It's difficult to turn away from stories of serial killers, and while they're definitely out there,
the truth is that they're on the decline. What's more, quite a few of them may have
never existed in the first place, and some of their stories were nearly complete fiction.
Some true crime theories help to perpetuate themselves not because of the strength of
the evidence contained therein, but because they present nothing more than an interesting
narrative. The truth of that narrative often seems to be a secondary concern.
Take the case of the Smiley Face Killer. The killer in question was
once widely believed to be an active serial killer who operated in New York
City. Said killer would grab young men from bars or parties and then,
after what was presumed to be a period of torture, would drown them in local waterways.
The "smiley face" link came from what many believed to be significant instances of
smiley face graffiti found near the bodies. The theory soon spread to numerous other regions,
including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Iowa. Proponents of the theory explain:
"It's a well-structured, organized group,
with cells spread out in major cities across the United States."
Only, upon closer examination, the situation was far too broadly defined and more easily explained
by other factors. Many began to argue that the men who had died could have accidentally drowned,
especially considering that many appeared to be
under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of their death.
The cases were further complicated by police officials who perhaps didn't want
to admit that they'd gotten caught up in a compelling, but poorly supported story,
as well as grieving families who weren't ready to accept an accident as the cause
of their loved ones' deaths. No one has been identified as the Smiley Face Killer.
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is a long-running Broadway musical
that's been appearing on stages and occasionally big and small screens since its premiere in 1979.
The musical was based on earlier stories of a murderous barber who
operated in London long ago. But was Sweeney Todd real, as some have wondered?
It certainly seems like it could have happened. Men of 19th century London did visit barbers,
who wielded wickedly sharp straight razors that could have easily been
used by a malicious person to cut a throat. And it's not like 19th century police had
the kind of resources to track every missing person in the city. So, is there a string of
killed or missing men from that time and place who also happened to visit the Demon Barber?
Not really. The first known appearance of Sweeney Todd comes via an 1846 "penny dreadful." These
sensationalist, cheaply produced tales of terror can't exactly be taken as substantiated fact,
even though it's rumored to have been based on an earlier story...
thought to be little more than urban legend.
And researchers who have dug into the historic record can't find a telltale
trail of dead or missing people. In fact, they can't even find confirmation that
a barber worked on London's real Fleet Street in the early to mid-19th century.
While it's true that some penny dreadfuls were dramatizations of real crimes,
it appears that Sweeney Todd only exists on the page and the stage.
Too often, it's difficult to parse just what's true and what is the
product of a confused and anxious human mind. And when you realize
that you're dealing with not just one easily misled person, but many,
things get even more complicated. Sometimes, they can even turn dangerous.
Take the case of the Halifax Slasher, a serial killer that was first identified
in northern England in 1938. Two women in the town of Halifax claimed to have
been attacked by a mysterious man wielding a mallet and, curiously, sporting brightly
shining buckles on his shoes. Another woman later came forward with a similar story.
Soon enough, groups of concerned citizens were forming ad-hoc security groups. That could have
been fine, except they apparently weren't any good at identifying the potential serial
killer in their midst. They attacked a number of innocent men, dealing out real-world violence.
Meanwhile, more and more people began to panic, and some businesses even closed temporarily to
avoid the violence. Eventually, officers from Scotland Yard were called in. Yet,
a mere week after the initial reports, skepticism began to take over. No bodies were recovered,
no further attacks were reported, and no killer with shiny shoe buckles and
a hammer was ever apprehended. It was all soon dismissed as a case of mass hysteria.
Many true crime sources will report on the case of the Polish serial killer known as the "Red
Spider" as if it were a verifiable fact. He's even appeared in textbooks like "Serial Killers
Around the World," which reports that the Red Spider was a man known as Lucian Staniak
who killed along mass transit lines. He's even believed to have gone so far as to kill victims
right inside train cars, seemingly careless of the danger that he would be caught in the act.
He's even had a film made about him, titled, naturally enough, "The Red Spider."
Staniak, however, likely didn't care about being caught because he was never real to begin with.
According to a film review for "The Red Spider" in Variety,
there's practically no evidence to support the Red Spider story. At the time the film was released,
even the press notes for the film admitted that Staniak wasn't real.
Perhaps most tellingly, no one's been able to produce police reports or court records that,
for other known serial killers, usually supports the claim that they're real.
For 15 years, German police thought they had a major case on their hands.
Not only was there an unidentified killer leaving
DNA around at least six crime scenes, but that serial killer was a woman.
That's odd, but not unheard of. Female serial killers do exist, but are far more rare than
their male counterparts and often have different techniques and motivations,
like using poison or killing those closest to them. Yet, with the violent unsolved murders of
unconnected people in Germany, it appeared that this particular killer was prepared to stand out.
If only investigators could identify her, though. She was dubbed the "Phantom
of Heilbronn," after a city where she was believed to have killed at least one person.
Then, they looked a little closer at the DNA. While this sort of evidence is typically pretty
ironclad, it's not infallible. And, lo and behold, there was a significant flaw here.
