#serial killer history

[harrison-abbott]

‘Jack the Ripper’, among the most famous serial killers ever, has never been identified, and historians and criminologists alike agree they are unlikely to ever pinpoint who he was. They do, however, reckon that the killer may have been somebody of surgical or medical knowledge. Most likely a surgeon – due to the manner of which the victim’s bodies were manipulated. In 1888, surgeons would’ve been wealthy, respected people; and thus wouldn’t have been suspected of being serial murderers.

[thehmn]

The oldest inn in Denmark sounds like something that was taken straight out of a horror story bordering on being too cliche or weird to be believable.

I present to you Bromølle Kro

We don’t know how old it is because it was first mentioned in a text from 1198 when it had already been open for years. I could go into detail about how it also used to function as a mill and store but that’s boring.

The first strange part is that the current building isn’t the original. You see, it was build on a bog and slowly each incarnation of the inn would get more and more damp, the floor would become soggy, mould would spread and the walls would bend as the whole thing sank into the ground. Eventually the owners would tear the whole thing down and build a new inn on the rubble. They did this over and over again, leaving everyone to wonder why they didn’t rebuild it somewhere else.

Then in the 1700’s guests started to disappear. It took a while for people to notice because most guests were travellers who were expected to be gone by morning anyway, but eventually so many people disappeared it couldn’t be ignored.

The couple who owned the inn were accused of getting rich patrons senselessly drunk, dragging them to their room and beating them to death with a club hidden under the bed. They then threw the victims out the window into the river that ran behind the inn.

For years people weren’t sure how true the story was. Did they really kill that many people? How would that even be possible without anyone seeing or hearing it?

Then in the 1950’s people wanted to straighten the river out for convenience and after they temporarily dried it up they started digging and found a skeleton. And another. And another. And another.

In all they dug up 28 skeletons from one small stretch of the river very close to the inn. And those were just the ones they found.

And despite all this the inn stayed in business. It wasn’t closed despite repeatedly sinking into the ground. It didn’t close when the owners were hanged for being serial killers. And it didn’t bother anyone that they had been sleeping and dining next to murder victims for years.

Today the ground has dried up and you can even enjoy the view of the river while you have lunch. They keep two of the skulls in the reception and named one of them Frede (a name that means peace/rest) for your viewing pleasure.

And somehow Bromølle Kro just keeps going and going…

[marzipanandminutiae]

I don't know if Lizzie Borden did or didn't Do It, but what matters more is what she did afterwards:

moved to a grand house with her sister and had intense, Ambiguously Gay friendships with actresses until her death at age 66

there's a terrible slasher film called Lizzie Borden's Revenge and I'm like. revenge for WHAT. what about the entire rest of her life could possibly leave her feeling in need of vengeance. barring local notoriety and the emotional toll thereof, the rest of her life was excellent

[pensivegladiola]

You can’t be too good at your job: FALSE.

Richard Mansfield’s 1880s onstage portrayal of Dr. Jekyll’s transformation into Mr. Hyde was so good that people accused him of being Jack the Ripper and even wrote letters to the London police encouraging his arrest.

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 28: Murder and

Disappearance Edition II

Given that Judge Crater, Roanoke, and the Dyatlov Pass Incident are credibly solved, though not 100% provable, I'm leaving them out in favor of things ,ore mysterious. I almost left out Amelia Earhart, but the evidence there is sketchier.

[bethanydelleman]

I was really fascinated to learn recently that there was once a serial killer who was heir to a throne of Joseon (now Korea). Like legitimately, he killed around 100 people, mostly servants. And they didn't know what to do about it because there are laws against harming the royal family but also his son might die too because of communal punishment. So eventually they forced him to get into a huge box and just waited for him to die of natural causes. And then they pretended that he was actually a cool guy so that his son could still inherit. And his son was actually a great king so that worked out well in the end I guess.

But yeah, you always have in the back of your head, "Maybe primogenitor is a bad plan because what if your heir wouldn't be a good king?" Well the worst case scenario did happen, at least once.

[distractedrighter]

I have a bad bad habit of falling in love with fictional men that I would 100% not last an hour with irl

[morbidology]

Somewhere between 1560 and 1610 in Scotland, Sawney Beane and his family are said to have killed and cannibalized thousands of travelers. His family were the product of incest and included eighteen grandsons, fourteen granddaughters, six daughters and eight sons. Soldiers stumbled across the family living in a cave and found smoked human flesh. The family were put to death in Leith.

