The stats provided are just “big time criminals” if you will. I hear the middle name Wayne a lot in run-of-the-mill criminal news as well. It’s uncanny.
We know all these names, I suppose:
John Wilkes Booth
Bruno Richard Hauptmann
Lee Harvey Oswald
James Earl Ray
John Wayne Gacy
Mark David Chapman
But bear something in mind: many, probably most of the famous murderers of the past, NEVER used three names! The criminal justice system may identify a killer as John Jacob Jinglheimerschmidt, the media will refer to him exclusively as John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt, he will become known solely as John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt among the public at large… but his family would probably tell you “Nobody ever called him Jacob. He was Johnny to his family, friends, and everyone who knew him.” (In the case of Lindbergh kidnapper Hauptmann, oddly enough, NOBODY ever called him Bruno- he was just “Richard” to everyone to knew him. His defenders thought that he was put at a disadvantage in the press by being tagged with a foreign name that sounded sinister to many Americans.)
I mean, do you think Lee Harvey Oswald used “Harvey” often? Or that Mark David Chapman went by “Mark David”? Presumably, he was just Mark to his friends and family.
We don’t hear most people’s middle names at all. Notorious killers are among the few people who are almost always addressed by their first and middle names.
Even so, just off the top of your head (no research, just stick to famous killers that almost everybody is familiar with): besides Gacy, how many killers can you name with the middle name “Wayne”?
The “using the middle name bit” is to distinguish serial killer John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt from all the honest law abiding John Jingleheimerschmidt’s out there. Though why it wasn’t used for Jeffrey Dahmer is a mystery.
The only other famous crime involving a person with the middle name Wayne is John Wayne Bobbit (snicker), and he was the victim.
The movie “John & Yoko” had originally casted an actor called Mark Lyndsey to play John. He was dumped after it was discovered that his real name was Mark Lyndsey Chapman, which was too close to the name of Lennon’s killer Mark David Chapman. Well, would you want an actor named Lee Lyndsey Oswald to play JFK?
I temped with the Texas Commission for Law Enforcement Officers and (something that starts with S) one summer and had to retrieve and file records of cops all over the state. I was amazed at how many cops had Wayne as their middle name; seemed like damn-near every other one. Maybe it’s a Texas thing, not so much a criminal one.
Why would the statistics be any different? Can you provide some?
Because Walloon’s cite is for executed criminals, which are an itty bitty subset of all criminals, and one that may not necessarily match the social distribution of criminals as a whole?
All very nicely hypothesized. But this is the General Questions board, not the IMHO board. Impressions don’t cut it. The statistics I presented can be supplanted by better statistics — which you are welcome to post.
Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a database of criminals that includes social and economic data. So I’ll stick with what I said: The list you gave may not necessarily be representative of all criminals, because it’s only a list of executed criminals.
If you think that statement belongs in IMHO and not GQ, you’re free to, um, deal with it.
From some stats on the web - in 1960, there were about 2.2 million males born. There were 7,198 Waynes, the 58th most popular first name. That’s about .3 % of the population. That’s a pretty small number compared to the 1.9% executed. I know that all the killers executed were not born in 1960 - a random year I selected. But, in years after 1960, Wayne’s popularity as a name was considerably lower, and before that, only slightly higher. Makes me think that, yes, it is an uncommon name for killers. I don’t know if Wayne is has been a more popular or less popular middle name, which throws this speculation into an area of even less certainty. Still and all…
Keep in mind that the 1.9% is a cumulative total of all executions over the period 1977-2005.
caligynephophia writes:
> I temped with the Texas Commission for Law Enforcement Officers and
> (something that starts with S) one summer and had to retrieve and file records
> of cops all over the state. I was amazed at how many cops had Wayne as their
> middle name; seemed like damn-near every other one. Maybe it’s a Texas thing,
> not so much a criminal one.
I have a hypothesis as to what’s going on here. I don’t have any proof of it, but it fits in with some other observations I’ve made. The hypothesis is this: Both policemen and criminals may tend to have the middle name of Wayne more than other American males. This is particularly true if you restrict yourself to white Southern males. Both policemen and criminals tend to come from backgrounds that are working-class or lower-middle-class in higher proportions than you would expect at random. I don’t mean this observation as an insult to policemen at all. In a working-class or lower-middle-class background, one would tend to see the effects of crime more than one would in an upper-middle-class community. (This doesn’t mean that there are no crimes committed by upper-middle-class people, but embezzlement or business fraud don’t tend to affect the communities where the perpetrators live.) There’s two obvious reactions to this: One could say, “Hey, this looks like easy money. I want some of this.” Or one could say, “This is really shameful. Somebody’s got to clean up this mess.”
So let’s suppose that both policemen and criminals come from working-class and lower-middle-class backgrounds more often than one would expect at random. My guess is that people from these backgrounds tend to give their sons the middle name of Wayne more often than one would expect at random. My offhand observations are that, more specifically, this is particularly true if you restrict yourself to white Southern working-class to lower-middle-class families. I don’t know why the middle name “Wayne” became popular in this group. Perhaps, as people have mentioned, it has something to do with the popularity of John Wayne.
Leave us not forget John Wayne Bobbit. He didn’t dismember anybody, but, well, he…
was dismembered himself! 
Back to the OP.
There have been a sting of break-in robberies on Long Island. One of the persons arrested for it on Saturday had the unforgettable name of: Efraim Zembalist Russell.
I was going to ask the same question, but instead regarding the name “Ray” rather than “Wayne.” For some reason, watching the news and hearing about murderers both regular and serial, it seems like a large number of them had “Ray” as their middle name. “Lee” is another one that also seems to come up a lot.
Wasn’t there a thread somewhere that answered the question “Why are serial murderers and high-profile criminals always referred to with their first, middle and last names?”
Anecdotal data point, backed up with amateur psychological diagnoisis:
My father’s middle name is Wayne, and I’m pretty sure he’s a sociopath.
Well, them, and Miss America contestants.
[/QUOTE]
I may have asked you this before, but is it Wainwright as in Wainwright Hotel at Heritage Park?
And Mom’s kids…“Zachary Robert, don’t make me slap you!”
I may be a bit dim this evening after a few beers, but I gotta say that the force of these arguments escapes me.
Thanks, guy.
-C. Wayne