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applied for a judicial review in 1996 under s. 745 of the 

Criminal Code

 of

Canada.

9.2.3.4

Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi

The Hillside Stranglers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, were cousins
who ran a part-time prostitution ring (Gates & Shah, 1992; Levin & Fox,
1985; Newton, 1990a; Newton & Swoope, 1987; O’Brien, 1985; Schwarz,
1981; Time-Life, 1993; Wolf & Mader, 1986). When that enterprise failed
they impersonated police officers and picked up women from the streets of
Los Angeles to bring back to Buono’s automobile upholstery shop-cum-
residence. There the victims were sexually assaulted and tortured before being
murdered. Their bodies were later dumped on the hillsides of the San Gabriel
Range.

These dump sites were chosen by Angelo Buono, the more dominant of

the two killers. He had grown up in the suburb of Glendale and knew the
Los Angeles area well, unlike Bianchi who was raised in Rochester, New York.
The crime locations produced a connected geographic pattern that was sub-
sequently linked to Buono’s home, and this fact was presented as corrobo-
rating evidence by the prosecution during trial. “The Stranglers were taking
advantage of the freeways, covering far more territory than would have been
possible in, say, New York or Boston, sketching the arterial form of the city
in the geographical pattern of their abductions and dumpings” (O’Brien,
1985, p. 179).

Buono and Bianchi murdered a total of 10 women from 1977 to 1978,

before they separated and Bianchi moved to the state of Washington. There
he killed two more women in January 1979, and was arrested by Bellingham
Police who subsequently made the connection between their case and the
Hillside Stranglings. Bianchi at first pretended to suffer from multiple per-
sonality disorder, and his alter ego “Steve” claimed responsibility for the
murders. When this ruse was unsuccessful, he testified against his cousin,
and after the longest trial in California history, both killers were sentenced
to life imprisonment.

9.2.3.5

Peter Sutcliffe

In the 5 years from 1975 to 1980, the Yorkshire Ripper attacked 20 women
in Northern England, murdering 13 of them (Burn, 1984; Doney, 1990;
James, 1992; Jones, 1989; “The killing ground,” 1981; Kind, 1987a, 1987b;
Newton, 1990a; Nicholson, 1979; Time-Life, 1993). Like Jack the Ripper, his
namesake of a century past, Peter Sutcliffe sought out victims from the
prostitutes who worked the streets and bars of red-light districts. He attacked
these women in a frenzied fury with a claw hammer or sharpened screwdriver.

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The Ripper Inquiry was the largest manhunt in British history, consum-

ing enormous police resources and costing millions of dollars. Ironically,
Sutcliffe was interviewed by detectives at least nine different times, a connec-
tion lost in the 24 tons of paper records generated by the investigation. When
police presence became too great in the red-light districts of West Yorkshire,
Sutcliffe responded by hunting in other cities and targeting women who did
not work the streets. Because of his choice of victim, the target backcloth for
these crimes was not uniform. Body dump and encounter sites are close to
equivalent. Sutcliffe moved residence halfway through the murder series.

He was eventually arrested while parked with a prostitute in Sheffield by

two patrol officers who found his murder weapons. Sutcliffe confessed and
claimed to be acting on orders from God whose voice he heard originating
from a gravestone. This led to considerable debate amongst psychiatrists over
whether Sutcliffe was a paranoid schizophrenic or a sexual sadist. One doctor
assessed him as an extremely dangerous person, and conjectured that the
best forensic hospitalization could hope to accomplish was to turn him into
just a dangerous one. Sutcliffe’s own explanation to his brother for his mur-
derous actions was that he was only cleaning up the streets. The case of 

Regina

v. Sutcliffe

 in the Old Bailey resulted in 13 majority verdicts of guilty, and a

life sentence without hope of parole for 30 years.

9.2.3.6

Richard Ramirez

Greater Los Angeles was terrorized for over a year by the Night Stalker, 25-
year-old Richard Leyva Ramirez (Allen, 1993; Linedecker, 1991; Lyman, 1993;
Newton, 1990a; Time-Life, 1992b). From 1984 to 1985 he murdered at least
15 people, tried to kill 8 others, and sexually assaulted another 10. His
preferred M.O. involved shooting his victims in the head, but he also slashed
their throats and brutally beat them.

