S&D: Serial Killers

The Night Stalker scared the crap out of me when i was a kid. I just remember that hot summer and that scary ass artist rendition of him, with those buggy eyes and creepy look. then there was something about him targeting yellow houses by freeways and we had a yellow house by the freeway!! i just knew this devil looking dude was gonna come climbing through my window.

kemper's wiki reads like

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FHAAH32TL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg

was kinda hard being in school in Santa Cruz and NOT hearing about Kemper

I find the fact if Kemper's self-reflexive comedy timing the most ugly and most scary fact abt him, actually — certainly the hardest for me to process and be comfortable with. I can't be comfortable with it, bcz it means a state of mind i put a lot of moral trust in and enjoy — a playful sense of fun — is not firewalled territory after all.

one of the best things ever said on ilx imo

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Thursday, December 3, 2009 5:54 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

it's not the same thing i realize but maybe it comes from the same place: this reminds me of all the jailhouse interviews/correspondence that the hipster grifter is doing, this self-awareness, self-clowning, matched with total sociopath behavior.

or you know the pages of vice magazine

didn't know where else to post this but O_O

http://io9.com/5448369/suspected-tylenol-poisoner-writes-science-fiction-novel-about-poisonings

James Lewis was accused of putting cyanide into Tylenol capsules back in 1982, causing several deaths. His involvement has never been proved, but now he's self-published a new science-fiction novel called Poison!, which is making people wonder anew.

Lewis' novel follows a psychologist named Dr. Charles Rivers, who can both read and control other people's minds (similar to Heroes' Matt Parkman). Rivers also has a slew of high-tech gadgets. He uses all of the resources at his disposal to investigate a rash of poisonings in his Missouri hometown, including his own father, who appear to have been poisoned with a bizarre mixture of toxic chemicals. But while Rivers is investigating the poisonings, he comes across evidence of a criminal mastermind named Agua Naranja (Orange Water), who has discovered a way to cause earthquakes, using techniques pioneered by Nikola Tesla.

okay WAHT

And wow, man that story they link to from the Boston Herald adds a whole new level of crepey to this guy: http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=349846

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uf95INZmWI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Alcala

worst. date. ever.

He won a date with "bachelorette" Cheryl Bradshaw, who subsequently refused to go out with him, according to published reports, because she found him "creepy."

a peeled banana

Jed Mills, an actor who sat next to Alcala onstage as "Bachelor #2", later described him as a "a peeled banana" with "bizarre opinions."

LIFE slideshow of Ed Gein's house:

http://www.life.com/gallery/39992/inside-a-serial-killers-house#index/0

Serial killer and terrible housekeeper

i honestly dk how i got down this wormhole just now but reading this is p chilling/interesting in its mundanity, 'i stopped @ dennys for moons over my hammy and grabbed some chocolate milk' etc. not a serial killer but dude was inspired by the show dexter

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51760361/Manuscript-from-Mark-Twitchell-s-laptop#archive

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/calif-serial-killer-richard-ramirez-dies-19349065

Richard Ramierez was the first serial killer that ever caught my attention. In 6th grade, I accidentally videotaped Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker off of TV, for some reason thinking it was an actual horror movie based on the TV Guide description I guess. A year later, my English teacher found a true-crime paperback about Ramirez that I had left in my desk. It led to a parent/teacher/principal conference and was partially responsible for me being dropped from the GT program.

Hate him. Not for my personal reasons, just for the murders he committed. Didn't die soon enough.

i found myself googling 'where did all the serial killers go' like a month ago. seems like they've been replaced with spree killers in the 21st century

'siri, where did all the serial killers go?' would make a great song title

the new generation wants instant gratification, whatever happened to patience

There was one arrested in Alaska a few months ago. Maybe they just aren't as big a news draw.

there were 2 in sacramento area, the Speed Freak Killers (Herzog died last year but Shermantine is still on death row)-- suspected in the deaths of more than 70 ppl, many dating back to the 80's. FBI is still excavating the well where a lot of remains have been found

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_Freak_Killers

I only just learned of these 2 recently myself. Crazy shit.

they are kind of rare, and yeah spree killers are the new serial killers as far as the media's concerned.

I remember when the night stalker was at large/when he was caught by the mob, that was crazy shit. for a brief period it was like all the Xtian right's hysteria about heavy metal-listening, satan-worshipping, killer rapists had some basis in reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doodler

http://www.laweekly.com/2005-10-06/news/eastside-story/

Eastside Story
The day we caught the night stalker
By Ben Quiñones

The summer of 1985 was setting up to be a good, long, lazy one for L.A. The city was still on a sports high from hosting the ’84 Olympics, where Boyle Heights boxer Paul Gonzalez had won a gold medal, and Magic Johnson’s “Showtime” Lakers had just beaten the much-hated Celtics to win another NBA championship. And, if Ronald Reagan was turning Central America into a tropical war zone and AIDS was starting to devastate the world, at least Quincy Jones gave us a fleeting sense of unity by producing the all-star artist hit “We are the World: USA for Africa.”

