#if i were a notorious serial killer and a documentary was made about me the opening shot would be me wanting a mango as i usually do
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i eat mangoes like a wild fucking animal
#succ speaks#if i were a notorious serial killer and a documentary was made about me the opening shot would be me wanting a mango as i usually do
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Tribute to P. Kennedy, G. Palermo, P. Dietz and M. McCann for their job
Detective Patrick Francis Kennedy
Detective Kennedy is the one who led the Dahmer’s interrogation with detective D. Murphy and the attorney W. Patrickus. Better known as “Pat”, he decided to follow his father’s and great-grandfather’s steps becoming a policeman, turning himself a detective in the crime division later after moving to Milwaukee.
He received the order to go to the Oxford Apartments, and proceeded with the arrest of the suspect Jeffrey Dahmer. Subsequently he led the interrogation and, thanks to his endearing personality, he succeeded on creating a bond with the serial killer himself. With a mutual trust, he spent lot of time with Dahmer for several weeks getting a full confession, for then attending and testify the man’s trial.
After years, Pat went back to the academy and later began teaching criminal justice at two Wisconsin institutions. He also joined various documentaries about the Dahmer’s case, as the most notorious one “The Jeffrey Dahmer Files” - came out in 2012. He even wrote a book telling his experience (it was called “Dahmer Detective” at first but then it changed to “Grilling Dahmer”).
Pat died in 2013 because of an heart attack at 59.
“I can’t say that I really did, because when I looked at Jeffrey Dahmer, what surprised me the most during the six weeks I talked to him was how very much like you and me he really was. I had breakfast with him, I had lunch with him, I would bring the paper in, showing what the people were saying about him. And it sounds weird that we became friends but we were kind of friendly. We were friends.” - P. Kennedy, 2012.
Doctor George B. Palermo
The psychiatrist George Palermo (whose real name is Giorgio Benito Palermo) was born in Tarquinia, an old city in Italy, and he graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Bologna in 1951. After moving back and forth from Rome to Wisconsin, he came back as a Professor of Criminology at Marquette University.
During Jeffrey Dahmer’s trial psychiatrist G. Palermo was called to offer an objective assessment of the defendant’s mental state. He took stand on 6th February 1992, where Dahmer pleaded guilty to the murders but claimed he was insane, a claim that was shot down by Palermo at trial. Palermo is been one of the few people who irritated and made Dahmer laugh, shaking him out of his stone-like stand.
Palermo served on the faculties of schools around the world and wrote books and scholarly articles, and lectured in places like Russia, China and Japan on a subject many might find revolting. He also liked visiting galleries in Rome because he was an art lover. On October 22, 2005, the Mayor of that time Alessandro Giulivi conferred on him the honorary citizenship of Tarquinia.
George died in 2016 at age 91.
“He looked as if he was used to it, that the courtroom was no hostile environment as far as he was concerned, and that he would get this over with nice and quickly. He was relaxed, urbane, smiling, often joking, slightly superior in manner, friendly and patient. He was patently a nice man and an amusing companion who would make a splendid dinner-guest.” - The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Doctor Park Elliot Dietz
Differently to his physician father and grandfather, Dietz is a forensic psychiatrist, criminologist and he also has consulted for television shows as Law & Order, Law & Order: Los Angeles and Kiss The Girls. He even published books called “Autoerotic Fatalities” and “Psychotherapy and the human predicament: A psychosocial approach”. He’s known for forensic psychiatry and for his expert testimony in high profile criminal cases.
Dietz was hired by the prosecution to evaluate Dahmer's claim that he was "guilty but insane", and so he spent 18 hours with him. He spoke with Dahmer, they watched Dahmer’s favorite movies and porns together, and Dahmer talked with him about the shrine. During his two days of testimony, Dietz held the trial professionally going through every one of the fifteen counts of homicide with a view to deciding in each case whether Dahmer knew right from wrong at the time of the offence and whether his actions betrayed a capacity to conform to the law if he had wanted to.
Park Dietz is also president and founder of Park Dietz & Associates, Inc. and TAG - Threat Assessment Group, Inc. The first is an association of professionals in the psychiatric and forensic field. The second is about educating institutions and individuals about the prevention of violence.
Today the psychiatrist P. Dietz is still alive at age 74, still working.
“Dr Park Dietz made his appearance in the witness-box on Wednesday, 12 February. It was immediately apparent why he was saved until the last, for there was about him an aura of unassailable proficiency. He was alert, meticulous, fastidious, precise, patiently prepared to suffer the task of explaining difficult concepts to the untutored. Like a reluctantly cynical professor, he had learnt that you have to speak slowly if people are to grasp your meaning, and you have to use simple words.” - The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Attorney Edward Michael McCann
E. Michael McCan was both attorney and politician, an he prosecuted numerous high-profile cases during his tenure as district attorney. He went to Milwaukee after he studied and graduated in Detroit and Cambridge, and he served as a prosecutor working under district attorneys, handling criminal appeals heard by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
McCann is a catholic moral man who was asked to obtain the conviction of Jeffrey Dahmer in 1991. After two weeks of the trial, McCann delivered his closing argument for the prosecution, describing Dahmer as a sane man, in full control of his actions, who simply strove to avoid detection. He argued that by pleading guilty but insane to the charges, Dahmer was seeking to escape responsibility for his crimes. Once again, McCann defeated Boyle’s defence, and Dahmer was ruled to be sane and got his sentence to life imprisonment.
Unfortunately in the last years McCann was in the middle of critics of political, social and economic nature, and so he abandoned the scene in 2007. Following his departure from office in January of that year, McCann joined Marquette University Law School, where he became a Boden Teaching Fellow and adjunct professor of law. Today he’s retired and he’s living quietly at age 87.
“Opposing him would be the District Attorney, Michael McCann, a kindly, compassionate man who felt the burden of his duty to represent the community and give expression to their outrage. He was thorough in preparation, remorseless in presentation, and only appeared unforgiving. He was a deeply moral man whose passionate advocacy reflected his outrage and did not have to be contrived.” - The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Drawing note: I started sketching this art with Pat, as I saw his unique, even goofy, appearance. He looked like a Pixar character, so I decided to draw him in my style to have some fun. I didn’t plan to make a whole drawing with multiple characters at first, but then I sketched Palermo as well since his appearance was so cartoonish too. At the end I decided to amplify the canvas so I could add two additional characters and I decided to include Dietz and McCann. These four are the involved people of Dahmer’s case who hit me the most, and I decided to dedicate them a drawing. I don’t mean to minimize the gravity of the case with this drawing, I don’t want to treat it like a tv series making fanarts out of it, but instead it wants to be a tribute for their amazing job during the case, in my personal own artist way. I don’t mean to offend/disrespect anybody with it. If this causes troubles or unease to somebody, I won’t think twice and I’ll delete it right away. Thank you for reading!
#jeff dahmer#jd#true crime#jeffrey dahmer#informative#patrick kennedy#tribute#park dietz#George Palermo#Michael McCann#drawing#fanart#jeffrey lionel dahmer#Dahmer#the shrine of jeffrey dahmer#grilling dahmer
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The Red Rose
Paring : Serial Killer Jongho X gn reader
Warnings: murder, blood, obsessive behavior, jealousy, yandere (let me know if i missed out anything!!!)
!!! Read at your own risk !!!
Word count : 1K?
hi this is my first time ever writing and posting it online! i just had a lot of ideas and i miss jongho so much so... hehe
hope y'all like it <3
The town has whispers of this notorious serial killer. He has probably killed over a 100 victims over the span of the last one year. It was said that his way of killing is not brutal, he just loves to slice people’s throats with a knife and let them bleed to death. He enjoys the screams and cries of his victims. He doesn’t have a type for his victims, instead he kills for pleasure. He ends his killing with a red rose, coloured almost blood red, being placed on their cold body. Therefore he is known as “The Red Rose”.
He is not caught yet. Many bodies were found but no evidence of the killer. Some say they saw someone walking in the dark, dressed in full black with a red rose in his hands, his face was covered with a clown mask. He probably kills with his mask on. Who knows right?
Well, you know. You know “The Red Rose”, you know who is this notorious serial killer that has been around town killing people. That’s because he is your boyfriend. You’ve known each other since highschool. He is one quiet boy in class, everyday dressed in full black, and has an obsession with clowns and knives. Well, it’s not that bad right? Since he was just 15 years old back then. How did you guys end up together? Well you are sick and twisted in your mind like he is.
He fell in love with you first. In love… hmn maybe i would go for “obsessed”. That’s the word. He was obsessed with you. He loves your mannerism, he loves your voice, he loves how you look at him. He loves everything about you. You’ve noticed him since he was in your class and he is quiet so you tend to look at him alot and observe his behaviour in class.
One day, you decided to talk to him. And he replies. Oh, is not that he doesn't talk to people, but it’s just that nobody talks to him, and he didn’t bother to either. His voice… this was the first time you heard his voice, and it was deep and gentle. He speaks so gently. Everything he does, was so gentle. He was a gentle person.
Until you found out about his obsession with clowns and knives. That’s when you got even more curious about this quiet kid at the back of your class. His name is Choi Jong Ho. Since then, you’ve befriended him and always hung out with each other. Slowly getting to know more about each other and slowly falling in love.
As time went by, you found out more about him, he was curious how killing someone is like. He wants to know what that feels like. He watches a lot of movies, TV Series, documentaries about serial killers, those scenes described, acted out, and the sounds he heard through the TV screens intrigued him alot.
Oh, and you also found out how obsessed he is with you. And that made you feel some type of way. It makes you feel loved somehow, and you don’t notice the problem and the toxicity that arises from it. You just let him be possessive and obsessive over you. You also notice that he whines a lot when he is with you and you only. He talks a lot when he is with you, he is clingy and he loves hugs and kisses from you, especially intimidating ones. Well, because most of the time he is really quiet. He is really different when he is with you and just you alone. You get to see his cute little smiles and his cute little laughter. And this is all for you to see. He is yours right?
You were there for his first attempt in murdering someone. You were there through the entire thought of it, the planning and eventually the implementation of the plan. You supported him because you love him. Well, he just wants to try out right? It doesn’t hurt to try… right?
You were with him when he made his first attempt. You weren’t shocked though, you just find it fascinating, most importantly you find him hot and sexy. He always looks hot and sexy when he is focused on doing something. But you do get jealous though, when he is very focused on his victims, especially when they were females.
You found a red rose lying on the ground, picked it up and observed it. It has splatters of blood of the victim on its petal. Interesting, you thought to yourself. Gently placing it on the victim’s lifeless body, you smiled. He asked for the reason for you placing the flower on his victim. You simply told him it is pretty and it was splattered with his victim’s blood and it looks nice being placed on the body. He took your words seriously and from then on, he made it a habit to bring a red rose with him when he is on his way for his next victim and placing it on the bodies after killing them. Just because you told him it was pretty and it looked nice.
Now, you are used to it. Him leaving the house in the middle of the night and coming back passed midnight with blood stains of his clothings and his clown mask. He will be in the shower, cleaning himself and you will help him to clean his mask and burn his dirty clothes. Well, neither were you or him wearing the clothes that were stained with other people’s blood.
After all that, you both will cuddle in bed. You liked to be the small spoon. You would ask him about his killing that day and you both would just giggle and laugh at it. He would kiss your forehead goodnight and tell you how much he loves you and you both sleep peacefully in each other's arms.
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Ok but as someone who was not born nor raised in America until much later in life, I need to know, what the fuck is y'alls obsession with serial killers?
The context of this question is not important, but I'll still talk about it cause I need to talk about this encounter. So I'll just have it under a read more for those who want to understand where I'm coming from with this.
So theres this girl in my philosophy class who I unfortunately went to high school with, and on it's own I cannot stand this girl so already her shit on very thin ice with me. But anyways, this girl is notoriously obsessed with serial killers, like extremely obsessed, to say that in high school she wanted to make an entire group research project about how oversexualization in the media contributed to serial killers, which on it's own is a lot to unpack, nevermind the fact that nobody in our group saw it had anything to do with anything. But yeah, extremely obsessed with sk. So what happened was that at some point in my philosophy class a few weeks ago, our professor brought up something that ended up spiraling down a rabbit hole about cannibalism, and this bitch decided to bring up Jeffrey Dahmer and was basically saying how he was her favorite serial killer and how interesting he was like. Which like maybe from a psychological perspective but to say that hes your favourite serial killer? Like yo, are you fucking hearing yourself? Thankfully the prof cut that shit short. Buttt fast foward to today, my professor brought up the dilemma of better and worse desires, and his example was a man needing to eat and a man wanting to kill. And you guessed it, this bitch went, "do you mean eat as in cannibalism like dahmer?" And everyone just went yo what the fuck (verbatim, the guy behind me said that). And she went on about dahmer. So the prof once again moved on to a different example. Then at the end of class, the guy behind me asked her what was her obsession with dahmer, which yeah rightfully so, and she once again said he was her favourite serial killer, and then the guy went on to compare dahmer and Bundy I guess in mortality or how successful their methods were, which by then I was about to check out. But what really made me question this girl's sanity was that she went to explain in detail one of dahmers very gruesome murders and acts of cannibalism with absolute casualty, like she was stating a fun fact. By then I went straight out the door, and I guessed the guy followed my example because he followed after me and left her talking. Which like yeah no, I wouldn't want to listen to her serial killer infatuation any longer either.
And the fact of the matter is that this girl is not the only girl who has this morbid interest in serial killers, like at this point with the amount of documentaries and stylized movies/shows that have been made about REAL LIFE sk (mind you when I say real, real people who murdered real people who still have living family members, or maybe even victims that might still be alive, those people are fucking real) I think these hideous men are just romanticized to a point that is disgusting. Like the amount of people I've seen that are obsessed with the new dahmer show is absolutely sickening. I personally like crime shows, and shows like mind hunter where they used actual police procedures while exploring the hideous nature of these killers do a really good job at showing it without romantazinting it. And I'll even listen to YouTubers talk about and analyze notorious serial killers, but that's it. I dont inquire more, I dont go researching about every single crime, about every single kill, and i sure as hell dont go researching every single detail about someone so vile simply out of curiosity or interest. And for similar reason, things like the dahmer show or the netflix Bundy movie are just things I cant get myself to watch because it feels entirely different, it feels like with them being front and center, you're supposed to understand them, get inside their heads because to some extent it interests you. But it goes too far cause it's one thing to look true crime and find their psyche interesting from a psychological or criminology stand point, but it's a completely different one to find genuine intesterest in said hideous acts when you're doing it solely for your own curiosity and interest, and not because its your job, as it may be the case for a criminal psychologist, forensic or law enforcement. Like you're gonna tell me that knowing how someone decapitated another person, kept the head and then fucked it is valuable or interesting to you? A 14-18 year old has no business being so deeply invested or obsessed with these sk, especially when they show absolutely zero regard for the victims or the impact those disgusting people had on those they hurt.
The romatization of sk and killers in general is a fucking problem and you can't fucking tell me that it's not.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk babes.
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Long post: Being young in the TCC
I wanna talk about those under the age of 18+ in this community. It will not be any form of slander directed at the teens and younger teens in this community, just merely my observation and personal experiences. For reference, I was born at the end of 1999. (I’m not super ancient but enough)
I grew up being into the paranormal, cryptozoology, mythology, so it isn’t a big shock that I eventually have fallen down this rabbit hole of a true crime wonderland I’m in now.
I was about 7-10 years old when I would recall overhearing conversations my parents were having with my “grandparents.” (Ignore the quotations, it’s a long story) I never forgot hearing them talk about, who I now know was Jeffrey Dahmer, a man who had body parts in his fridge and trash bags of body parts. They would have a few cocktails and talk about notorious criminals often. Something about it stuck with me and I did ask questions, but they never answered more than likely due to my age and their belief that I might lack understanding.
Around age 11/12, I was introduced to this band, Blood on the Dance floor. (Yes, we both know…) Anyways, if you were a fellow emo or scene kid back in the day, you may recall Bryan Stars Interviews, some little twinky kid who’d interview all the edgy bands. I was watching an interview with the band i stated earlier, and one of the front men recited a quote/meme (not entirely sure where it came from) which was a parody of “Call me Maybe,” the top song of the year.
It went:
“Hey I just met you, and this is crazy. But here’s my basement, I’m John Wayne Gacy”
Within the second I heard that, my little preteen fingers scrambled to Google. That’s when I found out he was a serial killer, in which lead me to Jeffrey Dahmer. From there, I was hooked. I spent hours watching documentaries, movies, reading books, trying to learn everything about Jeff. You can say I was THAT person. I was so utterly obsessed over the crime and person, down to the point where I knew his inmate number by heart.. yeesh.
That’s when I started to discover what true empathy felt like. As we know, there’s a big deal over the romanticism of killers online and in research. As a kid, I didn’t know any better. I felt this strange pity for Dahmer. Looking at it now, as an adult, it was because I myself was in a bad place at the time and I happened to know what it felt like to be lonely per say. I understood what he did was wrong and couldn’t be justified, but that overwhelming sorrow I felt was immense.
Though, I was also so young and immature to the point where I didn’t understand the emotions those who confronted Dahmer in the court room over their loved ones and cracked jokes about it. I get comments replying, to this day, to my HORRIBLE in taste comments on YouTube videos I made when I was 11/12 and delete them in horror of what I said. I didn’t know how to empathize with the victims then.
Around that time, deep into my Dahmer obsession, Sandy Hook destroyed my state. ( Wont disclose my location obviously, but will say I personally knew people who lost loved ones that day). My 13th birthday was just around the corner, two days to be exact, when the shooting happened. I also won’t go into detail about where I was, what I thought, and so on that day; it’s a whole separate post I would make. But that that the moment I kinda snapped back to reality.
