Are Serial Killers All Loners?

They arrested the Satin Strangler tonight.

The classic serial killer was once depicted as a social monster living alone and trolling the streets for victims.  That story became overplayed, though, and in many cases was total BS.  The media also learned that monsters don’t sell as much as mainstream killers.  It’s a cinch for the public to dismiss a monster as a freak of nature, something unlike the rest of us.  But what happens when the serial murderer actually resembles us in many ways?  They are just as frightening, but far more disturbing.

Tonight’s media coverage has been about Destiny Blande being the quintessential girl next door.  No surprise there.  But who is she really?  Is she America’s sweetheart, a psychopath, or something in between?  Can a serial murderer really live among us at work, in a family, and as an interactive member of society, all while accumulating a pile of corpses?

Many serial murderers have lived and worked in normal settings, and some have supposedly had normal family situations.  These are the most intriguing killers, after all.  A shiver runs down our spine when a killer’s friends and family report how shocked they were to hear of the news.  We stare at our televisions into the peaceful face concealing the monster within.  These are the most successful serial killers, the ones we all overlook as the body count rises.  These are also the ones who sell the most Crazy 4 Crazies memorabilia – Mug Shot Mugs, t-shirts, and victim calendars.

Robert Yates, killer of as many as 17 prostitutes in the state of Washington in the 1990’s, was married with 5 children and lived in a middle class neighborhood.  He was even a decorated US Army National Guard helicopter pilot.  The neighbors never would have suspected that a body was buried right outside Yates’ bedroom window.

Another Washington state favorite, Gary Ridgeway, aka the Green River Killer, was a truck painter for over 32 years and was married at the time of his arrest.  He was a church-going bible reader, professing religious beliefs while killing at least 48 women in his spare time over a 20-year period.

BTK killer Dennis Rader was married with two children in Wichita, Kansas.  He was a Boy Scout leader, a government official, president of his church group, and a US Air Force veteran.  His favorite hobby, however, was killing victims and sending taunting communications to the press.

We want to think of Destiny Blande, the Satin Strangler, as the girl next door.  A raving lunatic would hardly be as interesting. Instead, she is in control enough to conceal her pathology, keeping it buried just far enough from the surface to lure in, not just her victims, but the public.  Her fans.  It is easy to see how she seduced and killed so many men.

The first news stories are breaking, and we are already falling for her because we’re Crazy 4 Crazies.  Let’s face it; this luscious lady had us at “hello.”

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This is post #10 in The Satin Strangler Blogs (TSSB).

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Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Jane Toppan

Based on the emails we received after the post about female serial killers, and with the Satin Strangler media coverage once again proving that female serial killers are smoking hot, we thought you'd enjoy this bedtime story about Jane Toppan, another sizzler.

Born in Boston as Nora Kelly to typical future serial killer misery in 1854. When she was still an infant her mother died and her tailor father was institutionalized for trying to stitch his eyelids shut. After a brief stint in an orphanage, Nora was adopted by the Toppan family and changed her name to Jane. From then on she led a very normal life until, as a young woman, she was jilted by her fiancee, had a nervous breakdown and unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide.

Although she excelled as a student in Nursing School, she raised some eyebrows with her morbid curiosity for autopsies. Eventually she was unceremoniously dismissed after two patients died mysteriously under her care. Not the passive type, Jane forged her nursing degree and went out looking for a job as a private nurse.

Jane was a considered a kind and sensitive nurse who regularly took care of the sick and elderly for Boston's best families. However, most of her patients and their families died mysteriously after ingesting some of her "special" potions. Over two decades, Jane blazed through the homes of New England society with her trusty morphine cocktails to the tune of a least 31 deaths.

America's premiere female "Angel of Death," Jane's deadly trail unraveled in the summer of 1901 when all four members of the Davis family dropped dead. Suspicious of the kindly nurse who had treated them, the husband of the fourth victim ordered the Massachusetts State Police to perform an autopsy on his wife. Authorities confirmed that a lethal dose of morphine and atropine killed his wife. Jane fled Boston and was finally arrested in Amherst on October 29, 1901.

In custody Jane confessed to 31 kills. It is believed her true body count is somewhere between 70 to 100 deaths. In her 1902 trial, doctors said Jane was "born with a weak mental condition." In true serial killer madness, Jane declared in court, "That is my ambition. To have killed more people -- more helpless people -- than any man or woman who has ever lived." Having fulfilled her wish, she was found insane and sent to the state asylum in Tauton, Massachusetts where she died in August, 1938, at the ripe age of 84.

Although she was remembered by the hospital staff as a "quiet old lady," she still had murderous fantasies permeating her brain. Orderlies remember how she would say, "Get some morphine, dearie, and we'll go out in the ward. You and I will have a lot of fun seeing them die."

Sweet dreams, and may you remain forever Crazy 4 Crazies.