I was a young Mexican growing up across the Los Angeles River in East L.A. and attending school as a seventh-grade scrub at Stevenson Junior High. My family lived on 4048 ½ Princeton Street, a back house on a dead end in the heart of the LiL Valley Gang. During that unbearably hot summer the sounds of Wham! and Punky Brewsterreruns would drift through open windows and screen doors.

It looked like I’d be doing the usual summer stuff — hanging out at the corner store, Ken’s Market, chewing on some Now and Later’s while playing Frogger, going to the Boulevard Theater on Whittier Boulevard to watch The Goonies for 99 cents and swimming at Ruben Salazar Park (formerly Laguna Park), also on Whittier.

But the summer of 1985 would also be a season of terror in L.A., thanks to the Night Stalker, a 25-year-old Mexican drifter from El Paso named Richard Ramirez. The Texan had two loves: AC/DC’s “Night Prowler” and crawling into open windows to kill. He began his murder rampage in June 1984, but it wasn’t until the summer of 1985 that the bodies started “making sense” to the cops. There were 13 victims in all, mostly girls and women between the ages of 6 and 83. Some had been beaten and raped, some savagely mutilated. (One woman’s eyes were gouged out.) As mementos, Ramirez would leave behind inked Satanic pentagrams.

Angelenos had seen death before, but this terror was on another level. Sales of guns, guard dogs and burglar alarms seemed to reach an all-time high. Neighborhood watch groups sprung up all over the city and vigilantes began patrolling the streets at night. Doing our part as good East Angelenos, we walked the beat around our street. I, along with my childhood friends Fernando and Efren Torres, and my older brother Rigo, protected our street with bats, pipes and homemade numchucks that we fashioned by taking old broomsticks, cutting off two pieces and then nailing or screwing on a thin chain to each end. We were Mexican ninjas. We also had the backing of the LiL Valley cholos, the older veteranoswho hid a greater arsenal on Raspberry Hill, a large brush area with raspberry shrubs on top of the hill beyond our street. It was a place where you could pick berries and pick up hidden knives and guns.

I was not afraid of the Night Stalker — I grew up in a gang war zone. I had seen the casualties of that war up close, including a drive-by where at least 10 LiL Valley cholos got shot up by rivals. I didn’t know it, but I was already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Deep down I wanted a piece of the Night Stalker.

As the killer continued his spree, he got meaner but sloppier and was ID’d through fingerprints, his first mistake. On August 30, an arrest warrant was issued and Ramirez’s mug shot was plastered all over newspapers and broadcast on TV. He fled into, of all places, East L.A., where perhaps he felt he could hide out among the brown. That was his second and costliest mistake. The story goes that Ramirez showed up to the 3700 block of East Hubbard Street, just a few blocks from my house, looking for a car to steal. He found a red Mustang parked in a driveway, but its owner, Faustino Pinon, quickly grabbed Ramirez around the neck, pushed him off his property and began chasing him.

Ramirez then threatened to kill a neighbor unless she surrendered the keys to her Ford Granada. The screaming woman’s husband rushed to her aid with a metal post. He, along with other neighbors who’d quickly armed themselves with steel rods and tools, pursued Ramirez, who now ran for his life. He was hit with fist and metal post like an evil piñata. Finally, a block away from where it all began, the Night Stalker collapsed to the ground and was subdued, while the mob beat him until sheriff’s deputies arrived. Ramirez raised his hands to the deputies, begging for protection. The crowd had to be held back as the lawmen saved the killer’s life!

“They caught the Night Stalker!” Word quickly spread as my friends and I got on our old, beat-up Schwinn bikes (the kind you build and not buy) E.T.-style and rode with our adrenalin pumping to Hubbard a couple blocks away, where the sheriffs were placing a bandaged and demoralized Richard Ramirez into a squad car. As I stood behind the sheriffs and saw Ramirez in person from a few feet away, he didn’t seem like the monster that he was — no modern-day Jack the Ripper, just another hapless soul. (One who’d end up on Death Row, where he sits today.)

Soon every television crew converged here to let the world know that the Night Stalker had not only been caught but almost beaten to death in East L.A. The neighborhood that took great pride in the capture was allowed by Sheriff Sherman Block to have a huge block party with each end of Hubbard cordoned off by the sheriffs. That whole night a DJ played cha-chadisco jams like Tapps’ “Burning with Fire” and Lime’s “Babe We’re Gonna Love Tonight,” while what seemed like all of East L.A. danced their asses off. We had to celebrate — after all it’s not every summer when Satan’s right-hand man gets caught in East L.A.

