Jeffrey Dahmer is a prime example of a conundrum in modern life â how something so disgusting can also be so fascinating⦠at least for students of crime, and astrology. Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed 17 men and boys over a period of 13 years, many of his murders […]
Ted Bundy, criminal chameleon
The weird thing about Ted Bundy, people later reflected, was that he never looked the same from one photograph to another. Even in person, he had the ability to metamorphose, with a glance or a turn of his head, from someone of charming intelligence to one of cunning violence. Criminal investigators later attributed his chameleon-like […]
Prime malefics in homicidal charts
Prime malefics in homicidal charts Despite our best intentions, many people find murder fascinating. And yet because it’s the worst of crimes, to rob another person of their life, we hold killers in contempt. Even as we despise them, however, we struggle to understand them, to know what quirk of gene, character or fate compelled […]
The Beltway Sniper: malefics in the crosshairs
For 23 days in October 2002, the Beltway Sniper held the citizens of the Washington, DC, area terrorized in his sights. Ten people were shot and killed over the space of three weeks, another three people critically wounded. The shootings had no obvious motive, the victims seemingly targeted at random as they went about their […]
The Yorkshire Ripper: a study in stellar forensics
Peter Sutcliffe, aka The Yorkshire Ripper, terrorized the north of England in and around the cities of Leeds and Manchester from 1975 until 1980. The case received sensational press coverage in its day and was both a burden and embarrassment for the British police services which, in the pre-computer era, had at one point dedicated […]
Oscar Pistorius: Blade Running for his Life?
Life is full of mysteries. One of them is, How did a guy like this end up in a mess like that? Oscar Pistorius is affectionately known as the Blade Runner, thanks to the prosthetic âfeetâ with which heâs propelled himself into the athletic spotlight over the past decade, into the hearts of South Africans […]