by Ian Brady
After all, simple mental arithmetic by the Seattle public would have soon convinced them that there were only so many prostitute victims to go around and, at the present rate of fatality, that figure must be getting pretty low, and hookers with any sense would be packing their bags for the airport. Add to that the extremely alarming fact that several of the victims had no record of prostitution, other women would quickly appreciate the deadly logic of the situation.
Against all reason, the Seattle public continued to accept and believe what they were comfortingly told by the police. Such is human nature in general, unlike that of Sherlock Holmes:
Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.
— The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Instinct of danger slowly but surely began to penetrate the collective psyche of the Seattle public, sending influential waves of apprehension and dissatisfaction into police headquarters. For, in early January 1984, the Seattle police department took special measures by setting up a Green River Task Force. A development which, you might reasonably agree, should have taken place well before the number of victims rose to over forty.
The good citizens of Seattle were indeed beginning to think along mathematical lines, not only because prostitutes were becoming thin on the ground, but also as the killer/killers might be escalating activities from resentment at the lack of public interest and poor media reviews.
By far the most significant and important outside appointee to the new Task Force was Bob Keppel, seconded from the U.S. Attorney General’s office.
Keppel had played a crucial part in the hunt for Ted Bundy — who, to help stave off his death sentence, had ironically offered his services in helping to track down the Green River Killer . . . initially on the premise that he had insight into the killer’s mind and, eventually, on the suggestion that he himself had committed some of the murders. Keppel was one of the new breed of intelligent hunters impressed by the psychological methodology developed at the FBI Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia.
The first practical moves of the Task Force included the setting up of surveillance teams and police decoys, in the Seattle red-light districts and along the Sea-Tac Strip, covertly monitoring and tabulating prostitutes and their clients.
The first pivotal break for the Task Force occurred in April 1984 when three skeletons were discovered in the vicinity of Star Lake, situated to the south of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. A fourth skeleton was found in some woods a mile or so from there. The latter skeleton was eventually identified as that of Amina Agisheff, who had disappeared on 7th July 1982. This meant that, according to the prevalent police theory that there was only one killer involved, Amina Agisheff displaced Wendy Coffield as being the first known victim of the Green River Killer. It also constituted an outstanding example of a victim who did not fit the expedient theory that there was only one serial killer involved.
Amina Agisheff had been a thirty-five-year-old housewife with two children and a thoroughly respectable background. She had been working as a waitress and had no criminal record, and had mysteriously disappeared when going to catch a bus after visiting the house of her mother.
As far as Bob Keppel was concerned, it should have been perfectly clear that there were at least two separate serial killers at work — the original Green River Killer who disposed of his victims in the river, and a second killer who discarded them on land.
In my opinion, sixteen-year-old Opal Mills, the only one of three black victims who was found on the riverbank, was probably the victim of the second serial killer, after he read of Wendy Coffield and Debra Lynn Bonner having been dumped in that area of the river by the so-called Green River Killer.
Not before time, the fresh mind of Bob Keppel applied psychological profiling principles to the hunt. Working on the assumption that the first victim/victims of a serial killer are known to him even if only by sight, Keppel now concentrated the attention of the Task Force on thoroughly researching the background of Amina Agisheff, questioning those who knew her and those who lived in close proximity to her home.
Second, the large majority of serial killers do not suddenly start killing on a daily basis. The contrast between their fantasies and the reality of the first murder is often such a profound traumatic shock that they require a cooling-off period or, in some instances, actually commit suicide. With each murder, the cooling-off period becomes progressively shorter, reflecting the lessening effect on their psyche or the diminishing degree of satisfaction being obtained through repetition. Further, it is often the case that the incipient serial killer has a modest criminal record, or a history of mental illness, before he starts killing.
With these factors in mind, Keppel should have had the Task Force check through criminal records that preceded the first known murder by the so-called Green River Killer, searching for any other homicides which bore the same personality print, or lesser crimes of assault that might represent some of the killer’s first botched attempts (especially any involving kidnapping or efforts to strangle the victim in the vicinity of a river).
Intense police activity most likely made the other killer/killers more cautious. For, on 21st March 1984, after the skeleton of Cindy Ann Smith, a seventeen-year-old stripper and hooker, was discovered in bushes near the Sea-Tac airport, the killings suddenly halted.
The Task Force did not realise this until months passed without any more prostitutes being killed or going missing. To me, this reinforces the deduction that the Task Force had brushed shoulders with one or more of the killers during its inquiries. The data obtained from these inquiries should have been very thoroughly re-examined for any clues of additional significance, in respect of the killings having subsequently ceased. Had any questioned male later died or left the Seattle area since? Whether or not the Task Force adopted these approaches I have no way of knowing.
After the passage of a year without any further killings, in April 1985 the head of the Task Force publicly stated that he was confident that the Green River murders had come to an end.
