Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Actually I should probably try Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is about serial killers, right, Yeah. I actually I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to mention that we have a lot of fun in the show and we joke around, and we will probably do that in the serial Killer podcast. Will and I find them fascinating, but we always remember that there are real victims here and we don't want them to fly to that or anything. Yeah. No, but the serial killers are so grizzly and their acts are so monstrous that it almost is easy to just detach and be like, hey, what's your favorite serial killer? They actually have serial killer training cards. Huh. Yeah, but we don't play that game. No, we don't. We play Old Maid. So I'm Josh Clark. The guy you just heard talking, uh is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. If this is your first time to Stuff you Should Know, Um, there is a goodie bag that we have for you, if you'll check under your seat should be taped under there. Send us an email and we'll try to see what we can come up with as a replacement. Probably just a response saying sorry. You know what they get. They get two hundred and fifteen free podcasts. Oh that's a good deal automatically, that is nice, chuck Um. So what are we talking about today? Serial killers? Oh? Yeah, that's right, Chuck. Here's the intro. Yeah. If you can't tell, I'm a little twitchy, a little jumpy. You may even hear a little bit of gum in my mouth that I probably should take out being a professional podcast vehemently, he just spit out his gum. Okay, so my gum is out. But the reason I'm doing this and acting all twitchy is because I have quit smoking for the first time in twenty years. I'm actually doing it. I've tried a couple of times, but we all know that it was half hearted at best. But I'm actually quitting smoking. Very proud of you, buddy. Thank you. Like I told you in the email you didn't reply to if that's very brave and terrifying thing you're doing. You have all my support, Thank you very much. I want to keep you around, and by proxy, I imagine I have Jerry's support too. Yeah she can't said, yeah, So if I do seem a little weird, it is because of that today and I apologize. What's you're flying in japandam Mar, So it's just all you're all weird right now, dah, I am perfect time to do serial killers? Okay, so let's talk serial killers, Chuck, Chuck, Where in the name of God did the term serial killers come from? And the middle of what decade did it come from? Coming It was coin Josh in the mid seventies by Robert Wrestler, and he was a former FBI director of the Violent Criminal Apprehensions Program, which imagine as a pretty fun laugh a minute job. And uh he apparently he chose cereal because the English police called those kinds of crimes crimes in a series, right and we uh we find in the article written by Shanna Freeman pretty good one too, like um that he was also a fan of serials that like you would watch like at the movies, like The Lone Ranger or something like that. So I thought it was a little weird, Like I love The Lone Ranger. So I'm gonna give a little shout out to him by coining this term. Yeah, they used to call them mass murders before that, or my favorite, it sounds like a personal's ad stranger on stranger crime. I like that, but it is true. I mean it is stranger crime and kind of uh underlines one of the I guess the riveting and and um most characteristic aspects of serial killers is that they they lack what would appear to any of the rest of us a motive. They're not killing for money. Um, they're not killing for um, you know, to get rid of a problem or because they're they've been they're a jilted lover. The the key hallmark of the serial killers that they kill for the pleasure of killing, for the sake of killing, and their subcategories will get into within that. But yeah, totally right on the money there. And there's a couple of other kinds of murderers that um people often confuse serial killers with. So let's just clear the air right now. Let's start with mass murderers, right, what do you have to do to become a mass murderer? Uh, you have to kill four or more people at the same time or roughly the same time in the same place. So like a school shooter would be a mass murderer, right right, right, And then of course you've got these free killers. Uh. Those are like office shooters who go from an from their house, say, after killing their family, and then they're like, I got one more problem place I want to take care of. They go to the office, shoot that place up, kill some more people, and then drive off to a gas station and blow their heads off in in the in the van. Yeah. Yes. And a serial killer, officially defined by the FBI, means you it has to be three or more victims. And like you said, the hallmark is there's got to be a cooling off period in between. So like I killed somebody and then like in Jeffrey Dahmer's case, I think he waited years and years before he killed his second victim, and then another long period because he was like eighteen and when he started and yeah, yeah, something like that, and then he waited and I think, and this is all from memories, not in the article, and then um, I think he waited a long time between second