SERIAL KILLERS
WARNING: MAY CONTAIN DISTURBING IMAGES
FOR SOME READERS
WARNING: MAY CONTAIN DISTURBING IMAGES
FOR SOME READERS
http://www.herald.co.zw/life-sentence-for-murder/
* Special thanks to "wikipedia.com", "Google Images", "Psychology Today"
and mederpedia.org
and mederpedia.org
BLOG POST
by Felicity Blaze Noodleman
Los Angeles, CA
6.20.14
If you are of the opinion that guns kill and the answer to eliminating murder is to ban all guns, than think again. Killing and murder is almost as old as human kind! This week we explore some of the most gruesome serial murders of the Twentieth Century. The Cannibals. The Necrophiliacs. The Sex Offenders. The Child Molesters to walk the streets in many American cities.
In our research we found most serial killers were men but we did uncover a few women which we will label as "Black Widows". When it comes to murder women are motivated by personal rage and in some cases by psychological disorders such as postpartum syndrome for example. We did not find many examples but have included one unusual female killer who was one of the vicious out of all the examples we are including for this article. We were able to find a wealth of information from the web site http://murderpedia.org/
We have collected a short list of serial killers and begin with the original dirty old man, Albert Fish. He is one of the most disgusting, revolting and depraved killers we have ever read about! When it comes to the worst of the worst he is the Porto type for evil. He was only convicted for three killings but his other attributes set him apart from all the others.
The CDC (Center for Disease Control) tracks the number of Homicides in the United States and reports the number of cases in 2010 to be 16,259 (deaths per 100,000: 5.3). We have to wonder what triggers such prime evil behavior in some people while most of us are to keep our primitive instincts in check. Could this be some outgrowth of civilization causing humans to strike back at the lack of freedom and living space in our worlds?
For a little professional advice in helping us understand this phenomenon in deviant human behavior we turned to "Psychology Today" and are posting two articles by Dr. Katherine Ramsland who writes a page entitled "Shadow Boxing"
The CDC (Center for Disease Control) tracks the number of Homicides in the United States and reports the number of cases in 2010 to be 16,259 (deaths per 100,000: 5.3). We have to wonder what triggers such prime evil behavior in some people while most of us are to keep our primitive instincts in check. Could this be some outgrowth of civilization causing humans to strike back at the lack of freedom and living space in our worlds?
For a little professional advice in helping us understand this phenomenon in deviant human behavior we turned to "Psychology Today" and are posting two articles by Dr. Katherine Ramsland who writes a page entitled "Shadow Boxing"
Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish
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Early life
He was born Hamilton Howard Fish in Washington,
D.C., on May 19, 1870, to Randall (1795 – October 16, 1875) and Ellen (née
Howell; 1838–?) Fish. His father was American, of English ancestry and his
mother was Scots-Irish American He said that he was named after statesman and
politician Hamilton Fish, a distant relative. His father was 43 years older
than his mother and 75 years old at the time of his birth. Fish was the
youngest child and had three living siblings: Walter, Annie, and Edwin Fish. He
wished to be known as "Albert" after a dead sibling and to escape the
nickname "Ham & Eggs" that he was given at an orphanage in which
he spent much of his childhood.
His family had a history of mental illness. His uncle
suffered from mania. A brother was confined in a state mental hospital. His
sister was diagnosed with a "mental affliction". Three other
relatives were diagnosed with mental illnesses and his mother had "aural
and/or visual hallucinations". His father was a river boat captain and by
1870, was a fertilizer manufacturer.The elder Fish died in 1875 at the Sixth
Street Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Washington, D.C. of a myocardial
infarction. Fish's mother then put him into Saint John's Orphanage in
Washington, where he was frequently treated sadistically. He began to enjoy the
physical pain that the beatings brought. Of his time at the orphanage, Fish
remarked, "I was there till I was nearly nine, and that's where I got
started wrong. We were unmercifully whipped. I saw boys doing many things they
should not have done."
By 1880, his mother had a government job and was able to remove Fish from the orphanage. In 1882, at age 12, he began a relationship with a telegraph boy. The youth introduced Fish to such practices as urolagnia (drinking urine) and coprophagia (eating feces). Fish began visiting public baths where he could watch other boys undress, and spent a great portion of his weekends on these visits. Throughout his life, he would write obscene letters to women whose names he acquired from classified advertising and matrimonial agencies.
By 1890, Fish arrived in New York City, and he said that at that point he became a prostitute and he also began raping young boys. In 1898, his mother arranged a marriage for him with a woman nine years younger than himself. They had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John, and Henry
Fish.