Sure, there were up to 40 crime scenes that had at least traces of the same woman's DNA.
But the traces were oddly inconsistent, showing up on some pieces of evidence and not others,
though the samples were all from the same scene.
Eventually, investigators determined that the cotton swabs used to collect evidence had been
contaminated by an innocent factory worker. The "Phantom of Heilbronn" wasn't just nonexistent,
but had distracted the police from finding the real killers for well over a decade.
"The Bild newspaper ran the headline, 'Are the heads of our police stuffed with cotton wool."
In 1970s Yorkshire, there was a genuine serial killer who was stalking the countryside.
The Yorkshire Ripper, eventually revealed to be a man named Peter Sutcliffe, was apprehended
and convicted in 1981. He's known to have killed 13 women over a five-year period, and
it was a terrifying time for northern England as everyone wondered, "Could it be their neighbor?"
The police were stymied too, not just by the viciousness and complexity of the case,
but also by a notorious hoax that fooled them for a time and arguably took valuable
attention away from finding the real killer. It all started around 1979,
when police received a letter and tapes that seemed to have come from the killer.
"I'm Jack. I see you're still having no luck catching me."
"The hoax sent detectives in the wrong direction for 18 months."
Yorkshire Police went after the mysterious suspect,
dubbed "Wearside Jack." It's now believed that the delay
caused by this fruitless side investigation allowed Sutcliffe to kill three more women.
But while investigators eventually realized that Wearside Jack was a fake, they didn't
apprehend the hoaxer until 2005. That's when DNA from one of the envelopes containing the
Wearside Jack letters was linked to a man named John Humble, who admitted to the whole thing.
He was subsequently arrested and imprisoned until 2009.
For a period of time beginning around 2007, it may have seemed like a very strange serial killer was
operating in the Salish Sea region of the Pacific Northwest near Vancouver, Canada. That's when
hikers and beachgoers started finding shoes around the coast there — with the feet still inside.
The number of gruesome shoe discoveries began to seemingly pile up, with more and more disembodied,
decomposing feet in shoes found over the years. Was there a serial killer
on the loose? And why would they leave behind such a uniquely gruesome hallmark?
Only, once people moved past the wild tales and conspiracy theories,
it became pretty clear that there was no serial killings happening. Instead, the remains seemed
to be linked to missing people who were more likely to have drowned in local waterways.
The natural decomposition process, compounded with relatively cold water, scavenging sea life,
and buoyant sneaker material, all meant that feet easily detached from the rest
of the body and floated. Currents eventually carried some of these body parts to the coast,
where they were discovered. A touch of sensationalist press did the rest of the work.
So far, none of the cases show any evidence of foul play. And,
while some cases do remain unsolved, it seems highly unlikely that there's
a foot-hacking serial killer at work in the coastal Pacific Northwest.
Few serial killer cases have been quite as picked over as that of Jack the Ripper, the unidentified
killer who stalked the Whitechapel district of London in 1888, brutally murdering at least five
sex workers and indigent women over the course of two months. Most people have assumed that
the central five killings, and perhaps a few more, were all committed by a single individual
with some knowledge of human anatomy and a horrifying drive to mutilate vulnerable women.
In the many decades since the crimes, professional and amateur investigators alike have come up
with what can seem like a vast universe of theories centering on the killer's identity.
Yet, one of the most surprising suggests that "Jack the Ripper" wasn't one killer, but multiple.
It's a pretty bold theory in a field that's already crowded with different ideas,
but one that holds some interest. Even in 1888, investigators weren't uniformly convinced that
all of the central five murders shared enough details to indicate they were committed by the
same person. It's possible that some of them were committed by "copycat" killers
seeking to go undetected while everyone was searching for a different killer.
Did these copycat killers actually exist, or is it another dead-end? It's likely we'll never know.
Elizabeth Bathory was a fabulously wealthy and powerful Hungarian countess born in
the 16th century, and one of the most notorious figures in all of true crime.
In 1610, authorities claimed that she had been killing hundreds of young women from
the area around her castle for years. Some of the most lurid tales maintained that she
not only tortured the women but bathed in their blood in a misguided attempt to regain her youth.
Bathory was subsequently placed on house arrest and died in her castle in 1614.
Yet, there are significant flaws with her story, starting with the fact that
the man who oversaw her trial may have had an interest in taking down a female rival.
Furthermore, lurid testimony from some of her closest servants was taken only after they
were tortured and gave statements under duress. And significant pieces of evidence, like direct
witnesses to her crimes or those hundreds of bodies, remained missing. Suspicious, right?
This isn't to say that Elizabeth was instead the picture of Christian charity and kindness.
She had already been publicly censured for her cruelty… although her accuser
was a Lutheran minister who may have had a grudge against the Calvinist Bathory.
But the evidence pinning her as a serial killer is scant indeed. It could be instead
that she was an inconveniently powerful woman who was dramatically taken out by her rivals.
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