From there on my interest disappeared for a while. Only being able recalling odd situations I’ve been in where other criminals where being discussed in conversation; for example when I was a sophomore in high school attending a spoken word poetry type deal with my class. A young male, my age or an upperclassmen, read a poem about bullying. I do not recall anything from that session, but a loose sentence from his poem.
“Bullying can affect others mental health immensely. Take Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold for example”
I never thought anything of it, nor do I remember the whole poem, but that stuck with me, a victim of poor mental health and bullying myself.
Time skip to the summer after I graduated to really set my point in. I wanted to just add my personal experience with being very young and intrigued by true crime before I came to the age group the majority of people in this community are.
I was fresh out of high school, two months exactly. I partied like it was 1999 all over again that whole summer, into fall, and into the next year. My friend and I came back into my room after a long night of smoking weed and having a few drinks. We had just lost our friend to, what was labeled as murder, but became involuntary manslaughter, and talked about him.
I owned an ouija board. (Yes, you may think this is going where you think it’s going… it is kinda.) Like I said earlier, I loved the paranormal, so of course I owned one of these. My friend pulled it out of my closet said we should talk to our friend. Which we tried, got kinda spooked in a fun way, and lead to us joking about ghosts.
She ended up bringing up Ted Bundy, which sparked my whole memory of my Dahmer days. We talked about it for a while before binging court clips on YouTube. I’m pretty sure y’all know how YouTube will roll over to the next video in your recommended; well as we finished, I noticed YouTube was rolling over to a video called “Hitmen for Hire.” The second it started playing I was confused. I thought it was some stupid video someone uploaded online, and never thought anything of it until I saw, who I know now was Eric, start screaming at the camera. I had this weird feeling that I recognized him from somewhere, almost like one of those “we’ve met before” moments. But at this time I had really no prior knowledge about Columbine what so ever. I googled the names in the description and was hooked on what the fuck went down. I’m talking about full on deep dive research that was nonstop. My researching lead me to this community.
You still with me? Wow, i’m impressed. Here’s a gold star ⭐️
I joined the tcc tumblr at the ripe age of 17 and I never turned back. My life drastically changed immediately after that. I won’t go into major detail to as what, but I was absolutely downright stupid, but was “enabled” by my vast following I conjured in the small span of a year. Im talking typical columbiner stuff, minus the “I’m in love with ___ or ___”, adopting the shitty ideologies, and never disrespected the victims. (No hate to those who do say they love them, it just was/is pure platonic love here)
I was deeply obsessed with Eric, it became so bad, on top of my heavy drug/alcohol use and the slow titrating off my cocktail of medications at the time, that I was subconsciously unaware I was molding myself into a weird imagined version of Eric that was in my head. Actually more like this “REB” character. A “REB kinnie” almost if you must. I let the case or mostly Eric himself, swallow me into this deep abyss.
I was consumed, as consumed as one can get. I was fighting with people in the community over the absolute dumbest shit, being pinned as a horrible person, bullied relentlessly, and practically targeted for the smallest things. I noticed this behavior and “mold” after something made me snap into a fit of anger. I really had to look at myself in the mirror and remember who the fuck I was, and who I wanted/needed to become.
Eric stood out to me way more than Dylan did. Eric and I, in a metaphorical way, are “connected.” (We’re not talking spirituality here, logically and mentally) I saw the world through the same eyes as him, not to the extreme extents and poor in taste rants, but similar. It was like for once there was someone out there who just understood. Somebody who mirrored my reflection back to me. That’s why I felt so attached.
This pattern/behavior stopped after doing some self reflecting before I sent my ass out to Colorado in 2018. I visited the memorial, grave sites, saw their former homes, and school. My whole perspective truly changed. From there, I took a break from the tcc. I left for a whole year and returned with a sincere apology for my behavior. I was on the tumblr and Instagram side of the tcc at this point, mostly ignoring my tumblr. I truly did not return to the tcc until May of 2020 when I joined tcc Twitter, now have been on it coming to about 2 years, and returning to tumblr late this year.
What I want you all to take from this, especially if you’re within the 14-18 age range. You need to learn how to detach. It is 100% okay to feel the way you feel, it’s okay to relate to your “Fave” or topic/person of interest. But you cannot let it consume you. You do not have to feel like you need to dress like them, be interested in the same things, or even talk/spread the same belief system as them to be accepted by others or feel closer to them. I do not want any of you to fall victim to that mindset I did. The worst part of this, and the biggest thing I want to make clear, is that sometimes you don’t even recognize this behavior in yourself since it’s subconscious or even conscious. It’s because you conditioned yourself or lead yourself to believe what is going on is normal behavior for you. You don’t recognize that the interest has had an effect on you since you’re so consumed by it.
You will look back on this, if you decided to stick around longer, and just want to slap yourself. I can already hear the typical “I won’t be here when I’m an adult,” “it’s really not that serious, I won’t care” already. Yes…. You will. Maybe not immediately, oh but you will..
Another word of advice to my younger mutuals, it’s okay to make friends, but be super weary with who you’re talking to and how you talk to them. You never know if someone is out to harm you. It’s okay to be mutuals with an adult as teen. As long as they’re not actively engaging in red flag behavior, grooming for example, toward you or anyone in that age group, you’re fine.
I see my younger mutuals as siblings, If you need advice I’m here. You can practically ask me anything. (Just don’t tell me any details about your “private time/life” I’m an adult, yes I’ve been there too, but I don’t need to know.) God forbid one of you needed a plan b for example, I would go out of my way to help you obtain it so you don’t have to have that embarrassing talk with mom or dad.
Overall, I and many other older veterans here truly care about you. If you’re spiraling, need help, anything. Talk to one of us you trust. You’re not alone, and you’re not the first to go through an edgy phase or your hardships.
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-- && guests may mistake me as ( andy biersack ), but really i am ( liam sullivan + cis male + he/him ) and my DOB is ( 12/28/93 ). i am applying for the ( banquet manager ) position as part of the EHP and would like to live in suite ( #203 ). i should be hired because i am ( + loyal, charismatic, driven ), but i can also be ( - distracted, opinionated, pushy ) at times. personally, i like to ( watch documentaries, play poker, get tattoos ) when off the clock, but that won’t interfere with work. thank you for your consideration!
ooc;; it’s ya girl kay again, i’m so so sorry adfjlaksfj. this is liam, he’s a brain baby of mine that i played a little while ago and he’s been haunting me since i stopped playing him so here he is to be a part of y’all’s lives. hopefully you dig him, if not......... well that’s fine, too. can’t make you do anything, i’m not your mom unless you’re card; go to your room, card.
TW’s: Mentions of prostitution. Abortion. Drug use, drug addiction, drug overdose, & drug related death.
fast facts / personality details;;
( i put these first this time because the background is A Lot on this one okay )
has a rather protective and care-giving nature mixed in with his excellent work ethic and drive.
loves when guests ask for the manager and he gets to come out and see how much they didn’t expect the manager to be a 6′4″ beanpole with neck tattoos.
lives by the ideal “put your money where your mouth is” ; also just like, be genuine and up front with him in general, like he’s not an asshole, but also he knows how to deal with assholes, so let that be said
has a five year old german shepherd named Roxy that he rescued from shelter overflow when she was only a six month old puppy; Roxy still thinks that she is a small lap dog despite being a Big Girl
still wears the ring that his mom gave him for his eighteenth birthday every day, despite the issues that they had, and despite her being gone now.
has his nose pierced and his lip pierced, though the lip ring he takes out for stretches of time; the nose ring is always in, though.
absolutely covered in tattoos, in case that wasn’t already painfully obvious. he loves getting them and yes, still has room for more, will continue to get them probably forever.
prefers brown liquor over pretty much any other alcohol, though he’s not opposed to a good draft every once in a while
listens to more classical music than anyone would ever probably expect of him; that being said he also listens to a lot of classic rock and, naturally, a dose of pop punk, too, for fun.
he likes listening to true crime podcasts and watching various true crime / serial killer documentaries; criminal minds is also his favorite show. so like don’t piss him off, i guess ajdkfljasdklf
smokes cigarettes like he’s a motherfucking chimney; says he’s working on quitting, has yet to actually start that process.
generally just a supportive person; if Liam cares about you in any capacity - even if it’s just because you work together - you’ll know it. he likes to help the people around him, try to steer them in the right direction, offer them advice.
he’s not a shy person, in fact he’s rather social, and while there’s a dry humored joke or a sarcastic toy here and there, he’s a pretty genuinely nice dude. despite the things that he’s seen and been through in his life, he’s worked really hard to stay optimistic, and driven throughout and so far he’s been very successful at that.
dresses rather nice / got that business casual look down with the short-sleeved button ups or the long-sleeved ones with the sleeves rolled for work purposes. however, outside of work it's like a cat and his wardrobe were in a trash bag together. lots of black, and dark earthy colors, too. the duality of man.
background / life story;;
Liam Travis Sullivan was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, where his mother, Stephanie Sullivan, was an escort / call girl on The Strip.
Stephanie getting pregnant was a tremendous ‘oops,’ but she kept the baby anyway. The baby’s father was a client who had a wife and kids already, so he paid Stephanie a whole lot of money to stay quiet and out of contact with him. This money allowed for her to take time off from working to be able to have Liam and take care of him for a bit.
Liam really was Stephanie’s whole world once he was born; the best thing that she ever did, as she so often told him through the years.
Liam never knew his father, but he put two and two together once he was old enough to understand what it was that his mom did.
Liam was three years old when Stephanie finally returned to working on The Strip. He was left in the care of some of Steph’s other ‘working girl’ friends on the nights she happened to be working.
He got very accustomed to spending his time around females, having a heavy female influence in his life as he grew up -whether that particular female influence was always the best or not. It led to his respect for women, though, and his ability to feel very comfortable around them, even from a young age.
When Liam was six years old, Stephanie ended up pregnant again. However, this time she ended up actually having an abortion. Liam only knew about it because his mother rambled about it to him in an overemotional drunken state. She told him that “he was her good boy and all that she needed.”
Working The Strip -as notorious a place as it was- and making the money that she did left Steph open to a lot of drinking and drug use.
At eight years old, Liam found a stash of his mother’s cocaine in their bathroom. This earned a distressed meltdown from Steph about him staying away from that sort of stuff because it was bad. Though, as a developing child gaining understanding of the world around him, that proved to confuse Liam because he didn’t understand why his mommy had it and was doing it if it were so bad.
Liam was ten years old the first time that his mom overdosed. This instance just involved going to the hospital to get her stomach pumped and spend the night on a fluid IV, but it was still terrifying for the boy at the time.
Stephanie struggled with drug abuse for most of Liam’s life. Living where they did facilitated it so easily and also made any getting caught up in the law with it rare -it was Vegas, after all, not to mention Stephanie was in sex work, so the law wasn't always looking out for her anyway.
Right before Liam was about to start high school, the young teenager -already having had to do so much growing up so early and so fast- took it upon himself to give his mother an intervention of sorts. He told her that if she was going to keep taking time with her away from him that he was going to run away, figure life, out himself, even if he did end up in the foster system or something. He pleaded with her that he didn’t want to lose her, that he wanted her there for all the things his life could still have in store for him. Ultimately, after many tears and a lot of convincing, Steph let her fourteen year old son flush her drug stash and they made a very rushed plan to finally get out of Vegas.
Moving to California was really good for the both of them for a while. Being in a new place meant starting fresh, moving forward. Stephanie didn’t know anyone she could get drugs from; between that, the support of her son, and finding help at local NA meetings, she managed through the withdrawal and the struggling. She got a stable, more normal job, working at a sports bar -bartending and waiting tables.
Liam easily adjusted to the change of environment. He practically thrived in Los Angeles. Before he knew it, he had friends, got into playing football at his high school, was losing his virginity. Fast-paced and unconventional were ways that Liam was used to living his life, so getting into things like physical relationships with girls, despite how young he was in reality, felt normal to him in all his adjusting.
Things stayed going really well for pretty much the whole first year they were in LA. Liam did well in school, got a part time job to help his mom out. Steph ended up picking up a second job to stay busy and keep money coming in. They were good, they were better than they had been, and they had each other.
The summer before Liam’s junior year of high school, he caught his mom using again. Evidently it had been going on for a few months already at that point, and because of how busy he was with school, friends, and work, he had caught on late. Stephanie argued with him on the matter, told him that it wasn’t his business to worry about, among other unexpectedly harsh things. It was the first real, legitimate fight he ever really had with his mom, at least the first one that really mattered.
With too much riding on his focus on school and football -given he had since come up with the goal to go to a good college, to make something of himself and do good things- Liam shut himself off from his mom for a little while. They lived together, came and went about their lives, but they spoke minimally, Liam didn’t fight more with her despite knowing that she was still using at the time. It was very odd for him, to have any sort of bad energy between him and his mom -it was so rare, it had always been just the two of them. He decided, though, that he had to focus on himself and his future.
Senior year came with the promise of scholarships, multiple college scouts having their eyes on him, more than one girl interested in dating him, a wide friend circle, a basic car he had been able to buy for himself, and a growing savings account. Liam was doing great, he was on the right track, focused. Stephanie, however, had downward spiraled. Her using had gotten out of hand to the point of losing both of her jobs, having to get a new one in a setting that was dangerously close to the things she had been doing in Vegas -a strip club.
It wasn’t until Liam’s Winter Formal that year -Stephanie deep into her continued cocaine addiction- that something changed. He was in his suit, getting ready to leave to go pick up his date when his path crossed with Stephanie’s. Upon finding out where her son was heading, who he was going with, the friends he was meeting -details she hadn’t been knowledgeable on for some time at this point- the woman burst into tears. She sobbed apologies to her son, begged him to forgive her for missing out on his life, made promises to him that she would get better for him -promises Liam tried not to take to heart; he had learned.
They did get Stephanie into a rehabilitation clinic shortly after the holidays. She had to sober up a little bit and once again Liam shouldered the responsibility of getting rid of the drugs that she had in their apartment. He spent two months alone in their apartment while his mom worked through her issues, sobered up fully, came back to him. It was an exhausting couple of months for him, trying to be a self sufficient adult in an apartment that had to have things paid for in it, while also juggling school and football, but he managed.
Stephanie came home a different woman than she left, and upon getting a more functional version of his mother back, Liam had the tiniest glint of hope that maybe things would be okay again. Graduation was looming, and he had a few different schools that were more than willing to offer him full ride football scholarships to their universities. Notre Dame, Duke, UCLA, among other state-based colleges all had eyes on him. It was something he could finally talk to his mom about.
While Stephanie encouraged him to follow his heart, follow wherever his dreams were gonna take him, Liam couldn’t shake the idea of being far from home -or, in particular, being far from where she was. Things were so fragile with her and her addiction, it was so much more possible for something bad to happen and him to have absolutely no idea about it if he went far away. So despite the incredible opportunities he could have had elsewhere, he chose to accept to scholarship from UCLA out of all the schools who chose him.
Going to college, let alone such a prestigious and well known state school like UCLA was like something out of a fairytale for Liam. Looking back on what his life had been up to the point of graduating high school and moving on to bigger things, he was amazed at what he had accomplished. Given the healthy and sober way that his mother still was at the time of his high school graduation, she, too, made it a point to make sure he knew how amazed and proud she was of him.
College wasn’t quite as easy for him as high school was, but that just drove Liam to work even harder. He wasn’t going to waste the opportunity he was given. He was double majoring in business and marketing; even though he had little idea what sort of business he wanted to be a part of, he knew that he wanted something for himself, something that could do good, give back in some way shape or form. Those subjects would do a lot to help him get there, he knew that much.
Stephanie stayed sober for most of Liam’s college experience, after the help of going to rehab, and the continued going to NA meetings. He popped back to the apartment every now and again -having moved into campus living during the semesters- and that helped her, too. Things seemed really good for quite some time, but having the other shoe drop once again unfortunately didn’t come as too terribly much of a shock to Liam. She had been getting involved with some guy she knew from work, they’d been sleeping together, and what Liam didn’t know is that they frequently went out for drinks. Drinking slowly but surely progressed into getting high together; something easy for Stephanie to fall into, particularly because of her habit, but also because of the familiarity of the circumstances -it was awfully similar to when she was working on The Strip and would get wasted with clients.
Liam was in his last semester of college, just about three months shy of graduating with his bachelor’s degree. It was a huge deal for him, it was something that he wasn’t going to give up for anything in the world. Still, he made it a point to help his mother after she called him absolutely high out of her mind and apologizing to him while he was pulling an all-nighter on an assignment one night. He didn’t ask many questions, just the basics, and he looked into a place himself -a rehab center that was further away, lengthier and more in depth with their programs. Before, they had gone with what was convenient, facility-wise, but he wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. If his mother needed more special attention, he was going to get her to that.
Getting his degree was a gift, a blessing he in reality never thought would be his. While his mom was still in rehab at the time of his graduation -Liam insisted that she not leave treatment just to come to the ceremony- she still wrote to him consistently, sent him a congratulations card right around the day of the ceremony. Liam was in a position in his life that awed him in a way, ready to take on the world.
Pursuing the concept of his own business sort of took a back seat; having just gotten his degree, it wasn't like Liam could immediately leap into much, not to mention he didn't have the funds. He had been working and saving all through college - served, cooked, and bartended at a grand total of six different restaurants in Los Angeles by the time he graduated - but on top of any business itself being expensive, school itself was expensive, too.
By the time Liam was twenty-four years old, he was managing two bars, and co-managing a restaurant out in Los Angeles. He was living on his own, keeping tabs on his mother sporadically, but mostly working toward a goal for a business of his own. He was teetering between a pub of sorts, or a burlesque club - two wildly different ideas, but both with the same idea in mind; somewhere entertaining but somewhere that also provided a sense of community, somewhere he could give jobs to people that needed them - perhaps that was inclined to women, from his subconscious protection of his mother, but that was beside the point.
