Chilling True Crime Stories - Volume 2 (eBook)

SERIAL KILLERS AND NECROPHILIA

Necrophilia is not uncommon amongst the most notorious serial killers. Ownership and total control of a person is a common fantasy that fuels the depraved activities of the worst serial killers. It is a popular thread with many serial killers that their sexual fantasies from a young age were about people who are restrained or can't move or struggle. Social scientists say that the desire for control and dominance we see in serial killers often stems from an unhappy childhood where they felt weak and vulnerable. Many serial killers love the thought of having a helpless sexual victim at their mercy and you don't get more helpless than being dead. Studies have shown that necrophilic serial killers are much more likely to mutilate and cut up the victims. A study once found that 86% of serial killers had violent sexual fantasies that involved mutilation and restrained victims. Lester and White found that 100% of the serial killer necrophiles in their study were male. This is generally not something that female serial killers (female serial killers do exist) indulge in.

'Necrophilia,' wrote sciencedirect.com, 'is a term derived from the Greek words philios (attraction to/love) and nekros (dead body) and involves the sexual attraction to a dead body. Surprisingly, necrophilia dates back hundreds of years and has been documented in Greek mythology, ancient cultures, the Greco-Roman period, the middle ages, and in the modern era. Mortuary attendants and funeral home workers have been known to be caught sexually assaulting corpses, and there have been individuals who have dug up graves in order to obtain a dead body to have sex with. More commonly there are serial murderers such as Ed Gein, Ed Kemper, Jeffery Dahmer, and Garry Ridgeway who have taken sexual advantage of dead victims.' Necrophilia is a common postmortem activity for sexual serial killers because it doesn't give the victim the opportunity reject the offender.

Gary Ridgway was born in 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is known as The Green River Killer and was convicted of 49 murders. The true kill count is almost certainly a lot higher than that figure. Ridgway, like many serial killers, targeted sex workers and teenage runaways and hitchhikers. Ridgway would usually strangle the victims and then sexually abuse the bodies - which he would leave in the woods and return to again. Gary Ridgway said he sometimes tried to bury victims as soon as he could because otherwise he was tormented by an insatiable urge to have sex with the corpses. Ted Bundy (by now captured) was consulted by the police when they were trying to solve the Green River Killer case. Bundy told the police that the killer probably returned to burial sites to visit the bodies of his victims. He was certainly right about that.

Jerry Brudos was a serial killer who murdered four women in Oregon from 1968 to 1969. Brudos was a rapist and necrophile who killed because he couldn't control his foot fetish. He sawed off the foot of one victim and put in the freezer. He would then often take the foot out of the freezer and put ladies shoes on it. Jerry Brudos cut off the breasts of one of his victims so he could make plastic moulds with it. Jerry Brudos actually got married. It was said that he liked his wife to do the housework naked wearing nothing but a pair of high heeled shoes. Jerry Brudos was thankfully captured quite quickly. He died in prison in 2006. His prison cell was said to be full of ladies shoe catalogues when he died.

Jane Toppan, who was born in Boston, was a famous serial killer who entered medical school in 1885. She murdered 31 people with lethal injections in her duties as a nurse. She was known as The Angel of Death. Toppan was jilted at the alter. This is speculated to have been one of the sources of her anger and mental health problems. Toppan first attracted suspicion in her medical duties because she was completely obsessed with autopsies. Toppan absolutely loved visiting the morgue. She was known as Jolly Jane to her colleagues because she was always laughing and smiling. Toppan was brought to justice in 1901 after killing an entire family. Toppan is said to have got a sexual thrill from her murders. She said she climbed into bed with patients she had killed. Toppan was sent to a mental institution and died in 1938.

