Captured in the 1930s before the words psychopath and pedophile were part of common vernacular, notorious serial killer Arnold Sodeman murdered four young girls with little thought of remorse. Without guilt, the evil serial killer strangled them to death with their own clothing and left their small bodies alone in the Australian brush, earning himself a chilling position in the annals of Australian crime. The first victim in his child murder spree, 12-year-old Mena Griffiths, showed signs of having been sexually assaulted, although the man who would become known as The School-girl Strangler denied the assault, and blamed the killing of both Griffiths and the other girls on his inability to control himself after he’d been drinking. The…
H.H.Holmes was one of America's first serial killers. He killed a large amount of victims by making a hotel designed to be a murder house. His tactics are the reason why so many people learn about him and why he is still remembered today. H.H.Holmes was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire on May 16th, 1861. His birth name was Herman Webster Mudgett.…
Wayne Williams was born on May 27, 1958, in Atlanta, Georgia. Wayne Bertram Williams was the key suspect for the Atlanta Child Murders. He was convicted of the killing of two men in January 1982. It was only until after his conviction that he was thought to be responsible for the deaths of more than 20 other people, these were the Atlanta Child Murders. These beliefs came from DNA evidence that suggested he was linked to the murders (Wayne Williams Biography).…
Robert C. Hansen is known as Alaska’s most prolific serial killer. His patterns of kidnapping, rape, torture, and ultimately hunting his victims before killing them reads like a Hollywood movie script; and in fact did become a recent move, The Frozen Ground (2013). Robert “Bob” Hansen was born on February 13, 1939, in Estherville, Iowa to a Danish immigrant family. His father, Christian, was a baker by trade and operated his own bakery in their small town (Greig, 2012). In his youth, Robert was afflicted by a severe case of acne as well as a noticeable stutter when he spoke.…
John Wayne Gacy is one of the most infamous serial killers in American history. During a seven-year span of the 1970s, Gacy murdered 33 men. As is the case with many high profile murderers, to the average person, one would have to be insane to commit such acts, which is what Gacy 's defense claimed. The jury did not buy it though, and Gacy would be executed by lethal injection in 1994. Criminologists study why people commit crime, and assemble theories.…
Anna Halgren Hoover - Sociology One of the age old questions that plague this earth is the thought that things like murder, corruption, and deviance are coded into the human genome, and that when these genes meet in certain frequencies, coupled with environmental and social factors, it leads to the creation of outliers. Or, in Joel Rifkin’s case, among others, to the birth of a serial killer. Joel Rifkin was born in New York in January of 1959, the adopted son of Bernard and Jeanne Rifkin from a pair of unwed college students. Rifkin is known for the deaths of at least 17 women in the 1990’s, targeting prostitutes and drug addicts, acting upon inspiration from Hitchcock’s Frenzy, strangling his victims and using elaborate methods to hide the bodies.…
The ‘Grim Sleeper’ is a serial killer that was not caught for over two decades. The same suspect got linked to 11 different murders. Since he took a 14 year pause in his killings, the public named him the ‘Grim Sleeper’. Lonnie Franklin Jr. is the man blamed for all of the murders. During his trial, his attorney tried to tell the court that an expert hired by Lonnie’s defense connected DNA from two of the cases to a man named Chester Turner.…
TWENTY YEARS LATER: THE DIRTY TRUTH ON JOHN WAYNE GACY, THE SERIAL KILLER By: Vaithiegaa Mathanarajan Even twenty years after the death if the notorious serial killer, John Wayne Michael Gacy, people still tremble when they hear his name. Gacy, an American serial killer was found guilty of killing thirty-three boys and young men (Berry-Dee, 2007). Biographical Information Gacy was born on March 17th, 1942, and died on May 10th, 1994 by lethal injection (Greig, 2010).…
him to keep him from telling his father. He was also found to have an extremely high IQ and always used alcohol while committing his murders. He frequently hopped abound doing unskilled work. He is considered a mission-oriented killer because the people he murdered were women who reminded him of his mother. His first murder was a childhood bully who continually made fun of his "girly" name.…
Charles Cullen is known as the “Angel of Death” and “Satan’s Son” due to the murders of hundreds of patients in his 16 year career of nursing. These describe him accurately as he preyed on innocent sick people who were hospitalized. On February 22, 1960 in West Orange, New Jersey, Charles Cullen was born. His family consisted of his father, mother, five sisters and two brothers.…
He was an individual that was intelligent and had feelings towards others. The murders he committed were due to the sexual arousal that he felt after committing each murder. Bundy began his criminal acts soon after he ended his relationship with his girlfriend Stephanie Brooks. Bundy became infatuated with criminal activity at a young age; his criminal acts began with burglary and small thefts at local convenience…
Shawcross has some traits of mission-oriented serial killers. For example, his viticms are majority of prostitutes. Arthur Shawcross claimed “his mother 's voice told him to kill his victims” and helped him strangle and mutilate one of the victims. However, Dr. Park Dietz stated that Shawcross was faking mental illness to avoid prison (Associated Press, 2008). Therefore, he does not hears any voices or visions guiding him to kill other people.…
Deviant behavior can mean different things to different people. Deviance can be an aggressive behavior or action. Deviant behavior can be any type of criminal act such as rape, murder, assault, or kidnap. Serial killers can be described as having deviant behavior. Deviance can also be a mental state of mind.…
A lot of people want to blame the parents of the offenders, asking “what did you turn your child into?” 36% of serial killers were physically abused, 26% were sexually abused, and 50% were psychologically abused (Mitchell and Aamodt 45). Many people have logically come to the conclusion that just because someone is abused, it does not mean that they will become a serial killer; or even a murderer; which is true. In the general population (people who have never committed murder) only 6% are physically abused, 3% are sexually abused, and 2% are psychologically abused (Mitchell and Aamodt 45). The dramatic difference of abuse frequency between people who are serial killers and people who are not seems evident enough to support that serial killers are created.…
Theodore Robert Cowell or as many people would refer to him as Ted Bundy, was a notorious serial killer and rapist who was born on November 24th 1946 and was executed by an electric chair on January 24th 1989. Ted 's ' mother Eleanor Louise Cowell gave birth to him in Burlington, Vermont. When Ted was born, Eleanor left Ted for three months and returned to Philadelphia. Later, Teds ' grandparents pretended to adopt Ted and said that Eleanor was his sister. Many people believed that Bundy was a child from incest and that his grandfather Sam Cowell was his biological father.…