Serial Killers

The lives of five young women and one man, their families’ grief, and the tension of a city under siege are the heritage of the Son of Sam killer, one of the most notorious serial killers ever. North and South of La Guardia airport, inside New York City for about a year residents never knew when a pair of hands would reach for them, or when a gunshot would herald their last breath. Killing some but leaving seven others wounded, the “Son of Sam” haunted the Bronx and Brooklyn streets in the dawn hours, leaving a grisly aftermath.

The city of New York was undeniably held in the grip of terror in the mid-1970’s by a Brooklyn born killer known as the “Son of Sam”. The Son of Sam was also known by his weapon of choice as the “44-caliber killer”. But the pathology of this killer was so twisted that it was not the anonymous city life or face-in-the-crowd anomaly, or even sexual lust, that drove him wild, but a hybrid chain of attempts of one man’s mind to make sense of it all.

Born in 1953, David Berkowitz might have been any child in the northernmost precincts of NYC. The child of kosher Orthodox Jews, Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz enjoyed their family life with their adopted son. But the concept of being an adopted child and the unwelcome peer mockery for this in a time of little tolerance subdued Berkowitz’ spirit. An only child, Berkowitz would have few confidantes and no peers to know of his internal torments.
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John Edward Robinson is called the Internet Serial Killer, but not all his victims were those he met online. Rather, John Robinson was an unusually accomplished con artist whose adept scams and multiple cons and frauds kept him at large and supporting a family for decades. Operating in the Midwest and the heartland, Robinson captured the attention of women looking for a new start or the “right” man, and delivered them unto death.

Robinson is titled the Internet Serial Killer because he was the first criminal serial killer whose exploits developed the Internet as a predatory hunting ground for new victims. A master swindler and determined scammer, Robinson juggled multiple schemes of women and plans that were fictitious and formed to exploit women and derive profit thereby. At trial, Robinson’s defence team would allege he was the fourth generation of a depressive and clinically dissociative personality. Yet his mind for the swindles was always razor sharp.

The Internet Serial killer was not only significant for his plumbing of a new medium for victims. The life of any serial killer generally ends with them being caught and put for trial after a limited gruesome career, with notable exceptions such as the Green River Killer. But the sheer burden, cost, handling chores and normal legal defence responses absorbed much more time than normal. The victims’ families, witnesses, and jury pool selection extended year after year long after Robinson’s arrest.
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How does a boy born in Washington D. C. in the 1870’s grow up into one of the most unspeakable serial killers of all time? The Werewolf of Wisteria earned this and many other epithets as his normal demeanor belied a demented child molester, abductor and murderer. Hamilton Howard Fish – aka – Albert Fish, and The Gray Man, presented as a grandfatherly old-timer with genteel leanings, yet his hidden true self was a saturated prism of unspeakable lusts and forbidden practices.

The nature of the killings of Albert Fish are more gruesome and detached from a human sensitivity than maybe any other serial killer. Trophy “recipes” prepared by Fish from the bodies of victims display the power politics whereby he enjoyed sexual pleasure. The playfulness of emotion is stomach-turning. Albert Fish admitted to some killings but may have been guilty of a hundred murders.

The times would ordinarily not produce such a psychotic misfit. But Fish had a father who was over forty years older than his mother when he was born. The man was 75 years old when Albert Fish was born and suffered a heart attack shortly after. His mother had to give him up for adoption due to financial hardship. A history of mental illness ran in the character of almost every relative he had. Yet ironically he was first imprisoned for embezzlement!
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Richard Ramirez was perhaps one of the brutal serial killers of all time, notably for the intense brutality and indiscriminate violence visited upon his victims. Ramirez was known as the “Night Stalker’, a man who cruised Los Angeles, California homes and randomly selected areas and victims of all genders, ethnicities, and types.The trial of Richard Ramirez was one of the most expensive in California history, outdone only by the O. J. Simpson media circus to come years later. Lucifer-worshipper Ramirez is currently awaiting a Death Row date with his real maker with all his Supreme Court appeals having been exhausted.

