Serial Killers

This woman says she'd been trying for over four decades to get authorities to believe her claims that her late father was a quite prolific serial killer who made his kids help him dispose of the bodies in a deep well on their rural Iowa property. The authorities have finally taken her seriously, and multiple agencies are investigating ...
Woman claims her dad was prolific serial killer who buried bodies on property; Iowa officials investigating

ES MOINES, Iowa – Sheriff's deputies and state officials are investigating an Iowa woman's claim her late father was one of American's most prolific serial killers. ...

According to his daughter, Donald Dean Studey murdered "five or six" women a year over several decades and buried them in and around an abandoned well on his property near Thurman, Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope told the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network. ...

Thurman, population 167 as of the last U.S. Census, is a small city near the Iowa- Nebraska state line. Studey's property is about 40 miles from Omaha, Nebraska, officials said. ...

On Oct. 21, two cadaver dogs took to the site had "hits" indicating the possible existence of decomposing remains in the area of the well, Aistrope said Monday.

"She's got a hell of a story but we don't have any proof of anything other than we had a cadaver dog hit," Aistrope told the Register. "We've got to have more proof than that."

He said he has asked the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) for assistance. ...

State investigators said they are joining the investigation but claimed it is too early for them to comment on the case. ...

The woman, identified at her request in a Newsweek article Monday by her maiden name, Lucy Studey, said her father killed roughly 70 women, mostly prostitutes and runaways, and buried them on the family's rural five acres, Aistrope said. ...

Aistrope said he and his deputies began looking into her claims in 2021 when she contacted the sheriff's office for at least the second time to report that there were "five or six" dead women buried on the land her father lived on until his death in 2013. ...

She told them the bodies had been buried in and around the old well in a wooded area that was later logged. Sheriff's investigators spent much of the last year attempting to find the well and get permission from the current owners of the property and neighboring properties to conduct searches ...

The well, since filled in, was 90 feet deep and excavating it would be a major undertaking ...

With Donald Studey dead, finding the bodies and identifying the remains will be complicated ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/w...erty-iowa-officials-investigating/ar-AA13mF7J

More details are given in this earlier Newsweek article:
https://www.newsweek.com/dad-was-se...s-cadaver-dogs-scour-field-nightmares-1754083
 
ramonmercado said:
Latest.

A medical expert has told the trial of nurse Lucy Letby how he noticed a "quite disturbing and quite unusual" pattern in the deaths of babies she is accused of murdering.

Ms Letby is charged with killing seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2016.
Ms Letby, 32, denies 22 charges.

Expert Dr Dewi Evans was approached by the National Crime Agency to review the case in 2017. Giving evidence at Manchester Crown Court, Dr Evans said: "The concern was that there had been a number of deaths in the Countess of Chester that had been unusual. There were far more deaths than they would expect. There was collapses in babies that were otherwise quite stable, but in many of the cases resuscitation was not successful."

Dr Evans said "a pattern became apparent", which he described as "quite disturbing and quite unusual."

It is alleged Ms Letby injected air into the bloodstream of a baby referred to in court as Child A, shortly after she came on shift in June 2015, just over 24 hours after his premature birth.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-63387593
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Update.

Lucy Letby had to be told more than once not to go into a room where the parents of a baby she is accused of murdering were grieving, her trial has heard.

The nurse is accused of killing seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Ms Letby, 32, denies 22 charges.

Manchester Crown Court heard from a senior nurse who worked at the hospital's neonatal unit at the time. She was a shift leader on the night a baby, referred to in court as Child C, collapsed and later died. Ms Letby was not Child C's designated nurse that night. That was another nurse called Melanie Taylor.

The senior nurse told the jury that after resuscitation efforts for Child C were stopped, Ms Taylor approached his parents about creating a "memory box" about him. The senior nurse, whose identity has been protected, asked Ms Letby to turn her attention to another poorly baby on the unit, the court heard.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-63433599
 
EnolaGaia said:
This woman says she'd been trying for over four decades to get authorities to believe her claims that her late father was a quite prolific serial killer who made his kids help him dispose of the bodies in a deep well on their rural Iowa property. The authorities have finally taken her seriously, and multiple agencies are investigating ...

