The Serial Killer Thread

[Chula Vista]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Did he actually have more of a positive effect on the world than I have?

**** no. You don't fully comprehend just how important and life saving that whopper is to many when they just have to have one!

The employees at my local 24/7 Denny's have saved more lives that our hospital emergency room FFS.

The part of that book that was crazy was when Ann Rule finally came to grips with the fact that her close friend was indeed a horrific monster and had to go throw up in the courthouse bathroom because of the realization.

I really felt in her shoes during that part of the story.

[Cuthbert]

Harold Shipman.

250+ victims. I remember this at the time. He would inject his patients with lethal doses of whatever it was, alter medical records and put himself in patients' wills before murdering them. Got away with it for years, even got confronted by one family and then they thought they got it wrong and he continued killing.

There are a load of documentaries about him on Youtube, so give them a watch.

There's more, but I'll wait.

[kibbeh]

i didn't mean because he killed more people. its just you hear about dahmer so much... there are other interesting serial killers too.

[The Batlord]

Then gimme some good'uns.

[kibbeh]

some of my faves.

Mahin Qadri is Iran’s first documented female serial killer. She was convicted for killing six people including five women between February 2008 and May 2009 in the city of Qazvin. Most of her victims were elderly women whom she picked up outside prayer houses. Once they entered her car, she played mind games with them, telling them how much they reminded her of her own mother. She then offered them drugged juice to knock them out, after which she suffocated them to death and robbed them. In one instance, a victim regained consciousness, and she finished her off with an iron rod. But when one of her would-be victims escaped and alerted the police, Mahin’s spree came to an end.Mahin claimed she committed the murders solely for the money, being £16,000 in debt. She also claimed to have taken tips from Agatha Christie novels, which are quite popular in Iran. Agatha Christie visited the country several times and even used it as the setting for one of her stories, “The House of Shiraz.”Mahin was sentenced to death and was hanged in a prison in Qazvin.

Brothers George and Michel Tanielian killed 11 people, mostly taxi drivers, in Lebanon’s Metn district, earning themselves the nickname “The Taxi Driver Killers.” They boarded taxis at night, and George would sit in front beside the driver while Michel would sit at the back. Once they got to a remote location, George would tell the driver to pull over so that he could relieve himself. As soon as the driver pulled over and George began to exit the vehicle, Michel would shoot the driver in the head. They’d then rob the body and set the car on fire. Sometimes, they’d dump the body by the roadside and use the cab to carry other victims, whom they also robbed and killed. Lebanese intelligence officers once went undercover, posing as taxi drivers to catch the brothers. An agent once engaged them in a struggle, but they managed to escape. The pair were arrested after police tracked a victim’s phone that they’d sold. Along with the two of them, police arrested three other brothers as suspects, until Michel confessed during questioning that he and George had carried out the killings. George and Michel were charged before a military court and were sentenced to death.

Saeed Hanaei’s murders were known as “The Spider Killings” because he wrapped the bodies like a spider. All of his victims were prostitutes whom he picked up from the streets of Mashad, Iran. He took them to his house, where he strangled them with their headscarves and wrapped their bodies with their chadors. He then dumped their bodies on the streets. Once the body was found, Saeed would return to the scene and even help police in carrying the corpse into an ambulance. Police found 19 bodies, and Saeed claimed responsibility for 16 of them, saying he’d have killed as many as 150 had he not been caught. He claimed to have started killing prostitutes after a driver mistook his wife for one. He described prostitutes as a “waste of blood,” as worthless to him as cockroaches.The killings won Saeed many fans who said he fought indecency and vice. His 14-year-old son even defended him in court, saying his father was “cleaning the Islamic Republic of the corrupt of the Earth, and many would replace him if he was killed.” The boy claimed 20 people had told him to continue his father’s work, but he’d told them, “Let’s wait and see.” One fact that Saeed’s supporters didn’t realize was that he actually had sex with most of the prostitutes before killing them. Saeed Hanaei was sentenced to death and was hanged on April 17, 2002.

[Frownland]

Marie Delphine Lalaurie

The Lalauries maintained several black slaves in slave quarters attached to the Royal Street mansion. Accounts of Delphine Lalaurie's treatment of her slaves between 1831 and 1834 are mixed. Harriet Martineau, writing in 1838 and recounting tales told to her by New Orleans residents during her 1836 visit, claimed Lalaurie's slaves were observed to be "singularly haggard and wretched;" however, in public appearances Lalaurie was seen to be generally polite to black people and solicitous of her slaves' health, and court records of the time showed that Lalaurie manumitted two of her own slaves (Jean Louis in 1819 and Devince in 1832). Nevertheless, Martineau reported that public rumors about Lalaurie's mistreatment of her slaves were sufficiently widespread that a local lawyer was dispatched to Royal Street to remind LaLaurie of the laws relevant to the upkeep of slaves. During this visit, the lawyer found no evidence of wrongdoing or mistreatment of slaves by Lalaurie.

