The a to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (32 page)

Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

Ninety years later, the New York City psycho who, until that time, had been known as the “.44-Caliber Killer” received a new and permanent nickname when he left a ranting letter at a crime scene. Addressed to a Queens police captain, the letter began:

I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But i am a monster. I am the “son of Sam.” I am a little brat.

When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood.

“Go out and kill,” commands father Sam.

Behind the house some rest. Mostly young—raped and slaughtered—their blood drained—just bones now. . . .

I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else—programmed to kill.

In August 1969, another serial assassin who murdered with a gun—the California killer known only as
Zodiac
—mailed letters to three Bay Area newspapers. Part of each letter was written in code. When these passages were deciphered, they formed one chilling message: “I like to kill people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest, because Man is the most dangerous animal of all. . . . The best part will be when I die. I will be reborn in Paradise, and then all that I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try
to slow or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.” The following month, Zodiac sent another letter to the
San Francisco Chronicle,
threatening to “wipe out a school bus full of children”—a threat which, thankfully, he never carried out.

“Zodiac” letter

The tradition has continued in recent years in the case of Wichita’s
BTK
Strangler. During a murder spree in the late 1970s, this Midwestern psycho-killer fired off a series of letters that followed the usual pattern. The culprit used the correspondence to supply his own sinister
nickname
(an acronym based on his sadistic MO: Bind, Torture, Kill), as well as to generate media attention. And like a sulky child, he grew petulant when his tactics didn’t work. When a newspaper failed to respond quickly enough to one of his letters, he wrote back and demanded: “How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?”

In one way, though, BTK was different from his predecessors. As with
Jack the Ripper
and the
Zodiac
killer, his murders came to an abrupt halt. Unlike those earlier psychos, however, BTK suddenly piped up again years later in 2004 with a whole new stream of correspondence. The reason? Perhaps he was starving for recognition again. After all, the Green River Killer
had just been captured and was garnering nationwide attention. It’s possible that BTK was feeling neglected.

Or maybe he just wanted to get caught. That would explain why one of his new packages contained a computer disk which could be traced to the machine that had housed it—a clue that helped police arrest Dennis Rader, who was quickly charged with the stranglings that had happened nearly thirty years before.

“I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater, I am not. But i am a monster. I am the ‘son of Sam.’ I am a little brat.”

D
AVID
B
ERKOWITZ

The Sickest Letter Ever Written?

Undoubtedly the most ghastly letter ever written by a serial murderer is the one that cannibalistic child killer Albert
Fish
mailed to the mother of his twelve-year-old victim Grace Budd. Fortunately, Mrs. Budd was functionally illiterate and so was spared the horror of reading this unspeakable document. The original of this letter is now part of the collection of artist Joe Coleman:

My dear Mrs. Budd,

In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was a famine in China. Meat of any kind of was from $1-3 Dollars a pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold to the Butchers to be cut up and sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or a girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go to any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or a girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girls behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys one 7 and one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them—tortured them—to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 yr old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was Cooked and eaten except head—bones and guts. He was Roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried, stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E. 100 St. near—right side. He told me so often how good Human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3—1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said Yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already
picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and Called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How did she kick—bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did
not
fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a
virgin.

Albert Fish in custody
(New York Daily News)

L
IPSTICK

As a general rule, serial killers are not eager to get caught. Their atrocities are a source of unspeakable pleasure, and—as psychopathic personalities—they are immune to guilt or remorse.

Every so often, however, a serial murderer comes along who does feel bad about his behavior. He may even make an effort to stop. At one point, for example, Jeffrey
Dahmer
—who fantasized about having a zombielike sex object under his total control—stole a department store dummy in the hope that the mannequin might serve as a substitute for a human victim. Unfortunately (if predictably), the tactic didn’t work. Psychos like Dahmer are in the grip of an irresistible compulsion and find it impossible to kick the murder habit on their own. Sometimes, they will resort to suicide (see
Death Wish
). On other, rare occasions—knowing that they are powerless to prevent themselves from committing future horrors—they will beg for someone else to intervene.

The most famous instance of this latter phenomenon occurred in the case of William Heirens. Raised by sexually repressive parents who filled him with the belief that “all sex is dirty,” Heirens grew up to be a fetishist who achieved sexual climax from breaking into women’s homes and stealing their underwear. Intellectually gifted, he won admission to the University of Chicago in 1945 at the tender age of sixteen. Even while leading a stereotypical collegiate existence—dating, hanging out with buddies, cutting classes—he continued to pursue his clandestine life as a cat burglar and panty fetishist.

On June 5, 1945, a forty-three-year-old Chicago woman, Josephine Ross, surprised an intruder who was looting her bedroom. She was found that afternoon, sprawled across her bed, her throat slashed, her dress wrapped around her head.

Six months later, on December 10, the naked corpse of a petite, thirty-three-year-old brunette named Frances Brown was found in the bathroom of her Chicago apartment not far from the scene of the earlier crime. She had been shot in the head, a butcher knife protruded from her neck, and her housecoat was draped over her head. Scrawled in lipstick on the living room wall was a cry for help that would become the single most famous serial-killer message of the century: “For heavens sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.”

The “Lipstick Killer” (as he was instantly dubbed by the press) committed his last—and most heinous—crime in early January, when he abducted six-year-old Suzanne Degnan from her bedroom, strangled her, dismembered her body with a hunting knife, and dumped the pieces into the sewer.