Serial Killers

I never know what I’ll read next. What ever sparks my interest, either by title, by book cover, or by subject. I have no special direction or particular interest, but if I found one book on a subject interesting, I’m far more likely to read another on the subject, or by the same author. Hence I’ve read an inordinate amount of books on Ebola, fast fashion, tea, books on the making of various movies, and, well, serial killers.

We know the names. Son of Sam. Ted Bundy. Green River Killer. BTK Killer. Long Island Killer.

I have no fascination with them, find most of them repellent and frightening beyond description, and did not shed a tear when Jeffery Dahmer died in prison, but I find the psychological processes and forensics involved in tracking them down utterly intriguing. The science end, not the murder end. And there is SO much to be fascinated about.

Most recently, I read the book American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years, by Peter Vronsky, and I was blown away by the premise. America – which has more serial killers than any other country (well, that are reported and connected. Other countries have mass murders by corrupt governments, so maybe we’re better off) – had a major epidemic of serial killers (those that intermittently kill more than three people, as opposed to a spree all at once) from around 1970 to the mid 1990’s – more than 600 a year, and then it tapered off sharply. Why? Why did we have terrible trails of serial murders for 25 or 30 years, and then few? Vronsky makes a very strong, documented case for the fact that most of these killers were born in the late 40’s and early 50’s (25 or 30 by 1975) and their fathers fought in World War II. Vronsky documents that many of these fathers came back damaged from the war – PTSD, violent, depressed, alcoholic, received no help, and were unable to nurture their children. These boys – coming of age with violent sex images in men’s magazines, pulp fiction novels, and comics – grew up with attachment issues, poor self-image, and violent fantasies about sex, which they slowly began to work up the nerve to carry out. Why did things taper off? Most of those killers were either dead, in prison for other crimes, or had worn themselves out and were living a quiet life until something might trigger them again, unknown to their neighbors. Vietnam Vets received more services than soldiers in the 40’s, there was more public support, it wasn’t as big a deal to divorce a man, and those children did not have the same issues their grandfathers did. Those children of Vietnam vets would have been 25-30 in 1990-95 – years when serial killers were in decline.

Another utterly fascinating book – one that sent me down a long, long wormhole of research – is Barbara Rae-Venter’s I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever. The Golden State Killer was alleged to have killed 13 people and committed more than 50 rapes across California between 1974-1986. Because police departments didn’t talk to each other or share information, no one was ever able to piece together all the information. Enter Rae-Venter. Rae-Venter spent her days helping people trace their genealogy and find their families using her home computer. Asked if she could do the same for a suspect, Rae-Venter needed 63 days and $200 to make a genetic profile of the killer from her dining room – something 30 years and $10 million of taxpayer money had never been able to do, leading directly to the apprehension of the killer. Since Rae-Venter, a huge number of backlogged, dead-end cases have been solved and cleared (like the Long Island Killer) due to the methods she used.

Spurred on by her methods, I fell down a rabbit-hole of genealogical research, aided by ancestry.com (free at the library), and in a week was able to trace my mother’s ancestry back 12 generations, connect some gaps, discover my grandmother had an older sister we never heard of (probably because she died at 5 months), and my grandmother’s younger sister was four when she died, not the two my grandmother remembered. Sometimes books are dangerous!

Through both of these books, several names kept popping up, and I realized I’d already read books by both men. John Douglas was the first real FBI criminal profiler, starting in the 1980’s, creating many of the procedures we use today. His book, Mindhunter, chronicles how he began, in a time where every department wanted the glory of solving the case, and thus no one ever shared information, and no one ever solved the cases.

Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes, is another. Holes learned the business under Douglas, pursuing cold-case investigations from the 1990’s into the 2000’s. Some of the cold cases that perplexed them the most and they were never able to solve were later solved by Barbara Rae-Venter’s methods, like the Long Island Killer and the Golden State Killer.

If you don’t care so much about crime but like psychology and sociology, and want to find out why people kill, try I Am a Killer, by Danny Tipping. It’s a sad book that dwells on the murderers and not so much the crime. Time after time, the horrific backgrounds of these killers are revealed (one father, to hide the bruises and welts on his kid when Social Services was coming, tied him to a mattress, poured lighter fluid on him, and set his back on fire). Many did not deserve the sentences they received, responding to unimaginable abuse. There are no winners in this book.