Martineau also recounted other tales of Lalaurie's cruelty that were current among New Orleans residents in about 1836. She claimed that, subsequent to the visit of the local lawyer, one of Lalaurie's neighbors saw one of the LaLaurie's slaves, a twelve-year-old girl named Lia (or Leah), fall to her death from the roof of the Royal Street mansion while trying to avoid punishment from a whip-wielding Delphine LaLaurie. Lia had been brushing Delphine's hair when she hit a snag, causing Delphine to grab a whip and chase her. The body was subsequently buried on the mansion grounds. According to Martineau, this incident led to an investigation of the Lalauries, in which they were found guilty of illegal cruelty and forced to forfeit nine slaves. These nine slaves were then bought back by the Lalauries through the intermediary of one of their relatives, and returned to the Royal Street residences. Similarly, Martineau reported stories that LaLaurie kept her cook chained to the kitchen stove, and beat her daughters when they attempted to feed the slaves.

On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the LaLaurie residence on Royal Street, starting in the kitchen. When the police and fire marshals got there, they found a seventy-year-old woman, the cook, chained to the stove by her ankle. She later confessed to them that she had set the fire as a suicide attempt for fear of her punishment, being taken to the uppermost room, because she said that anyone who was taken there never came back. As reported in the New Orleans Bee of April 11, 1834, bystanders responding to the fire attempted to enter the slave quarters to ensure that everyone had been evacuated. Upon being refused the keys by the Lalauries, the bystanders broke down the doors to the slave quarters and found "seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated ... suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other", who claimed to have been imprisoned there for some months.

One of those who entered the premises was Judge Jean-Francois Canonge, who subsequently deposed to having found in the LaLaurie mansion, among others, a "negress ... wearing an iron collar" and "an old negro woman who had received a very deep wound on her head [who was] too weak to be able to walk." Canonge claimed that when he questioned Madame Lalaurie's husband about the slaves, he was told in an insolent manner that "some people had better stay at home rather than come to others' houses to dictate laws and meddle with other people's business."

A version of this story circulating in 1836, recounted by Martineau, added that the slaves were emaciated, showed signs of being flayed with a whip, were bound in restrictive postures, and wore spiked iron collars which kept their heads in static positions.

When the discovery of the tortured slaves became widely known, a mob of local citizens attacked the Lalaurie residence and "demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands". A sheriff and his officers were called upon to disperse the crowd, but by the time the mob left, the Royal Street property had sustained major damage, with "scarcely any thing [remaining] but the walls." The tortured slaves were taken to a local jail, where they were available for public viewing. The New Orleans Bee reported that by April 12 up to 4,000 people had attended to view the tortured slaves "to convince themselves of their sufferings."

[Key]

Here's my thoughts on serial killers in general, prepare for tl'dr.

Serial killers, to me, are fascinating. And before you judge me by saying "oh man, you like people that kill people?" No, that is not the case. I'm human and I know right from wrong, and I understand the stigma around people that are fascinated by this type of thing. It's very easy for someone to go up to someone when they express in an interest in this type of thing and say "man, you're ****ed up." I don't find people that are interested in this type of thing to be anywhere near as ****ed up as people claim that they are, because to me, being interested in serial killers is the same as being interested in murder mysteries, or horror games, and the like. There's something about it that sparks an interest in some people, and for other people to tell them they're ****ed up in the head is a weak mans argument.

To me, a serial killer is interesting for one thing and one thing only: their brain. When I first heard about what a serial killer is, I did my research and found people in the past that have committed these crimes such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Richard Ramirez to name a few. There's countless others, but those three are the ones I did extensive research on. You have to wonder what kind of brain chemistry these people had when they committed these crimes. A normal person wouldn't just go out one day and think "man, i'm going to kill people today." No, it seems like it's much deeper than that. A lot of serial killers, even today, have had some common trends that made them this way. Some of them had a really bad upbringing, and I mean really bad. When it comes to the way the brain works, there's never been any certainty especially with how quickly people can be manipulated into thinking something is right, and vice versa. I've always wondered and I still wonder about how the serial killers think when they progress from victim to victim. Normal people obviously feel remorse even for the smallest things, like when a cat dies, or a parent dies, but something about the brains of the individuals that commit these crimes have been said to not feel any remorse, some of them have found enjoyment and pleasure out of it, i.e. rapists, necrophiliacs, etc. There are also countless pictures whether they're in court, or even documentaries of such individuals where their facial expression doesn't change, even when they speak about the people they have killed. A good example of this is the interview with Ted Bundy before he was executed.



