CRIME & PUNISHMENT IN YORK TOWN (TORONTO) 1790 – 1834

(with a note on slavery)

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT COLONIAL CANADA : HANGING 

Justice was harsh in the early days of pioneer Toronto at the end if the 1700’s.  The death penalty was the punishment for no less than 120 different crimes.

  Only in 1865 was hanging finally restricted as punishment for the crimes of murder, rape and treason.  Hanging was performed publicly, and the “drop”, a technique where the condemned fell a distance through a trapdoor to have his neck broken,  resulting in almost instantaneous death, was not used at the time.  Instead the condemned died a slow and horrible death by strangulation as he or she were roughly hauled up at the end of a rope tied around their neck or just dangled a foot or so high. 

Even when the drop was used, hanging was still a public and frequently bloody affair.  Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews, participants in the Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837, were hung in a horrific  manner before a huge crowd of spectators on the corner of King and Toronto Streets, just across from where the King Edward Hotel stands today.  W.L. Mackenzie described the executions in “Caroline Almanac” for 1840:

They (Lount and Matthews) behaved with great resolution at the gallows; they would not have spoken to the people, had they desire it. The spectacle of Lount after the execution was the most shocking sight that can be imagined. He was covered over with his blood; the head being nearly severed from his body, owing to the depth of the fall.

(Thanks to Dr.  S.I. Gorelsky, Department of Chemistry,  Stanford University for the above quote.)

Public hanging in Canada wasn’t abolished until 1869, and in Toronto it was moved indoors from the Don Jail yard into its confines in 1905.

PUBLIC HANGINGS OF  SAMUEL LOUNT AND PETER MATHEWS

Rebels 1837

King & Toronto Streets
Toronto 1838

Hanging was an expensive undertaking.  In 1828 Toronto’s Sheriff Jarvis charged the Province the following for a double hanging:

• Materials, framing, erecting and taking down

• the gallows:                  £ 44     0    0

• Iron work:                          8  13s   6d

• Painting:                             7  17s  4d

• Two coffins:                        2    0     0  

•                                         £ 44   10  10 

• 
  Sundry expense to executioner and Sheriff’s assistant;

• also for rope cord, dress, and to certain persons aiding

• the sheriff in erecting the platform and removing the body

• of the criminal:             £  15  0     0
  For second criminal:        15  0     0  

•                                          £  30   0     0

• TOTAL:                          £ 92  10   10

Compare costs of the last outdoor hanging in Toronto, in the Don Jail yard in 1905:

• Erecting Gallows:   $ 58.50

• Undertaker:                10.00

• Sheriff’s Fee:             20.00

•                                    $ 88.50

• Does not include pay to executioner, Death Watch, and some constables. ( Source:  James Edmund Jones, Pioneer Crimes and Punishments in Toronto and Home District, Toronto: 1924. )

Execution of Stanislaus Lacroix,  21 Mar. 1902 at Hull, Quebec, said to be the last publicly viewed execution in Canada.
Onlookers can be seen on surrounding rooftops and telegraph poles.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT COLONIAL CANADA

(“corporal”–corpus-“body” punishment in the form of pain caused to the body of the condemned by  whipping, mutilation, amputation, branding, etc.)

Branding

Branding on the tongue and hand was a common penalty for petty crimes.  In Toronto until 1798, prisoners were publicly branded in open court at the bottom of Berkeley Street near the present location of Front Street.  Except for the crime of manslaughter,  branding was abolished in 1802.

Whipping

A punishment that remained on the books in Canada until very recently, whipping was most often routinely prescribed for petty larceny (theft under $10), and accompanied by a term in jail.  

The punishment was carried out in public until 1830, usually in the Market Square — approximately where St. Lawrence Market stands today on Front Street in Toronto. 

Thirty-nine lashes was the most common amount of blows given with the cat-o’-nine-tails, reflecting a Biblical precedent, 2 Corinthians 11:24, where St. Paul declares,  “five times received I forty lashes minus one.”

Stocks and Pillory

In the Magistrate’s Records of Toronto there was a order in 1811 for the construction of a moveable stocks for two people:  “ordered that a carpenter be employed to make moveable stocks that will confine two persons at once, and when completed that they be erected where a majority of the Magistrates may think most proper.”   This was a wooden contraption that consisted of heavy timbers with holes, in which the legs of a prisoner were confined.  A variation on this was the pillory, where the prisoner’s head and arms were locked into the device.  The prisoner was then left out at the mercy of the public, which would amuse itself by throwing objects at the prisoners.  The objects would range from eggs to rocks, depending upon how the public felt about the particular prisoner.  With just the legs confined in stocks, the prisoner could at least protect his head and face, but in the pillory there was no such opportunity.  In England, the prisoner’s ears were frequently nailed to the pillory but there is no record of this having been done in Ontario.In Toronto the stocks were wheeled out for use in the Market Square.  There is only one case surviving on record of their use:  in 1834 Mayor and Magistrate William Lyon Mackenzie ordered a prisoner convicted for larceny to a two month term at hard labour in the jail and “to stand one hour tomorrow, and one hour tomorrow week, in the common stocks, and to be banished.”  The use of this device was finally abolished in Canada in 1842.

Banishment In 1802 an Act was introduced providing for the banishment of convicts from the Province of Upper Canada for a maximum period up to life.  The convict usually had eight days to remove themselves from the Province and failure to comply was punishable by death.  In 1841 the punishment for unauthorized return from banishment was amended to imprisonment for four years and transportation upon release.

Outdoor hanging in Ontario c. 1895-1900 (possibly in London.)

LYNCHING IN TORONTO

On occasion, citizens took action on their own, as in the case of one of the earlier murders on record in the Toronto district.  In 1819, just outside of Toronto, a farmhand by the name of De Benyon, brutally murdered his stepson.  The two lived in a log cabin by the side of the road.  On a bitterly cold night in February, De Benyon threw his thirteen-year-old stepson out of the house.  The boy tried to sneak back into the cabin, but his step-father caught.  He tied the boy up, and slowly pushed him into the burning fireplace, first burning his legs, and then eventually the rest of the lad. When the neighbors heard of the murder, they formed into an ugly mob and De Benyon ran towards Toronto.  The mob overtook him near the Don River and he was lynched there from a tree near the river.

FREQUENCY OF ASSAULT

Our Toronto forefathers were most often guilty of one particular crime:  assault.  Toronto Magistrate James Jones, writing in 1924 a history of justice in Toronto, observed that the court records in 1828, indicate in a short time period four cases of petty larceny, nineteen of larceny, eight of riot, one of break-and-enter, four of nuisance, and 129 of assault!  Some of Toronto’s most prominent citizens, whose names now mark the streets of the city, were brought up on assault charges in our courts:  James Mercer, Jonathan Cawthra, William Augustus Baldwin, were some who were convicted of assault.

SLAVERY IN TORONTO IN 1811.

Our Toronto ancestors also kept slaves.  Slavery persisted in Toronto much later than we think.  Toronto Magistrates Thomas Ridout, Hon. Duncan Cameron and John Small‘s minutes for March 1811, describe the escape of two black slaves, a young boy and girl who eloped, belonging to William Jarvis, of the prominent Toronto family:

William Jarvis of the town of York, Esq., informed the Court that a negro boy and girl, his slaves, had the evening before been committed to prison for having stolen gold and silver out of his desk in his dwelling-house, and escaped from their said master, and prayed that the Court would order that the said prisoners, with one Coachley, a free negro, also committed to prison on the suspicion of having advised and aided the said boy and girl in eloping with their Master’s property, they were accordingly ordered to be brought before the Court for examination.”

The court held that the “said negro boy named Henry commonly called Prince, be remitted to prison and there safely kept till delivered according to law and that the girl do return to her said Master.”

While slavery was banned in Ontario 1793,  this was to “gradually be done without violating private property.”  Thus slaves purchased prior to the ban, were not freed, and furthermore, children born to female slaves subsequently, were to remain slaves until the age of twenty-five.  Under these laws, a female slave, one year of age in 1793 when the act was enacted, and who for the sake of argument, could give birth until the age of thirty-five,  could have technically sustained slavery in Toronto until about 1850.  In the Magistrate records there are references to blacks as “free nigger” and “a free man of color.”  Surnames for Blacks were not in favor:  a 1819 record shows a charge of assault against “Catherine, calling herself Catherine Meyers.”  She is later referred to as, “Catherine, a woman of colour.”   

  PART 4 TORONTO POLICE IN 1870 -1920   Constables as Urban Missionaries 

If the new Toronto City Police were reformed to meet a growing perceived threat from “dangerous classes” within the community, the strategy gradually shifted from being prepared to shoot down rioting mobs to a more systematic regulatory supervision of the working class life in Toronto.  Helen Boritch describes this as the “class control” function of 19^th century policing.         

The Toronto Police were seen as a force that could serve as an efficient “instrument in curbing the immorality of society.”  Egged on by ‘respectable’ opinion, the Toronto Police began to define the moral reform of the poor as its particular vocation. At the same time, the Toronto constable prevented by regulations from living in lower-income neighborhoods and associating with lower class citizens in his off-duty hours, was kept aloof from the lower classes. 

Toronto Bay 1886 — oil painting by George A. Reid       

Control of all aspects of working class people’s lives was the goal set before the police.  To begin with, the force strove to curb the more unruly aspects of popular culture, prohibiting bonfires, restraining weekend revels, banning firecrackers, and curbing the activities of ‘mischievous urchins’ who sought to soil the crinoline dresses of respectable ladies on national holidays.  Arresting drunks and prosecuting prostitutes became a major focus of Toronto Police activity.                       

