By Annarocket
Andrea Yates shocked the world by drowning her five children, one after another on a hot summer morning in 2001. For most people it was an open and shut case: anyone who would commit such an act clearly had issues beyond what normal post-natal depression would cause. There was no rehabilitation for an act like that, only swift Texas justice with the harshest punishments meted out to those responsible. And Andrea was saying over and over that she had drowned her five children, she was guilty. It seemed that every minute of media coverage, Andrea had to herself, she stared vacantly, completely lost. Between her husband and the children, there wasn't much room for anything else.
And Andrea had other things working against her. Her husband pressuring her to have children although they were told it would be very risky to Andrea's mental health. The self-stylized rantings of a drive-in evangelist named Michael Woroniecki who encouraged Andrea to not take medication and disapproved of her parenting skills. More about Rusty than Andrea, I still found this interesting because I didn't have any questions about her. It was him I wanted to hear explain himself. Gives a good background of the legal proceedings on the case, as well.
When Scott Peterson was accused, then convicted of the murder of his 8 month pregnant wife, Laci, it became one of the most followed crimes of 2002. Laci Rocha Peterson was beautiful, on the cusp of giving birth to a son they had planned to name Conner when she vanished on Christmas Eve. From the minute Scott came under suspicion during Laci's disappearance, until he was arrested and charged with her murder, crime sites were flooded with talk about Peterson. Focusing less on the crime, and more on the sociopath, Dr. Ablow made a name for himself by examining the childhood and adolescence of Peterson and the family dynamic that shaped the choices Scott made for years to come.
As an adult, Peterson was a pathological liar and a continual womanizer, he went through his adult years using every person he met to his advantage. It's almost surprising Scott and Laci married at all, considering he was carrying on affairs with three women besides his wife. It's interesting to read how Peterson lied his way through life, feeling absolutely no remorse or regret whatsoever for any of the actions he chose. This book outlines the women he used and speculates on how he felt if he did indeed kill Laci, which the author believes he did. Literally takes you into the mind, as the title suggests, and it is fascinating.
On April 20,1999 the first school shooting classified as a mass murder happened in Littleton, Colorado. As we all know, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold assembled a teenage arsenal with which to blow up their school, Columbine High. Building pipe bombs and collecting firearms, this excellent books shows how both boys were thinking about killing and the thoughts they had for as many as two years before the shootings.
It also debunks many of the myths that the American public had about what was reported: the myth about the Christian martyrdom of Cassie Bernall, the length of time it took for the building to clear, the holding off of the parents to hear about the death of their children, and heaps of police errors in a situation they clearly were not trained to control.
Sympathetic to the families of the killers and emphasizing details that are absoluty infuriating about what the county conceded to the parents of the killers and held from the American public. This book will have you wondering how the parents could have neglected to know their sons had TEC-9's and sawed off Mossburgs in their bedrooms and homemade hand grenades in the basement. A stunning book with more information than most of us had any clue was going on, and the things the things that have been kept from the American public will leave your jaw dropping with shock and disgust. A thought provoking book,especiallly if you have school age children
Elizabeth Pena, aged 16 and her best friend Jennifer Ertman aged 14 were lovely young women just coming into their own in their beginning of the summer in Houston, Texas. June 24,1993 was a night that was to the change the lives of so many people, to try and list them here would be futile. To coin a phrase, read the book! And read it do, because for the crimes of raping, viciously sexually torturing and murdering these two young women barely beginning their lives, a group of the lowest of the low tried to make excuses [which the author concurred, disgustingly] about everything they could to excuse the absolutely terrifying experience Elizabeth and Jennifer suffered at the hands of these criminals.
It has been a really long time since a book made me nauseated on so many levels I almost couldn't finish it. The brutality of the acts, the almost unimaginable pain and fear, for both the victims and the parents of the victims all made me cringe, and that's hard to do. Top that with the author's occasional comment snuck in that it was a poor Hispanic upbringing and broken homes that made these young boys into monsters, by the time I was finished, I was just rubbing my eyes and wanting to smack someone....anyone. But the author had the last laugh on me, when he proceeded to the incarceration phase and the end result. Well written, detailed and a hard read [if you have a teenage daughter, especially] but a Serial Killer Magazine pick of the best.
I found this great little hardback at Barnes & Nobel up by the cash wrap and it immediately sucked me in, with a simple cover of a bloody knife and handprint. Like a who's who of the most notorious crimes from all over the world, it covers basics on cases like Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, who were called the original “Natural Born Killers” to more contemporary criminals like Richard Ramirez who we all know as The Night Stalker. They have some Australian crimes I hadn't heard much about and I'm looking forward to checking up on and chapters on both Charlie and the family. Very enjoyable, this book is one you'll hear yourself saying more than once, as you read, “I didn't know that”.
On November 25, 1996 Ruth and Rick Wendorf were beaten to death in their home with a tire iron. Their two teenage daughters were not home at the time, but one shortly arrive and found the bodies of her parents. Where was the other one? The younger one, Heather Wendorf had made some new friends who had delusions of immortality: they had spent hours in the local cemetery, cutting their wrists and tasting each other's blood. The leader was a young man named Rod Ferrel, with a pregnant girlfriend and a few loyal followers that believed everything he said. In the days before Twilight and New Moon, these kids were interested in astral projection and traveling the sands of Cairo. Sadly, Heather's parent's wound up being the victims of Rod's fantasy of spilling blood and as they drove away from Florida, the police knew that if they didn't catch up with the group, someone else was able to wind up dead at Rod's hand. Aphrodite Jones weaves a tale skillfully in these pages, and you'll be turning pages and asking questions as fast as she can answer them.
This book rides the line between crime and music but I've given it a review here because I believe many of our readers would enjoy it. As many of us know, on December 8, 2004 Dimebag Darell Abbott formerly of the band Pantera, and then of the band Damageplan, was shot and killed onstage by a disgruntled fan of Pantera who had misguidedly thought Dime was responsible for the breakup of Pantera. In this book, the writer goes about telling about the night of the crime and Dime's death. He also talks about the brave men who tried to save the band and the fans. Three others were killed by this man who was in possession of a firearm his mother gave him as a gift after being discharged from the military. Packed with photos of the scene, profiles of the men who saved lives that night and a forward by Officer James Niggmeyer, the officer who killed the shooter, this book is a must read for any Pantera fan, or anyone who wondered how someone managed to get a firearm into that club and kill one of metal's most beloved guitarists.
Editor's note: this list ran in Serial Killer Magazine as version 3.0 of a recurring column and is published here as the author wrote it, spellings included. It is a column of book reviews, so the opinions in it are hers and the summaries describe what each book argues rather than what this archive holds.
Four things need correcting against the record. The book called Columbine is by Dave Cullen, not Bill Cullen. Columbine was not the first school shooting classified as a mass murder; it is the one that changed how they were reported, which is closer to what the review goes on to describe. The leader of the Wendorf case is Rod Ferrell, with two Ls, and he was sentenced to death in 1998 at seventeen, later commuted to life. The officer who ended the Alrosa Villa shooting is James Niggemeyer.
One point of substance rather than spelling. Most of the men and women in these seven books are not serial killers, and the column never claims they are: Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity at her second trial in 2006 and is held in a state hospital, not a prison, and Scott Peterson's conviction has been through a great deal since this was written, including the vacating of his death sentence in 2020. The list is a true-crime reading list, not a roster.