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The Serial Killer - Part XLIII

In 1960 there were 8.000 murders every year in the USA. Thirty years later, in 1990, the number increased to 23.438. The average of solved murders in 1962 was around 93%, which means that 600 cases were not solved. Today that number has decresead to 68%, that is 7.000 murders not solved. The average of murders has increased 280% in 30 years, while the average of non solved murders is around 1200%. This is due in the majority of the cases to an increase in the so called "strange to strange murders" - crimes where the murderer and the victim do not know eachother. Of these, serial killers are responsible for an important slice.

More than 90% of violent crimes are commited by men between the ages of 15 and 24. During this stage of their lives, young men go through several transitions, they become independent, they rebel and they have little control of their emotions. This is also due to social changes - we tend to have become strangers to eachother. In the beginning of the century, most people lived and worked in family estates. Then the fields and the small american cities became unpopulated. Migration to big cities was followed by changes in the family structure. The father abandoned the farm and started working for someone else, his children lost their male model. We can no longer visit our father at his day job because it is very far away from home. The american family lost its anchor point and its traditions. Before, members of the same family lived close to eachother, they knew all the neighbours, sometimes in the course of entire generations. Today, every year 36 million americans change home, which represents around 10'% of the entire countrie's population. On average a family moves around 12 times before their children are 18.

As for the race issue, it is not really a race issue but a social class issue. Violent crimes, mainly homicides, predominate in the lower classes, where racial variety is more disseminated. Yet the organized serial killer is a very specific type of killer, who commits murder for entirely different reasons than those that motivate the average violent criminal. 

About the sex issue, it is probable that women may increase the numbers of serial killers because they tend to have more mobile and transitive occupations, aswell as more power in the working place and in their private lives. Yet they will never get close to the violent potential men represent.

Although there are a few occupations that might seem more likely to be associated with serial killers, such as truck drivers, it is not their job that makes them killers, rather they choose a specific type of job that allows them to be mobile, to jink authorities and find suitable potencial high risk victims, such as prostitutes or hitchhickers.

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The Serial Killer - Part XLII

Dr. Michel Benezech, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Bordeaux and a psychiatrist, has conceived this list of differences between a psychopath and a psychotic:

Most serial killers who commit strange acts like mutilations, canibalism or post mortem rapes  could be in the ideal situation to pleed insanity. Yet the majority does not choose this way out. Why? According to the statistics, in the USA, only one in every 1000 criminals who pleed not guilty for reason of insanity manage to accomplish his goal. Of the many hundreds that have gone through trial since the beginning of the XXth century, less than 20 have been declared untouchable or legaly insane. Many have tried to pleed insanity to no avail, claiming a personality disruption (Kenneth Bianchi or William Hereins), hearing the voice of God (Peter Sutcliffe or Herbert Mullin), an old demon inside the body of a dog (David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam"), or inherited psychosis from Vietnam war (Arthur Shawcross), for instance. 

The legal definition of insanity is different from the medical one and, in the USA, it varies from state to state. In 16 states the M'Naughten Rule is used since 1843, stating: "A criminal defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity if, at the time of the alleged criminal act, the defendant was so deranged that she did not know the nature or quality of her actions or, if she knew the nature and quality of her actions, she was so deranged that she did not know that what she was doing was wrong." This rule does not take into consideration the criminals that distinguish right from wrong but cannot control their behaviour. To take this into considerarion, some states added the "Irresistible Impuse Test" which allows the defense to prove the accused did not control himself in the moment of the crime, but a federal law dated 1948 supressed this addendum.

More recentely, the Brawner Rule dated 1972, states: "A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of the such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality [wrongfulness] of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.” With this rule the accused must prove a parcial incapacity and not a total incapacity. But the Brawner Rule excludes, for example, acts commited by psychopaths or individuals with a professedly anti-social behaviour.

In 1975 Michigan created its own law to define insanity and that later was adopted by 7 other states. The defendant accused according to this law is criminally charged and compulsorily admitted into a psychiatric institution. When he is considered cured he is transfered to a prisional institution and beggins his serve time.

Two thirds of serial killers who have been charged since the beginning of the XXth century have been condemned to various degrees of serving time. One quarter was condemned to death and of these, around 40% were in fact executed. The rest, some 7%, were condemned either to death or to a sentence, depending on the jurisdiction they were condemned in.

The serial killers executed since the beginning of the XXth century are around 50.

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The Serial Killer - Part XLI

On a psychiatric point of view two types of serial killers can be considered: the psychotic paranoid, who can be a schizofrenic; and the psychopath, whose personality is clearly anti-social, that is:
1. He lacks maturity, being ungrateful, cynical, unloyal and a rebel who takes advantage of others
2. As he can't feel empathy, he is also incapable of understanding how his actions can hurt others around him
3. Others only exist to fulfill his needs
4. Consequentely, his sexual life is typically manipulative and unfaithfull

