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Authors: Jeff Mariotte
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unnecessary bit of overkill. Once the victim was bagged, they tossed him into a Dumpster, believing that it would be emptied soon. When it wasn’t, a homeless man came along and opened the bags, then fled. The next passerby called the police. After that point, the Gemini crew delivered packages directly to the garbage dump or buried them beneath buildings under construction. The disassembly crew enjoyed its work and was good at it. Between 1977 and 1979 these men plied their trade almost nonstop.
The FBI whittled away at the Gemini crew, and finally Gambino decided that DeMeo’s habits were drawing undue attention to family matters. DeMeo, like so many of the people he had met in the last decade, was executed. He was shot seven times, and his body was left in the trunk of a car that was abandoned at a boat club. DeMeo wouldn’t be allowed to disappear the way his victims had—he was used to send a final message.
DeMeo associate Richard Kuklinski, also known as the Iceman, would also put Perotta to shame. Kuklinski was ten years old when his alcoholic father, Stanley, beat his older brother, Florian, to death. Young Richard and his mother lied about Florian’s cause of death in order to protect Stanley from the law. By age fourteen, Kuklinski had committed a murder of his own. Before his career came to an end, he claimed credit for at least 130; some sources put it closer to 200.
Kuklinski’s favorite murder weapon was cyanide, because it was hard to detect postmortem. But he was flexible, so he also used guns, knives, chain saws, and even a crossbow on at least one occasion. In his nearly scientific quest for murderous perfection, he sometimes froze the bodies of his victims to disguise their times of death, thereby earning himself the nickname the Iceman.
Kuklinski died in prison in 2006, reportedly of natural causes, but he was preparing to testify against Gambino family underboss Sammy Gravano. After the Iceman’s death, the charges against Gravano were dropped for lack of evidence.
Although people like Roy DeMeo and Richard Kuklinski—and the fictional characters Vincent Perotta and Tony “Basola” Mecacci, the Mob enforcers from “Reckoner” (503)—are not typically counted among the ranks of serial killers, they share many traits with them. Most notably, they suffer from a sociopathic lack of empathy. They feel no remorse about their victims, no sense of loss about lives snuffed out before their time. DeMeo and Kuklinski killed more for business reasons than personal ones, but they couldn’t have racked up the body counts they did if they weren’t supremely damaged human beings. In Kuklinski’s case, especially, the cause of that damage is obvious. Both men were, as the title of the episode suggests, natural-born killers.
2
Sexual Predators: Female Victims
THE MOST FREQUENTLY encountered unsubs on Criminal Minds are sexual predators. This might be because their particularly heinous crimes make dramatic television. When sex and death are mixed up, the result can be prolific serial killers whose fantasies lead them to kill and who refuse to stop. Some serial sexual predators focus on women, whereas others prey on men. What they have in common is the overriding urge behind their actions. They’re killing out of lust, and in most cases they’re powerless to stop themselves.
ONE KILLER who broke that final rule—who stopped himself cold, once he had dispatched the person at whom his anger was really directed—was Edmund Kemper, the Santa Cruz contemporary of Herbert Mullin’s. Kemper, the Coed Killer, is referred to by Aaron Hotchner as an example of a spree killer in the Criminal Minds episode “Charm and Harm” (120) and again, by David Rossi, as a killer with some characteristics similar to those of the unsub in “Penelope” (309).
Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 18, 1948, and it wouldn’t be long until he killed his first victims—his own grandparents. Since
The FBI whittled away at the Gemini crew, and finally Gambino decided that DeMeo’s habits were drawing undue attention to family matters. DeMeo, like so many of the people he had met in the last decade, was executed. He was shot seven times, and his body was left in the trunk of a car that was abandoned at a boat club. DeMeo wouldn’t be allowed to disappear the way his victims had—he was used to send a final message.
DeMeo associate Richard Kuklinski, also known as the Iceman, would also put Perotta to shame. Kuklinski was ten years old when his alcoholic father, Stanley, beat his older brother, Florian, to death. Young Richard and his mother lied about Florian’s cause of death in order to protect Stanley from the law. By age fourteen, Kuklinski had committed a murder of his own. Before his career came to an end, he claimed credit for at least 130; some sources put it closer to 200.
Kuklinski’s favorite murder weapon was cyanide, because it was hard to detect postmortem. But he was flexible, so he also used guns, knives, chain saws, and even a crossbow on at least one occasion. In his nearly scientific quest for murderous perfection, he sometimes froze the bodies of his victims to disguise their times of death, thereby earning himself the nickname the Iceman.
Kuklinski died in prison in 2006, reportedly of natural causes, but he was preparing to testify against Gambino family underboss Sammy Gravano. After the Iceman’s death, the charges against Gravano were dropped for lack of evidence.
Although people like Roy DeMeo and Richard Kuklinski—and the fictional characters Vincent Perotta and Tony “Basola” Mecacci, the Mob enforcers from “Reckoner” (503)—are not typically counted among the ranks of serial killers, they share many traits with them. Most notably, they suffer from a sociopathic lack of empathy. They feel no remorse about their victims, no sense of loss about lives snuffed out before their time. DeMeo and Kuklinski killed more for business reasons than personal ones, but they couldn’t have racked up the body counts they did if they weren’t supremely damaged human beings. In Kuklinski’s case, especially, the cause of that damage is obvious. Both men were, as the title of the episode suggests, natural-born killers.
2
Sexual Predators: Female Victims
THE MOST FREQUENTLY encountered unsubs on Criminal Minds are sexual predators. This might be because their particularly heinous crimes make dramatic television. When sex and death are mixed up, the result can be prolific serial killers whose fantasies lead them to kill and who refuse to stop. Some serial sexual predators focus on women, whereas others prey on men. What they have in common is the overriding urge behind their actions. They’re killing out of lust, and in most cases they’re powerless to stop themselves.
ONE KILLER who broke that final rule—who stopped himself cold, once he had dispatched the person at whom his anger was really directed—was Edmund Kemper, the Santa Cruz contemporary of Herbert Mullin’s. Kemper, the Coed Killer, is referred to by Aaron Hotchner as an example of a spree killer in the Criminal Minds episode “Charm and Harm” (120) and again, by David Rossi, as a killer with some characteristics similar to those of the unsub in “Penelope” (309).
Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 18, 1948, and it wouldn’t be long until he killed his first victims—his own grandparents. Since
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