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Authors: Harold Schechter, David Everitt
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police were inundated with letters purporting to be from the shadowy killer. Almost all of these were hoaxes, but one was signed with a sinister pseudonym that would quickly become the most infamous name in criminal history:
Dear Boss,
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. . . . I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. . . . My knife is nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Ninety years later, the New York City psycho who, until that time, had been known as the “.44-Caliber Killer” received a new and permanent nickname when he left a ranting letter at a crime scene. Addressed to a Queens police captain, the letter began:
I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But i am a monster. I am the “son of Sam.” I am a little brat.
When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood.
“Go out and kill,” commands father Sam.
Behind the house some rest. Mostly young—raped and slaughtered—their blood drained—just bones now. . . .
I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else—programmed to kill.
In August 1969, another serial assassin who murdered with a gun—the California killer known only as Zodiac —mailed letters to three Bay Area newspapers. Part of each letter was written in code. When these passages were deciphered, they formed one chilling message: “I like to kill people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest, because Man is the most dangerous animal of all. . . . The best part will be when I die. I will be reborn in Paradise, and then all that I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will tryto slow or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.” The following month, Zodiac sent another letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, threatening to “wipe out a school bus full of children”—a threat which, thankfully, he never carried out.
“Zodiac” letter
The tradition has continued in recent years in the case of Wichita’s BTK Strangler. During a murder spree in the late 1970s, this Midwestern psycho-killer fired off a series of letters that followed the usual pattern. The culprit used the correspondence to supply his own sinister nickname (an acronym based on his sadistic MO: Bind, Torture, Kill), as well as to generate media attention. And like a sulky child, he grew petulant when his tactics didn’t work. When a newspaper failed to respond quickly enough to one of his letters, he wrote back and demanded: “How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?”
In one way, though, BTK was different from his predecessors. As with Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac killer, his murders came to an abrupt halt. Unlike those earlier psychos, however, BTK suddenly piped up again years later in 2004 with a whole new stream of correspondence. The reason? Perhaps he was starving for recognition again. After all, the Green River Killerhad just been captured and was garnering nationwide attention. It’s possible that BTK was feeling neglected.
Or maybe he just wanted to get caught. That would explain why one of his new packages contained a computer disk which could be traced to the machine that had housed it—a clue that helped police arrest Dennis Rader, who was quickly charged with the stranglings that had happened nearly thirty years before.
“I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater, I am
Dear Boss,
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. . . . I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. . . . My knife is nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Ninety years later, the New York City psycho who, until that time, had been known as the “.44-Caliber Killer” received a new and permanent nickname when he left a ranting letter at a crime scene. Addressed to a Queens police captain, the letter began:
I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But i am a monster. I am the “son of Sam.” I am a little brat.
When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood.
“Go out and kill,” commands father Sam.
Behind the house some rest. Mostly young—raped and slaughtered—their blood drained—just bones now. . . .
I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else—programmed to kill.
In August 1969, another serial assassin who murdered with a gun—the California killer known only as Zodiac —mailed letters to three Bay Area newspapers. Part of each letter was written in code. When these passages were deciphered, they formed one chilling message: “I like to kill people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest, because Man is the most dangerous animal of all. . . . The best part will be when I die. I will be reborn in Paradise, and then all that I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will tryto slow or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.” The following month, Zodiac sent another letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, threatening to “wipe out a school bus full of children”—a threat which, thankfully, he never carried out.
“Zodiac” letter
The tradition has continued in recent years in the case of Wichita’s BTK Strangler. During a murder spree in the late 1970s, this Midwestern psycho-killer fired off a series of letters that followed the usual pattern. The culprit used the correspondence to supply his own sinister nickname (an acronym based on his sadistic MO: Bind, Torture, Kill), as well as to generate media attention. And like a sulky child, he grew petulant when his tactics didn’t work. When a newspaper failed to respond quickly enough to one of his letters, he wrote back and demanded: “How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?”
In one way, though, BTK was different from his predecessors. As with Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac killer, his murders came to an abrupt halt. Unlike those earlier psychos, however, BTK suddenly piped up again years later in 2004 with a whole new stream of correspondence. The reason? Perhaps he was starving for recognition again. After all, the Green River Killerhad just been captured and was garnering nationwide attention. It’s possible that BTK was feeling neglected.
Or maybe he just wanted to get caught. That would explain why one of his new packages contained a computer disk which could be traced to the machine that had housed it—a clue that helped police arrest Dennis Rader, who was quickly charged with the stranglings that had happened nearly thirty years before.
“I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater, I am
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