Lucid Dreams and Saturn Skies The Life and Writing of Andrew Kincaid

Category Archives: Killers And Serial Killers

The New Jersey Ghost Sniper

January 31, 2013 11:32 am / 1 Comment /
Credit: New York State Museum

Could boys shooting marbles with sling shots be responsible for the wave of terror that swept Camden, NJ in 1928?

Nowadays you don’t have to look too hard to find a headline about a shooting here, there, or anywhere really in this country.  Usually such stories are pretty cut and dry–an argument got out of hand, and someone turned to a gun (the bulk of homicides are spur of the moment, despite popular perception).  That is not meant to trivialize it of course–any death is a tragedy. All of that being said, it isn’t likely these days you’ll come across a gun related crime quite as weird as the Camden Ghost Sniper, the name given to the perpetrator of a very odd set of crimes between 1927 and 1928 in Camden, New Jersey.

The Ghost Sniper’s reign of terror began January 25, 1928 when a bus windshield and the wind shields of four other vehicles were ‘strangely shattered’ by an unknown projectile.  In just about every case attributed to the Ghost Sniper, windows appeared to be shot through with a bullet, although usually no fragments or shell casings were found.  So it was with the first five shootings.  Also, a police officer was struck and knocked to the ground by a blue marble.

After these first strange occurrences, reports of the ‘phantom sniper’ began to flood into Camden police stations.  Reports of similar attacks came in from Collingswood and Lindenwood, New Jersey as well.  Police suspected the culprit or culprits might be using a high powered air gun or a low caliber hand gun with a silencer, or some combination of the two.  Indeed, in later incidents bullets were found, one matching a .38 slug and the other a .22. In another case, a prominent local jeweler had a nickel-plated screw shot through his windshield, which was promptly recovered.

What was strange was that, in most cases, no one reported hearing gun fire during any of the incidents.  There was only one case where a possible shooter was identified; he’d apparently shot through a bedroom window, and when the occupants looked outside to see where the projectile had come from, they saw a man running a away shouting: “It’s all right now, Louie.”  The mystery man was never caught.

Luckily, no one was seriously injured throughout the ordeal, other than some severe cases of jangled nerves and a couple of officers who suffered nasty bruises after being struck by blue marbles.  That is not to say that Camden and the surrounding area were not in a borderline panic over the ‘phantom shooter’.  Police actually outfitted themselves with tommy guns and pursuit vehicles to aid in the hunt for the shooter, and throughout the course of the investigation they operated under a “shoot on sight” order.  People were genuinely terrified of the Ghost Sniper, and with good reason.  After all, no one could catch him, so who was to say when he would get bold and begin to kill, thinking he could do so with impunity?

The strange story concluded when police arrested two youths for shooting a hole in a windshield with a slingshot.  So far as I can see, after that point there were no more incidents reported.  This story reminds me strongly of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon; meaning, it is probably an incidence of mass hysteria.  Was there an initial attack?  Probably.  Then for whatever reason, possibly because of the public nature of the attack and the fact a police officer was injured, the story blew up.  Every pebble shot through a window by a passing car and every prank by bored school boys became a sign of a mad man on the loose.  Copy cats probably came out of the woodwork and fueled the flames, for reasons of their own.  Like such things do, it eventually peaked, and probably by the time the two youths were arrested, interest in the whole business had waned anyway.  It was a phantom shooter indeed, as it only existed in the collective minds of the residents of Camden, New Jersey.

Posted in: Ghost Stories, Killers and Serial Killers, Our Weird World / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Madam LaLaurie–The Murderous Mistress

August 16, 2012 8:37 pm / Leave a Comment /

An image of the LaLaurie mansion from a post card circa 1906. It was on the third floor of this mansion that Madam LaLaurie built her torture chamber.

More often than not, when you hear the word “serial killer” you think of a man.  You would not be far off, as the vast majority of serial killers are male.  However, the fairer sex is not immune from murderous instincts, and some of the most notorious serial killers in history were women.  Among their number is the wealthy New Orleans socialite Marie Delphine LaLaurie, better known as Madam LaLaurie, whose mansion has gone down in the eccentric history of New Orleans as a house of horrors.

On April 10, 1834 a fire broke out in her mansion.  While neighbors and firefighters struggled to put out the flames, LaLaurie herself went about the mansion trying to save her valuables.  Rescuers began to question where all the household slaves were, and why they weren’t helping to fight the fire.  I also imagine they were curious as to why an elderly slave was chained to the stove.

