James Oliver Huberty was a survivalist living in San Ysidro, New Mexico. A man who never felt at home in America, and felt that it was in a state of moral decay, but shared that all-too-common delusion that murder is apparently not a moral failing.
On July 18, 1984, he strode into a McDonalds three blocks away from his residence, and opened fire. He wounded 19 people, and killed 21 more, before he was finally killed himself. The massacre lasted 77 minutes. In the aftermath, McDonalds demolished the restaurant, and donated the site to the city as a memorial to the victims.
Referenced in:
McMassacre — Macabre
McMurder — Ethnic Cleansing
James Oliver Huberty — LoNNNIe
Shotgun Boogie (James Oliver Huberty) — Church of Misery
Graham Young was only 14 years old when he was arrested for murder – and the murder in question was that of his stepmother, Molly. He had also been trying to poison his father, sister and a friend of his from school.
Young was convicted on three counts of attempted murder (the murder of his stepmother could not be verified, as she had been cremated) and served nine years in a prison for the mentally unstable. After his release, he poisoned at least another seventy-two people, two of them fatally. He was once again arrested, and this time sentenced to life in prison. He eventually died in prison at the age of 42.
Referenced in:
Poison — Macabre
Taste the Pain (Graham Young) — Church Of Misery
Gary Ridgway is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. He was convicted of 48 separate counts of murder – but he has confessed to a total of 71, and some authorities believe that he may have murdered more than 90 people, almost all of them women. Favouring strangulation as his method of murder, Ridgway dumped the bodies in forested areas of King County, Washington state or in the Green River – it was the latter which led to him being dubbed the Green River Killer. Continue reading 2001 – Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, is arrested
Jim Jones was a weird kid, into death and religion, who would later become a Communist. Later still, he would found the People’s Temple, and move it – and most of the adherents of the religion – to a site in Guyana he named the People’s Temple Agricultural Project, but which is better known to history as Jonestown. Messianic fuckwits like Jones are a cowardly and superstitious lot, and Jones himself was about as well balanced as an up-turned egg.
In 1978, after the visit of Congressman Leo Ryan, Jones’ personal demons got the better of him. He ordered a mass suicide of his followers – although accounts vary as to just how voluntary this suicide was – and the shooting of the Congressman and his party. A total of 918 people died, including Jones and 908 of his followers. Almost all of them were Americans, and until the 9/11 attacks, it was the single greatest loss of American lives that ever took place in a single day.
Referenced in:
Guyana Punch — The Judys
Jimmie Jones — The Vapors
Reverend — Church of Misery
The Riverflow — The Levellers
Jonestown — Concrete Blonde
Guyana (Cult of the Damned) — Manowar
Carnage in the Temple of the Damned -– Deicide
Ballad of Jim Jones — Brian Jonestown Massacre
John Wayne Gacy was a serial rapist and murderer who lived in Chicago, Illinois. He is known to have raped and murdered at least 33 young men – 26 of whom he buried under his house. Most infamously, he often dressed as a character of his own invention, Pogo the Clown, in order to lure children into his clutches.
Gacy was arrested for his murders on December 20, 1978, and confessed two days later – in fact, he confessed to more murders than there was evidence to confirm. He attempted to plead insanity, but failed to convince the court. On March 13, 1980, he was found guilty of 33 counts of murder and sentenced to death. His execution by lethal injection took place in 1994, after years of appeals failed to overturn his convictions.
Referenced in:
Gacy’s Lot — Macabre
33 Something — Bathory
Suffer Age — Fear Factory
Pogo The Clown — Hubert Kah
John Wayne Gacy, Jr. — Sufjan Stevens
Pogo The Clown — Dog Fashion Disco
Master of Brutality (John Wayne Gacy) — Church of Misery
Three for Flinching (Revenge of the Porno Clowns) — The Dillinger Escape Plan
The Boston Strangler – assuming it was only one man – was a serial rapist and murderer who terrorised Boston from June 1962 and January 1964. He killed thirteen people, all of them single women (ranging in age from 19 to 85), and all but three of them he also sexually assaulted. Despite his nom du crime, not all of his victims were strangled.
Although a man named Albert De Salvo later confessed to and was convicted of the Strangler’s crimes, there remains some doubt that he was actually responsible for all of the crimes – although he knew many details police had not released to the public, there were some inconsistencies in his testimony. To date, however, no one else has been charged with any of the crimes attributed to the Boston Strangler.
Referenced in:
The Boston Strangler – Macabre
Midnight Rambler – The Rolling Stones
Dedicated to Albert De Salvo – Whitehouse
Boston Strangler (Albert DeSalvo) – Church of Misery
Sometimes, you really think that these things should have been caught earlier than they were.
Surely, for example, someone in Howard Unruh’s unit, back in World War Two, must have noticed the meticulous notes he kept about each German he killed? And although many men came home with souvenir firearms, not many of them went on to decorate their bedrooms with military paraphenalia, or built shooting ranges in their basements.