Instead of responding to citizens’ complaints of specific offenses, the Toronto Police now more often sought out on their own initiative what they felt were offenses against ‘public order.’  Through the offices of the Police Commission, the Toronto Police also had the power to create bylaws they felt necessary for public order.  

      Liquor Arrest on Queen West near Simcoe Street  circa 1917  [Toronto City Hall Clock Tower visible in background.]                  

Together with their responsibilities for liquor license controls and the enforcement of the newly emerging Sabbatarian laws, the Toronto Police began to see themselves more like urban missionaries assisting various other institutions in cleaning up Toronto.  Before the creation of the Humane Society in 1887 and the Children’s Aid Society in 1891, the Toronto Police oversaw animal and child welfare, regulating child support and abuse, for example.  (Although it is entirely Dickensonian that the Humane Society was formed before Children’s Aid.)             

In the later nineteenth century, a small but steady increase of “foreigners” amongst the once exclusively British population once again shifted security concerns on ethnic lines.  Italians, Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, and Chinese were beginning to settle in the city.  When Chinese immigrants began to open laundries, lawyers representing British laundry operators petitioned the Police Commission to license the business.  It was pointed out to the Commission that Chinese laundries were largely increasing to the detriment of the white people engaged in that business.   The next year the Chief reported “the Chinese are invading districts where their presence is considered objectionable by the residents.  I think the location of such laundries be subject to police control.”  It was done so the next year: for “improved sanitary conditions, less danger from infection, prevention of gambling, opium smoking, etc,” the licensing of laundries was delegated to the Toronto Police in 1902. 

Technology, industrial growth, and advancing public transit systems, continued to further geographically polarize Toronto’s citizens by income and class.  Modern transportation gave further rise to the exclusively wealthy neighborhoods like Rosedale and Lawrence Park while industrialization intensified the density of slums like Parkdale and The Ward.   By the close of the century the Toronto Police were directly involved in virtually every corner of low-income communities, from private life to commerce and entertainment.

A series of commercial bylaws and license regulations were introduced by City Council and the Police Commission to be enforced by the Toronto Police. Most of these affected commercial activity of low-income citizens:  cab drivers, street vendors, corner grocers, tradesmen, rag men, junk dealers, laundry operators, etc. All required a license from the police to operate.  Unlike middle-class businesses, which were regulated by the Province, working class enterprises fell under the jurisdiction of the Toronto Police.  As we have seen with the Chinese laundries, each new licensing provision often had a deeper hidden agenda.  Vendors, for example, were prohibited from plying their trade in upper scale neighborhoods or in front of the better theaters, hotels, and restaurants downtown.

As a function of class control, some police responsibilities in low-income communities it could be argued had positive and progressive functions.  In the days before social services, the Toronto Police functioned as a social mega-agency, operating juvenile services, shelters for homeless, enforcing child support payments backed with the power of arrest.  The police ran the ambulances and they acted as the Board of Health.  Police stations at the time were designed with space for the housing of homeless, and virtually no other organization in Toronto dealt with this problem.  On the eve of the Great Depression, in 1925, the Toronto Police would house 16,500 homeless people.  

Family: 152 Spadina Avenue, March 1916  (Toronto Board of Health Item No. 423) 

Despite some of the positive aspects of the police function in the low-income community, the Toronto Police nevertheless, represented middle and upper class property-owning interests.  Perhaps nowhere were the Toronto Police more intrusive than in their attempt to regulate the morality of Torontonians through a series of Sabbath and Public Order bylaws.

Someone once observed that the “criminologist’s definition of ‘public order crimes’ comes perilously close to the historian’s description of working class leisure time activity.”  Under public order provisions, the Toronto Police were responsible for the licensing and regulation of dance halls, pool halls, theaters, and later movie houses.  They were responsible for censoring the content of not only theatrical performances and movies, but of all literature in the city ranging from books to posters and advertising.

Perhaps the most intrusive series of bylaws were the Sabbath laws, which even today, remain a source of controversy in Toronto.  The Sabbath laws were introduced at the behest of various citizen committees in the late 19th century, demanding that various recreational and commercial activities be prohibited on Sundays.  The demands of these committees became so shrill that tobogganing in High Park on Sundays was prohibited and even streetcars were not allowed to run on the Sabbath. 

The Toronto Police were forced to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy enforcing Sabbath laws.  Again, there was a lurking hidden agenda behind the Sabbath laws that went the beyond religious issues.  Most workers endured a six-day workweek consisting of ten or twelve-hour shifts, and Sunday was their only day off.  It could be argued that the ancillary intention of the Sabbath laws was to minimize and suppress the movement and congregation of working class citizens in their free time.  Streetcars were prohibited to operate on Sundays, yet no wealthy Torontonian was prohibited from running his private carriage or requiring his chauffeur to work Sundays.  While Torontonians were strictly prohibited from buying and consuming liquor on Sundays, this prohibition did not extend into the private homes and clubs of the wealthy.  As one woman convicted of drunkenness at the time, stated to the magistrate, “The only difference between me and Lady Flaherty in Rosedale is that I don’t have a powdered flunkey to carry me up to bed when I get drunk.”

When some misguided police constable charged several members of the Toronto Golf Club in 1895, for playing on Sunday, the courts quickly put the matter straight and dismissed the charges. The court ruled, “golf is not a game of ball similar in any sense to the games enumerated in, or intended to be prohibited by the statute,” such as boys playing ball in the park.  

Essentially, this kind of intense petty regulatory control would remain the function of the Toronto Police until the 1920s when proactive crime fighting gradually became its primary function.  

Some of the worst of Toronto’s slums lay beneath the windows of City Hall.  (The Ward:  Elizabeth Street, 1912.)

Conclusion:  Toronto Police and Crime in the Nineteenth Century

There is little discussion in this website about the relationship between crime and the Toronto Police. That is because there was not much of a relationship.  If we define “crime” as offenses against persons and property such as murder, robbery, rape, and theft, as opposed to “public order” or “morality” offenses such as drunkenness, disorderly behaviour, vagrancy, prostitution and gambling, then crime was of little consequence in Toronto throughout the nineteenth century.  Not only that, but crime rates in Toronto declined throughout most of the century.           

In her analysis of arrest statistics in Toronto, Helen Boritch found that:     

The trend in criminal arrests for nineteenth century Toronto provides further support for the general thesis that the processes of rapid urbanization and industrialization did not produce increases in criminal behaviour or official criminality.  Instead, there is a substantial empirical basis to suggest that crime actually declined throughout this era.      

The decline in crime rates in the nineteenth century American and European cities has been confirmed by numerous studies.   As one study concluded, “The linking of crime, violence and disorder to urban growth must fall into the category of things people simply want to believe for the belief rests on no substantial foundation of fact or systematic analysis.”

From John Beattie’s study of attitudes to crime in Upper Canada in the 1830s with which this essay began to the figures to be quoted below, the threat of traditional crime against persons and property was never a major factor in the evolution of Toronto’s policing policy.  Politics, fear of external enemies and rebellion from within were the driving factors.

A quick glance at statistics of arrests in Toronto in 1850 and in 1860, when the city was in the process of reforming its police, although not a complete picture (because arrests can also reflect police and political policy, reporting patterns, etc, as much actual crime rates) nonetheless suggest the premise that the crime rate was indeed declining.  The population of Toronto in 1850 was approximately 30,000; in 1860 it was 44,500.   

Some of the Toronto arrests were as follows:

                                                             1850                       1860                                                

One can discern the reformer impetus in the new police and its reorganization in the inflated number of arrests for drunkenness and disorderly conduct.  There is a rise in the rate of larceny but crime rates for offenses such as assault, robbery, and rape decline.  In neither of the two sample years are any homicide arrests recorded.          

Almost the entirety of nineteenth century policing in Toronto unfolded outside the context of traditional criminality.  The role that the Toronto Police play as crime fighters today is a relatively new one.  Although the Toronto Police Service traces a direct lineage administratively to the nineteenth century force, the functions and purposes of the two institutions are radically different.            

The Toronto Police began as a small English style parish watch, which until 1860 was inadequate and corrupt and tightly controlled by local municipal patronage.  By the end of the century it was a complex institution primarily tuned to serve two functions:  to fight rebellion by force in the city streets and later to systematically regulate potentially rebellious classes of inhabitants.  Fighting rebellion, overall, was the operative function, not preventing crime and apprehending criminals.  What distinguishes the Toronto Police of that period is its inherent inclination to the moderation in its use of force, both personal and collective by its constables—an inclination incorporated in its standing orders and demonstrated by its behaviour in the second half of the century.

While the Toronto Police served also as a crime fighting force, with all the accoutrements of that function—handcuffs, detectives, identification photography, holding cells, etc., its crime fighting function was contained in its general purpose of maintaining peace and protecting the property of its patrons.  Traditional crime itself, did not determine the primary evolution of the police until well into the twentieth century.           

Although the Toronto constables were indeed “formidable engines of oppression” in the hands of the Toronto City Council during the first twenty years, it was nonetheless, the same body that eventually carried out the reform of the police, albeit with some nagging from the Province.  Those reforms of 1857-59 have given us the current regulatory system under which policing functions in Ontario today. 

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• PREFACE:   MY TWO SERIAL KILLERS
  
  How I came to write this book after briefly encountering two serial killers before they were caught:  Richard Cottingham in New York City in 1979 and Andrei Chikatilo in the Soviet Union in 1990.

PART ONE
A HISTORY OF MONSTERS

• 1. 

