Serial Killers

Washington D.C. is the American nation’s capital, a paradise of security and armed forces presence and command. Yet in 2002, two men held the city captive while arresting pedestrian traffic with random sniper shots killing random victims with no warning. Indiscriminate selection of victims on the Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. area roads. The random activities of the victims made for serious concern along all social strata.

Local and Interstate 95 kept beltway commuters looking over their shoulder and scattering at the slightest sound. A manhunt failed to catch the killers for several days when the nation watched as gunplay entered into the public domain. The arrest and sentencing of two African American men would once again polarize racial tensions in the area. These would be later classified by some criminologist as hate crimes.

There was no religious affiliation, no gender bias in the killings. People sitting outside the post office or mowing their lawn are equally vulnerable to the sniper. The sniper’s rampage of death was happening in the city, not isolated riverbeds or backwoods roads. “Stealth” poses at the gas pumps become normal to see in the forty mile area centralized in Montgomery County.

John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo kept the people in the nation’s capital watching their rear view mirrors and indoors for three weeks even in an age of media and satellite radar. Amazed Americans watched their news reports every night and marveled that a sniper existed in this day and age without being caught. Authorities desperately sought a way to end this beltway rampage holding so many in fear.

The killers were a pair of men who had determine to kill six people a day until their $100 million “ransom” was paid. Disorganized as to a goal but efficient at killing, the snipers had a custom rack mount on their vehicle to make shooting easier. The victims had no association with the killers, they were as disparate as a crafts store employee to a pizza maker.

The Beltway Snipers were so named because their target “hit” areas were gas stations and stores and parking lots connected around Washington D. C. by the Virginia Beltway. Random targets meant nobody was safe, and investigators and the public puzzled over why Washington D.C. environs were receiving the attacks. Ultimately the killers hoped the white demographic base of Montgomery County would suffer.

Was the killing politically motivated? Virginia residents and Washington D. C. beltway drivers began to weigh their drive in to work, wondering if they were taking their lives in their hands by that act alone. A trip to the gas station or being parked anywhere suddenly carried a death sentence for an unlucky few. The GPS and maps inside the serial killer vehicle indicated specialized focus for killing trips. Unseen targeting of unsuspecting victims was allowed from the interior plan of the attack car.

John Allen Mohammed, a black man of Muslim beliefs, had begun a spree of murder and robbery in Louisiana the month before the killings started in 2002. Shooting at John Gaeta in August, Mohammed injured him. The second shooting occurred in Maryland in September, where the shot man’s laptop was later found in Malvo’s car. Paul LaRuffa survived six shots. A few weeks later an Alabama woman was shot and killed while her co-worker was injured.

Serial killers have had problems getting the sentences they deserve due to inaccurate testimony, incomplete evidence, and other forensic foul-ups. Evidence from this early Alabama attack in particular helped convict the Beltway Snipers after they were arrested. Mohammed may also be responsible for a Baton Rouge killing of a man in this time period. Born in Antigua, John Allen Williams changed his name to Mohammed in an Islamic conversion.

Before making his way to sniper shots along the Capitol Beltway, John Allen Mohammed intentionally devised a scheme of programmed killing designed to take multiple lives on a schedule. After the first killing on October 2, 2002, five more victims were shot at on October 3, 2002. Local residents watched the news and looked aghast. Was nobody safe?

October was a dark month in the Washington D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area in 2002. Headlines and news report communicated that death was outside the front door no matter where residents might go. No ethnic group, race, age or gender victim was safe from being a target. October 4, 2002 saw a woman wounded in a parking lot near Fredericksburg. This was the start of a vicious spree of killings.

Then October 7th saw another shooting outside a school, followed by another on October 9, 2002 near a Manassas gas station, and then another at a gas station in the Fredericksburg area on October 11th, 2002. Capitol area residents couldn’t go to the gas station, grocery store, or shop without wondering if they were taking their life in their hands. The lack of connection between the victims puzzled police and stymied investigators.

Then on October 14th, a woman was shot in Falls Church, Virginia. News reports had local residents scared to death, carpooling and watching in their rear view mirror on the roadways. On October 19th, 2002, a man was shot in a parking lot in Ashland, Virginia. A thirteen year old boy was killed after media reports stated that children were safe in schools.