Police Search Area Of Murder Scene
12/14/35-New York, NY: Medical examiner Amos Squires directs policemen who are digging for bones at
the spot in Westchester County where parts of the body of slain Grace Budd were found. One
policeman has something and is showing it to a physician. Albert Fish aged recluse confessed
to the horrible killing of the ten year old girl whose disapearence seix years ago started a
nation wide search which has at last been successful.
March 14, 1935 © Bettmann/CORBIS
http://murderpedia.org/male.F/f/fish-albert-photos-2.htm
"Going
to the electric chair will be the supreme thrill of my life."
http://skcentral.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=16058#im=0Belle Sorenson Gunness
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(born as Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth; November 11, 1859 – April
28, 1908) was a Norwegian-American serial killer.
Standing six feet tall (183 cm) and weighing over 200 pounds (91 kg), she was a physically strong woman. She killed most of her suitors and boyfriends, and her two daughters, Myrtle and Lucy. She may also have killed both of her husbands and all of her children, on different occasions. Her apparent motives involved collecting life insurance, cash and other valuables, and eliminating witnesses. Reports estimate that she killed between 25 and 40 people over several decades.
First victim
In 1884, Gunness married Mads Ditlev Anton Sorenson in Chicago,
Illinois, where, two years later, they opened a confectionery store.
The business was not successful; within a year the shop mysteriously burned
down. They collected insurance, which paid for another home.
Though some researchers assert that the Sorenson union produced
no offspring, other
investigators report that the couple had four children: Caroline, Axel, Myrtle,
and Lucy. Caroline and Axel died in infancy, allegedly of acute colitis.
The symptoms of acute colitis — nausea, fever, diarrhea, and lower abdominal
pain and cramping — are also symptoms of many forms of
poisoning. Both Caroline's and Axel's lives were reportedly insured, and the
insurance company paid out. A May 7, 1908 article in The New York Times states that two
children belonging to Gunness and her husband Mads Sorensen were interred in her
plot in Forest Home cemetery. On June 13, 1900, Gunness and her family were
counted on the United States Census in Chicago. The
census recorded her as the mother of four children, of whom only two were
living: Myrtle A., 3, and Lucy B., 1. An adopted 10-year-old girl, identified
possibly as Morgan Couch but apparently later known as Jennie Olsen, also was
counted in the household.
Sorenson died on July 30, 1900, reportedly the only day on which
two life insurance policies on him overlapped. The first doctor to see him
thought he was suffering from strychninepoisoning.
However, the Sorensons' family doctor had been treating him for an enlarged heart,
and he concluded that death had been caused by heart failure.
An autopsy was
considered unnecessary because the death was not thought suspicious. Gunness
told the doctor that she had given her late husband medicinal
"powders" to help him feel better.
She applied for the insurance money the day after her husband's
funeral. Sorenson's relatives claimed that Gunness had poisoned her husband to
collect on the insurance. Surviving records suggest that an inquest was
ordered. It is unclear, however, whether that investigation actually occurred
or Sorenson's body was ever exhumed to check for arsenic, as his relatives
demanded. The insurance companies awarded her $8,500 (about $240,000 in 2012
dollars),
with which she bought a farm on the outskirts of La Porte,
Indiana.
Remains of Andrew Helgelien found on Gunness Hog Farm.
http://murderpedia.org/female.G/g/gunness-belle-photos-3.htm
The head of one of Belle Gunness'
victims
http://murderpedia.org/female.G/g/gunness-belle-photos-3.htm
James Warren "Jim" Jones
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Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple there in the 1950s. He later moved the Temple to California in the mid-1960s, and gained notoriety with the move of the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco in the early 1970s.
Deaths in Jonestown
910 inhabitants of Jonestown, 303
of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around a
pavilion. This
resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate
act until the September 11, 2001 attacks. No
video was taken during the mass suicide, though the FBI did recover a 45 minute audio recording
of the suicide in progress.
On that tape, Jones tells Temple members that the Soviet Union,
with whom the Temple had been negotiating a potential exodus for months, would
not take them after the Temple had murdered Ryan and four others at a nearby
airstrip. The
reason given by Jones to commit suicide was consistent with his previously
stated conspiracy theories of intelligence organizations allegedly conspiring
against the Temple, that men would "parachute in here on us,"
"shoot some of our innocent babies" and "they'll torture our
children, they'll torture some of our people here, they'll torture our
seniors." Parroting
Jones' prior statements that hostile forces would convert captured children to fascism,
one temple member states "the ones that they take captured, they're gonna
just let them grow up and be dummies."
