Abstract This paper is talking about “The Serial Killer,” but focus on Gary Ridgway- “The Green River Serial Killer.” He earned his nickname because the first five victims that he killed were found in the Green River. He was one of the most famous serial killers in the United States. Ridgway raped, chocked, killer and discarded 48 women, including many teenagers as young as 15 years old (Silja J, 2003). In Ridgway’s mind, he even believed that he was helping the police out, as he admitted in one interview with investigators (Silja J, 2003). Introduction A serial killer means, the person has killed at least three people or above in a short period. There are many different types of serial killers. Gary Ridgway was “The Organized Killer”; it …show more content…
This could be one of the reasons that made him became a serial killer. As a young child, Ridgway was tested with an I.Q. of 82, which means signifying low intelligence, and his academic performance in school was so poor that at one point in high school he had to repeat to a single school year twice in order to attain grades decent enough to pass (Blanco, 2011). When he was 16, he wanted to know how it feels to kill a person, so he stabbed to a six-year-old boy, but luckily, the boy did not …show more content…
Ridgway, an extreme incarnation of a brutal misogynist, considered killing female prostitutes a “career.” He felt proud of what he did, and thought he was good at it. However, in Ridgway’s mind, he even believed that he was helping the police out, as he admitted in one interview with investigator (Silja J, 2003). It took almost eight minutes for the names of 48 women to read aloud. Each time, Gary Leon Ridgway calmly said “guilty,” admitting to being the nation’s most prolific serial killer as part of a plea deal that keep him off the states’ death row (Vries, 2003). However, deeply in his mind, he never felt guilty of what he had done. To date, the killings have been the subject of one A&E television documentary, “The Riverman,” a well-regarded made for TV 2004 film and an obscure 2005 film, Green River Killer (Mayo, 2008). Most of the people that have met him before, would never know he could be one of the most serial killer in the United States, everyone thought he was a nice person; but sometimes his behavior is a little bit weird. Family could be one of the biggest reason to make what kind of person we are, or who we want to
The serial killer that I have chosen to research is Mark goudeau, also known as the “Baseline Killer”. Mark was born on September 6th 1964, he was an american serial killer and rapist. He was involved in one of the two simultaneously occurring serial killer cases going on in South Phoenix, Arizona at that time. Mark’s was born in Phoenix, and was the second youngest of 13 siblings in which six were felons, and four have done prison time. Mark’s mother was a maid working at all different hours of the day, while his father Willie was a lot attendant for different car dealers. They were lower working class which didn’t help with thirteen children to take care of. His father had a drug and alcohol problem, which ran in the family. He later cheated
In 1982, police received a call about a body floating in the Green River in Salt Lake City, Utah (it was just one of many bodies that they were going to find). Police were stunned when they started receiving more calls about bodies found in parks, play grounds, and near highways. When police learned that all of the victims were prostitutes, they knew this was a key piece of evidence in their investigation. No one could have ever known that Gary Ridgway just started one of the largest killing sprees in American history. Ridgway grew up in a house where he was abused and harassed by his mother, Mary Ridgway. Ridgway soon began growing a strong hatred towards his abusive mother. Ridgway had begun thinking of some ways he could get back at her by hurting her, but he never did. According to American Murder, Ridgway went through numerous divorces and had a history of interacting with prostitutes (Mayo). ). Ridgway’s past with women soon made him develop a strong dislike for them and led to his killings.
Montaldo, Charles. “Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer.” Crime/Punishment. About.com. 8 Feb. 2012. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.
The United States is responsible for 67.41% of the entire world’s serial killers on record, approximately 2,743 killers. One man who is a part of this statistic, named John Wayne Gacy, was born on March 17th, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. Over a period of six years, Gacy murdered over thirty young men. For the first few years, police were not suspicious of Gacy, and he was only investigated for a few months before his capture. Due to the severity and nature of his crimes John Wayne Gacy was categorized as an organized, power-oriented serial killer.
Richard dropped out of junior high school and was notorious for killing cats in his Polish neighborhood as a youth. Even Richard’s brother Joseph was convicted of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl (Carlo 2003). Amid the alcohol abuse of his father as well as physical and verbal abuse from both his mother and father, Richard began to develop those attributes that psychologists typically attribute to serial killers: an abusive childhood, family dysfunction, killing animals, a lack of self-worth (Holmes 1999), and alcoholism (Carlo 2003).... ... middle of paper ...