An unemployed skid road habitué, he hunted at night in the middle-

class, suburban neighbourhoods of the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys,
breaking into the homes of his sleeping victims. For some unknown reason
Ramirez seemed to target single-storey houses painted in light, pastel colours
(usually white, yellow, or beige), typically located near freeway off-ramps.

52

Body dump and encounter sites are equivalent in this case. Several of the
crime sites involved two victims, one of which occurred in San Francisco.

The Night Stalker was identified through old-fashioned witness obser-

vation and good patrol work, combined with state-of-the-art fingerprint
technology involving cyanoacrylate resin fuming, laser enhancement, and a

52 

The Night Stalker’s selection of targets close to freeway exits could be the result of

opportunism (the first suitable houses encountered), or tactical considerations (proximity
to escape routes). It might also be argued that little of the Los Angeles metropolitan area
is any significant distance from a freeway.

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computerized digital image search system. Ramirez was finally apprehended
after a lengthy chase through the East Los Angeles barrio by citizens who
recognized his mug shot from the newspaper.

Claiming to be a follower of Satan, he raved to the courtroom after his

guilty verdict: “You don’t understand me. You are not expected to. You are
not capable of it” (Linedecker, 1991, p. 287). Some experts described
Ramirez’s crimes as simply pure evil. He himself stated he had “no morals,
no scruples, no conscience.” Ramirez was sentenced to the gas chamber, and
now has a fan club of devoted Night Stalker “groupies” who regularly visit
him on San Quentin’s death row.

9.2.3.7

David Berkowitz

From the summer of 1976 to the summer of 1977, David Berkowitz shot 10
victims with a .44-calibre revolver, killing 6 of them (Carpozi, 1977; Lane &
Gregg, 1992; “Murder and attempted murders,” 1977; Newton, 1990a; Terry,
1987; Time-Life Books, 1992b). Known as the Son of Sam from a phrase in
one of the taunting letters he sent to police and New York tabloids, Berkowitz
later claimed to be obeying the murderous orders of a demon, manifested in
the form of a dog belonging to his neighbour, Sam Carr.

Berkowitz hunted almost nightly through the New York boroughs of

Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, often returning to scenes of his former
crimes. He sought out couples in parked cars, apparently attracted to women
with long, dark, wavy hair. In a message left for police at one of the shooting
sites, he wrote, “I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game —
tasty meat. The wemon of Queens are z prettyist of all. I must be the water
they drink. I live for the hunt — my life. Blood for Papa....” (Terry, 1987, p.
55, uncorrected quote).

Body dump and encounter sites are equivalent in this case. Several of the

crime sites involved two victims. After his first two attacks, Berkowitz moved
from the Bronx to Yonkers, an address situated outside of his hunting area.
At that point he became a poacher, commuting into the boroughs of New
York City to commit his shootings. Berkowitz grew up in the Bronx, however,
and it appears that his victim searches were based on the mental map he
developed during that time.

Acting on information from a witness who saw the killer remove a

summons from his illegally parked Ford Galaxie sedan shortly following the
last shooting, police arrested Berkowitz at his Yonkers home. He pled guilty
after being found sane. In 1979, while serving his murder sentence in Attica
Prison, Berkowitz admitted he concocted the Son of Sam story, though some
psychiatrists remain dubious about this recantation. Controversy remains
over whether or not Berkowitz was a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered
from delusions, but no one can deny his self-diagnosis. During his pretrial

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evaluation, Berkowitz drew a sketch of a jailed man surrounded by numerous
walls. At the bottom he wrote, in classic understatement, “I am not well. Not
at all” (Time-Life, 1992b, p. 183).

9.2.3.8

Jeffrey Dahmer

The infamous Jeffrey Dahmer admitted to police after his arrest that he
murdered 17 men from 1978 to 1991 (Dahmer, 1994; Dvorchak & Holewa,
1991; Masters, 1993; Norris, 1992b). All but the first of his victims were killed
in the four-year period from 1987 to 1991 while Dahmer worked night shift
as a mixer for the Ambrosia Chocolate Company. Unlike many serial mur-
derers, Dahmer did not own a vehicle and usually travelled by bus or taxi.

