Tag Archives: Murder

5 MOST MEMORABLE MURDERS

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to investigate a real murder case?

You probably have. At least the popularity of TV shows like CSI, Bones & Hawaii 5-0 suggests that there’s a huge public interest in what goes on behind the homicide scenes.

I never kept track of how many homicides I was involved in. Lots.

There’s different degrees of murders. First degree is when it’s planned and deliberate. Second degree is deliberate, but spontaneous. Manslaughter is when it’s not intentional, but the actions are so reckless that it results in death. Then there’s the various angles of criminal negligence causing death, impaired driving causing death, and assisting suicide.

One thing I learned is that there’s never two cases the same. People find some vicious and creative ways to do others in. Here’s five cases that really stand out.

5. The Pork-Chop Murder

There was this real low-life named Gerry who had a cult following that did all his dirty work – drug dealing, break-ins, strong-arming, and shoplifting. He thought one of his minions double-crossed him so he ordered the other drones to kidnap the young guy and bring him before a ‘tribunal’. They kicked the shit out of this youth who refused to confess (because he was actually innocent). Failing to get anywhere, he ordered them to finish the kid off. One of the disciples went to the freezer, got a bag of frozen pork chops, and proceeded to cave the youth’s head in with it, causing a massive subdural hematoma resulting in death. They took the body out, dumped it in an alley, then put the pork chops back in the freezer. It wasn’t difficult to solve. The trail of blood led back in the house and straight to the murder weapon in the freezer.

4. Bing

“Bing’ was a nasty bastard who’s pastime was beating his wife. One night Bing came home, pissed as usual, thumped her half-senseless in front of their kids, then passed out. The wife finally had enough so she took a .308 Winchester, put a round it, and shot Bing in the head. Problem was that she only blew his jaw off and woke him up. Terrified, she scrambled for more ammo while Bing was ki-yiing around. Her son came up with some 30/30 shells so she switched guns and finished Bing off. The jury acquitted her on the grounds of provocation and self-defense.

3. Wolfgang’s Roto-Tiller

Wolfgang was a mailman with a bad temper. He got in a fight with his wife and she fell back against the fireplace, struck her head, and died. Panicking, Wolfgang took her outside and built a huge bonfire to dispose of the body. This caused his neighbors to call the fire department who came screaming in and hosed-down the flames. They warned Ol’ Wolfie not to burn without a permit and left him with a half-finished job. Panicking again, Wolfgang chopped-up the charred remains and roto-tilled them into his garden. After a few weeks, relatives became suspicious that the wife was missing and went to police. Eventually Wolfgang confessed. A forensic excavation found hundreds of bits of charred bone and she was identified by her wedding ring.

2. The Gun Store

Mr. & Mrs. ‘L’ owned a mom & pop shooting-sports supply business. Michael Katz and Austin Peer escaped from jail and went on a bank robbery spree which required them to get more guns. They cased-out the store, then hit it right at closing time, forcing Mr. & Mrs. to lay on the floor, then executed them by shooting them in the back of the head. Katz & Peer loaded up dozens of handguns and assault rifles, along with hundreds of rounds of ammo, and fled back east where they were captured after a massive gunfight with Toronto PD. I never experienced such a cold-blooded, despicable act. The judge summed it up well at sentencing – “The law in Canada only allows me to give you life imprisonment with no parole for twenty-five years. If I had my way, I’d send you both out to the courtyard and hang you by the neck until dead.”

1. The Attic

Billy-Ray was a true psychopath who stalked his ex-girlfriend. He broke into her house and hid in the attic for two and a half days while she went about her business underneath. Sure enough, she came home with her new boyfriend. They made out, then went to sleep. Around 3 am, Billy-Ray climbed down with a brush-axe and chopped both their heads off. He then did some kinky things to her blood-bathed body and fled, leaving a trail of evidence behind that even a blind rookie could follow. The last I heard of Billy-Ray was that he’d raped his case-worker inside prison.

HOW TO AVOID BEING MURDERED BY A SERIAL KILLER

Ever met a serial killer?

Can’t say I have – at least not that I know of.

Highway 16 in Northern BC, Canada

But I’ve worked with other police officers who’ve dealt with them and I’ve investigated unsolved homicides that could be the work of a serial killer. (Google Highway Of Tears). I’ve also helped send killers to jail who were possibly caught just before their serial career could start.

So how would you recognize a serial killer if you met one?

Ted Bundy

First of all, let’s define a serial killer. According to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, it’s an individual who’s committed three or more homicides segregated by a block of time. A cooling-off period, so to speak. This separates true serial offenders like Ted Bundy, who committed a spaced-apart series of nation-wide killings, from localized spree or mass murderers like the Columbine shooters or bombers like Timothy McVeigh.

