Serial Killers True Crime Science

Chris Dorner was a cop with the LAPD who was fired after reporting that his training officer beat up a handcuffed, nonresisting suspect. He appealed. Lost. Then snapped. In his manifesto that he posted on Facebook, he vowed to kill those associated with him being fired as well as their families. His first victims were the daughter of the LAPD lawyer who represented him and her fiancé. This recent case from 2013 includes some graphic scenes, including the all-out manhunt for Dorner and his controversial death.

Understand history's most enigmatic serial killer. In December of 1968, a serial killer began orchestrating a campaign of terror in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not satisfied with the simple act of murder, he taunted law enforcement and the public by writing letters to local newspapers. Through often cryptic and bizarre content - including four ciphers, three (now two) of which have never been solved - the psychopath played a twisted game. Reporters dubbed the man the "Cipher Killer", but the murderer chose a different name for himself: the Zodiac.

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds.

In this gripping tale of sex, jealousy, con artists, and murder, the author gets to the root of the violent crimes perpetrated by 1940s serial killers Fernandez and Beck, who preyed on lonely women through personal ads, stealing from them, and murdering them before the ultimate justice was served on the killer lovers.

Some of the things that the psychopaths featured in this audiobook did will chill your bones.... It can be hard to understand what some serial killers have done to their victim’s corpses because it’s just beyond unthinkable, and yet, it did actually happen. There are men and women who kill not just because they desire the death of their victims but because they need their bodies. They use the human body to make things - food, decorations, and even more utilitarian items.

When we hear about a serial killer, we never consider the sex, we would immediately assume a man...right? but that's not always the case! Females are for the most part, the loving and caring protectors of our species and the ones that are more susceptible to danger. However, they are in fact the most dangerous because they are the least suspected of the Serial Killers. Like their male counterparts, they show no remorse and have no mercy for their victims.

Listen to the story of Gary Ridgway from childhood to chase to capture. You might not be able to sleep after listening to this one!

Much has been written about the brutal crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and - 35 years after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 13 women - scarcely a week goes by without some mention of him in the media. In any story featuring Sutcliffe, however, his victims are incidental, often reduced to a tableau of nameless faces. But each woman was much more than the manner of her death, and in Somebody’s Mother, Somebody’s Daughter, Carol Ann Lee tells, for the first time, the stories of those women who came into Sutcliffe’s murderous orbit.

The Yorkshire Ripper's reign of terror is well known, but many remain unaware of the full truth behind the brutal attacks that shocked the nation many years ago. Countless crucial details of murder, manipulation and miscarriages of justice have been hidden from the public and the true extent of the Ripper's crimes still remains hidden to this day. This book exposes the twist in the tale of the most notorious British serial killer of the last hundred years.

Dive deep into the chilling history of Alcatraz, America’s most infamous prison. Serial Killers of Alcatraz uncovers untold stories of ruthless serial killers who continued their reign of terror even behind bars. This gripping book reveals newly discovered files, chilling inmate accounts, and violent escape attempts that ended in bloodshed.

Criminals reveal who they are and where they live not just from how they commit their crimes, but also from the locations they choose. This is the claim of renowned criminal psychologist and profiler David Canter. In this groundbreaking book, now fully revised and updated, Canter leads us into the labyrinthine psyche of serial killers, rapists, and other violent criminals, and reveals how geographical profiling is changing the way police work and our understanding of the criminal mind.

In October, 1996, young, pretty, and petite women began vanishing off the streets of Poughkeepsie, New York. Most were prostitutes and some were addicts. By August, 1998, the toll had reached eight, when a prostitute told police she had barely escaped being strangled by Kendall Francois, 27, a 6'4", 300-lb. middle school hall monitor whose slovenly personal hygiene had earned him the nickname "Stinky". Inside his house, the smell was worse, as investigators discovered a tangle of rotting flesh and bones.

Professor David Wilson has spent his professional life working with violent men - especially men who have committed murder. Aged 29 he became, at that time, the UK's youngest ever prison governor in charge of a jail, and his career since then has seen him sat across a table with all sorts of killers: sometimes in a tense interview; sometimes sharing a cup of tea (or something a little stronger); sometimes looking them in the eye to tell them that they are psychopaths.

From John Wayne Gacy to Jeffrey Dahmer, many of America's most famous murderers have entered into the collective cultural consciousness. They have become pop culture figures, famous for their crimes and the violent nature of their acts. People feel compelled to understand more about these dark and twisted crimes, even when they disgust. For audiences everywhere, the very idea that these people can exist and operate in day-to-day life becomes an issue of abject terror and interest.

For decades, Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia. The highway is known as the Highway of Tears, and it has come to symbolize a national crisis. Highway of Tears is a piercing exploration of our ongoing failure to provide justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and testament to their families and communities' unwavering determination to find it.

The story of Richard Cottingham, the "Times Square Ripper" or "Times Square Torso Killer", one of America's most sadistically depraved serial killers. A shocking case of unbridled sex, sadism, prostitution, porn, singles bars, date-rape drugs, abduction, bondage, handcuffs, duct tape, torture, sexploitation, perverted paraphilic fetishes, serial killing, and dismemberment on New York's notorious Times Square and the Forty-Deuce in the 1970s.

By day, Robert Lee Yates, Jr., was a respected father of five, a skilled helicopter pilot who served in Desert Storm and the National Guard, and a man no one suspected of a deadly hidden life. By night he prowled the streets where prostitutes gathered, gaining their trust before betraying them with a bullet to the head. On August 26, 1997, the decomposed bodies of two young women were discovered in Spokane, Washington. Within months, four more women were added to the mounting death toll.

Serial killers are big business. From the endless books, films, and television programs to the fascination of the 24-hour news networks, there is something about these mass murderers that catches the eye and catches the attention. While many people are familiar with the better known killers like John Wayne Gacy or Jack the Ripper, this is not the end of the story. There are so many examples of serial killers from around the world that many of them have simply been forgotten about.

Forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant asks, what is it about murder that fascinates us? Is it the chill whisper of fear reminding us we too can kill? Grant describes 10 true murder cases, each with unique triggers. For most of us, murder is an arm's length experience, close enough to frighten and fascinate yet far enough not to traumatise. For those directly affected, murder can be scarring. Our restless chatter about murder, our state of heightened alert, our endless appetite for news, may all just be play therapy, reassuring us that our own killer instincts are under control.

The second volume of my series on serial killers will introduce you to women who committed serial killings. These evil women are every bit as cruel and ruthless as their male counterparts. I am going to introduce you to a few well-known killers such as Elizabeth Bathory, a.k.a. the Countess of Blood; Aileen Wuornos, the woman who inspired the film Monster; Leslie Van Houten, a woman who committed murder for Charles Manson; Jane Toppan, a nurse, who killed dozens of her patients; and Amelia Dyer, the baby farm murderer.