My purpose here has been to inquire into mediated understandings of Hindley, and to question how popular texts delineate between the deeds of a human being and the way those deeds are culturally inscribed. The task is neither conclusive nor complete, for monsters are illusive. There is always some part of them that evades both enunciation and comprehension.
posted by Trurl on Oct 30, 2011 - 15 comments

Bill James, a pioneer in the field of baseball statistics, has now turned his attention to serial killers and their methods.
posted by reenum on May 5, 2011 - 38 comments

"Serial Killer Roguelike" is exactly what it sounds like. Here's a video of it in action. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla on Aug 26, 2010 - 46 comments

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

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

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