Serial Killers

Modus operandi, signatures, and staging have been used by serial killers since the beginning. Crime profilers will use these to help determine who the unsub of the crime is and to get to know their style of killings. These also play a part in figuring out if the unsub is an organized or disorganized killer.

The first thing that needs to be understood is the modus operandi, or method of operation, is defined as the offender’s actions while committing the crime (Douglas and Munn 1992). The modus operandi is a learned behavior and can always evolve in order to accommodate the circumstances in which the crime is being committed (Bonn 2015). This includes everything from luring, capturing, and killing their victim. A method that worked with one victim, may not work with the next, so the offender must take what they learned from that crime and make any changes that are necessary.

A few examples of some serial killer’s method of operation are Charles Cullen, John Gacy, and H.H. Holmes. Charles Cullen was a nurse who murdered/attempted to murder around 29-45 people by poisoning them with prescription drugs when the victims did not need them (Murder Pedia). John Gacy, who was a clown performer, would seek out his victims and promise them construction work. Once he had them lured, he would take them hostage, sexually assault them, and strangle most of them with a rope. He was able to kill about 33 young men using this method of operation (Biography 2014). H.H Holmes had what he called his “murder castle” which he would lead his victims – mostly woman – to and suffocate with lethal gases. Once they were poisoned, he would take them to his basement in order to use them for experiments and then dispose of the bodies (Maranzani 2017). Every killer has their own specific method of operation and knowing what it is can help lead investigators to discover who the killer is.

Next to be discussed is signatures. Most serial killers will leave behind some sort of signature. A signature is an offender’s personal mark left on a victim or crime scene that is individual to them (Bonn 2015). Signatures can also be actions that the offender does consistently after each crime committed, for example, sending letters to the police to taunt them. They will leave these after committing their crime to show a part of their personality. These signatures are usually based off of their fantasies and unlike their MO, their signature always remains constant. A signature is left behind to give the offender satisfaction with their crime, however if the offender is interrupted, distracted, gets an unexpected response from the victim, they may not leave a signature. If the offender always leaves a signature but for one the reasons stated is unable to, this can cause them unsatisfied with their crime because since their violent crimes stem from their fantasies, their signature can be the most important part to them. Although this is very disturbing, the more victims found with a particular signature, the easier it is to find the killer. While investigators of course want to find the killer as soon as possible to put an end to their crimes, but they will usually need to gather evidence from multiple victims to accomplish this (Douglas 1992).

To show some examples of signatures, Charles Albright, Keith Hunter Jesperson, and Dennis Rader will be discussed. Charles Bright, called “The Eyeball Killer”, was a serial killer in the 1990’s. He murdered 3 women by shooting them and his signature was surgically removing their eyeballs (Murder Pedia). Although he never said why he would remove their eyes, it is thought to have stemmed from learning taxidermy at a young age. He was taught how to use tools, including the use of the scalpel that is needed to used to cut away the animal’s eyes from its sockets (Hollandsworth 1993). Keith Hunter Jesperson, referred to as the, “Happy Face Killer” was a serial killer in the 1990’s and had around eight confirmed victims. His signature was drawing smiley faces on his letters to the media. It all started with his first victim, Taunja Bennett. Even though he was the one who killed her, someone else came forward and falsely confessed to murdering her. This upset Jesperson greatly because he was not receiving the attention he had hoped he would get.

In order to obtain his sought-after attention, he wrote an anonymous confession on a bathroom wall along with the signing of a smiley face. However, his confession and drawing elicited no response, so he started sending hand written letters to police departments and the media which detailed his murders. Every letter that he sent was signed with a smiley face (Murder Pedia). Dennis Rader was a serial killer from 1974-1991 and had a total of ten victims (Murder Pedia). After Dennis would commit his crimes, he would consistently send letters to the police that entailed in great detail how he killed them and would give hints as to where he hid the bodies. These letters were meant to taunt the police and would always be signed with the initials “BTK”, meaning bind, torture, kill, which describes his MO and the reason why he named himself the “BTK killer” (Douglas 1992). The initials on the letters were also arranged in sexually explicit way, the B being the woman’s breasts, the T the torso, and the K being legs spread apart (Ramsland 2013).

