SERIAL KILLER BY ADS
Back in the old days, desperate singles in search of a mate might turn to a professional matchmaker. Nowadays, they are more likely to look in the personals section of the classified ads or subscribe to an Internet dating service. Of course, when it comes to getting anything that people are peddling in newspapers or online—whether it’s a used car or themselves—it pays to take heed of the old warning: Buyer Beware! Those Handsome SWMs and Sensual DWFs who make themselves look and sound so attractive in their digital photos and printed descriptions might turn out to be very different when you meet them in person.
Occasionally, in fact, they might turn out to be serial killers.
Using classifieds as a way of snaring potential victims is a ploy that dates back at least as far as the early 1900s. That’s when the infamous American Black Widow, Belle Gunness, lured a string of unwary bachelors into her clutches by placing matrimonial ads in newspapers across the country: “Rich, good-looking widow, young, owner of a large farm, wishes to get in touch with a gentleman of wealth with cultured tastes.” There was a certain amount of misrepresentation in this classified, since Gunness was actually fat, fiftyish, and bulldog-ugly. She wasn’t lying about being a rich widow, though, since she had murdered at least fourteen husbands after separating them from their life savings.
In France, Gunness’s near contemporary, Henri Landru, known as the “Bluebeard of Paris,” also found his lover-victims through the newspapers. Some of the classifieds were matrimonial ads in which Landru presented himself as a wealthy widower searching for a mate. In others, he pretended to be a used-furniture dealer looking for merchandise. In either case, if the person who responded was a lonely woman of means, Landru would turn up the charm. The results were always the same. The woman’s money would end up in his bank account. The woman herself would end up as a pile of ashes in the stove of his country villa.
In the late 1950s, a sexual psychopath and bondage nut named Harvey Murray Glatman was able to procure victims by posing as a professional photographer and placing ads for female models. After luring an unwary woman into his “studio,” Glatman would rape her, truss her up, take pictures of her while she screamed in terror, then strangle her. (Glatman’s case served as the real-life basis for Mary Higgins Clark’s bestselling novel Loves Music, Loves to Dance, which—as the title suggests—deals with the sometimes perilous world of the personals.)
In more recent times, a vicious sociopath named Harvey Louis Carignan lured young women to their deaths by advertising for employees at the Seattle gas station he managed. Carignan’s MO earned him the nickname the “Want-Ad Killer” (the title of Ann Rule’s 1983 bestselling true-crime book on the subject). At roughly the same time, an Alaskan baker named Robert Hansen—who was ultimately convicted of four savage sex killings, though he was allegedly responsible for seventeen—used the personals page of his local newspaper to attract several of his victims. Hansen, who was married with children, would send his family off on a vacation, then take out a classified, seeking women to “join me in finding what’s around the next bend.” After snaring a victim, he would fly her out to the wilderness in his private plane. Then, after raping her at knifepoint, he would strip off her clothing, give her a head start, and (in a sick, real-life duplication of Richard Connell’s famous short story “The Most Dangerous Game”) stalk her like an animal.
Even scarier was the wizened cannibal and child killer Albert Fish, who regularly scoured the classifieds in his endless search for victims. In 1928, Fish came across a Situation Wanted ad placed by a young man named Edward Budd, who was looking for a summer job in the country. Masquerading as the owner of a big Long Island farm, the monstrous old man visited the Budd household, intending to lure the youth to an abandoned house and torture him to death. Fish altered his plans when he laid eyes on Edward’s little sister, a beautiful twelve-year-old girl named Grace. It was the little girl who ended up dead, dismembered, and cannibalized—and all because her brother’s innocent ad brought a monster to their door.
Arguably the most bizarre advertising gambit in the annals of psychopathic sex crime occurred in 2002, when a forty-one-year-old German computer technician, Armin Meiwes, posted an Internet ad that read: “Wanted: Well-Built Man for Slaughter and Consumption.”
Though it is impossible to conceive of a less enticing come-on, it caught the fancy of a forty-two-year-old microchip designer named Bernd-J?rgen Brandes, who showed up at Meiwes’s door, eager to be butchered. With the victim’s enthusiastic cooperation, Meiwes cut off Brandes’s penis, cooked it, then served it up for the two of them to eat together. He then stabbed Brandes through the neck, chopped up the corpse, froze certain parts for future consumption, and buried the rest To describe Herr Meiwes as “disturbed” is clearly an understatement. It must be acknowledged, however, that—in contrast to such wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing as Robert Hansen and Albert Fish—at least he wasn’t guilty of false advertising.
Advertising for Victims
In the 1989 film Sea of Love, a serial killer with a seductive line goes trolling for male victims in the classifieds. When a sucker bites, the killer reels him in, then leaves him facedown on the mattress, a bullet in the back of his skull.
As he did nine years earlier in Cruising, Al Pacino plays a homicide detective who goes undercover to catch the killer. By placing his own ad in the papers, he turns himself into live bait. In the process he plunges into a turbulent affair with Ellen Barkin—who may or may not be the killer.
A riveting thriller, Sea of Love is especially good at conveying the dangerous undercurrents that run beneath the surface of big-city singles life, where lonely people looking for a good catch sometimes end up with a barracuda.
AXE MURDERERS
AXE MURDERERS
Though the figure of the axe-wielding maniac is a staple of horror movies and campfire tales, he is largely a figment of the popular imagination. In reality, serial killers rarely rely on axes.
The most famous axe in American criminal history, of course, was the one that belonged to Miss Lizzie Borden, who, according to folklore, used it to give her sleeping stepmother “forty whacks” in the face (and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one). Lizzie, however, was no serial killer but a chubby, thirty-two-year-old spinster with long-simmering resentments who apparently went berserk one sweltering day in August 1892. In short, her crimes (assuming she committed them, which seems fairly certain, in spite of her acquittal) were a one-shot deal—a lifetime’s worth of stifled emotions exploding in a single savage deed.
Another fatal female who was handy with an axe was the notorious Belle Gunness, who murdered at least fourteen of her husbands and suitors. Some apparently were poisoned, others were dispatched in their sleep with a hatchet. Though the fat, ferocious Gunness cut a more frightful figure than the ladylike Miss Lizzie, she was no wild-eyed thrill killer. Rather, she was a cold-blooded mercenary, killing to collect on her spouses’ life-insurance policies or inherit their savings.
Closer than either of these lethal ladies to the popular stereotype of the axe-wielding psycho was a hard-bitten drifter named Jake Bird. Roaming around Tacoma in 1947, Bird hacked a mother and daughter to pieces with an axe he found in their woodshed. Alerted by the victims’ dying shrieks, neighbors summoned the police, who managed to subdue Bird after a violent struggle. Bird pled innocent until forensic analysis established that the stains on his trousers were human blood and brain tissue. Before his execution in 1949, he confessed to no fewer than forty-four murders throughout the United States, a number of them committed with his weapon of choice—the axe.
The most fear-provoking axe killer in the annals of American crime, however—one who kept a whole city in a state of panic for over two years—was a maniac whose identity remains unknown. This is the shadowy figure known as the “Axeman of New Orleans.”
On the night of May 23, 1918, a New Orleans couple named Maggio was butchered in bed by an intruder who smashed their skulls with an axe blade, then slit their throats with a razor, nearly severing the woman’s head. Thus began the reign of terror of the so-called Axeman, a real-life boogeyman who haunted the city for two and half years. His MO was always the same. Prowling through the darkness, he would target a house, chisel out a back-door panel, slip inside, and find his way to the bedroom. There, he would creep toward his slumbering victims, raise his weapon, and attack with demoniacal fury. Altogether, he murdered seven people and savagely wounded another eight.
Panic gripped the city, particularly since the police were helpless to locate the killer. Hysterical citizens pointed fingers at various suspects, including a supposed German spy named Louis Besumer and a father and son named Jordano, who were actually convicted on “eyewitness testimony” that later proved to be fabricated. Since many of the victims were Italian grocers, there was also a theory (wholly unsubstantiated) that the killer was a Mafia enforcer. To cope with their fears, citizens resorted to morbid humor, throwing raucous New Orleans-style “Axeman parties” and singing along to a popular tune called “The Mysterious Axeman’s Jazz.
Though the killer was never identified, some people believe that he was an ex-con named Joseph Mumfre, who was shot down by a woman named Pepitone, the widow of the Axeman’s last victim. Mrs. Pepitone claimed that she had seen Mumfre flee the murder scene. Whether Mumfre was really the Axeman remains a matter of dispute, but one fact is certain: the killings stopped with his death.
Though the figure of the axe-wielding maniac is a staple of horror movies and campfire tales, he is largely a figment of the popular imagination. In reality, serial killers rarely rely on axes.
The most famous axe in American criminal history, of course, was the one that belonged to Miss Lizzie Borden, who, according to folklore, used it to give her sleeping stepmother “forty whacks” in the face (and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one). Lizzie, however, was no serial killer but a chubby, thirty-two-year-old spinster with long-simmering resentments who apparently went berserk one sweltering day in August 1892. In short, her crimes (assuming she committed them, which seems fairly certain, in spite of her acquittal) were a one-shot deal—a lifetime’s worth of stifled emotions exploding in a single savage deed.
Another fatal female who was handy with an axe was the notorious Belle Gunness, who murdered at least fourteen of her husbands and suitors. Some apparently were poisoned, others were dispatched in their sleep with a hatchet. Though the fat, ferocious Gunness cut a more frightful figure than the ladylike Miss Lizzie, she was no wild-eyed thrill killer. Rather, she was a cold-blooded mercenary, killing to collect on her spouses’ life-insurance policies or inherit their savings.
Closer than either of these lethal ladies to the popular stereotype of the axe-wielding psycho was a hard-bitten drifter named Jake Bird. Roaming around Tacoma in 1947, Bird hacked a mother and daughter to pieces with an axe he found in their woodshed. Alerted by the victims’ dying shrieks, neighbors summoned the police, who managed to subdue Bird after a violent struggle. Bird pled innocent until forensic analysis established that the stains on his trousers were human blood and brain tissue. Before his execution in 1949, he confessed to no fewer than forty-four murders throughout the United States, a number of them committed with his weapon of choice—the axe.
The most fear-provoking axe killer in the annals of American crime, however—one who kept a whole city in a state of panic for over two years—was a maniac whose identity remains unknown. This is the shadowy figure known as the “Axeman of New Orleans.”
On the night of May 23, 1918, a New Orleans couple named Maggio was butchered in bed by an intruder who smashed their skulls with an axe blade, then slit their throats with a razor, nearly severing the woman’s head. Thus began the reign of terror of the so-called Axeman, a real-life boogeyman who haunted the city for two and half years. His MO was always the same. Prowling through the darkness, he would target a house, chisel out a back-door panel, slip inside, and find his way to the bedroom. There, he would creep toward his slumbering victims, raise his weapon, and attack with demoniacal fury. Altogether, he murdered seven people and savagely wounded another eight.
