If science could alter the mind of a killer, would you approve? (via Anguished Repose)
Interesting Idea.
via Anguished Repose
Real Life Monsters
Serial killers and true crime
Archive for April, 2011
Searchers race against nature for clues to Long Island killings (via This Just In)
One of the blogs I subscribe to.
via This Just In
BTK Summary of Evidence
An interesting although disturbing document.
It does get graphic so if you are easily offended or upset you might not want to read it.
Serial Killer News
MARIN CO., Calif. — A suspected serial killer was in the Marin County jail Monday (04/11) night following his arrest on four counts of murder involving cold cases from around northern California.
Joseph Naso, 77, had been living in Reno, Nev. and was arrested Monday in South Lake Tahoe after being released from the El Dorado County jail on unrelated charges.
The homicides took place in northern California in 1977, 1978, 1993 & 1994.
Investigators did not release many details Monday but at least one of the killings was involved a Marin County woman.
KTVU learned the Marin County Sheriff’s Department and Washoe County Sheriff’s Department have scheduled news conferences for Tuesday morning.
Marin County District Attorney Ed Berberian told the Marin Independent Journal that authorities were still trying to notify family members after his arrest.
Naso, who is being held without bail, was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.
Elsewhere a parole board is deciding if a serial killer should be released on parole.
A state parole board heard testimony Monday about why a convicted killer — whom police believe was behind a grisly string of Clark County homicides in the 1970s — should remain locked up.
Warren Forrest, a Vancouver native and Army veteran, was suspected of slaying at least six women in Clark County between March 1972 and October 1974. He was convicted in 1979 of one of the homicides and received a life sentence.
Now 61, Forrest is eligible for parole in 2014, and the Washington Indeterminate Sentence Review Board is hearing testimony this week before deciding whether to release him. Today, two board members will interview Forrest at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen to determine whether he’s shown significant signs of rehabilitation.
The board is expected to reach a decision in four to six weeks, according to Portland KATU-TV reporter Dan Tilkin, a Columbian news partner who attended Monday’s hearing.
Forrest was sentenced prior to an overhaul of the state’s sentencing guidelines that now mandate set sentences; prior to the current guidelines, defendants in certain violent crimes were given indeterminate sentences and their cases were to be periodically reviewed by a parole board.
This is the first time Forrest has been eligible for parole.
On Monday, family members of the women spoke vehemently before the board at its Lacey headquarters about why Forrest should never be freed.
Among them was Starr Lara, the sister of Jamie Grissim, a 16-year-old Fort Vancouver High School student who disappeared Dec. 7, 1971. Sheriff’s investigators later found Grissim’s identification in remote Dole Valley, about a mile away from where the remains of two young women also were found.
Investigators believe Grissim was Forrest’s first victim, according to 1970s police reports. However, her remains were never found.
Lara of Hillsboro, Ore., said Monday that she thinks about her sister every day and still seeks answers from Forrest about her disappearance.
“I’ve gone without my sister all these years,” Lara told the board, according to KATU video footage of Monday’s hearing. “And he doesn’t deserve any less of a secure place.”
She said he shouldn’t receive any privileges “because they didn’t get that.”
Forrest, a former Clark County parks employee, is serving his sentence for the 1974 murder of Krista Kay Blake. In addition to the slayings, he is suspect of attacking two other women. Both eventually identified Forrest as their abductor.
Forrest pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the kidnap and rape of one of his surviving victims and spent 3½ years at Western State Hospital near Tacoma. Meanwhile, sheriff’s investigators began piecing together a puzzle that led them to believe Forrest was a serial killer.
Investigators, though, were stymied by the lack of physical and direct evidence linking Forrest to those disappearances.
In 1978, Forrest was charged with the first-degree murder of Blake and subsequently convicted by a Clark County jury and sentenced.
Monday, two of Blake’s sisters also spoke to the board, decrying the possibility of Forrest’s release.
