Ripper

by Linda Rosencrance

  During the interview the detectives asked Harrison if he knew his friend was picking up prostitutes.

  “Honestly, I didn’t think he had the balls,” Harrison said. “When we went out to bars, he would not talk to any girls unless he knew them. I can’t believe he did [this], and unless I know otherwise, I won’t believe it. I can’t believe he picked one up, never mind do anything else.”

  Detectives also interviewed Mailhot’s landlord, Stephen Lovatt, who said Mailhot had been his tenant for about six or seven years. Lovatt said he never had any problems with Mailhot.

  “In that time I have known him to be a good tenant,” Lovatt said. “As far as I know, he goes to work every day. I remember one time he accidentally broke a window and I fixed it and did not charge him because he was a good tenant.”

  Lovatt said he didn’t know Mailhot socially; he only knew him well enough to say hello when he saw him.

  The police asked Lovatt if Mailhot ever did anything he thought was odd.

  “He once told me that he got a computer and I told him I would help him with it,” Lovatt said. “The next thing I know is that he’s telling me he sold it. I then noticed computer boxes in the trash, so he must have gotten a new one. Other than that, I cannot think of anything.”

  Lovatt told the detectives that he never paid attention to Mailhot’s comings and goings and had no idea if he ever brought anyone home with him.

  The cops then asked Lovatt if Mailhot brought his own trash barrels out to the street for pickup.

  “He will put his barrels near mine and I or my kids will take them out to the road,” Lovatt explained, adding that he had never seen Mailhot take out any bags of trash in addition to the barrels.

  The police canvassed Cato Street to get information about Mailhot from his neighbor, but they didn’t have much luck. Most people were either not home or had never even seen or heard of Jeffrey Mailhot.

  One resident who lived nearby said he never really saw anything suspicious going on at Mailhot’s house. However, one incident did stick out in his mind. The man said he saw Mailhot pull his Blazer in front of his apartment on around June 26. There was a girl with Mailhot, he said. But Mailhot only stopped his vehicle for a second before quickly taking off again. Then he came back around the block, stopped and once again quickly took off. Mailhot again drove up in front of his house, but this time he parked the Blazer. The neighbor said it looked like Mailhot was trying to convince the girl to go into his apartment with him, which she ultimately did. The neighbor said the woman was in her mid to late twenties, with dark skin and black hair in a bun. The man said after they went inside, he went to bed and had no idea what happened after that.

  Sometime after his arrest, police learned that Mailhot had responded to a letter written to him by his boss at Proma Technologies, the company where he now worked in nearby Franklin, Massachusetts, which produced technologically advanced metallized papers. So the police contacted Mailhot’s boss, who agreed to bring the letter to the station.

  In his letter Mailhot said he hoped no one at the company would have any accidents because they were distracted thinking about his situation. He went on to say that despite everything that had happened, he was doing okay and that he was getting an unbelievable amount of love and support from his family and friends. In fact, he was getting more support than he could have hoped for or imagined. And in that respect he felt like the luckiest person in the world.

  Now comes the hard part, he wrote. I know that everyone wants an explanation for the horrible acts that I committed.

  Mailhot said the first thing he wanted his coworkers to know was that he didn’t plan to kill anyone. The murders were not premeditated, he said, adding that he would try to explain what happened without going into the gruesome details. Mailhot explained that nearly a year and a half earlier he was driving home alone after hanging out at a local bar with some friends. He said he was pretty wasted. Before he got home, he stopped to pick up a girl who was walking down the street near his house. That girl was Audrey Harris.

  Mailhot took Audrey back to his house, where they had sex. After they finished, Mailhot said, Audrey told him she had given him the AIDS virus. However, Mailhot never told police Audrey claimed to have given him the AIDS virus.

  At that point, I reached out and grabbed her around the neck, he wrote. I was so drunk that I don’t remember much after that.

  For the next couple days, Mailhot said, he didn’t know what to do. He considered telling someone what he had done or turning himself in to police, but he didn’t because he was afraid of losing his family and friends. So he thought and thought about how to hide “the horrible thing” he had done. Mailhot told his boss he didn’t come up with the plan to dismember Audrey’s body on his own. He explained that he had seen it done on an episode of The Sopranos and figured it was the only way to dispose of her body.

  Over the next year I had many sleepless nights and many days of just trying to cope with what I had done, he penned.

  Mailhot said he thought about going into therapy but didn’t. He said he wished he had talked to someone about murdering Audrey Harris, because if he had, maybe Christine Dumont and Stacie Goulet would still be alive.

  Mailhot told his boss he met Christine and Stacie the same way he had met Audrey—and on the same street. Neither of them deserved their fate, he said.

  I don’t know how to explain why I attacked those women, he wrote. I have played those events over and over again in my head and the only thing I can remember thinking when I attacked the last two women was what the first woman said to me. I kept flashing back to that comment she made about giving me AIDS.

  Mailhot said he didn’t want anyone to think that he was making excuses for murdering three women. He said he felt nothing but remorse and regret for what he had done and had given a full confession to the police.

