# Were psychos, serial kidnappers, and other (real) boogeymen around in the "good old days"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 3, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795 "2009-12-03T02:19:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/21 "2009-12-03T10:10:54Z")
This is relevant to the OP. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth\_B%C3%A1thory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory) > [@](#): > > The exact number of young women tortured and killed by Elizabeth Báthory is unknown, though it is often speculated to be as high as 650, between the years 1585 and 1610. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/22 "2009-12-03T10:35:56Z")
Also, it seems people remembering the good old days tend to forget things like lynching and the murder of civil rights workers. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/23 "2009-12-03T11:24:34Z")
> [@Harmonious\_Discord](#): > > Read the account of The Mysterious Mr. Holmes in the book [A Book of Remarkable Criminals by Henry Brodribb Irving](http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/446). There are some mentally deranged and amoral people in this book. The accounts are from the 1800’s. > > In the Holmes account he was a polygamist huckster committing fraud and then killing people including his children afterward mounting the fresh stripped skeleton or burning the body in a wood stove. His \*murder hotel \*and his residence in Chicago are worth mentioning. Didn’t he “work” prior to the Ripper? Giles De Rais deserves a mention, as does Bathory. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/24 "2009-12-03T13:41:36Z")
I don’t have a cite handy, but I believe I read somewhere that although school massacres are more frequent “these days” (where a number of students are killed or wounded at one time) the total number of students killed each year in schools is way down. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/25 "2009-12-03T13:42:31Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > attitudes towards child safety are in part dependent on the number of children people typically have. If you have several and are young enough to have more if needed, you will be less scared of having one of them killed by lightning than if you have only one and are now too old / tired to do it all over again, because you married too late and had the kid even later. What do you mean by this, practically speaking? Are you saying the trend toward being protective of our kids over the past 50 years is primarily caused by people starting families later on average? Or are you talking about a much different time frame? ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/26 "2009-12-03T13:52:32Z")
They can hardly keep count of the kids that go missing in this day and age, so why would anyone think it didn’t happen in bygone eras? ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/27 "2009-12-03T14:51:56Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > His \*murder hotel \*and his residence in Chicago are worth mentioning. Didn’t he “work” prior to the Ripper? > > Giles De Rais deserves a mention, as does Bathory. You’d have to look up the information. I’m not remembering well today. The book I linked to is from gathered data and not the accounts he sold to newspapers and lied about everything. You can’t believe anything the guy told people. ---
**Author:** ![Terraplane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@Terraplane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terraplane)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/28 "2009-12-03T14:56:31Z")
> [@Harmonious\_Discord](#): > > Read the account of The Mysterious Mr. Holmes in the book [A Book of Remarkable Criminals by Henry Brodribb Irving](http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/446). There are some mentally deranged and amoral people in this book. The accounts are from the 1800’s. > > In the Holmes account he was a polygamist huckster committing fraud and then killing people including his children afterward mounting the fresh stripped skeleton or burning the body in a wood stove. _The Devil in the White City_ is a great account of Holmes and his ‘castle’ during the 1883 Chicago World’s Fair, with parts of the book focusing on Holmes and other parts focusing on the architects of the fair. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/29 "2009-12-03T15:15:45Z")
> [@Spartydog](#): > > Don’t forget: > > John Norman Collins [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan\_murders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_murders) > > and > > Richard Speck [http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/speck.htm](http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/speck.htm) And never underestimate greed, as in the [Bobby Greenlease kidnapping/murder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Greenlease). ---
**Author:** ![Umbriel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/4af34b/32.png) [@Umbriel2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Umbriel2)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/30 "2009-12-03T15:21:36Z")
I’m not sure that the change in perception in the present day is merely a function of media sensationalism. Other factors have changed as well. Personal mobility has improved dramatically. People decades ago may have heard about the Cleveland Torso Killer and thought that Cleveland seemed pretty far away. Now, because of both transportation and communications, it seems relatively close by. There also _has_ been a marked increase in child abductions in the context of divorce disputes. These make up the majority of faces one sees on milk cartons or at Wal-Mart. The tendency of both media and advocacy groups to not distinguish these abductions from the more lethal kind tends to increase the overall menace factor. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/31 "2009-12-03T21:53:13Z")
