Letter Writing Serial Killers: Jack The Ripper, #2

What better way to celebrate Christmas than another letter considered to be from Jack the Ripper.

The Central News Agency received this (so-called "Saucy Jack") letter postmarked October 1, 1888, in the same handwriting as the September 25 letter:

I wasn't codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. youll hear about saucy Jackys work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn't finish straight off. had not time to get ears for police thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.
Jack the Ripper

Police circulated the letters around and placed facsimiles of them outside every police station in case someone recognized the handwriting. Nothing came of this effort except a number of crank letters.

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Dennis Rader

Tonight's serial killer bedtime story is about Dennis Rader.

Dennis Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer who murdered ten people in Sedgwick County (in and around Wichita, Kansas), between 1974 and 1991.

He was known as the BTK killer (or the BTK strangler). "BTK" stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill", which was his infamous signature. He sent letters describing the details of the killings to police and to local news outlets during the period of time in which the murders took place.

After a long hiatus in the 1990s through early 2000s, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent conviction. He is serving 10 consecutive life sentences at El Dorado Correctional Facility, with an earliest possible release date of February 26, 2180.

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

Letter Writing Serial Killers: Jack the Ripper, #1

Our readers seem to be Crazy 4 the letetrs written by Crazies, so we have starting pulling them together to include on the website.

Hundreds of letters were sent to police, news agencies, and various individuals, claiming to be from Jack the Ripper. Three are given the most credibility.

The following letter, written in red ink, gave the notorious murderer his name. It was received by Central News on September 27, 1888 and was addressed to The Boss, Central News Office.

Dear Boss
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha.ha. The next job I do I shall clip. The lady's ears off and send to the Police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.

Good luck.
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Don't mind me giving the trade name

Then on the same letter, written horizontally was the following message:

wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet. They Say I'm a doctor. now ha_ha

The editor treated the letter as a hoax and did not send it to the police for a couple of days. The night after the police finally received the letter, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes were murdered.

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: David Berkowitz

This serial killer bedtime story goes out there to all of you rabid (no pun intended) David Berkowitz junkies who have been flooding us with emails since we started this feture on the website. We will be following this brief bedtime story up with additional Son of Sam segments in the upcoming months, so hang in there.

David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco; June 1, 1953), also known as Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer and arsonist whose crimes terrorized New York City from July 1976 until his arrest in August 1977. Shortly after his arrest in August 1977, Berkowitz confessed to killing six people and wounding several others in the course of eight shootings in New York between 1976 and 1977; he has been imprisoned for these crimes since 1977. Berkowitz subsequently claimed that he was commanded to kill by a demon who possessed his neighbor's dog.

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

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Delfina & Maria de Jesus Gonzales

If you enjoyed our recent serial killer bedtime story about the Harpe brothers, you'll love this one about the sister act, Delfina & Maria de Jesus Gonzales.

These two deadly sisters ran the bordello from hell in Guanajuato, Mexico. They recruited their prostitutes through help wanted ads and killed them when they stopped pleasing the clientele. Sometimes they even killed the johns who showed up to the brothel with big wads of cash. After too many unexplained disappearances, the cops raided the premises where they found the bodies of eleven males, eighty females, and several fetuses.

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

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Andrei Chikatilo

Tonight's serial killer bedtime story about Andrei Chikatilo comes to us all the way from Russia (without love).

The Soviet Hannibal Lecter. As a kid Andrei's brother was taken by the villagers and eaten during times of famine. Or so he said. As an adult, while he living a double life as a married man, Communist Party member and a teacher, Andrei, enjoyed killing children with impunity.

Chikatilo -- a sexually impotent dirty old man from hell -- lived in Rostov, 500 miles from Moscow, where he preyed mostly on children. He stalked many of his victims in train and bus stations, and had a penchant for disembowelment and mutilation. He was also a cannibal and a sadist. His macabre twelve-year killing spree was finally uncovered in 1992. Chikatilo wasn't exceptionally crafty hiding his crimes. Investigators were hindered by the fact that he was a Party member. Also, the investigation of his crimes was used to flush out many known homosexuals in a Soviet-style attempt at moral cleansing. Many blame the incompetence of Soviet authorities and their refusal to admit the existence of a serial killer in their socialist utopia for his 10-year reign of terror.

