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I would have thought that cleaning and health and safety could be addressed with a plastic all-in-one and a face mask?
 
More about serial killer Samuel Little:

"James Holland has heard confessions from many, many murderers. But now one is telling the Texas Ranger he's committed 93 murders himself, making him perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history. The race is on to identify all of the 93 women Samuel Little says he murdered, while the 79-year-old remains alive and continues to cooperate.

littlesketches20.jpg


Information Holland has gathered from Little has led to 50 cold case murders being solved."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-min...o-confessed-to-murdering-93-women-2019-10-04/

The ex-bobby in me is delighted that crimes have been detected, and families given a degree of closure; however, the temptation in police forces to write off a decades-old cold case by pinning it on Little must be strong. Let's hope that the attributions are rigorously scrutinised.

maximus otter
 
If you must have capital punishment I am beginning to think firing squad is the way to go. Less likely to go wrong.

...unless everyone's having a bad day and accidentally just wound the perp.

I'd have thought pure nitrogen or carbon monoxide in a gas chamber would be fairly humane. No gasping for breath, no pain, just drifting away until the ECG says it's over. No mess, no fuss, easily administered, cheap to obtain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation#Capital_punishment
 
Not a serial killer but a bloke who dropped a memory card that he'd written homicide on .. as you do ..

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...arriott-anchorage-alaska-arrest-a9151701.html
Not the sharpest tool in the shed. It reminds me of how Dennis Rader was caught. He asked the police 'can floppy disks be traced?'. The police replied 'no'. They were lying.

Rader was genuinely shocked that he was arrested. “I need to ask you, how come you lied to me? How come you lied to me?” Rader asked police Lt. Ken Landwehr at the start of his interrogation. Landwehr replied, “Because I was trying to catch you.”

So serial murderers are not always evil geniuses, some are evil morons.

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/08/240899/btk-killer-caught-when-how-floppy-disk-dennis-rader
 
Not the sharpest tool in the shed. It reminds me of how Dennis Rader was caught. He asked the police 'can floppy disks be traced?'. The police replied 'no'. They were lying.



So serial murderers are not always evil geniuses, some are evil morons.

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/08/240899/btk-killer-caught-when-how-floppy-disk-dennis-rader

Series two of Mindhunter (Netflix) features BTK and Son of Sam with the respective actors portraying uncanny resemblances, especially in the case of Berkowitz. Worth watching.
 
I'd have thought pure nitrogen or carbon monoxide in a gas chamber would be fairly humane. No gasping for breath, no pain, just drifting away until the ECG says it's over. No mess, no fuss, easily administered, cheap to obtain.

It's already being discussed -

America to trial using nitrogen gas as method of execution

Lethal injection promised to be more humane than the electric chair and gas chamber – but failed, with many prisoners suffering extreme agony for hours. Now some states are trialling nitrogen inhalation.

This is a very interesting article, especially the sections about why sedation is necessary (to protect onlookers from the disturbing sight of prisoners writing and moaning in agony) and why it's hard to achieve (because some drug companies refuse to supply them for this purpose.)
 
There is a swedish movie coming out called Quick. It's about Thomas Quick, the serial killer with a dark secret. The dark secret being that he wasn't actually a serial killer.

There was also a rather plodding documentary doing the rounds a few years back - oddly boring, given the fascinating, and infuriating, nature of the Quick/Bergwall story. I've mentioned it - and Hannes Råstam's book on the case - a few times in the past; most recently on this very thread a couple of years ago (here #535).

I still wonder how many of the investigations into the over thirty real murders attributed to Bergwall have been irredeemably undermined.
 
An ancient Chinese Bathory, Daji (1076-46BC, name in Chinese: 妲己)

I don't think I've seen her on any list of historical serial killers but she seems to have been a real person and fits the bill, though I'm not sure if she had a personal hand in the deaths ascribed to her.


Of course history is written by the victors. Her partner was given the posthumous title 'King Zhou of Shang', a 'Zhou' in this case being the piece of equestrian gear most often covered in horseshit. In histories written after their defeat, Zhou and Daji were accused of several atrocities - not least of all serving human meat pies to relatives of the deceased, Titus Andronicus style.

The pair were alleged to put on parties that would put Caligula to shame, featuring orgies and 'a lake of wine and a forest of meat', an expression still used in Chinese to signify gross excess.

Daji was a sadist and had several people murdered to satisfy her curiosity about human anatomy. Quote from Wikipedia:

Daji's greatest joy was to hear people cry in physical torment. Once, she saw a farmer walking barefoot on ice and ordered his feet cut off so she could study them and figure out why they were so resistant to low temperatures. On another occasion, she had a pregnant woman's belly cut open so it satisfied her curiosity to find out what happened inside. To verify an ancient saying that "a good man's heart has seven apertures", she even had the heart of the minister Bi Gan (King Zhou's uncle) dug out and subjected to her scrutiny.
Daji was best known for her invention of a method of torture known as Paolao (炮烙). A bronze cylinder covered with oil was heated like a furnace with charcoal beneath until its sides became extremely hot. The victim was made to walk on top of the slowly heating cylinder and he was forced to shift his feet to avoid the burning. The oily surface made it difficult for the victim to maintain his position and balance. If the victim fell into the charcoal below, he would be burnt to death. The victim was forced to dance and scream in agony before dying while the observing King Zhou and Daji would laugh in delight.

