He now had all his energies focused on finding Tommy who was still at large. The police were being overwhelmed by the need to hit upon Tommy. They had been monitoring both his ATM and credit cards hoping that he would make transactions with them and possibly lead them to his exact location, but so far, nothing had come out yet. It seemed as if Tommy was clever at that as he neither used them nor went to the bank. The police would also monitor hotels’ check-ins hoping to stumble upon Tommy's name. Unfortunately, they never did. Traffic police had been notified to look out for Tommy just incase he went out driving but so far, none of them had spotted him.
Angie’s death was so screaming. The murderer had used a very rare method to eliminate her and that showed clearly that whoever it was, had made plans on how to eliminate her beforehand. Luckily, it gave Det. Allen evidence to prove his case and consequently bring the guilty persons to book.
The circumstances that surrounded Angie’s murder were a little easier to work on as compared to some of detective Allen’s previous cases. In those cases, the murderers had used natural compounds that the coroner would not easily suspect or be able to prove that they were used in the murders. In regard to the above, I’ll peruse over two such cases that I can remember for now which had the detective’s head rolling in hysteria. You see, he had hollow evidence on his hands and was wondering how he would convince the jury that those evidences were really used to commit murders.
On the first case, the murderer had injected distilled water right into the carotid artery of his victim. For your better understanding, let me pen you a brief overview of what the artery is all about: Carotid artery supplies oxygenated blood to the head and brain. When the oxygen-rich blood in the artery is replaced with water (of which happens to have a lower ph than that of blood), the brain is deprived of oxygen for sometime. And when brain is deprived of oxygen, even for a few seconds, a person dies or in some rare cases, he ends up with a permanent brain damage that can never be repaired.
That explains why people pass out in the event that somebody tries to squeeze life out of them. You see, strangling blocks the intake of oxygen into the lungs but does not completely shut the supply of the available oxygen to the brain. With the reduced supply of oxygen to the brain, one passes out. However, one can only die after being stifled continuously over a prolonged period of time, such that, the oxygen that is in their blood gets depleted and his brain succumbs to hypoxia. From that, you can see that injecting distilled water into carotid artery like a shortcut for strangling since the brain gets hypoxiated instantly.
In the above case, it was hard for the coroner (and so for Det. Allen) to prove that distilled water was used in the murder since water is a normal bodily fluid. The prosecution was then limited to only rely on circumstantial evidence since the defense could have successfully brought up the above argument and possibly put a dent to the case.
On the second case, the murderer had injected a saturated KCL (normal table salt) solution into the same artery which readily killed his victim. A salt solution would kill faster than ordinary water because, first, it has the ability to draw water from tissues through osmosis and secondly due to its being more acidic in nature. Again, the prosecution was faced with the problem of lacking a solid ground to prove that salt solution was used in perpetrating the murder. The abnormal high amount of the compound in deceased’s blood could not be proof enough that it was used to kill him since everybody has some amount of salt in their blood.
Luckily, Angie’s case can stand for itself. First, there is solid evidence since dioxin was proved to be present in her blood. Secondly, the detective has already established killer’s motive and has a serial suspect for that matter. The suspect seems to have a patterned behavior as anyone who becomes his girlfriend dies in a manner that displays foul play in its highest order. He is changing the way he does his transgressions but regrettably, not his ways. Lastly, the suspect disappeared after the murder, something that puts a very big question to his innocence. With all that, the detective was assured of a smooth sail in the courts.
Back to police headquarters, Det. Allen was seated in his office, grappling with his recent murder case. It had rekindled memories of his previous case of which, Tommy was acquitted and set free. He regretted the way the court handled it but, unfortunately, it was too late. The only thing that was remaining was to apply for repeal against the ruling and hopefully have the case re-opened afresh and thus run parallel with the current one. He applied for it and a week later, his wishes were grunted when the judge re-opened the case, putting the credibility of the previous ruling in a limbo.
Tommy was now facing a snag of twin-murders that could see him put out for good. If Tommy was found, arrested and proven guilty of the two murders, he could get a sentence that was nothing short of execution. Everybody was sure about that and they all looked forward to the day Tommy would face the gallows. It was upon Det. Allen and his men to expedite their efforts in arresting Tommy before he could get an opportunity to carry out his next murder. You see, serial killers often have a ‘cooling off’ period between one murder and the next. The police were suspecting that Tommy had lapsed into that period and was planning to re-appear after sometime and carry on with his evil mission.
Knowing that he was still out there, women were feeling insecure. Some of them got too cautious to the point that they avoided talking to strangers in bars and other social places. Soon after, the hullabaloos about Tommy had found their way into almost every household’s discussions.
