The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (63 page)

MISSING Persons as Potential Victims

Milat had fired the attorney who fingered his brothers were not revealed until Corll’s death in August 1973.

as suspects, representing himself in a new—and futile—

JOHN GACY spent the best part of seven years planting appeal to the New South Wales Supreme Court.

bodies in the crawl space underneath his home in a Authorities in New South Wales believe that they Chicago suburb before simple negligence led police to have only scratched the surface of Milat’s homicidal his doorstep. California’s JUAN CORONA was more ener-rampage. On March 22, 1998, detectives announced a getic, claiming 26 lives in three months, but none of his new investigation into Milat’s movements dating back transient victims were even reported missing until a to the late 1970s. According to press reports, he is sus-Yuba City farmer stumbled on the first of many shallow pected in the disappearances of six Newcastle women graves.

and an equal number of tourists, including visitors from It is alarming to discover that we often don’t know Europe and Japan. One rare survivor, a 41-year-old who is dead or missing in America today. In 1984, the Newcastle resident, has told police she was abducted US Department of Health and Human Resources esti-and raped by Milat in 1978. A second rape victim, mated that 1.8 million children vanish from home every attacked the following year, has also been reinterviewed year. Ninety-five percent are listed as runaways, and 90

in an effort to link Milat to the crime. The Newcastle percent of those return home within two weeks, leaving disappearances—long presumed murders—date back to a “mere” 171,000 children at large on the streets. Five 1979 when Milat was employed on a road crew work-percent of the missing—some 90,000—are identified as ing in the area.

abductees, with 72,000 reportedly kidnapped by parIn October 1999 Milat offered to help Queensland ents involved in bitter custody disputes. The other investigators solve the cases of three missing women.

18,000 children are simply gone.

He failed to turn up the bodies, but authorities named The FBI cast doubt on those statistics three years him as the prime suspect in three disappearances occur-later, reporting that the Bureau investigated only 150

ring between December 1978 and April 1979. Nineteen

“stranger abductions” of children between 1984 and months later, in May 2001, Milat was hospitalized after 1986, but what did that disclaimer really prove? Fed-a bungled suicide attempt, in which he swallowed a eral agents normally remain aloof from kidnap cases in spring mechanism from his prison toilet. Later that the absence of ransom demands or concrete evidence of year, he tried again, gulping 24 staples, three razor interstate flight, and they take no notice whatsoever of blades, and the chain from a pair of nail clippers. From runaways. Indeed, the statistics themselves are suspect, those adventures, he proceeded to a hunger strike, since FBI spokesmen radically changed their tune in designed to overturn rejection of his various appeals. It 1995, admitting reports of some 300 stranger abduc-failed. October 2002 brought news that Milat might tions per year—an average of one every 29 hours receive $40,000 compensation for violation of his pri-throughout America.

vacy, after X-rays from his second 2001 suicide attempt The case of vanishing adults is even more obscure, were illegally released to the media. That payment with no statistics readily available from any source. A never came through, and Milat received his final disap-published estimate from 1970, no doubt conservative, pointment on May 29, 2004, when Sydney’s High

suggested that at least 100,000 adults disappear in the Court decreed that he should never be released from United States each year. Again, the vast majority are prison.

tagged as runaways—from debt or broken marriages, increasing numbers of the homeless traveling in search of jobs and warmer climates—but the fact remains that
MISSING Persons as Potential Victims

some undoubtedly fall prey to human predators. Five Any discussion of serial murder, and particularly victims of Juan Corona’s 1971 murder rampage remain UNSOLVED MURDERS, ultimately touches on the subject unidentified to this day. Outside Chillicothe, Missouri, of missing persons in America. One reason why it is Ray and Faye Copeland paid their transient farmhands impossible to estimate the number of unknown serial off with bullets in the head, and no one gave the miss-killers at large—much less to calculate the number of ing men a second thought.

their victims—is because police across the nation have A corollary of the missing persons problem is the no standard method of recording missing-person yearly glut of unidentified remains discovered in reports. Too often, it appears that such reports are sim-America each year. Scarcely a day goes by without ply filed away and instantly forgotten by authorities announcements that a corpse or a skeleton has been who have their hands full dealing with the criminals recovered somewhere, from the littered alleys of New and victims they can see.

York, Chicago, or Los Angeles to the southwestern It took DEAN CORLL and his accomplices three years deserts or southern marshlands, in New England’s to murder 27 boys in Houston, Texas, but the crimes piny woods, or on the rugged mountain slopes of
179

MODUS Operandi of Serial Killers

Bones of John Gacy’s victims were reconstructed in an attempt to identify them. (Wide World API) Washington and Oregon. Decomposition frequently occasions, most particularly when at risk of capture, a prohibits any cause of death from being diagnosed, killer may change his or her technique, but such devia-and scores (if not hundreds) of persons are consigned tions are rare and never seem to last for long.

to nameless paupers’ graves each year, logged in police Nomadic killers are the travelers, moving fre-records as John or Jane Doe.

