EDWARD GEIN

Edward Theodore Gein (August 27, 1906 - July 26, 1984), was one of the most notorious murderers in U.S. history. The necrophiliac nature of his crimes shocked the world, even though it may never be known if he committed more than two murders. Besides the death of his brother in 1944 under mysterious circumstances, six people disappeared from the Wisconsin towns of La Crosse and Plainfield between 1947 and 1957.

Childhood of Ed Gein

Ed Gein was born to Augusta Lehrke (1878-1945) and George P. Gein (1873-1940) on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His parents, both natives of Wisconsin, had married on July 7, 1900, and their marriage produced Ed and his older brother, Henry G. Gein (1901-1944). Gein's father was a violent alcoholic who was frequently unemployed. Gein and his brother rejected their violent, aimless father, as did Augusta, who treated her husband like a nonentity. Despite her deep contempt for her husband, the atrophic marriage persisted. Divorce was not an option due to the family's religious beliefs. Augusta operated the small family grocery store and eventually purchased a farm on the outskirts of another small town, Plainfield, which became the Gein family's permanent home. Augusta decided to move to this desolate location to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons. Gein only left the premises to go to school and Augusta blocked any attempt he made to pursue friendships. Besides school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta, who was a Lutheran and fanatically religious, drummed into her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drink, and the belief that all women (herself excluded) were whores. According to Augusta, the only acceptable form of sex was solely for procreation. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament dealing with death, murder and divine retribution.

At the age of ten, Gein experienced an orgasm upon viewing his mother and father slaughtering a hog in a nearby shed. When Gein reached puberty, Augusta became increasingly strict, once dousing him in scalding water after she caught him masturbating in the bathtub, grabbing his genitals and calling them the "curse of man".

With a slight growth over one eye and an effeminate demeanor, the young Gein became a target for bullies. Classmates and teachers recall other off-putting mannerisms such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal joke (a possible sign of hysteria). Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.

Deaths of Ed Gein's family members

By the time his father, George, died in 1940, Henry had begun to reject Augusta's view of the world. He had even taken to bad-mouthing her within earshot of his mortified brother. In March 1944, the brothers found themselves in the middle of a brush fire on the farm. When Ed ran to get the police, he told them he had lost sight of Henry, but then led them directly to his brother's corpse. Although there was evidence Henry had suffered blunt trauma to the head, the local county coroner decided he died of asphyxiation while fighting the fire. Gein then lived alone with his mother. Less than two years later, on December 29, 1945, Augusta died from a series of strokes, leaving her grief-stricken son alone on the isolated farmstead.

Arrest of Ed Gein

Police investigating the disappearance of a store clerk, Bernice Worden, in Plainfield on November 16, 1957, suspected Gein to be involved. Upon entering a shed on his property, they made their first horrific discovery of the night: Worden's corpse. She had been decapitated, and was hanging upside down by the ankles and had been split open down the torso like a deer. The mutilations had been performed post-mortem; she had been shot at close-range from a .22-caliber rifle.

Searching the house, authorities found:

* severed heads acting as bedposts in the bedroom;

* skin used to make lampshades and upholster chair seats;

* skulls made into soup bowls;

* a human heart (it is disputed where the heart was found; the deputies' reports all claim that the heart was in a saucepan on the stove, with some crime scene photographers claiming it was in a paper bag);

* a face mask made out of real facial skin found in a paper bag;

* a necklace of human lips;

* a waistcoat, called a "mammary vest", made up of a vagina and breasts stitched together;

* other items fashioned from the parts of human bodies, including a belt made from nipples.

Above all, Gein's most infamous creation was an entire wardrobe fabricated of human skin consisting of leggings, a gutted torso (including breasts) and an array of tanned, dead-skin masks that looked leathery and almost mummified.

Gein eventually admitted under questioning that he would dig up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and take the bodies home, where he tanned their skin to make his macabre possessions. One writer describes Gein's practice of putting on the tanned skins of women as an "insane transvestite ritual". Gein also participated in a stunted form of necrophilia, achieving sexual pleasure by playing with the mutilated sexual organs of corpses. Gein denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining, "They smelled too bad." During interrogation, Gein also admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan, a local tavern employee who had been missing since 1954.

Shortly after his mother's death, Gein decided he wanted a sex change, although it is a matter of some debate whether or not he was transsexual; by most accounts, he created his "woman suit" so he could pretend to be his mother, not merely change sex.

Harold Schechter, a leading expert on serial killers, wrote a best-selling book about the Gein case called Deviant. In this book, Schechter mentions that Plainfield sheriff Art Schley physically assaulted Gein during questioning by banging Gein's head and face into a brick wall; because of this, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible. Schley died of a heart attack at the age of 43 shortly before Gein's trial. Many who knew him said he was so traumatized by the horror of Gein's crimes and the fear of having to testify (notably about assaulting Gein) that it led to his early death. One of his friends said, "He was a victim of Ed Gein as surely as if he had butchered him."

Gein was found mentally incompetent and thus unfit to stand trial at the time of his arrest, and was sent to the Central State Hospital (now the Dodge Correctional Institution) in Waupun, Wisconsin. Later, Central State Hospital was converted into a prison and Gein was transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1968, Gein's doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial; he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the rest of his life in the hospital.

While Gein was in detention, his house burned to the ground. Arson was suspected. In 1958, Gein's car, which he used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at public auction for a then-considerable sum of $760 to an enterprising carnival sideshow operator named Bunny Gibbons. Gibbons called his attraction the "Ed Gein Ghoul Car" and charged carnival-goers 25 cents admission to see it.

Death of Ed Gein

On July 26, 1984, he died of respiratory and heart failure in Goodland Hall at the Mendota Mental Health Institute (Not Fond Du Lac county as Find A Grave reports) His gravesite in the Plainfield cemetery was frequently vandalised over the years; souvenir seekers would chip off pieces of his gravestone before the bulk of it was stolen in 2000. The gravestone was recovered in June 2001 near Seattle and is presently displayed in a Wautoma, Wisconsin museum.

Serial Killer or just a regular old Murderer? 
By Michael Aloisi
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

Ed Gein famously opened American’s eyes to deranged and sick habits that they never imagined in their worst nightmares.  He was the man that inspired such films as Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs.  A man who ate his soup out of human skullcaps and wore socks made out of human skin.  A man who had a window shade pull made of human lips and stored salted genitalia in a box.  A man who is famously known as America’s first serial killer.  Which is not true.  Gein, technically was not a serial killer. 

Though the term is a mere three decades old, nowadays serial killer is thrown around in so many television shows and movies that people have forgotten that a serial killer is not just someone who commits murders.  You see, there are rules to being defined as such… Rules the F.B.I uses these rules to determine if they are dealing with a true serial killer.  Of course every case is unique, but these are the factors that most killers have in common.

First and foremost a serial killer must have three or more kills, usually with a cooling off period in between kills.  Hence why Gein is not one.  Though suspected of more murders, Gein was convicted for only killing two women.  Most of the body parts found in his house where from robbed graves.  Of course, not everyone who kills three people is considered a serial killer.  There is much more to it than that.  For you wouldn’t think of a mafia hit man that has twenty kills under his belt as a serial killer now would you? 

What about someone who goes out and massacres thirty people in a mall?  Again, they are not serial killers.  They have their own name, “Spree Killers”.  A spree killer is someone who goes and kills multiple people over the course of a short period of time.  Serial killers are much more methodical. 

Besides body count there are other attributes one needs to have to be deemed the title that makes most American’s shiver.  Victims; unlike most murderers who know the person they kill, serial killer’s prey tend to be strangers.  Most of the time the killer is usually not connected to the person in any way.  The murders (though they might have a pattern as in a preferred type, like blonds) usually seem to be random at first.  It’s this randomness that usually throws off police in the beginning.  With time between kills and no connection between victims it can take time for a killer’s murders to be linked. 

On a psychological level most serial killers seem to have a need to sadistically dominate their victims.  It tends to be a power issue as expressed by Ted Bundy in this quote “You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body.  You’re looking into their eyes.  A person in that situation is God!”  While most will never admit to this need when examined on a psychological level, the majority of serial killers desire that dominance.  Whether they even realize it themselves or not. 

One of the most common reasons for murder is profit.  Kill a man, take his wallet and car.  Not true for Serial Killers.  In almost all cases they do not try to profit from their killings.  It is purely a psychological satisfaction that they receive.  Though a few have been known to take some cash out of a pocket, profit was not the motivation or reason for the kill. 

The next common trait that they may have is their victims might hold a “symbolic” meaning to them.  For example, each victim may represent their mother or the person who abused them as a child.  This is usually found out through their method of killing.  For though many may experiment with how they kill and play with their victims, many tend to enjoy the same methods and repeat them over and over again. 

Lastly, most serial killers tend to pick vulnerable victims.  As in prostitutes and runaways.  Though anyone is susceptible to a killer’s knife, most victims are chosen for their accessibility and ease.  A runaway that has no family to report to is easy pickings and less suspicious.  Or someone who is drunk and alone in a dark place makes for an easier target.  The more vulnerable they are, the less chances of getting caught. 

Those are the six aspects the F.B.I uses to deem a killer with the title of “Serial”.  Of course we could get into the psychology and childhood history of said killers, but we’ll save that for another time.  In the meantime think about this fact…  During childhood almost all serial killers did three things.  Wet their beds into late ages; had an unhealthy obsession with fire (setting them and playing with it); and they all showed cruelty to animals.  If this sounds your child, someone you know or even yourself, you better keep an eye out, or you may end up in the pages of this magazine. 

Edward Theodore Gein
The Butcher of Plainfield, The Plainfield Butcher, The Mad Butcher, The Plainfield Ghoul
By chris Bartholomew
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

On August 27, 1906 in Vernon County, Wisconsin Edward Theodore Gein was born, and his upbringing surely had a hand in making him infamous.

He was raised on the family's farm near Plainfield, Wisconsin. A shy, lonely boy, Gein grew to be a reclusive man. His alcoholic father died in 1940 and his domineering, religious mother, Augusta, sternly warned Gein and his brother Henry against premarital sex. When Gein was 38, his brother Henry was found dead on a brush pile. (It is said that Ed killed Henry so he could be more alone with his mother.  In some sources it says that Henry was found dead in the Gein barn or was killed trying to put out a fire that had got the barn; but in others it says that Henry died while fighting a forest fire, and got trapped and was either burned or died from smoke inhalation.)   The next year his mother died, and he tried to raise her from the dead by "will power". Failing this, he became depressed. He claimed to have heard her voice talking to him for about a year after she died, and felt that "she was good in every way". In reality she had been a fearsome bible-quoting tyrant who dominated his every waking hour, and warned him to stay away from the women of the town, who were harlots and sinners.

Townspeople knew him as shy Eddie Gein, the local handyman, who was always willing to help out fixing a fence or babysitting. Older children would sit enthralled as he told them morbid ghost stories and said his house was haunted. Most of their parents just thought he was a little crazy, but about as harmless as they come.

Eventually, in the face of overwhelming evidence, they began to view him as a cunning and devious killer. The police and psychiatrists questioning him, on the other hand, felt that he really had no idea of what all the fuss was about.

Gein took to reading texts on female anatomy and in 1947 he began opening the graves of local women and taking portions of the corpse's home, where he preserved them. This activity went undetected for years.

In 1954, a local woman vanished, but though he was a suspect, Gein was not arrested.

How could a middle-aged bachelor live for years in the middle of a tiny community in a house piled high with corpses, making odd jokes about embalming to his fellow workers, without anyone noticing?

That was the scariest thing about Ed Gein: His apparent ordinariness.

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

He enlisted the help of an old friend named Gus.  Gus was a weird loner too, and quite definitely odd - he went to the asylum a few years later.  Gus was Ed Gein’s trusted buddy, and agreed to assist Ed in opening a grave to secure a corpse for ‘medical experiments’.  Gus helped dig the graves.

The first corpse came from a grave less than a dozen feet away from the last resting place of Gein’s mother.

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

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

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

His collection of trophies grew, and so did the range of his experimentation and obsession.

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

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

A customer who dropped into the tavern found the place deserted, and a large bloodstain on the floor.  A spent .32 cartridge lay near it.  Bloodstains ran out the back door and into the parking lot, where they halted beside tire tracks that looked like those of a pickup truck.  It looked as if Mary Hogan had been shot and taken away.

Police were unable to find any clues to the disappearance.  But a few weeks later, when a sawmill owner named Elmo Ueeck spoke of the disappearance to Ed Gein, Gein replied: ‘She isn’t missing. She’s at the farm right now.’ Ueeck could not even work up the interest to ask him what he meant.

There may have been other victims in the years that followed, but nothing definite is known about Gein’s murderous activities until that day on 16 November, 1957, when he shot and killed Bernice Worden in her hardware store on Plainfield’s Main Street.  He used a .22 rifle from a display rack in the store, inserting his own bullet which he carried with him.  Ed Gein shot and killed Bernice Worden, locked the store and took the body home in the store’s truck.  Gein also removed the cash register, which contained $41 in cash, but not because he wanted to commit robbery, but he later explained that he wanted to see how it worked, and fully intended to return it later.

Bernice Worden’s son, Frank often assisted her in the store, but on this particular Saturday morning he’d gone deer hunting.  When he returned in the late afternoon he discovered the store to be closed with the lights still on and his mother missing, also the cash register was gone.  There was blood on the floor.

A local garage attendant told him that he had seen the store truck driving away at about 9.30 that morning.

Frank Worden served as deputy sheriff in the area and immediately alerted the sheriff, Art Schley, and reported the circumstances.  He checked the record of sales transactions made that morning.  One of them was for half a gallon of antifreeze.  Worden remembered that Ed Gein had stopped by the previous evening at closing time and said he’d be back the next morning for antifreeze.  Ed had also asked Worden if he intended to go hunting the next day.  Worden also recalled that Gein had been in and out of the store quite frequently the previous week

Since the cash register was missing, it appeared that Gein had planned a robbery after finding a suitable time when the coast would be clear.

Worden told of his suspicions to the sheriff.  The sheriff Art Schley and captain Lloyd Schoephoester set off for the farm, seven miles outside Plainfield…

The house was dark and Ed Gein was absent, so acting on a hunch, they drove to a store in West Plainfield where Gein usually purchased groceries.  Gein was there as he’d just had dinner with the proprietor and his wife.  He was just about to leave in his truck.

The sheriff halted him, and asked him to get into the police car for questioning.  Gein told of how he thought someone had tried to frame him for Bernice Worden’s death.  Sheriff Schley took Ed Gein into custody; Schley had not mentioned Bernice Worden’s death.
Sheriff Schley and Captain Schoephoester returned to the house with other officers.  The doors to the farmhouse were locked, but the door to the side shed at the rear of the house opened when Schley pushed it with his foot.  It was nighttime and since the farm had no electricity, the sheriff had to use a torch.  It revealed a naked corpse of a woman hanging upside down from a crossbeam, the legs spread wide apart, and a long slit running from the genitals almost to the throat.  But the throat, like the head, was missing.  The genitals and the anus were also missing.  Bernice Worden had been disemboweled like a deer.

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

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

The bodies of 15 different women had been mutilated to provide Gein’s trophies.  It is also said that sometimes Gein brought house gifts of fresh venison to his neighbors although Gein said he had never shot a deer in his life.

One early story of Ed Gein is that in 1942.  Ed was invited over to his nearest neighbor's house, the Bankses.  A female relative of the Bankses was in the house, and was wearing shorts; Ed couldn’t keep his eyes off her legs.  Later that night a man broke into the woman’s house and grabbed her small son by the throat, asking him where his mother had gone.  The intruder fled before the boy could tell him anything.  The boy thought he had recognized Ed Gein as the man.

Some other stories of possible victims of Gein are an eight-year-old girl who went missing in 1947 and a fifteen-year-old who had disappeared on her way home from babysitting in 1953.  The babysitter’s bloodstained clothes were found but no body had turned up.  In Ed’s house there were some body parts which didn’t prove to come from that of his grave robbing or 2 known murders.

Gein was in a series of examinations at the Central State Hospital for the criminally insane.  He was proven insane.  The reasons for his actions were seen; he loved his mother but he hated her, so that is why he killed older women.  It is said that Mary Hogan had more of a passing resemblance to his mother.

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

The case created a sensation because of the true nature of the crime.  Thousands of people drove to Plainfield to get a look at the 'murder farm'.  Eventually the place was burned down by the Plainfield citizens as they regarded it as a place of evil.

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

In the house the police found:

Human skulls mounted upon the corner posts of his bed
Human skullcaps, apparently in use as soup bowls
An array of "shrunken heads"
Skin fashioned into a lampshade and used to upholster chair seats
Skin from the face of Mary Hogan, a local tavern owner, found in a paper bag
A vest crafted from the skin of a woman's torso
Socks made from human flesh
A sheath made from human skin
A human heart (it is disputed where the heart was found; deputy reports all claimed that the heart was in a saucepan on the stove, while some crime scene photographers claimed it was in a paper bag)
A window shade pull consisting of human lips
Four noses
Organs in the refrigerator
Pieces of salted genitalia in a box

Gein's most notorious creations were an array of "shrunken heads." Various neighborhood children — whom Gein occasionally babysat — had seen or heard of these objects, which Gein offhandedly described as relics from the South Seas, purportedly sent by a cousin who had served in World War II. Upon investigation, these turned out to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from cadavers and used by Gein as masks.

The skins from ten human heads were found preserved, and another skin taken from the upper torso of a woman was rolled up on the floor. There was a belt fashioned from carved-off nipples, a chair upholstered in human skin, the crown of a skull used as a soup-bowl, lampshades covered in flesh pilled taut, a table propped up by a human shinbones, and a refrigerator full of human organs. The four posts on Gein's bed were topped with skulls and a human head hung on the wall alongside nine death-masks - the skinned faces of women - and decorative bracelets made out of human skin. The stunned searchers also uncovered a soup bowls fashioned from skulls, a shoebox full of female genitalia, faces stuffed with newspapers and mounted like hunting trophies on the walls, and a "mammary vest" flayed from the torso of a woman. Gein later confessed that he enjoyed dressing himself in this and other human-skin garments and pretending he was his own mother.

In 1958, Gein's car, which he'd used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at a public auction for the then-considerable sum of $760 to carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons. Gibbons later charged carnival-goers 25¢ admission to see it.

On July 26, 1984, Gein died of respiratory and heart failure due to cancer in Goodland Hall at the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin. His gravesite in the Plainfield cemetery was frequently vandalized over the years; souvenir seekers chipped off pieces of his gravestone before the bulk of it was stolen in 2000. The gravestone was recovered in June 2001 near Seattle and is displayed at present in a museum in Waushara County, Wisconsin.

In 1995 near the location of the old Gein home place parts of up to eleven human skeletons all female but one were discovered in a old well. Local police said that while they can not say 100 percent for certain it is in all likelihood that these 11 remains were the work of Ed Gein as they dated back to the time when he was on his killing spree in the area. The only male was a mailman that vanished the year before Ed Gein was caught. At the time of his disappearance he had been Ed Geins mail delivery person.

Many people over the years since his death have claimed to have seen a younger Ed Gein walking along the road in the direction of his former home which had burned to the ground years before. He is often seen in his car driving the roads around his former home. Several young couples parked in make-out areas over the years have claimed to have been approached by a man who fits Geins description and several have claimed Gein has beat on their car windows. The local police refused to post the drawing of the lover's lane stalker because he so closely resembled Ed Gein.

Ed Gein’s activities certainly inspired the literature and film industry.  Because of the true nature of the crimes it gave Hollywood a lot of ideas to work on.

One such early film was Psycho.  Based on the Robert Bloch novel and made into a Hitchcock film.  The connection being the overpowering mother and horror of the film, it made it one of the first of a kind.  Robert Bloch got most of the ideas for Psycho from Ed Gein's life.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was one movie lightly based on Ed Gein.  The story is about a group of traveling teens who stumble on a horror house.  The house’s residents are a family of weird homicidal cannibals who also like grave robbing and constructing furniture made of bones and skulls alike.  The lead bad guy is called ‘Leatherface’. 

Leatherface likes chasing teens around with his chainsaw and wearing the human face mask of his victims.  There are about four Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies each with the teen’s trying to escape the deadly Leatherface.  The connection is mostly with the house, grave robbery and cannibalism.