  THE POST-MODERN AGE OF SERIAL HOMICIDE: THE SILENCE OF THE “LESS DEAD” An introduction to the evolution of serial murder from 1970 to 2000 and the nature of serial killers. –  The Post-Modern Serial Killer –  Who Are the Serial Killers –  A Primer on the Nature of Serial Killers and Their Victims

  –  The “Serial Killer Epidemic”:  The Statistics of Murder
  –  Behind the Making of the “Serial Killer Epidemic”

  –  Previous Serial Killer “Epidemics”
  –  The Global Rise of Serial Murder
  –  Why The Rising Wave of Serial Killing 1970-2000?

• 2. 

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF SERIAL MURDER: TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF MURDER FROM ROME TO BOSTON A survey of serial murder from the recreational killings in the Roman Coliseum to the Boston Strangler. –  Rome:  Empire of Hedonistic Killing –  Gilles de Rais:  The Bluebeard Child Murderer –  Elizabeth Bathory:  The Female Vampire Killer –  Serial Killers in Pre-Modern History (1550 – 1750) –  Slouching Towards Whitechapel:  The Rise of Sexual Murder –  Jack the Ripper and After –  Explaining Mutilation and Picquerism –  Why the Rise of Sexual Homicide? –  Into the 20th Century –  Back in the USA –  Albert DeSalvo:  The Boston Strangler

  –  America Tumbles into the Sixties: 1966–“The year the world went mad.”

THE METHOD AND MADNESS

• 3. 

  CLASSIFYING SERIAL KILLERS:  THE TYPOLOGIES OF MONSTROSITY An introduction to the basic FBI “organized/disorganized” method of classifying serial killers. –  Organized Killers –  Disorganized Killers –  Mixed Category Killers –  Ted Bundy:  The Ultimate Organized Killer –  Miguel Rivera–Charlie Chop-off:  A Disorganized Killer

  –  Richard Ramirez-The Night Stalker:  A Mixed Category Killer

• 4. 

  THE EVOLUTION OF MONSTROSITY:  VISIONARY MISSIONARY HEDONIST POWER-ASSERTIVE ANGER-RETALIATORY MUNCHAUSEN SYNDROME BY PROXY SERIAL SPREE KILLERS AND OTHER EMERGING CATEGORIES

  

  A look at the more complex range of categories used by criminologists and psychologists to classify serial killers including types of female serial killers and the recently defined “spree” type serial killer. –  Evolving Categories –  Visionaries:  Herbert Mullin-The Die Song –  Missionaries:  Joseph P. Franklin; The Zebra Killers; Ted Kaczynski –  Hedonist Comfort Killers:  Dr. Marcel Petiot –  Hedonist Lust Killers:  Jerry Brudos; Ed Gein –  Hedonist Thrill Killers:  The Hillside Stranglers –  Power/Control Killers:  John Wayne Gacy –  Recent Revisions in serial killer categories –  Power-Assertive, Power-Reassurance, Anger-Retaliatory, Anger-Excitation –  Offense Distribution of Proposed Categories –  Other Classifications and Typologies –  The Female Serial Killer –  Female Sexual Killers as Accomplices Gwendolyn Graham & Catherine May Wood; Myra Hindley & Ian Brady; Karla Homolka & Paul Bernardo; Carol Bundy & Douglas Clark; Charlene and Gerald Gallego –  Aileen Wuornos:  The Female Single Sexual Killer Who Wasn’t –  Other Types of Female Serial Killers:  Black Widows; Angels of Mercy; Myunchausen Syndrome By Proxy

  –  The Spree Serial Killer:  A New Emerging Breed–Andrew Cunanan; John Allan Muhammad & John Lee Malvo:  The Beltway snipers.

• 5. 

  THE QUESTION OF MADNESS:  INSIDE THEIR HEADS A primer on the psychology of the serial killer. –  The Insanity Plea –  Psychotics and Psychopaths –  Biosocial Interaction

  –  Can psychopaths be treated and cured?  Case studies of Peter Woodcock and Edmund Kemper.

• 6. 

  SERIAL KILLERS AS CHILDREN:  THE MAKING OF MONSTERS A survey of common childhood factors in the histories of serial killers. –  The Serial Killer as Infant –  The Serial Killer as the Lonely Child –  The Serial killer and His Mother –  Childhood Mental and Physical Trauma –  The Childhood of Henry Lee Lucas –  Biochemistry –  Substance Abuse

  –  The Role of Fantasy

• 7. 

  THE SERIAL MURDERER’S FIRST KILL:  TRIGGERS, FACILITATORS, DETECTIVE MAGAZINES, PARAPHILIC HARD PORN AND THE BIBLE Every serial killer commits a first murder.  This chapter explores the various factors that might compel the frequently youthful offender to cross the line for the first time from homicidal fantasy to action. –  Serial Killers’ Reminisces On Their First Murder –  Triggers –  Facilitators –  Pornography and the Internet –  Detective Magazines –  Other Literature –  The Bible and Serial Killing

  –  The Second Murder

• 8. 

  THE KILLING TIMES:  THE METHOD TO THE MADNESS A murderer becomes a serial killer only after their second and third murders.  An exploration of the cyclical psychopathology behind how and why serial killers kill again and again. –  Phase 1:  Dissociative-Fantasy State –  Phase 2:  Trolling-Hunting-Stalking Stage –  Phase 3:  Persuasion-Seduction Stage –  Phase 4:  The Trap and Capture –  Phase 5:  The Murder

  –  Phase 6:  The Totem-Trophy-Memory Stage

FIGHTING MONSTERS

• 9. 

  THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CRIMINAL PROFILING:  HOW THEY GET RIGHT AND WHEN THEY DON’T An introduction to the history and technique of serial killer profiling with a critical look at problems and controversies with the FBI’s legendary system.
  –  Profiling and the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit –  A Brief History of Profiling –  Profiling the Mad Bomber of New York:  1956 –  Pierce Brooks and Linking Cases –  Coining and Defining the Term “Serial Killer” –  The FBI System of Profiling:  Crime Scene Analysis –  Criminal Signatures, MO, Staging and Posing –  FBI Profiling in Action:  Richard Chase, Wayne Williams, Larry Bell –  Issues and Problems with the FBI System –  Other Profiling Systems:  Diagnostic Evaluation and Investigative Psychology

  –  Geographic Profiling

• 10. 

  SURVIVING A SERIAL KILLER:  ESCAPING THE MONSTER’S CLUTCH A review of some possible options available if you should find yourself confronted by a serial killer based on law enforcement interviews with surviving victims and serial killers themselves. –  Avoiding the Serial Killer –  Trust Your Intuition –  Never Get Into the Car –  Dealing with Strangers and Recognizing Warning Signs of Duplicity –  Desperate Measures:  Escape; Verbal Confrontational Resistance; Physical Confrontational Resistance; Verbal Non-Confrontational Dissuasion; Physical Dissuasion; Acquiescence

  –  Summing It Up

• INDEX

• CITATIONS

• 20 illustrations, many published for the first time.  SERIAL KILLERS:  THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS Peter Vronsky Berkley Publishing:  $16.00 list US / $22.00 Can. 432 pages

  ISBN: 0425196402

• PETER VRONSKY IS REPRESENTED BY Deidre Knight THE KNIGHT AGENCY, INC
  577 South Main, 
  Madison, GA 30650

 1.  THE PRE-CATHAR PERIOD 

The south western region of France, where Montsegur is located, has some of the oldest traces of human inhabitants since the dawn of time.  

The cave of

Chavet-Pont-D’Arc, for example, discovered in 1994 contains the world’s oldest known cave paintings–dating back an astonishing 30,000 years!

The region in the immediate vicinity of Montsegur, the Lasset Valley is dotted with numerous prehistoric sites.  The region is also densely laced with deep and complex cave formations and underground rivers sources.

It appears that some kind of fortress or temple already existed on the site of Montsegur, perhaps Spanish, prior to its conversion into a Cathar stronghold.  Nonetheless, the only archeological trace discovered of pre-Cathar human habitation on the peak of Montsegur, was a Roman coin dating to the year 260-268 AD.  It was found in 1964 immediately outside the north-eastern wall of the fortress where several terraced habitations were once located.

[Source:  Groupe de Recherches Archeologiques de Montsegur et Environs (GRAME), Montsegur:  13 ans de rechreche archeologique, Lavelanet: 1981.]

 2. THE CATHAR ERA 1204 – 1242 

According to a deposition given to the Inquisition on March 30, 1244 by the captured co-seigneur of Montsegur, Raymond de Pereille (b.1190-1244?), the fortress was “restored” in 1204 at the request of Cather perfecti Raymond de Mirepoix and Raymond Blasco.
[Source: Doat V 22 f^o 207] 

The Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars was launched in 1209.  At the time the territory in question was not a part of France–it was known as Occitania, ruled by powerful independent local aristocrats.  Neighboring Catalonia and Aragon exerted their spheres of influence over the region and the English were attempting to penetrate as well.  The Crusade was as much about the Capetian French Crown consolidating its power over the territory as it was a religious crusade.

In its first several years, the blitz- like crusade devastated the Cathar Church, but as the crusade petered out into sporadic summer campaigns in later years, Cathars effectively regrouped by 1229.  Montsegur remained remote from the warfare and functioned as center for Cathar refugees.  In 1229 the Treaty of Paris was signed, officially calling an end to the crusade–with the local lords agreeing to recognize the authority of the French Crown and to aid in the persecution of Cathars.  But some of the lords only gave lip-service to the treaty and continued to aid the Cathars in secret.

In 1230, the leader of the heretics, bishop Guilhabert de Castres asked Raymond de Pereille for permission to make Montsegur the seat of the Cathar Church.

