S&D: Serial Killers

The Long Island serial killer is really fascinating. LOTS of stuff on You Tube about it.

Idk if there is a racial element to the relative lack of media interest. Quite a few of the most recent ones to have been caught (Lonnie Franklin, Anthony Sowell, Samuel Little) have been black, as have most of their victims.

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?

The BTK killer (bind, torture, kill) was caught in 2005 (thanks to a floppy disk, iirc!), although the murders were many years earlier. This got a lot of play in the media.

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

iirc the Green River killer case went cold for a long time until police finally arrested and charged Gary Ridgway in 2001.

I remember being stationed overseas when Berkowitz was at large, although I wasn't quite 8 years old. That was my dad's home turf so he kept up on the news from home about it all the time.

Snowtown murders in Australia. Craaaazy shit.

Forgot the Pig Farmer Killer earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton

Also in Canada, the Highway Of Tears murders are still unsolved (quite possible there's more than one killer though)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Tears_murders

Also unsolved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Killing_Fields_(location)

Pickton case is crazypants

Texas Killing Fields is a particularly grim one for me.

fuck, the Vice Issei Sagawa documentary is just...

Dude's comic is pretty cool, I hate to say

But yeah, fascinating and weirdly likeable as he is...it's pretty annoying that this guy is able to live in relative peace & that Vice just played into it like he's some sympathetic character, meanwhile giving zero recognition to the person he killed. It's fucked up to say, but I'm kind of proud to live in 'murica, where a dude like this would not survive for very long as a free man.

Also what the fucking fuck at whoever orchestrated that porno. I kind of hate them more than I hate Sagawa.

This guy was a big deal 'round here in the mid '90s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81ngel_Maturino_Res%C3%A9ndiz

does the beltway sniper count

xp yeah, in general i like lenient/rehabilitative prison systems -- and don't think murderers should always serve life in prison, necessarily -- but it pisses me off that issei sagawa is free, and that vice treated him as just like this eccentric. also he doesn't seem extremely repentant so i'm not sure if japan is very safe with him at large...

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

― хуто-хуторянка (ShariVari), Friday, June 7, 2013 5:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is exactly it, the media just doesn't care any more. There's a serial killer active in long island and it's just a local story.

I'm still amazed that Luka Magnotta wasn't a bigger deal.

Was Dahmer the last one to achieve real celebrity status? Gary Ridgway doesn't seem like the type I could assume most people would know right way.

I just looked up Luka Magnotta. Jesus christ on a cracker that is horrifying.

Looked Magnotta up too. Fucking hell, it takes a LOT to squick me out...

magnotta's the gay porn star kitten killer one right? i remember all my gay friends going on about that one, apparently it's not hard to find the videos. i'd totally forgotten angel resendiz but yeah that was a big deal briefly. vivid memories of this also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gainesville_Ripper. can also remember the summer of dahmer. he does seem to be the last one to achieve that icon status of a gacy or bundy. apparently serial killings have gone down and while i'm sure datamining and just better information technology in general has played the largest role apparently media not turning these guys into rock stars has helped also, whether that was any kind of deliberate move on the part of the industry or if they just followed the money to mass shootings and terrorism (where media exposure is also a motivation) i don't know.

yeah I think the "Hunting Humans" boom is (unintentionally) as much about the sociology of the cult of personally that sprung up around serial killers up until Dahmer.

Have the slightly creepy intuition that no real fame has accrued to any since then because none of them have been *artistic* enough. No originality.

boom = book of course

I'm not a student of this or anything, but I notice that Dahmer was arrested the same year as Silence of the Lambs. If he was the last one to gain widespread notoriety, would the movie have anything to do with that? Maybe it was an apotheosis of sorts, eclipsing all subsequent real-life versions.

yeah i could see these grand guignol tabelaux serial killers (which probably reaches its apotheosis w/ se7en) presented in media would set a standard that actual dull drifters and nerds serial killers could never live up to. the rest of the nineties 'serial killers are a kind of performance artist' cliche is just exhausting that interest and then columbine preceded by the smaller school shootings (and maybe in a weird way andrew cunanan) provide a more easy to work w/ for tv and definitely more legitimate alternative. it's odd cuz serial killers are sort of built for the internet (fincher's zodiac is almost a movie about the internet, or at least burying yrself in data and the difference between data and information) but maybe the timing element plays against it, something where there can be months or even years between incidents is handicapped in an age where a story that goes two or three days w/ no developments is dead in the water.