Given that reasoning, Jones and several members argued that the
group should commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced
grape-flavored Flavor Aid. Later released videos made to show the best of
Jonestown shows Jones opening a storage container full of Kool-Aid in large
quantities. However, empty packets of grape Flavor Aid found on the scene show
that this is what was used to mix the "potion" (as was referred to in
several statements obtained by the FBI in the final tape recordings) along with
a sedative. One
member, Christine Miller, dissents toward the beginning of the tape. When
members apparently cried, Jones counseled, "Stop this hysterics. This is
not the way for people who are Socialists or Communists to die. No way for us
to die. We must die with some dignity." Jones
can be heard saying, "Don't be afraid to die," that death is
"just stepping over into another plane" and that it's "a
friend." At
the end of the tape, Jones concludes: "We didn't commit suicide; we
committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an
inhumane world." According
to escaping Temple members, children were given the drink first and families
were told to lie down together. Mass
suicide had been previously discussed in simulated events called "White
Nights" on a regular basis. During
at least one such prior White Night, members drank liquid that Jones falsely
told them was poison
Jones was found dead in a deck chair with a gunshot wound to his
head that Guyanese coroner Cyrill Mootoo stated was consistent with a self-inflicted
gun wound. However,
Jones' son Stephan believes his father may have directed someone else to shoot
him. An autopsy of
Jones' body also showed levels of the barbiturate Pentobarbital which
may have been lethal to humans who had not developed physiological tolerance. Jones'
drug usage (including LSD and cannabis)
was confirmed by his son, Stephan, and Jones' doctor in San Francisco.
909 Temple members died in
Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed
"revolutionary suicide" by Jones and some members on an audio tape of
the event and in prior discussions.
http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/28992
FILE--Bodies are strewn around the
Jonestown Commune in Jonestown, Guyana where more than 900 members of the
People's Temple committed suicide in Nov. 1978. The Rev. Jim Jones urged his
disciples to drink cyanide-laced grape punch. Jones, who was among those who
died, led the Peoples Temple, which ran a free clinic and a drug rehabilitation
program.(AP Photo/file)
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Jonestown-and-City-Hall-slayings-eerily-linked-in-2548703.php#photo-2467727
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer
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Diagnosed by psychologists and prison psychiatrists as
suffering from a borderline personality disorder, Dahmer was found to be
legally sane at his trial. Convicted of 15 of the 16 murders he had committed
in Wisconsin, Dahmer was sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment on February
15, 1992. He was later sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment in
relation to an additional homicide committed in the state of Ohio in 1978.
On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by
Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, where
he had been incarcerated.
Jeffrey Dahmer is known to have
killed 17 young men between 1978 and 1991. Of these victims, 12 were killed in
his North 25th Street apartment. Three further victims were murdered and
dismembered at his grandmother's West Allis residence, with his first and
second victims being murdered at his parents' home in Bath, Ohio and at the
Ambassador Hotel in Wisconsin respectively. A total of 14 of Dahmer's victims were
from various ethnic minority backgrounds, with nine victims being black,
although Dahmer was adamant the race of his victims was incidental to him and
that it was the body form of a potential victim which attracted his attention.
Most of
Dahmer's victims were killed by strangulation after being drugged with sedatives,
although his first victim was killed by a combination of bludgeoning and
strangulation and his second victim was battered to death, with one further
victim killed in 1990, Ernest Miller, dying of a combination of shock and
blood loss due to his carotid artery being cut Many of Dahmer's victims killed in
1991 had holes bored into their skulls through which Dahmer injected muriatic
acid or, later, boiling water, directly into the brain in an attempt to render a permanent,
submissive, unresistant state. On at least three occasions, this proved fatal
although on none of these occasions was this Dahmer's intention.
First off, Dahmer
had decomposing bodies in his apartment. He had three human heads and Human
meat in the freezer. Hands from several of his victims and a penis were found
in a closet. Two skulls that were painted grey were found in his closet. Male genetals
were preserved in Formaldehyde. A bottle of Chloroform was found which
investigators found out that it was used to drug the victims. They also found
hundreds of photos of the victims before, during the murders, and after death.
All of this evidence was eventually used in court.
http://dahmer-forensicsbramlett.weebly.com/evidence.html
http://weirdscenes.tumblr.com/post/6144134941/jeffrey-dahmer-monster
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy
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Bundy was regarded as handsome and charismatic by his
young female victims, traits he exploited to win their trust. He typically
approached them in public places, feigning injury or disability, or
impersonating an authority figure, before overpowering and assaulting them at
more secluded locations. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes for
hours at a time, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing
corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made further
interaction impossible. He decapitated at least 12 of his victims, and kept
some of the severed heads in his apartment for a period of time as mementos. On
a few occasions he simply broke into dwellings at night and bludgeoned his
victims as they slept.
