Gifted Serial Killers:
John Wayne Gacy
Edmund Kemper
Theodore Bundy
An Honors Thesis (HONRS 499)
by
Lindsay Wayne
Thesis Advisor
Jennifer Warrner
Ball State University
Muncie, Indiana
December 6, 2007
Will Graduate May 2007
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The names John Wayne Gacy, Ed Kemper, and Ted Bundy were not made famous by anything good they did. In fact, these three men were some of ...
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Gifted Serial Killers:
John Wayne Gacy
Edmund Kemper
Theodore Bundy
An Honors Thesis (HONRS 499)
by
Lindsay Wayne
Thesis Advisor
Jennifer Warrner
Ball State University
Muncie, Indiana
December 6, 2007
Will Graduate May 2007
(~ r^ l. ,':'^ t~ Abstract /I,r; ' The names John Wayne Gacy, Ed Kemper, and Ted Bundy were not made famous by anything good they did. In fact, these three men were some of the most notorious serial killers that the United States has ever seen. Each man was very different in the way he killed, his victim choice, and his general personality. In this paper, I describe the general background and actions of each killer, and then give a profile of each killer. Criminal profiling is a recent trend, but law enforcement now utilizes criminal profilers to examine crimes and crime scenes to help get an idea of the personality of the person responsible. Finally, I explain the gifted characteristics that each killer possessed, as this project was inspired after taking a class on giftedness.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Ms. Jennifer Warmer for helping to both inspire this thesis idea and for supporting me through the completion of this project. Her creativity and advice helped to keep me motivated and focused.
John Wayne Gacy Background John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago in March of 1942, the second of three children to Marion and John Stanley Gacy. He was raised in a middle class neighborhood, and kept busy with Boy Scouts and different part-time jobs. Gacy had a very stressful relationship with his father, who was a verbally abusive alcoholic, and the two were never close. After spending time in Las Vegas working, Gacy moved back to Chicago in the early 1960's. He enrolled in a business college, and found he was talented as a salesman. Eventually, Gacy rose to a management position for Nunn-Bush Shoe Company in Springfield, Illinois. In Springfield, Gacy was very involved in the community in organizations such as the Chi Rho Club, the Catholic Inter-Club Council, the Chicago Civil Defense, and the Jaycees, where Gacy was even voted "Man of the Year" (Crimelibrary.com, 2006). In 1964, he married Marlynn Myers and moved to Waterloo, Iowa. In 1967, when Gacy was around the age of twenty-six, he began to bring boys to his home. At this point, he was not killing the boys, just engaging them in sexual acts. Gacy claimed the sex was consensual, even though he would do things like tie boy's hands behind their backs before he raped them. Gacy was brought to trial for sodomy and sentenced to ten years in the Iowa State Reformatory for Men in Anamosa. This was the beginning of the end of Gacy's marriage to Marlynn and contact with his children (Morrison, 76). While in prison, Gacy became one of the prison's top chefs and started a prison chapter of the Jaycees. After just seventeen months, Gacy was released for good behavior. After he was released, he moved back to Illinois, and in 1971, he married his second wife, Carol Huff, and they lived in a neighborhood on the northwest
side of Chicago. Gacy also started his own business, PDM Contracting. Gacy became a well respected member of the community and was always willing to help his neighbors. He would dress up as a character he called Pogo the Clown to visit sick children in local hospitals, and was well known for throwing back-yard parties with hundreds of guests (Morrison, 86). It was during this time that Gacy began to hunt for his victims. During the night, he would visit an area of Chicago called Bughouse Square, which was then a run-down area where male prostitutes were common (Morrison, 87). This was also around the time when Gacy's second wife, Carol, divorced him. Even while they lived together, he had begun to bury bodies under their home, but she claimed she never noticed anything strange or suspicious. She explained the reason the marriage ended was because he was too busy with his contracting business and helping out neighbors (Morrison, 85). Even though it soon became a common knowledge around Bughouse Square that Gacy was interested in rough sex, many prostitutes in need of money did not take heed. Gacy would drive around Bughouse Square in his Oldsmobile with his own police spotlight and scanner looking for prostitutes. Gacy would bring the boy to his home, and begin to toy with him. Often, he would handcuff the victim, tie a rope around his neck with a board between the knots, and twist the rope with a stick. Then, when the boy was nude and unconscious, Gacy would take pictures until the boy regained consciousness, twist the rope again and repeat this process until the victim died (Morrison, 87). One victim who survived Gacy's torture was Jeff Rignall. In March of 1978, Rignall decided to go to a bar after he argued with his girlfriend. As he walked down the sidewalk, Gacy pulled up in his Oldsmobile and started a conversation. Later Rignall
