The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (65 page)

July 2004, charging them with a series of murders The fanfare of publicity, complete with Texas

around Milan, dating from 1998.

Rangers on patrol and homicide detectives staked out in the guise of teenage lovers, caused the killer to adopt a new technique for what was said to be his last attack.

“MOONLIGHT Murderer”

On May 4, 1946, 36-year-old Virgil Starks was shot America was still recovering from the trauma of World through the window of his farmhouse 10 miles from War II and the euphoria of V-J Day when headlines Texarkana as he read his evening paper after supper.

focused national attention on the town of Texarkana, Emerging from a bedroom at the sound of breaking straddling the Texas-Arkansas border. There, between glass, his wife was wounded twice before she managed March 23 and May 4, 1946, an unknown slayer

to escape and summon help from neighbors. In her claimed at least five victims, surfacing at three-week absence, the intruder prowled from room to room, leav-intervals to murder when the moon was full. His raming bloody footprints behind as he fled, dropping an page brought hysteria to Texarkana and environs, caus-untraceable flashlight in the bushes outside. Tracking ing citizens to fortify their homes or flee the town dogs were hurried to the scene, but they lost their man entirely, sparking incidents of violence when a paperboy at the point where he entered his car and drove off.

or salesman was mistaken for a lethal prowler in the Two days after the Starks attack, with Texarkana liv-night. Despite five decades of investigation and producing in a state of siege, a man’s mangled body was found tion of a feature film about the case, it stands officially on the railroad tracks north of town. While some unsolved today, the so-called phantom gunman uniden-reporters have suggested that he may have been the tified.

killer capping off his murder spree with suicide, a coro-The killer’s first attack, unrecognized for several ner’s report of May 7, 1946, reveals that victim Earl weeks, took place on February 23. Jimmy Hollis, age McSpadden had been stabbed to death before his body
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MOTIVES for Serial Murder

was dumped on the tracks, suffering further mutilation from consideration as serial slayers, their argument when a train passed over at 5:30 A.M. Today, it seems becomes untenable when specific cases are examined.

more likely that McSpadden was another victim of the First, we know that some “dispassionate” assassins

“Moonlight Murderer,” dispatched in an attempt to actually enjoy their work immensely, deriving both a end the manhunt with a simulated suicide.

psychological and a financial reward from their crimes.

Arkansas lawman Max Tackett claimed to have cap-Likewise many contract killers—including the likes of tured the killer in the summer of 1946, basing his case

“Iceman” Richard Kuklinski and Elmer “Trigger”

on disjointed remarks from a convicted car thief and an Burke—have committed private, personally motivated inadmissible statement from the suspect’s wife. At least murders in addition to their contract “hits.” It is also one FBI agent also fingered the thief, later sentenced to well established that pathological slayers like Thomas life on unrelated charges, as a prime suspect in the mur-Creech and Dennis Webb accept murder contracts on ders, but he was never charged. If he was the killer, that occasion, thus mixing business with pleasure.

fact somehow managed to elude Captain M. T. Gonza-A second type of criminal-enterprise slaying is the ullas, in charge of the Texas Rangers’ investigation at gang-motivated murder. Again, some purists will com-Texarkana. As late as 1973, Gonzaullas listed the plain that no “gang-banger” should ever be counted as

“moonlight” murders as his most baffling case, vowing a “true” serial killer, no matter how many murders he that he would never stop hunting the killer as long as he commits . . . and again, the argument is weak. The lived. Today, the Ranger captain is no longer with us, aforementioned Thomas Creech and Dennis Webb both and the case remains officially unsolved.

rode with “outlaw” motorcycle gangs on occasion, committing several murders each on behalf of those groups. In Canada, prolific slayer Yves “Apache”

MOTIVES for Serial Murder

Trudeau killed many of his 42 known victims as a ser-Serial killers in FICTION AND FILM are frequently por-vice to the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, but an equal trayed as twisted geniuses, pursuing some gothic number were killed out of personal spite.

agenda that requires a modern Sherlock Holmes (or Criminal-competition homicide is a third form of even psychic powers) to cut short the reign of terror. In criminal enterprise slaying, similar in many ways—if real life, of course, the motives for serial murder are as not indistinguishable—from gang-related slayings. The diverse as those for any other type of crime—as varied, same arguments apply, and one need only recall the case in fact, as the killers themselves. Some “experts” still of “Homicide Harry” Strauss, linked to over 100 slay-insist that serial murder is “always sexual” in nature, ings with Brooklyn’s “Murder Incorporated,” to see but such broad generalization is no more valid than how prolific such killers may be.

claims that serial killers are “always male” or “always Kidnap murder is the fourth type of criminal-enter-white.” In fact, there are no absolutes.

prise homicide, assuming some sort of demand in The FBI Crime Classification Manual (1992) pre-exchange for the victim’s return. William Hickman was sents four broad categories of homicide with 32 subcat-one repeat killer who tried his hand at ransom kidnap-egories, nearly all of them applicable to some case of ping in 1927 to raise the tuition for college. He returned serial murder within recent years. Three are examined his 12-year-old victim on schedule, but she had been here, while the fourth— group-cause homicide—is dis-strangled, with her body hacked off at the waist, arms cussed in the essay on TEAM KILLERS. The manual itself severed at the elbows, eyes stitched open to present a provides a number of examples, clearly demonstrating semblance of life at the ransom exchange.

the diversity of motives for serial murder, and examina-The fifth type of criminal-enterprise slaying, product-tion of the several categories readily brings other cases tampering homicide, may—or may not—include a to mind.

financial-extortion demand. No motive has yet been determined for the unsolved “TYLENOL MURDERS” of
CRIMINAL-ENTERPRISE HOMICIDE

