Can you ever tell if someone will go on to kill? Is hindsight 20/20? Or are some flags just too red to ignore?
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00:00Can you ever tell if someone will go on to kill? It's hindsight 2020. Or are some flags
00:05just too red to ignore?
00:08When Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested in 1991, police spoke to some former neighbors from
00:13his home state of Ohio and unearthed a long history of disturbing behavior.
00:17"...not because I was angry with them, not because I hated them, but because I wanted
00:22to keep them with me."
00:24In one instance, a group of boys had found a dog-severed head on a spike behind Dahmer's
00:28childhood home. Other neighbors reported seeing cats and frogs pinned to trees in buildings
00:33nearby. Dahmer's neighbors kept this information to themselves for decades, however, and these
00:38details only came to light after he was already in custody.
00:42But these warning signs were nothing compared to the one missed by police in May 1991. That
00:47month, a 14-year-old boy named Conorick Sinthesomphone escaped Dahmer's Milwaukee home. Sinthesomphone
00:53was nude, visibly inebriated, and bleeding when a pair of young women found him. Those
00:58ladies phoned the police while fending off Dahmer, who insisted that the boy was his
01:02drunken lover, and that there was no need to involve the authorities. When the cops
01:06finally arrived, they simply walked Dahmer and Sinthesomphone back to Dahmer's apartment.
01:11After they left, Dahmer strangled Sinthesomphone to death.
01:15When this information emerged, protests broke out. Locals claimed that police racism and
01:20homophobia had condemned Sinthesomphone to his fate. The officers themselves were briefly
01:25suspended, but they continued to defend their decisions in the years to come.
01:29In his youth, Ted Bundy felt an apparent need to control and harm others, and he often took
01:33those feelings out on his family and neighbors.
01:35There are always more than enough kids around us to do something with. They seem to be everywhere.
01:41While living with his grandparents, for example, Bundy shared space with his 15-year-old aunt,
01:46Julia Cowell. One morning, Cowell awoke to find the 3-year-old Bundy lifting up her bed
01:50sheets and inserting butcher knives into her bedspread with a grin on his face. Cowell
01:54addressed this incident at the time, but no one else in the family shared her concern.
01:58And Bundy's childhood friend, Sandy Holt, later told the Netflix documentary Conversations
02:03with a Killer that Bundy would build so-called tiger traps in their neighborhood, which she
02:07described as pits full of spikes and hidden by vegetation.
02:10And one little girl went over the top of one of Ted's tiger traps and got the whole side
02:17of her leg slit open.
02:20Bundy never suffered any known consequences for setting these traps, and he soon moved
02:24on to more lethal pastimes.
02:26There was something inherently unassuming about Gacy that seemed to disarm the communities
02:30around him, making it almost impossible for them to suspect him of wrongdoing. But some
02:35people nevertheless tried to raise the alarm about him. In 1967, two teen boys informed
02:40the police that Gacy had plied them with alcohol, forced them to watch pornography, and attempted
02:44to molest them.
02:45The face that I saw that night was, I don't know how to explain it. It was just frightful.
02:51Gacy attempted to intimidate them into keeping quiet, but still caught a 10-year sentence
02:55on sexual assault charges. He served only 18 months, however, and stepped back into
03:00civilian life in 1970. Shortly after his release, another teenager accused Gacy of attempting
03:05to sexually assault him. Those charges were dropped after the alleged victim refused to
03:09appear in court to testify, which meant Gacy narrowly skirted a parole violation that would
03:14have put him back in prison.
03:15Even though Gacy had twice faced accusations of sexually assaulting a minor and received
03:19a conviction, he wasn't considered a suspect when teens started disappearing in his area.
03:24Gacy started killing in 1972, less than a year after his second trial, but cops didn't
03:29hone in on him until local complaints led to a stakeout in 1976.
03:33The man known as the Night Stalker experienced several traumatic events early in his life.