and third and then they you know, as usual, it starts picking up in succession, that kind of off the cliff they go the further off the cliff they go, and boy did he go off the cliff. We're gonna talk about some famous serial killers later, right, Okay, we gotta we gotta mention him. Um. As a matter of fact, I think we would be professionally irresponsible if we didn't mention Jeffrey Dahmer in depth. I think you're right, Um, Chuck. There's uh. I think been approximately four hundred serial killer in the US in the past century by estimates, right, Um. And strangely, there's been a I think it an increase of some vast percentage, but eighty percent of those have come about since nineteen and they actually think the earliest when the most widely cited first serial killer in the US was a guy named H. H. Holmes. Yeah, he had the Holmes Murder Castle in Chicago at the World's Fair. He built this hotel basically and it was literally like you check in, but you don't check out type of situation. Yeah. And remember on the Urban Planning podcast we talked about the the the guy who came up with the the City Beautiful movement, and that's where he debuted. It was at that at that World's Fair, right while people were getting off at a at a hotel nearby, so he's the first one. They say, I think, uh, twenty seven confessions. But they as always almost with all these grogler killers, they say, well they tagged this many, but there may have been hundreds, right. And then sometimes most of the time it's that they can get him for like two or three, which is really all you need, um, and then they'll confess to about you know, X number more and then people will suspect that yeah, there's they actually you know, kill the hundred or so people. But um, in other cases it's actually they'll confess to more than they actually did kill. Like Henry Lee Lucas has um come into question over the over the years as to how many people he actually killed. Like they know he killed his mother, and they were pretty sure he kill at least one other person. But if he only killed two, he's technically not a serial killer. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, and then the also the other thing in like the case of Wayne Williams, the Atlanta child strangler, he uh or I don't think he's strangled child killer? He uh. They kind of tacked on a bunch of murders onto his wrap that they wanted to close the cases on. Yeah, did you ever hear about pretty Kinky case? Yeah, yeah, I remember it kind of came back around in like two thousand five or something. He was up for parole or something, and the case was it sounds like he's innocent if you if you start investigating the case, it's really circumstantial. Um, that's our opinion. Uh so, Chuck, Josh, how do you classify a serial killer? Well, there's a couple of ways. You can classify them based on motive, or you can classify them based on uh social patterns, organizational patterns. So if you're talking motive, Um, you're talking about Holmes typology named for Ronald and Stephen Holmes, right, not h H. Holmes, you become a serial killer, you're not allowed to actually classify any of your ilk extremely enough, that's true. And they are authors of textbooks on violent crimes, and they came up with this from anecdotal data. So a lot of people poopo it. But when you're talking serial killers, a lot of times all you can do is interview these people and compile it and try and draw you know, conclusions based on that. Right. So what they came up with was, um, there's two kinds of Um, I guess motive based. Sure. Uh, there's act focus and process focus focus. So act focus means like you're you're you're killing quickly, and you're usually killing for a reason. There's a larger reason and the killing is kind of means to the end of achieving that reason. Process focused is kind of the um that's the serial killer who enjoys killing, enjoys taking someone's life, will likely torture the person over a period of time, will kill them kind of brutally. Uh. There's it's not quick and it's messy. Yeah, and there's there's subcategories within each of those. The act focused killers are visionary or missionary. Visionary means they hear voices and have like a vision saying like go kill I think on Sam was one of those. Yeah, he didn't his neighbor's dog talent quite a vision. And Uh, missionary murders um believe they're on like a mission to get rid of like prostitutes, like the Green River killer. Right. Um. And you could also um make the case that um uh John Wayne Gacy was a mission focused or missionary act focused serial killer because he had said after he got caught like they're gonna give me an award for getting rid of these you know, clousy, bad kids that I killed. Um. But there's also a distinction among serial killers that they often rationalize what they're doing by justifying it to a larger authority, like they were providing society a service. So depending on exactly how he was saying that, it could go either way. Did you here see what the Green River killer said in his police statement to the jury, I just hate prostitute, hate prostitites. It's like, all right, yeah, I remember Van Nostrin was reading a book about that. Oh that's right, remember, Yeah. So the subcategories for the processed focus slow killers are fall into three groups. Um, lust