Panic gripped the city, particularly since the police were helpless to locate the killer. Hysterical citizens pointed fingers at various suspects, including a supposed German spy named Louis Besumer and a father and son named Jordano, who were actually convicted on “eyewitness testimony” that later proved to be fabricated. Since many of the victims were Italian grocers, there was also a theory (wholly unsubstantiated) that the killer was a Mafia enforcer. To cope with their fears, citizens resorted to morbid humor, throwing raucous New Orleans-style “Axeman parties” and singing along to a popular tune called “The Mysterious Axeman’s Jazz.
Though the killer was never identified, some people believe that he was an ex-con named Joseph Mumfre, who was shot down by a woman named Pepitone, the widow of the Axeman’s last victim. Mrs. Pepitone claimed that she had seen Mumfre flee the murder scene. Whether Mumfre was really the Axeman remains a matter of dispute, but one fact is certain: the killings stopped with his death.
18 WHAT TO KNOW AROUND THE WORLD
When you're traveling around the world, it's useful to be aware of the local customs, and even more useful to know the local laws. Here are some of the more unusual laws around the world that you might encounter.
1. Singapore - Gum control
In Singapore it's illegal to import chewing gum. The problem with gum is not how people chew it, but how they dispose of it. And no gum helps keep the footpaths clean.
2. Thailand - No to commando
In Thailand, There's a rule against leaving home without your underwear. We don't know who checks these things but you are advised not to take the risk.
3. Russia - Wash and go
In Russia you can be fined for having a dirty car, as the police need to be able to read your registration plate.
4. Fiji - Don't dare to bare
In Fiji, topless sunbathing is illegal. And the call for modesty extends further, because when you visit rural areas you should cover your shoulders.
5. Florence, Italy - Food to take (further) away
In Florence, Italy, it's an offense to eat or drink near the main churches or public buildings. There's no mystery to this, it's just a mark of respect to the city and its culture.
6. Minnesota, USA - They've got you pegged
In Minnesota, USA, you're not allowed to hang male and female clothes on the same washing line. Strange but true, so best toe the line.
7. Australia - Parental guidance explicit lyrics
In Adelaide and Melbourne there are laws against singing obscene song. As there's no official list of banned words, it is worth singing on the safe side, and keeping lyrics above the waistline.
8. Kentucky, USA - Freezing your assets
In Kentucky, USA, it's illegal to keep ice cream in your back pocket. This is because in the past, thieves would put ice cream in their pockets to steal horses luring them away, without even looking at them.
9. Manila, Philippines - Come in number 6, your time is up
In central Manila, Philippines, your car registration number defines which days of the week you can drive - with every private car having one day off. This is a move to manage congestion, which often brings the city to a standstill.
10. Rio Claro, Brazil - The watermelon law
Rio Claro, Brazil still has a city law that bans the sale of watermelons. The "Watermelon Law" was put into force in 1894, because at the time, watermelons were thought to transmit typhus and yellow fever.
11. Russia - Strictly No Frills
In Russia, there' an import ban on synthetic lace underwear. But what might seem odd at first glance is actually a move to protect customers from unhealthy poor-quality synthetics.
12. Japan - A major puddle muddle
In Japan, courtesy is taken very seriously and this extends to how people drive. There is a law that in wet conditions they must slow down to avoid splashing pedestrians.
13. Germany - How low can you go?
On the autobahns of Germany, although there is no specific law against running out of fuel, it is illegal to stop unnecessarily. In the authorities' view there is no excuse to run out of fuel.
14. New Zealand - Just plain chicken
In New Zealand it's illegal to fly with a rooster in a hot air balloon. Our research team is still working on this one, but we have learned that the first balloon passengers were a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
15. United Arab Emirates - There's an e-law against it
In the United Arab Emirates, it's illegal to sell e-Cigarettes. Far from the 'healthy alternative', the UAE has acted on World Health Organization warnings that chemicals used have not been properly identified or proved to be safe.
16. Capri, Italy - Shhhh!
In Capri, Italy, the local Mayor introduced a law banning loud footwear. The law was put into effect along with other noise controls for people living in apartments.
17. Venice, Italy - The pecking order
Some laws in Italy are city-specific, and in Venice it's illegal to feed the pigeons. You'd probably get a warning, but if you continue, you could be fined.
18. Oklahoma, USA - Tongue out is right out
In Oklahoma, USA, it's illegal to pull ugly faces at a dog. The actual law however states it is unlawful to torment a service dog.
1. Singapore - Gum control
In Singapore it's illegal to import chewing gum. The problem with gum is not how people chew it, but how they dispose of it. And no gum helps keep the footpaths clean.
2. Thailand - No to commando
In Thailand, There's a rule against leaving home without your underwear. We don't know who checks these things but you are advised not to take the risk.
3. Russia - Wash and go
In Russia you can be fined for having a dirty car, as the police need to be able to read your registration plate.
4. Fiji - Don't dare to bare
In Fiji, topless sunbathing is illegal. And the call for modesty extends further, because when you visit rural areas you should cover your shoulders.
5. Florence, Italy - Food to take (further) away
In Florence, Italy, it's an offense to eat or drink near the main churches or public buildings. There's no mystery to this, it's just a mark of respect to the city and its culture.
6. Minnesota, USA - They've got you pegged
In Minnesota, USA, you're not allowed to hang male and female clothes on the same washing line. Strange but true, so best toe the line.
7. Australia - Parental guidance explicit lyrics
In Adelaide and Melbourne there are laws against singing obscene song. As there's no official list of banned words, it is worth singing on the safe side, and keeping lyrics above the waistline.
8. Kentucky, USA - Freezing your assets
In Kentucky, USA, it's illegal to keep ice cream in your back pocket. This is because in the past, thieves would put ice cream in their pockets to steal horses luring them away, without even looking at them.
9. Manila, Philippines - Come in number 6, your time is up
In central Manila, Philippines, your car registration number defines which days of the week you can drive - with every private car having one day off. This is a move to manage congestion, which often brings the city to a standstill.
10. Rio Claro, Brazil - The watermelon law
Rio Claro, Brazil still has a city law that bans the sale of watermelons. The "Watermelon Law" was put into force in 1894, because at the time, watermelons were thought to transmit typhus and yellow fever.
11. Russia - Strictly No Frills
In Russia, there' an import ban on synthetic lace underwear. But what might seem odd at first glance is actually a move to protect customers from unhealthy poor-quality synthetics.
12. Japan - A major puddle muddle
In Japan, courtesy is taken very seriously and this extends to how people drive. There is a law that in wet conditions they must slow down to avoid splashing pedestrians.
13. Germany - How low can you go?
On the autobahns of Germany, although there is no specific law against running out of fuel, it is illegal to stop unnecessarily. In the authorities' view there is no excuse to run out of fuel.
14. New Zealand - Just plain chicken
In New Zealand it's illegal to fly with a rooster in a hot air balloon. Our research team is still working on this one, but we have learned that the first balloon passengers were a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
15. United Arab Emirates - There's an e-law against it
In the United Arab Emirates, it's illegal to sell e-Cigarettes. Far from the 'healthy alternative', the UAE has acted on World Health Organization warnings that chemicals used have not been properly identified or proved to be safe.
16. Capri, Italy - Shhhh!
In Capri, Italy, the local Mayor introduced a law banning loud footwear. The law was put into effect along with other noise controls for people living in apartments.
17. Venice, Italy - The pecking order
Some laws in Italy are city-specific, and in Venice it's illegal to feed the pigeons. You'd probably get a warning, but if you continue, you could be fined.
18. Oklahoma, USA - Tongue out is right out
In Oklahoma, USA, it's illegal to pull ugly faces at a dog. The actual law however states it is unlawful to torment a service dog.
30 WEIRD AND WONDERFUL NATURAL PHENOMENA FROM AROUND THE WORLD
5 MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE WHO HAVE FINALLY BEEN IDENTIFIED
5 MOST TOXIC ABANDONED GHOST TOWNS ON EARTH
10 CREEPY URBAN LEGENDS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
10 ROADS AROUND THE WORLD YOU WOULD NEVER WANT TO DRIVE ON
18 WHAT TO KNOW AROUND THE WORLD
10 MYSTERIOUS PHOTOS AROUND THE WORLD
10 CURSED OBJECTS AROUND THE WORLD
20 CELEBS WHO DON'T LIKE TAYLOR SWIFT
10 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO DON'T AGE
10 FAMOUS PEOPLE CAUGHT WITH FAKE BEHINDS
TOP 10 WORST MOVIE ENDINGS
CANNIBALISM and Serial Murder
CANNIBALISM and Serial Murder
Throughout history, many cultures have sanctioned and ritualized the consumption of human flesh, but cannibalism is generally banned today, since its practice requires either homicide or desecration of corpses (a criminal offense in most American jurisdictions). Still,
as bizarre as it seems in modern society, cannibalism is not particularly rare among serial killers, particularly those driven by sexual or sadistic MOTIVES.
Indeed, it has always been so. In ancient Mexico, where Aztecs sacrificed and cannibalized an estimated 15,000 victims yearly, Emperor Moctezuma was said to prefer dining on the same young boys he chose to share his bed. Cannibal killer ALBERT FISH also preferred the
flesh of children, while California’s EDMUND KEMPER devoured parts of at least two female victims, later terming the act a means of “possessing” them forever. The “CHICAGO RIPPERS,” four young Satanists, habitually severed and devoured the breasts of women they abducted, raped, and killed.
Cannibalism is not always a sexual act. For some, it may be a survival technique. Millions starved to death in Russia during the 1930s while Josef Stalin communized the nation’s agricultural system, and the tragedy was repeated 20 years later under Mao Zedong in the
People’s Republic of China. In both countries, many cases of cannibalism were reported (including parents who devoured their own children), but authorities responded in very different ways. Soviet officials executed an unknown number of cannibals, while sentencing some 350 others to life imprisonment; Chinese leaders, on the other hand, sometimes applauded acts of homicide and cannibalism, especially where the victims were members of the “reactionary” old guard. In Russia, at least one case of serial murder and cannibalism was also reported from Leningrad during the long Nazi siege, but details are elusive thanks to Soviet censorship. (Perhaps significantly, Russian slayer ANDREI CHIKATILO blamed his own forays into cannibalism on childhood stories concerning his older brother, allegedly murdered and eaten during the famine of the 1930s.)
There is at least one case on record of serial murder and cannibalism committed as acts of revenge. Embittered at the murder of his wife by members of the Crow Indian tribe, trapper John Johnston waged a ruthless vendetta in the Colorado Rockies, killing scores of tribesmen and devouring their still-warm livers, raw, as a gesture of contempt. When Hollywood tackled his story a century later, handsome Robert Redford took the lead as Jeremiah Johnson, a romantic hero, with no trace of “Liver-eating Johnston” to be found on-screen.
