Serial Murder vs. Mass Murder: Defining the Differences, Schemes and Mind Maps of Business

Download Serial Murder vs. Mass Murder: Defining the Differences and more Schemes and Mind Maps Business in PDF only on Docsity! AN EXPLORATION OF SERIAL MURDER An Honors Thesis (ID 499) by Allison Riley Thesis Director Ball State University Muncie, Indiana May 1988 Expected Date of Graduation: Spring 1988 -~ 1"\ \ :~~~~~J~ TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction II. Case Studies of Serial Murderers A. Christopher Wilder B. John Wayne Gacy C. Edmund Kemper D. Herbert Mullin E. Donald Harvey F. John Norman Collins G. Fritz Haarman H. Edward Gein I. Charles Starkweather J. Nannie Doss K. Theodore Bundy III. Discussion IV. References itself after about an hour and a half, leaving fourteen people dead or dying and thirty people wounded. Whitman had killed his wife and mother the night before his shooting at the university. Ending his spree of murder, Whitman was shot and killed when four police officers finally got close enough to Whitman to shoot him. Whitman was a well-liked young gentleman; Yet, people 2 who knew him realized that he possessed many pent up hostilities. They did not know how deep these hostilities ran. Not until his rage exploded with blood and death did people realize that Whitman was in mental and emotional trouble. Most of the time the mass killer does not try to hide his crimes; he displays them blatantly with violent aggression. Often times, the mass murderer is himself killed at the scene of his crimes due to his willingness to show himself off. Extreme rage also appears in the serial murderer. His rage is buried deep within himself and is, therefore, not as explosive as the anger of his mass killing counterpart. The person who kills serially feeds upon and savors his hostility which allows him the luxury of releasing that rage in measured quantities again and again with each incident of murder. The serial killer kills his victims separately and at different times, perhaps on different days, and perhaps in different places. The mass murderer, on the other hand, kills his victims at the same place and within minutes of each other. 3 Secretly preying upon his victims, often times, the serial murderer kills indiscriminately. He may kill more or less people then anyone mass murderer, and he often picks his victims at random. Many times the mass murderer strikes out at those whom he feels have greatly wronged or betrayed him, such as his family. Killing strangers or acquaintances seems to be the serial murderers' specialty. The majority of serial murderers do not kill their family or loved ones. However, there is a minority of serial murderers, most often women, and this minority of serial killers usually kill their loved ones because of their want of insurance money. Therefore, there are serial murderers who kill family members, but the majority of this type of killer kills strangers or acquaintances. Mass and serial killers differ also in the way in which they kill, specifically in the weapons that they choose to use. The mass murderer wants to kill as many people as possible in a very short time. In order to do this, the majority of mass killers use semi-automatic rifles or other kinds of guns or rifles. Knives are also commonly used by mass murderers. Jim Jones took a marked departure from the method that most mass murderers use to kill when he filled a large vat with cyanide laced Kool-aid. Jones persuaded hundreds of people to drink from the deadly vat with his magnetic personality; those who could not be swayed by Jones' charm were forced at gunpoint to drink from the vat. Hundreds of men, women, and children died at Jones' 4 hands; he drank from the vat also. He became known as perhaps the most notorious mass murderer in history. The serial murderer chooses his weapon for murder more freely than does his mass killing counterpart. The serial killer does not worry about killing as many people as possible in a short time. He usually picks a method of murder which he enjoys and which works well for him, and he usually sticks with this method in everyone of his killings. John Wayne Gacy well illustrates this point; he killed all but one of his thirty-three victims by strangling them. Albert DeSalvo also used the same method in all of his thirteen killings; he strangled them all and was, thus, dubbed "The Boston Strangler." Although a big number of serial murderers use one type of weapon or method in all of their killings, there does exist a portion of serial murderers who use different types of weapons in each of their individual killings. Donald Harvey, for example, poisoned or suffocated his victims. Henry Lee Lucas killed his victims with a range of different weapons. He used guns and knives. ran over his victims with his car. He also strangled or Fritz Haarman, one of the most vile serial murderers, often liked to bite his victims in the throat, as if he were Dracula, thereby killing them. So, each serial murderer chooses his weapon and his method of killing according to his own desires and needs, however sick they are. or eliminating those who are momentarily weaker or more vulnerable than he. Control may be acheived by sadistically inflicting pain or seeking to destroy life-by making others who are incapable of defending themselves suffer (Levin and Fox, 1985). Criminologists want to be able to explain why serial murderers murder and how their instincts to murder develop. 