August 3, 2010

South-Central's serial killers

Here's a horrifying story from the Los Angeles Times about South-Central LA in 1984-1994 (recently renamed South LA to shed some memories):
Multiple killers, more than 100 victims
By Scott Gold and Andrew Blankstein
During a 10-year period beginning in 1984, several serial killers operated in South Los Angeles, all of them targeting young, poor, African American women.

... The recent arrest of another man accused of being a serial killer active in that era, Lonnie David Franklin Jr. — allegedly the long-sought Grim Sleeper — prompted jubilation and noisy public pronouncements. The celebrations served to obscure, once again, a terrible truth about South Los Angeles: During a 10-year period beginning in 1984, multiple serial killers operated there, all of them targeting young, poor, African American women.

All told, between 1984 and 1993, more than 100 women, almost all African American, were killed by men targeting more than one victim in South L.A. and the surrounding neighborhoods, police say. So far, police have positively linked 30 of those deaths to five men:

Franklin, 57, has been charged with 10 counts of murder. Turner, 43, is on death row after raping and strangling 10 women, one of whom was six months pregnant. Louis Craine was convicted of strangling four women between 1984 and 1987; he later died in prison, at 31. Michael Hughes, 54, was accused of killing eight, four in South L.A. and nearby Inglewood. And Daniel Lee Seibert confessed to killing 13 across the United States, two of them in South L.A.; he died in prison, at 53, in 2008.

Biological evidence suggests that at least two more men, who have not been apprehended, were each responsible for at least four more deaths, officials said. That would mean at least seven serial killers were preying on women in the same neighborhood at roughly the same time.

During the years in which they were active, the South Los Angeles killers never earned the noir nicknames of the region's other infamous killers — the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler.

Those other crimes were notorious sagas that gained national attention and had parts of the metropolis in a state of panic. By contrast, few people in South L.A., including parents of victims, were even aware of a serial killer operating in their neighborhood — much less five or more. While the more publicized cases had distinctive hallmarks, in South L.A. there were so many people being killed, almost all of them from the margins of society, that it was difficult for neighbors or police to pinpoint any patterns.

The rapes and murders of dozens of young women were, effectively, lost in the crime wave.

"Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?" said Margaret Prescod, who founded an organization 24 years ago to press for a more aggressive response to the killings and now hosts a radio show. "Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?"

This reminds me of a theory I've been noodling with: that the domino-like impetus for much of the recent Housing Bubble/Bust began, more than anywhere else, in the LA Basin south of the Santa Monica Freeway. A lot of people who were already there were trying hard to get out (for reasons readily understandable from this article) and a lot of people in other countries were trying hard to get in.

In the very long run, the gentrification of South-Central LA will be a huge deal -- the climate is too nice for it not to happen someday. (Financial Warning: Someday may not come until after you are broke.)

59 comments:

Steve Sailer said...

By the way, in case you are wondering, since there has long been the assumption that serial killers are white, I looked up this Daniel Lee Siebert name from the article as the most likely to be white, and I think he was white.

jody said...

the shooter in connecticut is a black american. that's probably enough to torpedo the majority of the television coverage of this latest shooting. i suspect most news outlets will lose interest in this one fairly quickly.

apparently, his employers were going to fire him for stealing. guess he had other ideas.

it's now getting to be kind of sad how predictible the white girlfriend and white girlfriend's mother come flying out of the woodwork to tell us all about how good of a guy the perpetrator was and how he would never do something like this.

this is worse of a trend in the UK but it's kind of bad even in the US.

i'm not sure what the end game is here, a society in 2050 where black americans are routinely bulldozing people and their white relatives go on the offensive trying to defend them.

basically, the current system for handling football players and basketball players when they break the law, but extended to the general population.

Chris said...

I believe all of greater L.A.'s most recent five serial killers have been black. Lonnie Franklin Jr., John Floyd Thomas, Chester Dewayne Turner, Ivan Hill and Michael Hughes. I wonder if Louis Craine makes six.