Initially incarcerated in Utah in 1975 for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault, Bundy became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in multiple states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults, including three murders, before his ultimate recapture in Florida in 1978. He received three death sentences in two separate trials for the Florida homicides.
Ted Bundy died in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in
Starke, Florida, on January 24, 1989. Biographer Ann Rule described him as
"a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the
control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after."
He once called himself "... the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll
ever meet." Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team,
agreed. "Ted," she wrote, "was the very definition of heartless
evil."
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/november/serial-killers-part-3-ted-bundys-campaign-of-terror/serial-killers-part-3-ted-bundys-campaign-of-terror
For his last meal he had steak,
eggs, hash browns and coffee.
http://murderpedia.org/male.B/b1/bundy-ted-photos-9.htm
Richard Ramirez
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Ricardo Leyva "Richard" Muñoz Ramírez (February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013) was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar. His highly publicized home invasion crime spree terrorized the residents of the greater Los Angeles area, and later the residents of the San Francisco area, from June 1984 until August 1985. Prior to his capture, Ramirez was dubbed the "Night Stalker" by the news media. He used a wide variety of weapons, including handguns, knives, a machete, a tire iron, and a hammer. Ramirez, who was an avowed Satanist, never expressed any remorse for his crimes. The judge who upheld his thirteen death sentences remarked that Ramirez's deeds exhibited "cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding". Ramirez died of complications from B-cell lymphoma while awaiting execution on California's death row.
On April 10, 1984, 9-year old Mei Leung was found murdered in a
hotel basement where Ramirez was living in the Tenderloin district
of San Francisco. The girl had been raped, beaten and stabbed to death, and her
body was found hanging from a pipe. This, his first known killing,
was not initially identified as being connected to the crime spree. In 2009,
Ramirez's DNA was matched to DNA obtained at the crime scene.
"Night Stalker" crimes
On June 28, 1984, 79-year-old Jennie Vincow was found brutally
murdered in her apartment in Glassell Park. She had been stabbed
repeatedly while asleep in her bed, and her throat was slashed so deeply that
she was nearly decapitated.
On March 17, 1985, Ramirez attacked 22-year-old Maria Hernandez
outside her home in Rosemead,
shooting her in the face with a .22 caliber handgun after she pulled into her
garage.Inside the house was her roommate
Dayle Okazaki, age 34. She had heard the gunshot and ducked behind a counter to
hide when she saw Ramirez enter the kitchen. He was waiting when she checked to
see if he was gone, and he shot her once in the forehead, killing her. Hernandez survived her attack
because the bullet fired at her ricocheted off the keys she held in her hands
as she lifted them to protect herself.
Within an hour of the Rosemead home invasion, Ramirez struck
again in Monterey Park.
He attacked 30-year-old Tsai-Lian "Veronica" Yu and pulled her out of
her car onto the road. He shot her twice with a .22 caliber
handgun and fled. A police officer found her
still breathing, but she was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. The two attacks occurring on
the same day bolstered media attention, and in turn caused panic and fear among
the public. The news media dubbed the attacker, who was described as having
long curly hair, bulging eyes and wide-spaced rotting teeth, "The Walk-in
Killer" and "The Valley Intruder".
On March 27, 1985, Ramirez entered a home that he had
burglarized a year earlier in Whittier at
approximately 2 a.m. and killed the sleeping Vincent Zazzara, age 64, with a
gunshot to his head from a .22 caliber handgun. Zazzara's wife Maxine, age 44,
was awakened by her husband's murder, and Ramirez beat her and bound her hands
while demanding to know where her valuables were. While he ransacked the room,
Zazzara escaped her bonds and retrieved a shotgun from under the bed, which was
not loaded. An infuriated Ramirez shot her
three times with the .22, then fetched a large carving knife from the kitchen. Her body was mutilated with
multiple stab wounds, and her eyes were gouged out and placed in a jewelry box,
which Ramirez left with. The autopsy determined that
the mutilations were post-mortem. Ramirez left footprints from a pair of Avia sneakers in the flower beds, which
the police photographed and cast. This was virtually the only evidence that the
police had at the time. Bullets found at the scene were matched to those found
at previous attacks, and the police realized a serial killer was at large.