FULL STORY: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/w...erty-iowa-officials-investigating/ar-AA13mF7J

More details are given in this earlier Newsweek article:
https://www.newsweek.com/dad-was-se...s-cadaver-dogs-scour-field-nightmares-1754083
Click to expand...
Unlike most cases of people claiming their dads to be uncaught serial killers, this one appears to have some sand to it. Awaiting further developments.
 
EnolaGaia said:
This woman says she'd been trying for over four decades to get authorities to believe her claims that her late father was a quite prolific serial killer who made his kids help him dispose of the bodies in a deep well on their rural Iowa property. The authorities have finally taken her seriously, and multiple agencies are investigating ...

FULL STORY: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/w...erty-iowa-officials-investigating/ar-AA13mF7J

More details are given in this earlier Newsweek article:
https://www.newsweek.com/dad-was-se...s-cadaver-dogs-scour-field-nightmares-1754083
Click to expand...

More on this story.

The families of about 15 missing people have reached out to the woman who claims her father was a serial killer, asking whether their loved one might have been one of his victims, buried deep in the Green Hollow area around Thurman, Iowa.

"I can't imagine a family with a missing loved one," Studey, 53, told Newsweek Friday. "Every time you hear of a body being found or a possible murder, you must wonder: 'Is that my loved one?' My heart goes out to them."

She said family members and friends have sent her pictures of potential victims and related details of their stories.

"I can't read them anymore without an emotional breakdown myself," Studey, who has told investigators that as many as 50 to 70 people—mostly women—are buried around the family's property," told Newsweek Friday. ...

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-...ghter-explains-why-she-told-her-story-1760800
 
Kondoru said:
What is disturbing is the dissonance between 50-70 missing people and only 15 families enquiring after them.
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There is no dissonance for me. The US is a huge country compared to the UK. The US has a population of about 3/4 of the European Union, and is twice the size in landmass.

So many young women (and young men!) run away from home across the US, and have done so for decades, that it would be unusual for any family members to associate their missing ones with this one specific mess. Since the time period for the murders was 40 to 50 years ago, the siblings of these missing women themselves are dying out, and the parents are likely dead.

The kinds of family homes which many young women run away from are the kinds of homes in which close, loving relationships are not taught nor modeled. So, for many of these runaways, nobody will be looking for them. The families inqiring about them are the exceptions. Many runaways are actively looking to create a better life for themselves, and so their continuing absence is not necessarily a cause for concern that they are dead. I know several people, both men and women, who severed all prior family relationships, created new identities for themselves, and were successful in self-supporting, happy lives.

(As an American, it takes me a certain amount of internal resolve to write about this stuff here in Forteanaland, as I am braced for the virtuous shit-slinging some UK friends here regularly engage in regarding my country.)
 
A possible Canadian serial Killer this time, victims were all indigenous women.

A Canadian man already accused of murdering one woman has been charged by police in the city of Winnipeg in connection with three more deaths.

In May, police charged the 35-year-old man with killing one victim, 24-year-old Rebecca Contois. On Thursday, they charged him with three more counts of first-degree murder. All of the victims are believed to be indigenous women, Winnipeg police said.

Police identified the suspect as Jeremy Skibicki of Winnipeg, who was first arrested on 18 May in connection to the murder of Ms Contois, a member of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation in the province of Manitoba. In a Thursday press conference, investigators said they believe Mr Skibicki is responsible for three other deaths.

Police Chief Danny Smyth said "it's always unsettling when there's any kind of a serial killing", adding these homicides are particularly disturbing as "they involve indigenous women".