[Photo](http://www.prairieghosts.com/holmes2.jpg) and [diagram](http://www.prairieghosts.com/diagram.jpg) of Dr. Holmes’s "murder castle. Contrary to rumor it was financed mostly from mail order medicine business, not from money he stole from his victims. Also contrary to rumor Henry H. Holmes (born Herman W. Mudgett) and Sherlock Holmes did not have anything to do with naming each other; Mudgett was using Holmes as an alias years before Sherlock Holmes appeared in print though his infamy wasn’t known until after Sherlock was an established character. The mansion is long gone of course. Do any Chicago Dopers know if there’s anything there now that commemorates its significance? ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/32 "2009-12-03T22:15:15Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > The mansion is long gone of course. Do any Chicago Dopers know if there’s anything there now that commemorates its significance? I SERIOUSLY doubt it. (I’ve never been by, as it was very far away from where I lived in Chicago.) The city government generally tries to ignore places where unpleasant things happened. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/33 "2009-12-03T22:36:40Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > What is horrible is that school massacres only started recently. The Columbine, CO shootings really touched off that craze. Wait, let me check my facts. > > [spoiler]Columbine was chump change. The worst school massacre in U.S. history occured in Bath, MI in **1927** where 45 students were killed and 58 others were wounded. Many of them were very young students. > > [Bath School disaster - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster) > > [/spoiler] > [@Bisected8](#): > > Not to mention [Dunblane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre) (1996, 18 dead, 16 of them primary school aged children). The reason we don’t let anyone legally own a handgun in these parts. To be fair, though, neither of those seems to involve a \*student \*as the killer, which is the biggest part of the school/campus shooting hype. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/34 "2009-12-03T22:53:35Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > The mansion is long gone of course. Do any Chicago Dopers know if there’s anything there now that commemorates its significance? Well, it’s now [a post office.](http://weirdchicago.blogspot.com/2008/10/murder-castle-today-or-good-grief-more.html) Creepy. I go by that way every once in a while and never realized that was the site of a “murder castle.” ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/35 "2009-12-03T23:40:22Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Crimes reported on the news were considered anomalies, and not relevant to our lives. They are **still** anomalies, statistically. Only a tiny percentage of kids is ever actually harmed by a psycho, serial kidnapper, etc. (far fewer than the kids hurt by abusive parents, for example). It’s just that there is so much more publicity now, and a different attitude by the media. In the 50’s, the media tried to be reassuring about such things (‘it can’t happen here in suburbiaville’), whereas now the media tries to attract attention by making it as scary as possible (‘watch your children carefully – it’s so dangerous out there’). But that’s the way they get big ratings now. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/36 "2009-12-03T23:49:13Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > His \*murder hotel \*and his residence in Chicago are worth mentioning. Didn’t he “work” prior to the Ripper? > > Giles De Rais deserves a mention, as does Bathory. It’s worth mentioning that in the past (Crusades, frontier of the Roman Empire, etc.), today’s serial killer could have followed his inclinations and received not only acceptance, but gainful employment and possibly decoration. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/37 "2009-12-04T00:07:52Z")
> [@Neptunian\_Slug](#): > > I have asked him about it before and he doesn’t seem to think that there was any unusual paranoia. It certainly got a fair amount of media attention, not least because Cleveland had Eliot Ness running the show I was surprised to learn (when I checked the film The Untouchables on Wikipedia then went off to Ness’ article) that Ness had gone from organised crime to serial killers. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/38 "2009-12-04T00:22:12Z")
I think you can for the most part trust your kids to run around now. I live in NYC, and the Dominicans in my neighborhood let their 11 year olds run around the neighborhood. And you can make any comments about the ghetto that you like, these kids even when they become 15 or 16 don’t make me nervous. I saw two kids get into a tussle on the sidewalk and it seemed like one of those ‘for real/not for real’ fights that people in the same clique get into to establish dominance. I was impressed by both of them, and there was a clear victor, but no one got seriously hurt. I waited around to see if it was gonna get ugly, but the victor would put the other kid on the ground and he didn’t start kicking him in the face or anything like that. Psychos have always existed, but for the most part your neighborhood is no less safe than a similar neighborhood was in the 50s. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/39 "2009-12-04T00:41:39Z")
> [@Umbriel2](#): > > I’m not sure that the change in perception in the present day is merely a function of media sensationalism. Other factors have changed as well. Personal mobility has improved dramatically. People decades ago may have heard about the Cleveland Torso Killer and thought that Cleveland seemed pretty far away. Now, because of both transportation and communications, it seems relatively close by. > > There also _has_ been a marked increase in child abductions in the context of divorce disputes. These make up the majority of faces one sees on milk cartons or at Wal-Mart. The tendency of both media and advocacy groups to not distinguish these abductions from the more lethal kind tends to increase the overall menace factor. I agree mostly with these statements. There used to be all these missing children whose pictures were on milk cartons. Were aliens stealing them, where were they all going? It was an epidemic, mass media exaggerated the issue and then it just faded away. Why? Did all the abductions just stop? No, they never really were abductions, only child custody disputes. And once no-fault divorce became more common, and courts started granting joint custody, no more missing children. Or at least the epidemic was over. Bad things happen. And they happen all over the world. But now we are so over-informed that we know about incidents that are far away, that will never harm our kids, but it instills fear anyway. We have the capability to learn of almost every violent crime commited this week, not only in our neighborhood or country, but even around the world. We learn this fear. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795/40 "2009-12-04T00:53:01Z")
A fine discourse on the topic of reality v. perception of dangers to children, and the fears that drive that perception is Richard Louv’s _Last Child in the Woods_. I’d also submit that the last decade has been characterized by an increase in general anxiety and subtle fears in the public, partly as a result of the terrorist attacks, and the ensuing climate of fear that was promulgated by US policies and public statements. However, another great piece is _The Culture of Fear_, by Glassner, published in 1999, who traces these impulses back quite a bit farther. All that fear and anxiety translates to the overvaluation of the occasional crime report as more common than statistics indicate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-psychos-serial-kidnappers-and-other-real-boogeymen-around-in-the-good-old-days/519795.md?page=3)