The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers Read online

  SADISM

  Some criminologists define serial murder in strictly quantitative terms: three or more homicides committed over an extended length of time, with an emotional “cooling-off” period between each incident (see Definition). Other specialists in the field, however, believe that serial murder in the strict sense of the term always contains another element: a powerful streak of sexual sadism.

  Certainly, this is the aspect of serial killing that makes it such a uniquely hideous crime—even worse than mass murder. After all, it is one thing to be cut down by a crazed gunman in a convenience store; it is quite another to fall victim to a psycho who calmly explains (as one serial killer actually did): “First, I’m going to torture you in the most horrible and painful manner I can think of. Then I’m going to abuse you sexually in the most degrading way I can possibly think of. Then I’ll kill you in the slowest and most painful way I can. Any questions?”

  Albert Fish liked to castrate teenage boys and watch them bleed to death in agony. Leonard Lake and Charles Ng took videotapes of the slow, sadistic murder of their bound and captive sex slaves. Another serial killer tortured a prostitute for forty-three days before killing her. These are just a few of countless unspeakable examples.

  In this regard, serial murder can be seen as a kind of depraved travesty of normal sexual functioning. Instead of looking for a date at a singles bar or dance club, the serial killer goes trolling for victims in some favorite hunting ground—a red-light district, say, or a homosexual hangout. Once he has a victim in his power, he achieves sexual release not through intercourse but through torture, degradation, and finally murder (it is not uncommon for a lust murderer to reach orgasm during his victim’s death throes). The so-called cooling-off period corresponds to the contented lull that normally follows sex, while the psychopath’s growing need to kill again is the equivalent of building sexual hunger—in effect, the serial killer gets increasingly horny for blood.

  Sexual psychopaths of this type tend to be victims of extreme physical and/or emotional childhood abuse (often sexual abuse). Subjected to vicious Upbringings that twist their erotic natures completely out of shape, they grow up equating sex not with love and tenderness but with aggression, dominance, and murderous rage. To cite just one of many examples: Joseph Kallinger—who tortured and mutilated a string of young boys (including his own son)—was raised by parents who routinely flogged him with a cat-o’-nine-tails and threatened him with castration. Other serial killers who conform to this pattern are Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Edmund Kemper, and Jeffrey Dahmer—in short, some of the most monstrous criminals of our (or any other) time.

  “I always had a desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt. The desire to inflict pain, that is all that is uppermost.”

  ALBERT FISH

  “It is probable that he first cut the throats of his victims, then ripped open the abdomen and groped among the intestines. In some instances he cut off the genitals and carried them away; in others he only tore them to pieces and left them behind. He does not seem to have had sexual intercourse with his victims, but very likely the murderous act and subsequent mutilation of the corpse were the equivalents for the sex act.”

  RICHARD VON KRAFFT-EBING,

  discussing Jack the Rippet

  SATANISM

  If you believe everything you hear on Geraldo, you might well think that our country is overrun with satanic cultists who regularly indulge in human sacrifice and every other manner of unspeakable perversion. In fact, beyond the highly unreliable testimony of various religious nuts and sexual hysterics, there is little or no evidence that such devil-worshipping covens actually exist, at least not in the United States of America.

  On the other hand, since serial killers are inexorably drawn to all that is dark and depraved, they often enjoy embellishing their crimes—and themselves—with a bit of satanic symbolism. Wayne Nance, a Montana truck driver who killed five people in the mid-1980s, used a white-hot coat hanger to brand the number of the Beast—“666”—onto his own flesh. Similarly, John Kogut—a young Long Island landscaper who led a gang that raped and murdered three young women—burned an inverted cross onto his forearm.

  Other self-styled devil devotees like to leave satanic markings at the crime scene. After breaking into the suburban home of an eighty-four-year-old Los Angeles woman and beating her to death, Richard the “Night Stalker” Ramirez drew pentagrams on her skin, then painted a few more on the walls before fleeing. At his trial, he kept the press corps entertained by shouting salutations to Satan and flashing a pentagram that he had inscribed on his palm. “You don’t understand,” he said, sneering at the judge. “You are not expected to. I am beyond good and evil. Legions of the night! Night breed!”

