What serial killer(s) scare you the most?

When I was in my mid teens, I had an unhealthy obsession with what one might euphemistically call the "darker sides of life." More specifically, I was very into the grotesque details of wartime atrocities and serial killer crimes. For reasons too convoluted for me to bother explaining, it made me feel "mentally tough" to able to stomach such content, or something on the lines of that. I guess you could call me the living personification of what the internet would refer to as an "edgelord" today, and it's a mindset I cringe in utter agony to this very day.

Anyways, one of the very few serial killers that I researched in that part of my life that truly terrified me was Dean Corll. For those unfamiliar with him, Corll was a serial killer active in Texas during the early 70s. He raped and killed dozens of teenage boys with the help of his teenage accomplices (David Brooks and Elmer Henley). Whom acted as procurers that lured (often with the promise of drugs, booze, and parties) his victims to him. What scared me about the case, was the realization that he might've went after me if I lived in early 70s Houston Heights.

After all, I (at the time) was in the same age group as most of his victims and of his targeted gender. Additionally, I was bit lonely and loved associating with peers that were even remotely affable to me. I feared that if it was Henley and Brooks being friendly and offering me to hang out, I might've bitten it hook, line, and sinker. It's a feeling that made me feel so vulnerable, even obviously knowing that the guy died decades ago. However due to my religious background, I had a distrust for drug/alcohol usage. So perhaps that would have been my saving grace in that situation.

How different would the case would've been if happened in the present day instead of the 70s? Additionally, are there any particular serial killer that hit that "special nerve" in you?

 

Harold Shipman... he was our family doctor from the day I was born to the day he was arrested. Ironically he was the best doctor I’ve ever known.

 

My family took serious note when John Wayne Gacy unraveled. He lived a few blocks from my aunt in DesPlaines, IL. My cousin Tim and I were both in his age demographic, and Tim knew a few of the victims.

The house is gone now; the vacant lot is all that’s left. The house was partially taken down while they searched for more bodies. The rest of the building was removed to deter the macabre tourism that was springing up around it. As a show of respect for the 33 victims and their families, DesPlaines chose to not turn the lot into a public park, and has vowed to never issue a building permit for that property again.

 

I lived in the NY Tri-State when Son of Sam - David Berkowitz - was terrorizing the five boroughs. When we took breaks from our band rehearsals, we took extra precautions when we were outside of our rehearsal space and never hung out in our cars.

 

One of my WIPs is in the words of a woman whose abusive father might also have been a child-murderer during the 1980s. I researched the obvious and major serial killers, plus some others like Josef Fritzl - basically to see if he had anything in common with any of them. I met him several times since he was still alive when we started, and on the one hand yes he was obviously a psychopath (and such a low-functioning one that the only people he didn't avoid interacting with throughout his life were other convicted sex offenders like him), and on the other hand there wasn't much need to fill anything in from other research.

Although there was tons of material to do his voice and mannerisms with - not just interviews but also a whole childhood's worth of weird home videos (think Dogtooth), we decided to sideline him. So much of his behaviour was exhibitionistic that this seemed like what he deserved. And from a creative point of view I think these people are boringly single-minded. They're unrelatable and they lack conscience, sympathy and empathy - which are the things that make people into characters, rather than walking talking plot devices. There might be some difference from one to another between their temperaments or how they present socially, but their inner worlds aren't instructive or even particularly cautionary. I believe that antagonists and villains in novels should be able to teach the reader something about themselves or the human condition or how to deal with other people - but psychopaths don't have anything to offer.

But was he scary? Sort of. The scary things were how easily he managed to set up a lifestyle that kept him off the radar, how sophisticated some of his offending was, how parts of his MO he must have gotten help with from other people, and how vulnerable his daughter must have been. But face-to-face he presented as timid, taciturn, passive, totally unopinionated - waiting for the scrutiny of human contact to pass over him. If he was scary to adults, how would he offend? But children are more perceptive: so how to groom a child to happily cover for him - to help him appear as a family man whilst seeing family pets being disembowelled, or seeing her dad digging holes in the night and moving bad-smelling holdalls back and forth without any fear that might raise the alarm?

I have nightmares about him - but I think that's because the research went on too long. The story as we're telling it is about an emotionally-healthy woman managing to emerge from this sickening household.

 

Mikhail Popkov. The guy was a Russian police officer. And a serial killer with that kind of authority gives me chills.

 

I think for me it would be BTK...he had almost none of the noted characteristics of a serial killer...managed to get married, raise a family, even be super involved in his church. It allowed him to go on for much longer than the weird loner who has a problem with female relationships, etc, that normally accompany psychopaths.

The other would be Richard Kuklinski, aka "The Iceman". If you watch his interviews, he is probably about as soul-less as a human can be. Like feeding people alive to rats in a tunnel and videotaping it. There was zero moral compass in him. He was another man who managed to have a family and live a seemingly ordinary life.

 

Actually, when I think about it, the ones we've never heard about because they've never been detected or caught are the ones that scare me most, because they're still out there "working."

 

The DC sniper was probably the worst and glad we haven’t seen a copycat. Very hard to catch and stuck with basic impunity. Didn’t even have to get close to you to take you out.

I think there were some kids in my class who were supposed to go to DC that had the trip cancelled because of them.

 

it's the sexual nature of most serial murder that skeeves me out the most. If you murder for money or something I can get my head around it.

that's incredible, wow

 

I do wonder if the social environment of today would allow the scenario you described to go on to such a degree. Kids seem savvier now than their previous generation, especially when it comes to who they mingle with. There's all the side channels of gossip via phone apps that the evildoer (evilintender?) wouldn't be able to keep a lid on, and indeed those phones replete with photos and trackable I'm sure would reduce the chances of any ongoing success. So, to me, a small positive born out of the murk of social media. I don't know if numbers have been crunched to see if there's fewer (serial) murders now per capita but I'd wager so. Nipped in the bud.

Edmund Kemper — eurgh, his deeds twanged that nerve. I learned of his antics in the series Mindhunter. You name it, he's done it, and stuff beyond naming too.

 

I agree with this one just because there was no target demographic or safe(r) behaviors you could engage in, you just had to hope that you weren't in the crosshairs that day.

I mean, I wasn't, nobody's ever designed a rifle or scope that will shoot that far beyond the horizon, but the methodology of those two was particularly chilling.

 

I lived in DC and went to elementary school during the DC Sniper rampage. we were taught to walk in zigzags, we had recess inside with the windows boarded up, and teachers had to escort us 1 class at a time out to our cars/buses

 

I listen to a lot of true crimes podcasts and watch the netflix documentaries on them. so far, Son of Sam scared me the most. something about the "talking dog made me do it" excuse freaked me out and still freaks me out

 

I would think that the other teens would realize something was wrong on the virtue of anyone that goes to parties with those two accomplices never come back.

 

Agreed, or the moment they pop off the radar in Find My Friends.

Just popped to a few sites where the numbers appear to have been totted up. Late 70s and early 80s there seems a high peak. The upshot (it's reported) is a surge in the ability to link crimes as methods improved, meaning in prior decades they went unconnected and were swallowed by the general murder rate. Then after the 80s, detection methods saw the perpetrators caught earlier. I used to think shows like Criminal Minds were fanciful. Maybe, but set 20 years earlier, maybe not.

 

If you're including fictional killers, the mind-control guy (David Tennant) in the Jessica Jones series really creeps me out.