EXECUTIONS
Back in the old days—when public executions were a major form of popular entertainment—putting a serial killer to death was quite a production. When the fifteenth-century cutthroat Sawney Beane was finally brought to justice, he and all the other male members of his cannibal clan had their hands and legs chopped off. Then the women were tossed into three blazing bonfires after being forced to watch their men bleed to death. All this, of course, took place before a large crowd of eager spectators. (For more details on the bestial Beanes, see Clans.)
A century or so later, in the late sixteenth century, a German serial killer named Peter Stubbe committed such unspeakable deeds that he was regarded as a literal werewolf. (Among his other atrocities, Stubbe murdered his own son, then cracked open the boy’s skull and devoured his brain.) When Stubbe was finally arrested, authorities meted out a punishment commensurate with his crimes. After being tortured on the rack, he was broken on the wheel. Then red-hot pincers were used to tear out chunks of his flesh, his arms and legs were crushed with an axe head, and his head was cut off and his body incinerated.
As everyone knows, of course, we live in a much less barbarous age. Nowadays, even a creature like John Wayne Gacy ends up being treated like a beloved, ailing pet—put to sleep by lethal injection. Still, there have been exceptions. Unsurprisingly, one particularly nasty exception occurred under the most barbarous regime of modern times. Between 1928 and 1943, a German laundry deliveryman named Bruno Ludke murdered as many as eighty women. Nazi officials repeatedly bungled the investigation, but when they finally caught up with Ludke, they reacted with characteristic brutality. Bypassing the usual channels, they shipped him off to a “research hospital” in Vienna, where he was used as a human guinea pig. Only when the Nazi torture doctors were done with him was Ludke executed by lethal injection.
Of course, when you’re dealing with serial killers, it’s not always clear that putting them to death is a form of punishment. Some of these maniacs actually look forward to the experience. Ludke’s countryman Peter Kürten—the “Monster of Düsseldorf”—couldn’t wait to be beheaded; the sound of his own gushing blood, he claimed, would be a source of ultimate pleasure. The American child killer Albert Fish seemed to feel the same way. Fish was not only a sadistic killer but also a world-class masochist, who enjoyed shoving sewing needles into his groin (among other extravagant forms of self-abuse). When Fish was given the death sentence for the savage murder of a twelve-year-old girl, the newspapers quoted him as saying, “What a thrill it will be to die in the electric chair! It will be the supreme thrill—the only one I haven’t tried!”
FAIRY TALES
Fairy tales may be set in the enchanted neverland of “Once upon a time,” but they also reflect the real-world conditions of the European peasants who originally told them. And from the evidence of these supposedly charming little kiddie stories, that world was full of violence, brutality, and the kind of remorseless cutthroats we now call serial killers.
Take “The Robber Bridegroom.” The heroine of this well-known Grimm Brothers tale finds herself betrothed to the leader of a gang of cannibal killers who abduct young women, cut them into pieces, boil the parts in a big kettle, then consume the flesh with generous portions of salt.
Another Grimm tale, “Fitcher’s Bird,” is an example of a folklore tradition that scholars call “bloody chamber” narratives: stories about innocent young women who discover that they are married to monsters when they enter forbidden rooms filled with the reeking remains of their hubbies’ previous victims. The villain of “Fitcher’s Bird” is a serial axe murderer who keeps the dismembered corpses of his female victims in a “great bloody basin” stored in a locked room. When his latest wife sneaks into the room and discovers his terrible secret, he chops off her head, cuts her into pieces, then “tosses her into the basin with the rest.”
One of the most famous of all fairy tales, “Little Red Riding Hood,” is generally interpreted as a cautionary tale about the very real dangers that unprotected young girls face from sexual predators. Some scholars believe that the big, bad wolf is meant to represent real-life “lycanthropes”—serial mutilation murderers who killed with such savage ferocity that they were thought to be actual wolfmen. The most famous example was Peter Stübbe, a sixteenth-century German lust killer who slaughtered, dismembered, and cannibalized more than a dozen children, often tearing out their hearts and eating them “panting hot and raw.”