Though he technically didn’t kill anyone, if you want local flavor, read Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, The Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling, by Michael Cannell. Many people claim to have invented criminal profiling, but this was an early case. In the 1940’s, a bomber went around exploding devices all over New York City, then teasing the police through letters. After twenty years, he was determined to be George Metesky – from Waterbury, Connecticut, and the criminal profiling was eerily correct.

If you like crime stories and investigations, these are excellent books. If you like psychology and deviant behavior, these are also excellent books. The difficult part is that they had to be written at all.

NOTE: This post deals with a difficult subject matter, serial killers, so if you’re easily disturbed, you might not want to read any further.

A book kept passing through my hands and it seemed intriguing – psychopath, history, award-winning – probably good, and I read it at last. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson tells the true story of the great Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, a celebration of Columbus’s 400th anniversary of discovering the new world and an attempt to outdo the 1887 Paris World’s Fair, which amazed the world with the new Eiffel Tower, the tallest structure in the world. The fair covered more than 600 acres – almost six times the size of Disney’s Magic Kingdom – and attracted more than 27 million visitors in its 6 month-run (versus 20 million visitors to Magic Kingdom in 2016). It also chose Tesla’s AC electric current to power it because it was cheaper than Edison’s DC current, cementing the road for America’s future electrical grid.

Chicago was no charming city, known for stink (stockyards), grime (trains and soot), crimes and vice. And in this mix lurked a serial killer, H.H. Holmes. Holmes’s background was a perfect mix of known factors of psychopathic development – strict, cold, abusive parents with severe religious obsession. By the age of 6, Holmes liked to dismember animals, and by his teens was implicated in the death of a young boy but cleared due to the pitiful state of investigations. He fled to Chicago, where he became a con artist, bilking insurance companies, furniture companies, and drug supply stores. He also charmed single ladies, killed them, reduced them to skeletons, and sold them as medical supplies. He built an elaborate hotel nicknamed “The Castle,” complete with gas jets in the rooms, soundproof rooms, and a personal crematorium in his basement. When finally cornered for killing his long-time assistant, Holmes confessed to 29 killings, though only 9 could be proven, but his total might have been as high as 200. He was hung for his crimes. Leonardo DiCaprio bought the film rights to the book, and a film is in production with Martin Scorsese as director (it had a tentative 2017 date, but is still in process).

Serial killers – those that kill large numbers of victims over time – are rare as far as murder goes, but the extent of their crimes garners a lot of press. Connecticut has its own serial killer in Amy Archer Gilligan of Windsor, who killed as many as 48 of her nursing-home patients for insurance claims between 1885 and 1917. Some of the more notorious American serial killers include:

Jeffery Dahmer (1991), who killed (and ate) at least 16 young men and boys. Not a high count for a serial killer, it was the cannibalism that made him famous. He was beaten to death in prison not long after his conviction. Some things scare even murderers.

John Wayne Gacy (1978), who dressed as a clown for kids’ birthday parties and killed more than 33 men. Stephen King said “It” was fiction.

Charles Cullen (2003), convicted of 40 murders while he was a nurse, but possibly responsible for up to 400, making him the most prolific not only in New Jersey, but the USA. Carl Watts (1982) was also a nurse, convicted of six murders but possibly as many as 130.

Ted Bundy (1975), one of the most famous and perhaps sickest, who killed more than 30. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept the heads in his apartment, and often performed sex acts on rotting corpses (I warned you). He was executed in Florida.

Gary Ridgeway (2001) the “Green River Killer”, with 49 proven deaths, 71 confessions, with a probable total closer to 90.

Ed Gein (1957)– Gein was convicted of only two murders, but if you’re looking at psychopaths, Gein is King. Gein had a bizarre attachment to his mother (back to that cold/abuse/super-religious thing), and would go to graves and dig up women’s bodies, skin them, and save parts attempting to wear his mother. Gein was the inspiration for Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic, incompetent, and died in a mental facility.

What predicts a serial killer? Most professionals look for early abuse, neglect, brutality, bullying, and mental illness. Animal cruelty, especially in young children, is a warning sign. Killers are often charismatic (Holmes, Bundy, Jim Jones, too) and manipulative, gaining friendship and trust. Lack of empathy for their victims is always present. Some do it for attention, especially media attention. One interesting point: 70% of serial killers had experienced significant head trauma as children; with what we now know about violence among football players and boxers who receive blows to the head, could this be a risk factor?

So hug your kids. Be patient. Be kind to them and to others, and teach them to be kind as well. Take bullying and animal cruelty seriously, and report it to authorities. You don’t know how many lives you might save.