Many detectives firmly believe that serial killers can't stop, not sure why that is, because Dennis Rader aka BTK stopped for many years before planning to kill again which led to his capture. And if a killer like Zodiac and The Original Night Stalker don't want to be caught, they can stop. Some are so sure that the only way killers like that stop are either dead or in prison.
Y'know, I could eat a peach for hours
You have to remember this is case by case scenario. What was Dennis Rader/BTK doing between he stopped killing and when he got caught. He got married and had kids which did keep him busy. He also got to let it out in other ways trough his job which I can't remember what it is at the moment. However, he did manage to put a woman's dog to sleep the first chance he had. There was also a suspicious murder on his street between the BTK attacks and when he got caught.
Even with Zodiac, some want to connect them with the Soloma(?) County murders where a composite looks similar to a wrinkly zodiac with longer hair and no glasses. Perhaps zodiac got married which kept him busy. Of course you can go with the Uninomber theory which can explain everything.
As for The Original Nightstalker, he did start off was East Area Rapist. The man doing this doesn't have a criminal record do his DNA isn't on file. He could have committed other crimes nobody knows about.
Well going by the Night Stalker's MO, which was breaking into ppl's houses and raping women, the bindings, diamond knots etc, it's a very distinct MO and recognizable unless he changed it which is not likely. It's just my guess that he just stopped b/c perhaps the police got too close and he saw DNA becoming more prevalent.
Y'know, I could eat a peach for hours
Or he died.
shareI think this is just a badly worded or poorly explained idea. There really is no basis to assume that they CAN'T stop, I mean how many 80 year old serial killers have there been?
I think it's more a matter of saying that the psychological motivations of murderers, if left untreated, will always be there. So if they want to commit murder and nothing is stopping them from doing so, then they will. Simple as that.
It should be said that the ones who get away with it most likely do so precisely because they have the ability to control themselves. Most psychotic killers who go on a rampage don't get very far before they are caught. Ted Bundy committed murders for years and many of them went unnoticed for years and some are still thought to be unknown. Then after he escaped prison he went on a wild killing spree and was quickly recaptured because he did not carefully plan out his crimes to ensure he got away with them, as he had previously done.
"the psychological motivations of murderers, if left untreated, will always be there"
that is close to the truth (IMHO). it's way too broad to say serial killers can't stop - serial killers are just as individual and varied as any fraction of the human population. zodiac was/is, as far as i can see, nothing at all like bundy or gacy. he is just a little like "son of sam" - some of the same inadaquecies (i don't know how to spell that word) are at work.
but the thing about Z. that makes him different from pretty much any other SK, is that i think he actually "grew out of it". (i've banged on this on other posts, sorry! but it's my Grand Thesis on zodiac) i think that is unique among known SK's.
as i've said before, the kathleen johns incident speaks loud about our boy. if that truly was Z., we are seeing a pilgrim at a turning point here. he drives around for 2 hours trying to decide what to do,(a baby???)then allows her to escape. and as far as we know, he does not commit another murder.
if my little theory is correct, Z is a very unusual SK. BUT WE'LL NEVER KNOW!
I guess we can compare serial killers to sex. For example, most guys from teen until late 40s early 50s are sexually active until they start to lose that desire. Maybe killing to serial killers is similar. It's exciting in their early 20s but after many years they lose that thrill. Majority will keep articles of them and remember the good ol times.
shareThat's probably correct. I don't ascribe to Freudian interpretation of everything, but most serial killers have a sexualised aspect. Zodiac is pretty atypical in that the only sexual element of his is his awkward ramblings about "getting your rocks off with a girl" that reads like a dorky teen.
shareDorky teen... Somewhat do you think of the high school student suspect?
shareZodiac also focused more on the women than the men. That's probably why Magaeu survived.
shareThere are many many serial killers who were never caught...ones who became famous and then there are ones who operated with no traceable MO, stopped and were never caught. Look at how many people go missing daily in the US alone...they all end up somewhere.
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"That's a hell of a Caucasian Jackie..." -The Dude
Hi-
I think that the question of whether or not a serial killer can stop is a function of what is motivating him to kill in the first place.
Mike
Of course they can stop. They want the notion that you can kill a bunch of people and go on with your life squashed. They want to instill fear of losing control in the murder curious. They want to assure the public cause a fiend that cant stop will be caught eventually. Its all propaganda and mind control for a healthy society.
shareI don't prescribe to the notion that social conditioning and control are by definition manipulative or dehumanizing, as they are necessary for function. A society that produces serial murderers and more importantly does nothing to curtail them cannot be described as healthy, so doesn't a real health require those mediated effects?
