why he stopped and he was never apprehended. One of the most frightening things about the Zodiac killer is that he may still be out there. There are many theories on the Zodiac including that he is dead or serving time in prison for another crime. Since he has never been identified, the case is still open.

    This killer received his name after he scribbled zodiac signs around several of his victims. The rare survivors from his attacks have described him as a heavy set man with glasses and red hair.

    There are numerous theories surrounding his identity, methods, and his reasoning behind the astrological murders. His numbers vary according to sources. Some attribute only six hits to this faceless maniac. Others believe the Zodiac has slayed up to 49 individuals. Some have settled on 37 after a note he sent to a San Francisco paper on January 30, 1974 in which he wrote "Me-37 - SFPD-0."

    One of the most fascinating things is the letters he sent in code to police and newspapers, some were deciphered but most were not. He sent twenty-one letters to various newspapers boasting of his crimes. His envelopes were easy to recognize, always with double postage and the writing "please rush to editor." [click for larger view]

    One letter specifically has defied the most sophisticated codebreakers and computers at the CIA, NSA and FBI. Although it could have been just a joke from the "Zodiac", many things point to it's sincerity. He really made his own code and no one has been able to decipher it yet.

    The code in this letter was based on 340 symbols. On the sixth line, he made a correction. This points to the fact that it had meaning not just random symbols. He appeared to be intellectually taunting and challenging the SF police.

    In one of the letters he stated that his reasoning for killing, was to "collect slaves for the afterlife." One of "Zodiac's" many threats was...
    "School children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning, just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out."

    Although it's been more than 30 years since the Zodiac's last known murder, it seems as firmly implanted in people's memories as it was then. It was one of the first cases that the public and the media murmured when the recent Washington D.C. area sniper left a tarot card.

    Read about the Zodiac Murders and the Mysterious Zodiac Killer - But, be warned, you may never have a restful night's sleep again!
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    Ciudad Juarez - The City of the Dead    

    Ciudad Juarez is the largest city in the State of Chihuahua and the 5th (some say 4th) largest city in all of Mexico. With a population of almost 2 million people, this city is no sleepy little border town. Located just across the border from El Paso, Texas, together the two cities form the largest international border community in the world. It sounds like a wonderful place to visit, but if you are female, you are in danger on the streets of Ciudad Juarez.

    Since 1993, according to The El Paso Times, “nearly 340” females have died brutal deaths to an unknown killer or killers. Although numerous suspects have been caught and jailed, each hailed to be the solution to the crime, the murders continue. Some believe the police are either directly involved or are part of a cover-up.

    No one knows exactly how many people live in Ciudad Juarez; the border town is often an area of transit for migrant workers looking to enter the US. Many young women travel to the city to work in maquiladoras [sweatshop factories], often making less than five dollars a day. They work in squalor and are often sexually harassed, but they put up with the poor conditions hoping to make a better life for themselves and the families they left behind in nearby villages. The legal system does not protect them, nor is there a union to assure better working conditions. In Mexico, money talks, even illicit money. If you are poor, you have little or no hope for a better life, but there is more than corruption in Ciudad Juarez… much, much more.

    The maquiladora murders first attracted attention in 1993, when a Mexican government forensic psychologist, Oscar Maynez Grijalva, noticed an unexplainable rise in the murder rate of poor, young, slender women with dark skin and long black hair. He warned Ciudad Juarez police that some of their unsolved murders might be the work of a serial killer. In a subsequent interview, he stated that the authorities ignored his warning and classified many of the deaths as unsolvable, especially when the victims were, as in many cases, unidentifiable. It seemed as if no one cared. Grijalva accused the police of asking him to help plant evidence during an investigation. He eventually quit his job, saying he was disgusted and shamed by how the investigation was being handled. His accusations were not in vain, however, as both American and Mexican government officials were now watching the Ciudad Juarez police.

    The first official victim, Alma Chavira Farel was found beaten, raped, and strangled on January 23, 1993. Alma was not the first victim, but she became the first official victim of the killer (or killers) the media dubbed "the Juarez Ripper" or El Depredador Psicópata . Sixteen more women were found murdered by the end of the year, many with similar slash marks as on the breast of the first victim. Four of the murders were supposedly solved. Of the twelve left, four had been raped, four strangled, four stabbed, and one set on fire. Body decomposition ruled out further evidence in two of the victims. In 1994, eight victims were identified; again one had been set afire, six were strangled, two were stabbed to death and one was beaten to death. The ages of the victims ranged from eleven to thirty-five. In 1995 nineteen victims were discovered, eight of who were never identified. A pattern was emerging however; four of the three victims in September of 1995 had their right breast severed and the left nipple bitten off. In October, the Mexican detectives had a suspect.

    Abdel Latif Sharif, Egyptian by birth, had been convicted of rape and drunk driving. He had been described by acquaintances as “obsessed by young women”. After a second rape conviction, his lawyers made a deal with the US government that instead of deportation, Sharif would voluntarily leave the US. Sharif moved to Ciudad Juarez, worked at one of the maquiladora factories, and resided in the exclusive Rincones de San Marcos district. One of his factory workers accused him of rape and said that he threatened to kill her and dump her body in Lote Bravo, a desert region south of town where several other victims had been found. It was also noted that he had dated one of the victims found in August, seventeen year old Elizabeth Castro Garcia. Sharif was found guilty in 1999 of that murder and given thirty years in prison, but even while he was under arrest, the murders continued, even to a greater degree. Only one month after Sharif was in custody, the Mexican police acknowledged that in the previous eleven months there were five hundred and twenty missing persons and a large percentage of them were female adolescents. From the time of Sharif’s arrest and April 1996, there were fourteen more female victims whose ages ranged from ten to thirty. One of the victims had her right breast severed and the left nipple bitten off. The public was outraged and the police were embarrassed. Apparently Sharif was not the Juarez Ripper.

    On April 8th, 1996 the raped and mutilated body of eighteen-year-old Rosario Garcia was found. Hector Olivares Villalba, a member of a local street gang called Los Rebeldes ("The Rebels") admitted participation in Garcia’s murder. The police raided local bars and hangouts of the street gang members and detained three hundred of them and after questioning, charged nine of them with collaborating with Sharif while he was in prison to continue the murders. All of the confessions of the Las Rebeldes were recanted, saying that they were tortured into confessing. Four of the gang members’ charges were dropped due to lack of sufficient evidence, four others remain in jail awaiting trial (an unusually slow process in Mexico) and a third was convicted on another unrelated charge. The conspiracy theory failed and the murders continued.