Shawn said...

La Griffe on serial killers:

http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/serial.htm

Anonymous said...

Of all the things I've always found unfathomable about LA -- and there are many -- the single most puzzling has always been why the poor occupy the majority of the city's Great Weather Zone, a place virtually unmatched in all the world for pleasantness, while so many middle (and even upper-middle) class people have lived in behind the first set of hills, in places with below average weather.

What other possible reason is there for living in LA other than the weather. If you live in a section of LA where the weather is like Phoenix or Dallas, why wouldn't you move to those cities, which are better than LA in almost every single respect other than weather?

Anonymous said...

By the way, in case you are wondering, since there has long been the assumption that serial killers are white, I looked up this Daniel Lee Siebert name from the article as the most likely to be white, and I think he was white.

A while back, La Griffe du Lion wrote an essay about this.

Basically the idea was that even though Blacks & Hispanics have a much higher propensity for violence [their mean is far out to the right of the White mean], their criminality bell curves are nevertheless much sharper [lower standard deviation], whereas the White criminality bell curve is much flatter [higher standard deviation], so that at the far right tail [where serial killers live], the White curve eventually swamps the Black and Hispanic curves.

One scary possibility here is that if there are that many serial killers in a low-IQ vicinity like South Central [with a broad, flat, low standard deviation criminality bell curve], then there must be a heckuva lot more of them in a higher-IQ vicinity [with a broad, flat, high standard-deviation criminality bell curve].

On the other hand, another possibility is that the police and the medical examiners and the district attorneys covering South Central were so stupid, lazy, and inept that they just weren't capable of catching the serial killers - but that in higher-IQ vicinities, you get a higher quality of policeman and medical examiner and district attorney, who have more success at tracking down, convicting, and incarcerating their would-be serial killers.

Another possibility is that the serial killers do indeed exist in the higher-IQ vicinities, in much higher numbers, but that they are so much more intelligent than the authorities that they never get caught [ergo the little children on the milk cartons and on the posters at Walmart are never found].

In fact, it would be a pretty interesting exercise [in a cross-disciplinary nexus of psychology and criminology] to try to figure out the IQ necessary to catch a serial killer [or to catch any given criminal, for that matter].

Clearly a police detective with an IQ of 120 shouldn't have all that much difficulty catching a car thief with an IQ of 80, but can a police detective with an IQ of 115 catch a serial killer with an IQ of 145, or 160?

Or can a quota-hire minority police detective, with an IQ of 90, catch a fellow minority serial killer, with an IQ of 105, or 110?

On average, that might not be possible.

John Craig said...

One of the more interesting developmens of the internet age is that we can now read the comments from readers after an article about a crime where race was an angle. Yahoo News has such a feature and the NY Post has such a feature. They are a wonderful way to gauge the public temperature (and they are also a great way to let the public's raw emotions boil to the surface). I always read the comments after such an article in the Post because they're generally more amusing than the article itself, and I suspect most Isteve readers would be surprised how many racially aware people there are out there. The comments always quickly break down to white vs. black.

The reporters, who must conform to standard journalese, don't play up the central racial angle, but the readers do it for them.

Anonymous said...

OT: any thoughts on Omar Thornton, the black Conn beer truck driver who after being caught stealing shot up 8 coworkers? At some point Thornton made unfounded claims of racism. The report doesn't give the races of the victims, but this looks like potentially a hate-crime to me.

Anonymous said...

How is this different from Africa?

Anonymous said...

By the way, in case you are wondering, since there has long been the assumption that serial killers are white, I looked up this Daniel Lee Siebert name from the article as the most likely to be white, and I think he was white.

I've often wondered why, even though most of us have a middle name, only a serial killer is known by all three of his. I imagine it's to save a person named "Daniel Siebert" or "Henry Lucas" or "John Gacy" from strange looks every time someone learns his name.

Anonymous said...