The majority of these individuals develop an anti-social personality because they suffered severe abuse during childhood, either because of abusive parents or by being abandoned. The reaction to this kind of mistreatment may lead them to a more dangerous stage and turn them into sociopaths.
The sociopath not only is morally insensitive and lacks any kind of feelings, he also pretends to feel emotions he never experiences. He is "polished", generally very intelligent and usually with a brilliant carreer. This personal success compensates an intolerable self impression of total inaptitude. The sociopath feels great pleasure in controlling others. Manipulating becomes an obssession, to the extent that it drives him to the ultimate goal: deciding the life and death of someone else.
The psychopath, a true hedonist, constantly seeks his own pleasure, even if it means hurting others. When he kills he doesn't feel any remorse or guilt because he has no conscience. What makes him so dangerous is his vulgar appearance, for he is a master of deception. There isn't the slightest trace of any kind of strange behaviour or irrational thoughts. When he is caught, his verbal fluency allows him to simulate honesty and remorse to fool his captors. In his cell the psychopathic serial killer becomes a model prisioner. He is the most dangerous type of serial killer and the one who can escape criminal investigation for the greatest amount of time.

There are two types of serial killers: the organized criminal planns his crimes in a conscious way and takes his victims to the scene of the crime; the disorganized criminal doesn't plan in advance and the scene of his crime reflects his mental disorder.
According to an FBI report on sexual murderers dated 1990, these are the differences between those two types:

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The Serial Killer - Part XL

The unreal world serial killers prefer is the place where they can be their own lords, away from the insatisfaction caused by their real family life and the abuse they are victims of. Controlling this new world of fantasy becomes crucial to the child's eyes and later the adult. We often find that in children who recover from an abusive treatment, it is not the ghosts of escape to a better world that dominate their minds. They do not compensate that stimulation and aggression with creative activities or idylic thoughts. Their energy is channeled to fantasies of aggression and domination that suggest a repetitive projection of their own abuse and an identification with their aggressor.
Although they have high or very high IQs, their performance in school, college, sexual life, military or professional activities is distressingly mediocre. More than half do not finish school and the rest have mediocre grades in 68% of the cases, which leads to the conclusion that they never fulfill entirely the potencial they seem to reveal.
They are not capable of maintaining a job: 80%; change constantly and have non qualified occupations. Nearly 45% followed a military carreer, but more than half of them retired for medical or psychiatric reasons or due to problems with authority. 25% commited some crime during their time as militaries. As for sexual experiences, 44% confess to not having experienced "normal" sexual intercourse before turning to criminal activity.

Serial killers are very dangerous individuals. They look normal until some vulgar accident triggers the explosion. For Ted Bundy, the trigger was seeing a student who resembled very much his former fianceé; for Carlton Gary, it was a white old female, similar to those who employed and humiliated his black mother. As for John Wayne Gacy, a stupid quarrel with one of his employees, a teenager complaining about his payroll, triggered him into a murderess insanity.
The serial killer is a sick person: he cannot stop killing and, anyway, he doesn't want to. He only exists through the death of others and can only be stopped if killed himself, captured or if he comits suicide. But suicide is very rare amongst these kind of killers, except for psychotics or those who find themselves almost on the verge of being caught. These are the only serial killers, since the beginning of the century who have killed themselves:
Louise Vermilyea (1910)
Joe Ball (1938)
Mack Edwards (1971)
Antone Costa (1974) 
Richard Chase (1980)
Barry Prudom (1982)
Charles Yukl (1982)
Leonard Lake (1985)
Richard Macek (1987)

When captured they almost always confess their crimes and even tend to exagerate the numbers. This is due to an incredibly big ego, their desire to become celebrities and the tendency to manipulate, even the law system. Confessing to non existent murders delays judgement dates. On the other hand, they also beneficiate with better imprisionment conditions, since they are asked to cooperate with the different authorities investigating their crimes. Henry Lee Lucas, for example, claimed to have murdered 300 people, but this number was suddenly and drastically reduced to 160, and continued to decrease as the investigation progressed. Likewise, a serial killer can confess to acts he didn't even comit, as was the case of Arthur Shawcross who claimed to be a canibal and necrophile so he could be considered untouchable for insanity reasons.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXIX

When we look at the individual development of serial killers, we find two common factors in most cases: a systematic abuse during childhood, wether physical (30%), psychological (69%) or sexual (40%); and the existence of a fantasy life.

The following behaviours are listed below with the according frequency:

Behaviour                                           Childhood        Teenager         Adult
Compulsive masturbation                        82%                  81%               81%
Fantasy                                                    82%                  82%               81% 
Isolation                                                  71%                  77%               73%
Cronic lying                                             71%                  75%               68%
Involuntary urinating                               68%                  60%              15%
Rebelion                                                  67%                  84%               72%
Nightmares                                              67%                  68%               52%
Destruction of objects                            58%                  62%               35%    
Pyromania                                                 56%                 52%                28%
Theft                                                        56%                 81%                56%
Cruelty towards children                          54%                  64%               44%
Bad self-belief                                          52%                  63%               62%   
Violent outbursts of rage                         48%                  50%              44%
Sleep disturbances                                  48%                   50%              50%
Violence towards adults                          38%                   84%              86%
Phobias                                                    38%                   43%              50%
Escapes                                                    36%                   46%              11%
Cruelty towards animals                           36%                   46%              36%
Accident propensity                                29%                   32%              27%
Headaches                                               29%                   33%              45%
Destruction of personal objects              28%                   35%              35%
Loss of appetite                                       27%                   36%             35%
Convulsions                                              19%                   21%             13%
Self-mutilations                                        19%                   21%             32%

The majority of these murderers highlight the importance of a fantasy life based on aggressive thoughts and a ritual that blends death with sex. All of them mentioned prefering their ghosts to real life. They also reveal a high degree of egocentrism and they do not recall the existence of any positive ghosts during their childhood. It is hard to know if those positive ghosts even existed, if they were buried beneath negative thoughts or if they are totally absent from their minds. More than half of them claim they were already disturbed with rape fantasies before the age of 18 and 21% actually fulfilled those fantasies less than a year after they became conscious of them.

