Dennis Rader and Thomas Cutbush

[diana]

The argument was made in relationship to Cutbush that someone who had committed the Whitechapel atrocities would not be satisfied to merely stab women and run off as Cutbush did.

As far as can be determined Dennis Rader's last murder was in 1991. After that he contented himself with persecuting the citizens of Park City with trumped up charges, leering at people through windows, making his subordinate at the city office miserable, and enjoying his trophies.

I believe that turns the argument on its head.

[mariag]

You're quite right.

We just don't know enough about human psychology in general and SK behavior in particular to make blanket statements about what any individual might or might not do.

I suppose a lot of people would feel better if we could make a list of rules for killers. And then the killer could just laugh.

[diana]

I think there will eventually be a list that can be relied on. Profiling is in its infancy, and discovering the rules will be trial and error.

Rader was actually caught because the FBI behavioral unit gave advice to the Wichita police on how to manipulate him and it worked.

[White-Knight]

I agree wholeheartedly too, Diana and Mariag, though perhaps surprisingly it still seems to put a lot of people off Cutbush as a suspect ..the notion seems to have been promoted and perhaps inspired by Melville Macnaghten who did seem to think so, possibly inaugrating a tradition of denying the Cutbush suspect on these grounds,why he thought so however is yet another question...a discussion on which can be found here on the 'Why did Macnaghten deny Cutbush as a serious suspect' thread as well as being explored in 'Jack The Myth', available in its entirity here on casebook..just in case you haven't had a look....

basically my inner jury is still out on whether this misconceived notion was down to ignorance or design...

WK.

[DarkPassenger]

The Boston Strangler gave up killing women to become a rather boring rapist, Rader gave up being a serial killer to...well...be a **** to a lot of innocent people trying to take their dogs for a walk in the park. Maybe Cutbush was the Ripper and he gave it up?

[Ally]

That's only if you believe that the Boston Strangler was DeSalvo, which is the minority opinion these days.

As for serial killers being able to channel their "desires" into other things, I think yes absolutely it is possible, but I think there is a difference. I don't know if Rader, with a knife in his hand and stalking a woman, would have been content just to prod her. Yes, you can channel your "addiction" into other things, but can you take just the occasional "sip" without downing a full glass? I do believe it is possible for people who are totally in control of their mental faculties (uh...other than the whole killing women thing..) but Cutbush by all accounts was not wrapped well enough to control himself to that extent.

[Mascara & Paranoia]

Valid points.

Though if Thomas did kill anyone thought by some to be a Ripper victim then it was probably either Tabram and/or Stride.

[White-Knight]

Ally, you're hitting the nail on the head...

Cutbush by all accounts was not wrapped well enough to control himself to that extent.

.. that possibility with Cutbush does not necessarily limit his candidature but rather extends it. Cutbush, possibly, was mentally ill to the extent that he genuinely was not in control of his actions..and as such his actions were as likely to follow a somewhat random pattern more than a pattern reflecting any kind of long term addiction to murder. The 'voices' changed..

For any of this to seem feasible, of course, the notion that all murderers are all always as in control of their free will' as the rest of us, needs to be done away with. That in itself is not a popular sport, since murderers do like to use this in their defence, Sutcliffe being a good example. The public often prefer not to discriminate and are often doubtful and suspicious, understandably.
But none of this takes away from the possibility that Thomas Cutbush may well have been the 'genuine article', so to speak.

WK

[Ally]

While anything might be possible, when killers who previously have displayed the kind of cool rationale that allows them to be serial killers suddenly stop betraying that cool, and go on an orgy of madness, they don't limit themselves to a little stick with a knife. Bundy did a spree because he knew he was going to be caught, but he definitely was not the "hearing voices" insane type.

The hearing voices insane type are generally not, in my opinion, the type who would have committed the whitechapel five and then years later, gone about poking women in the butt. While killers might not always be in control of their "free will", serial killers are not impulse driven, unable to control themselves except in popular myth. They stalk, they select and they abandon when there is a risk of exposure. Serial killers are not deluded, hearing voices, non-functional wrecks. Thomas Cutbush by all accounts was. And I will never be able to give credence to the idea that the "voices" in his head first tell him to slaughter a half a dozen people, then years later, say, eh, let's just give them a stick in the backside completely without treatment or intervention, instead of devolving, he manages to evolve from brutal destruction to mild damage?

