Killer for Hire Tom Horn on This Day in History

 

This day in history: American scout, cowboy, soldier, range detective, and Pinkerton agent Tom Horn was executed by hanging on this day in 1903. “Killing is my specialty,” Horn reportedly once said. “I look at it as a business proposition, and I think I have a corner on the market.” 

"He was an unusually skilled rifleman, an ability that may have later encouraged him to gravitate towards a career as a professional killer. That his father was a violent man, who severely beat his son, might also explain how Horn came to be such a remorseless killer." Source

Horn is most notorious for being hired by numerous cattle companies as a cowboy and hired gun to watch over their cattle and kill any suspected rustlers. Horn developed his own means to fight thieves: "I would simply take the calf and such things as that stopped the stealing. I had more faith in getting the calf than in courts". If he thought a man were guilty of stealing cattle and had been fairly warned, Horn said that he would shoot the thief and would not feel "one shred of remorse".

Horn often gave a warning first to those he suspected of rustling and was said to have been a "tremendous presence" whenever he was in the vicinity. Fergie Mitchell, a rancher on the North Laramie River, described Horn's reputation: "I saw him ride by. He didn't stop, but went straight on up the creek in plain sight of everyone. All he wanted was to be seen, as his reputation was so great that his presence in a community had the desired effect. Within a week, three settlers in the neighborhood sold their holdings and moved out. That was the end of cattle rustling on the North Laramie".

Horn’s reign of murder ended in 1903 when he was hanged for killing a 14-year-old boy.

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The Zodiac Killer on This Day in History

 

This day in history: On this in 1969, Michael Mageau, 19, became the first person to survive a murder attempt by a man who would become known as the "Zodiac Killer", and the first to provide a description to the police. Mageau and a friend, 22-year old Darlene Ferrin, were shot while sitting in Ferrin's car parked at a municipal park in Vallejo, California. The killer then called police from a pay phone near the Vallejo Police Department. Ferrin died at the hospital, but surgeons were able to save Mageau. On August 1, the Vallejo Times Herald and two San Francisco newspapers would receive letters from a man who would claim responsibility for Ferrin's murder and for the December 20 murder of two high school students in Benicia, along with a cryptogram, and demanded that the three papers publish the letters to avoid more murders.

The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer, who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The case has been described as the most famous unsolved murder case in American history. It became a fixture of popular culture and inspired amateur detectives to attempt to solve it.

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The Gorilla Killer on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: Earle Nelson was born on this day in 1897. Earle Leonard Nelson, also known in the media as the Gorilla Man, the Gorilla Killer (he was described as a dark and stocky man with long arms and large hands), and the Dark Strangler, was an American serial killer, rapist, and necrophile, who is considered the first known serial sex murderer of the twentieth century. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, by his devoutly Pentecostal grandmother, Nelson exhibited bizarre behavior as a child, which was compounded by head injuries he sustained in a bicycling accident at age 10. After committing various minor offenses in early adulthood, he was institutionalized in Napa for a time.

Nelson began committing numerous rapes and murders in February 1926, primarily in the West Coast cities of San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. In late 1926 he moved east, committing multiple rapes and murders in several Midwestern and East Coast cities before moving north into Canada, raping and killing a teenage girl in Winnipeg, Manitoba. After committing his second murder in Winnipeg, he was arrested by Canadian authorities, convicted of both murders and sentenced to death. Nelson was executed by hanging in Winnipeg in 1928.

In undertaking his crimes, Nelson had a modus operandi: Most of his victims were middle-aged landladies, many of whom he would find through "room for rent" advertisements. Posing as a mild-mannered and charming Christian drifter, Nelson used the pretext of renting a room in the landladies' boardinghouses to make contact with them before attacking. Each of his victims were killed via strangulation, and many were raped after death. His penultimate victim, a 14-year-old girl named Lola Cowan, was the only known victim to be significantly mutilated after death.

Nelson's crime spree, which consists of 22 known murders, made him the most prolific serial killer by convictions in American history until the discovery of Juan Corona's crimes in 1971. He was a source of inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt.

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Contract Killer "The Iceman" on This Day in History

This day in history:  American criminal and convicted contract killer, Richard Kuklinski, was born on this day (April 11) in 1935. He was given the moniker Iceman by authorities after they discovered that he had frozen the body of one of his victims in an attempt to disguise the time of death. Kuklinski was engaged in criminal activities for most of his adult life; he ran a burglary ring and distributed pirated pornography. He committed at least five murders between 1980 and 1984. Prosecutors described him as someone who killed for profit. Kuklinski lived with his wife and children in the New Jersey suburb of Dumont. They knew him as a loving father and husband, although one who also had a violent temper. They stated that they were unaware of his crimes. 

Kuklinski's modus operandi was to lure men to clandestine meetings with the promise of lucrative business deals, then kill them and steal their money. He also killed two associates to prevent them from becoming informants. Eventually, Kuklinski came to the attention of law enforcement when an investigation into his burglary gang linked him to several murders, as he was the last person to have seen five missing men alive. An eighteen-month-long undercover operation led to his arrest in December 1986. In 1988, he was convicted of four murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2003, he received an additional 30-year sentence after confessing to the murder of a police officer named Peter Calabro.

