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Jul-28-2006 17:55

Anxious and impatient about the next feature that will be introduced? How about making ourselves acquainted already with some of the worst crooks history has ever seen.

I suggest each and everyone posts a biography in this thread about the criminal of his/her choice. I'll get this started with the biography of one of the most infamous of the all....

Ladies & Gents, the legendary AL CAPONE!!!!!

Jul-29-2006 02:43

Mysteriously, Jack the Ripper was never identified. The killings suddenly stopped. Much debate has gone on for years over the possible identities. A crazy freemason, psychotic surgeon, misogynistic butcher, an American Doctor (American to explain why the killings ceased suddenly-the killer returned home), a man or a woman? We will never know the answer to the riddle. But Jack the Ripper remains one of the truly great Arch Villains of all time.

Jul-29-2006 02:56

Jack the Ripper is the most notorious serial killer in history. Although there were many murderers who killed more people than he did, he caught the popular imagination because his identity has never been determined.
The murders happened in 1888 in Whitechapel, an impoverished area of London. There were five victims, all of them prostitutes: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. But the police at the time of the murders (and some of the later historians) thought that there might had been many more.
The murders were extremely savage. They all happened in a public place, the victim's throat was cut and the bodies were mutilated. Some of the victims had their internal organs removed, and this led the police to the conclusion that the murderer had some knowledge of surgery.
The police received hundreds of letters from people who claimed to be the killer, but they thought only three of them were genuine. They were signed "Jack the Ripper".
After the death of the fifth victim, the murders suddenly stopped, no one knows why. There were many theories about the identity of the killer, but nothing has ever been proved. The list of the possible (and sometimes impossible) suspects contains more than twenty names. The most prominent among them was prince Albert Victor, Queen Victoria's grandson, although this is highly unlikely. One of the strangest theories came from sir Arthur Conan Doyle who thought that the killer was a woman, probably a midwife.
The last police report about the case dates from 1896.

Jul-30-2006 11:02

THE CLEVELAND TORSO KILLER:

Throughout the 1930's a killer decapitated 12 vagrants in the Cleveland area. In many cases, the head of the victims was never found.

Eliot Ness was assigned to stop the killings, and became so frustrated in 1938 that he ordered police to arrest hundreds of vagrants and physically burn the area of Kingsbury where most of the murders had occured down.
This stopped the murders.

The likeliest suspect was a man named Sunheim. Sunheim had all the characteristics needed by the killer: He was large (There had been a size 12 footprint found at one of the crime scenes), he had psychological problems, he'd studied medicine -- necessary for how the killer performed the murders, and he lived in a nice house. The theory was that the killer was killing the victims somewhere private and then dumping them afterwards (explaining the missing heads in many cases, and disproportion of blood at the crime scenes.)

When Ness confronted Sundheim and told him he was under suspicion, Sundheim responded with "Prove it." Sundheim checked himself into a mental institution and died within 2 years, before Ness could officially prove it. Thus, the Cleveland Torso Killer's Identity was never truly identified.

Jul-30-2006 11:03

Er...the suspect's name was Sundheim, I left out the D in my first few spellings of the name.

BAH! I meant to do that. I was..er...testing all you.

Jul-30-2006 12:52

Here is one of my favorites, not quite in the theme of those above but if you have not read the stories it makes for fun research on how to be a criminal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat

Here is a quick blurb:

...We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society. It was easier in the old days, of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the building now as well. Now that society is all ferrocrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment...

Jul-31-2006 14:18

As far as i'm concerned there's 3 types or profiles (roughly) of killers;

1) The ones that are driven by "rational" motives such as money or eliminating witnesses
2) The ones that act in an impulse or sudden change of circumstances
3) The ones that apparently have no immediate motive or appeal on some vague "ideals" or justifacions based on an irrational background.

The next criminal belongs in the latter category. Even though he's featured in a contemporary setting, I definitely think he belongs in the list of alltime crooks. HELTER SKELTER!

Jul-31-2006 14:19

Charles Manson
born: 12-11-1934
birth place: Cincinatti, Ohio

Charles Manson was an unplanned, illegitimate child born to a sixteen-year-old mother, Kathleen Maddox. The young girl could not cope with her son, and often left baby Charles with his grandmother or aunt.