So no, his candidature is weakened by the crimes that got him committed, not strengthened.

[Robert]

A quick question : do those who see the jobbings as a negative factor for Cutbush's candidacy think that the case against him would be stronger if he hadn't done the jobbings? I.e., if he had simply done nothing at all from November 1888 to his incarceration?

One point I'd make - and this doesn't specifically concern Cutbush - is that if, as the majority of people do, we write off McKenzie as a JTR victim, we're left with two mutilators who were operating at more or less the same time and whose cessation of activities has to be explained in some way through death, incarceration, emigration etc, which is by no means impossible but seems a bit odd. The probability seems to me rather that either McKenzie was a JTR victim, or at least one murderer (either JTR or McKenzie's murderer) stopped of his own volition.

[Howard Brown]

As far as can be determined Dennis Rader's last murder was in 1991. After that he contented himself with persecuting the citizens of Park City with trumped up charges, leering at people through windows, making his subordinate at the city office miserable, and enjoying his trophies.


Not sure whether Rader had already been making citizens of Park City miserable by his antics before, during, and after the crimes,are we? True, he ceased murdering...but is it not just as likely that before his last murder, during the period between murders and after the last murder he was the same individual as far as his less-violent behavior goes?

Should we be comparing Rader, who by his own accounting "scrapped" several intended "hits", as he called them, indicating premeditation and a sense of awareness of the environment at said scrapped intented hits which he felt would be too risky, to someone like Cutbush is, as Ally mentioned, a different kind of animal all together ?

[DarkPassenger]

Thing is that serial killers become serial killers by chasing harder sexual highs (in the main anyway). Eventually, killing people will dry up as a source of that high they chase.

[Ally]

A quick question : do those who see the jobbings as a negative factor for Cutbush's candidacy think that the case against him would be stronger if he hadn't done the jobbings? I.e., if he had simply done nothing at all from November 1888 to his incarceration?

One point I'd make - and this doesn't specifically concern Cutbush - is that if, as the majority of people do, we write off McKenzie as a JTR victim, we're left with two mutilators who were operating at more or less the same time and whose cessation of activities has to be explained in some way through death, incarceration, emigration etc, which is by no means impossible but seems a bit odd. The probability seems to me rather that either McKenzie was a JTR victim, or at least one murderer (either JTR or McKenzie's murderer) stopped of his own volition.

Robert,

I have thought about whether I think Cutbush would have been a better candidate if he'd done nothing at all, and I don't think he would have been. Cutbush's mental status, in my mind, rules him out. I don't believe someone would have devolved significantly, who, prone to and having committed acts of horrifying mutilation and violence, would still be at all functional without continuing to commit those acts. I probably didn't explain that well, but basically, the presentation of Cutbush's illness rules him out for me. I don't see him becoming LESS violent, the more ill he became and yet still being a "functional" human being. If he hadn't done anything because he immediately lapsed into drooling non-functionality or catatonia or something similar, perhaps.

As for Mckenzie, I actually think the mutilations were fairly tentative in nature, not the wholesale kind of thing that Jack had done. I imagine that the person's motives were less mutilation and probably more an attempt to make it seem like mutilation and therefore Jack's work, who was probably still in the minds of many.

[Robert]

Fair enough Ally. Obviously it would suit my purpose if it turned out that Thomas was sent to a private asylum within days of Kelly's murder, but such seems not to have been the case (at least his family don't mention it). What seems to have happened is that a young man with several screws loose became even worse once removed from his safe home base and confined in Broadmoor, though he never attained the level of violence of someone like David Cohen. However, I know little of paranoia, schizophrenia etc and I will keep persevering with him.

Re McKenzie, I suppose the killer may have attempted to "hide" a simple client-prostitute murder by imitating the Ripper, though in the short term he was running added risk the longer he stayed with the body.

[diana]

Re: the disorganized and killing

We will never know if Mr. Li who committed the Canadian bus decapitation would have killed again had he escaped. So we can't label him an SK. But he did share one characteristic of SK's in that he went after a perfect stranger.

He was pretty disconnected from reality and of course that is the reason he was caught. He committed murder and mutilation on a crowded bus. (Actually the mutilation was done after the driver pulled off and he and all the other passengers fled in terror.) That makes him one or two degrees less organized than JTR who seemed to be able to avoid having witnesses.

I think the case of Mr. Li shows that individuals even less organized than JTR are capable of murder.