In more current crime news, black man caught stealing at the beer distributorship where he worked shoots 10 people at his workplace, killing 8 of them, before killing himself. Family blames this on racial bias.

Christopher Paul said...

There you again about the climate. As if SoCal is the only habitable spot left in the universe. Well, the climate hasn't kept whites in their droves from fleeing to affordably form their families elsewhere. The truth is, only fatties and old fogies like Steve think it should be 60 degrees and cloudy in July and cold every night of the year. The rest of us are taking a long look at Miami.

Chief Seattle said...

The Seattle Times conveniently left out a picture of yesterday's CT mass shooter. So I'm left to assume he was just another angry male, probably spurred on by Glen Beck and Limbaugh.

Anonymous said...

TV says serial killing is a white thing.

I believe TV. TV is my friend!

Big Bill said...

"Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?" "Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?"

Of course we cannot imagine it, Margaret! We cannot imagine it because people actually care about one another in Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes. And even not-rich white folks care about each other. Compare the flooding in Fargo, ND with the flooding in New Orleans.

And that is why black people have always fought for integration: they gave up on their own race and tribe and desperately want to move in with white folks in white neighborhoods where they can be taken care of and where their daughters and sons won't be raped and killed by black folks, and where they can "act white" and survive to adulthood..

The only problem is that they always want to invite Cousin Pookie and Ray-Ray over to visit, and the next thing you know they be breakin' into the neighbor houses and shiznitz like that.

But, yeah, Margaret, I can relate. You don't see that crazy-azz killin' in Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes. A real shame, ain't it?

Justin said...

Arizona just dealt with our own black serial killer, with more details emerging all the time:

http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2010/08/04/20100804baseline-killer-case-new-details.html

DYork said...

jody said...

the shooter in connecticut is a black american. that's probably enough to torpedo the majority of the television coverage of this latest shooting. i suspect most news outlets will lose interest in this one fairly quickly.


But the shooter complained to his White girlfriend that he has been a victim of racism on the job and nobody helped him.

Black racist mass murderer = try to ignore.

Black victim of White racism driven to kill = give attention to the case as another example of White America's shameful racist legacy and the poor angelic black folk brought down by it.

Chris said...

I believe all of greater L.A.'s most recent five serial killers have been black. Lonnie Franklin Jr., John Floyd Thomas, Chester Dewayne Turner, Ivan Hill and Michael Hughes. I wonder if Louis Craine makes six.


The vibrantly Latino Richard Ramirez feels ignored.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Steve, don't count on the gentrification of "South Los Angeles" until it happens in lots of other places in Southern California that are west of Interstate 405 -- i.e., have an even better climate than "South L.A."

Torrance, Lomita, Carson, Long Beach all have poor areas.

But the how-is-it-possible-this-place-hasn't-been-gentrified comment applies most of all to Ocean Beach in San Diego. Stunning setting full of the homeless, bums, head shops, pawn shops, liquor stores and dive bars.

When these places are gentrified, then maybe it will be "South L.A.'s" turn.

Anonymous said...

John Floyd Thomas had targeted elderly white women over a 30 year span. This killer of white women had been dubbed The Westside Rapist. Some think he killed more than any LA serial killer ever.

By late 2008, the LAPD was trying everything to catch the Grim Sleeper, one of the killers of black women. All known black sex offenders of a certain age were called in to give a DNA sample under the law enacted in 2004, Prop 69.

One John Floyd Thomas, an insurance claims adjuster (and friend of Earl Ofari Hutchinson), dutifully gave his DNA. Thomas didn't match the Grim Sleeper profile, but he was linked to two elderly white women murdered as far back as 1976. He has since been linked by DNA to the murders of three more women, all white and elderly.

So Thomas was caught by accident. The priority was on the Grim Sleeper, not the Westside Rapist.

Thomas had been convicted several times of rape (always white women), and contrary to myth, had served short prison sentences. Not only that, he had a good job and was friendly with the esteemed Mr. Hutchinson.