7 Some sociologists and criminologists feel that serial killers kill out of feelings of frustration and social impotence. Serial killer, Edmund Kemper, tends to agree with this theory. He explained that he knew he could never possess a woman in life; therefore, he had to possess her in death. Yet, one word explanations about serial killers, their motives, and their psychological status have absolutely no place, as of yet, in the study of serial murder. Students of serial killing can only describe the phenomenon; they cannot build absolute conclusions as to the causation of serial killing, nor can they classify serial murderers into neat, definite groups. There is just not enough known about serial murder and its causation to form any certain conclu- sions about it. No two serial murderers are alike. Hence, only generalizations regarding serial murder as a whole can be made, and explanations regarding the behavior of serial murderers are impossible to give. Serial murderers kill in a pattern. The individual serial killer kills in different ways for different reasons. Money, pleasure, and sex are usually the surface things that serial killers murder for. But, of course, there has to there must be strong psychological motives which make the serial murderers' ultimate acts of murder possible and desirable. Individual serial murderers kill different groups of people. Some kill specific groups of people in specific ways, such as Ted Bundy did. He killed young women only, and it was found that most of his victims died by being hit in the head with a blunt object. Bundy killed only John Wayne Gacy also killed a specific group 8 strangers. of people. He chose only males for his victims, and strangulation was the method he used. tances. He killed both strangers and acquain- Other serial killers kill a specific group of people in a variety of ways. Richard Cottingham well illustrates this type of serial murderer. He killed prostitutes by using a variety of methods such as strangulation and decapi- tation. Still other serial murderers kill a variety of people in specific ways. Lastly, there are serial murderers who kill a variety of people in a variety of ways. Henry Lee Lucas, for example, killed men, women, and children, using a wide range of methods. Serial murderers are definitely not categorized by the number of people that they kill. As has been clarified previously, the serial murderer is thus labeled because he kills in a pattern. When a murderer has only killed two or three people, and is then caught, he can still be classified as a serial murderer if he killed those two or three in a pattern. This pattern of killing would have continued had the murderer not been caught. Some serial murderers are never caught. In some cases, the strinq of murders end in any particular incident of serial murder, leaving police stumped. Thus, the murders are never solved because there were not enough clues left. When this happens, police usually theorize that the murderer moved somewhere else, got arrested and imprisoned for crimes 9 unrelated to the murders, or that the killer died. sometimes a serial murderer may kill for years in the same area without getting caught. The Green River Killer, for instance, in Seattle, lNashington has been killing women since 1982, in the same area, and has never been caught. He has killed some forty-eight women, and police in Seattle remain baffled as to his identity. Often times, serial murderers travel from state to state and kill, which makes it very difficult for police to solve the murders. In other cases, serial murderers stay in one area and kill as has previously been explained. The bottom line is that serial murderers, no matter where they kill, are extremely difficult to catch. They are crafty and careful; often when serial murderers are caught it is almost by accident. Henry Lee Lucas, for example, was arrested in Texas on a weapons charge and ended up confessing to over three hundred murders. Police had no idea that Lucas was a murderer until he confessed to being one. Serial murder is frightening. Every aspect of serial CASE STUDIES OF SERIAL MURDERERS CHRISTOPHER BERNARD WILDER Christopher Bernard Wilder was born on March 13, 1945 in Australia. He had two younger brothers and a stable family life. But he grew up with violent tendencies which became apparent when, at the age of seventeen, he was arrested for his involvement in the gang rape of a young girl in Australia. Wilder was put on probation for his part in the rape, and he was ordered to go to psychological counseling for a year. In 1969, Wilder moved to the United States and settled in Southern Florida. He started an electric contracting and construction business, which apparently did well financially. For Wilder owned a beautiful and costly horne, two expensive cars, and a speedboat. bachelor. He lived the life of a well-to-do Wilder became known to the Florida authorities first in 1976, when he was arrested for rape. He had coerced a sixteen year old girl into his car by promising her a job interview. After she was in his car, he forced her to perform oral sex on him. She did, and he freed her. She related to police what had happened and was able to give them a full description of Wilder. The police found him and arrested him for rape. Wilder was given a jury trial, and the jury acquitted him. Neither his troubles nor his troublesome behaviors were over though. In 1980, Wilder was again arrested; this time the charges 13 were attempted rape. He had offered a teen-age girl a modeling job for what he said was a pizza advertisement. The girl was given a piece of pizza by