 In 1232, the Cathars asked Raymond if they could live infracastrum–within the castle.  Montsegur was thereafter gradually fortified and various adjunct walls were constructed along its southern and northern slopes.  With the torrent of Cathar refugees and clergy arriving at Montsegur, a small terraced village grew in size beneath the fortress walls on the north-eastern flank.

In 1233 the Inquisition was officially instituted, empowering Dominican and Franciscan friars to prosecute heresy and demanding, according to the terms of the Paris Treaty, local secular authorities to assist and enforce the Inquisition’s actions.  The Inquisition spread terror throughout the region but it was not an easy going.  Inquisitors were frequently attacked and run out of town–local lords issued advance warning to Cathars and secretly sabotaged Inquisitorial efforts.  Even the new French masters disliked the Inquisition as they felt it was bad for commerce,  disturbing local peace and order in their newly acquired domains.

In 1234, Raymond Pereille’s dispossessed cousin, Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix (b.1194/1202-d.1244/62 ?) arrived at Montsegur with his relatives, knights and men-at-arms and married Raymond’s young daughter Philippa.  With the marriage he became the co-seigneur of Montsegur, and effectively its commander.  The future administration and defense of Montsegur was to be conducted mostly by Pierre-Roger, and not the legendary Raymond Pereille.

Pierre-Roger Mirepoix was by reputation a young and bellicose lord who fought bitterly against the French Catholics during the crusade and as a result lost his lands to them after the Treaty of Paris.  His father was Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix le Vieux, co-seigneur of Mirepoix and brother of Guillaume-Roger de Mirepoix–Raymond Pereille’s father.  According to Inquisition records, Pierre-Roger le Vieux died circa 1209 and received the Cathar perfect‘s consolamentum  upon his death bed.

Upon his installation as co-seigneur of Montsegur, Pierre-Roger Mirepoix began to organize the defense of Montsegur.  Pierre-Roger had brought with him a complement of dispossessed court officials, knights and men-at-arms who began to patrol and further fortify the approaches to Montsegur.  Pierre-Roger himself, is reported to have made appearances in various parts of the region, plotting and aiding in rebellion and disorder in Occitania.

In 1241, the local overlord Raymond VII, the powerful Count of Toulouse, who with his father Raymond VI, had fought the Crusaders for decades,, made peace with the French Crown.  Part of the terms included his promise to destroy Montsegur.  But Raymond VII was a Cathar sympathizer who continued plotting against the French and the Catholic authorities behind their backs.  His siege of Montsegur in the summer of 1241 was nominal and half-hearted.  The roads and paths to Montsegur remained opened; the besieging troops consisted of Cathar sympathizers and clandestine believers, and by the autumn the siege melted away. 

It would be an assassination launched from Montsegur by Pierre-Roger the next spring, that would bring down the Cathar community forever.

  3. THE MASSACRE OF THE INQUISITORS AT AVIGNONET  

In the spring of 1242 a courier brought a letter to Montsegur from a clandestine Cathar, Raymond d’Alfaro, the bailiff at Avignonet, a town between Toulouse and Carcassone.  Alfaro was very highly connected:  he was the son of a Navarrese mercenary captain and the illegitimate half-sister of Count Raymond VII.  He was also a dedicated Cathar believer.  The letter informed Pierre-Roger that the chief Inquisitors of Toulouse, Etienne de Saint-Thibery (Stephen of St. Thibery) and Guillaume-Arnaud (William Arnald), along with their assistants and notaries, were coming Avignonet in the next few days.

Pierre-Roger quickly descended from Montsegur with a small force of men.  At Gaja-la-Selve they recruited a small force of men armed with hatchets and cudgels.  On  May 28, 1242–the eve of the Feast of Ascension–they positioned themselves in a copse of trees known as Antioch Wood on the outskirts of Avignonet.  That evening they were met there by Guillaume-Raymond Golairan, one of Alfaro’s men, who informed them that he had personally insured that the friars were lodged down in in the central chamber of the castle keep.  He then rode back to the castle and visited the friars one more time, ensuring they were bedded down and the castle guards were looking the other way.

When night fell, Pierre-Roger remained behind, while his knights Guillaume de Lahille, Bernard de Saint-Martin, and Guillaume de Balaguire led the force into Avignonet under the cover of darkeness. 

They were quietly allowed to slip into the castle by local sympathizers and were guided to the quarters where the Inquisitors were sleeping.  The knight Bernard de Saint-Martin who had already been condemned to death in absentia by the Inquisitors a few years earlier, led the assault bearing a huge battle axe.  After the Inquisitors and their assistance  were massacred–a total of approximately ten friars–their clothes, funds and belongings were looted.  More importantly, the Inquisition registers were carefully searched out and set on fire (other sources, say they were sold.)

According to a witness statement given years later to the Inquisition, the assassins returned to Antioch Woods, where one of them, Jean Acermat, gave Pierre-Roger the news of their success.  Pierre-Roger is reported to have exclaimed, “Where is my cup?”      The assassin replied, “It is broken.”      Pierre-Roger allegedly laughed and joked, “Why did you not bring it?  I would have bound it together with a circlet of gold and drunk from it all my days!”      They were talking about Guillaume Arnald’s skull.

[Source:  Inquisition Records, Doat 22, 286b.  See also Stephen O’Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars, Vancouver: 2000.]

The news of the assassinations quickly spread. Again, in Inquisition records, it is reported that one Cathar woman, Austorga de Resengas upon hearing the news, said to her husband, “All is free”;  to which he replied, “All is dead.”

[Source:  Doat 24 fol 1r-7r — Quoted in Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars, Oxford: 1998.]

This single act by Pierre-Roger essentially sealed the fate of Montsegur and the Cathars forever.

 GO TO NEXT PAGE: 
THE SIEGE OF MONTSEGUR

 LETTER 2:  DECEMBER 26, 1962.

Hello my dearest uncle Ilya and aunt Valya:

How glad I was to at last receive the long-awaited letter from you.  I hoped so much and how the letter arrived.  Dearest aunt Valya, I sat reading your letter and cried like a fool.  You must know that I love you very, very, much.  I cried with joy reading the letter because such distance separates us.  Alek was also very happy and read the letter himself.  He always asked when he came home from work, “Is there a letter from aunt Valya?”  He told me to reply immediately and send you the only color photograph of me that we have.

Dear aunt Valya, about your soup…  it was very good and I made it last night.  We invited some Americans over, our friends, and they even ate two bowls.  They said that I and aunt Valya are very good.

In Dallas there are a few Russians — good and bad — different ones in general.  We meet with one family, they are Russians but have never been to Russia and were born in China.  They are very charming and good and travel a lot on foot.  He himself is a geologist, loves Negroes and Russia.  Soon he will be leaving to go to work in Haiti.  His name is George de Mohrenschildt.  Just a count’s name remains, but otherwise he is a typical Russian guy by nature.

Now a little bit about myself.  You probably know from my previous letters to work, but I’ll write again.  Alek is working in a printing house, in the photographic department.  He prints photographs for magazines and newspapers.  He likes to fool around with chemistry.  He makes $230 and maybe more later.  IT was hard for him to find work as he was in the USSR.  At first we lived in Fort Worth and there he worked in a metal shop.  But here our Russian acquaintances helped him find this job.  It is an interesting job — it is clean — he is tired of getting dirty.

The weather remains warm as autumn.  Occasionally there is a cold wind but no snow.  Yesterday it was Christmas and it is very pretty in the city.  Houses are decorated with little lights.  It is very impressive, especially at night.  Alka bought a Christmas tree but Marinka does not understand it yet.  She just likes to stare at the bright decorations.  But mostly she likes wooden spools and spoons to play with.  She now has two teeth.  She stands up in her bed hanging on the barrier.  Soon she will be a year old.  So fast, I cannot believe it, that I have a daughter.  She has few light colored hairs.  She is calm.  Papa loves her very much.  One day we had to take her to the hospital with a light flu.  While the doctor was looking her over she was crying and Alka was crying with her, while I was laughing in my soul.  Alka said he was ready to kill the doctor because he was an idiot.  He treats me well.  Occasionally we fight, but you cannot be without that.  But I know he loves me with his insane love.  He is jealous of everything although I give him no cause as I love him too.  He is a good boy — a little crazy but I am not much better myself.

We are so far repaying our debt to the government for our move to America.  By the New Year we should be paid up — it came to about $500.  That is like 500 rubles in our currency.  Right now we are renting an apartment — two rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, etc.  It is a big apartment but not a new one, but we can afford it.  It is $68 plus the electricity.  For food we spend $10-12 a week.  If it was not for the debt we could live decently.  Dear aunt Valya, I now have very much respect for you and uncle Ilya.  I miss you.  I have many clothes and dresses but no place to wear them to.  Everything just hangs in the closet.  I miss you very much.  I think about the time we will meet again.  Either we will visit you or you will visit us.  Anything can happen in life.  Alka often thinks about you and Minsk and says, either in jest or perhaps seriously, “Let’s go back.”  I do not know how to understand that.

Dear aunt Valya, I am sending you my address.  We have a postal box:  number 2915.  If we change our address we will still be able to get mail.  You wrote my address with a mistake but it got to us.  You wrote it as “Elizabeth” but I think letters will reach me just the same.

I am slowly learning English.  Maybe we will move closer to the University and then I will be able to go study English.  There is an English for foreigners class there, but I already am beginning to understand much.  Alka speaks Russian but not very good now.  In the evening he sings Russian songs:  “Meadowlands” his favorite.  Eric and Pavel write us, we received a letter from Ludka from Leningrad and from another girl with whom I studied.  From Tanushka too.  I am very happy for them.  Dear aunt Valya, I would like to send you something but when I sent Tanya something and they had to pay much duty on it.  Although it might cost relatively little here, over there customs could value it very expensively.  What is the sense of sending presents?  But I will think of something.