Plenty of ironies here.

Nick said...

Well, as we have all learned from the eternal controversy over Willie Horton, noticing and fearing black killers be racis'. Therefore, the media could not and should not have noticed that there was a pack of serial killers in South Central.

After all, white opposition to crime be racis'. This opposition is merely the wholly irrational white prejudice that people who have been convicted of raping, robbing and murdering tend to commit rape, robbery and murder, which are all undesirable acts. This is, of course, a fallacy, and banning crime is nothing more than an excuse to put blacks away! (Why they feel black "criminals" should be locked away is a mystery and it's best that we not contemplate such things.)

As an inevitable corollary, blacks, who literally cannot be racis', necessarily do not oppose crime. Therefore, black women in South Central do not care if they get murdered and would not be interested in hearing about such occurrences.

Simple as that.

Whiskey said...

Add Venice to the areas that should be gentrified, but are not.

Gentrification is very hard to pull off, in New Orleans I knew a couple of people with big plans for the lower Garden District, very beautiful houses, who were not able to pull it off. The crime waves just beat you down.

As far as catching serial killers, almost all of it seems to come from DNA analysis and dragnets. For example, the Grim Sleeper was caught because a relative had a somewhat matching profile, and the detectives targeted the rest of the family (the killer's son was in jail and had DNA sampled).

I don't think that the coverage of the CT spree-killer Thornton ("my victims were racists!") will have the effect the media thinks it will have.

Christopher Paul said...

Regarding those areas west of the 405: Steve has long shown zero interest in the South Bay and its shadows. His L.A. stops at the 10.

Christopher Paul said...

Whiskey, what part of Venice are you referring to? Because the area near the boardwalk is too nutty, the area around Lincoln is too gritty, and the nicer area with the canals seems plenty gentrified already (and appropriately overpriced).

Plus, Venice is a district of the city of L.A., which no one wants any part of. Culver City, right next door, gentrified rather painlessly. Its police actually come when you call.

jody said...

"Black victim of White racism driven to kill = give attention to the case as another example of White America's shameful racist legacy and the poor angelic black folk brought down by it."

you could be right. maybe i underestimate their ability to spin the story. this one could become yet another instance of turning the world upside down so the african killer is actually the victim here. up is down, left is right, red is blue, when africans attack it's because they are victims, not perpetrators.

the speed with which this spin often happens for many african athletes is blinding. it truly is dizzying speed, where a total asshole, who has been an asshole his entire career, is suddenly a helpless, defenseless victim and it's just not fair how the entire world is coming down on his head. the NFL is completely, probably irrevocably compromised by this principle.

this is especially true in track & field when they are caught using sports drugs. instantaneously, and i mean, in like 0.0 seconds, they transform from arrogant, cocky invincible superhumans who openly sneer at their white competitors, and become innocent, helpless children, the victims of their own white coaches and trainers, who "tricked" them into taking enough sports drugs to kill a horse. "I didn't know what I was taking, they just told me to take it." oh, poor, defenseless, 28 year old man child, those evil whites tricked you. we should all help you and protect you from those heartless drug testers and evil, institutionally racist track & field organizations who want to apply the rules equally to all competitors. they want to ban you? it's so NOT FAIR that you might not be allowed to compete in this sport again! it's THEM trying to ruin YOUR life, and not any other way. the IAAF is hurting YOU. you didn't do anything wrong! let's all forgive your cheating and pretend it didn't happen. 3 years from now we'll never talk about it again and you'll be back to being a total asshole.

Fred said...

"Clearly a police detective with an IQ of 120 shouldn't have all that much difficulty catching a car thief with an IQ of 80, but can a police detective with an IQ of 115 catch a serial killer with an IQ of 145, or 160?"

You raise an important point. Police departments around the country need to start recruiting from Mensa to defend against the Hannibal Lecter threat.