A coworker of his at one of the bars he was the bar manager of ended up being who presented a move out of Los Angeles to him. There was potentially more business opportunity somewhere out of that location, out of the state of California, even. Chicago was brought to the table, this friend having heard of a program that offered employee housing at a luxury hotel. Liam was apprehensive about the Malnati at first, given he didn't want to have to start on a bottom rung in terms of his job once again. As it turned out, however, there was a management position that was generally up his alley. Seeking opportunity and further growth wherever he could find it, Liam made the move to Chicago.
Things between him and his mom had been more distant over the year since he graduated college, and in his move to Chicago, he couldn't say he was surprised to end up hearing about things getting bad again for his mom. It was a moment of true growing up for Liam, realizing that he had to be responsible for himself, he had to do what he needed to do, he couldn't carry his mom anymore. If she didn't want to get better and stay better, he couldn't be the one derailing his life to continue to try to make her do so.
That first year of him living in Chicago, working as the banquet manager at the Malnati, his mom overdosed for the last time. It was unexpected in the same way that it wasn't; Liam went through a brief period of a numb sort of grieving - he was of course sad to have lost his mom, to have to come to terms with the fact that he'd never get to see or speak to her again. He also, though, had to face the fact that as dark and upsetting as the circumstances were, they were out of his hand, they were not his responsibility. He mourned his mother as she deserved, and he went on with his life; because deep down he knew that she would want that for him, anyway.
Liam has been living in Chicago and working as the Malnati's banquet manager for the last nearly-three years now. He oversees more than just a restaurant and a bar now, and it's expanded his career experience in ways that he is very thankful for. It's a little bit on the backburner once again, but definitely not forgotten, that he intends to have his own business some day. Perhaps more than one, even. He loves the organization and the hard work and dedication that go into leading - whether that be a kitchen or a bar or an event. He likes to be supportive as much as a leader - Liam wants to see his team succeed; if there's slack that needs to be picked up and he can help, he will. He's not going to bark orders and call it a day, that's not what he's about, that's not what he considers his job. He's got a good head on his shoulders, and a good work ethic, and he likes doing what he does.
wanted connections;;
IT’S TIME ONCE AGAIN FOR ME TO FAIL AT THESE LMFAO
Liam in his job oversees chefs, bartenders, servers, room service runners, and musicians, so like we got a whooooole lineup of connections to be had there; he’s their boss yeah, but as I’ve said like a million times now he’s really active in trying to help his team succeed. he’ll help out on the bar and running food and covering breaks or callouts or whatever, so like there’s a lot of good potential relationships to be had there.
other managers bc we love seniority adfjlkasdfjk no i’m just kidding, but still we love some manager pals why not
idk i think it’d be really funny to have someone who’s like intimidated by him simply because of the way that he looks and he’s like look i’m really not that bad i just like tattoos a lot okay lmAO
a casual hookup here or there is chill; he’s not super into the fwb thing? like he’ll stay friends after a hookup if the other person is cool with it, but as an ongoing thing it just gets too complicated for his liking.
pet parent friends; his girl Roxy is a friendly giant baby and he adores her, bring him some parent friends and her some dog friends
tattoo pals of some variety?? even if it’s just him constantly encouraging people to go get tattoos, or talking them through processes? going with them for moral support because he barely even feels it when he gets tattoos now?? who knows
honestly we been knew i’m up to just talking shit out and winging it a lot of the time too so just hit me up if you wanna figure some stuff out with this inked up beanpole okay? okay ily.
#liam. | about#liam. | headcanons#this is EXCEPTIONALLY LONG LMAO I'M SO SORRY#there's a lot to take in#if you made it through the whole thing you may be entitled to emotional compensation
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The Shocking Case of O.J. Simpson (Part 2)
And we are back! So in Part 1 we looked at an overview of the case; here in Part 2 we’re gonna look at the suspects! I’m thinking this is how it’ll go for true crime episodes in the future. Speaking of which, if any of you guys have an idea of an episode for me to do next, whether it’s supernatural or true crime, feel free to suggest it!
Now that we’re getting into suspects, I feel I should reiterate my warning from Part 1: we’re gonna get into some of the... heavier details in this part. If at any point you feel uncomfortable or distressed by what you read, you are totally free to stop reading. I personally had no problem with what is addressed, but I realize not everyone is me. Your feelings are valid, and you are not a lesser person for wanting to stop reading.
And now, without further ado, enjoy!
Tag list: @cosmicrealmofkissteria @ashestoashesvvi @kategwidt
VINNIE [voiceover]: Now that we’ve covered the timeline and important events in the case, let’s get into the suspects. Unlike our other cases, this case has one clear top suspect: O. J. Simpson. So we’re going to break this down into two sections; why O. J. is the killer, and why O. J. is NOT the killer. Let’s start with why he could have done it. First off, let’s start with a possible motive. O. J. and Nicole Simpson had been going through a break, and at the time of the murders were living in separate residences. Also at the time of the murders, Nicole and Ronald Goldman had grown increasingly close, leading some to speculate that they were perhaps more than friends. Though Goldman said this was not the case.
That is obviously a clear motive right there.
Yeah, obviously. Even if Goldman said it wasn’t the case…
O. J. could still think he’s lying and they’re getting romantically involved.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Now, let’s return to the timeline. If the murders did in fact occur around 10:15 PM, the time the dog barking began, that would give O. J. enough time to commit the murders, clean himself up, and be back at his house by 11 PM, in time to greet the limo driver.
[cut to the three driving in the car in Brentwood. It is now night]
VINNIE: Right now, we’re headed to O. J.’s Rockingham Estate, which, not-so-fun fact, was only six minutes away from Nicole’s townhouse.
PAUL: Oh man, really?
GENE: So it’s definitely feasible, especially if he was booking it.
[car stops, and they all look out the window]
PAUL: Is that it?
VINNIE: That is it. [camera pans over a gated entrance as Vinnie speaks] So this the former site of O. J.’s Rockingham Estate. It was demolished in 1998, but… probably very happy to leave.
[screen cuts back to the slideshow]
VINNIE [voiceover]: Going into DNA evidence, O. J.’s blood, as well as Nicole’s and Goldman’s, were found on the glove left at the scene of the crime. Further damning is the fact that this glove matched a glove found at O. J.’s estate behind the guest house, near the area where O. J.’s friend Kato heard loud thumps at 10:40 PM. Both gloves had blood on them that matched Nicole, Goldman, and O. J. O. J. also had a cut on his finger the day after the murders when the police interviewed him. The knitted hat contained hairs that were proven to be O. J.’s by the FBI hair and fiber laboratory. Also found at O. J.’s residence was Nicole’s blood on a sock, and blood was also found in his driveway. The bloody shoeprint found at the crime scene matched O. J.’s size, and the sole pattern matched another pair that O. J. owned at the time. O. J. had also purchased a knife matching the type the coroner predicted had been used. Though, the knife and the shoes were never found.
I’m sorry, how is this an unsolved case again? Because it seems pretty obvious to me that he did it.
Well… *sigh* I don’t know how to answer this question…
I’m pretty sure this is where most people draw the line and say, “Yep. He’s guilty.” I think this is where my grandfather was convinced anyway.
Wasn’t your grandfather kind of a dick, though?
Okay, regardless of whether or not Gene’s grandfather was a dick, I will say that yes, this is where many people draw the line.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Another key detail was the fact that O. J. had been a perpetrator of spousal abuse against Nicole Simpson in the past, reportedly resulting in nine police visits to the Simpson residence responding to domestic disturbance calls. In 1989, O. J. was found guilty for spousal abuse, and plead no contest to the charges. Bizarrely, in 2006, O. J. himself wrote and published a book called “If I Did It”; a hypothetical account of the murder. Though the book was first cancelled due to public outrage, it was still later published, with all profits going to the Goldman family.
Wait wait wait, hang on a sec.
Uh huh?
So O. J., the man everybody thinks did it…
Yes.
…after getting acquitted for these murders…
Yes.
…writes a goddamn book on what could have happened if he did it?
Yes.
…
*wheeze*
*laughter* What the fuck, man?
This guy’s got some balls on him, that’s all I’ll say.
VINNIE [voiceover]: For those that are new to this case, O. J. Simpson was found not guilty. Despite the DNA evidence found at the crime scene, the defense team called to the attention of the jury technical mistakes made by the forensic team, which created some doubt over the evidence. Evidence was not packaged correctly and even left in a van to overheat. This ultimately led them to suggest that the crime scene may have been contaminated.
So, do we have any commentary on this?
*sighs*
Nope.
I got nothin’.
Okay then.
VINNIE [voiceover]: During the trial, the defense team had O. J. try on the glove found at the crime scene, and it was too small, leading to the now famous line by his lawyer, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Though, it’s worth mentioning the prosecution team was against having O. J. try on the glove, because it had been frozen and unfrozen multiple times as a preservation method, and it also had been covered in blood.
Oh, THAT’S where that line comes from!
Yep, this is where it’s from.
I was wondering what line they were parodying on that one Rick and Morty episode.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Many also believe that race played a factor in O. J.’s acquittal, due to the events that surrounded the trial. In 1992, race riots occurred due to the LAPD’s senseless and horrific beating of a black man named Rodney King; a beating for which the assaulting officers were acquitted of all charges. The defense strategically used law enforcement racism as a reason for O. J.’s charges; they showed a video of Simpson handcuffed as soon as he returned from Chicago, demonstrating the rush in judgement by the police. Perhaps one of their biggest arguments was centered around Detective Mark Fuhrman. During the trial, the defense played for the jury a tape of audio in which Detective Fuhrman was recorded using racial slurs over FORTY times in one recorded sitting.
What the fuck?!
Jesus…
VINNIE [voiceover]: This is noteworthy, because Detective Fuhrman was also the first person to step inside O. J.’s Brentwood Rockingham Estate after the murders occurred, a feat he accomplished by jumping over the wall of the estate. This is a critical detail, because according to Fuhrman’s own testimony, it was during this time after he jumped the wall that he alone discovered the notorious, matching bloody glove behind O. J.’s guest house. With this information, the defense was able to suggest that Detective Fuhrman planted the glove and perhaps all other evidence found at O. J.’s estate, effectively tainting the evidence regardless of whether or not it was true. Christopher Darden, a deputy district attorney assigned to the O. J. case summarized it in this quote: “It will do one thing. It will upset the black jurors. It will say, whose side are you on, ‘the man’ or ‘the brothers’?” The jury was made up of eight black people, one Hispanic person, one white person, and two people of mixed race. All these things considered, the jury reached the verdict of not guilty, after only four hours of deliberation. However, it’s worth mentioning that O. J. lost the eventual civil case for the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, with the jury awarding their families $33.5 million in punitive damages.
[cuts back to the office]
PAUL: This episode is gettin’ me down, man.
VINNIE: Yeah, I— [starts laughing]
PAUL: This sucks.
GENE: I agree, this is the worst.
VINNIE: Yeah, it is not fun.
PAUL: Jesus, I’m getting JonBenet Ramsey flashbacks. This is the fucking worst.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Though, if O. J. Simpson didn’t kill his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman, then who did? Let’s get into some alternate suspects. The first suspect is convicted serial killer Glen Rogers. In an investigation discovery documentary, Clay Rogers, the brother of Glen Rogers, said that while on death row, his brother Glen confessed to murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Though, even if this theory is true, O. J. would still be guilty. Glen Rogers had reportedly been hired by O. J. to steal a pair of earrings from her condo, but was told to kill her if she got in the way. However, it’s possible that Rogers was serving a six week jail sentence at the time of the murders, and therefore lied about his involvement.
So O. J. hired a serial killer to steal a pair of earrings?
Yeah, that… that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
No, it really doesn’t.
Those must’ve been some pretty damn expensive earrings.
VINNIE [voiceover]: The last suspect is Jason Simpson, O. J.’s son, and is the sole theory of famed private investigator Bill Dear, one of the few private investigators to be inducted into the Police Hall of Fame. Though, it’s worth mentioning that people have discredited Dear’s case as entirely circumstantial.
I already am suspicious of this theory.
Oh, just wait.
Is it bad?
Well, I don’t know if I would call it “bad” per se, but it’s… it’s kind of fucked up.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Nonetheless, Dear presents his theory in a book, and the highlights are as follows: At the time of Nicole and Goldman’s murders, Jason was on probation after having attacked his former boss with a knife. According to Dear, Jason had also attacked a former girlfriend named Jennifer Green. Dear also spoke to another former girlfriend of Jason’s named Dee Dee, who claimed Jason almost broke her back after throwing her into a bathtub, and perhaps even more suspiciously, cut off her hair with a knife, giving Jason two reported assaults involving a knife. Dear also reportedly obtained medical records of Jason’s—illegally, some might add—by dressing up and impersonating a doctor at Cedar-Sinai Hospital, where Jason had been a patient, for two weeks.
Okay—wow.
He, *laughing* he impersonated a doctor for two weeks just to get this kid’s medical files?
*wheeze* It does sound ridiculous when you put it like that.
Why didn’t he just ask the hospital for the records?
Well, there were probably a ton of hoops he would’ve had to jump through if he did that. Like, I know there’s a law protecting doctor-patient confidentiality for one thing.
… Okay, that makes sense. But still… weird.
Definitely weird. The Police Hall of Fame didn’t seem to think it was weird, though.
Is that really a thing?
Yes.
Okay... I dunno how to feel about that, but okay.
VINNIE [voiceover]: According to Dear, Jason had been diagnosed with Intermittent Rage Disorder, and around the time of the murders, Jason stopped taking the prescribed antipsychotic drugs. This was also during the time when Jason reportedly told doctors he was “going to rage.” Jason’s alibi was that he was working at a restaurant that night. Dear feels this is a flimsy alibi, due to the fact that his timecard is reportedly handwritten, which could suggest it was written after the murders. This reportedly handwritten timecard is even more suspicious when you consider the fact that the electronic time clock was fully functional that night. Dear also reportedly has pictures of Jason wearing a knitted hat that bears resemblance to the hat found at the scene of the crime, pictures taken before the murders and not after. To cap this off, Dear suggests that O. J. was only present at the scene of the crime to protect his son, and that this would explain his bizarre behavior such as the famous Bronco chase. But as mentioned before, many have discredited Dear’s case as almost entirely circumstantial.
I will say this: he does make a solid case.
Yeah, but… I dunno…
I hesitate to say this theory is good, because unlike with O. J., there’s no definite, hard evidence that he did it.
Yeah, there is that.
There’s no DNA evidence, his theory on the alibi is kinda shaky…
It’s almost as if he’s twisting around facts to support his theory…
It really does.
Which as we all know is intellectually dishonest.
Very intellectually dishonest.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Unrelated to this case, on September 16th, 2007, O. J. was connected to a robbery in Las Vegas, Nevada. In the 2008 trial that followed, O. J. was found guilty for twelve counts, including armed robbery and kidnapping, and was sentenced to 33 years in prison. According to a CNN survey, the overall percentage of Americans who believe O. J. did murder Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman has increased from 66% in 1994 to 83% in 2014. Perhaps one day we will have a definite answer to the question of who murdered Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. But for now, the case officially remains… UNSOLVED.
[as the credits roll, we cut back to the office set. Paul, Gene, and Vinnie all look unsure of what to do next]
PAUL: Jeez… Well, thanks for this, Vinnie. This has been fun.
GENE: Yep. We got into some heavy shit this episode.
VINNIE: Well I’m sorry for heeding the request of the masses. [gestures to the camera] They’re the ones that kept suggesting this case.
PAUL: I will say, this did not bum me out as much as JonBenet Ramsey.
VINNIE: I mean, all of us were bummed out by the JonBenet Ramsey case.
GENE: You guys are givin’ me flashbacks.
[beat of silence]
VINNIE: [sighs] I need a drink. [stands up. Paul and Gene follow]
PAUL: I feel like I need a shower.
GENE: I’m gonna go watch some Looney Tunes. I need some humor after all this heaviness.
PAUL: Good idea. [looks and points at the camera] All you guys, go watch some Looney Tunes. Give yourself a laugh. Self-care is important.
BUZZFEED UNSOLVED TRUE CRIME
What unsolved mystery do you want to see next?
#kiss unsolved#kiss unsolved true crime#lol I really put the boys through the wringer on this one eh?#I promise the next true crime case I write up for them will be a bit lighter#well as light as it can be anyway#I always really enjoy writing for this au#it's really fun and these three work really well together#if only they were like this in real life...#well that's what fanfiction's for#hope you guys had a good time reading this#please feel free to suggest another episode to cover#kiss au writing#my writing#thanks for reading!
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WIP Game
The Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.
I was tagged by the wonderful @jimalim a while back. It took me a bit to compile all the projects I’m working on, but here they are! Fingers crossed that some actually get finished 😂
Bughead:
For All Time — World traveler and photographer Betty Cooper knew her entire life that Jughead Jones was meant to be the love of her life. When they finally meet, somewhere in the shops of an old Brooklyn borough, he is taken aback by her sudden insistence that they belong, however he is subjected to her theories as they continue on their assignment together, backpacking across Europe collecting tales for his travel blog. When he begins to have visions of her death, however, he begins to question whether what she says is true, and as their relationship deepens, he starts to give in to the emotions she claims they’ll share together. When signs point to her impending demise, can he work to stop the clock in time or will he lose the one person he never knew he needed until he had her? And should she perish, can he fight to get her back or will he learn that sometimes love may not be enough to transcend time?