Wilder and was told to chew it slowly while he took pictures of her. The pizza that Wilder had supplied to the girl was drugged. When the drugged pizza took sufficient effect on the girl, Wilder put her in his car and tried to rape her. She managed to escape, however. At his trial for this offense, Wilder stated that he had done this sort of thing many times before. He plead guilty to a lesser charge and was given five years of proba­ tion as a sentence. Then in 1982, Wilder traveled to Australia where he was once again arrested. He had picked up two fifteen year old girls from a beach and had taken them to a park. Once at the park, Wilder forced the girls to strip and pose for pornographic pictures. The two girls were then bound and gagged and transported to a hotel. Wilder subjected them to more pornographic picture taking and then released them. They went straight to the police. Subsequently, Wilder was arrested the next day on the charges of kidnapping and indecent assault. Wilder was able to post bond by telling the Court that he had pressing business in Florida that he had to attend to. He was released after he promised that he would return to Australia for the trial. It was to take place in April, 1984. What Wilder did for the next two years is unknown, Risico from a shopping mall. He took her to a motel and sexually abused her. He also gave her electric shocks for hours. He did not kill her though; instead, he kept her alive and by his side for the duration of his murder spree. She later stated that she went along with his wishes, which is why he decided to let her live. By t~is time, Wilder had been placed on the Ten Most 16 Wanted List by the FBI. He still was able to evade authorities, however. And on April la, 1984, Wilder and Tina were in Merrilleville, Indiana. They went to the Southlake Shopping Mall in Merrilleville, where Wilder sent Tina hunting for a girl. Tina looked for any pretty girl and found one, a teenage girl, within the mall. Tina told this girl that her boyfriend was a professional photographer and wanted the girl to pose for some pictures. The girl was then led easily to Wilder's car by Tina, whereupon Wilder pulled a gun on the Indiana girl, tied her up and put her in the backseat of the car. Wilder climbed into the backseat and sexually abused the girl while Tina drove out of Indiana. On April 12, 1984, the three of them had made their way to New York. In a wooded area in New York, Wilder stabbed the girl from Indiana many times and left her for dead. She did not die, however. She was able to stagger to a road where she flagged down a car. She was able to give the police and the FBI a lot of information about Wilder. Wilder had killed his last victim by this time. He had shot her in the head and had stolen her car. Wilder then did something out of character; he let Tina go. He bought her an airplane ticket and put her on a plane to California. Before she boarded the plane, Wilder handed her a roll of money and kissed her on the cheek. Wilder's rampage was over on April 13, 1984, when he stopped at a small store in New Hampshire. Two police officers drove by as Wilder was pulling into the store parking lot. The officers recognized the car Wilder drove as being stolen from a woman who had been shot. Therefore, the officers stopped to investigate. One of the policemen approached Wilder, causing Wilder to draw his gun. The officer jumped on top of Wilder, who was sitting in the front seat of the stolen car. Wilder fired two shots from his gun; one of the shots wounded the policeman. The other went through Wilder's own heart. Wilder had made his last kill. 17 .-. - JOHN WAYNE GACY, Jr. On December 21, 1978, police investigators and crime lab technicians entered the home of John Wayne Gacy, Jr., a thirty-six year old construction contractor. Gacy had just been arrested that afternoon, in the city of Chicago, in connection with the murder if fifteen year old Robert Piest. Piest had last been known to be in the company of Gacy before his disappearance. Police knew Gacy had killed the boy because Gacy had been positively linked to Piest. Nonetheless, the body of the boy had not been yet found. Police had obtained a search warrant which allowed them to search the crawl space under John Wayne Gacy's home, which was in the suburbs of Chicago. They were looking for Robert Piest's body. What they found was much worse. For when the excavation of Gacy's house was finally completed, the bodies of twenty-nine young boys and men had been unearthed in the crawl space and in various other places around Gacy's home. People who knew Gacy were shocked, disgusted, and confused. Gacy had been a well-liked, well-respected man. He was generous and kind to those around him, or so people thought. In reality, he had been killing young men secretly for years and was a depraved man who had been able to mask his insanity from society for much too long. Johr Wayne Gacy, Jr. was born on March 17, 1942, to Marion and John Stanley Gacy, Sr. in Chicago, Illinois. John, Jr. had an older sister and a younger sister. John 21 a magic trick. Instead, Gacy throttled the boy's neck until Lynch almost lost consciouness and urinated allover him­ self. At last, Gacy let Lynch go, apologized profusely, and drove the dazed, frightened boy home. He also fired Lynch, and Lynch went straight to the police. John was tried for and convicted of sodomy; he was sentenced to ten years at the Iowa State Reformatory which caused his wife to immediately divorce him. After sixteen months of being incarcerated, Gacy