© 2008 William Ahearn
The history of serial killers is as odd and as awkward as the history of anything else. Things get lost, forgotten, and sometimes all that remains are relics with no context. A perfect example of one of these relics is the Moonlight Towers in Austin, Texas USA, that are listed in the National Registry of Historic places. Built in 1894, the carbon arc lamps were used to illuminate streets and open areas of the city. For the particulars of the Moonlight Towers, go here.
What doesn’t get mentioned anymore is that the Moonlight Towers were built to thwart a serial killer known as The Servant Girl Annihilator. Eight people (seven women and one man) were axed to death between December 30, 1884 and December 24, 1885. The women were sexually assaulted and some were left “out in the moonlight,” according to newspaper accounts of the time. The killer was never caught.
For all the gristly details go here, here and here.
The Servant Girl Annihilator is being mentioned because it happened three years before Jack the Ripper terrorized London and yet it remains an obscure footnote in the annals of crime. If you surf over to Hollywoodripper.com, you’ll find some 38 Jack the Ripper movies and TV episodes spanning almost a century. How two similar killers can be remembered so differently is a tad above my pay grade, as they say, and how one ended up as a rumor and the other a franchise I’ll leave to people with better resources and more time.
Another serial killer working in the United States from 1893 to 1895 is H.H. Holmes who may have killed 9 or 27 or 200 people depending on which reliable source you consult. There is a DVD of “H.H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer” – even if he was a year after the Austin slayings – that I found at my local library. For more on Holmes go here, here or here.
There is a legacy – for want of a better word – that Jack the Ripper created that plagues law enforcement to this day. For one thing, Jack was smart and contrary to his portrayal in films, he never killed anyone with a knife. Strangulation was the method and for a very simple reason: It minimized arterial sprays and blood spatter.
There is something else to be said about his victims that has gotten lost in the lurid stories. Although most have been described as prostitutes that really isn’t as accurate a description as say describing the Green River Killer’s victims as prostitutes (or sex workers, as the newspeak has it). Many of the women were homeless alcoholics and were out on the street because they were literally out on the street. The notion of the victims being prostitutes allowed for prurient and moralistic connotations that may not always be present. One has to consider that these women were much easier targets than younger women strolling – even in White Chapel – during the day.
There was also the taking of souvenir body parts by The Ripper. This oddity will reappear with Ed Gein, Jeffery Dahlmer and as satire with Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and in numerous other real-life cases.
There is doubt about whether any of the letters received by London newspapers signed “Jack the Ripper” were actuality written by the killer. (An excellent web site about all things Jack can be found here.) Whatever the truth, Jack the Ripper became the first newspaper star serial killer as the result of the letters and numerous other serial killers would feel the need to taunt the media and the police. Whether the other killers feel the need to emulate Jack or the behavior is part of the pathology is beyond my knowledge but the behavior can be seen over and over in cases such as Son of Sam, BTK killer, and the Zodiac killer to cite the obvious ones.
And that brings us back to the question of how some killers get remembered and some get lost in the annals of crime. H.H. Holmes was also a newspaper star serial killer – William Randolph Hearst paid him some serious money after his conviction to write his story in the form of a confession – and now H.H. Holmes is merely a footnote.
Instead of spending the next couple of months watching Jack the Ripper films, I selected one to represent the case. How can you pass up that other Holmes?
Sherlock Holmes in “A Study in Terror.”