One more recent and Academy Award winning film is Silence of the Lambs.  It’s about an FBI agent who’s tracking down a serial killer and to find him she must get the help of an intelligent cannibal, Dr. Hannibal Lector.  The serial killer she’s trying to track down is called ‘Buffalo Bill’ because he likes to kill women and make clothes of their skin, also he wants to be a woman, hence the skin costume like that of Gein.  There are a lot of connections to this film and Ed Gein, being with the skin clothes, cannibalism, and Buffalo Bill being a transvestite.

ED GEIN IN ASYLUM
By Vanessa West
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

Joseph Conrad wrote, "Belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." He could have been describing Ed Gein. Gein, a sometime farmer, was arrested in 1957 in his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin. While investigating the disappearance of a local shopkeeper, Bernice Worden, police found a treasure trove of the grotesque in Gein's home. Along with the decapitated, eviscerated body of Worden, authorities discovered several 'death masks' - the faces of women with scalps intact; a box containing female genitalia; severed heads; household items made from human remains; and perhaps most horrifically, the tanned torso of a woman, which Gein would later confess to wearing. The little man, often described as odd, quiet and "good with children," was arrested, judged mentally incompetent, and sent to Central State Hospital in Waupan, Wisconsin. Gein would spend most of the following decade in Central State, until the facility was converted into a prison. He was then sent to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Despite a diagnosis of schizophrenia, Gein was found competent to stand trial in 1968. A two hundred page confession was thrown out by Judge Robert Gollmar, who citied the defendant's precarious mental state. Gein was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Gein's demeanor at Mendota was alternatively described as quiet, unobtrusive and blatantly lewd. While his lawyer, Dominic Frinzi, described him as "soft spoken", hospital nurses remembered him as freely describing sexual acts. In 1974, Gein petitioned the court for re-examination and release. An evaluation by Dr. Thomas J. Malueg reads, "Mr. Gein has little insight concerning the possibility that society will remember him and his notoriety, and may continue to respond to him in ways that could be anxiety provoking. He feels that everyone has forgotten him and that he will be able to simply walk away from harassment should it occur. He has some unrealistic plans about going to Australia ... although he is not certain about how to arrange his travel plans." The petition for release proved futile, and Gein spent the remaining ten years of his life in Mendota's Goodland Hall. On July 26, 1984 he died of respiratory and heart failure brought on by cancer. Gein was buried in Plainfield's cemetery next to his mother. Souvenir seekers chipped away pieces of his gravestone until it was eventually stolen completely. The recovered stone is now housed in a Wautoma, Wisconsin museum. Ed Gein's story lives on to this day, more than fifty years after his house of horrors was discovered. He has been made infamous in film, providing the basis for the character of Norman Bates in Psycho and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Many muscians have written songs about Gein, used his name in their stage persona, or simply named their band after him. He is inescapable in the lore of the macabre. Despite media attention in the form of countless songs, books, films, and television programs, we are still no closer to understanding what caused Ed Gein to commit his horrific crimes. Perhaps he said it best, when he stated simply, chillingly, "I had a compulsion to do it."

Ed Gein
The man, the myth, the movies.
By Robert Ward
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

Ed Gein started his way into infamy in 1950’s. The disappearance of a bartender named Mary Hogan sparked an investigation that would scare the mid-west and inspire movie writers. Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are two of the more famous movies that talked about certain parts of Gein’s actions. (That’s right kids, despite what you think, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre never happened!) There have been 2 movies since 2000 that have been made to show “The real story of Ed’s life”. One is just a self titled “Ed Gien” that was written by Chuck Parello(2000). The other is “Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield” written by Michael Feifer (2007). The self titled movie was great, not only did it go into detail about the troubled childhood of Ed, but it shows Ed’s slow decline into insanity. Not only is the story very true to the acts, but they also casted very well. Steve Railsback plays Ed to near perfection, not only with the correct (according to friends and neighbors of Gein’s) attitude of a mild manner, very isolated man. His stature rang true to the fairly scrawny killer. This movie had almost every detail covered (except a couple of minor errors, such as places and timelines). All in all this was a great insight to the life of the man who is recognized as “America’s First Serial killer). The Butcher of Plainfield was ok, and that’s being very generous. This movie depicted Ed to be a roughly six foot, 235 pound mad man. Kane Hodder is a very convincing killer, but not this killer. This movie concentrates solely on the last couple of days of Ed’s days as a free man. Giving no explanation of why Ed was afraid of his mother, although they do give her some “voice moments” yelling at him and her face appearing on the face of the victim (Mary Hogan). Had I not known the real story, I would’ve been lost and totally confused by who the hell this woman is. Like I said previously Ed was a small man, this movie is just a way to incorporate the life of Ed into The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even having a scene where Ed picks up a man and tosses him into a gap of a tree, then smashes his head in. So, if you want a good movie that shows the real Ed Gein I recommend “Ed Gein” and if you run across an extra 90 min to waste in your life than grab “The Butcher of Plainfield”, But “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid”.

A history of cannibalism
By Frederick W. Cook
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

A cannibal, one might say, is the extreme opposite of a vegetarian. Though for a cannibal, vegetarians might be on the menu.  Cannibalism is the act of eating ones own species, generally “human eating human.”   The act of cannibalizing has been around since man first walked upright.  There are two classifications of cannibalism that have been practiced; endocannibalism and exocannibalism.

Endocannibalism is the act of eating another human from within ones own tribe, group or culture and generally serves a variety of purposes or reasons, usually involving ritual.  Exocannibalism is the act of eating humans from outside of ones culture, tribe etc…and also includes those who eat corpses of the already deceased.  Most commonly in both forms of cannibalism, eating the same species was not done for nutrition (puuuuuuure protein) and instead held some ritual significance. 

A third classification of cannibalism occurs only under extreme circumstances, famine, survival or mental illness, but has no real title.  This third classification is described by Wikipedia.com, as cannibalism sanctioned by “cultural norm.”  It is easiest to find evidence of the third classification of cannibalism throughout history, generally due to famine and food shortages. 

Historically, calling ones neighbor a cannibal was used to almost remove their humanity and allow the accuser the right to kill or enslave the populace.  It has been proven that many of the claims of cannibalism throughout history, have been false and were used for personal gain.  This does not in any way mean that reports of cannibalism were all merely fabricated, as proof has also been found to substantiate cannibalisms practice. 

In Germany along the Hönne, where many of Europe’s largest caves were built, 1,891 signs of cannibalism were found, especially in Karhofhöhle cave from around 1000BC – 700AD.  In the years BC 1073-1064 in ancient Egypt, the mighty Nile River didn’t flood and the people were made to resort to cannibalism or starvation to survive.  It was widely stated and speculated that during the first crusades cannibalism and crusaders feasting on the flesh of the conquered, occurred numerous times. 

From the spring of 1315 until 1322, Europe was wracked with what is known as the “Great Famine.”  Innumerable cases of cannibalism sprang throughout Europe, as millions of people died of starvation and extreme famine.  Many cultures over the millennia have practiced cannibalism; the Aztecs, the Anasazi Indians, 1920’s Soviet Russian’s, Chinese, early American settlers and serial killers the world over. 

There are few cultures that exist that do not have at least speculative or incidental (Spurts) accounts of cannibalism in their history.  In 1884 some of the first catholic missionaries formed the first Roman Catholic Church in the Solomon Island’s and were soon after eaten by the natives there.  (Tastes like HOLY!)

In 1552, Hans Staden was shipwrecked with his small crew of survivors and consequently captured by natives for nine months in Brazil.  Staden’s crew was killed and eaten.  However, Staden managed to survive to tell the tale.  Whangaroa in 1809 was the largest mass killing and episode of cannibalism in New Zealand’s history, when the Maori took revenge for the whipping of a Maori chief’s son aboard a slave ship.  Sixty-six men, women and children were killed and then eaten by the Maori tribes in what’s known as the “Boyd Massacre.”

In 1816 a French Frigate called “The Medusa,” found itself crashing off the coast of Senegal.  140 members of the Medusa’s party (crew and passengers) were stranded on a raft for four days at sea, living off of the remains of those who died.   The Medusa crash and following (monstrous Tom Sawyer-esk) raft excursion have been the topic of numerous paintings, poems, plays and movies. 

In the winter of 1846-1847 a group of individuals left independence, Missouri bound for California, but became snow-blind along the Sierra Nevada.  The emigrants in the party resorted to cannibalism to survive.  Those individuals became known as the “Donner party,” after the brothers George and Jacob Donner, who alongside their friend James Reed, formed the party with their crew of around thirty hands. 

In February of 1945 the Japanese soldiers Maj. Matoba, Gen. Tachibana, Adm. Mori, Capt. Yoshii, and Dr. Teraki were found guilty and hanged of killing and eating five American airmen.  This was one of the most horrific (and well documented) atrocities against American captive soldiers committed during World War two. 

Another account of cannibalism during WWII comes during the siege of Leningrad.  It’s been stated that after consuming all of the pets around them, people began killing other humans for their flesh.  This became such a problem that the Leningrad police formed a special anti-cannibalism division.  (Think Soilent green…)

New York Times reporter William Buehler Seabrook, after a trip to West Africa and meeting with the Guere tribe, became fascinated with cannibalism.  An intern at the Sorbonne procured some meat from a man who was killed in an accident and Seabrook soon got his wish to understand cannibalism a little bit better, he said;

“It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable.”

Now that’s a man who likes to bite tooth and nail into his work!

Journalist Neil Davis reported on cannibalism in the nineteen-sixties and seventies during the South East Asian wars.  Cambodian troops ate the livers of those they’d kill or capture as well as those under the Khmer Rouge were forced to cannibalize others out of food rationing and starvation. 

For the sake of space (I could write a book on all of the cases of cannibalism due to famine or by tribes), we’ll begin to focus on people and their illegal appetite for you and I. 

Armin Meiwes also known as the "Rotenburg Cannibal" or "Metzgermeister" (The Master Butcher) used the Internet to find and eat a willing victim named Bernd Jürgen Brandes.  Before killing Brandes, Meiwes and his willing body donor attempted to eat Brandes own penis together.  Meiwes then stabbed Brandes several times in the throat, hung him on a meat hook and for ten months kept parts in his freezer and ate upwards of 20kg of Brandes a day! 

Danijel Jakupek Zak a twenty-six year old was arrested and charged with murder and cannibalizing of a five-year-old boy (His fellow schoolmate) and his uncle.  Day’s later police arrested Özgür Dengiz (also known as the “Cannibal of Ankara”) A Turkish serial killer and cannibal who killed two men, planned to kill another and ate one of his victims.  Cafer Er, one of Dengiz’ victims went missing for several days before police found his body at the Mamak dump.  Police said that it was apparent that Er was murdered; mutilated and large chunks of flesh had been removed.

A Danish artist named Marco Evaristti held a diner party and fed his guests agnolotti pasta topped with a meatball made from his own fat, from a liposuction operation held previously.  (Art with a message…and taste.)

Between 1978 and 1991 Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer murdered and ate 17 men and boys in and around the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area.  It was stated that Dahmer was involved in cannibalism, necrophilia and rape and was in the process of setting up a makeshift altar out of skulls and candles.  The single survivor to escape Dahmer’s clutches, Tracy Edwards, managed to alert police to Dahmer’s apartment, number 213 where they made the grisly findings.

Inside of Dahmer’s apartment they found photographs of murder victims, human remains stored in acid vats, severed heads in his refrigerator and at least three human skulls for use in an altar.  Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered alongside another inmate Jesse Anderson, by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver on November 28th, 1994. 

Otis Toole was yet another reputed serial killer cannibal, made famous by his confession in the July 1991 murder of Adam Walsh, son of John Walsh, the child victim advocate and host of the America’s most wanted television program.  Of Toole’s many claims, beside that his grandmother was a Satanist and his mother a religious fanatic, was that his first murder occurred when he was fourteen years old.  Another popular claim by Toole was that he’d killed hundreds of people for some cult known as “the hand of death,” with a friend of his Henry Lee Lucas.

Toole confessed to the kidnapping, rape, murder and dismemberment of Adam Walsh, stating that he’d cut him up and fed him to alligators in a nearby swamp.  Though Toole confessed to the crime, police no longer considered him a suspect after preliminary investigations, John Walsh however still believes that Toole murdered his son.  In all, Toole was charged with two murders and later confessed to four more before cirrhosis of the liver claimed him while serving his sentence. 

Another modern cannibal is Issei Sagawa, who was convicted of killing (Via a gunshot to the neck) and eating Renée Hartevelt.  Mr. Sagawa ate the woman because he wanted her energy, beauty and health, as he described himself as a “weak, ugly and small man.”  After a hearty bout of necrophilia with the woman’s corpse, Issei Sagawa proceeded to eat her hips and was surprised at the "corn-colored" human fat. 

Mr. Sagawa described his less then mundane meal, as “odorless and soft like tuna.”  After his arrest and following deportation from Paris back to Japan, Issei Sagawa served fifteen month’s in a mental institution and was then checked out and has been a free man since.  Now living in Tokyo, Japan, Issei Sagawa is a minor celebrity, writing books, appearing on various television and film programs and even working as a restaurant reviewer. 

Edmund Emil Kemper III also known as the “co-ed killer,” is another fine example of modern cannibalism by a serial killer.  He was known to have tortured and killed animals and enacted sexual perversions with his sister’s dolls all at a very young age.  Kemper’s mother locked him in the basement at nights for fear he would rape his sisters and she’d often abuse and berate him due to her suffering from borderline personality disorder. 

In August of 1964, Kemper murdered his grandparents and when asked why, he’d replied, "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma," he knew his grandfather would be angry and so he killed him as well, all at only fifteen years old.  After his release from Atascadero State Hospital and after several jobs, Kemper was at it again starting in May of 1972. 

From May 72, until February 73, Kemper picked up several female hitchhikers, murdered them, brought them back to his apartment, then after a little necrophilia, dumped or buried the bodies in ravines.  In April 1973 he murdered and mutilated his mother and her best friend, throwing his mothers vocals chords into the garbage disposal.  The disposal couldn’t penetrate the thick tissues and the vocals chords ended up back in the sink.

After turning himself in to authorities, Kemper said, “That seemed appropriate…as much as she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years."  In all Edmund Kemper III claimed ten lives and confessed unrepentantly to murder, necrophilia and cannibalism to the courts and still serves a life sentence in Vacaville state prison.

South Korean Yoo Young-Chul, murdered, mutilated and burned twenty-one people, mainly prostitutes and wealthy elderly individuals.  Yoo Young-Chul admitted to eating the livers of several of his victims.  When asked why he killed, he replied, "Women shouldn't be sluts, and the rich should know what they've done."  Yoo Young-Chul was sentenced and put to death on June 19th 2005. 

José Luis Calva Zepeda was an author, a confessed serial killer and cannibal in up to eight separate cases of murder.  Under suspicion for disappearance of his girlfriend Alejandra Galeana, the Federal Preventative Police stormed Calva’s house and found him eating human flesh.  Upon further inspection of Calva’s home, investigators found a myriad of the macabre ranging from his girlfriends mutilated corpse, man beef in the fridge and a box of cereal with bones in it. 

Mexico was forced to take down the sign “500 years without cannibalism and counting,” and had to start all over.  December 11th 2007, Calva hung himself in his cell with a belt (possibly old Navy?) between 6:00am and 6:30am. 

Convicted of eight murders, confessed to thirteen including cannibalization and mutilation, the “Ruhr Cannibal,” “The Duisberg man-eater,”…Joachim Kroll.  Kroll’s spree began in 1955 and ended in 1976, throughout Kroll favoring the rape and strangulation method (in no particular order).  When Joachim Kroll was arrested on July 3rd, 1976, police found the body of a four-year old girl cut into parts, parts of the girl were in the refrigerator, her hand in a pot of boiling water and intestines were in a waste pipe. 

When Kroll was asked why he’d eaten his victims, he’d replied to save on grocery bills (Option for the economy and food shortages?).  After a 151-day trial, Kroll was given nine life sentences and in 1991, he’d died of a massive heart attack while serving his time in prison of Rheinbach. 

Richard Chase is another noted cannibal serial killer, who in the span of one month, killed and ate six Californian’s.  Sometimes known as “The vampire of Sacramento” because he drank his victim’s blood and ate their remains, Chase was a delusional being.  Chase was fond of torturing and disemboweling animals, as well as eating them sushi style a.k.a raw. 

Chase was referred to as “Dracula” by the staff of a mental institution that he’d been involuntarily committed to.  A healthy dose of the woo woo juice in the mental hospital and Chase was released to his then divorced parents, who got him his own apartment.  Chase rampaged through California killing and cannibalizing along the way and both humans and animals were on the menu.  Chase was convicted on six counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. 

Richard Chase committed suicide on December 26, 1980 in his cell, with an overdose of prescription antidepressants.  Before killing himself, Chase granted a series of entertaining interviews with Robert Ressler, talking about Nazi’s, UFO’s and radar guns…oh my. 

Marc Sappington killed four people and ate a part of one of his victim’s leg.  A known schizophrenic and under the influence of PCP, Sappington said voices told him to kill, eat flesh and drink blood or he’d die.  Sappington killed two of his four victims in the same day and soon became known as the “Kansas City vampire.”  It was said that blood and gore was everywhere in Sappington’s mother’s basement, imagine having to clean that mess.   Sappington is currently serving four consecutive life sentences for his crimes.

The list goes on and on of cannibals past and present, and cannibals in popular media are just reaching their height of popularity.  Everything from “Silence of the lambs” and “Ravenous,” to the highly successful “Sweeney Todd” shows that cannibals are the new proverbial “vampire” of pop culture. 

Humans have been eating humans since…well humans have been around!  A mild form of cannibalism is practiced during mass, in love bites with a girl or boyfriend, in French kissing, in bloodletting and sharing etc.  For good or for bad, for terror, lust, study or entertainment, cannibals and cannibalism has and will continue to be a part of humanity. 

The Fuss about Cannibalism
By Keimi Yamagata
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec asked, “Can the cannibal speak in the name of those he ate?” The answer is up to speculation, but undeniable are the new perspectives given by the cannibal. From Hannibal’s Chianti and fava beans to celestially-named families of hill people, cannibals have integrated themselves into cinema, literature, and newspaper headlines for centuries. But just what is the appeal? What is the fuss the all about?

Where better to start searching for answers than with the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Cannibals” himself, Issei Sagawa. Not only is Sagawa one of the most unashamed and brazen of all real life cannibals throughout history, he is one who went through the legal system to only get away with, quite literally, murder. Years before the sleazy talk show and soft-core porn magazine celebrity he’s known for today, his singular account of cannibalism was about to be committed.

While studying in France at the Sorbonne in 1981, a young woman by the name of Renee Hartevelt had the misfortune of Sagawa’s obsession falling on her. It was one evening when Hartevelt had come over to his apartment to read poetry as they sat on the bed that Sagawa realized his wants.  In his now out of print bestselling novel, In The Fog, he wrote of his thoughts as he sat next to her, “My passion is so great. I want to eat her. If I do she will be mine forever.  There is no escape from this desire.”  The next evening when she returned, Sagawa let her seat herself and as she was to begin reading the poetry, he shot her with a rifle in the back of her neck and she died instantly. Sagawa now had his meal ready to be prepared. But his own lack of preparedness on the subject emerged when he realized he had no idea how to prepare human flesh. So, like any other person, Sagawa grabs a knife and decides to start with the buttocks. He describes the experience by saying, “Suddenly a lot of sallow fat oozes from the wound. It reminds me of Indian corn. It continues to ooze. It is strange. Finally I find the red meat under the sallow fat. I scoop it out and put it in my mouth. I chew. It has no smell and no taste. It melts in my mouth like a perfect piece of tuna. I look in her eyes and say: 'You are delicious.'”