  One of the most notorious of all Lucifer-related cases was the savage 1984 mutilation-slaying of Long Island teenager Gary Lauwers by the devil-besotted druggie Rickie Kasso. “Say you love Satan!” Kasso commanded over and over again, while slashing Lauwers to pieces with a pocketknife. Horrific as it was, however, the murder was not—as originally reported—a ritualistic sacrifice but rather a vicious act of revenge over some bags of stolen angel dust.

  The only documented case of satanic serial murder occurred in Matamoros, Mexico, where a devil-worshipping drug gang slaughtered fifteen sacrificial victims in a demonic rite designed to ensure supernatural protection (see Cults).

  SLIPPING THROUGH THE CRACKS

  Serial killers tend to possess two characteristics typical of psychopaths. Lacking normal human emotions, they are able to stay absolutely calm under intensely stressful circumstances. They also have the ability to appear so utterly, blandly normal that it is virtually impossible for anyone to conceive of them as crazed, cold-blooded killers (see Mask of Sanity). Both of these traits have stood many serial killers in extremely good stead, allowing them to fool even highly trained investigators and elude arrest for years.

  For several decades, Albert Fish roamed across the country, in search of young prey. During that time, he was frequently in and out of custody for charges ranging from petty theft to public indecency. At no time, however, did authorities suspect that he was capable of insanely violent crime. Only in 1934 did the appalling truth come to light: the gray-haired, grandfatherly old man, who looked so sweet and kindly that strangers would entrust their children to his care, had spent his lifetime torturing, mutilating, and ultimately cannibalizing little boys and girls.

  In the mid-1970s, a string of young women were abducted and murdered in Seattle after meeting a man named “Ted.” One of the many suspects in the case turned out to be a law student named Ted Bundy. When police checked into his background, however, they decided that the bright and ambitious young Republican couldn’t possibly be the killer—leaving the sociopathic Bundy free to murder, rape, and mutilate young women for another four years.

  One of the most notorious instances in which a serial killer slipped through the hands of police occurred on the night of May 27, 1991, when two Milwaukee cops, alerted by a 911 call, found a naked teenaged boy apparently attempting to flee from an older man. The man—a soft-spoken thirty-year-old named Jeffrey Dahmer—explained that he and the boy were gay lovers who had been engaged in nothing more serious than a “domestic dispute.” Dahmer was so polite and persuasive that police let him take the teenager back to his apartment—where Dahmer proceeded to strangle him, have sex with the corpse, and dismember the body.

  Police are not the only ones who have been known to let real-life monsters go free. In 1978, the world’s most prolific serial killer, Pedro Lopez, was caught by a group of Peruvian Indians as he tried to kidnap one of the girls from their village. The outraged Indians were in the process of putting Lopez to a slow, agonizing death, when a female missionary happened onto the scene and persuaded them to desist. Lopez was turned over to the Peruvian police, who simply deported him to Ecuador. As a result of the missionary’s m
isplaced compassion—and the gross negligence of the Peruvian police—the “Monster of the Andes” went on to rape and murder scores of Ecuadorian women.

  It is one thing for a Christian missionary, whose faith demands forgiveness, to be fooled by sociopathic evil. It seems much less comprehensible when the sucker is a trained psychiatrist—supposedly an expert in the darker workings of the human mind. In September 1972, an entire panel of state-appointed psychiatrists interviewed Edmund Kemper to determine how well he had adjusted to life since his release from a mental hospital three years earlier. The doctors were unanimous in their judgment—Kemper was no longer a threat to society. Kemper drove away from the interview free from any further psychiatric supervision.

  Inside the trunk of his car was the head of a fifteen-year-old girl he had decapitated the previous day.

  SONGS

  Though the crime-ridden lyrics of “gangsta” rap have come in for all kinds of flak, the truth is that people have always enjoyed songs about sex and violence. Moralists who long for the good old days before songs like “Murder Was the Case” ruled the airwaves might keep in mind that one of the biggest hits of the 1950s was the Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley”—a mournful ditty about a guy who is about to be hanged for slaying his girlfriend (“Met her on the mountain, / There I took her life. / Met her on the mountain, / Stabbed her with my knife”). And indeed—though folk songs are generally thought of as cheery and uplifting—some of the oldest songs in folklore tradition are so-called murder ballads, many of which date back hundreds of years and describe violent crimes in horrifying detail. A popular ballad called “Expert Town,” for example, contains lyrics like: “Little attention did I pay, / I beat her more and more; / I beat her till the blood run down—/ Her hair was yellow as gold.”

