S&D: Serial Killers

read today about the benders of kansas, 1869-1872, a sweet spot where pioneering and serial killing mix and match

pioneering must have had it’s share of serial killers you would think now looking back. everyone’s dying left & right from every disease/trampled by livestock/drunken fistfights, creates a pretty convenient & chaotic cover for deliberate violence, lotta ppl not being missed etc

few opportunities to taunt law enforcement via the media though :(

Pony Express rider with a bag full of Frontier Zodiac letters

The Ingalls family, made famous in the books and television series Little House on the Prairie, lived near Independence, and Laura Ingalls Wilder mentioned the Bender family in her writing and speeches. In 1937 she gave a speech at a book fair, which was later transcribed and printed in the September 1978 Saturday Evening Post and in the 1988 book A Little House Sampler. She mentioned stopping at the inn, as well as recounting the rumors of the murders spreading through their community. She alleged that her father, "Pa Ingalls", joined in a vigilante hunt for the killers, and when he spoke of later searches for them she recalled, "At such times Pa always said in a strange tone of finality, 'They will never be found.' They were never found and later I formed my own conclusions why."

TO EDITOR SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BY THE TIME THIS REACHES YOU ANOTHER GIRL WILL BE DEAD STOP YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME STOP I'LL KEEP KILLING FOREVER STOP

"Uh . . . are you sure you want me to send this, sir?"

however --

Some have cast doubt on the story saying that Laura would have been only 4 when her family moved away from the area, and that the Benders were exposed in 1873, two years after the Ingallses left.[21]

someone needs to make this into a film: Bloody Nights: A Little House on the Prairie Thriller

if it was two years after the Ingallses left then WHY DID PA KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT IT HMMM

Also - what was the most brutal act ever depicted in an episode of little house? I was well versed in my youth and I'm sure there must have at least been a murder at some point but the hardest core thing I can recall atm is albert getting strung out on morphine (well I suppose there is the act of domestic terrorism in the series finale)

there was the episode where Charles and Albert are drawn away from the Ingalls ranch by a Comanche tribe and return to find the place in flames and Mary and Laura have been kidnapped (the others are all dead.) Charles and Albert spend years hunting Laura (Mary having been killed and left along the trail early on.) It's pretty harsh stuff.

when pinkerton man dale cooper has to find laura it gets pretty dark/weird

ah yes how could i forget the aguirre-like visionary sequence when charles and albert have been travelling without food or water for five days and think they see a giant weathercock sticking out of a mountaintop

xpost

The episode of Little House where a young girl is raped in a barn (?.) was some heavy, dark shit for a little kid to see.

I believe that episode was called “Sylvia”, the victim was Albert’s girlfriend (Sylvia), and the rapist wore a really creepy plastic mask.

I have told ppl about the Albert-on-morphine storyline & no-one believes me

I remember and validate your experience VG

I remember Albert being on morphine, but didn't he also later possibly die?

As for murder, Mr. Edwards' son was murdered, but I don't personally remember this and am not sure it was handled "darkly".
Charles had another son who was shot, but survived.
It was also pretty brutal when Mrs. Garvey (?) and Mary's baby died in a fire which I believe was started when Albert and the Garvey's son were smoking or something.
But the scary masked rapist was the thing that most left a childhood impression on me.

god i hardly caught any of little house when i was younger and now I'm glad

little house on the prairie, and the basement beneath it

xxposts ty jon <3

anyway i am basically ride or die for Little House forever

kinda want to rewatch it..but i’m deep into the Mary Tyler Moore Show & Hill Street Blues for the foreseeable future

anyway how did we get from serial killers to Little House? oh Benders, right right

Did you hear about the Nun who liked Bingo?