Richard Ramirez typically attacked couples or home owners while at home asleep in their beds at night. Brutal shootings through the eye or death by a blunt object applied with force might occur before victims were fully awake. The vicious and purposely satanic mien of Ramirez during his trial was a chilling reminder of what evil a single individual is capable of. After double digit homicides and invasive murders accompanied by burglary, one final targeting by investigators led to a desperate chase by civilians who recognized the man trying to steal their neighbour’s car. Things might have been different for many people if only the judge for his break-in and motel assault of a woman when he was 16 had been more seriously punished.

Anybody waking up to the face of Richard Ramirez in their bedroom had a date with death. Ricardo Munoz Ramirez had little holding him anywhere except a taste for the suffering of others and the displacement of their cash and goods for resale and drug purchases. Ramirez, a drifting drug user whose violent tendencies were ameliorated by no guilt, religious or conscientious forbearance, had rotten teeth from poor diet habits and had begun a career in robbery to finance a cocaine habit. Ramirez was the child of Texan Mexican American immigrants, yet he favoured rock band AC/DC music, Satanic themes, and decidedly non-Catholic drug uses.
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As serial killer cases go, one of the most bizarre and downright sickening is the Jeffrey Dahmer case. Dahmer initially became fixated with sex with men but evolved his strange desires into more brutally inhuman tastes. Gregarious and active as a child, his playful personality underwent a change after a move. The Dahmers were by all accounts a fairly healthy family whose second child arrived shortly after Mr. Dahmer achieved his Ph.D in a Chemistry. 4-H gardening and animal raising was a father and son bonding activity.

No serious or extreme changes marked the childhood fascination with nature and animals except after the Dahmers’ marriage problems. Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother was hospitalized just about the time puberty onset occurred. Dahmer’s obsessive roadkill gathering and backyard dissection grew. The fantasies became an aggressive reality, with mental plans for lying beside a nude man. But by the time high school started Dahmer was taking alcohol before school time to vanquish thoughts of partaking in sex with men.

Dahmer’s extroverted behaviour drew attention to himself from casual observers around school. Dahmer even talked his classmates into meeting with Vice President Walter Mondale during a trip to the nation’s capital. Dahmer’s academia was erratic from good grades to failure due to boredom or lack of attention. No close friends or partners meant a social life spent inside the world of animals while living on a diet of fantasies. High school was spent mantling his inner traumas of his parent’s bickering and escapist sexuality involving men and animals.
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John Wayne Gacy is perhaps one of the best known American serial killers of all time. Lacking remorse, repeating serial style abductions, killings, and sadistic torture procedures, Gacy claimed enough lives to be put to death. Twisted desire and corrupted behaviour gave way to private perversions of rape and murder performed on male captives his clown costume and people-friendly demeanour deceived. Wife swapping early in his marriage degenerated into homosexual activities with strange men. In a time when most things of this ilk were not spoken of, Gacy pursued stag films, prostitute led orgies and private homosexual encounters.

Many know Gacy for his propensity to wear a clown costume during block parties, but there is much more to this serial killer.

A socially aggressive man with a knack for cooking, Gacy personifies the ugly stereotype of the hidden psycho killer lurking within us all. A sickly child whose maturity hid a frightening alter ego, Gacy existed as a social curiosity who committed murders while belonging to social organizations and enjoying a social personality. The Junior Chamber International was the type of service club that Gacy might have earned the respect of his father for leading, if the known proclivity wasn’t stag parties, dirty movies, and paid women to bring in new members.

John Wayne Gacy became JayCee president despite known homosexual teenage tendencies. His history had already included incidences of accusations for kidnapping, sodomy, and other crimes. But Gacy’s white male status and Jaycees reputation formed a confidence that convinced even visiting police all was well. With a custom built crawlspace under his house and his wife and mother out of the way, Gacy pursued the serial killings and amassed a stack of ID’s, personal possessions, and torture trophies from the murders.
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