Rumors had abounded before the fire of LaLaurie’s alleged cruelty towards her slaves.  Certainly slavery itself was a cruel institution, but slave holders were expected to treat their slaves with some minimum degree of humanity (I should mention that I waffled over that word choice for about ten whole minutes and it still doesn’t fit).  This evidently didn’t exclude slave holders from using whips and chains to discipline their slaves, so to be considered “cruel” back then meant very much going above and beyond.

Said rumors were probably in the back of the rescuer’s minds as they put out the fire.  They headed up the stairs toward the attic, guided by the words of the elderly kitchen slave who had told them about her fellow slaves who were sent to the attic, never to return.  Some believe the slave set the fire in the kitchen herself to try to draw attention from the outside world to Madam LaLaurie’s cruelty.  If that was her intention, the plan worked.

Rescuers broke down the attic door and found a scene straight out of the worst modern day horror movies.  Accounts vary, and likely they have become exaggerated with the passage of time, but regardless what was inside was terrible enough to make hardened firefighters become sick to their stomachs.  Slaves were bound in chains to the wall, with collars around their throats.  Some were locked in dog cages.  All of them showed signs of starvation and maltreatment, and some were horribly mutilated.  One man had had his genitals removed in a crude sex change operation.  One woman’s limbs had been broken at the joints which were then reset at odd angles, resulting in a crab-like appearance.  Another woman’s limbs had been removed and strips of her flesh had been stripped away in sort of a striped pattern.  A man had been vivisected (autopsied while alive) and lay on the makeshift operating table with his organs exposed.  Buckets of organs and blood were scattered all over the room.

Now I should mention that descriptions these rather more horrific and specific tortures came later, as near as I can tell.  They may not (and hopefully didn’t) occur, but rather they might be embellishments of the legend of Madam Laurie.  Regardless, the fact seems to stand that Madam LaLaurie and her husband committed atrocities against their slaves that were shocking even to the culture of the day that regarded them as nothing more than property.

Not long after the discovery, Madam LaLaurie was forced to flee her home as an armed lynch mob attacked the mansion when word spread of the attic room and its grisly contents.  LaLaurie and her husband fled in a carriage and escaped to Paris, France.  On December 7, 1842 Madam LaLaurie died in Paris, allegedly of wounds sustained during a boar hunt.  She was never punished for her crimes.

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Life in a Small Town Isn’t Always What It Seems. Or Is It? (It Isn’t).

July 6, 2012 4:55 pm / 3 Comments /

There are two conflicting pop culture cliches concerning life in a small town.  One is the idyllic, Norman Rockwell portrayal, where a small town is portrayed as something like a little slice of heaven on Earth.  This is the stereotypical, baseball and apple pie American ideal that most small towns aspire to with varying degrees of success.  And then on the opposite pole there is the portrayal of small towns favored by Stephen King and other horror authors since time immemorial–the Norman Rockwell-gone-wrong where on the surface everything seems fine but like a white washed tomb the pleasant exterior conceals corruption.

Having lived in a small town my entire life, I’m in a position where I can judge the truth of both these extremes.  Both are true, to a certain extent.  There are wonderful people in small towns, people who will do anything for you and who still live by the Golden Rule.  The down-home feel and old fashioned spirit are both still alive and well in America’s small towns (at least the ones I’ve been in).  Where I live, it’s safe to go out at night and a lot of people still leave their doors unlocked (I don’t, but that’s because I have anxiety problems and a lot of portable electronics).

However, that is not the whole story.  Horror is a popular genre not because it talks about terrible things that can never happen, but because it helps us to deal with the terrible things that do happen in a safe way.  The horrors of the world are not far away in a small town, no matter how friendly or safe it might be.

Certainly, there may not be as much crime and violence in rural areas as in a bigger city, but while the frequency of such events might be lower they are often more horrific simply because they happen in smaller, close knit areas, where everyone knows everyone.  I can think of several terrible things that have occurred around my area, senseless and bizarre crimes that still echo in the local memory years, even decades, later.

By way of example, in my own town two local boys in the 90′s went on a killing spree.  The story goes that they killed an old lady in the next town over by crushing her head with a brick.  They killed two more people before finally being caught in Oklahoma.  They’ve since been executed.  When asked why they did what they did, one of them responded that they were bored.  Even creepier, one of them worked at a local grocery store and he carried out for my mom a week before he and his friend went on their spree.  The woman’s body was never found.

I covered another example in a previous post.  Cletus T. Reese killed three men on his farm the next county over, spurred by voices in his head.  He did the deed by braining them with a heavy branch.  His story went on to become the subject of local folklore, which portrayed him as a cunning serial killer rather than a sad, mentally ill man haunted by inner demons who destroyed three lives as a result of his delusions.