Snapshots — What’s a story only half-told?An afternoon of reading old diaries and manuscripts turns into a lifetime of memories played before Betty and Jughead as they dig through the past. What were the moments leading up to the romance of sophomore year that stood out to Betty in her diaries, Jughead in the manuscript he wrote about his story with the girl-next-door? How did their epic love story play out for the couple beyond the events of Jason Blossom’s murder that shook the bedrock of Riverdale? -- Currently on AO3
INSIDE -- Stepping into her father’s shoes was always the plan for ambitious detective Betty Cooper, her endless dream of taking down the bad guy imprinted on every step of her path from childhood to adult. She had worked hard to gain the respect of her superiors, and suddenly she lands the opportunity of a lifetime – going undercover to investigate the shocking murder of Jason Blossom, the son of a well-known businessman in Riverdale, NY. The job was simple: get beneath the surface, lie low, and pay attention. However, when Betty is assigned to infiltrate the Serpents, a notorious gang in the Southside part of town, she finds it harder than expected to blend in, catching the eye of nefarious leader Jughead Jones. Will she make it out alive with the answers she craves, or will she find herself stepping in the path of a very dangerous man, locked in the snake pit that she can’t escape?
In Her Own Words -- At the young age of 19, Elizabeth Cooper, daughter of the Earl of Cooper, found herself courted and wooed by the famous heir to the House of Andrews, the crowned prince who she was to wed. After a hasty engagement, a whirlwind of press and protocol, Betty found herself surrounded by people but still felt so alone, her mental health taking a dive as her marriage began to crumble around her feet. Her husband’s secret affair with long-term friend Veronica and the spotlight of the world upon her both lead to years of self-harm and isolation, and soon the only joy she feels is the sparkle of laughter she shares with the Prince’s personal secretary, Forsythe “Jughead” Jones. She puts on a brave face beneath the scrutinizing gaze of the public eye, but inside she’s falling apart, and it isn’t long before she learns she has to push back and fight for herself or else she won’t survive. Will the reaffirmed belief in true, albeit forbidden love with her close friend and confidante claim her downfall or will it give her the strength to stand on her own two feet and become the Queen she was always meant to be?Or the retelling of Princess Diana’s tragic, yet inspiring life based off the documentary “Diana: In Her Own Words”. This story will be interview style in the first person with Princess Elizabeth “Betty” Cooper with memories and flashbacks retelling her ill-fated romance and involvement with the House of Andrews, and her future beyond the weight of the crown.
But Now I See -- Ever since she was a child, Betty Cooper felt she was meant for something greater, meant to make the world shine brighter. As she grew older, and life became too difficult, she sought comfort in the church, soothing her emotional scars with the words of God and Christ. Devoted to her cause and her faith, she sets forth on a course to take a vow of postulancy. For most of his life, renowned pianist Jughead Jones always kept his head down, choosing to create his own masterpieces in the shadows, free without the confinements of society. His life is forever changed, however, when he gets into a horrific car accident, the end result being a crippling blindness that makes him question everything he thought he knew.When the two meet in the hospital ward and strike up a friendship, they begin to doubt their beliefs in both faith and purpose. Will Betty complete her journey to become a nun or will she realize her purpose lies in the heart of another, and will Jughead finally learn to believe in the good of fate or will he succumb to the demons that haunt him forever?
That’s Why I’m Here -- oneshot where Betty and Jughead meet at an AA meeting, bonding over their broken parents
Title still undecided -- Betty is a sex talk show host who is, in reality, fairly inexperienced with good sex. Jughead is a journalist who tries to uncover the truth about the sensationalized, famous show host. She ends up getting him to break down his walls while he teaches her a thing or two about good lovemaking. Basically an excuse to write porn with good plot.
SweetVee:
Title still undecided -- serial killer AU where Veronica and Sweet Pea try to track down a killer obsessed with Veronica
Title still undecided -- Veronica takes her daughter with her to live at Alice Cooper’s ranch after her messy separation from her husband where she meets ranch hand Sweet Pea.
Relatively Stable -- For the first time since medical school, Veronica Lodge, MD was on top of her game. One of the youngest and most sought after doctors at Riverdale General, she exuded both sophistication and grace as she fought to save life after life in the Intensive Care Unit. But when an ambitious new nurse named Sweet Pea challenges her authority, she takes it personally, and the two butt heads by the bedside, patient after patient.When a young man comes through the Emergency Room one night, bleeding out from a massive car wreck, Veronica and Sweet Pea have to put aside their differences to save his life. Fighting to keep their patient stable starts to bring them closer, their feelings becoming far more carnal than clinical, and despite their numerous differences Veronica may learn that Sweet Pea is just what the doctor ordered.Will both their relationship and their patient survive the night? Find out in Relatively Stable, a medical narrative that asks the question – is love the best medicine or can the heart only take so much before it arrests and dies?
On The Run -- Veronica Lodge was on the verge of seventeen, and all she wanted to do was forget about the responsibilities her parents expected of her and revel in the passion she shared with secret boyfriend, bad boy biker Sweet Pea, who had a reputation that made her rich father’s blue blood boil. Defying her parents’ wishes, she sneaks out of her penthouse bedroom one evening for a twilight filled with freedom, experimental sex, and cocaine-fueled excitement. However, what starts as an act of teenage rebellion quickly turns into a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, a run-in with the Ghoulies leading to an all-out brawl that spells trouble for the ill-fated lovebirds. As Sweet Pea and Veronica flee for their lives, on the run from violent gangs, vigilant law enforcement, and her family’s disappointment, Veronica has to make a choice — give up the rush to enter adulthood with a safe, respectable reputation or throw it all away for the bad boy with a cold sneer and a heart of gold.
My Favorite Piece of You -- Cakes, tarts, and pies -- all delectable treats served up at the Serpentine Bakery, the lunch time haunt that ambitious businesswoman Veronica Lodge frequents every single day. For the past year, she’s been coming to the cafe, indulging in its simple pleasures, until one day she unknowingly insults the attractive yet surly owner, motorcycle enthusiast Sweet Pea. After a sour meet cute, the two begin to form a connection over the concoctions that he creates behind the counter of the bakery, an appetizing alliance that takes them both by surprise. However, over time they begin to wonder if the chemistry between them can withstand a dose of sugar or if their relationship has too much spice to be a good thing. They’ll have to knead out the kinks in their peppery personalities if they want their love to rise, but one thing’s for sure -- Veronica Lodge has got one Hell of a sweet tooth.
Multiship:
To Riverdale, with love -- What is Christmas to the stranger next to you? Is it a time to sing joyous carols door to door in the freezing cold? Is it a time to curl up next to a fire with a cup of hot cocoa while surrounded by loved ones? Is it a time to bury beneath blankets to hide from the sorrow of what a Christmas without that special someone feels like? Follow along in this seasonal treat as nine stories weave in and out like holiday tinsel in this Love Actually inspired fanfic, including the romance and friendships of nine different pairings in Riverdale, the town where one might just find that love truly is all around. -- COMING CHRISTMAS SEASON 2018
There’s also a whole host of one shot ideas and other multi-chapter fics I have saved, but haven’t quite touched yet.
If you’d like to know more about any of these projects, please feel free to reach out to me!!!
#upcoming projects#works in progress#bughead#bughead fanfiction#sweetvee#sweetvee fanfiction#multiship fanfiction
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South Africa’s Mad God Face Off With Devils In Bruising New Doomer
~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~
MAD GOD is a hell of a name for a band. It's brash, frightening and, if there is a God, probably true. Literature is replete with tales of madness, from throne room to darkest cavern. After all, what could be more frightening than insanity? Worse still, what if God were bonkers, too? It's an idea pregnant with possibilities and this week, the Johannesburg trio of Tim Harbour (guitar, vox), Evert Snyman (bass), and Patrick Stephansen (drums) gives birth to another album of vignettes from our mad, mad world.
'Grotesque and Inexorable' (2018), besides being a vocabulary expanding mouthful, will have fans of H.P. Lovecraft whipping out their magnifying glasses, looking for signs his influence throughout. What's behind those glowing eyes? Is that perhaps a ritual knife? And what of that ghastly cephalopodic tail? It all beckons us to venture closer, to stroll deeper into the bush. Only here in nature's primitive darkness can we see clearly.
This is not an interpretive dance through Lovecraft's greatest hits, however. What Mad God have assembled is essentially a horror anthology, each of its six chapters bearing witness to some monstrosity -- real or imagined. All of them are unimaginably terrifying.
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is
fear of the unknown." (H.P. Lovecraft)
The parade of deplorables kicks off in the cemetery, where apparently if there is no rest for the wicked, then neither will there be respite the just. "Haunting the Graves of the Unhallowed" is like a nod Unhallowed Graves and perhaps The Reluctant Dead by the pioneering author of African horror, Nuzo Onoh. Mad God bring a Goyaesque gravity to the song, with the witchy metallic grit of early Yob or the bitter-sweet ire of Trouble -- all caged with the expansive song structure made a staple of the genre by the godfathers of doom, Black Sabbath. That's for those of you reaching for a point of reference in this slow-burning, bubbling cauldron of toxic stew. It won't take long for you to acclimate to the flavor, and with repeated spins you'll be easily picking up on the Mad God distinctives.
If the first track draws upon the supernatural, "The DeZalze Horror" is grounded in grizzly physical reality. In January of 2015, the papers greeted South Africans with the strange story of a millionaire and his family massacred at the DeZalze Golf Estate golf resort outside of Cape Town. Henri van Breda, was the apparent lone survivor and claimed amnesia about the whole event. He evaded justice for a year-and-a-half, until all evidence in the investigation confirmed that the 20-year old Henri had indeed wielded an axe against his father, mother, brother, and sister (the latter being the sole survivor).
Mad God's mean, sludgy swagger makes this track a fitting bedfellow with Church of Misery's bevy of serial killers. Tim's guitar chugs along like someone pacing hallways, Evert and Patrick's rhythm section makes me think the bump and drag of the axe's head along the floor, while Henri laments the shocking outcome of his brutal rage. A bluesy, fuzzy interlude brings us the 911 call, and the drums pound like sunken heartbeat, resigned to the awfulness and permanence of one's decision.
Last month, the band chose "I Created God" as the album's first single. "This song was written after watching a Charles Manson documentary, following his death in 2017," Tim Harbour explains. Though Manson remains the perennial muse of songwriters, he hastens to add: "This song does not condone the actions of the cult leader, but rather delves into the psyche and motives of both him and his followers around the time of the murders that took place in 1969." As one might expect, the lyrics aren't pretty, underlying the band's thesis that despite the beauty and good in the world, the ugliness of evil is never far behind and is often three steps ahead. Unlike the notorious fascination of Uncle Acid & the deadbeats for Charlie, Mad God's musical characterization of Manson and his Helter Skelter scenario is somber, with his mad ramblings echoing through the song's final stretch.
"The Crawling Chaos" follows, a reference to the short story written by Lovecraft, but based upon a dream of a companion, poet Winifred V. Jackson. A hazy, Alice in Wonderland ambience opens this opium fever dream, in which an accidental overdose leads to a misshapen landscape mired by 50 foot waves, outsized flora, and bizarre trip beyond the Milky Way. The song is perhaps emblematic of the horrors lying dormant within each of our mind, not to mention the subtext of addiction.
"No Prayers, No Fires" is my favorite of the lot, for it led me down another fascinating rabbit trail. This one took me all the way to one Herbert George Wells -- yes, the self-same H.G. -- who wrote a non-fiction book speculating about the future of society. Central to his book, 'The Future in America: A Search After Realities' (1906), a travelogue of impressions from his first visit to the States, was the Oneida Community of New York. Once hailed as a triumph of human cooperation and communal living, there were now "no prayers, no fires upon the deserted altars of Oneida any more forever..." Their leader, a cultic figure by the name of John Humphrey Noyes, wanted to bring about Christ's fabled millennial kingdom (which was all but an obsession of 19th century religionists), but the enterprise fell upon scandal and financial ruin. The evil groove of this song is key to its success and the band is in fine form for the duration.
At last comes "Wild Hunt," which returns us to the spirit realm for a romp through the underworld, with faintly human apparitions fastened upon their ghostly steeds in pursuit some unknown prey. Legend has it that those among us unfortunate enough to see a vision of the Wild Hunt will be met with sure calamity. It's not a fast song, as we've become conditioned to by bands that tend to go nuts with the "wild" part. Mad God's take is, in fact a sad one -- more in the spirit of Reagers-era Saint Vitus or more recently, Pallbearer. These departed spirits are "bound by eternity" to chase after desires they could never be satisfied in their former lives, nor in this pale existence. It's a tasteful conclusion to the album, though it does leave one with a feeling of melancholy.
Mad God's Grotesque and Inexorable drops this weekend and can be pre-ordered here. Of all the surprises we've been treated to in 2018, this is perhaps the grimmest and most tantalizing -- not unlike a Lovecraftian monster.
Give ear...
Grotesque and Inexorable by Mad God
Some Buzz
'Grotesque and Inexorable' (2018) is the 2nd full length release by Johannesburg doom metal band, Mad God. Mad God was formed in 2014 by Tim Harbour, Tim Harrison and Patrick Stephansen with the intention of bringing doom metal to South Africa, as it is one of the most underrepresented metal genres in the country. 2015 saw Mad God release their first split, 'Unholy Rituals' alongside Johannesburg stoner act Goat Throne. The following years were good for doom metal, the Temple of Doom shows put on in Joburg became a regular event for stoner, psychedelic and doom metal music showcasing some of South Africa’s best talent such as Ruff Majik, STRAGE, Corax, Pollinator, The Makeovers and many more.
In 2017, bassist Tim Harrison left the band and was replaced by Jarred Beaton and in July that year, Mad God released their first full length album titled 'Tales of a Sightless City,' which gained a fair amount of traction among online stoner and doom circles such as Stoned Meadow of Doom and MrDoom666 on YouTube as well as receiving favourable reviews from popular review sites such as Angry Metal Guy and Doombringer. That same year, Mad God did their first tour to Cape Town and staged a show with The League of Doom (Cape Town’s very own doom and stoner event organisers) as well as played at Krank’d Up Festival alongside acts such as Vulvodinya, OHGOD, Intervals, and Memphis May Fire. Shortly after, the tour the band took a hiatus to focus on writing new material and bassist Jarred Beaton was replaced by Pollinators lead singer and guitarist, Evert Snyman.
'Grotesque and Inexorable' is an exploration into new musical territory for Mad God. After the release of 'Tales of a Sightless City,' Mad God have been aiming to evolve their sound to something darker and more unique.
This album draws on much gloomier themes and the lyrics reflect this turn. The music itself is both dirtier and more progressive and as a band we tried to introduce a wider variety of influences including death and black metal as well as more traditional and heavy metal sounds, even including some '70s progressive rock.
The album title also reflects this change in sound. In other words, "disgusting and cannot be stopped." The band adds, "As Lovecraftian fan boys we had to throw the word grotesque in somewhere!"
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#D&S Debuts#Mad God#Johannesburg#South Africa#Doom#Sludge#Metal#Doom Metal#D&S Interviews#Doomed & Stoned
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The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness Review – Exhaustive Look Is Long Overdue
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Netflix‘s new docuseries The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness aims to restructure a deeply ingrained story. New York City’s most notorious serial murderer wasn’t a serial murderer after all. If David Berkowitz was part of a team of street level satanic power brokers, the entire story is a false narrative.
The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness is an impressive entry in the true crime documentary premiere run at Netflix. It focuses on the work of journalist Maury Terry, whose investigation into the Son of Sam case was criminally sidelined. Terry was convinced that convicted lone serial killer David Berkowitz was part of “a highly motivated and well-organized cult group whose various criminal enterprises included the .44 homicide.”
Terry’s 1987 book The Ultimate Evil: An Investigation of America’s Most Dangerous Satanic Cult, is a must read. But it got lost in the Satanic Panic, and Terry got sucked up into the world of the tabloid press. If Geraldo Rivera couldn’t survive The Geraldo Show with his journalistic reputation intact, how could Maury Terry? A wall of authority was built by a seeming Satanic cabal to shut out any idea the infamous murders could have been by anyone but a singular “Son of Sam.”
The “Son of Sam” spree captivated the world in the late 1970s. The chase for the killer was legendary, it made household names of investigators and district attorneys, careers and reputations were assured by it. All of New York City clung to its every detail. Berkowitz pled guilty to eight shootings in 1977, and the case was closed. Nobody else was charged with any crimes related to the shootings. The arrest and conviction of Berkowitz made people believe they were safe to go back out on the streets.
The documentary does a fantastic job showing how the police, press and the public all came together to create the lone gunman mythology. Berkowitz christened himself “The Son of Sam” in a letter designed to taunt police, and the documentary makes it seem like they never forgave him for it. He wrote to Jimmy Breslin, the recognizable “face” of The New York Daily News, name-dropping Beelzebub before promising to return. “Yours in murder, Mr. Monster,” he signed the letters, but the demonic names meant nothing more than lurid prose to the police.
The press fed the beast. The documentary vividly captures the mania which fell on New York City, as women cut or tied up their hair, because the roving gunman was targeting long-haired women, and stayed home anyway. Discos emptied. Neighbors followed neighbors. The documentary mirrors the rabid and rising hunt for the killer with Terry’s increasing obsession. The cops closed out the Summer of Sam by accident. A lucky coincidence linked a witness with a ticketed car. Berkowitz was arrested in front of his apartment complex on August 10, 1977.
Filmmaker Joshua Zeman (Murder Mountain) expertly incorporates archival news footage, and damning snippets of conversations. Terry’s own words and case files are thoughtfully read by Paul Giamatti. The director had already found a Son of Sam connection with his 2009 documentary Cropsey, about missing kids on Staten Island, and had contact with the author during research. The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness opens with the director receiving boxes of files, including interviews, and correspondences with Berkowitz from Terry’s personal investigation. Among them is a letter the journalist received from the convicted killer in 1981, postmarked Attica Correctional Facility. “I am guilty of these crimes,” Berkowitz wrote, “But I didn’t do it all.”