Now, let’s dispel a few myths.

Serial killers are not common. In fact, they’re exceptionally rare. Less than .01% of murders are classified as serial incidents. A 2012 study by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) lists the North American homicide rate as 3.9 per 100,000 in population, so doing the math from a combined populus of 464 million, you’ve got a .00039% chance of being a serial killer victim. It’s also estimated that no more than 300 serial killers are currently active in North America which puts them at .00064% of the population. So, you’ve got better odds of scoring big on the lottery than bumping into a Bundy.

The Green River Killer

Serial killers are not dysfunctional, transient loners. Gary Ridgway, Seattle’s Green River Killer, was married, lived in the same house for years, and held a steady job as an automotive painter. BTK murderer Dennis Rader was also married with children, a church leader, and slayed within a small radius of his home in Wichita, Kansas.

Willie Pickton

Serial killers are not all insane, nor are they evil geniuses. Vancouver’s Willie Pickton, ran unchecked for years, right under the nose of overlapping police jurisdictions who saw him as a simpleton. Pickton, who butchered 49 women and fed them to his pigs, was no Google Geek but he instinctively stick-handled a skillful interrogation by my colleague Don Adam, one of the RCMP’s best polygraphists.

Son of Sam

Serial killers are not all about sex. It’s more a control thing. Satisfaction from the power of holding their victim’s life in their hands seems to be the primary motivator. It’s psychological, not material. David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, and Harold Shipman, the British doctor, are prime examples of power freaks.

Paul Bernando

Serial killers are not natural deviants. They’re products of their development from birth to adulthood with a vast assortment of contributing factors. Socio-economic upbringing. Neglect. Sexual and physical abuse. Poor self-esteem and harsh peer influence. Clifford Olson, the Beast of BC who brutally hammer-murdered eleven children, became incorrigible early in his pathetic childhood and Paul Bernardo resulted from an affluent, but highly-dysfunctional, middle-class family. He came of age in his teens.

Karla Holmolka

Serial killers have no gender or racial template. John Wayne Gacy was white. Wayne Williams was black. Richard Ramirez was Hispanic. Charles Ng was Chinese. They’re not all male, either. There’s Karla Holmolka, who assisted Bernardo in raping and murdering other women including her own sister, and Aileen Wuoronos, a particularly nasty piece of work who did in her johns.

Serial killers are not a 21^st century, western phenomenon. They’ve been in all cultures and over all ages. Australia and the UK have an abnormally high rate of serial killers, while some of the really weird ones come from Belarus, South Africa, and Germany. Not classified as serial killers are genocide-orchestrating, evil-entities like Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot. Those guys got others to do their dirty work and are in a class of their own.

Zodiac’s Note

Serial killers do not have a death wish, nor a longing to get caught. Most go to extremes to avoid detection, learning from mistakes, improving their craft, and rarely do they taunt their investigators like the Zodiac Killer of California did. He’s yet to be identified. Same with Jack the Ripper.

Here’s a few things we do know about serial killers.

They are not capable of rehabilitation. By the time they progress to this extremely abhorrent behavior, it’s too late. And who in their right mind would take a chance on releasing one? Life without parole or the death penalty are the only options.

Their psychology is complicated. Psychopathy is the common diagnosis, but their kinks in antisocial personality disorders seem to be as unique as their modus operandis. Commonly they’ve a lack of self-control, need immediate gratification, practice predatory behavior, and possess a complete lack of remorse. They can be charming, crafty, spectacularly manipulative, and are pathological liars – not the sort of folks you want inviting you over for dinner, especially a guy like Jeffrey Dahmer. And around puberty, most were cruel to animals, pyromaniacs, and chronic bed-wetters. This is known in forensic psychiatry as the triad.

There’s less and less of them all the time. That’s because of better technological and psychological detection methods resulting in their earlier removal from society. DNA and databanks have been a Godsend in solving multiple offences, especially clearing up cold-cases. There’re better analytical tools like the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Profiling System, ViCAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, and IBIS, the Integrated Ballistic Identification System. Police resources are better trained and have sophisticated case management software, as well as improved inter-jurisdictional communication. And there’s also legislative initiates like Canada’s Dangerous Offenders Act which allows for indefinite incarceration regardless of maximum statutory sentencing requirements.

We’re fascinated by serial killers.

Why?

Hannibal Lector

Because they tell us about ourselves.

I believe they’re extenuation of folklore monsters that we heard about in kid stories. The bogeyman. The big bad wolf. Trolls under bridges and witches in forests. Jekyll & Hyde. Frankenstein. Dracula. Psycho. And who hasn’t freaked over Hannibal Lector ?

