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Gary Leon Ridgway, born February 18th in 1949, is the world’s most prolific serial killer. What makes him the world’s most prolific serial killer? Among being a murderer he was also a necrophiliac. The sheer number is a prime example of the psychotic things this man was capable of doing. He was convicted of forty-eight murders, but later confessed to as many as twice that number. It is also astonishing that this horror lasted more than a decade between the 1980s and 1990s.
As a young child Ridgway was exposed to many arguments between his parents. He was belittled for wetting the bed by his mother whom he had opposing sexual and aggravated feelings for. This was a start to his sexual sadism. At the age of sixteen he stabbed a six year old boy in the woods. The victim and Ridgway said Ridgway walked away say “I always wondered what it would be like to kill someone.” This had begun his passion for harming others. Ridgway tested with an IQ of eighty-two when he was a child which led him to repeating two years of high school. He graduated at the age twenty-one. He later married his high school girlfriend. Ridgway joined the Navy where he would begin to solicit prostitutes while being married. He contracted gonorrhea for the second time in his life but still had intercourse with multiple prostitutes. When he came home to his wife he would ask very strange sexual favors such as sex in public places, which later his victims would be sometimes found. They divorced due to infidelities of both partners and later he remarried. After saying she was put into a choke hold by Ridgway, his second wife divorced him. His second wife gave birth to his first child, it was a boy. He still was having relations with the prostitutes. Ridgw...
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...iller"" N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2014
"Gary Leon RidgwayUnited States." Gary Leon Ridgway. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. http://serial-killers.findthebest.com/l/223/Gary-Leon-Ridgway
Pulkkinen, Levi. "Green River Killer Gary Ridgway: Photos from the Archives." Seattlepi.com. N.p., 4 Nov. 2013. Web. 21 Mar. 2014. http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Green-River-Killer-Gary-Ridgway-Photos-from-the-4954198.php#photo-5415678
Wilma, David. "Gary Leon Ridgway Pleads Guilty to Murdering 48 Green River Killer Victims on November 5, 2003." HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. N.p., 5 Nov. 2003. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=4262
"MO- The Bridgeway to Ridgway." The Bridgeway to Ridgway. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2014.
Dubbed the “Baton Rouge Serial Killer” Derrick Todd Lee was only one of two serial killers working the Baton Rouge area during the time between 1992 and 2004. Lee is a black male, who lived with his wife and children St. Francisville, LA. Lee had avoided being caught for many years because an eye witness had told authorities the suspect was a white male (Mustafa, Clayton & Israel, 2006). This information was very believable because most serial killers do not cross racial lines when choosing their victims and all of Lee’s victims were white except one (Mustafa, Clayton & Israel, 2006). Lee was eventually named as the suspect in 2002 when DNA tests revealed the killer was a black male (Stewart, Boyd, M., & Nunnally, D. (2002). He was arrested in 2003 and now lives on death row in Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Montaldo, Charles. “Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer.” Crime/Punishment. About.com. 8 Feb. 2012. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.
As years go on so will the research on serial killers and hopefully we as a society will fully understand them and one day be able to cure whatever inside that makes them have the urge to kill. Works Cited The Electronic Journal of Sociology, published by the University of Guelph, Ontario. http://www.scribd.com/doc/167086215/How-Serial-Killers-Work. According to the article “10 Most Common Traits of Potential Serial Killers By Hestie Barnard Gerber. According to Comrade Chikatilo: The Psychopathology of Russia's Notorious Serial Killer.
Hickey, Eric W. Serial Murderers and Their Victims. Belmont, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1991. Print.
Taking the life of another person is one of the worst infractions of the law to commit. The Bureau of Justice defines serial killing as “[involving] the killing of several victims in three or more separate events” (“Michigan” 1). Serial killers often commit extremely violent crimes; they usually become infamous for these crimes. The first recorded serial killers are probably Jack the Ripper in 1888 and Fritz Haarmann in 1924 (“Michigan” 1). Jack the Ripper is also one of the most well-known criminals, almost everyone knows who he is or has at least heard of him. Most people know what he is famous for and associate him with being a bad person. Serial killers are typically sadistic and sociopathic, meaning that they are unable to feel empathy for people who are suffering (“Michigan” 1). Whimsical sociopaths who have sadistic tendencies are very dangerous. They inflict pain because they do not care that someone else is suffering, they only care that it makes t...