In response, the board members told family members that it will be tough for Forrest to meet the burden required for an early release; he must show that he’s fully rehabilitated.
Should the parole board decide to release Forrest, he would first be enrolled in a three-year program that helps prisoners reintegrate into society by teaching them life skills, such as using a cellphone, Tilkin said.
Lara told the board that she doesn’t think Forrest has met that burden.
“I don’t think he’s ever shown remorse,” Lara said.
I have no idea why they would ever release him, or any serial killer back into society. It is proven over and over that serial killers can not be rehabilitated. They are basically putting a time bomb on the streets.
This link has a video about the Long Island, New York / Possible New Jersey serial killer.
In West Mesa New Mexico the police are hoping that the press that the serial killer in New York is generating breathes new life into their unsolved serial murders.
Investigators in the West Mesa buried bodies case are keeping a close eye on developments in Long Island, New York.
There, in a rural area of the island, the remains of eight people have been recently discovered. More remains, believed to be human, were found on Monday. The discovery is leading them to think a serial killer may be responsible— a killer with eerily similar victims to the West Mesa Case.
Even though it’s so far away, the case has the attention of the Albuquerque Police Department as they continue to look for the culprit in the West Mesa murders.
“The lifestyles are similar, the women are engaged in a different type of activity given that they’re using Craigslist or different types of calling contacts, where ours are believed to be contacted off the streets so those are a few of the similarities,” said APD Deputy Chief Paul Feist.
From there the similarities end. Investigators say they have confidential evidence with the West Mesa case that doesn’t match up with Long Island case.
Albuquerque police don’t think they’re looking for the same person but say when there’s a mention of a serial killing, like in Long Island, there’s potential for a breakthrough. “Even if this is not the same offender, it might spark somebody here with recollection or give them courage to come forward,” said Feist.
Police believe the answer is out there somewhere, but for now the West Mesa murder case remains a mystery.
If you have information about the West Mesa murders you are urged to call police.
9th Body Found in New York
INVESTIGATORS found a ninth set of human remains today along a New York beach thought to have been where a serial killer buried victims.
“They are human remains. It’s not a complete body, they are partial human remains,” a source said.
Investigators also said they found a human skull, but it was unclear if it belonged to the ninth victim or was part of another set of remains, according to FOX News Channel.
State Police Captain James Dewar said the remains were discovered about 11.30am (local time) on the north side of Ocean Parkway about 2.4km from Jones Beach, just outside New York City.
Searchers “did locate some bones, and those bones will be transported to the Nassau County Medical Examiner’s office,” Captain Dewar confirmed, without elaborating.
Cops also found remains that were deemed to be animal bones earlier Monday and discovered a third set later in the day that have yet to be identified.
Investigators believe that the Long Island slays were linked to the serial killings of four prostitutes in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 2006 because of similarities in the cases. “It’s the same guy,” a source said.
Another source said that a suspect had been identified – a contention Suffolk County cops have publicly denied.
Some are speculating that the killer is either a cop or an ex cop. I do not think so. Serial Killers read books about other serial killers and learn. They also are known to be big fans of cop shows. I think the killer is just someone who has studied.
With the new information coming out it does look like it is the same killer.
Police have yet to link their deaths with the four victims in New Jersey – Kim Raffo, Molly Jean Dilts, Barbara Breidor and Tracy Ann Roberts. But there are several coincidences.
In each case, the killer dumped four prostitutes near water and in close proximity. The bodies were in various stages of decomposition, suggesting he kept some for a time after they died.
All eight were sex workers, and the four in New York used Craigslist. Each had been strangled.
He had removed the shoes from both sets of bodies, though the women in New Jersey were clothed. Those in Long Island had been stripped naked and were found without jewellery or belongings, each wrapped in burlap.
‘It’s the same guy,’one law-enforcement source told the Post.
The article also goes into more information about the calls the killer made to Melissa’s younger sister.
The twisted Craigslist Ripper stalked the teenage sister of one of his victims, taunting her in six telephone calls.
He even revealed to 16-year-old Amanda Barthelemy that her sister Melissa was a prostitute – a secret she had kept from her family.
The sadistic serial killer, who police fear may have stalked and strangled to death at least eight vice girls over the past five years, would only talk to the teen.
Four bodies were dug up in Long island near Gilgo Beach last December, including Barthelemy, an aspiring hairdresser, who disappeared from her Bronx apartment in July, 2009.
The 24-year-old had not told her mother she was advertising her services on Craigslist and had been having sex with clients for more than a year.
According to the New York Post, the killer said to Amanda: ‘Is this Melissa’s little sister?’. ‘Yes,’ replied the girl.
‘Do you know what your sister is doing? She’s a whore.’ Barthelemy had lied to her mother, Lynn, that she was an exotic dancer. Half a dozen more calls and texts followed in the next six weeks.
The killer always phoned in the evenings, spoke for less than three minutes and in a low voice, calmly mocking the youngster. The family feared he had seen Amanda when she visited her sister’s home and stayed over.
Edit, Some are reporting that the 10th set of bones have been identified as human which bring this up to 10 bodies, not 9.
Speed Freak Killer #2 Trying to Get Out
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY—In a 3 page letter sent to the Stockton Record, convicted serial killer Wesley Shermantine says he’s ready to reveal where he and former friend Loren Herzog buried the bodies of women they killed during a 15 year spree.
The letter was scrawled on a paper from a yellow legal pad. The offer is simple. “I’ll give up information about Loren Herzog if you let me out of prison in say 10 years,” says Record reporter Scott Smith.
The letter was addressed to Smith or any Record reporter. Smith has had off and on contact with Shermantine for years and has seen him taunt people with the possibility of information before.
“He’ll kind of hint at things, he’ll say, ‘I have some information, would you like to know what it is?’ So I don’t know what you can believe of what he says, really,” Smith told FOX40.
The bodies of at least five women believed to have been killed by Shermantine and Herzog, dubbed “The Speed Freak Duo”, have never been recovered.
Shermantine’s offer is a tempting one for prosecutors and they’ve heard before. Just after his conviction, Shermantine made the same offer, but demanded $20,000. A few years ago, Shermantine again said he’d reveal the location of the missing women – if the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office bought him art supplies.
For their part, the D.A.’s office has been negotiating have the death penalty dropped from Shermantine’s sentence and reduce it life in prison in exchange for the info, but deputy district attorney Thomas Testa says this latest demand won’t fly.
“He wants to get out in 10 years, which is never going to happen,” Testa says. Testa prosecuted both Herzog and Shermantine and believes this latest tease is borne out of jealousy, “I think it really burns Wesley Shermantine up to see Loren Herzog free.”
Loren Herzog was released from custody this summer, though he’s still living on the grounds of High Desert State Prison in Susanville because no California county wanted him to move in.
“As Wesley wrote in that letter, he’s interested in making sure Loren gets back in custody, I think that’s what motivated him in part to show us where the bodies are,” says Testa. The letter to the Stockton Record asks for a “deal”, but it appears Shermantine has finally pushed too far and the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office is pulling the plug on the cat and mouse game.
“We are washing our hands of Wesley Shermantine,” says Testa.
Wash your hands and stop letting this killer play games. Just say no.
The California Justice System already let Herzog out. Isn’t that bad enough?
Release controversy
Much to the mortification of the residents of Lassen County, Calif., Herzog was paroled to their area upon his release from prison in San Joaquin County: some of his victims’ relatives successfully petitioned to have his release moved out San Joaquin County, where many of his alleged crimes had been committed. Originally scheduled for release in July 2010, prison officials discovered that his sentence required him to serve several additional weeks. The discrepancy over the release date was chalked up to a “clerical error.” Although a number of influential politicians had tried in vain to keep Herzog locked up, the prison system said that there was little they could do given Herzog’s sentence and the ruling of the parole board. Dozens of area residents protested in Susanville three days before his scheduled release date.
