Lost Girls An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

Author:Robert Kolker [Kolker, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Child Abuse, Social Science, True Crime, Prostitution & Sex Trade, Family & Relationships, Abuse
ISBN: 9780062183675
Publisher: Harper

Producers for cable TV news have a stable of pundits they turn to during hot crime stories—medical examiners, criminologists, forensic scientists, former prosecutors—and the serial-killer category has its own roster of subspecialists, ready to chime in on what could be learned from bones exposed to weather for eighteen months or longer, and what the burlap and the location might say about the killer’s signature. They could fill the airtime talking about how Gary Ridgway was called the Green River Killer because he buried his victims in shallow graves near the river of that name in the state of Washington, and how Denis Rader became B.T.K. when it came out that he bound, tortured, and killed his victims. “It’s a calling card,” explained Vernon Geberth, a retired commander from Bronx homicide who has become something of a scholar of serial killers. Based on the placement and reported condition of the bodies, Geberth told The New York Times that he was convinced the killer was a local, familiar with the area. “He has a reason to be there,” he said. “The biggest thing on his mind now is whether or not he’s going to be linked to this.”

Geberth wasn’t alone in that opinion. As early as the first week, CNN was airing speculation that this killer was a clam fisherman who could come to the barrier island undetected from the Great South Bay. Geberth went deeper with the idea on his media rounds, suggesting to the Daily News that the killer had placed the bodies so that he could find them again, returning to the burial ground “to relive the murders for sexual gratification.” Others concurred that the killer was every bit as systematic and intentional as Joel Rifkin—that his need for intimacy announced itself in the care he took; that he shrouded them in burlap, protecting them from the elements; that he seemed to want to control every aspect of their lives through their deaths, and to continue his relationship with them past death. Now that the bodies had been discovered, Geberth suggested that the killer was “in a panic state,” but that was no reason to believe he wouldn’t kill again.

For the ultimate expert opinion, the Daily News approached Joel Rifkin himself. Living out his days in an upstate prison, Long Island’s most famous and prolific murderer couldn’t resist critiquing this new killer for leaving all the bodies in one place; Rifkin, at least, had been savvy enough to sprinkle his victims’ remains across the tristate area. Yet he suspected that they had a lot in common: growing up lonely, mocked, and bullied; grappling with anger. “America breeds serial killers,” Rifkin said. “You don’t see any from Europe.” As for the victims, Rifkin said that prostitutes were obvious targets for any serial killer. “No family,” he explained, occasionally breaking into laughter. “They can be gone six or eight months, and no one is looking.” This was not a novel insight about serial killers and their choice of victims: The Green

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