crimes. In the Criminal Minds episode “Reckoner” (503), profiler Emily Prentiss says, “Serial killers, especially sexual sadists, often document their kills.” Mike DeBardeleben was also brought down partly by his photos of his many rape victims.
The man often thought of as the first of the modern signature killers (murderers whose crimes share some distinctive telltale commonality that can often be used to link them), Harvey Murray Glatman, also had a photography hobby. Known as the Lonely Hearts Killer, Glatman not only used photographs to fuel fantasies that mixed sex, bondage, and violence—which he often found in the pages of detective magazines—he also used photography itself as a way to lure his victims.
After moving to Los Angeles in 1957, Glatman joined a “lonely hearts club” of single people. From that and from the classified ads he ran in the newspapers, he found a ready pool of women who were willing to model for him in suggestive poses. These women didn’t get their pictures in the magazines, as Glatman promised, but as Glatman’s fantasies became ever more violent, they became the victims of his rapes. Having raped the women, he thought he was left with no choice but to murder them so they couldn’t identify him.
Glatman’s photo-bug habits tripped him up in the end. He photographed each victim at every stage of her torture and eventual death, and when those pictures were discovered, he broke down. His detailed confession proved to be a kind of entry-level manual for understanding the mind of a sexually sadistic serial killer. He was convicted of three murders and executed on September 18, 1959. A fourth victim, believed to be Glatman’s earliest murder, was never identified, and her case remains officially unsolved.
IN THE EPISODE “Scared to Death” (303), real-life murderer Gary Taylor is used as an example of a serial killer whose MO changes as his need to control his situation changes. Taylor used weapons as diverse as a wrench, a rifle, and a machete, and he went from sniping at unsuspecting women to using ruses and posing as an FBI agent to earn their trust.
Taylor, born in 1936, was institutionalized as a young man after nonfatal attacks on several women in Royal Oak, Michigan. His MO was to hang around bus stops waiting for likely victims, whom he clubbed over the head with a wrench. From there he took to shooting women who were out after dark, which led to his becoming known as the Royal Oak Sniper or the Phantom Sniper. He admitted to a “compulsion to hurt women,” but he was nonetheless granted outpatient status and instructed to take his prescribed medication.
Eventually, of course, he stopped doing that, and then his murders began. While living in Michigan, Taylor abducted two women from Ohio, murdered them, and buried them in his yard. He then moved to Seattle, and his wife reported the two bodies buried in the Michigan yard and claimed that a third was buried there, too, but a third body was never found.
In Seattle Taylor killed another woman and buried her near his home there. The Seattle authorities picked him up, but the authorities in Michigan had not yet entered his name in the national database. Unable to charge Taylor with the Seattle murder and not knowing that he was wanted in Michigan, the police released him, and he vanished again.
After more travel, Taylor surfaced in Texas, where he changed his MO once again: raping his victims but letting them live. On May 20, 1975, he was arrested for a sexual assault in Houston, and he confessed to four homicides. The authorities in California, Texas, and Michigan think he might have been involved in up to twenty murders. He was sentenced to life in prison.
AARON HOTCHNER , in the episode “100” (509), beats serial killer George Foyet to death with his bare hands after Foyet kills Hotchner’s wife, Haley. An investigation concludes that Hotchner was acting in self-defense and defending
The man often thought of as the first of the modern signature killers (murderers whose crimes share some distinctive telltale commonality that can often be used to link them), Harvey Murray Glatman, also had a photography hobby. Known as the Lonely Hearts Killer, Glatman not only used photographs to fuel fantasies that mixed sex, bondage, and violence—which he often found in the pages of detective magazines—he also used photography itself as a way to lure his victims.
After moving to Los Angeles in 1957, Glatman joined a “lonely hearts club” of single people. From that and from the classified ads he ran in the newspapers, he found a ready pool of women who were willing to model for him in suggestive poses. These women didn’t get their pictures in the magazines, as Glatman promised, but as Glatman’s fantasies became ever more violent, they became the victims of his rapes. Having raped the women, he thought he was left with no choice but to murder them so they couldn’t identify him.
Glatman’s photo-bug habits tripped him up in the end. He photographed each victim at every stage of her torture and eventual death, and when those pictures were discovered, he broke down. His detailed confession proved to be a kind of entry-level manual for understanding the mind of a sexually sadistic serial killer. He was convicted of three murders and executed on September 18, 1959. A fourth victim, believed to be Glatman’s earliest murder, was never identified, and her case remains officially unsolved.
IN THE EPISODE “Scared to Death” (303), real-life murderer Gary Taylor is used as an example of a serial killer whose MO changes as his need to control his situation changes. Taylor used weapons as diverse as a wrench, a rifle, and a machete, and he went from sniping at unsuspecting women to using ruses and posing as an FBI agent to earn their trust.
Taylor, born in 1936, was institutionalized as a young man after nonfatal attacks on several women in Royal Oak, Michigan. His MO was to hang around bus stops waiting for likely victims, whom he clubbed over the head with a wrench. From there he took to shooting women who were out after dark, which led to his becoming known as the Royal Oak Sniper or the Phantom Sniper. He admitted to a “compulsion to hurt women,” but he was nonetheless granted outpatient status and instructed to take his prescribed medication.
Eventually, of course, he stopped doing that, and then his murders began. While living in Michigan, Taylor abducted two women from Ohio, murdered them, and buried them in his yard. He then moved to Seattle, and his wife reported the two bodies buried in the Michigan yard and claimed that a third was buried there, too, but a third body was never found.
In Seattle Taylor killed another woman and buried her near his home there. The Seattle authorities picked him up, but the authorities in Michigan had not yet entered his name in the national database. Unable to charge Taylor with the Seattle murder and not knowing that he was wanted in Michigan, the police released him, and he vanished again.
After more travel, Taylor surfaced in Texas, where he changed his MO once again: raping his victims but letting them live. On May 20, 1975, he was arrested for a sexual assault in Houston, and he confessed to four homicides. The authorities in California, Texas, and Michigan think he might have been involved in up to twenty murders. He was sentenced to life in prison.
AARON HOTCHNER , in the episode “100” (509), beats serial killer George Foyet to death with his bare hands after Foyet kills Hotchner’s wife, Haley. An investigation concludes that Hotchner was acting in self-defense and defending
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