When I titled this commentaryWise Words from Criminal Minds—I did not actually mean criminal minds, but rather, quotes from the TV show Criminal Minds.
The fictional series follows a group of criminal profilers who work for the FBI as members of its Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). They use behavioural analysis and profiling to help investigate crimes and find the suspect—known as the unsub [unknown subject].
The show features one or more quotes at the start of most episodes and sometimes at the end. The quotes are often from historical figures.
Below are just some examples.
“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” —Joseph Conrad, a Polish writer working in England regarded as one of the greatest novelists in the English language.
“Evil is always unspectacular, and always human, and shares our bed, and eats at our table.” —Wystan Hugh Auden, (Anglo-American) poet known for his vast poetic work in many forms on many themes.
Better to be violent if there’s violence in our hearts than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.” —Gandhi
“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” — Gandhi.
“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, theologian, a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and founding member of the Confessing Church. (The Nazi regime executed him on 9 April 1945.)
“We can easily forgive a child who’s afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” —Plato.
“In order to learn the important lessons in life, one must each day surmount a fear.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
“Nothing is easier than denouncing the evildoer. Nothing more difficult than understanding him.” —Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. (Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.)
“He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.” —Leonardo da Vinci
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” —Edmund Burke, Irish statesman and author
“I’m not afraid of death. It’s the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.” —Jean Giraudoux, French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright
“There is no present or future; only the past, happening over and over again now.” —Eugene O’Neill, American playwright and Nobel Laureate in Literature.
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” —Albert Einstein
“Your memory is a monster; it summons with a will of its own. You think you have a memory, but it has you.” —John Irving, an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (The Cider House Rules, based on his novel of the same name)
I am always fascinated by the popularity of serial killers. Everyone will know at least the name of one serial killer. The one thing that isn’t clear is who actually first coined the term serial killer, it is either, FBI Special agent Robert Ressler, criminologist Ernst Gennat or journalist John Brophy.
One might be forgiven to think that Jack the Ripper was the first serial killer, but there have been quite a few before him. We often associate serial killers with the US or UK, but there have been many of them across the globe.
Peter Stumpp was a German farmer and alleged serial killer, accused of werewolfery, witchcraft and cannibalism. He was known as ‘the Werewolf of Bedburg’.
The most comprehensive source on the case is a 16-page pamphlet published in London in 1590, the translation of a German print of which no copies have survived. The English pamphlet, of which two copies exist (one in the British Museum and one in the Lambeth Library), was rediscovered by occultist Montague Summers in 1920. It describes Stumpp’s life, alleged crimes and the trial, and includes many statements from neighbours and witnesses on the crimes.Summers reprints the entire pamphlet, including a woodcut The Werewolf of Bedburg From George Bores, 1590:
… Thus continuing his devilish and damnable deeds within the compass of a few years, he had murdered thirteen young children, and two goodly young women big with child, tearing the children out of their wombs, in most bloody and savage sort, and after ate their hearts panting hot and raw, which he accounted dainty morsels and best agreeing to his appetite.
Moreover, he used many times to kill lambs and kids and such like beasts, feeding on the same most usually raw and bloody, as if he had been a natural wolf indeed, so that all men mistrusted nothing less than this his devilish sorcery…”
The sources in Peter Stumpp vary, and around 1590 a pamphlet of 16 pages has been published in London as a translation of a German print, however, no copies of the original have survived. The document describes Stumpp’s live and all alleged crimes as well as his trial. Stumpp was born at the village of Epprath near the country-town of Bedburg in the Electorate of Cologne. Unfortunately, his exact birthdate is unknown as the local church registers were destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War. It is believed that the name “Stump” or “Stumpf” may have been given him as a reference to the fact that his left hand had been cut off leaving only a stump, in German “Stumpf” and it was alleged that as the ‘werewolf’ had its left forepaw cut off, then the same injury proved the guilt of the man. Stumpp’s name is also spelled as Peter Stube, Peter Stub, Peter Stubbe, Peter Stübbe or Peter Stumpf, and other aliases include such names as Abal Griswold, Abil Griswold, and Ubel Griswold. It is assumed that Stumpp was a farmer in his rural community and he possibly was a widower with two children. According to the judiciary at the time, Peter Stumpp committed at least 16 murders, rapes and incest over a period of 25 years in Epprath and Bedburg in the Rhineland in the guise of a werewolf. He was also accused of sorcery and living with a “she-devil”.
There were whisperings of a wolf-like creature roaming the countryside killing both humans and livestock. The creature was described as “greedy… strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like unto brands of fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body and mighty paws.”