"Gentrification is very hard to pull off, in New Orleans I knew a couple of people with big plans for the lower Garden District, very beautiful houses, who were not able to pull it off. The crime waves just beat you down."

For gentrification, it helps to have some sort of industry attracting high wage earners (either that or a steady supply of trustafarians). New Orleans long ceded its natural geographic role as the main Gulf Coast port to Houston, and there isn't much industry there besides tourism.

Peter A said...

"If you live in a section of LA where the weather is like Phoenix or Dallas, why wouldn't you move to those cities, which are better than LA in almost every single respect other than weather?"

Maybe because those are two of the most boring,ugly, culturally starved cities in the US? Dallas does have its charms, to be fair. Phoenix, not so much.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

In the very long run, the gentrification of South-Central LA will be a huge deal -- the climate is too nice for it not to happen someday.

That's how the theory goes: the places with great climate should be full of wealthy, functional individuals who outbid all the riff-raff. In practice, it doesn't seem to pan out very often. Oakland will probably always be Oakland, don't you think?

Anonymous said...

Black Americans live in Bizarro World. For example, this story from today's headlines:

"A masked man armed with an assault-style rifle fired dozens of shots on a birthday party at a house in an inner-city Indianapolis neighborhood early Tuesday, killing two people and wounding six before fleeing, police said.

Around 30 people were attending the
birthday barbecue when the shooting
happened shortly after midnight, Indianapolis police Lt. Jeff Duhamell said. A motive was not immediately known."

Who barbecues on Tuesday morning just after midnight?

alonzo portfolio said...

that last comment was relevant. In reality, West Oakland (where Frank Robinson and Bill Russell grew up), has the best climate anywhere. Never gets as hot or muggy as L.A.

Fred said...

Steve,

OT, but the Post has an update on that FDNY story you've blogged about before: "Judge blocks hiring of 300 new firefighters".

ATBOTL said...

La Griffe seems to be underestimating the number of Hispanic serial killers. Some of the most famous serial killers have been Hispanic: Juan Corona, Richard Ramirez(AKA the Nightstalker) and Rafael Resendez Ramirez. I can think of several Puerto Rican serial killers in NYC that did not receive national media attention. To the extent that Hispanics are underrepresented among serial killers in some these studies, it's probably because the studies go back to the 60's when the Hispanic population was very small.

Chris said...

I came across a print copy of the LAT today and saw that this story was top center, and even had photos of the four black + one white serial killers above the fold. Surprising they'd do that.

rob said...

La Griffe seems to be underestimating the number of Hispanic serial killers...it's probably because the studies go back to the 60's when the Hispanic population was very small.


Not just the 'Hispanic' population, the US-born 'Hispanics.' If you were a serial killer, would you stay in corrupt, violent, incompetently policed Mexico/sub-Mexico or move to the US? A killer must be less likely to get caught in Mexico City's slums than even LA.

Anonymous said...

You raise an important point. Police departments around the country need to start recruiting from Mensa to defend against the Hannibal Lecter threat.

Yeah, guys like Hannibal Lecter and Meir Wallach-Finkelstein.

Kylie said...

Chris said..."I came across a print copy of the LAT today and saw that this story was top center, and even had photos of the four black + one white serial killers above the fold. Surprising they'd do that."

Surprising? To whom? Certainly not to me. Did you read the article to which Steve linked yesterday? The implication was that while the area in which these murders occurred does have a lot of crime, if the victims had been...oh, say, white...there would have been more awareness and the LAPD would have worked harder.

From the article: "...in South L.A. there were so many people being killed, almost all of them from the margins of society, that it was difficult for neighbors or police to pinpoint any patterns.

The rapes and murders of dozens of young women were, effectively, lost in the crime wave.

'Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?' said Margaret Prescod, who founded an organization 24 years ago to press for a more aggressive response to the killings and now hosts a radio show. 'Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?'"

