Serial Killer Forums

[Li H'Sen Chang]

I find it interesting that many of the serial killers like Gacy and Dahmer are gay.

[Rising Dead Man]

I find it interesting that many of the serial killers like Gacy and Dahmer are gay.

Many are also straight or bi.

[Pumpkin_Man]

A serial killer is a serial killer is a serial killer. Being gay or straight does NOT determine whether one becomes a serial killer or not. Gacy and Dahmer were gay. Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer were straight. Dennis Raider (B.T.K.) was straight but also killed male victims. Jack the Ripper was straight. H. H. Holms' killing spree had nothing to with sxuality what so ever. He would lour unsuspecting victims to his 'chamber of horrors,' be they male or female, gass them, then disassemble them in his basement, and sell the skeletons to medical colleges.

If Gacy or Dahmer had been straight, their victims would have been women. And let's not for get the infamous Ed Gein. He was also straight, and if he or Bundy had been gay, their victims would have been men.

Then we have The Zodiak and Son of Sam. Like H. H. Holms, their killing sprees had nothing to do with sx. They killed just for the sake of killing because it made them feel powerful.

And with all this discussion about serial killers, we forgot to mention Arieen Wurnos, female serial killer who posed as a 'lady of the evening' and shot her would-be "jons" dead after stealing all their cash and their cars. Sx may have been the lour, but it was not the motovation behind Arieen Wurnos' killing. She killed primarily because she hated men.

And there was also the "angel of death," a woman and a nurse who murdered her female patients, and slept with them as they died. That was sxualy motovated and obviously she was gat.

Mike

[Rising Dead Man]

It is interesting that most serial killers seem to be men.

[Tee]

Didn't there used to be a deck of cards that was all serial killers? Like trading cards or something?

[Rising Dead Man]

Didn't there used to be a deck of cards that was all serial killers? Like trading cards or something?

Yeah, theres been a few.

[Pumpkin_Man]

RisingDeadMan, I am ashamed to say that you are essentialy correct. The vast majority of serial killers are men. In fact, the vast majority of all criminals, be they serial killers, dope peddlers, bank robbers or members of gangs or organized crime syndicates like the Mafia are also men. In fact, the Mafia, Hells Angels and other organized crime syndicates, biker gangs and street gangs don't even allow women to enter. The women are basicaly "property" of the various men in those organizations. It's a very sad statement to make, but for every 1 woman who's convicted of a crime, there must be at least 5 men convicted of a crime.

Mike

[jadewik]

There are female serial killers too... like Belle Gunness and Mary Bell.

The Colorado shooter IS classified as a mass murderer, according to the FBI classification system. Spree killers start in one place and move place-to-place. Mass murderers kill multiple people in one, single location. Serial killers kill single or multiple victims, but have a down-time in between killings.

... and if I had a dollar every time we had a mass murder here... I'd have $2. I was around for the 2004 College of Medicine shooting at UA... and I was here for the whole Jan 8, 2011 shooting where Congresswoman Giffords got shot in the face.

On the topic of serial killers... I watched a TV show yesterday on a new Jack the Ripper theory that was pretty compelling. They named this fellow James Skelly (I think) who killed his wife, escaped from an asylum, did the white chapel killings, took a ship to New York... and continued his murders in cities like New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angels, Dallas, etc... the newspapers in the US all seem to report "ripper like" motives and mutilations. They all coincide with this fellow's visit to the states.... and... they took a photo of the old guy and forensically back-aged it and compared it to a police sketch of eye-witness accounts from white chapel... the two images were uncanny in their similarities. This also coincides with the FBI profile of the Ripper-- which you can find in their FOIA files here: http://vault.fbi.gov/Jack%20the%20Ripper

There are also some interesting criminal profiling articles on their FOIA site here:
http://vault.fbi.gov/Criminal%20Profiling

You can spend hours looking at all the info they have on their old, prolific cases... and some very interesting people of note. Granted, a lot of the details are blacked out... but still... it makes for an interesting read.

[Murfreesboro]

Mike, I remember reading a number of years ago that women, as a gender, seem built to be more stable than men. This would make sense if you consider that the main biological role of women is to nurture children. Men, by contrast, tend as a gender toward the extremes. Extremely bad and extremely good. There are indeed more male criminals, and more male serial killers, than there are females who do those things. There are also more male geniuses than female geniuses. That doesn't mean that women can't be geniuses or criminals. But as a gender, men trump us in both those categories.

Jadewik, I think we have discussed Jack the Ripper before. I had never heard of this James Skelly you mention, or I don't recall hearing about him. Prior to reading your post, the most convincing theory I had ever encountered was Patricia Cornwell's about the well-known Enlgish artist, Walter Sickert.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Murf and Jadewick, I watched that James Skelly a while back, and I tend to believe that he was actualy Jack the Ripper, and he very well could have gotten on a ship to the U.S. Imigration laws were no where's as stringent back then as they are today, and since he was a white european, he would have gotten in quite easily. There were some subtle differences in the MOs of the actual Jack the Ripper killings and the Ripper like killings in the various American cities, but that could hav been because Jack the Ripper actualy changed his MO in order to cover up who he really was. He very well probably did leave London as the police were starting to close in on him. England, like the rest of the world, had the death penalty back then, and there's no doubt that Jack the Ripper whould have been hanged had he been caught.

Mike

[Li H'Sen Chang]

Statisticly most serial killers spree killers and mass murderers are white males. The memorable exception is the blacks in DC a few years ago who got caught at a rest area and the Asian student at Virginia Tech. Woman doing these things is very rare indeed.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Don't forget Wayne Williams, the Atlanta Child killer. He was an African American, as were all of his victims. Butyou are right. Wayne Williams is the exception, not the rule.

Mike

[Li H'Sen Chang]

It is odd that most violent crime is committed by blacks but they are rarely serial killers.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Actualy when it comes to main stream violent crime like robbery, gang banging or racketearing, I think poverty has more to do with it then race does. The Italian Mafia has allways been notorious for violent crime, as has the Greek Mob, the Russian Mob, there's also an Irish Mob, and there were plenty of John Dillinger / Bonnie and Clyde type criminals who were form main stream White Anglo Saxen Protestant America. All of those crime cyndicates I mentioned all were formed here in the United States when those particular ethnic groups were first generation, and could only get the most menial and low paying jobs. Al Capone's father was a barber who made a very modest living in New York City. Al Capone got into crime because of the money, as did most other hoodlums of his time.

[Murfreesboro]

I think you are correct, Mike. Most crime is committed by the more impoverished groups, whoever they happen to be at the time. Serial killer type stuff is a psychological or mental aberration. It doesn't have much to do with socio-economic class.