Peter Sutcliffe - The Yorkshire Ripper

The Yorkshire Ripper is one of the most notorious serial killers in British history. He is known to have murdered a minimum of 13 women and severely injured a further 7 (some experts believe that he may have been responsible for more, unsolved murders committed throughout Europe).

The Yorkshire Ripper's first known victims were in July and August of 1975. Somehow, both women survived the brutal hammer and knife attacks. But in October of the same year, the Ripper struck again. And this time the victim - 28-year-old Wilma McCann - did not live to tell the tale.

On January 20, 1976,  The Yorkshire Ripper killed for a second time, bludgeoning a woman with a hammer, before stabbing her 50 times. He would not strike again until the following year, killing 28-year-old Irene Richardson in February 1977 and 32-year-old Patricia Atkinson in April of the same year. Atkinson's body was mutilated after death.

So far, all of the victim's had been prostitutes - society's forgotten women. But the next one was different. On June 16, 1977, The Yorkshire Ripper attacked and killed Jayne MacDonald, a regular and well-liked 'girl next door'. Suddenly, no woman in the North of England could really relax: any one of them was a potential target.

Police officers were, of course, under immense pressure to catch the killer before he could strike again. But they had no real evidence to go on. Until, that is, they were sent a recording and several taunting letters that purported to come from the Ripper himself. They threw themselves into the analysis of the new evidence, wasting countless hours on what turned out to be nothing more than an elaborate hoax (the identity of the hoaxer was never revealed).

In a desperate bid to catch the killer, law enforcement officials across the North of England had taken to staking out places that they thought he might strike next. It seemed like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack, but one of the stakeouts noticed a man walking with a known prostitute. They decided to stop and search him just on the off-chance that he was the man they were looking for. And, by a stroke of good fortune, it turned out that he actually was. The police officers found that he was carrying weapons. Under interrogation, he confessed to the killings. His name was Peter Sutcliffe.

Peter Sutcliffe was sentenced to life imprisonment at HMP Parkhurst, but was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sectioned under Section 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983. He is currently incarcerated in the infamous Broadmoor High-Security Hospital. He claims to have been cured, but his appeals to the courts have all been rejected. He will most likely die within the bleak walls of Broadmoor.

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Albert DeSalvo - The Boston Strangler?

Image Attribution: Federal Bureau Of Investigation [Public Domain] via Wikimedia commons

Between the years of 1962 and 1964, the US city of Boston was gripped by fear. Fear of a man the media referred to as The Boston Strangler.

It all started on June 14, 1962, when the body of a 55-year-old woman was found lying on the floor of her apartment. There was a rope around her neck. At first it looked as though she had hung herself, then fallen to the ground. But closer examination revealed otherwise: Her body had been posed after death, with her legs spread unnaturally wide. She had also been raped with a foreign object. It was clearly a murder.

A little over 2 weeks later, on June 30, another body was found. It was that of 68-year-old Nina Nichols. She had been sexually assaulted with a foreign object, strangled, and posed in the same way as the victim of the June 14 attack.

The third body was discovered on July 2. Again she had been raped with a foreign object, strangled, and posed with her legs spread wide. A fourth victim followed in late August. This time it was a 75-year-old, Ida Irga.

People became terrified. Boston women, in particular, started to take unusual precautions. Sales of deadbolts and other home security devices skyrocketed. Strangers were treated with suspicion, and some women went so far as to refuse to go out without an escort.

Another victim was found, having been killed within 24 hours of Ida Irga. The FBI were called in to help with the investigation. Scores of known sex offenders were questioned. A psychological profile was created of the killer. But still The Boston Strangler managed to elude capture.

Then, on December 5, 1962, The Boston Strangler did something that made the city even more terrified - he struck again, but this time he didn't take the life of an elderly, white woman. Instead, he attacked and killed a young, black woman. Suddenly no one was safe. Levels of paranoia and fear went through the roof.

A further 5 victims were to be found before The Boston Strangler would finally be caught. The last of these was 19-year-old Mary Sullivan, who was found dead in her apartment on January 4, 1964.

At this point, the police still had no real idea as to the identity of The Boston Strangler. But then George Nasssar, a patient at the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane, told investigators that one of his fellow inmates had all but confessed to being The Boston Strangler.

This fellow inmate was Albert DeSalvo, a 29-year-old man who was incarcerated for sexually assaulting a woman after tying her up. Under questioning, he was able to give the police details of the Strangler's crimes that had not been released to the general public.

However, a number of the doctors at the hospital were not very convinced. For one thing, it was a hospital for the criminally insane: could they really take the word of two mentally ill patients? Secondly, Nassar was trying to use the information to set up a plea bargain for himself. He would testify in court if the police gave him something in return. And finally, Nassar's psychological profile was a better match to that of The Boston Strangler than Albert DeSalvo's.

But DeSalvo confessed to the crimes, and did so in a detailed and believable manner (though, of course, he could have easily learnt the facts from Nassar). He also confessed to two murders that the police had not previously attributed to The Boston Strangler - the first because she had been bludgeoned to death, not strangled, the second because she had died of a heart attack. DeSalvo claimed that when he went to strangle her, she had a heart attack and just collapsed in his arms. No one had ever even suspected foul play.

It should probably be mentioned at this point that Albert DeSalvo did possess a large number of traits that crop up time and time again in cases of serial sexual murder. For one thing, he had suffered an abusive childhood at the hands of his father, who had beaten DeSalvo, along with DeSalvo's mother and siblings. DeSalvo also had an almost unbelievable sex drive. He would have sex with his wife around 30 times a week, and would also flirt with other women as well. This sex drive is reminiscent of other sexually-motivated serial killers, such as Bobby Joe Long and The Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway.

It was never proven beyond doubt that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. Instead, he was charged with a series of rapes, to which he pleaded guilty. He was found stabbed to death in his prison cell on November 26, 1973. In July of 2013, DNA evidence was found that linked DeSalvo to the rape and murder of the Strangler's last victim, Mary Sullivan. The DNA evidence excluded 99.9% of the population, meaning that although it was highly likely to have come from DeSalvo, it is not 100% certain.

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Edmund Kemper - The Co-ed Killer

Image attribution: By Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office ([1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

During the 1970's, a serial killer roamed the streets of Santa Cruz, California. He targeted mostly young female college students, offering to drive them somewhere. His name was Edmund Kemper, and this is his story.

At an imposing 6'9'' and 280 pounds, Edmund Kemper was probably not the kind of man you would expect young women to happily get in a car with, especially when they knew there was a serial killer on the loose. But Kemper was an extremely intelligent individual (once tested as having an IQ of 136) who knew how to put the women at ease. He would talk to them and play the 'gentle giant' routine. Sometimes he would take them to where they wanted to go without incident; on other occasions he would kill, dismember, and cannibalize them, as well as using their corpses for sexual release.

As is so often the case with serial killers, Edmund Kemper had an abusive childhood.The primary abuser in his case was his mother, who would constantly degrade and belittle him. She would also often lock him in the basement of the house. On one occasion, she forced him to kill his pet chicken, and his father then made him eat it.

From a young age, Kemper displayed some unnerving behaviours. He would often spend hours alone with his sister's dolls, decapitating them and cutting up their limbs. After a while, he moved on to doing the same to cats and dogs.