If you watch his face as the interview progresses, he doesn't seem fazed by his acts at all. He's able to speak openly about his crimes and smile as he does so. He also states that he feels calm even though he is so close to his execution. He again states that his home life was fantastic and never dealt with any sexual or physical abuse.

When I watch interviews about these killers, there's also a common trend that the killer is able to speak about the crimes openly and not feel any remorse. You have to wonder as they are speaking openly about their crimes what seems to be going through their heads. Is there something that the brain is telling them to say? Or do they really feel that what they did isn't considered a bad thing? The obvious answer for normal people would be that it is of course a bad thing, but when you look at the killers in their interviews, you can't help but wonder what's going through their head.

One more thing I would like to mention is the fact that I strongly believe, and have believed this for some time, that serial killers are actually (and most of them are) considered geniuses. I know I mentioned before that they seem to lose control of their mind and get twisted into thinking whats right and wrong, but it has to take some sort of intelligence be it about how humans work or how the brain works, to allow yourself to be manipulated to the point of feeling no remorse for killing people. A lot of killers have had a history of going to college and being successful and had they not been manipulated mentally, they could have been something great. For me, if there was ever an opportunity to look into a killer brain and just see what they're thinking, it would be a fascinating experience. Hell, would it be scary? Of course it would, but ever since I discovered the process of serial killers and the way they think and how they came to be, I've been more and more interested in how the brain functions. Like I said, there's never really been a direct answer as to how this stuff works, but even in the interview I posted above, I don't think i'd be scared giving the interview at all. Instead, I'd actually be excited to be sitting down and being able to tap into the mind of someone that is obviously mentally ill, in some way.

I do also often wonder how one could have stopped a serial killer from committing the acts that he did, and whether that person would have been successful. This also brings to light how one thing that either goes right or goes wrong could change someone's life forever. It's like from Back to the Future when they go back in time, and it's stated that one small change could change the future forever. I feel like this in some way related. Imagine if any of the killers would have met one specific person, or had changed their direction on the street, like going left instead of right. It could have been a difference of whether they decide to go on a murderous rampage or not. Then again, some killers did have a fantastic upbringing and a good life, so I suppose in that case it wouldn't make sense. But just imagine if one person made a difference in their life, it could have changed them forever. Granted, that is how some killers came to be killers in the first place.

At the end of the day, being interested in serial killers becomes the easiest thing to judge about people, and it's not fair. It sparks an interest, and yes, they are interesting. Some may say that it can create comfort in reading about these people. I find it to be the same as if I were researching a past president, or someone who died in war, it's all the same to me. I've never once considered anybody who finds interest in serial killers to be bad people. Hell, most of them are super cool and fun to talk to because they don't get offended so easily.

[Chula Vista]

Originally Posted by Ki

One more thing I would like to mention is the fact that I strongly believe, and have believed this for some time, that serial killers are actually (and most of them are) considered geniuses.

Have to disagree with this. Gary Ridgeway, Jefferey Dahmer, Otis Toole, Fritz Harrman, Aileen Wuoros, Charles Ng, Richard Ramirez, and most others I've read about were troubled kids with below average IQs and/or learning disorders.

Ted Bundy is a rare exception.

[Key]

Originally Posted by Chula Vista

Have to disagree with this. Gary Ridgeway, Jefferey Dahmer, Otis Toole, Fritz Harrman, Aileen Wuoros, Charles Ng, Richard Ramirez, and most others I've read about were troubled kids with below average IQs and/or learning disorders.

Ted Bundy is a rare exception.

True.

[FRED HALE SR.]

Originally Posted by Chula Vista

Have to disagree with this. Gary Ridgeway, Jefferey Dahmer, Otis Toole, Fritz Harrman, Aileen Wuoros, Charles Ng, Richard Ramirez, and most others I've read about were troubled kids with below average IQs and/or learning disorders.

Ted Bundy is a rare exception.

Huh? Ted Bundy had a 136 iq which while above average is not genius level. Dahmer was a 145. Charlene Williams had the highest iq of any serial killer in history with a 160. Loeb and Leopold had 150 and 158 iq's. Carrol Cole had a 152. Andrew Cunanan surprisingly had a 147 iq. There are many more that fall in the genius level but i'm not gonna look anymore up. Ted Bundy is the exception to being genius maybe because he wasn't.