The documentary shows how, while some authorities hinted claims about ritual murders might be credible, a thin blue line forms behind the “my dog told me to do it” story to stifle the fear, rushing the case to a close. New York Mayor Abraham Beame was up for reelection and the story was fast-tracked, almost in advance. This speedy wrap-up never fooled Neysa and Jerry Moskowitz, the parents of the victim Stacy. Queens District Attorney John Santucci, whose jurisdiction included five of the Son of Sam attacks, was mocked by cops like Joe Coffey for even reading Terry’s book. Carl Denaro, a surviving victim, was so enraged he joined Terry’s investigative team. Though he would later have to remind the journalist he got shot in the head for the case.
Maury Terry is more relatable than the documentary seems to realize. Friends and colleagues bring up how he goes from a drinking buddy to a drinking baddie, but every personal revelation ultimately gets tied to his descent into obsession. Terry really is the ultimate representation of a New Yorker who lived through the Summer of Sam. He has good instincts, but he’s stuck at the wrong job. Who wants to write about the newest laser printer when his gut tells him there’s more to another story in his own neighborhood?
The press claimed Berkowitz got the name “Son of Sam” because he was acting on orders of his neighbor’s dog. He reportedly believed the dog was possessed by the soul of a 6,000-year-old man named Sam. In 1979, The New York Times reported Berkowitz made it up, but Terry, breaks the code which led to the codified .44 caliber myth. There is a real Sam, he’s got real kids, they got real problems and he’s along for the ride. Sam Carr and his sons lived in the house behind Berkowitz. The Carr family owned the Labrador retriever Berkowitz hailed as the high demon.
The high point of the series is the interview at the Sullivan Correctional Facility recorded for Inside Edition. The co-producer of the installment, Wayne Darwen, succinctly sums up the emotion by describing the meeting as Sherlock Holmes meeting Moriarty and Ahab harpooning the great whale. Berkowitz says it doesn’t matter how involved he was in the crimes, he should be imprisoned for the rest of his life just for being there.
The documentary excerpts Berkowitz’s story. He joined the cult in 1975, after meeting Michael Carr at a party on Barnes Avenue in the Bronx. Berkowitz says he “was intrigued by the occult,” which was presented in a harmless way, “just witchcraft and seances. I never dreamed I’d eventually become a murderer.” Berkowitz describes late-night meetings in the woods of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and Untermyer Park in his own backyard, which was Pine Street in Yonkers. This inspires the name of Terry’s investigative team, The Pine Street Irregulars. Another tip of the hat to Sherlock Holmes. The description matched the “Twenty-Two Disciples of Hell” taunts in letters to Jimmy Breslin.
The convicted killer also describes his initiation at Untermyer Park. “I recited a prayer to Lucifer and then pricked my finger to draw a little blood. I also gave information about my family.” He names John “Wheaties” Carr. This points back to the letters “Son of Sam” wrote to Breslin.
Berkowitz admits he was present at each of the eight murder scenes. But wasn’t the triggerman at all of them. In the book, Ultimate Evil, Berkowitz says one of three women in the group shot Carl Denaro. Berkowitz also said “a Yonkers police officer who belonged to the group.” On camera for Inside Edition, he admits to shooting Donna Lauria and her girlfriend Jody Valente. He says there were three other accomplices at the scene, two men “in a tan car,” and Michael Carr, whom Berkowitz claims is the shooter in the Queens disco shooting. He says John Carr killed Joanne Lomino and Donna DeMasi. Earlier in the documentary, Terry says he thinks John Carr looks more like a likeness in a police sketch than Berkowitz.
The documentary sets up the segment brilliantly. We believe we have seen Terry’s vindication. Berkowitz confirms and expands on every aspect of the story he has laid out. The highlights were broadcast nationally on Inside Edition. The documentary then puts Terry’s questions about Arlis Perry, a 19-year-old student who had been murdered at Stanford University on October 12, 1974 under a magnifying glass. Was Terry leading? His follow-up interview is sad to watch, almost as infuriating for the viewer as it must have been for everyone in the room at the time.
The documentary shows how Terry chased some dubious leads to bad conclusions, from desolate small towns to the heart of Hollywood. Roy Radin was a producer on the 1984 movie The Cotton Club. His body was found on Friday, May 13, 1983, at a deserted site in northern Los Angeles County. He had been shot in the head 13 times. After the police scoured the crime scene, Terry, along with private investigators, found a Bible in a tree near the murder scene, opened to a passage which can be interpreted as pointing to a Satanic connection.
Terry lumps too much satanic activity together. He sees satanic symbols everywhere. He sees codes in everything. He hits on the Process Church of the Final Judgement in the book The Family by Ed Sanders. Terry speculates the murders could be connected to Charles Manson, but the Process Church has always downplayed anything having to do with the man who killed the sixties. He published an article in their magazine, probably got high with them, but the Process Church had a history of suing anyone who suggests a connection. The four-part documentary series skirts this by avoiding some of the more problematic claims of Terry’s book, which also describes a mysterious figure called Manson 2, who was apparently being groomed for mystical mayhem.
The other story being told in The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness is the rabbit hole Maury Terry gets lost in. The arc of someone ignoring family, relationships, health, and ultimately life. The theories never move into QAnon ridiculousness. Terry’s initial investigation is well-researched and investigated. The evidence strongly suggests Berkowitz did not act alone. The segments where Terry puts together all the pieces could have been longer, because so many esoteric clues fly by so fast, the audience doesn’t get the chance to luxuriate in the spidery webs which connect everything. It is fun to go down this rabbit hole and make all these connections. It fills a similar need to crossword puzzles. True crime obsession is a fascinating topic.
The focus of the series is as much Terry as it is the Son of Sam killings. Terry is also his ultimate victim, dying in 2015, and still yelling orders on who to call to follow up a lead. It is a cautionary tale about the dangers of true-crime obsession. Terry is a fascinating character. His obsessions with Satanism, snuff films, and cash are compulsively watchable. But the coincidences which frustrate him are as damnably indictable as they are effectively inadmissible. John Carr was killed in February of 1978 in a shooting in Minot, North Dakota. Michael Carr was killed in a suspicious traffic accident in October 1979. His car was apparently run off the road on the West Side Highway.
The intrepid journalist isn’t even the smartest guy in the room. It’s the serial killer. If Berkowitz acted alone, he’s got defenders fighting the police narrative, the press narrative and the public’s fear. If Berkowitz did act on orders, he’s managed to keep himself alive while even his superiors wound up dead. Ultimately, Maury Terry only has two goals. He wants the police to apologize, and he wants to make sure the victims knew who shot them. Berkowitz knew far in advance he’d never get either.
“Maury, the public will never, ever truly believe you, no matter how well your evidence is presented,” Berkowitz tells Terry at the end of their first meeting. No matter how much evidence Terry compiled, no one was prepared to take him seriously.
The Berkowitz case is responsible for creating the Son of Sam law, which says no criminal can profit from the publicity of their crimes. The state can take any money earned and donate it to the victim’s families. New York should have jumped on it, milking Berkowitz dry, and paying for an investigation. The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness is compelling, exquisitely inconclusive, and long overdue.
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The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness is available to stream on Netflix now.
The post The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness Review – Exhaustive Look Is Long Overdue appeared first on Den of Geek.
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Punk (Chap. 8)
Summary: You’re head over heels for your best friend Bucky and hate the nickname he gave you as it doesn’t exactly scream romance.
Word count: 4284...oops
Warnings: Same as always
A/N: Okay here it is chapter 8. Let me know if the flow of this chapter is okay, if it makes sense. I’d like to get a better feel of how I construct scenes so I can improve for the future. I LOVE feedback, you have no idea. So don’t be afraid to lemme know how you feel!
Also, there is a line in here with an asterisk (*) after it. It is a paraphrase from Criminal Minds season 3 episode 8 said by Penelope Garcia to Derek Morgan and it is something that has always stuck with me and I just thought it was so perfect for this chapter.
Perhaps watching Investigation Discovery’s documentary on the world’s most notorious serial killers at one o’clock in the morning while finishing off the leftover apple pie in an essentially deserted tower wasn’t the smartest move. Every sound was suddenly more sinister and every shadow could be hiding a deranged murderer who wanted nothing more than to chop off your head and keep it in the freezer, which had startled you so badly when it spit out ice cubes into its inner bin that you spilled an entire glass of water on Ferdinand who ran shrieking from the room and knocked over what was probably a very expensive vase. Fuck.
But you’d already fallen into the vortex of twisted true-crime stories and you weren’t likely to surface anytime soon. It was like watching a car crash. But it was a welcome distraction from your train wreck of an evening and took your mind off, however briefly, of the endless ebb and flow of self-loathing thoughts plaguing your mind. So if listening to psychologists throw out theories about psychopaths and narcissists and human behaviour made you forget your own personal problems, then so be it. Bring on the gore.
An hour later the pie was gone, you hated yourself and lack of self-control, and both the Zodiac Killer’s and Jack the Ripper’s identities were still unknown. The thought was unsettling. How had they gotten away with all that they’d done? Did they have help? Hydra, you thought wickedly. Or the Illuminati…or vampires...Freddy Krueger…Jason Voorhees…Michael Myers…You glanced around the dark, still living room. The others wouldn’t be home until closing time and the nearest person was at least three floors away….you glared around at the shadows…did that book case always look so….shelfy? Was the kitchen clock always so...aggressive? Tick!…tock…tick!…tock…
The faint sound of the elevator door opening had you springing from the couch, knocking the empty pie dish and all of its crumbs onto the carpet with a clang, and diving to the floor. Some brave Avenger you were. “Pssst, F.R.I.D.A.Y?!” why you were whisper-shouting was beyond you. “Is there a murderer in the building?”
“Several highly- trained assassins, including yourself, currently call this tower home,” the A.I. responded...AT A NORMAL FREAKING VOLUME! Great, now the murderer knows I’m here! Tony couldn't make a stealth-bot, could he? Something that understood the subtleties of surviving a serial killer!
Ok that might have been a tad dramatic. “Hey! I’m not an assassin! I’m an Avenger! It’s different!” you hissed. “I’m not, like, a serial killer,” you grumbled.
“Serial killer is such an ugly term. I was a specialized weapon and not by choice might I add.” Bucky’s soft, sarcastic voice came from behind you causing you to yelp and jump nearly a foot in the air.
“Oh my god, you scared the shit outta me!” Your hand was on your heart as it jackhammered against your sternum, something you were fairly certain Bucky could hear even from ten feet away.
Bucky laughed and flipped on the light, bathing the room in a soft, yellow glow. Immediately, you threw yourself back on the couch and grabbed the soft, plush blanket you’d been using as a shield during your murder stories. Hopefully, if you tucked the edges around your face at just the right angles, he wouldn’t notice your red, puffy eyes and runny makeup. But you’d avoid making eye contact just for good measure. And, for the first time since you’d met him, you wished he’d go away. Bucky Barnes was not someone you wanted to see anymore of tonight.
“What’re you doin’ home?” Your voice was muffled like you have a bad head cold and you cringed, hoping he’ll just think you’re tired rather than you’d spent the better part of the evening blubbering uncontrollably.
Bucky shrugged, leaning against the wall. “Didn’t feel up to it anymore. What’re you doin’ here? They uh, they said you left with uh, some guy.”
The uncertainty in Bucky’s voice caught your attention and your head whipped away from the television to look at him. Why was he making that face? He looked like he couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth. “They said you left with some guy.” A wave of anger bubbled up. What, like it was so preposterous?! You felt your brow furrow and upper lip curl at the thought.
You nod curtly. “Yeah. I did.” Technically it was the truth. You had walked out of the club with a man.
Bucky cleared his throat. “He here?” He looks around for any sign of company; taking in the discarded pie tin and your change in attire since he’d seen you a few hours earlier. Your jaw clenched in anger. Thanks for the reminder, Buck, that no, you were not the only man to be repulsed by me this evening and yeah, I ate all the fuckin’ pie, so back off!
Why was he even asking you these questions? Clearly, he already couldn't imagine a male specimen being remotely interested in you. So what? He wanted confirmation or something? Did he need to hear it to actually get some fucking closure? Is that what he wanted? Your confirmation that, no, no man in his right mind would ever want to get involved with you? Fine, then he could have it. “No,” your voice was laced with underlying anger. “He’s not here.”
Bucky nodded and locked eyes with you, taking in the red, puffy lids, before you turned away again. If you looked at him too long, the mixture of sad, angry tears would return as you faced the truth that someone who looked like that would never want someone who looked like you. “He didn’t try anything?...Did he?”
And you fucking lost it.
“Excuse me?” He’d sounded if the mere notion of a man coming home with you was simply unbearable to think about. Really? It’s that implausible?! An anger you hadn’t known existed welled up inside. It was as if your heart, engulfed in flames, was pumping out waves of white hot rage through every vein. You pushed yourself up from the couch and faced Bucky like an angry tiger poised to strike. Never in a million years did you think you would look at Bucky like this. You’re fists were clenched painfully and your teeth were bared as you snarled, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Bucky had the decency to look afraid. His glacial blue eyes widened as he pushed off from the wall and stepped closer to you, hands held up in defense. “Wh-what—I d—”
“No, explain to me what the fuck that’s supposed ta mean!” Your roar had stopped him in his tracks as you trembled with rage. But the dam had broken, letting all the pain and anger you had been holding in, all of the fears and insecurities you'd been holding on to, come tumbling out. “What, so no one could ever wanna try somethin’ with me?! Is that it?! That I’m not worth it? Not good enough? Huh?! Is it that farfetched an’ ridiculous ta think that someone could ever wanna have sex with me?!”
“No! No, that’s not what I—” Bucky sputtered in horror but you cut him off, erupting like Mount Vesuvius. Your rage raining down around the once peaceful living room.
“No no no, go ahead! Explain it to me,” you challenged, throwing your hands in the air. “Tell me what you really think! That nobody could possibly want someone who looks like me! Maybe you wouldn’t stoop so low as ta give me a second look but that doesn’t mean that someone less superficial wouldn’t*! Just because you’re perfect doesn’t mean that everyone who isn’t doesn’t deserve to be liked in some way!” Your voice broke a little at the end and the fact that Bucky just stood there, hands covering his mouth slightly, looking completely shocked, did nothing to quell your fury.
“I—I didn’t—what I—”
But you were beyond listening to him. Your rage wasn’t over. And even if you knew logically that it really wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t attracted to you, that people like who they like, the fact that Bucky, your best friend Bucky, the man you loved whole-heartedly, body and soul, didn’t find you attractive in any way, shape, or form, well, that shattered your heart into a million little pieces. And that made you fucking furious.
And as hurt as you were that Bucky wasn’t interested and that he thought you so abhorrent that you could never manage to snag a man, you were mostly angry at yourself for even liking Bucky in the first place! It was ridiculous to have allowed yourself to fall so completely for someone like him. And forget what he looked like—He was a fucking superhero for fuck’s sake! He saved the world! He protected the weak and injured and innocent. He sacrificed his life, his sanity, for his country. He fought back against his tormenters. He fell apart and picked himself back up again after all he was forced to do and had the goddamn nerve to beg for forgiveness for crimes he had no responsibility over. Bucky Barnes was a goddamn treasure. Who the fuck did you think you were to covet it?
You were a complete moron and, in fact, you were so goddamn enraged with yourself that you had begun to both cry and laugh humorously at the same time. It was as if you no longer had any control of your emotions. It was fucking laughable! This whole thing was entirely ridiculous! The tears began to flow freely as you realized what a complete joke your life was at this point.
Everything leading up to this horrific moment was your fault and yours alone. It all could’ve been avoided if you had just kept your mouth shut and went back to your dorky, pathetic, loveless existence. Then you would still have Bucky’s friendship, your money, and whatever fucking dignity you possessed in the first place. But that was all out the window now! Now you were destroying it all.
“And to think I did all of this stupid shit just to—to get you to—and you didn’t even notice!” You laughed darkly at your own stupidity. “All this effort, and money and time, and for what? Nothing!”
Bucky pressed his hands through his hair, completely bewildered at the scene before him, when he stopped short. “What?” His eyebrows knitted and the colour drained from his face. “What’re you—what’d’you mean?” His voice was but a whisper. It annoyed you. What’d’you mean ‘what’d’you mean?’?!
You rolled your eyes obnoxiously. “I mean that I’m a fucking idiot for thinking that a dress and some makeup would make you see me any differently,” you seethed. When he continued to stare at you completely dumbfounded you sighed and quietly added, “I know what kind of girls you like… I saw you the other night…at Luke’s.”
“You were there?” Bucky stepped forward again, looking at you with wide eyes. His voice was low and serious and he shook his head as he spoke. “You saw-? Look, that wasn’t—”
“You don’t hafta explain. I was there. I know.” You stepped back from him, shaking your head sadly. Fat tears fell away from your cheeks and rained down to the floor. “And I’m so stupid.” Your voice cracked with emotion and you took in a shaky breath before continuing. “I did all of this, the hair and makeup and clothes, but I can’t compete with girls like that.” There it was. Out in the open. You’d finally admitted the truth; you weren’t good enough, attractive enough, for Bucky.
And when he just continued to stare at you, looking more and more horrified at your confessions, another wave of tears spilled over, choking your voice even more. “Who was I kidding!? I must’ve been out of my goddamn mind to think that all of this would work. That you’d actually–”
It was Bucky’s turn to interrupt you. He waved his arms to stop you and, with a voice filled with complete and utter bewilderment, “A—are you saying that this was all for me? Why? Why would—”
You couldn't bare this. Your face screwed up to stop more sobs from escaping; your chin trembled with the effort. It was too much. Actually having to stand there and listen to Bucky’s rejection, to his horror at your crush, no. That was too much. The look on his face, the shock, it was like a knife had been plunged into your heart. He’d had no idea how you felt. And now he was completely thrown, absolutely stunned. Your anger surged once again. Was it really so foreign for him to think that you could actually like him? Or that anyone could like you?
