Son of Sam?
Yes and no. His crime scenes were elaborately, perhaps even ritually set up, but AFAIK it wasn’t in order to taunt or misdirect the police - he simply was the kind of sick fuck who got a kick out of putting a dead woman’s breast in her mouth and similar.
OTOH, he did purportedly write letters to the cops and newspapers, and one to the forensic doc who studied the piece of human kidney that came with his “From Hell” letter. A journalist later admitted however that he had written the letters the cops had singled out from the absurd mass of kook mail they got on the case. From Wiki :
As you can see for yourself, the “Dear Boss” letter’s handwriting is significantly different from the later “Saucy Jack” and “From Hell” letters.
No.
There’s no evidence of that being the case.
Dennis Rader was a dumbass with an inflated sense of ego, who knew less about data retrieval on floppy disks than most 10 year olds.
It wasn’t where he worked, it was the church that he attended and was on the board of.
The Unabomber wrote a bunch of letters and a manifesto that was eventually published in several newspapers under threat of further murders. His own brother eventually recognized phrases from the manifesto and, after doing some research of his own, turned him in to the FBI. A fascinating story: Ted Kaczynski - Wikipedia
So the current thinking now is that none of the letters written to the newspapers or police during the reign of Jack The Ripper were actually written by the true killer?
The Zodiac Killer’s letters and ciphers can be viewed here. Some have indeed been deciphered, others are still a mystery. It may be that some of them are simply garbled nonsense, but who knows. The famous “My Name Is…” letter is among those left unsolved.
That’s what I thought, and that is almost certainly the case of the letters that coined the term “Jack the Ripper” (in fact a newspaper man admitted to faking them, and the hand writing matches his) . But Wakinyan points out above the “From hell” letter (which included part of a kidney) have never been shown to be a forgery.
I have a friend who is a Ripperologist. I made her a Jack troll and a plush half a kidney along with a “Fwom Heck” letter.
Does anyone remember a story of a man who came across documents that convinced him that his father had been a serial killer, who had never been caught? I thought that was the Zodiac killer, but did Z have a reputation for a precise approach? The father was a doctor.
You might be thinking of Steve Hodel, son of Dr. George Hodel, who was convinced his father committed the Black Dahlia murder.
Mr. Moto, that clip was confusing. Newspaper story sequence being what it is, I was having trouble figuring out how he was executed, then wrote an insulting letter to prosecutors, so he could be reconvicted.
Paul Powell was executed Thursday night. He was captured almost immediately after the crimes mentioned, tried and sentenced to death.
The sentence was appealed and the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that since there had been a rape and attempted murder of one girl, and a murder of another, capital murder did not apply. Capital murder requires an aggravating offense - since the only known aggravating offenses happened against another victim who survived the attack, the death sentence was overturned. Powell was given a life term and returned to prison.
He then sent a profane and taunting letter to prosecutor Paul Ebert and others in the Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney office. In it he boasted that he tried to rape the murder victim as well. This provided evidence of an aggravating offense. A new trial was obtained and Paul Powell was sentenced to die in 2003.
I have come to oppose the death penalty for various reasons. However, I will say that if all prosecutors approached capital cases the way Paul Ebert does, there wouldn’t be much controversy over the practice.
I don’t know why exactly, but I think that is just adorable!
Wait, They fucking lost the ‘From Hell’ letter!?
When I was a teenager I lived with Marvin and my mother for a summer. This was after his first murder and before his last two. It was a very strange time in my life.
I think that if ever I become a serial killer, I WILL leave coded clues for the police, which if they do actualyl manage to decypher them will identify someone that I don’t like as the killer while at the same time insulting the cops mothers.
Interesting topic. I’ve heard about a few mentioned but the most memorable I can think of right now is From Hell
awwwwww, cute =)