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Warm up on Arch Villains
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BadAss
BadAss
Charioteer

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!!!!!

Replies

R Anstett
R Anstett

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...

BadAss
BadAss
Charioteer

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!

BadAss
BadAss
Charioteer

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

BadAss
BadAss
Charioteer

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.


BadAss
BadAss
Charioteer

Jul-31-2006 14:33

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

biggie528
biggie528
Lucky Stiff

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.

biggie528
biggie528
Lucky Stiff

Jul-31-2006 20:28

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. According to Augusta, the only acceptable form of sex was solely for procreation. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament dealing with death, murder and divine retribution. At the age of 10, Gein experienced an ejaculation upon viewing his mother and father slaughtering a hog in a nearby shed.[1] When Gein reached puberty, Augusta became increasingly strict, once dousing him in scalding water after she caught him masturbating in the bathtub, grabbing his genitals and calling them the curse of man. With a slight growth over one eye and an effeminate demeanor, the young Gein became a target for bullies. He was also

biggie528
biggie528
Lucky Stiff

Jul-31-2006 20:29

notorious for a permanent lopsided grin that was displayed even during serious conversations. Classmates and teachers recall other off-putting mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal joke. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading. Some researchers argued that Gein's dysfunctional childhood experiences were a contributing factor in his later behavior. notorious for a permanent lopsided grin that was displayed even during serious conversations. Classmates and teachers recall other off-putting mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal joke. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading. Some researchers argued that Gein's dysfunctional childhood experiences were a contributing factor in his later behavior.



biggie528
biggie528
Lucky Stiff

Jul-31-2006 20:30

Police investigating the disappearance of a store clerk, Bernice Worden, in Plainfield on November 17, 1957, suspected Gein to be involved. Upon entering a shed on his property, they made their first horrific discovery of the night: Worden's corpse. She had been decapitated, was hanging upside down by the ankles and had been split open down the torso like a deer. The mutilations had been performed post-mortem; she had been killed with a close-range blast from a .22-caliber rifle.

Searching the house, authorities found:

severed heads acting as bedposts in the bedroom;
skin used to make lampshades and upholster chair seats;
skullcaps made into soup bowls;
a human heart (it is disputed where the heart was found; the deputies' reports all claim that the heart was in a saucepan on the stove, with some crime scene photographers claiming it was in a paper bag);
a face mask made out of real facial skin found in a paper bag;
a necklace of human lips;
a waistcoat, called a "mammary vest," made up of a vagina and breasts;
and other items fashioned from the parts of human bodies, including a belt made from nipples.
Above all, Gein's most infamous creation was an entire wardrobe fabricated of human skin consisting of leggings, a gutted torso (including breasts) and an array of tanned, dead-skin masks that looked leathery and almost mummified.

Under questioning, Gein eventually admitted that he would dig up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and take the bodies home, where he tanned their skin to make his macabre possessions. After his mother died, Gein had begun to think often of castration and even considered a sex-change operation, but couldn't afford it. [citation needed] One writer describes Gein's practice of putting on the tanned skins of women as an "insane transvestite ritual."[2] Gein also participated in a stunted form of necrophilia, achieving sexual pleasure by playing with the mutilated sexual or

biggie528
biggie528
Lucky Stiff

Jul-31-2006 20:31

Gein also participated in a stunted form of necrophilia, achieving sexual pleasure by playing with the mutilated sexual organs of corpses. Gein denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining, "They smelled too bad." During interrogation, Gein also admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan, a local tavern employee who had been missing since 1954. At some point, Gein decided he wanted a sex change, although it is a matter of some debate whether or not he was transgendered; by most accounts, he created his "woman suit" so he could pretend to be his mother, rather than achieve a change in gender identity. [3] Harold Schechter, a leading expert on serial killers, wrote a best-selling book about the Gein case called Deviant. In this book, Schechter mentions a tragic footnote: Plainfield sheriff Art Schley physically assaulted Gein during questioning by banging Gein's head and face into a brick wall; because of this, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible. Schley died of a heart attack at the age of 43 shortly before Gein's trial. Many who knew him said he was so traumatized by the horror of Gein's crimes and the fear of having to testify (notably about assaulting Gein) that it led to his early death. One of his friends said, "He was a victim of Ed Gein as surely as if he had butchered him." Gein was found mentally incompetent and thus unfit to stand trial at the time of his arrest, and was sent to the Central State Hospital (now the Dodge Correctional Institution) in Waupun, Wisconsin. Later, Central State Hospital was converted into a prison and Gein was transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1968, Gein's doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial; he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the rest of his life in the hospital. While Gein was in detention, his house burned to the ground. Arson was suspected. In 1958, Gein's car, which he used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at

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