killers, that's pretty self explanatory. Um, but not check the ripper, right yeah, dah, yeah, we'll get into him. Uh, I'm sorry. Thrill and gain killers, and that means they either get a kick out of killing or they think they're going to profit in some way. And then the power seeking killers, who those are the guys who like to play god. And we say guys a lot because it's mostly white men. I think. Yeah, it's very infrequent that you have a serial killer who kills outside of his ethnic group, meaning that it's white on white crime. Very rarely do you have a female serial killer, right, although there's a pretty prominent one UM named Charlie's Thearren you heard, yeah, where they ugly at her up for that movie. Way they did a good There's a picture of um Eileen Warnos in this article, and by god, she doesn't look just like Charlie's Thearren and monster. But she killed Uh she was convicted of killing seven men and probably killed more. Yeah, but she was one of the very few real female serial killers. Yeah, there's a couple. We have a list that you know how Josh loves this list, so we have a list later on. We would like to get the ladies there due because we called a task for not naming female geniuses and Chuck. There's another way to classify serial killers, and that's by their level of organization, right yeah, organized or disorganized? Right? So organized e g. Dexter. You've got somebody who, like um, drives a flashy car. Smart uh smart Um? Actually there, he would be considered non social, which we can't quite wrap our heads around that. But it's um. I think it's being excluded from society. But still being capable of existing or appearing to exist in society, right sure, Okay, so they may also taunt the police. They're probably educated, um and uh, they follow the news right, keep up with modern events. They have daytime habits. They is interesting. They may show up um as a like a somebody who can help the police as a witness crime or something like that, just to kind of get a thrill out of that as well. Um, and then of course you've got disorganized, right, this is like ed Gan or Robert Picton just basically like the like you can look at and be like, you're a serial killer, aren't you. Yeah, And that's pretty they're pretty much the opposite like everything we said. And there's a list of things here for for organized and disorganized, and they're all pretty much opposite. So disorganized means you live alone, you don't date, you have no interest in the news, you have nighttime habits, you aren't interested in the cops and police work. You're kind of dumb. You you really don't dismember, whereas organized person dismembers, Which is weird because again Robert picked in um hung his victims on uh meat hooks in his barn and disembowel them. Yeah, it was bad. Um, but he had nighttime habits and was disorganized killer, So it's kind of weird. I don't think anything's exactly cut and dry when it comes to serial killers. Yeah. Well they said the majority of them are organized and non social, but they're like you know, we said, plenty of the others as well. Um. And the other thing I thought was interesting was the McDonald triad. Had you ever heard of this? I had, but I've never heard of it. I've never heard it called that. Yeah, they said that serial killers often exhibit, uh, these three behaviors in childhood, and it's known as the McDonald triad um formerly the ray Croc triad um, bed wedding, arson and cruelty to animals. And I surprised Josh with the fact that I was nearly on the path myself. I because famously I was a late bedweater, as I have admitted famously, and well whoever listens to us, and um, I was kind of into like fires. I wasn't an arsonist, but I love playing with fire, but I love animals like crazy. So you have the McDonald die ede not crazy crazy, but I love hannibals. That's funny that you bring that up, Chuckers, because a lot of people assume that serial killers are in fact crazy. That's really far off base, at least legally speaking. Right. So, there's a lot of debate now actually more than ever, um, between psychology and sociology. And we'll get into that a little further, but let's let's talk about, um, you know, the kind of psychological motives. But there's a little bit of foreshadowing. Take it with grain salt, because there's a whole school thought out there that thinks psychology has totally dropped the ball on explaining criminal behavior, specifically serial killing. Right. So standard stuff that's been around for decades is um that serial killers are the result of combination of neglect and abuse. Right. Yes, they've done studies. FBI has done studies and interviewed dozens and dozens of killers, serial killers, all kinds of killers, and they found a similar pattern, and most of them of childhood abuse and neglect. And it makes sense because when you're a kid, you're growing up, you're developing as a normal, normal child. There are very important periods when you learn about things like empathy and trust and love and being nice with your fellow man, just very basic rules of humanity, and if you don't have those, then it's not imprinted on your little kid brain and you may not be able to learn it later on in life. Right, makes it a little tougher, Yeah, which is really sad. It it is sad, and actually