I think that you are promoting the ClockWork Orangelike idea that dehumanising people in the name of stopping violence only propagates violence, and I agree with that, as well as that social control plays a part in the way that violence is exercised.
I also agree that media and culture have created a mythological view of serial killer behavior, but to prescribe to the idea that it is completely baseless is unfounded.
I would say it all depends on the individual killer in question. Zodiac wasn't some crazy loner anonymously murdering hookers all over the country. He did it for the attention and was driven primarily by narcissism and anger at society, not bona fide sexual sadism. Hence the silly codes to prove what a genius he was. He even took credit for crimes he didn't commit, which any respectable serial killer will tell you is against "the serial killer code." I don't even get the impression that the Zodiac killer(s) particularly enjoyed the act of murder and in fact had a distaste for it. For one thing, the attacks were mostly hands-off and too many of their victims survived. They were merely amateurs who lucked out and never got caught after doing everything to get caught because the cops screwed up at every step of the investigation.
"Ass to ass. Ha ha ha ha. ASS TO ASS!"; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa5z77EI8y0
I agree of with your assessment of the killer, but not the investigation. What exactly would you say they did wrong or could have done differently? Other than the incorrect NMA/BMA APB, and that was just a simple, although very costly, communication error.
The police agencies of the various jurisdictions were all competing with each other and not sharing information. Nobody reached out to the feds for help (using the mail to terrorize and facilitate crimes is a federal beef btw). Nobody reached out to behavioral psychologists for insights into the killer's mindset and motivations (it was a few years before "profilers" became a thing, but still it seems like common sense to me; then again I'm a bit sharper than any cops or feds I've ever met or read about). Nobody thought to chase down the manufacturer or seller of the rope or where the ammo might have been purchased, etc. They did nothing with the unusual boots lead (again, the feds would have come in handy here to check the military base stores). The killer kept taunting the police. That's how they finally caught BTK; he kept taunting them and they finally tracked him down. So they didn't even open up lines of communication to get the killer comfortable talking to them. None or obvious surveillance of suspects/persons of interest. True story: I once planned on becoming a professional assassin (big money in whacking organized crime figures and crooked cops and politicians), and as I looked into it one of the very first things that struck me was how easy it was to get away with murdering somebody in the United States if you didn't have any connections with them/apparent reason to kill them. Because cops are lazy and dumb and unimaginative and accustomed to sweating confessions out of people who knew the deceased instead of following the evidence and using deductive reasoning. Investigative methods and procedures might have improved in the 45 years since the Zodiac, but not much else.
"Ass to ass. Ha ha ha ha. ASS TO ASS!"; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa5z77EI8y0
MHS, no disrespect intended, i certainly don't want the Mob after me, and i don't doubt you are sharper than me, i'm basically a mental butterknife, but i think the cops did about as much as they could, in that era. if he had kept on attacking couples the way he started out, yes, he would have been caught. but the guy faded into the woodwork. police stuff was primitive then.
what you said about getting away with murder was true then and somewhat true now - but i'll tell you what: SK's in the future will have have a much harder time sustaining long careers. not just DNA, but also the electronic surveillance culture. i have no love for the damn american police state we are now living in. but one positive effect is that it will be more and more difficult for serial criminals - at least on a "street level", to get away with crap for long.
of course, the problem with that is that the more crime they stop, the more it legitimizes the whole stinking system. welcome to the true life science fiction american dystopia.
That's not entirely accurate.
You are correct that the agencies did not directly work together in a task force, as they would now, but they did share information.
They did work with the FBI who examined the letters under their mail fraud jurisdiction exactly as you suggested, and they ran their own additional fingerprints and handwriting analysis. The case was eventually all put together under the jurisdiction of the CA DOJ after it went cold and they reinvestigated it from scratch, but didn't have much to add.
They did check into the boots and the rope and found that they were very common items with no singular point of origin to investigate. I don't know about the ammo, that would be a good idea if they didn't check into that.
They also were very proactive in trying to communicate with the killer. After his first letter they asked for more information and the Zodiac responded. After that they mainly made antagonistic statements calling him out for incorrect facts in his letters, and having the chronicle write an article that criticized him as "the clumsy killer" and "latent homosexual". That tactic didn't really work so well as it did in the first place, but he did keep writing.
They didn't really employ profilers until later since they weren't in common use, but they did employ psychics who pretty much told them the same thing.
Oh yeah and they wasted a lot of time tailing Arthur Allen, and not really looking into anyone else. An idea that it seems a lot of IMDB posters would employ today if they had the chance.