Morgan Beatrice Harris, 39, was killed on or around 1 May, while Marcedes Myran, 26, was killed on or around 4 May. Both women are members of the Long Plain First Nation but lived in Winnipeg. Police have yet to identify the fourth victim. They have appealed to the public for information and released photos of a reversible winter jacket that belonged to her. Investigators, however, said they believe the unidentified victim is also an indigenous woman in her mid-20s.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63829124
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
(As an American, it takes me a certain amount of internal resolve to write about this stuff here in Forteanaland, as I am braced for the virtuous shit-slinging some UK friends here regularly engage in regarding my country.)
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I'm English and proud of it. But I lived and worked in the US for 5 years, and I hope I have some understanding of how different it is - and indeed, under other circumstances, I would have been proud to have become a US citizen. For me, in many respects, I saw the US as being representative of the best that we can be.

I would however point out that despite my sentiments, respect works both ways, and most US citizens seem to have no idea the rest of the world is different, and chooses to be so.
 
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Endlessly Amazed said:
(As an American, it takes me a certain amount of internal resolve to write about this stuff here in Forteanaland, as I am braced for the virtuous shit-slinging some UK friends here regularly engage in regarding my country.)
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The only thing that annoys me about you guys is that when we finally got rid of Piers Morgan and sent him to you, after a few months you then (understandably) also got fed up with him -telling you how you should change your laws etc- and then what do you do? send him back to us.
Couldn't you have sent him somewhere else? Even people who don't like Jeremy Clarkson looked the other way when he punched Morgan for being a dick.
 
Floyd1 said:
The only thing that annoys me about you guys is that when we finally got rid of Piers Morgan and sent him to you, after a few months you then (understandably) also got fed up with him -telling you how you should change your laws etc- and then what do you do? send him back to us.
Couldn't you have sent him somewhere else? Even people who don't like Jeremy Clarkson looked the other way when he punched Morgan for being a dick.
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Should have sent him to Russia. Meltdown would ensue.
 
ramonmercado said:
Cottingham charged with another murder.

A serial killer has been accused of killing a woman whose body was found in the car park of a shopping centre on New York’s Long Island over 50 years ago.

Richard Cottingham was charged on Wednesday in connection with Diane Cusick’s death in 1968. From a hospital bed in New Jersey, where he is already serving a life sentence for 11 other killings, he pleaded not guilty.

While he has claimed he was responsible for up to 100 murders, authorities in New York and New Jersey have officially linked him to only a dozen so far, including Cusick’s death.

He has been imprisoned since 1980, when he was arrested after a motel maid heard a woman screaming inside his room. Authorities found her alive but bound with handcuffs and suffering from bite marks and knife wounds.

Cottingham asked to be arraigned on Wednesday by video feed from the New Jersey hospital because he was in poor health, bedridden and not ambulatory, judge Caryn Fink said.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40901912.html
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Cottingham admits to five more murders.


MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A serial slayer known as the “Torso Killer” already convicted of 11 homicides admitted on Monday that he also killed five women on Long Island in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Richard Cottingham was sentenced Monday to 25 years to life for the slaying of 23-year-old Diane Cusick, who was killed in February 1968 after buying shoes at the Green Acres Mall in Nassau County.

As part of a plea deal, Cottingham received immunity from prosecution for the four other killings. The 76-year-old prisoner attended the hearing via a video feed from a New Jersey prison.

“Today is one of the most emotional days we’ve ever had in the Nassau County district attorney’s office,” District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at a news conference where she was joined by several family members of Cottingham’s victims. “In the case of Diane Cusick, her family has waited nearly 55 years for someone to be held accountable for her death.”

https://apnews.com/article/new-jersey-homicide-f3ddc29a14287aaf57b473feea2399e1
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
There is no dissonance for me. The US is a huge country compared to the UK. The US has a population of about 3/4 of the European Union, and is twice the size in landmass.

So many young women (and young men!) run away from home across the US, and have done so for decades, that it would be unusual for any family members to associate their missing ones with this one specific mess. Since the time period for the murders was 40 to 50 years ago, the siblings of these missing women themselves are dying out, and the parents are likely dead.