People were soon traveling from town to town only in large, heavily armed bands. Travelers would sometimes stumble on victims’ remains in the fields, raising the level of terror even higher. When a child would go missing, the parents would immediately assume all was lost and that the wolf had taken another victim. Although every effort was made to try and kill the creature, it eluded capture for several years until 1589 when a group of men tracking the wolf with their hounds encircled it.
When they moved in for the kill, the wolf was nowhere to be seen. They instead found Stubbe. There seems to be some confusion as to whether they actually saw him transform back from being a wolf or if he just happened to be traveling through the woods at this inopportune moment. Either way, under the threat of torture he confessed to the murders of 13 children, two pregnant women and one man.
The execution of Stumpp, on 31 October 1589, alongside his daughter Beele (Sybil) and mistress, Katherine, is one of the most brutal on record: he was put to a wheel, where “flesh was torn from his body”, in ten places, with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axe head to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and his body burned on a pyre. His daughter and mistress had already been flayed and strangled, and were burned along with Stumpp’s body. As a warning against similar behavior, local authorities erected a pole with the torture wheel and the figure of a wolf on it, and at the very top they placed Peter Stumpp’s severed head.
Strangely enough, the most modern source on the medieval life and times of Peter Stumpp, otherwise known as the Werewolf of Bedburg, can be found in the lyrics of the rock band Macabre, a group of American troubadours who specialize in the obscure genre of “murder metal.” Paring down the meat of the story to bare bones, their song works in harmony with history yet offers little in the way of understanding. That heartier version can only be found in time-worn sources from the past, all of which provide a feast of gruesome details on the world’s most famous werewolf.
Over 400 years ago The people were terrorized Around Bedburg and Cologne In the German countryside According to the pamphlet Published at that time A man named Peter Stumpp Committed atrocious crimes
I have often wondered how many murders have been unsolved because of World War 2?
And one would also have to wonder how many serial killers were active during the war years. I reckon some may have just joined the SS. However there were several ‘civilian’ serial killers at large during WW2.
Nazi-occupied Paris was a terrible place to be during the waning days of the War. With Jews, Resistance fighters and ordinary citizens all hoping to escape. Disappearances became so common they often weren’t followed up.
One man exploited this situation for his own evil satisfaction and greed.
Marcel Petiot was a respected doctor in France until his horrific murders were uncovered during World War II. Though perceived as gentle, kind, and generous by those who thought they knew him, he in fact only posed as a liberator for Jews hoping to escape occupied France to find sanctuary in South America. Insisting that these hopefuls bring their possessions to him for safe keeping and submit to an injection that would keep them safe from foreign diseases, Petiot instead killed his victims and kept their possessions amounting in the end to thousands, if not millions, of dollars worth of furniture, clothing, furs, and jewelry.
Petiot was unusually intelligent as a child but exhibited severe behavioral problems in school and was expelled several times before completing his education. At age 17 he was arrested for mail theft but was released after a judge determined that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. In 1917, while serving in the French army during World War I, he was tried for stealing army blankets but found not guilty by reason of insanity. Despite his mental state, he was returned to the front, where he suffered a mental breakdown. He was eventually discharged for abnormal behaviour, for which some of his examiners said he should be institutionalized. Despite his history of instability, Petiot then enrolled in school and eventually obtained a medical degree in 1921.
Petiot’s first murder victim might have been Louise Delaveau, an elderly patient’s daughter with whom Petiot had an affair in 1926. Delaveau disappeared in May of that year, and neighbors later said they had seen Petiot load a trunk into his car. Police investigated but eventually dismissed her case as a runaway.
That same year, Petiot ran for mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne and hired somebody to disrupt a political debate with his opponent. He won, and while in office embezzled town funds. The following year, Petiot married Georgette Lablais, the 23-year-old daughter of a wealthy landowner and butcher inSeignelay. Their son Gerhardt was born in April 1928.
The embezzlement discovered by his constituents, and they reported him to the Prefect of Yonne Département. In August 1931, he was suspended from his position as mayor.
Only a month after he was removed as mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, he won a seat on the general council for the Yonne district .He was the youngest man to ever sit in that office, at the time.. During his time on the council, he was charged with the theft of electric power from Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. He was fined and lost his seat on the council, and moved to Paris.
After the 1940 German defeat of France, French citizens were drafted for forced labor in Germany. Petiot provided false medical disability certificates to people who were drafted. He also treated the illnesses of workers who had returned. In July 1942, he was convicted of over prescribing narcotics, even though two addicts who would have testified against him had disappeared. He was fined 2,400 francs.
