Episodes
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Interview with Dr Peter Vronsky, author of "Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present", the book which more than any other has been foundational to informing the development of this podcast series. Dr Vronsky talks about how he developed his theory regarding the historical and neurobiological roots of serial murder, and his chance encounters with two infamous serial killers, Richard Cottingham and Andrew Chikatilo
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In the 1980s and 1990s Views on criminal justice shifted right-ward and one reason for this was that serial predators,Kenneth McDuff and Arthur Shawcross among them, were wrongly let out of jail and unleashed once again on the public. McDuff, known as the Broomstick killer, was sentenced to death in Texas in1966 for 3 murders. When the US Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972 and McDuff's death sentence had not technically ruled out parole, a parole board would go on to parole him in 1989 and he would go on to murder at least 6 women over the next three years. Similarly Arthur Shawcross, who had been jailed in 1972 for child murder, was paroled in 1987 and went on to murder 11 women before being arrested again. Along with other causes, these two cases are emblematic of an emerging consensus in the 1980s that the criminal justice system was not doing its primary job of protecting the public from dangerous predators, and helped usher in a period where the US became far more fearful and suspicious of each other
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Episodes manquant?
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On July 22 1991, in an unassuming apartment complex in Milwaukee, police arrested Jeffrey Dahmer and removed barrels and vats containing body parts of his male victims. Dahmer, known popularly as the Milwaukee Cannibal, has since become a Bogey of popular American folklore for his predation on young men and boys and specifically for consuming their flesh. Between the years of 1978 and 1991 Dahmer killed 17 young men and boys and has entered American folklore as a true bogey of the modern era, though in truth he was in essence no different than the lunatics of medieval Europe or indeed of ancient antiquity and even beyond, reaching back into our atavistic past where we and neanderthals killed and ate each other
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In the past 30 years there have been over 500 identified killings along the busiest highways and interstates in the country. At least 25 serial killers currently imprisoned for murder are truck drivers though the total number is limited only by the length of paved road stretching from coast to coast. The most infamous is Robert Ben Rhoades, a sexual sadist who kept women in an area of his long haul truck he had outfitted as a torture dungeon. Rhoades is known to have murdered several but is suspected of over 50, maybe hundreds. We also cover Keith Jesperson, also known as the Happy Face Killer, who was convicted of killing 8 women across the country, though he insists the number is 160
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Among those victims criminologist Steven Egger refers to as the "Less than Dead" female prostitutes are the most represented demographic, especially those in high risk environments such as in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver or in Los Angeles, where at the height of the crack epidemic the targeting of those in crimed sometimes referred to as NHI, or No Humans involved. Lonnie Franklin jr, now known as the Grim Sleeper, was the primary figure among over a half dozen serial killers stalking black neighborhoods in LA during this time, one of them also being Samuel Little, the most prolific serial murderer on record in US history, who got out of jail in 1987 as the crack epidemic peaked and promptly killed 10 women, though this was but a small part of a minor epidemic of predation on those whose death meant less to society than if they had never lived
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Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka are the most infamous criminals in Canadian history, a young couple who in the early 90's raped and murdered at least three teenage girls, the first of which being Karla's younger sister Tammy. Prior to this, between 1987 and 1992, Paul Bernardo was the predatory menace known as the Scarborough Rapist, who had viciously assaulted and raped at least 18. The dreadful crimes of Bernardo and Homolka, the glamorous seeming Disney couple described as "Love's Young Dream" continue to haunt the Canadian psyche to this day. With our guest Canadian English lecturer and writer Curtis Runstedler PhD.
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While California may be the serial killing capital of the country the Pacific Northwest, stretching from northernmost California to Vancouver in Canada, has itself seen a great number of serial murderers. 20% of the world's documented serial killers are from this region, a whopping 277 from Washington alone. These include two of the most prolific, Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway. Ridgway, targeting prostitutes throughout the region, was convicted of murdering 49 and confessed to 71 though his total may indeed be higher. Though it is unknown if he killed any in Canada, Ridgway was known to patronize the sex workers of the notoriously rundown Downtown Eastside area of Vancouver where several serial killers were active. Among them was pig farmer Robert Pickton who himself killed 49 prostitutes before feeding their corpses to his pigs.
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In the mid 1980's, in a cabin and associated bunker in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, ex-marines Leonard Lake and Charles Ng ran a deadly operation of abduction, torture and murder. Using a variety of aliases and schemes the duo killed many to variously steal their identification, possessions or in the case of an unknown number of women, to keep them as captives in a dungeon hidden in the bunker.The remains of 11 to an estimated 25 victims (if not more) were found on this remote property, all in service of enacting a sadistic fantasy Leonard Lake had dreamed of putting into action since he read John Fowled novel "The Collector" as a teenager. To this day the number and identification of many of the victims remains unknown
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Robert Hansen was a successful baker and prize winning hunter who murdered 17 women between 1971and 1983 and raped an additional estimated 30 in Anchorage, Alaska. He largely targeted sex workers who he would lure or abduct, hold in a room for several days then fly out on a private miniplane to the wilderness where they would be killed and dumped, sometimes after having been shot by a hunting rifle like game. Hansen was born in 1939 in Estherville, Iowa and grew up in the town of Pocahontas. His childhood was rife with hardship. His father was strict and demanding, making his left handed son train to be right handed. He had a pronounced stutter and developed pock marks which caused him to be bullied at school and mocked and rejected by the girls at his school, one of the antecedents it is believed of his later rapes and murders. It is possible that if he came around today he might have become a mass shooter rather than a serial killer.
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In 1983 two ragged drifters, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, were arrested for what was at the time unlawful firearm possession and arson. This would grow into an escalating series of claims on the part of both law enforcement and the men themselves that Lucas and Toole had, while traversing the country by car, committed hundreds if not thousands of murders. Lucas had served time for killing his mother in 1960 but this is the only murder either has been credited with that can be authenticated for certain. While no one knows for sure what Lucas or Toole actually did or didn't do what became clear over time is that they were encouraged by law enforcement especially sheriff Jim Boutwell and the Texas Rangers to confess to murders that had not been solved in order to clear their books and fit an image of a killer they were looking for. In so doing they helped develop and entrench the popular image of the serial killer in the national consciousness, though they if anything muddied the picture of what actually happened
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This episode features comedian Jake Flores (@feraljokes) the host of popular podcast Pod Damn America to discuss his state's most frightening killer the Night Stalker. Few figures loom as menacingly in the modern American imagination as The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez a murderous predatory loner who, modeling himself after his war criminal cousin and dedicating his war against society to the devil, conducted a one man terror campaign against the people of Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1984 and 1985, invading homes and brutalizing those inside. Ramirez would be convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries though his crimes went beyond even this. Ramirez trial would become as much a public spectacle as that of Charles Manson and Ted Bundy and Ramirez has become every bit as infamous in the annals of violent crime as they
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On this episode we are joined by comedian Sean P McCarthy to discuss a 1970s podophile group encompassing several significant serial killers and covered up by the government. Sean P McCarthy is a comedian and podcaster whose interests include current affairs, inequality and government conspiracies. In the 70's and 80's huge numbers of boys and young men went missing in the US. Some of them were caught in an interconnected web of trafficking operations which provided victims to plugged in and well connected buyers, some or all of which were connected either directly or indirectly with a man who went by many names including John D Norman who was the most amongst the most prolific sex traffickers in recorded history. At different times Normans operation was being run in the backyards of serial killers Dean Corll and John Wayne Gacy and in the latter case his personal assistant was also employed by Gacy. The degree to which these men were all connected is not fully known but where there's smoke there's fire.
