Violent pornography incites sexually motivated murders. (Part 4)

40) Stephen McDaniel

Lauren Giddings had just received her degree from Mercer Law School at the time of her murder. Friends and relatives became concerned when they were not able to make contact with her, prompting them to contact local police and file a missing persons report. Once they arrived at the Barristers Hall apartment complex located on Georgia Avenue in Macon, they smelled a foul odor. The odor led them to a garbage bin, where they found the dismembered body of the victim inside. The body was dressed in pink shorts, and the arms and legs of the victim were missing. Frantic detectives canvassed the area and came up with the name of a suspect identified as Stephen McDaniel.

Law enforcement officials were informed of McDaniel’s bizarre interest in Lauren. It also came to light that Stephen McDaniel had actually boasted about giving a woman alcohol and killing her on an internet forum. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, these are his words.

 “Party hard by drinking alone in front of my computer. See my sexy neighbor/classmate come home late… Invite her up for a nightcap, make her a special drink called a Mickey Finn a drink designed to knock someone unconscious. She’s out cold. I finally lose my V-card [virginity]. Oh, no, she OD’d and died. I barbecue her legs and arms to celebrate losing my V-card. Not into organ meat, but throw her torso out, lose it on TV while the cops are discovering her remains, you mad virgins.”

The family of a murdered 27-year-old Georgia student listened to her killer’s confession in which he revealed the moment she ripped off the mask he was wearing and recoiled in horror as she recognized her friend before he strangled her to death.

Mercer University School of Law graduate Stephen McDaniel, 28, pleaded guilty to the June 2011 murder of fellow student Lauren Giddings, 27, in court on Monday and provided a full confession as part of his deal.

McDaniel's coolly detailed confession of how he startled Lauren awake at 4.30am on Sunday June 26 after he broke into her apartment dressed all in black.
'She saw me and said, very calmly, 'Get the f*** out,' said McDaniel in his confession which outlined how he killed and dismembered Lauren before disposing her remains in a trash dumpster outside the apartment complex they both lived in.

According to this confession he then returned to his apartment next door to Lauren's and spent the entire day on his computer according to the Macon Telegraph.

Then, in the evening, he returned with a hacksaw and cut up her body.

'I removed her limbs and head, wrapped them in several black trash bags, separately, and discarded them in the Mercer law school dumpster,' he wrote.

The cool killer then said that he put Lauren's torso into the apartment trash can on June 28 - two days before it was found. Before McDaniels changed his plea, the court had heard how he had spied on Lauren for months, using a camera attached to a 6-foot-long wooden stick - standing beneath her second-floor apartment and videoing her.

He had become obsessed with Lauren, his next-door neighbor at Barristers Hall apartments, across the street from Mercer University's law school - where they had been classmates.

"The case took a turn for the worse for McDaniel when the computer evidence started coming out, and it just kept coming," said McDaniel's attorney, Frank Hogue. "They were continuing to find more and more evidence related to his computer and camera, and finally he agreed that was enough to get a conviction."

Youtube video where McDaniel had been searching pornography, including rape.

41) Sean Gillis


Is an American serial killer who stalked, kidnapped, raped, murdered, and mutilated eight Louisiana women between 1994 and 2003 in the Baton Rouge Metro and surrounding areas. He was arrested without incident at his residence on Burgin Road at 1:30 a.m. on April 29, 2004. In his initial arrest, he was charged with three counts of first degree murder and three counts of ritualistic acts in the murders of 29-year-old Katherine Hall, 45-year-old Johnnie Mae Williams and 43-year-old Donna Bennett Johnston. Gillis confessed to the murders with little coercion and then informed investigators about four other women whom he had murdered.

