Serial Killers

The quiet Pacific Northwest in the 1960’s was home to one of the most murderous serial killers in American history. One ordinary boy, a generation earlier, who preferred to play with women’s shoes had become a native. Jerome Henry Brudos, known as the Lust Killer or the Shoe Fetish Murderer, who laid waste to a series of young lives as young women from the Portland, Oregon area, may be one of the most distastefully macabre of a notably violent and insane group of American serial killer criminals.

In 1969, local women in Portland and surrounding areas started to disappear never to return. Strangled corpses started to surface although in circumstances that meant their location was meant to be a secret. A young boy whose mother has emotionally abused him and psychologically rejected him had formed the beginnings of a vicious killer in the making. Assault grew to rape, coercion grew to abduction, cruising escalated to impersonation of a police officer. The fixated footwear fetish of Brudos had trodden into forbidden fields.

Serial killers like Jerome Brudos are truly a menace to society, both for their sophisticated attempts to mask their killing thirst and their flagrant exhibitionism of their aberrant tendencies. Jerry Brudos made no secret of the fact he had a visible gender dysfunction, which only subsided during male stereotypical experiences like (heterosexual) marriage and fatherhood. But as evidenced by earlier sexual experiences, Jerry Brudos seemed to become enabled and sexually aroused by the wearing of young women’s shoes and underwear, possibly in a trans-formative state toward a gender his mother might have found more pleasing.

Linda Slawson, 19, was a door to door encyclopedia saleswoman in January of 1968, whose chopped-off foot became a “model” for the Brudos shoe collection. Jan Whitney’s car broke down in November of 1968, and after killing the 23-year-old by strangulation Jerry Brudos violated her corpse sexually and repeated this process during the next few days in his private home workshop. Karen Sprinkler, 19, became a fatal model for Brudos in March of 1969 after being picked up in a department store parking garage. Linda Salee, 22, was coerced by Brudos from a local shopping mall.

If there is one signal mark of serial killer, it is a submerged identity trying to get out. The lack of self, the blurred border between another personality (such as a mother) and the isolation from general society and the self-identification as a “reject” or weirdo can designate many types of people into a subcategory vulnerable to criminal behavior. Jerry Brudos was a man who kept his wife under “lock and key”, had two children, made her perform household chores nude in high heels, yet viciously exercised the power of life or death over his many victims. The killings were adorned with objects like women’s underwear and shoes. In these episodes, the girl his mother had always wanted began to emerge.

The likelihood of an individual to follow the rules when they see themselves as separate and apart from society is a common thread among serial killers. Anther common denominator among serial killers is the choice by parents to ignore strong signals that important erosions in a child’s development are occurring. In the case of Jeremy Brudos, multiple alarms should have been ringing long before Brudos’ adolescence. Known as the “Lust Killer” or the “Shoe Killer”, Brudos fulfilled every dread the storied slayings of a serial killer could ever create. His psychopathy was so bizarre he would hang victims to die while watching cartoons and crank up a strangling women while idling in predatory dispassion.

Jerry Brudos was identified early as a son who had a predilection for his mother’s and then other women’s accessories shoes and clothing. Feminine behavior, playing with women’s clothing and dressing women’s shoes strongly aligns the self of a male potential killer with another life, another destiny. The committal of the serial murders is a product of the rage, anger, humiliation and suffering the individual experiences when distanced from this idea of themselves. Jerry Brudos and his killings stamped the Willamette Valley with fear, trepidation, and sadistic violence.

Maternal tirades channeled Brudos’ mixed sexual aggression and sadistic tendencies into violence. Society demands that the killer conform to outward ideals and archetypes. Like John Wayne Gacy and the Green River Killer, societal participation bred a cycle of internal pressure that was bound to break sooner or later. The disturbed tendencies of an adolescent Brudos were dismissed as psychological, not psychiatric. Underground prisons with sexual victims on tap were a theme in his fantasies. These ideas would grow to mirror reality in his workshop and garage prison of murder.

As early as age five, Brudos was instituting the wearing of women’s shoes and women’s underwear. By seventeen, his sexual tendencies veered toward the abnormal, triggered by altitudes of secrecy, fear, and aberration. Born in South Dakota in 1939, Jerry Brudos was the youngest child whose mother would have preferred a daughter. The oldest of four brothers, Larry, was the favorite. Growing into an ordinary boy, with a doughy, pale countenance, Jerry Brudos nevertheless was to electrify the Portland area with ugly murders and astonishingly sadistic sexual violence.