    Between April and November of 1996, sixteen more females were slain. Eight of the victims remained unidentified. In 1997, there were seventeen victims found, seven of who were never identified. Again their ages ranged from ten to thirty. 1998 was even a worse year, twenty-three victims were found. Mexico's Human Rights Commission issued a report in that year castigating the police, but they were no closer to catching the Juarez Ripper than they were five years before. The killings continued.

    By March 1999, eight more victims were found. Sharif’s trial for the murder of Elizabeth Castro began on March 3rd, and the police were about to have a new suspect. Nicknamed El Dracula and El Tolteca., Jesus Guardado Marquez a bus driver for the maquiladora had been identified by a 14 year old girl who staggered up to a neighbor’s door bloody and scared. She told a story of Marquez raping and nearly killing her. The police went after him after a background check showed that he had a prior conviction for sexual assault. Marquez had left Ciudad Juarez with his pregnant wife, but was arrested in Durango a few days later and questioned by police. He confessed (he claimed while under torture) to four murders and named accomplices: maquiladora bus drivers, collectively dubbed Los Choferes ("The Chauffeurs"). The police again tried to connect the suspects with Sharif, but failed. The murders continued even though The Los Choferes remained in prison.

    The FBI became involved after three US Citizens were found in a mass grave just outside of the city. Not associated with the maquiladora murders, this mass grave contained bodies of men missing from the US and believed to have been involved with drug trafficking. Some believe it is ironic that it took the male murders to bring the FBI to Ciudad Juarez, no one had worried about the poor women and children who had been murdered. No one could hear their cries from the grave.

    Famed serial killer profiler Robert Ressler who heads the Virginia-based Forensic Behavioral Services, a private company that focuses on profiling, investigations and law-enforcement consultation said “I determined that it wasn't one person who was responsible. It’s not one serial killer. I think it's probably two or three." Ressler theorized that an American might be crossing into Juarez and taking advantage of the border's anonymity. He noted that Juarez offers serial killers plenty of dark streets, abandoned buildings and a transient population from which to choose victims: "It's an ideal situation for an American with money. The environment for trouble is there."

    Another famed criminologist Candice Skrapec, who is best known for profiling the New York's "Zodiac Killer," spent 10 weeks in the summer of 1999 working with Juarez police. Skrapec, a professor of criminology at California State University at Fresno, said she had identified 67 cases in which she believes serial killers were involved. She suggested that because of his strong family ties to Ciudad Juarez, Angel Maturino Resendez, aka The Railroad Killer should be considered as one of the suspects. Resendez was later cleared of the murders in Ciudad Juarez, which continued non-stop after his arrest.

    2000 and 2001 recorded more murders. November 10, 2001 Chihuahua officials announced the arrest of two 28-year-old bus drivers, Javier Garcia Uribe and Gustavo Gonzalez Meza, on charges of killing eight women who had been found three days earlier. Both claimed police tortured them into a confession. Meza died from complications of surgery while in prison and Uribe remains in prison. There are fifty-one (by some reports) suspects in Mexican prisons and some of them are police; yet the killings continue.

    A large wooden cross has been erected near the border, as a memorial to the murdered and missing. The business owners in Ciudad Juarez have protested the cross, saying it is bad for tourism. No one has any idea of the exact number of bodies that have been found. They have stopped counting. The numbers are not important anymore; it is the lives that were taken before their time that are important. They should not be forgotten.

    Additional Suspects and information in the Ciudad Juarez Murders can be found at Crime Library

    NOTES:
    To protest the lack of progress in the case , a huge free concert is being organized by famous Latin artists such as Alejandro Sanz, Alex Ubago, Manu Chao, Lila Downs and others on September 18th 2005 in Mexico City’s central Zocalo square.

    Recently, American indie-rock band AT THE DRIVE-IN released a music video for their song "Invalid Litter Dept." that details the deaths. The video features several photos of newspaper clippings and articles about the murders.

    Amnesty International - The Women of Juarez

    The following has been taken from the Washington Office on Latin America Website:
    Congressional concern about the Juárez and Chihuahua murders has grown over the past few years. In October 2003, WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America) helped organize a delegation of members of Congress to Juarez to meet with family members of victims, non-governmental organizations, and government officials. Since then, members of Congress have pursued a number of initiatives to encourage the U.S. and Mexican governments to take more effective action in the investigations.

    In March 2005, Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) and Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) introduced House and Senate resolutions condemning the murders, expressing condolences to the families, and encouraging the State Department to become more involved in efforts to resolve these crimes.
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    Kids Who Kill    

    At age fifteen, future serial killer, Edmund Kemper III was sent to stay with his grandparents on their ranch. One afternoon he was bored, so he picked up his gun and went outside. His grandmother who was sitting at the table called after him not to shoot at the birds. He turned around and from a distance of only a few feet he shot her in the back of the head. He fired into her body twice more. He began to drag her body into the bedroom when he heard his grandfather's car drive up outside. As the old man got out of the car, Edmund Kemper lined up the gun, shot, and killed him with a single bullet.

    Jason Sweeney was a 16-year-old who was on the fringe of the teens’ social circle in Philadelphia’s blue-collar Fishtown neighborhood. His first girlfriend, Justina Morley a 15-year-old girl who promised him sex, lured him to his death. When they reached a secluded spot near the Delaware River, he was ambushed by three youths with a hatchet, a hammer and a large rock. Justina had set him up so that the three youths, Edward "Eddie" Batzig, Dominic and Nicolas Coia, could beat him up. Jason had just cashed his paycheck and the killers needed the money to buy drugs. Justin’s last words were “I am bleeding” and, to his girlfriend Justina, “You set me up!”

    Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both age ten, were skipping school on February 12, 1993, shoplifting, and looking for something to do. Bored, they decided to see if they could get away with a kidnapping. According to reports, they had already tried with a four-year-old who'd resisted them, but two-year-old James Bulger was not so lucky. James, whose mother was delayed in the butcher shop, was waiting outside. Thompson and Venables grabbed James by the hand and headed for the railroad tracks over two miles away. Nearly thirty-eight people spotted the unusual trio as they headed out of the mall. James had been dropped on his head and had an obvious, large contusion on his forehead. Many of the witnesses thought the site was strange, but none stopped the boys. The battered lifeless body of the two year old was later found on the railroad tracks. The body had been cut in half and was covered in blue paint. There were numerous wounds on his body and tracks on his face resembling horse’s hooves. There was evidence of sexual assault.