Sean Gillis

On March 21, 1994, Gillis murdered his first victim, 81-year-old Ann Bryan, whose residence (an exclusive retirement home) he entered when she left the door unlocked for her nurse. He tried to rape her, but when she started screaming after he touched her, he quickly slashed her throat and then stabbed her repeatedly, nearly decapitating and disemboweling her in the process. The following year, he and Terri moved in together, and she eventually realized his addiction to pornography, but decided to ignore the issue, although she didn't realize what kinds of pornography Gillis specifically took a liking to. She continued to ignore the issue when he showed her pictures of dead women, which she was disgusted at, but otherwise, the two maintained a good relationship. On January 4, 1999, almost five years after the murder of his first victim, Gillis, allegedly bored from the inactivity, struck again, killing Katherine Hall, a prostitute he lured into the car with the promise of oral sex; he tried to kill her by strangling her with a zip-tie, but when she tried to escape, he instead stabbed her to death before undressing her and mutilating her body. Four months later, he began stalking Hardee Schmidt, whom he spotted jogging in the southern area of Baton Rouge; after three weeks, he found her jogging again and hit her with his car, knocking her into a ditch. Gillis then tied a zip-tie tightly around her neck and took her to an isolated area, where he raped and killed her before placing her body in a truck, where it remained for two days until he dumped it in a bayou located off of Highway 61 at St. James Parish, where it was discovered soon afterwards. On November 12, he killed Joyce Williams and took her body to his home, where he mutilated it and engaged in cannibalism. He then dumped her body, where it wouldn't be discovered until January 2000. 

After killing three more victims from 2000 to 2003 (during which another serial killer, Derrick Todd Lee, who Gillis admired, was active), Gillis murdered his eighth and final victim, 43-year-old Donna Johnston, on February 26, 2004. After taking 45 pictures of her body, he took it to another location and dumped it, but took the time to pose it first.

On April 28, investigators interviewed and got DNA swabs from a number of people who owned vehicles that had that specific tire model, including Gillis. When Gillis's DNA sample matched the DNA found on the hairs of two of his victims, police arrested him the next day in front of Terri, to whom he apologized during the arrest.

 Later that day, he confessed to his murders and his house was subsequently searched. Among the items recovered were newspaper clippings of Carrie Yoder, the final victim of Derrick Todd Lee, and a computer file titled "DTL" (Lee's initials), which stored news and information about Lee's crimes; Gillis would go on to allege that he feared being "outdone" by Lee. After evaluating his confessions and giving him various charges that changed multiple times, investigators finally charged him for the murders of Katherine Hall, Johnnie Williams, and Donna Johnston, which he stood trial for on July 21, 2008. On July 31, he was eventually found guilty of all charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole after the jury made a deadlock during the penalty phase. On August of the previous year, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was subsequently convicted in the murder of Joyce Williams. On February 17, 2009, Gillis pleaded guilty to the murder of Marilyn Nevils, which he received another life sentence for.

 

42) PAUL BERNARDO AND KARLA HOMOLKA

 Their wedding photographs are picture perfect but handsome accountant Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka had a distorted view of life and death. They formed a beautiful but deadly team and had already killed before their fairytale white wedding near Niagara Falls in Canada.

Their three victims included Homolka's younger sister Tammy, 15, who was drugged and raped in a sadistic session that ended in her death in 1990. The couple initially escaped detection because they cleaned up so well, claimed Tammy had suffered an accident and police could not believe it was possible for a sister to inflict such cruelty.

The couple met in 1987 and Homolka was the first girlfriend to encourage Bernardo's sadistic sexual behaviour. It was a fatal combination. Bernardo was a multiple rapist on his own but with his wife went on to kidnap two more schoolgirls, videotaping their rape and sexual assault.

The victims were dismembered and the body parts weighed down with concrete blocks before being thrown into a lake.

They became known as the Ken and Barbie killers because of their good looks in a case that rocked Canada.Tammy's death was re-examined and police found that she had been killed by a combination of alcohol and drugs from the veterinary surgery where Homolka worked.

 

43)  DAVID AND CATHERINE BIRNIE

The house at number 3 Moorhouse Street was Australia’s very own House of Horrors. It was the love-nest, torture chamber and killing field of Catherine and David Birnie, who, like the Wests, were a husband and wife serial killer team, the rarest form of serial killers in the world. It was here that they committed atrocities to their young female victims. 

  The Birnies weren’t particularly fussy about who they murdered. As long as they were female. Their victim’s ages ranged from 15 to 31. Whenever the Birnies felt like killing someone they would drive along the highways of Perth and pick up hitchhikers or other young women in need of a lift.Their victims never suspected the friendly couple until it was too late. At knifepoint they were taken back to Moorhouse street and tied up and abused as the Birnies carried out their sexual fantasies. Then they were murdered. The lucky ones were put to sleep with an overdose of sleeping pills and then strangled. The less fortunate victims were either stabbed or bludgeoned to death with a knife or an axe as they sat in their shallow graves in a secluded pine forest a short drive out of Perth. 