When asked to list their sexual preferences, the results were as follows:

pornography              81%
fetishism                   72%
voyeurism                 71%
sadomasochism         39%
exhibitionism            25%
bestiality                   23%
obscen phone calls    22%
transvestism              17%
prostitution               11%
coprophagy                  7%

As we can see, all of these sexual expressing forms are of a solitude nature. When asked about the preparation for their crimes, they insist on the importance of these fantasies. They recognize that after the first murder they became greatly absorbed and frequentely excited by the memory of the act, which helped feed the fantasies concerning following crimes.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXVIII

Serial killers are very intelligent individuals, generally speaking. Their intelligence is revealed not only through their intelectual abilities, but mainly it concerns the skills they show in preparing their crimes, manipulating those around them and in their ability to use decoys to hide their criminal activities.
Frequentely they kill the same type of victims and they can travel hundreds of miles to select and hunt their prey.
The crime is considered a ritual by the murderer. Usually serial rapists fear sex and are only  able to practice it by reducing their victims to full impotence, unconscious or even dead. Henry Lee Lucas, someone we will be talking about later on, executed his victims so that he could use their different body parts to satisfy his sexual needs.
The serial killer does not consider his victim as human but as an object, a carcass, members destined to awake his desire. What matters is not the identity of the corpse but what it signifies.

The FBI conducted a series of interviews since 1979 to 36 serial killers and sexual murderers. The results were published in 1983 and do not necessarily aply to all serial killers, but they give is a serious average of what might be happening in general.
Most of the individuals questioned are the oldest son in their family, 15% being an only child and 12% adopted. The majority was raised in the 40s and 50s and some in the 60s, which gives them an advantage in a society and an age dominated by males. Almost none had any physical disability and their appearance was agreeable. In 29% of the cases their IQ is medium, in 36% of the cases having a high IQ and in 15% of the cases a very high IQ. Two thirds started their lives in traditional families, having both a mother and a father. In two halves of the cases the mother stayed home to take care of them and in 75% of the cases the father had a stable professional occupation. 80% of them belong to the middle class and only 14% come from poor families.

However, this apparent normality hides more important elements. The great majority of serial killers have suffered extreme episodes of physical and mental violence during their childhood. All in all, as children they have been neglected or abused and have experienced a great deal of conflicting situations, without being able to use proper defence systems. These frustrations, stress situations and anguish crisis, in association to a chronic incapacity to deal with them, can lead to total isolation from society, which the individual considers a hostile entity. Some people choose to kill themselves during their teenage years, instead of having to face a life of loneliness and frustration. They have very little self esteem. They are usually described by their family members and friends as very quiet, agreeable and closed, never seeming to accomplish their potencial. During their teenage years they may comit voyeuristic or fetishist acts which balance their inability to maintain normal intercourse with females. But they can also choose to exteriorize their hostility through agressive acts, mostly during puberty. They express themselves through anti-social activities which may lead them to murder. They want to get revenge of society by punishing those who seem to function well in it.

Half of the individuals have had criminal background. 53,3% have had psychiatric background, 60% of the families knew alcoholism, 33% used heavy drugs and 46,2% had extreme sexual difficulties. All families were unstable. In 68% of the cases the families changed homes frequentely and in 40% of the cases the individuals were sent for adoption, detention centers or psychiatric institutions before they were 18. 66% knew mental difficulties from early childhood. In 47% of the cases the biological father abandoned home before the subject was 12. On the other hand, 66% of them had domineering mothers and in 45% of the cases motherly coldness was the norm.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXVII

Some statistics, before we go to the juicy parts:

The serial killer is a recidivist of murder. Usually one is considered a serial killer after committing more than 3 murders.

Until the beginning of the 80’s multiple homicides were classified as “mass murders”, whithout any distinction between, for example, Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler” or Charles Whitman, who shot 16 people with a rifle in Austin, Texas.

Currently there is a fine distinction between three kinds of violent murders:

Mass murder – Four or more victims in the same place triggered by the same reason

Spree killer – Murders in different places in a very short period of time. The murders are triggered by a single event and its succession may extend for a certain amount of time

Serial killer – Three or more distinct events, with a time lapse between them. During those events, the serial killer might kill several victims at the same time

Like a true predator, the serial killer chooses his victims. He believes he will never be captured and sometimes he is right. A serial killer controls events, unlike the spree killer, who does not dominate the situation he himself created. Sometimes a serial killer may become a spree killer, when he feels the police identified and is after him.

There are no official statistics regarding serial killing, except for a map designed by the FBI in the 90’s which regards the period between 1977 and 1989. It indicates 112 mass murderers, 169 serial murderers and 50 spree murderers. This number is, of course, below the average, since we may suppose that many isolated murders have not been identified as belonging to a series.