was paroled which was mostly due to the fact that he had been a model prisoner. Gacy was released in June, 1970. John moved to Chicago, where his mother lived. His father had died while John was in prison, and he had not even been allowed to go to his father's funeral. As a matter of fact, he had learned of his father's death and funeral only after both had taken place. And only eight months after John left prison and moved to Chicago, he was in the midst of trouble with the law again. He was arrested and charged with assaulting a teenaged boy whom he had picked up from a bus station. The boy had allegedly propositioned Gacy, enraging him and making him hurl the boy from the car. The case was ultimately dismissed. In August, 1971, John moved to the house at 8213 Summer­ dale in the suburbs of Chicago. This was the structure that would ultimately store the bodies of twenty-nine young men. Also in August, Gacy met a young male named Mikel Reid with whom Gacy became friendly. So friendly, in fact, that Gacy had Mikel move into the Summerdale house. They had sexual relations a few times, but Mikel soon became frightened of Gacy. One time, John hit Reid in the head with a hammer, and he hit Reid in the head with a tire iron another time. These attacks were unprovoked according to Mikel. Thus, Mikel soon moved out of the house. But after Reid left, Gacy met Cathy Hull, and he fell in love with her. He married her on July I, 1972. Cathy had two young daughters from a previous marriage, and John was a wonderful father figure to them. But by the time John had married Cathy, he had already committed the first in what was to become a string of murders. On January 2, 1972, in the early morning, John picked up a boy from the bus station. John had been drinking and cruising; he was in search of someone with whom he could 22 engage in homosexual sex. He found someone at the bus station. John could not remember the youth's name in later years, but he could remember the events that had taken place on that early morning. John took the boy home, and they each had a few drinks. They then had oral sex with each other, after which they went to bed. John claimed that he had been aroused from his sleep sometime later because the boy was standing over his bed with a butcher knife in his hand. A struggle ensued which ended with John stabbing and killing the young male. John, at ~irst, was at a loss as to what to do with the body. He finally decided that he had to keep the murder a secret. So he hauled the body into the crawl space, dug a grave to put it in, and buried it. This was not to be the last t.ime that John Gacy would be engaged in such activity. After marrying Cathy, John started his own business; he became a contractor for construction, and he worked long, hard hours in order to get his business off of the ground. He was successful in doing this. John's marriage started off well but got progressively worse. John had hired a lot of teenaged boys for his business, and it seemed to Cathy that he spent more time with these boys than he did with her and the girls. When Cathy and John first got married, they had a very good, fulfilling sex life. After a year or so, this aspect of their marriage began to slack off until finally sex was nonexistent in their marriage. One night, in 1975, John announced to Cathy that they would make love for the last time. When Cathy asked him why this was so, John replied that he had always been a bisexual, but that now he had slipped completely over to being a homosexual. Soon after John made this confession, he found his marriage over. Cathy divorced him. John found himself alone in his Summerdale horne and alone in his thoughts. John's thoughts were murderous; hence, in 1975, John entered the world of the serial murderer. His murders are too numerous to go into with depth. John usually killed his victims late at night or early in the morning. He always killed them in his horne. Only teenagers - - was found. As Gacy's past was investigated by detectives, they became more and more suspicious of him. Police inter- viewed people who had been involved with Gacy and learned of his sexual preferences. They also discovered that many of Gacy's former employees were missing. They became quite 26 sure that Gacy had killed these missing boys, but they could not prove this. Gacy did nothing incriminating while he was under sur- veillance. But a small yet significant breakthrough in the case came when police brought six teams of dogs into the garage where Gacy's car had been impounded. There were sixteen other cars in the garage, and the dogs were unleashed in order that they might explore all of the cars. The dogs sniffed around all of the vehicles, inside and out. Terry Sullivan, author of Killer Clown, witnessed the dogs explor- ation of all of the cars, including Gacy's. He wrote this of the experience. "Finally, one small German Sheperd approached Gacy's black Oldsmobile. I got a chill down my spine when she got in the passenger side and lay down on the seat. That, according to her handler, was the 'death reaction' and clear confirmation that John Gacy's car had been used to transport the body of Robert Piest (Sullivan, 1983)." Still, the body could not be found, and, thus, Gacy could not be formally charged with murder. Finally, however, on December 21, 1978, the police surveillance team followed Gacy to the office of his lawyer. The team waited in the lobby of the office while Gacy held a conference with his lawyer. The conference was long, and when it was over, Gacy and his