Mr Justice Wallace sentenced David Birnie to the maximum sentence of life imprisonment with strict security. He added: “The law is not strong enough to express the community’s horror at this sadistic killer who tortured, raped and murdered four women. In my opinion, David John Birnie is such a danger to society that he should never be released from prison.”

David Birnie stood trembling in the dock as the sentence was passed. His bravado returned as he was led to the prison van under tight security. With the angry mob calling for his blood, David Birnie put his hand to his lips and blew them a kiss.

Found sane enough to plead, Catherine Margaret Birnie admitted her part in the murders and was sentenced on 3 March 1987 in the Perth Supreme Court. She stood in the dock, holding hands with David Birnie, the man who had led her down the path of torture, rape and murder. Through the day’s hearing they chatted quietly and smiled at each other as the court was told of their 35 day reign of horror.

On occasions she would stroke and pat his arm. A psychiatrist to the court said that Catherine was totally dependent on Birnie and almost totally vulnerable to his evil influence. He said: “It is the worst case of personality dependence I have seen in my career”.

44) David Snow

 A former hostage testified yesterday that accused double murderer David Snow pointed a handgun to her face, asking, "Do you want me to show you what I can do to you?"

The 26-year-old woman said Snow posed as a customer seeking a family portrait at her East Hastings Ave. photo shop in Vancouver.

Snow abducted her at gunpoint as she was closing her store at 6 p.m. and marched her 8 km into a densely wooded area in North Vancouver on the night of July 3, 1992. He kept her as his sexual toy for eight days only half a block from a Safeway store at the Westview Shopping Centre at the busy TransCanada Highway.

David Snow

She said in her first weekend of captivity, Snow would lift her as his hog-tied hostage "about an inch perhaps off the ground" and drop her. Snow also molested her, she told the jury.

Snow forced to her perform sexual acts three or four times a day and "spanked" her one day, she testified. But he never punched her after the first night, she added.

She is the first of five witnesses from incidents involving Snow in Vancouver in the summer of 1992.

Snow, 42, an Orangeville antique dealer, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the April 7, 1992 deaths of Toronto realtor Ian Blackburn, 55, and his wife, Nancy, 49, a public health nurse.

Prosecutor Hank Goody said in his opening statement that evidence will show that Snow strangled, gagged and hog-tied Nancy Blackburn and that Ian was also bound. The bodies of Ian and Nancy - who was nude - were found in the trunk of her car parked in the driveway of their St. Leonards Ave. home on April 13, 1992.

The photo store clerk said yesterday she made no effort to fight or flee after resisting on the first night of captivity. She said Snow punched her " so hard in the face I literally saw stars."

Later, Snow brandished three handguns - a silver one, a black 9 mm handgun and a smaller black firearm - before his hostage, whom he called his "outstanding catch," court heard."I want to show you," she quoted Snow as saying as he displayed his three stolen guns before aiming the smallest weapon at her head. "Do you want me to show you what I can do to you?"

At about the time Ian and Nancy Blackburn were meeting their deaths, the older brother of their alleged killer was examining a briefcase with links to both his brother and the Blackburns.

Called as a Crown witness at the murder trial of his brother, David, Victor Snow, 49, testified yesterday that in March or April of 1992, he came across the briefcase while cleaning out a closet in an Orangeville, Ont., house once occupied by David and their mother.

Victor Snow said the black briefcase contained, among other things, "pornographic pictures," sheets of paper with "what seemed to be listings of ships or submarines" in his brother's handwriting, and photographs of an octagonal barn on the Blackburns' Caledon farm.

The Ontario Court jury has heard that Mr. Blackburn, 54, and Mrs. Blackburn, 49, were last seen alive on April 7, 1992. Their bodies were found six days later in Mrs. Blackburn's Chevrolet, parked in the driveway of their North Toronto home.

In his opening address to the jury, Crown attorney Hank Goody said evidence would show that after the killings, the accused took a train to Vancouver, where he kidnapped, stripped and sexually assaulted four young female victims.

Masses of hard core pornography was also found in David Snows house and storage unit as told in this video about his crimes. 

 

45) Lonnie Franklin Jr.

