A murderer attempts to explain, justify, and understand his crime (before the fact).
posted by prefpara on Aug 5, 2009 - 527 comments

My date with Willy Pickton. Robert Pickton that is, Canada's most prolific serial killer.
posted by GuyZero on Apr 13, 2009 - 30 comments

The most cruel viral ad campaign yet. Give your friend the experience of being stalked by a serial killer. Make sure to preview the very slick customized video generated first, before you decide whether you really want to do this to someone you like. [Yes, yes, viral advertising for some FX show, also Flash]
posted by blahblahblah on Aug 14, 2007 - 38 comments

Black Sheep Bloodthirsty, murderous sheep are on the loose in a small farming village. Keep your fingers crossed, this upcoming horror movie from New Zealand just might be Snakes on a Plane 2!
posted by dhammond on Jan 11, 2007 - 36 comments

Issac Asimov's first Law of Robotics has been broken.
posted by icosahedral on Nov 3, 2006 - 80 comments

"Psycho killer raccoons terrorize Olympia." What else is there to say, really.
posted by _sirmissalot_ on Aug 23, 2006 - 55 comments

Man kills jealous boyfriend with coffee mug. This is from my local paper (see also stoner busts self). Just to show you the kind of interesting stuff that goes on here in Utah...(more inside)
posted by punkbitch on Feb 9, 2006 - 44 comments

An iTunes For The Rest Of Us? Just for laughs I often flip through my (free subscription!) Stereophile magazine. You know, the one with the ads for the $12000 speaker wire and $5000 CD players. Imagine my surprise when I saw a preview of a new music service, MusicGiants, that is offering lossless music downloads for $1.29 each. Targeted to "audiophiles", MusicGiants is also selling its "SoundVault", which seems like some kind of Windows Media Center PC, albeit with a $10,000 price tag, and an ability to download the lossless tracks to some portable media players, with the notable exception of the iPod. Oh, and there's a $50 annual fee (!). Ho hum so far, but then I noticed that the service has significant buy in from most of the major labels, indicating that they seem to have developed some faith in the ability of Microsoft's DRM to shield their "top quality" downloads from pirates. My thinking on this is that if successful, it should prompt Apple to offer lossless downloads from the iTMS Service, if only because Apple likes to present a "high end" image, and having a competitor actively dissing iTMS by lumping it in, quality-wise, with "pirated music from p2p networks" has got to hurt.
posted by meehawl on Nov 18, 2005 - 63 comments

This is the Zodiac speaking...I am waiting for a good movie about me. Who will play me. David Fincher's upcoming movie on the Zodiac Killer aims for historical accuracy and uses witnesses, survivors, detectives and reporters as consultants. A detective who worked on the original case says, "their investigation was deeper than anything I did at the time," and the filmmakers claim to have uncovered new evidence, but Fincher says, "What we've learned...we want to keep for our film." The case was deactivated in 2004. The killer sent taunting letters to the police and the media. (Podcast of interviews with a detective and a reporter who received a letter from the killer.)
Apparently the Zodiac Killer isn't a fan of the 1971 movie about the case, but he may have been inspired by a Charlie Chan movie [mp3]. Dirty Harry is loosely based on the case.
posted by kirkaracha on Oct 5, 2005 - 28 comments

Jack Cafferty pulls a Jon Stewart --Cafferty, CNN's resident curmudgeon, goes off live on the coverage of the BTK killer. (video here at Crooks and Liars) ... This is a ghoulish exercise on the part of the news media and if ratings are the reason, then I’ll say it again, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. There was no reason to give this guy a platform to talk to everybody in the country ... With cameras in courtrooms almost everywhere nowadays, what is the media's responsibility?
posted by amberglow on Aug 19, 2005 - 82 comments

"I can't tell you where I am, but I can tell you I love free wireless internet. I know some of you like those fools, but they were trying to front and I can't let that lie." The BBC News article declares, Message Board Argument Ends In Murder, describing how an argument on a San Diego web forum prompted one member to shoot two others. Except the "message board argument" isn't over. The BBC piece linked directly to the thread where the fight began, so the moderator removed the original posts and started a new one to talk about the murders. Now the alleged shooter, still on the run, is apparenly back on the board, taunting his shocked former friends. It's been a weird week on the Internet.
posted by pzarquon on May 25, 2005 - 62 comments