again, um, like, I think it's appropriate that Jeffrey Dahmer is off to the side in that little section because it's really weird. Because I was thinking about it today, I've realized that I've always kind of felt bad for that guy because of the life that he had, Like he was abandoned by his family. Is not just like his parents, like one parent left, Like I think his dad left and then his mom was like, I'm gonna go look for a boyfriend and take the younger ones with me. You stay here, And he was like seventeen and just left to live the rest of his life on his own. I think that played a huge factor in I imagine the neglect, right, and then you have UM abuse. So usually they're finding when they study serial killers that there is that combination of UH neglect from the parents and UM abuse, either direct abuse, whether it's a physical, emotional, sexual um or witnessing the abuse of others, a sibling or both. I imagine it's probably worse. And um they've actually seen in rats with the neglect, not with the abuse part, but with neglect. Rats that um are not that that are basically neglected or rejected by their parents by their mother actually show um symptoms of rats sociopathy as they get older. I feel so bad for the rats. I know, it's like the did someone actually abuse the rats to see how they react? Kind of you like flick them and stuff. If you put on a white lab coat, you can pretty much do whatever you want to a rat and the rats. Oh. The other thing that you know you mentioned Amer it was so disturbing and just like oddly fascinating was when he was a teenager. I think one of the first really odd acts he did was he like saw a dead deer in the woods. Did you ever hear about that? And he like laid down with a deer and like, you know, cuddled with it. It's like Johnny Depp and dead Man in the forest. Oh, yeah, you're right. And uh, then before he killed, I know, he knocked a jogger out cold in the woods and like laid down with his unconscious body to try and stave off this desire to kill. Yeah, and well, I don't even know if it was to stave off the desire to kill as much as if he was tired of people leaving him alone. He wanted to be with people. One of the things that he was famous for was an attempt to make a zombie who would stay with him, so he would he would lure like young prostitute boys back to his house or his apartment and then attack him. There was one kid that he drilled a hole in the guy's head and was able to pour drain oh into it, and the guy stayed alive like that for a few days, and Dahmer, a guest, said, you know, I just didn't want him to leave. Yeah, he wanted companionship. Yeah. So he was trying to make a zombie using drain though, and I think that probably also accounts for the cannibalism as well. Is he trying to ingest something to keep it as a part of himself. This is all just armchair psychology, but it's we could pretty much charge for this with the level that psychologists contributed so far. You know, I wonder if match dot com would have been around, if he could have found like a mate, if that never would have happened, maybe so, or maybe he would have killed the mate and then use match dot com to find his victims. Oh yeah, So, Chuck, we are talking about whether or not serial killers are insane. And if you look at the US Code for the insanity defense, they don't fit the bill almost Ever, when you read the definition, at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the defendant, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of the wrongfulness of his acts. Mental disease or defect does not otherwise constitute defense. Right, So you don't understand what you're doing. You don't is right and wrong? Is right and wrong? And you also aren't You're not You're not taking a life like that's not your goal. You're not thinking about that. This flies in the face of serial killing. Well, that's only two have only gotten off with that plea of insanity, right, and one of them was a game and he wore people's skin. Yeah, he was the inspiration for Buffalo Bill and leather Face. Yeah, and Texas changeaw Masacar do the dance for me? Baby was Texas Changsaw Mascar summer school reference when they were watching Texas. That was a reference in a reference. I thought you were gonna do the like, uh, well, you help me with this couch good. You do a way better Buffalo Bill than me. I don't know, you, big fat gruel. That's so disturbing. It is a great movie, though, Yeah, and we like that one picture. Yeah. Sure. Did I ever tell you my Silence of the Lamb story? I went to uh An Athens in college. I went to see Dances with Wolves and they said, and if you want to stay after for a free screening of Silence of the Lambs of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. And I was like, I'll stay. And I heard Silence of the Lambs Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins. I thought it was gonna be like Our Merchant everything. I cut to thirty minutes into the movie when I have my you know, hair glued to the ceiling of the theater. I was like, holy crap. Yeah that was a good movie. It still is too, but when it came out it was like groundbreaking. Definitely, it's good stuff. Um, but yeah, Buffalo Bob and Buffalo Bill. You know that one and Leatherface were both based on Ageen, who is one of I think two serial killers