The following arrest of his threatening and assaulting a young girl delivered Brudos into the care of the Oregon State Psychiatric Hospital. Brudos’ nine month incarceration identified in-depth fantasies containing range and anger against his mother. Brudos was known to take women’s shoes and flee from them. The assignment of Brudos’ sexual fantasies and obsession with feminine objects was categorized into schizophrenia, yet Jerry Brudos graduated with his high school class in 1957 and went on to become an electronics technician.

His attitude toward his behavior was compulsive and psychologically satisfying but the triggers grew more serious. After high school, his behaviors continued. Joining the armed services, his dreams were of a Korean girl entering his bed and untold other secrets. His attitudes and thoughts had him cashiered out of Fort Ord. His mother Eileen ordered him to live in the shed in the back of the family house. The third-class mode of living was to have long term consequences form those who ended up his Jerry’s crosshairs. A date with a girl named Ralphene ended up pregnant and a wedding occurred.

But life was hardly linear and focused with young Jerry Brudos. He would prowl the neighborhood looking for underwear and shoes to steal, this behavior progressed to murder with follow-up segues of masturbation and more shoe wearing. For these reasons Jerry Brudos was also called the Shoe Fetish Slayer. Brudos was so inwardly focused on his sexual fantasies his marriage and children were merely secondary afterthoughts to his main program of lust killing and shoe fetish enjoyment. Stalking a woman to her apartment, her discovery of him ended up in her murder.

Serial killer experts theorize that Brudos felt more in control of women when possessing himself of their underwear and shoes, but also that he was able to participate in a feminine side of himself (as his mother had always wanted). The mutilation of the corpses exhibited both his hatred of his mother’s rejection and possibly an antipathy toward the women’s sexual characteristics he could never fully assume. Brudos took photographs and kept them as trophies of his gender based supremacy. This corresponds to the rejection of his mother towards his gender from childhood.

Brudos tried a plea of criminal insanity in court. Like many serial killers, Brudos considered himself smarter than the police. He even gave police a section of the rope he had used to hang and strangle his victims when Oregon State Police visited him for questioning. Brudo’s cruising for women locally had given police description of a “Vietnam Vet” and one woman who had narrowly avoided being killed also reported a matching description. Jerome Brudos preferred to believe himself falsely infallible to those of superior intellect and claimed an advanced IQ in later interviews.

This error was exploited at his trial as prosecutors massaged Jerry Brudos’ ego on the stand with “hypothetical” questions. His remorseless trophy taking of cut off breasts and photographs, underwear and shoes of his victims proved convenient for local police. Brudos began to confess. His sloppy attempt to evade capture were almost laughable. Brudos was arrested 250 miles from the Canadian border, as police followed with an arrest warrant. Brudos was found wearing women’s underwear, hiding under a blanket in the back seat of the car. His career of escalating torture and violence with sexual overtones and necrophilic assault of the victims dubbed him the “Lust Killer”.

Brudos was given three consecutive life sentences. Authorities probed the culpability of Jerry’s wife Ralphene who might have led police to her husband earlier in the series of killings. Psychologists have estimated that fear and denial caused Ralphene to block out the photographs of nude women she came across and the discovery of a “molded” breast, one of Brudos’ grisly murder trophies. Filing appeals while in prison, he collected women’s clothing and shoe catalogues while forming his own prison library. Convicted of three of the four murders he is believed to have perpetrated, Jerry Brudos died in prison of liver cancer in 2006.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.

The BTK Killer conformed to the classic serial killer profile, showing that any combination or social profiling will always yield an adaptation to the serial killer profile. The BTK killer was a man named Dennis Rader, outwardly a pillar of his community. But the mask of a law-abiding family man with children and ties to community leadership hid a deviant sadist whose lust for sexual release via strangulation and killing struck again and again. Childhood zoosadism and sexual handling of women’s underwear also flagged Rader as a serious deviant. But these signs were concealed.

Between 1974 and 1991, residents of Wichita, Kansas kept one eye out at all times. The BTK killer fascinated the public after his arrest because his “subterranean” lusts were so skillfully hidden beneath the appearance of normality. On that basis anyone might be a serial killer, a concept that both threatens society and challenges it. Rader acknowledged after arrest and sentencing that the victims were an ends to a means, and that he did not expect victims’ families to forgive him. The BTK killer is the record holder for waste of human life for the most trite and misguided of purposes.