“Why would you fall for it?” you asked, finishing his question for him. “I’ve been asking myself that all night because clearly it didn’t work!” you cried causing Bucky’s mouth to drop open. “Congrats, you can’t be fooled! Apparently just because Y/N tries to dress like a girl, doesn’t mean she is one! To think for a second you'd see anything other than a reject, a whale, in a dress…” you shook your head dejectedly. “What was I thinking?”
“I—I just—”
“And to top it all off, you were right! Ethan isn’t here!” You laughed wetly as the endless river of tears fell. You displayed your arms widely as you spoke. “He didn’t want to come home with me. Why the hell would he, right? Look at me! No no no, it was just another delusional fantasy of mine. To think that I could actually get a guy to be attracted to me in some way, oh my god, it’s fucking laughable, right?! So let’s all take a moment and bask in your wonderful ability to be see the fucking future and come home to find me all alone, just as you expected.” Three sharp claps sounded around the living room, making Bucky wince. “Happy?” you demanded.
He stepped closer, reaching for your hand. His eyes welled up and his lower lip was shaking ever so slightly. “No, no, Punk, you’ve got it all wrong, that’s not what—”
“STOP FUCKING CALLING ME THAT!” You ripped your arm away from his grasp, causing Bucky to freeze, his arm still out stretched towards you. You’d never pulled away like that before.
His lips gaped open like a fish as he searched for something to say. You, on the other hand, were panting heavily as if you’d just run a mile. Hastily, you used your shirt collar to dab at the steady stream of tears.
It was certainly a night of new territory for you two. Not once had you ever mentioned how you felt about that particular nickname. That every time he called you that you felt a little part of your heart breakaway, shrivel up, and die like a flower dropping petals as the seasons change. No, you’d just responded when he said it, your head turning in his direction, knowing it was you he was talking to as less and less frequently the term was directed towards Steve. You were the punk. Just you.
Bucky cleared his throat and swallowed hard, pursing his lips. “Y/N, I—I don’t…” He stopped to clear his throat again and rapidly blinked his glassy eyes.
“Just forget it, Barnes.”
“Barnes? Barnes?” Taken aback by the use of his last name, Bucky sounded both hurt and offended. You’d never called him anything but some shortened form of ‘Bucky’, something that was always laced with affection. “You never call me—”
“Well, it’s a helluva lot better than being someone’s punk, don’t ya think?” you snapped. “I looked it up. I know what I mean to you. And I am fucking sick of it. I’ve never felt so fucking stupid in my entire life. Here I am pining after you, praying to gods I don’t believe in that you’ll feel the same way when all you see is this—this disgusting, thing and I—I can’t—I can’t take it anymore.”
“No, Y/N, just—just let me explain,” Bucky begged moving towards you again, but with each step closer he took, the more you backed away, making his face twist in an unrecognizable expression. Each breath felt like a thousand razor blades scraping against your lungs. Was this heartbreak? Or humiliation? Or was it something more? Whatever it was, it was unbearable.
“That’s the thing,” you whispered. “You don’t hafta explain anything. I get it. I already know. You’ve made it painfully clear.” A loud sob racked through you causing your whole body to shake. You couldn't meet Bucky’s eyes anymore. It hurt too much. You weren’t afraid to see hate there. No, Bucky didn’t hate you, not even after all of this. But you knew you'd find pity there. Pity for the poor, pudgy, pathetic, punk that was in love with a man so obviously out of her league.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered into the ensuing silence. What you were sorry for you weren’t quite sure. For making a scene? For ruining a friendship? For taking your self-hatred and insecurities out on an innocent bystander? For shouting at Bucky for not feeling the same way? For falling in love with him in the first place?
Or were you sorry for being ugly and fat and embarrassing? Or for being terrible at being a girl?
Probably all of it.
Yeah, all of it.
A hot wave of embarrassment hit as your mind, at lightning speed, ran through all that had transpired since Bucky had walked in on your mini television marathon. The anger had all but drained away and was rapidly being replaced with mortification at your words and actions. Had you really just spilled your guts to Bucky? Did you actually reveal your feelings? Oh god, you’d told him all of your insecurities. Admitted your embarrassing and failed attempts to seduce him. Panic, hot and intense, surged up, triggering your fight-or-flight response.
And you gave in.
And you ran.
“Y/N, wait! Don’t leave! Please don’t leave,” Bucky called.
You could hear his footfalls behind you, but instead of bolting for the once safe haven that was your room, you turned down the long hall, and shouted for F.R.I.D.A.Y to shut the elevator doors the moment you set foot in it. Turning as the doors closed, you saw Bucky running towards you. He was shouting for you to stop. But he reached the doors too late and collided into them with the thud of metal on metal as they sealed you away.
The last thing you heard was the strangled cry of your name as the elevator descended deeper into the tower.
***
Please be here. Please be here. The elevator doors couldn't open fast enough. Each racking sob at what has just happened upstairs threatened to break you apart. Almost on autopilot you found yourself knocking loudly on the door, making it rattle in the frame. Please, please be home.
A sleepy, bleary eyed Clint Barton ripped the door open, ready to rage at the dipshit who had the nerve to wake him up when he had to leave at the ass crack of dawn for a mission he was less than thrilled to go on. “What the fu—?”
He stopped short to see you standing there, sobbing uncontrollably, in the dead of night.
“I’m s-sorry. I’m s-so- s-sorry,” you hiccoughed, trying to sign to him at the same time, before noticing that he’d shoved at least one hearing aid in before answering the door. She’s not here, she’s not home yet. “I-I thought Nat w-would—and you hafta go soon—I’m—I’m ”
Clint’s arm shot forward and pulled you roughly to his chest and into Natasha’s room closing the door behind you. “Stop, that doesn’t matter. What happened? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” His hands cupped your face and he feverishly looked you up and down for any signs of injury.
You shook your head but continued to blubber letting hot tears fall onto his fingers.
Clint pulled you to his chest, allowing you to cry onto his t-shirt, and stroked your hair soothingly. He moved you both to the bed where he laid with you in his arms. “Talk to me, kid. What happened?”
And you spilled your guts about everything. About recruiting Nat and Wanda to try to make you pretty, about falling in love with Bucky, about not being thin enough or pretty enough or womanly enough for him. And you told him how much you hated every single thing about yourself because it just wasn’t right or normal or cool. And then you sputtered unintelligibly for a while because it all sounded so unbelievably stupid when you said it out loud.
“Shh, Y/N, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” Clint whispered, kissing your hair.
“No, it’s not,” you wailed, your voice muffled against his chest. You sniffed loudly. “I ru-ruined ev-everyth-thing.” As you retold the events of the evening, both at the club and in the living room, Clint let you sob without interruption. His hands rubbed up and down your back as you shook in his arms.
“Why doesn’t anyone like me?” Clint’s heart clenched sharply at your words. “Why doesn’t he like me? I—I just want t-to be pretty. Why can’t I be pretty?”
“Y/N, are you kiddin’ me? You’re beautiful,” Clint whispered against your hair. These confessions of yours had come to a complete shock to him. But your revelations about what you really thought about yourself made him angry. How could you think these things? Why did you think these things? How could you make him see what to him is so obvious?
Ignoring his proclamations, you cried harder, your frame shaking the whole bed as you curled against his side, fists curled in his shirt as a pain you’d never before experienced fell over you. And the only thing you could do was ride it out.
When you were done, when you’d exhausted both the story and your body, when you were all used up and were completely void of tears, when every emotion had finally poured its way out of you, you fell silent against him. Clint stroked your back absently and it wasn’t until your breathing had slowed and evened out that he realised that you’d fallen asleep against him.
Sometime later the door creaked open and Nat wandered in, shoes in hand. She let her dress pool at her feet as she slipped into one of Clint’s t-shirts and crawled into bed behind you. The dip in the bed pulled Clint out of his sleep and he squinted around in the darkness. Nat flicked a small nightlight on.
‘Hi, baby,’ she signed to him. ’What’s Y/N doing here? Everything okay?’ Her brow furrowed in concern.
Clint sat up slightly with a yawn, gently placing you back on the pillow. Once he tucked the hearing aids in snuggly he relayed in a sleepy whisper what you’d told him. Nat remained silent, her expression growing graver with each passing moment. She’d begun combing her fingers carefully through your hair as Clint spoke. Your eye lids were red and puffed up from crying and roughly wiping away the tears with your hand. Even in sleep Natasha could see that you weren't peaceful.
Her gaze moved from your tired form to her boyfriend. He looked so dejected. One of his hands was still wrapped around you but the other had found Natasha’s. He gripped her fingers tightly, rubbing a thumb against the soft skin on the back of her hand. Nat smiled and brought his fingers to her lips, leaving a soft kiss there.
“Thank you for taking care of her,” Nat mumbled against his skin, her voice flowing with love and gratitude.
Clint smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll always take care of her. I’ll take care of the both of you. Don’t ever thank me for that,” he whispered.
Nat nodded and whispered, “I love you.”
“Not as much as I love you.” When she rolled her eyes in denial at the proclamation Clint chuckled softly. The movement caused you to stir and you rolled over to face Natasha. Sleepily, you opened your eyes which were still sticky with half-dried tears. “Nat,” you croaked. “I—I’m sorry, an—and Clint’s le-leavi—”
She shushed you and snuggled closer, tucking your head under her chin, effectively cutting off an unnecessary apology. Clint moved closer behind you and you felt the two lovers joined hands resting on your back. Nat’s other hand was still stroking your hair as she whispered kind words and your blubbering ceased to silent tears falling on the pillow. Nat kissed your forehead softly.
Clint’s low voice vibrated through your back. “It’s okay, kiddo. Everything will be okay.” You murmured softly at his words as sleep claimed you once again in the warmth of their arms.
“Babe?”
“Hmm?”
“Why?”
Natasha didn’t have to ask him to clarify. She knew exactly what he was asking. Why did you think those things? Why did you, a lovely, beautiful woman, think you were so repulsive? Why didn’t you see what he saw, what Nat saw, what everybody else saw? Why didn’t you believe them?
“I dunno. I don’t understand it either,” she replied glumly.
“I hate it.”
“Me too, baby. Me too.”
And like that, hands clasped tightly, holding the broken girl together between them, they drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
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'GHOST ADVENTURES' HOST ZAK BAGANS TALKS CHARLES MANSON RUMORED HAUNTINGS AND THE ATTRACTION TO TRUE CRIME STORIES
By Newsweek ( KELLY WYNNE ON 4/4/19 AT 1:01 PM EDT)
Cult leader Charles Manson has an immortal way about him, in the stories left behind of his notoriously wicked ways. There may be a bit of truth to the way he lingers, as Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans has a collection of Manson’s personal items that in a short amount of time, have proven to have potential hauntings.
Bagans has given obscure Manson artifacts a home in The Haunted Museum, his museum in downtown Las Vegas. There, he displays Manson’s items, from the hospital gown Manson died in, which holds some of his bodily fluids, to a painting made with Manson’s ashes and bone fragments from the cult leader’s body.
Bagans’ quest to secure the Manson items has taken more than a year, and they’ve just recently surfaced in the public setting. Already, though, Manson’s objects have reportedly caused some trouble for museum visitors. “Six weeks ago as a woman at The Haunted Museum bent over to view Manson’s bone fragments and gown, she made a comment directly to Manson, ‘Good on you Man,’” Bagans told Newsweek. “Upon turning away she felt something stab her in her stomach and had to be taken out of the museum, where she was very affected.” Bagans said he has the incident on video.
Bagans also opened up about the mind-power Manson had, and how it has apparently affected some of the objects. “I also believe that while Manson could never get out of prison, he infused the same mind-power he had with the Manson Family into his art and belongings through electrical thought impressions, cursing certain things so whoever obtained them would experience that,” Bagans said. “This occurred with his prison TV that I own, which put one man through pure hell while he previously owned it.”
The darkness of Manson’s acts and the nearly hypnotic hold he had on his “family” are common talking points when it comes to true crime topics. Manson’s most notorious night, when he and members of his “family” murdered actor Sharon Tate and others in her home, has been turned into a film The Haunting of Sharon Tate, starring Hilary Duff. Another Tate film, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, is slated to premiere later this year, along with another, similarly-angled film, simply titled Tate. Bagans has even produced his own Manson documentary, titled Charles Manson: The Funeral, which will premiere on Reelz April 13. The fascination with Manson in just one year begs the question: why are we so drawn to such a sinister story? Bagans has an answer.
“Charles Manson was an evil man and evil fascinates us. This is why there are so many successful TV shows and movies in the true-crime genre,” he explained. “The media also bombards us daily with headlines of evil events. As human beings we want to know more about why such evil people would commit such crimes like this…who are they and what goes through their minds. We want to know some psychology of their minds. We must go inside the mind of an enemy to protect ourselves.”
It’s the reason why Bagans created The Haunted Museum, though his own fascination lies deeper. He admitted he feels drawn to the dark and demonic elements found in human life, even if not entirely accessible in this realm.
“I collect these items that belong to monsters and give people that same adrenaline rush by being so close to them, reminding that the dark history of what they did will never be forgotten,” Bagans explained. “There are dozens of war museums that showcase guns, uniforms, relics of our enemies that have killed—and we must not ever forget these monsters, war enemies, terrorists, serial killers. Owning their belongings, artwork, remains…it’s a rush in itself for me to be able to own a part of them, and tell my guests how bad and evil they were.”
This article has been updated to fix a headline typo in Charles Manson’s name and to include new details about Zak Bagans’s Manson film.
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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/is-our-growing-obsession-with-true-crime-a-problem/
Is our growing obsession with true crime a problem?
Image caption
Shows like Making a Murderer have given criminal cases worldwide attention
From series like Making a Murderer to podcasts like Serial – true crime seems to be everywhere these last few years.
I put my hands up and admit it – I’m an addict.
For reasons even I don’t understand, crime documentaries have become my default way to unwind.
If I have friends over, I might make an embarrassed joke about my streaming suggestions – but the evidence suggests I’m not alone.
The genre’s growth is inescapable. Almost every week there seems to be a new documentary released and not without controversy.
Some warn we risk glamorising notorious killers and erasing their victims with the coverage. Others have accused programme makers of being selective with evidence.
So is our fascination with true crime problematic? I spoke to victims and the communities directly affected to try and find out.
The survivor
Kathy Kleiner was only 20 years old when she was attacked by Ted Bundy.
He beat her in bed with a piece of wood in the Chi Omega house at Florida State University in 1978.
Before entering her room, Bundy had murdered two of her sorority sisters as they slept.
Image copyright
Kathy Kleiner
Image caption
Kathy with her son Michael (left) and husband (right)
Kathy was left with a shattered jaw and severe facial injuries. Her mouth had to be wired shut, forcing her to leave college.
Now 61, Kathy says she hadn’t spoken about the experience much until US media recently tracked her down.
This year marks 30 years since Ted Bundy’s execution. You can probably tell because the serial killer seems to be everywhere in 2019.
In February it was reported that Netflix had paid millions to secure US rights to a new movie starring heartthrob actor Zac Efron as Bundy.
The announcement came as the trailer caused uproar online, with some accusing it of sexualising the killer.
Netflix, who had also just released a series focusing on interviews with Bundy, even weighed in on social media.
I ask Kathy, as one of a handful of survivors, what it was like to be continually reminded of Bundy in popular culture.
“I did not ask to be put on the journey with him in his life – with his killing and his abuse,” she says in a phone interview from New Orleans, where she now lives.
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Sky Cinema
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Efron’s portrayal of Bundy won praise when it debuted at Sundance Festival
But for her, knowledge has meant power.
“I read every book and saw everything I could read and see about him,” she says, while acknowledging others may have coped differently.
Efron has adopted Bundy’s curls and signature smile for the role – and bears an uncanny resemblance to the killer.
“When Hollywood makes a movie they want it to sell, they want people to see it,” Kathy says about his slick portrayal.
“Bundy showed them what he wanted them to see – he was always in control… Zac Efron – he’s playing a part – he’s an actor. He’s doing this the way he was, the way they perceived Bundy.”
You can hear more on this story on the Beyond Today podcast on the BBC Sounds app or online on the podcast’s website from 16:00 GMT on 1 April.
Kathy says she attempted to contact the studio when she heard about the production, but assumes the email was lost among general enquiries.
She admits that she can’t imagine watching as a relative of one of the 30 women and girls he is known to have killed.
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Kathy went on to testify against Bundy at trial
“To me they’re the heroes during this, having to endure this publicity,” she says.
She hopes the movie reflects the victims more than the trailer alludes.
“I don’t know how far they dive into the victims,” Kathy says. “So without seeing it and if they don’t do the victims right – then maybe I’ll be pissed.”
The community
Wisconsin has the unenviable reputation of being home to some of America’s most notorious ever crimes.
Manitowoc County sits on the state’s eastern shore. It houses 80,000 residents but is famous around the world for just one – Steven Avery.
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A mural welcomes visitors and celebrates the city’s heritage
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Manitowoc borders Lake Michigan and is a hub for manufacturing
A Netflix series charting Avery’s wrongful conviction on sexual assault charges and re-incarceration for murder became a sensation on its December 2015 debut.
Hundreds of thousands of people have since signed petitions demanding his and his nephew’s acquittal. A second series has already been released and legal appeals are ongoing.
I travel to Manitowoc at the start of March, when a hangover from an unusually cold winter means snow is still deep on the ground.
Before travelling I try to reach out to local officials – but there seems to be an understandable reluctance to speak to yet another journalist coming to town.
The international spotlight has brought uncomfortable attention to the county and its city namesake.
Now, tourists drive over to the Avery family’s Salvage Yard to take selfies. A firefighter tells me the local police have been forced to moderate Facebook comments because of abuse. I’m told threats have forced other officials off social media altogether.
