The Allure of Premeditated Murder by Jack Levin & Julie B. Wiest

Author:Jack Levin & Julie B. Wiest
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538103890
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

A FINE LINE BETWEEN THRILL AND REVENGE

Motives are not always crystal clear. We might speculate about what motivated a particular killer but never arrive at a definitive explanation. A recent example can be found in the quadruple slayings allegedly committed by 24-year-old Howell Donaldson III in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. In 2017, between October 9 and November 14, Donaldson shot to death four people, one at a time and seemingly on a random basis.

At first, it appeared that the killer had no connections to the victims or the neighborhood. He didn’t live there, and he didn’t have any friends or family who lived there. He wasn’t known for visiting anyone who lived there. As a serial killer, he had two unusual characteristics. One was his relative youth, being in his early to mid-20s, and the other was his choice of weapon—a handgun—instead of a more hands-on method. It appeared that the killer simply walked up to a potential victim, chosen at random, and pulled the trigger.

His killing spree was reminiscent of teenagers or young adults who hurl large rocks from an overpass through the windshields of oncoming cars, sometimes killing the occupants. In such cases, the killers get a thrill from the consequences of their sadistic criminal behavior. In the Tampa case, however, it was discovered later that there may have been a personal connection between the killer’s family and the Seminole Heights neighborhood. In 2016, Donaldson’s father filed a petition for a restraining order against his daughter’s boyfriend, accusing him of stalking her and threatening his family. The boyfriend’s most recent address was located in Seminole Heights, just a five-minute walk from the killer’s first victim and eight minutes or less from the other three murders. We may never determine whether Donaldson had blamed the Seminole Heights community for the threatening behavior of his sister’s boyfriend and decided to get even for what he regarded as sins against his family. Or maybe he was just looking for a thrill.

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