Piest's body was one of the few that Gacy disposed of in the Des Plaines River. He actually dragged twenty-nine of his victims into the crawl space under his house and placed them into shallow graves he dug. The bodies were arranged in a circle, and some were so decomposed that cause of death could not be determined. Others had been buried with ropes tied around the neck, and other bodies that had not yet greatly decomposed were found with wads of material in the esophagus, possibly to stop blood from getting onto Gacy's floors (Morrison, 89). The youngest ofGacy's victims was nine, and the oldest around twenty. Cook County Medical Examiner Dr. Robert Stein believed that some of the victims may have been buried alive and had tried to claw themselves out (Wikipedia.org, 2006). On March 12, 1980, Gacy was found guilty of thirty-three murders, and on May 9, 1994, he was executed by lethal injection. Profile While Gacy's thirty-three murders may have seemed to be sexual in nature, they were really about anger and aggression (Morrison, 74). Around the age oftwenty, Gacy had left his family and was working in Las Vegas as an attendant at a mortuary. He admitted to getting into a coffin and holding a dead body to himself while he grew aroused. According to Helen Morrison, M.D., who was certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology for general psychiatry and was a certified forensic psychiatrist, what Gacy was doing was a combination of experimenting with a body and something he saw as comfortable, and not acting as a necrophile interesting in actually having sexual relations with the bodies (Morrison, 75). F or a person so interested in killing, it seemed strange that Gacy would let a victim live, as Jeff Rignall did. Rignall felt he was still alive because he never resisted,
mainly because he was completely restrained. He said Gacy waited until he knew Rignall was experiencing pain, and then put the chloroform cloth back on his face. After he lost consciousness, Gacy would reposition him and when he awoke, explain what he was going to do to Rignall next. Rignall felt that Gacy was turned off by the fact that there was no resistance. Morrison agreed, as she stated, "Rignall may have played a role of submission that allowed him to live. That's not to say that submission would've worked for any victim of a serial crime or any of Gacy's other victims. But at that moment in time, Rignall survived" (Morrison, 79). Morrison also quoted Gacy as saying, " .. .I'm afraid of myself. And afraid I'm going to hell." However, Morrison felt that Gacy had no concept of hell and explained that when he talked about Jesus and Satan, he had no clear distinction of the two in his mind. To him, they were the same being, as he could not differentiate among concepts that were complex, abstract, or philosophical (93). Morrison also describes how Gacy would talk continuously, as ifhe could not stop. The clinical name was logorrhea, a disorder often seen in those in a manic state (95). As he talked, he would explain how he felt he was the victim and was being persecuted by everyone else. Morrison discussed how Gacy liked to portray himself as powerful, influential, smooth, and suave. However, she mentioned that he always seemed a bit in doubt and his emotions were very inconsistent, ranging from where he felt he could rule the world, and then feeling completely down, lonely, and confused with no will to live (97). Morrison felt that even though Gacy had high intelligence, he often worked in a very primitive form of thought. Gacy did not know how to restrain himself verbally, and during most of his life, his impulses were most likely experienced as stimuli coming from outside of himself. He
one, they were used to find and resolve problems and two, they were considered useful and highly valued by society. This was very true for Gacy. Interpersonal intelligence, as defined by Gardner, was the ability to notice and make distinctions among other people's moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions (Storfer, 360). Gacy was able to fool many people with his outgoing and helpful personality, and he worked hard to help other people. Interpersonal intelligence was based on being able to interpret and adapt to emotional aspects of situations, and was derived from episodic memory (Storfer, 365). Not only was Gacy able to use his interpersonal intelligence to appeal when he was functioning in normal society, but he also was able to seem normal and nice enough to keep his victims from being put off by his personality.
