Alleged serial killer and convicted rapist Anthony Sowell is creating even bigger problems for the Cleveland police department, who have been accused of joking about missing victims, passing the blame onto those victims and outright incompetence. As of today, the body count is up to 10 (plus one skull), and people around the world are wondering what went wrong.
posted by bitter-girl.com on Nov 4, 2009 - 69 comments

Then, in November 2007, exactly three years after the disappearance of Simjanoska, another woman from Kičevo went missing. Fifty-six-year-old Lubica Ličoska was, like Simjanoska, a custodian, and she also lived in the same section of town. When the similarities were noted, locals suddenly remembered Gorica Pavelska. She was seventy-three, a retired custodian who went missing in May 2003. No one had thought much of it at the time. She might have suffered a stroke in some remote place, they had speculated, or gone to work in Skopje. No trace of her was ever found and the whole business had been forgotten. But now it appeared that little Kičevo was home to a serial killer, and Vlado Taneski’s editors smelled a big story.

- The Mask of Sanity: On the Trail of a Serial Killer in Macedonia by Dimiter Kenarov. An account of the Kičevo Monster and the killer's surprising identity. [Warning: Descriptions of the murders include graphic details]
posted by Kattullus on Aug 5, 2009 - 20 comments

You know what? There ain't no doors outta Hell, babe. Before serial killer nurse Charles Cullen was sentenced to 11 life sentences in New Jersey, some of the families of his victims were allowed to read Victim Impact Statements (audio) (videos linked at left) in which they not only told the court about the effect of the murders on their lives, but also told Cullen what they thought of him. While state laws differ, Victim Impact Statements are often allowed to be considered in making sentencing decisions, and sometimes creep into the guilt phase of the trial. The trials of Terry Nichols, Scott Peterson, and Zacarias Moussaoui all included Impact Statements. Some have argued that Impact Statements are needed to properly assess harm and balance mitigating and humanizing evidence allowed on behalf of the defendant. Others call it nothing more than institutionalized revenge. Would you want the chance to say "Burn in Hell" to a person who harmed someone you cared about, or does such talk have no place in the courtroom?
posted by banishedimmortal on Apr 20, 2006 - 51 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