lawyer, along with two other lawyers who had sat in on the conference, appeared. All of the lawyers were shaken and nervous. The surveillance team ascertained 27 that Gacy had confessed murdering the Piest boy to the lawyers; they did not know that Gacy had actually confessed to thirty­ three murders. Later that day, Gacy was arrested on a charge of possession of marijuana. The police were working on a second search warrant for Gacy's home. They arrested Gacy on the small marijuana charge because they were afraid of losing him at this critical point. And so, the police entered Gacy's home on December 21, and began to uncover, to their horror, bodies of boys and young men. Months later. Gacy's house was torn down, but only after twenty-nine bodies had been removed from it. Four others, including Robert Piest's, were recovered from the river. Gacy admitted to all of the thirty-three killings~ there was no way he could deny them. EDMUND EMIL KEMPER III Edmund Kemper was the second of three children. He was born to Edmund Emil II and Clarnell Kemper in 1948. Edmund II and Clarnell had a stormy relationship, and when little Edmund was still quite young, Mr. Kemper left the family. Clarnell was a big woman who lashed out at Edmund III with extreme verbal abuse. She abused him harshly, both mentally and physically. Once the elder Kemper came to visit the family and found that for eight months in a row, Clarnell had been forcing little Edmund to sleep in the basement as a form of punishment. Edmund was a withdrawn, isolated little boy. He was also a little boy who became mentally unbalanced at an early age. He took to cutting off the heads and hands of his sisters' favorite dolls when he was young. He also had a list of people whom he wished dead. This list included his teachers and friends of his mother. Before Edmund was ten years of age, he brought to life his preoccupation with death. At this time, Edmund killed one of his cats by burying it alive in his backyard. He then cut off the cat's head when it was dead, and he put the head on a spindle and kept it in his room until it reached the point of decomposition. This incident did not repeat itself until he thirteen years old when, for no apparent reason, Edmund suddenly cut off the top of the skull of his Siamese cat. He repeatedly upon Edmund's release that the doctors felt was absolutely imperative was that Edmund should not be placed under his mother's care. And into his mother's arms was exactly where Edmund went upon his release. Ultimately, Edmund became a serial Killer. In 1972, Edmund, still living with his mother, began playing out the fantasies he had lived with for what to him must have seemed like forever. He began killing college coeds. In an extensive interview for HBO's program Murder: No Apparent Motive, Edmund talked at length of his crimes. He, of course, can tell his story better than anyone else. Thus, his story, in his words, is presented here. INTERVIEW WITH EDMUND KEMPER Q: "What did people see?" K: "A nice guy." Q: "You were able to appear like a ordinary person, not threatening ... " '")1 K: "I lived as an ordinary person most of my life even though I was living a parallel and increasingly sick other life. One victim let me back in the car. I locked myself out. She opened the door for me. My gun was under the seat. What in the Hell am I doing telling you that? Am I a masochist? Am I looking to be tormented further? I'm trying to show you just awful this got, how commanding these rages got. I was raging inside; there was just incredible enegies-positive and negative­ depending on my mood, that would trigger one or the other, and outside I looked troubled at times, other times I looked moody, other times perfectly serene, not very sane, but again people weren't even aware of what was happening." Q: "You were involved in the campus because your mother worked there?" K: "Yes, I was also involved in killing coeds because my mother was associated with college work, college coeds, women, and had had a very strong and violently outspoken position on men for much of my upbringing." [Speaking about murdering women because of his rage against his mother.] ,- "I distill a doubt into one word realities like that; there's a lot that lends into that happening, but that's what happened. It represented not what my mother was, but what she liked, what she coveted, what was important to her-, and I was destroying it." Q: "Why did you actually kill the girls?" K: "My fr-ustration, my inability to communicate socially, sexually; I wasn't impotent but emotionally I was impotent. I was scared to death of failing in male/female rela­ tionships. I knew absolutely nothing about that whole area. Even just sitting down and talking with a young lady. I need to be able to really communicate and ironically enough that's why I began picking people up and I'm picking up young women and I'm going a little bit farther each time. It's a daring kind of a thing. At first there wasn't a gun. I'm driving along. We go to a vulnerable place where there aren't people watching, where I can act out, and I say 'no, I can't.' And then a gun is in the car, hidden. And this craving, this awful raging, eating feeling inside. I could feel it consuming my insides, this fantastic passion. Uh, it was overwhelming me. It was like drugs; it was like alcohol-a little isn't enough. At first it is and as you adjust to that psychologically and physically, you take more and more and more. It's the same process. It finally came down to the thing of do I dare bring this gun