Another important element when looking at a crime is examining if the serial killer staged the scene and/or posed the victim in a particular way. Staging is the deliberate alteration of the crime scene before the arrival of the scene (Douglas and Munn 1992). Staging is considered to be a part of the killer’s MO if the purpose of the changes to the crime scene are meant to mislead or confuse the investigators of the crime. Posing is considered to be part of the killer’s signature if the alterations are meant to satisfy their fantasy needs (Bonn 2015). Staging and posing is not something that occurs commonly, but it does occasionally happen.

Elizabeth Short, known as Black Dalhia is a good example of staging and posing. Black Dahlia was an aspiring actress in the 1940’s. She was 22 years of age when she was murdered in an extremely brutal fashion. Her murder became very attractive to the media due to the graphic nature of the crime scene. Black Dahlia’s body was found in an empty lot in Los Angeles. Her body had been stripped of any clothing, nude, cut in half, and posed with her arms above her head, elbows bent at a right angle, and legs spread apart. Along with these gruesome details, her body had been drained of blood and scrubbed clean (Biography 2014).

The MO, signature, and staging/posing are all important aspects that define a serial killer. Knowing these details can also help figure out if a killer is organized or disorganized. Organized killer’s crimes are usually planned and premeditated in order to leave no evidence of the crime. They are a lot harder to find due to the fact that they cover up tracks very well and are well educated on how police investigate crimes (Bonn 2015). These types of killers are more likely be more sociable, have average intelligence, and tend to take “trophies” with them from the crime scene along with any weapon used to commit the crime (Douglas 1992). Disorganized killers will kill when an opportunity is presented, even at random, which can lead to them leaving behind blood, fingerprints, etc. at the scene. These killers tend to have below average intelligence, not super sociable, and will often leave their victims in open view rather than attempting to cover up their mess (Douglas 1992). Disorganized killers are more likely to be young in age, mentally ill, live by themselves, and isolate themselves from other people (Bonn 2015). Of course, disorganized and organized killers are not one size fits all, as it is possible for an offender to display a mixture of both types.

Ted Bundy was a handsome, intelligent, and well-liked law student who seemed to be the perfect citizen. Bundy fell in love with a girl from a prominent family and became engaged to her. Later, she broke off the engagement, and Bundy was devastated. This is what prompted him to begin killing. Bundy would prey on young women, and would catch them off guard with his charm, abducting them, then beating, raping and murdering them. Bundy posed with a fake sling to gain sympathy of his victims, then would ask for their help. He killed over two dozen women in Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Florida.

During his killing spree, Bundy was caught, but escaped from prison twice. On January 15, 1978, Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house of a Florida university, and went on a rampage, bludgeoning two coeds to death, and critically wounding several others. Bundy continued to kill, until his capture in Florida in 1979. With his law school education and brilliant mind, Bundy acted as his own attorney and defended himself. He proclaimed his innocence and refused an insanity defense. Bite marks, however, were matched with Bundy’s teeth. In July of 1979, Bundy was convicted on two counts of murder, and was convicted to death by electric chair.

After ten years of appeals, Bundy was executed by the state of Florida in 1989. Charles Manson was born an unwanted son to a prostitute mother. From the age of three, Manson was put in and taken out of foster homes, juvenile prisons, and reform centers. At the age of 18, Manson was arrested for car theft, forgery, and fraud. Following his parole, Manson relocated to San Francisco during the ‘Summer of Love’. Manson used his charisma to attract a large following of outcasts and young women. At its peak, the Manson Family had up to 50 members. The Family settled on a desert ranch in Simi Valley, California where they engaged in sex, heavy drug use, and other illegal practices.