Charles spent some of his early years with an aunt and uncle in West Virginia, while his mother was in jail for auto theft, but the couple were fervently religious and very strict. After the freedom he had had with his mother, he found this regime difficult to abide, and was constantly in and out of boys’ homes and detention centres.

It would appear that Charles preferred life inside institutions. At one point, as he was due for parole, with his aunt ready and willing to care for him, a teenage Charles was found sodomising another boy with a razor blade held to his throat. He was then sent to the Federal Reformatory in St. Petersburg, Virginia, before being transferred to a more secure institution in Ohio.

Charles was paroled aged nineteen and soon married a waitress who bore him a son, Charles Jnr. He soon re-offended, however, and on his release from prison in California began a new career as a pimp.

His next crime was to con a young girl out of $700 before drug-raping her roommate. For this he served time in a penitentiary in Washington.

In 1967 Manson was released and went to San Francisco where he met up with a group of hippies. Being musical, he blended in well. The "Manson Family," as they became known, travelled around by bus and on their travels, Charles met Dennis Wilson, of the Beach Boys, through mutual friend Gary Hinman. Through him he also met Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day.

By this time, Manson had developed a racist philosophy, stating that there would be violent race riots beginning in the summer of 1969, in which black people would overthrow white people, performing hideous crimes in acts of retribution. He believed that he and his family, by hiding out

Jul-31-2006 14:20

in the desert at a place called the Spahn Ranch, could avoid this violence.

He told his followers, many of whom were impressionable girls from disturbed backgrounds, that they could reach paradise through a cave underneath Death Valley where they could stay until black people, due to their innate inferiority, relinquished their power.

By that time he estimated that the family would have grown to 144,000, and preached that when they all returned to earth, he - Jesus Christ - would lead them as the fifth angel (the other four angels being The Beatles).

In 1969, when the race riots had not begun, Manson claimed that the black people needed to be shown how to kill, as they were too stupid to work it out for themselves. He and his followers slaughtered five adults including Roman Polanski’s wife Sharon Tate who was eight months pregnant, at Terry Melcher’s Hollywood home, as well as another couple in Los Angeles, and Gary Hinman. The murders were horrifically gruesome, and around the crime scenes were messages, relating to Manson’s "philosophy", scrawled in blood.

Charles Manson and other members of the family were tried in 1970, and Charles was found guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was given the death penalty, but this was later commuted. He is currently being held in Corcoran Prison, California.

Jul-31-2006 14:33

What a nice bunch of people we assembled so far for a picknick :D

Jul-31-2006 20:28

One of my personal faves (and may well get my first deleted post just for the disgust factor ;)

This is the guy who originally inspired the Hannibal Lecter character:

Edward Theodore Gein (August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984), was one of the most notorious murderers in United States history. The particularly bizarre and morbid nature of his crimes shocked the world, even though it may never be known if he committed more than two murders. Besides the death of his brother in 1944 under puzzling circumstances, between 1947 and 1957 six people disappeared from the Wisconsin towns of La Crosse and Plainfield; Gein could be linked for certain to only two, though it is suspected there were more.
Ed Gein was born to Augusta T. Lehrke (1878–1945) and George P. Gein (1873–1940) on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His parents, both natives of Wisconsin, had married on July 7, 1900, and their marriage produced both Ed and his older brother, Henry G. Gein (1901–1944). Gein's father was a violent alcoholic who was frequently unemployed. Gein rejected his violent, aimless father, as did his older brother and especially Augusta, who treated him like a nonentity. Despite her deep contempt for her husband, the atrophic marriage persisted. Divorce was not an option, due to the family's religious beliefs. Augusta operated the small family grocery store and eventually purchased a farm on the outskirts of another small town, Plainfield, which became the Gein family's permanent home.

Augusta decided to move to this desolate location to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons. Gein only left the premises to go to school, and Augusta blocked any attempt he made to pursue friendships. Aside from school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta, who was a Lutheran and fanatically religious, drummed into her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drink, and above all that all women (herself excluded) were whores.