CASE 4: EDMUND KEMPER

AKA The Co-Ed Killer

Going back to a true crime focus for this week, I wanted to talk about Ed Kemper. Throughout this quarantine madness I’ve been watching a lot of true crime shows, documentaries, etc. and one of my favorites is Mindhunter, which is a really amazing show on Netflix. Based on a real-life story, it includes lots of dramatized interviews with infamous serial killers and other violent criminals, focusing on how criminal profiling was designed as an investigative resource and practice as well as analyzing the psychology of these twisted individuals. It’s a fun mix of true crime, mystery, and drama. I would totally check it out if you’re into that sort of thing.

But, let’s talk specifically about Ed Kemper. He’s a pretty well-known serial killer, both because of the abhorrent nature of his crimes and also because of his larger-than-life persona; I mean that quite literally. The guy is 6’9″, and he boasts an IQ of around 145, making him extremely intelligent (for reference, the average IQ is only 100, and 160 is supposedly the mark of a “genius”). He’s a textbook psychopath, even during his childhood where he’d torture and murder animals (a common trend among serial killers). In his interviews and testimonies, he shows a jarring lack of emotional empathy. He’s very aware of how he is perceived by others, and able to use his wits to manipulate and use others to his advantage. He doesn’t always come across as cold and calculating when you watch videos of him – it’s just kind of disturbing. He discusses extremely disturbing and graphic details with a straight face and an unnaturally cool demeanor. It’s enough to give anyone the creeps.

Ed grew up in an incredibly abusive household, especially when it came to his relationship with his mother. He was physically, emotionally, and mentally abused, often discussing his mother’s strong hatred and disgust with him for merely existing. It’s easy to understand how abuse can twist an individual’s perception, morals, and mentality, but in Ed’s case it only seemed to ignite a flame that was already threatening to burn. His anger toward his home life and family led him to shooting both his grandmother and grandfather when he was just 15. He first shot his grandmother, allegedly to “know what it felt like,” before repeating the same aggression toward his grandfather. He was confined in a mental institution for just five years before being released into his mother’s care once again.

It’s clear that the obvious target of the aggression and violence Kemper felt the urge to carry out stemmed back to his terrible relationship with his mother. However, he committed a series of murders against innocent young women during the time period following his release up until his eventual incarceration. He would pick up hitchhiking female students, take them to remote and rural areas, kill them, and oftentimes decapitate and practice necrophilic acts with their corpses. I won’t go into explicit detail, because it’s pretty disturbing, but if you want to find out more, a quick Google search will suffice. Kemper finally murdered his mother before strangling her best friend in 1973. Soon after, he confessed to his crimes and turned himself in.

Part of the reason I find this man to be so horrifying, yet morbidly interesting, is because he could easily pass as a normal guy. When you know to be looking for signs of off behavior, it’s obvious. But part of the terrifying thing about psychopathic and sociopathic killers and criminals is that they’re so good at manipulating people and hiding behind a mask of charm and normality. Kemper held down jobs and casual friendships with others. By all accounts, he was a normal, albeit perhaps socially awkward, guy. No one seemed to know what was lurking beneath the surface until it was too late.

CASE 3: BLOODY MARY

This stern looking woman is Mary I, the first regnant queen of England

Hi all. Long time no see. I hope that everyone is doing well this week and continues to do well as time goes on — I’m sure our current situation will get worse before it gets better, and things seem to be changing drastically from a week to week, even day to day, basis. Hang in there, stay safe, and take care of yourself and those you love.

This is a post I thought about using around Halloween, but decided against it. It’s not quite as spooky as it may seem on the surface, but it is rooted in some interesting historical fact. Everyone has heard of Bloody Mary as a cultural phenomenon – there’s even an alcoholic drink named after her – but not many people know who the woman herself actually was. She was no saint, to be clear, but she also isn’t a spirit lurking in your bathroom mirror waiting to be summoned and to terrorize you.

Mary didn’t have such an easy life. As the only child of King Henry VIII (you know, the man who had multiple wives and tragic ends to his marriages, got mad at the Catholic church for not allowing him to annul his marriage to his first wife when she could not bore a son, kind of crazy — that Henry VIII) and his first wife, her path to the throne was not a clear one. You know, because of her father’s many wives and consistent failure to produce a male heir. Nonetheless, Mary did rise to the throne in her late 30’s and was said to be wracked with problems regarding her emotional and mental health. She struggled to produce an heir herself, which would lead to the throne eventually being passed on to her younger half-sister Elizabeth.

