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Serial Killers

Man, 78, confesses to 90 unsolved murders over four decades, say police
A man being held in Texas has confessed to the killings of as many as 90 people over the past four decades.
Investigators in Louisiana and Georgia confirmed they were able to close four unsolved murder cases after Samuel Little, 78, who is already serving a life sentence for three murders in California, claimed to reveal all to officers.
According to a police memo, officers said the man provided details on two killings in Houma, Louisiana, "that only the murderer would have known".
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Kind of hard to know exactly where to get started on the most "unpleasant," to say the least, subject of Albert Fish, the "Werewolf of Wisteria," and the "Vampire of Brooklyn," but for those of us familiar with this case, it does need some discussion.

And, being a relative newcomer to Fortean Times, I have not read all of the past threads about Mr. Fish and his atrocities.

But, I do wonder just how much of what is remembered about, or discussed about, the case today, might be folklore and what might be actual fact.

My introduction to Mr. Fish and his atrocities, was in a one shot news-stand magazine, titled, "Famous Executions," following the execution of Gary Gilmore, said at the time, to be an execution comparable to that of Caryl Chessman and the Rosenbergs.

But, in the years since then, is Gary Gilmore even remembered today?

I read the biography of Robert Elliott, "Agent of Death," the man who travelled around the New England states, as an "electrician," who electrocuted condemned prisoners.

Mr. Elliott debunked the often told folk tale that the needles in Mr. Fish's body caused the electrocution of Mr. Fish to malfunction, and a second shock was required to complete the electrocution.

Yet, I saw a paperback book on odd newspaper stories, title, "The Man Who Shorted Out the Electric Chair," along with other weird stories.

I'd wonder how much study of the Fish case the author of that book had done?

Did he read Mr. Elliott's book?

Well, if the author of that book could sell his book to a publisher and interested readers would buy it, More Power To Him.

But as far as "truth," whatever that might be, goes, the book did not make any contribution.

One matter I have wondered about, is a claim that Albert Fish made a pilgrimage to a bawdy house in Brussels, Belgium.

When reading that, I just wondered how someone who didn't really earn all that much of an income could have made such a trip abroad?

And, at least one other person has also asked that same question, with doubts about the story.

Has anyone here on this message board, been able to, or at least tried to, determine what the real, indisputable facts of the Albert Fish case were, and what is just possibly, or probably untrue folklore?
 
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Not sure, but just to say UK readers may know of Gary Gilmore through the punk band The Adverts' hit record Gary Gilmore's Eyes, about a blind man who gets the killer's eyes transplanted into his head because "Gary don't need his eyes to see, Gary and his eyes have parted company".
 
Saucerian said:
...But, in the years since then, is Gary Gilmore even remembered today?
...
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Gilmore is - or should be - well known for having effectively lobbied the authorities to carry out his own execution, having refused to cooperate in any appeal process, and even opposing his own mother's request for a stay of execution. His is often cited as the first execution to take place after the Furman Moratorium (I'm not sure if this is entirely accurate, but it is often quoted as a fact). If this is true (and maybe even if not) then part of his ascent into folklore must surely be that the modern phase of the history of capital punishment in the US was kick started by one of it's own victims. (Furman was, if my memory serves me, the shorter official moratorium which followed a longer term unofficial hiatus in the carrying out of the death penalty - the whole process starting some time in the 60's and lasting for around ten years or so).

It may be a generational thing, but as a kid growing up in the UK in the 70's Gilmore was a name I was familiar from the news. There was something ghoulish but fascinating about a man apparently desperate to be executed, and even about the fact that he chose the method to be employed. This awareness may have been underlined by the fact that Gilmore became something of a reference in punk culture (as illustrated by GNC's post above), and by the success of Mailer's The Executioner's Song.

I think a lot of people growing up in the 70's will have the name Gary Gilmore, and the grim, violent, self-destructive nihilism of his story, written in their experience - even outside the US.
 
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There is one overrarching element which may have done more than anything else to cement Gilmore's place in popular culture - even if most of those familiar with the phrase are unconscious of the connection: Nike's, Just Do It slogan.

I always assumed this was a near coincidence - but apparently not. See Wiki page on the Nike slogan, here.
 
Gilmore's life and pending death was big news here in Australia at the time. I think, certainly here, that's he's remembered most for being one of the few who championed for his own means of execution and was successful.
 
Can you actually even really class Gilmore as a serial killer? It may sound a bit cold-blooded, but two murders in 24 hours barely even makes an extended spree. Gilmore's journey from petty criminal to cold-blooded murderer seems to me to follow a similar trajectory to that of a more modern phenomena - the trajectory which carries petty criminals from Muslim backgrounds - often with no history of radicalisation, or even devoutness - towards the cold-blooded killing of complete strangers. It's as if some people, utterly saturated in a life of crime, reach a tipping point beyond which they can see no option but to step into an abyss which will, in the act of destroying others, destroy themselves.
 
Very good posts from everyone. I think that with the passing of generations, some things, such a true crime stories tend to fade into history, and the memories of these crimes, if kept alive, is mostly through word of mouth folklore, and, for a few of us, those who actually study crime stories.

I was not old enough to remember Albert Fish and the Rosenbergs, Although Ed Gein, and Caryl Chessman were remembered during my younger days.

I pretty much have given up studying true crime stories, because there are so many other things in Heaven and Earth and between Sunset and Dawn, that I am interested in studying.
 
James_H said:
Man, 78, confesses to 90 unsolved murders over four decades, say police
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More about Samuel Little.

An imprisoned murderer is being investigated after confessing to 90 killings across four decades in the US.