[ao3screenshotss]

[thetudorslovers]

𝕱𝖊𝖒𝖆𝖑𝖊 𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖆𝖑 𝖐𝖎𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖎𝖓 𝖍𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 🍷🗡

1. Darya Saltykova was a Russian noblewoman accused of torturing and murdering at least 100 of her serfs. Most of the serfs she murdered were children and young girls. Complaints about Saltykova were ignored by officials for a very long time until relatives of her victims were able to bring an official petiton before Catherine the Great who sentenced her to be chained to a public platform for one hour wearing a sign stating 'This Woman tortured and Murdered', Saltykova was later imprisoned in the basement of a convent for the remainder of her life.

2. Alice Kyteler, a well known Serial Killer in Ireland during the 14th century, murdered 4 men and escaped to England where she was never heard from again.

3. Mary Ann Cotton, Britain's first serial killer, was suspected of the murders of 14 people, including her stepson, in her older life twenty one people close to her died. Her motive was gain, as she would marry, kill and collect the insurance money, then repeat it again. She was hanged in Durham prison on March 24, 1873.

4. Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a Hungarian noblewoman and reputed serial killer of hundreds of young women in the 16th and 17th centuries. Stories of her sadism and brutality quickly became part of national folklore, her infamy earning her the nickname “The Blood Countess” or “Countess Dracula”.

5. Giulia Tofana was an Italian professional purveyor of poisons, and the inventor of the deadly poison Aqua Tofana, which is named after her.

6. Locusta was a notorious maker of poisons in the 1st-century Roman Empire, active in the final two reigns of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. She supposedly took part in the assassinations of Claudius and Britannicus.

[oil-bh]

Do you think, when he was arrested, that Cell was seen as the same as any other prisoners? Do you think he resided in the same places, ate the same food, performed the same work? Do you think the guards saw him and his violent history and let him roam the same as the thieves whose POV we saw it through?

Or do you think they saw this barely 18-year-old, who turned to violence and cannibalism as a means to survive, and recognized the danger he posed? Do you think they held him down, fought against his struggle, and let the other prisoners know that he wasn’t like them?

Do you think Cell was confused, confused as to why he was so different from the other Brazilians that lived in those same conditions? Do you think that he saw them as threats not because they were ones, but rather, because he knew that they lived so much better than him, yet still wound up here?

Do you think this man— if you could even call this teen a man— saw JV, Pac, Mike, and Guaxinim as threats out of jealousy? Empty wishes that he could have lives their lives and made smarter decisions to be a free man roaming the earth?

Do you think he cried when they held him down and put that infernal thing on him?

Não.

Ele é um animal.

Os animais não sentem.

[adarkrainbow]

Sometimes, people wish fairy tales were real life. But in some cases, we deeply regret it...

Today I want to briefly talk about an actual real-life case of Bluebeard - the infamous French serial killer Landru. Of his full name, Henri Désiré Landru. Of his mediatic nickname, "The Gambais Blue Beard". Never had a criminal case been so close to the world of fairy tales: people like to call murderers "witches", "ogres", "devils", but this man is an actual real-life Bluebeard.

The criminal investigation began in 1918, when the mayor of the small town of Gambais (Yvellines) received a letter from a certain Miss Pellat. Miss Pellat was worried about one of her friends, Anne Collomb: she had recently taken domicile with her fiancé, Mister Dupont, at Gambais, but since then had abruptly cut off all communications. The mayor unfortunately could not be of help: he had no knowledge of any "mister Dupont" at Gambais. Not much later, the mayor received another letter about a missing woman - this time it was a "miss Lacoste", who asked about the wellness of her sister, Célestine Buisson, who had recently moved to Gambais with a "mister Frémyet". But again, the mayor was at loss: he knew not of anyone by this name.

