Presented at the Confronting Homicide in a Changing World Seminar, WI -- April 7, 2016
Yes, that’s me in the first picture, looking like I
had everything figured out back in 2005. What I came to realize was that
everything I knew about serial murderers was based on stereotypes and myths.
After long term exposure to Silence of the Lambs and the Profiler TV show, I had
fallen victim to the serial murder entertainment machine. My attitude began to
change after more than a decade spent studying serial homicide in Boston. What
I thought I knew about serial murder would be consistently challenged after
watching the offenders pictured here earn this classification in ways not
historically associated with serial murderers.
With this presentation, we hope to help you begin to
understand a bit about the modern serial murderer, specifically those that
function in partnerships. I will provide some preliminary findings of my analysis
looking at the subset of killers that operate in pairs.
So where does all of this information come from? To
address the issue of definitional discordance, the Serial Homicide Expertise
and Information Sharing Collaborative was built with the purpose of bringing
together a team of researchers to share their serial homicide data and
synchronize collection efforts. In 2012, nine datasets were combined with the
Radford Serial Killer Database, strengthening our initiative to create
the first national serial murder database. The overall goal of this effort is
to encourage further empirical studies, allowing users the option to apply the
definition they choose, rather than forcing a specific one on them.
Alongside this effort, I co-founded the Atypical
Homicide Research Group which is an active network of one hundred academic
researchers, law enforcement professionals and mental health practitioners that
allows members to communicate over a private and secure email listserv setup
through Northeastern University. The mission of our group is to collaborate to
come to a greater understanding of atypical homicide and sexual violence
through the exchange of ideas, anecdotes and research. This community was
established with the purpose of bridging the gap between current thought and
practice through open communication, informed discussion and information
sharing. Our secondary objectives are to facilitate the dissemination of
research materials, solidify partnerships and foster connections amongst one
another while building professional relationships on a foundation of trust and
mutual respect. Most of us involved in these efforts call it simply ‘the
collaborative’.
When assembling this presentation, there were
reports in the news that "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez may have had
help in committing at least one of his murders. There was also a story about a
still unnamed 16 year old killer in Brazil that murdered 11 people along with
his accomplice. With these killings in mind, we thought it was important to use
the database to focus on killers in pairs because it is a neglected area of
research.
As Jenkins notes, the study of teams is important
because the existence of multiple killers during the same event can complicate
personality profiling. But what is a team? Teams are made up of individuals
that come together to accomplish a task by combining resources and sharing
ideas. While dynamics between people make the topic a much more complex issue,
the basic tenant is that members agree on the methods used to achieve a goal.
Goals can be pro-social or nefarious but the same concepts of bonding come into
play: loyalty, trust and acceptance. Members are not always like minded but for
a pairing to work, one must either agree with or eventually concede to the
others point of view. Most of us have heard about the dominant and submissive
relationship and nowhere is that more apparent than in the world of serial
murder.
I will be discussing only those multiple murderers
that operate in a pair mainly due to the limited nature of data on groups, a
byproduct of media sources tending to focus on the primary one or two actors
and overlooking the many other participants. As a result, I have excluded gang,
cult and crime syndicate activity because the introduction of a third party
transforms a pairing into a group and changes the dynamic between two people.
These groups often have steep entrance and exit requirements and consequences
and limited options for independent decision making Excluding those other than
pairs allows us to focus on unwavering partnerships. In larger groups,
relationships tend to be tenuous and accomplices are oftentimes
interchangeable.
A pairing of serial murderers, on the other hand,
represent individuals that are often like minded and form a group out of joint
desires to cause harm to others or to take from them what isn’t theirs. Serial
killer partnerships benefit from dispensing with the pleasantries that
pro-social people use to get others to help them. Although they do not always
possess the same skills and abilities, each contributes what they can to ensure
the success of the other. The one drawback of participating in a pairing is
that the stakes are far greater if one is captured since the concepts of
loyalty and trust are often abandoned quickly as one killer cooperates to make
a deal with law enforcement before the other does. Oftentimes, though, sharing
these risks serves to enhance the bond between the pair.
Most of us will be familiar with these faces. We
have pictured here Alton Coleman and Denise Brown, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng,
Douglas Clark and Carol Bundy, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono. In the second
row we have Ray and Faye Copeland, Alvin and Judith Neelley, Charlene and
Gerald Gallego, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole. The third row pictures Michael
and Thomas McCormick, Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, Gary and Thaddeus
Lewingdon and Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris.
These pairings demonstrate that even serial killers
need connections to others for one reason or another. Whether it be a
significant other, a family member or a friend or acquaintance, serial
murderers have found partners in nearly every iteration of human relationships
since the beginning of the phenomenon hundreds of years ago. Pairing up has the
advantage of reciprocity and provides someone to trust, to accept them for who
they are, to hold them accountable and spur them forward, to help them overcome
their fears and apprehension, someone to collaborate with and devise new
methods of destruction, someone to provide a connection to grander goals and
ideals and to share their desires freely, someone to share the logistical
burden of decision making and the blame when things happen against plans.
Partners bring each other’s strengths to the forefront. Some have said that
killing with another forms the deepest type of bond and that they could not
have achieved their destiny without the push the other provided them.
Interestingly enough, many of these reasons are the same as why we all engage
in pro-social paired relationships.
But as the conference name indicates, we must
confront homicide in a changing world. The remainder of this presentation will
be dedicated to the next crop of serial murderers and how they function
together as partners to accomplish their goals.
But how do these killers in pairs compare to
solitary serial murderers? Gurian (2013) states that the number of partnered
homicides is lower than those committed by solo male offenders. The Radford
SKDB confirms that finding in that it contains information on 2,743 US based
offenders with 2,095 (76%) of those murderers operating alone, 358 (13%)
partnering with an accomplice and 290 (11%) being members of a team with three
or more offenders. In total, 648 or 24% of offenders operated as part of a
partnership or team. What we found was that the solo offenders represented 76%
of the database and killed 84% of the total victims while the paired and
grouped offenders represented 24% of the database and killed 16% (1,589) of the
total victims. What is interesting is that of that 16%, paired offenders
murdered 9% of total victims while grouped offenders killed 7%.
According to White (2014), partnered and lone serial
killers differ on several psychologically important characteristics. Serial
killers with a partner were less psychiatrically disturbed but more sexually
deviant and brutally sadistic. They were less often found to be introverts in
adulthood and less often had a major precipitating event prior to the murders.
Hickey agrees and states that solo offenders were prone to report feelings of
rejection more than team serial offenders and that they cause greater
destruction than team killers. Having more than one offender involved did not
increase the number of victims per case.