After paying a fine, he then took on the alias of Dr. Eugène and set up a false escape network for Resistance fighters, Jews and criminals looking to escape the Gestapo. He claimed that his network, Fly-Tox, worked in conjunction with Argentinian authorities to safely transport people to South America without the knowledge of the German invaders. He had had three accomplices: Raoul Fourrier, Edmond Pintard, and René-Gustave Nézondet.
He claimed that he could arrange a passage to Argentina or elsewhere in South America through Portugal, for a price of 25,000 francs per person. His accomplices, directed victims to “Dr. Eugène”, including mainly Jews, Resistance fighters, but also ordinary criminals. Once victims were in his control, Petiot told them that Argentine officials required all entrants to the country to be inoculated against disease, and with this excuse injected them with cyanide. He then took all their valuables and disposed of the bodies.
It was the Gestapo that first became suspicious of him. However, they thought that he was a member of the Resistance and was assisting Jews to escape. They apprehended all three of his accomplices and tortured them for information.
While the Gestapo did not learn anything about the Resistance, as Fourrier, Pintard, and Nézondet had nothing to tell them, they did reveal that “Dr. Eugène” was Marcel Petiot. On March 11, 1944, Petiot’s neighbours told the authorities that there was a foul stench in the area. They were also informed of the large amounts of smoke that often came out of the chimney of the house. The police discovered a coal stove in the basement of his house, as well as the quicklime pit. They also found human remains and properties of his victims.
At first, Petiot had dumped the bodies of his victims in the Seine, but he later destroyed the bodies by submerging them in quicklime or by incinerating them.
In the subsequent months, Petiot evaded capture by staying with his friends. He adopted a new pseudonym, “Henri Valeri”, during the liberation of Paris and enlisted in the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). He was eventually captured on 31 October 1944 at a Paris Métro station.
Petiot went on trial on 19 March 1946, facing 135 criminal charges. René Floriot acted for the defense, against a team consisting in state prosecutors and twelve civil lawyers hired by relatives of Petiot’s victims. Petiot taunted the prosecuting lawyers, and claimed that various victims had been collaborators or double agents, or that vanished people were alive and well in South America under new names.
The extensive coverage of the Petiot affair soon escalated into a full-blown media circus. Newspapers dubbed the doctor the Butcher of Paris, Scalper of the Etoile, the monster of rue Le Sueur, the Demonic Ogre, and Doctor Satan. One of the first and more popular sobriquets was the Modern Bluebeard. Later, other names would be proposed for the murder suspect, from the Underground Assassin to the Werewolf of Paris.
He admitted to killing just nineteen of the twenty-seven victims found in his house, and claimed that they were Germans and collaborators – part of a total of 63 “enemies” killed. Floriot attempted to portray Petiot as a Resistance hero, but the judges and jurors were unimpressed. Petiot was convicted of 26 counts of murder, and sentenced to death.It was estimated that he netted 200,000( I believe an equivalent of $2,000,000} francs from his ill-gotten gains. He was charged with murder for profit.
On 25 May, Petiot was beheaded, after a stay of a few days due to a problem in the release mechanism of the guillotine.
It is estimated he killed 60 people, many of them were French Jews who had been hiding and hoped to try to escape to South America. It wasn’t the Nazis who murdered him but a French Doctor pretending to be a resistance fighter.
He was known throughout Paris as a freedom fighter who would help smuggle away anyone being hunted by the Nazis.
Yet it turns out he preyed on their hopes and dreams and murdered them.
The irony is that it was the Gestapo who stopped the killing. Although the could not find anything on him, it must have been clear to Petiot that he would remain under suspicion
(initially posted on July 13,2016 under the Title ‘Marcel Petiot-“Doctor Satan” ‘)
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
I have always been intrigued by serial killers. I am just interested to know what makes them tick.
Today is the birthday of one of the most notorious serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer. He would have been 61 one today. However he was killed on the morning of November 28, 1994, Dahmer was on cleaning duty, which he’d begun three weeks earlier, in the prison’s gym bathrooms with two other inmates, Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. The three were left alone for 20 minutes; when guards returned they found the bludgeoned bodies of Dahmer and Anderson, who’d been beaten by Scarver. Dahmer was pronounced dead an hour later; Anderson also ended up dying from the attack. I suppose there is some poetic justice to both men being killed by another murderer.