We’re terrified of monsters and horrified by what they can do to us. But deep-down we have an intense curiosity about what makes these monsters tick. It may be a fear that we, ourselves, could become a monster. Or that the stranger two doors down may already be one. Nature has hard-wired our brains to manage our safety through recognizing danger and alerting each other before it happens. We do this through storytelling and we’re all fascinated by good stories. Especially stories about the most dangerous of creatures – serial killers.

So how do you avoid being murdered by a serial killer?

Simple. Don’t do what their victims do.

Serial killers are creatures of habit and opportunity. They go for the easiest, most vulnerable, most disposable prey. Generally, those are women and youths of both sexes in the high-risk lifestyle demographics – sex trade workers, substance abusers, socio-economic outcasts, and free-spirits who travel alone.

The odds of your being murdered – never mind by a serial killer – are astronomically against you.

But you can still decrease those odds by not associating with a charming stranger.

Royal Canadian Air Force Colonel and Serial Killer Russell Williams.

Knowing who to avoid takes sobriety, life-experience, common sense, and exercising caution when being alone.

ALL ABOUT AUTOPSIES

Ever been to the morgue?

No?

Well, like most people, you probably never think of the morgue except during shows like CSI, Bones or Hawaii 5-0.

**But the popularity of forensic TV series is social proof that you’re interested in finding out just what goes on behind the autopsy suite’s closed door.**

The word autopsy means ‘to examine for yourself’. It’s a medical procedure that sounds simple in principle – taking a look at the outside and inside of a cadaver to establish the cause of death. In practice, a post mortem examination can be highly complicated and time consuming; employing leading-edge scientific expertise.

There’s three types of PM’s. A hospital autopsy is a non-legal process where the cause of death is known, but the caring physician wants to confirm a specific issue – such as a cancer tumor. A routine autopsy is conducted when the cause of death is not known, but foul play is not suspected. Then there’s a forensic autopsy – the one that’s going to be torn apart in a murder trial.

All autopsies follow a standard protocol. It’s the nature of the investigation that determines just how in-depth the procedure gets. The deceased arrives at the morgue and is cataloged with personal details and a registration number. Yes, they really do use toe-tags. The body is then placed in a refrigeration unit and waits its turn for examination. In a busy morgue this can take several days.

Usually two people conduct the autopsy. The pathologist, or medical doctor who is trained in the study of death and disease, is assisted by the Deiner (German word for helper). Often there’s observers present; police officers, students, or technicians who come and go. The length of time quite varies – fifteen minutes to confirm a tumor, two hours routinely, and up to eight for a complicated forensic ordeal.

External observation can take a good portion of time. The body is removed from its shipping shroud, stripped, photographed, X-Rayed, weighed, measured, and identifiers such as race, age, hair and eye color, markings, abnormalities, as well as evidence of trauma or medical intervention is recorded. In homicide cases, the bulk of the evidence can be recovered in the external exam – clothing perforations, gunshot residue, lacerations, abrasions, hair, fibre, DNA, chemical contamination, or foreign objects. The observations are recorded on notes, diagrams, photos, and verbal dictations.

The corpse is placed supine, on its back, on the examining table which is an angled stainless steel tray draining fluids to a disposal sink. A plastic block is placed under the back to elevate the chest and recline the head and arms, making internal operations practical. A Y-incision is sliced from the tip of each shoulder, horizontally to the center of the chest, then vertically down to the pubic area. The skin is scalpeled back in a butterfly pattern accessing the thorax and abdomen, then the ribcage is snipped loose, exposing the upper and lower organs.

The major ones are removed, weighed, and cross-sectioned – lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, stomach, and intestines. Tissue sections are exscinded and fluids are extracted – blood, urine, vitreous humor, and digestive contents. These can be of immediate visual interest, or may tell later tales in toxicology and microscopic processing.

Cranial examination is the part that most newbies find difficult. The neck is now propped to elevate the head and the scalp is cut from ear to ear, peeled over the face and down the neck, then the skull cap is severed with a vibrating saw. The brain extracts easily and is often preserved in formalin to gel for later sectioning.

Completion involves returning the organs to the central cavity and sewing-up the incisions before releasing the body to a funeral home. Tissue and liquids are retained for histology and toxicology. In forensic cases, exhibits such as bullets, trace evidence, DNA standards, and clothing are transferred to the crime lab.

Often the cause of death is conclusive at autopsy. Occasionally nothing is known until the lab results come in. And sometimes… it’s never determined just why the subject died.

Dying Words

Provoking Thoughts on Life, Death, and Writing