    Children are born innocent. How could someone so young become so evil? These kids kill without regard to life and seemingly have no regrets. They are antisocial, classified as ‘sociopathic,’ and having no conscience. Why DO kids kill? There are no definite answers, but there are clues to help us understand and identify children who are potential killers and to help us stop them before they kill.

    According to Katherine Ramsland, a forensic psychologist, the list below identifies some traits of a child who has the potential to take violence to the killing extreme:
  • A mother exposed to deprivation or abuse as a child
  • A transient father
  • A mother who cannot maintain stable emotional connection with child
  • Low birth weight or birth complications
  • Unusual reactions to pain (especially to an insult)
  • Lack of attachment to adults
  • Failure to make eye contact when touched
  • Low frustration tolerance
  • Heightened sense of self-importance
  • Transient relationships throughout childhood, or close association with another like him
  • Cruelty toward others
  • Animal abuse
  • Lack of remorse for hurting someone
  • Lack of empathy in friendships

    The questions arise whether these traits are a genetic predisposition, or whether they are due to cultural and/or environmental influences. There is a strong theory that violence shown on television and movies, and practiced in video games, has hardened our children to the negative effect of violence. If that is true, why then are some children unfazed by the violence and grow up normally with no violent tendencies? During a study of aggression and violent tendencies in relationship to television, one Canadian city reported a 160% increase in shoving, pushing, biting, and hitting among young children when they were exposed to television programs depicting violence. They noted that the children perceived the violence as a pleasing experience especially if they were eating and drinking while watching. Interactive videogames often reward violent acts with higher scores. The children learn to point and shoot often at human likenesses while the comprehension of the consequences of the actual acts is never realized. Are we teaching our kids to kill and to enjoy killing?

    There is no denying the effect of the electronic age on our culture, but kids were killing long before there was television or video games. There are some researchers who believe childhood violence is the product of brain physiology, an imbalance in the brain chemistry that precipitates violent behavior. Studies indicate that this imbalance is a combination of both genetic predispositions and environmental factors. According to Debra Niehof, a neuroscientist who researched the subject for twenty years before writing The Biology of Violence, "The biggest lesson we have learned from brain research is that violence is the result of a developmental process, a lifelong interaction between the brain and the environment." She explains that the brain keeps track of our experiences through chemical codes. These chemical codes are stored in our brain and recalled when we have an interaction with a new person. We recall attitudes and feelings that we've developed through previous interactions. They give us a sense of how safe we are in relation to the world. These attitudes set off certain emotional reactions and the chemistry of those feelings is translated into our responses. Our chemical profile is updated with each new experience.

    The chemical profile of aggression is a result of the chemistry of our attitudes. An appropriate response may be turned into an inappropriate one by overreacting or misdirecting it to the wrong person. A person’s evaluation of a situation then becomes impaired. Niehof explains, "If a person has come to believe that the world is against them, and they are overreacting to every little provocation, these violent reactions get beyond their ability to control, because they are in survival mode."

    On the opposite end of the pole is the under-reactive pattern where the child may fail to develop empathy for others and fail to attach emotion to their actions. In this case, more provocation to violence would be required, but the actions would still be aggressively abnormal. Is this abnormal brain chemistry destined to produce killers? Not if observed early and intervention occurs. Unfortunately the trend today has been to place these children on anti-depressants, which in some cases has worsened the scenario. Providing adequate psychological evaluation by professionals skilled in identifying childhood aggression is necessary to stop the progression of the altered brain chemistry. There are non-pharmaceutical tools that can be used to reduce violent behavior by creating a safe and caring environment. Early intervention is the key.

    Girls are in the minority of children who kill, but can still be as brutal and aggressive as boys. Take the case of Jessica Holtmeyer, age 16, who, with the help of a male friend, put a noose over learning disabled Kimberly Dotts, age15. While five other children watched, they slung the rope over a tree branch and hung Kimberly by the neck. When her limp body began convulsing, Jessica grabbed a rock and smashed it into Kimberly’s head until she stopped moving. Jessica reportedly laughed and said she wanted to cut the girl to pieces and keep a finger for a souvenir. Her male accomplice said he thought they were just trying to scare Kimberly and he saw something frightening in Kimberly "It was like a side of her I didn't see before. Like she didn't care about nothing.”

    Despite the horrendous behavior by Jessica Holtmeyer, few killings by girls are senseless, and they rarely kill strangers. Girls rarely commit a murder on their own. If they do kill they often have accomplices or do it as part of a gang. Some of the reasons girls give for killing are revenge against an abuser, self-protection and to get rid of a witness of a crime.

    Despite common theories, no one is born violent but it has been proven that males have more of a predisposition to violence. Anti-social acts are three times more likely to be performed by boys. Boys are much more likely to develop sexual based violent fantasies that can adversely affect their brain physiology. Despite physiological differences, perception and experience play a large part in the progression of violence in both genders.

    A type of killing by children, usually called ‘thrill killing’ by teens, is initiated not from reaction but from a need to feel superior, satisfied and stimulated. Often drugs are involved and violence is used as a weapon. Thrill killing is often the result of an agonizing defeat and/or humiliation. It may be the only way in which a killer, especially a child experiencing the difficult years of puberty may feel gratification. With each violent event, which is encoded into the brain physiology, a feeling of euphoria may occur, thus violence and eventually killing may be associated with pleasure or an intense ‘high’. This very dangerous type of violence leads to subsequent events and often is a precursory trait of a serial killer. According to Ramsland, there are certain factors in a child’s background that may point to an increased risk of violence in adolescents:
  • Past violent behavior
  • Substance abuse
  • Aggressive peers
  • Family aggression
  • Social stress
  • Character or mental disorders
  • Access to weapons
  • Focused anger
  • Low degree of resilience

    It is imperative that we identify these potential killers before they reach adolescence. There are some very early warning signs that a child may become a killer. Infants and young children need a feeling of security and trust with their parents or caretakers. If this security and trust are not developed in their formative months and years, they may become detached from reality. If there is violence in the home, the child may fail to develop social skills necessary to survive. The following conditions may precipitate a child to follow an aggressive and violent route:
  • Lack of safety in the home represses the development of cognitive skills
  • A child who lives in constant fear may repress their feelings and never develop empathy.
  • Violence in the home/environment inhibits concentration
  • Physical/emotional abuse causes feelings of hopelessness
  • Post-traumatic Stress Symptoms may develop if the child is under constant stress

    A child, who does not develop a strong parental bond, will develop anti-social behavior in later years because they have not learned how to connect with others. This is a fact that has been proven over and over. Who do we blame if our children kill? We have no one to blame but ourselves. Despite Hollywood’s depiction of children who are “Bad Seeds”, there is no such thing. It is up to parents to provide a safe, trusting environment for our children. If they still show aggressive behavior, then we as parents should intervene appropriately. We should not allow our children to be psycho-medicated to reform their behavior to our acceptable standards. There is a reason for the aggression and we as parents and teachers should take the role seriously and provide what these children so desperately need: love, nurturing and guidance.