Reports of cannibalism flourished in the 1990s, perhaps because of the subject’s sensational nature. In October 1997, Ugandan police arrested Ssande Sserwadda, accused by his wife of cannibalism. In custody, Sserwadda freely admitted the charge, reporting that he learned the practice from his parents. He told the court, “We are a family of cannibals, we always have been, and I feel queasy if I go too long without tasting human meat. But just because we like to eat human flesh, does that mean we’re bad people?” Sserwadda admitted eating seven corpses in the past year, then added that his brother “is the really greedy one. He’s eaten dozens.” Presuming that Sserwadda dined on corpses without committing murder, the court sentenced him to three years in prison. He shocked the judge by asking if he could take a human leg, introduced as evidence at trial in 2001, to prison with him for a snack. “It’s still got plenty of meat on it. It’s a shame to let it go to waste.” In Nigeria, authorities jailed two alleged cannibals at Lagos, in February 1999. The suspects, identified as Clifford Orji and Tahiru, lived beneath a local bridge and were accused by neighbors of supplying human organs to black-magic practitioners. Raiders found the pair grilling parts of a fresh corpse, and seized the flesh and various bones as evidence. A police spokesman accused Orji and Tahiru of murdering women, and claimed they preferred “young, fine girls with long hair.” No disposition for that case was available at press time, but new reports of widespread cannibalism emerged from the neighboring Congo region in 2003. There, dwindling tribes of pygmies complained to the United Nations that rural guerrillas regularly killed and devoured members of their race, driving their people toward extinction. Reports published in Europe, during August 2003, described mobile armies of “child soldiers” dragooned by their elders to fight in a long-running civil war, subsisting on flesh from their slain enemies as they prowled the countryside.
Modern Asia has no shortage of cannibalism reports. In January 2001, Western journalists revealed that human flesh (dubbed saram hoki) was sold in the marketplace at famine-blighted Hoeroung, North Korea. Films and photographs supported the claim, depicting parts of a dismembered child in one cooking pot. Reporter Carla Garapedian told the world, “All of the North Koreans we interviewed knew about it.” North Korean officials declined to comment. A year later, in March 2002, authorities in Hyderabad, India, alleged that members of “a nameless sect” consumed human flesh as part of a puja ritual designed to help them find hidden treasure. No charges were filed in that case, but several alleged cannibals were reportedly slain by their neighbors on suspicion of practicing evil magic.
Eastern Europe has produced its share of cannibals in recent years. Ilshat Kuzikov, a 37-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, Russia, was convicted in March 1997 of killing and devouring at least three male acquaintances since 1992. Officers who raided his home found dried ears hanging on the walls and soft-drink bottles filled with human blood. Four years later, in April 2001, authorities in Chisinau, Moldova, arrested two women for selling human organs in the city’s marketplace. A full-scale investigation was announced, but its results are presently unknown. Four Ukrainians were jailed at Kiev in July 2002, charged with killing a teenage girl and devouring her body. Police claimed that the prisoners, including three men and a woman, had killed at least six victims for their flesh. The latest kidnapping had also involved an abortive $3,000 ransom demand. Detectives found “several books on black magic” at one suspect’s home, suggesting that the murders sprang from Satanism. Once again, no disposition of the case has been reported.
Across the Atlantic, accused cannibal Dorangel Vargas was arrested by police in San Crist?bal, Venezuela, in February 1999. A former mental patient who was briefly held on similar charges in 1995, Vargas confessed to murdering and eating 10 men over the past two years. “Sure I eat people,” he told reporters. “Anyone can eat human flesh, but you have to wash and garnish it well to avoid diseases.” Notwithstanding those admissions and the reported discovery of human remains at his home, some observers defended Vargas as a hapless “scapegoat,” allegedly framed by illicit organ-traffickers. No judgment in the Vargas case had been announced by press time for this volume. On April 14, 2001, police in Kansas City, Kansas, charged 21-year-old Marc Sappington with murdering and cannibalizing three men over the past week. Dismembered remains of one victim, 16-year-old Alton Brown, were found in Sappington’s basement. Held in lieu of $2 million bond, Sappington was examined for psychiatric abnormalities by analysts who reported his fascination with Milwaukee cannibal-killer JEFFREY DAHMER. After being certified as sane, Sappington faced trial in July 2004. Jurors convicted him across the board, on three counts of murder plus one count each of kidnapping and aggravated burglary.
In 2004, European authorities announced their discovery of an Internet cannibal network that “links maneaters from Austria to America.” That revelation emerged from the murder trial of German defendant Armin Meiwes, a cannibal who advertised online for a “young well-built man who wants to be eaten” and thus met Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, whom he killed and devoured in 2001. Defense attorneys for Meiwes submitted that he should be freed because Brandes volunteered to be slain and consumed. Jurors convicted Meiwes on a reduced charge of manslaughter, sending him to prison for eight and a half years, but police were more concerned with evidence that two more victims may have been eaten in Europe. German criminologist Rudolf Egg told reporters, “There are several hundred people with cannibalistic tendencies in Germany alone, and many thousands around the world.” Inspector Isolde Stock announced that Meiwes’s e-mail correspondence with members of various “cannibal forums” would fill two large trucks if it were printed out. The haul included several thousand photos of nude men, downloaded from the prisoner’s computers, in addition to scenes of torture.
Throughout history, many cultures have sanctioned and ritualized the consumption of human flesh, but cannibalism is generally banned today, since its practice requires either homicide or desecration of corpses (a criminal offense in most American jurisdictions). Still,
as bizarre as it seems in modern society, cannibalism is not particularly rare among serial killers, particularly those driven by sexual or sadistic MOTIVES.
Indeed, it has always been so. In ancient Mexico, where Aztecs sacrificed and cannibalized an estimated 15,000 victims yearly, Emperor Moctezuma was said to prefer dining on the same young boys he chose to share his bed. Cannibal killer ALBERT FISH also preferred the
flesh of children, while California’s EDMUND KEMPER devoured parts of at least two female victims, later terming the act a means of “possessing” them forever. The “CHICAGO RIPPERS,” four young Satanists, habitually severed and devoured the breasts of women they abducted, raped, and killed.
Cannibalism is not always a sexual act. For some, it may be a survival technique. Millions starved to death in Russia during the 1930s while Josef Stalin communized the nation’s agricultural system, and the tragedy was repeated 20 years later under Mao Zedong in the
People’s Republic of China. In both countries, many cases of cannibalism were reported (including parents who devoured their own children), but authorities responded in very different ways. Soviet officials executed an unknown number of cannibals, while sentencing some 350 others to life imprisonment; Chinese leaders, on the other hand, sometimes applauded acts of homicide and cannibalism, especially where the victims were members of the “reactionary” old guard. In Russia, at least one case of serial murder and cannibalism was also reported from Leningrad during the long Nazi siege, but details are elusive thanks to Soviet censorship. (Perhaps significantly, Russian slayer ANDREI CHIKATILO blamed his own forays into cannibalism on childhood stories concerning his older brother, allegedly murdered and eaten during the famine of the 1930s.)
There is at least one case on record of serial murder and cannibalism committed as acts of revenge. Embittered at the murder of his wife by members of the Crow Indian tribe, trapper John Johnston waged a ruthless vendetta in the Colorado Rockies, killing scores of tribesmen and devouring their still-warm livers, raw, as a gesture of contempt. When Hollywood tackled his story a century later, handsome Robert Redford took the lead as Jeremiah Johnson, a romantic hero, with no trace of “Liver-eating Johnston” to be found on-screen.
Reports of cannibalism flourished in the 1990s, perhaps because of the subject’s sensational nature. In October 1997, Ugandan police arrested Ssande Sserwadda, accused by his wife of cannibalism. In custody, Sserwadda freely admitted the charge, reporting that he learned the practice from his parents. He told the court, “We are a family of cannibals, we always have been, and I feel queasy if I go too long without tasting human meat. But just because we like to eat human flesh, does that mean we’re bad people?” Sserwadda admitted eating seven corpses in the past year, then added that his brother “is the really greedy one. He’s eaten dozens.” Presuming that Sserwadda dined on corpses without committing murder, the court sentenced him to three years in prison. He shocked the judge by asking if he could take a human leg, introduced as evidence at trial in 2001, to prison with him for a snack. “It’s still got plenty of meat on it. It’s a shame to let it go to waste.” In Nigeria, authorities jailed two alleged cannibals at Lagos, in February 1999. The suspects, identified as Clifford Orji and Tahiru, lived beneath a local bridge and were accused by neighbors of supplying human organs to black-magic practitioners. Raiders found the pair grilling parts of a fresh corpse, and seized the flesh and various bones as evidence. A police spokesman accused Orji and Tahiru of murdering women, and claimed they preferred “young, fine girls with long hair.” No disposition for that case was available at press time, but new reports of widespread cannibalism emerged from the neighboring Congo region in 2003. There, dwindling tribes of pygmies complained to the United Nations that rural guerrillas regularly killed and devoured members of their race, driving their people toward extinction. Reports published in Europe, during August 2003, described mobile armies of “child soldiers” dragooned by their elders to fight in a long-running civil war, subsisting on flesh from their slain enemies as they prowled the countryside.
Modern Asia has no shortage of cannibalism reports. In January 2001, Western journalists revealed that human flesh (dubbed saram hoki) was sold in the marketplace at famine-blighted Hoeroung, North Korea. Films and photographs supported the claim, depicting parts of a dismembered child in one cooking pot. Reporter Carla Garapedian told the world, “All of the North Koreans we interviewed knew about it.” North Korean officials declined to comment. A year later, in March 2002, authorities in Hyderabad, India, alleged that members of “a nameless sect” consumed human flesh as part of a puja ritual designed to help them find hidden treasure. No charges were filed in that case, but several alleged cannibals were reportedly slain by their neighbors on suspicion of practicing evil magic.
Eastern Europe has produced its share of cannibals in recent years. Ilshat Kuzikov, a 37-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, Russia, was convicted in March 1997 of killing and devouring at least three male acquaintances since 1992. Officers who raided his home found dried ears hanging on the walls and soft-drink bottles filled with human blood. Four years later, in April 2001, authorities in Chisinau, Moldova, arrested two women for selling human organs in the city’s marketplace. A full-scale investigation was announced, but its results are presently unknown. Four Ukrainians were jailed at Kiev in July 2002, charged with killing a teenage girl and devouring her body. Police claimed that the prisoners, including three men and a woman, had killed at least six victims for their flesh. The latest kidnapping had also involved an abortive $3,000 ransom demand. Detectives found “several books on black magic” at one suspect’s home, suggesting that the murders sprang from Satanism. Once again, no disposition of the case has been reported.
Across the Atlantic, accused cannibal Dorangel Vargas was arrested by police in San Crist?bal, Venezuela, in February 1999. A former mental patient who was briefly held on similar charges in 1995, Vargas confessed to murdering and eating 10 men over the past two years. “Sure I eat people,” he told reporters. “Anyone can eat human flesh, but you have to wash and garnish it well to avoid diseases.” Notwithstanding those admissions and the reported discovery of human remains at his home, some observers defended Vargas as a hapless “scapegoat,” allegedly framed by illicit organ-traffickers. No judgment in the Vargas case had been announced by press time for this volume. On April 14, 2001, police in Kansas City, Kansas, charged 21-year-old Marc Sappington with murdering and cannibalizing three men over the past week. Dismembered remains of one victim, 16-year-old Alton Brown, were found in Sappington’s basement. Held in lieu of $2 million bond, Sappington was examined for psychiatric abnormalities by analysts who reported his fascination with Milwaukee cannibal-killer JEFFREY DAHMER. After being certified as sane, Sappington faced trial in July 2004. Jurors convicted him across the board, on three counts of murder plus one count each of kidnapping and aggravated burglary.