Vincent and Maxine's bodies were discovered by their son, Peter.
On May 14, 1985, Ramirez returned to Monterey Park in search of
another random victim and entered the home of Bill Doi, 66, and his disabled
wife Lillian, 56. Surprising Doi in his bedroom,
he shot him in the face with a .22 semi-automatic pistol as Doi went for his
own handgun. After beating the mortally
wounded man into unconsciousness, Ramirez entered Lillian's bedroom, bound her
with thumbcuffs, then raped her after he had
ransacked the home for valuables. Bill Doi died of his injuries
while in the hospital.
On the night of May 29, 1985, Ramirez drove a stolen Mercedes-Benz to Monrovia and
stopped at the house of Mabel "Ma" Bell, 83, and her sister Florence
"Nettie" Lang, 81. Finding a hammer in the
kitchen, he bludgeoned and bound the invalid Lang in her bedroom, then bound
and bludgeoned Bell before using an electrical cord to electrically shock the
woman. After raping Lang, he used
Mabel Bell's lipstick to draw a pentagram on her thigh, as well as one on the
wall of both bedrooms. Discovered two days later,
both women were found alive but comatose; Bell later died of her injuries.
The next day, he drove the same car to Burbank and
sneaked into the home of Carol Kyle, 42. At gunpoint, he bound Kyle and
her 11-year-old son with handcuffs and ransacked the house. He released Kyle to direct him
to where the family's valuables were; he then sodomized her repeatedly. He repeatedly ordered her not
to look at him, telling her at one point that he would "cut her eyes
out". He fled the scene after retrieving the child from the closet and
binding the two together again with the handcuffs.
On the night of July 2, 1985, he drove a stolen Toyota to Arcadia,
randomly selecting the house of Mary Louise Cannon, 75. After quietly entering the
widowed grandmother's home, he found her asleep in her bedroom. He bludgeoned
her into unconsciousness with a lamp and then repeatedly stabbed her using a
10-inch butcher knife from her kitchen. She was found dead at the crime scene.
On July 5, 1985, Ramirez broke into a home in Sierra Madre and
bludgeoned sixteen-year-old Whitney Bennett with a tire iron as she slept in
her bedroom. After searching in vain for a knife in the kitchen, Ramirez
attempted to strangle the girl with a telephone cord. He was startled to see sparks emanate from the cord, and when
his victim began to breathe, he fled the house believing that Jesus Christ had intervened and saved
her. She survived the savage
beating, which required 478 stitches to close the lacerations to her scalp.
On July 7, 1985, Ramirez burglarized the home of Joyce Lucille
Nelson, 61, again in Monterey Park. Finding her asleep on her living room
couch, he beat her to death using his fists and kicking her head. A shoe print
from an Avia sneaker was left imprinted on her face. After cruising two other
neighborhoods, he returned to Monterey Park and chose the home of Sophie
Dickman, 63. Ramirez assaulted and handcuffed
Dickman at gunpoint, attempted to rape her, and stole her jewelry; when she
swore to him that he had taken everything of value, he told her to "swear
on Satan".
On July 20, 1985, Ramirez purchased a machete before driving a
stolen Toyota to Glendale. He chose the home of Maxon
Kneiding, 68, and his wife Lela, 66. He burst into the sleeping
couple's bedroom and hacked them with the machete, then killed them with shots
to the head from a .22 caliber handgun. He further mutilated their
bodies with the machete before robbing the house of valuables.
After quickly fencing the stolen items from the Kneidling
residence, he drove to Sun
Valley. At approximately 4:15 am, he broke into the home of the
Khovananth family. He murdered the household
patriarch, Chainarong Khovananth, by shooting the sleeping man in the head with
a .25 caliber handgun, killing him
instantly. He then repeatedly raped the
man's wife, Somkid Khovananth, beating and sodomizing her. He bound the
couple's terrified eight-year-old son before dragging Somkid around the house
to reveal the location of any valuable items, which he stole. During his
assault he demanded that she "swear to Satan" that she was not hiding
any money from him.
On August 6, 1985, Ramirez drove to Northridge and
broke into the home of Chris Peterson, 38. Ramirez crept into the bedroom
and startled Peterson's wife Virginia, 27; he shot her in the face with a .25
caliber semi-automatic handgun. He shot Chris Peterson in the
temple and attempted to flee, but Peterson fought back and avoided being hit by
two more shots during the struggle before Ramirez escaped. The couple survived their
injuries.