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In late Dec 1978 the bodies of 26 boys were excavated from under the house of local businessman and democratic precinct captain John Wayne Gacy. Gacy would go on to be convicted of 33 murders of young men and boys, the most prolific case of serial murder the US had seen to that point and a bookend to a decade of escalating serial murder inducted by Houston's Dean Corll who had murdered at least 28 boys and young men in the early 70s, though each are suspected of more. By the time the bodies had been unearthed from underneath the Gacy dwelling it had become clear how many victims had been ignored next door and that serial murder could be ignored or banished to the margins no longer
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Throughout the 70's and early 80's a mysterious and elusive counterfeiter known as "The Mall Passer" was sought by the US secret service for distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit bills across 38 states. The culprit ended up being James Mitchell "Mike" Debardeleben, a lifetime menace who beyond printing and passing counterfeit money (among other frauds and petty crimes) it turned out was a prolific and sadistic kidnapper, serial rapist and likely serial murderer who was in possession of records of victimization of women both voluminous and graphic. Most chillingly he had written a missive the FBI refers to as a "Manifesto of Sadism" in which he lucidly describes the "essence of the sadistic drive"
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In the late 1970’s as the post-war wave of violent crime headed towards its peak, dead bodies mostly of young men and boys began to litter the sides of the California freeway in droves. The police knew two distinct killers at least were responsible. One of them, William Bonin, drove a van and had accomplices the other, Randy Kraft, often jettisoned bodies while traveling at high speeds, hundreds of miles on the coast sometimes inland. This was but the forming crest of the deadly wave. As the wave began to crest the killer duo template pioneered by the Hillside Stranglers became imitated by even worse duos, most infamously Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris
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The Golden Age of Murder podcast returns with the Dating Game Killer. A contestant on the Dating Game Show 13 September 1978 in which he won the date. Rodney Alcala (born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor) on August 23, 1943. Alcala's grew up in a normal immigrant family, was popular and well liked, possessed an IQ of 170 and attended film school under director Roman Polanski. That however was his public life, his private life and the impulse that drove his life was to stalk and kill young women.
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In the late 1970's a pair of cousins, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono together raped and murdered 10 women in Los Angeles. While Bianchi would kill two more himself in Bellingham, Washington the spree he went on with his cousin would usher in a new and terrifying trend: the serial killer team
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We cover Ted Bundy joined by Washington native and comedian Yogi Paliwal. Ted Bundy, the boy next door who would bring serial killing to the home of every unsuspecting American family and shatter an age of innocence which had resigned serial murder to mad men and loners. Bundy was born out of wedlock Theodore Robert Cowell and raised by his grandparents under mysterious circumstances. He would develop an antisocial personality but would steadily cultivate a refined air through university, learning psychology and working in politics. Hiding his true, invisible self under a successful mask in the sea of masks that would become American interpersonal relationships in the 1970s. This allowed him to gain the understanding of women and to exploit their instincts in a way that would contribute to perhaps the most prolific record of female victims. Bundy is considered to have 30 victims but it could be 100.
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On this episode of Golden Age of Murder we are joined by Nic Edwards from the incredibly popular True Crime Garage. We discuss the BTK, Dennis Rader a sadist who named himself after his process Bind, Torture, Kill. Born in 1945, he experienced what to most seemed a pleasant childhood with a loving family but underneath he developed dark sexual urges. These feelings would lead him to model himself after Harvey Glatman from our first episode. Young women would be his target but he would murder whole families. Rader would go on to kill 10 people and is a primary case study in sadism like nothing else.
True Crime Garage presents an archive of missing persons, unsolved and cold cases, plus accounts of infamous serial killers and chilling solved cases. Follow Nic Edwards at @TCGNIC and the Garage True Crime Garage on Apple Podcasts and anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
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In this episode we look at the life and times of the Son of Sam. David Berkowitz, born Richard David Falco, engaged in a killing spree between July 29, 1976 and July 31 1977 taking the lives of many innocent couples in New York City. In his furious writings to the cops Berkowitz would describe himself as the Son of Sam, a name that would forever become synonymous with that time in the city's history. During a period where America and specifically New York City, where the killings took place, was undergoing a crisis of confidence. New York was home to rampant crime, a fiscal crisis and urban decay. 1976 where Berkowitz crimes became was described by many as the worst year in American history and 1977 in New York saw a massive black out which would see looting and fires. Berkowitz a very lonely young man who struggled to fit and felt rejected by the women in his life would become the horror of horrors in a city which was rejected by the rest of the nation and where many were anonymous.
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