In 2004, European authorities announced their discovery of an Internet cannibal network that “links maneaters from Austria to America.” That revelation emerged from the murder trial of German defendant Armin Meiwes, a cannibal who advertised online for a “young well-built man who wants to be eaten” and thus met Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, whom he killed and devoured in 2001. Defense attorneys for Meiwes submitted that he should be freed because Brandes volunteered to be slain and consumed. Jurors convicted Meiwes on a reduced charge of manslaughter, sending him to prison for eight and a half years, but police were more concerned with evidence that two more victims may have been eaten in Europe. German criminologist Rudolf Egg told reporters, “There are several hundred people with cannibalistic tendencies in Germany alone, and many thousands around the world.” Inspector Isolde Stock announced that Meiwes’s e-mail correspondence with members of various “cannibal forums” would fill two large trucks if it were printed out. The haul included several thousand photos of nude men, downloaded from the prisoner’s computers, in addition to scenes of torture.
ARTWORK and Memorabilia Related to Serial Murder
ARTWORK and Memorabilia Related to Serial Murder
Considering the celebrity status conferred on infamous criminals in modern society, it comes as no surprise that some of them become “collectible” through such media as portraits and autographed photos, personal mementos, model kits, trading cards, comic books, and sundry other items ranging from tawdry curiosities to the bizarre. This fascination with felons in general—and serial killers in particular—is viewed by some critics as a symbol of societal decadence (even imminent apocalypse), while others dismiss it as a passing fad. On balance, given the apparent declining interest in such items since the mid-1990s, the latter view would seem to be correct.
Serial killer art, as noted by authors Harold Schechter and David Everitt, may be conveniently divided into two categories: art depicting serial murderers, and art created by the killers themselves. The former category includes everything from formal portraits and life-sized sculpture to weird, abstract sketches on cheaply produced trading cards and the sometimes graphic scenes depicted in various comic book “biographies” of notorious slayers. The several sets of trading cards and comics sparked heated controversy in the early 1990s, as parents and conservative religious leaders blamed them for “corrupting” modern youth. Producers of the cards and comics countered with reminders that their goods were plainly marked “for sale to adults only” and were not intended for a younger audience—an argument which critics viewed as somewhat disingenuous. (Nassau County, New York, legally banned the sale of one card set to minors; by the time that law was voided on appeal, the company in question had gone bankrupt.)
Generally speaking, collectors of serial killer art are more interested in work produced by the murderers themselves, and there has been no shortage of product from the 1980s onward. Prison inmates have tons of spare time, and some unlikely artists have emerged from America’s captive population of recreational killers. JOHN GACY was easily the most famous, known worldwide for his paintings of clowns, skulls, and other subjects, sold from death row in a marketing scheme so controversial that the state of Illinois would later sue Gacy’s estate, seeking to recover room and board expenses for the years he spent in prison. As with many other artists, Gacy’s work has grown more pricey since his death in 1994, one outraged critic purchasing a block of paintings and burning them publicly, to prevent them reaching “the wrong hands.”
While Gacy hogged headlines in the war of words surrounding killer art, other notorious predators were quietly at work, including Richard Speck (wildlife watercolors), “Night Stalker” RICHARD RAMIREZ (ballpoint doodles), MANSON “FAMILY” alumnus Bobby Beausoleil (paintings), and Charles Manson himself (sketches and toy animals fashioned from socks). “Quiet” hardly describes the case of “Gainesville Ripper” Danny Rolling, whose pen-and-ink drawings were sold by his publicist and one-time fianc?e, Sondra London, until the state of Florida filed suit to shut the business down. Elmer Wayne Henley, accomplice and slayer of Houston’s DEAN CORLL, has emerged as another prison artist of note, his paintings displayed at two Texas galleries in 1998. Predictably, the showings drew more anger than acclaim, picketers at one gallery arriving with signs that read “hang Henley, not his art.” New York inmate Arthur Shawcross sparked a similar furor in September 1999, when prison administrators learned that he had retained agents to sell his paintings on the Internet auction site eBay. Shawcross spent nine months in solitary confinement for that transgression of prison policy and lost all art privileges for an additional five years. On May 16, 2001, eBay announced a ban on further sales of “murderabilia.”
Other collectible items in the serial murder genre include T-shirts emblazoned with portraits of various killers, autographs from sundry slayers, a scale model of EDWARD GEIN (complete with shovel and lantern, preparing to rob a fresh grave), and similar items. An Internet website markets scores of “killer fonts,” allowing persons so inclined to print computer-generated documents in the (simulated) handwriting of various psychopaths ranging from “JACK THE RIPPER” to more recent specimens. By 1995, several mail-order catalogs offered a wide range of murderous memorabilia and accessories—fake skulls and severed limbs, etc.—for collectors with money to burn. An easy winner in the poor-taste category (and impossible to authenticate without DNA tests) was the offer of fingernail clippings from LAWRENCE (“Pliers”) BITTAKER, awaiting execution at San Quentin. In February 1999, the Back Bay Brewing Company named a new brand of ale for alleged “BOSTON STRANGLER” Albert DeSalvo, declaring: “It’s probably one of our best.”
As with FICTION AND FILM treatments of serial murder, the sale and collection of killer art and memorabilia invites protests that vendors and buyers alike are somehow “glorifying” human monsters, transforming them into “heroes.” And, while it is undeniable that certain infamous killers—notably Manson and Ramirez—enjoy literal cult icon status with some pathological characters on the lunatic fringe, most casual collectors of murder memorabilia seem slightly eccentric, at worst. As the majority of baseball card collectors never pitch a big-league game, so there has been no case to date of any “killer art” collector emulating Gacy, Speck, or Manson with a series of atrocious crimes. The controversy surrounding such items generates income for vendors and critics alike (as when religious groups hold rallies and sell pamphlets or collect donations to oppose the latest “sinful” fad), but otherwise, the impact of serial murder collectibles on American society seems no more significant or lasting than the Nehru jacket or the hula hoop.
In September 1999, French authorities suggested that art might be a motivating factor in a series of unsolved murders around Perpignan. The first victim, 19-year-old Moktaria Chaib, was found stabbed to death and mutilated near Perpignan’s railway station in December 1997. Police arrested Dr. Andres Barrios, a Peruvian-born surgeon whom reporters quickly dubbed “a Latin JACK THE RIPPER,” and detectives linked him tentatively to the 1995 disappearance of 17- year-old Tatiana Andujar in the same vicinity. Then, with Barrios still in custody, the slayer struck again in June 1998, killing 22-year-old Marie-H?l?ne Gonzalez, escaping with her severed head and hands. Barrios was then released on bond, while officers compared the mutilations suffered by Chaib and Gonzalez to portraits of disfigured women painted by surrealist Salvador Dal?. The link was strengthened, some said, by the late artist’s comment that he “sprang to attention with joy and ecstasy” when he passed Perpignan’s railway depot. The crimes in France remained unsolved when this work went to press.
Considering the celebrity status conferred on infamous criminals in modern society, it comes as no surprise that some of them become “collectible” through such media as portraits and autographed photos, personal mementos, model kits, trading cards, comic books, and sundry other items ranging from tawdry curiosities to the bizarre. This fascination with felons in general—and serial killers in particular—is viewed by some critics as a symbol of societal decadence (even imminent apocalypse), while others dismiss it as a passing fad. On balance, given the apparent declining interest in such items since the mid-1990s, the latter view would seem to be correct.
Serial killer art, as noted by authors Harold Schechter and David Everitt, may be conveniently divided into two categories: art depicting serial murderers, and art created by the killers themselves. The former category includes everything from formal portraits and life-sized sculpture to weird, abstract sketches on cheaply produced trading cards and the sometimes graphic scenes depicted in various comic book “biographies” of notorious slayers. The several sets of trading cards and comics sparked heated controversy in the early 1990s, as parents and conservative religious leaders blamed them for “corrupting” modern youth. Producers of the cards and comics countered with reminders that their goods were plainly marked “for sale to adults only” and were not intended for a younger audience—an argument which critics viewed as somewhat disingenuous. (Nassau County, New York, legally banned the sale of one card set to minors; by the time that law was voided on appeal, the company in question had gone bankrupt.)
Generally speaking, collectors of serial killer art are more interested in work produced by the murderers themselves, and there has been no shortage of product from the 1980s onward. Prison inmates have tons of spare time, and some unlikely artists have emerged from America’s captive population of recreational killers. JOHN GACY was easily the most famous, known worldwide for his paintings of clowns, skulls, and other subjects, sold from death row in a marketing scheme so controversial that the state of Illinois would later sue Gacy’s estate, seeking to recover room and board expenses for the years he spent in prison. As with many other artists, Gacy’s work has grown more pricey since his death in 1994, one outraged critic purchasing a block of paintings and burning them publicly, to prevent them reaching “the wrong hands.”
While Gacy hogged headlines in the war of words surrounding killer art, other notorious predators were quietly at work, including Richard Speck (wildlife watercolors), “Night Stalker” RICHARD RAMIREZ (ballpoint doodles), MANSON “FAMILY” alumnus Bobby Beausoleil (paintings), and Charles Manson himself (sketches and toy animals fashioned from socks). “Quiet” hardly describes the case of “Gainesville Ripper” Danny Rolling, whose pen-and-ink drawings were sold by his publicist and one-time fianc?e, Sondra London, until the state of Florida filed suit to shut the business down. Elmer Wayne Henley, accomplice and slayer of Houston’s DEAN CORLL, has emerged as another prison artist of note, his paintings displayed at two Texas galleries in 1998. Predictably, the showings drew more anger than acclaim, picketers at one gallery arriving with signs that read “hang Henley, not his art.” New York inmate Arthur Shawcross sparked a similar furor in September 1999, when prison administrators learned that he had retained agents to sell his paintings on the Internet auction site eBay. Shawcross spent nine months in solitary confinement for that transgression of prison policy and lost all art privileges for an additional five years. On May 16, 2001, eBay announced a ban on further sales of “murderabilia.”
Other collectible items in the serial murder genre include T-shirts emblazoned with portraits of various killers, autographs from sundry slayers, a scale model of EDWARD GEIN (complete with shovel and lantern, preparing to rob a fresh grave), and similar items. An Internet website markets scores of “killer fonts,” allowing persons so inclined to print computer-generated documents in the (simulated) handwriting of various psychopaths ranging from “JACK THE RIPPER” to more recent specimens. By 1995, several mail-order catalogs offered a wide range of murderous memorabilia and accessories—fake skulls and severed limbs, etc.—for collectors with money to burn. An easy winner in the poor-taste category (and impossible to authenticate without DNA tests) was the offer of fingernail clippings from LAWRENCE (“Pliers”) BITTAKER, awaiting execution at San Quentin. In February 1999, the Back Bay Brewing Company named a new brand of ale for alleged “BOSTON STRANGLER” Albert DeSalvo, declaring: “It’s probably one of our best.”