Mary I is not remembered for her unstable childhood or her struggles to acquire and maintain her status as queen – there’s nothing really bloody about that, is there? The nickname “Bloody Mary” comes from a time of divide in England between the Protestants and the Catholics, mainly spurred by the shift in religion inspired by Mary’s father, Henry VIII (who broke off from the Catholic Church during his reign). Mary, a devout Catholic, viewed Protestantism and its followers in a highly negative light. So negative, in fact, that she was directly responsible for ordering the execution of hundreds of “convicted” Protestants. They were burned at the stake in what would later become known as the Marian Persecutions.

So how does this example of historical persecution and misfortune translate into chanting Bloody Mary’s name into a mirror in the dark to attempt to summon spirits, demons, or other supernatural forces/phenomenon? I honestly am a bit unsure. I tried to do some digging, but am unable to fully understand why Mary specifically was chosen to be a legendary figure of horrific folklore. Historically, women were encouraged to summon Bloody Mary in a mirror – if they could see their husband’s faces in the mirror, they were to be married soon. But, if they saw a skull, they were to die before they had the chance to marry. But why Mary I? Could it be her unyielding cruelty? Could it have been rooted anti-Catholic sentiment and fear? Let me know what you think if you have any ideas.

CASE 2: CITIES LOST TO TIME

I love some good ol’ fashioned (pun slightly intended) ancient history, and I often focus on man-to-man interactions rather than their more natural, less violent or suspicious counterparts. There are all kinds of abandoned or “lost” cities, civilizations, etc. all over the world of varying ages; way too many to talk about in a single post. But some are more intriguing than others to me, mainly because of the level of preservation they’ve managed to attain, their age, or simply their complexity. What’s even more fascinating is exactly what happened to them. In many cases, people just seem to have literally vanished into thin air, or simply just up and left. It leaves the end, challenges, or other circumstances of their way of life up in the air, like looking at a clue to a case you know you’ll never solve but still want to anyway. So I decided to pick a couple of “lost” cities/civilizations and provide a brief summary of what they are, where they are, what happened, and why. It really makes you consider the temporary nature of humanity. Even the most successful and progressive of efforts can fall flat against the cruel reality of time, nature, and circumstance.

~~~

1. Tikal, Guatemala

 

Tikal, Guatemala is a former Mayan town surrounded by forests and wildlife. Aside from its incredible architectural ruins and remains, the city also boasts an incredibly knowledgeable former population. The people of Tikal had created a 365 day calendar and a lunar cycle only a few minutes off of modern standards and calculations by the time they abandoned their city. Its temples still stand proud and tall as they did way back at the beginning of the common era, a look into past homes to former religious or otherwise cultural rituals and celebrations. What makes Tikal unique not just as a Mayan city-state but also as a historical site is the amazing condition of its ruins; unlike many other similar sites, many of its buildings still remain at the same height and same level of grandeur that they did upon their original construction. For reasons unclear, the city was abandoned around the 10th century, possible due to climate change, droughts, or other natural causes – but its sudden abandonment luckily did nothing to taint the magnificence of the accomplishments done here.

Outside Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/tikal-guatemala/index.html 

2. Pompeii, Italy

I have the unique privilege to say that I’ve actually been to Pompeii. It’s as haunting as it is spectacular. Pompeii is a pretty significant and popular cultural icon, especially due to the casts of human and other remains that are displayed alongside the ruins. Pompeii was once a prosperous ancient Roman city full of the cultural and social developments the rest of the empire had to offer. The entire city was suddenly destroyed when a local volcano, Mount Vesuvius, erupted at such a scale that the entirety of the grounds and buildings, including all of the civilians within, were covered by thick layers of smoke and ash, basically petrifying all the buildings and figures where they stood. This means that a lot of the ruins are incredibly well preserved; the buildings, roads, and city layout are still very comprehensible, and some original artwork still remains on some of the walls. But, as mentioned previously, the seemingly frozen-in-time corpses (which are actually casts of actual human remains rather than the literal remains themselves, at least those on display for the general public) are what seem to attract a lot more attention. It’s a place that simultaneously reminds you of the fleetingness of mortality but also the complexity of human society – truly a unique experience, and such an extensive city that it’s impossible to explore it all at once.

BIGFOOT

Heritage, history, and evidence… or lack thereof.

Oh lord, he’s comin’

 

Hello ladies, gents, everyone in between ~ as I’m continuing the same focus and site as my first semester passion blog, I decided to title the posts from this semester slightly differently than those in the past to clarify which belong where. Is Bigfoot really some sort of case-study? No, absolutely not. But he’s both historical and mysterious, the titular characteristics of this blog, and I thought it would be a fun place to start out rather than grisly murder-mysteries or disappearing children.

