About the same time that Michael Aamodt, a professor at Radford University in Virginia, started cataloguing serial killers, trading cards popped up. Aamodt's Serial Killer Data Base, compiled with the help of students, is academic, respectable. See here for a prior blog re Aamodt's Radford work. Serial killer Trading cards are not respectable, at least they weren't back in 1992. They are still bought and sold on Amazon, Etsy, and Ebay. Aamodt's catalogue has over five thousand entries … [Read more...]
Crime – Extremist Mass Murder – Tutorial – Proud Boys and Others Pose Threat.
My bad. I've overlooked extremist mass murder in recent posts. However, in my blog tutorial about multicide, I covered many types of mass murder in the US. And using data from the GunViolence.org Archive, I showed how many mass shootings we've had in recent years. Also, using CNN data, I showed how many Rampage Killings we've also had going back to the 1940s. Extremist Mass Murder President Trump's message to extremists during the first Presidential Debate to "Stand Down and Stand … [Read more...]
Serial murderers, their killing fields, and sacred rituals. II
In my last post, I talked about killing fields where some serial killers conduct their sacred rituals.** But many killers don't have access to a remote outdoor places or even a basements or crawl spaces to do this. So they must rely on souvenirs to re-live the sense of power or the psychological high they got from killing. Souvenirs and scared rituals. If you're like me, you love bringing home souvenirs home from a vacation as a nice reminder of the great trip you had. During Covid-19 … [Read more...]
Crime – Car repair fraud – Tutorial for all of us & True-Crime Writers.
As I've noted in prior blogs, there's all manner of fraud abroad in the land.* True crime fans and writers might want to bone up on car repair fraud. Most of us lucky enough to own vehicles have experienced such fraud. Thus many readers can relate to it. And car repair fraud sometimes has a "wow" factor that writers strive for. Car repair fraud can even be elegant in its simplicity as the video below shows. A trend in writing true-crime stories is to make criminals so clever and resourceful … [Read more...]
The Psychopath and The Hare.
The Psychopath and the Hare lip is my way to addressing what's become an interesting debate among moviegoers. Even comic book aficionados have gotten into the act. And so may you and I as so many of us are at home without sports, political rallies, and other live TV as a distraction. We've got time to watch movies like Joker. The debate is whether Joaquin Phoenix, who won an Oscar for Best Actor, portrays the Joker as a psychopath or not? The Psychopath and The Hare … [Read more...]
Crime – Myths about the Evil Genius Killer – Tutorial for Tru-Crime Fans & Writers
Fans of true-crime books and crime writers are often drawn to evil genius killer stories. And so are everyday people since these stories both horrify and fascinate us frequently. Evil genius killer tutorial. As a service to my fans and fellow true-crime writers, I'm providing another tutorial. This one deals with the myth and facts about one such killer, Ira Einhorn. Hopefully, you readers will find it interesting. And you writers will find it useful. Many of our feelings and much of … [Read more...]
Plea bargains, Prisons, Parole — an after-your-arrest Tutorial with Boston Strangler tie in.
Am close to finishing my latest book, Privileged Killers, where I take plea bargains and parole board decisions to task. These are two phenomena that've dictated court and corrections culture for years. Hopefully this tutorial will help writers, criminology students, true-crime fans, and others understand these topics. Plea bargains are a win-win often. Suspects get to plead guilty to doing something less serious than what they've done in all likelihood. The joke is it's like copping to … [Read more...]