Authorities attempted to open a dialogue using media channels with the sniper. Limited details are released to the press, claiming that the sniper has eradicated child safety anywhere in Montgomery County. The Tarot cards and the Deist messages built a controversy regarding the use of these details while the serial killings were occurring.

On October 19th authorities found a missive asking for a ransom. threatening the lives of children in the area, it asked for a hundred million dollars. the letter did not impress authorities as professional. Telephone calls, tarot cards, and erroneous reports of a white van were involved. Finally, on October 22, Conrad Johnson was shot at his bus in Maryland. Washington, D.C, press corps monitor the radio frequencies for police alerts on the case. Authorities were tipped off about the Alabama shooting.

Montgomery County and other agencies fell over themselves setting up roadblocks and cruising for likely vehicles. By this time a dark blue Chevrolet was targeted as the suspect vehicle. Roadblocks and witness interviews after the killings were filled with numerous red herrings. Nightly news reports in the Washington D.C. were tense body-count affairs. Yet the FBI traced ballistics and verified the involvement of John Allen Mohammed.

By October 24th, the Beltway Sniper had been identified as John Allen Mohammed traveling with a minor. Alerts about a Chevy Caprice notified an alert driver who spotted the car. two sleeping in the car were arrested as Beltway suspects. Post 9/11 laws were used to frame prosecutor charges in multiple counties. Mohammed had a U.S. Army past as well as a marriage with four children. The military weapon training honed Williams/Mohammed’s aim and abilities.

Thought to be a single shooter by authorities, it was discovered that Mohammed had recruited a younger cohort to assist in the killings. Lee Boyd Malvo was a minor employed to help drive the car and look out for police or witnesses following their getaway. The vehicle seventeen year old Malvo drove was one local residents had grown to fear the sight of. Any van on the highway filled drivers with fear.

John Allen Mohammed was an ex-army sergeant who had attained sniper skills in the armed forces. Honorably discharged from the Army, he was born John Allen Williams in New Orleans in 1960. The forceful propaganda of the nation of Louis Farrakhan solidified the hatred bred in alleged abusive conditions while being disciplined in Saudi Arabia for bombing a tent full of soldiers.

Mohammed was able to execute successful killing sprees because the media had grasped the device of a “white van” that confused the public and media. Astonished investigators learned after Mohammed’s arrest that he had been stopped by police and authorities yet released from scrutiny. The brief timetable of the serial killings and the waterfall of killings stymied the profiling model used by criminologists for serial killers.

The authorities reviewing the state of the case after the arrests of the killers observed that the public convinced of the “white van” motif had been led to disregard African-American men in a blue Chevy because the media has publicized a white van with a white driver doing the killings. Speculation about the D. C. sniper that was not factual may have cost lives.

Williams/Mohammed had come together after Mohammed had taken his family to Antigua. Malvo’s mother had deserted him, and the warrior mentality and qualified pose of the Islamic messenger suited Mohammed’s purposes. By visiting the United States, Mohammed planned to target wealthy, complacent white people enjoying civil freedoms and racial privileges hostile to the black community.

Malvo had attempted to contact police with information and proceeded to inform the authorities about other murders. Mohammed’s fingerprint was found at the Alabama crime scene, and a witness came forward to the FBI hotline relating how an old Army buddy with a young Jamaican friend had used the term “sniper” during a visit. They had shot using a Bushmaster rifle during their visit. Media news reports had featured the Bushmaster gun in its coverage of the Beltway Sniper.

Absurdly, Lee Malvo had been trying to contact authorities at the same time, persevering through phone contacts. Yet antipathy between law enforcement agencies and public and press was loaded with disinformation designed to lure the killers forward. Journalistic distribution of the Chevy Caprice data assisted in the arrest of the killers. But many suspect that events might easily have caused the suspects to flee.

The analysis of the Beltway Sniper evolved to an identification of the two man team. While the over-forty Mohammed had the technical skills and weapons training, Malvo was suspected of being the more wily planner. The serial killings had intensely accomplished a spree of murders due to ambitious planning, instead of following the spiraling fantasies of a demented sexual-motivated serial killer murderer.

Mohammed was suspected of training Malvo in sharpshooting, and the intent to ransom funds form the government through a campaign of terror form the killings was identified form police investigations. Authorities observed that press notice and media reports fed the snipers’ sense of power and intent. As in many cases of serial killers, confusion of the investigative techniques and coordination between the press and police affected the arrest date of the serial killers.