Aunt Valya, please do not be angry.  Soon I will go to work and I will think of you.  It is very hard on us.  I am tired of sitting around at home.  We are not getting any letters from Innesa and the magazines I sent her are not getting to her.  I do not know why.

We are very happy that everything is very fine with Uncle Ilyusha and that he had a rest and freshened up.  I wish you all the best.  Please congratulate Irachka Kutsievna and Vova with their daughter, and say hello to Lialya.  Did she get married?  Please tell her not to be angry and to write.  A big regards to the Andrianovs from me and Alka.  A big kiss and a hug–how are Lyuda and Maria Josephina?  Tell them not to be angry.  I respect them very much.  On this I end.  I kiss you tightly, tightly my dears.

Marina, Alek, and Marinka

PS:  Everyone treats me very good, there are good people here… like everywhere.

One of the most baffling mysteries about Oswald’s journey to the USSR is the apparent lack of interest in him from the KGB. The Soviets have consistently maintained that they did not debrief or question Oswald on his military experience in the Pacific, despite the fact that he served as a radar operator in Japan from where U-2 spyplanes were launched, nor did they consider recruiting him as an agent.  Many intelligence critics insist that the Soviets would be happy to question a former Marine like Oswald on close-order drill if that was all he knew.  But Oswald knew much more.  According to the testimony of his Marine crew commander at El Toro, Lt. John Donovan, :

“Oswald had access to the location of all bases in the west coast areas, all radio frequencies for all squadrons, all tactical call signs, and the relative strength of all squadrons, number and type of aircraft in a squadron, who was the commanding officer, the authentication code of entering and exiting the ADIZ, which stand for Air Defense Identification Zone. He knew the range of our radar. He knew the range of our radio. And he knew the range of surrounding units’ radio and radar…  There are some things which he knew on which he received instructions that there is no way of changing, such as the MPS 16 height-finder radar gear… He had also been schooled on a piece of machinery call a TPX-1, which is used to transfer radio–radar and radio signals over a great distance. Radar is very susceptible to homing missiles, and this piece of equipment is used to put your radar antenna several miles away, and relay the information back to your site which you hope is relatively safe. He had been schooled on this.”
[WC Vol. 8 p.298]  

The problem is that we give the KGB more credit than they deserve. Like any other government bureaucracy, the KGB was frequently riddled with jurisdictional disputes, laziness, departmental rivalry, and miscommunication where one hand did not know what the other was doing.  One of the most frequent comments heard from the KGB officials on the issue of Oswald is:  if only they had known the details of Oswald’s military experience, they would have taken a greater interest in him.  But they did not know, or at least, not the right KGB people knew. The KGB was no more efficient than any other Cold War superpower intelligence service – which is saying that largely they were incompetent.

Secondly, there is a popular misperception of the KGB’s primary function.  The KGB is not an intelligence agency, but an internal security organization. Its principal mandate was the suppression of dissent and counterespionage and not traditional intelligence gathering. Its foreign intelligence operations, although very extensive, were frequently focused on augmenting its internal security function. The form that foreign KGB operations often took were disinformation, sabotage, influence, assassination (primarily of its own citizens and ex-citizens abroad or citizens of Warsaw Pact nations), and penetration of émigré groups and foreign intelligence services with the objective of identifying spies back home. Traditional intelligence gathering was only one of many items on the KGB’s operational list and compartmentalized within the KGB away from its internal security division.  In 1991 when the KGB was split up into separate agencies, the new foreign intelligence component consisted of only 12,000 employees out of a total estimated 400,000 – 700,000 KGB officers, operatives, and uniformed troops.  Somebody else was engaged in traditional intelligence gathering.

The active pursuit of traditional military intelligence such as nuclear weapon secrets, chain of commands, troop dispositions, military technological secrets, and the kind of data that Oswald might have yielded was and remains today the mandate of the GRU – the Main Intelligence Administration (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie.) The GRU has been running strong under the same name and command structure for eighty-two years! An agency of the Defense Ministry, the GRU is headquartered in an inaccessible high-rise complex known as the “Aquarium” located on the Khodinka airfield tucked away in the middle of the city ten minutes from downtown Moscow. It is estimated that the GRU has personnel equal to all the US military intelligence agencies combined. Very often what we perceived as arrests or expulsions of KGB spies in the West, were in fact exposed GRU operatives.

While the KGB in the new Russia has been renamed, split up into separate agencies, sanitized, and is now offering FBI-like tours of its headquarters and peddling its JFK “secrets” to Norman Mailer and the Learning Channel, the GRU on the other hand is is not returning any calls — not that there is a number to call.  You can buy KGB patches and badges on E-Bay; there is no such thing as a GRU badge.  Most Russians have never heard of the GRU despite of its uninterrupted eight decade existence. When you say “GRU” in Russia most people think you are saying “CIA” which in Russian is pronounced as the “TsRU.” If the GRU had gotten to Lee Harvey Oswald, and they very much would have liked to, it will be a very long time before we learn anything about it, if ever.

In 1959, when Oswald arrived in the USSR, the KGB – Committee for State Security (Comitet Gosudarstvenoy Bezopastnosti) – was in its heyday. It had been first known as the Cheka, then the OGPU, GPU, NKVD, MVD, and MGB (not necessarily in that order) before it became the KGB in 1954.  Its main function had been the suppression of threats within the borders of the USSR — it is estimated that some 20 to 60 million Soviet citizens were put to death between 1918 and 1953 by the secret police apparatus.

When the KGB came into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald, it was divided into several Chief Directorates.  The First Chief Directorate was responsible for the KGB’s foreign operations, including intelligence gathering.  The First Directorate was almost as separate from the KGB as the CIA is from the FBI. In fact, the KGB’s foreign intelligence service was even headquartered away from infamous Lubyanka complex and based in Yasenevo in the southwest district of Moscow.  First Directorate KGB officers looked down on their internal security fellow employees and often attempted to disassociate themselves from their excesses.

The larger more powerful division of the KGB was the Second Chief Directorate – counterintelligence and internal security.  Evaluating Oswald as he popped up in the Intourist hotel system, would have been in the jealously guarded jurisdiction of the KGB’s Second Directorate.  Thus in assessing Oswald, the KGB would first have been concerned as to whether he was a threat to the Soviet Union by his presence there.  His potential value as an agent or as a source of intelligence was of absolutely no interest to the Second Directorate field officers evaluating Oswald.  Imagine an FBI agent while interviewing a suspected Russian agent, concerning himself with the possibility of turning that individual and sending him back to Russia or attempting to extract intelligence on Russian troop strength or chain-of-command.  It is not what the FBI does.  Likewise for the KGB Second Directorate in 1959.

Nechiporenko does state in his book, Passport to Assassination, that the First Directorate had a Department Fifteen responsible for the recruitment of foreign visitors to the USSR as Soviet agents. However it relied on information forwarded from the Second Directorate and did not have an operational presence inside the tourist system. Why?  Because the Second Directorate was trying to take that function on itself and would do so successfully:  in later years  Department Fifteen was disbanded and its functions transferred to the Second Directorate.   Furthermore, at first glance, Oswald was not an ideal candidate for recruitment as an agent anyway.  He had openly journeyed to the USSR, thus making himself visible to US security. He was a low ranking Marine no longer on active duty and had no access to classified material.  He was uneducated and  held no promise of future access to information or influence. At closer scrutiny the Russians would have noted his youth, immaturity, and unconventional and erratic behavior. He would have been judged too unreliable as a potential agent. All that is assuming that the First Directorate – Department Fifteen had even learned of his presence. Once Oswald staged his “suicide” and then attempted to renounce his citizenship at the US Embassy, any lingering and remote considerations for his use as a Soviet agent would have vanished forever.

It was the Second Directorate, which jealously guarded its operational zone in the Intourist hotel system, that was dealing directly with the problem of Oswald. But the Second Directorate was not concerned with gathering intelligence – only with assessing Oswald’s presence as a potential danger to the USSR. Any idea of “recruiting” Oswald, or even extracting intelligence out of him would not have been the concern of the KGB officers evaluating Oswald. Perhaps a young, zealous and highly motivated counterintelligence officer upon encountering Oswald would have phoned around or cabled another branch of the KGB informing them of his existence. But such individuals are scarce in any bureaucracy, Soviet or other. At the end of the day, the KGB officer handling Oswald decided to go home for the night rather than risk putting in more work without overtime. We know that the KGB official who initially met with Oswald on October 20 to assess his request for asylum in the USSR was a veteran secret police officer who had joined the service in the 1920’s – Abram Shaknazarov. [Nicheporenko, pp. 33-34] After having participated in and survived three decades of Stalinist shot-to-the-nape-of-the-neck policing, Shaknazarov was very close to his pension.  The KGB’s recommendation that Oswald be put on the next train out of the country was a “safe” recommendation that any long careered intelligence bureaucrat could feel secure in.
 
History shows that the KGB’s First Directorate – Department Fifteen’s function of recruiting agents among tourists and visitors was eventually transferred to the Second Directorate. There obviously was a clash between the two Directorates over operations inside the territory of the USSR, almost akin to the highly defined division between the CIA’s and FBI’s jurisdictions. It is possible that interdepartmental politics even led to the Second Directorate deliberately keeping the First in the dark as to the existence of Oswald and his potential intelligence yield. In any case, the moment it became clear that Oswald was not leaving the USSR, he was drawn inescapably into the Second Directorate’s orbit whose only concern was that Oswald not pose a threat inside the USSR.

