SERIAL KILLERS: A DEADLY RAGE
CRIME: A Smoldering Anger May Trigger Criminals Such as the `Bedroom
Basher' to Mete Out Suffering.
Orange County Register, 24 June 1996, pg. A1
By Teri Sforza
Something goes wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.
A hideous chemical aberration in the brain, perhaps. Or a brutal childhood at the
hands of savage parents. Something that triggers a rage inside.
These people never fit in; the notoriety of their actions spawns nicknames that
both depersonalize and mythologize them: the "freeway killer," "night stalker,"
"hillside strangler" and "bedroom basher."
"The interesting thing is that firearms are hardly ever used by serial killers to kill,"
said Bruce Danto, a forensic psychiatrist in Fullerton. "Guns don't give them that
feeling of power that they crave. They want a more intimate contact. They want
to see the suffering up close. Bludgeoning. Stabbing. Strangling. These are the
methods of choice."
Last week, a former U.S. Marine named Gerald Parker reportedly confessed to
being Orange County's "bedroom basher" _ a man who savagely beat at least six
women in 1978 and 1979, causing such a panic that many bought guns or
moved away.
Law-enforcement authorities said Friday that he is being looked at for additional
crimes here and outside Orange County that also fit his pattern.
The killings stopped after Parker went to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl in
1980. He was paroled in 1984 but immediately taken into custody on an assault
charge. He spent the next three years in jail and was paroled in Nov. 1987. He
was arrested in 1993 on burglary charges and, after spending two years and four
months in jail, was arrested again for another parole violation this January.
Police believe that at least three of Parker's victims from the 1979 attacks
survived:
Kim Whitecotton was attacked in her Costa Mesa apartment May 24, 1979. She
awoke to find a man repeatedly striking her face and head. She was unable to
see him; she says she believes that the man intended to kill her.
Jane A. Penttengill was attacked in her Costa Mesa home in July 1979.
Pettengill, 29, was bludgeoned about the head and still can only speak with the
help of an electrical device. She changed her name and moved to Northern
California after the assault.
Dianna Green was nine months pregnant when Parker allegedly raped her and
smashed her skull Sept. 30, 1979. Green's unborn daughter died. Green suffered
brain damage. But she nonetheless accused her husband, Kevin, of the attack.
On her testimony, an innocent man went to prison for 16 years. Kevin Lee Green
was released Thursday when DNA evidence cleared him and linked Parker to the
attack.
Experts in the field are cautious in attempting to generalize about motive.
"Be wary of anyone who says there's one cause behind serial killing: Every case
is unique," said Michael Rustigan, a criminology professor at San Francisco State
University. "What cuts through all these cases is rage _ rage against their own
feelings of impotence and powerlessness, an early anger that's been smoldering
for years.
"With most serial sadistic lust killers, you can't find any medical defect. You can't
find abnormal biochemistry or organic lesions or vitamin deficiencies. Most are as
physically healthy as anybody else. What we find is that something's been
festering. There's a lot of repressed hostility. Look at a gallery of (Ted) Bundy's
victims, very much resembling the one woman who dumped him," Rustigan said.
There are other common traits: Extreme narcissism. Monstrous egos. A lack of
guilt feelings. "They feel no compassion," Rustigan said. "They blame the victim.
It's always her fault: `The bitch wanted too much money.' What they've done is
completely undermine their own moral responsibility. What's missing is
conscience."
Killers are often plagued by self-loathing as well, said Reid Meloy, a forensic
psychologist in San Diego.
"They often choose victims who reflect what they consider to be their own most
disgusting characteristics. It's like a killing of the self," Meloy said.
And perhaps the most simple, cliched, but true motivation: hatred of women.
"There's a lot of data showing that these are misogynistic crimes," Meloy said.
"The hatred is displaced from the original woman in every man's life: his mother.
It sounds too Freudian and simplistic, but we have 50 years of cumulative data
suggesting that's the case."
That Dianna Green was raped in her ninth month of pregnancy _ and left for
dead _ speaks volumes about the attacker's wrath toward women and
motherhood, several experts said.
Peek into the background of many serial killers and you'll see a baby who never
bonded with his parents, Danto said. "There's no mother, no feeling of life or
appreciation for love. They've never had it. And particularly for the males, there's
no contact with the father, and no healthy social-sexual model. Dad is violent or
not there at all. It's not difficult to see how these people come into being. The
American family has been breaking down for years."