At the age of 15, Kemper killed his grandparents. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and sent to a psychiatric hospital. He behaved himself and even managed to befriend the psychiatrist. He was given a job administering certain psychological tests to other patients. Kemper memorized some of these tests, along with the answers the psychiatrists were looking for. When it was his turn to be evaluated, it should come as no surprise that he passed with flying colours. He was released back into the community at the age of 21, right back into the custody of the one person all his doctors seemed to agree he should never live with again - his mother (quite why this happened is something of a mystery). 3 years later he started killing again, taking the lives of 6 co-ed students  at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Next, Kemper killed his mother. Apparently, he realized that it was his mother who was the source of his anger: the college students had merely been symbolic representations of her. He waited until she was sleeping, then crept into her room and smashed her skull with a ball-peen hammer. Kemper then cut off her head and hands with a pocket knife, removing her larynx and grinding it up in the garbage disposal.

After that, Kemper invited his mother's best friend round to the house, on the pretense of throwing a surprise party for his mother. When the friend arrived, Kemper strangled her to death, then decapitated her corpse. Shortly afterwards, Kemper phoned the police and confessed to his crimes. He was arrested and given a sentence of life imprisonment.

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Harvey Glatman - The Lonely Hearts Killer

On the surface, Harvey Glatman seemed fairly harmless and innocuous. He looked like a bit of a geek and had an IQ of 130. But not everyone is who they appear to be.

At the age of 12, Glatman hung himself from a rope - not as a suicide attempt, but simply because he enjoyed hanging there, finding it difficult to breathe. He literally seemed to take pleasure in his own physical suffering.

Glatman also had a penchant for making other people suffer - particularly females. When he was 17, he started to mug women for their purses, only to give them back straight afterwards. His intention, it seems, was not to steal from the women, but to scare them. Later that year, he threatened a young girl with a toy gun, ordering her to take off her clothes. The girl screamed and he ran. For this crime, Glatman was later arrested. But he escaped to the East Coast of America before he could be sentenced.

Eventually, however, Glatman was arrested again, this time for a robbery. The police soon learned that he was a fugitive from justice. He was sentenced to serve 5 years in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility  in New York.

Glatman was released from prison in 1951. He moved to Los Angeles, where he found himself a job as a television repairman. He settled into the community, and appeared to have turned his back on crime.

But in 1957, Glatman was called out to repair the television of an attractive 19-year-old woman by the name of Judy Dull. She said that she was a model, at which point Glatman claimed to work as a part-time photographer (a lie, although photography was something of a hobby for him). He said that he happened to be looking for a model to pose for a bondage themed photo shoot - would she be interested? He offered to pay her $50 and she accepted.

Harvey Glatman picked Judy Dull up on August 1, 1957, on the pretense of taking her to a photography studio. But once she was in the car, Glatman pulled a gun. He took her to his apartment, forced her to strip, and proceeded to take photos of her. Next, he raped her, made her put her clothes back on, tied her up, and took more photos. Finally, he drove her 125 miles out into the desert, where he took yet more photographs, before strangling her to death and burying her in a shallow grave.

After killing his first victim, Glatman started looking for a second. He joined a singles club, where he met a woman by the name of Shirley Bridgford. They arranged a date, and she agreed to him picking her up in his car. He took her out into the Borego Desert State Park in San Diego, where he raped her. Glatman then tied the woman up and took photographs. Then he raped her again and strangled her to death. He did not bury the body this time, deciding instead to leave it out in the open to be eaten by wild animals.

Glatman's next victim was another model - Ruth Rita Mercardo. Glatman went over to her apartment on the pretense of offering her work. He raped her, then drove her out into the desert. Once there, he tied her up and took photographs. He proceeded to kill her, though this time he did deliberate somewhat. He had actually grown to be quite fond of her - in his own disturbed and unbalanced way. He didn't want to end her life. But she had seen his face and he decided that he had no real choice.

There is no knowing how long Harvey Glatman would have gotten away with his shocking crimes if it had not been for one woman by the name of Virgil. Glatman had lured her into his car and pulled out a gun. He went to tie her hands, at which point the plucky woman made a desperate bid to fight him off. The gun went off in the struggle, hitting Virgil in the leg. But she did manage to get it away from him.

The fight spilled out onto the road, and Virgil eventually got control of the gun. She levelled it at her assailant, at which point a police officer came running over. Glatman's reign of terror was finally over. He was sentenced to die in the gas chamber, a punishment that was carried out on August 18, 1959.

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Bobby Joe Long - The Want Ad Rapist/Killer

In 1974, Bobby Joe Long was riding his motorcycle in Tampa, Florida, when a car materialized in front of him. Long slammed down on the brakes, but it was too little too late: he was thrown forwards into the car, hitting his head hard enough for his helmet to crack. He did survive, but not without incurring long-term brain damage.

Immediately following the accident, Bobby Joe Long claims that his sex drive started to increase dramatically. Beforehand, he had been a fairly regular guy: he thought about sex from time to time and would engage in intercourse with his wife about 2 or 3 times a week. But after the accident he thought about sex almost all the time. It became his obsession; it took over his life. He started demanding sex from his wife 2 or 3 times a day and would also masturbate a further 5 or 6 times daily.

But after a while even this wasn't enough. In 1980, Bobby Joe Long began to search for want ads in his local papers, looking for items that required him to go to a woman's home to collect. He would respond to the ad, and arrange to collect the item during the day, as he reasoned that this would make it less likely that a husband or boyfriend would be at home. Once he had made sure that there was nobody else in the house, Long would tie the woman up and rape her.

The media had a frenzy, referring to him as 'Want Ad Rapist'. FBI agents and local police forces combed all the evidence they could find in order to track him down. But he would succeed in evading capture for 3 years.

As time went on, Bobby Joe Long started to lose control more and more. He would get angry at the slightest provocation. On on occasion, he even grabbed his mother and spanked her like a child.

It is a well-known fact that some rapists will, sooner or later, escalate to murder. After a while, the rapes just don't seem to stimulate them the way they used to. They need to take it to the next level in order to feel the same amount of thrill and power.

In 1983, Bobby Joe Long killed  a Vietnamese woman. He lured her into his car, overpowered her, tied her up, raped her, and strangled her to death. Her body was unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road. A further 8 murders would follow.

Just before killing for the 9th time, Bobby Joe Long abducted  a 17-year-old girl, raped her, and let her go. He didn't seem to be able to bring himself to kill her, even though she had seen his face as well as the inside of his apartment.

Shortly after letting the 17-year-old go, Bobby Joe Long was arrested. He spoke of the growing sense of revulsion he felt at his acts. He tried to claim diminished responsibility on account of the brain damage he had incurred as a result of the motorcycle accident. However, his defense team were unable to prove a causal link between this and his later crimes. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985. He remains on Florida's death row to this day.

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Israel Keyes - Alaskan Serial Killer

"There is no one who knows me - or who has ever known me - who knows anything about me really... They're going to tell you something that does not line up with anything I tell you because I'm two different people basically." - Israel Keyes

Image Attribution: By Federal Bureau of Investigation (MassLive.com) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Israel Keyes (January 7, 1978 - December 2, 2012) was arrested on March 12, 2012 for the murder of 18-year-old barista, Samantha Koenig. He abducted her from her coffee stand, before raping her. He killed her the next day, leaving her body in his garden shed whilst he went on a 2-week cruise. Before he killed her, he forced her to reveal her PIN number.