  I felt a lot of emotions during and after confessing my actions (sorrow, regret, fear, etc.) but mostly I felt glad and relieved to finally talk about it out loud, Mailhot wrote. Now at least the families of the women know what happened to their loved ones and can begin the process of working through and dealing with the tragic news and try to move on. I know that the pain and loss they are experiencing will never be erased.

  Mailhot said he wanted to let his coworkers know that the person they knew at Proma was the person he really was.

  I hope that you can believe that, he wrote. I would never in my right mind hurt anyone. I know that in my heart. I also know that I need to get some serious help in order to find out what is wrong with me. I don’t care if it takes the rest of my life; I want to understand how a person like me could do such horrible things.

  Mailhot said he knew he was a good person and he hoped that he would get better, no matter how long it took.

  Chapter 16

  Although his friends and family didn’t think Jeffrey Mailhot was a murderer, he certainly appeared to fit the demographic profile of a serial killer developed by criminologists. The typical serial killer is a white male who commits his first murder when he is around thirty years old. Serial killers typically kill more than three people, and most of them just target strangers or people they may have seen around once or twice. Though a few travel around, leaving bodies in their wake, most kill within a specific area.

  However, according to University of Houston criminologist Steven Egger, an expert on serial killers, there are a number of misconceptions that exist about serial killers. In his book The Killers Among Us, Egger lists some major myths about serial killers, which, he said, “are ingrained in the public’s understanding of serial murder.”

  Those common myths are as follows: All serial killers had terrible childhoods, were beaten by their parents and were sexually abused. Serial killers are “mutants from hell,” who do not really look like an average person. Serial killers prey on anyone who crosses their path and really don’t pick out their victims. Serial killers are able to stay one step ahead of police for a long time
. The male serial killer is a sex-starved person, who kills because he had a horrible childhood and because of the way society has treated him. He has an unusual relationship with his mother, and he travels alone across the country and has an in-depth knowledge of police procedures, which allows him to elude authorities. He is an insane coward who preys who on the weak and helpless.

  According to Egger, these myths are incorrect for a number of reasons. But the most important reason why the myths are incorrect is that serial killers are individuals, who have lived different lives and really don’t fit the same mold.

  Egger said the first myth—all serial killers had terrible childhoods and were probably abused when they were kids—is just not true. Some may have had it rough when they were kids, but you can’t generalize and say they all did, according to Egger.

  Egger is right on when it comes to Jeffrey Mailhot. There was no indication that Mailhot had it bad as a kid. The only bad thing that happened to him was that his parents died while he was young.

  The second myth—serial killers are mutants from hell and do not resemble the average person in appearance or mannerisms—is also not true, according to Egger. He said there just isn’t really any way to figure out who is a serial killer just by looking at the way he looks and the way he acts.

  Most serial killers, like Jeffrey Mailhot, look and act just like everybody else. Many of them have normal jobs, get married, have children and hang out with friends. In fact, Egger said, they look and act “normal.” But what makes them different, Egger said, is the horrible crimes they’ve committed, the often incomprehensible reasons they give for what they’ve done and the lack of remorse for those crimes. Jeffrey Mailhot was sorry for the grief he caused the families of Audrey, Christine, and Stacie, but he never felt any remorse for murdering the three women.

  Egger said, contrary to popular wisdom, serial killers don’t select their victims randomly. Instead, they usually put a lot of thought into deciding who their victims will be. Serial killers select their victims based on their own criteria, according to Egger. Mailhot selected prostitutes because he felt he was doing society a favor by getting rid of them, and because he figured nobody would really miss them.

  Egger also said, despite what people think, serial killers don’t have any superhuman abilities that allow them to elude law enforcement authorities. If, in fact, police are unable to apprehend a serial murderer, it’s because of the system and society—not the superpowers of the killer. Maybe the police haven’t had the right training or maybe there’s not enough manpower to handle the case. There’s also the fact that people who could help police in the investigation just don’t want to get involved, Egger said.

  According to Egger, another pervasive myth—serial killers all fit a similar profile—just isn’t true as well. He said serial killers are individuals, and they can’t all be lumped together.

  Some of them can have great childhoods, great jobs, super families—or maybe they have nothing at all, Egger said. Maybe it makes it easier for society to deal with serial killers, if society thinks they’re all alike. For if we don’t know who they are, how can we stop them? he said. No one agency, not even the FBI, has all the answers when it comes to serial killers, he said.

  Unfortunately, when it comes to serial killers, we really don’t know much of anything, he said. But there is one thing that various studies have shown us—prostitutes are more likely to be the targets of serial killers than any other group of people.

  Egger said one of the main reasons is that they are vulnerable because they are so available. That’s because no one pays much attention to a john picking up a prostitute in an area that’s known for prostitution, he said. And besides, who’s going to go to the police to report a missing prostitute? he reasoned. Jeffrey Mailhot knew that, and that’s why he knew it would be so easy to murder women who were known prostitutes.

  Egger said most serial killers are psychopaths—people who treat their victims as objects, not as human beings, which is why many serial killers target prostitutes. Serial killers who murder prostitutes don’t see them as someone’s daughter or someone’s wife—they just see them as trash to be thrown away, according to Egger. That’s exactly the way Jeff Mailhot viewed Audrey, Christine and Stacie. And that’s literally what he did with their remains.

