Serial Killers

[lennytheweedwhacker]

i've never been a serial killer

[LoathedVermin72]

More seriously, how come we don't hear about serial killers these days? They were very prominent in the latter third of the 20th century. Did crime solving become better, or did the media just stop focusing on them more? Or both, or something else?

Who needs to serial kill anymore? Now we just walk into places and open fire. It’s the millennial way.

That's hardly anything new.

WOW THANKS IVE NEVER HEARD ABOUT THIS BEFORE ITS COMPLETELY NEW INFORMATION TO ME

don't be sarcastic to my fellow bronco brother..you're in colorado, show some respect

I respect no coloradbros

[LoathedVermin72]

i've never been a serial killer

Are you sure...I mean how would you know

[lennytheweedwhacker]

i've never been a serial killer

Are you sure...I mean how would you know

i guess that depends...how many murders make you serial?

[LoathedVermin72]

i've never been a serial killer

Are you sure...I mean how would you know

i guess that depends...how many murders make you serial?

I dunno like maybe 3??

[tree_]

I think it's so that the people you've murdered are of a certain particular consistency so they can predict your next murder... You're prolly good Len

[lennytheweedwhacker]

hmm...oh well, i don't plan on changing

[verb_to_trust]

More seriously, how come we don't hear about serial killers these days? They were very prominent in the latter third of the 20th century. Did crime solving become better, or did the media just stop focusing on them more? Or both, or something else?

Who needs to serial kill anymore? Now we just walk into places and open fire. It’s the millennial way.

Pretty much exactly what I was going to say

[Green Habit]

don't be sarcastic to my fellow bronco brother..you're in colorado, show some respect

[The Argonaut]

I broke up my morning reading this long New Yorker story from 1994 built around death row interviews with John Wayne Gacy. I found this passage especially interesting, given how serial killers are often portrayed as fascinating geniuses. It's also just a very well-written passage

After it had been arranged for me to visit Gacy, I began to feel obscurely anxious about what effect he might have on me. He struck me as someone who was overwhelmed by his interior life, and, since I have never felt anything like control over my own, I was afraid that spending time alone with him might cause something damaging to rise from my unconscious. The night before I met him, I dreamed, in a motel in Perryville, Missouri, that I was being chased at night across a desert by a huge hooded figure riding a black horse. The figure had a crossbow. Once I had met Gacy, I realized that I was nothing like him, and my fears subsided, but I continued to have dreams in which he seemed to figure as a violent and malevolent presence.

I saw Gacy on six occasions during February and March. Two visits lasted a little more than an hour, and the others lasted five or six hours—more time, he pointed out, than any other writer had ever spent with him. Occasionally, his company was so dreary that I would take off my watch, so I couldn’t see how slowly the time was passing. Now and then, he struck me as being like a boor you start a conversation with in a bar and then realize you can’t get rid of.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994 ... h-a-killer

[tree_]

Perryville, MO is where I live! Weird!

[BurtReynolds]

Never been that interested in serial killers.

[blueviper]

Never been that interested in serial killers.

What about cereal killers?

Sometimes I can really kill a box of Reese's Puffs.

[tree_]

Kill, or eat?

[washing machine]

I broke up my morning reading this long New Yorker story from 1994 built around death row interviews with John Wayne Gacy. I found this passage especially interesting, given how serial killers are often portrayed as fascinating geniuses. It's also just a very well-written passage

After it had been arranged for me to visit Gacy, I began to feel obscurely anxious about what effect he might have on me. He struck me as someone who was overwhelmed by his interior life, and, since I have never felt anything like control over my own, I was afraid that spending time alone with him might cause something damaging to rise from my unconscious. The night before I met him, I dreamed, in a motel in Perryville, Missouri, that I was being chased at night across a desert by a huge hooded figure riding a black horse. The figure had a crossbow. Once I had met Gacy, I realized that I was nothing like him, and my fears subsided, but I continued to have dreams in which he seemed to figure as a violent and malevolent presence.

I saw Gacy on six occasions during February and March. Two visits lasted a little more than an hour, and the others lasted five or six hours—more time, he pointed out, than any other writer had ever spent with him. Occasionally, his company was so dreary that I would take off my watch, so I couldn’t see how slowly the time was passing. Now and then, he struck me as being like a boor you start a conversation with in a bar and then realize you can’t get rid of.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994 ... h-a-killer

This reads like something out of The Savage Detectives.

[Birds in Hell]

Read Jarett Kobek's Motor Spirit recently, and now partway through his How to Find Zodiac.

Great books, once you adjust to his idiosyncratic style.

From memory, I think it was the below Twitter thread that prompted me to order them last year:

(If you're even halfway interested, it's better to read the books, though.)

[Simple Torture]

spenno is an early-morning hero for that Twitter thread.