So, by way of my own experiences, the Stephen King-esque cliche of the white washed tomb town is very much true.  But then so is the 1950′s Norman Rockwell stereotype.  It’s rather like when you see the ugly side of a person, say when the lose their temper and say something that shouldn’t be said.  Often the response will be, “So now we see who you really are!” (or the like).  Well, no.  And yes.  Really, it can be both at once and neither at the same time.  Kind of like how grey is neither black nor white but a mix of both.

That, in a nut shell, is life in a small town.

 

Posted in: Ghost Stories, Killers and Serial Killers, Life & Writing, Our Weird World / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Legend of the Bunnyman (Based on True Events…Seriously, I Couldn’t Make This Stuff Up)

June 29, 2012 2:17 pm / Leave a Comment /
The Colchester Underpass, better known as Bunnyman Bridge

A photo of the Bunnyman Bridge during daylight. Officially known as the Colchester Overpass, two rail lines run over top of it and the road itself is also fairly busy. Keeping kids away from this place could be part of why the story of the Bunnyman came into existence.

Ask anyone under the age of twenty out in Fairfax County, Virginia if something lurks in the night under the Bunnyman Bridge, and they will tell you most assuredly that something does.  Be he a flesh and blood maniac or a being of a more ghostly variety, the Bunnyman is said to haunt the Colchester Overpass, now better known as Bunnyman Bridge.

The legend began somewhere around 1970, and the information that I have seen claims that it has spawned upwards of fifty-four variants(!).  The most common version of the story goes as follows.  Around 1904, the residents of Clifton, Virginia successfully petitioned to have the local asylum/prison shut down.  Since you can’t just release a bunch of violent crazy folks out into the countryside, the prisoners were to be transported to another facility.  All went well, at least until the transport crashed, killing several of the prisoners and allowing the rest to escape.  All but one of the escapees were rounded up.  Skinned, half eaten rabbit carcasses left hanging from trees and the Colchester Overpass began to appear soon after.  Officials then found the body of Marcus Wallster, left hanging from the Underpass in a similar manner to the rabbits.

Understandably concerned, the police ramped up their efforts to find the madman and soon discovered that the culprit was none other than Douglas A. Grifin, who had been put in the asylum for killing his family on Easter Sunday.  When the climactic confrontation came between the authorities and the madman, Grifin was hit by an oncoming train in an attempt to escape.  Ever since, around Halloween when the veil between our world and the spirit world is thin, locals claim to see rabbit carcasses hanging from the Colchester Overpass.  Some have even claimed to see a figure standing there in the shadows.  Nobody ventures beneath the Underpass to see who it is though because the Bunnyman makes no distinction between rabbits and people–many variants of the legend have our costume-clad friend going Jason Vorhees on curious teenagers who come calling on Halloween Night, leaving their mutilated corpses dangling from the Colchester Overpass like Marcus Wallster so many years before.

Of course, this is all sorts of urban legend-y fun but how much of it is true?  Is this story, like Cropsey, more of a way to scare teens and preteens away from danger?  As you might suspect, the bulk of this story is false.  There never was an insane asylum in Clifton, and county records have no men named Marcus Wallster or Douglas A. Grifin on record as ever having lived.

However, there are some elements of the story which are true.  Namely, there really was a crazy guy dressed in a bunny suit terrorizing (actually more like confusing the hell out of) people in Fairfax County.  Two separate incidents from 1970 report a man dressed in a bunny suit yelling at people he felt were trespassing on his property.  In one incident he tossed a hatchet through a car window, and the other he attempted to chop down a porch post with a long handled axe.  No suspect was ever detained, but in one related incident a man calling himself the “Axe-Man” accused a representative of the Kings Park West Subdivision of dumping trash on his property. To this day no one knows the mysterious costumed man’s identity.

Not coincidentally, after these events in 1970 the Bunnyman story took wing.  It isn’t often in researching folklore and urban legends that you find their origin, but in this case it seems that the truth really was stranger than fiction.

Sources:

Bunny Man–Wikipedia

The Clifton Bunnyman–Castle of Spirits

The Bunnyman Unmasked

Posted in: Abnormal Psychology, Ghost Stories, Killers and Serial Killers, Monsters & Mythology, Our Weird World / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Legend of Cropsey

June 22, 2012 8:56 pm / 5 Comments /
The poster for The Burning, a horror movie featuring a blade wielding maniac named Cropsey

“A legend of terror is no longer a camp fire story anymore!”– tagline for The Burning, the only movie I’ve seen featuring a crazed killer named Cropsey.