Court documents show that Parker was one of eight children. His mother died
when he was 8, and he was sent to live with his grandparents.
Rustigan believes there are six kinds of serial killers:
The "sadistic lust killer" (like Randy Kraft and Ted Bundy) “gets the most
attention and adores the feelings of power and control that killing gives him.”
"Thrill killers" enjoy terrorizing the community and lashing back at society.
The "greed killer" wants money, like the landlady who murders her renters and
then cashes their checks.
At first, "pedophiliac killers" murder the children they have sex with, usually
young boys, to get rid of the witnesses. Then they grow to enjoy killing as much
as sex, as "freeway killer" William Bonin did.
"Black widow serial killers" are often women who use poison to murder husbands
or children, often for control or money.
The Unabomber is an example of a "missionary serial killer" who murders for
what he believes is a holy cause.
The experts are divided on whet her there has been an increase in serial killers in
the past three decades. Danto believes the surge in Southern California
sociopaths in the late 1970s and early 1980s is linked to the closing of many
mental-health hospitals during budgetary cutbacks.
There is also disagreement on whether America is more prone to producing
serial killers than other nations. Rustigan is convinced this is so.
"America has about 5 percent of the world's population, and we produce 70
percent of the world's serial killers," Rustigan said. "England has certainly had its
share, and Russia. But it's distinctively American, and it has a lot to do with the
kind of extreme individualism we practice in America."
In other nations, violence is collective: In Bosnia and Rwanda, it's tribe against
tribe, clan against clan, Rustigan said.
"Ours is much more the loner, the drifter, the wide-open society."
Register staff writer Jonathan Volzke contributed to this stor y.
RECENT SERIAL KILLERS IN CALIFORNIA
Randy Kraft: Believed to have killed as many as 65 young men in Oregon,
Michigan and California during a 13-year span that ended in 1983. Kraft was
convicted of mutilating and murdering 16 young men in Orange County in 1988.
Kraft is currently on death row in San Quentin prison.
William George Bonin, aka the "freeway killer": Convicted of murdering 14 boys,
four of them in Orange County. He lured them inside his green van and sexually
assaulted and strangled them. Their nude bodies were often found face-down,
their wrists still bound. Bonin was executed by lethal injection Feb. 23 at San
Quentin prison.
Richard Ramirez, aka the "night stalker": The tall, lanky drifter from El Paso,
Texas, was convicted of 13 murders as part of a grisly rampage that terrorized
Southern California and led to a nationwide hunt. Some of the assaults were
tinged with satanic symbolism, such as pentagrams drawn on the body of one
victim. Ramirez is on death row in San Quentin prison.
Angelo Buono, left, and Kenneth Bianchi, aka the "hillside strangler": Between
1977 and 1978, the two men participated in the killing of 10 women in Los
Angeles. Buono was convicted in nine of the killings and sentenced to life
imprisonment; Bianchi, who testified against Buono, pleaded guilty to five
murders, plus two others in the state of Washington. Buono is in Folsom prison
serving a life sentence; Bianchi, who subsequently changed his name to Anthony
A. Amato, is serving a life sentence in a Washington prison.
Charles Manson: Manson and members of his notorious "family" are serving life
terms in various prisons for at least 11 murders committed in the late 1960s.
Manson is currently serving a life sentence in Corcoran state prison.
IN UNITED STATES
John Wayne Gacy Jr.: Convicted in 1980 of the sex slayings of 33 young men
and boys. The victims' bodies were buried in a crawl space at Gacy's home near
Chicago. Gacy was executed in 1994.
David Berkowitz, aka "son of Sam": Terrorized New York City in 1976 and '77 by
killing six people on the streets and in their cars. Currently in a New York prison
serving a life sentence.
Theodore Bundy: Convicted in 1979 of three murders, but police suspect Bundy
of killing 36 women in six states before his apprehension in Florida. Bundy was
executed in Florida in 1989.
Jeffrey Dahmer: After police found body parts in Dahmer's Milwaukee apartment
in 1991, he admitted killing 17 young men and boys, mutilating and sometimes
cannibalizing his victims. Dahmer was killed by a fellow inmate in a Wisconsin
prison in 1995.
Joel Rifkin: The New York landscaper admitted strangling or suffocating 17
prostitutes over two years in 1994. He claims he dismembered two or three for
easy disposal. Currently in prison in New York.
ABROAD
Rosemary West: Convicted in Great Britain in 1995 of torturing and killing 10
women and girls, including a daughter a! nd a stepdaughter.