Officially the number of serial killers opperating currently in the USA, for example, is according to the FBI of 35 to 100. Between 1900 and 1960 the police uncovered an average of 1.7 cases of serial killers every year. At the end of the 60’s 5 new cases per year. In the 70’s 14 cases per year. In the 80’s 2 new cases every month, which adds to 24 cases a year. Since then, the number has increased to 36 new cases a year.

65% of serial killer’s victims are women

35% of victims are men (in other types of crimes it goes up to 78%)

65% are inter-racial murders

89% of the victims are white, 10% are black and 1% belong to other ethnic groups

83% of serial killers are white, 17% are black and oriental are very rare

89% of serial killers are male and 11% female

The serial killer prefers contact with his victim, which makes him fonder of knives, strangling and hitting objects. As he kills in many different occasions, he might change his method several times and that is particularly true of the psychotic who doesn’t premeditate the crime and improvises in the crime scene. Female serial killers are usually less violent than men, preferring poison in 45% of cases, the choice weapon for “black widows” and “death nurses”.

The serial killer is a young man. The average age is 27,27 at the moment of his first crime and 31,44 at the moment of his last crime. He kills in a specific territory, a city or state, close to his home in 63% of cases, and in any part of the country in 29% of the cases. He also kills in his home or place of work in 8% of the cases.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXVI

Jack was intelligent, resourseful, cool and very lucky. He would set the tone for modern serial killers all around the world.

What does it take to be a serial killer? you might ask. It's not as if someone wakes up some day and decides to be a serial killer, of course, but there are certain features you must have to be able to be it, or else, no can do, I'm afraid.

Intelligence

Most of us are much more intelligent than the average human being. We have to be. We must con the entire world, starting with our families, friends and acquaintances, through our victims, and ending in the minds that want to catch us. The average IQ of a serial killer is 135, against the average IQ of the rest of the population, which is 115.

Resourcefulness

We are what we do. Jack had a trade - killing. So he used what he knew in his killings. His trade was not carving. His trade was mutilating. But he used his carving skills to do it. Serial killers know what they are doing all the time. And if they don't, then they will soon learn it. The ability to learn, to research, thoroughly, obsessively. We are sponges, sucking up everything that will help us get the job done. Excuse me, not the job done, the work of art. We are artists. And we never stop until we have reached perfection. And perfection takes time, decades sometimes. It's the work of a lifetime.

Coolness
A very important factor in the trade of killing. The best killers are clean. But, helas, to be clean you have to stay cool and collected. That is something you learn from experience. Killing many times gives you assurance. You will not do the same mistakes again and again, because you are intelligent. The more kills the more cool you will be. Coolness can save your life, but never your victim's. Do not mistake coolness for colectedness. Coolness comes with coldness and mileage.

Luck
Again, Jack beneficiated of his time. Darkness, smoggy streets, poluted air, poverty, abandon, drunkenness, solitude, ignorance. He was the right criminal at the right time, in the right place, with the right motivation. Speaking of which, we will never be sure what his real motivation was. Killing hookers was never a novelty, but the cunundrum is not in the ladies'' trade, instead in what the ladies had in common, which could have been anything other than their trade.

We will now analyse my most recent colleagues. There are plenty, so we will be focusing our attention on those who have stood out for a number of particular reasons.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXV

In a time before forensic science and even finger printing, the only way to prove someone committed a murder was to catch either him or her in the act, or get the suspect to confess. The Whitechapel Murders unhappily fall into this period of time. One interesting feature of this case is that not one, but two police forces carried out investigations. The Metropolitan Police, known as Scotland Yard, was responsible for crimes committed in all the boroughs of London except the City of London proper. The single square mile in the heart of London known as the City of London had their own police force. When Eddowes was killed, it was in their territory and this brought them into the Ripper case. It is believed that the rank and file of the two forces got along and worked well together, but there is evidence that the seniors in each force did not. To what degree, if any, their failure to cooperate fully had on solving the case is not known. Most sources do not fault either police force for failing to solve the Jack the Ripper mystery, rightly pointing out that catching serial killers is still a hard task even by today's science and technology. Other than autopsies and taking statements from everybody who might know something there was little else that the Metropolitan police force did. The attitude of the people at the time was that the police were incompetent and that the Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, was only good for policing crowds and keeping order rather than detective work. He was especially criticized for not offering a reward in the hope that a confederate or accomplice would come forth and inform against the Ripper. In fact, Warren had no objections for a reward being offered and it was his superior, Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary who refused the sanction of a reward. The City of London Police seems to have done a better job although they did not apprehend the killer either. City police officers made crime scene drawings, took many photographs of the victim Eddowes, and even though she was not in their jurisdiction, they took photographs of the Kelly victim. She is the only victim who was photographed at the crime scene. One of the splits between the leadership of the two forces was over graffito found in Goulston Street on the night of the "double event". A piece of Eddowes' apron, which the Ripper used to wipe off his knife, was found by a constable near a doorway that had a chalked message over the door. This message, "The Juwes are the men That Will not be blamed for nothing", may have been written by the Ripper and the City police officers wanted to photograph it. Warren felt that leaving it until it was light enough to be photographed might cause riots against the Jews living in Whitechapel whom the bigoted English residents already believed were responsible for the murders. Warren did not even compromise by willing to erase or cover up the word "Juwes" only. In the end the police never charged any suspect with the murders committed by the Ripper which shows they did not have a sufficient amount of evidence that would gain a verdict of guilty in criminal court.