Folks in the Northeast US who attended literally any camp in the past thirty or forty years will probably be familiar with the name Cropsey.  For the rest of us, there is a fascinating documentary on the subject on Netflix called, creatively enough, Cropsey that in large part inspired this post.  Outside of the Northeast, we might know Cropsey better as Jason Vorhees.  That is slightly overstating the case, but let me give you the bare bones version of the story, since there are a dizzying array of variations.

The core of the Cropsey legend involves a man named Cropsey who was a respected member of the local community who lived near the local sleep-away camp.  Campers tried to play a prank on Cropsey’s son that goes horribly wrong.  The prank left Cropsey terribly deformed and seriously pissed, not to mention insane.  As a result, Cropsey took to the woods, axe in hand, where he lay in wait for any unwary campers who happened to wander away from the relative safety of camp.

The parallels with the Friday the 13th franchise and nearly every slasher ever made are pretty clear.  They all involve a blade-happy maniac with a hate-on for campers/coeds/teenagers who break the rules, be they cultural rules (anyone who has premarital sex dies) or the camp rules (if you wander off you get axed).  The way to survive is clear–simply don’t break the rules, and you’ll be fine.

In that way, what started as a regional legend has become a part of pop culture at large, although Cropsey only shows up as a named character in one movie that I know of.  That movie is called The Burning, which is basically a Great Value version of the original Friday the 13th.  It is about a cruel camp caretaker named, you guessed it, Cropsey who is the victim of a prank that gets out of hand, leaving him deformed and very, very angry.  He gets his revenge years later on a group of campers that, oddly enough, contains characters played by Fisher Stevens and Jason Alexander (better known as George Costanza from Seinfield).  In any case, the movie is actually pretty good despite its slow start.  I don’t normally laugh at people getting hacked to bits (it seems in bad taste) but some of the stuff that happens when the bloodbath begins is pretty goofy and I couldn’t help myself.

Now that the legend of Cropsey has entered pop culture, it is much more difficult now to pin down whether or not there ever really was a man named Cropsey and whether he committed any crimes.  The answer is…it isn’t clear.  There was a man named Jasper Cropsey who lived in New York, but so far as I can tell he never committed any axe murders.  The documentary Cropsey frames its entire narrative around the crimes of Andre Rand, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering several children in the 80′s on Staten Island.  While he certainly could not have been the man whose crimes originated the legend, given how recently he committed his crimes, he’s become part of the legend in that region of the country at least.

Like any number of urban legends, we probably will never know for certain where the legend of Cropsey originated.  These sorts of stories begin from seemingly nowhere and take on lives of their own.  Cropsey in particular has had a great deal of longevity, especially since his legend has inspired key parts of the modern slasher flick.  We might not know where Cropsey came from, but we can be certain that he’s here to stay.

Posted in: Ghost Stories, Killers and Serial Killers, Monsters & Mythology, Our Weird World / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Ghost and the Darkness – The Tsavo Man-Eaters

March 31, 2012 11:40 am / 5 Comments /
The Tsavo Man-Eaters were a pair of lions that attacked workers constructing the rail bridge pver the Tsavo River for the Uganda/Kenya rail line

The Ghost and The Darkness, on display in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago Illinois.

I’ve written a lot about serial killers on this blog.  Serial killers are the predators among humanity.  Amoral, and motivated only by unfathomable urges, they have killed and terrorized likely for as long as there has been civilization.  However, humans are not the only animal capable of senseless killing.  The animal world has its share of killer beasts as well, monsters our ancestors whispered about around camp fires while casting wary eyes toward the impenetrable blackness of the night.

Most often, animals leave humans alone.  If there is an animal attack, often the violence is provoked by a human invading the animal’s territory or otherwise making the animal feel threatened.  However, every now and then I’ve come across stories where the normal rules of human/animal interaction do not apply.  More often than not, if you leave an animal alone, it will leave you alone.  Also, most animals don’t see humans as a food source as we’re not only too small for a big predator but also too dangerous.

Back in 1898, though, all bets were off.  From March through December of that year, monsters stalked in the darkness of the African night.  The British Empire commissioned the Uganda/Kenya railway be built to connect its colonial territories.  The workers used to build the project were primarily Sikhs and Hindus from Britain’s India colony.  Designers planned the railway to cross the Tsavo River, which obviously meant that the workers would need to build a bridge to span the waterway.

A male lion

A typical male lion. Notice the distinct mane, unique among feline species. The Tsavo Man-Eaters lacked manes. Some mane-less males have been reported, although it doesn’t seem to be common.