Manson soon became obsessed with the Beatles’ song ‘Helter Skelter,’ interpreting it as predicting a race war which would soon topple the United States. Manson began targeting enemies of the Family and members began murdering in 1968. On August 9th, 1969, several members of the Family raided the home of movie director Roman Polanski, brutally murdering five people, including film actress, Sharon Tate. Tate, who was several months pregnant, pleaded for her life, and the life of her baby. Her killer responded, “Look bitch, I have no mercy for you”. The following night, another couple was brutally murdered in the same fashion.

Graffiti was scrawled on the walls at each crime scene with phrases including “Pigs” and “Helter Skelter”. That same year several members of the Family were arrested for an unrelated crime. One of the family members, Susan Atkins confessed to the murders, implicating 10 other members of the Manson Family, including Manson himself. During the trial, members of the Family continued to support Manson, gathering outside the courthouse from dusk till dawn. During the trial, attorney Ronald Hughes was murdered. Manson and eight other members were convicted of the murder in 1971.

Manson was sentenced to death, but the death sentence was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972. In 1975, a member of the Manson Family, Lynette Fromme tried to assassinate President Ford. Manson continues to hold influence over members of the Family who follow him to this day. He in now eligible for parole and has had sever unsuccessful parole hearings. As a kid, Jeffrey Dahmer liked to torture and kill little animals. As an adult, he did the same, but with humans. The Milwaukee chocolate factory worker lured gay, black men to his apartment with the promise of sex and drugs, and instead killed them and had them for dinner. Once his victims were dead, Dahmer came to life. He would have sex with the corpses and was conscientious to always wear a condom.

Sex with live beings was not as good because they could get up and leave at any moment. He also enjoyed mutilation and experimented with different ways of disposing of the bodies. He once tried to turn one of his victims into a zombie by performing a homemade lobotomy on the man by drilling into his brain, and then pouring acid into the holes. When captured, police found three dissolving bodies in 55-gallon acid vats in his bedroom. They also found four severed heads, seven skulls, skeletons in his closet and a penis in a lobster pot. Ironically, Dahmer had no food in the fridge, only condiments. In the freezer he had a heart stashed “to eat later.” Dahmer was killed when he was viciously attacked by Christopher Scarver, a convicted killer on antipsychotic medication, while mopping the bathroom floor in a maximum-security prison.

Dahmer’s brain (at his mother’s request) was preserved in formaldehyde for future study. The general characteristics include more than three victims, some say four or more. The serial killer will not stop killing until he, or in very rare cases, she, is prevented from doing so. Most of the time, the victim is either unknown or of very little acquaintance to the offender. Furthermore, the motives are not clear-cut or obvious to anyone other than the offender. The motives are internal, based on fantasies which drive the offender to kill. Serial murders do not include murders that stemmed from a fight with another, revenge toward another, or being jealous of another. There is no monetary gain with serial murder (in other words, the offender was not paid to kill the victim). A serial killer does not kill as a survival method — at least not in the sense that most of us would think of. A serial killer may perceive that he has to kill to survive or self-preserve himself, but he does not kill to take the victim’s truck to escape detection, for example. Would a serial killer take a victim’s truck, though? Sure, but the reason for killing the victim was not to obtain the truck. In addition, the serial killer goes through phases and periods of “cooling down” or “cooling off.”

As a young boy he didn’t show any odd behavior until he turned the age of ten. At the age, often in 1960 he started killing and torturing animals including cats. Then by some years passed it was 1964 an he started attending Mira Lama High School, obtained grades of Co’s, Ad’s, and If’s, but still managed to complete high school an get his diploma. While he was in school his sophomore year he was arrested for possession of marijuana ordered by Juvenile court work on weekends, and as his time as an teenager he became a very Intense drug user and regularly exhibited symptoms of delusional thinking.

January 5, 1978 Chase started his life of legal problems from small crime of stealing a four- mouth old puppy, shooting it in the head and proceeded to drink the blood or to his random violent acts like on the date January 11, 1978. On the 1 lath of January 1978 chase attacked a neighbor after he asked for a cigarette then restrained her units she turned over the entire pack. 2 weeks later, he broke into a house, robbed it then urinated inside a drawer containing infant clothing and defecated on the bed in a child’s room. Interrupted by the owners return, chase was attacked but managed to escape.