In one of his bestselling records, Frank Sinatra croons, “Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you.” If you’re familiar with Grimm Brothers stories like “The Robber Bridegroom” and “Fitcher’s Bird,” all you can say is, “I hope not.”
FAN CLUBS
Though it’s common for serial killers—even the most repugnant—to attract Groupies, few possess enough broad-range appeal to generate fan clubs. One exception is Ed Gein, Wisconsin’s most notorious native son. Undoubtedly because of his unique status as the most influential psychokiller since Jack the Ripper, Gein—whose ghoulish crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs—has attracted a sizable worldwide cult following.
Evidence of Gein’s appeal is the existence of the Official Ed Gein Fan Club, information about which can be found on the aptly named Web site www.evilnow.com. For a modest fee, new members receive a card, a badge, and a shot glass adorned with Ed’s mug, as well as specially discounted offers on such must-have collectibles as a purported chunk of Gein’s gravestone, a sample of dirt from his grave, and a gravestone rubbing.
Another celebrity psycho who has always exerted widespread fascination is the scarily charismatic Charles Manson. The Web page www.charlesmansonfanclub.com proudly offers “the best in Charlie Manson Memorabilia,” from “Charlie Fan Club” T-shirts to Zippo lighters emblazoned with a portrait of the hippie-era Manson surrounded by the slogan: “Remember Kids, Charlie Loves You.”
Needless to say, these psycho-worshipping fan clubs—and the cheerfully tasteless souvenirs they traffic in—inspire profound indignation among many people. For more on the phenomenon of what one outraged critic has labeled “murderabilia,” see Cards, Comics, and Collectibles.
Official Ed Gein Fan Club membership certificate and lapel pin
(Courtesy of Damon Fox)
FANTASY
Though we’re sometimes loath to admit it (even to ourselves), everyone harbors socially unacceptable thoughts—forbidden dreams of sex and violence. There’s a big difference, though, between the fantasies of serial killers and those of ordinary people. For one thing, the former are a whole lot sicker. An average guy might imagine himself making love to a super-model. The serial killer, on the other hand, will think obsessively about shackling her to a wall, then slicing up her body with a hunting knife.
There’s a second, even scarier difference: unlike a normal person (who might indulge in an occasional daydream about, say, hiring a hitman to bump off his boss), serial killers aren’t satisfied with thinking about taboo behavior. They are compelled to act out their fantasies—to turn their darkest imaginings into real-life horrors.
People who grow up to be serial killers begin indulging in fantasies of sadistic activity at a disturbingly young age—sometimes as early as seven or eight. While their peers are pretending to be sports stars or superheroes, these incipient psychopaths are already daydreaming about murder and mayhem. Interviewed in prison after his arrest, one serial killer explained that as a child he spent so much time daydreaming in class that his teachers always noted it on his report cards. “And what did you daydream about?” asked the interviewer. His answer: “Wiping out the whole school.”
Another serial killer recalled that his favorite make-believe game as a little boy was “gas chamber,” in which he pretended to be a condemned prisoner undergoing an agonizing execution. Fantasizing about a slow, painful death was a source of intense boyhood pleasure to this budding psycho.
Unlike other people,
the serial killer never outgrows his childhood fantasies. On the contrary. Cut off from normal human relationships, he sinks deeper and deeper into his private world of grotesque imaginings. From the outside, he might appear perfectly well adjusted—a hard worker, good neighbor, and all-around solid citizen. But all the while, bizarre, blood-drenched dreams are running rampant inside his head.