out, already realizing if that gun comes out something has to happen. [Speaking about the two roommates he killed in Berkeley.] K: "In that first killing in May of '72, when that gun was pulled out, I lodged it out. I hid it under my leg and the seat. It was something that had been thought out in fantasy, acted out, felt out hundreds of times before it ever happened." [He drove the two girls, whom he had picked up because they were hitchhiking, at gunpoint to a wooded area and took one of the girls into the woods and stabbed her to death.] K: "I had just gone through a horrible experience with her roommate, stabbing her, and I was in shock because of it. I couldn't believe that it was that way, and I'm walking back there bewildered; 'I got to kill her. I can't let her go. She's going to tell on me. Every­ body's going to get me.' She sees the blood on my hands. 'What are you doing?' She pulled back and she gasped, and I think 'Whoa, I don't want her to know what happened.' I said 'your friend got smart with me.' She'd been getting really smart with me a lot, but I never hit her; I killed her, but I didn't hit her. I said 'you friend got smart with me, and I hit her. Q: K: I think I broke her nose. You better come help.' She's about to die; why does she have to know that? I couldn't deal with telling her that. And when I attacked, she didn't at first realize what was happening. It didn't go through. She has very heavy coveralls on. It knocked her right up on the lid of the car, but it didn't pierce the clothing. It wasn't that swell of a knife anyway. I went out and bought a pawnshop, huge knife and, uh, I kept on mindlessly attacking. She falls back into the trunk. I just killed a young woman. I slammed down the lid of the trunk. She isn't dead; she's dying. And I panicked, I thought 'I just locked the car keys" 'cause I can't find them in my pocket; 'Oh my God, I locked them in the trunk.' I'm kicking on the trunk lid and yanking on it. 'Oh no, I don't believe this.' I started to run, and I tripped over the gun that I'd had in my pants that I had totally forgotten was there. I stopped, I said 'stop and think.' I collected my wi ts. 'Check all your pockets.' I picked the gun up, I stuck it back in my pants now remembering I had one. I checked all my pockets, and there's the keys in the back pocket. I never put 'em in my back pocket. "I thought I was pretty slick and went and just tripped allover myself that first two murders. That first twenty-four hours, there were three clear times I should have been busted, and I wasn't because three different individuals or three different groups of people got scared and minded their own business and looked the other way. "My mother worked at the campus, and I had an A sticker on my car and obvious access day or night to the campus." "So how come they'd get in a car at that time?" "She judged me not to be that guy. I didn't look like it. "It was getting easier to do. I was getting better at it. I was getting less detectable. I started flaunting that invisibility. Severing a human head, two of them, at night, in front of my mother's residence with her at home, my neighbors at home upstairs, their picture window open, the curtains open, at 11:00 at night, the lights are on. All they have to do is walk by, look out, and I've had it. Some people go crazy at that point. I felt it. It was one hell of a tweak. I mean to just flip out and not know where I was, to be walking up to my apartment past a happy young couple coming down the stairs, who nodded and smiled at me as they went by. 'Good evening.' They're going out on a date where I'd love to be going. And I'm aware of both of these realities, and the distance between those two was so dramatic, so amazing, so violent that-that really, I could feel the wheels squeaking inside. That was really pulling on them, and I imagine at that point hear em. No, because it'll never open again.' You know, so I - I - I, uh, rationalized that to give up would be insane, to give up would be crazy. I'd be giving away my freedom, and I don't need to. But I look back on that and wish I had earlier when I was saying those things to myself. The people who were later dead wouldn't be; the regret that came later would've not had to be. Those people, not things, those people would still be with their families, with their loved ones if I had had the courage to make that decision instead of painting myself into a corner." Q: "When~ might you be if you'd had never given in to the impulse to murder?" K: "Where might I be? [Sigh.] If my parole had been success­ ful, uh, I believe I'd be married and have children. I'd be heading toward my first grandchildren." K: "If there's somebody out there that is watching this and hasn't done that, hasn't killed people and wants to and rages inside and struggles with that feeling or is so sure they have it under control, they need to talk to somebody about it. Trust somebody enough to sit down and talk about something. That isn't a crime - thinking that way isn't a crime. Doing it isn't just a crime; it's a horrible thing. It doesn't know when to quit, and it can't be stopped easily once it starts." Edmund Kemper was truly a sadistic murderer. He did turn himself in to authorities, but only after he killed eight girls and women. The HBO interview failed to disclose many of the indignities that Kemper imposed upon his victims once they were dead. He dissected his victims' bodies and kept parts of their flesh and skin as morbid trophies. Kemper also took poloroid pictures of the corpses. Being