in the US to ever get off on an insanity played. Yea, he was rough, he was, and he looks like it too. He's wearing like flannel and he's just staying in on his sports like I'll kill you, I'll kill you. And I think psycho Um Anthony Hopkins character is based on a Geene as well. Yeah, he made a big splash when he came up because again I think he was in the forties or early fifty and this was way before people before the term serial killer was ever around. So, um, what serial killers have as far as psychology can come up with as far as the d s M four soon to be the d s M five right, which coincidentally not Quinn itdentally comes out in two thousand twelve because it's going to be the end of the world. And um, but they've come up with is that serial killer stuffer from a personality disorder antisocial personality disorder, Um a k A psychopath, right, And I have a buddy who's a sociologist, A University of Alberta that I first ran across when I was writing an article on sociology and serial killing. And he says, of course they have a personality disorder. It's like they're serial killers. Is that really the best you can come up with? After literally decades of intense research, people have have been their entire careers onto the study of serial killers from a psychological standpoint, the best you can come up with is a personality disorder. And that's sad but true. When I when I when I UH interviewed this guy first, I imagine him he was going to be like, well, you know, we think we can kind of help psychology out, like maybe to understand or hash it out. He's like, no, psychology is utterly and completely failed at this, and it's time to take another look at it. Interesting. Yeah, um, while you were talking about the ap D though, that um anti social personality of order disorder. There's seven factors that determine that and if you have three of them, if you're diagnosed with three of them, then I think you are considered technically as having a p D. Okay, let's I'm a little nervous right now. You're playing at home, see which applies to you. Number one a failure to a bide by the law or to conform to social norms um. Number two deceitfulness that is often found in the form of habitual lying or multiple aliases. Number three, you're aliases. A failure to plan ahead or acting on impulse. Yeah. Number four repeated physical fights or assaults that indicate irritability or aggressiveness. You're not a fighter. Number five a reckless disregard for safety of others or self. I do love bumper cars, so we'll call that a thing. Okay. Number six a repeated failure to sustain a job or an ability to honor financial obligations. Now you've got a good gig. I would give that maybe a third of a ding previous life Josh, but current Josh is very responsible, that is true. And number seven, uh, they are indifferent to suffering from uh suffering of another. So basically you don't have the mirrorner on that gives you empathy like we were talking about with synesthesia. Okay, So how many did you have to have to have a p D UM three out of seven? Okay, I had five. Everybody, I have UH, anti social personality disorder, just thank you for that. The good news is, Josh, you are not insane. No, I know. I know it because I know right from wrong right. And uh, if I were a serial killer, I just really really like to kill. Like Gary Ridgeway, I just really really hate prostitutes. You know, you turned out to be a serial podcaster, thankfully for all of us, because they occur in a series. Um, Chuck, can you tell a little bit of disdain here in my voice? Yes? So I thought it was a smoking thing. No, it's it's part of it for sure. Um. But it's so back to sociology, okay, because this really makes sense to me. Um, But it's such a radical departure from how we've always viewed serial killers. You view them as crazy. There's some sort of psychological problem with them, right, Um. Sociologists say, yeah, they have any social personality disorder, But it doesn't mean that that's a problem psychology has to tackle. It's not a mental flaw, it's a character flaw. And yeah, I'm sure that the neglect by parents didn't help. I'm sure the abuse really made it worse. But people can go through that and never become a serial killer. And it's it's actually the movement of this organism we call society, and it's current mood that can produce serial killers. Right And basically since nineteen fifty there's a lot of people who point to this post era as a time when there's just been such social change that you could conceivably call it a societal breakdown, like degradation of morals, violent films, video games where you kill people in the first person point of view. Right. And I didn't know this, but Kevin Higgerdy told me this. Um. Apparently in the late early modern era, so say, like the nineteenth century, prostitutes were actually much more a part of the community than they are now. Right, So we're actually more puritanical towards prostitution than we were like a hundred or so years ago. Uh. And he's saying that as a result of prostitutes becoming more and more and more outcast in society, Um, they have become more and more of a target favorite target of serial killers who love the act of killing. They don't hate the person that they're killing, unless you're Gary Ridgeway. But you're just