Returning home from the cruise, Keyes sent a $30 000 ransom demand to Koenig's boyfriend. This was paid, with the money being deposited into Koenig's bank account. Keyes immediately started withdrawing money from ATMs across the United States, continuing until he was eventually apprehended.

Up until this point, Israel Keyes had been extremely careful and meticulous in all of his illegal activities. He had killed before; he had robbed several banks; he had burgled somewhere in the region of 20 to 30 homes. The only things he had ever been arrested for were driving under the influence and driving without a valid licence. This was largely due to the extreme lengths he was prepared to go to in order to avoid detection.

As an example of Keyes' generally meticulous nature, consider the following: In June of 2011, Keyes flew to Chicago,where he rented a car to drive a further 1000 miles to Essex, Vermont. He made sure to remove the battery from his mobile phone so that it could not be traced. He paid for everything in cash.

Once he arrived in Essex, Vermont, Israel Keyes broke into the home of Bill and Lorraine Currier. He tied them up and took them to an abandoned building, where he shot Bill Currier, before raping and strangling Lorraine Currier. Their bodies were never found.

Keyes would go on to confess to more murders, though the precise number may never be known. It is, however, estimated by many to be in the region of 10 or 11.

As a child, Keyes had, by his own admission, tortured animals. He had also begun to realize that there was something different about him. There were things he wanted to do, things he thought were OK, that no one else seemed to find acceptable. Realizing this, he started to become more and more of a loner. He also tended to carry a gun with him wherever he went.

Between the years of 1998 and 2000, Israel Keyes served as a specialist in the US Army. In 2007, he started working as an independent contractor, operating under the name 'Keyes Construction'.

The first major crime that Keyes admitted to was the rape of a teenage girl sometime between the years of 1996 and 1998. The crime was never reported, but the FBI believes the confession to be genuine.

On December 2, 2012, Israel Keyes committed suicide in his jail cell whilst awaiting trial for the murder of Samantha Koenig. He never showed any remorse for his crimes.

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John George Haigh - The Acid Bath Murderer

Image attribution: By Gps909 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

For a serial killer, one of the most difficult problems to solve is how to dispose of a body. You could, of course, just leave it lying in a ditch somewhere. But that would basically amount to handing law enforcement a whole lot of free evidence.

British serial killer John George Haigh believed that he had come up with the perfect solution to this problem. He would gain the trust of his victims over the course of several months, before luring them to an out-of-the-way location, where he would kill them quickly, often with the aid of a gun. Finally, he would dissolve the corpse in sulphuric acid, before forging papers that would allow him to take over his victim's material possessions.

English law has a concept known as corpus delicti, which basically means that a crime has to be proven to have occurred before a person can be convicted of it. John George Haigh assumed that if no body could be found, then it would be impossible to prove that a murder had been committed. Consequently, he could never be charged with the crime, however much the police suspected him.

This plan seems to work on the surface. But it is actually possible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a murder has taken place even if the body is never recovered. For example, if a person goes missing and a large amount of her blood is found at the primary crime scene (more than a person could be expected to lose and survive), then that may be enough to prove murder in the eyes of the English legal system. As it happens, though, John George Haigh's disposal method didn't work quite as well as he had hoped. When the police searched his residence, they found human gallstones and bones. When combined with other evidence, this was enough to convict 'the acid bath murderer' (as he was dubbed by the media) of 6 murders. He would later confess to a further 3, but these were never proven.

Haigh tried to plead insanity, but this was rejected by the jury, who took only 15 minutes to find him guilty on all counts. He was sentenced to die by hanging, a punishment that was carried out on August 10, 1949.

John George Haigh appears to have been primarily motivated by greed and the challenge of committing the perfect crime. He was also possibly motivated by his strict upbringing. His parents were members of a strict Protestant sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. They were famous for their austere practices, as the young John George Haigh was only too aware. He spent an inordinate amount of time within the confines of a 10 foot fence that his father had erected around the family home to keep the world out. He was not permitted to play sports, and the only form of entertainment available to him was Bible studies. He would later claim that he was plagued from a young age with religious nightmares. But this might have just been a last ditch attempt to avoid the death penalty.

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Dennis Rader - The BTK Killer

Between the years of 1974 and 2005, a seemingly unremarkable family man terrorized the residents of Witchita, Kansas with a series of brutal murders. He started out by massacring an entire family - father, mother, son, and daughter - using a combination of strangulation, asphixiation, and hanging. Over the next 17 years, he would take another 6 lives, managing to evade capture largely due to the meticulousness with which he planned each crime.

During these 17 years, the killer sent numerous letters to the police, taunting them for their inability to catch him. In one of the letters, the killer suggests a name for himself - BTK, standing for Bind, Torture, Kill, a perfect description of his modus operandi. The name sticks. Gun sales skyrocket and everyone seems to want alarms and extra security fitted to their homes (BTK tended to break into people's homes and surprise them when they returned).

But, if you were a resident of Witchita, Kansas and you wanted an alarm fitted between the years of 1974 and 1988, chances are that it would be installed by the very person you were trying to keep out. An apparently ordinary family man would arrive to make your home safer. You might offer him a cup of tea. You might talk about sports or the weather. At no point would you realise that this intelligent family man was actually a ruthless killer. But beneath the facade lies a terrifying secret. This man's name is Dennis Rader, and he is the BTK Killer.

Dennis Rader was born on March 9, 1945 to Dorothea and William Rader in Pittsburgh, Kansas. As a child, Dennis Rader used to enjoy torturing and killing animals, one of the classic early warning signs exhibited by soon-to-be serial killers in their childhoods. He also started to develop a fetish for women's underwear, as well as a strong interest in bondage and sadomasochistic activities. One day, his teacher embarrassed him in front of his class. He went round to her house that evening and watched her without her knowledge. Whilst doing so, he had an orgasm. Voyeurism is another classic behaviour exhibited by a large number of fledgling serial killers (Ted Bundy, for example used to go out at night, get drunk, and spy on women; Richard Trenton Chase would go out at night with his uncle-in-law for the same purpose).

As he got older, Rader's fantasies grew stronger. He would venture into the wild and take pictures of himself in bondage positions, wearing women's underwear. Once, he even dug a grave, dressed up in women's underwear, tied himself up, and jumped in. He would later claim that he knew from a young age what he would grow up to become.

But, on the surface, Rader managed to play the part of a balanced, functional member of society. He served as a mechanic in the US Air Force between 1966 and 1970. Returning home, he began studying for an associate's degree in electronics, before moving on to Witchita State University to study for a bachelor's degree in Administration of Justice via night school. He graduated from the university in 1979. Rader also became heavily involved in the local Christ Lutheran Church, even being elected president of the church council. On top of that, he was a cub scout leader.

Rader killed the last of his 10 victims in 1991. Then he went quiet, and the case went cold for 13 years. He resurfaced in 2004, sending the police taunting messages, apparently because he was bored and wanted the opportunity to tell his story his way. Panic spread across the community of Witchita, Kansas once more. Was the BTK Killer about to strike again?