So, Bigfoot. Is he real? No. Well, I don’t think so. You can disagree with me, and I’m sure even if you won’t openly you might have a slight, albeit deeply suppressed and shamefully hidden, suspicion or belief or even curiosity regarding this godforsaken Sasquatch. And you know what? That’s fair. There’s been a lot of speculation, false information, hoaxes, and all sorts of anecdotal evidence surrounding Bigfoot or other similar creatures for decades. Way, way too much for me to cover in a blog post, much less an actually entertaining blog post. So, for your sake and mine, I thought I would just break down the history, as well as some of the “best,” or most compelling, popular, unexplainable, etc. etc. pieces of evidence in favor of our boy here.

As a brief disclaimer, a lot of this information or these theories come straight from internet searching, and it’s a bit hard to find reputable sources for Bigfoot theories (shocker) but I tried my best to keep them within reason.

1. Where did Bigfoot come from?

While folklore and urban legends surrounding large, hairy creatures of various sorts have floated around human civilization for centuries, Bigfoot as we know him today (big, tall, often primate or ape-like, covered in hair, big feet) made his public debut in the late 1950’s when a small Californian community ran a news story on massive, 16-inch footprints left around and in a construction site. Headlines reported the footprints “puzzled residents,” as strange massive footprints rightfully ought to do, and said paper, the Humboldt Times, gave the culprit of the mysteriously large prints an ever-so creative name: Bigfoot. And he’s been wreaking havoc in the depths of American forests and leaving other weird footprints in the hearts of conspiracy theorists ever since.

2. The Patterson Footage / Images

The image at the top of this post, perhaps the most well-known and widely circulated image of Bigfoot to ever exist, actually comes from a real video. It’s pretty short, but it shows an unknown creature stalking across some sort of forest or clearing – it doesn’t seem to resemble anything else, like a bear, and appears to be way too tall and large to be a man in a suit. Or so people claim. This is really the only footage of Bigfoot that hasn’t been proven to be a hoax or replicated in some way to expose its ingenuity, in part because the footage is on the older side (1967). Many researchers believe it to be nothing more than a dude in a suit, but no one has ever stepped forward to admit this (except a select group of people trying to get famous off of Bigfoot clout – all debunked). The filmmaker responsible for shooting this footage, Bob Gimlin, claims he believes he knows what he saw and that it couldn’t have been a man in a suit… but, again, has no professional opinion to back him up. Watch and see for yourself, I suppose.

 

3. Reality TV

For a long time, the only “evidence” of Bigfoot was purely anecdotal – he said, she said, he saw, she saw. And, aside from videos and photos like those above, most things were easily able to be debunked or explained away through much more likely and plausible scenarios. Still, Bigfoot stomped on in the minds of many Americans, and as technology evolved, so too did the lengths people are willing to go to in order to PROVE that he exists. Enter Finding Bigfoot, or Expedition Bigfoot, or Chasing Bigfoot, or Mountain Monsters, or any other reality tv or documentary program based SOLELY. On finding. Bigfoot. Finding Bigfoot has been running since 2011, folks. And they have yet to find Bigfoot. Or maybe they think they have – but the proof isn’t in the pudding, guys. Because there is no proof. There is no pudding.

So why do people still want to believe in Bigfoot so badly? Your guess is as good as mine. Until someone finally tackles him down, I will remain a staunch skeptic.

Chapter Eight: The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript

 

For my final post, I wanted to explore a topic that (hopefully) most people haven’t heard of; I know I hadn’t until very recently. The image above is a page from a document known as the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval text written in an unknown language that has yet to be decoded or understood. It contains lots of puzzling, strange images alongside its undecipherable text, leading to centuries of fruitless attempts at understanding its message and lots of very frustrated historians and scholars.

There are a couple of things we do know about this strange document. It carbon-dates back to around the 1300-1400’s, and is believed to have been produced in Italy or somewhere else in the Mediterranean region. It passed through the hands of a couple of owners in centuries past, then seemingly disappeared from historical records for about 250 years until 1912 when a man named Wilfred Voyich (thus the name of the document) purchased it, allegedly from a Jesuit outside Rome. The documents strange contents were released to the public in 1915, and it’s been confounding all sorts of intellectuals ever since.

There have been several hypotheses regarding the meaning and origin of the document, as well as several individuals claiming to have cracked its code, but there are no definitive answers that explain anything, really. The most sound argument, in my opinion, is that this language is simply extinct – that’s easy to believe since it doesn’t match any other recorded language in human history, but it does raise the question of why this is the only document ever written in it (at least that we know of). And why is it not written in Latin, or some other prominent historical language? Is it meant to be a language of symbols, like hieroglyphs, or is it an actual alphabet?