Hickey’s finding makes sense because an offender
operating in a team would need to be open to sharing the experience of murder
and confiding in another as apposed to the generally secretive solitary
offender. In regards to psychopathy, Joudis writes that the sexual homicide
offender would likely encounter significant challenges when attempting to find
a co-perpetrator who shares the same extreme deviant interests and can be
trusted to share in such activities. Joudis writes that these types of killings
were exceedingly likely to be committed by a sole perpetrator as psychopathic
individuals are unlikely to cooperate with one another. It seems more likely
that a psychopathic individual who plans a murder might recruit an easily
manipulated accomplice who could assist in attaining access to victims or who
could later serve as a scapegoat for the planned criminal activity.
With regard to multi-perpetrator homicides, the more
psychopathic men tend to select victims of a younger age, to engage in illicit
drug use, and to inflict violence for the purposes of causing the victim pain.
Given their interpersonal deficits and manipulative tendencies, psychopaths may
utilize co-offenders in unique ways. For example, whether through grooming,
manipulation, threats, or mimicry, a psychopathic offender influences his
non-psychopathic accomplice to commit more gratuitous violence than the partner
would have if he had acted alone. This would not account for why
accomplice-assisted homicides are often instrumental as the Radford database
shows is overwhelmingly the case. Perhaps this is a clue that the majority of
partnered serial homicide offenders are not psychopathic.
As this slide shows, Jenkins, Jones and Gurian have
tried to classify serial murderers that function together. Jenkins calls
research on killer teams the most obscure area of the field as none of the
current co-offending research examines the interpersonal dynamics that permit
an offender to recruit allies. Criminologists often lack the background in
organizational behavior necessary to appreciate the complex interplay between
individuals commonly thought to function alone.
What we do know is that cooperation involves a broad
spectrum of types and degrees of participation. Hickey notes that not all
offenders share equally in the thrill or the same motivations or abilities for
killing. For this reason, most partners fit into one of three roles that aid
the Principal Offender: the Enlisted Accomplice, the Witting Facilitator and
the Idle Witness. Jenkins states that those that did not participate in the
murder can still create the setting by influencing the primary offender with
their attitude. Gurian (2011) noted that passive participation helps legitimize
the killing in the principal offenders mind.
Jenkins believes that partners in dyads found mutual
support and encouragement in the other, rejecting the attitudes of wider
society and establishing their own world and values. Joudis writes that the
loss of individuality in a pairing leads that person to behave in primitive and
irrational ways. Gurian (2013) believes that partners operate symbiotically and
contribute to each other’s wish for power and share tasks to neutralize
feelings of responsibility. Gurian states that partnerships are based on
interdependency where unthinkable risks are possible with likeminded
individuals. White (2014) believes that the presence of a partner results in
less guilt when partners feed off of each other and exhibit more deviant
behaviors while they try to outdo each other. Fox thinks there is a special
chemistry and a bond of loyalty or love that ignites a willingness to engage in
behavior they may never have tried alone. It is not unusual for one to play a
dominant role, inspiring the partner to go along for the sake of the
relationship. The insanity is located in their relationship rather than in their
minds or personalities. Hickey states that partnered homicide is both
participation and spectator event where inhibitions and fears dissipate and
power is gained by observing, convincing or enticing another take a life. This
can bring as much gratification as performing the act themselves. To some
partners, killing first became acceptable and then desirable, while others were
anxious to become involved but then became killers because of another’s
influence. Much like some relationships among non-killers, those of serial
murderers are built on deception, bravado and intimidation and nurtured through
coercion and persuasive techniques.
The last image on the slide shows that gang members
are not significantly represented among serial homicide offenders as the
prevalence of gang members among normal homicides at 10.7% was nearly
equivalent to the combined prevalence of the abnormal homicide types at 11.2%.
This was important for us to know as we were worried about altering the data by
excluding them from the analysis.
One of the main questions driving my research into
this area was whether or not offenders differed in their degrees of participation
over their series because, as Jenkins states, police can fail to link murders
due to differing degrees of participation by “allied” offenders over the
course of a series. I wanted to know what percentage of offenders were likely
to have killed without a partner and how many would never have killed alone.
I measured variation by looking at the victim age
variable where detailed records were kept of which offender was responsible for
the death of which victim.
Where information was available, I found the
majority of the 290 offenders that operated in pairs engaged in the same level
of participation as their partner (198) at 68%. 32 percent did differ in their
level of engagement. These 92 offenders formed 46 pairings. 38 of these pairs
had one offender that was responsible for all of the variation; six pairs saw
both offenders being responsible for the variation; and two pairs had both
offenders vary on all victim counts, suggesting that they watched the other
commit the crime.
Of the 46 pairings, 74% (34) had variation in when
their series began and ended. The variation was typical in the early stages of
the offender’s series with 20 pairs having a different start date than their
partner. 9 pairs had a different end date than their partner. 5 pairs had
variation in both their start and finish dates. These instances represent
offenders that were killing before they met their partner and those that
continued killing after their partner was captured or died.
Of the 46 pairings, 12 (26%) pairs did have
variation in the number of victims that they killed but shared the same start
and end dates. These pairs represent instances where the offenders traded off
between who would kill the victim.
In almost half of the cases, the difference in
victim counts between co-offending serial murderers with variation sat at 1
victim.
As you will see over the next few slides, I have
used the Radford database to generate some descriptive statistics to help us
figure out what types of offenders partner up and how this data compares to the
current research in the field. I have collected information on all offenders
and further break that information across pairings, covering mixed male/female
pairs, male/male and female/female partners and then those where there is
variation in the victim count. For comparative purposes, I have selected the
top 50% and displayed this information in the charts with a number followed by
a percentage. Those numbers represent the count of offenders or pairings and
their share of the database is represented by the percentage. The first chart
here shows demographics on the individual offenders in the cohort whereas the
other two charts break out the data by pairings.
White, Fox and Levin state that 20.8% of serial
murderers kill with partner while Hickey’s data was 26 percent. Radford
contains information on 648 offenders operating as part of a partnership or
team, or 24% of the total database.
Hickey states that males make up 76% of the data on
partners and females represent the remaining 24%. Radford is similar in showing
that males are present 83% of the time while females show up in 17% of cases.
Hickey shows that Caucasians populate the data 55% of the time while African
Americans hold 38% of the share. The Radford data is similar in that Caucasians
represent 61% and African Americans 32%. According to Gurian, the average age
of men in all partnered groups is 27 while average age of women in partnered
groups is 29 matching the Radford data exactly. The Radford data shows only a
gap of one year between mixed pairs, a surprising finding since Fox and Levin
state that in exactly half of cases, one of the partners is much older than the
other and dominant. According to the Radford data, partners are the same age in
9% of cases and 46% of the time, offenders are less than 5 years apart in age.
28% of the time there is a five to ten year gap between partners. Males are
older than their female counterparts 69% of the time.
Before
we get into how this data compares to the literature, I should mention that the
Multi descriptor under victim type encompasses victims killed on the street be
it criminals or prostitutes, to hitchhikers, hospital patients, families and
home invasion murders and Employees and Customers. The Young descriptor under
victim age encompasses children and adolescents while the varied descriptor
covers a wide range of ages from teenagers to middle aged adults.