One of the letters Rader sent to the police asked whether a floppy disk could be traced back to him if he were to send one. The police lied and said that no, it could not. For some reason, he took their word on it and sent the disk. Computer experts promptly examined the metadata of the disk's only document and found that it had been created using software registered to the Christ Lutheran Church. The metadata also showed that the document had been last modified by someone logged in as 'Dennis'. A quick internet search for 'Christ Lutheran Church Dennis' brought up Rader's name. He was arrested shortly afterwards and received 10 consecutive life sentences (the death penalty was not in force in Kansas at the time Rader committed his infamous series of murders).

Dennis Rader never tried to deny his crimes. For him, they were something to be proud of. He had killed 10 people and eluded capture for more than 30 years. Today, Rader is held in solitary confinement at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas. He is allowed out for 1 hour of exercise per day, and has access to the showers 3 times a week.

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Are All Serial Killers Insane?

Serial killers are amongst the most chilling and hard to understand individuals on the planet. They don't kill just once in a fit of passion or rage, but over and over again. Sometimes the victims are tortured. Oftentimes they are raped. Some serial killers even perform sexual acts on the corpses of their victims. Still others engage in cannibalism.

This is clearly abnormal behaviour, the work of a deranged and troubled mind. It is so far removed from what most people seem capable of in even their darkest moments, that most people's initial gut reaction is that the perpetrators of these ghastly crimes must surely be mad. But are serial killers necessarily insane?

First of all, we need to define the concept of insanity. From a legal perspective, a person is only judged to be insane if they cannot distinguish right from wrong. Therefore, if a serial killer knows that what he/she is doing is wrong, then he/she is not legally insane. Even if he is a schizophrenic like Richard Trenton Chase (who believed that he had to kill in order to prevent his blood from being turned to powder) this same rule applies: if he knew that he was doing wrong, then he cannot be found legally insane (Richard Trenton Chase was, for example, found sane, despite having a long history of mental illness).

But even if we adopt a broader definition of insanity - one that includes people suffering from serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia - then some serial killers still do not seem to fit. Take Ted Bundy, for example. America's most notorious serial killer was an intelligent, charming law student who's crimes showed a high level of organization. He would lure his victims to a secluded location by faking injury or impersonating a figure of authority. He disposed of the bodies and took great care so as to not leave any incriminating forensic evidence behind. He even succeeded in escaping from police custody, not once but twice. He appeared to be just an ordinary man (albeit an unusually good-looking and charismatic one). He just didn't seem to fit any standard definition of insanity.

And Ted Bundy wasn't the only apparently rational serial killer. Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and Dennis Rader (the BTK killer) would also fit the profile of the seemingly sane serial killer.

So, clearly, the answer to the question 'Are all serial killers insane?' would appear to be a resounding 'no'. It might be argued that they are all somewhat unbalanced - or just plain evil -  but they are not necessarily any crazier than the rest of us. And that just makes them all the more chilling.

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Richard Ramirez - The Night Stalker

Image attribution: By San Quentin State Prison, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ([1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Between June of 1984 and August of 1985, residents of San Fransisco and Los Angeles were terrorized by a man the media dubbed 'The Night Stalker'. He would enter his victim's house in the dead of night, dressed all in black, targeting people of both genders and all ages. He attacked with unimaginable levels of ferocity, varying the weapons used, but generally favouring a gun. The men were usually shot, whilst the females would be tied up and raped. Sometimes, The Night Stalker would let the women go (for whatever reason). But on other occasions they were not so lucky. To add insult to injury, The Night Stalker would sometimes burgle his victims as well.

One of the females that the Night Stalker decided to let go managed to get a good look at him. Also, her 13-year-old neighbour had noticed a man acting suspiciously in the area. The observant adolescent managed to write down a partial license plate as well as a description of the suspect's vehicle.

The aforementioned vehicle was soon located and a single fingerprint was found on the car's rear-view mirror (despite The Night Stalker's best efforts to wipe the car down). The fingerprint belonged to a known felon by the name of Richard Ramirez. Police released Ramirez's photo to the media. Suddenly, The Night Stalker had a face and a name.

Ramirez was soon spotted in an East Los Angeles neighbourhood, whilst trying to steal a vehicle. A mob of angry citizens banded together and detained him until police arrived. On September 20, 1989, Richard Ramirez was found guilty of 13 counts of murder, 5 counts of attempted murder, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries. He was sentenced to die in California's gas chambers.

As a child, Ramirez had taken to sleeping in a cemetery in an effort to escape from his violent and abusive father. He also developed something of a drug problem, starting with glue sniffing at the tender age of 7, before moving on to marijuana at 10, and LSD, PCP, and cocaine by his adult years.

Also, at the age of 13, Ramirez witnessed his older cousin shoot his wife. Richard Ramirez was standing close enough that he got covered in the poor woman's blood. Quite understandably, after this he became sullen and withdrawn. He took to stalking and killing animals. He enjoyed watching horror movies, and developed something of an obsession with Satanism. He started to skip more school classes than he attended.

At the age of 15, Ramirez managed to find himself some work at a motel. But he was soon fired after he tied up a female guest and started to rape her. The husband returned and beat the teenager. No charges were ever filed as the couple were from out of town and wanted to move on ASAP.

Ramirez went to live with his aunt and her husband. Unfortunately, the husband happened to be an avid peeping Tom. He would regularly take Richard Ramirez out for a night of voyeurism. It is likely that this served to increase the frequency and intensity of Ramirez's violent sexual fantasies (a large number of serial killers experimented with voyeurism before moving on to murder, including America's most notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy).

When he was 22, Ramirez moved to California, where he made a living through drug dealing and burglary. A couple of years later, he would begin the murder spree that would shock a nation.

Richard Ramirez died on June 7, 2013 of liver failure, whilst still awaiting execution. During his incarceration, he received lots of sexually explicit 'fanmail' from love-struck females. One of these women was a freelance magazine editor by the name of Doreen Liog. In 1996, Richard Ramirez and Doreen Liog married. She described him as being kind and charming.

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Early Warning Signs of a Future Serial Killer

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Definition of a Serial Killer

There is some debate as to what actually constitutes serial murder, but a common definition is as follows: A serial killer is an individual who kills 3 or more people in at least 3 separate incidents, with a cooling off period between the murders. This 'cooling off period' is a span of time during which the killer returns to apparent normality. He/she may go to work, take a spouse out for dinner, or socialize with friends. The important point is that he/she does not kill during this period. There is no real agreement as to how long the killer has to wait between murders for it to count as a cooling off period, but most would probably agree that we are talking about a few days or more (some serial killers can have years between murders, like the infamous BTK Killer who terrorized the residents of Wichita, Kansas, for more than 3 decades).

Approximately 90% of serial killers are male and about 65% of the victims are female. Serial killers tend to only target members of their own ethnic group (though there are notable exceptions, such as the Milwaukee Cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer, a white male who mostly targeted African-American men and boys). Nearly half of all serial killers start in their twenties. The most common method of killing is strangulation, a relatively up close and personal method (compared with, say, shooting someone from a distance). However, female serial killers tend to prefer poisoning.