Mohammed’s inability to obtain revenge against his ex-wife is thought to have impacted his decision to “adopt” Malvo and strike “back” at the general populace. Mohammed’s ex-wife had moved to the D. C. area after a confrontation over child custody in the Pacific Northwest. In interviews she claimed that her husband had returned form Army service a changed person she did not recognize.

Analysts mused on the relationship between this man cut off from his children and the hero worship Malvo afforded Mohammed for participation in the killing/extortion plan. Malvos’ use of a laptop to track the killings indicates a premeditation and planning not common to the average Jamaican teenager. The monetary aspect of the serial killing sprees was not as highly organized as the killing themselves.

Critics of the investigation pointed to charges of Lee Malvo as a juvenile as an error, as Malvo was capable of taking life as well as John Allen Mohammed. Mohammed was executed and Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Malvo exercised his right of appeal and rescinded all previous interviews and testimony for the 2002 murders. Mohammed appealed his verdict and sentencing and a debate over his fitness to represent himself legally arose after allegation of brain damage were raised.

In all they were convicted for killing at least 10 people on their rampage. Muhammad was executed by lethal injection, which took place November 10, 2009. Malvo continues to leak some information and that includes the notion that there may be more victims and other people involved in the killings.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.

The so-called “Angel of Death” killer was an inside man, a hospital employee and orderly whose access to unattended hospital patients and means to extinguish their lives proved fatal in double digits for American patients in the Midwest and Southeast. Donald Harvey started his criminal career simply by strangling patients too weak to struggle or using drugs to subdue them when nobody else was near. True to the nature of every serial killer, Harvey continued killing for little or no material gain, and even falsified job information for employment where he could kill again.

Born in Ohio in 1952, Harvey was part of a normal family. Growing up a ‘nice boy”, Donald Harvey won the praise and notice of teachers but not friends. Harvey was not happy to be a factory worker and when nuns noticed his adeptness around the building they suggested instead he train to be a medical orderly. At this time, many religious orders governed medical care in hospitals and medical wards. Harvey enjoyed an advantage to be trained without earning his vocation or showing moral turpitude before being considered for medical training. Soon Harvey would be charged with full care of patients on an unsupervised basis.

A homosexual man, this serial killer came by his moniker of murder because he always seemed to be around when death struck a patient. Yet to the inside atmosphere and world of the nurse or orderly, death was a constant enough attendant to the work life that few made connections until it was much too late for the victims. By using alternate methods in varying deaths converging with patient illnesses and symptoms, much of the initial activity of Donald Harvey passed relatively unnoticed. As medical equipment changed, Harvey disconnected ventilators and poisoned food. Despite discharges from hospitals, Harvey utilized a common trait among serial killers and obtained employment in the same field he would otherwise have been disqualified from.

Donald Harvey effected the deaths of many patients simply by reason of access and opportunity. Harvey may have claimed that his early victims were killed for “empathetic” reasons, but he would hardly have hidden his methods so carefully if such were the case. Like many serial killers, when the method of killing is carefully masked by conditions of reality and circumstance, they can continue to keep killing. Harvey cannot have planned such “empathy” in advance for all his patients without being a serial killer. Almost two decades of murders took place while Harvey quietly fulfilled his ghastly duties.

The young man traveling the corridors of the hospital, smiling at staff and greeting patients by name had another life. His stash of weapons, poisons, drugs, drug delivery equipment, and more accessories of death lay at home. The Angel of Death might come to work with a bag of “supplies” and a gun, and by the end of the day another death had been reported. Harvey fancied himself an occultist, vacillating around Death like a prizefighter. From about 1970 through 1987, Harvey delivered his patients to their greater reward on an ad-hoc basis. No program, stars or lust drove his schedule.

Harvey slept soundly and was not troubled by shame or guilt, he did not need to drink or get stoned to kill. Donald Harvey was termed the Angel of Death because the mortality rate of his patients swung higher every day he worked at the place. But Harvey did not limit his experiments with death to patients. His lover Carl Hoeweler got homemade poisons, and his parents died of mysterious poisonings. Harvey was caught one time leaving a hospital with a bag full of syringes, a gun, and other medical equipment.