I think that issue of sustaining a media narrative is pretty insightful.

serial killer mythos also perhaps tied to old boogie man myths (as in "go to bed or Jeffrey Dahmer will get you") which while certainly timeless in certain respects almost seem of another era--one with more loneliness, darkness, and weird sounds in the night than we tend to experience any more.

Most serial killers have no interest in being artistic. They are gratifying other urges. The majority try to keep their activities as low-profile as they can, so they can operate as freely as possible. Movies and tv require stories filled with terror and heroics. Serial killers are usually just sordid and disgusting.

Yeah it's important to draw a distinction between the culture around these guys and their pathetic realities. nevertheless there is often a certain consciousness in how they present themselves to the police and media. zodiac certainly good example of that.

nowadays I'm much more frightened that some random guy will open fire on me at the mall or something. but then again thinking of someone crawling through your window on a warm summer night has a special horror of its own.

something where there can be months or even years between incidents is handicapped in an age where a story that goes two or three days w/ no developments is dead in the water

That seems exactly right. The Columbines and Auroras and Boston Marathons, awful one-time events that unfold minute-by-minute, are much more in sync with the internet age.

the boy in the homemade balloon who wasn't in the balloon, although the balloon spent a couple hours live on CNN == perfect internet age story

no serial killers involved :-(

maybe the distinction between local and national news matters too. there was a murder in Austin on New Year's Eve a year ago and i won't bore with all the details but it definitely had all the hallmark elements. Huge story for a few weeks, parts of the community around UT especially were very on edge. We found out later he had killed himself a few days after the murder, possibly after seeing police sketches of himself plastered all over town. It was an eerie time.

I'm watching The Snowtown Murders right now and wondering if this is such a good idea...

creepy + v disturbing

i liked it but it's hard to watch

serial murder is a p bad idea

yea i know there was a praise-heavy thread on it but i had to turn it off

I'm working while watching it so I have a little bit of a buffer, but the bit with the wallaby heads was the first indication of what I was in for.

It is staggeringly good but it really fucked me up.

It's not helping that I think Daniel Henshall is handsome.

Oh no not the dog.

I'm going to try not to liveblog my viewing of this movie, but I may have to pop in for support now and then.

Is he the protagonist or the charismatic? You're in for some whiplash either way...

Btw my mustache needs cutting so badly ATM that I kind of resemble the drugged out sunken cheeked accomplice :(

Ugh the dog scene.

The movie actually gets more disturbing btw so strap in!

Daniel Henshall plays John, who is the charismatic, I believe. The guy who gets the kid to go along with his killing spree. This fella:

http://www.boudist.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Daniel-Henshall-Snowtown-209-590x885.jpg

Yep he is a magnetic motherfucker.

We'll talk later abt the particular scene where his performance will haunt me to the end of my days

yeah he's really great -- and I get a weird Australian Ricky Gervais vibe from him

apparently a good portion of the supporting cast and extras are all locals

oh wow all of them except the 2 main stars were locals!

Apart from Daniel Henshall and Richard Greene, the actors were locals with no acting experience that Kurzel had found in the area where the murders occurred, with most from Davoren Park. Kurzel himself grew up in the area and felt that using locals would move the film from being a one dimensional horror show to a tragic human story showing what happens when people are disadvantaged. Davoren Park is considered one of the most violent and dysfunctional suburbs in Australia and a place where emergency vehicles fear to go without a police escort. According to Kurzel, far from the "wow, I'm going to be a movie star" attitude that he had expected, he had some difficulty convincing them to take part.[8][9]

that last line is kinda... dude, I could have told him that

is this on tv right now y/n

It's on Netflix streaming

Yes. That's where I'm watching it.