Whilst it is certainly true that a large number of serial killers have experienced substantial childhood trauma, this is not always the case. Some serial killers simply carry out their horrific crimes because they enjoy it. And plenty of people recover from childhood trauma to become productive members of society.

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The Six Motivations of a Serial Killer

Determining the motive of a serial killer can be an extremely difficult task. All manner of factors may be involved, with many of them stretching back into the killer's childhood. But, broadly speaking, the primary motivation tends to fit into one of 6 categories.

Visionary

The visionary serial killer is the stereotypical (though actually surprisingly rare) mentally ill murderer who kills on the instruction of auditory and/or visual hallucinations. Of course, most people who suffer from severe mental illness are not serial murderers, and even some schizophrenic serial killers are judged to be legally sane.Take the case of Herbert William Mullin, for example. In the 1970s, he killed 13 people after hearing voices that told him he had to kill in order to prevent California from being struck by a massive earthquake. Everyone agreed that he was schizophrenic, but he was still judged to be responsible for his actions, and was declared legally sane by the courts. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mission-oriented

The mission-oriented serial killer kills out of a warped sense of duty. He believes that it is his mission to rid the world of a certain type of person (e.g. prostitutes or homosexual people). He might suffer from delusions, but he differs from the visionary killer in that he is not acting on the instructions of hallucinations.

Gain

Gain motivated serial killers are simply people who kill for profit. They believe that the act of murder will bring them some sort of material gain, whether in the form of money, property, or something else (people who kill for the attention that they think it will bring them would also fall into this category). A good example of this type of serial killer is mafia hitman Richard 'The Iceman' Kuklinski, who is thought to have killed over 100 people on the orders of mob bosses. He charged thousands of dollars for each 'hit', and money appears to have been his primary motivation.

Lust

A very common motivation for a serial killer is lust/sex. Some serial killers of this type are essentially rapists who kill in order to cover their tracks (after all, a dead victim can't talk to the police). But there are also serial killers for whom the actual act of murder is sexually arousing. And a surprising number of serial killers have a sexual attraction to corpses. Ted Bundy, for example, would often return to his dead victims to perform sexual acts on their corpses, only stopping when decomposition made further sexual intercourse unfeasible.

Thrill

Many serial killers find that the act of taking another life gives them a kind of adrenaline rush or 'high'. For some, it is this 'high' that serves as the primary motivation for their ghastly crimes. It is, it seems, literally possible to become addicted to murder.

Power/Control

Lots of people feel a need to be in control, and there is nothing wrong with that in moderation. But some people take it to extremes. There is a certain type of serial killer who feels the need to completely and utterly control and dominate another individual to such an extent that they are willing to kill for this experience. Such killers may have experienced severe abuse/neglect as a child. This makes them feel powerless and angry. They start to fantasize about taking revenge on the people who wronged them (or people who remind them of their abusers), of having complete control back, and mending their own damaged egos in the process. For most people, this never goes beyond fantasy. But for some, the fantasy gets stronger and stronger until the desire to act upon it can no longer be resisted. Then a serial killer is born.

Serial killers are complex individuals, and as such it should not come as too much of a surprise that a large number of them fail to fit neatly into any single category. For example, Ted Bundy would attack and sexually assault attractive young females in a manner characteristic of a lust killer. But he also exhibited a need for a level of control and dominance characteristic of a power/control motivated murderer.

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Organized vs Disorganized Serial Killers

Serial killers as a whole can generally be split into two categories according to the level of organization evident in their methods.

Organized killers tend to be intelligent individuals who often lure their victims to secluded locations with a combination of trickery and charm. Ted Bundy, for example, would sometimes wrap his arm in a fake plaster cast and ask young females for assistance. Because he was considered charming and did not look like a deranged killer, plenty of women voluntarily went off with him. Once they were alone, he would hit them over the back of the head, take them somewhere more secluded, kill them, and rape their corpses.

Organized serial killers also tend to dispose of their victims' bodies in a way that hinders detection (e.g. burial) and have an above average understanding of forensic science and other investigative techniques. They usually appear fairly normal on the surface, and friends and family are often shocked when their true nature is revealed. They generally have no real difficulty as far as romantic relationships are concerned, and may even be married with kids (as was the case with the notorious BTK killer, Dennis Raider).

Disorganized serial killers, on the other hand, tend to be more impulsive. They are often found to be suffering from some form of mental illness (though this is not necessarily what causes them to kill - there may be other factors involved) and may be of below average intelligence. They rarely take any real care to hide the bodies and rarely use trickery or charm to put their victims at ease, preferring to attack in more of a 'blitz' fashion. They are less likely to be in a stable romantic relationship and are also less likely to talk to their victims. Jack the Ripper is generally considered to be a good example of a disorganized serial killer.

It should be noted that a large proportion of known serial killers exhibit characteristics of both the organized and disorganized types. Furthermore, it is possible for serial killers to become more disorganized as their compulsion to kill grows stronger, or in times of high stress.

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The Zodiac Killer

Image attribution: author unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Zodiac Killer was/is an as yet unidentified serial killer who has been conclusively linked to 7 attacks, though the killer claimed to have taken 37 lives. The 7 confirmed attacks took place between December of 1968 and October of 1969. Two of the 7 victims survived the attacks.

December 20,1968 - Betty Jensen and David Faraday

16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen was out on a first date with 17-year-old David Arthur Faraday. They had stopped their car at a well known lovers' lane in a quiet spot on Lake Herman Road, California. Evidence suggests that a second vehicle pulled up beside Jensen and Faraday. The driver got out and walked round to Faraday's door, before shooting the young man at point blank range. Jensen ran, but was shot 5 times in the back. Betty Jensen died at the scene; David Faraday passed away on route to hospital.

July 4,1969 - Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau

22-year-old Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin and 19-year-old Michael Renault Mageau had parked at Blue Rock Springs Golf Course in California at around midnight. A car pulled in behind them and a man got out. He approached Ferrin and Mageau's car and aimed a flashlight through the window at their faces, temporarily blinding them. He immediately fired 5 shots into the car, hitting both Ferrin and Mageau. He started to walk away, but  heard Mageau cry out in pain. He returned to the vehicle and fired another 4 shots, hitting Mageau once and Ferrin twice. 

Fortunately, three teens stumbled across the crime scene only minutes after the killer had left. They phoned for help, which arrived in time to save Mageau's life. Ferrin, sadly, died on route to the hospital.

Mageau was able to give a partial description of the assailant, describing him as a white male, about 5'8'' and 195 pounds.

Approximately 30 minutes after the attack, police received an anonymous call taking responsibility for it, as well as for the murders of Betty Jensen and David Faraday. The call was made from a public phone booth situated just minutes from the local police station.

September 27, 1969 - Cecilia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell

The next confirmed victims were students Cecilia Ann Shepard and Bryan Calvin Hartnell (who were 22- and 20-years-old, respectively). They were enjoying a picnic at Lake Berryessa in California when a man claiming to be an escaped convict approached with a gun. His face was covered with a hood.

The assailant threw Shepard a piece of clothesline and forced her to hog tie her boyfriend. Then the attacker tied Shepard up in the same manner. He stabbed them both repeatedly and left them for dead.