In 1894, Sir Melville Macnaghten, then Chief Constable, wrote a confidential report in which he names the three top suspects. Although some information concerning the suspect he believed most likely to have been the murderer had been available before the turn of the century, the name of that suspect was not made public until 1959. Macnaghten's suspect was M.J. Druitt, a barrister turned teacher who committed suicide in December 1888. Unfortunately for Macnaghten who wrote his memoranda from memory, the details he ascribes to Druitt are wrong. According to the Chief Constable, Druitt was a doctor, 41 years of age, and committed suicide immediately after the Kelly murder. In actuality Druitt was 31, not a doctor, and killed himself nearly a month after the last official murder. No other police officer supported Macnaghten's allegations, and one in fact, stated that the theory was inadequate and that the suicide was circumstantial evidence at best that the drowned doctor was the Ripper. While it is still possible that he was the Ripper, correct information gathered about Druitt so far makes him seem an unlikely candidate.

In 1903, Frederick Abberline, a retired crack detective who had been in charge of the Ripper investigation at the ground level stated that he thought that multiple wife poisoner Severin Klosowski, alias George Chapman, might be Jack the Ripper. As with Macnaghten, no other officer has concurred with his opinion and modern criminal profiling science tends to reject Klosowski as a serious candidate.

The name of Macnaghten's second suspect was confirmed as Aaron Kosminiski in the early 1980s when a researcher came upon Donald Swanson's personal copy of Robert Anderson's book of memoirs. Both Swanson and Anderson were officers who participated in the Ripper investigation; indeed, they were the ones given the responsibility of being in charge of the case. Anderson had written in his memoirs that appeared for the first time in 1910 that the police knew who the Ripper was. According to Anderson the Ripper was a Polish Jew who was put away in an insane asylum after the crimes, and then died soon after. Swanson had made some notes in his copy of the book concerning Anderson's suspect, and wrote that the suspect's name was Kosminski. At first it seemed that the case had been solved, but research has found a number of problems with the theory. No other officer supports' Anderson's allegation, and Swanson's notes seem to question his superior's claims rather than support them. Aaron Kosminski was a real person and was placed in an insane asylum. His records show him to be a docile and harmless lunatic that heard voices in his head and would only eat food from the gutter. The dates of his incarceration are wrong, and he did not die soon after his committal but lived on until 1919. Some researchers have tried to explain the problems by saying that the name Kosminski' was confused with another insane Polish Jew, who really was dangerous.

The search continues. The third Macnaghten suspect, Michael Ostrog, has been investigated and there is nothing to indicate that he was nothing more than a demented con man.

Dr. Francis Tumblety, the latest serious suspect, only became known to students of the Jack the Ripper murders in 1993. A collector of crime memorabilia obtained a cache of letters belonging to a crime journalist named G.R. Sims. Among the letters was one from John Littlechild, who had been in charge of the Secret Department in Scotland Yard at the time of the murders. Dated 1913, Littlechild writes to Sims: "I never heard of a Dr. D. (which many assume is a reference to Druitt as Macnaghten thought Druitt was a doctor and Sims was a confident of the Chief Constable), in connection with the Whitechapel Murders but amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one, was a Dr. T . . . He was an American quack named Tumblety . . . " A book by the collector who found the letter goes to great lengths in trying to prove that Tumblety is the final solution for the mystery. Unfortunately, he fails to do so. There is no doubt that Tumblety was a legitimate suspect and that when he fled to America, Scotland Yard detectives came over to investigate him further. It is unlikely that Scotland Yard continued to view him as a serious suspect. James Monro, who succeeded Warren and was in overall command of the Secret department before becoming Commissioner, thought that the Alice McKenzie murder of July 1889 was the work of the Ripper. He stated in 1890 that he did not know who the Whitechapel murderer was but that he was working on his own theory.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXIV

It is unclear just how many women the Ripper killed. It is generally accepted that he killed five, though some have written that he murdered only four while others say seven or more. The public, press, and even many junior police officers believed that the Ripper was responsible for nine slayings. The five that are generally accepted as the work of the Ripper are:

1. Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, murdered Friday, August 31, 1888.
2. Annie Chapman, murdered Saturday, September 8, 1888.
3. Elizabeth Stride, murdered Sunday, September 30, 1888.
4. Catharine Eddowes, also murdered that same date.
5. Mary Jane (Marie Jeanette) Kelly, murdered Friday, November 9, 1888.

Besides these five there are good reasons to believe that the first victim was really Martha Tabram who was murdered Tuesday, August 7, 1888, and there are important considerations for questioning whether Stride was a Ripper victim. As to the actual number of women that the Ripper killed, Philip Sugden wrote in his excellent book, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, "There is no simple answer. In a sentence: at least four, probably six, just possibly eight."

All five of these listed plus Tabram were prostitutes and were killed between early August and early November 1888. All but Tabram and Kelly were killed outdoors and there is no evidence to suggest that any of them knew each other. They varied in both age and appearance. Most were drunk or thought to be drunk at the time they were killed.