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CALUMET COUNTY/SUPPLIED
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The entrance to Steven Avery’s property has become an attraction for visitors
One Manitowoc resident determined not to stay silent is Jason Prigge.
As a businessman working around the country, he says the final straw came when a client introduced himself and asked: “Well, did he do it?” in reference to Avery.
Since then, he and his wife Tina have made it their mission to change the outside world’s perspective of Manitowoc. They set up an online web series, The Coolest Coast, to showcase positive aspects of the community like local businesses.
Tina describes the Avery case as a “freak anomaly” and like others I spoke to, points out the Avery property is actually miles outside the city of Manitowoc.
“Reporters come in or somebody from Hollywood comes in to make a show and they get to leave without delving in and really learning who this community is or what it has to offer,” Tina says. “To them it’s just a name, it’s just a story.”
“Imagine if you have a bunch of TV crews park outside of your house and they look at your house and they judge you because of one cracked window,” Jason says about the negative attention.
“They never talk to people that live in the house, but they just look at the house from the outside.”
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Tina and Jason come from a background in civil service and marketing
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The city has seen reporters come from around the world
The couple show me around the area, keen to show it off.
In the cold weather, much of the river is still frozen and has a sparkly glaze. The city’s skyline is dominated by industry and a historic courthouse I recognise from the show, but is otherwise full of quaint local businesses like coffee shops and boutiques. It’s a postcard image I didn’t expect.
They urge people like me not to judge the county and all of its residents from the documentary.
“The cameras and reporters leave but what they’ve left here is a stain which we’re trying to scrub,” Jason says of the lasting damage.
The business
Eighty miles south of Manitowoc is Milwaukee – a city known best for its beer and baseball.
But it is also a destination high on the list for America’s biggest true crime fanatics.
The Cream City Cannibal tour takes visitors around Walker’s Point – the area where serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer lured some of his victims from gay bars.
Its website boasts the tour is “so gruesome that it was banned from Groupon twice”.
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The tour’s owner insists nothing could change his mind about his business
When it launched, local media covered a protest by victim’s families. Critics said it was too soon because the crimes were still in living memory for many.
The tour leaves from Shakers – a bar in the centre of the old gay district. Once owned by the Capone family as a speakeasy and brothel, the location has a dark history of its own.
Current boss Robert Weiss bought it in the 1980s and runs a number of ghost tours from the venue. He says he got the idea for a Dahmer tour when people he met travelling made reference to the killer after he introduced himself as a Milwaukee-native.
Bob also knew the crime well because local police frequented the bar and Dahmer even visited himself.
“I served him drinks for five or six months as he periodically came in,” Bob tells me.
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Dahmer was arrested in 1991 and was murdered in prison three years later
About 12 people take the tour on the Saturday night I attend. The weather is freezing cold and it rains and snows throughout.
Those attending are mostly true crime super-fans, but also include a family and a couple celebrating their anniversary.
Our guide talks us through the serial killer’s upbringing, alcoholism and journey towards violence.
Dahmer, who admitted killing 17 boys and men, is considered one of the most heinous criminals in US history.
His murders and cannibalism are described in grisly detail by our guide, who points out infamous locations along our walk.
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Organisers says some family members of victims have been on the tour
The information is disturbing, but not worse than what you may hear on any Dahmer documentary.
Bob insists the tour has historical and educational value, but I notice his bar also sells T-shirts, which feels at odds with that.
“Of the thousands of shirts that we have sold with that likeness on, have we had anyone complain? We have not,” Bob says.
He rejects the assertion they are incendiary, and insists they only started making them because of unprecedented customer demand.
“I think if you are talking about things that are in poor taste, there’s any number of other things that would go above and behind what the shirt is,” he says, pointing to people who buy morbid artefacts like Charles Manson’s artwork.
He also says that he rejected other bad-taste merchandise options, like cannibal-themed food.
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Their “Milwaukee Cannibal” shirt also has “Dahmer 17” on the back
Those attending the tour reject the assertion that it’s in bad taste or comes too soon.
“I’ve always grown up knowing about it,” says one tour-goer named Alex who is in his 20s. “I think it’s just part of our history and rather than hide it and keep it in the background, I think it’s important for people to know about it so they can try and avoid it in the future.”
Another, Melissa from Illinois, had already been on the tour before.
“I don’t think it’s disrespectful to the families,” she says. “I think it’s more of a way of remembering the victims instead of them being forgotten.”
She, like me, admits watching a lot of true crime. She believes the addictive nature of streaming services is behind the boom in their popularity.
The experts
Deborah Allen has seen a “huge jump” in audience interest over the last few years.
She is vice-president of programming at Jupiter Entertainment – one of the biggest producers of true crime television in the US.
The company started making murder shows back in 1998, despite initial hesitancy from TV channels.
“It used to be that the networks saw true crime shows as their dirty little secret,” she says.
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Jupiter Entertainment
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Jupiter Entertainment’s shows include titles like Snapped – which has had 24 series
In the last decade a number of dedicated 24-hour crime channels have sprung up in the UK and US.
High-budget series may have gone mainstream but there is still a mass of other content made to fill these network schedules too.
The demand means Jupiter now makes about 200 hours of crime shows a year – fuelled by researchers who comb through news stories from around the country.
Deborah says they only cover cases that have been resolved in court, and thinks many viewers take comfort in seeing justice served.
She also says their company listens to victims’ families if they object to a case being covered.
But the recent public distress from the mother of James Bulger about a film made about her son’s murder shows the family’s view does not always prevail.
How controversial James Bulger film was made
Serial’s Adnan Syed loses retrial bid
It’s a similar story behind other popular shows too.
The McCann family did not contribute to a new series about their daughter’s disappearance and Theresa Halbach’s family have never taken part in Making a Murderer.
The loved ones of 1999 murder victim Hae Min Lee said the attention from Serial “reopened old wounds” for their family. Despite this, HBO have adapted that case into a new documentary series – The Case Against Adnan Syed – which follows on from where the record-breaking podcast took off.
Serial, like many other popular true crime series, focuses on casting doubt on a conviction.
This format has an obvious draw for any audience – allowing them to play detective for themselves.
Some programme makers, including from HBO’s The Jinx, have even uncovered new evidence that prosecutors say have helped with cases.
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Reuters
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The Case Against Adnan Syed started in March on HBO
True crime’s growing popularity means big business in other areas too. There’s now young YouTube influencers covering stories and in the UK, a new glossy monthly crime magazine was recently announced.
In the US, thousands attend CrimeCon every year – an event where fans pay hundreds to see experts and presenters from their favourite series.
A reporter from the New York Post pointed out most of last year’s attendees were female – and Bob in Milwaukee has found the same with his Dahmer tour. He describes his average customer as college-educated women aged 25-37.
So why is it that we are so intrigued – is it pure morbid curiosity?
British psychologist Emma Kenny, who regularly features agrees that we have a natural tendency to be voyeurs and be attracted to darker things.
This, of course, is nothing new and can be seen throughout human history.
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Historical cases, like Jack the Ripper, have long-captured public fascination
She points to crime’s prevalence in other forms of entertainment too – including the dramas we watch and the books we read.
Emma says that watching crime shows can trigger chemical reactions in our bodies while we watch, while also affirming our moral views about right and wrong.
She says an interest in the genre is nothing bad but warns people, including myself, about watching too much.
“I think that for anybody who’s watching this kind of stuff you really need to know why you’re watching it, I think. Because you don’t want to desensitize yourself too much,” she tells me.
“Life is best spent around good people doing good things, exposing yourself to the best things in the world that you can expose yourself to… we should never be desensitized to the horror.”
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S. Clelia Sweeney, Probing the Public Wound: The Serial Killer Character in True-Crime Media, Creating Knowledge 8 (2015)
It is two weeks before Halloween and I’m standing inside a tent with a man in smeared clown makeup shouting at me: “Are y’all ready to see some sick, twisted shit?” This is Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare, an attraction of three haunted houses set up in Villa Park, Illinois, and the last house on the tour has a serial killer theme. The outer façade is resplendent in sensationalistic Americana, with hay bales, jack-o-lanterns, rusted metal, a sharp-toothed taxidermy monkey, and gaudy signs advertising attractions inside. One painted clapboard sign reads, “SEE—the PSYCHO of PLAINFIELD—A TRUE CANNIBAL.” Inside, an actor portraying that “psycho” leers from a workbench piled with eviscerated plastic bodies, helping to create a recreational thrill based in real-life tragedy, a thrill that also oddly evoked hints of an (almost) nostalgic 1950s Americana. Ed Gein is the famous killer the sign is referencing and the actor is portraying; in bucolic 1950s Plainfield, Wisconsin, Gein robbed graves, murdered two women, and allegedly cannibalized corpses. He is most notorious for making taxidermy-like items out of human bodies. As psychologist George W. Arndt recounts from photographs of the farmhouse interior, “Ten human skulls neatly arranged in a row, books on anatomy, embalming equipment, pulp magazines, furniture upholstered in human skin, and dirty kerosene lamps completed the macabre scene.”1 Those grisly photographs, published as part of a Life magazine 6-page cover story about the crimes on December 2, 1957, circulated the depraved inner world of Ed Gein (later referred to as “The Ghoul of Plainfield”) across the nation.
A sign almost exactly like the one outside Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare was once hung outside a carnival tent in 1958 to advertise a strikingly similar exhibition of serial killer entertainment. At the 1958 fair, a reconstructed murder scene featured wax dummies in the actual car Gein drove when he committed his crimes. As Harold Schechter recounts in his biography of Gein, “The ‘Ed Gein ghoul car’ made its first public appearance in July 1958 at the Outgamie County Fair in Seymour, Wisconsin, where it was displayed for three days inside a large canvas tent covered with blaring signs—‘SEE THE CAR THAT HAULED THE DEAD FROM THEIR GRAVES! YOU READ IT IN ‘LIFE’ MAGAZINE! IT’S HERE! ED GEIN’S CRIME CAR! $1,000 REWARD IF NOT TRUE!’”2 The exhibit was soon shut down by public outcry, but Ed Gein endured as a celebrity monster in America, inspiring iconic horror movies such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Psycho (1960).3
Serial killers—both real and fictional—proliferate in lm, television shows, true-crime novels, magazines, internet culture, and in the lexicon of Americana. True-crime entertainment commodities the tragedy surrounding serial killers, and often makes them into scapegoated representations of human “evil.” From the 1980s to the 1990s true-crime media representations of serial killers radically shifted. In the 1980s, the serial killer was generally cast as an irredeemable freak; by the 1990s the media framed serial killer entertainment almost as scientific inquiry whereby spectators were invited to delve into the killers’ psychology, to understand what made them tick and why they killed.
I argue that this shift can be attributed to the advent of therapy culture during this decade, as well as to the appearance of likable serial killer protagonists in lm. Therapy culture, a term coined by sociologist Frank Furedi, describes the phenomenon whereby unusual momentous events are processed in a collective psychological way and understood in terms of their emotional impact and influence on individual mental health.4 Furedi notes that when therapeutic analysis enters the public sphere, “it ceases to be a clinical technique and becomes an instrument for the management of subjectivity.”5 In other words, because the therapy is public it is not meant to bene t a “patient” so much as to influence how the audience perceives the subject. Moreover, therapy culture can be used to describe a culture wherein psychiatric principles have become generally normalized in the public sphere, encouraging more empathetic understanding of the once-unknowable other; it can also be used to describe the psychological conventions of confessional television.
In terms of confessional television in the 1990s, therapy culture was visible on tabloid talk shows such as Oprah Winfrey, Jenny Jones, and Jerry Springer. These shows encouraged participants to lay bare the pain of their lives for an audience, ostensibly to encourage healing and resolution but in reality more for voyeuristic entertainment. Media historian Mimi White provides an astute critique of this in her book on television-as-therapy: “In relation to television’s therapy programs the terms of the debate are relatively obvious: Are the programs helpful and educational or harmful and distorting? Do they promote more openness and understanding about emotional problems or turn real human suffering into television spectacle for the sake of profits?”6 White places the origin of this confessional talk-show television-as-therapy trend at the end of the 1980s and connects it to the idea of social therapy, meaning an attempt to heal the public wound caused by social trauma and crime:
. . . there is a sense that participating as the confessional subject is part of the therapeutic ethos projected by television: telling one’s story on television is part of the process of recovery (and repetition). At the same time this confers on participants a sense of celebrity. Their stories are told on national television, and they get to participate as actors and expert witnesses. . . In certain of these shows...there is also a sense of a socially therapeutic mission, as exposing unsolved crimes on television has led to the apprehension of a number of criminal suspects.7
Often true-crime shows interview victims’ families who discuss their own pain in relation to the crime and often cry on camera—which suggests that televised interviews can be cathartic and healing. Victims’ families have served as the “expert witnesses” that White refers to, but so have serial killers themselves, which plays to the audience’s empathetic engagement with the crime-story narrative.
Rather than the mainstream, normalized sphere of the talk show, serial killers have tended to occupy the space provided by true-crime television shows such as Blood, Lies & Alibis, Born to Kill?, and Most Evil. Such shows capitalize on public interest in the grotesque and present murderers as socially deviant subjects, appropriate for study. These shows, Most Evil in particular, employ psychopathic rhetoric in order to frame the serial killers as born freaks with psychological disorders. The audience is trained as armchair detectives and armchair psychologists, with serial killers made into case studies. These celebrity monsters help maintain the social dichotomy of normalcy and deviance, placing the audience in the authoritative, “normal” role of diagnostician, trained—vis à vis true-crime television—to look for clues as to how deviancy may have developed through experiences in the killers’ childhoods.
While public fascination with gruesome crimes is nothing new, psychiatric media representations of serial killers shows a cultural need to unmask the monster and prove him/her human. The television viewer can disavow the serial killer of some of his/her power and mystique when they subject them to psychological analyses. This process also functions as a cathartic experience for the television viewer, partaking in what cultural critic Mark Seltzer has termed “wound culture,”—that is, the social phenomenon of gathering around a site of public trauma to look at, experience, and process its tragedy collectively. While wound culture describes a human need to collectively process and congregate around a site of trauma, therapy culture defines the form that processing can take. Seltzer also situates wound culture in the culture of the 1990s: “The crowd gathers around the fallen body, the wrecked machine, and the wound has become commonplace in our culture: a version of collective experience that centers the pathological public sphere. The current à-la-modality of trauma—the cliché du jour of the therapeutic society of the nineties—makes this clear enough.”8 This kind of response may be at its most intense in the immediate aftermath of the crime, but the media that ensues carries on this ethos. In this way, true-crime entertainment and endless news coverage can be seen as poking at the wound, probing it for further reactions.
Drawing on analyses of two documentaries on crime and murder from the 1980s (Murder: No Apparent Motive and The Killing of America), a televised 1.5-hour 1994 interview with Jeffrey Dahmer, and an archetypal episode of the 2006-2008 show Most Evil, this essay shows how the serial killer character has been used in American media as a psychological deviant, or freak of consciousness: a figure assigned with the role of deviant Other in order to assert the viewing public’s feelings of normalcy. With the advent of disability rights, it is currently much more acceptable to exhibit freaks of consciousness than freaks of body9 (as would populate a traditional circus freakshow), and serial killers are in some sense the ultimate end-result of this framing of the freak. Modern true-crime media about the serial killer makes spectacle seem acceptable by psychologizing the subject and emphasizing the emotional, psychic impact of crimes on the psychic sphere. This is a distinct shift from the 1980s, where the question posed by this strain of media was much more about the what than the why. Handling serial killers in the mode of 1990s confessional television, which continues to the present, strips these murderers of some of their frightening mystique. They are still sensationalized as monsters, used for thrills-and- chills shock value, but also framed as “sick,” “psychotic,” “disturbed” individuals who can be pitied and studied in a psychological manner.
The 1980s: Serial Killers—Who Are They and How Can They Be Caught?
In the late 1970s there was a tremendous sense of fear in the country, with new killers seeming to appear every couple of years. For example, 1978 alone saw the arrest of three serial killers: Richard Chase, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy. Soon after, in 1983, the FBI publicized their serial killer profile, which framed serial murder as a contemporary American epidemic. Of course serial murder is not a modern, nor an exclusively American, phenomenon. Nor did the FBI coin the term “serial killer,” as it had already been in circulation in the criminological community for over a decade.10 Nevertheless, the FBI popularized the term along with their profile, which defined the serial killer as “public enemy number one” in America and elected FBI profiler Robert Ressler as the ultimate authority on the subject.
In the emotionally grueling documentary lm The Killing of America (1982), made up entirely of real footage of crimes, the serial killer emerges as the ultimate fear—a senseless, random, brutal killer. The film is filled with scenes of panic and disorder, shouting, violence, urban decay, and punctuated with a voice-over from an unseen, hard-boiled male narrator. The narrator intones things like, “An attempted murder every three minutes. A murder victim every 20 minutes.” And, “Bodies and more bodies. All day, every day. Guns. And more guns.”11 The lm does not incorporate emotional nuance or psychological elements, but drums its message of fear into the audience through stark, disturbing facts. The experts are all police officers and FBI profilers, and FBI profiler Robert Ressler appears prominently. There is no psychological intrigue in The Killing of America, which frames the serial killer as one symptom of a larger cultural degeneracy. The film traces a downward arc from John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the the “epidemic” of senseless sex-maniac killing. There is an extensive interview with serial killer Edmund Kemper, but that interview is not presented as a psychological study. For example, although Kemper experienced an abusive childhood, the interview does not focus on his formative history, but instead focuses on the details and circumstances of Kemper’s crimes. This focus on the what rather than the why exemplifies this period of true- crime media, and early perceptions of the serial killer. While a 2007 episode of Most Evil presents Kemper first with a child actor staring into the camera, The Killing of America does not linger long in the killer’s mind nor attempt to humanize him in any way, despite appearing “in person” for the documentary. Kemper’s opening line is, “I’m an American and I went off the deep end.” He makes some effort to humanize himself, but the lm does not help him do so. The ominous, deep music and deadpan narration accentuate serial killers’ irredeemable violence and work to instill fear in the audience—not aid us in psychological understanding.