The kinds of family homes which many young women run away from are the kinds of homes in which close, loving relationships are not taught nor modeled. So, for many of these runaways, nobody will be looking for them. The families inqiring about them are the exceptions. Many runaways are actively looking to create a better life for themselves, and so their continuing absence is not necessarily a cause for concern that they are dead. I know several people, both men and women, who severed all prior family relationships, created new identities for themselves, and were successful in self-supporting, happy lives.

(As an American, it takes me a certain amount of internal resolve to write about this stuff here in Forteanaland, as I am braced for the virtuous shit-slinging some UK friends here regularly engage in regarding my country.)
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Not exactly replying to myself, but the investigation shows no evidence of any bodies. Maybe the daughter who claimed her father was a serial killer is delusional. Hard to imagine she was just "mistaken."

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/us/thurman-iowa-serial-killer-investigation/index.html
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
Not exactly replying to myself, but the investigation shows no evidence of any bodies. Maybe the daughter who claimed her father was a serial killer is delusional. Hard to imagine she was just "mistaken."

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/us/thurman-iowa-serial-killer-investigation/index.html
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Despite the woman’s protestation that there was not a thorough investigation, I would think that the well site would have been the first area to investigate and if nothing was found there, then how much more time would/should be spent on this. I also don’t know how much use cadaver dogs are for finding bodies buried for several decades.
 
This I find surprising...

Serial killer The Serpent, Charles Sobhraj, to be freed from Nepal jail​

A French serial killer portrayed in BBC drama The Serpent is to be freed from a Nepalese prison, after a court ruling.
Charles Sobhraj, who spent 19 years in jail for the murder of two tourists in Kathmandu in 1975, has been ordered to return to France within 15 days.
Sobhraj was linked to a string of other tourist murders in the 1970s, and spent 20 years in prison in India.
His victims were mostly young Western backpackers on the hippie trail in India and Thailand.
The notorious killer had been serving two life sentences, each 20 years, in Nepal's capital for the murder of an American woman, Connie Jo Bronzich, and her Canadian backpacker friend, Laurent Carriere.
He was convicted in two separate trials - most recently in 2014, when he was sentenced to 20 years in a high security prison for murdering Carriere.

But Nepal's Supreme Court ordered Sobhraj's release on Wednesday after his legal team successfully filed a petition claiming he should be given a concession on his prison term due to his age, 78, and good behaviour.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64050714
 
A longish essay about serial killers in reality, the media, popular imagination and fictional portrays in literature, film, TV, with a particular emphasis on and critique of Criminal Minds.

The serial killer media industrial complex rages on, but what has it taught us? Very little about the crimes in question, and much more about ourselves.​

In the fall of 2019, news outlets breathlessly announced that the FBI had identified a new serial killer, the most prolific in American history. His name was Samuel Little, and he had given up his story to a Texas Ranger named James Holland, who interviewed him after theorizing his connection to a cold case in Odessa, got a confession, and kept going. Little spent forty-eight days drinking Dr Pepper, eating pizza, and describing his murders to Holland. Then Holland described Little to the world: He was smart. He had a photographic memory. He had confessed to ninety-three murders. And he had evaded detection for so long, Holland told 60 Minutes, because “he was so good at what he did.”

I first heard about Samuel Little through this 60 Minutes segment, which introduced him, for anyone who lacked context, as the man who had committed “more [murders] than…Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer combined”; a “cunning killer” who “preyed upon…women he believed the police wouldn’t work too hard to find.” He drew portraits of his victims, and the FBI made them public in the hopes that they could be connected to more cold cases.