As with FICTION AND FILM treatments of serial murder, the sale and collection of killer art and memorabilia invites protests that vendors and buyers alike are somehow “glorifying” human monsters, transforming them into “heroes.” And, while it is undeniable that certain infamous killers—notably Manson and Ramirez—enjoy literal cult icon status with some pathological characters on the lunatic fringe, most casual collectors of murder memorabilia seem slightly eccentric, at worst. As the majority of baseball card collectors never pitch a big-league game, so there has been no case to date of any “killer art” collector emulating Gacy, Speck, or Manson with a series of atrocious crimes. The controversy surrounding such items generates income for vendors and critics alike (as when religious groups hold rallies and sell pamphlets or collect donations to oppose the latest “sinful” fad), but otherwise, the impact of serial murder collectibles on American society seems no more significant or lasting than the Nehru jacket or the hula hoop.
In September 1999, French authorities suggested that art might be a motivating factor in a series of unsolved murders around Perpignan. The first victim, 19-year-old Moktaria Chaib, was found stabbed to death and mutilated near Perpignan’s railway station in December 1997. Police arrested Dr. Andres Barrios, a Peruvian-born surgeon whom reporters quickly dubbed “a Latin JACK THE RIPPER,” and detectives linked him tentatively to the 1995 disappearance of 17- year-old Tatiana Andujar in the same vicinity. Then, with Barrios still in custody, the slayer struck again in June 1998, killing 22-year-old Marie-H?l?ne Gonzalez, escaping with her severed head and hands. Barrios was then released on bond, while officers compared the mutilations suffered by Chaib and Gonzalez to portraits of disfigured women painted by surrealist Salvador Dal?. The link was strengthened, some said, by the late artist’s comment that he “sprang to attention with joy and ecstasy” when he passed Perpignan’s railway depot. The crimes in France remained unsolved when this work went to press.
10 MYSTERIOUS PHOTOS AROUND THE WORLD THAT CANNOT BE EXPLAINED
These are 10 mysterious photos that cannot be explained.
1. The Babushka Lady
During the 1963 assassination of president John F. Kennedy. A woman is recorded on film and in many photographs. She appears to be taking photos of her own while the others run for cover. The FBI searched for the woman but her identity and photos were never recovered.
2. The Hessdalen Lights
Throughout the years, vibrant lights are famed to show up and photos taken in Norway's Hessdalen Valley. Many studies have been conducted to define this phenomenon. Scientists are still at a loss to explain what it is about this valley that causes these lights.
3. The Hook Island Sea Monster
In 1964, a couple spotted a strange object calmly swimming toward them in the lagoon park island. It seemed to be a gigantic tadpole like creature, estimated about 80 feet long. After taking several photos the couple claims the creature opened its mouth before moving off.
4. The Solway Firth Spaceman
In 1964 a man photographing his daughter captured what appears to be an astronaut standing behind her. He claims no one else was present in the shot other than the girl. And even the Kodak company inspected the photo to confirm that it was not tampered with.
5. The S.S. Watertown Ghosts
In 1924 two sailors were killed in a freak accident and buried at sea. In the days following, the crew claimed to see two faces of these men following the ship. And the captain snapped this photo that allegedly shows their faces in the waves.
6. The Black Knight Satellite
In 1960 a dark, tumbling object was reported in Earth's orbit. At this time no satellite had been launched nor was identified as a man-made design. And since then, many other finds have been recorded of similar objects appearing in orbit before vanishing.
7. The Copper Falling Body
There is very little information available about this mysterious photograph. Other than, the copper family moves into their new home and takes a family photo. After developing, the picture shows a body falling from the ceiling.
8. The Geophone Rock Anomaly
This photo was taken by Apollo 17 during the last flight to the moon. The photo was listed as "blank" do to extreme light exposure but when the contrast was adjusted the photo revealed a pyramid-like structure.
9. The Goddard Squadron Photograph
In 1919 this photo was taken on the day of the funeral of squad number to be, Freddy Jackson. At the top of the photo, a face emerges behind one of the officers. Recognized by members of the squadron as Freddy Jackson.
10. The Mysterious Case of Elisa lam
In 2013, Elisa was found dead inside of the Hotel's rooftop water tank. Her death was ruled as accidental and no traces of drugs or alcohol found during her autopsy. Hotel surveillance footage just moments before her death show Elisa enter an elevator she begins behaving strangely, first stepping to the side as if avoiding someone and moving around in a very unnatural way before ultimately wandering off to her demise.
Source: The Richest Youtube Channel
30 WEIRD AND WONDERFUL NATURAL PHENOMENA FROM AROUND THE WORLD
10 ROADS AROUND THE WORLD YOU WOULD NEVER WANT TO DRIVE ON
18 WHAT TO KNOW AROUND THE WORLD
10 MYSTERIOUS PHOTOS AROUND THE WORLD
10 CURSED OBJECTS AROUND THE WORLD
67 POISONOUS PLANTS AROUND THE WORLD
10 DISCOVERIES THAT WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE
10 SUPER STRONG ANIMALS AROUND THE WORLD
20 CELEBS WHO DON'T LIKE TAYLOR SWIFT
10 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO DON'T AGE
10 FAMOUS PEOPLE CAUGHT WITH FAKE BEHINDS
TOP 10 WORST MOVIE ENDINGS
6 STRANGEST KOREAN FOODS
URBAN LEGENDS AROUND THE WORLD
WOMAN CRIMINAL AROUND THE WORLD
Bangkok Ghost
Bangkok Ghost
the influence of the spirit world is felt in belief, business and popular entertainment in thailand’s capital and beyond
On a popular episode of “Humans defy ghosts” – a weekly Thai TV programme that delves into the supernatural – a two-year-old girl who survived three days next to the dead body
of her mother was asked a series of questions by one of the show’s panellists. “Who prepared your milk?” Kapol Thongplab enquired. “Who played with you? Who
opened the door?” “Mummy,” the little girl replied, as genuinely convinced as her adult
interlocutors that her mother’s ghost continued to sustain her in those harrowing days. In Thailand, a show like this is more than just entertainment.
For many of Thailand’s soothsayers, astrologers and its huge monastic network, belief in superstitions is undoubtedly lucrative. Exorcisms, protective spells and trinkets are all readily available at a price, while books and films about haunting spirits are hugely popular. Businesses often pay monks to make annual visits to chase away evil spirits. Thais believe a violent or unexpected death is more likely than a peaceful death to result in the creation of an angry ghost when a soul departs.
Few ghosts are more famous than ‘Nak’, a woman who Thais believe lived in Bangkok in the
19th century and died during childbirth while her husband was away fighting a war. There are many versions of the story, but in general they all describe how the husband returned to find his wife seemingly still alive. Nak was so devoted to him that she had remained as a ghost, but became a malevolent spirit when her husband discovered the truth and ran away.
“On the eve of a lottery, this temple is open all night,” reads the sign on a shrine dedicated to Nak in Bangkok where locals make offerings to the ghost asking for cures, good luck and exemption from military service. Fortune-tellers ply their trade outside the shrine and devotees also release fish, turtlesand frogs into a nearby canal to earn ‘merit’. According to the merchants selling the animals, the release of an eel will bring professional success and a frog can reduce sins. [AFP] 2 Feb 2015.
• Sinsakorn Aroon, a 60-year-old official, said he saw a ghostly phenomenon inside Bangkok’s Government House at around 6pm on 10 September 2014. Mr Sinsakorn, who is in charge of the audio system in the press conference room, said he was preparing to leave when he spotted a woman sweeping the floor near the reception room. He told her he was leaving and asked her to lock the door behind her – but then suddenly felt cold and wondered why someone was cleaning at that hour. “The repair workers were already done and the building’s housekeepers had already gone home,” he said. The figure then walked into a set of doors and disappeared right in front of him. “If she were human, I would have heard the door move,” he said. “I was frozen on the spot. I could only hear traditional Thai music, even though I didn’t hear that sound earlier. Once I came to my senses, I ran off and shut the door.”
Mr Sinsakorn said he had heard tales about Government House ghosts from other officials,
including a painter who claimed a female ghost told him in his dream to use “dark colours” when he painted inside the building, and an official who said workers noticed a scent of mysterious “ancient perfume” during the recent renovation. “I think I saw the ghost because she wants to instruct me to keep the building clean,” Mr Sinsakorn said. “I plan to make merits for her soul.” This latest apparition manifested despite the fact that a feng shui master had recently been hired to oversee the realignment of plants and furniture inside Government House. Military junta chairman and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha had also prayed to spirits at several different altars in the complex on his official first day of work just
days before Mr Sinsakorn’s ghostly encounter.
A number of Government House officials believed the ghost had appeared because the ceremonies needed to appease the supernatural entities watching over the area had not been properly conducted. The spirit world is everywhere in Thailand where animism and folk beliefs are deeply infused with Buddhism. Most buildings boast a ‘spirit house’ – a shrine placed in an auspicious corner of a property where offerings can be made to appease ghosts lest they turn malevolent. thaivisa.com, 12 Sept 2014.
• For several nights running, construction worker Nopchakorn Sangkong, 33, experienced a strange phenomenon he described as “seeing white smoke at his feet” and hearing a voice beckoning him toward an abandoned house nearby. Finally, on 12 November 2014 he entered the house – Soi Lat Phrao 74, in Bangkok – and found a skeleton on the second floor, prompting him to call the police. The remains were believed to be those of Wasinee Haemopas, 71, who owned the house and had probably died there of natural causes about three years earlier. She lived alone and never interacted with her neighbours. bangkok. coconuts.co, via thaivisa.com, 12 Nov 2014.
• Inhabitants of Baan Tai village in Thailand’s Krabi province suddenly started fainting in July 2015. Some later died. Local people blamed ghosts. Homeowner Rayong Boonroong, 70, said that she had fainted and became fearful for her life, especially after a relative dreamed the God of the Underground was out harvesting fresh souls from the living. To
discourage the wraiths from entering their homes, residents started hanging red T-shirts and signs to scare off the gullible ghosts. “This household has no faint-hearted people!” read one of the signs. “Only strong persons live here!”
