Serial Killers

dichotomization: The Execution of Ted Bundy Time finally ran...

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:03:15 -0400

The Execution of Ted Bundy

Time finally ran out for Ted Bundy on January 24, 1989 when he was executed in the electric chair. One of Bundy’s final acts was to permit James Dobson, a Californian psychologist and host of a syndicated radio show, to videotape an interview to be broadcast after his death. Dobson described Bundy was “feeling great remorse.” He quoted Bundy saying his crimes “should serve as a warning to the dangers of pornography.” Bundy appeared frightened when he was escorted into the death chamber. But he moved easily to the chair, nodding to his attorney, James Coleman, and Gainesville minister Fred Lawrence, who had counselled him earlier. “Jim and Fred, I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends,” he said in a strong voice that trailed off at the end. “He was calm but visibly shaken,” said state Rep. Randy Mackey of Lake City, an official witness. Bundy stared straight ahead and his jaw tightened when workers adjusted a chin strap and fitted a hood over his shaven head.

When the switch was thrown by the executioner, who is paid $150 for the job, Bundy’s body surged back against the chair. His fists clenched. A doctor pronounced him dead at 7:16 a.m. EST. Gene Williams, owner of the Williams-Thomas Funeral Home, said he accepted custody of the body but would not give any details on arrangements, including whether there would be burial or cremation. But he said no funeral was planned. John Tanner, a prosecutor who arranged for Bundy’s confessions with investigators from the four Western states, said Bundy had no finished “telling the names and locations of the bodies. He just ran out of time.” The governor had insisted that Bundy would not be allowed to use a protracted litany of confessions to delay his execution a fourth time.

dichotomization: “I didn’t start to hate all women; as a matter...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:38:32 -0400

dichotomization:

“I didn’t start to hate all women; as a matter of fact, I would venture to say I started to fall in love with every one of them. Every one of them became so precious to me ‘cause I wanted their friendship.”

Robert Hansen was born in Pocahontas, Iowa, and was a troubled child, given to wetting his pants, setting fires, and shoplifting. He moved to Anchorage, Alaska, following in the footsteps of his father, and there he opened a bakery. During times when his wife and kids were away, he started trolling areas where prostitutes plied their trade, and eventually he started to murder them. Sometimes he would pick them up in his truck and go to his house. He was a licensed pilot, so other times he would fly them into the Alaskan wild, release them, and then hunt them down with a rifle or bow and arrow. Hansen admitted to seventeen murders, but Alaska state investigator Glenn Forthe felt that Hansen had killed four or five women a year from the early 1970s to 1983, the year he was tracked down.

Hansen was finally caught when one of the women, Kitty Larson, he took to his house escaped, running from his house dressed only in the handcuffs he had put on her. Larson went to the police. In February of 1984, he admitted to some of the killings during questioning, though at times for investigators it was like pulling teeth. In his confession Hansen went into great pains to rationalize his behaviour. He explained that he had had problems with women since he was a teenager and that women wouldn’t go out with him because of his acne and his stutter, “I was I guess what you might call very frustrated, upset all the time. I would see my friends and so forth going out on dates and so forth and I had tremendous desire to do the same thing.” He said he always “loved” women, but he made a distinction - a sharp distinction - between good and bad girls. Bad girls could die, “I’m not saying that I hate all women. I don’t. Quite the contrary, if, I guess in my own mind what I’m classifying is a good woman, not a prostitute.”

Photo

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:35:47 -0400

dichotomization: On 12 September 1996, obsessed fan Ricardo...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:35:03 -0400

dichotomization:

On 12 September 1996, obsessed fan Ricardo López mailed an acid-spraying letter bomb to Björk’s London home and then killed himself, but the package was intercepted by the Metropolitan Police Service. López filmed himself in the process of making the acid bomb intended to kill her. The nearly 18 hours of videotape described López’s obsession with Björk, the construction of the device, his thoughts on love and other subjects, including racial remarks against Björk’s then-boyfriend Goldie. The video footage continues after his mailing the bomb to Björk’s London home and ends dramatically as López applies face paint, shaves his head and commits suicide by shooting himself on camera.