After his murder convictions, Kuklinski gave interviews to writers, prosecutors, criminologists, and psychiatrists. He claimed to have murdered anywhere from 100 to 200 men, often in gruesome fashion. None of these additional murders have been corroborated.

As to whether he was a sociopath or psychopath, I found this comment on Quora: "I believe he might have been a primary psychopath with strong secondary traits. Genetics and environment. He had a really rough childhood with both his parents being abusive.

He didn't kill for the hell of it, he wasn't sadistic, he just did what he was supposed to do. To earn a living, to support his family. He had a purpose, he had several reasons to why he chose that life. And it was easy for him. He didn't feel anything about it, it was a job, he did his job and that was that.

This is methodical, calculating, callous, ruthless, goal oriented, he immediately got rid of potential problems, it wasn't emotional nor dramatic. He even used cyanide sometimes to make it less messy. He just wanted it done.

He wasn't apathetic like sociopaths seem to be. He felt loyalty to his family. Sociopaths would sell their mother if they got a good offer, they don't have a sense of loyalty, nor friendships etc. He seemed to have low emotional empathy, but really high cognitive empathy.

Also very violent and paranoid. A typical low functioning primary psychopath." Source

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The 2009 Lakewood Shooting on this Day in History

 

This Day in History: Four police officers of Lakewood, Washington were fatally shot at the Forza Coffee shop in the Parkland unincorporated area of Pierce County, Washington, near Tacoma. A gunman, later identified as Maurice Clemmons, entered the shop, shot the officers while they worked on laptops, and fled the scene with a single gunshot wound in his torso. After a massive two-day manhunt that spanned several nearby cities, an officer recognized Clemmons near a stalled car in south Seattle. When he refused orders to stop, he was shot and killed by a Seattle Police Department officer.

Prior to his involvement in the shooting, Clemmons had five felony convictions in Arkansas and eight felony charges in Washington. His first incarceration began in 1989, at age 17. Although his sentences totaled 108 years in prison, those for burglary were reduced in 2000 by Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee to 47 years, which made him immediately eligible for parole. The Arkansas Parole Board unanimously moved to release him in 2000. Clemmons was subsequently arrested on other charges and was jailed several times. In the months prior to the Parkland shooting, he was in jail on charges of assaulting a police officer and raping a child. One week prior to the Parkland shooting, he was released from jail after posting a $150,000 bail bond.

Mike Huckabee was widely criticized for having commuted Clemmons' sentence and allowed his release from prison in 2000. In his book about the shooting, The Other Side of Mercy, Jonathan Martin of The Seattle Times wrote that Huckabee apparently failed to review Clemmons' prison file, which was "thick with acts of violence and absent indications of rehabilitation." Martin also suggested that Huckabee failed to ensure Clemmons' post-release plan was "solid, or even factual." In an article for the Times, Martin wrote that if Huckabee was serious about running for president in 2016, "he'll have to answer his Maurice Clemmons problem."

At a previous arrest, Clemmons made religiously-themed comments and referred to himself as The Beast. He also told a police officer that Obama and LeBron James were his brothers, and Oprah Winfrey was his sister.

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The Times Square Killer on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: American serial killer and rapist Richard Cottingham, who murdered a minimum of 12 young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980, was born on this day in 1946. He was nicknamed The Torso Killer and The Times Square Killer. In 2009, nearly 30 years after being convicted of five murders in New Jersey and New York in 1981–1984, Cottingham admitted to a journalist that he had committed at least 80 to 100 "perfect murders" of women in various regions of the United States, of which, since 2009, six have been subsequently confirmed and their cases closed. Cottingham was convicted of five murders, two in New Jersey and three in New York, plus multiple charges of kidnapping and sexual assault and other charges. Four surviving victims testified against Cottingham; he was convicted in three of the abduction-rape survivor cases and acquitted in one.

He earned the nicknames the “Torso Killer” and “Times Square Torso Ripper,” after two victims were found savagely dismembered and decapitated, then set on fire, in a Times Square motel in 1979. 

The remains incarcerated at the state prison in New Jersey to this day.

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Serial Killer Gary Evans on This Day in History

This day in history: American thief and confessed serial killer Gary Evans was born on this day in 1954. His penchant for stealing antiques and his multiple escapes from custody — including one that ended in his death — made him headline news in the New York area on numerous occasions.

On August 12, 1998, Evans was arraigned at the Rensselaer County District Court and charged with three murders. He was then transferred to the Rensselaer County Jail, where he was charged with parole violations before the local court. Two days later, while en route to Troy and passing through the Menands Bridge, Evans, despite being in manacles and chained, used a secret key hidden in his nose to free himself. He then broke the window of the transport van and jumped out. He was quickly cornered by police, but managed to run to the fence and leaped into the Hudson River, hitting the shallows below which caused him fatal head injuries. Due to the circumstances, his death was ruled a suicide.