The ghosts were believed to be targeting residents born on Wednesdays – just like Rayong. “This helps me feel more secure,” she said of the spirit-repelling shirt. Darunee Wangsop, 26, erected a scarecrow wearing a red T-shirt atop a motorcycle in front of her home. “It looks like someone is guarding us all the time,” she explained. The previous year, villagers in Buriram province had used T-shirts to protect themselves from a tall, headless man who claimed several souls while they slept. Phuket News (Thailand), 4 Aug 2015.
the influence of the spirit world is felt in belief, business and popular entertainment in thailand’s capital and beyond
On a popular episode of “Humans defy ghosts” – a weekly Thai TV programme that delves into the supernatural – a two-year-old girl who survived three days next to the dead body
of her mother was asked a series of questions by one of the show’s panellists. “Who prepared your milk?” Kapol Thongplab enquired. “Who played with you? Who
opened the door?” “Mummy,” the little girl replied, as genuinely convinced as her adult
interlocutors that her mother’s ghost continued to sustain her in those harrowing days. In Thailand, a show like this is more than just entertainment.
For many of Thailand’s soothsayers, astrologers and its huge monastic network, belief in superstitions is undoubtedly lucrative. Exorcisms, protective spells and trinkets are all readily available at a price, while books and films about haunting spirits are hugely popular. Businesses often pay monks to make annual visits to chase away evil spirits. Thais believe a violent or unexpected death is more likely than a peaceful death to result in the creation of an angry ghost when a soul departs.
Few ghosts are more famous than ‘Nak’, a woman who Thais believe lived in Bangkok in the
19th century and died during childbirth while her husband was away fighting a war. There are many versions of the story, but in general they all describe how the husband returned to find his wife seemingly still alive. Nak was so devoted to him that she had remained as a ghost, but became a malevolent spirit when her husband discovered the truth and ran away.
“On the eve of a lottery, this temple is open all night,” reads the sign on a shrine dedicated to Nak in Bangkok where locals make offerings to the ghost asking for cures, good luck and exemption from military service. Fortune-tellers ply their trade outside the shrine and devotees also release fish, turtlesand frogs into a nearby canal to earn ‘merit’. According to the merchants selling the animals, the release of an eel will bring professional success and a frog can reduce sins. [AFP] 2 Feb 2015.
• Sinsakorn Aroon, a 60-year-old official, said he saw a ghostly phenomenon inside Bangkok’s Government House at around 6pm on 10 September 2014. Mr Sinsakorn, who is in charge of the audio system in the press conference room, said he was preparing to leave when he spotted a woman sweeping the floor near the reception room. He told her he was leaving and asked her to lock the door behind her – but then suddenly felt cold and wondered why someone was cleaning at that hour. “The repair workers were already done and the building’s housekeepers had already gone home,” he said. The figure then walked into a set of doors and disappeared right in front of him. “If she were human, I would have heard the door move,” he said. “I was frozen on the spot. I could only hear traditional Thai music, even though I didn’t hear that sound earlier. Once I came to my senses, I ran off and shut the door.”
Mr Sinsakorn said he had heard tales about Government House ghosts from other officials,
including a painter who claimed a female ghost told him in his dream to use “dark colours” when he painted inside the building, and an official who said workers noticed a scent of mysterious “ancient perfume” during the recent renovation. “I think I saw the ghost because she wants to instruct me to keep the building clean,” Mr Sinsakorn said. “I plan to make merits for her soul.” This latest apparition manifested despite the fact that a feng shui master had recently been hired to oversee the realignment of plants and furniture inside Government House. Military junta chairman and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha had also prayed to spirits at several different altars in the complex on his official first day of work just
days before Mr Sinsakorn’s ghostly encounter.
A number of Government House officials believed the ghost had appeared because the ceremonies needed to appease the supernatural entities watching over the area had not been properly conducted. The spirit world is everywhere in Thailand where animism and folk beliefs are deeply infused with Buddhism. Most buildings boast a ‘spirit house’ – a shrine placed in an auspicious corner of a property where offerings can be made to appease ghosts lest they turn malevolent. thaivisa.com, 12 Sept 2014.
• For several nights running, construction worker Nopchakorn Sangkong, 33, experienced a strange phenomenon he described as “seeing white smoke at his feet” and hearing a voice beckoning him toward an abandoned house nearby. Finally, on 12 November 2014 he entered the house – Soi Lat Phrao 74, in Bangkok – and found a skeleton on the second floor, prompting him to call the police. The remains were believed to be those of Wasinee Haemopas, 71, who owned the house and had probably died there of natural causes about three years earlier. She lived alone and never interacted with her neighbours. bangkok. coconuts.co, via thaivisa.com, 12 Nov 2014.
• Inhabitants of Baan Tai village in Thailand’s Krabi province suddenly started fainting in July 2015. Some later died. Local people blamed ghosts. Homeowner Rayong Boonroong, 70, said that she had fainted and became fearful for her life, especially after a relative dreamed the God of the Underground was out harvesting fresh souls from the living. To
discourage the wraiths from entering their homes, residents started hanging red T-shirts and signs to scare off the gullible ghosts. “This household has no faint-hearted people!” read one of the signs. “Only strong persons live here!”
The ghosts were believed to be targeting residents born on Wednesdays – just like Rayong. “This helps me feel more secure,” she said of the spirit-repelling shirt. Darunee Wangsop, 26, erected a scarecrow wearing a red T-shirt atop a motorcycle in front of her home. “It looks like someone is guarding us all the time,” she explained. The previous year, villagers in Buriram province had used T-shirts to protect themselves from a tall, headless man who claimed several souls while they slept. Phuket News (Thailand), 4 Aug 2015.
DANGEROUS SERIAL KILLERS WHO WERE NEVER CAUGHT
DANGEROUS SERIAL KILLERS WHO WERE NEVER CAUGHT
1. The Jennings Killer
In the small town of Jennings, Louisiana, eight women were killed between 2005 and 2009. All of the women were prostitutes, and they all knew each other, which is rare for serial killers. The strange thing was that the women may have known they were going to die. One of the victims even told her mother not to make her a birthday cake as she wouldn't be alive much longer and another victim told her friends and family that she was helping the cops solve a case. Because of the link to the authorities, it has been speculated that the serial killer is actually a cop.
2. Stoneman
The Stoneman killer brought fear to the city of Calcutta, India who killed at least 13 homeless people in their sleep in 1989. The murders took place over a span of 6 months, starting in June of 1989. The reason for the name "Stoneman" was due to the fact that the victims were murdered from a large stone or concrete mass being dropped upon them. Police were never able to find the serial killer, let alone determine what the rest of the murders were a copycat or not. It is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in India.
3. The Freeway Phantom
From 1971 to 1972, Washington DC was unsafe for you if you were an African-American female. From april 1971 through September 1972. six victims from the ages of 10 to 19 were abducted raped, and strangled by an unidentified serial killer who still remains at large today. While there have been some suspects of interest, there has never been enough evidence to arrest or charge any of them.
4. Smiley Face Killers
The smiley face killers are believed to have been responsible for the drownings of over 45 college-age men in 11 different states from the 90s to the 2000s. The reason why the name "Smiley Face" was given as due to the smiley face graffiti found at each location where victims have been found. New York City Police Detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte believe that the deaths are all connected and could be possibly conducted by a group of killer.
5. The Februari 9th Killer
The Februari 9th killer is an unidentified serial killer who is responsible for the 2006 rape and murder of 29 year old Sonia Mejia and her unborn baby, as well as the 2008 murder fifty seven-year-old Damiana Castillo. The murders were all committed on februari 9th in Salt Lake City, Utah. Police have the DNA, but because the killer has no criminal record, he cannot be identified. It is speculated that the killer is a young Hispanic boy, but nothing is for certain.
6. Connecticut River Valley killer
The Connecticut River Valley killer is an unidentified serial killer was killed over seven people with a knife in Clermont, New Hampshire around the Connecticut River Valley area in the 1980s. Three women disappeared in the mid-1980s, and two of the remains were found with multiple stab wounds. The remains of multiple women have been found since 1978 until 1987 and while all the bodies have been linked to the serial killer, no one has been identified.
7. The Bone Collector
In 2009 in West Mesa, a suburb of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a woman saw a bone sticking out of the ground while she was walking her dog. After alerting the police, the area was dug up, and the remains of 12 people were discovered, which included 11 women and a fetus believed to have been killed between 2002 and 2005. In 2010 West Mesa police released a series of images of unconscious woman who were believed to be link to the bone collector and needed help in identifying the women. The source of the photos remains unknown and the killer is still at large.
8. The Craigslist Ripper
Also known as a Long Island serial killer, the craigslist ripper is a name given to an unidentified serial killer who has killed between 10 and 17 people over the course of over 20 years, starting in 1996. The victims were all part of the sex industry including escorts and prostitutes. Their bodies have all been dumped along the ocean parkway near Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach on Long Island. The first batch of four victims was found in December 2010, with six more bodies found in the Spring of 2011. The killer still remains at large.
9. The Highway of Tears
Highway of tears is located on highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. On this 500 mile stretch of road, 16 women have been murdered between 1969 2006. However, these are just the 16 women that have been found. Over 43 families have claimed to have lost a loved one on the stretch of road. Unfortunately because these murders have taken place on a highway, the killer or killers is likely to be a truck driver, drifter, or traveller. this means that the serial killer can be right down the street from you.
1. The Jennings Killer
In the small town of Jennings, Louisiana, eight women were killed between 2005 and 2009. All of the women were prostitutes, and they all knew each other, which is rare for serial killers. The strange thing was that the women may have known they were going to die. One of the victims even told her mother not to make her a birthday cake as she wouldn't be alive much longer and another victim told her friends and family that she was helping the cops solve a case. Because of the link to the authorities, it has been speculated that the serial killer is actually a cop.
2. Stoneman
The Stoneman killer brought fear to the city of Calcutta, India who killed at least 13 homeless people in their sleep in 1989. The murders took place over a span of 6 months, starting in June of 1989. The reason for the name "Stoneman" was due to the fact that the victims were murdered from a large stone or concrete mass being dropped upon them. Police were never able to find the serial killer, let alone determine what the rest of the murders were a copycat or not. It is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in India.
3. The Freeway Phantom
From 1971 to 1972, Washington DC was unsafe for you if you were an African-American female. From april 1971 through September 1972. six victims from the ages of 10 to 19 were abducted raped, and strangled by an unidentified serial killer who still remains at large today. While there have been some suspects of interest, there has never been enough evidence to arrest or charge any of them.
4. Smiley Face Killers
The smiley face killers are believed to have been responsible for the drownings of over 45 college-age men in 11 different states from the 90s to the 2000s. The reason why the name "Smiley Face" was given as due to the smiley face graffiti found at each location where victims have been found. New York City Police Detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte believe that the deaths are all connected and could be possibly conducted by a group of killer.
5. The Februari 9th Killer
The Februari 9th killer is an unidentified serial killer who is responsible for the 2006 rape and murder of 29 year old Sonia Mejia and her unborn baby, as well as the 2008 murder fifty seven-year-old Damiana Castillo. The murders were all committed on februari 9th in Salt Lake City, Utah. Police have the DNA, but because the killer has no criminal record, he cannot be identified. It is speculated that the killer is a young Hispanic boy, but nothing is for certain.