The notorious graverobber Ed Gein was born in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1906. He is not generally felt (in terms of statistics) to be a serial killer but he might well have been. Gein probably killed more people than he is officially credited with. Gein had an isolated life on the family farm but his mental health eroded after the death of his mother and brother. Gein's brother died in a mysterious accident involving fires on the farm. Many suspect Ed Gein of killing his brother. Ed Gein never got over the death of his mother. He was a childlike man who was fond of lurid paperbacks and comics that featured stories about cannibals and Nazis. In 1957, Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden vanished. The police deduced from cash register receipts that Ed Gein had been one of the last visitors to the store so they went to his farm. At the farm they found the body of Worden decapitated and hung up like a deer. It turned out too that Ed Gein had been digging up bodies from the local cemetary and making masks, furniture, and skin suits from them.

At Gein's farm, the police also found the head of a woman named Mary Hogan who had been missing for three years. Gein used female genitalia in some of the bric-a-brac around his home. He'd also fashioned some skulls into serving bowls. When the police searched Ed Gein's house they found his kitchen full of maggots. They could not fathom how anyone could live in such squalor. The police found one room in Gein's farmhouse untouched and free of ghoulish graveyard bric-a-brac. His mother's bedroom - save for dust - was exactly how she had left it when she died. You might say this was pure Norman Bates. Gein was one of the first killers to gain national attention in America. His crimes were so bizarre that a morbid fascination with the case was unavoidable. Gein was arrested and sent to a prison hospital. Ed Gein's farm burned down after his arrest (it was said to be accident but you never know). The locals were very happy when this happened because they didn't want the farm to attract curious sightseers.

Patrick Wayne Kearney was born in East Los Angeles in 1939. He confessed to 35 murders but the true figure is most likely considerably higher. Kearney is sometimes known as The Trash Bag Killer in true crime biographies. This is because he would dismember his victims into trash bags and dump them by the side of the road or put them in the desert. He was not only a killer but a necrophile too. Kearney spent most of his spare time trawling the underbelly of the gay scene. His victims were mostly young men but he killed boys too. Kearney was only 5'5 tall and not the most physically imposing man. For this reason he used a gun and would shoot his victims dead while they were asleep or sitting in the car passenger seat next to him. He would then drive to a secluded spot and sexually abuse the body. Kearney said he would sometimes punch and kick the bodies of dead victims because he found this cathartic.

Thor Nis Christiansen was a Danish-American killer who murdered four young women in California from 1976 to 1979. Christiansen was also a necrophile. In fact, this is what had motivated the murders in the first place. He had been overwhelmed by dark fantasies of shooting a woman dead and then having sex with the body. John Christie was born in Yorkshire in 1899. Christie murdered at least eight people in London in the 1940s and 1950s - mostly by use of domestic gas. Once they were unconscious he would rape and then murder the victims. Christie is arguably not strictly a necrophile but he was close enough. He liked his victims to be inert and lifeless before he raped them. Dead or unconscious - it made no difference to Christie.

Earle Nelson was born in 1897 in San Francisco, California. He tends to be known as The Dark Strangler. Earle was the first prolific American serial killer of the 20th century (indeed for many years he thought to be the MOST prolific American serial killer - at least until the serial killer explosion of later years). Nelson's killing spree began in 1926. His modus operandi soon became clear. Nelson would dress him quite smartly and, Bible in hand, pretend to be a Christian traveller looking for a room to rent. His targets were middle-aged landladies. Once he had charmed the landlady sufficiently and got his foot inside the door (so to speak), Nelson would strangle them (sometimes with a chord) and then usually have sex with the body. He was - of course - a necrophile in addition to being a serial killer. He is credited with 22 murders but there are at least seven unsolved murders where he is considered to be a suspect.

'Some people who work in the medical and funeral industries get so used to death and bodies that becoming attracted to one takes fewer cognitive leaps,' wrote the Crime Library.

'It happened in 1931 in Key West, Florida. Radiologist Carl von Cosel, 56, became obsessed with one of the tuberculosis patients at the sanatorium where he worked. Her name was Maria Elena de Hoyos and she was a beautiful, 22-year-old woman. Von Cosel hoped to marry her, but before she could respond to his attentions, she weakened and died. He begged the family not to bury her. Fearing contamination of her body from groundwater, he built a mausoleum for her in the nearby cemetery and preserved her in formaldehyde. There in secret...