fefeferi: when u accidentally hurt ur friends feelings and they insist that its fine but u know it...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:34:53 -0400

fefeferi:

when u accidentally hurt ur friends feelings and they insist that its fine but u know it isnt

dressedinslowmotion: Abandoned farm home outside of town. There...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:33:17 -0400

dressedinslowmotion:

Abandoned farm home outside of town. There were 8 cars left there (The blue one pictured has a pitch fork in the windshield). There was still toilet paper in the bathroom, and pictures littered the counter. The basement wall had caved in and I couldn’t really go down there. All the mirrors and windows were broken, everything was left there. I have no idea what happened.

thenewkiki: manson2012: Charles Manson with first wife on...

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:27:40 -0400

thenewkiki:

manson2012:

Charles Manson with first wife on wedding day.

OH MY GOD

dichotomization: An Interview with Arthur Shawcross about his...

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:20:55 -0400

dichotomization:

An Interview with Arthur Shawcross about his 8-year-old victim, Karen Ann Hill:

Arthur Shawcross: She kinda wanted it, ya know. Sex, an’ stuff like that. Then, I started, an’ she starts cryin’ and wants her mom, so I suffocated her. Not with my hands. Covered her mouth with dirt and stuff.

Interviewer: But you did have sex with her. Vaginally and anally, Arthur.

Arthur Shawcross: Yeah. But that was after she was dead. Then I went home.

fuckyeahforensics: Test fire burn pattern analysis

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:40:48 -0400

fuckyeahforensics:

Test fire burn pattern analysis

dichotomization: Richard Ramirez was on suicide watch in the...

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:03:00 -0400

dichotomization:

Richard Ramirez was on suicide watch in the days after his August 30, 1985 arrest and a sheriff deputy who was watching him said he saw Ramirez drawing symbols of devil worship in his own blood on the floor of his cell on September 2, 1985.“I looked through the doorway and saw the defendant sitting on the toilet,” said Deputy Gerald Newbold. “He was bleeding from the palm.” He said he watched Ramirez dip his left hand into the blood on his right palm and write on the floor the numbers “666” and draw a pentagram.

buttholebiter: Son killed his father then sliced his face off...

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:41:15 -0400

buttholebiter:

Son killed his father then sliced his face off and dressed as his dad to go see his grandfather. The grandfather talked with him for a while before he finally realized something was up and called the cops to go over to the father and son’s home.

dichotomization: John Wayne Gacy very gradually ensnared his...

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:03:11 -0400

dichotomization:

John Wayne Gacy very gradually ensnared his victims. He plied them with marijuana and alcohol and began by showing them heterosexual porn movies. He then shifted to gay porn. If the guest did not object, Gacy then did his “hand-cuff trick.” Once he had his victims imprisoned, he sodomised them. Gacy developed an elaborate ritual of torture in which he submerged his victims in a bathtub full of water with a plastic bag over their head and revived them before they died. Eventually they either died from the treatment or Gacy arranged them with his “rope trick.” He looped a cord around the victim’s throat, attached it to a stick, and slowly twisted the stick, tightening the noose. Gacy confessed that as he killed his victims, he recited aloud the Twenty-Third Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd… Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil….”

dahmerletsdolunch: Serial killer John Wayne Gacy in an undated...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:54:52 -0400

dahmerletsdolunch:

Serial killer John Wayne Gacy in an undated photo with his second wife, Carole Hoff.

Photo

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:53:36 -0400

dichotomization: On 8 September, 1986, two twelve-year-old...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:02:49 -0400

dichotomization:

On 8 September, 1986, two twelve-year-old boys, Richard Kohn and John Ostland, were standing by the bridge on the Kinnickinnic River Parkway in Milwaukee when they saw a man by the river, with his pants around his thighs and his shirt pulled up. The man appeared to be masturbating. Richard, who was old enough to know what he was doing, shouted out, “Are you having fun?” to which the man replied, “Yeah I’m having a great time.” The boys reported this incident to the police and gave an accurate description of the man, which was then broadcast to all squad cars. Police Officer Richard Menzel spotted a man who fitted the description at West Jackson Park Drive and stopped him. It was Jeffrey Dahmer. He was bought back to the river and positively identified by the two boys, at which point he was arrested and charged with Lewd and Lascivious Behaviour and Indecent Exposure.

rhamphotheca: Blood Falls, a Natural Time Capsule Containing a...