Also, anti-Capitalist journalist and murderer Ulrike Meinhof was born on this day in 1934. After being charged with multiple murders and attempted murder, she was found hanged in her cell in the Stammheim Prison. The official finding of suicide sparked controversy. One year later, on 7 April 1977, two members of her group assassinated the Federal Attorney-General Siegfried Buback as revenge for her alleged murder.

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Blondie's Debbie Harry on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Debbie Harry, the lead singer of the 1970's band Blondie was born on this day in 1945. Did you know: Debbie Harry was almost one of Ted Bundy's first victims but managed to get away?

"According to Interview Magazine, she previously revealed the time she met the famous killer back in 1972, and how she managed to escape his grasp. ‘It was in the early 70s and I was trying to get across town at two or three o’clock in the morning,’ she said. 'This little car kept coming around and offering me a ride. I said no but I finally took it because I couldn’t get a cab.' The star went on to describe the interior of the car and claimed it had been completely stripped, as well as there being no door handles." Source

"By sheer luck, Harry managed to flee after Bundy saw her reaching her arm through a crack in the window. He took a turn so fast that the passenger door flung open. Harry jumped out and fled to safety. Years later, Harry saw Bundy’s face plastered across the cover Newsweek after his execution in Florida. She realized he was the same man who offered her a ride." Source

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"Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski on This Day in History

This Day in History: Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski was captured at his Montana cabin in the United States on this day in 1996. [Ted Kaczynski came to be called the Unabomber because his early targets were universities and airlines — ‘Un’ for ‘University,’ ‘A’ for ‘Airline,’ unabom.”]

"Over a seventeen-year period, he mailed bombs to a number of targets (e.g., universities, airlines) killing three persons and injuring a score of others. While he was quite open about the socio-politico motives for his violent acts, thoughtful minds wondered how an otherwise intelligent and well-educated man could reduce himself to such acts of utter desperation." Source

"[Kaczynski] would leave messages encrypted with mathematical codes that not even the FBI could crack. He managed to escape capture for 17 years, a feat showing genuine intelligence. What finally did him in? When his manifesto was released, his brother and sister-in-law recognized the writing style and tipped off the FBI. Who knows if he would have been caught otherwise." Source

Of course, history is full of "geniuses" who've lost their minds in other ways, such as: Paul Erdos, Lord Bertrand Russell, John Nash, Nietzsche, Pythagoras, Lord Byron, Tycho Brahe, Michelangelo, Nikola Tesla, Empedocles, Poe and Sir Isaac Newton.

"...madness enters in some measure into most of the great minds with which history makes us acquainted; and that it often becomes very difficult to establish the difference which predispositions to madness present, from certain conditions known as those of reason."~M. Octave Delepierre

Was Ted Kaczynski a creature of the Left or the Right? He derided leftism as "one of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world". He also addresses right-wing politics as a movement, describing conservatives as "fools" who "whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth".

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The Taco Bell Strangler on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Henry Louis Wallace, also known as "The Taco Bell Strangler" was born on this day in 1965. Wallace is an American serial killer who killed ten women in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the early 1990's and is awaiting execution at Central Prison in Raleigh. 

Wallace earned the name "The Taco Bell Strangler" because he worked as a Taco Bell manager, and even killed some of his co-workers there.

North Carolina has produced a number of killers over the years, such as Jeffrey Robert MacDonald, aka The Green Beret Killer, a United States Army captain (Fort Bragg) who was convicted in August 1979 of murdering his pregnant wife and two daughters in February 1970 while serving as an Army Special Forces physician. Joe McGinniss wrote the book "Fatal Vision" about this case. MacDonald remains incarcerated in the Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution.

Gary Michael Hilton known as The National Forest Serial Killer, is an American serial killer responsible for four known homicides between 2007 and 2008 committed in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. On February 22, 2011, he was officially sentenced to death for the crime and sent off to Florida's death row.

Frederick Robert Klenner Jr. was a mass murderer who killed several victims between 1984 and 1985. Police spotted him in Greensboro in June 1985, but they never got a chance to arrest and charge him for his crimes. He detonated an explosive inside his vehicle, killing himself as well has his girlfriend, Susie Lynch, and her two sons. His other victims were identified as Lynch's family members. 

Scott Wilson Williams is a convicted serial killer who lived in Monroe, North Carolina. He has been convicted for the murders of three women that took place over a period of nine years. He has also been convicted of crimes against two additional women who were not killed. Williams is imprisoned at Alexander Correctional Institution.

As of 2018, there were 141 people on death row in North Carolina (North Carolina has the sixth largest death row in the USA)...a few end up dying of natural causes while awaiting execution. There have been nine people in North Carolina sentenced to death who turned out to be innocent.

North Carolina is far from being the worse place for serial murder. "Within the US, there is one state in particular which seems to be the serial killer capital of the world: California. With over 120 serial killers to its name, equaling a total of around 1600 serial killing-related deaths, the Golden State has been the hunting grounds of some of the most brutal and terrifying criminals in US history." Source

Florida and Texas take second and third place. Alaska has the most serial killers per capita.

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