A lot of leading theories about the purpose of the document suggest that it’s some sort of women’s health manual, demonstrating different Pagan health or spiritual rituals and written in a relatively unknown dialect even for the time. Again, this makes logical sense, but there really is no evidence to support it other than the fact that the images kind of look that way, and other similar arguments. The document also contains what appear to be astrological symbols and celestial charts, and lots and lots and lots of naked women performing various tasks. Weird.

Some scholars and people claim that the entire document may be an elaborate hoax orchestrated by Voynich himself. I find this hard to believe; after all, the document was carbon-dated using scientific methods back several centuries, and there are historical records of other owners possessing it in the past. Also, the document is so extensive and detailed that it seems unlikely that an old man would take the time to sit down and draft it up – and for what purpose? I suppose it can’t be out-ruled as a possibility, but there are other explanations that I think make more sense and I can logically settle on as the most likely sort of answer.

Still, though, no one really knows what any of those words, symbols, or whatever they may be are trying to say – or why. Will it ever be deciphered? Is there a missing link somewhere else out there that will suddenly make everything clear? Was Voynich just a crazy and extremely dedicated old man? We probably won’t know for a really, really long time, if ever.

Chapter Seven: The Mysterious D. B. Cooper

Sorry for the slightly late post, fellow spook-sleuths; in the stress and chaos of the past week, updating you on the weird tomfoolery that went down in the past totally slipped my mind. But I am here now, and I would kick myself if I let this whole semester go by without discussing one of my favorite historical mysteries: the strange hijacking and disappearance of the great mystery man D. B. Cooper.

As I’ve said in the past, you might have heard of this story before. It’s been popular for decades, but a lot of different true-crime documentaries, videos, and series have covered this event; I know that because I’ve watched several, hoping some new details or insight might be provided. But it really is a dead end.

On November 24, 1971, a nondescript man boarded a normal, routine flight from Portland, Oregon bound toward Seattle, Washington. The man appeared to be in his 40’s, wearing a white shirt and a black tie, and carrying a briefcase. The man purchased his plane ticket using all cash under the name Dan Cooper. As he waited for the flight to take off, he ordered a drink: bourbon and soda. A while later, just after 3 pm, the man passed a stewardess who had been walking by a note directing her to sit next to him. After she complied, the man opened his briefcase to reveal to the stewardess what looked to be a bomb – red sticks and colored wires.

In order to avoid detonating the bomb, according to the man, the stewardess was to take note of his demands, take them to the captain of the plane, and follow the instructions. He requested four parachutes, and, most notably, $200,000 in cash. In 20 dollar bills.

The flight eventually landed in Seattle, though delayed (the original and normal flight would have only taken about 30 minutes, but did not arrive until around 5:30) due to the amount of time it took to acquire the money Cooper demanded. When the flight landed, Cooper exchanging the 30 or so passengers on board for the money and the parachutes. Then, he directed the pilot to fly south toward Mexico. A few hours later, around 8 pm, he did the seemingly unthinkable: he parachuted from the moving plane with the ransom money. The pilots and the plane were able to safely land afterwards, but with no other details or contact, the man who called himself Dan Cooper was seemingly lost forever.

There’s a lot of things that are unclear in this case: who is Dan Cooper (which is, shockingly, not this man’s real name)? What was his motivation? Where did he land? Did he survive his jump? If he did, how did he manage to use or spend the money without detection? How has he managed to escape undetected, despite massive amounts of investigation, to this very day?

Basically the only physical evidence left behind was Dan Cooper’s black clip-on tie, which he removed before parachuting from the plane for unknown reasons. The tie was able to eventually provide a DNA sample, but it matched nothing in existing databases and no identified suspects. With no other leads to go off of, this evidence is basically useless; without something or someone to compare it to, it remains another element of confusion.

A leading theory is that D.B. Cooper (a name given to him by press and media coverage) did not survive his fall from the plane. The parachutes he used were not steerable, and he jumped into a very wooded area at night time. Seemingly adding to this theory was a 1980 discovery by a young boy of a washed-up, rotting paper bag filled with about 5k in dollar bills with serial numbers that matched those that had been acquired by Cooper. The rest of the bills, as well as any remains or other items of Cooper, have not been found.

