Eupraxia Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I was tempted to post this in the Good reads on Wikipedia thread, however I think a few users of this forum have a similar morbid interest in the activity and behaviour of serial killers. Perhaps this thread could start a discussion. Anyway, there is a great matrix of serial killers by number of victims, with links to pretty much every convict. I recently started reading extensively about the Yorkshire Ripper, and found a pretty useful (if seemingly highly amateur) website focusing an all the different elements of his activity, arrest, and trial. I found it really interesting. Which cases are of particular interest to you? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemonade Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I've read a couple books on Dennis Nilsen, mostly because he's a Fraseburgh boy like myself. I've also read one on Fred and Rose West, which was tough going, also read one on Iain Huntley, one on Harold Shipman, one on Jack The Ripper, and loads of Worlds Worst Serial Killer types with bits on all the famous ones, Crippen, Dahmer, Boston Strangler, Ed Gein etc. Bit of a mad one was old Gein. Skinned his victims and made a woman suit out of the skin. Also made lamps and seat coverings and stuff. I have a bit of an interest in the topic myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemonade Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 "Searching the house, authorities found:[17]Four nosesWhole human bones and fragments[18]Nine masks of human skin[19]Bowls made from human skullsTen female heads with the tops sawn offHuman skin covering several chair seatsMary Hogan's head in a paper bag[20]Bernice Worden's head in a burlap sack[21]Nine vulvae in a shoe box[22]A belt made from female human nipples[23]Skulls on his bedpostsA pair of lips on a drawstring for a window shadeA lampshade made from the skin of a human face" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stroopy121 Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 Great thread. My favourite is Dexter, but I kinda like Hannibal, too. Not quite the same bracket as "serial killers" but I'm fascinated by the Manson family. But yeah, Ed Gein was....something else! xx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemonade Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I watched a program about Bible John the other night which was interesting. Made some good arguments for it being Peter Tobin but we'll probably never know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkDrummer Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I absolutely fucking love documentaries about serial killers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jester1470 Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eupraxia Posted January 10, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I watched a great documentary last night focusing on the Moors Murderers, and I have done extensive background reading on the case. I'll link it once I'm home tonight. Any other links to good serial killer documentaries would be very welcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottyboy Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 (edited) Yeah I've done a bit of morbid reading and viewing, mostly just on Wikipedia/Youtube. TBH few of them turn out to be very interesting, most seem pretty stupid and are mainly into raping and killing women and/or kids; not your class act Hannibal the Cannibal. Pretty much all had some shitty abusive upbringing and suffer a serious mental illness or three, usually anti-social disorders (or pscho-/sociopathy). The various interviews with Ed Kemper are pretty interesting. He's very articulate (IQ of 145 apparently) and pleasant, not stereotypically shallow and dismissive. And as it happens he did the most batshit stuff imaginable, including killing both his grandparents as a child (apparently just for the banter), and lastly his mother (and raped her severed head, of course, before using it as a dartboard). Really did not like his mother it seems (they all have "complicated" relationships with their mothers): he tried and failed to stuff her vocal chords into the garbage grinder ("seemed appropriate; never could get her to shut up") and buried a severed head in his garden (in between family members he bumped off students and raped their corpses) so he could giggle to himself whenever she mentioned wanting people "to look up to her". The HBO interviews with "The Iceman" (Kuklinski) are pretty interesting, partly because they seem to be almost total fantasy. If the guy is to be believed about everything, he was a one-man army whose life included spells as both a serial thrill killer and mob hitman, who killed hundreds of people in New York and New Jersey (including all his friends, anyone who knew anything about him), and went completely undetected for decades. [He was only convicted of a handful of murders, again mostly from stuff that came out of his own mouth]. Mentioned it in another thread, but "Bikini Killer" Charles Sobhraj (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Killer) was kind of an Asian Charles Manson (who did personally kill his victims, members of his own crime "families" in fact) whose escapades across the South and South East Asian backpacker circuits (and prisons) read like a horror parody of a picaresque novel. Jeffrey Dahmer is an example of one who seemed relatively normal, in terms of his upbringing and mental health (at least once he sobered up in prison...) while having done some very deranged, nasty stuff. Edited