Years before his arrest he was brought in for questioning and let go when police found that his blood did not match the semen found in one victim. It is a little known fact that in some rare cases -- Chikatilo being one -- the blood and semen of a person does not necessarily have to match. Free again, Andrei continued on his path of destruction with reckless abandon. Eventually he was arrested because of the determination of two investigators involved in his previous arrest who remembered his name after he was seen coming out of a forest near a train station.

While he was on trial, his gory descriptions, psychotic behavior and litany of horrors gave the Soviet public their first taste of serial mayhem. "I am a mistake of nature, a mad beast," he said at his 1994 trial where people fainted when they heard how he boiled and ate the sawn-off testicles or nipples of his victims. Andrei was executed by firing squad in prison on February 14, 1994. Chikatilo -- like many others in the Archives -- was the subject of his own delightfully gruesome movie, "Citizen X" starring Donald Surtherland and Stephen Rhea.

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

Son of Sam WIll Not Seek Parole

Okay, if you are Crazy 4 Crazies, you might have heard this already, but this one is hot off the Associated Press wires:

“Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz says he has no interest in seeking parole.

Berkowitz says in a letter to FoxNews.com that he is already a “free man” and that Jesus Christ has already forgiven him, even if society never will.

Berkowitz terrorized New York City over 13 months in 1976 and 1977, killing six women and shooting seven others.

Berkowitz, formerly of Yonkers, is serving six consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences at the maximum-security Sullivan Correctional Facility northwest of New York City.

He has been denied parole five times and has been in prison 34 years. His is eligible for a sixth parole hearing next year.

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Micajah & Wiley Harpe

Tonight's serial killer bedtime story about Micajah & Wiley Harpe, proves, yet again, that the family that plays together stays together.

Brothers Big and Little Harpe have been credited by historian Paul I. Wellman with 30+ murders in Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1790's. The wandering types, they enjoyed killing on whim. Once Big Harpe quieted a crying baby by bashing its skull in. Many victims were disposed by stuffing stones within their abdomens before dumping them in the nearest river.

They used a more dramatic method of killing when they temporarily joined Sam Mason's river pirates. After the gang had taken a man prisoner, the Harpes bound him naked to the back of a horse and goaded it to run over a cliff into the Ohio River. Though the river pirates had a reputation for being hard cases, this was too much for them and the Harpes were sent packing. Shortly after that a posse of citizens caught up with Big Harpe and mounted his severed head on a tree. Little Harpe, not as psychotic as his brother, met an uncertain fate, possibly being killed in a river boat fight.

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

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Erszebet Bathory

By popular demand, we are going to tell you some more about Erszebet Bathory, the Blood Countess, in tonight's serial killer bedtime story.

A Sixteenth Century Hungarian Countess, Erszebet enjoyed bathing in blood. This deviant fawn of royalty believed that regular blood baths would halt the aging process. Estimates of the number of girls that were slaughtered for her 10 years of beauty treatments vary from 40 to as much as 600.

The bloody Countess, the widow of a celebrated Hungarian war hero and descendent of the legendary despot Vlad the Impaler, led a life immersed in black magic and sadism. She once had the mouth of a servant sewn shut for being too noisy. In January 1611, after countless rumors about her behavior, a group led by Count Thurzo - Erzsebet's cousin - entered her Castle Csejthe and uncovered a blood-letting in progress.

In order to protect the family name, at the Count's insistence, Erzsebet was never actually "charged" with any crime, although he did have her put under "house arrest." In fact, her royal highness was literally sealed into her tower by masons. The consulate agreed largely because the government had a huge debt it would have had to pay off should they charge her.