Enjoying the experience so immensely, the entire night he sampled various other body parts, all while using her underwear as a napkin. He mentions that her breast was disappointing because it was “too greasy.” He took many photos of her, indulged in some necrophiliac pleasures, and then went to sleep. The following days he picked his favorite delectables, including Hartevelt’s lips and buttocks, and then disposed of the rest in two suitcases. Not the smartest of criminals, he was soon caught, his apartment raided. Psychiatric evaluations followed and he was declared “incurable,” but then, because of the high cost of asylums, Sagawa was deported back to Japan where his wealthy industrialist father eventually got him cleared. It was then that his fame began, TV interviews, the aforementioned best selling book, being the inspiration behind The Rolling Stones song, “Too Much Blood,” and now in his later years, taking up painting. His art consists mainly of women and mostly centers on, none other than, the buttocks.  

Moving on to many years before Issei Sagawa’s fascination, the curiosity of one Mr. William Buehler Seabrook, a reporter in 1931, was sparked as to what human meat tasted like after a trip to West Africa. His dissatisfaction lingered after the trip where he had asked the tribe leader of the Guere people he stayed with what humans tasted like and the answer wasn’t good enough for him. So upon his return, he sought the aid of a hospital worker who gave him a piece of a body of a healthy cadaver who had died in an accident. With rice and stew, he prepared what he called a “sizeable rump steak” and ate the meal. This is description of the taste, “It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable.”

The eccentric life of Seabrook had begun far before his delving into cannibalism and would continue throughout his life. Aleister Crowley himself had stayed at Seabrook’s farm in 1920, Seabrook had traveled across the world to research his lifelong interest in Satanism and voodoo and in 1933 he committed himself to sanitarium for his alcoholism. Before dying of suicide by drug overdose in 1945, he had written over 10 books on all his experiences.
Globally speaking, we’ve covered the USA, France, and Japan. The next stop on our cannibalism caravan: Germany with the one & only “Butcher of Hanover.” From 1919 to 1924, Fritz Haarman began to satisfy his appetite via biting the necks out of young boys he lured back to his apartment with a total of at least 24 victims before he was done. The answer to what we all look like sliced up might lie in the fact that Haarman, to dispose of the remains, sold the human meat as pork. During his spree, he was not alone however, his partner Hans Grans, whom he lived with, would sell the clothes for him, however Grans would later claim that he had no involvement even though he was urged by Haarman to be a part of the killings. As would be expected, Haarman was finally caught when some of the skeletons from the parts he had kept and disposed of, washed up from a local river and was eventually connected to him. This was one of the first big murder trials in Germany and the media coverage was unimaginable. Although there was major speculation over the mental capacity and sanity of Haarman, he was put to death and was beheaded in 1925. 
Considering the consequences of cannibalism, the pull to take that first bite must truly be a strong one, so strong in fact, that our own bodies can’t sometimes resist.  Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome is a disorder that causes auto-cannibalism and other self-mutilating behaviors. Finger and lip biting are common side effects and 60% of those afflicted, have to have all their teeth removed so that they do not bite off their lips, cheeks, tongues, or other parts. Another disease called acute pancreatitis can sometimes result in the auto-digestion of the pancreas. Yes, this is a stretch, but how can we know if a subconscious cannibal is inside of us? 

To avoid being deemed pessimistic is there hope for the cannibals of the world? Well, Mark Nuckols certainly tried to create some with is 2005 invention of “Hufu.” In Nuckols own words its, “the healthy human flesh alternative for cannibals who want to quit.”  Starting the website advertising the product in May of 2005, Nuckols never quite stated whether it was all meant as a farce or not, letting the public decide. When asked how he could have ever thought up the idea, he said that it just came to him one night as he ate a Tofurky sandwich and read “Good To Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture” by anthropologist Marvin Harris on the topic of cannibalism. Despite the obvious appeal of the product, the website itself admitting it was, “a great convenience food for cannibals. No more Friday night hunting raids!” Nuckols closed the site in 2006 because of rising costs to keep it running.
At the end of the day, cannibals are still and, for all intensive purposes, will always be, enigmas in our societies and of those around the world.  Also, the true taste of human flesh itself seems to not be so clear or universal. Whether tuna, pork, veal, or tasteless, it’s apparent that not everything tastes like chicken in the realm of human carcass. But perhaps it’s the experience, not the flavor…the sight of a human torso next to the ice cube tray in the freezer. Who knows. But it seems America will continue to try and find out why as fascination and stigma run parallel into the future. Who will the next cannibal be to rear his or her head? What will the delicacy taste like to them? What name will they be branded with by the papers?  Again, who knows. But, I ask, if we are what we eat, then, aren’t cannibals just human after all?

Pleading Insanity? – You Must be Crazy
By Brad Barrett
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, there's nothing better than taking some time for you. You might want to while away the hours cramming long needles in the space between your anus and scrotum. Or, if that doesn't tempt you, you might want a mouthful of your own crap, washed down with hot, salty urine. Still no takers? Anybody even hear voices? Anybody?

If there's one thing about Albert Fish that seems painfully obvious, it's this: He was nuttier than squirrel shit. What else can you say about a man who was a pedophile, a sadist, and a masochist? What other conclusion can you draw about a man whose obsessions included castration, cannibalism, coprophillia, urophillia and piquerism?

I'll save you the trouble of going to Wikipedia to find out what those last three mean. In short, Albert was obsessed with feces, urine, and stabbing (both himself and others). His favorite method of flagellating his own body involved a paddle filled with nails. He would often beat himself into a bloody mess.

He is well deserving of his nickname. He is the real, honest to goodness Boogeyman.

He first realized he was a few rounds short of a clip when he was still a child. After his father died, his mother put him in an orphanage where he was beaten unmercifully. So were all the other children. The difference was Albert liked the beatings. He enjoyed them so much they gave him erections. This gave the other children hours of entertainment at Albert's expense. It probably did wonders for his self esteem in the process.

It was much later, after his wife had left him, when Albert began to hear "angels" telling him to dash out the brains of children. That would have been cruel enough. Crueler still was what he actually did to them. He beat them for hours. He cut off ears. He extended smiles up the sides of faces. He removed noses, heads, limbs and anything else that would come off. He sucked the blood from their punctured stomachs. Then, he feasted on them for days, taking great pains to make the preparation process long and involved, lengthening the experience.

 Once, for good measure, he wrote a letter to the family of one of his victims.  Grace Budd's mother couldn't read, so her son had to read the letter detailing the awful things Albert had done. This ultimately proved to be his downfall.

 When Albert Fish had his day in court, Captain John Stein asked why he had written the letter. Albert didn't know. He supposed he "just had a mania for writing."

 When asked why he had done such a horrible thing to young Grace, Albert said, "You know, I never could account for it."

His legal defense entered an insanity plea. It seemed like a sure fire way to keep him from being executed. Most normal people wouldn't mind seeing Albert take a nice long dirt nap, but doctors and psychiatrists would likely have wanted the chance to examine him further. He was, after all, a perfect storm of mental illness. A run-of-the-mill psychopath is just plain boring in comparison.

 Quick show of hands, anybody think the Boogeyman isn't crazy?

If you raised your hand, you are of the same opinion as the United States government. That's right, folks. Legally, Albert Fish is perfectly sane and completely responsible for the atrocities he committed.

Confused?

You see, in order to be criminally insane in the U.S.A., you must be unable to distinguish between right and wrong. Note that it doesn't say you have to care. It doesn't say you have to feel guilty about it afterwards. To be sane, you merely need enough competence to know, deep down inside somewhere, that what you're doing will be frowned upon by others, if not yourself. It doesn't matter if your mother abandoned you. It doesn't matter if you were abused. It doesn't matter if the ghost of Adolf Hitler possessed you. It doesn't even matter if the fabric of time tore in half and you were kidnapped by ray gun-wielding slime creatures that hypnotized you and sent you back.  

By its very nature, the legal definition of insanity will exclude nearly every serial killer in history. If you have no idea what you're doing is wrong, you won't take steps to cover it up. Therefore, you won't ever get the chance to become a serial killer.

Allow me to make a few clarifications. Technically, a serial killer has killed more than one victim. Those killings must have occurred at more than one time. A spree killer might have a shot at the insanity plea because their crimes take place all at once. Any sort of premeditation, however, will likely prove their sanity. Their sanity, in turn, will prove their guilt in the eyes of the law.

Upon learning of his verdict and his sentence, a Daily News reporter wrote that Albert's "…watery eyes gleamed at the thought of being burned by a heat more intense than the flames with which he often seared his flesh to gratify his lust." He supposedly thanked the judge for that method of execution. On January 16, 1936, Albert Fish was executed. His final words were, "I don't even know why I'm here."

Crazy as he was, it took the jury less than an hour to determine Albert was sane and guilty. If this man was judged to be sane, there seems to be little hope for anyone relying on an insanity defense. To plead insanity… well, that's just plain crazy. 

Sympathetic Serial Killers
By:  Jessica Robinson
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

I was watching Criminal Minds (Zoe’s Reprise, 2009) a while back, and the episode was about a serial killer who was trying to figure himself out.  The basic plot of the story involved the guy copying different killers throughout time until he found the one method that appealed to him and was sexually gratifying.  The FBI knows that he has killed a specific amount of women, but there are some unsolved murders that they are trying to link to him.  The FBI eventually figure out that he is the killer because his girlfriend tells them that he likes to have sex outdoors and they link the places with photos they find hanging on the wall in his apartment.  Once the killer knows that he is caught, he asks David Rossi to please tell him why he does it.  He goes into a speech about how he walks down the street, looking at people and wondering how to kill them, knowing that no one else does that.  He knows that what he’s done is wrong, but he can’t help himself.  I scoffed and rolled my eyes as the credits rolled.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the show, but the ending struck me as kind of hokey.  It also made me think about the show Dexter and various other films.

Serial killers have been a subject of pop culture for years.  Hitchcock used Gein as the template for Norman Bates in Psycho, and Thomas Harris wrote an entire series about Hannibal Lecter.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was billed as true events, and was also based on the crimes of Ed Gein.  There are also the countless straight-to-DVD and made-for-TV movies that portray the life and crimes of Gacy, Dahmer, BTK, etc.  Serial killers are fascinating to us because we don’t know what drives them to do what they do.  We think we know, and it might apply to one individual, but it does not apply to all serial killers.  We watch shows such as A&E and Biography to hopefully get some insight into their minds.  We read books such as “Helter Skelter” to understand what drove them to commit murder.  But we also read and watch these things because it re-affirms the differences between “us” and “them.”  The only thing we forget is that serial killers are only “them” after they are caught; before then, they are “us.”

Gacy is a perfect example of this.  He lived in Waterloo, Iowa; had a wife, a son, and a daughter; and dressed up as a clown to entertain children.  He ran a KFC franchise that belonged to his parents, and was a member of the Waterloo Jaycees.  Gacy was arrested on March 1968 after two boys, age 15 and 16, accused him of sexually assaulting them.  Of course, he claimed he was innocent, and he would have gotten away with it, but he hired another teenager to beat up one of his accusers.  That young man was caught and confessed, so Gacy was arrested, convicted of sodomy, and sentenced to 10 years in the Iowa State Penitentiary.  Shortly after his incarceration, his wife filed for divorce.  He was paroled after serving 18 months, and headed back to Chicago to live with his mother.  In 1972, he remarried (only to be divorced by 1976), in 1975, he started his own contracting business, and he became active in the local Democratic Party.        It wasn’t until after his second divorce that he began his killing sprees in earnest.  On several different occasions, the victim’s parents told the cops to question Gacy, but nothing ever came of it.  Mainly because he was able to keep his conviction in Iowa a secret.  He was finally arrested in December of 1978. 

Even though Gacy had some run-ins with the law (which is not uncommon with serial killers), he was never a main suspect in the deaths.  The reason the families wanted him questioned was because he was the last person to see the victims alive.  His standing in the community and the facade of his normal life kept him from being a suspect for a long time.  It wasn’t until police found out about his prior conviction (along with other evidence) that he became the main suspect.

Kemper is also another good example.  Growing up in California, his dream was to become a Highway Patrolman.  Unfortunately, at 6’ 9”, he was too tall and didn’t make the force.  But that didn’t stop him from becoming friends with individuals on the police force.  He made it a point to hang out at coffee shops and diners that were frequented by law enforcement, and when he started his killings, he had inside information about the case.  Even when he called to turn himself in, it took three different phone calls to convince the police that he was actually the killer.  Despite the fact that he spent time in an institution as a child, he was able to function in society and appear normal.

There is also the BTK killer.  He committed 10 murders between the years of 1974 and 1991.  He sent letters to the police and the local news station describing his crimes, then went on hiatus in the 1990s.  In 2004, he started sending letters again, and was captured in 2005.  In 2004, the trail of the BTK Killer had gone cold.  For some reason, Rader sent a letter to the police and claimed responsibility for a murder that had not been previously attributed to him.  The police continued to correspond with BTK, hoping to gain his confidence.  They finally caught him after he sent in a floppy disk with metadata that was used to trace him.  Rader was arrested on February 25, 2005. 

Dennis Rader was married for 33 years and had one son and one daughter.  He was involved with the Christ Lutheran Church, elected as the president of the Congregation Council, and was a Cub Scout leader.  He had an associates degree in Electronics from Butler County Community College, and a bachelor’s from Wichita State University in Administration of Justice.  He served on the Sedgwick County’s Board of Zoning Appeals and the Animal Control Advisory Board.  If he had decided not to send that letter and disk to the police, he would probably still be free, and no one would know he was a killer.

The list goes on.  It seems like the first reaction from friends and family when a serial killer is caught is:  “But they seemed so normal.”  And what about all those killers who didn’t get caught?  The Zodiac Killer, the Black Doodler, Jack the Ripper?  Most professionals speculate that the murders stop because the killers are incarcerated for another crime, put in an institution, or die.  But what if they don’t?  What if they just stop killing because they’re tired of it?  (In the case of the Black Doodler, he has actually started killing again after a 20-year break.  He is now referred to as the Grim Sleeper.)  In that case, they have totally become “us.”

When you think of Gein or Bundy or Dahmer, the first thing that comes to mind is “monster,” and, for the most part, it is a fitting nomenclature; their crimes were deplorable.  But we seem to forget that they are humans, too.  When psychiatrists, behavioral specialists, and FBI profilers go into a case, they can give a pretty good description of what they are looking for in a suspect.  For serial killers, they are more than likely going to be white, middle class, fairly intelligent, and probably have had a hard time holding down a job.  What the profile doesn’t tell us is WHY they are doing it.  In some cases, it might be because they were abused as children, or it might stem from a head injury.  There are numerous theories out there that explain why serial killers kill, but none of them can be applied to serial killers as a whole.  Like “us,” “they” are complex creatures who think and feel.

The distinction between “us” and “them” comes into play when the killers are caught.  They seem to have no remorse for what they’ve done, and if given the chance, they will most certainly kill again.  They might spend the vast majority of their time seeking out victims, but the populace never knows it.  That is why they are such good fodder for popular culture.  They are the ultimate villain.

The reason serial killers work so well in films and literature is because there is a lot of material to pull from.  They are the perfect example of truth being stranger than fiction.  Serial killers work great for horror films because it doesn’t take much for them to scare the public.  But there has been a trend lately; one that made me roll my eyes after watching Criminal Minds and made me think about Dexter and various other films.  This trend is the author’s/director’s intention of making serial killers sympathetic.

As I mentioned before, serial killers are humans, just like us.  The only difference is they murder numerous individuals for pleasure.  While we all have our dark side, and we might even contemplate murdering someone, the vast majority of us will never actually do it.  But that doesn’t stop our fascination with those that do actually do it, and, naturally, we want to know why.  Authors and directors have the ability to delve into a character’s mind; to show the audience what they are thinking and give them motives for their actions.  Unlike serial killers in real life, we might not ever know why they did what they did, which is why I think shows like Dexter and Criminal Minds are so appealing.  They give us answers.  They make the bad guy the hero.  Sure, Dexter is a serial killer who has killed hundreds of people, but he only targets bad guys, criminals who didn’t get the justice they deserved, so he can’t be all bad.

Some serial killers target prostitutes and drug addicts because they believe it is their mission to clean up the streets.  Several other killers, including Gary Ridgway, also targeted prostitutes because he believed they wouldn’t be missed.  In his plea-bargain statement, Ridgway said, “I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex.  I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed.  I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be reported missing.  I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”  Dean Corll targeted boys from lower income homes who were perceived to be runaways.  In their minds, there were serving justice to those who deserved it.  Like Dexter, they believed they were targeting “bad guys.”

Dexter is the complete embodiment of serial killers:  he is smart, middle class, white, and leads a totally normal life when he’s not killing.  Like most serial killers, he even interjects himself into the police investigation, but Dexter takes it one step further because he actually works for the cops.  He can always stay one step ahead because he has access to evidence and knows what the police are planning.  Dexter is a popular program because it gives the audience access to what the killer is thinking.  Unlike real life where the motives can be obtuse or unexpected, Dexter gives us something concrete to grasp, and makes us sympathize with the trials and tribulations of the character.

One of the most common influences in a serial killer’s path to becoming a murderer is child abuse.  As I pointed out in an earlier article, mothers play an extremely important role in forming their child’s psychosis.  Psycho is a great example of how filmmakers have used this knowledge to make the killer sympathetic.  Based on the life of Ed Gein, Psycho follows Norman Bates as he murders people who are staying in his hotel.  The audience is led to believe that it is his mother that is actually committing the murders, but they learn by the end of the film that she is dead, a mummified skeleton in a rocking chair in the attic.  As a domineering and overbearing woman, Norman has adopted her into his psyche and takes on her personality when he kills.  By the end of the film, it is hard for the audience to not feel a little bit sorry for Norman.  He was thrust into a situation that he had no control over, and he did what he had to do to survive.  Even his victims deserved to die.  After all, Marion Crane was an adulterer and thief, and she was fleeing to elude capture.  Justice had to be served.

This approach is also used in the Thomas Harris novels and the subsequent films that introduce us to Hannibal Lecter (I will be referring to the films in the following, unless otherwise indicated).  Dr. Lecter is a killer who generally cannibalizes his victims.  Throughout most of the movies, Lecter is already in jail, having been caught by a tenacious FBI agent.  Since Lecter is such an incredibly smart individual, they go to him for advice about other serial killers and how to catch them.  Lecter, for the most part, is portrayed as an admirable character (after all, he’s helping get the real demons off the street), but in Silence of the Lambs, there are scenes that remind us just how horrible Lecter really is.  This is most evident when he is being transferred and has to wear a mask and straight jacket, and then in the scene where he kills and removes the cop’s face.  But this all changes when we get to Hannibal Rising.  The audience is thrust into his past and sees what turned him into a serial killer.  Again, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him as he loses his younger sister to cannibals and witnesses the atrocities of the Nazi party.  We want him to get revenge, and we cheer him on as he kills and consumes his victims.

It seems odd that we can sympathize with the characters on the screen, but we don’t translate that sympathy over to real serial killers.  After all, the characters in these books and movies are usually based on real-life killers who have suffered horrible abuse at the hands of their families or friends.  Kemper was abused by his mother, and transferred that abuse onto his co-ed victims, but then eventually killed the person who tortured him in the first place.  He was exacting revenge, but he didn’t become a sympathetic figure.  Gacy was in a constant mental battle with himself that stemmed from abuse from his father and Gacy’s own homosexual tendencies.  His victims were probably murdered because of the intense guilt and hatred he felt after indulging his fantasies.  Yet, no one felt sorry for him.
This is where fact versus fiction comes into play.  The audience is able to feel sympathy for the serial killers on screen because we know they are fake.  Real serial killers, on the other hand, really hurt people, those who are innocent and don’t deserve to die in horrific events.  Another reason we are able to sympathize with killers on screen and not in real life is due to remorse.  Most real-life serial killers know that what they are doing is wrong, yet they can’t/won’t stop.  They have to commit murder to fulfill some deep desire within them.  They are smart enough to elude the police, and when they are caught, they generally don’t exhibit any signs that they are sorry for what they did.  Bundy is quoted as saying, “So what’s one less?  What’s one less person on the face of the planet?”  Supposedly, right before Gacy was to be executed, he commented that his death would not bring any of his victims back, and it is reported that his last words to a correctional officer were “Kiss my ass.” 