The mayor however had the two families get in contact, and they realized that mister Dupont and mister Frémyet were one and the same... And both women had answered almost identical matrimonial advertisements. This opened an investigation, led by inspector Jules Belin. They found that the this mysterious man had taken his fiancées to an isolated villa near Gambais, called "L'Ermitage" (the place here the hermit dwells) because it was 300 meters away from the nearest house. The owner of the house explained that he did not live by it - he was renting it to "mister Frémyet". Said mister Frémyet claimed to live in Rouen, but this was a lie, and all of his letters were actually redirected to the mailbox of a certain "mister Guillet"... located at the house of Célestine Buisson, the second missing woman, in Paris.

The investigation could have stopped there, if a neighbor of miss Lacoste hadn't recognized the mysterious man, getting out of a Parisian earthenware shop with a a woman. The inspector Jules Belin discovered that this man was the famous "Lucien Guillet", and he had left an adress to the shop - for a special delivery. Finding the adress to be in Paris, he was arrested, in april of 1919, on the very day he was celebratng his fiftieth anniversary with... his family, his wife and kids. And this is where the inspector discovered that Dupont/Frémyet/Guillet was in reality called... Henri Désiré Landru.

Let us go back in time to understand how Landru became the monster he is known as. He was not born in a wealthy family, though his family was not miserable and he had quite a happy childhood. He was born in 1869, his mother was a seamstress, his father a factory worker. In school he proved to be excellent at drawings and mathematics, which led him to perform some architecture studies (though he did not pursue there very far - enough to get some low-ranking positions at an architecture firm as his first job).

In 1889, the same year he got said first job, he encountered his future wife, Marie-Catherine Remy, daughter of a laundress. To seduce her, he lied - the first of the many lies he would tell her. He pretended to have a better job within the firm he worked with than he really had, and as such he managed to marry her in 1893 (he had to do three years of military service in-between). Together they had, beteen 1891 and 1900, four children. After the crimes of their father was revealed, they demanded to have their family name changed to one of their mother, Remy.

Landru was not someone whom fortune smiled upon. Between 1893 and 1900, he practiced a dozen of different jobs and was hired by fifteen different people - sometimes he was a plumber, other times an accountant, sometimes he made roofs for houses, other times he draw maps for various projects... With four children to feed, this clearly wasn't enough - the Landru clan was living in poverty. So, to take care of his family as best as he could, Landru decided to abandon honest jobs, and he got into scams.

From 1900 to 1914, Landru organied many different scams and crooked operations to steal people's money. His first scam was organizing a national advertisement campaign about a future motorized bicycle factory (he had indeed prepared the previous year an actual, serious project for motorized bicycle, which he used to fuel his scam). He took pre-commands, but asked for a third of the price to be paid in advance - and of course, no bicycle was actually built...

Constantly switching names, he kept inventing more and more tricks. Buying garages but selling them immediately before even giving the original owner their money ; encouraging investors to fund a factory that did not exist ; organizing engagement celebrations with a woman only to run away after stealing her bank shares... Unfortunately he wasn't really good at fleeing justice - he regularly got minor condemnations to prison, spending there some months or years a handful of times. One of these condemnations was cut-short after he attempted a suicide, and the psychiatric reports of the time are very interesting when it comes to Landru's mental state. Because they noted that he clearly was not insane... but they still wrote that he was not fully sane. Not disturbed enough to have any mental disease, but still too disturbed to be treated like a regular person.

What happened in 1914 that made Landru fall into his "Blue Beard" ways? Why switch from being a petty crook to a serial killer? The most common and accepted theory is that it is due to the justice system. Due to having been sent to jail for a given amount of sentences "above three months", it was decided that his next sentence was to be sent "au bagne" - at the Guyane penal colony. Not only would this mean an exile and a life-long sentence, but back in the 1910s, many people di not survive the penal colonies due to the awful living conditions prisoners had to undergo. This was a true death sentence. So, Landru decided that, next time, he wouldn't be caught...

From 1914 onward, Landru put together a large "marital scam" with deadly conclusions. He put out matrimonial ads, again inventing all sorts of names and pseudonyms, but always presenting the same identity - he was a wealthy and lonely widow searching for a wife. By lying like this, he attracted 283 different women, that he seduced and entertained for a time - but many he rejected and did not do anything with. Why? Because they were ot isolated enough, or not rich enough. Landru was searching for victims with no direct family or close friends, and with some money and goods (even if they were not wealthy or upper-class). He managed to find some... he found ten of them, and he killed them one by one.

