The Serial Killer - Part XX
flkdsçlf
Considered to be the first real american serial killers, my colleagues, the Harpe Brothers operated between the 1780s and the 1790s. They prefered the roads and the rivers, murdering people in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi. They weren't vulgar robbers and they seemed to enjoy the killing more than the money they stole.
Their blood lust seems to have started with the influence of the renegade Creek and Cherokee Indians with whom they lived and who committed atrocities against white settlers and their own tribes. Their killing method was to rip open the bodies of their victims and drown them with the aid of stones. They butchered anyone at the slightest provocation, even babies. R.E. Banta in The Ohio claims that Micajah Harpe even bashed his infant daughter's head against a tree because her constant crying annoyed him. This was the only crime for which he would later confess genuine remorse, though.
In July 1799 John Leiper raised a posse to avenge the murder of Mrs. Stegal, including Moses Stegal, the victim's husband. Leiper reached Harpe first, and managed to shoot Big Harpe. After a scuffle with a tomahawk, Leiper overcame Harpe. When Stegal arrived, he decapitated Harpe and stuck his head on a pole, at a crossroads still known as "Harpe's Head" or Harpe's Head Road in Webster County, Kentucky.
By the end of their reign of terror, the "Bloody Harpes" were responsible for the known murders of no less than 40 men, women, and children. Little Harpe eluded the authorities for some time, using the alias John Setton, until allegedly being caught in an effort to get a reward of his own on the head of an outlaw, Samuel Mason. He was captured in 1803, tried and hanged on February 8, 1804.
Of course the Harpe Brothers are much more similar to the modern serial killers, such as me, than the majority of the previous killers presented here. There is a distinguishable feature in their crimes, apart from the sadistic nature of their killings, that is unmistakably common to all modern serial killers - the randomness and the geographical mobility.
flkdsçlf
Considered to be the first real american serial killers, my colleagues, the Harpe Brothers operated between the 1780s and the 1790s. They prefered the roads and the rivers, murdering people in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi. They weren't vulgar robbers and they seemed to enjoy the killing more than the money they stole.
Their blood lust seems to have started with the influence of the renegade Creek and Cherokee Indians with whom they lived and who committed atrocities against white settlers and their own tribes. Their killing method was to rip open the bodies of their victims and drown them with the aid of stones. They butchered anyone at the slightest provocation, even babies. R.E. Banta in The Ohio claims that Micajah Harpe even bashed his infant daughter's head against a tree because her constant crying annoyed him. This was the only crime for which he would later confess genuine remorse, though.
In July 1799 John Leiper raised a posse to avenge the murder of Mrs. Stegal, including Moses Stegal, the victim's husband. Leiper reached Harpe first, and managed to shoot Big Harpe. After a scuffle with a tomahawk, Leiper overcame Harpe. When Stegal arrived, he decapitated Harpe and stuck his head on a pole, at a crossroads still known as "Harpe's Head" or Harpe's Head Road in Webster County, Kentucky.
By the end of their reign of terror, the "Bloody Harpes" were responsible for the known murders of no less than 40 men, women, and children. Little Harpe eluded the authorities for some time, using the alias John Setton, until allegedly being caught in an effort to get a reward of his own on the head of an outlaw, Samuel Mason. He was captured in 1803, tried and hanged on February 8, 1804.
Of course the Harpe Brothers are much more similar to the modern serial killers, such as me, than the majority of the previous killers presented here. There is a distinguishable feature in their crimes, apart from the sadistic nature of their killings, that is unmistakably common to all modern serial killers - the randomness and the geographical mobility.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário