corpse.
Joseph Vacher attacks a victim
In August, 1897, Vacher was finally arrested after attacking a young woman named Marie-Eugenie Plantier, who was collecting pinecones in the woods. Her screams brought her husband and sons running. Overpowered, Vacher was taken into custody and charged with offending public decency.
Before long, police realized that they had the notorious “Ripper” on their hands. After offering a written, sickeningly detailed confession to all eleven murders, he was brought to trial in 1898. He offered every conceivable excuse for his outrages, from temporary insanity to an uncontrollable impulse induced by a childhood case of rabies. The judge was unpersuaded. Convicted, Vacher was guillotined on December 31, 1898.
PARTNERS IN CRIMES
In the popular imagination, the stereotypical serial killer is a lone wolf: a solitary psycho who holes up in his lair, brooding on his sick, sadistic fantasies until, driven by an overwhelming compulsion, he emerges to go prowling for a victim. And in fact there are quite a few serial killers who fit this pattern.
But many do not. A surprising number of them—anywhere from 10 to 28 percent, according to the best estimates—go hunting in pairs.
Lake and Ng
Team killers, as they are now generally called, have perpetrated some of the most heinous crimes of modern times. In the early 1980s, a self-styled survivalist named Leonard Lake—whose keenest desire was to abduct women and keep them as sex slaves—joined forces with a sadistically simpatico Asian named Charles Ng. Together—in a specially designed and equipped concrete bunker constructed on a piece of wooded property in the remote Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California—they lived out their depraved fantasies, raping, torturing, and killing a string of captives while videotaping the atrocities. Their unspeakable activities came to an end in June 1985, when a hardware store clerk spotted Ng stashing a stolen bench vise in the trunk of Lake’s car. By the time the cops arrived, Ng had fled. A check of Lake’s car revealed that it belonged to someone else. The police also found a silenced pistol in the trunk. Brought to the station house for questioning, Lake—realizing that the jig was up—plucked two hidden cyanide tablets from the lapel of his shirt and swallowed them. He went into a coma and died four days later.
A subsequent search of Lake’s isolated premises turned up a blood-soaked bed fitted with restraints, blood-caked power tools, homemade pornographic videos showing the two men debasing their captives, handwritten diaries detailing these outrages, and—buried around the property—an appalling cache of human remains, including the bodies of seven men, three women, two babies. There were also forty-five pounds of human bone fragments, suggesting that up to twenty-five people had met death at the hands of the psychopathic pair.
An arrest warrant for twelve murders was issued for Ng. He was ultimately arrested in Canada for shooting a security guard during a store theft. After years of legal wrangling, he was finally extradited and brought back to the US, though he managed to delay his trial until October 1998—thirteen long years after his capture. After an eight-month trial, he was found guilty of the murder of six men, three women, and two baby boys. He was sentenced to death.
God meant women for cooking, cleaning house, and sex. When they are not in use, they should be locked up.
—Leonard Lake
Bittaker and Norris
California was also the hunting ground for Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, a pair of quintessential psychopaths who bonded in prison, where they dreamed up a monstrous plan to kidnap, torture, and kill teenage girls while recording the crimes on tape. No sooner were they released than Bittaker purchased a used GMC cargo van that they christened “Murder Mack.” After a few dry runs in which they scouted locations, they put their hideous scheme into action on
Joseph Vacher attacks a victim
In August, 1897, Vacher was finally arrested after attacking a young woman named Marie-Eugenie Plantier, who was collecting pinecones in the woods. Her screams brought her husband and sons running. Overpowered, Vacher was taken into custody and charged with offending public decency.
Before long, police realized that they had the notorious “Ripper” on their hands. After offering a written, sickeningly detailed confession to all eleven murders, he was brought to trial in 1898. He offered every conceivable excuse for his outrages, from temporary insanity to an uncontrollable impulse induced by a childhood case of rabies. The judge was unpersuaded. Convicted, Vacher was guillotined on December 31, 1898.
PARTNERS IN CRIMES
In the popular imagination, the stereotypical serial killer is a lone wolf: a solitary psycho who holes up in his lair, brooding on his sick, sadistic fantasies until, driven by an overwhelming compulsion, he emerges to go prowling for a victim. And in fact there are quite a few serial killers who fit this pattern.
But many do not. A surprising number of them—anywhere from 10 to 28 percent, according to the best estimates—go hunting in pairs.
Lake and Ng
Team killers, as they are now generally called, have perpetrated some of the most heinous crimes of modern times. In the early 1980s, a self-styled survivalist named Leonard Lake—whose keenest desire was to abduct women and keep them as sex slaves—joined forces with a sadistically simpatico Asian named Charles Ng. Together—in a specially designed and equipped concrete bunker constructed on a piece of wooded property in the remote Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California—they lived out their depraved fantasies, raping, torturing, and killing a string of captives while videotaping the atrocities. Their unspeakable activities came to an end in June 1985, when a hardware store clerk spotted Ng stashing a stolen bench vise in the trunk of Lake’s car. By the time the cops arrived, Ng had fled. A check of Lake’s car revealed that it belonged to someone else. The police also found a silenced pistol in the trunk. Brought to the station house for questioning, Lake—realizing that the jig was up—plucked two hidden cyanide tablets from the lapel of his shirt and swallowed them. He went into a coma and died four days later.
A subsequent search of Lake’s isolated premises turned up a blood-soaked bed fitted with restraints, blood-caked power tools, homemade pornographic videos showing the two men debasing their captives, handwritten diaries detailing these outrages, and—buried around the property—an appalling cache of human remains, including the bodies of seven men, three women, two babies. There were also forty-five pounds of human bone fragments, suggesting that up to twenty-five people had met death at the hands of the psychopathic pair.
An arrest warrant for twelve murders was issued for Ng. He was ultimately arrested in Canada for shooting a security guard during a store theft. After years of legal wrangling, he was finally extradited and brought back to the US, though he managed to delay his trial until October 1998—thirteen long years after his capture. After an eight-month trial, he was found guilty of the murder of six men, three women, and two baby boys. He was sentenced to death.
God meant women for cooking, cleaning house, and sex. When they are not in use, they should be locked up.
—Leonard Lake
Bittaker and Norris
California was also the hunting ground for Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, a pair of quintessential psychopaths who bonded in prison, where they dreamed up a monstrous plan to kidnap, torture, and kill teenage girls while recording the crimes on tape. No sooner were they released than Bittaker purchased a used GMC cargo van that they christened “Murder Mack.” After a few dry runs in which they scouted locations, they put their hideous scheme into action on
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