• Complain

Vronsky - Serial Killers

Here you can read online Vronsky - Serial Killers full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1971, publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Vronsky Serial Killers

Serial Killers: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Serial Killers" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

In this unique book, Peter Vronsky documents the psychological, investigative, and cultural aspects of serial murder, beginning with its first recorded instance in Ancient Rome, through fifteenth-century France, up to such notorious contemporary cases as cannibal/necrophile Ed Kemper, Henry Lee Lucas, Ted Bundy, and the emergence of what he classifies as the serial rampage killer such as Andrew Cunanan.

Exhaustively researched with transcripts of interviews with killers, and featuring up-to-date information on the apprehension and conviction of the Green River Killer and the Beltway Snipers, Vronskys one-of-a-kind books covers every conceivable aspect of an endlessly riveting true-crime phenomenon.

Vronsky: author's other books


Who wrote Serial Killers? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Serial Killers — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Serial Killers" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright 2004 by Peter Vronsky.
Cover design by Jill Boltin.
Text design by Kristin del Rosario.

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The B design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Electronic Edition / March 2005
ISBN: 978-1-1012-0462-7

Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

www.penguin.com

For my wife, Anna, and my daughters, Quantel and Alisa

PREFACE
MY TWO SERIAL KILLERS

Serial killers know theyre invisible.
ROBERT D. KEPPEL, criminal investigator
I have a problem with women.
RICHARD COTTINGHAM , The Times Square Torso Ripper

I am not a highly educated expert on serial killers. I was never an FBI profiler, a police officer, a criminologist, or a forensic psychologist. I did not write a college thesis about them and I never interviewed incarcerated serial killers or exchanged letters with any. I never bought their art or collected their memorabilia. In other words, I am probably a lot like you: a curious amateur. Other than reading about them and seeing them on TV, my only experience with serial killers is my two brief personal encounters with them before they were identified and captured. You might think that is what makes me different from youbut dont be too hasty in your conclusion.

In my travels I randomly bumped into two notorious rippers: Richard Cottingham, the Times Square Torso Ripper, who was eventually linked to five torture dismemberment murders in New York and New Jersey, and Andrei Chikatilo, the Red Ripper, whom I briefly met in Russia just days before he committed the last three of his more than fifty cannibalistic murders of women, youths, and children. In both cases I did not know until much later whom it was I had encountered. My run-in with Cottingham was as dramatic as my meeting with Chikatilo was banal and forgettable.

I bumped into Richard Cottingham for about ten seconds one early Sunday morning in New York City in December 1979. I was working as a production assistant on a movie being shot in Toronto. My job was to fly out to New York every few days and personally deliver our exposed film for a special type of processing at a laboratory located near the Times Square area. It was a great gig: I would fly into New York in the morning and quickly drop off the film, and then I was on my own until it was ready for pick up the next day.

Usually I would be handed an airline ticket and an envelope of cash, and I was expected to arrange my own hotel and meals. Film crews routinely stayed at good business-class hotelsSheraton, Hilton, and so onand Id be given enough cash to stay and eat in those kinds of places. Young, punkish, having backpacked to New York previously and slept on the floor of CBGBs on the Bowery and fed myself on cheese and wine by attending gallery openings, I couldnt care less about upscale accommodations. I was content to routinely book cheap tourist-class hotel rooms on my film deliveries. I would spend the cash I saved on clubbing, record albums, books, and electronics. But on one such trip I went too far.

An unforeseen technical delay at the lab forced me to stay an entire weekend in New York. In order to stretch out my expense cash for the extra unexpected nights, I decided to check into a really marginal hotel on the last day. Early on a Sunday morning, I walked over to a nondescript medium-sized hotel on West 42nd Street, about two blocks from the Hudson River near the collapsed husks of the West Side Highway. Offering bargain rates, the hotel was located near nothingno convenient subway station, no tourist sites, no office buildingsin what was at that time a derelict neighborhood around Tenth Avenue deserving of its historical name, Hells Kitchen. The hotel was even inconvenient for the junkies and hookers who hung out in Taxi Driver country a few blocks west on what was then called the forty-deucea sleazy stretch of West 42nd Street lined with porn shops, live sex shows, and knife stores that ran from Broadway and past the bus terminal toward Eighth and Ninth Avenues. The hotel had bargain rates but for the price it appeared to be clean and secure enough, and within quick walking distance of the film lab I would have to go to early the next morning.

I showed up without a reservation and was told that a room would be ready for me shortly if I would wait about half an hour, as people were checking out. I decided that in the meantime I would go up and wander around a few floors just to see how bad the place might really be. As I waited at the elevator, I was mildly annoyed to see that it had stopped for what seemed an eternity on the top floor. Finally the stalled elevator began to come down, and when the doors opened, presumably the jerk who had held the elevator on the upper floor got off. He almost walked over me like some kind of glassy-eyed zombie, looking right through me and brushing me aside as if I were not there. As he passed me by heading into the lobby he lightly bumped my leg with a bag or a suitcase or something. I never noticed what exactly he carried, nor could I today describe the feel of it against my leg. The only other thing I would later remember was that he seemed to glow with a thin sheen of perspiration and he had this really bad moplike haircut. He appeared to be in his midthirties with sandy-colored hair and looked like a junior pasty-faced office workerwhich was precisely what he turned out to be later (although he was described by other witnesses as having an olive complexion). By the time the elevator doors closed behind me, I had forgotten all about him.

I took the elevator up and got off on one of the floors at random. I immediately noticed a faint but distinct odor of something burning, but I did not see any smoke and thought it was the natural smell of the hotel. As I walked around the halls I did not detect anything particularly nasty about the place, but I did notice the smell getting stronger, and now with an unmistakable underlying back-odor of burnt chicken feathers or hair. I did not know it at the time, but that was the smell of roasting human flesh.

In the corridor my eyes were drawn to several elusively small, dark, greasy slivers of sooty substances floating and circulating in the air like tiny black snowflakes. When I caught one, it stained my fingers black. As I moved along the hall it seemed to get lightly misty and the smell was now unquestionably that of a building firethat kind of woody-paint burning smell. I heard all sorts of commotion and shouting in the stairwells and fire alarms began ringing. I quickly made my way down to the lobby, emerging just as the fire department was pulling up in the street outside. All this gave me a bad vibe about the place (to say the least) and I left almost immediately to seek out another hotel without a glance backward.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Serial Killers»

Look at similar books to Serial Killers. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Serial Killers»

Discussion, reviews of the book Serial Killers and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.