ANTED
by the FBI
EDMUND KEMPER
"The Co-ed Killer"
Date of birth: DECEMBER 18, 1948
Race: WHITE
Sex: MALE
Height: 6' 9"
Weight: 280
Eyes: BROWN
Hair: LIGHT BROWN
Wanted for: Murder and mutilation of eight women
Gifted characteristics: Extremely high intelligence
no witnesses, and not get caught (Cheney, 31). After five years in Atascadero, Kemper was released to a halfway house run by the California Youth Authority, with the hospital staff recommendation of never being able to live with his mother again (Cheney, 33). While Kemper was in the hospital, his mother moved to Santa Cruz, California, and obtained a job as a secretary at the University of California Santa Cruz. After just three months at the halfway house, Kemper was paroled to his mother (Cheney, 35). In 1969, he bought his first car as well as knives and guns, and began to drive around picking up the prettiest and smallest female hitchhikers to talk. He used this period to learn and to observe the actions of the women to see what he could do to make them feel more comfortable (Cheney, 41). Kemper's first two victims were female college students, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa, who were hitchhiking to Stanford University. Once in his car, he told the girls he was going to rape them, and Mary Ann tried to talk him out of it. Kemper had already decided he was going to kill both of them, and though he says he would have enjoyed raping them, he was concerned about his lack of sexual experience. Cheney quoted Kemper as explaining, "I'd had very limited exposure to the opposite sex and I guess the learning point fifteen to twenty-one - I was locked up with all men, and there wasn't any opportunity to be with women or girls," and he seemed to be more comfortable with killing than with sex (88). He forced Anita into the trunk of his car and cuffed Mary Ann, placing a plastic bag over her head. Mary Ann kept fighting back, and Kemper grew anxious and frustrated with her, so he took his knife and began to stab her in her back. She was in great pain, and while moving around to try to get away from the knife, Kemper stabbed her in her stomach. She turned back over onto her stomach, and he continued to stab her in her back. Kemper felt like he was getting
nowhere, and Mary Ann kept fighting back and calling for Anita, so he finally grabbed her chin and cut her throat. He then moved to Anita, and told her that his hands were bloody because he though he had broken Mary Ann's nose, so she should climb out of the trunk and help her. Kemper tried to stab her, but her clothes were too thick for the knife to penetrate. She also began to fight back, but he was still able to stab her throat, her heart, and her arms to the point where her bones were visible. Kemper explained how he could tell when she started dying, because she slowed down and became delirious. He then put both girls in his car and drove to his apartment. He took both girl's bodies inside, and dissected Mary Ann and decapitated Anita. Kemper ended up killing four other young females he picked up while they were hitchhiking. Though he did not sexually abuse the first few victims, his fourth, Cindy Schall, whom he shot in the head, he took to his horne and when his mother had left for work, performed sexual acts with her dead body. After he finished, he dissected the body and threw the parts over a cliff (Cheney, 113). He engaged in sex acts with his next two young victims, both after they had been decapitated. After the six murders of young female hitchhikers, Kemper decided it was time to kill his mother. "I certainly wanted for my mother a nice, quiet, easy death like I guess everyone wants," Kemper explained (132). He took a hammer and a knife with him into her bedroom, and then began to hit her head. When blood began to flow, he moved her onto her back, cut her throat, and then decided to cut her head entirely off (Cheney, 133). When his mother's friend, Sally Hallett, stopped by, he decided to kill her, too. When she carne inside the house, he began to hit her, and eventually choked her to death using his arm (Cheney, 137). Once her body was in rigor mortis, he beheaded her, and hid her body in a closet (Cheney, 139). After Kemper killed