It was established that Herzog’s parole would be for three years, supervised. Another condition of his parole, according to Sacramento’s News 10, was that Herzog be housed in a modular home on the grounds of neighboring High Desert State Prison in Susanville. Although the property is owned by the state prison system, it is located outside the perimeter of the prison itself. Herzog is required to wear a GPS monitoring device tracked 24 hours a day, and is subject to a curfew.
Nonetheless, thousands of residents are upset over Herzog’s release into their county. At the time of his release, many people were organizing to take their protest to the governor’s office.
“Everybody was completely outraged,” said an area resident to CBS 12 Action News. “The bottom line is nobody heard about it until the last minute.”
Assemblyman Dan Logue, a Republican from the California State Assembly’s 3rd District, was among those who had fought to keep Herzog in jail.
“I cannot believe that the parole board let this guy out so early,” Logue said. “He still has years to serve, so I’m looking into the reasons behind that also.”
Logue’s attempt to keep Herzog behind bars by utilizing a civil commitment law, which would have required the district attorney, through the court system, to have a mental evaluation done to determine if Herzog still possessed a propensity for violence, but was unsuccessful.
“He can still get in his vehicle and go wherever he wants to go,” said an area resident. “The ankle bracelet is not going to stop him from going anywhere in a small town like that.”
“There is no bigger injustice,” John Vanderheiden, Cyndi Vanderheiden’s father, said of Herzog’s release. “All Herzog’s release is doing is making me relive it all over again….Our justice system just didn’t do its job.”
“A tattoo on your brain”
The ripple effect of murder is so often overlooked.
David Wallin’s wife Teresa, who was 7 months pregnant, was murdered by Richard Trenton Chase in 1978. David came home to find his wife lying murdered on the floor of their bedroom, shot twice in the head, her body disemboweled. The article is about how David has survived and coped since then.
For David Wallin, who found her in their North Sacramento home on Tioga Way, the image is still fresh.
“Every time you see something on TV, read anything, it takes you there,” Wallin said. “That image, I wish it could’ve been eliminated, but you can’t get it out of there.”
Instead, as the survivor of a loved one who was murdered, he has had to learn to coexist with the memory.
“You see a lot of victims say there’s no ‘closure,’ ” Wallin said. “You can throw the word out. I don’t care if you put the guy to death – my loved one is not here. It goes on.”
I can not imagine finding my loved one murdered never mind finding in the horrific display that Chase caused.
Soon after the murder, Wallin said, he went back to work, while friends looked after him to make sure he didn’t “go over the deep end.”
But for many survivors of murder victims, the pain of loss is “like a tattoo in your brain,” said Carole McDonald, founder of Volunteers in Victim Assistance, a Sacramento organization that provides crisis intervention and counseling to victims of violent crime and trauma.
“You get to a place where you’re able to function, where you’re able to live your life,” McDonald said. “But that doesn’t mean you forget.”
Wallin lived a “self-destructive” lifestyle for months, he said. He sought counseling briefly. He found himself wondering if Terry’s life might have been saved had he come home earlier that night.
Survivor guilt is so destructive and I see it over and over again when reading of the loved ones of those murdered. Imagine how many “what – if’s” they must suffer through.
In the 1980s, he began volunteering with Volunteers in Victim Assistance, fundraising and helping to counsel other people who had lost loved ones to violence, he said.
“It gave him something positive to focus on, that he felt he could help somebody else,” Fandrich said.
Fandrich said Wallin himself usually emerged from talks with other survivors seeming to carry less of an emotional burden.
Wallin never went back into the house he shared with Terry on Tioga Way, which has since been torn down.
I am happy that he found a positive outlet.
New York and NJ May Share a Killer
According to the NY Post a Suffolk County (NY) spokesperson confirmed that the NY police are in touch with the New Jersey police.
The New York Post has dubbed the unknown serial killer Long Island’s Jack the Ripper.
(I do not like that name. Makes me think of a slasher and I do not think that is the case. I know, a very idiotic thing to complain about but it does seem to feed into a glorification of the killer and well as misinformation as to method. I also am no fan of the way that they speak of the victims.)
Suffolk County cops said today they are exploring new information suggesting a link between Long Island’s Jack the Ripper and the murder of four hookers in Atlantic City in 2006.
“Our homicide detectives are in touch with the police investigating the Atlantic City murders,” a Suffolk police spokesman said.
The Post reported today that Kim Raffo, one of the victims of a suspected Atlantic City serial killer, spent five weeks on Long Island with husband Hugh Auslander shortly before she vanished.
Madelaine Vitale, a spokeswoman for the county prosecutor in New Jersey’s Atlantic County, said there have been no developments in the unsolved hooker homicides near Atlantic City since the bodies began appearing on Long Island last year.
The NY Post is also stating that the police have a suspect.
Police believe they know the identity of the Long Island Ripper, The Post has learned.
Cops on Long Island are “looking at somebody,” said a law-enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation.
He refused to elaborate.
The stunning revelation comes as police are exploring a possible link between the serial killer — suspected of dumping the bodies of eight victims along a remote Suffolk beachfront — and the grisly murders of four hookers in Atlantic City in 2006.
“Our homicide detectives are in touch with the [Atlantic City] police,” a Suffolk police spokesman told reporters.
The four remains discovered in December — all later identified as Craigslist hookers — had been wrapped in burlap.
But the new discoveries — one found last week and three more Monday — were dumped in a different manner, and were also found farther east off Ocean Parkway, the source said.
Cops have not determined how long the remains had been there, and the new discoveries may predate the others, they said.
“We don’t know their sex, we don’t know their age, we don’t know anything about them,” Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said from the mobile command center at Oak Beach.
I am not a fan of the NY Post, I think that they run wild with stories. The stories also strike me as tabloid stories rather than news stories. They also have a habit of having a lot of ‘unnamed sources’.
I do hope though that they are right about a possible suspect.
Unnamed Victims Not Forgotten
Pickton’s unnamed victims far from forgotten
ROBERT MATAS
Shortly after his arrest in February, 2002, serial killer Robert Pickton bragged to a cellmate that he had intended to kill one more woman, his 50th, and then stop for awhile. He held up five fingers of his right hand and made a zero with his left. “I wanted one more [to] make the big 5-0,” Mr. Pickton said, giggling.
Nine years later, police are confident they have identified 33 of Mr. Pickton’s 49 victims.
But who are the other 16?
There were no names, no bodies, no crime scene. Just the words of a serial killer.
RCMP Inspector Gary Shinkaruk has not forgotten what Mr. Pickton said. “There is no reason at this point that I know of not to believe him,” he said. “When a serial killer tells you he’s killed this many people, I think it is responsible for us to look at that.”
Insp. Shinkaruk is in charge of the Missing Women Task Force, a joint initiative of the RCMP and Vancouver Police Department that started in early 2001.
With a provincial inquiry into the police investigation of Mr. Pickton to begin later this spring, the task force is busy responding to requests for decade-old documents. Six people – of the 50 members of the task force – have been assigned to that job. But at the same time, the task force is pushing ahead vigorously with its search for the missing women, Insp. Shinkaruk said, trying to gather information for the families of victims and identify anyone else involved in the crimes.
“Our investigation has never stopped,” said Sergeant Dan Almas, who joined the task force on Feb. 6, 2002, the day after police first went onto the Pickton pig farm.
After Mr. Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder of six women in December of 2007, the task force continued to prepare for the possibility of a second murder trial in the cases of 20, and possibly more, women. Crown prosecutors decided they would not bring any more murder charges against Mr. Pickton after the Supreme Court of Canada last summer upheld the trial results. The prosecutors had decided that additional murder convictions would make no difference, as he was already serving the maximum sentence of life in prison.