The
Radford data matches Hickey and Gurian’s almost exactly in that 51% of
partnered offenders murdered both males and females. The Radford data also
shows that 67% of partners murdered at least one female. Where the data
diverges is in looking at the victim’s ages. Hickey states that team offenders
were least likely to select teenagers and children as victims but the Radford
data shows that partners murdered victims under the Varied category, which
includes teenagers and young adults, half of the time. Gurian stated that the mixed-sex
partners were more likely to murder adult and teen female strangers but the
Radford data shows they were more likely to murder a mixture of male and female
teen to middle aged members of the general public.
Under Motives and Methods, the Multi descriptor
under the Method Count variable encompasses the pairs that utilized any
combination of the following methods over the course of their series:
Bludgeoning, shooting, stabbing, strangulation, suffocation, poisoning,
bombing, fire, drowning, neglect or drug overdose.
The Radford data again matches Hickey’s exactly in
that 34% of partnered offenders used a combination of methods across their
series.
The Radford data conflicts with data from Gurian
when she states that partnered serial killers use multiple methods 71% of the
time. This theory makes sense if you imagine that each offender brings a
separate and different weapon than their partner. But thankfully for Tom’s
efforts - which you will see why later – partners tend to prefer to utilize a
single method 66% of the time. Gurian thought the multiple method theory would
hold true for the mixed sex partnerships but the Radford data shows that mixed
sex pairs also used one method the majority of the time.
Gurian was correct in stating that the accomplice is
usually a boyfriend or husband when women commit homicide with a male
accomplice as the Radford data shows that 66% of female offenders choose a
significant other as an accomplice. White states that 24% of men murdered with
a family member and 41% with a friend but the Radford data shows a slight
divergence in 37 and 35% respectively. White states that 14% of women killed
with a family member, 50% with significant other and 5% with a friend but the
Radford data show another divergence in 32, 66 and 2% respectively.
Hickey stated that team offenders were highly likely
to come into contact with one another as a result of prior incarcerations and
criminal records but according to the Radford data, that holds true for only 7%
of the partners. The majority knew each other due to their relationship as
family members (37%) or friends (30%).
Motive is another area where the data differs.
Gurian, Fox and Levin note that mixed sex partnered serial murderers killed
with pleasure-oriented motivations often for the thrill of the event. With 56%
of mixed sex pairings having financial motives and 23% killing for
enjoyment/thrill, the Radford data coincides with Joudis and Hickey who state
that money was found to be commonly cited as a motive for murder as
businesslike ventures were formed for goal driven financial gain.
One lingering question is whether or not the
addition of a second party extends or limits the length of an offenders kill
span. Hickey notes that killing with a partner greatly increases the likelihood
that a mistake will occur and lead to the partner’s identification.
Hickey and Gurian were correct in stating that
partnered serial killers operate in a shorter period of time and are more
likely to commit their murders within a single year. A staggering 71% of paired
offenders commit their murders in a year or less.
The rate of killing variable is calculated by
dividing the number of victims by the length of the offender's kill span. The
higher the number, the more victims the offender killed within a short amount
of time. Here you can see that the majority of offenders fall within the less
than or equal to 1.00 range meaning that partnered offenders are more likely to
kill fewer victims over their careers.
You can also see under the Days Between Final and
Arrest variable that the majority of offenders were killing up until they were
captured.
Another area where the Radford database was helpful
was in examining the location of events. Jenkins and Gurian state that
co-offending pairs are more likely to operate in the west at 43%. According to
the Radford data, instances of partnered serial homicide are heavily
concentrated in the south at 41% with only 18% of cases occurring in the west.
Gurian and Hickey found that 18 – 20 % of offenders operate in more than one
state but the Radford data places that number at 26% which is the addition of
the offenders killing regionally and nationally. Gurian was accurate in the
assessment that mixed sex pairing commit their crimes locally as the Radford
data state that occurs 55% of the time.
So before we finish with the data heavy portion of
my half of the presentation, lets take a look at what the average serial killer
team looks like.
The average killer in a pair was in their late
twenties when they began and ended their series and had a 6 year age gap
between their partner. They killed five middle aged victims over 500 days. They
were generally at large for two and half months between their final murder and
when they were arrested. The peak of these types of killings was the late
1980s.
Now I would like to discuss some narratives to put
the data into perspective. What I found was that male serial murderers seem to
have a knack for finding each other that almost mimics their ability to
identify vulnerable victims.
Steven Lorenzo, a serial rapist of gay men, teamed
up with Scott Schweickert who he met online to fulfill a fantasy of torturing
and killing men. Lorenzo and Schweickert killed two of the nine men they
drugged at bars and sexually tortured at Lorenzo’s home. Both men dismembered
one victim and scattered the pieces throughout Tampa. The second victim was
wrapped in a bedsheet and left in his own vehicle. Schweickert's voluntary
confession led police to a cache of nearly half a million images on Lorenzo's
computer and blood under the floor of Lorenzo's garage.
Eddie Mitchell and Cortez B. Eagle shot one victim
after he had won money in a card game and a second in a home invasion. Both
murders were committed in the process of taking items from the victims.
Leonardo Franqui and Pablo San Martin robbed a bank
and murdered a security guard during the robbery. They then ambushed a delivery
man and killed him in his vehicle. Both confessed to their crimes when
apprehended.
24-year-old Billy Richardson and 31-year-old Jerard
Garrett set up one of their victims for a robbery during a drug transaction in
a parking lot. Richardson lured him to the lot while Garrett shot him to death.
Six days later, they murdered another man in his home. Garrett had an extensive
criminal history and was out of jail on bond during the second killing.
Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog grew up as inseparable childhood friends but
are now dubbed the Speed
Freak Killers due to their methamphetamine abuse
and use of the drug to lure victims to their deaths. Together the pair murdered
anywhere from twenty to seventy two men and women while killing for sport or
trading drugs for sex. Shermantine
once bragged to his sister about how he and Herzog had hunted everything they
could including the quote ultimate kill but has since backed off that claim,
stating that Herzog committed all of the murders as he trained a
killing apprentice as means of entrance into the Hells Angels. Herzog blames Shermantine for masterminding the murders stating that
he was a nonparticipating bystander that helped cover his dominant and evil
friend's tracks afterward. Herzog thought that by cooperating with police that he would
be helping to get a killer off of the streets.
Cevelino Capiua changed from a churchgoing, serious
student to a man obsessed with obtaining street credibility. He sought guidance
from Shawn Womack and became entangled in three murders as his friends noticed drastic
changes in his personality like questioning God, doing drugs and partying all
the time. Womack gladly took Capiua under his wing, taught him slang words and
brought him to an adult bookstore where they killed two men, fifteen days
apart. After an arrest for a botched robbery, Capuia confessed that he killed
two men with the help of Womack. Womack then confessed that he shot and killed
Capuia’s girlfriend. Capuia, who once said that he sees good in Womack, broke
down in tears in police custody upon hearing the news.