A fisherman found the victims still breathing and called for help. Hartnell survived but Shepard was not so fortunate: she fell into a coma and died 2 days later.

Again, the killer placed a phone call confessing to the crime. Again, he did so from a public phone booth situated just minutes from the local police station.

October 11, 1969 - Paul Stine

The Zodiac's final confirmed victim was 29-year-old San Francisco cab driver, Paul Stine. The killer shot Stine in the side of the head and walked away. Three youngsters witnessed the crime. They described the shooter as being a heavily built white male between the ages of 25 and 30 with a crew cut. Someone matching this description was spotted by police officers just a stone's throw from the crime scene. But, for an unknown reason, the officers thought they were looking for a black male. They didn't give the man a second thought. Paul Stine died at the scene.

Letters and Ciphers

During the time of the killings, and for many years afterwards, the Zodiac Killer  taunted the police by sending messages and ciphers to local newspapers. One of the letters referred to the possibility of killing school children. The killer could, he wrote, just find a school bus, shoot out the front tire, and "pick off the kiddies as they came bouncing out"[1]. Fortunately, he never acted on this threat.

Four ciphers were also sent to the local newspapers. The killer claimed that if anyone could break the ciphers, then his identity would be revealed. To this day, only one of the ciphers has been conclusively broken. It did not reveal the name of the killer.

Over the years, around 2,500 suspects were interviewed, but none were ever charged. The case remains unsolved to this day.

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Sources

[1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer_letters

Madame LaLaurie

Image attribution: author unknown [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

In 1834, a New Orleans fire crew were putting out a fire at the mansion of Madame LaLaurie (c.1775 - c.1842), a well known socialite who often threw lavish cocktail parties. At first, it seemed just like another day's work for the firefighters. But then someone noticed the smell of  burning flesh coming from inside the building. A team was sent to investigate. What they discovered would send shock waves through the entire community.

One 70-year-old female slave was found chained up in the kitchen (it later emerged that she had started the fire as a suicide attempt, in order to escape the constant abuse she suffered at the hands of Madame LaLaurie). In another part of the house, more slaves were found chained up, some of them in deeply unnatural and uncomfortable positions. Some were alive; others were not. All showed signs of prolonged torture.

News of Madame LaLaurie's ghastly torture chamber spread throughout the local community, and a mob of angry citizens descended on the mansion. The police were called, but by the time they arrived the mob had destroyed everything of value that they could lay their hands on, and Madame LaLaurie had escaped. The story goes that she made her way to Paris, where she died in 1842. She was never brought to justice for her crimes.

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Richard Trenton Chase - The Vampire of Sacramento

Born on May 23,1950, Richard Trenton Chase displayed disturbing behaviour from a very young age (including the infamous, but disputed, Macdonald Triad of  bedwetting, arson, and animal torture). He abused alcohol and drugs from adolescence onward, and started to develop hypochondriac delusions with regard to his health. On one occasion he became convinced that someone had stolen his pulmonary artery; on another he thought that his stomach was back to front. He also believed that his heart was shrinking, and that the only was to stop this was to eat various animals raw (he would sometimes remove the organs and liquefy them in a blender, adding in some coca cola for good measure).

In 1975, Chase injected animal blood into his veins, which resulted in him developing blood poisoning. After the cause became apparent, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Staff members nicknamed him 'Dracula' due to his fondness for drinking the blood of animals.

After receiving treatment, Richard Chase was released from hospital into the care of his mother. She gradually weaned him off his medication and helped to get him set up in a place of his own. Perhaps this wasn't the best of moves, considering what came next.

On December 29, 1977, Chase killed a father of two, Ambrose Griffin, in a drive-by shooting. Shortly afterwards, he broke into a family home, urinated in a drawer, and defecated on a child's bed. The family returned and Chase fled the scene.

Chase's second murder occurred on January 23, 1978. Teresa Wallin was three months pregnant at the time. Chase shot her three times, before sexually assaulting the corpse whilst repeatedly stabbing it with a butcher knife. He drained the blood from the corpse, drank some of it, and bathed in the rest. He then went outside and collected some dog feces, returning to the corpse to shove the feces down its throat. At last, he left the premises.

The final murders were committed on January 27, 1978. He entered the home of 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth, shooting her neighbour, 6-year-old son, and 22-month-old nephew, as well as Evelyn herself. Evelyn Miroth's corpse was sodomized, and Chase drank her blood also. Part of the 22-month-old boy's brain was eaten and his corpse was taken back to Chase's apartment for further acts of cannibalism and mutilation.

Richard Trenton Chase was arrested shortly afterwards and charged with 6 counts of murder. Despite his long history of mental illness and the disorganized nature of the crime scenes he left behind, Chase was declared legally sane and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. He claimed that his crimes had been necessary to counter the effects of poison that had been placed under his soap dish by Nazis. He took his own life on December 26, 1980, by overdosing on prison-prescribed antidepressant medication.

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Gary Ridgway - The Green River Killer

Image attribution: By King County Sheriff's Office (http://thegreenriverkiller.tumblr.com/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was an unremarkable child who was once tested as having an IQ of only 82 (100 being the average score), and he was held back two grades in high school. He married at the age of 21 and joined the navy shortly afterwards. It was here that he first started using prostitutes, contracting gonorrhea from one of them. This experience may well have contributed to his later hatred for women of this profession. But he continued to pay for sex.

Returning from sea, Ridgway discovered that his wife had also been sleeping around. The couple filed for divorce. It is interesting to note that Ridgway's second marriage would go a very similar way.

After his arrest, Ridgway's wives were interviewed. They described a man who was torn between staunch religious beliefs and an unusually strong sexual appetite, which would cause him to demand sex several times a day. But all in all he seemed like a fairly regular guy. He wasn't a loner, he was always in employment, and he had several romantic relationships over the course of his life. He didn't really fit the stereotype of a serial killer. But he was one of the worst in American history.

In 2001, Gary Ridgway was arrested after new advances in DNA profiling allowed law enforcement to match his saliva to DNA recovered from semen found on the bodies of women who were believed to have fallen victim to the infamous Green River Killer (the name comes from the river in which the first bodies were dumped). When this was combined with other (circumstantial) evidence, it allowed law enforcement to charge Ridgway with 7 counts of murder. He would later confess to a further 42 murders as part of a plea bargain that saw him avoid the death penalty. Some experts believe that the true number of victims could be higher still, though this has never been conclusively proven.

The majority of Ridgway's confirmed victims were found naked in or near the Green River. All had been strangled; some had been posed. Most of the victims were young female prostitutes or runaways.

Ridgway would spend hours driving around his local area looking for potential victims. Once he had found one, he would approach her and try to put her at ease. Sometimes he would offer to pay her more than the going rate or to help her find a better job. On other occasions he would show her a picture of his son, in an attempt to make her see him as a harmless and caring father, a good man. Next, he would have sex with the woman, before strangling her from behind and disposing of the body. Sometimes he would return to the dump site to check on decomposition and perform sexual acts with the corpse. On one occasion, he had sex with the corpse  whilst his young son was only a very short distance away, sleeping in Ridgway's truck.