An chase continued to search for unlocked doors of homes to enter. He believed a locked door was a sign that he was not wanted, however an unlocked door was as Invitation to enter. Social problems Richard Chase had many of them; suffering mental disorders which made It had for him In his social life. Richard Chase himself managed to maintain a small social life, however his relationships with women would not last long. This was because of his bizarre behavior and because he was impotent. An event that happened would prove his mind state when he moves out his mother house thinking she was trying to poison him.

He had rented an apartment with some friends. Chaise’s roommates’ complained that he was constantly intoxicated alcohol, marijuana, and LSI. Chase would also walk around the apartment nude, even in front of company. Chaise’s roommates demanded that he move out. When he refused, the roommates moved out instead. Education and Jobs, all though Richard Chase never had a Job, his education was on the side of a little below average with an IQ of 95. During, the spring of 1968 he enrolled In American River College, maintained grades of Co’s, consistently used drugs, and briefly seen a psychiatrist.

Physical problems he suffered from constant paranoid episodes and would often end up at the hospital emergency room in search for help. He was psychiatric observation, but shrinking, Chase felt he had found the cure. He would kill and disembowel small animals and eat the various parts of the animals raw. 1975, Chase suffering from blood poisoning after injecting of rabbit blood into his veins, was involuntary hospitalized with schizophrenic. An his sexual was not very well written out cause his relationships never lasted long because of his bizarre behavior, and the fact that he was impotent.

He was killed with a direct gunshot wound to his head. Evelyn and Jason were found in Evelyn bedroom. Jason had been shot twice in the head. The depth of Chaise’s insanity was clear when investigators went over the crime scene. Evelyn corpse had been raped and solemnizes multiple times. Her stomach had been cut open and various organs were removed. Her throat was cut and she had been customized with a knife and there was a failed attempt to remove one of her eyeballs. Then, Richard Trenton Chase was captured by police after leaving several hand and shoe prints in blood at is last victims’ residence.

They found even more blood caked evidence in his apartment. In 1979 Chase stood trial on six counts of murder, his attorneys tried to avoid the death penalty by going the insanity route… The plea was rejected. On May 8th, the Jury found Chase guilty on all six counts and he was sentenced to the gas chamber. While in prison, Chase had been seeing a doctor who had prescribed him with antidepressants that he hoarded for weeks. He was found dead on December 26, 1980 of an apparent overdose-suicide, taking all the pills he had been saving.

I researched who is to be believed as the one of america’s First Serial Killers, Herman Webster Mudgett aka Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. He had confessed to 27 murders, but only 9 could actually be proven. He had several victims during his time and choose what he felt was the perfect place for these murders. Herman was born on May 16th, 1861 in Gilmanton, New Hampshire to Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price, both of whom were descended from the first settlers in the area. His father was a very violent alcoholic and his mother was a Methodist who would often read the bible to her son.

Holmes had a privileged childhood. It has been said that he appeared to be unusually intelligent at an early age. Still there were haunting signs of what was to come. He expressed an interest in medicine, which reportedly led him to practice surgery on animals. Some accounts indicate that he may have been responsible for the death of a friend. As a child Herman was scared of the local doctor and when this got out bullies at his school forced him to view and touch a human skeleton. It turns out that this fascinated Herman so much that he actually scared the bullies who forced him into very badly.

During much of his life he was considered a loner and very shady. Herman would later graduate from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1884, but while he was enrolled there he began to explore a new area or hobby. He would steal bodies from the lab disfigured the bodies, and claimed that the people were killed accidentally in order to collect insurance money from policies he took out on each deceased person he had stolen.