1982, but those crimes inspired another practitioner, The first category of murder, with 10 subheadings, is Stella Nickell, to poison her husband for his life insur-labeled by the Bureau as criminal-enterprise homicide—

ance. As an adjunct to the scheme, she also killed a total that is, any murder committed for personal gain. Some stranger with poisoned Extra-Strength Excedrin cap-purists will contend that serial murderers “never kill for sules in an effort to divert police attention from herself.

profit,” but again, such absolutist claims will not sur-Drug murder, the sixth type of criminal-enterprise vive close scrutiny.

killing, is typically—but not necessarily—related to The first subcategory of criminal-enterprise homicide organized gang activity. Once again, the distinction is is contract or third-party murder. While some theorists blurred because many serial killers abuse drugs exten-automatically exclude contract killers or “hit men”

sively, and some occasionally sell drugs to support
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MOTIVES for Serial Murder

themselves. Convicted killer William Mentzer, presently tially a crime of passion, as when CARROLL EDWARD

serving life in California, is known to have participated COLE strangled his second wife in a drunken rage. The in cocaine smuggling and drug-related murders in staged domestic homicide may also spring from stress Florida. That commercial activity did not prevent him or anger, but an effort is made to deceive investigators, from committing other homicides for personal motives, as when Paula Sims blamed a nonexistent “masked including alleged involvement in satanic human sacrifice.

intruder” for the deaths of two successive children.

The most common form of criminal-enterprise slayA third kind of personal-cause homicide is labeled ing linked to “bona fide” serial killers is doubtless the argument murder, resulting from verbal disputes in the insurance/inheritance-related death. A majority of those heat of the moment, distinguished from spontaneous who kill successive relatives and spouses, including both domestic slayings by the FBI’s insistence that victims male “BLUEBEARD” slayers and female “BLACK WID-exclude family or household members. This sounds like OWS,” murder in anticipation of some financial reward.

nitpicking until we recall the penchant for sudden vio-The FBI manual further subdivides this type of murder lence among many serial killers, prepared to lash out on into individual-profit and commercial-profit slayings. In a whim, in response to real or imagined insults. Prolific the first case, the killer hopes to profit financially, as slayer David Bullock shot one victim for laughing at him, through a life insurance payment; in the second, his-or-another for the simple act of “messing with [a] Christ-her desire is to achieve controlling interest in an active mas tree, telling me how nice the Christmas tree was.”

business concern (and the profits from same).

Conflict murders, in contrast to those arising from The last category of criminal-enterprise slaying, verbal arguments, spring from some ongoing tension dubbed felony murder, refers to slayings that occur dur-between killer and victim. The circumstances may ing commission of some other crime, such as robbery or include anything from a feud between neighbors (which burglary. Again, the FBI recognizes two subtypes. Indis-prompted DONALD HARVEY to poison one of his few criminate felony murder refers to a homicide planned in victims not killed in hospitals) to a clash between crimi-advance but without specific victims in mind, as when a nal accomplices (as when Elmer Henley shot and killed store is robbed and the customers killed to eliminate DEAN CORLL in Houston, Texas).

witnesses. Charles Sinclair, a nomadic killer linked to A fifth kind of personal-cause homicide, labeled the murders of 10 coin shop proprietors, exemplifies authority killing by the FBI, involves the murder of an such action. The flip side of the coin, situational felony actual or perceived authority figure in the killer’s life.

murder, involves a murder spawned by panic, confu-Prime examples may be found in the work of serial sion, or impulse. Again, William Hickman provides a killers who, like HENRY LUCAS and EDMUND KEMPER, case in point, with his “accidental” murder of a Los murdered abusive parents while simultaneously preying Angeles druggist after police surprised him in an act of on strangers outside the home.

robbery.

Revenge killing, yet another kind of personal-cause homicide, represents an act of retaliation for some real
PERSONAL-CAUSE HOMICIDE

or perceived injury. The target, in turn, may be either The second broad classification of murder is personal-symbolic or specific. Rudy Bladel, for instance, mur-cause homicide, defined as “an act ensuing from inter-dered a series of railroad employees after losing his job personal aggression [that] results in death to person(s) with the Rock Island Line, the killings cast in his mind who may not be known to each other. The homicide is as retribution against a heartless corporation.

not motivated by personal gain or sex and is not sanc-A seventh type of personal cause homicide, dubbed tioned by a group. It is the result of an underlying emo-nonspecific-motive killing, seems to be a catchall cate-tional conflict that propels the offender to kill.” Few gory for crimes without an apparent (or rational) students of crime would deny that these motives apply motive. The acts of delusional psychotics fall into this in many cases of serial murder.

category, and the FBI manual cites HERBERT MULLIN as The first subcategory listed in the Bureau manual is an example, with his murders intended to prevent erotomania-motivated killing, wherein murder springs earthquakes in California.

from the killer’s fixation with his victim. A case in point Extremist homicide, the eighth class of personal is Nathan Trupp’s murder of five total strangers in 1988, murders, is subdivided by FBI analysts into political, while stalking TV star Michael Landon (whom Trupp religious, and socioeconomic murders, the latter believed to be involved in a global fascist conspiracy).

spawned by hatred of specific ethnic, social, or religious Domestic homicide, another form of personal-cause groups. The sole example cited by the FBI is serial killer murder, may be either spontaneous or staged. The killer JOSEPH PAUL FRANKLIN, labeled a “political” killer in such cases has a familial or common-law relationship despite his obsessive hatred of blacks and Jews. A case to his victim. Spontaneous domestic murder is essen-of religious extremism leading to murder is seen in
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