Unlike some serial killers, Donald Harvey had a pleasant disposition that put people at ease. Yet Harvey was committed twice, with over 20 electroshock treatments. Donald Harvey might have kept on killing except for his gruesome insistence on an occult leaning and the untoward murder of Hoeweler’s parents. The locales of Cincinnati, California, and Kentucky in the 1970’s and 1980’s were well known for a while as the hunting grounds of the “Angel of Death”. Locals would never take their medical staff on face value again.

In all Donald Harvey claims to have murdered 87 people in all. Legal authorities believe his serial killing resulted in the deaths of between 36 and 57 people. He is currently incarcerated in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility serving four consecutive life sentences for his actions.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.

The Zodiac Killer was never caught because the law enforcement people in power at the time had used secondary means of catching a first rate criminal. The systems then in place were thought by many to be acceptable to the norms of the time, but criminal minds get away with crimes because their etymology of hate and lust for blood evades the thoughts and behavioral experience of the average policeman from that area in that era. Such law enforcement personnel cannot be expected to grapple with the serial killer type of threat.

The Zodiac Killer is the type of crime that specialized law enforcement agencies were formed to solve. Yet even after decades of forensic evidence and new theoretical modeling systems the Zodiac Killer has never been identified. Yet the improvement of data systems and the records access enjoyed by federal law enforcement today is unparalleled. By changing the approach used to evaluate the Zodiac Killer, a solution may present itself. [Here is an analysis that can clear up why that is].

The Zodiac Killer is thought to have a problem with water. The water comments in the notes indicate there may have been a problem with the killer living in an area that became flooded with water or the ground rose somehow preventing the killer from committing crimes. The Zodiac Killer was operating in a somewhat rural area during an era when options for personal transportation were limited. This could have been an important clue to follow up. Was the water clue a hidden one because in fact the serial killer was not ready to be caught yet?

This may also have meant that the transportation that the killer used was affected by the ground water rising or the conditions of the roads they had to use for access to the killing area was blocked by wet weather conditions.

Isolation of the areas where the killer might have come from might have yielded further information about his home or work. The hours of travel (the killings were always conducted at night) and the roadways open (to single non-freight drivers traveling alone) might have narrowed the search. With the physical description that came later, geographic limitation would have pinpointed more precise data sets to clear using 1960’s and 1970’s methods.

Zodiac Fascinates Public

While many people have thought their relatives or parents might have been the Zodiac Killer, the case remains unsolved. A woman came forward in 2008 claiming her father (adopted) was the Zodiac Killer, but many alleged this was a publicity stunt. The 47-year-old woman claimed to have participated in some way and assisted in writing the infamous Zodiac Killer notes. Zodiac experts are skeptical and continue to scan the data and case histories for a possible solution.

Some members of the public suspect the Zodiac Killer was Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber. Others believe he was simply an insane person deteriorating mentally whose killing spree ended with degeneration in physical abilities or freedom to roam unsupervised. If the Zodiac is still alive, there must be a compelling reason for him to keep his identity a secret, in contrast to the time in the 1970’s when his notes indicated he was on threshold of revealing it.
The killer may have been using an alternate method of transportation not available to him at times when he was not killing or committing murders. The killer may have been intentionally using a car or vehicle that was not his or that he did not have supervised use of in the rain or wet. The killer may have been using the car of someone else, a handy way to avoid people associating the motor vehicle with the person of the description. Access to this transportation (effecting use of cabs or a new car) seems a logical conclusion.

The Car as an Identifier

Cars were generally a good means of identifying and tracking criminals in the 1960’s and 1970’s, due to the fact that roadside stops by police officers tracked the license numbers. The Zodiac may have been aware of this, or even known the policemen local to him. There might be any number of reddish brown haired stocky men in the state, but very few automobiles of a certain color, condition, make and model.

The identification of one man as the probable Zodiac was evidently spurned when it was remarked the man had bought a new car. But why did the Zodiac need to buy a new car? What happened to the suspect’s old car? Was it tainted with evidence or bodies, or had it been part of a botched crime to the extent that the perpetrator had to dispose of it altogether. It may be the case that someone in the Zodiac suspect’s world noticed the use of the car and a change was necessary. Investigation of these cars and where they ended up would be a useful thread to pursue.

The criminology methods should have isolated the times the murders were occurring contrasted against the times the murders were committed and identified what bridgeworks or traffic patterns changed during those times. This might have established some good observation zones for the police to see which types of vehicles the killer might have used to “dogleg” to the murder scenes. While the notes may have implied the Zodiac Killer’s wish to be identified, he actually maintained methods preventing this from happening.