    Children may kill thinking they are solving their problems without grasping the concept that death is final. We must teach them that the violence they see on television, in movies, and among video games is not real, and that copying the acts will reap dire consequences. A child who exhibits a lack of empathy or disregard for the life of a person or animal needs professional help and loving intervention. According to psychologist Stephanie Piper, ”Most of all, adults need to listen. The common denominator among young killers is the overwhelming conviction that no one thinks they're important.”
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    • SPECIAL REPORT: Forensics

    Forensics is defined as: The use of science and technology to investigate and establish facts in criminal or civil courts of law. Forensics used in our crime labs today utilizes art, as well as, science to assist in investigation of evidence. According to the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, "Forensics is the application of the science of physical anthropology to the legal process. The identification of skeletal, badly decomposed, or otherwise unidentified human remains is important for both legal and humanitarian reasons. Forensic anthropologists apply standard scientific techniques developed in physical anthropology to identify human remains, and to assist in the detection of crime."

    Forensic art is the utilization of artistic methods and techniques to aid legal procedures. It's a way to present visual information that aids with missing-person cases and with the identification and apprehension of criminals. For example, a composite portrait taken from several eyewitnesses at a crime scene can provide law enforcement with a fairly good portrait of the person they're looking for.

    There are four types of forensic art used in combination with forensic science to determine what a suspect or a victim looked like. They are:
    1. Composite imagery (faces or evidence from descriptions)
    2. Image modification and image identification (enhancement and comparisons)
    3. Demonstrative Evidence (for court)
    4. Reconstruction and postmortem aids (identifications)

    This blending of forensic art and science has been used in many cases to identify a killer and/or his victims. The forensic artist must be aware of post-mortem changes in the body and be able to keep an objective view. Some artists are on staff of law enforcement agencies and some freelance their talent. Forensic art can be used in many ways to assist law enforcement in solving a case.

    In the 1950’s, composite imagery development from multiple witnesses became the standard. This lead to the development of the IdentiKIT which aided in the apprehension of serial killers such as Harvey Glatman and mass murderer Richard Speck. The process evolved and the Identi-Kit 2000 was born. It is a computerized version of the composite approach to suspect identification. In this version, witnesses are shown a whole face within the basic group that matches their description, not separate images of facial parts. They then point out the features that aren't quite right, and the artist can make adjustments from the extensive feature database. With the computer edit program, the artist can move, scale, shade, paint, draw, erase, and add or remove any feature. Once finished, the composite can be sent to other agencies via computer.

    Some artists still prefer to interact with the witness and sketch the results, as in the case of Polly Klass who was abducted from her home during a slumber party. The intruder left a handprint, but the police still needed a description from the other two girls who were eye witnesses. They were traumatized from the event, and could not remember physical details of the kidnapper. Forensic artist Jeanne Boylan who specialized in getting victims of high trauma to recall details was called in. Boylan herself had been a victim of crime at a young age and remembered the difficulty she had communicating with police. She developed a technique that deals with the witness’s psychological needs. She avoids direct questions to the witnesses and intersperses her questions about the suspect with normal conversation. This works especially well with children who are witnesses, it allows them to feel comfortable and protects the ‘memory’ of the crime. She believes that the trauma itself is what holds the key. Emotional trauma seals the memory of the event into the subconscious protecting the mind from re-living the horrible event. Putting the girls in a comfortable environment and giving them play-dough to occupy their hands, she slowly coaxed a painless description from the girls. The description led to the arrest of Richard Allen Davis who ultimately confessed and led authorities to the body.

    A newer form of forensic science which has made all sorts of advances in criminal and victim identification is DNA testing. Any type of organism can be identified by examination of DNA sequences unique to that species. Identifying individuals within a species is less precise at this time, although when DNA sequencing technologies progress farther, direct comparison of very large DNA segments, and possibly even whole genomes, will become feasible and practical, and will allow precise individual identification.

    To identify individuals, forensic scientists scan 13 DNA regions that vary from person to person and use the data to create a DNA profile of that individual (sometimes called a DNA fingerprint). There is an extremely small chance that another person has the same DNA profile for a particular set of regions
    Below are some examples of how DNA forensics may be used for identification and other purposes:
    ¤ Identify potential suspects whose DNA may match evidence left at crime scenes
    ¤ Exonerate persons wrongly accused of crimes
    ¤ Identify crime and catastrophe victims
    ¤ Establish paternity and other family relationships
    ¤ Identify endangered and protected species as an aid to wildlife officials (could be used for prosecuting poachers)
    ¤ Detect bacteria and other organisms that may pollute air, water, soil, and food
    ¤ Match organ donors with recipients in transplant programs
    ¤ Determine pedigree for seed or livestock breeds
    ¤ Authenticate consumables such as caviar and wine

    There are several techniques used in DNA forensic pathology. Only one-tenth of a single percent of DNA (about 3 million bases) differs from one person to the next. Scientists can use these variable regions to generate a DNA profile of an individual, using samples from blood, bone, hair, and other body tissues and products.

    In criminal cases, this generally involves obtaining samples from crime-scene evidence and a suspect, extracting the DNA, and analyzing it for the presence of a set of specific DNA regions (markers).

    If you watch CSI, or Court TV, you may be familiar with the term CODIS. The COmbined DNA Index System, CODIS blends computer and DNA technologies into a tool for fighting violent crime. The current version of CODIS uses two indexes to generate investigative leads in crimes where biological evidence is recovered from the crime scene. The Convicted Offender index contains DNA profiles of individuals convicted of felony sex offenses and other violent crimes. The Forensic index contains DNA profiles developed from crime scene evidence.

    CODIS utilizes computer software to automatically search its two indexes for matching DNA profiles. Law enforcement agencies at federal, state, and local levels take DNA from biological evidence (e.g., blood and saliva) gathered in crimes that have no suspect and compare it to the DNA in the profiles stored in the CODIS systems. If a match is made between a sample and a stored profile, CODIS can identify the perpetrator.
    Here is a link to the FBI’s CODIS information database:

    Forty states have passed legislation requiring convicted offenders to provide sample (blood, saliva, etc.) for DNA profiling. The CODIS software allows the sharing of this information with other states and regions.