Happy 420 day! Although many have (wrongly) believed that 420 had something to do with police code relating to marijuana offenses or 4/20 being the dates that Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrisson, and John Belushi died; this infamous number really was simply the time that several San Rafael high school students would meet after school to get baked.
posted by tsarfan on Apr 20, 2005 - 105 comments

Life and Death: an extraordinary post from Chris Clarke about his connection to serial killer Stephen Peter Morin. His family chimes in meaningfully in the comments. Morin's execution is often pointed to as proof of the cruelty of lethal injection.
posted by Cassford on Apr 4, 2005 - 20 comments

'Contributed To Culture Of Death' That Spawned His Killer? That's the charge that William Grim, Contributing Editor of the popular conservative web site The Iconoclast makes. There is a thread at Blabbermouth on this, but I'd like to hear what you folks think. Me? It's been a while since I've been called a barbarian.
posted by kmartino on Dec 14, 2004 - 44 comments

I've just finished reading a copy of Larson's Devil in the White City sent to me by a relative who heard of my love for Isaac's Storm. Devil is a biography of two men who were central to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. One, Daniel H. Burnham would become one of the most influential architects and city planners of the early 20th century. Burnham organized a crew of the architectural, engineering and artistic elite including landscape artist Frederick Law Olmstead (famous for Central Park and Biltmore) in an effort to better the Paris world's fair of 1889. The Chicago exposition would be profoundly influential for American culture introducing Arabic Dance (the tune for "There's a place in France/where the naked ladies dance" was created in Chicago), the Ferris Wheel, Shredded Wheat, and helping to settle the Battle of the Currents between Edison and Tesla. The fair drew a large variety of larger than life figures including Archduke Ferdinand, Elizabeth B. Anthony, Buffalo Bill Cody and the mostly forgotten master of self promotion Citizen Train.

Devil is also a biography of the man given credit for America's first recognized serial murders, the self-named H. H. Holmes. At the start of the fair, Holmes changed his modus operandi from marrying and killing women as part of insurance and real estate scams, to running a hotel from which an unknown number of his female tenants never checked out. Although information on Holmes's activities is scanty, he serves as a mirror of the utopia of civic safety created by Burnham. Larson makes the argument that the contrasts between optimisim and pessimism, well-intentioned virtue and depravity, urban utopia with a few blocks from slums, would set the tone for the 20th century.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Aug 7, 2004 - 13 comments

"I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight." With those chilling words, Gary Leon Ridgway (better known as the Green River Killer), plead guilty to the murder of 48 women. Previous discussion here...
posted by vito90 on Nov 5, 2003 - 35 comments

Killer cartoon. Yet to get through all episodes.It's a class act so far. (via coolios & flash)
posted by johnny7 on Aug 20, 2003 - 22 comments

This book was discussed last week, but in all the fuss about serial killers, we may have missed the extraordinary setting of the book: The 1893 World's Fair. The white city had some of the most beautiful architecture Chicago has ever seen, some of which still survives today. Of course, there are better remembered world's fairs, but the Chicago fair of 1893 is where the ferris wheel was invented, the pledge of allegiance was popularized, and PBR made its national debut.
posted by sodalinda on Feb 11, 2003 - 17 comments

BREAKING NEWS: Police Make Arrest In Green River Murder Case The biggest unsolved serial killing spree in the NW now has a suspect in custody.
posted by crankydoodle on Nov 30, 2001 - 14 comments

Microsoft unsympathetic toward ending serial killings. "Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk held an extraordinary public meeting two months ago and asked the public for fresh tips. He even wrote to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, asking him to donate software to help analyze 10 years of homicide files; according to a sheriff's spokesman, Microsoft said no." => Lack of confidence in their software, or lack of a value system for MS?
posted by greyscale on Apr 23, 2000 - 5 comments