IdleRich

IdleRich
There was a South American guy who hit his head and then killed like 150 people. All the biggest numbers guys come from South America for some reason.
 

version

Well-known member
I believe he was trying to kill 64, one for each square, hence the name.

Yeah, although he later said that he'd probably have just carried on killing anyway.

Pichushkin committed his first known murder as a student in 1992 and stepped up his crimes in 2001.[1] Russian media has speculated that Pichushkin was motivated, in part, by a macabre competition with another notorious Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, the 'Rostov Ripper', who was convicted in 1992 of killing 53 children and young women over a 12-year period.[2] Pichushkin has said his aim was to kill 64 people, the number of squares on a chessboard.[3][4] He later recanted this statement, saying that he would have continued killing indefinitely had he not been stopped.[5]

Pichushkin targeted primarily elderly homeless men by luring them with the offer of free vodka. After drinking with them, he would kill them with repeated blows to the head with a hammer. In what became his trademark, or signature, he would then push a vodka bottle into the gaping wound in their skulls. He also targeted younger men, children and women. He would always attack from behind in order to take the victim by surprise and to avoid spilling blood on his clothes.[6] He claimed that while killing people he felt like God as he decided whether his victims should live or die. "In all cases I killed for only one reason. I killed in order to live, because when you kill, you want to live," he once said. "For me, life without murder is like life without food for you. I felt like the father of all these people, since it was me who opened the door for them to another world."[7] Experts at the Serbsky Institute, Russia's main psychiatric clinic, have found Pichushkin sane, but suffering from antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Chikatilo was almost caught after his first murder but the police preferred to fit up a local convicted guy rather than pursue obvious leads to him. Later he benefited from some rare condition which meant that when tested his semen and blood appeared to belong to different blood groups (something like that anyway). So he was arrested and released cos his sample didn't match the one they had. I think that's right.
 
He claimed that while killing people he felt like God as he decided whether his victims should live or die. "In all cases I killed for only one reason. I killed in order to live, because when you kill, you want to live," he once said. "For me, life without murder is like life without food for you. I felt like the father of all these people, since it was me who opened the door for them to another world."

Same energy as Shipman, though he never said a word about it, did he?
 

version

Well-known member
The English one who seems to have taken on the same sort of mythic status as the American ones is Jack the Ripper.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Well the story had everything didn't it? With the gory details, London fog, the letters to the press, the catchy name, rumours of royal involvement and so on and so forth... and then it just stopped and he was never caught. Or not for that at least. He surely wasn't the first person to kill a load of people but he was one of the first to do it so violently and mysteriously and so on in a time when the news could be easily broadcast and so on. Five people (or whatever it was) is an average afternoon in a fair number of cities these days but at the time it was a big thing... although I get the impression that the original fuss kinda died down after it stopped and then later on it became a big thing again for some reason.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Never been on an actual paid one but have walked past a number of the sites - both by accidental virtue of living in the East End and, on occasion, deliberately. My girlfriend is quite interested in this stuff and she wanted to walk the route joining up the so-called double-event so that we could see for ourselves if it was possible (I think the conclusion was yes quite easily).
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Lived in Whitechapel for most of my London years. Right above the Blind Beggar pub which was where one of the Krays shot a rival point blank. Are gangsters seen as separate from serial killers? Surely many of them rack up the numbers.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
That reminds me of the bit in that Kurt Vonnegut with the soldier comparing the number of his kills with that of the guy who dropped the bomb in Japan... "But I did it the old-fashioned way".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Lived in Whitechapel for most of my London years. Right above the Blind Beggar pub which was where one of the Krays shot a rival point blank. Are gangsters seen as separate from serial killers? Surely many of them rack up the numbers.

I think the 'classic' serial killer kills for the sheer love of killing, or because of a sexual thrill (remember that many rape their victims first - and in some cases afterwards too), rather than for 'business' reasons (gangsters) or ideology (terrorists).
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
But I bet a lot of gangster killers - hitmen say - have a kind of enjoyment too, maybe not the same though.
You're definitely right about the sexual thing. Often problems with their mothers and/or women in general. I think that the Green River Killer (I forget his name but he's believed to be the most prolific US one I believe) had a father who fucked loads of prostitutes or something and then he did the same thing when he was in Vietnam or something and then he came back to the US and started killing them. This weird conflicted thing of paying prostitutes for sex and then hating them for selling sex.
 

version

Well-known member
The American ones are very media savvy. You can tell they're hamming it up for the camera, hoping to be immortalized in books and on film.

 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
One of the Krays (or should that be at least one of the Krays) was a psychopath who ended up in Broadmoor with Sutcliffe et al. But as others have said, serial killers are compelled to kill for no personal gain other than thrills.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But I bet a lot of gangster killers - hitmen say - have a kind of enjoyment too, maybe not the same though.

Yeah, I'm sure your Capones, Krays, Escobars and so on took a certain relish in their work when it came to bumping people off but AFAIK they didn't really go in for killing 'civilians' just for the hell of it (although I'm sure many people who weren't either cops or rival mobsters got killed as collateral damage or because they were the partner or child of someone who'd pissed them off).
 
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