    Forensics has been brought to the forefront of the TV watching public with such shows as CSI and Court TV, but as usual, TV is a fantasy. Crimes that are solved in an hour on TV, may take weeks and even months to solve with conventional forensic techniques. Television crime shows take the job descriptions of approximately 5 different forensic specialists and combine them into one to create a 'super scientist', a person who is able to solve any type of crime almost entirely on their own. In reality, a forensics laboratory is divided into half a dozen different sections which all have different specialists working within them. One piece of evidence is usually passed through a number of sections before deciding if the evidence reveals anything.

    On TV, we see fast and reliable results from evidence collected at the crime scene. More often than not, evidence in the crime scene is well hidden and requires a thorough initial search and usually many returns to the crime scene. Evidence such as latent fingerprints are difficult to find and other evidence found is often contaminated or unusable.

    While the CSI labs are up to date and fully equipped, in real life, crime labs are usually under funded and often under a constant battle with larger departments, such as fire and police, for funding and resources. Many labs often find it difficult to obtain enough staff members, are often tight for space and using worn out equipment.

    Each week we see the crime solved and the perpetrator sent to prison. The truth is that the majority of crimes are never solved and the chances of a person being sent to prison for committing a crime are 1 out of 100. Approximately eighty percent of murders are solved, but less than twenty percent of burglaries are solved.

    We have learned a lot from watching crime scene investigations, trials and convictions through the use of forensics on both the big and little screen.. The science of solving crime has come a long way, baby, but we are still far from living in a perfect society and abolishing crime. There will always be those who ‘beat the system’ even with the finest forensics, but the knowledge base and techniques are improving enough that someday soon the science of forensics will be a deterrent to many crimes.
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    SPECIAL REPORT: Serial Killer Cannibals

    Cannibalism or Anthropophagy is defined as the feeding on one's own species. The term cannibalism is derived from the name of the West Indian Carib tribe, first documented by the explorer Christopher Columbus. The Carib tribe was alleged to eat human flesh. The Aztecs practiced exocannibalism or the ritual religious sacrifice and eating of war captives, strangers, and enemies. Aboriginal Australians are believed to have practiced a different kind of cannibalism - endocannibalism - the consumption of friends and relatives as part of releasing the soul of the dead.

    Anglo-American law recognizes cannibalism as a necessity defense under the 'choice-of-evils' doctrine. The case of 'The Queen v. Dudley and Stephans' is often used in ethics classes. The facts of the case involve a 'lost at sea in a lifeboat' situation in which the occupants are starving and have no other choice but to eat the weaker occupants of the lifeboat in order to survive. This is formally known as 'survival cannibalism', it is assumed to be quite different from 'sexual cannibalism' an aberrant behavior sometimes exhibited by serial killers. The movie 'Alive', based on a true incident involving a plane crash in the Andes, is a straightforward portrayal of survival cannibalism. The 70's movie 'Soylent Green' portrays a scene in which human overcrowding requires the processing of human bodies for food and suggests an interest or at least a curiosity about cannibalism in general.

    The subject of cannibalism has always been surrounded by myth, rumor, and speculation. There are only a few eyewitness documentations of cannibalism. Historical accounts of ancient and primitive societies practicing cannibalism is a matter of debate among modern anthropologists. Evidence that people practiced cannibalism during periods of famine, disaster, prison overcrowding, and the siege of cities during war is also sketchy and inconsistent.

    There are many untraceable speculations and rumors that exist about cannibalism. One of the most unusual is that human flesh is an acquired, distinctive taste and that cannibalism has been practiced by aristocracies for generations for its intelligence and life-extending qualities. Another is that the ingestion of human flesh allows too much vitamin A and amino acids into the bloodstream, causing madness and congenital defects. A more recent claim is that cannibalism is caused by a human variety of mad cow disease.

    Surrounded by myth and rumor, cannibalism has been a favorite subject of fantasy. Writers and screenwriters have been fascinated by cannibalism as a natural occurrence in nature. Movies like 'The Wasp Woman' and 'The Fly' have drawn parallels or blurred the lines between insect and human behavior. The most commonly known cannibal among insects is the black widow spider, and the popular notion is that black widow behavior occurs in humans as well. Female serial killers are often referred to as Black Widows when they kill their spouses or significant others. Other movies like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'Little Shop of Horrors' have fueled the imagination about cannibalistic behavior.

    The most abhorrent and documented accounts of cannibalism have involved serial killers.

    The first known cannibal serial killer in American history possibly began as a case of survival cannibalism. Alfred Packer was a Colorado mountain guide during the 1880s who hired himself out to would-be gold prospectors anxious to reach California. He allegedly ate his first employers during a particularly cold and difficult trip through the mountains. There were subsequently other victims, but one managed to get away and described Packer who had a reputation as 'a nice guy', suddenly turning on them, like a 'mad dog'. He was described as a 'having a seizure' and 'in a feeding frenzy'. The "Mad Dog Killer" and his kind became the stuff of American legend in the Old West.

    The next known case in America was Albert Fish: remorseless torturer, murderer, necrophile, and cannibal. During the 1920s, he raped, killed and ate part of the flesh of at least 15 little girls. He claimed to prefer the taste of virgins. He sent cruel letters to the parents of his victims saying how delicious they were. One of these notes claimed he learned cannibalism from a sea captain, who told him the practice of eating children was common in Hong Kong during times of famine. Modern psychiatrists believe Fish was mostly a sadomasochist (getting pleasure from inflicting pain on both himself and others). When authorities tried to electrocute him in 1936, he had so many needles self-inserted inside his body that he short-circuited the electric chair.

    In the '50's there was the shocking case of Edward Gein who, throughout that decade, operated a human butchering farm in Wisconsin. He was the inspiration for several movies, including 'Psycho' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. His knowledge of anatomy, dissection skills, and fondness for eating human organs was the inspiration for the character of Hannibal 'the Cannibal' Lector in the movie 'Silence of the Lambs'. His fondness for wearing human skin as clothing, and making furniture out of it, was also the inspiration for the character Buffalo Bill in the same movie. Photographs were taken by law enforcement agents of the Gein residence, and the smokehouse where headless torsos were hanging. Many modern experts believe Gein was acting out hatred against his mother. The legal system declared him insane, he was committed to Waupan State Hospital for life and died in 1984 at age 78 of cancer.