The GRU would have been interested in questioning Oswald on anything  he might have learned in his USMC tour of duty.  But the GRU was very far removed from the Intourist hotel system.  US military personnel were not staying in Moscow’s hotels in any abundance.  Again, the GRU would have depended upon a call from the Second Directorate to learn of Oswald’s presence.  This is unlikely, as the KGB had always maintained a hungry eye on the GRU and had attempted a takeover several times previously.  The two agencies cooperated no more than was necessary.  In the end, when in 1962 is was discovered that a senior GRU officer Oleg Penkovsky was a spy run jointly by the US-UK, the KGB made its move, securing the right to approve the appointment of the GRU command. 

Nicheporenko reports that an unknown Russian intelligence officer interviewed Oswald on November 4 and that he was not from the Second Directorate. It is very likely that this was somebody from the First Directorate or perhaps from the GRU, taking a look for themselves as to what Oswald was about. They were not impressed because Oswald angrily pursued a promised further meeting only discover that nobody existed under the name that was given him. Oswald also notes testily in his diary that he is called to a meeting with three officials in late November, and they appear to ask him questions as if they knew nothing of his case.

In 1959 the KGB was all geared up for extracting intelligence from US targets abroad, but not from targets inside its own backyard. When Oswald arrived in Russia, there was no highly developed tourist industry. Foreign business, cultural, and scientific visitors were only starting to arrive in any significant number. Furthermore, Oswald was what is known in the intelligence craft as a “walk-in” – somebody who makes the first approach. All intelligence agencies regard walk- ins with nothing but the deepest suspicion. The Russians could have very easily made the deliberate decision not to attempt to debrief Oswald.

AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH PETER VRONSKY: WORLD TALK RADIO hosted by Antoinette Kuritz
December 8, 2004

Getting Serious About Serial Killers

December 22, 2004.

This morning on CNN, it was reported that evidence from the 25 year old unsolved BTK case in Wichita, Kansas had surfaced.  I was particularly struck by a comment made to the press by local police about how the BTK killer was doubly unsettling to the good people of Wichita because the city is located in the Midwest, where things such as serial killings just don’t happen.  It is this myth of serial killers that Vronsky punctures in his book, which purports to be “the definitive history of the phenomena of serial murder.”

In fact, the people in Wichita are no more immune from serial killers than are denizens of New York City or Oakland or Atlanta. Serial killers walk among us undetected, since on the outside, they are seemingly normal individuals. Worse still, serial killers are more than likely far more numerous than we know, their crimes often going unsolved since they so frequently victimize prostitutes, transients and runaways whose permanent absence isn’t always noticed. Also, lacking modern DNA evidence, law enforcement isn’t always able to definitively link crimes that might not be similar in other regards and thus can’t detect the work of a serial killer.

So the obvious question is who is the serial killer, and what motivates him? 

Vronksy’s theory about the serial killer phenomena holds that it is a product of the industrial revolution, as this type of homicide necessitates a certain degree of leisure time to both contemplate the deviant pleasures of murder (and sometimes torture and mutilation) to carry out the crime. Earlier examples of serial killers cited by Vronsky include the seventeenth century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who bathed in the blood of virgins to preserve her beauty, and the eighteenth century aristocratic killer of children Giles de Rais. But as the industrial revolution wore on, it was no longer only aristocrats that had the leisure time necessary to become a serial killer. Everyday people such as John Wayne Gacy and Baton Rouge’s own Derrick Todd Lee could also rack up a high body count and terrorize populations.

Vronsky is particularly interested in what he describes as the postmodern age of serial murder, a period of time he claims was ushered in by Ted Bundy. He contrasts Bundy to someone like Jack the Ripper

who was always imagined as an aristocrat with a top hat—the best of our society gone worst. The serial killers who followed were portrayed as depraved monsters—freaks of nature—outcasts and drifters whose demented criminal features should have given them away. But not Bundy. He was like so many of us: an attractive college student with typical ambitions who drove a cute Volkswagen bug. He was an updated and egalitarianized version of Jack the Ripper—a killer of superior social qualities attributed to all the young middle-class upwardly mobile professionals taking over America. In other words, unlike serial killers of the past, he was not one of “them” but one of “us.”

It is this postmodern killer who is also so fascinating to me, as I am an avid reader of serial killer fiction. Serial killer fiction differs from true crime writing in that the story of a killer is crafted into a narrative that focuses on both the savagery of his/her crimes and sometimes also represents him/her as fiendishly clever, leading either an equally clever or clueless police force on a wild chase. This formula, ultimately, is not that much different from the one employed on the campy Batman television series from the 1960s. However, real life serial killers and their apprehension are very different from what is depicted in fiction. While the killers’ crimes are grisly, they do not seem to have an unconscious desire to be caught, and thus, don’t leave cryptic clues for a well-equipped police force to decipher. Instead, it is more often than not merely very good luck and just dull, plodding police work that gets them caught. Someone happens to notice the killers’ usually unremarkable features and places them near the crime scene, or they are caught during a routine traffic stop.

Vronsky’s analysis of the serial killer also deflates a good many myths. For instance, it is commonly believed that serial killing is a predominately male phenomena, and that women very rarely become serial killers. While men do make up the majority of serial killers, a startling one in five serial killers is female. Killers such as Aileen Wuronos particularly attract media attention because her crimes so much resemble those of her male counterparts. In some ways, Wuronos resembled Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer, in that she too was a missionary murderer, and her crimes were related to prostitution. The missionary killer believes that he or she is doing the world a favor by ridding the world of a particular type of victim. Ridgeway thought that the world was better off without prostitutes, whereas Wuronos believed that she was ridding the universe of the sort of scum who patronized prostitutes. However, most female serial killers don’t get the same media attention as their homicides are in part an extension of their female gender roles. Women are more likely to kill in their care giving roles, such as nurses who operate as angels of mercy or mothers who suffer from Munchasen by Proxy syndrome and kill their children to get sympathy.

Another myth deflated by Vronsky concerns Ted Kaczynski, the Unibomber.  Represented by the media as a crazed kook who lived in a shack in the woods, Kaczynski actually lived in more of a suburb hardly located outside of civilization. Also, as a young college student, Kaczynski was “a survivor of a series of brutal personality-breaking psychological experiments in 1959, conducted at Harvard by Henry A. Murray, a towering figure in the world of intelligence agency personality analysis, brainwashing, and interrogation techniques.”  Kaczynski became such a kooky caricature during his trial because the media coverage “was highly controlled by the very corporate powers he so hated.” Only a handful of people were issued press passes to the trial, with most of them going to major media outlets, the remaining two available on “a daily lottery basis to independent or small media organizations.”

His final chapter is unique in that it offers advice on how to survive an encounter with a serial killer. Admittedly, this advice is culled from a somewhat flawed sampling, as the serial killer’s ability to continue to murder depends on his ability to remain invisible, and thus, it is likely that a good many people have unknowingly come into contact with this person and are not aware as to why they have escaped from the encounter unharmed. Instead, this chapter is based on interviews with serial killers in captivity and their would-be victims who survived. The advice, basically aimed at women (who are overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of serial homicide than are men) is to both trust their own fear instincts and to fight against their gender programming, which tells them to be polite and helpful and to appease attackers.  I particularly appreciated these last two bits of advice, as I am always impatient with those who tell women to do things when being attacked such as give in so as to not further piss off their attacker or to urinate on themselves so they will be unappealing. In essence, that sort of advice encourages women to further embrace a dangerously dependent feminine identity as they’re being victimized, rather than go down swinging. Becoming more passive in the face of adversity always seemed to me to be both dangerous and patronizing to women, and I was pleased to see someone encouraging women to actually fight back.

Vronsky’s book isn’t the usual litany of horrors perpetrated by serial killers. Instead, he actually puts this phenomena in historical perspective and examines the shortcomings of modern police work.  For this reason, as well as all the others cited throughout this review, I recommend Serial Killers as required reading for anyone who is particularly interested in the truth in this particular type of fictionalized reality.

ROUNDTABLEREVIEWS.COM

Reviewed By Jeannie Langston
December 15, 2004

SERIAL KILLERS: THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS  is one of the most complete books I have read on serial killers.  Peter Vronsky starts by making it personal with two instances of fate intervening.  On two separate occasions he ran into serial killers, not actually knowing until much later that they were the Times Square Torso Ripper and the Red Ripper — Richard Cottingham and Andrei Chikatilo respectively.

If I weren’t prone to paranoia, I would have been shortly after the introduction.  In Vronsky’s introduction he brings up the suggestion that serial killers lead perfectly normal lives.  How many times have we run into someone who is a serial killer or has the potential to become a serial killer? 

Vronsky gives a history of killers, everyone from Ted Bundy to Ed Kemper.  He describes cannibals and necrophiliacs to rampage killers; his descriptions are very detailed.  He brings to life many serial killers that I had never heard of as well as those who have touched everyone’s lips at one time or another. 

In SERIAL KILLERS, the text goes into everything from classifying a serial killer to their childhoods and then onto their first kill.  The final chapter gives some options on dealing with serial killers.  It is not a how-to guide according to the book, just some tips based on FBI interviews with those who have survived an encounter with a serial killer. 

SERIAL KILLERS is a great book.  It is very detailed, and even includes photos.  I’m not sure this is a good choice for those who are weak-stomached or those who are prone to paranoia.  It is very in-depth.  However, if you are fascinated by the human mind and by those who are abnormal, this is the book for you.