Lonnie David Franklin Jr killed nine women and a 15-year-old girl between 1985 and 2007, before dumping their bodies, often in alleyways.
The sentence against the 63-year-old was decided by a jury. Franklin was convicted last month.
He will be formally sentenced at a later hearing.
Prosecutors said Franklin stalked vulnerable young black women before shooting or strangling them.
He began by targeting drug addicts during LA's crack cocaine epidemic.
He was also convicted of the attempted murder of an 11th victim who survived being shot, raped and pushed out of a car in 1988.

Lonnie Franklin Jr.

'Grim Sleeper' serial killer is feared to have murdered hundreds of women over three decades

He has been dubbed the Grim Sleeper for the apparent gap in his killings between 1988 and 2002, but evidence brought up during the trial and other information which has surfaced over the years suggests he might have killed many more.
  When police entered his rundown house where he had lived since childhood they found pictures of hundreds of women including those of his victims. Many of the girls are still missing and presumed dead.
Among the litter in his garage were dozens of pornographic videos and explicit pictures of women he had brought home.
 A non-profit Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders says it raised its voice against the rising number of killings as far back as 1987 but the police wasn't interested in investigating the cases.
Ballistic tests had also shown that at least two of the women killed in the 1980s were murdered using the same weapon. But this information, which indicated that a serial killer was on the loose, was never released to the public.
 Former prostitutes interviewed by HBO for a documentary on Franklin said they were willing to carry out some of his wild demands because of their addiction to cocaine. Some said that he would put a dog-leash on them, whilst anally raping them or even use a screwdriver to penetrate them.

 In 1974, when Franklin was a private in the U.S. Army stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, he was arrested and sentenced to three years and four months in prison for the rape and kidnapping of Ingrid W. as well as the attempted kidnapping of an unidentified 18-year-old woman that same night. The screams of the 18-year-old alerted neighbors, who called police.
However, Franklin served less than one year in prison. 

 A part of the huge stash of pornography found at Lonnie Franklin Jr's home, garage and glove
compartment in his vehicle. These images were taken from the HBO documentary-Serial Killer Lonnie Franklin Jr: (HBO) Tales Of The Grim Sleeper
 *see below 

 

46) Gary Ridgway

 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ridgway is believed to have murdered at least 71 women (according to Ridgway, in an interview with Sheriff Reichert 2001) near Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. His court statements later reported that he had killed so many, he lost count. A majority of the murders occurred between 1982 to 1984. The victims were believed to be either prostitutes or runaways picked up along Pacific Highway South (International Blvd. 99) whom he strangled. Most of their bodies were dumped in wooded areas around the Green River except for two confirmed and another two suspected victims found in the Portland, Oregon area. The bodies were often left in clusters, sometimes posed, usually nude. He also sometimes later would return to the victims' bodies and have intercourse with them (an act of necrophilia). Because most of the bodies were not discovered until only the skeletons remained, four victims are still unidentified. Ridgway occasionally contaminated the dump sites with gum, cigarettes, and written materials belonging to others, and he even transported a few victims' remains across state lines into Oregon to confuse the police.

Gary Ridgway

Ridgway began each murder by picking up a woman, usually a prostitute. He sometimes showed the woman a picture of his son, to help her trust him. After having sex with her, Ridgway strangled her from behind. He initially strangled them manually. However, many victims inflicted wounds and bruises on his arm while trying to defend themselves. Concerned these wounds and bruises would draw attention, Ridgway began using ligatures to strangle his victims. Most victims were killed in his home, his truck, or a secluded area.

The victims

Gary was a bed-wetter and was assumed to be of very low intelligence, with an approximate 82 I.Q. during the school time, he had trouble with poor academic standing and attempted his first homicide in around 1966 at the age of 16 years old by luring a six year old boy into the woods and stabbing him. The planned victim survived and Ridgway started to twist stranger heights by growing an obsession with pornography, which is an ordinary denominator in almost all serial killers historical reports. He has been married many times, and he has one son.