Dexter is always fighting within himself as to whether or not he should continue his work.  He still continues to kill, but at least the audience sees his torment while he is doing it.  William Heirens felt the same type of torment, and left a message on the mirror of one of his victims, pleading with the police to stop him.  It was obvious that he knew his crimes were wrong, but he couldn’t stop himself.  Like Dexter, he continued to kill. 
As long as there are traits in characters that bring the killing machine back to humanity, the audience will feel sorry for them.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, it depends on your stand point), it doesn’t work for real serial killers.  I’m sure there are people out there who sympathize with serial killers.  After all, both serial killers and their sympathizers are human.  Just like “us,” “they” will have to atone for their sins.

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINED: 
HOW SERIAL KILLERS HAVE INFLUENCED SLASHER FILMS
By Jessica Robinson
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

We have a strange fascination with serial killers; one that we might never be able to fully explain.  A lot of the interest stems from the fact that they are just like us; they look like us, they hold down jobs like us, and they entertain our children.  More than likely, our macabre interest in their heinous acts stems from the fact that it could be any one of us.  We’ve all had dark thoughts; the desire to see some jerk tortured for being rude or the want to kill someone who pissed you off.  The only difference between the serial killer and you is that you have the ability not to act on your impulses.  This dark area in our psyche has influenced horror films throughout the course of time, especially the genre of slasher films.
          

Although considered to be the bastard child of the horror film genre, slasher films hold a very important place in our culture.  Much like the serial killer, slasher films have a strange fascination for audiences, and many times, movie goers find themselves rooting for the killer in the films instead of the hero (or heroine as is often the case in slasher films).  They always start out with a sense of normalcy, then twist into a ghastly (and often gory) representation of the dark side of human nature.  The appeal of both serial killers and slasher films is their ability to hide fiendishness with the guise of the common place.  The movie that started it, the one that opened the door for the genre, was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 
           

It’s no secret that the murders and decorating techniques of Ed Gein had an influence on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The symbolism is apparent in the opening scene, which describes the mass of grave robberies that have been affecting a small town.  It is also apparent in the way the house in which Leatherface commits his murders is decorated.  Like Gein, the family uses the body parts of their victims to fashion furniture and flatware.  Leatherface himself takes on Gein’s personality traits and uses the flesh of his victims to create masks for himself.  The parallels between what the family does to its victims (hanging them on meat hooks, cannibalism) and what Gein did are uncanny. 
           

As described in numerous accounts about Ed Gein’s murders, when the police first entered his farmhouse, they were shocked and appalled at the mess, the stench, and the corpse hanging from the rafters.  At first, they believed it was a deer carcass, which would have been very common in that part of Wisconsin.  Once they figured out what it was, the gruesome nature of his murders came to light.  Hooper uses this same premise in his film.  It takes the notion of something common, like hunting to feed a family, and twists it into the macabre.  In the case of the film, the idea of BBQ is exploited.  While traveling through Texas, a land well-known for its ranching industry, the group of teens needs to get gas and stumbles on a station that sells both gas and BBQ meat.  Later in the film, both the audience and the characters realize that the meat at the station does not come from cows, it comes from people.  What once appeared to be common place and innocent has now turned fiendish.
           

The film claims that it was based on actual events.  Although the actual events that are depicted in the movie never transpired, the Gein murders did.  The film also mirrors the atrocities of other murders that happened in Texas around the same time it was made.
           

Filming of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre began on July 15, 1973, and ended on August 14, 1973, right about the time the crimes of Dean Corll came to light.  Although the film was probably not directly influenced by the crimes, it is a testament to the fact the evil lurks everywhere and its horror knows no bounds.  Looking back on the film and the murders from 30 years makes it easy to draw comparisons between the two.
           

Dean Corll was born on December 24, 1939, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  His parents divorced, and he and his brother and mother moved to Houston, Texas.  He was drafted into the military in 1964, but released on a hardship discharge to help his mother run her candy business.  He was nicknamed “The Candy Man” because he often gave free candy to the neighborhood children.  When his mother’s store closed, he trained to become an electrician.
           

As with most serial killers, there was nothing about Corll that stood out, except perhaps his choice of friends.  He mostly hung out with young male teens.  There were two who were particularly close to Corll--a 14-year old named Elmer Wayne Henley and a 15-year old named David Brooks.  After Corll’s death, it became apparent that these two boys helped lure victims to his house where they were tortured, raped, and killed.  Corll apparently paid them $200 to bring boys from low-income Houston neighborhoods, being promised free alcohol and drugs. 
           

Corll was shot to death on August 8, 1973, by Henley.  There had been an argument because Henley had brought a female over to Corll’s house.  The police were skeptical at first that Corll had committed the atrocities that Henley claimed he did, but after Henley showed them the burial grounds, there were no further questions.  In all, 27 victims were uncovered.  Some of them had been shot while others had been strangled.  There was evidence of torture on some of the victims, such as objects being inserted into their rectums and glass rods shoved into urethra and smashed.  All of the victims had been sodomized.
           

It is not known why Corll committed these murders, and speculation is the closest thing we are going to get for an answer.  Brooks was found guilty of one murder and sentenced to life in prison, while Henley was convicted of six and sentenced to six 99-year terms. 
           

Although the actual killings of Corll and his helpers had no influence on the movie, it is not hard to see that they possibly could have.  This is most evident in the way that the entire Leatherface family was involved in the capturing of its victims.  Corll was fascinated with young boys, but since he was older, it would have been difficult for him to find victims.  He used Brooks and Henley to bring victims to him; much like Leatherface relied on his brothers, the Hitchhiker and the gas station attendant.  Like Henley and Brooks, they didn’t do any of the killing themselves, but benefited from the acts.  The whole idea of having helpers adds to the suspense of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and makes the crimes in real life much more heinous.  Who do you trust?  Who can you run to for help? 
           

Again, the notion of taking the common place and twisting it into the fiendish plays a role in these murders.  No one knew what Corll was doing until he was dead.  Families would report their children missing, but the police would write them off as runaways.  Both Henley and Brooks probably had a pretty good idea what Corll was doing, but they did nothing to stop it until the violence was turned on them.  They were good at luring victims because they seemed so normal.
           

In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the audience knows that something isn’t quite right with the Hitchhiker.  He behaves erratically and cuts himself with a knife.  At the first chance, the teens kick him out of the van and speed away.  They know that the Hitchhiker is scary because he doesn’t act normal.  Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the gas station attendant.  Like Corll’s helpers, he seems normal and willing to help, but his fiendish nature becomes all too apparent when he delivers his victim to Leatherface to be slaughtered.
           

There is no report that any of Corll’s victims were able to escape his torture, so there is no indication that anything was wrong until he turned his wrath on his helpers.  The Leatherface family has their share of ups and downs, but they never turn against one another.  It isn’t until Sally is driven by the desire to survive that their heinous acts come to light.
           

It is obvious that both Corll and the Leatherface family chose their victims very carefully.  They knew that if they targeted the dregs of society (hippies or those considered runaways), no one would care if they went missing.  It’s hard to say how long the murders would have continued if Corll wasn’t shot or if Sally hadn’t escaped from the house. 
           

Serial killers are fascinating because they remind us of the dark that has the potential to exist within all of us.  They take the common, every day and turn it into something heinous.  They have a tendency to remind us just how evil we as humans can really be.  Countless movies, TV specials, and studies have been done to figure out why a serial killer acts the way he does, and from a distance, it is captivating to know what makes them tick.  Slasher films and horror films are generally created to emphasize what it is that a society fears.  We all have a little of the macabre and fiendish existing within us, and what safer way to express it than through those individuals and movies that repulse us. 

The motives of a serial killer
By Rhiannon Edwards
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

What drives one to kill? It can seem like a simple idea to assess but you will find it goes beyond what the majority can possibly fathom.

There are two categories of ultimate motives which seem to direct further motives of serial killers. A distinction between the psychopathic and the insane, which fosters a common misconception to this day.

Insanity can be defined as an “unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding” leaving one not responsible for their behavior and almost completely helpless. Whereas psychopathic tendencies relate to antisocial personality disorder which is “often manifested in; aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse”. There are differences at hand which are significant and valuable as it is brought to our attention that Psychopathy is an easily attainable nature which often goes undetected or misjudged causing faulty treatment and hindered understanding of the psychopathic mind. Depending on if one is psychopathic or insane, there are significant differences in the further motives spawned from the foundations at hand.

     One who could be seen as insane may suffer delusions which trigger their acts; their motives may be clouded as they themselves don’t always understand what they are doing. If they are capable of realizing what they are doing, their motives may take on an unrealistic tone… rather than an urge to do something, a need to do it due to the fact there is a possible force behind it controlling them. Ed Gein who was considered schizophrenic at the time of his crimes was further motivated by an unhealthy relationship with his mother who brought him to feel conflicted about women and soon develop a particular psychosis leading him to commit the acts he did. Albert Fish being another example motivated initially by insanity, and then further by a religious psychosis enabling him to believe he was a Saint of sorts who had to do what he was doing, reasoning often that if his actions were wrong he would have been punished by an angel. Contrary to popular belief however, serial killers are very rarely insane or guided by these motives.

   Concerning the psychopathically motivated individuals, there are a number of further motives which have been recognized and repeated throughout the years which come into play such as Infamy and Revenge. Criminal psychologists Holmes and DeBurger note categories such as Missionary, Hedonistic, Gain-motivated, and Power/Control.
A simple example of one motivated in a missionary sense could be the mindset of particular infamous dictators like Adolf Hitler, who wanted those exterminated which did not meet the standards of his Aryan race ethic. Aileen Wuornos is considered a missionary killer due to her targetting patrons of prostitution.

Many serial killers are hedonistic, killing for sheer pleasure and often becoming addicted to this pleasure which fuels their continuation of murder, this includes killers such as Dennis Rader (the BTK strangler) who vastly enjoyed the hunt as well as the kill of his victims, and Jeffrey Dahmer who was satisfied with what he could do with the body after his victim was killed.

There are those who are influenced heavily by media depictions of serial killers and who grow to obtain a deep interest in them to an extreme point where they find they would like to achieve the success of a killer they have heard about. They often crave the fame or rather infamy which goes along with the act they commit, and they are motivated by this thoroughly as well as the power they seem to have during the process. Power and control, as mentioned, can take on a level of it’s own concerning types who seek to feel something they may have been restricted from at another time in their lives… or simply for those who dream of obtaining the kind of power others possess regularly in what seems to be an easier form. The power itself can prove an addicting motive and is often cited as one that a high number of killers possess during their “reign of terror”.
The motives of a serial killer vary, and to most they confuse, but it is significant to note that a lot of motivations present are an average phenomenon seen amongst society but often simply expressed in different, more accepted ways. These motives presented, aside from other factors contributing, tend to be the main trigger in what allows any human being to kill.

Necrophilia: Desiring the Dead
By Melissa Hogle
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

Necrophilia, the cornerstone of every psycho it seems...and a damn creepy idea to the rest of us.  After all who in the world would want to have sex with a dead person?!  Well there are a number of different reasons, some more comprehendible and romanticized and others more ghoulish and, honestly, stomach-turning.  Whatever the reason though it's pretty safe to say that this love/sexual preference/fetish is not the norm and likely (if not certainly) indicates some serious mental, emotional, and social problems in those who have it.

Romancing the Remains

The first category of those with this philia don't so much love the dead as they loved the person so much when he or she was living that they sort of just take that last kiss goodbye too far.  Famed American author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, confessed in his journal to be being so distraught over his young wife, Ellen's, death that shortly after she was buried he dug her back up.  What he did after that is anyone's guess (he never said) but should he have done anything more than another farewell kiss he'd fall into this category.

On the far more grotesque end of love gone beyond the burial service is that of Carl Von Cosel in 1930's Key West, Florida.  The radiologist, who worked at a sanitarium, fell deeply in love with a 22-year-old tuberculosis patient of his, Maria Elena de Hoyos, and his love carried over into her death.  He snatched the young woman from her burial place and brought her back to his place to keep as his love, and lover, for the next seven years or so.  Even as the woman's body began to discompose.  Over the years Cosel was forced to use piano wire to hold her bones together, replace rotting skin with wax and silk, use glass eyes to replace real ones long gone, and even insert a tube between her legs to have a "vagina" to continue having sex with her.  When his activities were finally discovered and what was left of Maria Elena was returned to rest in peace Cosel continued to love, and lust after, her using a personalized sex doll in her place...when he died in 1952 he was found clutching said doll which had a death mask of his dearly departed on it.

Loser Lovin'

The next type of necrophile has a slightly more "open relationship" with the dead...still not violent, but certainly not one to settle down with just one corpse as it were.  It's with these folks that we tend to find those misbehaving morticians and gravediggers who get busy with those they're trusted to care for by loved ones.  These types do love the dead, not because they're dead per say but because they can't say no.  These men (there are some cases of female necrophiliacs, but the vast majority are men) don't do so well with the living ladies - too shy, too weird, etc - and so turn to those that they're certain won't (re. can't) reject them.

Viktor Ardisson was a mortician and gravedigger who supposedly had sex with over a hundred of the dead - or, in some cases, at least parts of them.  He was caught when the smell of a decomposing three-year-old girl, who'd he'd been performing oral sex on since digging her up, alerted neighbors enough to call the police.  Also found at his place of residence was his "bride"...the severed head of a thirteen-year-old girl that he kept on his beside table and was known to kiss from time to time.  (It's important to remember, despite the ages of the two defiled mentioned, Ardisson was not a pedophile - it was the fact they were dead, not their ages, that aroused the man.)

Another such corpse loving creep, Henri Blot, was caught fast asleep after having dug up and had sex with a recently deceased ballerina.  While on trial the judge commented that what he had done was depraved to which Blot was quoted as replying, "How would you have it?  Every man to his own tastes.  Mine is for corpses."

Deadly Desires

The final form of necrophile being covered is the dangerous, violent, killing kind.  At the core these types, necrophiliac killers, are the same in that they use sex with the dead as another form of power over their victims.  Once the victim is dead they want that one last form of "owning" their victim in performing some sort of sexual act upon them whether it be intercourse or giving or receiving sexual pleasure in some other manner.

Some big names in the serial killer world were involved in doing the dirty deed with the dead.  Ed Kemper not only would rape his dead victims but also was said to have done so after decapitating one of them.  The "Sunset Slayer" Douglas Clark (with the help of his girlfriend Carol Bundy) would pick up hookers for oral sex and then shoot them in the head during the act, climaxing with the now dead woman's mouth over his member - he kept one victim's head in the freezer as a morbid sex toy.  And, after strangling his victims (thus leaving them with the common "Angel Lust" erection seen in strangulation cases), Jeffery Dahmer would perform oral sex on his victims...he was also known to cut the bodies open to have sex with the victim's innards.

...While mentioned at the start of this section these killers are the same at the core, there are subtle differences that are to be made.  With those like Dennis Nilsen (who killed 15 men and boys in London) the murders seemed more just a means to an end; the end being a lover to have power over and that will never, ever, leave.  Others, like Ted Bundy and Andrei Chikatilo, the raping of corpses seem to just be an extension of sexual sadism, another way to completely dominate the victims.  It will hardly matter to the victims’ loved ones, of course, but for those in law enforcement these small differences may help in catching the killer and possibly getting them to confess and/or convicting them of their crimes.

In Search of America’s Most Evil Serial Killer
By Rhiannon Edwards
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

Throughout history, millions have killed. From that we determine categories of killers, there are some who kill at war, and some who kill at random. It is true that killers take on all shapes and sizes, many different demeanors, and have an array of different methods. When you pinpoint serial killers, it’s simple to see all of them the same. We separate them according to their motives but often think that all were equally brutal in their crimes. However, this is not the case. It can be said that there are some killers, who take that extra step… committing acts that bring them from man, to monster. Some killers bring a style to the table that others can’t ignore, that leaves a mark and places them aside from the rest. Some killers are far from troubled or apathetic, looking at what they have managed to do we can say that they are evil incarnate. With that said, who then crosses this line into such depths the farthest? Who can we peg, as the most evil?

 There has been interest in the topic recently, of just how we can determine the most evil serial killer and why they earn their placement.

There are killers I have discovered throughout the world who deserve a placement on this list. However this in particular is a compilation of those few serial killers who; through specific acts of torture, unique hedonistic methods, and brutal reasoning, we can come to the conclusion might just be the most evil serial killers in American History thus far.

It's evil enough to kill another human being, But to kill your loved ones is an incomprehensible act that can't be ignored.

With this, Belle Sorenson Gunness is added to the list at number 5. Mother, lover, and serial killer.

Known as "one of America's most profligate known female serial killers,"
it is said that Belle is estimated to have killed both of her husbands and all of her children. She is known to have killed most of the men she has been involved with, and her two daughters, Myrtle and Lucy. Her apparent motives involved collecting life insurance benefits. This is one of the killers that hit close to home, for the fact that considering your family…it is difficult to think that you might sacrifice them for money in such a way. Belle cared very little for who she killed, regardless of their status in her life. To her, the children and the lovers were worthless unless they could bring her profit.

Reports estimate that she killed more than twenty people over several decades and got away with it, many people claim that her body count may have reached over one hundred. She makes this list for key reasons; One of those reasons being her targets – all supposed “loved ones” who she shamelessly slaughtered for some extra cash, another being the fact that like most serial killers she did not feel any remorse…this presents the fact that her killing was mainly for money and out of annoyance, she also grew to care nothing about what she had to do in order to keep herself content. This of course is only one example of cases where mothers have killed those closest to them, and fathers as well. It is a longstanding trend. What is unique about this case in comparison to the others is that Belle was not mentally unstable, just plain ruthless. In many situations where the mother has killed, it was out of instants of delusion and misguided thinking. Belle’s murders were a landmark concerning one who would be so bold as to willfully and proudly make family just for the chance to kill them off.

Topping the brutality of Belle, we come to our number 4 placement, filled by none other than the infamous Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK strangler.

Bind, torture, kill. With torture in his name you couldn’t have expected him not to be on this list. Dennis Rader is well known for his acts of torture on his victims, and one serial killer who enjoyed this method to an extreme, making it one of the pillars of what he stood for.  Rader bound, tortured, and killed his victims, making sure to cover all aspects of his art. He would strangle his victims until they lost consciousness, but it never ended there. Rader would then let them revive, and promptly strangle them again. He would repeat this pattern many times, forcing them into a near-death state all the while becoming sexually aroused at the visual created of their struggles. Often the final step of his killings would include Rader strangling them to death, which would be followed with masturbation where he would ejaculate into an article of their clothing to end things off, usually their underwear. BTK’s idea of a step by step process to putting his victims through hell before he finally ended their lives is something that was an influence to many killers later on, being something he prided himself on and something that set him apart from other murderers of the time. Aside from being influential, his methods were extremely sadistic and applied to a hedonistic mindset. All of this was very much a game, some work involved of course, but resulting ultimately in enjoyment and successful completion of his desires which he would blatantly throw in the faces of law enforcement. When you look at it that way, you can see that Rader went a step further in his indifference towards human beings and chose to deal with ending their lives in a lighthearted and so, grizzly fashion.

“[I c]ut one of my belts in half, slit these halves in six strips about 8 inches long. I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears, nose, slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out his eyes. He was dead then.” The words of number 3 on the list, Albert Fish. What else did he do to this victim? He engaged in continuing the knifing of this boy, and ultimately “made a stew out of his ears, nose, pieces of his face and belly.” Albert Fish is best known for the intricate and unbelievable murders of children. Just how many children he had killed, no one can know for sure. He was quite literally a stereotype of the “boogeyman”. For quite a long time he got away with it, due to his silent and gentle exterior to people around him. Who would ever think that this man was capable of so nonchalantly killing two birds with one stone, play time and dinner. His acts have been heavily publicized since the day he was found to have murdered, and for good reason. Fish, through his psychotic religious delusions, took hold of his human ability to kill and used it on one of the more innocent creatures on this earth, children. Unlike Belle Gunness who took the number 5 spot, these were not his own kin. That however, does not make the killings at hand any less gruesome. What stands out about his crimes is the way he killed, the disturbing reasons behind the killings, and also what he did with the bodies. The astonishing revelations we make about him can turn up from reading or hearing his descriptions of the murders and how he reacted towards them. He salivated with the thought of his actions, no true remorse found, and despite what he claimed to have forced him to commit these acts – the glory was often in what he was able to make of young bodies.

 “At frequent intervals I basted his behind with a wooden spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy. In about 2 hours, it was nice and brown, cooked through. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did.”