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer , also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was a convicted American serial killer and sex offender who committed the murder and dismemberment of 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.
Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He was described as an energetic and happy child until the age of 4 when surgery to correct a double hernia seemed to effect a change in the boy. Noticeably subdued, he became increasingly withdrawn following the birth of his younger brother and the family’s frequent moves. By his early teens, he was disengaged, tense and largely friendless. I just want to make a note here, that none of this should have been an excuse for him to kill a great number of people. Unlike some other serial killers, Dahmer was never abused and his parents gave him a secure life. In September 1977 his parents decided to get a divorce, strangely enough that is also the time when my parents decided to divorce.
Dahmer committed his first murder in 1978, three weeks after his graduation. At the time he was living alone in the family home in Bath. On June 18,[Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Mark Hicks, who was almost 19.
Like most serial killers Dahmer was caught because he made a mistake. Dahmer’s killing spree ended when he was arrested on July 22, 1991. The body parts found in Dahmer’s refrigerator and Polaroid photographs of his victims became inextricably associated with his notorious killing spree.
Two Milwaukee police officers were led to Dahmer when they picked up Tracy Edwards, a 32-year-old African American man who was wandering the streets with handcuffs dangling from his wrist. They decided to investigate the man’s claims that a “weird dude” had drugged and restrained him. They arrived at Dahmer’s apartment, where he calmly offered to get the keys for the handcuffs.
Edwards claimed that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom. When the officer went in to corroborate the story, he noticed Polaroid photographs of dismembered bodies lying around. Dahmer was subdued by the officers.
When Dahmer’s apartment was fully searched, a house of horrors was revealed. In addition to photo albums full of pictures of body parts, the apartment was littered with human remains: Several heads were in the refrigerator and freezer; two skulls were on top of the computer; and a 57-gallon drum containing several bodies decomposing in chemicals was found in a corner of the bedroom. There was also evidence to suggest that Dahmer had been eating some of his victims. There is a story that one day Dahmer’s Father had visited him and he had seen a box in the room which he was curious about, Before he could open it, Jeffrey told his father that he wouldn’t like the contents of the box that it was filled with pornography, the father decided not to open the box, It was found out that that box contained a human head.
Dahmer claims that his compulsions toward necrophilia and murder began around the age of 14, but it appears that the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and their acrimonious divorce a few years later may have been the catalyst for turning these thoughts into actions. I don’t buy that though, many parents divorce, like mine at the same time as his, but not every child from divorced parents becomes a serial killer.
One thing I am really interested in is his time in Germany. His father insisted that he join the Army. Dahmer enlisted in late December 1978 and was posted to Germany shortly thereafter. Did he kill men in Germany?
Dahmer’s trial began in January 1992. Given that the majority of Dahmer’s victims were African American, there were considerable racial tensions, so strict security precautions were taken, including an eight-foot barrier of bulletproof glass that separated him from the gallery. The inclusion of only one African American on the jury provoked further unrest, but was ultimately contained and short-lived. Lionel Dahmer and his second wife attended the trial throughout.
Dahmer initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, despite having confessed to the killings during police interrogation. He eventually changed his plea to guilty by virtue of insanity. His defense then offered the gruesome details of his behavior, as proof that only someone insane could commit such terrible acts.
The jury chose to believe the prosecution’s assertion that Dahmer was fully aware that his acts were evil and chose to commit them anyway. On February 15, 1992, they returned after approximately 10 hours’ deliberation to find him guilty, but sane, on all counts. He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms in prison, with a 16th term tacked on in May.
Dahmer reportedly adjusted well to prison life, although he was initially kept apart from the general population. He eventually convinced authorities to allow him to integrate more fully with other inmates. He found religion in the form of books and photos sent to him by his father, and he was granted permission by the Columbia Correctional Institution to be baptized by a local pastor.
Dahmer has been linked to 17 murders between 1978 and 1991.
Most of Dahmer’s victims were killed by strangulation after being drugged with sedatives, although his first victim was killed by a combination of bludgeoning and strangulation and his second victim was battered to death, with one further victim killed in 1990, Ernest Miller, dying of a combination of shock and blood loss due to his carotid artery being cut. Four of Dahmer’s victims killed in 1991 had holes bored into their skulls through which Dahmer injected hydrochloric acid or, later, boiling water, into the frontal lobes in an attempt to induce a permanent, submissive, non-resistant state. This proved fatal although on each occasion, this was not Dahmer’s intention.
Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t look like a monster although he behaved like one. He looked like an ordinary man, someone you would not notice in a crowd. In fact he looked a small bit like me I suppose that makes it so scary, anyone you meet could be a serial killer.
The one thing we all have in comon ,regardless of we are good or bad , at one stage of our lives we were all children.
Even the most evil men on who ever roamed the planaet started off as a child, like Joseph Mengele ,pictured above.
Below are a few more exampes of evil men when they were young.
John Wayne Gacy
Saddam Hussein
Adolf Hitler
Benito Mussolini
Jeffrey Dahmer
Ted Bundy
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know a you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2 ,however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thanks
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the paypal link. Many thanks
There are many theories on who Jack the Ripper was but there is only one thing that can be said with certainty, he was a vile and evil creature.There is a special place in hell for people like him.
Jack the ripper was well aware of this himself that’s probably why one of his letters started of with “From Hell”
The From Hell letter is probably the most disturbing of the three most infamous Jack the Ripper messages. Which was mainly because of to how the letter arrived,inside a small box, including half of a human kidney.
The letter, dated October 15,1888 was addressed to George Lusk, head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. He received it on October 16, 1888.
One of murder victim Catherine Eddowes’ kidneys had been removed by the killer. Medical opinion at the time was that the organ could have been gotteb by medical students and sent with the letter as part of a practical joke. Initially Lusk himself believed this also and did not report the letter until he was urged to do so by friends.
Dr. Thomas Openshaw of the London Hospital found that it came from a sickly alcoholic woman who had died within the past three weeks, evidence according to him that it belonged to Eddowes.
The letter read:
“Mr Lusk,
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman 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”
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
Born in England in 1946, serial killer Harold Shipman attended Leeds School of Medicine and began working as a physician in 1970. Between then and his arrest in 1998, he killed at least 100 and possibly as many as 260 of his patients, injecting them with lethal doses of painkillers.He was jailed for life, on January 31 2000. for murdering 15 of his patients, making him Britain’s biggest convicted serial killer.
Shipman, from Hyde in Greater Manchester, is also suspected of killing more than 100 other patients.
From the dock at Preston Crown Court, Shipman showed no emotion as the verdict was read out: guilty to 15 murders and forging the will of one of his patients.
In sentencing Shipman to life imprisonment the judge, Mr Justice Thayne Forbes, said:
“Each victim was your patient. You murdered each and every one by a calculated and cold-blooded perversion of his medical skills.”
“You brought them death, disguised by the attentiveness of a good doctor.”
All Shipman’s victims were women and none was suffering from a serious illness when she died. Each one died suddenly after a visit from Shipman.
The court was told how the doctor would visit the victims in their homes and administer a lethal dose of morphine.
The alarm was raised by solicitor Angela Woodruff, the daughter of Kathleen Grundy, Shipman’s last victim. Shipman arrived at Mrs Grundy’s home on the pretext of giving her a blood test and had, in fact, given her a massive dose of morphine.
He then crudely forged her will so he would benefit from her substantial estate.
Much of Britain’s legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a result of Shipman’s crimes. He is the only British doctor to have been found guilty of murdering his patients, although other doctors have been acquitted of similar crimes or convicted on lesser charges.
Shipman died on 13 January 2004, one day prior to his 58th birthday, by hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison.
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
In 1978, Rodney Alcala appeared on The Dating Game — the popular game show in which three eligible bachelors vied for a date with a bachelorette.
The show was heavy on innuendo. The host introduced Alcala as a “successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the darkroom at the age of 13, fully developed.”
Throughout the show, Alcala enthusiastically responded to the bachelorette’s suggestive questions: likening himself to a banana, saying that nighttime is when he “really gets good” and acting out the part of a dirty old man.
He was charming enough that the woman, Cheryl Bradshaw, chose him for a date.
But what Bradshaw — and the viewing audience — didn’t know was that Alcala was a serial killer who was in the midst of a rampage. He had already murdered at least two women in Southern California. Previously, he had served 34 months in prison for the brutal rape and beating of an 8-year-old girl. He had briefly been put on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
Bradshaw was selected by the show because he was tall, handsome and charming. Producers did not conduct a background check.
Bradshaw, if not for a healthy jolt of women’s intuition, would almost certainly be remembered today as one of Alcala’s victims. Instead, after the show ended, she conversed with Alcala backstage. He offered her a date she’d never forget, but Bradshaw got the feeling that her handsome potential suitor was a little off.
“I started to feel ill,” Bradshaw told the Sydney Telegraph in 2012. “He was acting really creepy. I turned down his offer. I didn’t want to see him again.”