Original Review at: www.roundtablereviews.com/roundtable/Archives/vronskypeter121504.htm 

Serial Killers Not New To History

(New York/Toronto) January 17, 2005 — “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters” a book by Peter Vronsky recently published by Penguin Berkley Books, traces the history of serial homicide throughout history. Vronsky looks at the myth that serial killers are a modern phenomenon linked to urbanization. While we often think of Jack the Ripper in London in the 1880s as the “first” serial killer, Vronsky cites numerous cases in Germany, France, Spain and Italy of similar serial predators in the 1600s and 1700s. ( See: www.petervronsky.com ) One of the early cases Vronsky looks at is the trial of Jean Grenier in France in 1603, a fourteen-year old boy accused of murdering and cannibalizing several children. Grenier claimed that he was a werewolf, but the court rejected his defense stating that “It has been observed that real wolves tear with their claws, and werewolves tear with their teeth, whereas men know how to despoil girls they wish to eat of their dresses without tearing them.” The court ruled that Grenier was not a werewolf but “possessed by demons”—an insanity plea of the time. Instead of being put to death, Grenier was confined for life in a monastery. Vronsky suggests that tales of werewolves and vampires might really be about serial killers. Even the eighth century English epic “Beowulf” features a description of a character named Grendel hauntingly similar to that of a modern serial killer. Grendel had been killing people by night over a period of twelve years and “grieves not at all for his wicked deeds.” Vronsky reminds us that the term ‘serial killer’ is only twenty-years old. He points out that the words serial killer do not even appear in Ann Rule’s 1980 ground breaking true crime book about Ted Bundy, “The Stranger Beside Me.” In 1980, serial killers were still described as “mass murderers”, a term reserved today for murderers who commit multiple killings in one frenzied episode. It has been commonly thought that serial murders were rare until the 1970s and 1980s when an “epidemic” rise of serial killing swept through the USA. Vronsky cites studies, however, showing that serial killer epidemics have hit the USA previously between 1911-1915 and 1935-1941. The difference was that in the 1980s, the Justice Department was lobbying Congress for funding to expand the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit at the same time that missing children’s program advocates were also lobbying for funding. It was in the interest of the Justice Department to highlight and even exaggerate the extent of the serial murder “epidemic” and to link it to missing children to secure the funding it was seeking at the time. As for the actual term ‘serial killer’, Vronsky definitively explores its use in the past and the claims of former FBI agent and profiler Robert Ressler to having coined it while guest lecturing police officers at Bramshill in England. One thing Vronsky does point out is that serial killing and sexual homicide in early history were frequently crimes of leisure and excessive wealth and power. He looks at the Roman Coliseum as a form of serial killing for the entertainment of the mobs. He explores the career of aristocrat serial child murderer, Gilles de Rais (who was also Jeanne D’Arc’s former bodyguard) and the killings by Countess Elizabeth Bathory in Hungary who was reputed to have bathed in her victims’ blood. Vronsky points out that today, some serial killers precisely seek the kind of unlimited power of life and death over their victims that ancient Roman despots had. As the world became modernized and average people had time to think about things other than how to survive starvation, plague or barbarian invasions, some also had increasing leisure time to start dwelling on sexual and murderous fantasies. The rise of large cities also made the offender more anonymous, Vronsky explains. He points out that the early migrating serial killers were often captured because small villages quickly identified and focused on a stranger in their community, while those who killed victims in their own tiny communities were quickly linked to them. It was in big cities that serial murders like Jack the Ripper’s began to remain unsolved.     The press also had much to do with the perception of serial killers. Jack the Ripper, whose crimes in 1888 still grip our imagination, committed his murders in the media center of its time: London. Newspaper headlines breathlessly covered his killings. But the twenty similar unsolved mutilation murders of women in Atlanta between May 1911 and May 1912, the first seven killings committed like clockwork every Saturday night, remain forgotten because they did not happen in a press center like New York or London. The fact that the victims were light-skinned Afro-American women also played a role in the newspapers’ relative lack of interest in the crime, a situation Vronsky suggest persists even today. It really was not until the term ‘serial killer’ was picked-up by the media in the early 1980s that the notion of serial homicide as something new and unique was identified in the public’s perception. What really was new was the term, not the thing itself. “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters” is a definitive 430-page book covering the historical, cultural, psychological and investigative aspects of serial homicide around the globe from the Roman Empire to the Washington Beltway and the Green River murders.

Peter Vronsky is currently completing his doctorate in history at the University of Toronto and is a former international investigative documentary producer.

(New York/Toronto) December 10, 2004 — “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters” a new history of serial murder by Peter Vronsky, describes research conducted by a university in Australia to empirically test the best qualifications for profilers of serial killers.  Groups of police officers, professional profilers (forensic psychologists with a history of being retained by police departments), ordinary psychologists, claimed psychics, and untrained economics and science college students, were all asked to profile an unidentified offender based on crime scene information from a previously solved case. The details of the offender’s identity and characteristics were obviously not disclosed to the test subjects. As expected, professional profilers and psychologists scored best in accurately describing the characteristics of the unknown offender. But surprisingly, the next highest scores were achieved by the untrained college students, followed by police officers and psychics last. Because the FBI asserts that investigative experience is the highest qualification that successful profilers can bring to the job, a second experiment was run to test the value of policing experience on the skills and abilities of profilers. The test subjects this time consisted of 31 senior detectives with a minimum of ten years experience; 12 seasoned homicide investigators; 19 trainee detectives with a minimum of ten years of general police duties; 50 police academy recruits with less than six weeks of training; 50 recruits with less than three weeks training; and 31 untrained sophomore chemistry students. The results were astonishing, reports Vronsky. Untrained sophomore chemistry students outperformed all the police groups across the board in producing the most accurate profiles. Among the police officers, police recruits scored higher than experienced homicide detectives and outperformed the other police groups. These results seem to contradict the FBI’s assertion that investigative experience is the highest qualification for effective profilers. Vronsky reports that researchers suggest that paradoxically, the more experience an investigator has, the more that experience gets in the way of interpreting data for the purpose of profiling. Investigators develop over the years a set of commonsense “heuristics”-impressions about criminals and crime that are based not necessarily on fact but on their own subjective experience and perceptions. College students and police recruits with no such prejudicial experience and a more open mind, can produce more accurate profiles than experienced police officers. These tests are not conclusive, Vronsky warns. Formal education might also be a factor behind the effectiveness of a profiler, and the low scores from senior police officers might reflect the lower educational qualifications of police recruits in the past when those officers joined the force. Vronsky reminds us that many FBI profilers hold M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in behavioral sciences, which may account for the FBI’s reputation for effective profiling.     “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters” is a 430-page book covering the historical, cultural, psychological and investigative aspects of serial homicide and includes a chapter on the history of profiling and recent developments and advances in the technique. Peter Vronsky is currently completing his doctorate in history at the University of Toronto and is a former international investigative documentary producer.

JOHN WALSH WRONG ABOUT SERIAL KILLERS AND MISSING CHILDREN

Publish Date : 12/10/2004 5:46:00 PM   Source : Legal News Onlypunjab.com In “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters” a new history of serial murder by Peter Vronsky, the story behind the “serial killer epidemic” of the 1980s is explored. According to the book, John Walsh, the current host of the TV program America’s Most Wanted, used inaccurate statistics when testifying before Congress in the 1980s. Relying on information, perhaps traced to the then Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell’s claims, Walsh stated that 205 children go missing every hour: a total of 1.8 million children a year. While most of the reported missing children are later found, Walsh said, “The unbelievable and unaccounted for figure of fifty thousand children disappear annually and are abducted for reasons of foul play… this country is littered with mutilated, decapitated, raped, and strangled children.” Walsh suggested that serial killers are responsible for these abduction-murders. Walsh’s own son, Adam had just been abducted and murdered in Florida by a stranger, who might have been notorious serial killer Ottis Toole, Henry Lee Lucas’s partner. But where were the actual reports of 50,000 unsolved disappearances: nearly a thousand children a week? According to Vronsky’s book, several studies were initiated in the wake of Walsh’s claims. A study of 1,498 child murders in California between 1981 and 1990 determined that the predominant killers of children were not strangers and serial killers, but the children’s own parents! Strangers murdered only 14.6 percent of children between the ages of five and nine, while relatives and parents murdered 44.8 percent of those child victims. Another 30.2 percent were murdered by acquaintances. Women comprised 36.4 percent of all killers of children between the ages of five and nine. A later study by the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Throwaway Children (NISMART) determined that between 1976 and 1988, an average of 43 to 147 children a year were actually abducted by strangers—and not all murdered. A far cry from the claimed 50,000 figure. Despite this rare occurrence of stranger abduction, the national fear triggered by the exaggerated reports of the 1980s persists today. While stranger abductions like the tragic case of Polly Klaas and the resolved case of Elizabeth Smart are extremely rare, Vronsky writes, “Of course, this fact is of no consolation to the parents of the 43 to 147 children who on average every year are abducted by strangers.” “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters” is a 430-page book covering the historical, cultural, psychological and investigative aspects of serial homicide from ancient times of the Roman Empire to the most recent cases today and includes many never before seen illustrations. Peter Vronsky is currently completing his doctorate in history at the University of Toronto and is a former international investigative documentary producer.

FEMALE SERIAL KILLERS COMMON 

(New York / Toronto) November 26, 2004   Nearly one in five serial murderers in the USA are women, reports a new history book: SERIAL KILLERS: THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS by Peter Vronsky.

According to a newly written history of serial homicide by Peter Vronsky, a study of 399 known serial killers in the USA between 1800 and 1995, showed that 16 percent were females and 75 percent of them made their appearance after 1950. 

