DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 31

The Serial Killer - Part XXII

The Burke and Hare murders occurred in the early 1800s in Scotland by two Irish immigrants.
The term “burking” has been derived specifically from William Burke’s method of killing, which was to smother a victim while compressing their chest. The two murderers killed seventeen people in total and would sell the corpses to a local Doctor who would use the bodies for dissection in his lectures to students of Edinburgh Medical College.

In late 1828, Burke moved into Tanner's Close, in the West Port area of Edinburgh, where Margaret Hare kept a lodging-house. Burke had met Margaret on previous trips to Edinburgh, but it is not known whether he was previously acquainted with Hare. She was married to William Hare, who would become his partner in crime. All of the victims were Hare's lodgers.

As medical science began to flourish in the early nineteenth century, demand rose sharply, but at the same time, the only legal supply of cadavers—the bodies of executed criminals—had fallen due to a sharp reduction in the execution rate in the early nineteenth century, brought about by the repeal of the Bloody Code. Only about two or three corpses per year were available for a large number of students. This situation attracted criminal elements who were willing to obtain specimens by any means. The activities of body-snatchers (also called resurrectionists) gave rise to particular public fear and revulsion. It was a short step from grave-robbing to anatomy murder.

Of course the two Williams' could not be considered serial killers in the classical sense of the term, but to all effects, in theory that's just what they were. I have a hard time with these kind of assumptions made by the so called investigative community, since they tend to forget a very important detail - the motive for any real serial killer is never nothing else but the pure joy of killing. Money is too low an item to even be considered.