The BTK killer tortured his victims and created a universe of pain he controlled. But nothing could stop his cyclic sexual urges that required sadistic episodes of induced terror in others to furnish the BTK killer with sexual pleasure. The first murders, as many serial killers experience, were experiments based on projected fantasies. He grew more crafty over time, changing his method of targeting likely episodes, victims, and environments of his prey to maximize pleasure and enjoyment without risking exposure unduly.

That one man could hold Wichita, Kansas, in fear for over thirty years is a testimony to the law enforcement gaps and social complacency of American culture. Women of that era made a habit of checking their phone cords for a dial tone, since the first Otero murders were signaled by a clipped phone wire. The Otero murders were heinous because they involved a family, two young children, and and the mother and father killed in their own home. The young girl Josephine Otero had been repeatedly resuscitated after strangling threshold has been reached so the BTK killer could maximize his pleasure and maintain a high level of erotic thrill.

The BTK killer selected victims for opportunity and convenience, acquiring a skill at concealing his identity and an expertise in isolating likely victims where the episodes of assault would not be discovered. BTK operated in a manner that concluded in a sexual episode that also happened to be a murder scene. A gratification event for Dennis Rader left a corpse or damaged human body at the very least. The Otero three children that survived did so only because they were at school during the “project”.

The childhood fantasies and high school dreams of sexual gratification became realities when BTK was an adult. Rader himself expressed surprise (after being incarcerated) that these early signs of deviancy were not caught or observed. Rader’s sentencing allocations are almost surreal in their brisk and matter-of-fact statements of killing, torturing and murdering innocent victims. Could Rader have benefited from counseling and other types of treatment? The world will never know.

BTK used positions as a compliance officer and security guard employee as he patrolled streets and boulevards looking for potential “projects”. His sizing up of a potential victim included their habits and likelihood to be alone and isolated. Masturbation and sexual release, interleaved with the binding torturing and killing of one or multiple victims was his modus operandi. The aftermath crime scenes of BTK sickened police officers and detectives for the manner of death they suggested.

Victims were not sexually assaulted themselves, but this was threatened to gain control of the victims. The BTK killer was enacting his fantasy, and attendant sexual release was the goal. But the heightening of the sexual experience came not from intercourse but from the repeated strangulation and “control” over the life or death of the victim.Thus, any person, old or young, man or woman could be the next victim.

With practice Rader collected items in a bag he called a “hit kit” with the supplies he needed to subdue and torture his victims. Things like tape, cleaning supplies, rope, handcuffs, pantyhose, or anything the killer might need to bind and torture his victims was assembled there. Certain murders changed in their methodology slightly because BTK forgot to bring the right supplies.

Men, women and children comprised the BTK killer’s victims. His long killing spree displays the strategy of serial killer intent on satisfying his need to kill with the social requirement of avoiding capture or arrest. The BTK’s ability to remain at large benefited from rural law enforcement, disturbed crime scenes, and overall shock and what the murders suggested. Even hardened law enforcement types were appalled and sickened by the themes and evidence, crime scene photos and concepts of the case.

Unlike other serials killers like Ted Bundy or The I-5 killer, The BTK killer had a life to lose. His marriage, children and job were on the line with every kill. His need to keep that life intact competed with his need to slake his desires in a confined atmosphere of controlled killing. His program of binding, torturing, and killing competed with the need to maintain a status quo. Upon his arrest for the murders a judge granted his wife an immediate divorce.

Dennis Rader’s childhood showed signs of the same isolation and zoosadism of other killers like the Son of Sam and Ed Gein. As the oldest of four sons, Dennis had no abuse and received no religious scolding from an overbearing mother, nor was emotionally taunted by a distant father. But the background he did have taught him how accepting people could be of behavioural aberration accompanied by an authority figure. Like many opportunistic killers, Rader lived his BTK persona within roles like security guard and patroller; he was able to combine cruising for victims and other purposes.

Rader evinced no qualities of the serial killers noted elsewhere, for one very good reason. He kept these behaviors hidden and masked, his aberrations kept hidden under a complex set of accepted labels. Proud father, good husband, Boy Scout leader, church elder, community fence mender, all these disguised the opportunistic cruising and unexplained absences the BTK used to satisfy his needs.