03:38At five years old, Richard Ramirez fell off a swing set and suffered a head injury that
03:42resulted in several epileptic seizures. While research has linked head injuries with a proclivity
03:47towards violence, it's no telltale sign on its own.
03:50A more concerning incident occurred when Ramirez was 12. His cousin, a Vietnam War veteran,
03:55showed him photos of brutally dismembered Vietnamese women. Ramirez allegedly became
04:00aroused by the nightmarish images, forever linking sex and death in his mind. Notably,
04:05he later witnessed the same cousin shoot his wife.
04:08Ramirez was 24 when he committed his first known homicide, killing a 79-year-old widow.
04:13He went on to kill at least 13 people, almost always during home break-ins. He also sexually
04:18assaulted many of his victims and left satanic symbols at the scenes of various crimes. In
04:231985, Ramirez was captured by Los Angeles residents after police successfully worked
04:27out his identity.
04:28I am so proud of them. I can't begin to tell you how proud we, all of us, are of the people
04:36in this community.
04:37Ramirez died in prison nearly 30 years later.
04:41Pyromania is often cited as a telltale sign of a potential killer. And while several known
04:46murderers have shown pyromaniacal tendencies, David Berkowitz might be the most prolific
04:51of them all. Berkowitz became known as the Son of Sam after he began his spree in 1976.
04:57He killed six people in total, despite often leaving letters at crime scenes and doing
05:00little to evade the law. The police finally caught him after he received a parking ticket
05:05near a shooting, and he ended up with six 25-to-life sentences.
05:09During his trial, Berkowitz spoke to a psychiatrist for defense and shared a handful of stories
05:13about his youth. He explained that he had set so many fires as a teenager that other
05:17kids called him Pyro. Berkowitz never lost his fondness for flames, either. He maintained
05:22a diary that linked him to as many as 2,000 arsons in the Bronx. At one point, he even
05:27worked as a volunteer firefighter, and yet nobody seemed to realize how dangerous he'd
05:31become.
05:32How did you feel when you heard he was the man?
05:35I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I still don't believe it.
05:40Born in California, Ed Kemper moved to Montana with his mom and two sisters after his parents'
05:44divorce. His mother, a heavy drinker, frequently abused and berated her son. Kemper slept in
05:49the house's basement, distancing him from his siblings and worsening his grudge against
05:53his mom. But Mrs. Kemper later claimed she had deemed it unsafe to allow Ed to share
05:58space with his sisters. At 10 years old, for example, he began cutting the heads off of
06:02his sisters' dolls.
06:04Around the same time, Kemper took his first life when he killed the family cat. Kemper
06:08reportedly killed another cat three years later, displaying its severed head on a platter.
06:13These red flags went unaddressed, however. At age 15, Kemper left Montana, returned to
06:17his father, and wound up living at his grandparents' house. He subsequently killed his grandparents
06:22and spent five years in a mental hospital. And even that wasn't the end of it.
06:26On his 21st birthday, Kemper was released on parole and placed in the care of his mother.
06:30He would go on to kill her, along with seven more people, before finally being brought
06:34to justice.
06:35Albert Fish is a good example of how easily red flags could be ignored in the 19th and
06:40early 20th centuries. Fish's parents put him up for adoption when he was just a few years
06:44old, leaving him in an orphanage where the young charges were routinely abused. He soon
06:49developed a fascination with suffering, experiencing pleasure from both watching and receiving
06:53violent punishment. He would take those interests with him when he left the orphanage and moved
06:57to New York with his mother. A decade later, Fish began luring children from their homes
07:02and torturing them.
07:04Self-harm was always a part of Fish's fascination with violence. He later married and had six
07:08children, all of whom became witnesses and participants in sadomasochism. He also frequently
07:13stabbed needles deep into his own body and lit himself on fire for sexual pleasure. In
07:18total, Fish killed at least three people before he was captured and executed, although he
07:22was connected to the deaths of at least seven more.
07:27For more stories, visit nyseagrant.org