Dale Hausner and Sam Dieteman partnered to kill
eight pedestrians over 16 months in a series of random drive-by shootings. They
can be heard over a police wire-tap of their apartment joking about the
victim’s pleas, looking at news clippings and arguing with news casters that
were providing the wrong information about the murders. The friendship between
the two men deteriorated after their capture with Dieteman confessing to two murders
and testifying against Hausner. Dieteman stated that he was doped up on
methamphetamine and Jack Daniels around the time of the shootings. Hausner
blames the murders on Dieteman and Hausner’s roommate.
Ricky Gray and Ray Dandridge were a brutal pairing
in that they murdered seven people over a seven-day period after invading their
victim’s homes, binding them with electrical cords and using multiple methods
such as shooting, beating, stabbing, hanging and suffocation to murder them.
Selecting victims was a matter of opportunity like spotting an open door while
looking for a house to burglarize. They also instituted ruses like pretending
to ask for directions or asking to use a phone. They each helped the other kill
a significant other, Gray his wife and Dandridge his girlfriend even though she
helped with one murder by posing as a victim allowing Gray and Dandridge to rob
her parents. Dandridge confessed to the killings and to burning the victim’s
houses and elaborated on their roles in which they traded off who would kill
the victims and who would search the house for items to steal.
I wanted to briefly discuss my colleagues’ exposure
to the Shermantine and Herzog case. Jeff Rinek’s role in the Shermantine and
Herzog case was to obtain the whereabouts of victim’s remains. In his
discussions with Shermantine, it was revealed that one reason why he chose to
speak was that his former partner will no longer speak to him. During their
conversations, Jeff got the feeling that Shermantine was jealous of a victim
for being sexual with Herzog.
Gurian offered the theory that shared psychotic
disorders could explain the draw that some partners have to one another.
Jenkins disagrees stating that mentally unstable individuals cannot attract
colleagues to their schemes. The Radford database seems to confirm that latter
point as it does not contain any sets of offenders with shared psychotic
disorder.
As we will see in the next slide, killers Gordon and
Cano were also described by the lead detective of acting like a real couple.
To get some additional insight on Steven Gordon and
Franc Cano, I contacted the leader of the team that apprehended the men,
Detective Julissa Trapp. Detective Trapp writes that Gordon and Cano did
everything together and that they care for each other deeply.
Convicted child molesters Gordon and Cano allegedly
prowled the streets of Santa Ana and Anaheim looking for prostitutes and murdered
five of them in the Santa Ana and Anaheim CA area over a five month period. The
two were best friends and Cano would sometimes stay with Gordon in his RV. The
Gordon and Cano case is one of the most detailed views into the decision making
process between two murderers that I have run across. It is evident that each
thoroughly respected one another and tried to protect each other as the 45 year
old Gordon left 27 year old Cano's involvement out of his account. After Gordon
thought that Cano did not want to speak with him any longer, Gordon conceded
that both suspects picked up prostitutes and killed them, calling Cano an
exuberant, active, aggressive participant in the killings. Gordon stated that
he picked up the women in his car while Cano hid in the back seat and
overpowered them when they got in. As you will see on the next slide, the men
exchanged a long series of text messages that show they were debating whether
to kill their victims and were hesitant with what to do at some points.
The women were chosen randomly but there were subtle
reasons as to why they were killed. Gordon claims that each time he just wanted
to have sex with the women but that things got out of control and the killings
were crimes of passion. The first victim was killed because her street name was
the same as Gordon’s daughter and that hearing the name "triggered
him." When one victim noticed Gordon's electronic anklet, he got angry.
Gordon placed the blame on one victim, calling her crazy for pulling on the
car's steering wheel. One was targeted because she gave them the finger. One
was killed because Gordon apologized and Cano stomped on her neck. Another was
murdered after Gordon asked her to make love to him like he was her boyfriend,
stay with him and quit the life of working the streets. Cano grabbed her, and
she maced them. Gordon proceeded to punch her, as Cano was strangling her.
This case also calls into question the theory that
the older offender is supremely dominate while the younger is submissive. Here
we see the older Gordon apologizing to a victim while the younger Cano
asserting dominance by stomping on her neck. Gordon did not want to kill one victim
because she was beautiful, but Cano reminded Gordon that if he didn't, he would
have to find a way to remove their DNA from her body. Cano made the decision to
pick up at least one of the victims against Gordon wishes. The younger Cano is
described as strangling the women while Gordon punched them in the stomach
"to get the air out faster." You can see from the text messages that
Cano wrote “I thought the next one, you were going to go at it,” “Either Kitty
walks or goes to sleep.” Kitty being code for the victim. Gordon did not want
to kill her stating "I can't hurt this cat. I just can't," but
eventually acquiesced and said “Bye-bye, Kitty,” at 12:13 a.m. “Kitty goes to
sleep.” It was the younger Cano that instructed Gordon to “get rid of her” at
11:55 PM and to use Happy Hand, a phrase prosecutors interpreted to mean
strangling. Cano resisted Gordon’s requests to do the deed saying that he had a
curfew and a parole agent monitoring him – and it was Gordon’s turn.
Although they were cognizant of countermeasures in
washing victims and throwing away their belongings elsewhere in another city,
they seemed to not care about being linked to the crimes via their sex offender
GPS tracking device monitors or cell phone records as Cano constantly texted
Gordon, which led investigators to not only suspect the pair worked together.
The GPS data matched the place and date of disappearance for at least three of
the women.
Although this case saw the convergence of
old-fashioned detective work and high-tech data gathering, there were still
some missteps. Despite being registered sex offenders, neither had DNA in any
law enforcement database. Gordon and Cano were under the supervision of federal
probation and state parole officials throughout the period that prosecutors say
they killed the four women. Sex offenders are normally prohibited from
associating, but interviews and records have shown the men were close friends.
Here we can see a record of text messages sent
between Gordon and Cano that Detective Trapp references in her email.
It has been said that mixed teams follow
conventional sexual stereotypes with a dominating male that bullies or dupes
the female into participating. Some, like Jenkins, reject the notion that
female offenders are victims coerced into crime and instead view them as active
participants, just as capable and complicit as men. Jenkins notes that the
victim defense is a byproduct of courtroom strategies meant to portray the
woman as being less culpable. Gurian (2013) notes that men are portrayed to be
endowed with extraordinary skills of control and influence while women are
compliant, feeble-minded and vulnerable, too intelligent to serve as proper
victims but weak enough to be manipulated. Many believe that if a female
displays masculine forms of aggression, it would require a kind of permission
from her male partner. Fox believes that female serial murderers occasionally
team up with men often for the thrill of it and participate in order to please
their mate but some develop their own satisfaction. It is often assumed that
the male is the major culprit while the women killed to preserve the
relationship or out of reasons of survival. Gurian (2013) takes it a step
further and posits that sexual arousal for some women is dependent on her
partner committing a crime. She states that people with a strong predisposition
for stimulation-seeking behavior (SSB) would be expected to form couples. She
asks if working with a male partner allows them to expand their murder pattern
through inclusion of additional motives/victims/methods. White’s data
demonstrate that women serial killers killing with a partner were more likely
to have been sexually abused in childhood, have psychiatrically disturbed
parents, be sexually deviant and to set some victims free. Gurian points out
additional characteristics as insecurity, low self-esteem, social isolation and
poor education.