After Graduation he began to dabble in more shady work such as pharmaceuticals, real estate and promotional deals under his created alias H. H. Holmes. On July 4th 1878, Holmes married Clara Lovering in Alton, New Hampshire; their son, Robert Lovering Mudgett, was born on February 3rd 1880 in Loudon, New Hampshire (in adult life Robert was to become a Certified Public Accountant, and served as City Manager of Orlando, Florida). On January 28th 1887, while he was still married to Clara, Holmes married Myrta Belknap in Minneapolis, Minnesota; their daughter, Lucy Theodate Holmes, was born on July 4th 1889 in Englewood, Illinois. (in adult life Lucy was to become a public schoolteacher).

Holmes lived with Myrta and Lucy in Wilmette, Illinois, and spent most of his time in Chicago tending to business. He filed for divorce from Clara after marrying Myrta, but the divorce was never finalized. He married Georgiana Yoke on January 9th 1894 in Denver, Colorado while still married to Clara and Myrta. He also had a relationship with Julia Smythe, the wife of one of his former employees; Julia later became one of Holmes’s victims. While in Chicago, Holmes had started to grow even more shady and criminal.

Holmes took a job in a drugstore which he would buy and promise to let the current store owner live even after her husband died. When her husband died however she simply disappeared and as people began to question where she was Holmes lied and told them she went to California and liked it there so much that she decided she would stay there. These people would actually turn out to be his first victims in his long murder spree and it is unknown how and when he murdered them. Holmes purchased a lot across from the drugstore and built what would be later known as his Murder Castle (which is where it is believed that he hid the bodies of Dr. E. S. Holton and his wife).

Holmes would open it up as a hotel for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, with part of the structure used as commercial space. The ground floor of the Castle contained Holmes’s own relocated drugstore and various shops, while the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of over one hundred windowless rooms with doorways opening to brick walls, oddly angled hallways, stairways to nowhere, doors opened only from the outside, and a host of other strange and labyrinthine constructions.

Holmes repeatedly changed builders during the construction of the Castle, so only he fully understood the design of the house, thus decreasing the chance of being reported to the police. Holmes selected mostly female victims from among his employees (many of which were required as a condition of employment to take out life insurance policies for which Holmes would pay the premiums but also be the beneficiary), as well as his lovers and hotel guests. He tortured and killed them in some of the worst possible ways you could imagine.

Some were locked in soundproof bedrooms fitted with gas lines that let him asphyxiate them at any time and some were locked in a huge soundproof bank vault near his office where they were left to suffocate. He would then take the victims’ bodies and drop by secret chute to the basement where some were meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, crafted into skeleton models, and then sold to medical schools. Holmes also cremated some of the bodies or placed them in lime pits for destruction.

Holmes had two giant furnaces as well as pits of acid, bottles of various poisons, and even a stretching rack which he would use to help dispose of the bodies and any evidence. Through the connections he had gained in medical school, he sold skeletons and organs with little difficulty and therefore was able to get rid of even more evidence. He had some of the best methods for disposing of all of his victims and the evidence that anything had ever even happened which is why it is so difficult to determine just how many victims he actually had and who they were.

There were also trapdoors and chutes so that he could move the bodies down to the basement where he could burn his victims’ remains in a kiln there or dispose of them in other ways. All the while, Holmes continued to work insurance scams and it was one of these scams that led to his undoing. He joined forces with Benjamin Pitezel to collect $10,000 from a life insurance company. Holmes would leave Chicago due to the economy and move down to Fort Worth, Texas, to a property that he inherited from two sisters he promised to marry and later murdered.

He had planned to build another castle, but would abandon that idea and move about the US as well as Canada and he was believed to have killed several more victims on his travels, but no evidence of this could be found. Holmes’s murder spree finally ended when he was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894, after being tracked there from Philadelphia by the Pinkertons(a national detective agency). He was held on an outstanding warrant for horse theft in Texas, as the police had little more than suspicions at this point and Holmes appeared ready to leave the country, with his unsuspecting third wife.

After the custodian for the Castle informed police that he was never allowed to clean the upper floors, police began a thorough investigation over the course of the next month, uncovering Holmes’s efficient methods of committing murders and then disposing of the corpses. While Holmes sat in prison in Philadelphia, not only did the Chicago police investigate his operations in that city, but the Philadelphia police began to try to unravel the Pitezel situation, the fate of the three missing children.