For someone in possession of an IQ that was 18 points below average, Ridgway showed a remarkable amount of talent for forensics. He left very little evidence behind (and would sometimes scatter false evidence to confuse the crime scene). If one of the victims managed to scratch him, he would cut her fingernails. He moved from manual strangulation to ligature strangulation after realizing that the former gave the victim ample opportunity to scratch and bruise his arm, something that would surely have drawn attention from family and coworkers. So, perhaps IQ and academic performance aren't everything as far as intelligence testing is concerned.

Gary Ridgway is currently incarcerated in Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. He will never be released.

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Amelia Dyer - The Angel Maker

Image attribution: By Wells Asylum authorities, 1893 (Wells Asylum, 1893) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In Victorian society, if a child was found to be illegitimate, then the father had no legal responsibilities. Furthermore, the woman would usually be sacked from any employment as soon as the fact became public knowledge. This left the mother-to-be in a virtually impossible situation. In many cases the only way she could keep her baby was to offer herself up for prostitution.

Where there is a problem to be solved there is usually also a profit to be made. A number of so-called 'baby farms' sprang up, ostensibly to help alleviate this social ill. They consisted of a person or group of people who were willing to essentially adopt newborn babies - in exchange for a fee of course. The struggling mother would either hand over her baby for temporary adoption in exchange for a weekly fee, or she would pay a one-off lump sum in exchange for permanent adoption of the child. The babies were often treated poorly; a large percentage would die. But there was one woman who would take baby farming to new, almost unimaginable levels of cruelty.

Amelia Dyer was a seemingly respectable woman of good parentage who was born in the English city of Bristol. She opened her own baby farm in the 1800s, drugging the babies in order to suppress their appetites and keep them quiet, maximizing her profits whilst minimizing her exertions. This abuse would often result in the death of the babies.

Eventually, Dyer allowed one baby too many to pass away before its time. She was arrested and sentenced to 6 months for child neglect.

Once she was a free woman again, Amelia Dyer spent a short while going in and out of psychiatric hospitals, before resuming her work as a baby farmer. But this time she worked with a different MO.

Instead of accepting a weekly fee for temporary adoptions, Dyer started demanding a one-off lump sum for permanent adoption. But once the money had changed hands, Dyer would strangle the infant and either dump his/her body in the River Thames or bury it in the garden of her rented accommodation. She moved around a lot to avoid detection, and operated under several assumed names for the same reason.

It is unclear just how many innocent babies this seemingly ordinary woman murdered. Some people estimate that it could have been as many as 300, or maybe even more. This would probably make her the most prolific serial killer in British history.

That a person could get away with killing hundreds of infants before she was finally caught shows that there was something seriously wrong with society in Victorian Britain. Thousands of children were dying in suspicious circumstances every year, but society as a whole did very little about it. It is shocking from our modern perspective to think of a time when the most vulnerable of our species were also the least protected. For more information about child abuse and how you can help to prevent it, visit the website of the NSPCC.

Amelia Dyer was eventually stopped after bodies were recovered in the River Thames that led back to her. She pleaded insanity, but this was rejected. She was executed by hanging in 1896.

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John Wayne Gacy - The Killer Clown

Image attribution: By The Orchid Club (originally posted to Flickr as John Wayne Gacy) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

John Wayne Gacy was a successful businessman, a husband, and a father. He used to dress up as a clown for fundraising events and to entertain sick children. He regularly threw cocktail parties for the local community. But beneath the mask of a model citizen lay the cold heart of a ruthless serial killer - one of the worst the world has ever known.

Between the years of 1972 and 1978, this well liked and respected man took the lives of some 33 boys and young men. Some of the victims were raped; some were tortured. All were killed on his property and most were buried there also.

The first victim was Timothy Jack McCoy, a 15-year-old boy who Gacy had encountered at a local bus stop. McCoy was lured back to Gacy's house with the promise of a bed for the night and a lift back to the bus stop in the morning. But Gacy killed the boy with a knife and buried the body in his crawlspace. Apparently the experience of murder was sexually arousing for the fledgling killer: he realised afterwards that he had had an orgasm. Gacy would later describe the act of murder as being the ultimate thrill.

The other 32 victims were all strangled or asphyxiated as this produced less mess than the knife. Some of them were picked up from the same bus stop as McCoy, whilst others were lured to Gacy's property with the promise of employment at Gacy's successful construction company, PDM Contractors (Painting, Decorating, Maintenance).

Like a large number of serial killers, Gacy experienced a traumatic childhood. His father was an alcoholic who would regularly beat Gacy's mother and siblings, as well as Gacy himself. On top of that, at the age of 9, Gacy was molested by a friend of the family. He also suffered from persistent medical problems, which resulted in him spending much of his adolescence in and out of hospital.

However, Gacy appeared to cope well with the hand he had been dealt. He got himself a place at Northwestern Business College, before getting married and taking over managerial responsibilities of 3 KFC restaurants. He worked hard, made good money, and even fathered two children. He was the very picture of success in both career and family life. He even managed to earn the approval of his once abusive father.

However, beneath the facade, Gacy was heavily involved in the seedier side of life. He would regularly cheat on his wife, and in 1968 he was arrested for persuading a 15-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him. For this he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

During his incarceration, Gacy was assessed by a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD), a pervasive disregard for the rights and welfare of others. ASPD is closely related to psychopathy (some researchers actually consider the two to be synonymous) and is very difficult - if not impossible - to treat, even with modern drugs and psychotherapy. It should have been a warning sign for the authorities, but Gacy was released after serving only 18 months of his 10 year sentence. He relocated to Chicago, started PDM Contractors, and began murdering boys and men.

For his crimes, John Wayne Gacy was given 12 death sentences. He was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994, after spending 14 years on death row in the state of Illinois. His brain was examined after his death. No obvious abnormalities were detected.

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Jeffrey Dahmer - The Milwaukee Cannibal

Image attribution: author unknown [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

On July 22, 1991, two police officers came across a man wandering nervously in the street, wearing a handcuff on one wrist. He claimed that it was put there by a highly disturbed individual who had proceeded to threaten him with a large knife. The police officers quickly found that their handcuff keys did not fit the handcuffs around the man's wrist. So they escorted him back to the house where he had been held hostage. Nothing could prepare them for what they were about to uncover.

They arrived at the house and the front door was opened by 31-year-old Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. He was polite and courteous to start with, but when the officers found a large knife in his bedroom, as well as a large collection of sexually explicit and incriminating photos, Dahmer became aggressive. He was quickly subdued, and the house was searched more thoroughly. Human skulls and heads were found, as well as human hearts, skeletons, and male genitalia. Under questioning, Jeffrey Dahmer admitted to being one of the most gruesome serial killers of the 20th Century.

Dahmer's disturbing behaviour began in childhood, when he would search for dead animals on the side of the road which he would then take home and dissect. He also began drinking heavily at the age of 14. He had little interest in schoolwork or, apparently, in life in general. He began to realize that he was gay and would often fantasize about dominating males in a sexual manner. One day, whilst still a teenager, he hid in some bushes with a baseball bat, awaiting the arrival of an attractive male who often jogged in the area. He planned to hit the man over the head and make sexual use of his unconscious body. But the man never showed.

Dahmer graduated high school in 1978. But although he was bright, his apathy towards his schoolwork and his persistent alcohol abuse caused his grades to suffer noticeably. Three weeks after graduation, he committed his first murder.