She always had a little prayer on the housie

xpost

i definitely want to rewatch little house during whatever time I left to me, it's gonna make me feel CRAZY to see though, it's like my weird hidden moral bedrock

hill street too (big time), and taxi, and st elsewhere. If you told me today I will never have time to rewatch those four shows I would be v v downcast

here ends my perversion of thread purpose

I can't remember what thread it was where I was arguing that the US doesn't have serial killers anymore because all the psychopaths are now mass-shooters but this seems relevant and backs up my theory: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/15/are-american-serial-killers-a-dying-breed

Watching the Ted Bundy doc on netflix.

well really it only backs up my theory that there are fewer serial killers than there used to be

xxp

yeah I don't really buy the mass shooter as replacement for serial killer theory

they're a pretty different breed

xp. it doesn't really back it up very strongly.

well it is the Guardian!

the rise of mass shooters seems to be more of a coincidence than a switch-off, as it were. i don't doubt that it's more difficult to actually be as somewhat cavalier and casual a killer as some of these guys were, but at the same time the pathology driving serial killers isn't something that would go away, and it's not one that typically answers to pleas to self for caution. i'd be curious to see if there were in-depth corresponding analyses of captured killers who seemed to have a similar M.O. to past killers, the only difference being they were captured early on in their, uh, "careers".

yeah I don't really buy the mass shooter as replacement for serial killer theory

they're a pretty different breed

I guess I think of it in big-picture sort of terms - there are these violent currents in society and the avenues of expression that they take vary from one period to another depending on a variety of factors, and for whatever reason for awhile there it was serial killing, whereas now it's mass shootings. I have no statistics or grand theory to back this up, just spitballing. Might roll in how generations of men are no longer routinely exposed to horrific violence on the battlefield too, why not.

xp

like, it used to be that if you felt compelled to kill a whole bunch of random people, hey just join the army or a bushwhacker unit or become an outlaw or a pirate or whatever.

i think it's harder for serial killers to go years without leaving behind any real evidence of their presence now. everyone's got a cell phone, anyone can take a quick picture with their phone at a moment's notice and send it to someone, few ppl hitchhike or pick up hitchhikers anymore, we've got DNA evidence now...

the Vronsky book cited in the Guardian article (and which I talked about up thread briefly) has an extended section on the soldier as serial murderer, as it happens

and before that he talks about witch hunting as an institutionalised expression of those desires

yeah the behaviors seem to be so key. baby boomers tell you stuff about their lives that often feel very foreign. like i remember my ex-mother in law telling me how she hitchhiked with a female friend when they were in their mid 20s to Mexico and back from Toronto. i would think someone had lost their damn mind if they were doing that now.

there's also better forensic evidence, more surveillance, cell phones, as you mention, law enforcement agencies doing better to share info - that bundy doc shows just how little cooperation there was between law enforcement while he was in washington state, utah, and colorado. he may as well have skipped abroad when he moved state

Serial killers are very different from mass killers.

Also I think serial killers were a reflection of a different time. (Not only their ability to go unnoticed for a long time. But also it says more about society if that makes any sense. The way mass shootings seem to be more prevalent than before.)

the main difference seems to be that there's not really a sexual component to mass shooters, seems like that was more of a focus for serial killers generally speaking. but apart from that idk

Mass shootings seem like they’re aimed at public recig ition and reflect a world where life is more public

plenty of serial killers wanted public recognition

True. The mass shootings seem inherently public though. They take place in public; they are a spectacle

Some mass killers are incells, which I would say counts as a sexual component.

it counts as motivation, but the act itself does not involve sex

serial killing is a libidinal thing though. straight serial killers tend to kill women and girls while gay serial killers tend to kill men and boys. serial killers have types of victims. serial killers plan. serial killers want to get away with it. etc.

(male serial killers i should add)

serial killers have types of victims. serial killers plan.

so do mass shooters

serial killers want to get away with it.

debatable

most mass shooters in america are men that kill a woman that they know and people who happen to be around them. that's not a type. the las vegas shooter who is now the most prolific mass shooter shot at a crowd of people he couldn't possibly have distinguished.

serial killers tend to try and get away with it for at least a while

that's not a type.

gays, black people, coworkers...

Jews etc.

kindergarteners, fellow students

I'm using "type" in the way that people talk about serial killers having a "type" of victim. this is not synonymous with "group of people of any description"

yeah but again I would say that "type" is usually driven by the sexual component w serial killers. Mass shooters tend to have types or groups of people that they are going after, but as you say it's not a libidinal thing.