It's of more use these days to the left than to the right to point out that a criminal is black. Institutional racism, impoverished neighborhoods, failing schools, disparities in the justice system, etc. all contribute to the high rate of crime among black people, so say those who choose to spin it that way. So that the crimes committed by blacks are just more proof of white racism.

Truth said...

Back when serial killing was thought to be a white thing, one of the explanations (rationalizations) here, on Amren, and elsewhere was that this was because it took a "high IQ" to kill for years and not get caught.

I take it the psychological profile of serial killers has changed now?

Anonymous said...

One scary possibility here is that if there are that many serial killers in a low-IQ vicinity like South Central [with a broad, flat, low standard deviation criminality bell curve], then there must be a heckuva lot more of them in a higher-IQ vicinity [with a broad, flat, high standard-deviation criminality bell curve].

OOPS:

One scary possibility here is that if there are that many serial killers in a low-IQ vicinity like South Central [with a sharp, steep, low standard deviation criminality bell curve], then there must be a heckuva lot more of them in a higher-IQ vicinity [with a broad, flat, high standard-deviation criminality bell curve].

Mr. Anon said...

""Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?" said Margaret Prescod, who founded an organization 24 years ago to press for a more aggressive response to the killings and now hosts a radio show. "Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?""

Maybe the "Stop Snitching" ethos has consequences.

http://newamericamedia.org/2010/07/stop-snitching-creator-sentenced-to-20-years.php

Mr. Anon said...

Funny how "Truth" is strangely silent on topics like this one.

He must be out watering his car.

jody said...

"I take it the psychological profile of serial killers has changed now?"

do we know for sure these guys are not smarter than average? maybe they are, maybe they aren't. but it's possible they are.

african NFL players are smarter than average, for instance. offensive players are about as smart as euro americans, maybe a little smarter.

Kylie said...

Truth said..."Back when serial killing was thought to be a white thing, one of the explanations (rationalizations) here, on Amren, and elsewhere was that this was because it took a 'high IQ' to kill for years and not get caught.

I take it the psychological profile of serial killers has changed now?"

New information may indeed cause existing theories to be modified so as to fit all the facts available, yes.

It probably does take a higher IQ to commit murder in otherwise low-crime areas and go undetected (e.g., Bundy operating on college campuses, Gacy in a working-class neighborhood) than to murder in an area already so rife with violence that any one murder doesn't stand out.

From the LAT article:"...in South L.A. there were so many people being killed, almost all of them from the margins of society, that it was difficult for neighbors or police to pinpoint any patterns.

The rapes and murders of dozens of young women were, effectively, lost in the crime wave."

That said, I've always thought in serial murder, as in the detection of crime itself, luck is as important as intelligence, skill and experience. One of the most successful (i.e. prolific) serial killers, Gary Ridgway, always struck me as downright dumb (Wikipedia states his IQ as 82) but incredibly lucky.

Truth said...

"New information may indeed cause existing theories to be modified so as to fit all the facts available, yes."

But I think you misunderstand; when it was thought that black guys didn't do it, it was, "because it's a high IQ endeavor." - rationalization

Now that black guys do it it's: YOU SEE, I TOLD YOU BLACKS DO IT!

Get it?

Kylie said...

Truth said..."But I think you misunderstand."

You think?

Earlier I said..."New information may indeed cause existing theories to be modified so as to fit all the facts available, yes."

Let me translate: When it was thought serial killing was a white thing, that was b/c only white murderers were smart enough to go undetected. Now that we know black guys are also serial killers, that whole higher IQ thing just went out the window.

Initially, I was trying to be tactful by being oblique. Apparently, you mistook my being oblique for being dense.

ATBOTL said...

"Back when serial killing was thought to be a white thing, one of the explanations (rationalizations) here, on Amren, and elsewhere was that this was because it took a "high IQ" to kill for years and not get caught.

I take it the psychological profile of serial killers has changed now?"