Rodney Alcala was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1943. His father moved the family to Mexico when Alcala was eight years old, only to abandoned them there three years later. His mother then moved Alcala and his sister to suburban Los Angeles.
At age 17, Alcala entered the Army as a clerk, but after a nervous breakdown, he was medically discharged due to mental health issues. Then, the intelligent young man with an IQ of 135 went on to attend UCLA. But he wouldn’t stay on the straight and narrow for long.
Alcala committed his first known crime in 1968: A motorist in Los Angeles called police after watching him lure an eight-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro into his Hollywood apartment. The girl was found alive, raped and beaten with a steel bar, but Alcala had fled.To evade the resulting arrest warrant he left the state and enrolled in the NYU film school, under the famous film director and producer Roman Polanski. using the name “John Berger”.
In 1971 he also obtained a counseling job at a New Hampshire arts camp for children using a slightly different alias, “John Burger”.
Later that summer, two children at the same camp where Alcala worked noticed an FBI most-wanted poster at the post office and notified the camp directors. The FBI made a quick arrest, but Shapiro’s family had already relocated across the border to Mexico to forget the horror they had to live through. Without the testimony, prosecutors were not able to convict Alcala of rape and attempted murder. Alcala pled guilty to a lesser charge of assault and was paroled after 34 months.
In June 1971, Cornelia Michel Crilley, a 23-year-old Trans World Airlines flight attendant, was found raped and strangled in her Manhattan apartment. Her murder went unsolved until it was connected to Alcala in 2011.
Decades after Alcala’s horrific crimes, the victims’ families are still grappling with the pain that he inflicted. Robin Samsoe was just 12 years old when Alcala saw her riding her bike to ballet class in 1979. Her mother, Marianne Connelly, recalls what happened when Robin didn’t return home from ballet class that evening.
“I called the police and said my daughter’s missing,” Connelly tells the show. “They told me they couldn’t take a report for 24 hours. By the next morning, they declared it a kidnapping.”
About 12 days later, her decomposed remains had been found, scavenged by animals.
Connelly recalls what happened when the authorities arrived at her house. “The sergeant says, ‘We found Robin,’ ” she recalls “I grabbed my purse and said ‘OK, let’s go.’ He said, ‘where do you think you’re going?’ I said ‘to go see Robin.’ ”
The sergeant told Connelly that she couldn’t identify the body because it took three days to identify her remains.
“I got so mad,” recalls Connelly. “I said ‘three days? How many little girls with long blonde hair disappear in California?’ And he said, ‘there was no hair.’ ”
This was the case that would finally break Acala’s killing spree
Alcala had three trials and numerous appeals. At the first two trials, Alcala was charged with the murder of Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old who disappeared between the beach and her ballet class on June 20, 1979. 12 days later her remains, and subsequently her earrings, were discovered in a Seattle locker rented by Alcala. Despite the fact Alcala was convicted and sentenced to death, the verdict was overturned by the supreme court because the jurors were informed of Alcala’s sex crimes prior to the trial.
While preparing for the third trial, advances in DNA science helped match semen left at the crime scenes of two women in Los Angeles. Again, a pair of earrings belonging to a victim were found in the locker rented by Alcala. DNA matches led to Alcala’s indictment for the murders of four additional women: Jill Barcomb (18), Georgia Wixted (27), Charlotte Lamb (31), Jill Parenteau (21).
At the final trial, Alcala decided to act as his own attorney, just like Ted Bundy and many other narcissistic psychopaths. The star and surprise witness was Tali Shapiro, Alcala’s first victim who survived the brutal rape and beating, finally ready to face the devil. For five long hours, Alcala played the roles of both interrogator and witness. He addressed himself as Mr. Alacala, asking questions in a deeper voice than when answering them. The theatrics of “The Dating Game Killer” didn’t work. The charm that entrapped so many girls didn’t convince the jurors or the judge and Alcala was found guilty on all five counts of first-degree murder. When it was time for the closing argument, he decided to play the Arlo Guthrie song “Alice’s Restaurant”.