There are some suspects in the case, but only about less than 2 dozen were actually seriously investigated. There have also been numerous confessions from members of the public claiming to be Cooper, but none of them have led to any serious conclusion or produced reliable evidence to suggest the validity of the claims. So, with nothing more to go off of than the eyewitness reports and descriptions of those on the flight that day, as well as the rotting money and the somewhat useless DNA evidence, it’s no wonder this case has gone cold. And, as the years go on, it seems to become more and more unlikely that we ever will truly know who D.B. Cooper was.

 

Chapter Six: The Black Dahlia

Los Angeles, 1947

 

This story is a little more grisly than the others I’ve written about in the past. It’s a fairly graphic and disturbing crime, but I will do my best to keep it as readable as possible – that means not including any of the gruesome images found at the crime scene. But if you’re curious, you can find them all (and no judgement from me, because I’ve done the same) with a quick Google search. But, as you’ll see, it’s intense stuff. Just a disclaimer.

The murder-mystery of the Black Dahlia is one of the most famous in recent history, mostly because of the horrendous state her remains were discovered in and the media sensation surrounding her death as a result. To this day, who the culprit is remains a mystery. The FBI even has a whole page dedicated to this case; you’ve probably at least heard the phrase “black dahlia” at some point.

The woman pictured above is Elizabeth Short, – also known as the Black Dahlia – age twenty-two at the time of her death. Elizabeth, an aspiring actress, lived with and did some housework for a French family in Los Angeles at the time of her death. She had ended up there after years of struggling to find work, partying, and trying to find a husband in a couple of men – all of which ended in heartbreak. Her beauty was, to many, striking; she lived a life like many other young women looking to make a name for themselves. The last person to see her alive was a man named Robert Manley, whom she had been having a brief love affair with – after a night spent together in a hotel, Manley left for an appointment. He later dropped her off at a different hotel, where she was to meet her sister, but did not stay to wait for the sister to show up. The last thing he saw of Elizabeth was her making phone calls in the hotel lobby.

She was then missing for six days.

On the morning of January 15, a housewife named Betty Bersinger was out for a walk to a shoe repair shop with her three-year-old daughter. The pair passed many vacant lots, and Bersinger noticed something white amongst the weeds and grass in one of them. Initially dismissing it as litter, upon closer inspection she believed it to be a mannequin that someone had tossed out. It struck her as strange, as the mannequin had apparently been severed in half. Bersinger began to walk away, but was drawn back to the mannequin – which she quickly discovered was not a mannequin at all, but instead the mutilated body of a young woman. She fled the scene with her daughter to a nearby house, where she immediately called the police.

Officers arrived on the scene within a few minutes. The state that the body was in was abysmal. Elizabeth had indeed been severed in half cleanly at the waist (perhaps suggesting a killer with medical knowledge), and her limbs had been apparently posed – arms raised over her shoulders with her legs spread – to make her appear seductive. She was naked with several cuts and abrasions across her body, including cuts from the corners of her mouth that extended to each of her ears, almost like a sick and crude smile. She had rope marks on her wrists, ankles, and neck that suggested that she had been tied up for an extended period of time. Notably, there was no blood on her body or on the ground underneath her, like she had been cleaned and killed elsewhere, then dropped in the vacant lot to be discovered. Her cause of death was determined to be due to brain damage and lacerations to her face, leading to hemorrhage and shock. Most of her other injuries, including the severing, were thus concluded to have occurred postmortem.

News spread of the discovery fairly quickly, and the crime scene was quickly contaminated and disrupted by dozens of civilians and reporters. Elizabeth was able to be identified from fingerprints lifted from her remains at the scene. Though it was clear who the victim was, what wasn’t was who was responsible for such a horrific and merciless crime.

Investigators believed that the killer had been someone close to Elizabeth, due to the extremely brutal way she was killed and the fact that her body was left to be discovered and gawked at by the public. Several men in Elizabeth’s life were suspects, most of them ruled out due to strong alibis, including Robert Manley (the last man to see her alive). Elizabeth’s shoe and bag were found in a trash can not far from the lot her body had been discovered, leading investigators to believe that the killer was within walking distance of the place her remains were found. Much like the Jack the Ripper case, letters that were apparently from the killer were sent to the LAPD, as well as important documents (like Elizabeth’s security card), but they had all been rinsed with gasoline to prevent the lifting of any fingerprints. Since there were a lot of false leads and hoaxes, both from letters and calls, police were often led down meaningless roads that led to little to no real evidence or progress in the case. Without any real leads or physical evidence, the case went cold. It still is to this day.

There are some popular suspects, though. If you want to read a bit about them, click here for a nice summary of each. But as for who actually did it? We don’t know. And we probably never will.