it because of its name, well, it's just been that kind of millennium, now, hasn't it.
Best Serial Killer of the Millennium.
Herman Mudgett. Yes, I know you've never heard of him. That's sort of the idea when you're a serial killer, now, isn't it.
I should note that this topic was one of the most requested by readers, you sick freaks, but I personally don't have much good to say about serial killers. First and most obviously, killing people is just plain wrong, unless it's self-defense, or a war, or your stuffed animals have told you that Jesus wouldn't mind.
More than that, however, is the fact that I think serial killers, as a class, simply exhibit poor form. While it's all very fun and ironic to follow the exploits of crazed murderers as if they were sports heroes (the gruesome collection of Serial Killer trading cards several years ago made this point rather forcefully), the metaphor is in fact entirely wrong. Outside of hockey, the aim of sports is not to actually brutally murder your opponent, and even if it was , your opponents would generally not be terrified student nurses.
Fact is, serial killers go for the easy targets, under false pretenses. They're not like gangsters in the 20s, when if you saw a guy in a pinstripe suit coming at you with a violin case, you knew you were gun butter -- and that you as often than not had it coming. Serial killers lure you in, offering sex or money or candy or whatever, a terminal bait-and-switch, and the next thing you know, you're dead, your pancreas is being fried up, and some guy is using your skull for a candle holder.
Mudgett (or Henry Holmes, his alias at the time) operated in Chicago at the time of the Columbian Exposition (that's 1892 to you), and is a perfect example of this concept. Mudgett killed women in a baroque chamber of horrors he had secretly built into his mansion/hotel on 63rd street (how does one manage to build a secret chamber of horrors? By changing contractors frequently during the construction process, so no one person -- besides Mudgett -- knows the set up of the entire house), and he lured them into the place by offering them a job. He needed a secretary, you see, someone who could take dictation, file, and then die.
Over two years, Mudgett had something on the order of a hundred secretaries, a fact you'd think someone would notice ("You're Ethel? What happened to Betsy? And, come to think of it, what happened to Bonnie, Daisy and June?"), but apparently no one did. Maybe they thought that Mudgett was a harsh boss. Well, and he was. More to the point, however, this was 1892, and sort of woman who had to work out of the home was also the sort of women who was less likely to be missed. Mudgett also went out of his way to "employ" new arrivals to town, who had the added benefit of no one to look out for them.
Mudgett was not just a crazed whacko who liked killing people, mind you. He was a crazed whacko who liked killing people and taking their money. Before he offed his victims, he would gain their trust (often by making them his mistresses -- so these days not only would he be liable for murder, he'd also be slapped with one hell of a sexual harassment suit) and then convince them to give him their life savings. His rationale, perhaps, was that once he was done with them, they wouldn't need it anyway.
As it happens, Mudgett had a long history of gruesome money-making schemes. While he was in medical school (say ahhh!), he would steal cadavers, burn them horribly with acid, and them place them in a place that had a lot of insurance in hopes of extorting a settlement of some kind -- not unlike the old "cockroach in the salad bar" manuever, except in this case the "cockroach" used to be someone's Uncle Ted.
This not to say it was all just business for Mudgett. No, he was, in fact, seriously screwed up: Abusive parents, early episodes of animal mutilation, all the classic signs of total bonkerness. His torture chamber on 63rd was literally
Best Serial Killer of the Millennium.
Herman Mudgett. Yes, I know you've never heard of him. That's sort of the idea when you're a serial killer, now, isn't it.
I should note that this topic was one of the most requested by readers, you sick freaks, but I personally don't have much good to say about serial killers. First and most obviously, killing people is just plain wrong, unless it's self-defense, or a war, or your stuffed animals have told you that Jesus wouldn't mind.
More than that, however, is the fact that I think serial killers, as a class, simply exhibit poor form. While it's all very fun and ironic to follow the exploits of crazed murderers as if they were sports heroes (the gruesome collection of Serial Killer trading cards several years ago made this point rather forcefully), the metaphor is in fact entirely wrong. Outside of hockey, the aim of sports is not to actually brutally murder your opponent, and even if it was , your opponents would generally not be terrified student nurses.
Fact is, serial killers go for the easy targets, under false pretenses. They're not like gangsters in the 20s, when if you saw a guy in a pinstripe suit coming at you with a violin case, you knew you were gun butter -- and that you as often than not had it coming. Serial killers lure you in, offering sex or money or candy or whatever, a terminal bait-and-switch, and the next thing you know, you're dead, your pancreas is being fried up, and some guy is using your skull for a candle holder.
Mudgett (or Henry Holmes, his alias at the time) operated in Chicago at the time of the Columbian Exposition (that's 1892 to you), and is a perfect example of this concept. Mudgett killed women in a baroque chamber of horrors he had secretly built into his mansion/hotel on 63rd street (how does one manage to build a secret chamber of horrors? By changing contractors frequently during the construction process, so no one person -- besides Mudgett -- knows the set up of the entire house), and he lured them into the place by offering them a job. He needed a secretary, you see, someone who could take dictation, file, and then die.
Over two years, Mudgett had something on the order of a hundred secretaries, a fact you'd think someone would notice ("You're Ethel? What happened to Betsy? And, come to think of it, what happened to Bonnie, Daisy and June?"), but apparently no one did. Maybe they thought that Mudgett was a harsh boss. Well, and he was. More to the point, however, this was 1892, and sort of woman who had to work out of the home was also the sort of women who was less likely to be missed. Mudgett also went out of his way to "employ" new arrivals to town, who had the added benefit of no one to look out for them.
Mudgett was not just a crazed whacko who liked killing people, mind you. He was a crazed whacko who liked killing people and taking their money. Before he offed his victims, he would gain their trust (often by making them his mistresses -- so these days not only would he be liable for murder, he'd also be slapped with one hell of a sexual harassment suit) and then convince them to give him their life savings. His rationale, perhaps, was that once he was done with them, they wouldn't need it anyway.
As it happens, Mudgett had a long history of gruesome money-making schemes. While he was in medical school (say ahhh!), he would steal cadavers, burn them horribly with acid, and them place them in a place that had a lot of insurance in hopes of extorting a settlement of some kind -- not unlike the old "cockroach in the salad bar" manuever, except in this case the "cockroach" used to be someone's Uncle Ted.
This not to say it was all just business for Mudgett. No, he was, in fact, seriously screwed up: Abusive parents, early episodes of animal mutilation, all the classic signs of total bonkerness. His torture chamber on 63rd was literally
Similar Books