Peter Vronsky writes in SERIAL KILLERS:  THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS, that women “are often more deadly and more prolific than typical male serial killers.  Female serial killers are described as the ‘quiet killers’ because they rarely leave bodies dumped by the roadside, which alarm a community.  Their killing careers last twice as long as men’s:  eight years for women to the male serial killer’s average of just over four years.” 

Women serial killers are also better educated and qualified, claims Vronsky citing further studies that show females incarcerated for a single murder are, when they commit their crime, 77 percent unemployed, 65 percent Afro-American, 76 percent mothers and with a median age of twenty-seven years.  Female serial killers, on the other hand, are only 10 percent are unemployed and 95 percent white with a median age of thirty.  A remarkable 31 percent of female serial killers were professionals, skilled workers, or business proprietors, and a further 15 percent were semi-skilled workers. 

In his history of serial murder from the ancient days of the Roman Empire to the most recent cases this year, Vronsky includes a look at female serial killers and their motives, which differ to some extent from those of male serial killers.  “On average, 74 percent of female serial killers were at least in part motivated by personal financial gain, a sad reflection on their middle-class aspirations,” writes Vronsky. 

Vronsky reminds us, however, that a third of female serial killers committed their crimes with an accomplice, frequently a male, and his book includes several case accounts exploring the dynamics of the killer couple marriages and love relationships. 

SERIAL KILLERS: THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS is an exploration of the historical, cultural, psychological and investigative aspects of serial homicide in a 430-page illustrated volume. Peter Vronsky is currently completing his doctorate in history at the University of Toronto and is a former international investigative documentary producer.

HOW TO SURVIVE A SERIAL KILLER

(New York / Toronto) November 8, 2004 — According to a new history book on serial murder, SERIAL KILLERS: THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS, the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU) interviewed serial killers, sexual murderers and rapists and their surviving victims to ascertain if anything in their behavior saved them from being murdered. Murderers convicted of multiple homicides were themselves asked, why they spared some of their intended victims.  The FBI eventually identified a number of behavioral options a victim might take, organized in a decision flow-chart system ranging from acquiesce to resistance. Vronsky describes how the FBI weighed the various risks and dangers of each option against the possible profile type of serial killer or rapist. Part of surviving a serial killer is avoiding one in the first place, Vronsky writes in his book, inspired by his own two brief encounters with serial killers prior to their capture. Vronsky reviews the accounts of several women who managed to avoid capture entirely because of a sudden intuitive flash. Vronsky warns both men and women not to underrate their “intuition” or “gut feeling.” He describes intuition as a psychological process where a person has observed something but the mind has not yet logically analyzed the meaning of what they saw. In one case, Vronsky documents how a serial killer who was feigning a ski injury approached a young woman on campus and asked her to help him carry some library books to his car. She readily agreed to help the handsome studious young man, his arm in a cast, by carrying his books to a vehicle parked nearby. But as she approached the car she noticed that the front seat was missing and she was suddenly overcome by a wave of unexplained fear. She quickly put the books down and ran off, deeply embarrassed by her sudden seemingly illogical and unfriendly behavior. That handsome young man was Ted Bundy and he would sometimes use his fake cast to batter women into unconsciousness. Bundy had removed the front seat from his car to conveniently transport in various states of life and death some of his twenty-one raped and mutilated female victims. “Indecipherable warning signs of danger can be perceived subconsciously without being immediately understood by the rational mind,” Vronsky argues. “No woman,” he says, “should be embarrassed or ashamed to respond to her intuition and flee without explanation any situation she finds uncomfortable or threatening.”     Once confronted, captured, or under control of a serial killer, a whole new dynamic comes into play, according to Vronsky’s book. In his closing chapter he explores the range of options that a victim might be able take and the projected effectiveness of each for escape and survival: verbal confrontational resistance, physical dissuasion, physical confrontational resistance, verbal non-confrontational dissuasion and acquiesce. Vronsky reviews each option and discusses the type of serial killer who might respond to it—and which types might react with increased violence instead, according to the FBI studies, and what to do then. SERIAL KILLERS: THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS is an exploration of the historical, cultural, psychological and investigative aspects of serial homicide in a 430-page illustrated volume.

Peter Vronsky is a former investigative documentary producer and is currently completing his doctorate in history at the University of Toronto.

Serial Killer Media Coverage Biased to Victims According To Author of New History of Serial Murder
Publish Date : Oct/29/2004 2:53:00 PM   Source : Culture and Community News

Peter Vronsky, the author of “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters”, a new study of the history of serial murder, claims there is a creeping nonchalance and callousness in the reporting by media of serial homicides of so-called ‘society’s throw-aways’–the homeless, prostitutes, runaway children, gays, inner-city poor, migrant workers, senior citizens. Vronsky writes: “For the press covering serial murder these days it is not the sheer number of snuffed-out lives that count, but their status or visible credit rating–the trade-off comes in at around one SUV in the garage for every five dead hookers in the Dumpster.” Vronsky’s book, “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters” looks at the myths and realities of serial homicide from ancient Rome to current times and includes numerous case histories of serial killers of prostitutes, such as William Suff in California who killed thirteen women in a case largely ignored during the O.J. Simpson trial; Joel Rifkin who killed seventeen women in the New York City area but somehow is relatively forgotten; and Kendall Francois who killed eight prostitutes in upstate New York but whose horrific crimes were hardly reported. Vronsky explains: “Francois was doing his killing in Poughkeepsie, a town on the Hudson River halfway between Albany and New York City—too far south to enter the Albany television market and too far north to be covered by the New York City TV footprint. That’s like saying it never happened. And of course, by the end of the 1990s, eight victims was a relatively mediocre performance if numbers count for anything… “Suff killed drug-addicted street prostitutes and left their bodies behind strip mall garbage Dumpsters, posed so as to call attention to their drug habits. But Suff went on trial in the middle of the O. J. Simpson case; what are thirteen dead crack whores compared to two shiny-white Starbucks victims in Brentwood at the hands of an enraged celebrity? And how about Joel Rifkin, who murdered seventeen street hookers in the New York-Long Island area? The media abandoned his story in the rush to cover the deaths of six “respectably employed” train commuters at the hands of Colin Ferguson. The trial of Joel Rifkin was wrapped up in relative obscurity despite the seventeen murder victims. We might not even know his name if an episode of Seinfeld had not made it a butt of jokes.” In his chapter entitled ‘The Silence of the “Less-Dead”’ Vronsky describes a ‘serial killer culture’ that encourages and rewards disturbed individuals to pursue homicidal fantasies focused on marginalized members of the community whose lives are less valued by the rest of society. Vronsky refers to a term coined by criminologist Stephen Egger for a type of victim : the “less-dead.” These are victims whose lives are devalued in society’s perception and whose murders are often seen by the media to be less important to report. Vronsky compares the lack of media coverage of the murder of eleven crack-addicted prostitutes in Detroit to the rush of live TV coverage of the serial murders of five white college students in Gainesville, Florida. Vronsky reports that Egger is concerned that a ‘killing culture’ is being defined by true-crime literature, fiction, television, film, entertainment and media coverage which, “all focus on the serial killer’s skills in eluding the police and the nature of his acts, while the victims are mere props in the story or worse, justify their own deaths.” The raising to near-hero status of the fictional character Hannibal Lecter portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in two Hollywood films, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and HANNIBAL, is an example of how the public is being encouraged to identify with or even laud the figure of the serial killer in our society. The serial killer is portrayed as a figure in rebellion, lashing out at society’s ills and a symbol of swift justice cleansing society’s ills. The killer’s talents for avoiding arrest overshadow the death and grief he leaves in his wake, according to Vronsky.

Vronsky quotes the Green River serial killer Gary Ridgway who killed forty-eight prostitutes and commented to police after his arrest, “I thought I was doing you guys a favor, killing, killing the prostitutes. Here you guys can’t control them, but I can.”

PRESS RELEASE

(New York / Toronto) October 4, 2004 – SERIAL KILLERS: THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS by PETER VRONSKY is a definitive history of serial homicide from the Roman Empire to the Washington Beltway.     SERIAL KILLERS looks at past and current issues, controversies and techniques in criminal profiling, recent advances in categorizing serial killers, new approaches to psychological research in the mystery of what motivates serial offenders and features a unique chapter based on FBI research on how to enhance your chances of surviving if confronted or captured by a serial killer. Peter Vronsky explores the history, culture, politics and psychology of serial murder in the ancient world, in medieval and early modern Europe, in 19th Century USA and England, and traces its extraordinary rise in the USA and the rest of the world during the 20th Century. SERIAL KILLERS: THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS is a shocking but sober exploration of serial homicide and features many new photographs never seen before. The book digs deeply into the true nature of serial homicide and reveals the politics and reality of the so-called “serial murder and missing children epidemic” which terrorized the American public in the early 1980s and continues to inspire fear today. SERIAL KILLERS provides detailed cases studies of both infamous and lesser known serial killers. Exhaustively researched with transcripts of interviews with killers, and featuring up-to-date information on the apprehension and conviction of the Green River Killer and the Beltway Snipers, Vronsky’s one-of-a-kind book covers every conceivable aspect of an endlessly riveting true-crime phenomenon. SERIAL KILLERS: THE METHOD AND MADNESS OF MONSTERS was inspired by the author’s two brief accidental encounters with serial killers before they were captured: Richard Cottingham, “The Times Square Ripper” in New York in 1979, who tortured and dismembered five women and Andrei Chikatilo, “Citizen-X — The Red Ripper”, in Moscow in 1991, who killed an record 53 victims during his monstrous career. Peter Vronsky is a former international television news and documentary film producer and is currently working on his Ph.D. in history at the University of Toronto.

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