Serial Killers and Mass Murderers by Nigel Cawthorne

Author:Nigel Cawthorne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ulysses Press
Published: 2010-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

YOURS IN MURDER, MR. MONSTER

By the time the letter reached the police labs, eight policemen had handled it. Only tiny traces of the writer’s fingerprints remained. He appeared to have held the letter by the tips of his fingers and there was not enough of a print on the paper to identify the sender. Consequently, the police kept the existence of the letter secret. But they showed a copy to celebrated New York columnist Jimmy Breslin, who dropped hints about it in his column in the New York Daily News.

On June 1, 1977, Breslin himself received a letter. It had been postmarked two days before in Englewood, New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan. Although the Daily News was then the biggest selling newspaper in the country—its offices on 42nd Street double as those of the Daily Planet in Superman films—it held back publication of the full letter for six days, instead reproducing it in four parts to give the public a taste of what was to come and to heighten anticipation. On June 3, 1977, they ran the front page headline: “THE .44 CALIBER KILLER NEW NOTE: CAN’T STOP KILLING.” The next day, they ran: “.44 KILLER: I AM NOT ASLEEP.” By Sunday, they were running: “BRESLIN TO .44 KILLER: GIVE UP! IT’S THE ONLY WAY OUT.” This edition sold out within an hour of going on sale. So the presses kept rolling. By the end of the day, the Daily News had sold 1,116,000 copies—a record that would only be beaten on the day Berkowitz was arrested. The editors assumed that interest had peaked and reproduced the letter in full in the Monday edition. Like the Zodiac Killer’s letters, it was written all in capital letters and was as rambling and incoherent as the letter he had sent before to the police. It signed off:

NOT KNOWING WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS I SHALL SAY FAREWELL AND I WILL SEE YOU AT THE NEXT JOB, OR SHOULD I SAY YOU WILL SEE MY HANDIWORK AT THE NEXT JOB? REMEMBER MS. LAURIA. THANK YOU. IN THEIR BLOOD AND FROM THE GUTTER, “SAM’S CREATION” .44.

Then there was a long postscript:

HERE ARE SOME NAMES TO HELP YOU ALONG. FORWARD THEM TO THE INSPECTOR FOR USE BY THE NCIC: “THE DUKE OF DEATH.” “THE WICKED KING WICKER,” “THE TWENTY TWO DISCIPLES OF HELL,” JOHN “WHEATIES”—RAPIST AND SUFFOCATER OF YOUNG GIRLS.

P.S.: J.B. PLEASE INFORM ALL THE DETECTIVES WORKING THE SLAYINGS TO REMAIN.

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