  In America, songs about serial killers date at least as far back as the nineteenth century. In her book American Murder Ballads, Olive Burt reprints a song about the notorious Black Widow killer Belle Gunness whose first few verses go like this:

  Belle Gunness was a lady fair,

  In Indiana State.

  She weighed about three hundred pounds,

  And that is quite some weight.

  That she was stronger than a man

  Her neighbors all did own;

  She butchered hogs right easily,

  And did it all alone.

  But hogs were just a sideline

  She indulged in now and then

  Her favorite occupation

  Was a-butchering of men.

  Contemporary songs about psychokillers, in short, are not just a modern-day aberration but a continuation of a genre that extends all the way back to the Middle Ages and probably further.

  For teenaged listeners, of course, one of the main functions of rock music is to send their parents into fits of sputtering outrage. Few things can accomplish this time-honored goal more effectively than songs that celebrate serial killers. The members of Marilyn Manson’s band pay tribute to their favorite psychokillers in their assumed surnames, which—in addition to their leader’s Charlie-inspired moniker—include Gacy, Gein, Berkowitz, and Fish. The “death metal” band Macabre has recorded such ditties as “The Ted Bundy Song,” “Gacy’s Lot,” and “Edmund Kemper Had a Terrible Temper,” along with an entire concept album dedicated to the depraved doings of Jeffrey Dahmer.

  The following is a list of twelve memorable recordings dealing with serial murder and mayhem.

  1. Bobby Darin, “Mack the Knife.” At the height of the sixties counterculture, no self-respecting hippie would have confessed to a fondness for the hopelessly out-of-date crooning of Bobby Darin. These days, however, he’s widely regarded as the epitome of finger-snapping Sinatraesque cool. In this irresistible rendition of a chilling little ballad from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 Threepenny Opera, Darin sings of a Jack-the-Ripper-like character named MacHeath. Rarely has serial murder sounded so swingin’.

  2. The Rolling Stones, “Midnight Rambler.” Though the only shocking thing about them now is their age, the Stones were the original bad-boy rock band: the anti-Beatles who sang “Let It Bleed” in answer to the Moptops’ “Let It Be.” This bluesy paean to the Boston Strangler is belted out by Mick Jagger at his sneering, strutting, pre-geriatric best.

  3. Warren Zevon, “Excitable Boy.” From the sardonic singer-songwriter best known for his hit “Werewolves of London” comes this toe-tapping tune about an “excitable boy” who rapes and murders his high school prom date. After doing ten years in prison, he digs up her grave and builds “a cage with her bones.”

  4. Talking Heads, “Psycho-killer.” A catchy musical foray into the mind of a homicidal creep, this is the song that put David Byrne and his band on the map. Qu’est-ce que c’est?

  5. Police, “Murder by Numbers.” An ironic commentary on the culture of violence disguised as a paean to the art of murder. Sting’s lyrics play a pivotal role in the plot of the 1995 serial-killer movie Copycat.

  6. The Beatles, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Not everyone is a fan of this infectious little ditty penned by Paul McCartney about a homicidal maniac. Ian MacDonald, author of the definitive Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, calls it a “ghastly miscalculation that represents McCartney’s worst lapse in taste.”

  7. Slayer, “Dead Skin Mask.” A brain-pummeling tribute to Ed “Psycho” Gein from a band that is one of the leading purveyors of “black metal” rock.

  8. Serial Killers, “Heidnik’s House of Horrors.” A rarity. Released on the obscure Suspiria label and pressed on blood-red vinyl, this punk-rock tribute to killer Gary Heidnik features a melody that can best be described as “primitive.” But how can you hate a song with lyrics like “He had a basement straight out of hell / Marquis de Sade would think it was swell”?