The best planners in the world couldn’t have foreseen what would happen next.  Panic began to ripple through the work camp when workers began to disappear, dragged screaming into the night by some massive predator, only to be found killed and shredded when the morning sun peeked over the horizon.  Nothing the workers did–from building massive fires to scare the beasts to surrounding their encampments with fences of thorns–kept the attackers at bay.  Fear of The Ghost and The Darkness–the worker’s name for the predators that plagued them–became so widespread that many workers fled.  For all intents and purposes, construction came to a halt.

What were these creatures that inspired such terror among the work crews?  The killers  stalking hapless construction crews were a pair of mane-less male lions.  It is odd, although not unheard of, that a pair of adult male lions would be lack a mane.  And adults they were, at least in terms of size–the first of the pair to be shot was about 10 feet long, which is huge for a lion (or any animal for that matter) and it took 8 men to carry the corpse back to camp.  Their appearance wasn’t the only strange thing about them.  Lions do attack people from time to time, but again only if said people are in their territory. Or alone.  These animals deliberately attacked a large gathering of humans, and some contemporary accounts of the attacks claim that the lions didn’t always eat their victims.  In some cases, it seems, the lions killed simply to kill.

If this sounds like something from a monster movie, well, just wait.  It gets better. Or worse I guess, if you were a Sikh or Hindu rail worker. Not only were The Ghost and The Darkness brutal, they were also cunning.  Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson, leader of the project, set out to kill the animals so that the project could continue as planned.  In true monster movie fashion though, they didn’t go down easy.

Lt. Col. Patterson posing with the first of the Tsavo lions that he shot.

Patterson and the first Tsavo lion. Notice the large size and the lack of a mane.

When Patterson set out to hunt the lions, he soon found himself hunted.  He shot the first lion in the rump, only to have it come back and stalk him that night even as he hunted it.  Patterson had to shoot the thing several more times before he managed to bring it down.  The second lion didn’t go down easy either–Patterson shot it five times, and then even when it was laying their crippled it tried to charge him again.  Three more shots rang out, and the beast was dead.

All told, the death toll from the Ghost and the Darkness’ killing spree was exceptionally high for a series of animal attacks.  Patterson claimed that 135 workers were killed in that 9 month period.  Modern estimates, based on complex measurements of various isotopes taken from the bones of the Tsavo man-killers, put the number at closer to 35.

We may never know just how many lives were lost during the killing spree.  The biggest mystery around this case, too, remains unanswered.  Why did these lions act so contrary to their species’ normal behavior?

Nobody knows.  Various explanations have been set forward.  Some claim that the Hindu practice of cremating their dead left partially burned bodies for the lions to consume, which gave them a taste for human flesh.

The predominate explanation, based upon examination of the lion’s remains, claims that one lion had a severely damaged tooth that kept it from eating its normal prey and forced it to turn to a plentiful, easier to catch alternative which the British Empire kindly provided when it decided to build its railway through the lion’s territory.  There are problems with that explanation as well, as it doesn’t explain why the second animal began to hunt humans.  It also doesn’t explain the unusual size and odd appearance of both animals, and why, if the reports of the behavior are accurate, they would sometimes kill just for the sake of it.

No one knows.  It seems I use those three words a lot on this site, doesn’t it?  We live in an odd world, and while science has helped us to understand a great deal of it, many mysteries and unanswered questions abound.  We may never fully know what made The Ghost and The Darkness commit their killing spree so long ago.


Posted in: Killers and Serial Killers, Monsters & Mythology, Our Weird World, Weird Science / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gary Ridgway – The Green River Killer

February 3, 2012 9:06 pm / 6 Comments /
Gary Ridgeway - the Green River Killer

The face of a monster.

Gary Ridgway, the man wh0 would later become known under his more infamous moniker “The Green River Killer”, was described by his friends and family as “friendly but strange”.  They never could have known that the strange man would go on to become one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.

Ridgway was born in Salt Lake City Utah on February 18, 1949 to an unhappy family that consisted of himself, his brothers Gregory and Thomas, and his parents.  His upbringing was tumultuous – it wasn’t uncommon for his parents to argue violently in front of their boys, and as if that wasn’t bad enough his mother would humiliate Gary in front of the family.  Part of his shame was the fact that he was a bed wetter (serial killers often show the so-called serial killer triad during childhood – bed wetting well beyond the age when it should have ended, animal torture, and arson).

As if all of that wasn’t enough (and maybe in part because of all of the above), Ridgeway had a low IQ.  His score was only 82 (where the average score is 100) and he suffered from poor performance in school.

When Ridgway was 16, he began his violent criminal career when he stabbed a six year old boy.  It is said that he walked away laughing, saying “I always wondered what it would be like to kill someone.”