Lovers James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud in the
top left corner lured a student into a van rigged with ropes and hooks where
they sexually tortured and strangled her. Michaud described each vicious
assault as an 'adventure' while Daveggio referred to them as 'hunting.' Michaud
stated that the day after Thanksgiving was the biggest shopping day of the year
and would be the best day to go kill somebody. Daveggio's daughter testified
that her father had been reading books about serial killers. In the top Right
corner we see Eric Mickelson and Beverly Arthur. Mickelson may have confessed
to the murder of an 87 year-old man but he states that his girlfriend
manipulated him into killing him while he was in a "cocaine-induced-
stooper" to prevent the victim from turning her in for stealing money to
feed their drug habits. Mickelson then said he would take all of the blame if
Arthur goes free but his defense team tried to direct all guilt at her even
though Mickelson confessed to his mother "I took a man apart. They
wouldn't have put him back together unless I put the pieces in their hand. I
didn't have to do that. I could have left him out there.“ Below them we have
Michelle and David Knotek who killed four people they invited to stay at their
farmhouse over a period of fifteen years until their daughters told police they
had subjected their victims to painful, humiliating abuse and disposed of the
bodies of people down on their luck that they befriended. David was well liked
in the community but Michelle was described as having a temper and being evil,
volatile, temperamental and an oddball. Richard Davis and Dena Riley in the
lower lefthand corner were once known as the FBI’s most-wanted couple for two
videotaped rape/torture murders that took place in April and May 2006. Both
victims were killed because they knew where Davis and Riley lived and they feared
they would contact police about what they had done to them. Samantha Bachynski
said that her fiancé Patrick Selepak instructed her to participate in the
killings and she complied because she loved him and would do anything for him
because he made her feel like a terrific person. Bachynski filled syringes with
a mixture of bleach and water and injected it into one victim and pulled on a
belt placed around the neck of another while Selepak placed a plastic bag over
the victim’s head. Later Bachynski claims that she feared Selepak and helped in
the murders because he pointed a gun at her. Selepak has tried to minimize
Bachynski's participation and has refused to implicate her. Bachynski stated
that she would never have become a killer without the influence of Selepak.
Lastly, John Hughes and his girlfriend Dana Tutor killed two truck drivers days
apart from one another. The couple used the weapon stolen from the first victim
after stabbing him to shoot the second during a botched robbery. Tutor lured
the second victim into a rest-stop bathroom and Hughes ambushed him, using the
victim’s car to drive to another state after the killing.
Here we see 52 year old Richard Beasley and his
accomplice, 16 year old Brogan Rafferty. As seen in 7% of partnered cases,
there was a vast age gap between them, twice the amount of Gordon and Cano.
Vast differences in age can sometimes bolster the connection between two
individuals as one undertakes the role of teacher or protector while the other
assumes the role of student.
Rafferty was primed to bond with Richard Beasley, a
man he described as an uncle to him, a relationship that came about due to his
absentee, violent and drugged out parents. Rafferty stated that Beasley looked
like Santa Claus and was his father without anger, a calm, rational man who
offered spiritual or worldly advice and kept candy in his pocket. Rafferty
began his relationship with Beasley by accompanying him to church at the age of
8. Beasley would be a normal presence in the Rafferty house for the next 8
years. Beasley became the one person that Rafferty could go to for
anything, a father that he never had and an escape because Beasley represented
a newer and more appealing vision: expressive, loving, always around to listen
and give advice. It was easy for Beasley to be a hero to Rafferty. He did what
their distracted, overworked, and somewhat traumatized parents couldn’t do and
really connect to Rafferty.
By his account, Rafferty wanted desperately to see
the murders coming and stop them but he was mentally unfit, estranged from
society, drunk all the time and thought he was going insane. He sat in the dark
most nights after school and could not connect with anyone. He was living
moment to moment and contemplated suicide often so that he could join his
grandmother in death and says that he was a shell of what he once was. Life
revolved around going to meet Beasley, and the time in between. The older
Beasley believed in a strict sense of loyalty and if he called Rafferty, he was
supposed to come running. Rafferty believes that his early adherence to this
code is why he was selected for Beasley’s campaign. But Rafferty was conflicted
and struggled with his involvement in the murders from the beginning, even
planning on killing his partner, stating that he had turned evil. Those plans
never came to fruition due to Beasley’s threats to kill his mother and sister
if he stepped out of line. Rafferty was also apprehensive since he though his
old friend was still inside Beasley somewhere. Rafferty resolved to let the
campaign resolve itself, convinced that Beasley would kill him when they were
done and began to dream of an unmarked grave as an end to the “horror story”.
In the end, they were apprehended.
This case is interesting because it highlights the
isolation and vulnerability of so many working-class men, who have been pushed
into unemployment by the faltering economy. Rafferty believes that Beasley
disguised his desire to kill for killings sake by adding a robbery and identity
theft angle to his crimes. The state presented a case that Beasley posed as a
man named Jack in craigslist ads offering a caretaker job at a nonexistent farm
in the hopes of identifying men on the margins that had possessions worth
killing for: a truck or a TV or a computer or even a motorcycle. Beasley
carefully crafted his ad to stress that those selected for the job needed to
start immediately and should bring everything they own with them as they would
be living rent free at the farm. Over many drafts, Beasley refined his pitch to
the prospective victims to appeal to desperate, working class men by settling
on the phrase “idyllic rural job of a lifetime”. Based on his responses to the
over 100 replies he received it is clear that Beasley also knew who to avoid.
One candidate was soon to be married and another used to be a security guard
and was an expert in martial arts.
Beasley portrayed himself to be a helpful gentlemen
but he was known in some circles as someone who always had a scam going. He was
actually on the run from the law due to his involvement as a pimp doing
anything in his power to keep girls at his halfway house including doping them
with drugs. Since Beasley was desperate to not end up back in jail, he told
Rafferty that he needed his help to survive by obtaining a new identity. After
killing his first victim, Beasley dyed his hair brown and found a room to rent.
He was adept at keeping police away for a while by tossing one victims items
out of their car after he got away because of a jammed gun. He once put a $20
bill under a rock after Rafferty dug a grave for a prospective victim thinking
that if it was gone when they came back, he’d know someone had been there.