Dahmer typically preyed upon homosexual men he picked up in the gay

bars along South 2

nd

 Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They were taken back

to his place, drugged, and strangled. Dahmer then engaged in necrophilia,
mutilation, and cannibalism. The corpses were dismembered and decapi-
tated, and the body parts stored in the kitchen refrigerator or a 57-gallon
barrel. Because earlier attempts to create zombies from his victims by drilling
holes in their heads and pouring acid inside failed, Dahmer began to boil
the flesh from their skulls in a plan to create an elaborate shrine of death.

Dahmer’s first murder took place at his childhood home in Ohio. The

next three murders occurred while he was living with his grandmother in
West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee. He then moved out on his own to first
one, and then a second apartment building in Milwaukee. With the exception
of the fifth murder, the rest of the killings happened in his second apartment.
As Dahmer picked up most of his victims from gay bars, the target backcloth
was nonuniform. Two of his victims were encountered in Chicago. Dahmer
was an ambusher and the bodies of his victims were kept in his apartment.

When one of his prospective victims escaped, police discovered the hid-

eous remains inside Dahmer’s apartment and arrested him. He subsequently
confessed. Determined by the court to be sane (in the legal sense), and found
guilty of 16 counts of murder, Dahmer received the mandatory sentence of
life imprisonment. The judge consecutively structured Dahmer’s parole eli-
gibility so as to forever prevent his release, but ultimately it did not matter.
In November 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by a fellow inmate in the
maximum-security Columbia Correctional Institution.

9.2.3.9

Joel Rifkin

Joel Rifkin murdered New York street prostitutes, soliciting them in Lower
Manhattan, strangling them, and then disposing of their remains in isolated
locations (Eftimiades, 1993; Pulitzer & Swirsky, 1994a, 1994b). From 1989 to
1993, he killed at least 17 times. Rifkin had very specific victim selection criteria,
preferring women who reminded him of the high school girls he knew during

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the 1970s. His murdered victims were dumped, often in 55-gallon oil drums,
over a vast area that included Long Island, the rivers of New York City, New
Jersey, and upstate New York. For the most part police did not connect the
deaths and disappearances of Rifkin’s victims, partly because of the high-risk
nature of their occupations, and partly because of his method of body disposal.

Rifkin commuted from Long Island into New York City where he picked

up his prostitute victims. The target backcloth for his encounter sites was
nonuniform as was, to a lesser extent, that for his body dump sites. The
former was constrained by the location of the red-light strolls, and the latter
by the geography of the coastline and the degree of urban development.

Rifkin was arrested after a police chase that began when state troopers

tried to stop him when they noticed his vehicle did not have a licence plate.
They then discovered the decomposing body of his last victim under a tar-
paulin in the rear of his pickup truck. During subsequent police interviews,
he confessed to a total of 17 murders. Rifkin was found guilty after an
unsuccessful insanity defence and sentenced to 25 years-to-life imprison-
ment. While in jail he wrote, “The Catch 22 of life, if you know you’re crazy,
then you’re not” (Pulitzer & Swirsky, 1994b, p. 300).

9.2.3.10 John Collins

John Norman Collins preyed on coeds near the Eastern Michigan University
(EMU) in Ypsilanti and was responsible for the Michigan Murders from 1967
to 1969 (James, 1991; Keyes, 1976; Lane & Gregg, 1992; Newton, 1990a). A
senior EMU student himself, Collins worked one summer in the administration
building and lived at the Theta Chi fraternity house close to campus. This
lifestyle made him familiar with both his hunting grounds and potential victims.

Collins was fascinated by the novel 

Crime and Punishment

, and once wrote

in an English essay, “It’s not society’s judgment that’s important, but the
individual’s own choice of will and intellect” (Keyes, 1976, p. 249). This was
a paraphrase of Dostoevsky’s student murderer Raskolnikov who believed that
some men have an absolute right to commit wicked and criminal acts.

Collins picked up hitchhiking female students, then sexually assaulted

and strangled, shot, stabbed, or beat them. Their decomposed bodies were
found dumped on the outskirts of Ypsilanti and neighbouring Ann Arbor.
He is believed responsible for a total of eight murders. Eastern Michigan
University was Collins’ primary anchor point. The target backcloth for his
body dump sites was nonuniform as Collins chose isolated areas in which to
dispose of his victims (the area north of EMU was largely undeveloped land).
He committed one murder while on vacation in California.

Suspicions about Collins were confirmed through crime scene forensics

after he strangled his last victim in the home of his uncle, a Michigan state
trooper. On August 19, 1970, the jury returned with a verdict of guilty and