It’s a cop show cliche to have a brilliant psychopath lay out a series of cryptic clues in order to play with the police. After each murder a clue will be left for the police to agonize over, which leads them to a new location and unravels a peace of the killer’s psyche. Have their even been cases of this in real life?
I don’t know right off hand about the “clues” idea. But, some killers do “play” with the police. The BTK killer (to use a recent example) sent letters to the police about his crimes.
Actually, you know what Carnick — Here’s a good link for you.
Ever heard of the serial killer who was given the moniker The Zodiac Killer? What about the Unabomber? Those are just 2 examples.
The Unabomber is a pretty good example but the authorities didn’t do a very good job of unravelling it. Even though his writings were carried in major papers, they didn’t make much progress at all. That is until his brother picked up the paper one day and started reading. “Hey, this crazy stuff sounds like stuff my brother Ted used to write. Hey, I haven’t seen him in a few years. I wonder what he is up to.” At least the authorities were able to find his Montana cabin given his info but that isn’t as impressive.
The BTK killer was just like the fictional stories. The police tracked the floppy disk to a computer in a church and Dennis Rader was the president of the church council. That one makes an almost cliched and unbelievable story at least at the end.
Son of Sam wrote letters too. It isn’t an uncommon pattern for serial murderers. Zodiac is uncommon in not having gotten caught.
There were two Zodiac killers, one in New York who was eventually caught, and one in California, who remains unidentified. So, you’re half right.
Well … the New York copycat really isn’t who springs to mind when you say “Zodiac Killer”. Unless they are explicitly pluralizing it to “killers”, it’s a pretty safe bet that someone means the CA case. But, yeah, they caught the copycat.
Aren’t the Jack the Ripper letters the first example of this?
Possibly. But there’s controversy as to whether any of the letters are genuine. From the first paragraph of that page:
It is for me, but then I’m originally from the NYC area at around the time of the murders.
Isn’t doing so a fairly standard trait of serial killers?
I recall reading a book some years ago about how the FBI developed their psychological profiling unit (I’m almost certain it was this), and one of the topics the author continually hit on was how a common motive is simply for the feeling of power: over the victim, over the media as they sensationalize the story, and over the police as they find your little clues/hints/etc, but not you.
Very interesting book, IMO, and well worth a look if you’re interested in serial killers/criminal profiling.
I’m not sure if the Manson family murders fit this scenario, but they did leave messages written in blood on the walls and other clues that eventually led to their convictions and also linked some of their murders.
Well that’s four or five out of thousands, so I would say it happens, but is not SOP for the average serial killer.
And there’s some selection bias here. The serial killers that leave clues, contact the media, and taunt the cops tend to be caught more often than those that stay in the shadows.
I asked this question a while ago, and got approximately the same answer.
One movie/TV additional detail is the killer who taunts a particular copy by name. Not sure if that’s ever happened.
This doesn’t quite fit the bill, but A lead investigator in the England’s Yorkshire Ripper case was sent a cassette tape purportedly recorded by the killer, in which he taunted the police about how dumb they were (and the detective in particular). The police spent a lot of time trying to trace the tape, giving excerpts to the media to air etc.
It finally turned out to have been recorded by a retired police officer with a grudge against the detective.
How about escaped or released convicts sending cops postcards from tropical resorts: “Weather’s here. Wish you were lovely.” Ok, ok I heard it on The Bill, but I’d be surprised if some wiseacre crim hadn’t done it in real life.