Gary started a campaign of destruction to remove the world of as many prostitutes as he perhaps could after attempting his first murder. Then he continued to kill the working girls and then he dumped their bodies into “The Green River” in Washington State. So he has been called as “The Green River Killer”. Then he began to dump the victims in unusual sites he referred to as “clusters.” Gary enjoyed visiting these dump sites and it was exposed later that he connected in the morbid practice of necrophilia so he could relive the murder and revel in his aggression and sexual perversion. He also posed the bodies and left strange articles on the bodies like fish, and stones, the meaning of which were never understood.
 Most of his victims were teenage prostitutes, and the prosecutor’s summary of the case says that Ridgway first started using prostitutes when he was stationed by the military in the Philippines. He had a bad first marriage, claiming that his first wife had affairs with other men. He considered her a prostitute for that reason. His second wife reported that he was interested in sexual bondage.
The prosecutor’s summary of the evidence doesn’t mention this, and we have seen nothing about it in the dozens of stories about Ridgway’s confession, but reporters for the King County Journal alluded to another factor in a story they filed two years ago. This is a paper that covers Seattle, the area where Ridgway committed his murders. Their story noted that sheriff’s detectives had searched Ridgway’s home and found pornography. Specifically, three pornographic magazines were found. The link between pornography and violence against women has been a subject of much controversy. In this case, there may be a link.

[link to part five]

Violent pornography incites sexually motivated murders. (Part three)

34) Edward Tenniswood

A bookkeeper was heard telling a young barmaid outside a nightclub "I'll get you home safe" before she was raped and murdered, a court has heard.
The body of India Chipchase, 20, was found at a house in Stanley Road, Northampton, on 31 January.
Birmingham Crown Court heard Edward Tenniswood, 52, of Stanley Road, Northampton, denies her murder.
Christopher Donnellan QC, prosecuting, said Miss Chipchase's body was found on a mattress at the defendant's home.

Mr Donnellan said Mr Tenniswood turned up outside NB's cocktail bar in Northampton in the early hours of 30 January when Miss Chipchase was in a "fairly pickled state" and could "barely stand up".
"Others nearby thought from the way he spoke to her, he knew her," said Mr Donnellan. "He was overheard by others to say 'not to worry' and he'd get her home safe - he didn't."

The jury heard Miss Chipchase's death "was no dreadful accident" and that Mr Tenniswood "raped and throttled" her at his home in Stanley Road.
"When she resisted he gripped her around the throat and squeezed. She suffered a blunt force trauma to the head and face and appeared to put up a struggle," he said.
After she died, Mr Tenniswood set about tidying up, Mr Donnellan added.
"He re-clothed her, covered her in a sheet and left her. He removed her belongings."

 'Determined to have sex'

The jury was told Mr Tenniswood had put on clear plastic vinyl gloves that were later found in a bag of rubbish.
"He was obviously aware of what he was doing and put on clear plastic vinyl gloves," Mr Donnellan said. "They were found in a bag of rubbish - India's blood on the outside of the gloves and his DNA on the inside.
'Fantasies'
 Tenniswood turned his sick violent fantasies into reality after he found India Chipchase in a drunk and vulnerable state outside Northampton’s NB’s nightclub.
When police smashed down the door of his house, having traced Ms Chipchase’s mobile to the address, they found her fully-clothed body lying on a mattress in a dimly-lit upstairs bedroom.
A sheet was drawn up to her chin and her long black hair had been arranged by Tenniswood in what police described as a ‘halo’.
Her body was near a book left open on a page showing romantic images of scantily-clad women.
Ms Chipchase was found to have 33 separate injuries on her body including evidence of blunt force trauma to her head and bruising to both hips.
 Following the verdict, press restrictions were lifted and we are now able to reveal that Tenniswood had previously pinned a teenage girl up against a wall by her throat and tried to kiss her. Before he moved to Northampton in the late 1990s, Tenniswood had a top-floor apartment on Oakley Street in Chelsea, west London.

Tenniswood bought the flat in the early 1990s with money stolen from his family's business.

A man whose partner bought it from Tenniswood branded the killer a 'weirdo'.

He told the Mirror: 'He was more than just a loner, he was properly odd. There was all kinds of pornography all over the house when we went to look at it.'

Edward Tenniswood was given a life sentence at Birmingham Crown Court with a minimum term of 30 years for raping and strangling India Chipchase to death.

35)Fritz Honka

Was a German serial killer. Between 1970 and 1975, he killed at least four prostitutes from Hamburg's red light district, keeping the bodies in his flat.

At 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m), Fritz Honka was extremely sensitive about his height. He liked his women shorter, and he also liked them toothless, to alleviate his fears of mutilation during oral sex. He found relief with aging prostitutes from Hamburg's red light district, killing at least four of them in his small attic room in the Zeißstraße 74 of Ottensen, Hamburg. Disposal was a problem, given Honka's size and basic laziness. He kept the bodies in his flat, and fortified himself with alcohol against the stench. When neighbours griped about unpleasant smells, he doused the place with quarts of cheap deodorant.