quently—often compulsively—from one location to It should not be supposed, of course, that every miss-another, killing as they go. Such hunters are the prime ing person in America and each set of unidentified beneficiaries of “LINKAGE BLINDNESS,” drifting from remains denotes some superpredator at large and killing one jurisdiction to another before police in one area with impunity. At the same time, it is naive to think that recognize a pattern of behavior. It is not uncommon for every missing child (or adult) in the country simply nomadic killers such as HENRY LUCAS and OTTIS TOOLE

“ran away” in search of greener pastures or that every to kill in several different states—or even, like “The Ser-sun-bleached skeleton discovered off the beaten track is pent,” Charles Sobhraj, to kill in several different coun-merely one more careless hiker who fell prey to hunger tries. A victim found hitchhiking in Texas may be or the elements. The truth, no doubt, lies somewhere in murdered in New Mexico and discarded in California, between, and it may never be revealed without con-thus confounding homicide investigators (if, indeed, the certed efforts on the part of law enforcement officers corpse is ever found at all).

from coast to coast.

Territorial killers are by far the most common of ser-See also VICTIMOLOGY

ial slayers, staking out a particular hunting ground that varies greatly in size from one case to the next. Some, like “Son of Sam” DAVID BERKOWITZ, stalk a particular
MODUS Operandi of Serial Killers

city or neighborhood. Others range farther afield, as For all their widely varied MOTIVES, regardless of race when the “GREEN RIVER KILLER” trolled for victims on or gender, serial killers generally stalk and kill their the highway between Seattle and Tacoma, Washington.

human prey in one of three ways, referred to hereafter Others are more strictly localized, driven by personal as nomadic, territorial, or stationary methods. On rare compulsion to haunt a particular location. Lester Harri-180

“MONSTER of Florence”

son, for instance, committed all but one of his murders terous lover, one Antonio Lo Bianco, were shot to death in close proximity to Chicago’s Grant Park. In theory, as they lay on the front seat of a car parked beside a territorial killers should be easier to catch, since they rural lane. In the backseat, Locci’s six-year-old son slept offer homicide investigators frequent opportunities to through the double murder undisturbed, suggesting to view their handiwork, but some still manage to remain police that the killer may have used a silencer. Despite a at large for years—or to escape entirely, as with Lon-paucity of evidence, the crime appeared routine to local don’s “JACK THE RIPPER.”

homicide investigators, and Locci’s husband was con-Stationary killers are the rarest of all, claiming most victed of the murders at trial. Six years elapsed before (if not all) of their victims at one location. Offenders in his innocence was proven, when the killer struck again.

this group are evenly divided between those who kill at The second set of victims, 19-year-old Pasquale Gen-home and those who murder in the workplace.

tilcore and 18-year-old Stefania Pettini, were slain on

“Home” killers include most “BLACK WIDOWS” who September 14, 1974, with the same .22-caliber Beretta prey on their own families, plus others like JOHN GACY

automatic pistol used in 1968; once more the gunman who bring strangers back to their lair (and often hide used distinctive copper-jacketed Winchester bullets, their corpses on the premises). Killers in the workplace manufactured in Australia in the 1950s. Unlike the first include a majority of the doctors and nurses responsible crime, however, this time the female victim was sexually for MEDICAL MURDERS in rest homes and hospitals, plus mutilated after death, a grim addition that would aberrant specimens like Calvin Jackson, a New York become the Florence slayer’s trademark.

janitor who raped and killed nine women in the hotel Another long hiatus in the murders followed, broken he was hired to clean. A case apparently unique in his-on June 6, 1981, when the unknown gunman killed 30-tory is that of Jerry Spraggins, who apparently returned year-old Giovanni Foggi and 21-year-old Carmela Di three times within as many years to one apartment in Nuccio. Di Nuccio was stabbed more than 300 times, Montclair, New Jersey, killing female tenants who had with a severed grape vine thrust into one of her no connection to each other or to him.

wounds. Breaking his pattern, the killer struck again on A stationary killer may be forced to move from time to September 22, 1981, claiming the lives of 26-year-old time, for reasons unrelated to his crimes, but he—or she—will normally maintain established hunting patterns.

Likewise, there is often speculation in the case of unsolved murders that the killer may have shifted to another town or state—again, Green River comes to mind, with speculation that the unknown killer may have moved to San Diego, Kansas City, or some other locale with a nameless predator at large—but without convincing evidence (a fingerprint, ballistics matches, DNA), no such conclusion is supportable in unsolved cases.

See also MOTIVES; WEAPONS; VICTIMOLOGY

“MONSTER of Florence”

The countryside surrounding Florence, Italy, has long been favored as a prime vacation spot for campers, hikers, and other nature lovers. In the summer months, warm breezes, starry skies, and rolling meadows make the district a perfect trysting spot for lovers, honey-mooners, or couples seeking to rekindle a romantic flame in their relationships. In the latter half of the 20th century, however, Florence acquired a different sort of reputation, as the preferred hunting ground of a serial killer who preyed exclusively on couples. Nearly four decades after the terror began, many details of the case remain in doubt—and some think the killer(s) are still at large.