    While the decade of the '60's was relatively quite, the '70's spawned several serial killers - two of whom were famous for both cannibalism and necrophilia, which some criminal profilers believe could be co-occurring psychopathologies.

    The first documented case of that decade was Arthur Shawcross, a missionary type serial killer, who preyed on prostitutes in the Rochester, New York area in '72. He consistently denied the killings, but the bodies of 12 victims were believed to have been killed in his car and then dragged out to a remote location where he had sex with them. He claimed cannibalism as part of an insanity defense at trial, where he also claimed to have learned the practice from eating dead babies while serving as a soldier in the Vietnam war. Clever cross-examination repudiated this part of his defense, and to this day, it is unknown if he was telling the truth or not. Many modern authorities believe his actions may have been due to his having 47 chromosomes, the extra one being a "Y" chromosome.

    The second case was Edward Cole in '76, a Nevada resident responsible for at least 15 victims, and again, in what was perhaps an attempt at an insanity plea, claimed to have cannibalized at least one of the victims. He is said to have first started killing at age 10. Also a missionary type killer, he targeted what he called "loose women" and slept with their bodies in their apartments for days sometimes after he killed them.

    Other cannibalistic serial killers of that decade were Gary Heidnik, Edmund Kemper, Richard Chase, and Otis Toole. Gary Heidnik ran a sex slave operation in Philadelphia where he forced the women he kept in captivity to eat the cooked flesh of any other woman who died in captivity. Edmund Kemper, a serial killer who selected co-ed victims who looked like his mother, said that he ate their body parts so they could be part of him. Richard Chase became known as the Sacramento Vampire Killer, and reportedly made milk shakes out of the flesh and blood of his victims. Otis Toole was the mildly retarded, homosexual partner of Henry Lee Lucas, the American serial killer who has claimed the most victims (about 200). While Henry was a necrophile not a cannibal, Otis was rather outspoken about his own cannibalism and it being a perk for assisting Henry in his many crimes.

    The '80s and '90s had two popular cases, one in Russia (dubbed the Soviet Hannibal Lector) and the other in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Russian was Andrei Chikatilo, also known as Citizen X, who developed a taste for boiling and eating the testicles of his young male victims and the nipples of his young female victims (total victim count 58). The case in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was Jeffrey Dahmer, a 31-year old single white male. He preferred the dark-skinned meat of ethnic boys (victim count 16) that he would pick up around gay bars. When police eventually broke into his apartment after complaints about the smell, they found severed heads in the refrigerator, torsos stored in barrels, genitalia stored in pots, and the whole area littered with scraps of human flesh - over 100 pounds total. At his insanity hearing, Dahmer said he had a 'consuming lust' to experience their bodies, and that he only cannibalized the victims he liked.

    More recent cases of cannibalistic serial killers include Nico Claux of Paris who described the emotional experience of eating human flesh as "like touching the face of God. It makes you feel like you don't belong to the human race anymore." Hadden Clark of the DC area, who after killing a 6 year old girl (the first of his many serial killings), stated that the flesh was his prize; her death was his revenge. Then there is Issei Sagawa, a brilliant Japanese student who lured a Northern European woman to his home in order to satisfy his fantasy of tasting flesh. He likened the taste of her flesh to that of the finest sushi.

    Now we know who some of these cannibals are, but we may never know why they choose eat the flesh of their victims. Is it a twisted, dark fantasy they play out or is simply… madness?
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    SPECIAL REPORT: Male vs Female

    The term 'serial killer' was coined in the mid 1970's by Robert K. Ressler (an FBI Behavioral Science Unit agent). Previously, a killer who mudered many people over a period of time was known as a 'stranger killer' because the killer's victims were usually unknown to him, but Ressler concluded that sometimes the killer did kill people he knew so the word 'serial' (meaning series) applied to this sort of killer. Whether male or female, serial killers are a rare but deadly breed. How do they differ? Are their motives the same? Do they kill differently? The answers may surprise you!

    FEMALE SERIAL KILLERS
    Rudyard Kipling once said that the female of the species is far more deadly than the male. Female serial killers more than prove that theory, yet they have always been something of an anomaly in criminology and a puzzle for law enforcement.

    These are the 'quiet killers', every bit as lethal as their male counterparts, but we are seldom aware of one in our midst because of their low visibility. Most female crime is hidden. Kelleher & Kelleher (1998) argue that female serial killers are more successful, careful, precise, methodical, and quiet in committing their crimes. They examined 100 cases since 1900 and found an average duration of 8 years before being caught -- double that of the male serial killer.

    Statistically, females usually account for about 15% of all violent crime and 28% of all property crime. However, there has been about a 140% increase in the number of crimes committed by women since 1970, and the upward trend is steady. For homicide, one of the most frequently-cited facts is a Justice Department study in 1991 which found females who were incarcerated for murder were twice as likely as men incarcerated for murder to have killed someone intimate (husband, boyfriend, or child).

    Female serial killers account for only 8% of all American serial killers, but American females account for 76% of all female serial killers worldwide. The female serial killer also has different methods and motives for killing. [yes, the total is over 100 - some overlap]
    Methods include:
    Poisoning - 80%
    Shooting - 20%
    Bludgeoning - 16%
    Suffocation - 16%
    Stabbing - 11%
    Drowning - 5%

    Motives include:
    Money- 74%
    Control - 13%
    Enjoyment - 11%
    Sex - 10%
    Drugs, cult involvement or to cover up feelings of inadequacy - 24%

    There are few researchers of female serial killers. The best book on the subject is by Michael and C. Kelleher (1998) "Murder Most Rare". Kelleher & Kelleher suggest a typology, one based on whether the female serial killer acts alone or in partnership with others. They, further, construct a nine-point categorization method based around 'acting alone' vs 'in partnership' typology.