Franz Honka

On 15 July 1975, the mummified remains were found by firemen after a fire in the house. Honka was not present, being on shift as a night watchman. He was arrested when he returned home. In custody, Honka said he killed the women after they mocked his preference for oral sex over "straight" intercourse. He was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment, significantly milder than the prosecutors recommendations. The court found him guilty of one case of murder and three cases of manslaughter. His habitual abuse of alcohol was considered a mitigating factor, as it has seen as a cause for diminished mental capacity.^[1]
Honka was released from prison in 1993 and spent his last years under the name of Peter Jensen in a nursing home. He died in a hospital in Langenhorn, Hamburg on 19 October 1998.
  The victims were-

  • Gertraud Bräuer, Friseurin, gestorben 1970

  • Anna Beuschel, Hausfrau, gestorben 1974.

  • Frieda Roblick, Prostituierte, gestorben 1974.

  • Ruth Schult, Prostituierte, gestorben 1975.

When police raided his flat they found the walls coated in pornography and countless magazines and sadomasochistic books. 

36) Daniel Bartelt

Internet searches for rape, strangulation preceded woman's death.

A 19-year-old man has been charged with killing his former high school girlfriend by strangling her in her bed, and attacking another woman three days earlier.
Daniel Joseph Bartelt is accused of murdering 19-year-old actress Jessie Blodgett after she returned to her Hartford, Wisconsin, home from a 'Fiddler on the Roof' cast party on July 15.
The college dropout also confessed to attacking a woman with a knife in a park on July 12, saying it was a 'spur of the moment decision', just hours after researching serial killers online.

Forensic experts found Internet searches on Daniel J.H. Bartelt's computer of websites depicting rape, strangulation and serial killers in the days before a young Hartford woman's death, according to testimony Friday in his homicide trial.

It was the fourth day of testimony on the first-degree intentional homicide charge against Bartelt in the July 2013 death of Jessie Blodgett, a 19-year-old aspiring actress found strangled in her bedroom.

Daniel Bartelt

Blodgett was found with ligature marks on her neck, wrists and ankles, indicating something had been tied around parts of her body, and an autopsy determined she died of asphyxia and compression of the neck.
Ashley Boldig, a computer forensics analyst with the state Department of Justice, testified that an Internet history analysis on Bartelt's laptop showed Wikipedia searches for serial killers, serial killers by number of victims such as Luis Garavito and Moses Sithole late July 11, 2013, into the early hours of the next day.
The analysis also shows that on July 15 a music file named "Jessie's Song," which Blodgett and Bartelt sang together, was deleted. Boldig also testified that pornographic videos, one titled "poor girl brutally raped and strangled to death," were viewed on the laptop. Blodgett's Facebook picture was viewed at 3:04 p.m. July 15, the day Blodgett was found dead. 

37)Leonard Lake and Charles Ng


No one will ever know how many men, women and children Charles Chitat Ng and his survivalist partner in murder, Leonard Lake, killed in the course of their criminal endeavours. 

 On June 2, 1985, law enforcement would first encounter this duo outside of a South San Francisco hardware store when Ng stole a vice, locked it into the back of a 1980 Honda Prelude and left the vicinity.  By the time police arrived, an overweight, bearded Caucasian sat at the wheel of the same auto.  Preliminary questioning uncovered a driver’s license and license plates involving two separate individuals.  A .22 caliber handgun illegally modified with a silencer further complicated matters.  The suspect was placed under arrest and at police headquarters he was confronted with information that the VIN number of the automobile indicated that it was owned by a third person, who had been reported missing nine months earlier.  The suspect calmly asked for a pen, paper and a glass of water.  After writing a short note, he removed something from his lapel and swallowed it with a gulp of water.  The “something” turned out to be cyanide which eventually killed the suspect, subsequently identified from fingerprints as Leonard Lake. Police would quickly locate Lake’s isolated ranch in the remote town of Wilseyville, California.  Lake’s house and adjoining bunker would yield an extensive cache of weapons, incriminating video cassettes and photos as well as a diary that indicated how Lake and Ng had tortured, raped and murdered numerous victims.  Males were typically abducted or lured to the ranch to facilitate the theft of personal possessions, credit cards, or cash.  Subsequently, following several hours of torment, these victims would be shot in the head.  Females were placed in the bunker next to Lake’s ranch house where they would be assaulted for several days before being murdered.  Any infants or children involved in these abductions would also be killed.  By the time, police and Calaveras County sheriffs had excavated the entire property and demolished the bunker, they would find the bodies of seven men, three women and two small children as well as forty five pounds of burned and crushed human skeletal material.  As many as twenty-five people reported missing and known to have associated with Lake and Ng may have perished at the Wilseyville location.