SLEW of posts already from SoCal friends who remember that time vividly with Ramirez (I was living in upstate New York at that point, only returning right around July and even then just going to San Diego rather than LA/OC). One friend mentioned violence and murder done to family members by him -- another talked about how, after the police reconstructed his movements, she and her family were almost victims as he was breaking into their home, only to be stopped by the house alarm going off. Unsettling to say the least.

jesus. serial killers are the worst. when son of sam was active in the 70s in nyc my mom couldn't sleep because her brother was a hippie who lived in a brooklyn and didn't lock his door or window

this is from the L.A. Times in 1985:

Here is a chronology of the 16 murders and some of the two dozen assaults police believe were committed by Night Stalker suspect Richard Ramirez, along with other key developments in the case:

Early 1985: Two people are slain in undisclosed parts of Los Angeles. Later, police will link these slayings to the Night Stalker. The locations and dates have still not been revealed.

Feb. 25: A 6-year-old Montebello girl is taken from a bus bench near school while waiting for an older sister. She tells police that she was carried away in a zippered garment bag, sexually assaulted and dropped off in the Silver Lake area.

March 11: A 9-year-old Monterey Park boy is kidnaped from his home at night, sexually assaulted, then left in Elysian Park, near Silver Lake.

March 17: Dayle Okazaki, 34, is killed, and her roommate, Maria Hernandez, is wounded in an attack in their Rosemead condominium.

March 17: Two miles from Okazaki's home, Tsal-lian Yu, 30, of Monterey Park, is pulled from her car near her home and shot several times. She dies the next day.

March 20: An Eagle Rock girl is kidnaped and sexually molested by a man who breaks into her family's home at night.

March 27: Vincent Zazzara, 64, a retired investment counselor, is beaten to death and his wife, Maxine, 44, is stabbed to death by an attacker who enters their ranch-style Whittier home through an open door. Their bodies are found by a business acquaintance two days later.

May 14: William Doi, 65, is shot to death in his Monterey Park home by an assailant who crawls through an open window. Doi, whose wife is assaulted, manages to telephone the emergency 911 number before losing consciousness--a call that police later said saved his wife's life.

May 29: Mabel Bell, 84, and her invalid sister, Florence Lang, 81, are beaten in their Monrovia home, high above the San Gabriel Valley on a narrow, winding road. The women are found four days later by a gardener. Bell dies July 15.

June 27: Patty Elaine Higgins, 32, is slain in her Arcadia home. Her throat is slashed.

July 2: Less than two miles from Higgins' home, Mary Louise Cannon, 77, of Arcadia, who had fought off two bouts of cancer, is murdered. Her throat is slashed.

July 7: Joyce Nelson, 61, is beaten to death in the Monterey Park home where she lives alone.

July 11: More than 600 residents jam a Monterey Park Neighborhood Watch meeting, anxious over the murders in their hometown and other nearby San Gabriel Valley communities. Police say they cannot yet connect the murders to a single suspect.

July 20: Chainarong Khovananth, 32, is slain in his Sun Valley home. His wife is beaten and raped, and their 8-year-old son is beaten. An estimated $30,000 in jewels and cash are stolen. Police are given a clue: A witness tells them the suspect fled in a maroon-colored Pontiac Grand Prix with a damaged right front fender.

July 20: Max Kneiding, 68, and his wife, Lela Ellen, 66, are shot to death in their Glendale home.

Aug. 6: Christopher Petersen, 38, and his wife, Virginia, 27, are both shot in the head in their Northridge home and survive.

Aug. 8: Elyas Abowath, 35, is shot to death in his Diamond Bar home. His wife is beaten. Their two children, ages 3 and 3 months, are not harmed. Later in the day, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block tells reporters that the attack on the Abowaths is the latest in a series of six killings that authorities have linked to the same suspect. It is the first public revelation that a serial killer is loose in Southern California.

Aug. 10-11: Reports of crimes made by citizens to LAPD's Communications Division, which processes emergency crime calls, jump more than 15% during the weekend, apparently because of anxiety over news of the Night Stalker's attacks. Gun shops report increased sales.

Aug. 13: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors offers a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Night Stalker.

Aug. 14: Sheriff's investigators say they now believe that the Night Stalker is responsible for a seventh slaying, the March 17 shooting of Tsal-lian Yu in Monterey Park.

Aug. 17: In the first killing outside Southern California, Peter Pan, 66, is shot and killed in bed in his San Francisco home. His wife, Barbara, 64, is shot and beaten but survives. The house is ransacked.