a necrophiliac, Kemper had sex with many of the bodies, including his mother's. He kept the heads of the coeds whom he had killed until decay set in. He buried the head of one of the dead girls in his mother's backyard so he could talk to it and be close to it. He visited his victims' graves. He wanted the girls to be his possessions; knowing he could not own them in life, he took them in death. Edmund ate two of his victim's flesh. He cut flesh from their legs because he wanted them to be a part of his blood and by eating them they were. After Edmund was taken into custody, he granted an interview to Marj Von Beroldingen, a writer for a magazine. He told hE!r during this interview, "You haven't asked me the questions I expected a reporter to ask: What is it like to have sex with a dead body? And what does it feel like to sit on your living room couch and see two decapi­ tated girls' heads on the arms of the couch?" He then answered his own questions. "The first time, it makes you sick to your stomach (Cheney, 1976)." '),7 Edmund went on with asking and answering his own questions. "What do you think, now, when you see a pretty girl walking down the street? One side says wow, what an attractive chic. I'd like to talk to her, date her. The other side of me says I wonder how her head would look on a stick (Cheney, 1976)." Clearly, Edmund was filled with a sick sense of humor. After Edmund killed his mother on Easter weekend of 1973, He decided that he should kill one of her friends in order to make people think that his mother and a friend went off together for the holiday weekend. This would explain his mother's absence and cover up his crime. Therefore, Edmund called his mother's best friend, Sally Hallet, and invited her to dinner. He killed her only minutes after she arrived. By that time he had already dismembered his mother's body. He severed her hands and put them in the garbage disposal. He also cut out his mother's larnyx and put it down the garbage disposal. Explaining this last action, Kemper claimed, "this seemed appropriate as much as she'd bitched and screamed at me over the years (Cheney, 1976)." The one thing that Kemper can be commended for, if ever so slightly, is the fact that he did turn himself in. For, Kemper certainly had the smarts and the anger, along with the extreme mental illness, which could have enabled him to kill for years. felt that his erratic, bizarre behaviors were caused by his ingestion of drugs. In actuality, Herb was mentally sick and his normal behavior only appeared when his schizo­ phrenia was in remission. Herb failed the psychological test given to him for 41 the Coast Guard. Do he tried to join the Marines. He passed all of their tests; yet he refused to sign the waiver of his criminal record because he claimed that the listing of his crimes was wrong. He had once been arrested for possession of an illegal substance which had turned out to be merely antipsychotic drugs prescribed to him by his psychiatrist. The arrest was still listed on his record which angered Herb. Although the Mullins felt that Herb's only motive for wanting to join a branch of the Armed Services was his desire to serve his country and to straighten out his life, Herb had a completely strange and demented motive for wanting to join the services. Herb's schizophrenia had been toying with his mind and had planted some weird ideas within it. Herb began to believe that an earthquake was going to rock California, and he also believed that the mission of saving California from this earthquake fell to him alone. Herb came to believe that human sacrifices had to be made in order to stop the earthquak!~. Herb had decided that only military personnel knew about this method of stopping earthquakes since legalized killing existed in abundance in the military. Since Herb was not allowed entry into any branch of the Armed Services, he decided that he had to kill illegally in order to prevent the earthquake that was going to come to California. After Herb was taken into police custody, which was after he had killed thirteen people, he was interviewed extensively by Dr. Donald T. Lunde, a psychiatrist. Dr. Lunde uncovered, after hours of conversation, Herb's true reason for killing. Dr. Lunde recalled: "He told me that if I would prepare a chronology of the world's wars and famines and compare it with a list of the world's major earthquakes throughout history, I would see that when the death rate goes up, the number of earthquakes and other natural disasters go down (Lunde, 1980)." Herb's schizophrenia fed this delusion to him. Herb had his first hallucination in 1972 when he was twenty- five years old; this hallucination was in the form of his father's voice which stated, "people have been abusing your nature too long, and people who have been abusing you should be killed (Lunde, 1980)." Thus, Herb felt the he was under pressure to kill because his father was ordering him to 42 kill as was his belief that killing would prevent the inevitable earthquake. The first person Herb killed was an old man named Lawrence White. White had been walking down a highway in Santa Cruz, and Herbert had engaged him in conversation and ended up killing him by bludgeoning him with a baseball bat. Herb told Dr. Lunde that the old man had telepathically told Herb to kill him in order to prevent the earthquake. Herb left the corpse in brush along the side of the road. On October 24, 1972, Herb killed again; this time he picked up a Cabrillo College student, Mary Guilfoyle, who was hitchhiking. He stabbed