So it was quite obvious early on that Ridgway was a troubled individual, but no one would know just how troubled until the body count was tallied.  His murderous career (oh and he regarded killing women as his career…the guy was a complete nut job, as you might guess) spanned from 1972 until 1998.  When he was arrested in 2001, evidence existed to convict him of 49 killings.  But after his arrest, he confessed to 71 murders that he recalled – he claimed he’d killed so many that he couldn’t remember the exact number of crimes he committed.  Some believe the number to be 90 or more.

From any other serial killer this might be taken as boasting, but unlike most others of his kind, Ridgway took great pains to avoid being caught.  The evidence for this is clear: while most of his killings took place around the Green River in Washington state, some remains were found around Portland, Oregon.  Ridgway later revealed that he moved the remains there to throw the police off his trail.  He also would throw trash and various other debris, sometimes scraps of papers with other people’s writing on them, onto the bodies to confuse authorities.

So, it seems very clear that Ridgway was indeed trying to avoid capture.  That might lend some credence to his claim that he couldn’t remember how many murders he had committed – after all, his care allowed him to operate for over 26 years.  That is a very long span of time, and if he killed on a regular basis it would be relatively easy to forget.  It is horrifying to think about, that a human being could be so callous that he forgets one life he took, let alone more than one.

How did Ridgeway manage to kill for so long?  The length of his criminal career is as amazing is it is horrible.  You’d think in that time he would have slipped up once in all of those years, especially given the fact he was by all accounts not a very bright fellow.  Whatever he lacked in the intelligence department, he seemed to make up for with sheer luck.  Often times, serial killers meet their downfall when they are picked up on unrelated charges.  Ridgway was picked up on unrelated charges (solicitation) in the early 80′s, but his more serious crimes went unnoticed.   He even became a suspect in the Green River killings in 1983, but he was never convicted.  In 1987, police took hair and saliva samples from him, and it was this DNA record that proved his undoing years later in 2001 when he was finally arrested.

A photo of the Green River, the Riverman's hunting grounds.

The Green River. Ridgway’s hunting ground was the region surrounding this river.

That’s right: the police had him, but they let him go.  It could have been incompetence on the part of the police, or it could simply have been that the massive deluge of evidence and suspects at the time overwhelmed the authorities and Ridgway slipped through the cracks.  It could also have been that technology at the time wasn’t good enough to catch him – after all, the techniques that allowed for modern DNA sequencing were only in their infancy.  Any number of factors could be responsible for Ridgway’s ability to elude the police and kill again.  It might have had something to do with his choice of victims, though.

Ridgway preyed on prostitutes and young runaways – all women.  He hated women.  His mother was a domineering figure who abused and belittled him, and it is thought that his hatred might stem from this treatment in his formative years.

He hated prostitutes in particular, as he believed they spread AIDS.  Which makes the fact that he had sex with said prostitutes before killing them rather odd – but then most psychopathic killers are less than rational.

In any case, his usual operation was to lure the prostitute or runaway into his vehicle, have sex with them, and then strangle them.  Sometimes he tortured them as well.  At first he strangled his victims with his bare hands, but the scratches and bruises they left on his arms made him worried that he’d be discovered, so he took to using a ligature (usually a cord or an article of clothing.)  Once the woman was dead he would dump their body in a heavily forested area.  Usually he left the corpses nude, oftentimes in clusters, and sometimes he would pose the bodies.

When Ridgway was finally caught, prosecutors used the death sentence as a bargaining chip to uncover the missing victims of his sick “career”.  He could live, albeit behind bars, if he told everything he knew.  So Ridgway confessed to 71 killings, every one that he could remember.  Some have been critical of the decision to take the death sentence off the table but if it had not been done, likely only seven of the murders (the seven Ridgway was linked to by genetic evidence) would have been solved.  The death penalty was taken off the table to find justice for the rest of his victims, and to provide some sort of assurance to their families that justice was done.

The Green River Killer will rot behind bars for the rest of his natural life, where he can do no more harm.  But no amount of vengeance in the world can erase the scars left both in the region and in the national psyche by Ridgway’s reign of terror.


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Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

January 30, 2012 7:52 pm / Leave a Comment /
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a low budget film shot in the late eighties that follows a killing spree perpetrated by a low-functioning killer named Henry. The movie is infamous for its shocking depictions of brutal violence.

Based on the true life serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas.

