Letter from a serial killer 19 years ago, Ridgway offered tantalizing clues. MIKE BARBER, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER. 6, 2003 Updated: March 31, 2011 7:43 p.m. Facebook Twitter Email. A css-based ransom note generator by Melvix. Directions: Type or paste in the text of your ransom note and click the Ransomize button. Change the look and feel. Many famous serial killers and murderers sent some disturbing letters to their families, victims, and 'fans,' both from prison and before their arrests. These chilling letters from killers will have you checking over your shoulder, and maybe a little wary of opening the mail. Killers sometimes come in twos. And while plenty of serial killer couples are made up of romantic pairs, some platonic serial killer duos have taken lives together too. Whether they were lethal friends, sisters, cousins, or co-workers, these murderers who killed together committed their vicious crimes for a number of different reaso. In a letter dated to 6 March 2009, the serial killer rambled on about a conspiracy against him in prison In the letters, he said: 'Apart from the banks and the economy there is, apparently, still.
Shocking moment a serial killer was caught
A handwritten letter from Genesee River Killer Arthur Shawcross to Amanda Howard reads, “Do you see me at night when you sleep?”Source:Supplied
“SOME of them are grossly pornographic. Some of them start that way and talk about erections and stuff like that. Sometimes they want to play a game but if I say ‘no, don’t, I’m not interested in that’, I do get an apology.
“People like (American serial killer, rapist, burglar, and Satanist) Richard Ramirez, he just kept coming at me, with all of this ‘I want to do this to you, I want to do that to you’, and that continued until I changed post office boxes.”
Amanda Howard has been writing to serial killers for more than 20 years. Despite the creepy nature of some — notably a handwritten letter from Genesee River Killer Arthur Shawcross which reads, “Do you see me at night when you sleep?” - she says her work is for a good cause; to help solve crimes.
But it also comes with a price.
“I’ve had ‘Toolbox Killer’ Roy Norris threaten to put an ice pick into my ear, which is what he and his partner had done to his victims.
“I’ve had a family of killers come after me a couple of times and threaten me and tell me to back off.
“They all play games, they all can switch on the charm and switch it back off. You can’t show weakness, otherwise you’re done. It can be really tough. You have to play the game, and sometimes you’re the cat and sometimes you’re the mouse. It depends who the killer is.”
Sometimes, these killers send her trinkets - or locks of hair. Ms Howard shows a lock sent to her by death row inmate Bobby Joe Long, who abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least 10 women in Florida. His last victim was raped for 26 hours.
A chilling handwritten note from American serial killer Arthur Shawcross to Amanda Howard. Picture: Amanda Howard/News CorpSource:Supplied
Envelopes from assorted killers in Amanda Howard’s collection including Aussies Ivan Milat and David Birnie, as well as Roy Norris, Richard Ramirez and Art Shawcross. Picture: Amanda Howard/News CorpSource:Supplied
It all began when a psychopath who stalked Sydney’s wealthy North Shore suburbs throughout 1989 and 1990, killing six elderly women and bashing and molesting several others, became known as The Granny Killer.
The case was one of the first serial killings in NSW, but it captured the attention of investigators from around the world — and one local teenage girl.
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It was 1989 and Howard was just finishing school in Sydney with plans of becoming a singer and dancer.
When police profiled the case they imagined a young, unemployed, evil skateboarder who hated his family. But when cops caught up with their killer, he was 57-year-old pie salesman, John Wayne Glover.
“It just showed how normal these people are, it was quite shocking. I was hooked,” Ms Howard told news.com.au.
“They’re extraordinarily normal.”
But it was when Ivan Milat’s backpacker murders became public four years later that the true crime author’s love affair with the extreme began. Ever since, she’s been delving deep into the minds of serial killers in a unique game of “cat and mouse”.
“Ivan was one of my very first contacts, he was quite normal too,” Ms Howard told news.com.au.
“I can see Ivan’s house from mine, it’s a very short walk between the two of us.”
“I would have bumped into him at the shopping centre and not even known. When it’s someone local and you can see the cop cars out the front, that creates that link. You go down that rabbit hole.
Amanda Howard, from Sydney, is an author who writes about true crime.Source:News Corp Australia
'Night Stalker' Richard Ramirez displays a pentagram symbol on his hand inside a Los Angeles courtroom in 1985. Ramirez pleaded not guilty to 68 felonies, including 14 counts of murder. Ms Howard says his letter were pornographic in nature. Picture: Lennox McLendonSource:AP
Serial Killers Who Wrote Letters
It set Ms Howard on a journey, where she embarked on a mission to get inside the minds of serial killers — and to discover what makes them tick. She says it’s become an important part of her research for her true crime novels.
Ms Howard published her first book, River of Blood: Serial Killers and their Victims, in 2004 while her latest book, Rope, published last year, looks at the history of people who have been hanged.
These days she has approximately 55 serial killers on her letter-list, varying in age, range and notoriety. Most are from the United States, but others come from Australia and England. She says she receives about 40 letters a week from across the globe.
“I just get these people to talk,” she says.
“Ivan [Milat] wrote to me last week and sent me twelve pages. It’s not like he’s just answering a question, I’m getting a little bit more from them than that, some of them slip up sometimes - that might create more charges.”