The Zodiac Killer plausibly killed three couples and one cab driver, and the one cab driver that was attributed as a kill by the Zodiac could have been part of his dogleg routine and if the driver made a comment about having recognized him as the killer, or made a remark about his pattern of behavior, or even mentioned seeing him drive a car, the Zodiac Killer would have taken his life to prevent the recognition from being shared or communicated to anybody else.

The San Francisco Connection

In 1968 and 1969 a vicious killer struck down two “lover’s lane” couples, attempting a third. The Zodiac Killer is thought to have murdered a woman, Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, California in 1966. Why the divergence from the San Francisco area and why the need to isolate the “lust” crimes to the San Francisco environs? What conflicts were present in the killer’s world to make the geography changes seen in the progressively scripted killing modus operandi?

Note the chronological displacement between the crimes. If Cheri Jo was a “warmup” crime, the Zodiac may have expected the killing of one woman to slake his lust for killing. He may have realized after the killing that a man and a woman killed was his preferred scenario. Was the Zodiac Killer the man in the “scenario” himself? Was his own conception or the birth of a child (from a lover’s lane tryst) cementing unacceptable changes in his life he couldn’t deal with?

The couple killings were location specific to the Bay Area, occurring in Vallejo, San Francisco, and Lake Berryessa. Why only three killings? The Zodiac (despite his bluster in the notes) might have feared he was unable to control the killings, as his third couple survived long enough to give details concrete enough to matter in a court of law. The risks the Zodiac Killer may have taken possibly were becoming too great for his limited ability to contain.

The script for the Zodiac killings is a challenging one to solve. There were couples and necking teenagers everywhere, why did these rural spots attract the Zodiac’s rage? Why did a man have to die first with the woman’s molestation and assault coming after? Was there a woman figure of power protected by a male figure within the Zodiac Killer’s immediate world that the murdered couples represented? Why not make the man watch as his wife or girlfriend was raped? There is an element of substitution present in the death order that point to the Zodiac’s motivation and murder/kill reward/release.

Sexual Motives in Zodiac Psychopathology

The identification of San Francisco as a homosexual hotbed directs the analyst’s thoughts to motivation. The social intercourse with homosexuals, the temptation or frustration directed at the self or at a certain individual may have factored into the Zodiac’s killing episodes. The limited number of successful murdered pairs indicates a trigger episode unlocked the fatal combination of Zodiac motivation and action while at large.

The first killing in Riverside in 1966 might have been an experiment with heterosexual longings a man in the homosexual community could not have engaged in or pursued. Was the Zodiac an accepted homosexual? Did he envy the couples engaging in their private snuggling sessions, while his own unassuaged desires went suppressed? Was he in fact a bisexual, dealing with unknown thoughts and desires confusing to him but required to be hidden?

Was the Zodiac Killer sexually confused, thus “proving” himself with the sexual assaults? Was there a man in his life he aspired to get rid of, that the men in the couples killings were supposed to represent? If the Cheri Jo killing was meant to assuage feelings of sexual confusion, perhaps an atmosphere of heterosexual complacency or even attraction was fostered while the Zodiac was in the car with her that he feared enough to Killer to blot out.
Was there a touching off incidence in the Zodiac’s life that secured an immediate blood lust, noticed by the Berryessa victims and reported before they died? The trance the Zodiac went into was a fugue state of emotional and realistic escape from his actual life. Why did the Zodiac Killer need to escape from his life at just these times? Other killings are alleged to have been done by the Zodiac Killer, but without the infamous notes for corroboration, police cannot be sure.

The Notes as Double Blind

The notes formed the basis of chiefly all of the Zodiac information law enforcement officials worked from. Yet this “evidence” was manufactured at the behest of a dangerous criminal! There was no reason to trust any communication that was delivered. The notes may contain various true facts sprinkled with falsehoods, intended to consume police resources and continue the media attention the Zodiac craved. With the cessation of notes being received by media outlets, one might assume the Zodiac Killer was no longer at large or had a medical or physiological limitation preventing him from communicating in this manner.

In all the Zodiac is suspected of killing 5 people and he injured 2 more. The Zodiac in his letters claims to have killed up to 37 people in total.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.