looking for somebody you can kill and get away with, because you're not crazy, you know what. You're doing is wrong, right. Um. And then that, combined with society turning its back on prostitutes, making them basically live out these very dangerous lives, has allowed the rise of serial killing to come up because of these changes like that, And that's just one of many changes. The really disturbing part of all this is that in sociologies few we're all serial killers. There's just society hasn't changed quite enough to to trigger that behavior in us. Well, let's hope that never happens. Yeah, let's hope indeed. Yeah, that's really interesting and it's like a totally different way to look at it, and it makes a lot more sense to me. Well, you know, another way to look at it. A lot of people think that, uh, you know, these serial killers are so far gone and that something is up with their brain. They can't help it. They've got a brain malfunction going on. And they've done a lot of studies on brain damage, and Um, one I came across found that thirty confessed killers not necessarily still serial killers on death row are mentally ill, and six of that twenty had frontal lobe abnormalities. No accident, I don't think, and of all confessed serial killers have no brain damage so due. So that's I mean, that's almost down the middle. So I think there's a variety of factors, one of which definitely could be brain injury. What was that one? Guy? Um? Oh? What was Bobby Joe Long? He has the best quote in this whole article. You want to read it, but it's okay, okay. Bobby Joe Long, he was convicted of nine murders and he stated in his quote, Uh, after I'm dead, they're going to open up my head and find that, just like we've been saying, a part of my brain is black and dry and dead. So yeah, I mean that's that hits it on the head man. That's creepy. It is creepy. And that's basically him saying, you know, something is wrong with my brain, dudes, and after I died, you're gonna check it out and you're gonna see that I'm right. And what's interesting is any time you say a quote like that, you automatically attract people who are waiting for you to die now because they're like, well, you just threw it out in the gauntlet. I want to see if part of your brain is black and dry and dead, I personally want to know. Yeah, so, Chuck, we've got not insane, possibly brain damaged in my opinion, definitely a product of society, anti social personality disorder, people abused and neglected. So how do you how do you catch such a person? Especially if there's four hundred of them over the last century in the United States? This is like a needle in a haystack, right, Yeah, except the murder to a needle. Yeah. Basically, what you do if you're a fed or a copper working the beat, searching out the serial killer. Do you want to get a do you want to get a signature? You want to get a modus operandi and m O, and you want to combine those to come up with a profile and a signature is like, UM, if you pose your victims in a certain pose, or if you always dumped them in a certain spot, that's a signature that you can look at to help profile or even the UM The way you dispatch your victims, Yeah, well that's part of the m O. The way you kill them. Certainly the ritual of it, that's a big time giveaway. But what what I found interesting was that the m O changes and involves and actually grows more mature over time. Um, basically, it's the killer learning from past mistakes. So your MO is going to So if like your early m O was, you know, learning somebody into a van and like a crowded area, R right, and you almost caught a couple of times, then you may lure somebody into your vans still, but it's not going to be in a crowded area anymore, or something like that. So that's that's an example of the m O changing over to lured them into your el camino in a crowded area. Yeah, I think you can generally trust people who drive el caminos, but the van the abduction man, if you've got a tiny round window on the back of rear side of your vand and that's it, then you're in big trouble. You do not get in a van like that effect to stay out of vans entirely. It almost always ends up badly for the person who was lured in there. Yeah, that's why they invented the minivan. Actually, that's why they invented the minivan because it just looks more family friendly and not like you're a serial killer. Yeah, that's that's what I heard. It makes sense. So profiling Josh started in the seventies with Ted Bunny was one of the first ones. Actually, yeah, and I guess they nailed him then down. Yeah, they said that his profile was almost perfect, right down to the point where they predicted that he would have a step brother. That's like pretty serious profiling if you're getting that detailed. Yeah, and they were right. Yeah, what all they missed though? Yeah, they got a stepbrother wrong, but they are the right. But they got his address wrong right off by like a number right, and we thought he was Chinese, but he's not. He's dead. Bundy really don't know what the whole sky diving thing was. Just yeah, Bundy, like he unraveled. Man, He he killed people for years. He's known for the University of Florida deal in the sorority house. But that was like at the very end. He had killed people for years and years and years, and