The FBI believe Samuel Little, who is 78, may be among the most prolific serial killers in US criminal history. State and federal agencies are now working to match his confessions with the deaths of dozens of women across the country from 1970 to 2005. Investigators say they have already linked him to 34 murders and are working to corroborate many others.

Little is currently serving life in prison after being sentenced in 2014 for the murders of three women. He has been in custody since September 2012 when he was arrested at a Kentucky homeless shelter and transferred to California where he was wanted on a drugs charge. DNA samples taken from Little were then linked to the unsolved deaths of three women in Los Angeles county in 1987 and 1989.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46384197
 
I'm wondering if his admission of the Odessa case and willingness to change prisons isn't some sort of death wish! :confused:
 
Those of you with an interest in serial killers may be experiencing a lot of booking of US local news sites etc. apparently due to GDPR. Time to get a VPN, folks.
 
An ice cold killer.

A Siberian policeman described as Russia's most prolific mass murderer in modern times has been given a second life sentence.

Mikhail Popkov, 53, murdered 55 women and a policeman near Irkutsk between 1992 and 2007. He was already in jail for 22 other murders. He killed the victims after offering them late-night rides in his car. At least 10 were also raped. Popkov was caught in 2012 after a DNA match identified his car.

The victims were all women between the ages of 16 and 40 apart from one male, a policeman. In three cases he was on duty in his police car. Popkov killed them around the city of Angarsk, near Irkutsk, with an axe and hammer. He dumped their mutilated bodies in forests, by the roadside and in a local cemetery. He claimed to be "purging" Angarsk of what he saw as immoral women.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46505746
 
James_H said:
I listened to the first episode of the podcast 'Happy Face', about being the daughter of serial killer Keith Jesperson.

It was very interesting and looks to be a promising series. Of special interest to members of this board, Jesperson's daughter recounts a couple of apparent paranormal happenings as part of the story.

In the first one, she ends up sleeping in the hallway because of unseen entities touching her when she tries to sleep elsewhere. In the morning her father asks her why she's sleeping in the hallway, and she tells him. He says something along the lines of 'Oh them, they're always trying to bother me at night. Just ignore them.'

In the second, she is lying on the couch in a room of her house she later discovers was the scene of a brutal murder. She sees blood on the ceiling (which wouldn't have actually been there), and the cupboard doors of the kitchen are opening and closing on their own.
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Episode 10 goes into more detail about the paranormal aspects of the story. Both father and daughter claim they see and hear ghosts all the time. The father is haunted by his murder victims but claims not to mind.
 
A long but interesting read.

Meet the Serial-Killer Whisperer
This woman has the world’s most comprehensive database on what makes serial killers tick

Last year, in late-July, Sasha Reid went to her desk in her apartment just outside Toronto. Her cat, Giz, hopped onto her lap. It was late, and the sun had already gone down. She booted up her champagne-colored MacBook Air and began searching through recent police reports from Canada, looking for people who had been reported missing for more than 72 hours, which is when most law enforcement agencies open cases.

Reid, a 30-year-old criminologist and developmental psychologist who’s finishing her PhD at the University of Toronto, has been collecting information on missing persons for more than two years. She’s amassed an in-depth database of thousands of them — drawing from official Search and Rescue (SAR) reports, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) database, collecting tips from crime-beat journalists as well as from friends and family of those missing — in order to obtain the age, ethnicity, demographic, and geographical information of victims. For some of this data collection, she’s delegated research responsibilities to 13 volunteer undergraduates at the University of Toronto. Often, she cross-references this database with another database that she’s been working on for closer to four years — her “serial killer” database — which includes up to 600 variables on the behavioral and psychological development of every known serial killer since the fifteenth century, making it the most complete database on the developmental traits of serial killers in existence.

That night in July, while updating her missing persons database, Reid came across a curious pattern. Looking at Ontario police records, she found and entered data on Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam, a thin 40-year-old refugee from Sri Lanka with black hair and sunken brown eyes, who had disappeared in September 2010, and had been last seen leaving a nightclub in Toronto’s gay district. Later in the evening, Reid found and logged Majeed “Hamid” Kayhan, a 58-year-old man who’d come to Toronto from Afghanistan and had also disappeared years earlier, in October 2012, also in Toronto’s gay district. When, later in the evening, she came across Abdulbasir Faizi, a 42-year-old, also from Afghanistan, who had disappeared in December 2010 in Toronto, Reid became particularly suspicious. All were middle-aged men, probably gay, and from a similar geographic area with a similar physical appearance — all had either beards or goatees and brown or black hair. And yet, while they’d been missing for between five and seven years, the police neither had much information on them nor had they linked them together. ...

https://medium.com/s/thenewnew/meet-the-serial-killer-whisperer-dccd0a6c6b9b
 
A popular genealogy website just helped solve a serial killer cold case in Oregon
On Thursday, detectives in Portland, Ore. announced that a long-cold local murder case finally came to a resolution, 40 years after the fact.

In 1979, 20-year-old Anna Marie Hlavka was found dead in the Portland apartment she shared with her fiance and sister. According to police, she was strangled to death and sexually assaulted. Police followed a number of leads and kept tabs on the case for decades without a breakthrough.

Last May, detectives with Portland’s Cold Case Homicide Detail dug back into the case using the methodology made famous when investigators last year tracked down the man believed to be the Golden State Killer.
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A large DNA testing company called Family Tree will now be working with the FBI.
 
Re: the theory discussed by Yith and others about a "spike" in serial killers in the 80s being due to them being raised by traumatised WW2 veterans, wouldn't that also imply an approximate "50s/60s spike" due to that generation being raised by traumatised WW1 vets? Or did it get compounded in aftermath of WW2, where a generation raised by those traumatised by one war who had also been been raised by those traumatised by the previous one?
 
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