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.
2011. “Serial Killers and Mass Murderers.” American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al. Vol. 9:
Gary Leon Ridgway may not be a household name, but the infamous Green River Killer is one of the most accomplished serial murderers in U.S. history. In 2003, Ridgway confessed 48 accounts of aggravated first degree murder (more confirmed murders than any other American serial killer) during a two-and-a-half-year period in the early 1980s near Seattle, although it is believed he slaughtered even more. The majority of his victims were runaway teenage girls and hookers whom he picked up on the interstate and strangled to death. But Ridgway was spared the death penalty as part of a plea bargain three years ago, in exchange for his assistance in leading investigators to his victim's remains and revealing other information to help "bring closure" to the grieving families ("Green River Killer Avoids Death in Plea Deal").
Murderers and Serial Killers in the Chicago Area. A notorious murderer or serial killer is the typical next door neighbor one would hardly associate with a serious crime: an educated psychopath with little regard for life. Most of them commit murder for some misplaced psychological benefit. Their actions border on insanity, as some commit theft by stealing their victims’ belongings and committing rapes, an indication of a need for financial gain or a craving for distorted sexual desires.
A serial killer is a person whom everybody knows as a friend, a lover or even a father but no one knows about his killer instinct until it's to late. Serial killers have plagued this country and others for many years. They are hard to find and virtually undetectable until they start murdering the innocent.
As if molded directly from the depths of nightmares, both fascinating and terrifying. Serial killers hide behind bland and normal existences. They are often able to escape being caught for years, decades and sometimes an eternity. These are America’s Serial Killers (America’s Serial Killers). “Even when some of them do get caught, we may not recognize what they are because they don’t [sic] match the distorted image we have of serial killers” (Brown). What is that distorted image? That killers live among everyday life, they are the ones who creep into someone’s life unknowingly to torture and kill them. The serial killers that are in the movies, Norman Bates, Michael Myers, and the evil master mind of SAW, these characters are just that characters. They have been made up as exaggerated fictional characters from the Hollywood imagination.
What would cause an individual to behave in this rather heinous and macabre manner? Using Robert Pickton as a case study, this paper will explore the phenomenon of serial murder and apply research literature to help explain his behaviour and examine issues such as psychopathy, mental disorder, and substance abuse relevant to the Pickton case. In addition, the paper will explore the sexually sadistic nature of Pickton’s murders. Finally, the paper will explore the reasoning behind Pickton’s selection of drug addicted prostitutes as victims that enabled him to conduct his murders in relative anonymity. ...
In Green River, Running Red, author Ann Rule describes a killer without remorse, who is the product of both personal and social influences, in effect forcing him to murder women and to continue to do so for over a decade as a fulfillment of his fantasies. When endeavoring to rationalize the causes of such a mind, theories of deviance, when separated into two distinct categories, positivist and constructionism. Positivist theories, such as the general theory of crime, allows for individual's to piece together events in the life of Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer which would undeniably lead him to a twisted sense of reality, combined with sexual fantasies and a tendency to justify perverted acts of murder. Constructionist theories, specifically conflict theory, are able to shed light on the lives and decisions made by the victims, who were all led to such lifestyles through outward sources. In determining the causes and motivations behind both the offender and the victims, theories of deviance leave little to be speculated on when placing blame on either psychological or social factors.
Introduction: On the spectrum of criminal activity, serial killers are rather rare. Rarer still is a serial killer like Ted Bundy. Bundy confessed to killing 28 women in the 1970s in ghastly fashion and some believe he may have killed far more. It is hard to imagine what could cause any person to cross the mental boundary into such macabre behavior as Bundy perpetrated. Nevertheless, it is important to try to understand that behavior because only though such an understanding would society be able to identify and deter mass murderers in order to save lives.
In order to identify serial killers before they kill repeatedly, a person needs to study the characteristics that makes up this type of criminals. Most serial killers have been abandoned, by one or both parents, they are emotionally, physically, and even sexually abused by a family member, or relatives from unstable families who have criminal, psychiatric and alcoholic histories, or tend to have hate for their parents and people in general which makes them have antisocial personality disorder. They have conflicted pain or tortured animals at a young age and most are highly interested in gaining control over things. Even though not every serial killers posses these characteristics, but most share these characteristics the same way they share the psychological need to have complete control and power over people.