What do we make of this? When one not only enjoys the torture of fellow human beings, but the torture of children, and then not only that aspect, but the ability to physically consume those he has tortured – cooking them proudly as if he had discovered the most expensive of roasts on sale. To most cannibals, human meat makes an increasingly better meal than that of what you can purchase at the store.

 Albert Fish enjoyed his work, he would never regret one moment of it. Making a sadistic lifestyle look easy to incorporate into his daily schedule, he is by far one of the most evil serial killers in America for blatantly ruling out of his mind what makes his acts so cruel and unusual to us, allowing a mindset that sees the torture of an innocent as a necessity in order to satisfy his common needs.

As we reach the penultimate spot on the list, number 2, we must now really consider aspects of all prior killers mentioned on this list and somehow come up with who can possibly top all of them as well as accommodate all of their methods in one. Who could get away with killing more people than the others mentioned? Who could possess the ability to find even more unique ways of torture and murder…and therefore the charm to lure victims into such a trap?

The answer is in who is depicted to be the first true serial killer in American History, Herman Mudgett, better known under the alias of “Dr. Henry Howard Holmes”.

Very rarely would his lovers and hotel guests leave his presence alive, and if they ever had they would leave seriously and indefinitely scarred for life. Holmes would torture, and kill his victims. One way of doing this would be to lock them in soundproof bedrooms which were fitted with gas lines that allowed him the luxury of asphyxiating them at any given time. Others were locked in a huge bank vault which was near his office, where he could sit back comfortably and listen as they screamed, panicked, and then eventually suffocated from their struggles. His killing extended to “patients” who died as a result of his abortion procedures, no doubt intended to lead them to their demise. The whimsy of his obscure and indecent methods do not end there. With little respect for the lives of the humans he was able to take without much trouble, he used their dead bodies to strange extents not often dealt with by many other killers you will have heard of. These bodies went by a secret chute to the basement, and afterwards some were meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, crafted into skeleton models, and then actually sold to medical schools – this includes the corpses of the women dying of their abortions, which were processed and also sold. There were some bodies cremated, and some placed in lime pits for destruction. Holmes also possessed two giant furnaces, as well as pits of acid, and various poisons to use at his leisure. One of the most alarming gadgets of torture and death which he owned was a stretching rack, allegedly in order to create a race of “giants” and other such experimentation. Medical school proved beneficial to him, allowing him to sell off his left over skeletons and the organs of victims with minimal difficulty. The existence of Holmes and his slayings is a mysterious one, we can estimate the number of his victims to be between 20 to 100, and some say even higher, which can only be based upon missing persons reports of the time and testimony of neighbors who reported seeing unusual events as well as young women accompanying Holmes into his hotel who never exited. The single verified number is 27, which is still an amazing amount to get away with – police however, had commented that “some of the bodies in the basement were so badly dismembered and decomposed, that it was difficult to tell how many bodies there actually were”. Again, counting the charm of this man, women were easiest to bring in, but this never stopped him from getting his hands on men and also children. What is so significant of these murders may not even be the ways in which they were tortured, or how their bodies were disposed of, but perhaps how dignified Holmes was able to act…and the composure kept during the entire process. This can signify that potentially, Holmes could have continued with his ways for years with ease. It is a disturbing thought that he had medical connections, and also that due to this it made killing and getting rid of bodies all the more simpler. These days although creative minds like that of his exist, they can never truly amount to the extent that brought all of this to be. It is obvious that, realizing what this man was capable of including the nature of his simply activity seeking induced crimes, he is a true candidate for one whom we may always see as one of the most evil human beings from the start that could be dealt with…

But not quite the most evil, not on this list anyway, because there is one more spot to be filled which is the number 1 placement.

The serial killer most intensely bonded with his torture seeking methods and body count, is none other than one that to this day surprisingly not a lot of people are familiar with. His crimes are questionable, and often debated over in terms of accuracy and capability. What this man is proven to have done reveals a depravity so potent that it would be difficult to keep him off of this list from any angle you approach. This man is Donald "Pee wee" Gaskins, said to be the most prolific serial killer in South Carolina history.

Donald’s victims were both male and female, child and adult. His acts included cannibalism, various acts of torture, and ultimately killing of these victims. Anyone could have been a potential target for his brutalities. Saying this seems a vague and average thing amongst the ranks of serial killers, unless you know the details.

As a child Gaskins was treated with disdain by his family, and not well liked by his peers as he grew older. Often teased and punished, he quickly developed an intense hatred towards those around him and battled this on a daily basis. As time passed and the hatred stayed with him, Gaskins took part in criminal activities and as a result was punished in many ways including jail time and reform school. However, punishment could not control what had been unleashed within Gaskins so long ago. Something had been deeply rooted within him and could easily be provoked at any given time, which became most apparent when he was confronted on an undesirable subject and acted out by taking a hammer to the head of a girl, which split her skull. For this he was charged for attempted murder. If he was capable of this, what else could he wind up involved in?

Donald Gaskins was just beginning his reign of terror. To build a persona that others would fear, he shed the face value of his small stature and learned to intimidate through his actions, which started violent and increased in violence as time went on. Although he had followed through with an array of disturbing acts, there were specific instances that pegged him as infamous for the monster he was.

His “vision” into “bothersome feelings” as he described it, led him to his most well known crimes. One instance of these inclusions can be noted as his tendency to keep his mutilated victims alive for days. Perfecting his torture methods, he would sometimes also cannibalize their severed parts as they watched, or were forced to participate in the consumption of their own flesh. This rarity and horrific experiment in torture was committed without a second thought on Gaskins’ part, as he allowed himself the luxury to do whatever was necessary in order to satisfy his visions of cruelty.

Continuing with his sadistic rampage, he identified his highway murders as recreational killings whereas his serious murders were reserved for those he knew personally. A chilling look into how he dissected his habit of homicide. Although his acquaintances often found him to be mentally disturbed and so distanced themselves from him, there were those who were friendlier to Gaskins – which sadly did not protect them from meeting the fate he had conducted. A prime example of this being that of Doreen Dempsey, who was pregnant at the time. Accepting a ride from Gaskins, he had taken her on an unexpected route to an isolated area of the woods in order to inflict his plans upon her. After raping and killing Dempsey, he also managed to sodomize her baby which Gaskins would later sickeningly describe as the best sex of his life.

His massacre truly did not stop at merely women and men, as he had not only violated and taken the life of this child, but many others; crushing their necks, cutting their throats, stabbing them, poisoning, drowning, beating them to death and even shooting them execution style. All of this a picture of how worthless and objectified he was able to render an innocent soul in his mind.

Gaskins had absolutely no regard and no consideration for any human life, other than his own, inflating his status in order to appreciate himself and committing acts which made him feel more powerful in his individual view. Having been possibly connected to over 100 murders, the few we have detailed stories on are enough to reveal this man’s nature and so enough to have him perceived as intensely evil in the eyes of those who see through his crimes. There’s a reason that Gaskins is sometimes referred to as the “Meanest Man in America”, from what I can see, he certainly fits the position. His unfathomable crimes stand notorious amongst serial killings due to their highly violent and unrelenting status, proving surreal and shocking to those who take the time to immerse themselves momentarily in his existence. Donald Gaskins is more than a maniac, and more than a sadist, he is America’s most evil serial killer.

Hiding Bodies
by Chris Bartholomew
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

The FBI estimates that there are currently 500 serial killers at large. Other estimates are much lower, around 35 - 100 serial killers currently committing crimes. In 1983, they estimated that 5000 Americans or 15 people a day were killed by strangers. Every year, between 3500 - 5000 people in America are the victims of serial killers. In the past 20 years, 160 serial killers have been identified or captured, and 120 of them were in the United States.

Sometimes in the profile of a serial killer, authorities will use the dump sites as a guide in that profile, an example would be that if the body is dumped in a wooded area, the killer might be a hunter or fisherman who is comfortable in the woods. Studies have been done showing that in most cases where the serial killer wasn't traveling, such as a truck driver covering a lot of territory, serial killers go a certain distance within a triangle space when dumping the body.

Sometimes the serial killer will go back to the dumping grounds to spend more time with the victim, or to relive the experience. Sometimes they will go back to make sure they didn't leave any evidence behind, or in some cases, when they've integrated themselves to the local police, to help in the investigation, or to taunt the police and leave clues. Gary Ridgway didn't chew gum or smoke, but he did leave chewing gum and cigarette butts at dump sites. Once he even scattered airport motel pamphlets and car rental papers to imply that the killer was a traveling salesman. Sometimes (also Ridgway) they go back to the dump site to have sex with the remains.

There are studies which suggest that the average serial killer travels about a half an hour from home to dispose of a body. Unless work or some other activity puts them further away, they likely live more or less than thirty minutes from the site.

Maurice Godwin, a former police officer from North Carolina, conducted research into geographical profiling involving 54 American serial killers. An analysis of the crimes of the 54 killers, who had each murdered at least ten victims, disclosed that the average distance between the killers' home and his chosen dumping ground was 14.3 miles while the abduction area was only 1.4 miles away.

Here is what 150 Serial Killers did about the question of hiding bodies:

Put in Trash Bags (along highways):
Patrick Kearney and David Douglas Hill (The trash bag murders), Belgium's Butcher of Mons, Bob Berdella (Put remains in can for collection by trash collectors), Jeffery Dahmer, Richard W. Rogers, Grim Sleeper (victims covered by trash bags, found near dumpsters), Bruce Mendenhall, Larry Eyler (The Interstate Killer), Jefferson Davis Parish Louisiana serial killings (unsolved), Robert Pickton, Unknown serial killer in Seoul, The Family murders (Adelaide, Australia), Jeffrey S. Mailho, Vlado Tanevski, Jeffrey S. Mailhot,

Fed them to Animals
Joe Ball - The Alligator Man, Ottis Toole, Robert Pickton, Belle Gunness, Carl Panzram

Sold them as food
Fritz Haarmann, George Karl Grossman

Under houses, crawlspaces, basements
John Wayne Gacy, Kendall Francois, Jesse Harding Pomeroy, David Maust, Jeffery Dahmer

Rivers or other bodies of water
John Wayne Gacy, California Astrology Murderer, Gary Ridgeway, Sean Vincent Gillis, Lewiston Valley Killer, Amelia “The Baby Farmer” Dyer, Fritz Haarmann, The Atlanta Child Killer,

Shed
Dean Corll

In or around Dumpsters in Alleyways
Daytona Beach SK (unsolved), George Russell, Eight Street Killer (Miami unsolved, 31 victims),

In the woods or fields
Gary Ridgeway, Ted Bundy, The I-45 Killer or Killer(s),east Texas and Montrose Killer(s), "killing fields" murders, Fort Myers killer, Gary G. Grant, James Edward Ruzicka, Gary A. Shaw, The 1969 Parkway Murders (Both Gerald Eugene Stano and Ted Bundy claimed credit for the Parkway Murders but were cleared), Ted Bundy (ditches and parks)

Rural Locations
Robert Lee Yates, Edmonton Canada missing women (unsolved)

Didn't bother
Dennis Radar, Angel Maturino Reséndiz, Zodiac Killer, Richard Ramirez, Jack the Ripper, Jesse Harding Pomeroy, Herbert Mullin, Aileen Wuornos

Under the bed
Jeffery Dahmer, Earl Nelson

Left them 'posed'
Albert Desalvo, Danny Rolling, the Grim Sleeper, George Russell

Dismemberment, cannibalism, hid some remains
Albert Fish, Jeffery Dahmer, Joachim Kroll, Arthur Shawcross, Henry Lee Lucas & Ottis Toole, Bob Berdella, Edmund Kemper III, Richard Trenton Chase, Douglas Clark & Carol Bundy, Andrei Chikatilo, Alfred Packer, Mark Sappington, Surender Koli and Moninder Singh Pandher

In house or apartment
Fritz Honka, Jose Luis Calva, John Christie, Charles Albright, Harrison Graham, Yang Xinhai, Moses Sithole, Tommy Lynn Sells, Dennis Radar, Richard Ramirez

Never found the Victims'
Gert van Rooyen and Joey Haarhof,

Burried them
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, Juan Corona, Gilles de Rais, The Bloody Benders, Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales, Pedro Alonso Lopez, Dorothea Puente, Reginald Christie, Fred West and Rosemary West, Gordon Northcott

Just dumped the bodies
Kenneth Alessio Bianchi and Angelo Buono

Burned
Gilles de Rais, Steven Avery, Sudhakar Gajare, Uresh Warik, Ravi Poojary, Charles Sobhraj, Nicolae Bonner, Thomas Svekla, Jeremy Bryan Jones, John Childs, Ohio Cincinnati killer (unsolved), Dr. Marcel Petiot, Herman Webster Mudgett (H. H. Holms), Countess Erszebet Bathory, Gilles de Rais, The Alberta Serial Killer, Larry Bright

Dissolved in acid (or kept hidden in vats or drums)
John George Haigh, Javed Iqbal Mughal, Nuevo Laredo, Santiago Meza López, Jeffery Dahmer

Dumped near highways (and deserted roads – vacant lots)
Rory Conde, Last Call Killer, Robert Lee Yates, Jr., James Ruzicka, Randy Kraft, The I-5 Killer: Randy Woodfield, Dewayne Lee Harris, California Occult Murders (unsolved), Gary Michael Hilton, Donald E. Younge Jr, Edmund Kemper, Derrick Todd Lee, Highway of Tears Killer (unsolved), Ortega Highway, (The 44-mile stretch of highway, officially part of California Route 74, where many bodies have been found, William Bonin threw one here, so did Randy Kraft, Patrick Kearney did too), Mack Ray Edwards, Clifford Olson, Larry Eyler, New Bedford Highway killer (unsolved)

Flushed them
Dennis Nilsen, Surender Koli, Joachim Kroll,

SERIAL KILLERS AND INSANITY
By:  Jessica Robinson
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

In a perfect world, serial killers would be insane.  This would allow the public to understand why they did what they did, and it would give them the chance to be treated.  Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, and most serial killers are not insane.  What does it mean to be insane?  Surely anyone who kills another, eats their body parts, or has sex with a headless corpse can’t be in their right mind.  Insanity, as defined by the Law Dictionary, reads as follows:  “mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior.”  The definition continues for criminal insanity:
In criminal cases, a plea of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ will require a trial on the issue of the defendant’s insanity (or sanity) at the time the crime was committed.  In these cases the defendant usually claims ‘temporary insanity’ (crazy then, but okay now).  The traditional test of insanity in criminal cases is whether the accused knew ‘the difference between right and wrong,’ following the ‘M’Naughten rule’ from 19th century England.  Most states require more sophisticated tests based on psychiatric and/or psychological testimony evaluated by a jury of laypersons or a judge without psychiatric training.  A claim by a criminal defendant of his/her insanity at the time of trial requires a separate hearing to determine if a defendant is sufficiently sane to understand the nature of a trial and participate in his/her own defense.  If found to be insane, the defendant will be ordered to a mental facility, and the trial will be held only if sanity returns.1

The M’Naghten Rule, which was the earliest and most common test for criminal insanity, was based on a man named Daniel M’Naghten.  He believed that he was personally being threatened by Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel.  He went to defend himself, and accidentally shot and killed Peel’s private secretary.  He was acquitted on the grounds of insanity because he was not aware of his actions or the difference between right and wrong.
          

 The only serial killer who has used the insanity plea successfully was Ed Gein.  At the time of his arrest, he was found to be mentally incompetent, so he was considered unfit to stand trial.  Instead of prison, he was sent to Central State Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin.  When this hospital was converted into a prison, Gein was sent to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.  His doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial in 1968.  He was found guilty of first-degree murder, but since he was already declared legally insane, he spent the remainder of his life in a mental institution.
           

Several other serial killers have attempted to convince the courts and the public that they are insane, but usually to no avail.  One of the most common ruses is to create an alter ego.  The hope here is that the killer will appear to have multiple personalities, making them less culpable for their actions.  Multiple personality disorder, now referred to as dissociative identity disorder (DID), is defined as:
a mental illness that involves the sufferer experiencing at least two clear identities or personality states, each of which has a fairly consistent way of viewing and relating to the world...This disorder was formerly called multiple personality disorder (MPD) and is often referred to as split personality disorder.  Although statistics regarding this disorder indicate that the incidence of DID is about 3% of patients in psychiatric hospitals and is described as occurring in females nine times more often than in males, this may be due to difficulty identifying the disorder in males.  Also, disagreement among mental-health professionals about how this illness appears clinically, and if DID even exists, adds to the difficulty of estimating how often it occurs.

Some professionals continue to be of the opinion that DID does not exist...[A] concern about the diagnosis of DID involves having to rely on the traumatic memories of those who suffer from this disorder.  That DID is significantly more often assessed in individuals in North America compared to the rest of the world, for the most part, leads some practitioners to believe that DID is a culture-based myth rather than a true disorder...Research on individuals with DID that have little to no media exposure to information on the illness lends further credibility to the reliability of this diagnosis.

If professionals can’t agree on how to diagnose it or if it even exists, then it must be easy to fake.  H.H. Holmes created “Edward Hatch,” who he claimed was the evil mastermind behind the Pietzel children murder.  (It should be noted that this in itself is an interesting defense considering “H.H. Holmes” was an alias created by Herman Webster Mudgett.)  William Heirens created “George Murman,” John Gacy created “Jack Hanley,” and Kenneth Bianchi created “Steve Walker.”  These alter egos fall apart under scrutiny because actual cases of DID are extremely rare.  In the case of Kenneth Bianchi’s Steve, it was discovered that Bianchi had seen the movie “Sybil” days before his psychiatric evaluation.
           

These men tried to manipulate the system into thinking they were insane.  One of the reasons they might have done it was so they wouldn’t get the death penalty, but then again, they might have just done it because it is their nature (I will expand upon this idea later).  Serial killers aren’t stupid.  That is evident in the fact that they can get away with multiple murders before finally being caught.  Some of them are even able to hold together families.  They know how to appear “normal.”  So why would it be so hard to believe that they would want to appear insane?  One of the most famous cases of attempting to be insane is Edmund Kemper.
           

After Kemper murdered his grandparents, he was sent to the criminally insane unit at Atascadero State Hospital.  Kemper learned to manipulate the system.  He “was such an endearing model prisoner and so intelligent that the staff trained him to administer psychiatric tests to other prisoners.  Kemper later admitted that being able to understand how these test functioned allowed him to manipulate his psychiatrists.”  He stayed in the hospital for 5 years before he was declared cured; he was no longer a danger to the public.  He continued to see his probation psychiatrist, all the while fantasizing about murdering women.  On one occasion, he even went to his session with a victim’s head in the trunk of his car.  Because of his ability to appear “normal,” his psychiatrists believed that he was a well-adjusted individual.

But that is not to say that there are no instances of insanity among serial killers.  One of the most common diagnoses for serial killers is schizophrenia, which is defined as:
A psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality.  Distortions in perception affect all five senses, including sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, but most commonly manifest as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction.  Onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood, with approximately 0.4-0.6% of the population affected…Studies suggest that genetics, early environment, neurobiology, psychological and social processes are important contributory factors; some recreational and prescription drugs appear to cause or worsen symptoms.

During Albert Fish’s trial, he claimed that he heard voices from God telling him to kill children.  His family had a history of mental illness, including a family member who suffered from religious mania.  Several experts took the stand, including several psychiatrists and his own 17-year old step-daughter.  Nevertheless, he was found sane, and sentenced to death.

Peter Sutcliffe, The Yorkshire Ripper, pleaded not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility at his trail, but he was found sane and found guilty of murder on all counts.  He was sentenced to life imprisonment.  Later, he was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia.  In March 1984, he was sent to Broadmoor Hospital.

Herbert Mullin murdered thirteen people because voices in his head told him to do it to prevent an earthquake.  He confessed to his crimes, so his trial focused on whether or not he was culpable for his actions.  Despite the fact that he was in and out of mental institutions since the age of 21, he burned himself with cigarettes, and was evicted from an apartment because he repeatedly pounded on the floor and shouted at people who weren’t there, he was found guilty of first-degree murder for two of his victims and second-degree murder for eight.  It was FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler who asserted that Mullin was schizophrenic.  He claimed that it manifested as early as his senior year of high school and was accelerated by the use of marijuana, LSD, or amphetamines.