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:48:57 -0400

rhamphotheca:

Blood Falls, a Natural Time Capsule Containing a Unique Ecosystem

This five-story, blood-red “waterfall” pours ever so slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valley. Geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, and believed the red color came from algae. Its true nature turned out to be more spectacular.

Roughly two million years ago, a small body of water containing an ancient community of microbes was sealed beneath the surface of the Taylor Glacier. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, the microbes have remained isolated inside a natural time capsule, in a place with no light, oxygen, or heat.

The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the seepage its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the microbial subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

More photos of Blood Falls can be seen on Atlas Obscura

dichotomization: “Endling” might just be the loneliest term in...

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:57:08 -0400

dichotomization:

“Endling” might just be the loneliest term in the English language. An endling is the last member of a species or subspecies, and when this lone individual dies its species is extinct. Several endlings have been recorded in recent times. Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in 1914 in Cincinnatti Zoo. She was the last of a species that had numbered several billion before Europeans arrived in North America. Human actions are a oft-repeated theme in the story of endlings. The animal in the photo is Benjamin, the last thylacine (or Tasmanian Tiger). Benjamin - who may have actually been female - lived out his days in Hobart Zoo. On the 7th of September, 1936, Benjamin died due to neglect. Other species endlings have included the last quagga and the Caspian tiger, though there are certainly more we don’t know of. Perhaps the most well-known recent endling is the Pinta Island giant tortoise Lonesome George, who died on 24th June last year. George’s status as an endling may be rescinded in time; DNA from 17 hybrid tortoises indicates that they have some genetic material from George’s subspecies. Given tortoises’ long lifespans, the researchers have hope that the hybrids’ parents may still be alive somewhere on the Galápagos islands. Unless these purebred specimens are found (if they are still alive), Lonesome George holds a special place as our most famous and recent endling.

dichotomization: Ronnie Loughlin, 15-year-old altar boy, sits...

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:55:11 -0400

dichotomization:

Ronnie Loughlin, 15-year-old altar boy, sits handcuffed after surrendering to police. The youth had killed one woman in a shooting spree, and kidnaped a second whom he held hostage during a 5-hour ride through South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. “I just went berserk, I guess,” he told authorities.

Tropical birds at Jonestown mass suicide site.

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:48:34 -0400

Tropical birds at Jonestown mass suicide site.

Dale Merle Nelson, thirty-one, was a society dropout who kept...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:02:46 -0400

Dale Merle Nelson, thirty-one, was a society dropout who kept his wife and three little children in a small shack at the edge of the wilderness near West Creston, British Columbia. He worked occasionally at hard labor in the nearby logging camps, but frequently he sank into bouts of depression that kept him drinking and alone. On the night of September 5, 1970, he had been feeding that depression all day, but instead of going home, he went to the house of his aunt, Shirley Wasyk. She was home alone with her three daughters while her husband was away at a logging camp. He battered the woman to death and strangled her 7-year-old daughter, Tracey Wasyk. Debbie Wasyk, twelve, managed to escape and went running for help. However, a neighbour had already called the police, and Nelson fled as he heard sirens approaching. Nelson did not get far, racing to a remote house. Ray Phipps opened his front door to a gunshot blast. Nelson stepped over the body and systematically shot Phipps’s common-law wife, Isabelle St. Amand, and their four children. He took Cathy St. Amand, eight, with him, and sometime in the next few hours, when the police had left the Wasyk house to search the neighbourhood, Nelson crept back in and removed Tracey Wasyk’s body. Going farther into the wilderness, Nelson mutilated the bodies of the two young girls. A day and a half later, after hiding in the woods, Dale Nelson gave himself up. The first thing he said to the police was, ”Must have been the LSD.” Nelson was tried at Cranbrook Assizes in March 1971, for the murders of Tracey Wasyk and Cathy St. Amand. The defense admitted all facts, letting them add up to a plea of insanity. The hallucinogen LSD was never introduced as a major factor. The jury found Nelson Guilty, and he was sent to prison for life.