Landru was an expert liar and a sweet-talker. After making his victims believe he was indeed the wealthy widow he pretended, he convinced them to sign papers that would allow him to take control of their bank accounts. Then he took them to an isolated villa, where he killed them. He killed his four first victims in a villa of the small town of Vernouillet, but he then switched to the Gambais villa he is most famous for, where he murdered seven more people. Why the change? Because one day, as he got back from the Vernouillet house, he got caught with an expired train ticket and he was forced to leave papers with the villa's adress. Not wanting to get caught, he changed his "murder lair". Once the murders were performed, he took all of the money of his victims, and then went to their house to remove their furniture and belongings. He was even helped by one of his sons to move the items into garages and storage rooms he rented, before selling them at auctions.

His son, you ask? Well yes. Because you see: Landru pretended to his wife and kids that he was an antiquarian, and second-hand dealer - and they thought that all these furniture he handled, he had actually bought... And wait, you still ask, seven plus four? It makes eleven victims, not ten! Indeed... Not all of Landru's victims were women. One was a man. When he killed in 1915 his first victim, Jeanne Cuchet, a 39 year old widow... he also killed her son, the 17 years old André, who had been taken with his mother to the Vernouillet villa. Landru seemingly did not want to leave any "collatoral damage" behind... Not even animals were spared: we know that around the time of the murder of his final victim, Marie-Thérèse Marchadier, the 37 years old owner of a prostitution house, he also strangled her three dogs and left their corpses in her house in Paris.

It has been regularly pointed out that the context of World War One, "The Great War", whose dates match the dates of Landru's murder (he began his fake marital ads in 1914, killed his first victims in February 1915, his last in January 1919), it what definitively helped and eased Landru's transformation into a serial killer. His mental state, already withered by his family's poverty, his mythomania and his fear of the punishment of justice, clearly worsened with the ambiance of death and destruction of the conflict. And the confusion and chaos caused by the war made his murders much easier. If he could regularly return to his wife and kids for brief sojourns, even though justice knew he was a convicted crook fleeing his sentence and his sending at a penal colony, it was thanks to the war keeping everybody busy. If he managed to attract so many lonely bachelors and widows in search for some money and a more stable situation, it was thanks to the war. And the war even helped him with his lies and fake identities: he kept pretending he was a refugee from Northern France (which was then occupied by the German forces), and used this as an excuse for him not having any official papers.

Let us go back to when Landru was arrested.

The police found the many garages where he kept the furniture of his victims. It also found his full and complete comptability - which not only revealed the vastitude of his marital scam (as he had kept the names and adresses of all of his 283 "eventual fiancées"), but also listed all of the tools he had bought for his murders (metal saws, wood saws, lot of coal). How did Landru killed his victims? We don't know exactly how - did he poison them, strangle them? It is a mystery to this day. But we do know how he got rid of the bodies... When investigating the Gambais villa, police found burned remains in the chimney and in the stove. A few pieces of burned female garnment... and burned human bones. Three heads, five feet, six hands. It is considered today that Landru cut off the body of his victims in pieces - the large parts (torso, arms, legs) were buried in the forest or thrown in ponds, while the smaller parts (head, hands, feet) were burned in his stove and/or chimney. In fact, despite being isolated, L'Ermitage still got complaints by those living closest to it due to the "foul smells" that came out of its chimney from time to time.

But what condemned Landru more than anything was a little black notebook he had with him all the time... A notebook in which he had noted the name of the eleven missing person, with hours associated with them - likely the hours of the murders. As I said before, Landru had been an architect and accountant as well as a scammer - he was talented for mathematics and preparations, and from his days as a simple mythomaniac thief he had kept the habit of noting down everything. The name of his victims, the amount of money taken, his fake identities... And he had kept this habit, even as he had put up murderous plans. A final proof, which he tried to explain poorly to the justice: every time he brought one of his victims to Vernouillet or Gambais, it was by train, and he always got a two-way ticket for him... and a one way ticket for the woman.

Landru's trial began in 1921. It was one of the marking cases of the decade. All the newspapers were talking about this (even regularly mispelling Landru's name), and many famous singers and actors of Paris at the time came to assist to the trial - even foreign aristocrats came in France just for this occasion. It wasn't just because of the enormity and morbidity of such a case, as serial killers weren't truly a "thing" back then ; it was also due to Landru's own behavior.

