Introduction: The Mind of the Serial Killer
1 Pornography and the Rise of Sex Crime
‘Action brings relief’: the key to the serial killer?—Ted Bundy—‘Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge’—Human irrationality—Sex and incest in nineteenth-century Whitechapel—Casanova the realist—Early erotica: The School of Venus, Dom Bugger and Fanny Hill—Richardson’s Pamela—The Marquis de Sade—The importance of ‘forbiddenness’—Sadistic obsession with blood—Pieydagnelle—The Ripper murders—Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata—The sexual illusion—Sheldrake and morphogenetic fields
2 Mass Murder in the Nineteenth Century
What is a serial killer?—Anna Zwanziger—The Ratcliffe Highway murders—Lacenaire—Zola’s ‘human beast’—Possession to the point of destruction’—The case of Thomas Piper—Jesse Pomeroy, Louis Menesclou—Theodore Durrant—Neil Cream—Joseph Vacher—Ludwig Tessnow
Bela Kiss, the Hungarian Bluebeard—Jeanne Weber, the ‘Ogress of the Goutte d’Or’—Georg Grossmann—Fritz Haarmann of Hanover—Karl Denke—Peter Kürten, the Düsseldorf sadist
4 Mass Murder in America, 1890–1920
H. H. Holmes—Johann Hoch—Belle Gunness—Was Belle murdered?—The Axeman of New Orleans
5 Mass Murder in America, 1920–1940
Earle Nelson, ‘the dark strangler’—Albert Fish—Carl Panzram—The Cleveland Torso Killer
Paul Ogorzov—Bruno Lüdke—Gordon Frederick Cummins—Neville Heath—Fernandez and Beck, the ‘Lonely Hearts killers’
Reginald Christie—Peter Manuel—Werner Boost, the ‘doubles killer’—Heinrich Pommerencke—Harvey Glatman—Ed Gein the necrophile—Charles Starkweather—Melvin Rees
The ‘motiveless murder’ of Hazel Woodard—Sartre’s Herostratus—Robert Smith: ‘I wanted to get known’—Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—Religious messiahs—The Moors murder case—Maslow and dominance—Sigward Thurneman—Hardrup and Nielsen: murder by hypnosis—The Thames nude murders—The Boston Strangler—Staniak, the Red Spider—John Collins, the Ypsilanti killer—The case of Jerry Brudos—Richard Speck—The Manson case
Dean Corll—The Ted Bundy case—The ‘Right Man’—‘Son of Sam’—The Zodiac murders—Paul John Knowles—John Gacy—The Hillside Stranglers: Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono—‘Sex crime is not about sex but about power’—The murder of the Ohta family—Herb Mullin—Ed Kemper—The Yorkshire Ripper
The FBI ‘psychological profiling unit’—The murder of Julie Wittmeyer—Robert Hansen—John Duffy, the Railway Rapist—David Canter—Thierry Paulin, the Paris ‘Phantom’—Erskine, the Stockwell strangler—Henry Lee Lucas—Dennis Nilsen—The Atlanta murders—Leonard Lake—Gerald Gallego—Ramirez, the Night Stalker—The Green River Killer—Jeffrey Dahmer—Andrei Chikatilo—Arthur Shawcross—Aileen Wurnos—Beverley Allitt