The police searched Lake's ranch in Wilseyville. It was clear Lake was a survivalist, his ranch fitted with a bunker and a stash of weapons. In a diary, Lake had written how he was convinced there was going to be a global nuclear war, and he planned on surviving in his bunker and rebuilding the human race with a collection of female slaves (he named this plan "Operation Miranda" after a character in the book The Collector by John Fowles). The police also found videos showing Lake and Ng torturing and raping women.

The grounds of the ranch were dug up and 12 corpses were uncovered in shallow graves. Among these victims were two families: Harvey Dubs and his wife, Deborah, and baby son, Sean; and Lonnie Bond and Brenda O'Connor and their baby son, Lonnie Bond Jr. The women had been sexually abused, and killed after their husbands and infants were disposed of. Five of the bodies were of men lured to the ranch to be robbed and killed — including Robin Stapley and Paul Cosner — and the 12th was identified as 18-year-old Kathleen Allen, who knew Ng because her boyfriend had once been his cellmate in prison. Police also found charred fragments of human bones (in excess of 45 pounds in total), but they were unable to determine the identity of the victims or their number. It has been postulated the number of unknown murdered persons could be as high as 25.

38) Chris Halliwell

A convicted killer has been found guilty of murdering missing woman Becky Godden five years after initially escaping justice due to police blunders.

Christopher Halliwell, 52, initially admitted the double murder of Becky Godden and Sian O'Callaghan from Swindon in 2011.

Chris Halliwell

But he evaded justice for killing Miss Godden until now due to a police error.
Miss Godden's mother thanked police "for bringing my little girl home".
A jury at Bristol Crown Court took less than three hours to find him guilty.

The ex-taxi driver is currently serving life after stabbing and strangling Miss O'Callaghan, 22 in 2011.
The case came to court after Wiltshire Police unearthed new evidence in the case which centred on soil on a shovel found at Halliwell's home, witness accounts and Halliwell's wounds when he visited a GP two days after Miss Godden disappeared.

Police said there was a “distinct possibility” that he could be responsible for other unsolved killings.
Christopher Halliwell, 52, laughed as a guilty verdict was returned at Bristol crown court on Monday and smiled at relatives of Becky Godden, who went missing aged 20 in 2003 when she was a sex worker in Swindon.
He is already serving life for the murder of 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan, whom he abducted from a nightclub in the Wiltshire town in 2011.
After the verdict, Det Supt Sean Memory, the senior investigating officer in the Godden case, said Halliwell may have killed others.
“I am really open-minded – there is an eight-year gap between Becky and Sian,” Memory said. “I would appeal to Christopher Halliwell – if he wants to speak I’m willing to speak with him.
“I can’t rule out that there are other victims. He’s not forensically linked to outstanding cases. However, that’s not to say he hasn’t committed other offences.

And when police searched a remote pond where Halliwell dumped O’Callaghan’s boots after stabbing and strangling her in 2011, they discovered dozens of scraps of material that may be clothing.
In common with many violent sexual offenders, Halliwell had a fascination with hardcore pornography, including child abuse and bestiality. Computer search terms he used showed he had an interest in murder, violent sex and rape.
After a two-week trial, a jury found him guilty of the murder of Godden. He became besotted with her after meeting her while working as a taxi driver in Swindon’s red-light district. In January 2003 he had sex with her, strangled her and buried her body in a field in Gloucestershire.
Godden’s murder came to light only after Halliwell was arrested over O’Callaghan’s disappearance in 2011. He led the senior investigating officer, Steve Fulcher, to where he had left O’Callaghan’s body at the side of a country road – and to where he had buried Godden’s remains eight years before.