her to death and left her corpse in a wooded area. Herb struck again on November 2, when he stabbed to death a Priest in the Saint Mary's catholic Church. The Priest's name was Henri Tomei. Herb had been in the church when a voice told him telepathically to kill someone. The Priest had been the only person there. Next, Herb killed a woman named Kathy Francis and her two young sons on January 25, 1973. He had come upon them at their residence when he had gone there to inquire of Kathy as to the whereabouts of a James Gianerra. The Francis family were close friends of the Gianerra family. After Kathy had told Herb where Gianerra lived, He went to the Gianerra residence and shot to death James Gianerra and his wife. He then returned to the Francis residence and shot to death Kathy and her boys. after they were dead. He also stabbed them On February 3, 1973, four boys who were camping in the Henry Cowell State Park in California were accosted by Herbert Mullin. Herb told them they would have to leave the area or he would report them to the forest rangers; the boys tried to talk him out of reporting them which made Herb angry. He shot all of them to death. Herb's final killing took place on February 13, 1973. He shot to death a seventy-two year old man named Fred Perez .- and he, therefore, expected his father to be arrested. Herb also told Dr. Lunde that each of his victims had wanted him to kill them, and they told him so using mental telepathy because they wanted to do their part in preventing the impending earthquake. Herb had felt animosity toward only one of his victims, James Gianerra, whom Herb had known since High school. Herb had bought drugs on occasion from Gianerra. Speaking of Gianerra, Herb stated: "James Gianerra had plotted against me. He had been belittling me behind my back for years. He also sold me the drugs which harmed my mind. About the turn of the year, I really began thinking about my life and my life's mission [preventing earthquakes]. I woke up one morning and knew that I had to kill Gianerra (Lunde, 1980)." Herb truly believed that he had indeed prevented an earthquake through his sacrifice of thirteen people, and he also believed that these people had been willing to die. Edmund Kemper was in a cell right next to Herb's when Kemper turned himself in to authorities; Mullin felt Kemper was an awful, horrible person. Mull in fel t thi sway because Kemper only killed for sex and pleasure, but Herb himself had killed for the purpose of preventing earthquakes. Herb 46 was, therefore, never to feel remorse for his killings because he truly believed that he had killed for the benefit of society. DONALD HARVEY In 1987, a nurse's aide named Donald Harvey confessed to authorities that he had killed some fifty-eight people over sixteen years. He had been working at Drake Hospital in Cincinnatti, Ohio, when he came under the suspicion of the hospital authorities. A coma patient who had been on Harvey's \{ard had suddenly died after showing signs of recovery. This patient, forty-four year old John Powell, had been the subject of an autopsy after his seemingly mysterious death. surprising. The results of the autopsy were very Mr. Powell was found to have a large amount of cyanide in his stomach, blood, and internal organs. It was clear that he had been fatally poisoned with cyanide; however, it was unclear as to who had done the poisoning. Employees of the ward where Powell had been cared for were called into the hospital for polygraph testing in order to establish for administrators their guilt or innocence in the death. Donald Harvey was called in and never showed up for the polygraph test. But he went to hospital authorities a few days later and confessed to murdering John Powell. The people who knew Donald Harvey, along with his super­ visors at Drake, were unbelieving of the fact that Donald was a confessed killer. They were so unbelieving, in fact, that most did not even consider the question of whether Harvey had killed other patients without being detected; however, a television news reporter became interested in the possibility of Harvey killing others. to investigate that possibility. So he proceeded The newsman found that the ward in which Harvey had worked had a higher death rate than any other ward at Drake Hospital. This occurrence had only started after Harvey began working at Drake. The prosecutor in Cincinnatti had 48 only enough concrete evidence to try Harvey on one murder. Neither he nor the newsman could come up with any solid evidence which would prove that Harvey was a multiple killer. Donald Harvey finally did confess to his defense attorney that he had killed some fifty-eight people over many years. Because the prosecutor could not get evidence on Harvey to pin him to more than one murder, Harvey's lawyer was able to strike a deal with the prosecutor. The prosecutor agreed to trade with Harvey life imprisonment for a full confession about all of the people Harvey had killed. Otherwise., Donald Harvey risked getting the death penalty for the killing of John Powell. Harvey was able to save his own life even after the taking of so many other lives. Donald's mother was crushed by what her son had done, but she still loved him deeply. She, Goldie McKinney, gave birth to Donald in a small town in Kentucky when she was only seventeen years old. He was the oldest of three children. Goldie thought that she had provided Donald with an ideal childhood.. Not until Donald was arrested for murder did she learn that Donald had had a horrible childhood experience.