  9. Bruce Springsteen, “Nebraska.” The haunting title song of Springsteen’s 1982 acoustic album is a first-person account of Charles Starkweather’s infamous killing spree across the badlands of Nebraska (see Killer Couples).

  10. Alice Cooper, “I Love the Dead.” Not exactly a serial-killer song but—with lines like “I love the dead before they’re cold / They’re bluing flesh for me to hold”—it’s certainly one that serial killers could relate to.

  11. Guns N’ Roses, “Look at Your Game, Girl.” This song set off a firestorm of controversy when it appeared on GNR’s 1993 The Spaghetti Incident? album, even though it has nothing to do with serial killers. The reason? It was written by none other than Charles Manson, who—before he gained notoriety as the kill-crazed leader of a cult of homicidal hippies—was an aspiring songwriter. Manson’s own version of “Look at Your Game, Girl” appears on his legendary LP Lie, along with such other immortal compositions as “People Say I’m No Good,” “Garbage Dump,” “Sick City,” and “Don’t Do Anything Illegal.” The Manson discography also includes: The Manson Family Sings, Charles Manson Live at San Quentin, and a recent CD called Commemoration, which includes his tribute to Hank Williams Sr. and several heartfelt numbers about the environment.

  12. Joe Coleman’s Infernal Machine. Unlike the previous titles in this list, this is an entire album of mayhem-related music assembled by the one and only Joe Coleman (see Art). Among its many treasures are Red River Dave’s yodelling country-western number, “California Hippie Murders,” and “Strangler in the Night,” with lyrics by Albert “Boston Strangler” DeSalvo!

  Record sleeve from “Heidnik’s House of Horrors”; art by Liz Pop (Courtesy of Larry Kay and Paul Bearer)

  In the realm of serial-killer-related pop music, mention must also be made of the now-defunct punk group Ed Gein’s Car; the 1991 album Too Much Joy by a group called Cereal Killers (get it?); and the limited edition single “Biter” by the Kansas City band Season to Risk, which features a jacket painting by John Wayne Gacy.

  Album cover for Joe Coleman’s Infernal Machine

  (Courtesy of Joe Coleman)

  SOUVENIRS

  See Trop
hies.

  Richard Speck

  Strictly speaking, Richard Speck was a Mass Murderer, not a serial killer, since the crimes that earned him everlasting infamy were all committed in a single night. Still, those crimes were so horrific that they place Speck squarely in the ranks of twentieth-century American monsters.

  Richard Speck; from 52 Famous Murderers trading cards

  (Courtesy of Roger Worsham)

  A hulking, acne-scarred thug addicted to booze and drugs, Speck had logged nearly forty arrests by the time he was twenty for offenses ranging from burglary to assault with a deadly weapon. Mass murderers are sometimes referred to as “human time bombs”—and the description certainly fits Speck, whose life had been one slow, inexorable buildup to a devastating explosion of violence.

  That explosion occurred on the night of July 13, 1966. Speck—who worked as a merchant seaman—was in Chicago, waiting to ship out to New Orleans. He spent the day guzzling booze, popping downers, and ogling the women as they sunbathed in the park behind Jeffey Manor, a town house for student nurses working at a local hospital. At around 11 P.M., Speck returned to the town house and knocked on the door. It was opened by a twenty-three-year-old student nurse named Corazon Amurao, who found herself face-to-face with a pockmarked stranger brandishing a knife and a gun. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Speck said as he shoved his way inside. “I need your money to go to New Orleans.”

  Speck led her upstairs, where he found five more student nurses. Herding them all into one bedroom, he ordered them to lie on the floor. Then, ripping a bedsheet into strips, he proceeded to truss his terrified victims. Over the next hour, three more young women arrived at the town house. They, too, ended up bound and helpless on the bedroom floor.

  Toying with his gun, Speck sat on the floor with his nine captives, as though debating what to do with them. Finally, he came to a ghastly decision. Untying twenty-year-old Pamela Wilkening, he led her into an adjoining bedroom, where he stabbed her in the breast and strangled her. Mary Ann Jordan and Suzanne Farris were next. Speck shoved them into another bedroom and savaged them with his knife.