In March 2010, Alcala was sentenced to death for the third time. The death penalty has not been carried out as of yet
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
Gilles de Rais was probably born in late 1405 to Guy II de Montmorency-Laval and Marie de Craon in the family castle at Champtocé-sur-Loire. He was an intelligent child, speaking fluent Latin, illuminating manuscripts, and dividing his education between military discipline and moral and intellectual development.Following the deaths of his father and mother in 1415, Gilles and his younger brother René de La Suze were placed under the tutelage of Jean de Craon, their maternal grandfather.Jean de Craon was a schemer who attempted to arrange a marriage for twelve-year-old Gilles with four-year-old Jeanne Paynel, one of the richest heiresses in Normandy, and, when the plan failed, attempted unsuccessfully to unite the boy with Béatrice de Rohan, the niece to the Duke of Brittany. On 30 November 1420, however, Craon substantially increased his grandson’s fortune by marrying him to Catherine de Thouars of Brittany, heiress of La Vendée and Poitou .Their only child Marie was born in 1429.
At an early age Rais distinguished himself militarily, fighting first in the wars of succession to the duchy of Brittany (1420) and then for the duchess of Anjou against the English in 1427. He was assigned to Joan of Arc’s guard and fought several battles at her side, including the relief of Orléans in 1429.
He accompanied her to Reims for the consecration of Charles VII, who made him marshal of France. He continued to serve in Joan of Arc’s special guard and was at her side when Paris was attacked. After her capture, he retired to his lands in Brittany.
Rais had inherited extensive domains from both his father and his maternal grandfather (Guy de Laval and Jean de Craon, respectively) and had also married a rich heiress, Catherine de Thouars (1420). He kept a more lavish court than the king, dissipating his wealth on the decoration of his châteaux and the maintenance of a large train of servants, heralds, and priests. He was a munificent patron of music, literature, and pageants, in one of which he figured (The Mystery of Orléans). When his family secured a decree from the king in July 1435, restraining him from selling or mortgaging the rest of his lands, he turned to alchemy. He also developed an interest in Satanism, hoping to gain knowledge, power, and riches by invoking the devil.
Rais was chosen as one of four lords on July 17, 1429 and was officially declared a Marshal of France on that same day. Rais was not present when Joan was burned at a stake by the English in May 1431.
A year after Joan’s death, his grandfather died on November 15, 1432 and left his sword and breastplate to René de La Suze, Rais’ younger brother, as a way to punish Rais for the reckless spending of his fortune.
In 1435, now bankrupt and no longer involved with the military, Rais began selling his properties to support his extravagant lifestyle. On July 2, a royal edict denounced Rais and prohibited him from selling any further property, Rais subsequently left Orléans.Rais’ first murders occured between 1431 and 1433, with the help of his accomplices, Rais kidnapped and killed an unknown number of children, some were even used rituals involving alchemy and demon summoning. On one occasion, Rais provided a contract with a demonic entity named Barron and attempted to summon him, but grew frustrated after no demon manifested. Having being told that Barron demanded the soul of at least one child, Rais murdered a boy and dismembered him, placing his limbs inside a glass vessel, but again, no demon manifested. On May 15, 1440, Rais abducted and murdered a cleric, which caught the attention of the Bishop of Nantes, who investigated him and discovered his heinous crimes, forty bodies of his victims were found. Rais subsequently confessed to the murders and was sentenced to death along with his accomplices. Rais was hanged and burned on October 26, 1440.
It is alleged he murdered more then 100 children.Gilles de Rais is believed to be the inspiration for the 1697 fairy tale “Bluebeard” (“Barbe bleue”) by Charles Perrault.
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
With Stephen King’s “It” taking cinemas by storm it is time to have a look at the real Clown Killer. John Wayne Gacy.
Although Pennywise is a total fictional character(well at least I hope so) there are similarities between him and John Wayne Gacy.
John Wayne Gacy was convicted of the torture, rape, and murder of 33 males between 1972 until his arrest in 1978. He was dubbed the “Killer Clown” because he entertained children at parties and hospitals as “Pogo the Clown.” On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed by lethal injection.
Stephen King’s It was published in 1986, not long after the Gacy case and prosecution would have played out all over the media. King says his direct inspiration was the idea writing a story about a troll under a bridge, but he had also said he wanted to play on a childhood fear of clowns. That fear was probably driven into overdrive when moms told their kids in the ’80s to behave, or a killer clown like Gacy might get them, as a cautionary tale.
Notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. The son of Danish and Polish parents, Gacy and his siblings grew up with a drunken father who would beat the children with a razor strap if they were perceived to have misbehaved; his father physically assaulted Gacy’s mother as well. Gacy’s sister Karen would later say that the siblings learned to toughen up against the beatings, and that Gacy would not cry.