I was never under this illusion. There was a black serial killer operating in the black neighborhood adjacent to where I grew up. It was a big local news story for a little while. When they caught him, he was a high school drop out ex-con. So I always knew that blacks could be serial killers and it didn't take a genius to do it.

I think the media is responsible for the idea that serial killers and others who perpetrate sensational crimes are intelligent. In every movie and TV show, the bad guy is incredibly cunning, makes ingenious booby traps, has an appreciation of classical music etc.

l said...

In the spirit of the MSM's agonizing over the Hartford shootings, we should ask: "What did these women do to deserve their getting killed?"

John Craig said...

One pertinent fact everybody here seems to be missing is that serial killing is more a function of sociopathy and a deviant sexuality than IQ. And sociopaths -- as well as sexual sadists -- come in a full range of IQs.

The smarter serial killers probably rack up higher numbers not only because they're more skillful at avoiding detection but also because they're more skillful at manipulation, i.e., convincing women to get into their car, putting them at ease, etc. This is why a sociopath with a normal sexuality is more likely to be a successful womanizer. A sociopath with a deviant sexuality, however, is a very dangerous animal because in his world, your life is worth less than his orgasm.

It's my impression that while there is a racial difference in IQ, there is also a racial difference in deviant sexuality -- with whites more likely to be deviant. (I can't back this up with any statistics, it's just an impression: blacks are into basic rutting, whites have whole panoply of perversions needed to turn them on.)

Also, keep in mind that there is a difference between a guy who rapes a girl because he just wants to get laid and then kills her afterward so she won't report him, and a guy who needs a dying (or at least extremely frightened) girl to turn him on, like Ted Bundy. (Bundy was also reported to have had sex with the corpses of a few of his victims.) Both men are sociopaths, but they are different types of killers. It's my impression that black serial killers are more likely to be the former type, whites more likely to be the latter.

Anyway, all these thing have to be taken into account when discussing serial killers.

Anonymous said...

Anonymouse: John Floyd Thomas had targeted elderly white women over a 30 year span... an insurance claims adjuster (and friend of Earl Ofari Hutchinson)... was caught by accident.

jody: do we know for sure these guys are not smarter than average? maybe they are, maybe they aren't. but it's possible they are.

JFT's Wikipedia page says that he was in the Air Force in the 1950s [briefly, before a dishonorable discharge].

And the Air Force has always had the highest standards for IQ scores on the AFQT [or whatever the equivalent would have been, back in the 1950s].

And while I don't know diddly-squat about the day-to-day operations of an insurance agency, it wouldn't surprise me if an insurance claims adjuster needed an IQ out towards the vicinity of 110 [just to have any hope of e.g. grappling with an Excel spreadsheet].

Along those lines, Arthur Hu's Wonderlic-to-IQ conversion table has "bookkeeper" listed at IQ 108 to 118.

So suppose John Floyd Thomas did have an IQ of 110, or maybe even 115.

And suppose he was being pursued by a quota-hire police detective, with an IQ of 90, or 95.

I.e. suppose John Floyd Thomas had an IQ that was about 20 [or 25] points higher than the people who were trying to catch him.

Would it then be realistic to expect that the much stupider police detective could catch the much smarter serial killer?


John Craig: The smarter serial killers probably rack up higher numbers not only because they're more skillful at avoiding detection but also because they're more skillful at manipulation, i.e., convincing women to get into their car, putting them at ease, etc.

Along those lines, a black serial killer with an IQ of 100+ is going to be preying on black victims with IQs in the 80s, 70s, and 60s, so he is going to have an enormous intelligence advantage in reconnoitering, hunting, capturing, and killing his prey.

Evil Sandmich said...

Cleveland had their own black serial killer quite recently who went after black women:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/04/more_charges_filed_against_ant.html

It doesn't help police when the victims aren't quite responsible citizens and are prone to disappearing for weeks at a time voluntarily.

Truth said...

"Anonymous Mr. Anon said...

Funny how "Truth" is strangely silent on topics like this one."