mother. By turning himself in, Kemper made the choice to stop killing, as he was the one who had chosen to start in the first place (Douglas and Olshaker, 39). Kemper was definitely very intelligent, and was very aware of the crimes he committed. Talking to Douglas, Kemper explained that he felt his mother hated him because he looked like his father and would take her frustrations out on him. Through her punishment, he developed a hatred for women. Kemper discussed how he was able to figure out how to put girls at ease to make them feel they were safe before killing them, and how it felt like a game to him. Douglas explained that Kemper's goals were to manipulate, dominate and control his victims. Kemper definitely seemed to conform to this description, as he explained he that wanted his victims to belong to him completely, and for him, this meant a loss oflife (Crimelibrary.com, 2006). He felt that when the victims were alive, they were distant and not interested in forming a relationship with him. When they were dead, he knew that they were now his (Cheney, 108). Though many cannot understand the actions of killers like Kemper, Cheney states, " ... such criminals were brutalized as young children and have spent their entire lives in a depressed environment. They are a very normal product of a slum. In assessing where they stand in relation to their world, they are eminently sane" (Cheney, 220). When Kemper killed his grandfather, he rationalized to himself that it was a mercy killing, preventing his grandfather from suffering the loss of his wife. This was obviously very illogical, but Kemper felt that death spared the living from pain (Cheney, 22). When Kemper killed his mother, he felt that killing her would save her from the shame of knowing that her son was the mass murderer the police were looking for (Cheney, 69). Much like John Wayne Gacy, Kemper never developed a positive sense of
personality and often experienced uncontrollable rages. However, he seems very logical in his explanation of his actions. Kemper stated" ... I really killed my grandmother because I wanted to kill my mother ... I had this love-hate complex with my mother that was very hard for me to handle ... " (Cheney, 29). While Kemper was living in Santa Cruz with his mother, and he began to try to talk to girls, he preferred those who were petite, pretty, and well put together. He also developed a strange mix of fascination and hatred for the upper-middle class female who thought she was better than him. His fantasies also began to grow more violent, "I had fantasies about mass murder, whole groups of select women I could get together in one place, get them dead and then make mad passionate love to their dead corpses' ", Kemper explained (42). After Kemper began to kill his victims, he always returned to the site. Reasons for this included trying to recapture the excitement and horror of his actions, and maybe even subconsciously, the wish to be caught and punished. He also returned because of his concern for the success of his plans and his desire for perfection (Cheney, 94). Kemper also decapitated his victims, as the act of beheading filled a subconscious need (Cheney, 97). Decapitation also gave Kemper a sexual thrill, and he compared the feeling to that of triumph, like how a hunter would feel when taking the head of a deer (Cheney, 108). Gifted Characteristics Often, when most think of being gifted, they think of giftedness relating to intelligence. Jean Piaget, in his book, The Psychology of Intelligence, described intelligence as a generic term used to indicate the superior forms of organization or
l
ANTED
by the FBI
THEODORE "TED" BUNDY
Date of birth: NOVEMBER 24, 1946
Race: WHITE
Sex: MALE
Height: 5' 11"
Weight: 155
Eyes: BROWN
Hair: BROWN
Wanted for: Brutal rape and murder of at least 23 women Gifted characteristics: Very intelligent with interpersonal intelligence
Theodore Bundy Background Growing up as a shy and awkward teenager, Theodore "Ted" Bundy was always a good student. Born November 24, 1946 to Louise Cowell in Vermont, Bundy and his mother lived with her parents for the first nine years of his life (Wikipedia.org, 2006). He and his mother eventually moved to Tacoma, Washington, and Bundy went to college at the University of Washington (UW), where he studied psychology. He also met and entered a relationship with a young, wealthy, dark-haired woman during this time. Their relationship lasted for many years, though Bundy often felt inferior to her (Larsen, 94). Bundy worked hard to impress her and was able to earn a summer scholarship to Stanford. However, this woman soon realized Bundy had some issues and ended the relationship with him, which lead him to become depressed and drop out of school. After she returned to California they kept in touch, and while he was on a trip in California, they met up again. She was impressed with his maturity, and she fell in love with him. However, after months of dating, Ted suddenly ended things, rejecting her as she had rejected him. Some theorize that this first girlfriend of Bundy's led him to prefer slender, dark-haired young women (Crimelibrary.com, 2006). Bundy's first confirmed murder was in 1972, when he was twenty-seven years old, though many police and other officials believe he began killing before this. A psychology major at UW, twenty-one year old Lynda Healy was a pretty, thin, brown- haired girl. When she did not show up to work one day in late January, those close to her became concerned. After checking her room to see if she was still sleeping, blood was found on her pillow and sheets, and a bloodstained nightgown was hanging in her closet