Surprisingly, a full understanding of the Ripper's modus operandi was not established until several years ago. The Whitechapel murderer and his victim stood facing each other. When she lifted her skirts, the victim's hands were occupied and was then defenseless. The Ripper seized the women by their throats and strangled them until they were unconscious if not dead. The autopsies constantly revealed clear indications that the victims had been strangled. In the past some writers believed that the Ripper struck from behind when the victims were bent forward, their skirts hiked up their backsides while waiting to engage in anal sex. This is a very awkward arrangement and the risk that they may scream or elude his clutch's make this unacceptable. The Ripper then lowered his victims to the ground, their heads to his left. This has been proven by the position of the bodies in relation to walls and fences that show that there was virtually no room for the murderer to attack the body from the left side. No bruising on the back of the heads shows that he lowered the bodies to the ground rather than throwing or letting them fall. Given the inclement weather and filth in the streets it is unacceptable that the prostitutes or their client would have attempted intercourse on the ground. He cut the throats when the women were on the ground. Splatter stains show that the blood pooled beside or under the neck and head of the victim rather than the front which is where the blood would flow if they had been standing up. In one case blood was found on the fence some 14 inches or so from the ground and opposite the neck wound and this shows that the blood spurted from the body while in the prone position on the ground. This method also prevented the killer from being unduly blood stained. By reaching over from the victim's right side to cut the left side of her throat, the blood flow would have been directed away from him, which would have reduced the amount of blood in which he would have been exposed. If the victim was already dead before their throats were cut, then the blood spilt would have not been very much. With the heart no longer beating the blood would not have been "pressurized," so only the blood in the immediate area of the wound would have evacuated gently from the cuts. The Ripper then made his other mutilations, still from the victim's right side, or possibly while straddling over the body at or near the feet. In several cases the legs had been pushed up which would have shortened the distance between the abdomen and the feet. No sign of intercourse was ever detected nor did the Ripper masturbate over the bodies. Usually he took a piece of the victim's viscera. The taking of a "trophy" is a common practice by modern sexual serial killers. In the opinion of most of the surgeons who examined the bodies, most believed that the killer had to have some degree of anatomical knowledge to do what he did. In one case he removed a kidney from the front rather than from the side, and did not damage any of the surrounding organs while doing so. In another case he removed the sexual organs with one clean stroke of the knife. Given the time circumstances of the crimes (outside, often in near total darkness, keeping one eye out for the approach of others, and under extremely tight time constraints), the Ripper almost certainly would have had some experience in using his knife.

It is commonly accepted by the experts on the case that none of the letters purported to have been written by the Ripper were in fact written by him. A letter dated September 25 and received on the twenty-seventh by the Central News agency was the first to be signed "Jack the Ripper". A postcard post marked October 1 followed. Because it referred to a "double event" the police thought it might be from the killer since it was posted the day after the Ripper killed two women. The post card also referred to the letter and must have come from the same source as the letter had not been released to the public yet. If the post card had been sent on September 30, the day of the "double event", instead of October 1, the likelihood that it was really written by the murderer would be significantly greater. The Whitechapel Murderer may have written the letter/post card but there is no evidence to suppose that he did and the police seem convinced that they were the work of a journalist. A recently discovered document states that a journalist from the Central News agency, Tom Bulling, was the writer.

One other letter may have been written by the killer. In mid-October a small parcel was sent to George Lusk, who was head of a vigilance committee in Whitechapel. Inside was half a human kidney and a letter from someone claiming to be the killer, and that it was part of the kidney he removed from the victim Eddowes. It is impossible to know for sure if the Ripper really did send it. Most of the arguments in favor of it being from Jack have been based on inaccurate information and the myths rather than the facts surrounding the case. However, Eddowes did suffer from Bright's disease and the description of the kidney does match what a Bright's disease kidney would look like.

The letter said:

"From hell.

Mr Lusk,
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer

signed
Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk"

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXIII

So we reach the end of the road in antiquity concerning serial killing, and enter the modern era of the trade. What separates these two eras are two details:

1. Notoriety

and

2. Investigative knowledge

Because as far as violence, creativity and numbers are concerned, the ancient killers are not very different from the modern ones.
The modern era of serial killing was, of course, born with the Ripper. Why him? For one very particular reason - the media coverage of the case.

Jack was not much different from some of the killers we have seen here. He didn't kill in any very odd way, nor did he kill in numbers superior to those of some of his most prolific colleagues. His choice of victims did not deviate from the average statistical norm: young or middle aged white females, poor and trading in the sex business is not anything new. They are usually very seeked out because they are the most vulnerable and easy to get, apart from not being as much missed by relatives or friends as would women of a higher social condition and decent occupation. Even the much discussed ease with which he proceeded to kill his unfortunate victims - in the middle of the street in 4 of the 5 official Ripper murders - has a perfectly logic explanation to it: in Jack's time London was drowned in a heavy, thick, oppressive fog, a combination of cold weather and the polution coming out of the factories that were starting to invade the city like mushrooms on account of the Industrial Revolution. They even gave it a new name - smog, because it was fog mixed with smoke. It was said that sometimes even during the day people had to cough to mark their presence and avoid being bumped by another passerby. Trolleys had to drive with a man walking in front of it with a light and a horn, to warn unwary passers who would otherwise risk being run over.