Since psychopaths lack the inner restraints that prevent normal people from acting out their hidden desires, there is nothing to keep a serial killer from trying to make his darkest dreams come true. Eventually, this is exactly what happens. His perverted fantasies of dominance, degradation, and torture become the fuel that sets his crimes in motion. For this reason, former FBI agent Robert K. Ressler—the man who popularized the term “serial killer”—insists that it is not child abuse or early trauma that turns people into serial killers. It is their dreams.
As Ressler puts it, creatures like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and their ilk are “motivated to murder by their fantasies.”
FBI
J. Edgar Hoover’s G-men earned their reputation by battling such Depression-era outlaws as John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. But compared to today’s serial killers, those tommy-gun-toting badmen of yore seem almost quaint. To combat the growing threat of random violence in America, the Bureau has had to come up with sophisticated new crime-fighting techniques.
Beginning in the late 1970s, agents of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU), headquartered at the Bureau’s Training Academy on the Quantico marine base in eastern Virginia, embarked on the Criminal Personality Research Project—an ambitious effort to probe into the minds of serial murderers. Traveling to prisons throughout the United States, these agents (whose forensic feats have been immortalized in the megahit movie The Silence of the Lambs) interviewed nearly forty of America’s most notorious figures, including Ed Gein, Charles Manson, Richard Speck, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. Flattered by the Bureau’s attention, most of these killers were happy to chat about themselves. The insights gained from this survey enabled the BSU to devise a revolutionary “criminal personality profiling” method that has proven to be a major new weapon in the fight against violent crime (see Profiling).
With serial killings multiplying at an alarming rate, the FBI perceived the need for a national clearinghouse that would provide assistance to police officers throughout the country in their efforts to solve the most monstrous and baffling of murders. The result was the creation of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes (NCAVC), designed for the express purpose (as Ronald Reagan put it when he announced its establishment in June 1984) of “identifying and tracking repeat killers.” Administered by the Behavioral Science Unit, NCAVC not only offers its criminal profiling service to stymied police agencies throughout the country but also serves as the world’s leading resource center for the pursuit and capture of serial killers.
Besides profiling, the most powerful weapon in NCAVC’s arsenal is the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP), the brainchild of a former Los Angeles homicide detective named Pierce Brooks. Back in the late 1950s, Brooks was investigating a brutal murder that seemed to be the work of a veteran killer who kept on the move. Having hit a dead end in his investigation, Brooks decided to see if there were other unsolved homicides in the country with similar characteristics. Unfortunately, there was only one way to check—by going to the public library during his off-hours and plowing through newspapers from around the United States. It took him a solid year to find what he was looking for—a case in Ohio that bore all the earmarks of the LA crime.
Cover of VICAP crime analysis report form
Perceiving the need for a more efficient way of tracking America’s growing population of elusive, highly mobile killers, Brooks came up with the concept of a nationwide, computerized network designed to collate and provide leads on thousands of unsolved crimes. As a result of Brooks’s efforts, VICAP finally became operational in 1985.
VICAP has had some problems: serious underfunding and the reluctance of local police to fill out the hellishly complex forms on their unsolved crimes. But the forms have been simplified, and the program received a major infusion of money from Congress in 1994. If VICAP lives up to its potential, creatures like Ted Bundy might soon go the way of other obsolete scourges, like leprosy and the black plague.
Tales of the “Psyche Squad”
Two founding members of NCAVC—Robert K. Ressler and John Douglas—have published gripping accounts of their experiences. Readers interested in learning more about the Bureau’s crack team of criminal personality profilers (aka the “Psyche Squad”) shouldn’t fail to check out Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert K. Ressler and Tom Schachtman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992) and Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker (New York: A Lisa Drew Book/ Scribner, 1995). Also recommended: H. Paul Jeffers’s Who Killed Precious? (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), a lively, behind-the-scenes look at the history and operations of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, and Stephen G. Michaud’s The Evil That Men Do (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), which details the career of Roy Hazelwood, another pioneering profiler and cofounder of VICAP
FETISH OBJECTS
See Trophies.
