Lacklustre serial killer gets life.
(Above: an artist’s depiction of Jack the Ripper, Victorian Gothic Horror at it’s lethal best).
Let’s face it, there’s something chillingly alluring about serial multicide for a lot of people.
Sure it’s nasty, immoral, evil and just straight out wrong, but you can’t deny there is an element in the common psyche that finds this stuff well nigh irresistible.
Popular films and literature help fuel the glamorous perception of people “driven to kill”, characters like Thomas Harris’ “Hannibal Lecter” and Cormack McCarthy’s “Anton Chigurh” in “no country for old men” are testimony to the popular appeal of the psychopath.
Peppered throughout history are real life “movie monsters” who fan the flames of our imagination, the media circus that surrounds these horrors are worthy of P.T. Barnham.
Figures like Herman Mudgett aka HH Holmes, Albert Fish, Ed Gein, Fritz Haarman, and Ted Bundy occupy a deep, dark recess in the human psyche.
Britain is no stranger to the phenomenon of serial multicide, home of Jack the Ripper, the Moors murderers, John Christie, John George Haigh, Dennis Nilsen, Fred and Rose West, Peter Sutcliffe and Harold Shipman.
British serial murder has a long and proud history, the British public can hold their head up safe in the knowledge that their own, home grown sick predation is equal to any, anywhere in the world, that’s why it’s disappointing to see bottom feeders like Steve Wright (convicted this week and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole) admitted to the list of “Britain’s Worst Serial Killers“.
Surely the British public deserve better, by any measure, body count, difficulty level in selecting victims, savagery, ability to evade capture or time spent terrifying the public while on the run, slipshod corpse disposal etc. Wright has got to be one of the less imagination inspiring serial multicides in modern history.
The bar has been set pretty high for serial murder, and Wright just plain fails to deliver.
It’s easy to blame the British education system or advances in policing and crime detection for allowing the standard of serial murder to fall so pathetically low but I tend to think that the culture of serial murder is becoming lazy. It’s not unheard for serial murderers to be using guns for pity’s sake, is there in all the world a less imaginative method of dispatching? I suspect not.
Practicing serial multicides out there, take heed. Lift your game. The standard of public expectation for serial murderers is higher now than it has ever been and from the current generation of sociopathic psychos, I weep for the future of serial killing, I really do.
February 23, 2008 at 11:39 am
What about Australia? Apart from Ivan Milat (and that prick used a bloody rifle) what have we got to show for ourselves in the serial murder stakes? Fuck all!
Martin Byant might hold the ‘mass murder’ world record, and then there’s that sick Nazi Juian Knight, but they don’t fit the bill of the grand old tradition of serial killing – they were just, er… “one -offs”
No, it takes planning, brain-power, years of practice, skill, persistence and DEDICATION to become a ‘succesful’ serialist and we just don’t cut it.
I suppose the ‘bodies in the barrels’ in Snowden S.A. might just qualify BUT … there was more than one killer involved!
That just shows you that Australians can’t even do a decent murder without involving their mates. Thank Christ we’re good at sport.
February 23, 2008 at 11:54 am
well we have a list here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_country#Australia
but of course, if it was an olympic sport we’d hardly be gold medal contendors, although for head of population we do alright.
We do have more than our share of serial murderers who use guns though, that’s just lazy in my book and they should’nt count towards their overall tally.
You might like to check out Bill “the mutilator” McDonald, he’s an Aussie keeping the standard of homicidal mania high.
Quietly spoken chap, he lives in Long Bay nowadays. Real “quiet achiever”
Let’s not forget that that guy from “Better Homes & Gardens” who went on to pretend to be a nice old psycho in that film “Wolf Creek” either.
Hardly “Hall of Fame” stuff though I agree.
February 23, 2008 at 12:01 pm
why do I find it deeply disturbing to find a motel owner with an interest in serial murder? You don’t have a mannequin dressed as your mother in the attic do you?