January 10, 2014 by scottyboy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dakota Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 My grandmother used to know Dennis Nilsen's mother. Not sure if they were friends or not, but she lived close to her. Poor woman. As a kid I went to some wax museum, can't remember whether it was the Edinburgh Dungeon or what, but his figure was there and my granny scared the shit out of me by telling me she knew him, where he was and that he liked to dress dead people up... That's my contribution to this thread, lol. Watching documentaries on these things creeps me the fuck out, chopped up limbs being found in the plumbing and when they found all these bodies buried under his house. EUGH. :S In other news, some bat shit insanity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XREnvJRkif0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattJimF Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but my uncle was in the same year, and some classes as Nilson at academy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dakota Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but my uncle was in the same year, and some classes as Nilson at academy. Unlucky. Hope he didn't talk to him. :S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattJimF Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 Unlucky. Hope he didn't talk to him. :SFrom what he's said, he was an odd child. Not sure if they were at primary as well, but his mother was a bit odd as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ca_gere Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 Good thread. Recently watched a documentary about Dahmer. Him and Bundy are the ones that interest me the most. Like Scottyboy says, it's the seemingly normal personality they had that gives me the chills. The drama film about Bundy is pretty good too. Link to the dahmer doc: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1779076/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaaakkkeee Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I watched a documentary called Cropsey. Quite cool in a morbid way. The Manson family doc on Netflix is pants. The documenter is so self-indulgent. But youtube has some great stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottyboy Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 Bundy was pretty much the archetypal Bateman-esque psycho. He seems normal and intelligent but people who were around him long-term (his girlfriend, legal teams, prison guards etc.) could tell he wasn't all there. He was floored by witnesses placing him in incriminating times/places because he couldn't understand that someone would pay enough mind to other people to remember details like that. He was also a kleptomaniac and calculated liar who'd never really take responsibility for anything (his last interview, in which he made apparently heartfelt statements contradicting anything he'd said previously on the subject, and which just so happened to match the interviewer's pet views, is pretty telling). He'd also just lose the plot and behave bizarrely at times. It's also worth bearing in mind that when he actually killed people he was always completely hammered on booze. Dahmer on the other hand seemed to take/show genuine responsibility/remorse and was one of the few who was apparently not a psychopath (but had some other personality disorder). Though like Bundy he was a raging alcoholic who by the time he was caught was drinking his way through heaps of beer with a bloated corpse on one side and a drugged and still alive victim on the other. He'd then go out to do more drinking while leaving the two alone with each other. Lovely, and clearly not criminal genius. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eupraxia Posted January 10, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 I watched a great documentary last night focusing on the Moors Murderers, and I have done extensive background reading on the case. I'll link it once I'm home tonight. Any other links to good serial killer documentaries would be very welcome. This is the documentary on Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. It primarily focuses on the remaining body of Keith Bennett, and how Ian Brady is probably clinging on to the whereabouts of his grave to exercise his intellectual superiority over the entire investigation. Ian Brady described his actions as an "existential experience" and he was always very interested in the idea of demonstrating his superiority over a weaker specimen/organisation. He was very interested in Nazi ideology and Friedrich Nietzsche. He seemed besotted with the notion of the "perfect crime", and by keeping the whereabouts of the final victim's grave, he feels he has committed the perfect crime. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Surfer_Rosa Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eupraxia Posted January 14, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 14, 2014 I love an unsolved serial killer case: Jack the Stripper 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flights Posted January 15, 2014 Report Share Posted January 15, 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_Girl_Annihilator Best serial killer name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eupraxia Posted January 15, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2014 Some monikers attributed to criminal cases are quite humorous, like the Batman Rapist case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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