Nigel Cawthorne - Serial Killers and Mass Murderers: Profiles of the Worlds Most Barbaric Criminals

Table of Contents

Introduction

Murder is close to the human heart. We have all said in anger or irritation Ill kill you or I could have killed so-and-so. No matter how little we meant it, everybody wonders at one time or another whether they could actually kill. How can we be sure that no murderer lurks within? Once that anger wells up inside, who can know how far things could go? Can you be sure that you could control that murderous rage? What would happen if you had too much to drink? Or if stress made you snap? And if you killed once and got away with it, would the temptation to murder again be too much?

Then again we are all potential victims. You are not even safe in your own home (most murders occur within families) or on the streets even in broad daylight (there could be a sniper on the roof intent on killing whoever steps into their sights). At night, things get worse. A sex killer could be lurking in the shadows. A murderer eager to kill for Satan or some other perverted cause might be climbing in through that unlocked window. Nowhere is safe.

It is not just your own safety that you have to worry about. Your friends and family are also at risk. Ian Brady and Myra Hindleythe Moors Murdererspreyed on defenseless children, torturing and murdering them for their own perverted gratification. Myra Hindley is now dead and Ian Brady, unrepentant, still refuses to reveal where all the bodies are buried, despite the evident distress of the families of their victims. Like Brady and Hindley, couples can become so deeply involved that they will kill anyone who gets in their wayeven family members. Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Fugate killed her family, before going on a killing spree that has inspired several films. More recently, two American high-school students went on a rampage, slaughtering their fellow pupils: even at school our young ones are at risk. The United States, the U.K. and Australia have all been terrorized by hideous killings: America was horrified by the actions of a lone sniper who picked off innocent victims in Austin, Texas; in England sullen loner Michael Ryan devastated the quiet village of Hungerford with inexplicable acts of murderous violence; and in Australia, faithful husband and loving father Eric Edgar Cooke transformed into a cold-blooded killer.

There have also been those killers who were motivated by an overwhelming sexual desire. In the 1960s the Boston Strangler used his sexual charisma to talk his way into womens apartments and often persuaded them to take their clothes off and have sex before he murdered them. The Yorkshire Ripper followed his nineteenth-century namesake by slaughtering prostitutes or those who he thought were prostitutes. He claimed he was doing Gods work. Ted Bundys insatiable libido sent him on a nation-wide killing spree. Dennis Nilsen killed men he had picked up so that they would not leave him. He then dissected their bodies, cooked them and flushed them down the toilet. Jeffrey Dahmer came up with another solution: He ate his victims.

No one is sure how many people were murdered by Fred and Rosemary West as they usually picked on transients whom no one would miss, and the case of Dr. Harold Shipman, who killed at least 215 people, proves that sometimes you cant even trust your own family doctor. Emanuel Tanay, a professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University, pointed out that murder is not the crime of criminals, but that of ordinary citizens. The great majority of murders are family affairs, committed by outwardly ordinary people who never murder or commit any other crimeexcept on the one fateful occasion. And when the psychotic killer strikes, the result is often wholesale slaughter.

Serial Killers & Mass Murderers details these shocking cases and takes you inside the minds of the people who committed these horrendous crimes. Are they inhuman beasts who are beyond compassion or understanding? Or are they human beings just like us, but who have simply overstepped a line? You decide. In the meantime, be on your guard. Anyone around you could be a potential killer. There may even be one lurking inside.

Natural Born Killers

Charles Starkweather was born on November 24, 1938, in a poor quarter of Lincoln, Nebraska. He was the third of eight childrenseven boys and a girl. His father, Guy Starkweather, was a convivial man who liked to drink. A handyman and a carpenter, he suffered from a weak back and arthritis, and could not always work. His wife, Helen, a slight, stoic woman, worked as a waitress and, after 1946, became practically the sole provider for her large family.

Although the Starkweathers knew little of their roots, the first Starkweather had left the old world in the seventeenth century, sailing from the Isle of Man in 1640. The name was well known across the mid-West and there was even a small town called Starkweather in North Dakota. Somehow the name Starkweather seemed eerily redolent of the wind sweeping the Great Plains.

Charles Starkweather had happy memories of his first six years, which he spent playing with his two elder brothers, Rodney and Leonard, helping around the house with his mother and going fishing with his dad. But all that changed in 1944 on his first day at school. When they enrolled at Saratoga Elementary School, all the children were supposed to stand up and make a speech. When it came to Starkweathers turn, his classmates spotted his slight speech impediment and began to laugh. Starkweather broke down in confusion. He never forgot that humiliation.

Starkweather soon gained the impression that the teacher was picking on him, and he believed that the other children were ridiculing him because of his short bow-legs and distinctive red hair. Later, from his condemned cell, he wrote: It seems as though I could see my heart before my eyes, turning dark black with hate of rages. On his second day at school he got into a fight, which he found relieved his aggression. He claimed to have been in a fight almost every day during his school life, though his teachers remembered little of this.