Poems enhancing the grandeur of his exploits began to appear form the BTK killer. A phone call in his own voice announcing a homicide also showed boldness. The BTK killer confided that he had wanted to divorce his wife to free up his time for “trolling” for victims. His fantasies could take shape and if possible he might isolate or stalk the victims until a killing episode came together. The cruising for victims and stalking particular “projects” have the BTK a sense of security to control the victim when the time came.

The BTK killer evolved into a persona that notes delivered to police and authorities seeking attention for his “achievements”. The BTK killer even termed his kills as intended victims as “projects” he could mull over and plan for. Dennis Rader had a past with national service and collected a lot of hardware yet did not distinguish himself in school or with other pursuits. Unlike the “Son of Sam” Rader needed no complex system of demonic threats to galvanize his killings. Fantasies from childhood and arousal thresholds triggered by spankings or wounded animals grew into deranged killing manias.

The ability to blend in and become one of the group kept the BTK killer in a secure social network that helped him function longer than isolated social “islands” like the Son of Sam and Ed Gein. Even Ted Bundy augured for more publicity as an acknowledged serial killer, but then Bundy didn’t have as intact a real life as Dennis Rader did. So completely did Rader fit the “bill” of social normality than when women complained about him they were rebuffed. The latent period between the 1960’s and the 1980’s defined an innocence in American social culture which did not allow women to as boldly assert boundaries or recognize predatory behavior with as much zeal as is common today.

Where Ted Bundy was a showoff, Rader contained his ego. Where Gein almost flouted his eccentricity, Rader worked hard to project the image of a “square”. Without flamboyant visible tendencies to cement the suspicions of others, The BTK killer remained at large longer than most serial killers ever will. Yet his mocking letter and taunting notes were his undoing. After “verifying” form police that a floppy disk could not be traced, Rader sent one anyway. His church information and name were in the file metadata, and police closed in.

Rader had sent numerous packages and letters to enhance the BTK legend, including crime scene bits and murder victim paraphernalia that only the murderer could have produced. On of these drop-offs included a Home Depot where a surveillance camera revealed a black jeep being driven away. When the floppy disk data pinned down Rader’s identity, the black jeep in the driveway convinced police. Police then matched DNA from Rader’s daughter’s pap smear and acknowledged the near match to evidence from the crime scenes.

The BTK killer killed people for the purpose of deriving sexual pleasure from the process of strangling them, from controlling the speed and manner in which they died or clung to life. Unlike many another serial killers, The BTK killer did not want to harm or kill the actual people involved for any reason. The incidence of his sexual desire in an aberrant mode simply could not be contained and the episodes unfolded as they happened. But the setup from the vantage point of a stalker improved BTK’s chances of success. Despite more than one stalking charge BTK was not identified as the killer.

The BTK killer operated within a framework of isolated opportunities to kill other people in a limited manner, yet the cold arm’s length perspective the BTK killer had for his victims did not invalidate the value of their lives. The marathon sentence duration the BTK received ensured no parole, but as Kansas didn’t reinstate the death penalty until 1994, the BTK did not meet his own most favored end,

The BTK remains in prison in a special area, in solitary due to threatening attitudes and practices for his crimes form other inmates. Allowed mail, TV and radio, the victims of the BTK killer cry that even this is too much luxury for the deviant serial killer. Considering that boredom made him kill in later years, the isolation and sole living habits of his incarceration may be the most abusive legal punishment his psyche could stand.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.

Rodney Alcala is a convicted serial killer whose raping and tortured killings of four women has resulted in a death sentence. Rodney Alcala raped one woman with a claw hammer. Yet the spurious criminal justice system that rewards convicted killers with lifetime jail sentences has upset many members of the general, let alone the victims and their friends and families. Rodney Alcala was sentenced in 1980 for the killing of a Huntington Beach woman. Additional victims of Rodney Alcala have stretched legal court proceedings to the present day.

Caught raping an eight year old girl in 1968, Alcala served thirty four months. The nature of Alcala’s crimes are savagely violent, premeditatively abusive, and sexually motivated in origin. Alcala struck down men, women and children in his twisted lust for episodes of torture, rape and abduction. Channeling a rage or lust unknown except in the most vicious of serial killers, Alcala’s propensity for murder was matched by his cunning in enticing victims. Alcala’s “shtick” was the use of a camera and the pose as a photographer to capture the attention of victims and build enough trust to lead them astray.