The task force then shifted its focus to those on the official missing-women poster, which features thumbnail photos of each woman and the day she was last seen. After spending around $122-million in the first decade, the task force this year has a budget of about $6-million.
“We are conducting interviews, inquiries and examinations of records,” Sgt. Almas said. Teams of investigators have undertaken full homicide investigations into each of the 31 women on the official poster still unaccounted for, as well as a handful of other missing-women cases. They are trying to figure out if the 16 other women were on the poster.
The task force is also taking a second look at the massive collection of items seized during the raid of Mr. Pickton’s pig farm. With advances in DNA analysis, technicians can extract information from smaller and smaller samples. Police are reassessing their thinking about some key items from the farm as they search for new investigative leads.
The task force has dedicated considerable resources over the past year to reaching out to the families of the missing women. Several weeks before the ruling, task force members met with representatives from the coroner’s office, the prosecution, victims services, parole services and federal corrections, trying to anticipate all the questions that families might have. They compiled binders with evidence in the case.
Once the Supreme Court issued its ruling, eight teams, each with two police officers and a victim services worker, fanned out across the country and into the United States to sit down with families.
Some families wanted more detail, some wanted less. The task force teams responded to queries about issues such as parole for Mr. Pickton and death certificates. They left it up to the coroner to talk about whether human remains, which were minuscule or in some cases non-existent, should be returned or cremated.
Despite the task force’s persistence, Insp. Shinkaruk did not indicate that more arrests are imminent. Mr. Pickton had told his cellmate that, if he was convicted, “about 15 other people are gonna go down.”
Police need evidence, not speculation, Insp. Shinkaruk said. “We do not have evidence that would support laying a charge against any other individual at this time,” he said. Police will recommend criminal charges “if and when we have the evidence.”
Insp. Shinkaruk acknowledged the task force may one day close down, even if no further arrests are made. But the investigation has no deadline.
“We’re going to continue to investigate the missings to the nth degree that is humanly possible,” he said. They will stop, he added, “when there are just no more stones to unturn.”
Not enough For Some
This week’s announcement of the expansion of the B.C. missing women inquiry didn’t resonate with one of the victims’ most outspoken advocates.
The commission, headed by Wally Oppal, was originally intended to conduct a formal hearing into the police handling of the disappearances and murders of the women plucked from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside by serial killer Robert Pickton. That hearing will unfold much like a criminal trial, and could result in findings of wrongdoing.
Oppal, however, asked that his mandate be expanded to include a more informal study portion that would visit this region to hear from those connected to the 18 women who have gone missing along the so-called Highway of Tears, and possibly make policy recommendations based on those submissions.
But Gladys Radek, whose niece, Tamara Chipman, is one of the Highway of Tears victims, said a study is simply not enough.
She said a formal inquiry is justified for the Highway of Tears just as it is for the Downtown Eastside in order to examine the police investigations conducted here in the north.
“I haven’t seen any resolve or cases solved since Tamara’s gone missing. I haven’t seen any answers. And that’s since 2005, and there hasn’t been any movement on any of those 18 victims,” said Radek.
“The underlying message here is: maybe we’re dealing with another serial killer. But in that respect, I think that until you can prove to me there’s only one man that killed all those women up there, there is (actually) 18 killers out there.”
Radek is one of the founders of Walk4Justice, an advocacy group dedicated to raising the profile of missing women cases across Canada. She said her group hired a lawyer to speak on its behalf at the Oppal inquiry in Vancouver, but is worried now that doing so will effectively muzzle the group in public.
Inquiry spokesman Chris Freidmond said the study portion has seven days tentatively scheduled for northern B.C. in the middle of June.
“It will be places like Prince Rupert, Vanderhoof, Terrace, Smithers, those types of communities,” said Freimond, adding he was uncertain if Prince George would make the cut.
The schedule was expected to be finalized after press deadline.
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