Jack, then, had it easy. He could kill right in the midst of everyone's wanderings without being detected. He had time, balls and knowledge to do it, according to the numerous investigators and schollars who studied the case then and later. He had it easy for another very important reason: the investigative knowledge of the time was very limited - there was no DNA analysis, of course, but worse than that, no one had even invented fingerprinting yet. Jack was a needle in the midst of the huge, dark, foggy, dangerous and cold hay that London was in the late XIXth century.

The only thing differente about the Ripper and the thing that made him officially the first serial killer of modern history and very probably the most infamous of us all, was Fleet Street. That's right, the newspapers which publicized the case like no other before it or even, I dare say, after. Think of serial killing and the first and sometimes only name that pops into anyone's mind is Jack the Ripper. He was discussed, proded and analysed like no other subject in the history of serial killing. He has been depicted in movies again and again and every now and then someone comes up with a whole new theory about who of the 20 or so official suspects, is most surely the London ripper or about why he commited the crimes the way he did and how. There are even those who call themselves Riperologists.

Jack became the demon every lay men believes in and fears, the monster hiding underneath the sewers or lurking in the shadows of all modern cities. He became a legend, a myth, I would even venture to say he has become a sort of attractive symbol of the dark forces that sometimes lay dorment in some men's souls, a rock rebelious idol of murder.
Unfortunately or maybe not, Jack also became the epitome of all of us who deal in this trade. We are constantly compared to him. Because he could never be found, he became the God of evil, the Prince of deception, the ultimate role model to follow.
And so we enter modern serial killing, carrying the weight and responsibility of a huge ghost - the unknown Ripper, author of several perfect murders.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXII

George Chapman was a was a Polish serial killer known as the Borough Poisoner. Born Seweryn Antonowicz Kłosowski in Poland, he moved as an adult to England, where he committed his crimes. He was convicted and executed after poisoning three women, but is remembered today mostly because some authorities suspected him of being our friend Jack the Ripper.

His motives for the murders are unclear. In one case, his victim had given him £500, but he gained nothing from the other two victims.Chapman took several mistresses, who often posed as his wife, three of whom he subsequently poisoned to death. They were Mary Spink (died December 25, 1897), Bessie Taylor (died February 14, 1901) and Maud Marsh (died October 22, 1902). He administered the compound tartar-emetioc to each of them. Rich in the metallic element antimony, improper usage of tartar-emetic causes a painful death with symptoms similar to arsenic poisoning. According to a certificate found in his personal effects after his arrest, he was apprenticed at age 14 to a provincial feldsher (a sort of nurse-practitioner), whom he assisted in procedures such as the application of leeches for blood-letting. He then enrolled on a course in practical surgery at the Warsaw Praga hospital. This course was very brief, lasting from October 1885 to January 1886 (attested to by another certificate in his possession) but he continued to serve as a male nurse, or doctor's assistant in Warsaw until December 1886. He later left Poland. Witness testimony at his trial seems to indicate that he arrived in London between 1887 and 1888, precicely the time of the Ripper murders.

Suspicions surrounding Marsh's death led to a police investigation. It was found that she had been poisoned, as had the other two women, whose bodies were exhumed.

An indictment for murder could contain only one count and Chapman was therefore charged only with the murder of Maud Marsh. He was prosecuted and convicted on March 19, 1903, and hanged on April 7, 1903.

One of the detectives at Scotland Yard, Frederick Abberline, is reported to have told George Godley the policeman who arrested Klosowski: "You've got Jack the Ripper at last!" In two 1903 interviews with the Pall Mall Gazette, Abberline spelled out his suspicions, referring to Klosowski by name. Speculation in contemporary newspaper accounts and books has led to Chapman, like fellow serial killer Thomas Neill Cream, becoming one of many individuals cited as a possible suspect in the infamous Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. In The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, Philip Sugden argued that Chapman is the most likely candidate among known Ripper suspects, but that the case is far from proven. As far as is known, Chapman was not a suspect at the time of the murders either under his proper name, or as "Ludwig Schloski", a name he was using in London. Chapman was a later surname borrowed from one of his common-law wives whom he did not poison — Annie Chapman (not to be confused with the Jack the Ripper victim of the same name).

The case against Chapman rests mainly on the point that he undoubtedly was a violent man with a misogynistic streak. Chapman is known as a poisoner and not a mutilator, but was known to beat his common-law wives and was prone to other violent behaviour. In one incident often used as an argument to link him to the Ripper crimes, while living in the United States, Chapman allegedly forced his wife, Lucy Klosowska, down on their bed and began to strangle her, only stopping to attend to a customer who had walked into the adjoining shop he owned. When he left, she was said to have found a knife under the pillow. He reportedly later told her that he had planned to kill her, even pointing out the spot where he would have buried her and reciting what he would have said to their neighbours.