Philadelphia detective Frank Geyer was given the task of finding out and his quest for the children, like the search of Holmes’s Castle, received wide publicity. He would eventually discover their remains essentially sealed Holmes’s fate, at least in the public mind. Holmes was put on trial for the murder of Pitezel and confessed, following his conviction, to 27 murders in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto, and six attempted murders. Holmes was paid $7,500 ($197,340 in today’s dollars) by the Hearst Newspapers in exchange for this confession.

He gave various contradictory accounts of his life, claiming initially innocence and later that he was possessed by Satan. His faculty for lying has made it difficult for researchers to ascertain any truth on the basis of his statements. On May 7, 1896, H. H. Holmes went to the hangman’s noose. His last meal was boiled eggs, dry toast, and coffee. Even at the noose, he changed his story. He claimed to have killed only two people, and tried to say more but at 10:13 the trapdoor opened and he was hanged, it took him fully 15 minutes to strangle to death on the gallows.

Afraid of body-snatchers who might capitalize on his corpse, Holmes had made a request: He wanted no autopsy and he instructed his attorneys to see that he was buried in a coffin filled with cement. This was taken to Holy Cross Cemetery south of Philadelphia and two Pinkerton guards stood over the grave during the night before the body was finally interred in a double grave also filled with cement. No stone was erected to mark it, Larson states, although its presence is recorded on a cemetery registry.

Holmes attorneys had turned down an offer of $5,000 for his body, and even refused his brain to Philadelphias Wistar Institute, which hoped to have its experts analyze the organ for better understanding of the criminal mind. Larson recounts a series of strange events afterward that gave credence to the rumors that Holmes was satanic, including several weird deaths and a fire at the D. A. s office that destroyed everything there save a photograph of Holmes. During this case, another American phenomenon arose from society’s fascination with sensational crime.

Thousands of people lined up to see the Chicago murder site, so a former police officer remodeled the infamous building as “Holmes’s Horror Castle,” an attraction that offered guided tours to the suffocation chambers and torture rooms. But before it opened it mysteriously burned to the ground. So many people who’d rented rooms from Holmes during the fair had actually gone missing that sensational estimates of his victims reached around 200, and some people perpetuated this unsubstantiated toll even today.

Its likely that Holmes own figure from his recanted confession is low, but there is no way to know just how many he actually killed. In the end he was so worried that someone would want to do to him what he had done to so many others that he felt the only way he could rest in peace was to be encased in concrete. He was one of the first ever serial killers and one of the worst. It was horrible what he did and all of the lives lost because of this man. In my opinion his request for a protected grave was one of the things that show you how crazy this man really was and how smart he was all at the same time.

In my opinion the starting point in H. H. Holmes spiral to murder would be that as a child, schoolmates forced him to view and touch a human skeleton after discovering his fear of the local doctor. The bullies initially brought him there to scare him, but instead he was utterly fascinated, and he soon became obsessed with death. He started by stealing bodies from the morgue, would disfigure them and then claim they were accidentally killed so he could collect on an insurance policy he would take out on each person.

Some of his fellow students became scared of him while trying to bully him, he was a bigamist, some felt he was charming, he was manipulative, and many of those around him viewed him as suspicious and shady. H. H. Holmes seemed to have the perfect idea on how to get rich and how to get away with murder and in fact he did for a long time. He was a very smart man and that is the reason that I believe he was able to go so long without getting caught.

On New Year’s Eve, 1910, Marion Hedgepeth, who had been pardoned for informing on Holmes, was shot and killed by a police officer during a holdup at a Chicago saloon. Then, on March 7, 1914, the Chicago Tribune reported that, with the death of the former caretaker of the Murder Castle, Pat Quinlan, “the mysteries of Holmes’ Castle” would remain unexplained. Quinlan had committed suicide by taking strychnine. Quinlan’s surviving relatives claimed Quinlan had been “haunted” for several months before his death and could not sleep.