The first ominous computerised signal suggesting the contrary came from Portland, Oregon. Corpses of four hookers had been discovered on the outskirts there. Had the Green River Killer (or one of them) changed his base of operations?
Again, this should have prompted the Task Force to study their extant data for any male who had, within the preceding year, moved from Seattle to Oregon. Remembering that many psychopathic killers, for differing pragmatic, strategic or psychiatric reasons, frequently change their address or move to other cities. If that particular killer had moved from Seattle in 1985, he soon moved back again, perhaps in paranoid/narcissistic response to the Task Force having stated the killings had stopped. Two more skeletons were found in the vicinity of the Mountain View Cemetery.
Ironically, a ‘trapper,’ Ernest McLean, who worked in the area, was arrested on suspicion, but was released after detailed police inquiries and a lie-detector test cleared him.
Without any apparent reason the killings again halted, this time for two years, until September 1987, when the body of sixteen-year-old Rosie Curran was found in a drainage ditch. In quick succession, two more girls, Debbie Gonsales and Dorothea Prestleigh, disappeared. This speedy rate of killing was a sure personality print of the original Green River Killer, yet the Task Force did not attribute these killings to him.
Had the Task Force, too, interpreted the return of the Green River Killer as a paranoid/narcissistic reaction? Were they deliberately trying to provoke him by tactically not crediting him with the latest three victims? Or were they simply playing politics, hoping to make the Seattle public forget both the killer and their embarrassing inability to capture him?
Whatever the truth of the matter, no killer rose to the bai
t. Eventually, in October 1989, almost eight years having passed since the so-called Green River Killings had begun, the new head of the Task Force, Captain Bob Evans, announced that they were still no nearer to catching a killer than they had been at the beginning.
Over twelve million dollars had been spent in the futile hunt, and a total of twenty thousand suspects had been interviewed. Finally, in January 1990, the defeated Task Force publicly announced that the hunt for the Green River Killer was now closed.
There is no doubt in my mind that there were two or more serial killers involved in the so-called Green River Killings.
The original killer had taken the trouble to hide the bodies in the Green River, indicating the cautious mind of a psychopath. The second killer had simply dumped his victims openly on the ground — the risk-taking personality print of a psychotic.
However, many first-time killers usually panic and leave the body unhidden. So, there could have been any number of individual killers involved, psychically or emotionally or opportunistically infected by the increasing rate of murders and the apparent invincibility of the killer, or incompetence of the police.
It was a perfect scenario and ethos both for disturbed personalities and highly educated aficionados of the art of homicide. Anyone already fascinated and excited by the very idea of murder would have been tempted to try it out for themselves. Seeing that all the killings were being attributed by the police to one killer, each successive killer would be both comforted and encouraged by the fact that, if apprehended, he could prove he was not the Green River Killer by providing a genuine alibi for when some of the other killings had occurred. A chaotic, convenient situation designed to attract aspiring killers, rapists and brutal muggers.
Even so-called ‘ordinary’ people have a morbid curiosity and atavistic urge to experience what it would be like actually to kill someone. The urge is buried inextricably within the human psyche.
If all the books that contain murder, rape and sexual perversion were to be burned, the bonfire would of course consist of most of the great classics, including the Bible. Books and films merely cater to crime. The catalyst to action lies not in the words or images, but in the individual psyche.
I have never experienced the need to corrupt anyone. I simply offered the opportunity to indulge extant natural urges. Innocence, once again, is the most corrupting influence of all. I am sure the collective perpetrators of the Green River Murders would heartily agree and concede the point.
Where you thought me safely drowned
In the depths I swim around.
Thither when you too descend,
With my claw I’ll tear you, friend!
— ‘The Road to Sinodun,’ George D. Painter
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Carl Panzram
When a liberal is abused, he says: Thank God they didn’t beat me. When he is beaten, he thanks God they didn’t kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay.
The Government’s Falsification of the Duma and Tasks of the Social Democrats (1906)
Those of you fortunate enough to have either been born with, or been inclined to have, a philosophical appreciation of the variegated splendour of life, must surely recognise that, in a perversely paradoxical fashion, some serial killers place a higher value on a human life than do many of their ostensibly more principled brethren.
As previously postulated, there are killers who, in order to annul their conscience or social conditioning, feel compelled to depersonalise their victims rather than see them as people who possess, to a greater or lesser degree, the same feelings and rights as they themselves.
Soldiers wear uniforms both to identify their comrades and the enemy. They are trained to kill by reflex those who wear the enemy uniform in the same manner as bulls are conditioned to charge a red cape. This is simply a socially acceptable, alternative method of depersonalisation to that used by the serial killer, but with precisely the same object: to kill without conscience or remorse.
Big business applies depersonalising criteria in the pursuit of profit. They distance themselves from general humanity, describing those who suffer from their exploitation as ‘units’ or ‘consumers.’