The boy suffered further alienation at school, unable to play with other children due to a congenital heart condition that was looked upon by his father as another failing. Gacy later realized he was attracted to men, and experienced great turmoil over his sexuality
Gacy worked as a fast-food chain manager during the 1960s and became a self-made building contractor and Democratic precinct captain in the Chicago suburbs in the 1970s. Well-liked in his community and a clown performer at children’s parties, Gacy also organized cultural gatherings. He was married and divorced twice and had biological children and stepchildren.
Yet Gacy had a dark side: he was convicted in 1968 and given a 10-year prison term for the sexual assault of two teen boys. He was released on parole in the summer of 1970, but was arrested again the following year after another teen accused Gacy of sexual assault. The charges were dropped when the boy didn’t appear during the trial. By the middle of the decade, two more young males accused Gacy of rape, and he would be questioned by police about the disappearances of others.
It was later discovered that he had committed his first known killing in 1972, taking the life of Timothy McCoy after luring the teen to his home.
On December 11, 1978, 15-year-old Robert Piest went missing. It was reported to police that the boy was last seen by his mother at the store he worked at as he headed out to meet Gacy to discuss a potential job.
On December 21, a police search of Gacy’s house in Norwood Park Township, Illinois, uncovered evidence of his involvement in numerous horrific acts, including murder. It would later be determined that Gacy had killed 33 boys and young men, the majority of whom had been buried under the house and garage, while others would be recovered from the nearby Des Plaines River.
Gacy lured his victims with the promise of construction work, and then captured, sexually assaulted and eventually strangled most of them with rope. When he killed, he sometimes dressed as his alter ego “Pogo the Clown.”
Gacy’s trial began on February 6, 1980, with a prosecution team headed by William Kunkle. With Gacy having confessed to the crimes, the arguments were focused on whether he could be declared insane and thus remitted to a state mental facility. Gacy had told police that the murders had been committed by an alternate personality, while mental health professionals testified for both sides about Gacy’s mental state.
Ultimately found guilty of committing 33 murders after a short jury deliberation, Gacy became known as one of the most vicious serial killers in U.S. history. He was sentenced to serve 12 death sentences and 21 natural life sentences. He was imprisoned at the Menard Correctional Center for almost a decade and a half, appealing the sentence and offering contradictory statements on the murders in interviews. Though he had confessed, Gacy later denied being guilty of the charges and had a 900 number set up with a 12-minute recorded statement of his innocence. He took up visual art as well, and his paintings were shown to the public via an exhibition at a Chicago gallery.
As both anti–death penalty forces and those in favor of the execution made their opinions known, John Wayne Gacy died by lethal injection on May 10, 1994, at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois.
There have been lingering concerns that Gacy may have been responsible for the deaths of others whose bodies have yet to be found, and the Cook County sheriff’s office has pushed to search a Chicago apartment building where Gacy once worked as a maintenance employee.
Cook County authorities are also using DNA evidence to try to identify six of Gacy’s victims, who remain unidentified. On August 1, 2017, one of those men, “Victim No. 24,” was identified as 16-year-old James “Jimmie” Byron Haakenson. Haakenson had left home in St. Paul, Minnesota, and traveled to Chicago to begin life in the city.
On August 5, 1976, he called his mother to let her know he had arrived, however, police believe Gacy killed him shortly thereafter. In 1979, Haakenson’s mother had contacted authorities to find out if her son was one of Gacy’s victims, however, she didn’t have dental records and the department lacked sufficient resources to identify him as a victim. Haakenson’s mother died in the early 2000s, but other family members provided DNA samples in 2017, and authorities made an immediate match to “Victim No. 24.”
Through his membership in a local Moose Club, Gacy became aware of a “Jolly Joker” clown club whose members—dressed as clowns—would regularly perform at fundraising events and parades in addition to voluntarily entertaining hospitalized children. By late 1975, Gacy had joined the Jolly Jokers and created his own performance characters: “Pogo the Clown” and “Patches the Clown”.
Gacy designed his own costumes and taught himself how to apply clown makeup, although some professional clowns noted the sharp corners Gacy painted at the edges of his mouth are contrary to the rounded borders that professional clowns normally employ, so as not to scare children.Gacy is known to have performed as Pogo or Patches at numerous local parties, Democratic party functions,
(Gacy with First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 1978, six years after the killings began. A pin indicating special Secret Service clearance is visible on his jacket)
charitable events, and at children’s hospitals. He is also known to have arrived, dressed in his clowning garb, at a favorite drinking venue named “The Good Luck Lounge” on several occasions with the explanation he had just performed as Pogo and was stopping for a social drink before heading home.
History of Sorts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.