And I guess my first question—before I ask whether killing people within the wide swath of humanity that the police don’t care about actually means you’re smart, or means you’re just lucky because you’re gambling in a casino with the best odds in the world;[1] before I ask why we seemed to be so excited to have found not just a new serial killer but the most prolific one; before I ask why we use the word prolific so unthinkingly in this context, as if some serial killers are like J. D. Salinger and others are like Stephen King—my first question, still, is this: How are we even to know that Samuel Little had a photographic memory if almost all the women in his drawings look so much like one another? Why do so many of them have the same almond eyes, the same smokey eye makeup, the same face shape? Why did the seventy-nine-year-old man who happened to be the most prolific murderer in American history also happen to have one of the most impressive memories in American history? And if you’ve committed just a handful of murders—an unremarkable number, one that won’t even get you on the leaderboard—then wouldn’t it be, well, not a terrible idea to confess to a few dozen more? What if it makes you into something special, and helps the police close unsolved cases all over the country, and makes a great story for the people on TV, who will all want to talk to you now?[2]

Watching the first days of excited Samuel Little coverage, I thought: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

And then I wondered how the deadliest serial killer in American history could fall into the category of “too good to be true.” ...

https://www.thebeliever.net/violent-delights/
 
After watching many documentaries, sensationalist programmes, and discussions on serial killers*, one factor apart from an early tendancy to animal cruelty, abuse from parents/carers etc. is an incident of potential brain damage.
It's no excuse for what they go on to do but certainly a 'flag'.
All other upbringing factors are a 'set up' for the lack of empathy, sexual tension, behavioural acceptance and so on, but might a brain injury - however minor - act as a trigger or even a removal of moral limitations? Has studies been made in historical behaviour change?
After all, Howard Hughes was a 'normal' but driven personality, a canny investor but someone willing to physically challenge themselves ... until the test in 1946. After that, he didn't stop but it looks like his personality developed into obession with hygiene and control.
Did his accident and potential brain injury result in a restructuring of his personality? And did this result in the same for serial killers?
 
Stormkhan said:
After watching many documentaries, sensationalist programmes, and discussions on serial killers*, one factor apart from an early tendancy to animal cruelty, abuse from parents/carers etc. is an incident of potential brain damage.
It's no excuse for what they go on to do but certainly a 'flag'.
All other upbringing factors are a 'set up' for the lack of empathy, sexual tension, behavioural acceptance and so on, but might a brain injury - however minor - act as a trigger or even a removal of moral limitations? Has studies been made in historical behaviour change?
After all, Howard Hughes was a 'normal' but driven personality, a canny investor but someone willing to physically challenge themselves ... until the test in 1946. After that, he didn't stop but it looks like his personality developed into obession with hygiene and control.
Did his accident and potential brain injury result in a restructuring of his personality? And did this result in the same for serial killers?
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I used to read books and academic journal articles on criminology. I will say, I haven't done much reading on the topic for some years but the following is my overall impression - others on this board may be better qualified than I. However I was interested in the topic and did some reading. I suspect that conclusive evidence might not be possible...

I am sure there must have been some analysis of the data on violent criminals to look at the incidence of head injury as a possible/potential causal factor. Of course there are usually a combination of nurture factors in the mix too. I am sure that researchers have done some statistical analysis of violent offenders and looked at the incidence of head/brain injury within that population. I don't know if they have compared that incidence with the incidence of brain injury amongst the general population - but there would need to be some comparison with different groups/factors (e.g. offenders and non offenders, brain injury verses no brain injury, different genders, lack of parental nurturing/adoption verses loving homes with parental care, incidence of abuse (violent or sexual) in home just to mention a few ideas off the top of my head.

It is interesting - the interaction between genetic/biological/physiological/social/psychological/societal influences on behaviour.
 
Herr Cloaca said:
There was a most excellent drama on this called The Serpent
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I enjoyed it immensely. If you can locate it, there's an excellent book by Australian author/journalist Richard Neville (deceased) and his wife Julie Clarke called 'The Life & Crime of Charles Sobhraj'.
They had access to him in Tihar Prison in India for a series of interviews and also had access to most people involved in the saga. It makes for an interesting read.
The disturbing thing, is that Sobhraj can at times come across as quite a likable guy, yet I guess that is exactly what enabled him to get away with the crimes he committed for so long.
 