Police eventually identified footage of Beasley from one of his interview
meetings while cyber-crimes specialists traced his IP address to a small house
in Akron. The owner did not know of a Beasley or Jack because Beasley was
posing as his victim. Over time, Beasley began viewing people as the sum total
of their possessions, telling Rafferty that he thought one victim could net
$30,000 enough for him to make it through the winter. But Rafferty told a story
about a victim that was selected because of the promise of goods but was
eventually killed for only the five dollars in his pocket and nothing more.
Beasley was very similar to the men he was hunting,
himself divorced, and living apart from his child, and was only sporadically
employed. And like them, he too had created an intense surrogate family
relationship with Rafferty. Beasley created in Rafferty an improvised
attachment to a family bond but it was formed under duress and needed to be
constantly tended to and reinforced. For men who are failing the traditional
tests of marriage and parenting, this kind of intense emotional connection “is
the last form of identity available.” Judge Lynne Callahan told Rafferty that
he had been “dealt a lousy hand in life” but that he had “embraced the evil,”
by digging the graves.
Many regard the Beltway sniper attacks as spree
killings given the small timeframe between murders but few are aware
that 42 years old John Allen Muhammad and 17 year old Lee Boyd Malvo murdered
seven people over ten months in a series of robberies beginning in
February 2002 in the states of Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,
Texas, and Washington before the ten fatal shootings in Maryland, Virginia, and
Washington, D.C. It was through these test run attacks that the partners
procured the laptop used to plan many of the Beltway sniper attacks and sealed
their demise by leaving a fingerprint later used to tie them to the attacks
after Malvo called to taunt the police about this unsolved homicide in
Montgomery, Alabama. Their more coordinated Beltway sniper attacks began and
ended in October 2002 and saw the partners switch from a .22-caliber pistol to
a Bushmaster rifle and use the rolling sniper's nest in the trunk of the
Chevrolet Caprice. Muhammad and Malvo increased the frequency of their attacks
with six fatal shooting deaths in the first 15 hours. On another day, four
people were shot dead within a span of approximately two hours but once they
started covering a wider area two or three days fell between shootings due to
due to heavy traffic and the lack of a clear shot or getaway at locations.
Victims were shot performing everyday activities: mowing grass, pumping
gasoline, changing tires, walking, or reading on a bench. Authorities
discovered a four-page letter from the shooter in the woods that demanded $10
million, threats to children and a Death Tarot card with the statement Call me
God" on the front. A series of trial exhibits suggested Malvo and Muhammad
were motivated by an affinity for Islamist Jihad but investigators
eliminated terrorist ties or political ideologies as a motive. Instead,
Muhammad intended to kill his second ex-wife with the other shootings intended
to cover up the motive for the crime, since Muhammad believed that the police
would not focus on an estranged ex-husband as a suspect if she looked like a
random victim of a serial killer.
After undergoing extensive psychological counseling,
Malvo admitted to the 17 murders after being freed of Muhammad’s brainwashing.
He stated that he was sexually abused by his former mentor, “taken under his
wing” as a teenager and taught about the Nation of Islam. Muhammad allowed
Malvo to move in with him when he was 15 and put him on a one meal a day diet
of soy burgers and soup coupled with vitamins and exercise. Malvo was complicit
in the attacks as they handed off driving and shooting duties to each other and
was allowed to weigh in on locations, even disagreeing with some due to level
of witnesses and surveillance cameras. Malvo claimed that he was the sole
shooter in order to protect Muhammad from a potential death sentence but now
realizes that Muhammad “made him a monster”. One victim that survived received
a letter of apology from Malvo.
According to Malvo, Muhammad's multiphase plan
consisted of meticulously planning and mapping the area to formulate a
predetermined path of escape after killing six white people a day for 30 days.
They would then kill a cop and blow up his funeral to kill the attendees. The
final phase was to kidnap children for the purpose of extorting millions of
dollars from the government so that they could set up a camp to train children
how to terrorize cities. They would recruit impressionable young boys with no
parents or guidance from YMCAs
and orphanages. As he did with Malvo, Muhammad would act as their father figure
and train the boys in weapons and stealth. After their training was complete
they would be sent them out across the United States to carry
out mass shootings in many other cities to send the country into chaos.
Brothers have been known to team up from time to
time. The most infamous recent case, whose three year anniversary is in 8 days,
being 26-year-old Tamerlan and 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the “Boston
Marathon Bombers”. I include them here since they are suspected of a mass
homicide in Waltham, MA on September 11, 2011 and because they were planning to
detonate explosives in Times
Square after the Boston Marathon. Fun fact - The actors that will play them
in the upcoming Patriots Day movie have just been cast.
Tyrone and Jerone Sotolongo, in the top right hand
images, were arrested under suspicion of committing three murders, one for a
victim’s gold chain.
19-year-old Robert Bever and 17-year-old Michael
Bever detailed to officers a gruesome plot to carry out further killings.
Robert expressed a desire for notoriety for being a serial killer telling of a
plan to head west in the family SUV armed with guns, ammunition and makeshift
bombs to randomly attack other locations and kill 10 people at each place after
having killed their family, cutting up the bodies, and storing them in bins in
the attic. Detectives said they wanted a Wikipedia page and media coverage.
Nowadays, connections between people are hard enough
to maintain, but these co-offending murderers somehow find and support one
another through the repetitive trials of victim identification, murder and body
disposal. Perhaps these shared experiences bolster the respect each has for the
other and make their bond impenetrable in their minds. After all, each has
something to lose in a relationship build on mutually assured destruction.
19-year-old Jake England confessed to shooting three
people and 32-year-old Alvin Watts confessed to shooting two. All the victims
of the shooting spree were black and police have said one motive for the
shootings may have been England's desire to avenge his father's fatal shooting
by a black man two years ago.
Here you can see some exchanges between England and
Watts on Facebook where Watts attempts to console the frequently sullen
England.
78 year old Helen Golay and 75 year old Olga
Rutterschmidt murdered two vagrants in 1999 and 2005 staging each to look like hit and run
incidents in order to collect on multimillion-dollar life insurance policies
they had taken out on the men. Before their arrests Golay and Rutterschmidt
collected over 2 million dollars in proceeds from the policies. Evidence was
raised at trial of their intent to victimize a third man but he escaped their
grasp after growing suspicious of their intentions. In secretly recorded tapes
the younger Rutterschmidt could be heard telling Golay that she was stupid for
taking out the extra policies and that the total blame would lay at her feet.
The two were described as meeting by chance and having an arm's-length
friendship built around "harvesting" the down and out for quick cash
due to failed marriages and shaky finances. Both told stories of painful
childhoods and a bond that grew during the spandex-era fitness craze that
peaked in the 1980s as they trolled for marks careless with their money and
taken in by their looks. Detectives stated that their scheme fell apart because
they grew to distrust each other.