Through exaggerations and distortions on how the police had so far failed to apprehend him, Tommy suddenly begun to be seen more as a hero than a miscreant. Slowly, his predicaments were turning into his unforeseen advantage but no one seemed to realize. They were all busy, wallowing in the story of the moment.
“All evidence is pointing at Tommy.” Det. Allen croaked out to himself before continuing.
“He won’t get away with it this time. Let this be his swan murder. I’ll make sure that he is arrested and brought to book. As I said during the last case, definitive evidence is not always important. I think that our justice system has a breach that has led us to this situation. We should have had him guilty and completely done with by now.”
The police groped and trailed Tommy until they could no longer undertake any wild goose chase anywhere, anymore. With that, Tommy was seen as invisible and out of reach by the law. He appeared as if he had gone poof into a no mans land where nobody could have had spotted his monotonous face. In some areas, there was a revolving notion that Tommy had gone out of the country, just as many other fugitives before him had done. A few of those escapees had changed their identities before running off to their destinations of cover. There, they lived normal lives as no one ever found them out. Most notable criminals preferred countries with governments that were too crooked to comply with international treaties such as those that require them to arrest foreign fugitives. They hid in those countries for sometime before taking their next course of action.
Different theories have been put forward in a bid to explain what influences top offenders and especially serial killers to do what they do. One such theory states that those killers are narcissists who enjoy inflicting pain on others and in the process they commit murders. They derive their happiness from seeing people suffer and when they don’t see anyone suffering, they take upon themselves to make someone suffer by way of inflicting physical harm onto them. Since their narcissistical tendencies are recurrent, they find themselves wanting to injure others from time to time.
The second theory that I have come across is that those killers have psychopathic personalities which leads them into antisocial behaviors. Some people do claim that antisocial traits are inherent but, I beg to differ. For example, there is no way someone can be born a murder or a rapist. Murderers and rapists are made not born! People acquire such antisocial traits when they are growing up. If you look back at murderers’ upbringings, you will realize that some of them com
e from families with unstable backgrounds. When a child is growing up in an unstable family, he/she does not receive the best guidance and virtues as required. They are therefore shaped by the world around them. Through movies, televisions, friends and outside society, they learn their perceived ‘perfect’ way of life. When they see some musician smoking cigars, they take it as an example of the way ‘real’ people should live. When they see people killing each other on television, they see it as ‘cool’ and thus want to emulate them. If such a child does not receive better teachings, lets say from a parent or a guardian, they are surely going to be influenced by the outside world.
Some serial killers have claimed to have had troubled childhoods. They were either bullied or looked down upon by their peers and people around them. As a result, they grew up with turnaround mentalities that they should never let anyone belittle them again. To that effect, they always desire to be the ones in control and would do anything to keep it that way. In the process, they get demented to a point that they would maim or kill to feel superior.
Studies have revealed that when some of these killers were young, they were never given any attention. They grew up pulling out all the stops in a bid to attract attention. They dressed like clowns, lived in weird lifestyles and followed distinctive careers that none of us would ever dream of. When such children become adults and run out of unorthodox ideas of attracting attention, they resort to doing unimaginable things. You see some of them building houses on trees, you see some of them piling used tins in their backyards, you see some of them inventing crazy artifacts and you see some of them killing fellow human beings; all in the name of seeking attention.
A female serial killer was quoted saying that she was molested when she was a child. Perhaps, she was not counseled well and hence never got over the ordeal. She lives her life hating men and especially, the particular kind that molested her. Her detestation increases as she becomes of age. She now understands the gravity of what was done to her and her fury reaches another level where only retribution would heal her hurting soul. Since she doesn’t know or can’t locate the person who molested her, she aims her revenge at any other man who looks something close to that molester. And when her revenge plans materialize, she kills and kills, just to fulfill her troubled heart.
I don’t see any justification in what she did but, that’s how it happened. You see (I often use this term to get people to see the point that I am making), as I stated earlier, murderers are made, not born. And for that matter, her becoming a murderer started the day she was molested, not the day she was born…..
The last theory that I know of is that of killers having hedonistic minds. A hedonistic person derives pleasure from killing people. To him, the act of making a person die is so exciting that he can’t resist engaging in and worse still, engaging in again. For example, just the way some of us find riding horses pleasurable, killers find killing pleasurable; just the way some of us take traveling as a hobby, killers take killing as their hobby. To both the traveler and the killer, their hobbies produces the same effect but with different results. They both enjoy their hobbying time but, for the traveler, the world gets explored while for the killer, somebody dies.
It is not death itself that excites them but the act that brings it forth. It’s as if killing seduces them and on the return, they kill their seducer to gratify their hearts wishes. These are the kind of killers who kill people in the most brutal manner possible by use of contact weapons e.g. knives. You find them mutilating bodies of their victims in the most horrible manner imaginable. You get horrified and thunderstruck when the news caster delivers the shocking tidings that a badly mutilated body was found dumped somewhere but, to the killer, there is nothing amusing about it; he was simply having fun!
