S&D: Serial Killers

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.

mass killers are more revenge and absolute chaos fantasy types afaict.

also what struck me about the Vegas dude was that what he did was almost create the type of scene you could re-enact in Grand Theft Auto, just getting to the top of a building and raining down gunfire on people and blowing shit up and holding out for as long as you can. i'm not "blaming video games" but it is kind of interesting.

read this last night thought it was good:
https://believermag.com/the-end-of-evil/

Hadn't even heard of this guy - Canadian Serial Killer Bruce McArthur, operated in the Toronto LGBTQ community.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/canadian-serial-killer-bruce-mcarthur-life-imprisonment-792388/?fbclid=IwAR0IKiYiNWBXAzD2F-rhQ2UwfcG-xjj_hQqi3WWCzfH_47ogHPoM-oqckws

On why he could fly under the radar for so long: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/alleged-serial-killer-divided-toronto-lgbtq-community-bruce-mcarthur-703592/

An 80 year old woman in Russia.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/serial-killer-russia-woman-elderly-body-parts-fridge-berezovka-khabarovsk-a8777026.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2lIYYylY8FA9aFxcYYCvJoOKcFlCNqJqCJla4oqOHIZf50wrkGbXkYto8#Echobox=1550063517

https://z98rocks.iheart.com/content/2017-10-24-the-voice-behind-many-bestselling-books-on-tape-is-actually-a-serial-killer/

According to a 1987 Los Angeles Times article, Edmund Kemper recorded himself reading hundreds of books for an initiative known as the Blind Project. It was a campaign set up by the prison that houses Kemper, the California Medical Facility State Prison, and even though Kemper, a fan of necrophilia, is serving eight concurrent life sentences for the murders of six female college students, according to the LA Times story, blind people are incredibly grateful for him.

Among the books Kemper lent his voice to are Flowers in the Attic, The Glass Key, Merlin's Mirror, Petals on the Wind, The Rosary Murders, Sphinx and Star Wars. In fact, between 1977 and 1987, he spent over 5,000 hours in the recording booth, using up an estimated four million feet of tape.

was reading about richard ramirez i.e. night stalker on wikipedia the other day and peaced out when it started to list his killings. apparently there is a new doc about it which... NOPE.

i mean jesus

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Richard_Ramirez_2007.jpg

There are some valuable interviews with survivors and families of victims and the procedural detective story aspects are interesting especially in terms of time and place but they do these stylistic devices which are really inappropriate. Also they brush way too quickly past Ramirez’s horrifying childhood which isn’t conducive to the stated goal of wanting to know why someone would do those things.

i got the feeling just from the article that the satan angle was played really hard by the media at the time. it does seem like being beaten to the point of unconsciousness numerous times before reaching the age of 9 would have more of an effect on one's behavior than satanic panic bs.

Yeah I kept thinking about the satanic panic atmosphere specific to the time (like I would assume his theatricality during the trial seems was influenced by that more than anything else) but the filmmakers have predictably zero curiosity toward contextualizing any of that.

still i mean maybe he was a demon look at that photo

also apparently he was quite a thottie in prison

the satanic thing was a big part of it at the time as far as I can remember. That summer was really scary! I was 10 years old in LA, our house was right off the Freeway and I was terrified of this guy.

yikes

i was alerted to it because of a lovefingers tweet, apparently any kid who lived in la around that age at the time is psychically scarred because of it.

the one great thing was the day they found him and he caught a beatdown from the people in the neighborhood. The sense of relief and joy that went over the city was really palatable, he really did traumatized us all.

Watched Night Stalker. I didn't know much about the case going in, though I'd seen photos of Ramirez in the courtroom. As a documentary, not much, mostly contemporary interviews from the two main detectives and survivors; very little attempt to put everything in the context of the time or place (maybe a little bit right at the beginning.) It's so weird from the vantage point of today that Ramirez could come back to L.A. from Arizona and not know that his face is on the front page of every L.A. paper. The man he murdered in San Francisco was named Peter Pan. The story of the six-year-old survivor was especially sad and compelling. Gil Carrillo seems like a good guy. Dianne Feinstein--who completely undermined the case--has been around forever. Amazing that you were right there through all that, carne.

I read Ramirez's letters at the Museum of Death in NOLA. dude had a sense of menace even in the fucking letters he wrote from jail. I felt queasy after reading them.

The man he murdered in San Francisco was named Peter Pan.

he can die, he can die, he can die!

dude

we started watching this the other night but I only got ten minutes into it. seemed more about the detective big-upping himself and telling his life story.

i said elsewhere that the production/editing was ott but the interviews are all great, i would much rather hear from homicide detectives & survivors than talking heads trying to “humanize” ramirez or whatever

i'll give it another shot when i'm less exhausted when I was that night. yeah definitely not looking for a 'fanboy' documentary of dude or anything!

*than

It was less the interviews themselves, for me, than that was pretty much all there was. My own preference, purely in terms of a film, would be a narrator, mostly footage from when it happened--the neighborhood arrest, for instance, was great--and less time on those interviews. I guess they were working within the strictures of what they had. It did spook me, though. I finished around 11:00 p.m., and I had planned on taking a shower afterwards. Held off until today.

Severely underrated outside of France:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_de_Rais

I loved the two main detectives tbh. Couldnt get enough.

i would much rather hear from homicide detectives & survivors than talking heads trying to “humanize” ramirez

definitely not looking for a 'fanboy' documentary of dude or anything!

I thought the film (or series, or whatever) struck the right balance here. It was very clear on what Ramirez's childhood was like, but it didn't dwell on it, and it positioned that information at the beginning of the fourth episode, at which point you're fully aware of everything he's done.

agreed, the show centred the crimes and the victims rather than Ramirez himself, who wasn’t even mentioned by name until the last episode. I also liked that it highlighted how institutional incompetence and petty one-upmanship between police jurisdictions were a major, major reason why Ramirez wasn’t caught earlier. And even though the detectives were the main talking heads, the series didn’t portray them as flawless heroes (there was even that one horrible cop who bragged about beating up perps ugh).

The man he murdered in San Francisco was named Peter Pan.

he can die, he can die, he can die!

― if Spaghetti-Os had whammy bars (Neanderthal), Wednesday, January 27, 2021 6:05 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

guilty lol

yeah that idiot cop boasting about beating up a perp, what a wanker. I thought there was going to be some context added: like I was having a breakdown at the time because of work stress or something. But no it was a very banal story with no point told by a pitiless thug that likes beating the shit out of people and then boasting about it on a netflix doc!

I liked how the editorial decision was clearly to just let him at it tbh

I also liked that it highlighted how institutional incompetence and petty one-upmanship between police jurisdictions were a major, major reason why Ramirez wasn’t caught earlier.

You get this a lot in fictional films, but it's usually resentment when the FBI comes in and pulls rank on an investigation that local cops have already begun (Silence of the Lambs, Mindhunter, etc.). Here, it was more like tension between co-equals in L.A. and San Francisco.