Inspite of this, there is a lack of any hard evidence that would link Chapman to the Ripper murders. Most scholars also believe the Ripper selected victims who were previously unknown to him, while Chapman killed acquaintances. In Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia John Eddleston rates Chapman at only 2 ("a remote possibility") on his 0 to 5 rating of Ripper suspects. He argues that although Chapman did live in Whitechapel it was not particularly near the murders, and as a 22-year-old immigrant he is unlikely to have had detailed knowledge of the area which the Ripper seems to have had.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXXI

Joseph Vacher was a french serial killer, sometimes known as "The French Ripper" or "L'éventreur du Sud-Est" ("The South-East Ripper"). When he was a child Joseph was sent to a very strict Catholic school, where he was taught to obey and to fear God. In 1893, while in militaryconscription, he fell in love with a young maidservant, Louise, who was not at all attracted to him and even mocked him. In a rage, he shot her four times (she was badly injured, but survived) and then tried to commit suicide. Shooting himself twice in the head accomplished nothing more than paralyzing one side of his face (one of the bullets remained forever lodged in his skull) and putting him in a mental institution. Medical treatment did nothing for him, but the doctors released him as "completely cured" one year later. Shortly after his release, at the age of 25, he began his murder spree.

During a three-year period beginning in 1894, Vacher murdered and mutilated at least 11 people (one woman, five teenage girls, and five teenage boys). Many of them were shepherds watching their flocks in isolated fields. The victims were stabbed repeatedly, often disemboweled, raped, and sodomized. Vacher was a drifter, travelling from town to town, from Normandy to Provence, staying mainly in the southeast of France, and surviving by begging or working on farms as a day laborer.

In 1897, Vacher tried to assault a woman in a field in Ardèche. She fought back and her screams soon alerted her husband and son, both of whom came rushing to her aid. The men overpowered Vacher and took him to the police. The authorities had little evidence that Vacher was responsible for the rash of murders, but Vacher soon confessed to everything.

Vacher claimed he was insane because of a quack cure given to him as a child, when a rabid dog bit him (in fact he was not bitten at all, just licked), then changed his mind and said that he was sent there by God, just like Joan of Arc, in order to make people think and understand the real virtues of faith. He was however judged sane by the court and sentenced to death on October 28, 1898. Vacher was executed by guillotine two months later, at dawn on December 31, 1898. He refused to walk towards the scaffold and had to be dragged by the executioners.

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The Serial Killer - Part XXX

Henry Howard Holmes was active between 1888 and 1894, targetting mostly younger women during the famous Chicago World's Fair. 

His father was a violent alcoholic, and his mother was a devout Methodist who read the Bible to his son. He claimed that, as a child, classmates forced him to view and touch a human skeleton after discovering his fear of the local doctor. The bullies initially brought him there to scare him, but instead he was utterly fascinated, and he soon became obsessed with death.

While attending university, he stole bodies from the laboratory, disfigured them, and claimed that the people were killed accidentally in order to collect insurance money from policies he took out on each deceased person. He moved to Chicago to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals. He also engaged in many shady businesses, real estate, and promotional deals under the name "H. H. Holmes".

He killed the women by enticing them to his custom-built "murder castle," which was tailor-made to kill large numbers of people using a wide variety of premeditated methods. To keep this secret, he fired all his builders and hired new ones before any one set of builders could ever finish one part of the "house." He sometimes murdered his victims on a day-to-day basis but usually slept with the victim first and devised a method in the morning. Actual body count is unknown, but it is possible that there could have been more than 230 victims, as the majority of the victims were completely dissolved into acid housed in a   gigantic pit built into his basement. In his biography he wrote he had killed 133 victims.

Following the World's Fair,  Holmes left Chicago and reappeared in Texas where he had inherited property from two railroad heiress sisters, to one of whom he had promised marriage and both of whom he murdered. There, he sought to construct another castle along the lines of his Chicago operation. However, he soon abandoned this project, finding the law enforcement climate in Texas inhospitable. He continued to move about the United States and Canada, and it seems likely that he continued to kill.

In July 1894, Holmes was arrested and briefly incarcerated for the first time, for a horse swindle. He was promptly bailed out, but while in jail, struck up a conversation with a convicted train robber who was serving a 25-year sentence. Holmes had concocted a plan to swindle an insurance company out of $10,000 by taking out a policy on himself and then faking his death. Holmes promised Hedgepeth a $500 commission in exchange for the name of a lawyer who could be trusted. He was directed to Colonel Jeptha Howe, the brother of a public defender, who found Holmes’s plan brilliant. Holmes's plan to fake his own death failed when the insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay. Holmes did not press his claim; instead he concocted a similar plan with his associate, Benjamin Pitezel.

In 1894, the police were tipped off by his former cellmate, whom Holmes had neglected to pay off as promised for his help in providing Howe. Holmes's murder spree finally ended when he was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894, after being tracked there from Philadelphia by the Pinkertons. He was held on an outstanding warrant for horse theft in Texas, as the authorities had little more than suspicions at this point and Holmes appeared poised to flee the country, in the company of his unsuspecting third wife.
After the custodian for "the Castle" informed police that he was never allowed to clean the upper floors, police began a thorough investigation over the course of the next month, uncovering Holmes's efficient methods of committing murders and then disposing of the corpses. A fire of mysterious origin consumed the building on August 19, 1895, and the site is currently occupied by a U.S. Post Office building.

This is the typical case of a serial, born serial, but using his serial skills to gain profit from it. Not the true artist, for sure, but neither the lame one.