It is interesting to note that Mullin was claiming victims at the same time as Kemper, and they spent some time in the same prison.  According to Peter Vronsky:
Kemper and Mullin were incarcerated in the same prison block, and Kemper tormented Mullin by calling him ‘Herbie,’ a diminutive Mullin hated.  ‘He had a habit of singing and bothering people when somebody tried to watch TV.  So I threw water on him to shut him up.  Then, when he was a good boy, I’d give him peanuts.  Herbie liked peanuts.  That was effective, because pretty soon he asked permission to sing.  That’s called behavior modification treatment.’

Asked if Kemper thought Mullin was insane, he replied, ‘Yes, judging from my years in Atascadero, I would say he is mentally ill.’3

Just because a serial killer is diagnosed as schizophrenic, that does not mean the disease was the cause of their murders.  Whether or not violence is a symptom of schizophrenia is a very contentious issue.  “Studies have indicated that 5% to 10% of those charged with murder in Western countries have a schizophrenia spectrum disorder.”4  Yet, there are also statistics that claim “Individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are often the victims of violent crime—at least 14 times more often than they are perpetrators.”4
Most individuals who are diagnosed with schizophrenia tend to shy away from social situations because of their hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized and unusual thinking and speech.  Since the disease usually manifests in late adolescence or early adulthood, the person’s social and vocational development can be severely disrupted.  According to Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a well known researcher, psychiatrist, and author in the field of schizophrenia:

There appear to be three primary predictors of violence and three other less well-defined predictors.  The most important one is a history of past violence; this is the most significant predictor of violence no matter whether a person is mentally ill or not.  In trying to predict future violent behavior, the person’s history is the single most critical piece of information.

The second important predictor is drug and alcohol abuse, and this is also valid whether the person is mentally ill or not.  In 1994, Jeanette Smith and Stephen Hucker reviewed studies of substance abuse in persons with schizophrenia and noted ‘a growing body of research suggesting a significant link between schizophrenia, substance abuse, and violence.’

The third important predictor is the failure to take medication...Those who do not take prescribed medication appear to be much more likely to commit violent acts.

Albert Fish was born on May 19, 1870, in Washington D.C.  His father was 43 years older than his mother and worked as a river boat captain and a fertilizer manufacturer.  Fish’s father died of a heart attack, and his mother was forced to find work.  She was unable to care for her son, so she placed him in an orphanage where he was frequently whipped and beaten.  He discovered that he enjoyed the physical pain, and would get an erection from the abuse, which led the other kids to tease him.  His mother eventually got a job with the government and was able to take him back.  In 1882, Fish began a relationship with a telegraph boy who introduced him to drinking urine and coprophagia (which in itself might seem crazy, but the court did not find that his fetishes were caused by insanity).  Perhaps if Fish had not been subjected to this abuse, he wouldn’t have murdered kids.  Since violence was enacted on him, he felt he needed to enact it on others, which is very common in the cycle of abuse.
           

Herbert Mullin decided to stop taking drugs in January 1973, after he had murdered three people.  He blamed his friend Jim Gianera from high school, who had sold him marijuana.  But his spree did not end after he stopped taking drugs.  He went on to murder ten more people.
           

The only known treatment for schizophrenia is antipsychotic medication.  But, like all medications, they are only effective if taken regularly.  It is unknown if any serial killers were prescribed antipsychotics or if they took them on a regular basis.
           

Schizophrenia describes the actions of some serial killers.  Most experts (Peter Vronsky [an investigative journalist and author] and Dr. J. Reid Meloy [author of The Psychopathic Mind:  Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment]) agree that serial killers can be classified as psychopathic, which is commonly known as antisocial personality disorder.  As I mentioned earlier, serial killers may do what they do because it is in their nature.  Vronsky claims:

Psychologists theorize that psychopaths have a diminished capacity to experience fear and anxiety, which are the roots to the normal development of conscience.  Psychopaths are often very charismatic and very able at manipulating people.  They are highly talented in feigning emotions while inside feeling nothing.  They have no remorse for their victims and have highly developed psychological defense mechanisms such as rationalization (‘She should have known better than to hitchike’), projection (‘She was a heartless manipulating slut’), and disassociation (‘I don’t remember killing her’).  They have a very weak realization of self and compensate for that with grandiosity and an inflated notion of entitlement—meaning that they feel that they are special and ‘entitled’ to act above the law or morality.  Most notable, psychopaths lack any sense of empathy with the feeling of others.3

The list of serial killers who fit this profile seems endless.  Ted Bundy calls himself the “most cold-blooded sonofabitch you’ll every meet.  I just like to kill, I wanted to kill.”  John Gacy never showed remorse, and called his victims “worthless little queers and punks.”  Sutcliffe believed he was “cleaning up the streets.” 

Dr. Meloy asserts that the psychopath’s relationships are based on power, not attachment.  He believes that it starts in early childhood development.  There is a split between the “soft me,” which is the vulnerable inside, and the “hard not-me,” which is the punishing outside.  The child goes through neglectful or painful experiences, and expects that all outside experiences are going to be painful, so he turns inward.  He distrusts everything and everyone outside, and refuses to allow anyone in.  Because of this distrust, the child cannot identify with the parents, and soon, the child has no empathy for anyone.
The majority of serial killers came from rough childhoods.  Many of them grew up with abusive parents and suffered horrible forms of torture.  It’s possible that the reason Fish murdered children was because he held animosity toward those who made fun of him in the orphanage.  He could exert his power over those who were younger and weaker than he was.

Kemper murdered women he believed he could never possess.  His mother was overbearing and abusive.  She constantly blamed her troubles on her son.  She constantly belittled him and made him feel worthless.  Kemper mainly murdered coeds because they were easy prey.  Kemper’s mother worked at the University of California in Santa Cruz, so she gave him a parking sticker so he could pick her up from work.  Even though students were warned not to take rides from strangers, the sticker in the window made them feel more at ease.  He had power over the women, which was more than he could say with his mother.

The pattern continues with other serial killers.  Those who suffered abuse from the hands of their mothers generally wound up killing women.  Gacy, who suffered abuse from his father, wound up killing adolescent boys and men.  The killers feel a sense of helplessness, a sense of worthlessness, so they kill those who are weaker to provide themselves with power and meaning. 

Not every psychopath becomes a serial killer.  Vronsky explains:
While not all psychopaths are violent, they are prone to violence more than average.  It is estimated that 20 to 30 percent of prison populations consist of psychopaths.  But the same might be said for the populations of corporate CEOs, performing artists, and certainly for politicians.  Being a psychopath alone does not make one a serial killer.3

Kemper’s first profession of choice was to be a cop.  At 6 feet 9 inches and weighing 280 pounds, Kemper tried out for the California Highway Patrol, but he was rejected because of his size.  That did not stop him from hanging out with the police and becoming friends with them.  After he started killing, he received inside information on the course of the investigation.  He was so liked by the Santa Cruz police that when he called to confess to the murders of eight women, no one believed him. 

There is no indication why Kemper went from wanting to be a cop to killing women.  Perhaps it is because he wanted to be in a position where his lack of fear and anxiety would be put to good use, but since he couldn’t use that to help people, he used it to harm.  There is a clear distinction between cops and criminals, between good and bad, and since Kemper couldn’t be good, his only other option was to be bad. 

No one really knows why some psychopaths become violent and others don’t.  It is theorized that the violence emerges out of personal social conditions and biological and genetic factors.  There also seems to be an imbalance of chemicals that are linked to depression and compulsive behavior.  There are a myriad of theories out there.  But the truth is:  no one really knows why serial killers kill. 

The prevailing theory is that there is a delicate balance between a chaotic or abusive childhood and biochemical factors that can trigger murderous psychopathic behavior.  Healthy social factors can prevent a biochemically unstable individual from committing criminal acts; healthy biochemistry can protect a person with a turbulent childhood from growing up to be a killer.  Violent offenders emerge when both elements are out of balance.  This theory goes a long way to explain why some children with difficult childhoods do not become serial killers and not everyone with a head injury behave criminally.3 

Unfortunately, there is no treatment or cure for psychopaths.  It cannot be traced to a single chemical, viral, or organic agent.  Psychiatric facilities have no influence on a psychopath, with the exception of giving them more ways to manipulate the populace (see Edmund Kemper).  Fortunately, it seems that psychopaths cure themselves as they age.  For whatever reason, “Starting from age twenty-one, approximately 2 percent of all psychopaths go into remission every year.  The older the psychopath becomes, the more likely that he will become adjusted to society—especially in his midforties.”3  This may explain why most serial killers kill in their mid-20s, and perhaps why Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer disappeared without being apprehended.

While it is possible for a serial killer to have a serious mental illness, most of them are diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.  They are not legally insane because they know the difference between right and wrong; why else would they try to hide their actions from the public?  On the one hand, this can be comforting.  If serial killers are declared criminally insane, they cannot be given the death penalty.  On the other hand, it is very frightening.  If there is no treatment or cure, there is no way to stop it from occurring in future generations.

How Serial Killers are Caught
by Chris Bartholomew
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

It is said that most Serial Killers are caught while being arrested for other things, traffic stops, speeding, stealing, etc.  Here is a list of how some were caught. 

Albert Desalvo - In 1960 De Salvo was arrested by police responding to a breaking and entering call.  He was arrested him after a short foot pursuit in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Albert Fish – He wrote a letter about a murder to the victim's parents in which the paper was able to be traced back to him.

Andrei Chikatilo - The Butcher of Rostov - caught when trying to approach young children while under police surveillance.

Angel Resendiz - The Railroad Killer – turned himself in after relatives, who had knowledge of his whereabouts, contacted authorities who then began secret negotiations to win the suspect's surrender.

Angelo Buono Jr. Kenneth Bianchi  - the Hillside Stranglers - an eyewitness caught sight of two men forcing a young woman into their car. 

Anna Maria Zwanziger - At the urging of his servants (who had survived poisoning) Judge Gebhard (her former employer) had their food analyzed. Traces of arsenic were found after Anna had already escaped. Before her getaway she filled every salt shaker and sugar container in the household with generous doses of arsenic. On October 18, 1809 Anna was arrested after she had sent several letters to the Gebhard household extolling her love for the dead baby and saying the she was willing to forget the wrongs she had suffered and was ready to resume her duties. After six months of questioning, Anna finally broke down confessed.

Anthony Hardy - "trail of blood" led the police to Hardy's flat located a short distance from where the bodies were discovered. They promptly obtained a warrant and searched his ground floor apartment, where they found a great deal of incriminating evidence. At the time of the search Hardy was nowhere to be found. CCTV video surveillance camera caught him on tape on January 1 trying to fill a prescription for his diabetic medication at a London hospital.

Arthur Gary Bishop - He was caught in July of 1983 after killing a 13 year old who he was scheduled to chaperone on a camping trip.

Author Shawcross - caught in 1990 when police intentionally left the body of this final victim where they found it with the idea that a criminal will always return the scene of the crime. The police were right and serial killer Arthur Shawcross was caught

Beverly Allitt - When deaths were so common police saw the pattern, she was the nurse in every death.

Bruce Lee – (Peter Dinsdale) –arrested for arson, he confessed to other fatal fires.

Bruce Mendenhall – Police found his truck, followed it to where the last woman Nicole Hulbert was killed (his truck description being given as being seen around the victim), when police opened his door, they saw blood stains and at that point police said they apprehended Mendenhall and transported him to police headquarters, where he admitted to being responsible for Hulbert’s death, police said.

Bruno Ludke - on January 29, 1943, the cops, while doing routine investigating stumbled upon Bruno, who went crazy on them, assaulting them, before being arrested.

Carl Panzram - In 1928, Panzram was arrested for burglary and held in Washington, D.C.. During his interrogation and jail time he voluntarily confessed to killing two boys.

Carl Stayner - When a fourth body was found in the park (Yosemite National Park) in July, he was questioned and arrested by the FBI. His truck yielded evidence linking him to the victim. He eventually confessed to all four murders.

Carlton Gary - His fingerprints were found at four of the crime scenes.

Charles Cullen - Somerset Medical Center fired Cullen on October 31, 2003, for lying on his job application. Police kept him under surveillance for several weeks until they had finished their investigation.

Clifford Olson- arrested on suspicion to abduct 2 girls.

Coral Eugene Watts – The Sunday Morning Slasher - Watts was picked out in a line-up and arrested on assault and battery charges. He admitted to attacking 15 females.

Danny Rolling - was arrested for an armed robbery

David Berkowitz - eventually caught after receiving a parking ticket at the time and near the place of the Moskowitz murder.

David Gore - On July 26, 1983, Vero Beach authorities received an emergency report of a nude man firing shots at a naked girl on a residential street. Surrounding the suspect house, owned by relatives of Gore, officers found a car in the driveway with fresh blood dripping from its trunk. Inside, the body of 17-year-old Lynn Elliott lay dead with a bullet in her skull. Outnumbered by the police, Gore surrendered, directing officers to the attic where a naked 14-year-old girl was tied to the rafters.

Dennis Nilsen - a neighbor arranged to have the drains unblocked -and the remains of the victims were discovered.

Derrick Todd Lee - linked by DNA

Dorothea Puente - On November 11, 1988, police found a body buried in the lawn at 1426 F Street. Seven bodies were eventually found, and Puente was charged with a total of nine murders, convicted of three, and is now serving two life sentences. She came under suspicion when neighbors noticed people went missing.

Earle Nelson - When Nelson stopped in a general store to buy food, he was recognized by the storeowner and a patron who knew of the $1,500 reward and notified the law.

Ed Gein – arrested when there were so many clues to who killed his last victim.

Eddie Leonski - Confessed to three murders after being picked out of a line of American servicemen by witnesses.

Efren Saldivar - In March 1997, about a year before Michael Swango was arrested on federal charges pertaining to his forged medical credentials, a hospital worker at the Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Glendale, California, told a supervisor that a respiratory therapist named Efren Saldivar had killed an elderly patient by injecting a muscle relaxing drug called Pavulon into the patient’s I.V.  This one was ignored, but evidentially, others reported leading authorities to arrest.

Elizabeth Bathory -  The King of Hungary ordered her arrest when she began murdering nobels instead of peasant girls.

Eric Edgar Cooke - He was caught when the gun used to murder one of his victims, Shirley McLeod, was found, and police waited for Cooke to collect it.

Emile Louis -  caught almost two decades later when his daughter found items in his house belonging to several of the victims.

Fritz Haarmann - A woman who had purchased one of his black-market "steaks" became convinced it was human flesh and turned it over to the police. In the summer of 1924, several skulls and a sackful of bones were found on the banks of the canal. Searching Haarmann's rooms, detectives found bundles of boys' clothing. The landlady's son was wearing a coat--given to him by Haarmann--that belonged to one of the missing boys.

Fritz Honka - In January 1975, he torched his flat, but firemen noticed mummified remains among the ashes and police were called.

Gary M. Heidnik - On March 24 Heidnik loosened the reins on Rivera (he kept his victims in the basement) a bit too much and the woman fled while on an unsupervised trip outside of the house. She notified police who apprehended Heidnik and searched the house, discovering the remaining women huddled in the dank basement.

Gary Ridgeway - On September 10, 2001, almost twenty years after the first known Green River murder, there was a match found between semen samples taken from the victims and Ridgway.
Gerald Schaefer – On July 21, 1972, Schaefer, while on patrol, picked up two teenage girls who were hitchhiking. He abducted them, took them to some remote woods and tied them to trees where he threatened to kill them or sell them into prostitution.  However, when he got a call on his police radio, Schaefer had to go, leaving the girls tied up. He vowed that he would return. The two girls, who were aged 18 and 17, escaped their bonds and went to the nearest police station, which was actually their kidnapper's own station.
Harvey Glatman - Lorraine Vigil, a first time model, agreed to pose for him at a studio. He claimed that Lorraine was getting on his nerves, so he tried to tie her up, but she fought. She finally kicked the door of his car open. She ran to the light and much to her
relief, two police officers were found. They began questioning him about the other victims. They insisted that he was the one who killed the other girls. Harvey finally confessed that he had indeed killed them.

Henri Desire Landru - In 1919, the sister of one of Landru's victims, Madame Buisson, attempted to track down her missing sibling. She did not know Landru's real name but she knew his appearance and where he lived, and she eventually persuaded the police to arrest him.

Henry Lee Lucas - Lucas was desperate for money and called an ex-employer named Ruben Moore who lured Lucas with $100.00 to work on the Moore Ranch. The police arrived the next morning. They could only hold him for left of a vehicle in Maryland. He was released again but later came back into the authorities hands to be captured for the final time.
H. H. Holmes - there are three different versions as to how the police caught up with Holmes. The first is that detectives traced Mudgett through his mother who told them the whereabouts of her son, the second is that while Jailed in Missouri, Holmes shared a cell with the infamous train robber Marion C. Hedgepeth, "The Handsome Bandit", perhaps wanting to brag about his own criminal prowess, Dr. Holmes told Mr. Hedgepeth about the Pitezel scam,and Hedgepeth squealed. And the third is that, aided by Mrs. Pitezel, the police captured Holmes.
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley - Myra's brother-in-law phoned police, directing them to Brady's address. The raiders caught Ian and Myra at home, retrieving a fresh corpse from the bedroom, along with the bloody hatchet and Brady's library of volumes on perversion and sadism.
Irene Leidolf (with Maria Gruber, Irene Leidolf, Stephanija Meyer, and Waltraud Wagner) They were caught after they were overheard bragging about their latest murder at a local tavern. They confessed to 49 murders, but may have been responsible for as many as 200.

Jeffery Dahmer - caught on 22nd July 1991, when 31 year old Tracy Edwards managed to escape from him. He found two policemen sitting in a police car and explained how he had been assaulted by Dahmer.

Jeffery Gorton - DNA evidence from a slaying matched his.

Jesse Pomeroy - When Pomeroy's mother moved out of her house , laborers working on the flooring found the decomposing remains of Katie Curran buried in the basement's floor.

Joe Ball - A joke circulated around that Joe Ball must have fed a missing waitresses to his pet alligators. The police took this joke seriously enough to investigate, especially when a neighbor of Ball's complained about a foul-smelling barrel that he had dumped nearby. On September 24, 1938, the deputies came to arrest Joe Ball, who took a swig of beer, hit the NO SALE button on his cash register, grabbed a .45 from the drawer, and shot himself through the heart.

Joel Rifkin - caught after a high-speed police chase, police inspected Rifkin's truck and discovered the corpse of his seventeenth and last victim.
John George Haigh - a jeweler from nearby Horsham called to say that a man had pawned a victim's jewelry the day after she went missing. He identified Haigh and that was enough for police to arrest him.
John Wayne Gacy - Robert Piest was the last boy to be killed by Gacy. Piest had been at work at the local pharmacy and Gacy had offered him a construction job, as he ran his own construction business. At the end of his shift, Piest was picked up by his mother, and told her he was just popping back inside to speak to a man about a job. He never returned and she left to go home. When he didn't return home at all that night the family contacted the police and started to search for him. They discovered that the construction man was John Wayne Gacy.

Joseph Duncan II – caught when he walked with victim Shasta Groene into a Denny's.

Joseph Paul Franklin - a nurse in Florida taking the blood he was selling recognized a bald eagle tattoo on his arm.

Juan Corona – A neighboring farmer noticed a fresh grave and called the police.

Jurgen Bartsch - was arrested after an unsuccessful attempt to torture, kill and dismember a young boy.

Kenneth Erskine - police found a handprint at the scene of one of the crimes, and it matched one on their files.

Larry Eyler - On September 30, 1983, an Indiana highway patrolman spotted a pickup truck parked along Interstate 65, with two men moving toward a nearby stand of trees. One appeared to be bound, and the officer went to investigate, identifying Larry Eyler as the owner of the truck.

Leonard Lake - When the vise Leonard Lake and Charles Ng  had been using in their victims' torture broke, they needed a new one. A clerk spotted Ng hiding the vise under his coat and called the police. Ng fled the scene, but Lake was arrested when police saw that he had a gun in his car, was using false license plates and had identification that seemed to belong to someone else. Lake gave up his partner's name and his own, announced that he was running from the FBI—then swallowed two cyanide capsules and passed out, dying a short time later.

Mack Ray Edwards - walked into the Los Angeles Police Department's Foothill station on March 6, 1970, and said he wanted to clear his conscience.