6. Connecticut River Valley killer
The Connecticut River Valley killer is an unidentified serial killer was killed over seven people with a knife in Clermont, New Hampshire around the Connecticut River Valley area in the 1980s. Three women disappeared in the mid-1980s, and two of the remains were found with multiple stab wounds. The remains of multiple women have been found since 1978 until 1987 and while all the bodies have been linked to the serial killer, no one has been identified.
7. The Bone Collector
In 2009 in West Mesa, a suburb of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a woman saw a bone sticking out of the ground while she was walking her dog. After alerting the police, the area was dug up, and the remains of 12 people were discovered, which included 11 women and a fetus believed to have been killed between 2002 and 2005. In 2010 West Mesa police released a series of images of unconscious woman who were believed to be link to the bone collector and needed help in identifying the women. The source of the photos remains unknown and the killer is still at large.
8. The Craigslist Ripper
Also known as a Long Island serial killer, the craigslist ripper is a name given to an unidentified serial killer who has killed between 10 and 17 people over the course of over 20 years, starting in 1996. The victims were all part of the sex industry including escorts and prostitutes. Their bodies have all been dumped along the ocean parkway near Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach on Long Island. The first batch of four victims was found in December 2010, with six more bodies found in the Spring of 2011. The killer still remains at large.
9. The Highway of Tears
Highway of tears is located on highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. On this 500 mile stretch of road, 16 women have been murdered between 1969 2006. However, these are just the 16 women that have been found. Over 43 families have claimed to have lost a loved one on the stretch of road. Unfortunately because these murders have taken place on a highway, the killer or killers is likely to be a truck driver, drifter, or traveller. this means that the serial killer can be right down the street from you.
CANNIBALISM SERIAL KILLER
CANNIBALISM SERIAL KILLER
Ever since the Stone Age, human beings have indulged in cannibalism, either for dietary or ritual reasons. The prehistoric hominids known as Homo erectus enjoyed supping on the brains of their fellow cavemen. Aborigines throughout the world, from New Zealand to North America, routinely devoured the hearts of enemy warriors as a way of absorbing their courage. Ceremonial cannibalism was a central feature of the Aztec religion. And Fijians consumed human flesh (which they called puaka balava or “long pig”) just because they liked its taste.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, however, cannibalism is regarded with such intense abhorrence that when faced with a choice between eating other humans or starving to death, some people have opted for the latter. (This was the case, for example, with several survivors of the famous 1972 plane crash that stranded a party of young Uruguayans in the high Andes.) As a result, of all the horrors associated with serial killers, cannibalism strikes many people as the worst. When Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs, set out to create the most monstrous serial killer imaginable, the result was Dr. Lecter, aka “Hannibal the Cannibal,” whose idea of a gourmet meal is human liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti on the side.
In point of fact, however, real-life cannibal killers are relatively few and far between. For reasons that can only be surmised, Germany has produced a disproportionately high percentage of twentieth-century people eaters. During the social chaos of the 1920s, the hideously depraved Fritz Haarmann slaughtered as many as fifty young boys, dined on their flesh, then sold the leftovers as black-market beef. His equally degenerate countryman Georg Grossmann also supplemented his income by peddling human flesh, though his preferred victims were plump young females, whose meat he made into sausages. Yet another postwar German cannibal was Karl Denke, an innkeeper who killed and consumed at least thirty of his lodgers.
At about the same time in America, the sadomasochistic madman Albert Fish was roaming the country, preying on small boys and girls. He was finally executed for the abduction-murder of a pretty twelve-year-old named Grace Budd, parts of whose body he made into a stew. In recent years, the “Milwaukee Monster,” Jeffrey Dahmer, has served as a grotesque reminder that the forbidden urge to consume human flesh may still lurk beneath the surface of supposedly civilized life.
Appalling as they were, Dahmer’s crimes were outstripped by the Russian “Mad Beast,” Andrei Chikatilo, who—with a confirmed body count of fifty-two victims—holds the record as the worst serial killer of modern times. Among his countless atrocities, Chikatilo devoured the genitals of some of his victims—a practice that left him (according to his captors) with a telltale case of bizarre halitosis.
A cannibalistic contemporary of Chikatilo and Dahmer was Arthur Shawcross, whose wildly sadistic tendencies first found free play in the jungles of Vietnam, where (according to his own account) he raped, slaughtered, and cannibalized two peasant women during an army combat mission. Shawcross’s subsequent career of psychopathic violence included the murder of a ten-year-old boy whose genitals he devoured, and the strangulation of a string of prostitutes whose bodies he dumped in the woods in upstate New York. Occasionally, he would sneak back to the body weeks after the murder, then cut out and eat pieces of the decomposing corpse (a particularly abhorrent form of cannibalism technically known as necrophagy).
During the past twenty-five years or so, there have been a number of appalling cannibal killers who might well have become full-fledged serial murderers if they hadn’t been arrested after committing a single atrocity. These include Albert Fentress, a former schoolteacher in Poughkeepsie, New York, who, in the summer of 1979, lured an eighteen-year-old boy into his basement, cut off and ate the victim’s penis, then shot him to death; Issei Sagawa, a Japanese national living in Paris who, in 1981, killed his girlfriend, had sex with her corpse, then dismembered and ate parts of her body; Daniel Rakowitz, who likewise murdered and dismembered his girlfriend, then boiled her into a soup which he allegedly served to homeless people on New York’s Lower East Side in 1989; and Peter Bryan, a British schizophrenic arrested in 2004 after killing a friend and frying his brain for consumption.
Most bizarre of all is undoubtedly Armin Meiwes, a middle-aged German computer technician who, in 2001, advertised for a victim willing to be slaughtered and consumed (see Ads). When a forty-three-year-old man named Bernd-J?rgen Brandes showed up in response to this Internet posting, Meiwes—with Brandes’s full approval—sliced off the latter’s penis. The two men then shared a meal of the severed organ. Brandes was then stabbed to death, dismembered, and frozen for future consumption.
Meiwes was arrested shortly thereafter. Since Germany has no laws against cannibalism, he was charged with murder “for sexual satisfaction” and “disturbing the peace of the dead.” His attorney at his 2004 trial attempted to argue that since Brandes consented (indeed, eagerly cooperated) in his own death, the case should be classified as a mercy killing. The court was not convinced. Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, though in April 2005, prosecutors—objecting to the leniency of the sentence—won an appeal for a retrial.
Despite Meiwes’s claim that he had gotten his cannibalistic urges out of his system—“I had my big kick and I don’t need to do it again,” he declared—there is reason to doubt his word. Certainly, if he had chosen to indulge his unnatural appetites a second time, he would have had a varied menu to choose from. At his trial, a state police inspector testified that Meiwes’s computer files showed that his ad had drawn responses from 204 applicants looking to be his next meal.
In the realm of serial-killer cinema, cannibalism features prominently in Tobe Hooper’s splatter classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, about a family of deranged good ol’ boys who turn unwary teens into barbeque. Like Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs, Hooper’s movie was inspired by the crimes of Edward Gein. Ostensibly, investigators found unmistakable signs of cannibalism in Gein’s horror house—a human heart in a frying pan, a refrigerator stocked with paper-wrapped body parts. This allegation, however, was just one of many hysterical rumors that floated around in the wake of his crimes. Though Ghoulish Gein committed all sorts of unspeakable acts, cannibalism was apparently not one of them. He did, however, enjoy eating baked beans from a bowl made out of a human cranium.
Ever since the Stone Age, human beings have indulged in cannibalism, either for dietary or ritual reasons. The prehistoric hominids known as Homo erectus enjoyed supping on the brains of their fellow cavemen. Aborigines throughout the world, from New Zealand to North America, routinely devoured the hearts of enemy warriors as a way of absorbing their courage. Ceremonial cannibalism was a central feature of the Aztec religion. And Fijians consumed human flesh (which they called puaka balava or “long pig”) just because they liked its taste.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, however, cannibalism is regarded with such intense abhorrence that when faced with a choice between eating other humans or starving to death, some people have opted for the latter. (This was the case, for example, with several survivors of the famous 1972 plane crash that stranded a party of young Uruguayans in the high Andes.) As a result, of all the horrors associated with serial killers, cannibalism strikes many people as the worst. When Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs, set out to create the most monstrous serial killer imaginable, the result was Dr. Lecter, aka “Hannibal the Cannibal,” whose idea of a gourmet meal is human liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti on the side.
In point of fact, however, real-life cannibal killers are relatively few and far between. For reasons that can only be surmised, Germany has produced a disproportionately high percentage of twentieth-century people eaters. During the social chaos of the 1920s, the hideously depraved Fritz Haarmann slaughtered as many as fifty young boys, dined on their flesh, then sold the leftovers as black-market beef. His equally degenerate countryman Georg Grossmann also supplemented his income by peddling human flesh, though his preferred victims were plump young females, whose meat he made into sausages. Yet another postwar German cannibal was Karl Denke, an innkeeper who killed and consumed at least thirty of his lodgers.
At about the same time in America, the sadomasochistic madman Albert Fish was roaming the country, preying on small boys and girls. He was finally executed for the abduction-murder of a pretty twelve-year-old named Grace Budd, parts of whose body he made into a stew. In recent years, the “Milwaukee Monster,” Jeffrey Dahmer, has served as a grotesque reminder that the forbidden urge to consume human flesh may still lurk beneath the surface of supposedly civilized life.
Appalling as they were, Dahmer’s crimes were outstripped by the Russian “Mad Beast,” Andrei Chikatilo, who—with a confirmed body count of fifty-two victims—holds the record as the worst serial killer of modern times. Among his countless atrocities, Chikatilo devoured the genitals of some of his victims—a practice that left him (according to his captors) with a telltale case of bizarre halitosis.
A cannibalistic contemporary of Chikatilo and Dahmer was Arthur Shawcross, whose wildly sadistic tendencies first found free play in the jungles of Vietnam, where (according to his own account) he raped, slaughtered, and cannibalized two peasant women during an army combat mission. Shawcross’s subsequent career of psychopathic violence included the murder of a ten-year-old boy whose genitals he devoured, and the strangulation of a string of prostitutes whose bodies he dumped in the woods in upstate New York. Occasionally, he would sneak back to the body weeks after the murder, then cut out and eat pieces of the decomposing corpse (a particularly abhorrent form of cannibalism technically known as necrophagy).
During the past twenty-five years or so, there have been a number of appalling cannibal killers who might well have become full-fledged serial murderers if they hadn’t been arrested after committing a single atrocity. These include Albert Fentress, a former schoolteacher in Poughkeepsie, New York, who, in the summer of 1979, lured an eighteen-year-old boy into his basement, cut off and ate the victim’s penis, then shot him to death; Issei Sagawa, a Japanese national living in Paris who, in 1981, killed his girlfriend, had sex with her corpse, then dismembered and ate parts of her body; Daniel Rakowitz, who likewise murdered and dismembered his girlfriend, then boiled her into a soup which he allegedly served to homeless people on New York’s Lower East Side in 1989; and Peter Bryan, a British schizophrenic arrested in 2004 after killing a friend and frying his brain for consumption.