then all of a sudden just flipped and walked into sorority house and started killing people. And then he got pulled over for a traffic ticket. That's how they called him. Yeah, how did they catch him? Like they knew who they were looking for, you know, not exactly like a sorority girl in the back or I don't know. I think they had already had a profile or leads or something at that point. They tripped him up and Berkowitz, son of Sam, they caught like they actually apprehended him and then let him go and he was gonna be like a witness to one of the murders that he committed with the cops. And then they were like, wait a minute, you said that you were just talking to your neighbor's dog exactly, and he was like, well yeah, and they're like, okay, well he didn't talk back, man, That's what I would have said, right, But he said, oh yeah, and he talked back, and he told me to kill people, right or b t K. We talked about the blind blind uh tap dance killer. Right. This guy is the saddest serial killer ever. He is terrible. He was terrible at he killed like three people over the span of like twenty six years. And do you know how he got caught? Right? I saw? Um, I'm sure it was on Discovery, our fine, fine parent corporation, right. Um. They were they were interviewing like one of the investigators who was working the b t K case and cracked it, and he was taunting the police. But he wasn't a really smart guy. So he sent a floppy disk um to the cops, taunting them with a Microsoft word document and didn't understand that there's this thing called metadata which has all sorts of very um specific information about the computer that you used that on. And he used it at the church that he was a deacon at, and um they got him like a couple of days later. But I remember one of the detectives going like, we actually thought it was like somebody trying to frame somebody else, Like I couldn't believe that somebody would be that sloppy or that dumb. And sure enough he was, Yeah, and he he wanted a position of authority do anything for us. It was like dog Catcher for a while. Anything that had a uniform, he would, Yeah, I should go ahead and point out before we get assaulted with listener mail. I know he wasn't called the bind tap dance kill. That's an inside joke between us and a super fan to figure that out. Bind, torture and kill. Um. The one I was fascinated with was Peter Woodcock, Canadian serial killer. You wouldn't think there's a lot of Canadian serial killers because Pickton was I think, in my opinion, the worst serial killer ever. Robert Pickton was Canadian, he was from Vancouver. Was he angry that he was an American? Feed his victims to his pigs? Oh, that's right. He was angry that I'm not America. I'm gonna kill everybody that's American. We're just kidding, Canadians, we love you. But Peter Woodcock was a Canadian and he spent thirty five years in a psych hospital in Canada after he had killed three people. He was what they thought was rehabilitated, which is the point of this is that you can't rehabilitate a serial killer. Pretty much, they thought he was rehabilitated. They said, you know what, We're gonna give you some leeway. We're gonna let you out on like some weekend passes. Now he got his first weekend pass, uh and his supervisor for the weekend pass was a former patient who was also a former murderer. And within the first hour that they let him off on as wee can pass, he and that his his guy that was watching him killed a dude with a hatchet and a knife. Within the first hour of his first weekend pass, he and his chaperone killed another patient. So that's a that's a bad guy that did not work out too well. So checking on anybody else? Yeah, we're like, uh, coming up against it. I have a big list, and to keep Josh from eating it, I'll just go ahead and skip to the front of it. To um. Harold Frederick fred Shipman is supposedly the most prolific serial killer and known history, and he is positively linked to two d and fifty murders. He was doctor Death. Do you ever hear that guy Dr Death? Yeah, he was a general practitioner and he targeted his female patients. And this was like you know, two thousand four was when he hung himself in jail. So he's supposedly the most prolific of all time. What about the Columbian guy, uh, Louis Alfredo Garbarrito Kubilos, otherwise known as the Beast or Labista. He raped and murdered a hundred and forty boys, but they suspect as many as three hundred and in Columbia you can only go to jail for thirty years, but they reduced that to twenty two years. So he is out. He is out in his whereabouts I believe are unknown if I'm not mistaken, so he is out. Yeah. And as Chuck said, I can't care a serial killer, no, because they're not insane. Right. So, if you want to know more about serial killers, is a pretty awesome article on the site called how serial Killers Work. You can type that into the handy search part how stuff works dot com, which of course leads us to listener mail hold on partner. We have a little bit of admin work to get out of the way about our New York trips. Some announcements. Okay, let me shiftle some papers here. Uh, well, T shirts first, let's go T shirts. The T shirt contest is on in in for real son and and it's uh the end of May is um at midnight is the deadline, So get your submissions in. If you