Green River Killer

 Convicted of 49 murders and confessed to nearly twice that number, Gary Leon Ridgway may be one of the deadliest serial killer the United States have known. His victims were women and girls, mostly prostitutes from Washington State. He committed all of his crimes between the 1980s and 1990s. The press gave him the nickname of the "Green River Killer" after five of his victims were found in the Green River, and his identity was not know yet. To kill his victims, he would strangle them, usually with his arms, but sometimes using some kind of cord like rope, shoe laces or wires. He would then drop his victims' bodies randomly throughout forests and wild areas in King County. Ridgway would often return to his victims' dead bodies to have sexual contacts with them. 

Some of his victims

Gary Leon Ridgway was arrested for the murders of four women on November 30, 2001, as he was leaving his job in Washington. The cases of the dead women were linked to him through DNA evidence. As a result of a plea bargain with the court where he released information on the still-missing women. He then received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole and the death penalty. 

"I'm not a rapist, I'm a serial killer"                                    -Gary Leon Ridgway

To learn more on the Green River Killer, visit http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/Gary_Ridgway

Written by Laurie St-Pierre 

Angel of death

Britain has seen all sorts of killers, but this serial killer must be on of, if not, the worse. Amelia Dyer, later named the ‘’Angel Maker’’, made desperate mothers believe that she was owner of a foster house for their children. She would take the mothers’ money promising them to find a good home for their child, but instead she would strangle the babies and dump their bodies in the River Thames. In the late 1860s, for as long as 30 years, she was able to commit the crimes of around 400 babies without being suspected. People would even ask her to suffocate their child at birth so that doctors would not make the difference between that and still-birth, making the crimes ‘unchallenged’. After she was discovered for her true colours, the Victorian society was so shocked that songs were written about her and adoption and child protection laws were straitened. When the police finally became suspicious and met with her, she told them that they would recognize the bodies that were ‘’hers’’ in the river by the tape around their neck. The disturbing woman was hanged at the age of 58, in 1896, at Newgate Gaol. Her case has been reopen since her death to be categorised as the worse Britain had ever lived, and she will forever be part of the world horrors.  

For more, read the article bellow:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2283302/Britains-worst-serial-killer-The-Victorian-angel-death-murdered-400-babies.html

Written by Aimée Pocock

A Mutual Admiration Society

Serial killers become famous over night. The media gives them nick names and everybody becomes obsessed about the cases. The media makes real life horror stories into cinematic dramas most of the time. Our society feed off of bad news and cases like these. Morgan Summerfield, the author of the article  "Serial Killer vs Media: A Symbiotic Relationship?", brings up a great point while studying the relationship between media and serial killers. She says that media emphasize and create the stories about serial killers to compete with other media networks. Not only do the killers sometimes gain sympathy from the public, they become obsessed about how they are portrayed. Some killers who suffer from grandeur delusion or any other narcissistic personality disorder are almost encouraged by the time spend talking about them. this can become extremely dangerous and provoke killing sprees. Humans are curious by nature and get engrossed by the phenomena that is created. Not only the stories, but the emphasis of murder, horrific stories and extreme killers have become a complete fascination in our society. Numerous television shows and movies have created an ideal image of crime solving. Kids and teenagers have become fascinated and more and more and starting to want to pursue careers in this domain. The only problem is, media has glorified it. So much is not shown.  Summerfield concludes her analysis by saying that the relationship between serial killers is very close knit. She even calls the relationship "mutual admiration society" which is very accurate. Who knows, maybe if cases were not made public, we would have less crimes by copycat killers. We might even prevent some killers to take action. If serial killers knew nobody was watching and they were not getting any attention for their actions, would they still commit the crime? It would  be interesting to find out.
To read Summerfileds full article visit: http://voices.yahoo.com/serial-killer-vs-media-symbiotic-relationship-12879.html

written by Courtney Milonja