joedetective wrote:The thing is, how do you fit an anomaly like Z into a criminal profile? If you take all the murders together, and especially, if you include Bates, it's difficult to make a basic argument of whether he was even an organized or unorganized serial killer. I find it interesting that Morf pictures a sick, mentally ill individual, others see a cold blooded sadistic type, some see thrill seeker, while others see power assertive.
Personally I don't picture Z to be schizophrenic whatsoever. I also disagree with Norse that the killing was secondary to the letter campaign. The letters, the taunting phone calls, point to a sadist, who stretches the joy of the kill, by writing letters and crank calling relatives of the victims. On the other hand, unlike sadists such as btk, Z has little interest in torturing his victims, and only one sloppy instance of binding, so I return to square one, baffled as to where Z fits.
I have wondered this myself. It seems there are a number of contradictions. I always thought it strange that he did the LB murders, and then went and shot a cabbie in the city. If he were getting that much of a thrill out of the killing, you would expect to see a continued escalation. That is USUALLY what happens...but no. He pulls back, uses a gun, shoots a guy from behind. With his last murder, he had gotten more up close and personal with the victims, spent more time with them than previous victims. If he were a sadist, one would think that inflicting pain close up would have been a thrill. Instead he stops killing couples and just shoots a guy from behind. Almost as if he were doing it for some other reason. I mean, why didn't he even take any souvenirs with him from LB? You would have thought he would have taken a piece of Cecilia's clothing. Think about Jack the Ripper- his last murder was the most brutal by far, and it was the only time he had privacy as well, in Mary Kelly's room. It gave him more license. Z has this opportunity and he merely stabs them, and not even all that well enough to kill them immediately, and he leaves another survivor. He didn't lean in and lose his cool and get really knife-mad. He doesn't. And he has a loaded gun as well.
Its just all so strange. Thinking on it you could believe that Stine was almost perfunctory. He wanted that shirt, wanted something to dribble out in his letters, proof. You could almost believe that was his ONLY real motivation with Stine.
I would think a schizophrenic would leave a much less organized scene, as well. And anyway, schizos rarely commit violent crimes. Even serial murder accounts for something like 3 percent of all homicides, so out of that small sliver schizophrenics are not hugely represented. Personality disorders are a whole other business, but diagnosing something like that from letters just turns the whole thing prismatic and inscrutable all over again. But think about Richard Chase, the Sacramento Vampire. That guy was purely, full on schizophrenic and he practically left blood trails right to his own door.
I think he was obviously a Black Swan, just unknowable by the typical disorganized/organized rubric of profiling. Walter's power-assertive model is the closest Z gets to being pigeonholed, but even then, he stands outside the margins somehow.
Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:12 am