On August 8, 1985, Ramirez drove a stolen car to Diamond Bar and
chose the home of Elyas Abowath, 31, and his wife Sakina, 27. Sometime after 2:30 am he
entered the house and went into the master bedroom. He instantly killed the
sleeping Elyas with a shot to the head from a .25 caliber handgun. He handcuffed and beat Sakina
while forcing her to reveal the locations of the family's jewelry, and then
brutally raped and sodomized her. He repeatedly demanded that she "swore
on Satan" that she wouldn't scream during his assaults. When the couple's
three-year-old son entered the bedroom, Ramirez tied the child up and then
continued to rape Sakina. After Ramirez left the home,
Sakina untied her son and sent him to the neighbors for help.
Ramirez, who had been following the media coverage of his
crimes, left the Los Angeles area and headed to the San Francisco Bay area. On August 18, 1985, Ramirez
entered the home of Peter Pan, aged sixty-six, and killed the sleeping man with
a gunshot to his temple from
a .25 caliber handgun. Pan's wife, Barbara, 62, was
beaten and sexually violated before being shot in the head and left for dead. At the crime scene Ramirez
used lipstick to scrawl a pentagram and the phrase "Jack the Knife"
on the bedroom wall.
When it was discovered that the ballistic and shoe print
evidence from the Night Stalker crime scenes matched the Pan crime scene,
then-mayor of San Francisco Dianne Feinstein divulged the information
in a televised press conference. This leak infuriated the
detectives in the case, as they knew that the killer would be following media
coverage and have an opportunity to destroy crucial forensic evidence. Ramirez, who had indeed been
watching the press, dropped his size 11 1/2 Avia sneakers over the side of the Golden Gate Bridge that
night. He remained in the area for a
few more days before heading back to the L.A. area.
On August 24, 1985, Ramirez traveled 76 miles south of Los
Angeles in a stolen orange Toyota to Mission Viejo,
and broke into the house of Bill Carns, 29, and his fiancée, Carole Smith, 27,
through a back door. Ramirez entered the bedroom of
the sleeping couple and awakened Carns when he cocked his .25 caliber handgun.
He shot Carns three times in the head before turning his attention to Smith.
Ramirez told the terrified woman that he was "The Night Stalker" and
forced her to swear she loved Satan as he beat her with his fists and bound her
with neckties from the closet. After stealing what he could
find, he dragged Smith to another room to rape and sodomize her. He then
demanded cash and more jewelry, making Smith "swear on Satan" there
was no more. Before leaving the home Ramirez told Smith, "Tell them the
Night Stalker was here." As he left in the Toyota,
thirteen-year-old neighbor James Romero III noticed the same "weird-looking
guy in black" that he had seen earlier in the night and thought
suspicious, and he decided to write down as much of the license plate as he
could. Carole Smith untied herself
and went to a neighbor's house to get help for her severely injured fiancé.
Surgeons were able to remove two of the bullets from his head, and he survived
his injuries.
When news of the attack broke, Romero told his parents about the
strange man in the orange Toyota, and they immediately contacted the police and
provided the partial license plate number. Carole Smith was able to give
a detailed description of the assailant to investigators. The stolen car was found on
August 28 in Wilshire,
and police were able to obtain a singlefingerprint from the rear view mirror
despite Ramirez's careful efforts to wipe the car clean of his prints. The print was positively
identified as belonging to Richard Muñoz Ramirez, who was described as a
25-year-old drifter from Texas with a long rap sheet that included many arrests for
traffic and illegal drug violations. Law enforcement officials
decided to release a mug shot of Ramirez from a December 12, 1984 arrest
(photo, below right) for car theft to
the media, and "The Night Stalker" finally had a face. At the police press conference
it was announced: "We know who you are now, and soon everyone else will.
There will be no place you can hide."
1st victim
http://skcentral.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=18106#im=0
Maxine Zazar, Victim of Richard
Ramirez. Mr. Zazar
was shot in the head and Mrs. Zazar's body was Mutilated Several stab
wounds and with a T-carving on her left breast, and her eyes gouged out.
http://parakovacs.postr.hu/cimke/Richard+Ramirez
The FBI's Sessions with Serial Killers
Early efforts to understand serial murder involved face-to-face interviews.
Published on June 14, 2014 by Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D. in Shadow Boxing
One of the pioneers of FBI behavioral profiling,
Robert Ressler, passed away last year. I was inspired by someone’s
commemorative post to look at an interview I had done with him. Ressler
initiated the FBI’s prison interview program, which assisted with data
collection, and it’s worth seeing the origins of that effort.