Ex-Russian surgeon Dmitriy Yakovlev and his
wife Julie were a husband-and-wife identity theft team suspected of killing
retired NYPD mechanic Michael Klein (left), Russian translator Irina Malezhik (center)
and jewelry importer Viktor Alekseyev,
whose dismembered body was found a year earlier in New Jersey woods. The
Yakovlev’s were found guilty of bank and credit card fraud charges in
connection with the stealing of their victims' identities.
Using a 9mm handgun, revolver and shotgun, 31 year
old Jerad and 22 year old Amanda Miller shot to death two Las Vegas police
officers and an intervening armed civilian at separate locations in June 2014.
They pinned a note on one officer’s body, which read: "This is the
beginning of the revolution." The Millers had planned to "take over a
courthouse and execute public officials" as their ideology has been described
as "along the lines of militia and white supremacists”. Jerad had a
history of run-ins with the law beginning in 2001 and an online presence over
the last year that included dozens of Facebook posts like the one you see here
and 20 YouTube videos posted under the username USATruePatriot. Posts almost
always contained conspiracy theories and anti-government rhetoric to the tune
of stopping oppression with bloodshed and a coming sacrifice. He expressed
strong hatred for law enforcement, gun control and surveillance. Jerad met and
married Amanda in 2011 and like Jerad, she had a Facebook account, in which she
made multiple posts, including numerous photos depicting the Millers dressed as
supervillains. In one
of the photos you see here, they were dressed up as Batman villains Harley Quinn and the Joker. In one of
her Facebook posts, which was dated May 23, 2011, she warned us all that we are
lucky she cannot kill us yet but that she would one day. Together the Millers
supported the Patriot
movement, a collection of various groups with a shared ideology for limited
federal government but there is no evidence that they belonged in a specific
group. Friends of the Millers reported that they idolized the two perpetrators
of the Columbine
High
School massacre, and wanted to follow in their footsteps.
31 year old David Pedersen and his 24 year old
girlfriend Holly Grigsby killed Pedersen’s father because he molested two young
relatives and his wife because she knew about it and didn't stop him.
Pedersen’s neck tattoo invokes "Supreme White Power," and those
beliefs led them to kill a man in Oregon they thought was Jewish, and another
man in California who was black. In trying to protect his girlfriend, Pedersen
takes "full responsibility" for the crimes but Grigsby admitted to
killing Pedersen’s stepmother by stabbing her. What is astonishing is that
Grigsby gave up a life with her husband, child and skipped her parole check-ins
to be with Pedersen. Her facebook page stated that she was devoted to her
family and following the path of God. They were headed to Sacramento to
"kill more Jews" when California Highway Patrol officers caught up to
them.
In late 2015, an American-born U.S.
citizen named Syed Farook and
his Pakistani-born
wife Tashfeen Malik
killed 14 people with semi-automatic
pistols and two .223-caliber
rifles at
a Department of Public Health training event and holiday party using ski masks
and black tactical gear. Pipe bombs were meant to target the emergency
personnel but failed to detonate. The shooters reportedly spent at least a year
preparing for the attack, including taking target practice and making plans with
Farook's mother to take care of their child. Federal prosecutors allege that in
2011, Farook and Marquez conspired to carry out shooting and bombing attacks
but they abandoned those plans at the time. The large stockpile of weapons used
by the shooters and an examination of digital equipment recovered from their
home led investigators to believe that they were in the final planning stages
of future attacks. The FBI stated that the married couple met online and were
"homegrown violent extremists" inspired by foreign
terrorist groups but were not directed by such groups and were not part of
any terrorist cell
or network, much like the Millers on the previously slide. The FBI's
investigation had revealed that Farook and Malik were "consuming poison on
the Internet" and both had become radicalized "before they started
dating each other online" and "before the emergence of ISIL."
I have included the San Bernardino killers in this
presentation because evidence points to their plans to commit additional
murders by bombing a California college and killing Los Angeles commuters. Over
the Atypical Homicide Research Group’s email listserv, two experts debate
whether or not they began killing due to the influence of forces other
than their own abnormal psychology. Many would classify their actions as an act
of terrorism but since we use a liberal definition with the database, Malik and
Farook would have fit within the rolls of multiple murder if they had
successfully carried out another attack at a separate location.
The Radford data shows that 71% of partners
confessed their crimes and implicated their partner.
Eric and Kim Williams engaged in a campaign of
revenge by shooting to death two victims that had prosecuted Eric for burglary
and theft while he was in office as Justice of the Peace. These events became
known as the Kaufman County murders with the first being described as an ambush
in a parking lot and the other a home invasion type assault. Like some
of these investigations, the possibility that the murders were committed by
larger groups was considered, in this case the Aryan Brotherhood but Eric’s
desire to show off by sending a tip into Kaufman County Crime Stoppers that was
traced back to his computer resulted in their apprehension. After the murders,
Kim sought a divorce from Eric and testified against him.
Cousins Caroline Peoples and Angel Wright-Ford used
friendship and sex as strategies to lure people who they then shot and robbed.
They were skilled at duping victims into positions of weakness even stripping
naked with one victim before shooting him in the head and stealing his DVD
player, jacket, cell phone and car. Ford had previous contact with two of the
victims, one as a nurse’s assistant and the other from a romantic relationship.
As Ford distracted the men, Peoples shot them on separate occasions. Ford then
encouraged another man to enter their van with the promise of sex but Peoples
was waiting in the back with a gun. The women took 200 dollars from his body
before they dumped it in the parking lot of a bowling alley. They were about to
pose as prostitutes to lure another man but Peoples called her friend and took
her to a restaurant. This murder was significant for the partnership as they
both took turns shooting the victim. Once they were captured, they each
confessed and implicated the other.
A chance meeting at a party brought together two
future murderers, a partnership described as a perfect storm of deviancy.
Konrad Schafer was 15 when he was charged with the murders of David Guerrero
and Eric Roopnarine in 2013. Schafer fatally shot 17-year-old Guerrero, who was
on his way to catch the bus for work, because he thought it would be fun to
kill. Days later, Schafer and David Damus forced their way into the home of
Roopnarine, a 22-year-old club promoter, because they wanted the 20,000 dollars
he had bragged of having. Damus shot him as he begged for his life while
Schafer stabbed him in the neck. The deaths took place during a 15-day
spree of 22 shootings in Osceola County during the summer of 2013. The
shootings left bullet holes in homes and cars. Schafer’s father purchased the
weapon due to his son’s claims of being bullied at school and in his
neighborhood. Damus’ change in personality came from too much partying while
Schafer’s was a byproduct of his leukemia medication. The two were caught after
bragging about living the “savage life” to friends. Schafer confessed through
tears within minutes of being arrested.
Vigilante killer William Inmon wanted to rid society
of what he considered to be less-than-desirable people including a drug-using
Vietnam vet, a sex offender and a teenager struggling to kick a drug habit.