This fear-mongering is only brought further to the forefront in the documentary Murder: No Apparent Motive (1984).12 The serial killer is again framed as incomprehensible in this documentary, akin to a destructive force of nature rather than an individual human psyche. Robert Ressler is also featured in this film; lecturing to a college classroom, he stresses the “motivelessness” of serial murder, and creates a sense of urgency in needing to capture these dangerous deviants. Murder: No Apparent Motive creates fear in the audience by emphasizing the vital importance of apprehending serial killers, and the difficulties that come with that. Robert Ressler falsely claims that “The crimes you’re seeing today did not really occur with any known frequency prior to the ‘50s,” possibly suggesting that serial murders were the result of the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s.
Of note, Murder: No Apparent Motive shares the same aesthetic conventions as its predecessor, The Killing of America, including an ominous, droning soundtrack and a gravel-throated narrator. Social historian Joy Wiltenburg, in her essay on true-crime, writes that, “Sensationalist crime accounts build their emotional potency in both a visceral response to violence itself and the quasi-religious dilemma posed by transgression of core values.”13 In Murder: No Apparent Motive, the visceral emotional response is pure dread. We are urged to take the role of armchair detectives by listening to police officers and profilers discuss the techniques used to catch these modern monsters. The goal is fairly straightforward: define the enemy, display the enemy, outline their deviancy, and scare the audience into believing this constitutes impending danger to their own personal safety.
The 1990s: Jeffrey Dahmer—The Sympathetic Face of Serial Murder
At the start of the 1990s, the serial killer began to be probed psychologically. Shows like America’s Most Wanted—hosted by John Walsh, whose 6-year-old son was viciously murdered in 1981—proliferated in true-crime entertainment. The first day in the year 1991 saw the arrest of Aileen Wuornos, the only female serial killer to enter the 20th-century canon of serial killer celebrities. But one serial killer arrest that can be said to have shaped the decade was that of Jeffrey Dahmer in July of 1991.
Titillation and narrative intrigue in true-crime television can come from dangers inherent in the serial killer passing as normal through his/her outward appearance. This absence of physical freakishness may actually enhance the effectiveness of the serial-killer-as-freak: “More than destroying the peace, the psychopath shatters our complacency that comes from not knowing that dangerousness cannot be detected by body type. . . ”14 The boy-next-door psychopath character takes its emotional potency from this idea, and plays o of pervasive fears about one’s own security in a society capable of producing the serial killer. This narrative lens is especially pervasive in the coverage of Jeffrey Dahmer, dubbed by tabloids as the Milwaukee Cannibal. Dahmer’s crimes were highly sensationalized because of their bizarre nature, but also because of his appearance and personality; Jeffrey Dahmer was polite, soft-spoken, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and deferential. In his 1994 interview with Jeffrey Dahmer, NBC’s Stone Phillips intones to the camera, “How could a seemingly normal Midwestern boy grow up to commit such terrible crimes?” The cultural anxiety resulting from this difficulty in spotting such deviant people in our midst—the freak of consciousness who keeps his/her perversion hidden—arguably generates wider interest in serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer. Moreover, Dahmer wholeheartedly embraced the television talk-therapy offered to him by NBC and Inside Edition (who also televised an interview with him), thereby creating an extensive and intimate media portrait of himself.
The Stone Phillips interview is essentially structured like public family therapy for Je rey Dahmer and his parents (Lionel Dahmer and Joyce Flint, divorced). The purpose of the interview is emotional truth, with Dahmer being continually urged to elaborate on his feelings about his past and his crimes. In contrast to the focus on the what of the crimes that we saw in the 1980s, in this 1.5-hour- long interview the criminal actions are mentioned far less than the killer’s childhood and feelings. It might have been that the case was already so widely publicized that this program was focused not on straight reporting, but on letting Je rey Dahmer tell “his side of the story,” so to speak. Talk therapy becomes a discursive strategy to get more luridly personal details out of Dahmer and also to encourage public preoccupation with the memory of his case—probing private wounds from his past that have become public. Allowing Je rey Dahmer televised family therapy has the potential to generate feelings of radical empathy in the audience on his behalf; alternately, it increases dramatic pitch in the absence of breaking news and makes for better television.
Towards the end of the interview, Stone Phillips turns to Je rey with an expression of overly-contrived earnestness and says, “Your father told me one of the reasons he wrote this book [A Father’s Story, a memoir] was in order to put down on paper what he has been unable to say to you in words, kind of reaching out to you. Is there anything you want to say to him, having read this?”15 Je rey then apologizes to his dad, they exchange a one-armed hug, and the camera zooms in on Lionel resting his hand comfortingly on Je rey’s arm. Phillips mediates between the two men in the way a family therapist would, asking “pointed questions” (his term) about Je rey’s crimes while also probing for emotional reasoning and humanizing details from Je rey’s life. Despite all of this seemingly sympathetic, gentle emotional prodding, Dahmer is still framed as a freak as well as an “unnervingly normal” man. In his closing statement Phillips mentions Dahmer’s weak handshake, bringing up a gay stereotype to magnify his social deviance, and describes the whole interview experience as “eerie.”
Of note, Dahmer’s arrest coincided with the release of The Silence of the Lambs, a blockbuster lm featuring an anti-hero cannibal killer. Although Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter was not modeled on Jeffrey Dahmer, their collision in popular consciousness caused their cultural presences to play off of each other. But fictional Hannibal Lecter offered a much more acceptable portrait of deviancy than Dahmer did, more akin to a dashing noir villain than a sad, lonely murderer. Lecter, portrayed by acclaimed Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins, offered a compelling portrait of a serial killer protagonist as guru to Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) and charming psychopath whose performance arguably steals the lm. Notably, Hopkins had only 16 minutes of screen-time, the shortest amount of time ever to win an actor an Oscar.16 Hopkins’ Lecter powerfully influenced the serial killer character in American culture.17 The urbanity, genius, and high-functioning psychopathy of a character like Lecter combined with the theatrical air of Hopkins’ gleefully evil performance enhanced the kind of awed respect generated by the serial killer. Furthermore, part of Hannibal Lecter’s backstory is that he was a practicing psychiatrist, giving him insight into how to best manipulate people to his own ends and characterizing him as an “evil mastermind” serial killer. Fictional characters such as Hannibal Lecter (or more recently, Dexter), arguably contribute as much to the public-consciousness image of the serial killer as their widely-publicized real-life counterparts. Both are contained within a star text that feeds off of the same public curiosity and “mawkish disapproval that is the ip-side of titillation.”18
Serial Killers in the 21st Century: Subjects of Analysis and Americana
By the mid-2000s, the primary focus of true-crime shows dealing with serial killers was psychoanalysis and emotional reception. The show Most Evil (2006-2008) centered around the “Scale of Evil” developed by Columbia University forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Stone, and each episode examined a handful of killers’ case files to see where they fell on the scale. There are establishing shots of Dr. Stone sitting at his typewriter, looking through a microscope, and flipping through his filing cabinet to find a folder marked with the killer’s name. The atmosphere of the show is meant to be frightening and creepy, but more subtly so than those we saw in the 1980s. Frequent reconstructions begin with a child actor staring eerily at the camera while a voice-over introduces the serial killer’s (often traumatic) childhood story. The cases are simplified in order to neatly t a diagnosis, allowing a handful of cases to be covered in the course of one episode. The show is framed as edifying and educational by its concluding voice-over narration: “For these criminals, Dr. Stone considers their genetic, constitutional, environmental, and neurological factors when placing them on the scale. He believes that evil is something to be understood and analyzed, with the hopes of one day helping us not only to understand, but to guard against their crimes.” Through their specatorship, the audience is poised to be thrilled at watching re-enactments and in hearing about transgressive violence and perverse crimes; they are also poised to feel morally superior to the killers, and to feel educated on how to guard against these “killers next door.”
To take an example, an episode from Season Two, entitled “Masterminds,” pro les three serial killers at length: Edmund Kemper, Ted Bundy, and Ted Kaczynski. The professed goal of the program is to track their “transformation” into serial killers, presenting each case beginning with a childhood retrospective. The voice- over narrator is British, despite this being an American program, a characteristic usually meant to inject a kind of sophisticated credibility. In contrast to the gravelly, hard-boiled narrator of 1980s true-crime films, this man speaks in a measured, almost conversational tone that could just as easily be applied to a documentary on an entirely non- violent subject. This is not to say that the program is above the occasional jolt of sensationalism: “To find the roots of Kemper’s sadism, Dr. Stone examined his past. He uncovered nightmarish details.”19 Cue commercial break.
In contrast to previous generations of true-crime shows, Most Evil encourages intellectual engagement rather than reactive fear in the audience. The background music is calm and meditative, with subdued single notes played on a piano over atmospheric noises. The atmosphere created is one of delicate tension, occasionally disrupted by a flourish of dramatic cellos. When examining frame composition, the action occurring is subtle. In dramatic reconstructions, the serial killer character (actor) often stares into the camera, playing with an object in his hands; in Kemper’s case, the actor slowly pulls the stuffing out of his sister’s doll. Despite such arguable, eerie scenes, Most Evil presents subtly reproduced violence, depicting serial killers in moments of solitude and relative non-violence, possibly encouraging a more empathetic reaction in the audience. To portray the inner anguish of the killers’ psyches, extreme close-ups from skewed angles are used to jarring effect. A sense of disorientation is created by shooting an image very close and blurry then bringing it into sharp focus, adding to the tense atmosphere of the program.
Most Evil uses real-life footage of serial killers sparingly, preferring instead to provide re-enactments or to share “evidence” drawn from psychiatric and neurobiological studies; in Season 2, Episode 8, for example, studies on brain activity in autistic children who are unable to feel empathy (like psychopaths) are meant to lend insight into Bundy and Kaczynski. Psychiatric professionals (rather than FBI criminal profilers) are centered as authorities, thereby aligning the audience’s perspective with their vantage point of clinical analysis. Pleasure in the show lies in this blatant invitation to be armchair psychiatrists who are equipped (by virtue of their spectatorship) to rank the show’s subjects on Dr. Stone’s Scale of Evil.
One odd feature of true-crime entertainment in the 21st century thus far is the emergence of an American serial killer canon of sorts. This canon comprises approximately 18 serial killers from the 20th century who are used again and again as television subjects and objects of fascination. Although there have been more serial killers arrested since the 2000s, none have achieved the level of fame or impact that these canonical killers have. Biopic programs about these serial killers’ lives are aired on the Biography Channel alongside those of people like Tiger Woods and Marilyn Monroe, in a sense assimilating them into mainstream culture as historical figures and celebrities. This could be because these serial killers are usually no longer a threat— being either dead or incarcerated. By framing them as subjects of clinical psychiatric study and figures from America’s past, the serial killer garners more fascination than fear and earns a place as a figure of Americana. There has been speculation that serial killers already fit seamlessly into American mythology, that they embody an individualistic ethos and have an outlaw/vigilante justice appeal. However misguided this may be, serial killers are undeniably compelling characters and their celebrity seems to have solidi ed into a recognizable mass over the course of the 20th century—confirmed and brought to a narrative conclusion by the criminal crack-down the 1980s and the pop-cultural mass media explosion of the 1990s.
Probing the Public Wound
David Schmid has argued that serial killers have generally been “depicted as monstrous psychopaths, whose crimes tell us little or nothing about the societies in which they live [and that true-crime narratives disconnect these individuals from the social fabric in order to present them as aberrations or freaks.”20 In contrast, I have argued that we can increasingly see true-crime media moving toward a psychological understanding and (slowly) away from mere condemnations of the serial killer as incomprehensible and inhuman monsters. In looking at the depictions of serial killers from the 1980s to the present, we can see how serial killers have come a long way through their media incarnations, from being discussed as an unstoppable epidemic to being considered individually and painstakingly through the lens of psychoanalysis (and pop psychoanalysis).
Whenever we see a reviled social Other being widely used as a stock character in mass-culture entertainment, we can conclude that the dominant culture is attempting to disavow that group of some threatening power or influence it holds. Serial killers’ crimes have tremendous frightening power because they threaten security, anonymity, and public normalcy. The true- crime media we consume about them satisfies a public need to understand and process their crimes while simultaneously satisfying an underlying desire to see violent acts recounted/reenacted, to be emotional voyeurs into other people’s tragedies, and to look at an extraordinarily deviant person who chose to live outside the laws and norms of society. This desire to consume the Other through media representations belongs to a longer history of freak show entertainment and has been incorporated into the modern context of therapy culture by using the serial killer as a freak of consciousness. However shameful or wrong it may seem, the serial killer is part of the Americana lexicon and will continue to occupy public imagination through various media incarnations for a long time to come.
Footnotes
George W. Arndt, “Community Reactions to a Horrifying Event,” in Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, XXIII (New York: Guilford Publications, 1959), 106.
Harold Schechter, Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho” (New York: Pocket Books, 1998), 216.
Dane Placko, “Rob Zombie’s haunted house has John Wayne Gacy room,” Fox News Chicago (Oct 5 2014), http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/26669431/rob-zombies.
Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age (London: Routledge, 2004), 12.
Furedi, Therapy Culture, 22.
White, Mimi, Tele-Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American Television (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 29.
White, Tele-Advising, 182.
Mark Seltzer, Serial Killers: Life and Death in America’s Wound Culture (New York: Routledge, 1998), 22.
David and Mikita Brottman, “Return of the Freakshow: Carnival (De) Formations in Contemporary Culture,” in Studies in Popular Culture (Louisville: Popular Culture Association in the South, 1996), 100.
David Schmid, Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2005), 69.
The Killing of America, directed by Sheldon Renan and Leonard Schrader, 1981. YouTube video (Aug 8 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdfFmTFY_JE.
Murder: No Apparent Motive, directed by Imre Horvath, 1984. YouTube video (Mar 15 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRv8uOnvRBc.
Joy Wiltenburg, “True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism,” in The American Historical Review (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1379.
Cary Federman, Dave Holmes, and Jean Daniel Jacob, “Deconstructing the Psychopath: A Critical Discursive Analysis,” in Cultural Critique (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 40.
“Confessions of a Serial Killer: Jeffrey Dahmer” Jeffrey Dahmer, interview by Stone Phillips, MSNBC, February 1994. YouTube video, (July 8 2012). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPMBfX7D4WU.
The Silence of the Lambs (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition), directed by Jonathan Demme (1991; Los Angeles, CA: MGM, 2007). DVD.
Philip L. Simpson, “Lecter for President. . . or, Why We Worship Serial Killers,” in Cult Pop Culture: How the Fringe Became Mainstream, Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012), 84.
Lisa Downing, The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 93.
Most Evil, “Masterminds,” Season 2, Episode 8, September 30, 2007. YouTube video (Jan 7 2014).
Schmid, Natural Born Celebrities, 176.
Bibliography
Arndt, George W. “Community Reactions to a Horrifying Event.” Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, XXIII. New York: Guilford Publications, 1959.
Biressi, Anita. “Inside/Out: Private Trauma and Public Knowledge in True Crime Documentary.” Screen, Vol. 45, No. 4. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2004.
Brottman, David and Mikita. “Return of the Freakshow: Carnival (De) Formations in Contemporary Culture.” Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 8, No. 2. Louisville: Popular Culture Association in the South, 1996.
Chemers, Michael M. Staging Stigma: A Critical Examination of the American Freak Show. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
“Confessions of a Serial Killer: Jeffrey Dahmer.” Jeffrey Dahmer, interview by Stone Phillips, MSNBC, February 1994. YouTube video. July 8, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPMBfX7D4WU.
Conrath, Robert. “The Guys Who Shoot to Thrill: Serial Killers and the American Popular Unconscious.” Revue française d’études américaines, No. 60. Paris: Editions Belin, 1994.
Dovey, Jon. Freakshow: First Person Media and Factual Television. London: Pluto Press, 2000.
Downing, Lisa. The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Federman, Cary; Holmes, Dave; and Jacob, Jean Daniel. “Deconstructing the Psychopath: A Critical Discursive Analysis.” Cultural Critique, Vol. 72. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Furedi, Frank. Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge, 2004.
Globe Magazine Special Issue: Serial Killers, Display until October 20, 2014.
The Killing of America. Directed by Sheldon Renan and Leonard Schrader. 1981. YouTube video. August 8, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdfFmTFY_JE.
Most Evil. “Masterminds,” Season 2, Episode 8. September 30, 2007. YouTube video. January 7, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXmXj2Hm8pA.
Murder: No Apparent Motive. Directed by Imre Horvath. 1984. YouTube video. March 15, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRv8uOnvRBc.
Placko, Dane. «Rob Zombie›s haunted house has John Wayne Gacy room.» Fox News Chicago, Oct 5 2014. http://www.myfoxchicago.com/ story/26669431/rob-zombies.
Schechter, Harold. Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho.” New York: Pocket Books, 1998.
Schmid, David. Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Serial Killer Culture. Directed by John Borowski. 2014. Toronto, Ontario: Waterfront Productions, 2014. Hulu video. www.hulu.com/watch/664916.
Simpson, Philip L. “Lecter for President. . . or, Why We Worship Serial Killers.” Cult Pop Culture: How the Fringe Became Mainstream, Volume One, edited by Bob Batchelor, 83-96. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012.
The Silence of the Lambs (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition). Directed by Jonathan Demme. 1991. Los Angeles, CA: MGM, 2007.
White, Mimi. Tele-Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American Television. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Wiltenburg, Joy. “True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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