Most bizarre of all is undoubtedly Armin Meiwes, a middle-aged German computer technician who, in 2001, advertised for a victim willing to be slaughtered and consumed (see Ads). When a forty-three-year-old man named Bernd-J?rgen Brandes showed up in response to this Internet posting, Meiwes—with Brandes’s full approval—sliced off the latter’s penis. The two men then shared a meal of the severed organ. Brandes was then stabbed to death, dismembered, and frozen for future consumption.
Meiwes was arrested shortly thereafter. Since Germany has no laws against cannibalism, he was charged with murder “for sexual satisfaction” and “disturbing the peace of the dead.” His attorney at his 2004 trial attempted to argue that since Brandes consented (indeed, eagerly cooperated) in his own death, the case should be classified as a mercy killing. The court was not convinced. Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, though in April 2005, prosecutors—objecting to the leniency of the sentence—won an appeal for a retrial.
Despite Meiwes’s claim that he had gotten his cannibalistic urges out of his system—“I had my big kick and I don’t need to do it again,” he declared—there is reason to doubt his word. Certainly, if he had chosen to indulge his unnatural appetites a second time, he would have had a varied menu to choose from. At his trial, a state police inspector testified that Meiwes’s computer files showed that his ad had drawn responses from 204 applicants looking to be his next meal.
In the realm of serial-killer cinema, cannibalism features prominently in Tobe Hooper’s splatter classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, about a family of deranged good ol’ boys who turn unwary teens into barbeque. Like Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs, Hooper’s movie was inspired by the crimes of Edward Gein. Ostensibly, investigators found unmistakable signs of cannibalism in Gein’s horror house—a human heart in a frying pan, a refrigerator stocked with paper-wrapped body parts. This allegation, however, was just one of many hysterical rumors that floated around in the wake of his crimes. Though Ghoulish Gein committed all sorts of unspeakable acts, cannibalism was apparently not one of them. He did, however, enjoy eating baked beans from a bowl made out of a human cranium.
ALLINGHAM, MARGERY [LOUISE] (1904-1966)
ALLINGHAM, MARGERY [LOUISE] (1904-1966)
British mystery author and creator of the detective Albert CAMPION, who first appears in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929). She went on to produce a series of books about him that, while relatively few in number compared with the output of some of her contemporaries, are of very high quality.
The Crime at Black Dudley was not Allingham's first published writing; born into a literary family, she published her first story when she was eight years old and her first novel at nineteen (Blackkerchief Dick, 1923). The novel, it was rumored, had been communicated to the writer by dead pirates during seances. Allingham's mother and father were cousins, and both had literary backgrounds. Herbert John Allingham edited the Christian Globe and later wrote pulp fiction; Emily Allingham wrote for women's magazines-and an aunt founded the film magazine, Picture Show.
In her youth, Margery Allingham studied drama and speech as a treatment for her stammering, which was cured. Thereafter she began to write plays. Her first effort in the genre for which she would become famous was The White Cottage Mystery (1927), which was serialized in the Daily Express.She was married to Philip Youngman Carter, an artist and one-time editor of the Tatler, in the same year that her first mystery appeared. Her new husband designed the cover for it, and for most of her later books. Youngman would also complete her last mystery after her death, Cargo of Eagles (1968), and then went on to write two more Campion mysteries by himself.
Along with such writers as CHRISTIE, MARSH, and SAYERS, Allingham was one of those who defined the GOLDEN AGE of the mystery in Britain. Allingham's stories are considerably more strange than those of her peers, and her detective is more eccentric than either Lord Peter WIMSEY or Hercule POIROT. Early on he was often perceived to be a parody of the former, but he "matured" into a great detective in his own right. Campion is only a peripheral character (as well as a suspect) in The Crime at Black Dudley; in Mystery Mile (1929) he becomes the focus. His servant and assistant is Magersfontein LUGG, an ex-convict.
Allingham matured as a writer in the early thirties, and began to lean more on the quality of her writing and less on the ridiculous trappings of Campionism. In Sweet Danger (1933; U.S. titles Kingdom ofDeath and The Fear Sign), Allingham stresses Campion's "foolish" appearance.
In this case, Campion becomes involved in a quasispy mission for the government; he has to find the heirlooms of the noble family of Averna, a small but strategically placed Balkan country whose titular rulers, the Pontisbrights of West Sussex, are now extinct. Campion poses as the Paladin of Averna in order to get the artifacts, which include a receipt of sorts from Metternich, showing that the British had paid for this territory. The plot represents the extremity of Allingham's romanticism, which was modulated in her very next book, in which
Campion becomes more serious-so much so that in the preface to DEATH OF A GHOST (1934) she felt compelled to explain Campion's personality change.
Allingham's output was lower than that of her contemporaries, and her audience may be smaller because of her idiosyncracy, but her work could be seen as more interesting for the same reasons. She never uses the same formula twice or seems to be merely going through the motions. Some of her finest work was done after World War II, when her production was even slower, though as with Sayers critics disagree rather severely as to which are the best. Allingham's best mystery is THE TIGER IN THE SMOKE (1952), which is more a crime novel than a mystery; among the most curious are THE CASE OF THE LATE PIG (1937), in which a bully from Campion's childhood gets his comeuppance, and Traitor's Purse (1941), a case of AMNESIA.
Many of the other characters in Allingham's books are as sensitive and unique as Campion himself. Death of a Ghost is largely about the painter, Lafcadio, who supposedly died in 1912; his legacy lives on, however, with interesting results. The book has been both praised and criticized for the many pages devoted to exploring the artistic milieu rather than the mystery. Allingham again focused on artistic personalities in Dancers in Mourning (1937), about a persecuted dancer, Jimmy Sutane. It also has a very effective subplot: Campion falls in love with Linda Sutane, Jimmy's wife, a distraction that causes him to make errors in detection. It is interesting that the "romantic subplot" exists entirely in Campion's head, and the book shows to the fullest Allingham's characteristic combination of mystery with portraits of character.
During World War II, the Allingham's home in Essex (an area thought to be a likely site for a German invasion), D'Arcy House, was used to billet two hundred soldiers with their weapons and munitions. Margery Allingham worked in civil defense; her book The Oaken Heart (1941) is a fictionalized account of this episode in her life. After the war, her writing continued to develop, and the last book she completed, The Mind Readers (1965), included a SCIENCE FICTION element.
After Margery Allingham's death from cancer, her husband wrote Mr. Campion's Farthing (1969) and Mr. Campion's Falcon (1970; U.S. title Mr. Campion's Quarry), which show his deep familiarity with the characters and which have been much better rated than most such continuations.
British mystery author and creator of the detective Albert CAMPION, who first appears in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929). She went on to produce a series of books about him that, while relatively few in number compared with the output of some of her contemporaries, are of very high quality.
The Crime at Black Dudley was not Allingham's first published writing; born into a literary family, she published her first story when she was eight years old and her first novel at nineteen (Blackkerchief Dick, 1923). The novel, it was rumored, had been communicated to the writer by dead pirates during seances. Allingham's mother and father were cousins, and both had literary backgrounds. Herbert John Allingham edited the Christian Globe and later wrote pulp fiction; Emily Allingham wrote for women's magazines-and an aunt founded the film magazine, Picture Show.
In her youth, Margery Allingham studied drama and speech as a treatment for her stammering, which was cured. Thereafter she began to write plays. Her first effort in the genre for which she would become famous was The White Cottage Mystery (1927), which was serialized in the Daily Express.She was married to Philip Youngman Carter, an artist and one-time editor of the Tatler, in the same year that her first mystery appeared. Her new husband designed the cover for it, and for most of her later books. Youngman would also complete her last mystery after her death, Cargo of Eagles (1968), and then went on to write two more Campion mysteries by himself.
Along with such writers as CHRISTIE, MARSH, and SAYERS, Allingham was one of those who defined the GOLDEN AGE of the mystery in Britain. Allingham's stories are considerably more strange than those of her peers, and her detective is more eccentric than either Lord Peter WIMSEY or Hercule POIROT. Early on he was often perceived to be a parody of the former, but he "matured" into a great detective in his own right. Campion is only a peripheral character (as well as a suspect) in The Crime at Black Dudley; in Mystery Mile (1929) he becomes the focus. His servant and assistant is Magersfontein LUGG, an ex-convict.
Allingham matured as a writer in the early thirties, and began to lean more on the quality of her writing and less on the ridiculous trappings of Campionism. In Sweet Danger (1933; U.S. titles Kingdom ofDeath and The Fear Sign), Allingham stresses Campion's "foolish" appearance.
In this case, Campion becomes involved in a quasispy mission for the government; he has to find the heirlooms of the noble family of Averna, a small but strategically placed Balkan country whose titular rulers, the Pontisbrights of West Sussex, are now extinct. Campion poses as the Paladin of Averna in order to get the artifacts, which include a receipt of sorts from Metternich, showing that the British had paid for this territory. The plot represents the extremity of Allingham's romanticism, which was modulated in her very next book, in which
Campion becomes more serious-so much so that in the preface to DEATH OF A GHOST (1934) she felt compelled to explain Campion's personality change.
Allingham's output was lower than that of her contemporaries, and her audience may be smaller because of her idiosyncracy, but her work could be seen as more interesting for the same reasons. She never uses the same formula twice or seems to be merely going through the motions. Some of her finest work was done after World War II, when her production was even slower, though as with Sayers critics disagree rather severely as to which are the best. Allingham's best mystery is THE TIGER IN THE SMOKE (1952), which is more a crime novel than a mystery; among the most curious are THE CASE OF THE LATE PIG (1937), in which a bully from Campion's childhood gets his comeuppance, and Traitor's Purse (1941), a case of AMNESIA.
Many of the other characters in Allingham's books are as sensitive and unique as Campion himself. Death of a Ghost is largely about the painter, Lafcadio, who supposedly died in 1912; his legacy lives on, however, with interesting results. The book has been both praised and criticized for the many pages devoted to exploring the artistic milieu rather than the mystery. Allingham again focused on artistic personalities in Dancers in Mourning (1937), about a persecuted dancer, Jimmy Sutane. It also has a very effective subplot: Campion falls in love with Linda Sutane, Jimmy's wife, a distraction that causes him to make errors in detection. It is interesting that the "romantic subplot" exists entirely in Campion's head, and the book shows to the fullest Allingham's characteristic combination of mystery with portraits of character.
During World War II, the Allingham's home in Essex (an area thought to be a likely site for a German invasion), D'Arcy House, was used to billet two hundred soldiers with their weapons and munitions. Margery Allingham worked in civil defense; her book The Oaken Heart (1941) is a fictionalized account of this episode in her life. After the war, her writing continued to develop, and the last book she completed, The Mind Readers (1965), included a SCIENCE FICTION element.
After Margery Allingham's death from cancer, her husband wrote Mr. Campion's Farthing (1969) and Mr. Campion's Falcon (1970; U.S. title Mr. Campion's Quarry), which show his deep familiarity with the characters and which have been much better rated than most such continuations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)