Landru tried to use his eloquence, arrogance, humor and talent for acting to move the trial into his own way. It did not work, as he was condemned for his crimes, but it still managed to make his trial a true show. Many of Landru's lines were preserved by records and newspapers - his jury was known to often laugh at his jokes. He kept denying having killed anyone. "Show me the corpses!" he said. "If these women have any problem with me, they should file a complaint!". He admitted to the lies, the scams, the thief - he even cried when he admitted he cheated on his wife... But he pretended this story of "murders" was fully invented. "Mister, you keep speaking of my head - I am sorry I do not have many to offer you!" ; "Me? I made people disappear? Well, if you start believing anything the newspapers claim...". To the jury he kept saying they shouldn't bother to come all the way to the courtroom for "such small things", and he even had this crazy exchange with the judge. When the judge asked him what his children could think, seeing him with so many women, h answered "Mister the Judge, when I give orders to my children, they obey it, and I do not need to explain the why or the how. I wonder how you raise your own kids!"

The lawyers also kept putting out "coup de théâtre" after "coup de théâtre" - such as bringing in the courtroom the very stove in which Landru burned his victims. But the most famous episode is this one: the lawyer in charge of defending Landru claimed that the victims were not dead. They were alive, and about to enter the courtroom... right now! Immediately, all of the people of the jury turned their head towards the door, from which no one came. The lawyer, happy with his trick, explained that this was a proof that, deep in their heart, the jury knew there was a possibility for these women to not be dead, else they wouldn't have turned their head. He wanted to convince them that, subconsciously, they could feel these accusations were ridiculous and unfounded. However this turned against him when the other party noted "But... have you noticed? Landru did not turn his head."

Landru was beheaded at Versailles in 1922, and up until the end he still had a good word. To the priest who asked him if he believed in God, he answered "I am going to die, and you want me to play a guessing game?". To the man who offered him a last glass of rhum and a last cigarette, he answered "No, it's bad for the health." And to his own lawyer, who asked him if he was ready to finally confess to the murders before dying, he answered his last words: "This, Master, is my small luggage..."

There are many more things to say about the Landru case - the drawing he made of the stove, and behind which he wrote a mysterious sentence which might have been a confession ; the way his murder-villas and his stove kept being sold around and transformed through the following decades, but since we are looking at a Blue-Beard, I want to focus on how, despite being recognized as a well-known murderer, he still had women fall in love with him... After his arrest, and until his execution, he received four thousand letters of admiration from women, eight hundred of which were apparently marriage proposals.

The last of the lovers of Landru, the woman he was living with when he was arrested, and the one who might have been his next victim, was Fernande Segret. Fernande Segret, who admitted in court that Landru had tried to poison her two times during her relationship... Fernande Segret, who organized a trial for diffamation when in the 60s Claude Chabrol made a movie about Landru and partially won it... Fernande Segret who, on the anniversary of Landru's wedding proposal to her, in 1968, killed herself by drowning at the Flers castle: she still had a picture of Landru in her bedroom...

[lettucealone]

*pointing out Henry Winter to the dark academia girls*

This is your man? This guy? The guy who poisoned dogs to practice poisoning? The guy who slaughtered a piglet to bathe in its blood? The guy who slaughtered a farmer with his bare hands? The guy with an intellectual god complex? The guy experiencing total delusions of grandeur? The guy who killed his best friend? The guy who--

[allastoredeer]

I'm currently researching the 20th century education system in New Orleans (reading "Becoming American in Creole New Orleans" for anyone whose interested) and here's a little segment I came across:

"As Upton Sinclair observed in The Goslings: A Study of American Schools, it “is the thesis of the businessmen who run our educational system that the schools are factories, and the children are raw material, to be turned out thoroughly standardized, of the same size and shapes, like biscuits or sausages."

It's good to know that our education system never evolved past the 20th century, amirite fellas ♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 48: Early Modernish and Earlier 3

These Questions are the result of suggestions a the previous iteration.This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

[neighborlyarson]

The funniest headcannon I have for TMP at this point came with the revelation that Jonathan God Damn Sims himself has a tumblr on here: Chester being plugged into the internet has a tumblr or is at the LEAST intimately familiar with it.