While on the road with John Douglas teaching local jurisdictions about the Behavioral Science Unit’s approach, Ressler thought it would be a good idea to use their spare time to visit prisons they were near to gain access to dangerous criminals. Douglas agreed. They wanted to interview known offenders to learn more about their criminal experiences. If the BSU could devise a protocol of questions to ask and get detailed responses, Ressler believed, the unit could start a database of information about traits and behaviors that these men shared in common.
“In 1978,” Ressler recalled, “I had come up with the idea of improving our instructional capabilities by conducting in-depth research into violent criminal personalities. I suggested we go into the prisons and interview violent offenders to get a better handle on them and formulate a foundation for criminal profiling. Initially, it was me and my partner who did this while we were on road trips for teaching purposes. If I was in California, I would contact the agent who was our training coordinator and have him set up interviews with people like Charles Manson or Sirhan Sirhan.”
They spoke with different types of offenders, from mass murderers to assassins (even failed ones) to serial killers. They did not want to ask questions that psychiatrists might have used during prison assessments. They were interested in practical angles for law enforcement.
To devise a protocol, data were collected on 118 victims, including some who’d survived an attempted murder. This helped to develop a questionnaire that covered the most significant aspects of the offenses. The goal was to gather information about how the murders were planned and committed, what the killers did and thought about afterward, what kinds of fantasies they had, and what they did before the next incident (where relevant).
Among the interviewees was William Heirens, who in 1945 and 1946 had committed three murders in an area that Ressler had known growing up, and who was famous for writing in lipstick a plaintiff request to be caught before he killed again.
“My father worked for the Chicago Tribune,” Ressler said, “and he would bring home the newspaper. I had heard that there was a killer loose in Chicago who was killing woman and leaving writings on the wall. It was a classic case and I started following it.”
Heirens was incarcerated in the Vienna Men’s Correctional Facility in southern Illinois, and one day Ressler came into the area. “It was weird, because kids have sports heroes and that sort of thing, and here I wanted to meet this serial killer. I told him I'd followed his case. He was about nine years older than me and he was kind of taken aback that he had a fan, in a sense. So I asked him to participate in our research.”
Other criminals who were willing to talk included Edward Kemper, the Coed Killer of San Jose who’d murdered eight girls, his mother, and her friend; Jerry Brudos, who’d killed and mutilated several women in Oregon; Richard Speck, who’d slaughtered eight nurses in their shared residence; and John Wayne Gacy, who’d killed 33 young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace beneath his home. Other offenders who were not killers were interviewed as well, such as Gary Trapnell, who had hijacked airplanes and committed armed robbery.
However, the database was primarily for gathering information about serial murder.
As
they went along, the agents kept refining their methods. Sometimes they had to
be creative to get the information they sought. They soon learned about the
issues with self-report interviews, when some offenders lied, played mind
games, exaggerated their crimes, and bragged about brutal deeds. A few were
mentally ill and somewhat inarticulate.
To get as much information as possible, the agents did extensive research on a target subject before talking with him. This was a way to show respect that the killer might enjoy, as well as to spot when his narrative deviated from the facts. Despite the brutality of many of the crimes, the agents realized that it was important to be nonjudgmental. Otherwise, the subject would not cooperate.
The initial study, meant to include 100 convicted offenders, compiled data from only 36, and some were not serial killers. However, it still proved to be helpful. Afterward, the interviews continued at a slower pace and other agents got involved.
From this initial sample of subjects, the researchers gained information that was useful for developing profiles in the late 1980s. The sample was too small to make broad generalizations, and it was far from random, but the protocol offered important groundwork for future members of this unit. Ressler's idea was a good one.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201406/the-fbis-sessions-serial-killers
Documentary offers complex examination of
murderabilia artists and collectors.
Published on March 8, 2014 by Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D. in Shadow Boxing
Serial Killer Culture, Revisited
I just returned from Whitechapel, in London,
where Jack the Ripper launched the "autumn of terror" in 1888. Here
and there, you can find T-shirts, notebooks, bookmarks, etc. with JtR logos,
along with plenty of tours. This is all part of what has been dubbed “serial
killer culture.”
About a year ago, I interviewed John Borowski about his film on the controversial subject of murderabilia and murder art, which will soon be released. I got to watch it last night. As usual, Borowski does quality work.
I
was pleased to see my colleague, Stephen Giannangelo, author of Real
Life Monsters, as the expert who frames the “collector” psychology. The
rest of the cast of characters were musicians, artists, hobbyists,
entrepreneurs, and even Borowski himself. Since I had asked John about this
movie a year ago , let me provide
background:
This is his fourth film. In the past, he has focused on a single case: Carl Panzram, Albert Fish, and H. H. Holmes. His interest in serial killers derives from watching horror films and developing a curiosity about the macabre. As he mentions in Serial Killer Culture, he hopes to understand the acts of men and woman who repeatedly kill, as well as to educate future generations.
