"As always, R.J. writes definitively and factually in "Case Closed: Serial Killers Captured." Reading this book, I was amazed at all of the "big-name" serial killers who have been caught. Sometimes we think more about those unsolved cases, but here, R.J. gives us a peek into the lives of serial killers ranging from Gacy to Bundy to the relatively recent discovery of the BTK killer's identity. This is great stuff -- insightful and well written."
~ Carl Hose, Author of Blood Legacy
"RJ Parker has done it again! It is hard to keep my attention with true crime stories, but this author has no problem doing just that. This is the third book of his that I have read and I love them all. I thought I knew a lot of true crime stories but he keeps surprising me. His books are wonderful and I must go now, to start the next one. Keep up the good work!"
~ Lori Smith, Avid Reader
"The serial killers that are in this book were the ones that left pain and fear in their wake. This book gives you just enough information on each one without going overboard on each one of them. If you ever wondered just what sentence Daumer or Gacey or any of the other received this book will tell you. Very interesting read."
~ Jennifer Thomas
"Here's a chilling and engrossing collection of killers, presented with the no nonsense seriousness of Jack Webb in DRAGNET. Perfect for a True Grue Crime fix!"
~ David Bischoff, NY Bestselling Author
INSIDE THE BOOK
Excerpt from Jeffrey Dahmer
At seventeen years old, Dahmer was
always having fantasies about killing men and having sex with their
dead bodies, but he did not act on his fantasy until just after he
graduated high school in June, 1978. He picked up a hitchhiker,
Steven Hicks, nineteen. They had sex, drank beer, and after that,
Hicks wanted to go home. Dahmer did not want Hicks to leave and
struck him in the head with a ten-pound barbell, killing him. Needing
to dispose of the body, Dahmer cut the body up, packaged it in
plastic garbage bags, and buried the bags in the woods behind his
home. That was his first kill. It would be another nine years before
he killed again.
Dahmer went on to attend the University
of Ohio State for one semester. He drank most of the time, missed a
lot of classes, dropped out, and then signed up for the U.S. Army. Of
course, being an alcoholic, his stint in the army did not last long.
Two years later, in 1981, he was discharged and went to live with his
grandmother in West Allis where he lived for the next six years.
On September 15th, 1987,
Dahmer was in a hotel room with Steven Toumi, twenty-six, after
spending the night at a popular gay bar. Dahmer later confessed that
he did not know how he killed Toumi, but when he woke up, Steven was
dead, and he had blood on his mouth. He went to a store, bought a
large suitcase, stuffed the body inside it, took the suitcase to his
grandmother's basement, had sex with the corpse, masturbated on it,
dismembered it, and threw it in the garbage.
While staying at his grandmother's,
she noticed increasingly strange behaviors in her grandson over time.
She found a fully dressed male mannequin in his bedroom closet;
another time she found a .357 Magnum pistol under his bed, and then
there was that terrible smell coming from the basement which Dahmer
said was just a dead squirrel he'd brought home and dissolved with
chemicals. In 1982 he was arrested twice for indecent exposure and
then, in 1986, masturbated in front of two boys and was arrested
again, but only got a slap on the wrist.
His grandmother had had enough of his
weird behavior, the foul smells in the basement, the arrests, his
late night outs. In 1988 she asked him to leave. At the time Dahmer
was working at a Chocolate Factory and decided to get an apartment
closer to his work on the west side of Milwaukee. Just one day after
he moved into his apartment on September 27th, 1988, he
was arrested again for drugging and sexually molesting a
thirteen-year-old boy. He was found guilty, fired from his job,
sentenced to five years probation and one year working in a release
camp for offenders, and was required by law to register as a sex
offender.
Dahmer worked the release camp, was
paroled two months early, and moved into a new apartment. Soon after
moving in, he began his murder binge.
In 1988 and 1989, Dahmer killed James
Doxtator, fourteen; Richard Guerrero, twenty-five; and Anthony Sears,
twenty-six. He would party with them, have sex, murder them,
dismember them, masturbate on their corpses, and then store them in
the basement. Keeping the skull of Anthony Sears, he boiled it to
remove the skin, painted it gray to make it look like a plastic
model, and saved the trophy for two years - until it was recovered
from his apartment on July 23rd, 1991. Later he explained that he
used to masturbate in front of the skull for gratification.
In May of 1990, Dahmer moved into the
apartment that later would become infamous: Apartment 213, 924 North
25th Street, Milwaukee. Dahmer picked the pace up of
his killings. He murdered Eddie Smith, thirty-six, in June; Ricky
Beeks, twenty-seven, in July; Ernest Miller, twenty-two, in
September; David Thomas, twenty-three, also in September; Curtis
Straughter, nineteen, in February 1991; Errol Lindsey, nineteen, in
April; and Tony Hughes, thirty-one, in May.
In the wee hours of May 27th,
1991, Konerak Sinthasomphone, fourteen, was discovered wandering
naked on the street, heavily drugged and bleeding from his rectum.
Two young women from the neighborhood found the confused young boy
and called 911. Dahmer chased after the boy to take him back to his
apartment, but the women stopped him. When the police arrived, Dahmer
told them that Sinthasomphone was his nineteen-year-old boyfriend,
and they'd had an argument while drinking. The two women were not
pleased and protested, but the two police officer turned the boy over
to Dahmer. The police later reported a strange smell inside Dahmer's
apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony
Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The two
policemen did not try to verify the boy's age and also failed to
run the background check that would have revealed Dahmer as a
convicted child molester, registered sex offender, and still on
probation.
Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered the young
lad, keeping his skull as a souvenir.
Author Note: Officers Joseph
P. Gabrish and John A. Balcerzak were fired after this incident but
appealed and were re-instated.