The serial killer is a common horror movie trope.  From Hannibal Lecter to Leatherface, audiences seem to be fascinated by the sociopathic killer.  And why wouldn’t they be?  They are at once something familiar and something far beyond our normal experience.  They aren’t some supernatural beast nor some undead monster; rather, they are humans the same as you and I.  But at the same time, they lack the very qualities that make a person human – empathy, impulse control, and respect for human life.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer follows one such killer.  But he differs in many ways from the typical movie serial killer.  He is neither the suave intellectual like Lecter nor a psychotic freak like Leatherface.  Henry acts closer to how a true sociopath would act.  He’s low functioning -he can’t read and the only work he can hold down is as a part time exterminator.  He shows little or no emotion – when Becky, his roommates sister, tells Henry she loves him, his response is flat and emotionless.  He has no empathy and no impulse control – he can kill without compunction or remorse, and he does so more than once during the course of the movie.

All that being said, you’re right to assume that this is a very violent movie.  It isn’t flashy and it isn’t stylized – the violence is brutal and spontaneous.  And worse, the killers (Henry works with his roommate, Otis, through most of the movie) take joy in their depravity.  In once scene, Otis is upset because a teen he sold drugs to punched him in the nose after he grabbed the kid’s thigh (sounds like a great guy doesn’t he?).  Otis wants to kill the boy, but Henry convinces him that would be a bad idea since people had seen them together.  So, they drive out to a tunnel, flag down a passing car, and kill the occupant, for no reason other than Otis was upset and they thought it would be fun.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is considered by many to be one of the most shocking movies ever made.  And it was indeed shocking and disturbing.  What got to me most was the casual disregard for human life.  No remorse.  No empathy.  Henry wanted to kill, so he killed whoever and wherever he wanted.

I thought this was an interesting movie for its portrayal of serial killers in a  more realistic light.  However, I don’t think it is a particularly great movie.  I wasn’t sure what it was about it that I didn’t care for.  Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was okay, but it’s probably not one I’ll sit down to watch again.


Posted in: Killers and Serial Killers, Movie Reviews, Our Weird World, Reviews / Tagged: , , , , , ,

999

January 9, 2012 3:37 pm / 1 Comment /
999 is a collection of short stories edited by Al Sarrantino. Stephen King, William Peter Blatty, and Neil Gaimen among others contributed stories for the anthology.

A collection of 29 stories by some of the best in the business.

As most of you probably know by now, I’m a fan of horror.  I have found in my explorations of the genre that something about horror lends itself to the short story format.  It’s a bit like the story of Goldilocks – not too hot, not too cold, but juuust right.  Or in this case, not too short, not too long, but juuust the right length to keep up the intensity and suspense.  Sometimes a horror novel can be too long – one complaint often lodged against Stephen King is that his stories end long before the book does.  Sometimes a good story can end way too soon, leaving the reader unsatisfied.  But every now and then you find a story that hits it just right, be it a novel, novella, or novelette.

999, edited by Al Sarrantinio, has a mix of stories that more often than not hits it just right.  Several authors including heavy hitters like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and William Peter Blatty (the author of The Exorcist) are represented in the anthology.   The stories within vary widely in content – from ghost stories to zombies to monsters to tales of love gone wrong.

Like any short story anthology, the book was a bit hit or miss here and there.  More often than not I enjoyed the stories, but now and then one fell flat.  Especially one called Des Saucisses, Sans Doute – it was supposed to be “funny” but I thought it was just disgusting.  And the Neil Gaiman story called Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story was…interesting…but certainly not my favorite in the book.   And I was surprised to find that William Peter Blatty’s Elsewhere has so far disappointed – I haven’t yet finished it.  Something about his writing style – possibly the gratuitous use of adverbs or the fact that few if any of the character’s are likable – has put me off of his haunted house story.  Still, there is enough intrigue there that I keep plugging away at it, bit by bit.  I’m getting the feeling that something awful is going to happen that will justify my continued faith in the story – that or it will all collapse into a miserable mess and turn out to be the worst of the bunch. Either or.

Now that I’ve all but turned you off of the book for the badness within, let me point out some high points.  Stephen King’s story was good – as his novellas usually are.  It was called The Road Virus Heads North and it involved a very peculiar painting.  The Catfish Gal Blues by Nancy A. Collins was a fun story of magic, greed, and jealousy set along the Mississippi River.  The Grave by P.D Cacek was a delightfully creepy look into the mind of a dowdy Kindergarten librarian who lives with her mother – I highly recommend this story if you like things that screw with your head.  Another favorite of mine was Mad Dog Summer, where an old man recollects a summer of horror from his childhood.  I seriously couldn’t put it down–Joe R. Landsdale did a wonderful job with this novella and I’d highly recommend horror fans take a look at this one.