    'Acting alone' killers are often mature, careful, deliberate, socially adept, and highly organized. They usually attack victims in their home or place of work. They tend to favor a specific weapon, like poison, lethal injection, or suffocations. Styles include:
    Black Widow - systematically kills multiple spouses, partners, or other family members
    Angel of Death - systematically kills people who are in her care for some form of medical attention
    Sexual Predator - systematically kills others in clear acts of sexual homicide
    Revenge - systematically kills out of hate or jealousy
    Profit or Crime - systematically kills for profit or in course of committing another crime

    'Acting in partnership' killers tend to be younger, aggressive, vicious in their attack, sometimes disorganized, and usually unable to carefully plan. They usually attack victims in diverse locations. They tend to use guns, knives, or torture. Their styles include:
    Team Killer - kills or participates in the killing of others in conjunction with at least one other
    Question of Sanity - kills in apparent random manner and later judged to be insane
    Unexplained - kills for reasons that are totally inexplicable or for unclear motives
    Unsolved - a pattern of unsolved killings that may be attributed to a woman (or women)

    MALE SERIAL KILLERS
    A male serial killer is typically a white male, 20-30, and lives in the USA. Their main motives are sex (even though the act of sex may or may not take place), power, manipulation, domination and control. The sex motive is usually rape for an organized killer and sadism for a disorganized killer. They act in a series of five or more murders with a cooling off period between each murder. Serial killers can go on for months and years before they are usually caught.

    The victim is usually the same for every killer - prostitute, hitchhiker, vagrant etc. Their victims may also have the same or similar attributes in gender, age, race, general look, residence etc. Serial killers also stick by their modus operandi very closely but may change it with experience. Most murders occur by strangulation, suffocation, stabbing etc. Serial killers act by a sex-murder fantasy based with their control, they usually live in this dream world in their teens until they act it out for real when they get into the adult stage. As each murder occurs a serial killer may be disappointed by his murder fantasy and may act it out again in order to achieve satisfaction.

    Serial Killer Characteristics :
    1. Killings are separate ('serial'), occurring with greater or less frequency, often escalating over a period of time, sometimes years, and will continue until the killer is taken into custody, dies, or is himself/herself killed.
    2. In common with normal homicides, killing tends to be one on one. There are however instances where a serial killer has struck down more than one victim in a single incident.
    3. There is no (or very little) previous connection between the perpetrator and the victim, the persons involved rarely being related.
    4. Although there may be a 'pattern' or 'victim trait', individual murders within a series rarely display a clearly defined or rational motive.
    5. An increasingly greater spatial mobility (since the advent of the automobile) has enabled killers (if they wish) to move rapidly from one place to another, often before a murder has even been discovered.
    6. There is usually a high degree of redundant violence, or an 'overkill', where the victim is subjected to a disproportionate level of brutality.

    These are the motives a serial killer might display (some killers display multiple motives).
    1. Visionaries - Acts in response to voices and is instructed by these voices to perform the act of murder. These killers are usually schizophrenic and psychotic.
    2. Missionaries - They think it is their responsibility to rid society of unwanted elements.
    3. Hedonists - Kill because murder causes them pleasure.
    4. Lust Killers - Kill for sexual gratification with acts that are usually sadistic.
    5. Thrill Killers - Kill because of a desire for a thrill or experience.
    6. Gain Killers - Kill for personal gain. The killer premeditates the act to require financial gain or materialistic goods. While gain is not the main motive in a murder some serial killers have took the opportunity to steal from their victims for their own personal gain.
    7. Power Seekers - Kill for the desire to have control over the life and death of others.

    The Stable Killer (e.g. Gacy, Dahmer) lives and works in one location for an extended period. He hunts and kills within the local area, disposes of bodies in the same or similar areas, and the disposal site selected for concealment. He may return to the crime scene or burial site. He seldom travels, but when forced to travel it is usually for business, family visits, or personal recreation.

    The Transient Killer (e.g. Ted Bundy) seldom stays in one spot more than a few weeks. His kills are spread out over a large area. He disposes of bodies in random locations, disposal site selected for convenience, and he seldom returns to the region of the crime. He travels continuously either for pleasure, to confuse law enforcement, or for new hunting grounds.

    There are disorganized killers and organized killers. Most serial killers (about 3/4) are organized and their victim counts seem to be higher, that is also because they are usually above average intelligence. The disorganized offender is lonely and his murders usually display his anger, most are of a low IQ and suffer from some mental disorder, the killing is not planned and is a usually spur of the moment thing. It should also be noted that some serial killers display both the characteristics of a disorganized and organized killer, these killers are typed as being 'mixed'.

    The Organized Killer(e.g. Gacy, Bundy) plans out the murder(may become accustomed to using it quickly). He will bring a 'rape kit' (rope, handcuffs, chloroform etc) if desired. He often personalizes himself with the victim (talks, leads, captures etc. the victim into/for planned murder situation). Rape, torture etc. may take place before murder, for the killers own gratification. He kills victim with awareness of evidence at crime scene (which may be cleaned, destroyed etc). He might move the body to hide, bury it etc. in an attempt to evade/delay discovery. The killer will not be involved further with the victim's body, but may take articles, jewellery etc. for trophy or gain.

    The Disorganized Killers (e.g. Berkowitz) murder usually happens spur of the moment (with no planning but the one simple objective to kill). He does not bring any tools to the kill except maybe murder device. No contact with the victim prior to spur of the moment murder. No rape, torture etc. will take place before murder. He kills victim but does not care for evidence usually left at the crime scene (high degree of violence takes place at murder). He will not move body in an attempt to hide, bury it etc., unconcerned of its discovery. The killer might be involved further with the dead victim (mutilation, necrophilia, cannibalism, etc) and may also take souvenir.

    Profiling and behavior studies are commonly used by the FBI to assist the police in identifying and capturing a serial killer. Whether male or female, the serial killer is an enigma to most of us yet a mystery that draws us to look into their world and try to discover what madness lies within.
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    SPECIAL REPORT: Serial Killers and Monsters

    Halloween is a time of celebration and magic. It is a time when we confront our fears rather than hide from them. We dress in costume, revel in ancient customs and feed with frenzy on lots and lots of sugar. We cautiously remember our first brush with fear when as children, we read or listened to stories of evil witches, goblins, trolls and the ever-fearsome ‘boogeyman’. As we grew up, we left many of the monsters behind, but as adults we are faced with the fear and horror of every day life. Perhaps the early fairy tale monsters prepared us on a psychological level for the horror of reality, and helped us to attempt to understand the darker side of humanity. That darker side is portrayed on the news and in the papers when a serial killer snatches the headlines. It reminds us of the ‘monsters’ hiding in our closets and under our bed. Many of the famous monsters portrayed in movies and literary work bear an uncanny resemblance to serial killers.