  But not everyone who kills more than one person is a serial killer. So what exactly makes someone a serial killer?

  During his research into the mind of the killer, former FBI agent John Douglas came up with three categories to define the killing of multiple people: serial murder, spree murder and mass murder.

  According to his biography on his Web site, Douglas was the legendary head of the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit, and has hunted some of our country’s most notorious and sadistic criminals: the “Trailside Killer” in San Francisco, the “Atlanta Child Murderer,” the “Tylenol Poisoner,” the man who hunted prostitutes for sport in the woods of Alaska and Seattle’s “Green River Killer.”

  According to his Web site, Douglas has confronted, interviewed and studied dozens of serial killers and assassins—including Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) and James Earl Ray—for a landmark study to understand their motives and motivations.

  “To get inside their minds,” he said.

  In order to understand Jeffrey Mailhot, we need to look at exactly what the experts have to say about serial killers.

  The teenagers responsible for the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado cannot be classified as serial killers, because they killed their victims all at once. In the case of the Columbine shootings, which happened on April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage, and ended up killing twelve students and a teacher. They also wounded over twenty other people before turning their guns on themselves. Douglas classified Harris and Klebold as mass murderers.

  According to Douglas, a mass murderer kills three or more victims at one time and in one place, although there may be a number of crime scenes. For example, a person might kill someone inside one building and then move on and kill more people down the street, Douglas said.

  A spree murderer, according to Douglas, tends to do his killings within a short period of time. And he continues to kill until he gets caught, turns himself in, kills himself or commits “suicide by cop,” by doing something that causes a cop to kill him, Douglas said. Although a spree killer usually picks his victims at random, he will most likely kill someone who meets his needs at the time. For example, he will kill for sex or money, or even because he’s hungry, Douglas explained.

  When it comes to spree killers, police usually know who they are. Take Andrew Phillip Cunanan, for example. Cunanan murdered five people, including fashion designer Gianni Versace, during a three-month cross-country killing spree in 1997. On June 12, 1997, the FBI put Cunanan on its “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list. The killings ended when Cunanan killed himself on July 23, 1997. He was twenty-seven.

  Cunanan murdered his friend Jeffrey Trail on April 27, 1997, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Next he killed architect David Madson at Rush Lake, near Rush City, Minnesota. Madson, who had been shot in the head, was found on April 29, 1997. Police soon connected the two murders because Trail’s body had been left in Madson’s apartment.

  After killing Madson, Cunanan drove to Chicago, and on May 4, 1997, he killed seventy-two-year-old Lee Miglin, a real estate developer. He then stole Miglin’s car, drove to Finn’s Point National Cemetery in Pennsville, New Jersey, and murdered its caretaker, forty-five-year-old William Reese, on May 9, 1997.

  Police theorized Cunanan killed Reese for his pickup truck, because he left Miglin’s car in the cemetery. After Cunanan killed Reese, the FBI put him on their “Ten Most Wanted” list.

  Cunanan then traveled to Miami Beach, Florida, where he hid out for a couple months before killing his fifth, and final, victim—fashion designer Gianni Versace—on July 15, 1997. Then, on
July 23, Andrew Cunanan committed suicide on a Miami houseboat.

  Although serial killers also kill three or more people, the difference between serial killers, mass murderers and spree murderers is that there is a “cooling-off” period between the murders of serial killers, according to Douglas. That’s because serial killers usually don’t like to take risks; they want to be sure that if they commit a murder, they won’t get caught. Jeffrey Mailhot killed Audrey Harris in February 2003, Christine Dumont in April 2004 and Stacie Goulet in July 2004.

  Some experts believe that serial killers are “addicted” to killing, and once they start, they just can’t stop. And a serial killer, they say, usually goes after strangers, but his victims are usually the same sex, around the same age and do the same kind of work. Douglas said serial killers are drawn to places where there is widespread prostitution, drug addicts and runaways—people that the serial killer figures won’t be missed. Mailhot certainly fit that part of the profile.

  According to Douglas, most serial killers feel inadequate, insignificant and powerless in one way or another. And in their minds, they can feel powerful by controlling others. Controlling another human being makes a serial killer feel important, almost as if he’s accomplished something, Douglas said.

  Serial killers never identify with their victims or even feel sorry for them. They figure they’ve been victims all their lives—dominated and controlled by other people. They believe they can be in control by calling the shots and deciding who lives or dies, according to Douglas.

  Even though a serial killer will admit he murdered people, he never really accepts responsibility for it, Douglas said. He’ll blame it on someone, or something else, or say he was abused as a child. And a serial killer may shed tears over what he’s done, Douglas said, but the tears are for him, never for the victims.

  Mailhot accepted responsibility for the murders, but he never expressed remorse for the victims. In fact, he said he felt he was ridding society of people who really didn’t matter. And in his letter to his coworkers, he implied that it was probably Audrey Harris’s fault he killed her and the other women, because she had told him she had given him the AIDS virus, and this had made him angry. He did, however, express remorse for the victims’ families.