]By DENNIS WILKENTGI Staff Writer LIHU’E-Local police and FBI investigators fear there is a serial killer operating on Kaua`i. This is a frightening new reality in Hawai`i, where there have been few mass murders (the worst in November 1998 in
]By DENNIS WILKENTGI Staff Writer
LIHU’E-Local police and FBI investigators fear there is a serial killer
operating on Kaua`i.
This is a frightening new reality in Hawai`i, where
there have been few mass murders (the worst in November 1998 in Honolulu when
Byron Uyesugi fatally shot seven Xerox co-workers; he was recently sentenced to
life without parole), much less serial murderers.
But there have been
serial killers loose in the world at least since there have been
newspapers.
In fact, the monster “credited” with the most murders, Herman
Webster Mudgett, aka H.H. Holmes, killed more than 200 people in Chicago
between 1880 and 1893. His murders were discovered when his house, a replicate
castle, burned down. In a weave of destroyed tunnels and secret passages, more
than 200 corpses, mostly women, were discovered.
Mudgett was hung in May of
1896.
One reason Mudgett isn’t as famous as Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy,
both of whom killed far fewer people, is that society and segments of the media
are more and more sensationalistic.
People decry violence but make a hero
out of Hannibal Lector of “The Silence of the Lamb.”
More books have been
written about Pacific Northwest serial killer Ted Bundy than about fallen
grunge music idol Kurt Cobain.
Americans are as fascinated by serial
killers as they are frightened by them.
Books abound and there are more
than 10 Web sites devoted to serial murderers.
The conventional wisdom just
a few years ago was that serial killers were all socially inept, white males
with “mommy” issues, a lot like Norman Bates, the character that Anthony
Perkins made famous in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock movie thriller,
“Psycho.”
But serial killing is more and more an equal opportunity
perversion.
Charles Ng, an Asian American, along with his partner Leonard
Lake, a Caucasian, killed more than 25 women. The pair operated out of a
Northern California ranch where Lake had built a torture chamber. Ng fled to
Canada as authorities closed in but was extradited six years later after being
arrested in the Calgary area for shoplifting.
Juan Corona, a Mexican labor
contractor working in Northern California killed 25 men, mostly migrant workers
and transients. Corona’s victims, discovered in an orchard next to his house,
showed signs of being sexually assaulted.
Richard Ramirez, Los Angeles’
infamous Night Stalker, brutally assaulted and killed at least 16
women.
When sentenced to die, an event that has yet to happen, Ramirez,
showing media savvy along with a sense of humor too dark for even late-night
television, yelled out, “See you in Disneyland,” echoing a popular sports
commercial.
Vaughn Greenwood, an African American, killed 11 derelicts on
Los Angeles’ Skid Row in the mid-1970s. He was caught and sentenced to life in
prison.
Alton Coleman, another African American, killed eight people in
eight days during a Midwestern crime spree that took him through Cincinnati.
Eventually caught in Evanston, Ill., near Chicago, he was sentenced to death
and remains at this writing on Death Row.
Aileen Wuornos is one of the few
known female serial killers, although the United Kingdom boasted several
distaff serial poisoners in the 19th century.
Wournos, a prostitute,
started killing her tricks. She murdered seven men before being caught. Wuornos
now resides on Florida’s Death Row, a dangerous place for a killer to be
because only Texas (231) and Virgina (78) have executed more prisoners than
Florida’s 49 since the Death Penalty was re-instated in the United States in
1977.
The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, based at the
FBI Academy in Quantico Virginia, divides serial killers into two main types:
spree killers and “classic” killers.
Classic serial killers have a typical
stalking method and the classic killer’s victims and crime scenes resemble each
other according to the NCAVC.
The classic would appear to include Kauai’s
killer, all three of whose known victims (one survived) were small, middle-aged
white women alone at the time of their assaults and all of whom were stabbed,
beaten and sexually assaulted.
At this early point in Kauai’s
investigation, neither local police sources nor FBI investigators are issuing
comments about the man terrorizing the west side of the island.
Another
category used by the FBI stems from location.
There are killers classified
as “geographically stable,” with all the murders done in the same area. And
there are others labeled “mega-mobile.”
Christopher Wilder, an Australian
jetsetter, traveled around the United States and killed at least eight women;
the Green River Killer, never caught, dumped the bodies of as many as 48
prostitutes and street people—all women—in the same general area near
Seattle.
Kauai’s killer would seem to be an example of the geographically
stable serial killer.
In the United States and Britain, according to NCAVC
415 serial killers murdered 3365 people between 1960 and 1990; and although the
overall crime rate is down in the United States at least, the number of serial
killers certainly hasn’t gone down.
Experts estimate that at least 50
serial killers are at large and working currently in the United States,
compared to five in Great Britain, where crime, including serial murder, is
increasing but is still much lower than in the U.S.
The most disturbing
characteristic of serial killers, for people living on Kaua`i, is that unlike
most other types of criminals, serial killers don’t usually retire or even
taper off.
And that’s not good news.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken
can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and [
HREF=”mailto:dwilken@pulitzer.net”>dwilken@pulitzer.net]