Why did she do all this? Well, you see, she was possessed by a fox spirit. I believe this accusation is fairly equivalent to those of erzebet bathory's vampirism or Gilles de rais' lycanthropy. A couple of thousand years later, a cult to her as a fox spirit arose. I wonder if this might have been a little like the cult of santa muerte in modern Mexico - evil deities offer more immediate pragmatic help than their more pious cousins. The fox cults were certainly suppressed by the ruling government.
 
Good riddance...
This all happened not very far from where I'm sitting right now. Scary stuff indeed. The world is a better place without him in it.

Australian serial killer Ivan Milat dies in Long Bay prison, aged 74

Ivan Milat, Australia's most notorious serial killer who was serving seven life sentences for the murders of seven backpackers, has died aged 74.

  • Milat was arrested in 1994 after a massive police investigation
  • His victims' bodies were discovered in the Belanglo State Forest in 1992 and 1993
  • Despite overwhelming evidence, he claimed he had nothing to do with the murders

Milat was diagnosed with terminal oesophagus and stomach cancer in May.

He had been transferred for advanced pain relief treatment to Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital on October 11.

He died in the medical wing of Long Bay jail this morning.

Milat had been treated at the same hospital earlier this year after being moved from Goulburn Supermax jail, where he had been in solitary confinement.

In a statement, the NSW Department of Corrective Services said Milat died 4.07am.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-27/ivan-milat-dies-in-sydney/11342686
 
Good riddance

I don't think we have a thread about it but it is often said that the worst things, medically, seem to happen to the nicest people.

It is, perhaps, less occult to say that we only notice it, when we care about people - horrid folk tending to fall off our maps.

Or do the most effectively-nasty creatures just have energy to spare? :(
 
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I don't think we have a thread about it but it is often said that the worst things, medically, happen to the nicest people.

It is, perhaps, less occult to say that we only notice it, when we care about people - horrid folk tending to fall off the map.

Or do the most effectively-nasty creatures just have energy to spare? :(

There is a lot that's valid to what you say.
What irks me in this instance, is that although Milat died of a particularly nasty cancer, he died in a comfortable hospital bed afforded the best medical treatment the state could offer.
Meanwhile, his victims died in pain, tortured, alone and terrified. Sometimes the scales of justice don't balance even at the very end.
 
An interesting case, she even "held down" a fake job for 17 years.

To neighbours in her Christian community in Koodathayi, Jolly Joseph was a respected college professor and devout churchgoer whose faith apparently sustained her through a series of family tragedies.

But in a lurid drama that has transfixed India, Joseph is now suspected of poisoning her husband, his parents and three other relatives with soup, drinks and snacks laced with cyanide during a slow-motion 14-year murder spree. Large crowds gathered when the 47-year-old “black widow” appeared in court yesterday in the southern state of Kerala for a custody hearing. Joseph is alleged to be a cunning and patient serial killer who carried out what have inevitably become known as the “Jolly murders” to inherit her in-laws’ property and to pursue a new husband — who happened to be already married and the cousin of her poisoned spouse. ...

It has also emerged that although she left home each morning for 17 years apparently to make the one-hour commute to a prominent engineering college, her identity card as a lecturer was forged and she never worked there. Where she went and what she did each day is one of many mysteries about her. ...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six...etails-of-black-widow-soup-killings-nxmrlqh2g
 
Maybe there are more victims somewhere then
Unlikely, as she was murdering family for personal gain (usually the case with female serial killers) rather than random strangers.
 
It has also emerged that although she left home each morning for 17 years apparently to make the one-hour commute to a prominent engineering college, her identity card as a lecturer was forged and she never worked there. Where she went and what she did each day is one of many mysteries about her. ...
She probably worked for the Indian secret service. Or was involved in some long-term illegal activity.
 
An interesting case, she even "held down" a fake job for 17 years.

To neighbours in her Christian community in Koodathayi, Jolly Joseph was a respected college professor and devout churchgoer whose faith apparently sustained her through a series of family tragedies. ...

In case you can't access the Times article, CNN posted a lengthy report on the case today ...
The tale of Jolly Joseph: Mom, churchgoer, chatty neighbor ... suspected serial killer

For years, Jolly Joseph talked about how her house was cursed, neighbors said.

Her mother-in-law apparently died from a mysterious illness. At least three of her close relatives suffered fatal heart attacks, and her two-year-old niece choked to death on a piece of food.

But in October, Indian police presented a different theory. There was no mention of curses. Instead, they alleged, Joseph had poisoned each of them, one by one, and then covered up her crimes with lies that have only now started to unravel. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/08/asia/jolly-joseph-murder-india-intl-hnk/index.html
 
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