Inmon killed one victim because he claimed he touched him and others
inappropriately, another because he supposedly shot Inmon’s dog and mistreated
people. According to detectives, Inmon was genuinely remorseful about his third
killing in which he was goaded into the murder by the father of the victim’s
girlfriend. Police focused their attention on the group of youths that
discovered one of the bodies before Inmon confessed to the murders.
When asked whether he had any regrets, Inmon said he
wished he had not involved others in the murders. What will remain a mystery is
if Inmon is truly remorseful or if he blames his accomplice Joseph Roberts for
contributing to his capture.
Prosecutors say Stephen and Linda Schneider ran a
"pill mill," carelessly writing prescriptions for potent, addictive
painkillers to people with severe pain but also to drug abusers who feigned
symptoms. The government accused Schneider of being little more than a drug
dealer who did not carefully monitor cases, prescribed excessive dosages and
wrote prescriptions so freely he became known among some patients as the
"Candy Man.“ Schneider and his wife were convicted of a moneymaking
conspiracy prosecutors say was linked to 68 overdose deaths. They were directly
charged in 21 of the deaths.
The 2-year-old son of Herbert and Catherine Schaible
died of untreated pneumonia in 2009 after which they promised a judge they
would not let another sick child go without medical care. But now the faith
healers have lost an 8-month-old to what a prosecutor called "eerily
similar" circumstances. Their pastor has said the Schaibles lost their
sons because of a "spiritual lack" in their lives and insisted they
would not seek medical care even if another child appeared near death.
What is open for debate is whether or not they are
serial killers. We would consider them to be and placed them under the neglect
category of the database.
Perhaps the greatest exploration of what it means to
be in a partnership was demonstrated fictionally through the relationship
between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham over three seasons on NBC beginning in
2013. Building on statements made by former profilers that to catch a monster
you need to become one, the series sees Hannibal try to convince Will to
release the monster that is building within him. In the series finally,
Hannibal’s goading culminates in the murder of a serial killer at the hands of
both Hannibal and Will Graham as they team up to take him down. Will then
plunges the two over a cliff after realizing what they had become together.
This telling varies greatly from the Thomas Harris
books and I thought it was worth mentioning here because of the way that the
series creator chose to portray the recruitment of Will into Hannibal’s plans,
the lengths Hannibal went to to ensure his success and that it took three years
to culminate this way.
The best outcome of forming the collaborative
mentioned earlier was the capture of suspected serial murderer Felix Vail who
possibly worked with a partner, David Thomason, during at least one of the
murders. My exposure to Vail began in October 2012 when Northeastern
University’s Jack Levin connected me with investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell
in an effort to locate Jim Bell, a former Major Case Specialist (MCS) with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Bell investigated Vail as a serial
killer suspect briefly in 1993 before retiring from the Violent Criminal
Apprehension Program (ViCAP). Gregory M. Cooper, a member of the Collaborative,
supervised Bell and suggested contacting the FBI.
Major Case Specialist Wayne Koka liaised between
Acting FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit-4 Unit Chief Armin Showalter, Jerry and
myself. Coupling Jerry’s extensive exposé on Vail with my knowledge of serial
killers, they were convinced of Vail’s potential. By January, Showalter had
spoken with Detective Randy Curtis of Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office who
summarily reopened the Mary Horton Vail cold case. Koka later modestly labeled
their assistance as “routine”, but we understood it to be a vital intervention.
Since Jerry suspected Vail of the 1973 and 1984 disappearances
of his longtime girlfriend Sharon Hensley and wife, Annette Craver Vail, we
continued to delve into his past. We consulted with Dr. Henry Lee about DNA
evidence, contacted Thomas A. DiBiase and the folks at NamUs about other
no-body murder prosecutions, reached out to a jewelry expert to identify earrings
that Vail retained, and emailed the Internet Adult Film Database to
inquire about a triple X film in which Vail may have participated.
I learned about Vail’s outlook on life from a series
of audio recordings that a private investigator supplied to us. The tapes
revealed a man that strove to maintain a standard of living that was untethered
to obligations who wanted his life to be unaffected by the turmoil caused by
lesser people. Vail is a self-proclaimed detached observer whose limiting
factor was his need to consume his partner’s resources and move on once they
were gone. This worldview contributed to his aspiration to escape the
commitment of becoming a second-time father, allegedly resulting in the murder
of his wife, Mary Horton Vail.
Vail refers to himself as a scientist studying the
anatomy of the ego. To him, the ego is an entity whose mission is to overtake
our electrical life force, or spirit, which he labels as the limiting factor of
the human species. Vail hoped to triumph over the ego and reach a state of
“free brain awareness” where total autonomy, self-governance and spiritual
enlightenment can be attained. Suppression of the ego requires fasting and the
“ceasing of verbalization” where all toxins can be purged and unwanted aspects
abandoned.
Vail is handicapped by a preference for abstract
thought, an immensely inflated sense of self-worth and a tendency towards
megalomania. His desire to tap into the consciousness of strangers to access
information within their minds signifies Vail’s lifelong quest for absolute
omniscience. Vail takes pride in thinking “outside the social parameters” to
which he states others are programmed. Ignoring “social ethics” and “religious
morality” affords Vail the ability to care not for what is deemed permissible
by society and disregard the illegality of his prior actions. Growing up on a
farm with sharecroppers and orderlies instilled in him a penchant for
dehumanization and the opinion that some are subhuman. As no woman could equal
him emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, they existed merely to be used. To
avoid sending “red flags”, he pretends to be influenced by the disapproval of
others. Vail faces a trial date of August 8th.
Here are the articles that I referenced throughout
the presentation.
DeLisi (2013) Do Gang Members Commit Abnormal
Homicide? American Journal of Criminal Justice
Gurian (2011) Female Serial Murderers. International
Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 55(1)
Gurian (2013) Explanations of mixed-sex partnered
homicide. Aggression and Violent Behavior
Gurian (2015) Reframing Serial Murder Within Empirical
Research: Offending and Adjudication Patterns of Male, Female, and Partnered
Serial Killers. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative
Criminology
Fox/Levin (2015) Extreme Killing
Hickey (2013) Serial Murderers and Their Victims
Jenkins (1990) Sharing Murder: Understanding Group
Serial Homicide. Journal of Crime and Justice 13 (2)
Jones (2008) Partners in crime: A study of the
relationship between female offenders and their co-defendants. Criminology
& Criminal Justice 8 (2)
Juodis, M., Woodworth, M., Porter, S., and Brinke,
L.T. (2009). Partners in Crime: A Comparison of Individual and
Multi-perpetrator Homicides. Criminal Justice and Behavior. 36:824-839.
White (2014) Twice the Evil: A Comparison of Serial Killers who Killed with a Partner and Those
White (2014) Twice the Evil: A Comparison of Serial Killers who Killed with a Partner and Those
Who Killed Alone. American Journal
of Forensic Psychology. 32 (1)