I made the post two above your's already there, Count van Count.

Truth said...

"Initially, I was trying to be tactful by being oblique. Apparently, you mistook my being oblique for being dense."

Alright Kylie, I'll give it a third shot...nah, actually I won't it's a waste of time, but anyway when are you meeting Kudzu Bob for a drink, he seems like a nice young white nationalist just ready to start a family?

Mr. Anon said...

"Truth said...

"Anonymous Mr. Anon said...

Funny how "Truth" is strangely silent on topics like this one."

I made the post two above your's already there, Count van Count."

You hadn't when I submitted my post. I don't control the comment queue. But fair enough, you piped up on this. Anything to say about the latest beer summit? Like, trying to convince those people that they weren't really murdered by a black man, so what are they worried about?

By the way, your moniker is no less anonymous than mine is.

Mr. Anon said...

"ATBOTL said...

I think the media is responsible for the idea that serial killers and others who perpetrate sensational crimes are intelligent. In every movie and TV show, the bad guy is incredibly cunning, makes ingenious booby traps, has an appreciation of classical music etc."

I think you are right. Police work has gotten better, and different jurisdictions actually communicate with each other regularly, which was not always the case when a lot of the most infamous serial killers made their names. A lot of these fiends are not much different than a tiresome bore who is obsessed with some tedious and silly hobby (model trains, fantasy football, collecting commemorative ball point pens, etc.). The only difference is that, in this case, his tedious hobby involves murdering and dismembering people.

Which, by the way, reminds me of this classic skit by Dave Foley:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2jtu3hDhMU

Truth said...

"Anything to say about the latest beer summit? Like, trying to convince those people that they weren't really murdered by a black man, so what are they worried about?"

I'm not sure what difference it makes, a black man of questionable sanity murdered some white people he barely knew, so what? It seems to happen at least once a month where a white person murders some white people he barely knew, and Steve ignores it; do you know something I don't know? Are white people murdered by white people a little (most white murder victims) bit less dead?

Mr. Anon said...

"Truth said...

Are white people murdered by white people a little (most white murder victims) bit less dead?"

No, white people who are murdered by blacks are no more dead than those murdered by whites. But white people who have to deal with blacks are more likely to end up murdered, raped, robbed, or beaten.

John said...

"But the how-is-it-possible-this-place-hasn't-been-gentrified comment applies most of all to Ocean Beach in San Diego. Stunning setting full of the homeless, bums, head shops, pawn shops, liquor stores and dive bars."

Ah, yes. O.B. Where the debris meets the sea.

Truth said...

"But white people who have to deal with blacks are more likely to end up murdered, raped, robbed, or beaten."

Now that may be true, and it may not be true, but I'll give you something that is true; white victims of rape, murder and assault are overwhelmingly victimized by whites. Look it up!

Mr. Anon said...

"Truth said...

Now that may be true, and it may not be true, but I'll give you something that is true; white victims of rape, murder and assault are overwhelmingly victimized by whites. Look it up!"

Depends on which whites you are talking about. I don't live in a trailer park with a bunch of toothless meth addicts. I live in a city with a large black population. My chances of being robbed or assaulted by blacks are probably greater than my chances of being robbed or assaulted by whites.

By the way, since a lot of crime statistics class people who are clearly mestizo latin-american as "white", the crime rate among real (european stock) whites is lower than the (faulty) statistics would indicate.

Anyway, with that brief digression, I'll let you get back to making excuses for black criminals.

Anonymous said...

>Who barbecues on Tuesday morning just after midnight?<

Probably not Kagan's neighbors.

Truth said...

"Depends on which whites you are talking about.

No, it really doesn't my good man; if you can trace your heritage to Europe you are a white person, and all white people in America are more likely to be killed by another white person than a black person. I did not make up the stats, the DOJ and the FBI did.

"Anyway, with that brief digression, I'll let you get back to making excuses for black criminals."

Exactly where did I do that?