Manuela Ruda (with husband Daniel) - arrested at a gas station.

Marc Dutroux - an eyewitness remembered part of a license plate which matched Dutroux's.

Marcel Petiot - He was recognized and arrested at a Paris metro station. He carried a pistol, F31,700 in cash, and 50 documents in six different names.

Mary Ann Cotton – caught when a post mortem examination on one of her children revealed arsenic poisoning as the cause of death.

Marywbeth Tinning - Tami Lynne was Marybeth's ninth and last child. She was born in August 1985 but lived only four months. She was found dead in her cot and blood was spotted on her pillow. This aroused suspicion and an investigation was carried out. An autopsy revealed that Tami Lynne had died from suffocation.

Michael Ross - witnesses recalled seeing a blue sub-compact car near a murder scene.
Police began working their way through a computer listing of 2,000 sub-compact drivers, and they caught up with Ross.

Michael Swango - rrested and convicted of falsifying statements and documents related to a previous application for a position at a Veterans Administration hospital in New York.

Michel Fourniret - caught in 2003, when a Belgian would-be victim, 13, broke free after being kidnapped.

Patrick Kearney – (and David Hill) - July 5, 1977 the couple walked into the Sheriff's In formation Center in Riverside, saw a wanted poster of themselves and surrendered.

Paul Denyer - A piece of skin, possibly from a finger, was found on the neck of a dead girl. And the sighting of a yellow Toyota Corona on a road near the bike track at 3 p.m., the time the coroner estimated that the vicitm had been murdered. The observant police officer had written down its number from its registration label because the car had no plates.

Randall Woodfield - In March 1981, police investigating a shooting death in Beaverton, Oregon encountered Woodfield, who was a casual acquaintance of the victim. Citing his history of sexual assault, police searched his home and found evidence linking him to the murder, as well as the attempted murders of two young women.

Randy Steven Kraft - Arrested by Sterling for driving while intoxicated, the patrolman found the strangled body of a boy in the car.

Richard Angelo - One patient, Gerolamo Kucich, caught him.   Kucich saw a bearded man put something into his IV, and he managed to reach for his call button before he succumbed. 

Richard Chase – After his final kill, he left perfect hand prints and foot prints in blood and was apprehended.

Richard Ramirez – After a his mug shots were broadcast on national television and printed on the cover of every major newspaper in California he was caught by angry residents and the police were called.

Robert Berdella - April 2, 1988, a man jumped from the second floor window of Berdella's house wearing nothing but a dog collar. Police were called, the house searched, he was arrested.

Robert Black - caught July 1990, after he abducted a six-year-old girl. A man recognized the van and called police. The girl was found bound and gagged in the back of the van.

Robert Hansen – was caught when a woman he was trying to capture ran right into the police.

Robert Lee Yates - Caught after he tried to abduct a boy from a Camas movie theater.
 
Robert Picton - On February 5, 2002, the police executed a search warrant for illegal firearms at the property owned by Robert Pickton and his two siblings. He was taken into custody, and the police then obtained a second court order to search the farm once they discovered personal items belonging to one of the missing women.

Sante Kimes – (and her son Kenney) Kimes and her son, Kenneth, were arrested on a warrant for using a bad check to buy a car.

Ted Bundy - Bundy's Volkswagen car aroused suspicion in Salt Lake City and on August 16, 1976 a police stop found a number of suspect items in the vehicle's trunk. Among the things found were an ice-pick, ski mask, crowbar and a large number of tools. At first, investigators believed they had captured a burglar, but a subsequent search of Bundy's apartment found brochures and maps for places in Colorado where victims had been murdered. A test revealed a match between hairs in Bundy's apartment and hairs found at the murder scene of Melissa Smith. A witness who saw Bundy's photograph then came forward to put him near the scene of a crime in Snowmass, Colorado the previous year.

Thomas Neill Cream – A doctor, he was caught when he tried to frame innocent doctors for his crimes.

Vaclav  Mrazek – Caught in March 1957 during a house inspection following a theft in the Libusin mine, where he was working as a spa staff attendant.

Vincent Johnson - fingered by another homeless man who was suspected of being the killer. The man was cleared because his DNA did not match, but he identified Johnson as a possible suspect and called officers when he saw him crossing the Williamsburg bridge.

Wayne Adam Ford – turned himself in.

Westley Allan Dodd - the law finally caught up with him after he botched an attempt to abduct another unnamed boy.

William Bonin - a young man in custody for car theft told the police he would give them the Freeway Killer if they would give him a break on the car theft.

William Suff – arrested after a routine traffic stop.

Serial killers in Pop culture
by Stephen W. Roberts
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

Serial killers in contemporary American culture is namely inspired by the convergence of two basic desires, that being violence and stardom. We as people desire notoriety, though most often this concept is unattainable. There lies a certain need within all of us to be noticed; be it by those whom we love and admire or by the world as a whole. This is a concept that every successful actor, musician, novelist, artist and serial killer have in common. They all longed to smile for the camera.
           

The elusive creature known as the serial killer has captured the attention of American culture. With the popular press churning out dozens of books and movies centered around the serial killer each year, the term has almost become a catch-phrase, replacing earlier terms such as 'homicidal maniac.' Fiction writers and the movie industry use 'serial killer' in such casual manners that it’s almost as if serial killers were either foreign to the American lifestyle or in fact fictitious themselves.
           

Serial killers do exist and Americans have perfected the art.
It cannot be denied that the serial killer kills. Killing, however, integrates a variety of meanings. A mere slip of the hand on the steering wheel can turn a normal person into a killer. And it is conceivable that a second such happening could turn an otherwise normal person into a serial killer of sorts.

I, for one do not recommend becoming a serial killer as to obtain some sort of celebrity status, but is it unconceivable that some may have already done this in history?
Perhaps it wasn’t forethought, but did most of them not bask in the glory of the hunt; knowing that the news would report on them, knowing cops could come for them and knowing reporters would take their pictures upon capture?

Just think of the book deals, movie deals and admiration from your peers and fans alike as you become the next flavor of the month in Hollywood. It’s enough to make a person sick, though perhaps it’s also enough to make a person kill.

If you’re a fan of pop culture then you’ll likely believe these all to be true or at least have heard of these clichés from time to time:
·    Most Serial killers are white males in their late 20s to early 30s.
·    Serial killers are always sexually motivated and always hunt the same kind of victim and murder them symbolically in the same fashion.
·    All serial killers are methodical outside-of-the-box thinkers and require a special kind of person to track them.
·    Serial killers are immoral and often are loners.
·    Serial killers like to torture animals in their young age as they fantasize about the acts they’ll commit later in life.
·    All serial killers wet the bed as children.
·    Serial killers are pyromaniacs.
·    They always follow the investigation and even taunt the police.
·    Serial killers target veteran detectives to play cat and mouse with throughout the investigation.
·    They always leave a signature
·    Serial killers kill alone
·    They prefer to kill up close and personal
·    There are less active today than in the 80s and 90s
·    Jack the ripper is the oldest documented serial killer
·    Aileen Wuornos is the first female serial killer
·    The green river killer holds the record for most slain by one individual
·    The zodiac killer was never identified
·    Movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre are based ENTIRELY on actual events.
·    All serial killers are psychopaths
·    They all possess some deep seeded motive linked to their unhappy childhoods
·    All serial killers want to be caught for publicity, though never feel remorse

Now though some of this may be true some of the time, none of it is factually flawless 100% of the time. Serial killers come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life. They make birth on every continent and can even be children.
Regarding motives, they can be placed into five different categories, although there may be some serial killers that seem to have characteristics of more than one type.

Visionary
Contrary to popular opinion, serial killers are rarely insane or motivated by hallucinations and/or voices in their heads. Many claim to be, usually as a way of trying to get acquitted by reason of insanity. There are, however, a few genuine cases of serial killers who were compelled by such delusions.

Herbert Mullin killed 13 people after voices told him that murder was necessary to prevent California from suffering an earthquake. Mullin went to great pains to point out that California did indeed avoid an earthquake during his murder spree.

Ed Gein claimed that by eating the corpses of women who looked like his deceased mother, he could preserve his mother's soul inside his body. He killed two women who bore passing resemblances to his mother, eating one and being apprehended while in the process of preparing the second woman's body for consumption. He also used the flesh of exhumed female corpses to fashion a "woman suit" (as well as various other household adornments, such as curtains and lamp shades) for himself so that he could "become" his mother. After his arrest he was placed in a mental facility for the remainder of his life.

Missionary
So-called missionary killers believe that their acts are justified on the basis that they are getting rid of a certain type of person (often prostitutes or members of a certain ethnicity), and thus doing society a favor. Gary Ridgway and Aileen Wuornos are often described as missionary killers. In Wuornos' case, the victims were not prostitutes, but their patrons. Missionary killers differ from other types of serial killer in that their motive is generally non-sexual.
 
Hedonistic
This type kills for the sheer pleasure of it, although what aspect they enjoy varies. Yang Xinhai's post-capture statement is typical of such killers' attitudes: "When I killed people I had a desire sexual excitement. This inspired me to kill more. I don't care whether they deserve to live or not. It is none of my concern"
Some killers may enjoy the actual "chase" of hunting down a victim more than anything, while others may be primarily motivated by the act of torturing and abusing the victim while they are alive. Yet others, like Jeffrey Dahmer, may kill the victim quickly, almost as if it were a chore, and then indulge in necrophilia or cannibalism with the body. Usually there is a strong sexual aspect to the crimes, even if it may not be immediately obvious, but some killers obtain a surge of excitement that is not necessarily sexual, such as David Berkowitz, who got a thrill out of shooting young couples in cars at random and then running away without ever physically touching the victims.
 
Gain motivated
Most criminals who commit multiple murders for material ends (such as mob hit men) are not classed as serial killers, because they are motivated by economic gain rather than psychopathological compulsion. There is a fine line separating such killers, however. For example, Marcel Petiot, who operated in Nazi-occupied France, could be classified as a serial killer. He posed as a member of the French Resistance and lured wealthy Jewish people to his home, claiming he could smuggle them out of the country. Instead he murdered them and stole their belongings, killing 63 people before he was finally caught. Although Petiot's primary motivation was materialistic, few would deny that a man willing to kill so many people simply to acquire a few dozen suitcases of clothes and jewelry was a compulsive killer and psychopath.

Power and control
This is the most common serial killer. Their main objective for killing is to gain and exert power over their victim. Such killers are sometimes abused as children, which means they feel powerless and inadequate, and often they indulge in rituals that are linked, often very specifically, to forms of abuse they suffered themselves. Many power/control-motivated killers sexually abuse their victims, but they differ from hedonistic killers in that rape is not motivated by lust but as simply another form of dominating the victim.
The above seems to cover the basics of motives for a serial killer, though it’s important for one to recognize that the fantasies involved could call for one or many variations of the above options.

No researcher, or writer, or even the FBI, however, has managed to make what now seems like a simple connection in the serial killer. It is well known that fantasy plays a large role in the life and motivation of the serial killer. And it is also widely accepted that the serial killer uses fantasy as a crutch, as a coping mechanism for day-to-day life. No researcher, however, has synthesized these two facts into a far more intriguing thesis. The serial killer, much like the chronic gambler and problem drinker, is addicted to the use of fantasy. So strong is this compulsion that the serial killer murders to preserve the addiction, in essence preserving his only remaining coping mechanism.

If being a serial killer is an addiction to fantasy, then what sets them apart from actors and fiction writers?

Do they not all live for the next fictitious thrill?

If this simplistic addiction is the cause of a serial killer, then why is one person able to pursue a live of addiction and gain fame and fortune, when others falls victim to their victims and go to prison…the answer is a choice. Serial killers may be compelled to act upon their addiction, but they alone make the choice to commit murder. Murderers decide to commit murder. So then, if by this recognition of a serial killer could we not be reading the next best seller written by Theodore Bundy about a serial killer named Stephen King?

In my opinion, this is true.

Every living being possesses the ability to commit evil acts and even though some of us are addicts, not all of us decide to commit murder to secure the continual existence of our fantasies.

In closing, I’d like to add that I DO NOT advocate any actions neither by or in interest of serial killers, nor do I suggest that anybody reading this should go out and become a serial killer for the fame, though I’m also not suggesting you become an actor or a novelist to maintain an addiction. Take from this what you will, acknowledge that the media has built up the serial killer as high as they have the rock star to sell merchandise and know that your life is solely in your hands…at least most of the time.

Why Serial Killers Kill – Some Theories
by Chris Bartholomew
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

When considering the question of why, we have to consider that some serial killers do kill just because they want to.  In most cases, there isn't a clear cut reason, and so I haven't delved into the reasons of, wanting to kill, power and thrill as a motivation, criminal enterprise, ideology (one who would kill to further the goals and ideas of an individual or group, terrorist groups).

From the Behavioral Analysis Unit-2, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Critical Incident Response Group, Federal Bureau of Investigation:Serial Murder — Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators:

• Predisposition to serial killing, much like other violent offenses, is biological, social, and psychological in nature, and it is not limited to any specific characteristic or trait.
 
• The development of a serial killer involves a combination of these factors, which exist together in a rare confluence in certain individuals. They have the appropriate biological predisposition, molded by their psychological makeup, which is present at a critical time in their social development.

• There are no specific combinations of traits or characteristics shown to differentiate serial killers from other violent offenders.

• There is no generic template for a serial killer.

• Serial killers are driven by their own unique motives or reasons.

• Serial killers are not limited to any specific demographic group, such as their sex,
age, race, or religion.

• The majority of serial killers who are sexually motivated erotized violence during development. For them, violence and sexual gratification are inexplicably intertwined
in their psyche.

• More research is needed to identify specific pathways of development that produce serial killers.

Attendees at the Serial Murder Symposium agreed that there is no generic profile of a serial murderer. Serial killers differ in many ways, including their motivations for killing and their behavior at the crime scene. However, attendees did identify certain traits common to some serial murderers, including sensation seeking, a lack of remorse or guilt, impulsivity, the need for control, and predatory behavior. These traits and behaviors are consistent with the psychopathic personality disorder. Attendees felt it was very important for law enforcement and other professionals in the criminal justice system to understand psychopathy and its relationship to serial murder.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others, in order to satisfy their own selfish needs. Although the concept of psychopathy has been known for centuries, Dr. Robert Hare led the modern research effort to develop a series of assessment tools, to evaluate the personality traits and behaviors attributable to psychopaths.

Why Serial killers kill is the question most people want to know, and it's also the reason that there are so many theories.  We want a logical explanation of a thing that is completely illogical.  Add to that the fact that we use actual serial killer interviews to try and get the answer, and well, you get the point, we don't know why but, as I pointed out, there are theories.

Abuse and Neglect

If you have read a lot of serial killer bios, then these terms have to be very familiar to you. This tells us that the FBI is right about childhood, and something lacking there very well may be most of the 'why' answer.  Many children grow up neglected and abused, but do not become violent criminals or serial killers.  Many serial killers came from normal families.  Not everyone will fall under this umbrella.

I could say the above and leave it at that, because I know everyone reading this knows what a 'normal' childhood is, right?  Probably not.  From the list below, you can see what abnormal is:

Child Abuse

Gary Heidnik, 3 years old, didn't clean his room properly; Father hung him by his feet out of a 3rd story window

7 years old Henry Lee Lucas, mother made him go to school dressed like a girl.  Mother's lover beat him when his teacher gave him a pair of shoes and at 10 years old showed him how to kill animals and then have sex with them

Danny Rolling was 6 months old when his father kicked him into a wall, 1 year old when his father beat him when he crawled funny, 6-8 years old father beat him twice a week, 13 years old; father handcuffed him to his brother, beat them and left them outside.

1 year old Robert Garrow's father made him kneel for hours in the corner, 2 years old his mother split his head open with a crowbar during a beating, 5 years old he was knocked unconscious when mother hit him in the head with a piece of wood. 6 years old when he was beaten unconscious by his father, and made to wear his sister's bloomers out to play.

Joel Rifkin's father committed suicide in 1987 and the killing spree started two years after that. 

Albert DeSalvo was sold into slavery by his father.

Ed Kemper's mother locked him in the closet numerous times.

Bobby Jo Long's mother had frequent sex with men in the same room that Bobby Jo slept in and then the men were abusive to him.

Gary Ridgway had a domineering mother who constantly yelled at their father and controlled Ted completely, and was never pleased with what he did.

Albert Fish - several of his family members had mental health problems. After his father’s death, he was put in an orphanage by his mother and he was whipped at the orphanage frequently

Herman Webster Mudgett – Dr. H. H. Holmes father was very strict and often bullied his son. He had a well-known fear of the local doctor’s office and due to this; other students in his school would often force him to touch human skeletons. What was meant to be a scare turned out to be a fascination, which led to him stealing corpses while in medical school.

Andrei Chikatilo He shared a bed with his mother and Chikatilo and often wet said bed, for which he was beaten. His mother told her children that his brother was eaten by starving villagers.

Bruce George Peter Lee - The son of a prostitute, Lee was brought up in children’s homes and suffered from congenital spastic disabilities in his right limbs, which left him with a limp in his right leg and a compulsion to hold his right arm across his chest.

Ted Bundy - born to an unwed mother, who later moved in with her parents, and assumed the role of sister to her son.

Michael Wayne McGray's father was a violent alcoholic and used to beat animals and encourage his son to do the same.

Peter Kurten, when his father was drunk used to force his wife to have sex in front of their children.

Cary Stayner - his younger brother, Steven, was kidnapped by a child molester Kenneth Parnell in 1972 and held captive for more than seven years before escaping and being reunited with his family. Stayner would later say he felt neglected as his parents grieved over the loss of Steven.

Carlton Gary was malnourished and abused.

Cayetano Santos Godino's father was an alcoholic physical abuser who suffered from syphilis. Cayetano attended several child-care organizations when he was between five and ten but always ended up ousted.

Charles Ng as a child was harshly disciplined by his father at every opportunity.

Danny Rolling - father, a police officer, was abusive to both him and his mother, and later his brother, Kevin. Claudia Rolling made repeated attempts to leave her husband, but always returned.

David Koresh described his early childhood as lonely, saying that the other kids teased him and called him "Vernie". As a young boy, he was abused by his stepfather. A poor student because of dyslexia, Koresh dropped out of high school.

Dennis Nilsen father was an alcoholic and his parents divorced when he was four years old. His mother remarried and sent her son to his grandparents, but after a couple of years he was sent back to his mother again.

Dorothea Puente - both parents abused her, and she often had to scavenge for food. Puente's father died when she was four.

Ed Gein's father was a violent alcoholic who was frequently unemployed. His mother blocked any attempt he made to pursue friendships. Besides school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta, who was fanatically religious, drummed into her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drink, and the belief that all women (herself excluded) were whores. According to Augusta, the only acceptable form of sex was solely for procreation.

Gerald Eugene Stano - His natural mother neglected him to such an extent that when she finally gave him up for adoption when he was six months old, county doctors declared him unadoptable because he was functioning at what they described as "an animalistic level". He was eventually adopted, however, by Norma Stano, a nurse, who renamed him Gerald Eugene Stano.

Henry Lee Lucas described his mother, Viola Lucas, as a violent prostitute. His father, Anderson Lucas, was an alcoholic and former railroad employee who had lost his legs in a train accident, and who suffered from Viola's wrath as often as his son. She regularly beat him and his half-brother. He once spent three days in a coma when his mother hit his head with a plank of wood, and on many occasions he was forced by his mother to watch her have sex with men. Lucas described an incident when he was given a mule as a gift by his father's friends, only to see his mother shoot and kill it.

Jerry Brudos - His mother had wanted a girl, and often ignored and belittled him.

Jesse Pomeroy, his father was extremely abusive to him and his brother, often taking them to their wood shed where he stripped them naked and beat them severely.

John Reginald Halliday Christie was abused by his father and dominated by his mother and sisters.

John George Haigh parents, John and Emily, were members of the Plymouth Brethren. He was confined to living within a 10ft fence that his father put up around their garden to lock out the outside world. Haigh would later claim he suffered from recurring religious nightmares in his childhood.

John Wayne Gacy - His father was an alcoholic who described Gacy as a "sissy" and who physically abused Gacy's mother.