Albert Fish
Albert Fish has been called “America’s boogeyman”—and for good reason. A cannibal ogre in the guise of a kindly old man, he was every parent’s worst nightmare: a fiend who lured children to destruction with the promise of a treat.
The crime that brought Fish to public attention was the 1928 kidnapping-murder of a pretty twelve-year-old girl named Grace Budd. After befriending her parents, Fish made up a diabolical lie. He said that his niece was having a birthday party and asked if Grace would like to go. Mr. and Mrs. Budd—who had no way of knowing that the grandfatherly old man was a monster—agreed.
Dressed in her Sunday finest, the trusting little girl went off with Fish, who led her to an isolated house in a northern suburb of New York City. There, he strangled her, butchered her body, and carried off several pounds of her flesh. Back in his lodgings, he turned her “meat” (as he called it) into a cannibal stew, complete with carrots, onions, and bacon strips. He spent the next nine days locked in his room, savoring this unholy meal and compulsively masturbating.
For the next six years, Fish remained at large, but throughout this time he was doggedly pursued by a New York City detective named William King, who had made the Grace Budd case his personal crusade. Even so, Fish probably would have gotten away with the crime if it hadn’t been for his own inner demons. In 1934, he felt compelled to send Mrs. Budd one of the sickest Letters ever written. In the end, King was able to track down his quarry through the letterhead stationery Fish had used.
Albert Fish; from True Crime Trading Cards Series Two: Serial Killers and Mass Murderers; art by Jon Bright
(Courtesy of Jon Bright and Valarie Jones)
Once Fish was in custody, authorities quickly realized that they had their hands on a killer of unimaginable depravity, one who had spent his whole lifetime inflicting pain—on himself as well as on others. Like a number of serial killers, Fish was a religious maniac, and he subjected himself to grotesque forms of torture as penance for his sins—flagellating himself with leather straps and nail-studded paddles, eating his own excrement, shoving sewing needles up into his groin. The children he mutilated and murdered were, in his demented eyes, sacrificial offerings to the Lord. Noted New York City psychiatrist Dr. Frederic Wertham—who was called in by the defense to examine Fish—declared that the old man had practiced “every sexual perversion known,” as well as a few that no one had ever heard of (among his grotesque pleasures, Fish liked to insert rose stems into his urethra). X rays of his pelvic region taken in prison revealed that there were twenty-nine needles lodged around his bladder.
Though the jury at his 1935 trial acknowledged that he was insane, they believed he should be electrocuted anyway. A
fter receiving the death sentence, the bizarre old man reportedly exclaimed, “What a thrill it will be to die in the electric chair! It will be the supreme thrill—the only one I haven’t tried!”
On January 16, 1936, the sixty-five-year-old Fish went to the chair—the oldest man ever put to death in Sing Sing.
FOLIE À DEUX
Would the Columbine massacre have taken place if Eric Harris had never met Dylan Klebold? Would Nathan Leopold have tried his hand at “thrill killing” without the encouragement of Richard Loeb? In both these instances, the answer is: it’s possible but highly unlikely. Cases like these—in which two individuals egg each other on to insane acts of violence that neither one, individually, would have dared to commit on his own—are examples of a phenomenon that psychiatrists call folie à deux: a madness shared by two people (otherwise known as “double insanity,” “reciprocal insanity,” or “insanity in pairs”).
Not all criminals caught up in a folie à deux are serial killers. Some, like Klebold and Harris, are mass murderers. Others, like Leopold and Loeb, perpetrate a single spectacular act of gratuitous violence.
Conversely, not all serial killers who operate in pairs are in the grip of a folie à deux. Henry Lee Lucas and the unspeakable Ottis Toole, for example, teamed up for a while, but each was already a confirmed serial killer. A true folie à deux involves two people who, separately, might daydream about murder but would never have the nerve to commit it. Only when they form a bond with another, equally toxic personality do they take the plunge into full-blown homicidal behavior.
The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers Page 9