Two of her accomplices in her orgies of horror had their fingers removed before being thrown on the fire. Another - the only male - was beheaded then thrown on the fire. The countess died on August 21, 1614, three years after she was sealed in her bedroom. Perhaps her elixir of youth had been working all along.

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

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Carl Panzram

Tonight's serial killer bedtime story is about Carl Panzram.

Not from the "Mister Nice Guy" file. The most unrepentant killer of them all. Carl started his criminal career by getting arrested at age eight for drunk and disorderly behavior. It was downhill ever since. His killing spree spanned two continents. While in Africa he hired eight blacks to help him hunt crocodiles. Instead, he killed his hired hands, sodomized their corpses and fed them to the hungry reptiles. He boasted of committing thousands of robberies, larcenies, arsons and having sodomized a thousand men.

Panzram had received a 20-year prison sentence for burglaries and was sent to a federal prison at Fort Leavenworth Prison, Kansas, in 1928. There, he began to write his memoirs of sodomy and murder, and he beat a prison laundry room worker to death. Panzram quickly confessed to the killing, asked to be hanged and got his wish. When an anti-death penalty group tried to save him, he was quoted as saying, "I wish you all had one neck, and I had my hands on it." On September 5, 1930, Panzram got his death wish. Mean to the very end, while on the scaffold Panzram snapped at his executioner, "Hurry it up, you bastard. I could hang a dozen men while you're fooling around."

In his book Panzram blamed the prison system and society for turning him into a monster. He wrote that he was "not the least bit sorry" for the murders, rapes and robberies he committed during his lifetime. In 1970, his memoirs were published and later became the basis of a movie, Killer: A Journal of Murder.

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

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Thierry Paulin & Jean-Thierry Mathurin

Tonight's serial killer bedtime story is one of collaboration between Thierry Paulin & Jean-Thierry Mathurin.

Known as the "Old Ladies Killer" and the "Monster of Montmartre" these two men terrorized elderly Parisian ladies in the district of Montmarte from 1984 to 1987. Paulin, a native of Guyana, was a black transvestite drug addict with dyed platinum blonde hair. His boy-toy, Mathurin -- a waiter from the Caribbean island of Martinique -- was eventually charged as an accomplice in nine of the 21 sadistic slayings committed by the transvestite killer.

The first victim was Anna Barbier-Ponthus, 83. She was found bound, gagged and beaten to death on October 5, 1984. On October 9, 1984, firefighters discovered the body of Suzanne Foucault, 89, bound and with a plastic bag wrapped over her head. On November 5, Iona Seigaresco, 71, was found bound with electrical cord and beaten to death in her flat on Boulevard de Clichy.

Confirming police suspicion that a serial killer was praying on older women in the Montmarte district, on November 7 Alice Benaïm, 84, was found dead in her apartment. The next day, Marie Choy, 80, was found dead next door. She was bound with steel wire and was forced to drink caustic soda before being beaten to death. The day after Maria Mico-Diaz, 75, was found bound, gagged and was nearly hacked in two with 60 stab wounds.

The similarities of all cases were quickly determined by police. All victims were old women ranging from 60 to 95, living alone in Montmarte. In all cases, they were attacked at the moment they opened their door on their way back from the market. Inside their apartments, the women were tortured, bound with electrical cord, gagged and beaten, strangled, stabbed or smothered to death. The apartment was then ransacked in search of money and other valuables.

The frantic Parisian police -- overwhelmed by public outcries and a terrified citizenry -- went into overdrive and arrested 60 junkies and assorted perverts hoping to crack the case. At the time Paulin and Mathurin left Paris and went to Toulosse where they hung out in gay clubs, did tons of coke and ended up separating after a fight.

Back in Paris Paulin severely beat his drug dealer who tried to cheat him. The man called the cops and got Paulin arrested and sentenced to 16 months in jail. Even though authorities had latent prints of Paulin from several crime scenes, they were not able link him to the string of deaths terrifying Montmarte.