In January of 1982, Wayne Williams was found guilty for the murder of two of the victims, Jimmy Ray Payne and Nathaniel Cater. His conviction was heavily based on the forensic evidence collected and analyzed. Consequent to the verdict, the Atlanta police announced that twenty-two of the twenty-nine murders were solved with the presumption that Wayne Williams was responsible.
The four remaining bodies were dumped in the Des Plaines River. Gacy was convicted of 33 murders and was sentenced to death for twelve of the killings. He was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. Gacy experienced a rough childhood. His father, John Gacy Sr., was an alcoholic who physically abused both his wife and children.
Mass Murderers and Serial Killers are nothing new to today’s society. These vicious killers are all violent, brutal monsters and have an abnormal urge to kill. What gives people these urges to kill? What motivates them to keep killing? Do these killers get satisfaction from killing? Is there a difference between mass murderers and serial killers or are they the same. How do they choose their victims and what are some of their characteristics? These questions and many more are reasons why I was eager to write my paper on mass murderers and serial killers. However, the most interesting and sought after questions are the ones that have always been controversial. One example is; what goes on inside the mind of a killer? In this paper I will try to develop a better understanding of these driven killers and their motives.
Attention Getter: Jeffrey Dahmer, The Zodiac Killer, Donald Henry Gaskins, Tsutomu Miyazaki, Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Amelia Dyer, Jane Toppan, these are the names of some of the most notorious serial killers the world has ever come to see, and there are many more where that came from.
An analysis of the most famous murderers and serial killers in the Chicago area shows varying degrees of psychopathy or mental illnesses, which ultimately contribute to homicidal conduct. Analysis also shows that the paths of serial killers have a tendency to converge.... ... middle of paper ... ...
“My consuming lust was to experience their bodies. I viewed them as objects, as strangers. It is hard for me to believe a human being could have done what I've done”(Dahmer). Jeffrey Dahmer is notably one of the most infamous serial killers in the United States. Along with seventeen murders under his belt, he was also a pedophile, cannibal and necrophiliac.
Bell, R. (n.d.). Ted Bundy. A Time of Terror — — Crime Library. Retrieved March 4, 2014, from http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/n
Serial killers are everywhere! Well, perhaps not in our neighborhood, but on our television screens, at the movie theaters, and in rows and rows of books at our local Borders or Barnes and Nobles Booksellers” (Brown). When people think of serial killers, names such as Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy, and Gein are cited. During the time Jack the Ripper was executing his victims in London, Holmes began his gruesome career in Chicago (America’s Serial Killers). “Despite being America’s first serial killer, Holmes is hardly a familiar name and until now we haven’t had any popular visual record of his crimes: (Spikol). Why is it that people only think of the more popular killers with higher known profiles? They are all very similar to one another because they share characteristics. H.H. Holmes was a successful serial killer because he was well educated, cunning and charming. Those are just a few traits Holmes ...
...in Ridgway's actions, which were in a certain way directly his own, albeit formed through his parents lack of direction and action. Ridgway's deviance is not constrained to one aspect of deviant theory, but seemingly draws from both sides, as he has the mental desire to commit crime but in retrospect was formed at an early age to have a disregard for personal well-being. On the other hand, conflict theory helps define the lives of the victims as created solely through the failing of society's boundaries. So while Ridgway's deviant behavior is adequately explained by both theories discussed, the victims are solely the product of outward stimuli which led them down a lifestyle of wretchedness. Gary Ridgway will likely remain as America's most prolific mass murderer and behind his name lies a deviant individual crafted by an influx of problems, both personal and social.
Ted Bundy was one of the most vicious serial killers in American history. He confessed to 28 grotesque murders in the 1970’s but the actual number of his victims remains