submitted, re submit within the window. If you're not American, I'm really sorry. But are we excluding Yeah? You have to really yeah? So wait, Canadians can't know. Man, it stinks. But like I told everyone that wrote in, I can't win a contest in England either. Every country has their own rules and you gotta be a citizen of this country. Wow, yeah, I had no idea. That's just the way it's gotta be here, to go back and read the fine print, I know. Huh okay, well, yes, sorry to everybody who lives outside the US. I know it's a bummer, but that's just another reason it sucks to be you. It's not our rules, yes, no, no, we would never come up with something the rules of the world. It's the planet rules of the United States apparently. Yes. So New York, Josh, Yeah, we are coming to New York and we have two events pending, one for sure and one tbd uh Monday night, June seven, we will be at the Knitting Factory and Scenic Brooklyn, New York, super hipster Central Brooklyn. I don't know that I'm going to be able to cut skinny jeans for both of us. Um. Yes, skinny jeans and the eyot Oxford don't really go unless it's like three sizes too small, and it kind of is. Yeah. So uh, we're gonna be doing a little happy hour get together from five thirty to seven thirty. There will be a concert to follow that actually costs money if you want to get into that. It's like twelve bucks. I think and The Onion is sponsoring that, and there will be folks from The Onion hanging out with us too, so you can meet them, yeah, which will be super cool. Looking forward to meeting them in person. Yeah, So be there, be square. And then Wednesday night, June night, we are gonna do an all star trivia challenge and we're rounding out our all star trivia team that Josh and are on and it's pretty exciting special mystery guests. Yes, well, I'll tell you what. Let's confirm one person, Um, the editor in chief of the Onion newspaper is on our team. Joan Does is one of our buddies now and um the other well, we don't want to announce just yet because I hate to say that. You know Mr t is gonna be there. If he's not gonna be there, I can't believe he just gave it away. So that is gonna be you come you challenge us for bragging rights at trivia. Uh, and it's gonna be a lot of fun at Bar Trivia and Location tv D. But that'll be Wednesday ju Night and co Ed Yes the beans Josh okay. So um, if you have heard our two part Guatemala series you're familiar with co ed if not UM, they are a great organization that creates um self sustaining textbook and computer centers, right, um. And you can actually support these guys with a five dollar donation by texting the words stuff as to U F F two two zero to two two. You'll get a text back saying you sure you're sure about this? And all you do is text yes, and it'll charge you five bucks. And what'd you say? Off? Mike? Some what applies? Text and data rates may apply and uh if it's actually all these this is another thing only for Americans because it's different cell companies in different countries. So if you want to give and you live outside the Union United States, you can go to UH co ed you see dot org then may have a place where you can donate there wherever you live, even if you live on Mars Mars. Well, all right, it's listener male Ton. Huh. Indeed, Josh, we're short on time. I'm gonna call this top ten reasons to hate stuff. You should know that's good, um. Number one reason to hate us Josh and Chuck frequently but your names and words during the podcast and misuse I and me in a gross perversion of the English language. Check Number two. We cause ordinary people to become inebriated while listening by saying a few key words. Number three. It is not released frequently enough and causes addicted listeners to moan in pain between Tuesday and Thursday. Number four catchy theme music easily gets stuck in listeners heads. Number five Chuck and Josh swear in the podcast, and the beats can cause hearing damage. Number six. Jerry is seldom mentioned, not true, and has never been heard live on the air, and some fans postulate the Chuck and Josh keeper locked in a closet between podcasts. Number seven uh, Stuff you Should Know instructs on a wide variety of illegal topics, including nuclear weapons, money laung ring, and the pompst the schemes. Number eight Chuck and Josh use horrible plug similes. True. Number nine the disillusion listeners by stating that they record to every Friday when it's common knowledge that they record every Tuesday and Thursday instead. Uh not true. And number ten. In addition to possibly keeping Jerry locked in the closet, we also torture her by going off on long winded introductions. True it's a bad one to put on the d and at times getting completely off topic. Way way true. Always a huge fan. Noah, Thanks Noah, We appreciate that. Top ten. Let's let's an be awesome listener mail I agreed. Yeah, if you have awesome listener mail force, we want to read it. And if you have any crazy serial killer stories grizzly or otherwise, how about those? Want those? Yeah, if you've got some firsthand experience obviously not if you're not a serial killer, but if you know of someone who was, or like any cool link. If you have something to say about serial killers, put it in an email, send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you