The March 2010 sentencing of Rodney Alcala for the Orange County murders stems from killings from the 1970’s. Common to the cases of serial murderers in America of this era, development of legal DNA evidence brought Alcala’s career at large to a halt. Alcala is suspected in the strangulation death and disappearances of many other victims. Alcala’s habits make law enforcement professionals dread the existence of other undisclosed victims both as bargaining tools and further proof of his serial killing deeds. Even among the most brutal and vicious serial killers, Rodney Alcala stands apart.

Like many secretive killers with a method for concealing the bodies, Alcala may be waiting for bargaining room in the appeals phase of his trial proceedings to proffer knowledge and proof of additional deaths. Historically serial killers have negotiated proof of additional murders for tradeoffs in sentencing and incarceration conditions.Yet Alcala may have over thirty additional murders to reveal. As Alcala furnishes material an argument for his appeals to his current and most recent sentence, news media and the law enforcement community will be listening closely for hints of further proof of serial killings.

Alcala may be guilty of thirty or more murders. Lack of forensic sophistication in crime scenes, casual evidence gathering techniques by American law enforcement, aging witnesses and evidence, and the mores of the times allowed for many people to disappear into the web of Rodney James Alcala. Apprehended in the late 1970’s, Alcala is still defending himself in law courts in legal proceedings today.

This era in American history remains the ‘golden era” of serial killers. Rodney Alcala is thought by some investigators to be possibly among the most prolific of American serial killers because he was smart enough to shield his activities and elude the law. Alcala “warned” the jury in his recent trial that sentencing would cost the state and public a huge amount of money due to planned appeals and additional legal processes.

Alcala is one of many American serial killers whose reign of terror went largely unnoticed in the United States of the 1970’s. Development of DNA evidence coupled with exacting legal proceedings are a element in many American serial killer histories. In the typical celebrity phase of many serial killers, a penned letter attributed to Alcala has been put up recently for sale on Ebay. Profilers of serial killers note the similarity to other murderers like the Green River Killer and Ted Bundy.

Rodney Alcala once appeared on the American television show ‘The Dating Game’ and has manifested an eagerness to self-substantiate an identity as a notorious serial killer. Alcala’s favorable rulings to shield his prior sexual criminal history from new case trials and his “career” as a celebrity defendant has made segments of the American public sensitive to Alcala’s evasion of a jail sentence or death penalty.

The day after the jury voted for the death penalty for serial killer Rodney James Alcala, more than a hundred photographs of Alcala’s were released. The female women and children pictured in 1970’s era photo poses and shots were of individuals composed by Alcala. Law enforcement officials found these photos among materials more than 30 years ago in a storage locker of Alcala’s. Circumstances show Alcala rented it just as police were closing in on him for killings in 1977-1979. Continued legal setbacks to Alcala’s incarceration and execution have vexed victim’s families and opened new scrutiny into the American legal system.

Alcala is thought to be an intelligent man, crafty enough to legally represent himself yet not smart enough to dispose of the kind of trophy photographs sociopath killers are known to keep. Trophy jewelry from multiple suspected victims found among Alcala’s belongings helped convict him of the murders. Alcala was the first man in a dozen years to represent himself for a death penalty trial. Alcala was born in 1943, and is self-possessed enough at 66 to argue his own cases in front of juries. Yet despite a newly announced death penalty sentence, Alcala’s path to justice for his culpability for his serial killings is far from over.

Photos hidden by Alcala may point to more killings. Media release of photographs of a putative series of killing victims has launched an investigation by law enforcement into unknown or unidentified victims of Alcala not previously linked to him. It is now suggested that Alcala may have murdered three women in New York City in the 1970s. But legal proceedings for these crimes and allowing Alcala more time in the courtroom spotlight is a troublesome matter. Court trials and extradition would be excessive and complex, freeing a clever killer from everyday incarceration to entertain more jury members representing himself. And like the families of victims and the general public, prosecutors may elect to leave Alcala to his death sentence without further circus acts.

While convicted to date for only five murders, Alcala may be responsible for as many as 100 murders during his killing spree.

Article by Roy Whyte . Visit his Google+ page for more.