February 26, 2005

• god help me, but i'm a serial killer junkie. right now i'm reading 'the boston stranglers'www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D1559722983/103-2534538-2300665 by susan kelly. i can't remember what i read just before that, but i've read about a gazillion books on gacy, dahmer, desalvo, and every other 'celebrity' sk, as well as a host of lesser known ones. i think i've got every anne rule book published ever published. this whole btk thing has had my interest since the cops started receiving notes about 6 months ago. i think it's especially interesting because he (presumably) stopped killing for years and then resurfaced through the notes. i wasn't aware they'd made an arrest. i hope to god they have someone examine him to find out how people get to be like that.
• "it was a tip from the killer's daughter that led to his capture." Hmm. Do you know where your parents are?
• His daughter, Kerri, is a wonderful person and turning her father in to the police could not have been an easy decision but she most certainly saved lives.
• The most curious part of the case is what prompted the killer to renew contact after 25 years of silence.
• It is highly unlikely that the well publicised communications from 'Jack the Ripper' to the press of the time, such as the 'dear boss' postcard, were from the real killer. Researchers have long considered the Ripper letters to have been the products of hoaxers &/or bored journalists trying to hang a name on the fiend. However, it is true that many modern serial killers have initiated contact with the press or police, such as the Zodiac killer. As for what prompted Rader to renew contact after 25 years, that is indeed interesting. I wonder if the renewed interest in unsolved serial killings on the internet in recent years caught his attention & stirred his ego. It is likely, also, that he continued to sporadically kill during that time period, but sufficiently disguised his crimes so that they were not linked with known BTK killings. He may have entered a period of his life where he was less fit & unable to satiate his desire for murder, & resorted to reliving past ones.
• Y'know, every time I see this I think that BTK is either a) some new boy band, or b) some new Burger King sandwich/promotion.
• Well, it's kind of what they do to the cows at Burger King. /vegan hippie
• Wow, they kill the cows right there at the Burger King?
• I'm really glad this gloating and murderous piece of shit is caught, and busted not just by a family member, but a young woman very close in age to many of the women he killed. Choke on that, fucker. 21 year old Kathryn Bright 26 year old Shirley Vian 25 year old Nancy Jo Fox 28 year old Vicki Wegerle "I can't stop it so, the monster goes on, and hurt me as well as society." They're the real victim. Right. Classic sociopathic thought.
• Don't get me wrong, but what's happened to "Innocent until proven guilty"? In the UK, the police and the media would never report the case like this.
• Yes they would. Well, the media would. The police wouldn't publicly make statements stating the person's guilt (because that could prejudice the trial) but they would do so, very emphatically, off-the-record to newspapers, to make sure the message got out. Newspapers have got very good at letting you know exactly how guilty a person is before the trial and verdict, in a way that falls just short of legally prejudicing the proceedings. And politicians, in the event that a manhunt has become politicised, would also quite happily make statements about the guilt of a person who has yet to face trial.
• Korzeniowski the Cat: I just read the Patricia Cornwell book about Jack the Ripper, and she believes that quite a few of the letters were real. (Granted, Cornwell is not the end-all-be-all of Ripper expertise, and the book has problems, but it's an interesting read.) oklo: I agree. It must take an amazing amount of courage to turn in a parent to the police. Not only to have to confront the parent with what you believe they've done, but to forever link yourself in the public eye with that parent. (Not that the public will think she's bad, too, but whenever her name comes up, people will say "isn't she related to...?")
• Cornwell's book is a joke. Not only did she conclude the killer was a wholly ridiculous suspect, Walter Sickert, but based it on very weak evidence, a couple of paintings. She may be a good crime fiction author, but as a Ripper researcher, she sucks. She spends four years researching a subject that other people spend 40+ years of research on, & claims a specific result when others don't? I think the book was a product of some kind of fugue of craziness. It was important for her to stress that some of the letters were genuine, in order to prove that Sickert was the Ripper, but most authorities claim that the original letters were hoaxed by journalist Tom Bulling. Over 600 letters were received once these first few were publicised, obviously created by many copycats, & it seems a bit of a stretch for Cornwell to pick out a few of these as genuine based on .. very little, apparently. The Openshaw letter that Cornwell fixated upon is not considered genuine by any other researcher. The only message that had, imho, a viable link to the Ripper was the one that contained a piece of human internal organ sent with it, the 'from Hell' letter - but even then it couldn't be conclusively linked to the victim that had part of the organ removed. Anyway, Sickert was in France at the time of the murders, according to several independant sources, which Cornwell ignores. That was a terrible book! I almost threw it across the room. Worse still was how she hacked up a Sickert painting looking for clues. Bah! There are far more credible suspects than Sickert with direct links to the crimes. My favorite suspects are D'Onston Stephenson & Joseph Barnett.
• She may be a good crime fiction author No, she isn't.
• Wait, was Sickert the doctor? (I admit that I have most of my information on the case from the footnotes of "From Hell," but, well, they were good footnotes...)
• Walter Richard Sickert.
• salmacis They've already got a 90% DNA match with his daughter which is pretty compelling factual evidence. If he didn't do it, then it's someone closely related who's roughly the same age, and also male. Odds are pretty good they got the right guy. DNA evidence had made "innocent until proved guilty" more of an intellectual conceit than common sense in many cases. The idea may have been more useful when a lot, if not most evidence was circumstancial or based on notoriously unreliable eye-witness descriptions, racial hatred, and coerced confessions.
• moneyjane - I'd have to disagree with you strongly there. I think it's precisely because DNA evidence is seen as infallible that we have preserve basic protections like presumption of innocence and due process. I've read a number of good arguments making this case - a quick Google brought up this from a UK campaigning group and there's some other stuff linked there. The general problem is, if DNA is taken as cast iron proof of guilt, the temptation is there for unscrupulous law officers or other criminals to fake it as the best way of securing a wrongful conviction. Due process is a safeguard against that possibility and I'd like to keep it. (Not a comment on this particular case, about which I know nothing, just the general principle).
• Oh, for sure; we need to preserve them, but what I'm saying is that with DNA evidence available, the media and public will see much less reason to assume innocence.
• According to CSI, DNA never lies.
• According to CSI, DNA never lies. Unless you are a chimera and then the shit really hits the fan.
• The media declares people guilty all the time before the facts are known. Just last December, the media branded Roger Valadez the BTK killer for about 12 hours (he was actually cleared by his DNA), and he claims that it has ruined his life. He's suing the police and several media outlets. See also Richard Jewell and the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. I think it's important to be careful with these things. Hopefully, this BTK guy is the real deal.
• The Ripper book is both the only book about the Ripper and the only book by Cornwell that I've read. I think if she were less famous, her editor would never have let her be so sloppy. I don't know much of anything about the actual Ripper murders, so I can't really evaluate that (I'll go by what you say, Korzeniowski, because you sound like you know whereof you speak), but the structure of the book was fairly non-existent. It was a big mess. Still, she told a compelling story -- she kept me interested despite the nightmares I was having.
• I think Jack The Ripper was a woman.
• The Zodiac Killer Was My Stepfather.
• That Cornwell book was the biggest pile of shit ever. She claims because he enlarged sketches by squaring them up (a legit artistic practice) that he was a chop 'em up psycho. Amongst a lot of other unconvincing conjecture. I declare the Ripper case still open.