999 is an older collection – published back in 1999 – but the stories still hold the same power they had thirteen years ago.  Horror fans would do well to have this book in there collection.  There are some low points, but the high points more than make up for the lack.  I only listed my favorites here – there are other wonderful pieces in this anthology that I don’t have the time nor space to talk about.  Give it a look–you won’t regret it.  Well, until the nightmares begin anyway…


Posted in: Book Reviews, Ghost Stories, Killers and Serial Killers, Monsters & Mythology, Our Weird World, Reviews / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Story of Murder Ridge – the Life and Crimes of Cletus T. Reese

January 6, 2012 3:50 pm / 1 Comment /
Cletus T. Reese was a mentally disturbed man who murdered 3 men in the 1950's. The farm he lived on is now known by the name "Murder Ridge". Legends depict Cletus Reese as a clever serial killer, when in truth he was a deeply disturbed individual.

Cletus T. Reese, the man behind the legend.

Murder Ridge.  Sounds like a pretty frightening place doesn’t it?  The story behind the name goes that in the 1950′s, Cletus T. Reese tooled around the highways and byways in and around Coshocton county, Ohio looking for stranded motorists.  He would offer to help those he found, but instead of fixing their car trouble he would bash their skulls in and scrap their cars for money.  As for the infamous ridge itself, the story goes that Murder Ridge is haunted by Reese’s’ victims, as many as fifteen of them, and the big man himself.

Those are the stories, at any rate.  The real events behind the story of Murder Ridge played out quite a bit differently than local legend suggests.  Don’t get me wrong though, “Murder Ridge” is a real place.  It’s a rural stretch of highway in Coshocton county that runs in front of what was then the Reese farm.  Cletus Reese was a real guy too, although he wasn’t the coldly calculating serial murderer of legend.

Cletus T. Reese was a bear of a man, easily tipping the scales at 250 pounds, with a history of psychological problems.  He did a stint in a mental hospital in Cambridge, where he was treated for schizophrenia.  He was released a year later.  It became pretty obvious later that the treatment hadn’t helped, especially after Clyde Patton disappeared.

Mr. Patton was a high school teacher and part time car salesman, who disappeared while taking a customer on a test drive.  The customer was quickly identified as Cletus Reese.  However, it wasn’t until Reese’s’ sister became suspicious of his having arrived home with a new car and called the police that Reese was arrested.  It didn’t take long before the police turned up Mr. Patton’s body – his head had been crushed with an oak branch and he was found buried in a shallow grave.  Reese fessed up to killing Mr. Patton, but he claimed it was an accident, that he and the part time car salesman had gotten into a fight that had gone too far.

Police searched the farm and turned up two more bodies, belonging to Lester Mellick and Paul Tish. Tish was an escapee from the very same hospital where Reese was treated.  Mellick was from Danville, but there doesn’t seem to be any more details about him.  Both men had their heads bashed in.

Reese changed his story and confessed to the murders.  But his story changed with each telling – once he told police”this has been going on a long time”, and another time he said told investigators that the three bodies that they found were his only victims.  He retracted his statement at one point, after which he came back and gave an incoherent story to police.  Reese said “Mrs. Truman” told him to kill the men, and he claimed he shot all three with a .22 caliber pistol.  Reese claimed he killed Tish over a difference of theology.

It was pretty clear by that point that Cletus T. Reese was out of his mind.  Reese was labeled a paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies and he was remanded to the custody of Lima State Hospital.  He lived there in the maximum-security ward until he died of a heart attack at age 48.

Sometimes truth is more disturbing than legend.  Other times, legends take a mundane truth and inflate it so much the truth can no longer be seen..  I think Reese’s’ story lies somewhere between the two extremes.

It should be noted that the murders were discovered during a contentious gubernatorial campaign, where the Republican candidate used the incident to bash his opponent for not being willing to put more money into the state mental health system.  The media jumped into the frenzy (“It bleeds it leads”), dubbing the farm “Murder Ridge” before the bodies even went cold.  I think the facts of the case became obscured by the political theater and the media frenzy, and the true story became little more than a historical footnote.  I, for one, knew nothing about it until a friend mentioned that they had visited Murder Ridge on a ghost hunt, and I’ve lived in the area my entire life!

I don’t mean to denigrate the grisly nature of Reese’s crimes – three men had their lives cut tragically short.  But, it is fascinating to me how the story has evolved in the fifty or sixty odd years since the events that inspired it.  Reese was, in reality, a very sick man who probably would not have killed had he gotten the help he needed.  But, in the popular consciousness, he became the cold, calculating killer of local folklore

Then again, there may be more to the true story than what I’ve set forth here.  There is some speculation among those familiar with the case that Cletus T. Reese might have killed more people.  There is only one man who can answer that with any certainty – Reese himself.  I doubt he’ll be talking anytime soon though.


Posted in: Abnormal Psychology, Killers and Serial Killers, Our Weird World / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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