There are some stimuli that trigger them to do those horrible deeds: Anger, thrill and attention seeking are just but a few. They act as the fire starters that ignite killers. I’ll try to address each of those catalysts separately in the following short paragraphs.
When narcissist people are angered by something that has happened in their lives, their killer instincts are sparked off. They then go out, wanting to harm and kill other people and when they actually get the opportunities to kill, nothing holds them back.
There are those who are thrilled when they see people dying in movies or by what they read in some horrific homicide books. That thrill sets them off into wanting to experience how it feels to kill. Those who happen to have psychopathic personalities actually go out into the world to fulfill their killing desires. When they finally get a break, they kill senselessly, stretching the boundaries of their capabilities into wider limits.
Some feel estranged persons who happens to have hedonistic characters may start killings as a result of their loneliness. They think that by killing, they will attract people’s attention and hence be noticed. You see, their wanting to seek attention elicits their murdering characters and when they seek to be noticed more, they continue with their killings.
Only a few killers kill for money. Like in the case where a man was killing his wives so that he could claim insurance compensation against life covers that he had taken for them. The man would make the murder look like an accident because insurance companies only considered claims for those who have died out of accidents. Money here plays the real motive for the murder and opportunity to kill being the trigger. And with his need for more money, he ended up marrying and killing several women before the police uncovered his ploy and put him out for the rest of his miserable life.
The police have over the years noticed that sequential killers often kill their victims in a patterned manner. Each killer has his own way of killing his victims and maintains it for at least most of his murders. It’s uncommon to find a killer who is known to shoot his victims often start knifing their throats out; that is, unless he is not acting alone in his evil mission. To date, only a small number of such atypical cases have been seen; for instance, in the case of Tommy, we’ve seen one woman go down right before the barrel of a hand gun and another one conked out by a severe radio-active poisoning.
Victims of each murderer share some common traits. In most cases, those traits include race, age, sex and appearance. The reason why the killer is killing and the victim’s vulnerability to his murder method forms the core factors that determine which kind of people the killer will go for. For example, a female killer who was molested in her childhood would most probably target to kill men as she tries to avenge what was done to her. It is very unusual for such a killer to start killing fellow women, unless she has other motives. The second example is that of murderers who go about mutilating bodies of their victims. Those murderers are likely, for obvious reasons, to go for women or children. They know that men are stronger and it would be hard for them to subdue them down.
Though not that weighty, the other factor that may influence a serial killer’s decision on who to go for is the message that he wants to send. In Asia for example, a man who was frustrated with a government started sniping on government ministers. When he ‘dropped’ three of them, most of the rest resigned. From that we see that his killings sent a message to the remaining officials that they should pack and go!
The fact that killers go for people with a particular bracket of characteristics has always sent shock waves to people, especially to those who happen to fall in such a bracket. It’s the reason as to why women got terrified when they heard that Tommy was on the loose. Belonging to his target group, they were well aware of the threat he posed and would do anything possible to avoid him. For those who liked hanging out; they had to put necessary adjustments on how they mingled with strange men as they hoped for news that Tommy had been arrested or put away through death or otherwise.
It was seen as if Tommy was winning the war but that could not stop detective Allen from pursuing justice. He knew that he would loose the war if he gave up and that motivated him to keep standing and going. To detective Allen, Tommy was just winning ba
ttles but the war was still far from over. Whoever wins the last battle wins the war. It doesn’t matter how many battles have been fought before or who have won them for that matter. What counted most was who would win the last battle and on his part, detective Allen was more than convinced that he would.
Detective Allen could see himself triumphing in the near future. He could see Tommy arrested and taken to court. He could also see him booking a date with the hang man. He had faith in his vision and couldn’t wait for it to happen.
“If the authorities can’t seize him, let it be that he will bring his own ass to the law” detective Allen told his companions in a briefing.
With time, the popularity of the case waned and people stopped talking about Tommy. Only a handful could have remembered his face incase they met him since most of the photos that displayed his mug shots no longer existed. While some of them had faded out, others had been removed by wind and in some cases by people who were tired of seeing them. They probably thought that, since the police had failed to arrest Tommy, it was best if he went to oblivion. The police scaled down their active search for him and instead, assigned secret investigators to trail him. A concerned woman who had been following the case closely used the phrase ‘God will deal with him through his own provident ways’ as she expressed her disappointments with how things were going. She was just one amongst many who had for long been anticipating Tommy's arrest but since it was long overdue; their hopes had begun to wear thin.
UNDER SIEGE (A Story Of Hope) Page 13