In 1987 he was freed for good behavior and was back on the streets drug dealing. In a pre Dennis Rodman fashion statement, he started wearing earrings and dyed his hair platinum blonde. Never one to slack, by November he started killing old ladies again at his usual breakneck pace. The weekend of his 24th birthday he killed three old ladies. Another grandmother he left for dead was able to give the cops a description of her assailant.

Obviously, a black man with platinum blonde hair and earrings was not hard to find. On December 1 a cop recognized him on the street and arrested him. Once in custody Paulin panicked and fingered his old pal Jean-Thierry Mathurin as an accomplice.

While in jail at Fleury-Mérogis. Paulin felt like a star. He collected every newspaper clipping about him and proudly showed them off to other inmates. Paulin knew he had AIDS since 1985. On March 10, 1989, his health took a turn to the worse. He died the night of April 16 of AIDS related complications. His trial was never concluded so he was never found guilty of the crimes he committed. However, there is no doubt in the minds of French authorities that he was the "Monster of Montmartre."

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

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Norman Afzal Simons

Since strangling is much in vogue these days, thanks to the widely publicized exploits of the Satin Strangler, tonight's serial killer bedtime story is about Norman Afzal Simons.

Norm is believed to be South Africa's "Station Strangler." He is presently serving a 25-year sentence for the 1994 murder of 10-year-old Elroy van Rooyen.

Since 1986 South African authorities had been stumped by the growing body count of young boys of mixed race appearing dead around Cape Town. At one point they asked for help from the Interpol and the FBI. Robert Ressler, the retired FBI expert who coined the term serial killer was called in to develop a psychological profile of the killer. With Ressler's profile in hand and the sharp work of South Africa's leading profiler, Dr. Micki Pistorious, authorities were able to nab their suspect. Police think Simons, a very well-educated man who speaks seven languages, is the "Station Strangler," South Africa's most notorious serial killer. I an eight-year murder spree, the "Strangler" is believed to have killed 21 boys and a young man, all of mixed-race.

His moniker comes from having found many of his victims in train stations. Most were later found in shallow graves around Cape Town after being sodomized and strangled. One body was found with a note that read: "One more, many more in store." Elroy, his final victim, was last seen boarding a train with Simons at Cape Town's Strand train station. His body was found 10 days later with his hands tied behind his back. According to police, Simons claimed his brother, who was murdered in 1991, was living inside him. He also started hearing voices after his brother sodomized him that ordered him to kill.

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

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Earl Nelson

Earl Nelson is the star of tonight's serial killer bedtime story.

This Bible quoting drifter killed mostly landladies of boarding houses. After killing them he stuffed them under his bed before going to sleep. Dubbed the "Dark Strangler" and later "Gorilla Murderer" for his large, powerful hands. He is known to have committed twenty-two murders and was suspected of at least three more. He was captured and hanged in Canada on January 13, 1928. As he stood with the noose on his neck he told spectators "I stand innocent before God and man. I forgive those who have wronged me and ask forgiveness of those I have injured. God have mercy!"

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

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Arnfinn Nesset

Sit back, sip a warm mug of hot chocolate, and enjoy this serial killer bedtime story about Arnfinn Nesset to bring in the new year.

The deadliest Norwegian of the Archives. A balding, mild mannered nursing home administrator, Arnfinn is believed to have slaughtered up to 138 patients over a 20-year nursing career. In 1977 Arnfinn became the director of the Orkdal Valley Nursing Home. As he took his post, an unusual number of patients started dying.

No one suspected anything until 1981 when an employee noticed the purchase of a large amount of curacit, a derivative of the poisonous curare used as a muscle relaxant.

Police brought Arnfinn, the man in charge of purchasing the curacit, in for questioning. First he claimed he bought the drug to kill a pack of wild dogs around the nursing home. Then, inexplicably, he started confessing to killing 27 patients. At one point he exclaimed "I've killed so many I'm unable to remember them all." In 1983 the lethal administrator was convicted of 22 murders. He was handed a 21-year sentence, the maximum allowed by Norwegian law. Last we heard from him, Arfinn changed his name, became a born-again Christian, and back on the streets.

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