    The Werewolves: Lycanthropy, the combination of the Greek words for wolf and man has been used to describe the concept of senseless, sexual murder. In the ‘A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers’, Harold Schechter and David Everitt describe the lycanthropic madman as sexual predators who terrorized 16th century peasant villages, so much that the authorities "regarded it as one of the most pressing social problems of the day." There were 30,000 cases of lycanthropy reported in Europe between 1520 and 1630. Lycanthropy was an offense associated with witchcraft, which revolved around the themes of murder and cannibalism, with the occasional incest and rape aside. In many of the trials it is clear that the werewolves were people whom today we would define as serial killers. Peter Stubbe (aka The Werewolf of Bedburg) of Germany and Gilles Garnier (aka The Werewolf of Dole) of France are two serial killers referred to as lycanthropes. Both attacked children, ripped them apart and cannibalized them. Stubbe even ravaged his own son and nibbled on his brain. The famed cannibal, Albert Fish was also called the ‘Werewolf of Wisteria’ and was reported to have danced naked in the presence of a full moon. Ed Gein not only danced in the light of the full moon, but also donned the ‘mother suit’ made from the skin of his mother. The wolfman myth is still popular today and the full moon is often blamed for bringing out the ‘crazies’.

    The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydes: Robert Louis Stevenson created the literary gentleman/monster, the proverbial split personality, rational and civilized on the exterior with the raging inner madman fighting to emerge. A common yet intriguing characteristic of many serial killers is their benign ‘Dr. Jekyll’ exterior. These killers certainly don’t look like monsters and they fit in socially, often holding very respectable positions in society. An excellent example is the BTK killer who was a deacon in his church and a Boy Scout leader. The notorious John Wayne Gacy entertained hospitalized children in his Pogo the Clown suit. He was once quoted as saying “you know, clowns get away with murder.” He used the same rope from his clown act to strangle unsuspecting men. Ted Bundy donned a fake cast to play upon the sympathy of young women as he lured them to their death. These Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde serial killers have the uncanny ability to come across as the normal ‘everyman’ and will neutralize their behavior if they should appear to be potentially dangerous. Unfortunately the Mr. Hyde personality does not emerge until the victim is in an uncompromising, dangerous life-threatening situation.

    Frankensteins: Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein was obsessed with the attempt to create a man from the body parts of corpses. Shelley subtitled her novel ‘The Modern Prometheus’. According to the Greeks, Prometheus stole fire from the gods. As punishment, he was chained to a rock, where an eagle each day plucked at his liver. Haughty Prometheus sought fire for human betterment--to make tools and warm hearts. Similarly, Mary Shelley's arrogant scientist, Victor Frankenstein, claimed "benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice”. Where as Dr. Frankenstein attempted to compose a man, the serial killer Frankensteins are also creative - in a more ‘decomposing’ manner. Jeffrey Dahmer operated on his victims, hoping for his own love-corpse, one who would remain faithful. UK serial killer Dennis Nilsen stashed the corpses of his victims under his bed and would occasionally take one out, dress it up and pretend to have a date. He was quoted as saying: "I think that in some cases I killed these men in order to create the best image of them. It was not really a bad but a perfect and peaceful state for them to be in, I remember being thrilled that I had full control and ownership of this beautiful body.” In his warped mind, he thought that by killing these men, he was creating the perfect companion. Ed Gein stole body parts from the cemetery. Many believe he was trying to re-create his mother who he had murdered and mutilated. The Frankenstein serial killers are probably the most demented as they truly believe their evil acts are for a good, creative purpose.

    Vampires: The term vampire was coined in 1734 and defined in Miriam Webster’s Dictionary as: the reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep. The vampire myth has grown in modern culture with Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ published in 1897 and the more recent portrayal of the romantic vampire in film and modern literature. The serial killer vampire is a far cry from the vampire in gothic drama. Human killers throughout history have been fascinated, even obsessed with the blood of their victims. One of the most famous vampire serial killers was Erzebet Bathory, not only did she drink the blood of her victims, but bathed in it, claiming it made her young again. Other famous Vampire serial killers include: Peter Kurten "The Vampire of Dusseldorf"; Fritz Haarmann "The Vampire of Hanover”; and Richard Chase "The Vampire of Sacramento". Kurten claimed that his "chief satisfaction in killing was to catch the blood spurting from a victim's wounds in his mouth and swallow it." Haarmann would sexually assault his victims before biting through their throats to kill them. Richard Chase confessed to the drinking of his victim’s blood and to carrying pieces of his victims with him to ‘gnaw on’ when he so desired. Another famous Vampire serial killer was John Haigh. Labeled by the British Press as The Vampire killer in the 1940’s, John Haigh would kill people for profit and also drink their blood. He stated that in his vision or dreams: "I saw before me a forest of crucifixes, which gradually turned into trees . . . Suddenly the whole forest began to writhe and the trees, stark and erect, to ooze blood . . .. A man went to each tree catching the blood . . .. 'Drink,' he said. The vampire serial killers associate drinking blood as a symbol of power and life and experience a feeling of well-being or empowerment. These vampire serial killers are sociopathic, blood lusting sadists driven by delusions and should not be romanticized in any way, form or fashion. They are probably the most dangerous because of the romantic connotation of vampirism especially in the gothic communities.

    Witches: The most controversial of serial killers, the witch may kill simply as a sacrifice. There is a popular theory that many serial murders are not the result of one person, but rather by a group or coven of witches. Ritualistic murders with no apparent motive often remain unsolved. Some authorities believe that the abduction of men, women and children is the result of highly organized groups of elite covens that need suitable victims at regular intervals for ritual murder! There are serial killers that conjure demons and perform spells during the torture and killing of their victims. Giles de Rais a 15th Century aristocrat and companion of Joan D’Arc, tortured and killed hundreds of children, both male and female, although he admitted he preferred killing young boys. A devout Christian, de Rais was accused of witchcraft in the official citation which read: “He has frequently practiced the horrible evocation of demons . . . he has sacrificed and made offerings to these demons and concluded pacts with them and has wickedly perpetrated other crimes and sins.” Serial killer Adolpho de Jesus Constanzo aka the Godfather of Matamoros, performed human sacrifices, mutilations and the boiling of brains and other organs in rituals to bring occult protection for his drug-smuggling ring. Serial killer witches may not act alone; often they have a cult following to assist them in obtaining the bodies for sacrifice. This puts a much darker spin on the fear of walking alone in the dark.


    Monsters or Serial Killers, these madmen and women should be feared. We should fear them because they are real, just as we are real. They are the embodiment of the desire, the darkness and the power, of which we must never explore. They are creatures of chaos rather than reason. They break the rules that keep us bound and dare to experiment with taboos. They are depraved and vile, yet we dare to experience a bit of the lunacy by reading about them, researching them or watching their stories on film. This Halloween let us celebrate our fears…for without fear, there is only madness.
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