Oh yeah and they wasted a lot of time tailing Arthur Allen, and not really looking into anyone else. An idea that it seems a lot of IMDB posters would employ today if they had the chance.
Babu wrote:
Did they "tail" him while he was driving his dirty old 1952 Kaiser with 58" front wheel track and which happens to resemble the body of a Studebaker of similar vintage?
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**CRICKETS** from the Zodiac case EVER-INFORMED, ALL-KNOWING, ALL-INFORMATIVE, duckking2001 ??!!
Quack... Quack... I don't know whether to laugh or cry!
You care more about proving me, and some guy from a website that I barely know, wrong than you care about justice for an unsolved murder, just because I argued with you like three years ago. That's really sad.
If it wasn't true, then every one of your posts would not be gloating about how I think that I'm right. You would just say what you needed to say and leave me out of it. It doesn't bother me, I don't mind being wrong because it means I've learned something. That's really all I'm trying to do, help people learn here.
I truly wish you luck in your research against Allen. I've never had a problem with that. But your bad attitude and the way that you are so hung up on me really has me worried about your emotional health and it's not good for either of us for me to respond to you. I don't want to talk to you anymore, so don't bother talking to me.
The only reason I am responding to you now is because you created a new account to get around my "ignore". Don't do that. You will just continue to be put on my ignore list.
Enough already with your sanctimonious, "care about justice for an unsolved murder" – You're sounding ever-more like your idol, Butterfield. How come you barely post on his site anymore, David Wescott? You ever ponder what a sorry state ZKF is in? Looks like you haven't helped out much with that condition!
Argued with me years ago? When? You made sure no rejoinder was permitted. That's why outside of IMDb you've sought (and continue to seek) safe haven for your vapid "criticism" on smarmy closed in-groups that play softball toss with you and won't challenge the hollow claims you broadcast over the Web. In the past, you've consistently used Butterfield's site to post sarcastic, unsubstantiated "debunking" one-liners while providing ZERO evidence to back your ass up. Be a man, Duckky... why don't you log on to ZKF now and type a little postscript about how you don't know what the **** you're talking about?
I've gone easy on you. Do you recall how many times over the last several years you've lifted thread topics and current discussions from other Zodiac forums, then paraphrased them on IMDb—within the same week if not day—while providing ZERO attribution? And please don't start with your fatuous excuse that netiquette prevents you from crediting other posters' ideas and topic threads. FOOL! [I can re-post them here in the future under any account I choose. IMDb doesn't have them saved, but I do.] See I'm not so "hung up on" you, duckking2001 as focused on Truth, Justice, and The American Way to Crime-Solving! Will your Mummy knit a wool cape for me as well?
My few posts here are not for your benefit, little man with his sweaty ignore button, but for others to see what a shallow, self-righteous moron you are.
The only reason I am responding to you now is because you created a new account to get around my "ignore". Don't do that. You will just continue to be put on my ignore list.
It doesn't bother me, I don't mind being wrong because it means I've learned something.
That's really all I'm trying to do, help people learn here.
Why are you so angry? You go to every site that I'm a member of and save all of my posts? That is not normal. Do you have friends and family to support you?
Now I don't want to ignore you because I'm scared about what you will do. I really believe that you would harm me if given the opportunity. You have serious problems. You need to get help.
Ooops! duckking2001 has forgotten to activate his ignore button.
You go to every site that I'm a member of and save all of my posts?
Except you are missing the notion that, if we assume the Zodiac to be Arthur Leigh Allen, I believe he in fact did stop, and tried to lead a potentially more normal life.
shareThe theory is that the urge to kill is like the urge to have sex. Just like most folks really want to have sex most of the time, and will definitely pursue the urge when they have the opportunity, a serial killer has the urge to kill and wants to scratch that itch.
But this doesn't mean we all go around jumping on women all the time - our brains govern our impulses. And there are times when there's no opportunity so we don't even pursue it.
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Philo's Law: To learn from your mistakes, you have to realize you're making mistakes.
That's ridiculous. Could be wrong, but pretty sure married couples in their 40s and 50s and certainly 60s are a bit less excited to have sex than in their 20s and 30s. They simply have other responsibilities and things that fill their head and are in a different place in life.
shareYes, when I said "most folks" of course I meant "every single person without exception." Oh, hold on... no I didn't...
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Philo's Law: To learn from your mistakes, you have to realize you're making mistakes.
We will never know, Zodiac was never apprehended so he could have died or was in prison for other crimes. Most of them do not stop until something stops them. Also some are more impulsive than others and have shorter "cooling off periods." There are organized and disorganized, the organized tend to have higher IQs and are more in control of their crimes and better at covering their tracks.
share