Stormkhan said:
After watching many documentaries, sensationalist programmes, and discussions on serial killers*, one factor apart from an early tendancy to animal cruelty, abuse from parents/carers etc. is an incident of potential brain damage.
It's no excuse for what they go on to do but certainly a 'flag'.
All other upbringing factors are a 'set up' for the lack of empathy, sexual tension, behavioural acceptance and so on, but might a brain injury - however minor - act as a trigger or even a removal of moral limitations? Has studies been made in historical behaviour change?
After all, Howard Hughes was a 'normal' but driven personality, a canny investor but someone willing to physically challenge themselves ... until the test in 1946. After that, he didn't stop but it looks like his personality developed into obession with hygiene and control.
Did his accident and potential brain injury result in a restructuring of his personality? And did this result in the same for serial killers?
Click to expand...
Childhood head trauma is indeed seen as a common factor among serial killers. There may be an element of confirmation bias though - when someone's known to have murdered a lot of people, psychologists, journalists and whoever else might go digging to find a childhood event that helps to 'explain' the events. What's not known is how many non-violent people get bumps on the head when they're kids, which are promptly forgotten about because those people never went on to careers of serial murder.
 
James_H said:
Childhood head trauma is indeed seen as a common factor among serial killers. There may be an element of confirmation bias though - when someone's known to have murdered a lot of people, psychologists, journalists and whoever else might go digging to find a childhood event that helps to 'explain' the events. What's not known is how many non-violent people get bumps on the head when they're kids, which are promptly forgotten about because those people never went on to careers of serial murder.
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This is a good point, and I suspect there is some truth to it. Less direct ways of verifying the different in brains between violent offenders and the rest of us is through brain scans and autopsies.

Any brain injury which results in damage to the executive function area of the brain will increase the likelihood of lifelong problems with impulse control and emotional regulation. If the bump on the head does not result in long-term damage, then the person will likely go on to have a normal life.

I once did a project involving extremely violent youthful sexual offenders. Almost close to 100% were brain injured (I vaguely recall the incidence rate as over 97%). Their rage could be triggered easily and quickly.

I find the evidence persuasive and overwhelming. Perhaps @Coal will join in as he is well-informed on this.
 
Swifty said:
I haven't seen any of these pictures before ..
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Likewise.

The picture taped to the cell wall behind Charles Manson is of an owl with a dead mouse in its beak.
 
harlequin2005 said:
Islamic Serial Killer in Iran

For all you fans of abnormal psychology where it becomes serial killing.



Story

Text

PROSTITUTE KILLER HANGED IN IRAN
Wednesday 17 April 2002 12:29pm



Prison authorities in Iran have executed a man convicted of a series of prostitute killings.
The murders exposed the growing networks of drugs and illicit sex in the country.

Saeed Hanaei was sentenced to death in October for strangling 16 prostitutes with their head scarves in the holy city of Mashhad.

The judge originally promised a public execution, but the decision was changed and Hanaei was hanged in the prison compound, according to a journalist for the state-run media allowed to witness the event.

"I did it for the sake of God," the journalist quoted Hanaei as saying moments before the hanging held in front of some of the victims' relatives.

Hanaei, a 39-year-old construction worker, told police he began the killing spree in 2000 after a man mistook his wife for a prostitute. He confessed to 16 slayings, but several more prostitutes had been killed and police have made no additional arrests.

The victims - many with previous convictions for drug use - were strangled with their Islamic head scarves, which were left wrapped around their necks.

The highly publicised killings and trial forced an unprecedented examination into the extent of prostitution and drug use in Iran, where nearly half of the population is under 25 years old and many feel less bound by conservative Islamic codes.

Prostitution in Mashhad was also blamed on the rising number of pilgrims to the shrine of Shiite Muslim saint Imam Reza.

(c) Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.

8¬)
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They've made a movie based on this killer called Holy Spider:
 
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