Aug 20: A four-hour search in San Marino for a man resembling the Night Stalker is called off after homicide detectives find that the man, who fled in his car when he was stopped by a police officer, was not the Stalker.

Aug. 22: Homicide investigators announce that they believe the Night Stalker was responsible for the Aug. 17 slaying of Peter Pan. A day later, they link an additional seven murders to the Night Stalker, bringing the total to 14. They also indicate that at least three different forms of evidence link the Night Stalker to the Southern California and San Francisco killings: ballistic tests, messages scrawled on walls and a "distinctive" but undisclosed piece of evidence the killer has left behind in the homes of his victims. Meanwhile, San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein announces that her city is offering a $10,000 reward.

Aug. 25: Bill Carns, 29, is critically injured--shot in the head while sleeping in his Mission Viejo home. His 29-year-old fiancee is raped.

Aug. 28: In what police call a "significant break," a stolen 1976 orange Toyota station wagon that had been spotted near the scene of the Mission Viejo attack is found abandoned on a Los Angeles street. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council offers a $25,000 reward for the Stalker's arrest and conviction, and Gov. Deukmejian announces the state will offer $10,000 more.

Aug. 29: Investigators say they have found "good" fingerprints on the stolen Toyota, thanks to a laser examining device. Meanwhile, they announce that they have linked the two murders that occurred early in the year to the Stalker, making a total of 16.

Aug. 30: Police issue an all-points bulletin for the arrest of a suspect--Richard Ramirez, whom they identify as being the thin, curly-haired man known as the Night Stalker. They make public a photograph of Ramirez.

Aug. 31: Police arrest Ramirez, taking him into custody after he is captured and beaten by angry citizens who grab him on an East Los Angeles street after he reportedly tries to steal a woman's car.

may be not 100% accurate anymore.

my wife was growing up in woodland hills at the time and basically everyone was terrified. also, there was this guy, who was even more terrifying since he was never caught:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Night_Stalker

this guy was scum obv but there is something funny to me about like patton oswalt noting his death on twitter and calling him a "piece of shit." like no duh, he was a serial killer. there's basically nothing you can say that doesn't end up sounding like a weak understatement.

also Treeship "serial killers are the worst" should be your catchphrase

the sheer number of victims so close together ...when you see them listed like that it is really overwhelming, quite terrifying even now

Feel like these need to be added to the thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLiaFzbgJSA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihi7FtIRBE0

Oswalt's wife is a serial killer blogger with no discernable writing talent and a lot of fans.

i also thought it was weird and hypocritical for oswalt to turn a blind eye to his wife's serial killing and yet condemn ramirez, but i wasn't going to say anything.

xpost i like her blog! 'no discernable writing talent' is p harsh imo.

Yeah, ok, fair enough. I have a bit of a bias against amateur detectives, and that's very much where she's coming from.

this guy was scum obv but there is something funny to me about like patton oswalt noting his death on twitter and calling him a "piece of shit." like no duh, he was a serial killer. there's basically nothing you can say that doesn't end up sounding like a weak understatement.

― congratulations (n/a), Friday, June 7, 2013 6:05 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not a serial killer but in the aftermath of Thomas Hamilton shooting 16 kids + himself in Scotland in the 90s, there was a front page tabloid article which stuck with me, claiming with relish that he'd been thrown into an incinerator LIKE A BAG OF TRASH rather than afforded the dignity of a burial. as after-the-fact hardmanning goes it's fairly understandable but also peculiar and kinda funny

the dunblane massacre was well out of order to be fair

patton oswalt was just an example. and i understand/sympathize with the impulse. but it's also so ineffectual that i can't help but find it funny.

Peter Pan, 66, is shot and killed in bed in his San Francisco home

:/

He didn't look a day over 14, but.

i feel like i missed out (uh, not really) on the serial killer scares of the 80s (and i guess early 90s?). i can vaguely remember the Dahmer trial, but has there been any that the media have latched onto since then?

i actually read Hunting Humans a few years ago because it was mentioned on this thread. it's a great book and i still think about it--the gist of the argument has some greater applications than just random loner killers i think. not sure it really holds water but it's a necessary corrective to the psychological or theological approach (ie, just its just "evil") often taken.

Guilty lol at "Aug. 17th slaying of Peter Pan" xpost

poor Wendy

i wonder if Barbara knew about Wendy

i feel like i missed out (uh, not really) on the serial killer scares of the 80s (and i guess early 90s?). i can vaguely remember the Dahmer trial, but has there been any that the media have latched onto since then?

There has, just not in the American media...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pichushkin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surender_Koli
http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/03/16/accused-rapist-killer-jack-mogale-awaits-his-fate