“They are human beings just like all the rest of us,” he says, “and I feel it is society's responsibility to attempt to understand them and not just execute them so they are out of sight, out of mind. There must be a reason for their existence and I’m attempting to figure that out.”
For this film, Borowski “wanted to connect the dots of all the people whom I had read about or came in contact with while studying serial killers and their impact on pop culture, including artists who are inspired to create art based on serial killers. The intention is to shed light on why artists, collectors and the public are fascinated by serial killers, murder, crime, and death. The film also highlights the historical importance of archiving true crime artifacts and literature so that future generations may learn about true crime history.”
The dozen or so interviewees include artist Joe Coleman, “murder metal” band Macabre, collector Matthew Aaron and his Last Dime Museum, Joe Hiles from Serial Killer Central, Andrea Morden with her Dahmer Tours, and true-crime musicians The World-famous Crawlspace Brothers.
I must admit that my favorite segment featured Rick Staton, a mortician-turned-collector who initiated the serial killer art shows that featured John Wayne Gacy’s work. He’d been featured in an earlier documentary,Collectors, and this time around we get his perspective as a burnout. He still has plenty of stuff, which Borowski shows, but after many years, he’s had his fill. He’s quite articulate about his experience.
Staton makes it clear that without Life Magazine and the rest of the mainstream media producing gruesome images and riveting crime narratives, there wouldn’t be a serial killer culture. (Personally, I’d take this further back to 19th-century crime museum founders who had hoped to “educate” the public and had quickly learned how lucrative such displays – and souvenirs – can be.) You get the point: why are murder musicians and artists so reviled while mainstream media photos and tales that cover the same subjects so fully supported?
“There has never before been a film like Serial Killer Culture,” Borowski says. “Instead of focusing only on collectors, which plays a small part in my film, I chose to focus on the reasons artists are inspired to create works based on serial killers, as well as the public's fascination with serial killing and true crime. The film is more of a study of the pop culture influence that serial killers have had on America and the reasons why serial killers have become celebrities.”
There is definitely something eerie about looking at items that killers themselves have touched, i.e., Charles Manson’s black-and-red tarantula creation. Apparently, he used guitar strings for the legs and wool from his socks, dyed with Kool-Aid, for the head and bulbous body. He spent a lot of time on it and you can almost feel those eyes on his creation as he wound the yarn into a ball.
I certainly experienced something like this as I stood in Mitre Square, where the Ripper supposedly gutted Catherine Eddowes. It’s a quiet place on a narrow street. It's creepy. But I also felt it when I looked at the maps and drawings from that case, under glass, in the quite respectable London Hospital Museum. Within a half mile of each other, high-mindededucation and voyeuristic frisson merged.
I
understand why some people are offended by gory murder art or a Jeffrey Dahmer
Murder Tour (especially victims' families), but there issomething
magnetic about these over-the-top crimes. I write a “crime-trotting” column
for Destinations Travel Magazine that has
become a popular feature. I get educated, I educate, and I also provide what
Ramirez calls “safe danger.”
It's difficult to separate these aspects into "this is OK" and "this is not." I think they're intricately linked. I don’t want to own Dorothy Puente’s fingerprint card or Arthur Shawcross’s toenail, but I’d love to get my hands on a limited-edition Ripperopoly game or tour Joe Coleman’s Odditorium.
I don’t know any other documentary producer who can deliver these elements the way Borowski does. I used to show Collectors in my course on serial murder. I will now switch to Serial Killer Culture.
To
learn more about this film, or other Waterfront productions, visitwww.serialkillerculture.com.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201403/serial-killer-culture-revisited
Katherine Ramsland is a professor of forensic
psychology at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, where she also teaches
criminal justice. She holds a master's in forensic psychology from the John Jay
College of Criminal Justice, a master's in clinical psychology from Duquesne
University, a master's in criminal justice from DeSales University, and a Ph.D.
in philosophy from Rutgers. She has been a therapist and a consultant. Dr.
Ramsland has published over 1,000 articles and 46 books, including:
This concludes the third week of death articles. We did not intend for these three to be a series but "Death", "Mass Murders" and "Serial Killers" has given us a broad outlook upon our mortality. If anything we walk away with a greater respect for life and hopefuly more self control of our own selves in dealing with others. This has been Felicity for "The Noodleman Group".
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