Criminals are forever being told to think of the effect of their actions on society. The large corporations chopping down trees in the rain forests as fast as they can are not in the least interested that their actions are affecting the atmosphere to the extreme detriment of all who live on the planet. They actually employ gangs of murderers to get rid of the stone-age tribes in the forest who stand between them and profit. These gangs either simply shoot the whole tribe or drop ‘gifts’ of poisoned foodstuffs from helicopters for the ignorant savages to ‘consume’ and decompose.
When killing people, these respectable businessmen use precisely the same justification as the Mafia: ‘It’s business. Nothing personal.’ And ‘civilised’ politicians and businessmen of the world, knowing these facts, expediently turn a blind eye, as their national economies rely on the wood supply — not least the tabloid newspapers, using it profligately to churn out synthetic indignation over comparatively petty murders, thefts, muggings, assaults, acts of hooliganism and vandalism, etc., fully aware the paper they are printing it on is soaked in blood more innocent than the ‘civilised’ blend.
Instead of indulging hypocrisy and ignorance by tendentiously arguing, argumentum ad hominem, that I only raise such facts to justify my own crimes or those of other criminals, rather ask why you yourself are willing to justify, on a much vaster scale, any capital crime so long as it indirectly provides you with a good job and a high standard of living.
Perhaps the more complacent amongst you are by now beginning to comprehend more profoundly what the philosophy of moral and legal relativism actually means, and, more important, that you and your good neighbours have been consciously or subconsciously adopting it all your life and still are, for your own personal comfort.
Now we come to the second category of serial killer I first mentioned, those who paradoxically kill because they place a great value on life. They deliberately personalise their victims not only to avoid the unpleasant exigencies of conscience but also to gain greater pleasure from the degradation and death they are inflicting. Their murders are perceived by them to be utterly senseless and without worth unless they attribute each victim with great spiritual value and metaphysical significance. There is no pleasure in killing someone who does not value life. No pleasure in killing unless you value life.
This type of killer’s main motive may be to gain revenge upon society or humanity as a whole, for some real or imaginary injury resulting in post-traumatic stress which, by degrees, has nurtured neurosis to full-blown psychosis or a psychopathic pattern of rationalisation. He is out for blood, and perhaps, ironically, places more actual spiritual value on it than some clergymen solemnly intoning merely from habit.
In effect, unlike the soldier or other government-sanctioned assassin, the serial killer regards the taking of each life as an act of cosmic significance. He perhaps even sees himself, in a polytheistic sense, as shouting defiance at the faceless gods, challenging and contemptuously daring them to intervene on behalf of his victims. Nothing less than divine intervention would have any meaning or importance to him. He is conceptually schizophrenic, in that he despises humanity as a whole yet is still able to invest the death of a single individual with great personal worth and metaphysical relevance.
You may or may not find it rather grotesque to suggest, as I now do, that the pivotal psychic ambivalence of such a killer is almost certain evidence that he is killing from despair and disgust rather than natural malevolence.
Like the ‘Night Stalker,’ Ricardo Ramirez, dealt with in an earlier chapter, this category of serial killer could be regarded as a disillusioned idealist, a moral perfectionist. A person who, so resentful of the zoological aspects of human existence in general, is determined to outdo in cynical sava
gery every person on earth, perhaps as a result of remaining unable to discern the essential psychic contradiction involved. If he were able to spot the flaw in his own fatal philosophy, resentful rage could make him twice as dangerous.
In my opinion, Carl Panzram was such a man. A killer fierce enough to send shivers of apprehension down even the spines of hardened criminals. A man perceived by others to be totally devoid of conscience or the least conception of compromise. A killing machine as lethal and remorseless as a shark. Someone either to be given as wide a berth as possible, or shot at point-blank range in the back of the head repeatedly, without warning, with a heavy-calibre revolver until dead and beyond salvage. Lesser measures and precautions in dealing with Carl Panzram would certainly have put your own life at risk.
Carl Panzram was born on 28th June 1891, the fourth child of German parents who emigrated to America in search of the good life. His father, a sullen man with a violent temper, ended up a farm labourer. Still ambitious in this land of opportunity, he eventually managed to save up enough money to buy a small farm in Minnesota. But an earlier, less famous version of the Dust Bowl Depression that hit farmers in the 1920s and ’30s (immortalised in Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath) wiped out his hard-earned investment. Dispirited and discouraged, Carl Panzram’s father simply packed up and left his family without a backward glance, never to return.
Here we have the first part of the classic pattern in the lives of many criminals: the broken home and the children neglected by the remaining overworked parent, through force of circumstance rather than deliberate cruelty. In Carl’s case it was in his most formative, learning years. A time when some sense of parental care and love was essential. A time when he needed to know someone really cared about him.
Frustrated by lack of reciprocal response, he became disruptive and precociously violent. A tendency perhaps partly compounded by inheritance of his father’s similar characteristics, and partly an attempt to gain some kind of attention that would reinforce a significant sense of identity and uniqueness. He was not to know that he would become one of the most unique criminals ever to have lived.