Whatever the reason, Howard Unrah’s madness went unnoticed until the morning of September 6, 1949. On this day, Howard loaded his captured luger, left his Camden, New Jersey home, and in only twelve minutes, killed 13 people and wounded 3 more.
A siege developed, but Unrah surrendered to police fairly quickly, and at his trial was ruled not guilty by reason of insanity. He was placed in the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, where he remains as of this writing.
Referenced in:
Retal – Church of Misery
Howard Unrah – Sheer Terror
Howard Unrah (What Have You Done Now?) – Macabre
With those words, Charles Manson initiated one of his most infamous murder sprees: the Tate killings. Manson despatched Charles Watson, along with three other family members, to the house of Terry Melcher. What no one in the family knew is that the Melcher no longer lived there – the house was now being leased by director Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate. Polanski wasn’t home, but Tate, unluckily for her, was.
Tate and three guests were brutally murdered by the Mansonites, each of them stabbed multiple times. The following night, the family committed another set of murders. On August 16, 25 member of the Manson Family, including all the Tate killers and Manson himself, were arrested. It would take several more months for the police to put it all together – it wasn’t until October that they connected the two different murder sites – but in the end, the murderers would all be caught.
Referenced in:
Mister Manson – Klaatu
DI-1-9026 – J. G. Thirlwell
ATWA – System of a Down
Revolution Blues – Neil Young
Manson Clan – Righteous Pigs
Death Valley ’69 – Sonic Youth
Do The Charles Manson – Necro
Lunatic of God’s Creation – Deicide
Charlie Manson’s Birthday – Otis Ball
Charles in Charge – Ian Brady Bunch
Manson Family Feud – Diesel Queens
Bloodbath in Paradise – Ozzy Osbourne
Charlie Manson Blues – The Flaming Lips
SST Superstar Charles Manson – Ultraviolet Eye
Spahn Ranch (Charles Manson) – Church of Misery
Dean Corll was an American serial killer. Born in 1939 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he served in the military briefly, but was discharged after only ten months when his mother needed medical care.
By 1970, Corll had started murdering young men around his home, mostly hitchhikers whom he hoped would not be missed. Along with two younger accomplices, David Brooks and Elmer Henley, he is known to have killed at least 27 teenaged boys and young men.
Corll’s own death occurred when he lost an argument over possession of a handgun with Henley, who shot the older man six times. Henley then called the police, and confessed to his part in killing Corll, and participating in the murders of others.
Referenced in:
Candyman (Dean Corll) – Church of Misery
Castrated and Sodomized – Divine Pustulence
Charles Whitman was a few weeks past his 25th birthday when he finally snapped. Taking his rifle, he killed 16 people, 3 of them in the tower tower of the University of Texas and 11 more as a sniper in the tower’s observation deck, where he retreated in his final rage. He also wounded 32 other people before he was shot dead by members of the Austin police department.
In the months leading up to his death, Whitman had been court-martialled by the Marines (by whom he had been trained as a sniper), endured his parents’ divorce, and developed both an amphetamine addiction and a headache-inducing brain tumour (the last discovered only at his autopsy)… looking for a motive in his actions is pointless, so many things in his life serving to unabalance him.
His was one of the earliest sniper killing sprees, but sadly, it would not be the last.
Referenced in:
Sniper – Harry Chapin
Sniper in the Sky – Macabre
Chest Explodes – Bottom Feeder
The Tower – Insane Clown Posse
The Ballad of Charles Whitman – Kinky Friedman
Road To Ruin (Charles Whitman) – Church of Misery
David Richard Berkowitz was never a well-adjusted man. Born Richard David Falco, he was put up for adoption by his mother and adopted by the Berkowitz’s when he was a week old.
From an early age, he showed above average intelligence – which unfortunately manifested in a loss of interest in learning and a growing tendency towards pyromania. He went to Woodstock in 69, joined the Army in 71 (although he served only in South Korea and the US, never in Vietnam), and upon his discharge in 74, began drifting into cults.
He failed to reconcile with his birth mother that same year, and first attacked another human on Christmas Eve, 1975. His first murder, that of Donna Lauria, took place more than six months later.
As the Son of Sam, Berkowitz terrorised New York City for a little over twelve months until his arrest in August 1976, killing a total of six people and wounding seven others.
Referenced in:
S.O.S. – Camarosmith
I Hear Black – Overkill
Son of Sam – Macabre
Son of Sam – Dead Boys
Son of Sam – Elliott Smith
Son of Sam – Neitherworld
Mr. 44 – Electric Hellfire Club
Jumping at Shadows – Benediction
Ballad to the Son of Sam – Consumers
Son of A Gun (David Berkowitz) – Church of Misery
Diddy Doo Wop (I Hear The Voices) – Hall & Oates
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