Joseph Paul Franklin is believed to have suffered an abusive childhood at the hands of both his violent parents.

Jurgen Bartsch's adoptive mother, who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, was fixated on cleanliness. He was not permitted to play with other children, lest he became dirty. This continued into adulthood - his mother personally bathed him until he was 19.

Mary Bell's mother Betty was a prostitute who was often absent from the family home, traveling to Glasgow to work. Accounts from family members suggest strongly that Betty had attempted to kill Mary and make her death look accidental more than once during the first few years of her life. Mary herself says she was subject to repeated sexual abuse, her mother forcing her to engage in sex acts with men from the age of five.

Michael Ross - his mother, who had abandoned the family at least once and had been institutionalized, beat all four of her children, saving the worst for him. Some family and friends have suggested that he was also molested by his teenaged uncle, who committed suicide when Ross was six.

Myra Hindley - She was believed to have been beaten by her alcoholic father, Bob Hindley, a paratrooper in the RAF during World War II, who was also alleged to have been violent towards her mother Nellie.

Ottis Elwood Toole - his father left the family when Toole was young. He claimed his mother was a religious fanatic, and that his sister dressed him in girl's clothes. Toole also claimed his grandmother was a Satanist who exposed him to various practices and rituals in his youth.

Patrick Kearney, a thin and sickly child, became a target for bullies at school. In his teens, he became withdrawn and fantasized about killing people. His mother, a prostitute with 13 children, caught him fondling his younger sister in 1957 when he was eight years old.

Richard Chase - An apparent victim of abuse at the hands of his mother, Chase exhibited by the age of 10 what is known in psychiatric circles as the "triad" of the early signs of a serial killer: He wet the bed, he started fires, and he tortured animals.

Richard Ramirez - his father, Julian, brought his children up with strict Catholic beliefs. Not shy of physical punishment, Julian Ramirez would beat his kids if they got into trouble as a way of discipline. Richard usually escaped, spending nights at a nearby cemetery. His father's temper was so bad that he once hit himself over the head with a hammer until he bled.

Robert Hansen as a child was small and sickly with perpetual acne and a severe stutter and spent much of his early life as a loner and a target for bullying from his peers and his strict, domineering father.

Robert Lee Yates - As a six-year old boy, Yates was allegedly molested repeatedly by an older neighbor boy. His father later described him as being "moody and violent" as a teenager.

Rod Ferrell - his grandfather raped him when he was 5. Rod also claimed that as a young child, he was exposed to occult rituals and human sacrifices, and was introduced to the "Dungeons & Dragons" role-playing game.

Robert Black - Locals and neighbors report that Black was often frequently and heavily bruised during his childhood, and acquaintances from primary school say he was "a bit of a loner but with a tendency to be bullied".

William Bonin - His father was a compulsive gambler and alcoholic, and his mother frequently left Bonin and his brother in the care of their grandfather, a convicted child molester.

Stewart Wilken alias ‘Boetie Boer'. He had been sexually abused during his childhood.
Henry Louis Wallace – They forced him and his sister to beat each other with a switch. His mother and sister would parade him around the neighborhood dressed as a girl.  He witnessed a gang rape at the age of seven.

Joseph Kallinger was adopted by sadistic parents, who disciplined the young boy with hammers and cat-o'-nine tails. After a hernia operation his stepmother told the 6-year-old that the surgery was to keep his penis from growing. She would also hold his open hand over a flame until his skin began to smolder.

Jeffery Dahmers mother was a hysterical hypochondriac who spent most of her life in bed popping pills.

Brain Damage perhaps caused by head injuries

The prefrontal cortex is 29% of the brain and acts as a controlling mechanism for anger and aggression. The trademark of all social primates is a highly developed frontal brain, and human beings have the largest one of all. Damage causes this to stop working, perhaps allowing people to become murderers and cannibals.

Serial killers who had head injuries:

Paul Charles Denyer
Bobby Joe Long
Leonard Lake
David Berkowitz
Kenneth Bianchi
John Gacy
Carl Panzram
Earle Leonard Nelson
Arthur Shawcross
Fred West
Gary Heidnik
Henry Lee Lucas
Albert Fish
William Burke and William Hare

For Profit Serial Killers

The Motives of Female Serial Killers
Money (74%)
Control (13%)
Enjoyment (11%)
Sex (10%)
Drugs, cult involvement, cover up, or feelings of inadequacy (24%)
Belle Sorenson Gunness
Elfriede Blauensteiner
K D Kempamma alias Mallika
Aileen Carol Wuornos
Mary Ann Cotton
Dorothea Puente
Dr. Harold Shipman
Maria Catherina Swanenburg
Blanche Taylor Moore
Margie Velma Barfield
Waneta Hoyt
Belle Gunness
Sue Basso
Lydia Trueblood
Henry Louis Wallace

Mother Hate

Although it's hard to put everyone who had a domineering mother into a category that says they killed because of the relationship that they had with the mother, there are a lot of them that did have strange relationships with that parent.  Many of the mothers of serial killers were highly controlling, overbearing or overprotective of their sons.  Since some serial killers kill women who have more than just a passing resemblance to their mother, this theory is very popular.

In the 1980's, a study was done of convicted sex-murderers by the FBI.  In that study they found that 47% didn't have a father present throughout most or all of their childhood, and of those that did have fathers present, 71% reported that their mother was the dominant parent.

Some of those serial killers who had obvious strange relationships include:

Ed Gein – he might have actually killed his brother to be more alone with his mother.
Edmund Kemper – mother was domineering, he preyed on women who looked like her. He killed his mother.
Henry Lee Lucas killed his mother.
Joseph Kallinger (he's in the abuse list above)
Kenneth Bianchi (he's in the abuse list above)
Peter Sutcliffe
Jerry Brudos
Arthur Shawcross was obsessed with pleasing his critical mother
Jeffery Dahmers mother was a hysterical hypochondriac who spent most of her life in bed popping pills.
Bobby Jo Long (he's in the abuse list above)
Gary Ridgway (he's in the abuse list above)
Andrei Chikatilo
Ted Bundy
Dorothea Puente
Gerald Eugene Stano
Jerry Brudos
John Reginald Halliday Christie
Joseph Paul Franklin
Jurgen Bartsch
Mary Bell
Michael Ross
Ottis Elwood Toole
Patrick Kearney
Richard Chase
William Bonin
Henry Louis
Wallace Joseph Kallinger

Killer Fantasies

A list of names that fall into this category of theory isn't' even required for this theory, just saying that all serial killers have fantasies that they are trying to fulfill when they kill will suffice.  In a study of 36 serial killers, 28 of them started daydreaming in early childhood.  While daydreaming in itself isn't a harmful thing as everyone has done it, cultivating those dreams and fantasies and reliving them over and over again before going out and murdering people is. For a serial killer in the making, it is often like an addiction. He fantasizes his crimes over and over before he actually commits it. Those fantasies are also used as a coping mechanism for a day-to-day-life. As soon as they are no any longer sufficient to satisfy his needs, he will start living them out.

Serial Killer: The Human Being
By Kait Wellman
Published in The Serial Killer Magazine

For centuries, maniacal and clinically disturbed people have been committing murders. Finding peace and solace in drowning a young child, enjoying dining on the tender meat of a human thigh, or simply falling asleep next to a rotting corpse; these are all things that satisfy and complete a murderer, if only for several moments. These delightful feelings produced through the death of another human being calm and deeply enrich a killer’s psychosis. A killer will go to great lengths to find this cherished sensation, travelling great distances, stalking a victim for weeks, or indulging in sadomasochistic pleasures. Murdering becomes a romanticized thought, arousing the killer’s insatiable appetite as he or she imagines their fantasies coming to reality. The longer the wait for the next victim, the greater the appeal for killing slowly rises.  The killer reaches his or her fanatical climax much like an orgasm when finally they end the life of their selected prey.

                What the killer feels next is not ecstasy, but rather immediate disappointment. The killing could have been executed better, could have lasted longer, and could have solved the loneliness the killer might be suffering from. Trivial and small insignificant details rack the brain of the killer, leaving them with the belief that the next killing might be perfect. With each murder, the intricate standards are set higher and higher, the killer becoming madly obsessed by obtaining that indescribable ideal emotion of agile strength, fantastic glory, and terrific splendor attained from the very first murder they committed. People who must kill in multitudes are called serial killers. They often kill more than three people in a short span of time, have what is called a “cooling off” period, and then continue their search for more victims. A sexual element, though not always the case, is usually included in the killings.

                America has had a remarkable number of serial killers, eighty-five percent of them currently dominating the nation according to the FBI. What seems to interest the innocent public is primarily why these killers do what they do. This is not an easy question to tackle, by far. Early childhood abuse usually plays a large part in the killer’s actions and deeds. Edmund Kemper was locked in a basement by his mother when he reached puberty, while Charles Manson was sent to school in girl’s clothing courtesy of his mother’s constant belittling. John Wayne Gacy was violently attacked regularly by his father, attempting to show his young son what a real man should be.

When a serial killer emerges from his shell, it is sometimes seen as a rebellion against what they have lived through. Not only are they scarred and badly traumatized by the events of their childhood, but they have the need to inflict the same or more pain that they once endured. This is where the argument begins: does childhood abuse always turn a person into a serial killer? No, for we see victims of this kind of cruelty every day, leading “normal” and civilized lives. A product of environment does not always affect a serial killer. What distinguishes a serial killer from the average person is simply the compulsion to murder. But the whys of this are infinitely impossible to pin down depending on each killer.

                Serial killers begin their killings at a very young age, their victim’s notoriously small animals such as domestic cats, dogs, or birds. Reasons vary from killer to killer, but some want to torture these defenseless creatures as an act of dominance. After a brutal beating from a parent or relative, the killer might want to inflict the pain they feel on another living thing. Some killers dissect the animals because they are simply curious of what the vital organs and intestines look like. Finding a rat or a squirrel, other killers merely take pleasure in suffering and death, finding that blood on their hands interests them more than any childhood game on the playgrounds. Cannibals, in their early years might find satisfaction in eating the raw flesh of a mouse or cat. Furthermore, fledgling child serial killers often keep souvenirs of the animals, keeping parts of the carcasses in shallow graves they might later dig up later to relive their crimes. Skeletons of these animals are sometimes hidden in backyards or private sheds. Although hard to attain, some killers are even able to keep their animals in jars filled with formaldehyde. 

                The next stage for an adolescent serial killer is sometimes petty crime, including theft, arson, and rape. Before they are able to ultimately commit murder, they must test the waters, so to speak, to see what they can get away with. Many of these killers are not able to conceal their crimes as easily as they had hoped, and end up in juvenile detention centers or reform schools. Edmund Kemper, an exception in the “law” of serial killing, murdered his grandparents at age 15, earning him five years in a state hospital. Albert DeSalvo was taught by his own father at an early age how to burglarize homes and shops, which came in handy when he finally did begin his full crime spree at age 31. For teenage future serial killers, this is a time for them to learn skills for social manipulation and to successfully gain the trust of people they might later take advantage of.

                By the time the killer reaches college age, he is beginning to understand that his fantasies of murder can become a reality if given the proper opportunity. The organized killer begins to plan elaborate schemes, dreaming in precise detail what he will do to his victim. The killer will attain all of his implements in advance; guns, knives, rope, or poison. He treasures his weapons lovingly, delighted that these will be his trophies once he is able to search out the perfect victim.

The “perfect victim” is sought by the killer in an exact manner, for the victim must fit the superlative image of whomever the killer has desired since first deciding to kill. Once the victim has been chosen, the killer usually stalks the home looking for dates and times that the victim will be alone for long spans of time. Dennis Rader was an avid stalker and spent weeks surveying the homes of young single women he would eventually “bind, torture, and kill.”The longer the killer stalks, the more ravenous he becomes for blood, suffering, and agony. Much like a rollercoaster, the killer slowly and gradually climbs to the top, believing the excitement he will feel as he descends will be the thrill of his life.

                The unorganized killer, sometimes known as a mentally insane person, does not search out a “perfect victim,” nor does the killer plan out exactly how he will devise the murder. An example might be that of Jack the Ripper, who found prostitutes on the streets of London and tore them to shreds in plain sight. At the same time, though, Jack was reportedly incredibly accurate when slitting open his victim’s chest cavities. Another spontaneous serial killer was Andrei Chikatilo, a Russian citizen with a keen interest in young children. After meeting them at a train station, he lured them to a secluded area in the woods where he tortured, killed, and ate them. David Berkowitz, suffering from severe schizophrenia, mercilessly murdered six young people in the mid 1970’s simply by walking by their parked cars in Brooklyn, NY.

                The sexual deviant is well known among America’s roster of serial killers. Many killers demand sex to prove their dominance, raping and sodomizing the victim in a tremendously violent fashion. Some killers who are normally impotent in their marriages find that they can maintain an erection when they are face to face with their chosen victim. The forbidden act of raping someone gives the killer enormous gratification, fulfilling their sexual urgency in colossal measures.

Ed Gein, reportedly impotent, realized that he could have sex with corpses without a laughable comment from his dead lovers. Other killers are over-enthusiastic about sex, commanding their spouse to perform intercourse six or seven times a day. When their spouses refuse, the killers simply turn to their victims, who are unable to reject the killers while bound and gagged. Albert DeSalvo, so tortured by his sex addiction, sought out the elderly, the least likely to fight back. Raping and then strangling them with their own stockings, he left the police to find a cheerfully loopy bow around the necks of his thirteen victims.

                Simple violence without sex is another form of serial killing. Bashing in the heads of their victims, beating them to death, and torturing them to the point of unrecognizable human features, serial killers are enamored with certain sadism and bloodshed. At first, this general operation is a vision of beauty to the common serial killer, but some later find it revolting, becoming sick and terrified of what they have done. This is the remorseful serial killer; one who can distinguish right from wrong and understands what he has done is not normal and absolutely horrendous. However, once the serial killers have begun killing, the addiction of slaying innocent people devours their conscious and they are unable and unwilling to end their vicious cycle. Jeffrey Dahmer admitted to his family and the court how enthusiastically sorry he was about the deaths of 17 young boys. Dahmer was genuinely sickened and vociferously disgusted about his crimes, volunteering for the death penalty. He sincerely believed that he should die for what he had done to so many innocent adolescent boys. 

                The remorseless serial killer does not see his crimes as erroneous, somehow believing that taking lives is his calling in life. Often, the remorseless killer has some kind of mental defect, perhaps brought on by a severe head trauma or hereditary traits that warrant him able to commit violence without guilt. Henry Lee Lucas, among many others, was brilliantly pleased with his murders, boasting nearly five hundred victims had died at his hands. Nannie Doss immediately admitted every detail of her murders, claiming she had killed simply because she was bored with her many husbands. Another female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, originally maintained that she was assaulted by her victims and had no choice but to kill them. She later confessed that in cold blood, she had murdered willfully and happily seven innocent men. America’s Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez reportedly had his skull crushed as a child by a dresser and later had a history of brain damage. His methods of killing varied, but were all impossibly and indisputably atrocious. By slitting their throats, beating them to death with a hammer, or shooting them in the face, all can be seen as the work of an extremely mentally ill person. 

                Some serial killers find that they possess enough charm and appeal to lure anyone they chose to their victim’s ultimate demise. Theodore Bundy was a perfect example of this kind of trickery, using only one line to attract his victims, “Hi. I’m Ted.” The monstrosities he committed are almost nauseating, but spoke volumes about the way he was able to operate so easily with women. Bundy had never been a victim of childhood abuse, nor had he been molested as a youngster, but he had a sexual addiction that was unprecedented.

A sex addict feels the same way as someone who finds that food tastes good. Once the euphoria of sex is discovered, the addict cannot stop. Although Bundy suffered from a severe case of sex addiction, he was indelibly violent about it. Perhaps the most astonishing case was that of the Chi Omega murders. In one night, Bundy broke into the sorority house of several co-eds, raped and beat two young women and bludgeoned three others to death. Bundy has been famously known as a psychopath, portraying himself as a well-meaning and charismatic man, while still holding the opinion that women were merely people to be raped and murdered.

                A wolf in sheep’s clothing was the name given to the practically ancient man named Albert Fish. Seen as a kind and grandfatherly type, nobody could guess that Fish was actually a child molester and cannibal. Bringing ten-year-old Grace Budd to an abandoned house, Fish stripped the young girl nude and strangled her. He dined on her body for the next several days until she began to decompose. Fish sent a letter to the Budd home shortly thereafter explaining in great detail what he had done to Grace. The one assurance he gave the appalled Budd family was that Grace had died a virgin. When Fish was apprehended, it was found that he was afflicted with an acute addiction to sadism. Whether beating himself with a nail-embedded paddle or exacting “punishment” on another, Fish could not control his overwhelming desire for pain. It is said that he even looked forward to his own execution, believing it to be the definitive aching pain he had been longing for his entire life.

                Without sophistication and wit, other killers spend their time in the shadows, realizing that they are not part of normal society. By creeping shyly through the streets, they are all virtually unknown killers, keeping their lives private and waiting for the correct victim to find them. After all, some killers are just indiscriminate about who to abduct, torture, and murder. Cousins Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi victimized prostitutes in the late 1970’s, leaving dead bodies in open areas, earning them the title of The Hillside Stranglers. Not only did they strangle their victims, but they bizarrely found pleasure in injecting the women with various window cleaners, and even used electric shock as a torture method.

Other socially awkward serial killers haunt the streets. Jeffrey Dahmer was one of those killers, a lonely and disillusioned young man with a mean penchant for hard alcohol. Dahmer had a decent upbringing, never abused and never molested. He had also never had any history of early head trauma, suggesting he was a sane person who was aware of right and wrong. Alcohol seemed to have not only dominated his life, but had an unusual effect on him when it came to committing crimes. Frequenting local gay bars, Dahmer understood that the only way to get someone to come home with him was to drug their drinks. In the privacy of his home, he mercifully drugged them to the point of passing out. He then strangled them while they slept, finding his ultimate fulfillment at his disposal.

Believing that he was repulsive to any living person, Dahmer strangely attached himself to his corpses, sleeping next to them and lovingly stroking their cold bodies. When the stench of death permeated his home, he decided to keep some of his corpses with him forever- by eating them. Though Dahmer is one of America’s top known cannibals, it is a little known fact that Dahmer did not only and primarily eat every one of his victims. Eating some of them served two functions; one, he could dispose of them by eating them, and two, Dahmer wanted to keep his visitors with him as long as possible, in his own stomach.

The truth about Jeffrey Dahmer is not that he murdered innocent victims without a thought in his mind. Dahmer was truly repentant about his crimes, and admitted that he knew what he had done was wrong. His belief, during his trial, was that he should die for his crimes, for there was no use for his damnable actions in life. His wish came true, in the form of a mop handle and a jealous fist in prison. Dahmer was beaten to death by another inmate after serving two years in prison.

It is indeed repulsive what these serial killers have done. By raping, strangling, bludgeoning to death, or eating the contents of one’s vital organs, we see the distinction between each killer. We find that they are sinful and wicked killers devoid of “normal” emotions or thought processes. It is not fair what they have done, the pain they have inflicted on others, the undeserved violence imposed on innocent citizens. By showing us the awful nature and rule of true evil, we learn that everyone can be a victim if not guarded by reason and a degree of caution. This is not to say that any person is at fault for their own peril. Serial killers are discrete and usually trustful individuals, and that is why they are so often able to capture people quite literally.

Serial killers are startlingly frightening in any capacity, leaving society haunted by the killer’s absolute lack of concern and accountability. But the fact that killers lack this kind of sincere apologetic responsibility has to show America- the entire world- that something is deeply wrong with these killers. A sick person is sent to a doctor, not an executioner. To stop these terrible things from happening, we have to realize that these killers are not another species. They are human beings with damaged mental disorders.

Humanizing a serial killer is difficult, but it must be done to prevent another future Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, or Jeffrey Dahmer. With profound and relentless psychological testing, a myriad of reasoning and understanding can come from these human beings we tend to call “monsters.” If every man in America is to be judged fairly, then the same should be done for serial killers. If compassion and truth must be shown to every man in court, the same respect should be shown to serial killers. Instead of the typical response to serial killing being that of great horror and repulsion, a shred of general empathy could be regarded, for isn’t a serial killer also a victim of their own tragically diseased mind?

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