Sian O'Callaghan

Halliwell initially wrongly believed Miss O'Callaghan was a sex worker, while Miss Godden was a prostitute. He admitted having sex with Miss Godden before she died and prosecutors insist that Miss O'Callaghan's murder was sexually-motivated.
Both women were strangled and their bodies were deposited in rural locations close to each other.
Miss Godden was buried naked in a shallow grave while Miss O'Callaghan was found partially clothed - with Halliwell later admitting he had cut her underwear and leggings in an attempt to remove them.
Halliwell described himself as a "sick f*****" before telling Mr Fulcher that he had strangled Miss Godden after having sex with her.

39) Charlie Brandt

Was an American murderer and serial killer. Brandt, a native of Indiana and longtime resident of the Florida Keys, committed suicide in September 2004 after his wife, Teresa "Teri" Brandt, was stabbed seven times and his niece, Michelle Jones, was decapitated and had suffered severe mutilation. An investigation by police concluded that Brandt had murdered Teri Brandt and Michelle Jones before hanging himself in Jones' garage.

Charlie Brandt

It later came to light that Brandt had shot his parents – his pregnant mother fatally – in 1971, when he was thirteen; he spent one year at a psychiatric hospital before being released, and was never criminally charged. Because of this incident – of which Teri Brandt's family was unaware – and because of Charlie Brandt's efficiency in killing his wife and niece and his hidden obsessions with human anatomy, investigators looked into the prospect that he had been a serial killer who had operated without detection since moving to Florida in 1973. Police have positively ascribed up to six homicides to Brandt.
 On the night of January 3, 1971, Brandt, then thirteen, walked into his parents' bathroom while his father was shaving and his mother, who was eight months pregnant, was taking a bath. Brandt shot his father point blank in the back with a gun, then fired several rounds into his mother; his father survived, but his mother died at the scene. Brandt then confronted his fifteen-year-old sister, Angela Brandt, but his gun wouldn't fire. After a physical struggle, Angela managed to calm her brother down before she fled the house and sought help from neighbors. Charlie also left the house and knocked on the door of a girl next door named Sandi Radcliffe, telling her, "Sandi, I just shot my mom and dad."

On September 2, 2004, Charlie and Teri Brandt were evacuated from their home on Big Pine Key before Hurricane Ivan made landfall. Their niece, Michelle Lynn Jones, invited them to stay at her residence in central Florida. Throughout the visit, Michelle Jones kept in regular contact with her mother, Mary Lou Jones, as well as several friends. On the evening of September 13, one of Jones' friends, Lisa Emmons, was scheduled to visit her house. However, Jones discouraged her from coming after reporting that the Brandts had had an argument after drinking. After that night, Jones stopped answering telephone calls, which alarmed her acquaintances.

On September 15, another one of Jones' friends, Debbie Knight, came to her house to check on her and the Brandts while on the phone with Mary Lou Jones. After finding the front door locked, Knight tried to enter the house through the garage, where she found Charlie Brandt's body hanging from the rafters; due to sweltering temperatures and the length of time since his death, Brandt's body was in a state of decomposition. Knight contacted the police, who entered the house and found the bodies of Brandt's wife and niece. Teri Brandt had been stabbed seven times in the chest while reclining on a couch. Michelle Jones, whose body was found in her bed, had been decapitated and disemboweled, with her heart and organs removed. Jones' head was also placed next to her own body. The weapons used in the crimes had been knives from Jones' kitchen.

Links to other murders  

Investigations into cold case files from throughout Florida eventually linked Brandt to unsolved murders that bore striking similarities to Michelle Jones' death. They included the decapitations of the victims and the removal of their hearts, which detectives established had been the focus of Brandt's obsession. The search led to twenty-six unsolved murders in Florida going back to 1973, the year Brandt moved to the state. Some cold cases have since been positively ascribed to Brandt by the authorities.

Sherry Perisho, 1989

Perisho's partly clad body was found on July 16, 1989, near the North Pine Channel Bridge at Big Pine Key, where Perisho, who was homeless, lived on a dinghy. Perisho's throat had been slashed and her head had been nearly severed; like Jones, her body was extensively mutilated and her heart was removed. Perisho was found less than 1,000 feet from where Brandt lived, and Brandt's appearance matched a composite sketch of a man seen crossing U.S. Route 1 near where Perisho was discovered on the night she was murdered. Based on this evidence, Monroe County investigators determined that Brandt killed Perisho and officially closed the case on May 6, 2006.

[link to part four]