A lock of Hair sent by serial killer Bobby Joe Long. “It still scares me and I won’t ever touch it with my hands,” said Amanda Howard.Source:Supplied
A collection of origami sent to Amanda by serial killer Robert Yates in the US. Picture: Amanda Holden/News CorpSource:Supplied
Serial Killer Notes
She began with the man dubbed Australia’s “sickest serial killer”, David Birnie, who along with wife Catherine, committed dark, sick and sadistic sexual fantasies with their victims.
Since then she has raised the stakes and includes Charles Manson among her regular correspondents.
“That’s only part of the story, there’s a lot I don’t tell.”
Letters that true crime author Amanda Howard has received from serial killers she's interviewed.Source:Supplied
Photo of serial killer Daniel Conahan, self-portrait charcoal by Serial killer Roy Norris and an ink art of Ninja by Cannibal Arthur Shawcross are among Amanda’s collection.Source:Supplied
— Do you have an interesting story? Email youngma@news.com.au
— Amanda Howard is a true crime author, fiction writer and serial killer expert. For more information, visit amandahoward.com.au.
Strictly speaking, a serial killer is someone who murders at least two people in separate events that occur at different times. While “serial murder” is not formalized by any legal code, the crimes of serial killers have often been seized on by the media and the public consciousness—especially in cases where there are many victims or the murders are carried out in gruesome fashion. The following list explores some of the most notorious serial killers the world has ever known.
Serial Killer Letters Book
Jack the Ripper
We call him “Jack the Ripper,” but we don’t really know who the person behind one of the older and most notorious murder sprees was. The killer appeared in London’s Whitechapel district in 1888 and murdered five women—all prostitutes—and mutilated their corpses. Police surmised the killer was a surgeon, butcher, or someone skilled with a scalpel. The killer mocked the community and the police by sending letters outlining the acts. Although many suspects have been named over the years, the killer has never been identified.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer started killing in 1978, just 18 years old, and wasn’t arrested for murder until 1991, after a would-be victim escaped and led police back to Dahmer’s Milwaukee, Wisconsin, home. It was there that some of the gruesome details of his life of killing were seen via photos of mutilated bodies and body parts strewn across the apartment. He even had a vat of acid he used to dispose of victims. In all, Dahmer killed 17 people, mostly young men of color. He served time in prison twice—the first time for molestation and the second time for murder—and was killed by a fellow inmate in 1994.
Harold Shipman
Harold Shipman, also known as “Dr. Death,” is believed to have killed at least 218 patients, although the total is quite likely closer to 250. This doctor practiced in London and between 1972 and 1998 worked in two difference offices, killing all the while. He wasn’t caught until a red flag was raised by several people, including an undertaker who was surprised by the sheer number of cremation certificates Shipman was a part of, along with the fact that most of the cases were elderly women found to have died in bed not at night but rather during the day. Police mishandled the investigation, and Shipman kept killing until he got greedy and tried to concoct a will for a victim that named him beneficiary, which led the victim’s daughter to become suspicious. He was finally convicted in 2000 and committed suicide while in prison in 2004.
John Wayne Gacy
A construction worker known by his suburban neighbors as outgoing, John Wayne Gacy was involved in politics and even acted as a clown for birthday parties. He was no clown. Gacy came under suspicion in 1978 when a 15-year-old boy, last seen with him, went missing. That wasn’t the only time families of missing boys had pointed fingers at Gacy, but it was the first time authorities took them seriously. Soon after, a search warrant granted police access to the Gacy home, with the smell of nearly 30 bodies buried in a four-foot crawl space under his home. He was convicted of 33 counts of murder, with additional counts of rape and torture, and was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
H.H. Holmes
Chicago has had its share of killers, but perhaps none more haunting than H.H. Holmes, the pharmacist who turned a hotel into a torture castle. Ahead of the 1893 world’s fair, Holmes moved to Chicago and started outfitting a three-story hotel with all manner of nefarious contraptions, including gas lines, secret passages and trapdoors, hallways to dead ends, chutes to the basement, soundproofed padding, and torture devices strewn throughout a maze. The gas allowed Holmes to knock out his guests before the worst of what was to happen came next, often on his surgical tables. He then burned the bodies in the building’s furnace, selling skeletons to medical schools and running life insurance scams. In all, he copped to more than 30 murders—found only after a fellow scammer turned him in for falling short on a financial agreement—before he was hanged in 1896.
Pedro Lopez
One of the world’s most prolific serial killers might still be out there. Pedro Lopez is linked to more than 300 murders in his native Colombia and in Ecuador and Peru. At least one-third of those murders were tribal women. After Lopez’s arrest in 1980, police found the graves of more than 50 of his preteen victims. He was later convicted of murdering 110 girls in Ecuador and confessed to 240 more murders in Colombia and Peru. The “Monster of the Andes” didn’t even spend 20 years in prison, as he was released in 1998 for good behavior. More than 20 years since, his whereabouts remain unknown.
Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy loved the attention his murders garnered him, and many in the United States were more than happy to give him that attention. The western U.S. was his hunting ground, with an unknown number of murders piling up—mostly college-age women—from Washington and Oregon all the way to Utah and Colorado. Bundy was once arrested in Colorado and convicted of kidnapping, but he escaped custody, moving to Florida where he killed multiple times more. Bundy’s final arrest and its aftermath captured the attention of the nation, as the accused murderer acted as his own lawyer during what is believed to have been the first televised murder trial, welcomed interviews, and boasted of the fans he had created. He was eventually executed in an electric chair in 1989.