Steven Mark Hicks was hitchhiking his way to a rock concert when he came across Dahmer, who invited Hicks up for a drink. Hicks said yes, and the two men went to Dahmer's residence, where they drank alcohol and engaged in consensual sex. But then Hicks said that he had better be on his way. Not wanting him to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned Hicks to death with a 10 pound dumbbell. He buried the body in a shallow grave.

Hicks was to remain Dahmer's only victim for another 9 years. During this time, Dahmer spent an unproductive term at Ohio State University before enlisting in the army as a medical specialist. He was discharged after 2 years due to his alcohol abuse, and took a job in a sandwich shop to pay the bills (though he spent a large percentage of his earnings on alcohol).

It was only in November of 1987 that he claimed his 2nd victim. He cut up the flesh and pulverized the skeleton with a sledgehammer, disposing of it in the trash. He kept the head for a while, as a souvenir.

Over the next 4 years, Dahmer killed another 15 boys and young men, carrying out his attacks in increasingly gruesome ways. Some of them had acid or boiling water injected into their skulls whilst they were still alive, apparently in an attempt to create living creatures that would be fully under Dahmer's control. Many of the victims had sexual acts performed upon their corpses. Dahmer also consumed the flesh of some of the corpses.

Jeffrey Dahmer was eventually given 16 life sentences (he was never charged with his second murder as there was insufficient evidence). He was sent to the Columbia Correctional Institute, where he became a born-again Christian. He was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate on November 28, 1994.

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Ted Bundy - The Charismatic Killer

Image attribution: author unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

He was intelligent, charming, handsome, and polite. He had a degree in psychology and was studying law. He had worked at a suicide crisis hotline as well as on a number of political campaigns. He was also a necrophiliac serial killer who claimed the lives of at least 30 young women (though many experts believe that the true number of victims is significantly higher, maybe even as many as 100).

Today, Ted Bundy's name has become synonymous with evil. He is often held up as the perfect example of a charming, psychopathic killer with a heart of ice. And when you examine his crimes it isn't hard to see why.

Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946 in Burlington, Vermont to a single woman by the name of Elanor Louise Cowell. He spent his early years believing that his young, unwed mother was actually his sister and that his grandparents were really his parents. It is unclear how much this deception contributed to the creation of the man Ted would later become.

Ted's grandfather was described as being violent and, after a while, his mother managed to escape by marrying a hospital cook, Johnny Culpepper Bundy. Both mother and son took the name Bundy.

Growing up, Ted was a quiet but seemingly well-balanced child who did reasonably well in school. He liked to keep himself to himself and once placed kitchen knives all around his aunt whilst she was sleeping. But all in all, there were no real indications that he would grow up to become anything other than a productive member of society.

In 1966, Bundy enrolled at the University of Washington to study Chinese. It was here that he would meet Stephanie Brooks, apparently the woman of his dreams. They dated for a while, but Stephanie eventually became dissatisfied with what she perceived as Ted's immaturity and lack of ambition. She dumped him, turning his world upside-down in the process. Bundy promptly dropped out of university and fell into a succession of low paying jobs that were far below his true abilities.

After a while, though, something seemed to change in Ted Bundy. He became more focused and confident. He re-enrolled at the University of Washington and threw himself into the study of his new major, psychology, graduating with honors in 1972, before being accepted into law school. He even managed to win back Stephanie Brooks, who could not help but be attracted to this new, ambitious Ted Bundy. It seemed that he now had everything he could possibly want: academic success, the woman of his dreams, and a promising career just around the corner. But appearances can all to often prove deceptive.

Without warning or explanation, Bundy dumped Stephanie Brooks, leaving her heartbroken. He started skipping classes, eventually dropping out of law school altogether. And young women started to go missing.

A large percentage of serial killers have what is referred to as an ideal victim type (IVT). This is a set of characteristics that a killer looks for in his (or, more rarely, her) victims. He or she may focus exclusively on one race or gender, or only target people working in a certain profession (e.g. prostitutes). For Ted Bundy, the ideal victim was a young, attractive, white female. They were often college students, and they often wore their hair parted down the middle - just like Stephanie Brooks (although lots of women wear their hair in this manner, so there is really no real reason to read too much into it).

Ted Bundy would generally approach his victim in a public place and lure them to a more secluded venue by faking injury (to elicit sympathy) or impersonating an authority figure (e.g. a police officer). Once he had them alone, he would overpower and restrain them, taking them elsewhere for the actual killing part. He would dump the bodies somewhere they would be hard to find and would often revisit the corpses to perform various acts of a sexual nature. He would continue to do this until the effects of decomposition made it no longer feasible.

After a while, police linked the disappearances of some of the women together and began to realize that they had a serial killer on the loose. They gathered together what little evidence they had and used it to create a profile of the killer. It described a good-looking male who called himself Ted and was seen driving a Volkswagen Beetle. Several witnesses stated that he had had his arm in a sling.

This wasn't much to go on, but the police released the profile to the public anyway, an act that resulted in them receiving hundreds of tips daily. Most of these proved to be red herrings, but a few people did phone in to name Bundy as a potential suspect. But the police found it hard to believe that such a charming, well-educated man could be the depraved killer they were hunting. Ted Bundy continued to kill, acting with apparent impunity.

On November 8, 1974, however, one of Bundy's intended victims, Carol DaRonch, managed to escape. He had claimed to be a police officer and had convinced her to get into his car. But she soon grew suspicious. A struggle ensued during which DaRonch managed to jump out of the car and run to safety.

9 months later, in August of 1975, Ted Bundy was pulled over by the police whilst driving. They found masks, handcuffs, and a crowbar in his boot and arrested him on suspicion of burglary. Shortly afterwards, DaRonch identified him as the man who had tried to abduct her. He was sentenced to serve 1 to 15 years for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault.

Slowly but surely, Ted Bundy was linked to other murders. He went on trial, choosing to represent himself. This allowed him to move between the courtroom and its library unshackled. When no one was looking, he jumped out of a second story window and escaped to freedom. He would remain at large for about a week.

After being recaptured, his movements were more restricted. But this didn't stop him. 7 months after his first escape he managed to pull himself up through the ceiling above his cell and crawl until he found a way down into the closet of the apartment of the chief jailer (who happened to be out on a date). Once Bundy was confident he was alone, he changed into some of the chief jailer's's clothes and casually walked out the front door.

This time he managed to elude capture for a couple of months. He made his way to Florida (where he was virtually unknown at the time) and tried to turn his back on crime. But fugitives need money and it is hard to get a legitimate job when you are on the FBI's most wanted list. He turned to petty theft to pay the bills.

On January 14, 1978, Bundy entered Florida State University's Chi Omega sorority house and brutally assaulted 4 women, killing two of them and leaving the others seriously injured. Another woman was attacked later that day.

On February 9, 1978, Bundy claimed his last victim - a 12-year-old girl - who he abducted, killed, and mutilated. He was caught a few days later and given 3 death sentences - one for each of the Florida murder victims. He proclaimed his innocence right to the end, but was nonetheless executed on January 24, 1989.

You might also be interested in:
Edmund Kemper - The Co-ed Killer, Gary Ridgway - The Green River Killer, John Wayne Gacy - The Killer Clown