My adopted child is a serial killer
Apr. 28th, 2012 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
7rin posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
7rin_on_adoptionhttp://www.examiner.com/article/my-adopted-child-is-a-serial-killer
FAMILY & PARENTING August 1, 2010
Christine Dellinger
6 consecutive life sentences or 365 years in Attica State Prison was the final sentencing handed down by the judge on June 12, 1978.
It was the final sentencing for David Berkowitz, American serial killer and arsonist.
Berkowitz was convicted of the heinous “Son of Sam,” murders involving the gruesome deaths of 6 (six) people and injury to many others during a killing spree with his .44 caliber beginning July 29, 1976.
“My adopted child is a serial killer,” are the thoughts that could have plagued the mind of David Berkowitz’s father, Nathan, as he sat in the courtroom that humid New York morning.
However, despite the loud and pounding thoughts which kept Nathan Berkowitz questioning the unconceivable crimes of his adopted son, they were soon interrupted by commotion in the courtroom. It was the sound of his son's voice.
“Stacy was a whore,” was the monotonous haunting chant from David Berkowitz’s lips as the judge descended the sentencing. Berkowitz was referring to Stacy Moskowitz, his final murder victim July 31, 1977; 33 (thirty-three) years ago yesterday.
The Broken Blueprint of the Mind
According to the FBI, there are more than 500 recorded serial killers in U.S. history, and of those, 16% were adopted. An atrocious statistic to be noted, particularly since adoptees represent only 2-3 percent of the general population.
Since 1987,forensic psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. David Kirschner, has served as a consultant or expert witness in 20 (twenty) homicide cases in which the accused was adopted, usually as an infant, or in early childhood. Dr. Kirschner writes:
In every case of these adoptees who killed, we have found a remarkably similar pattern, including a history of sealed original birth records, a childhood of secrets and lies (re: birth parents and genetic history), frustrated, blocked searches for birth parents, and untreated, festering adoption issues of loss, rejection, abandonment, identity, and dissociated (split-off) rage.
“Adopted children syndrome,” a controversial term coined by Dr. Kirschner, refers to maladaptive behaviors expressed by adopted children. Although Kirschner states that the reference is related to only a small sub group, this unrecognized and neglected identification process among mental health experts, in his opinion should be more carefully measured when evualuating cases. The term has never been entered into the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders, but it has been used as criteria in the courtoom when speaking as a temporary insanity or deminished capacity notion.
In a murder case should everything and even those psychological ideologies be considered? The “mens rea” or state of mind during the killing is always considered during a homicide.
Further examination in the case of David Berkowitz, Dr. David Abrahamsen, who had many interviews with Berkowitz in prison, notes in his book, The Mind of the Accused:
"Berkowitz's adoption became a central concern in his life, and the notion of being different also engendered in him a feeling of ambivalence toward the rest of the world."
Abrahamsen states that Berkowitz "developed a deep and abiding feeling of estrangement; there was he felt, something basically wrong with him."
The late Dr. Marshall Schechter, who was a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine and a nationally recognized expert on adoption, states:
"No amount of reassuring can diminish what adopted persons perceive as a stunning difference (between themselves and other family members). They may develop fantasies, both positive and negative, about their birth family, and it often hampers their ability to move on with their lives."
The Handsome Devil
Berkowitz was far from alone if he had any thoughts of deep rooted frustration about his birth mother . If he had any conscious, sub conscious, supressed or any other driven motives or excuses on why he committed his crimes, perhaps Ted Bundy could have shared the same defense lawyer.
Electrocuted in Florida for his last murder in 1989, known as being one of the most prolific and attractive of all serial killers, Bundy admitted to the horrific killing spree of 30 women. Bundy's modus operandi would include bludgeoning his victims, and strangling them to death; he also preferred rape and necrophilia. It is believed that the number of his victims could have reached 100. No one really knows when the murdering rampage began; Bundy was always unclear. We only know when it ended.
Ted Bundy confessed to over 30 murders
Every Child doesn’t come with a Manual
There is genetic research being conducted in determining if a child has a predipositon to kill. No child comes with a manual or genetic blueprint whether adopted or biological, and the information has been futile. If there is a wand to determine the future of anyone, let me know, I’ll put it one on layaway.
In the 1970s the attempt to dissect the serial killer originated, but today according the British Journal of Medicine, the information is limited. London GP, James La Fanu states, “… there have been substantial achievements and fascinating insights, the prevention and treatment of genetic disorders remains as elusive as ever.”
Adopted Killers
A study of 14,427 adopted children, conducted by Dr. Sarnoff A. Mednick discussed in the New York Times, reveals how a propensity to chronic criminal behavior may be passed through the genes. Although Mednick does not believe criminal behavior is directly passed down, he holds that certain biological factors that might be associated with crime can be inherited. He cites a biological predisposition towards substance abuse as an example.
Vallejo’s own Zodiak killer was thought to be adopted. However, there are also hundreds of people who have come forward claiming to be his son or daughter, alleging to be his long time lover, mother of his illegitimate children or claiming to have barbecued with him one 4th of July weekend. I guess we all want our 15 minutes of fame.
The following are a list of highlighted Serial Killers and their crimes (source:Lori Carangelo):
BARONE, Cesar Francesco, 31, (aka Adolph James Rode)
Born 12-4-60 as Adolph James "Jimmy" Rode Jr., and adopted as "Barone," he was convicted of sexually assaulting & killing 4 women in the Portland area in the 1990s & sentenced to Death in 1995. Source: Washington County Corrections web-site.
BARTSCH, Guergen
"Between 1962 and 1966, four schoolboys were abused, tortured and killed in Germany's Ruhr District. Their tormentor, Juergen Bartsch, was fifteen at the time of his first crime; nineteen when he was caught. Source: http://TheChosenChildren.com, & "The Child I Never Was" - http://www.scoops.be/movies/moviedetail.asp?movid=6260
BIANCHI, Kenneth, ("The Hillside Stranglers")
Alleged to have killed 25 women, Bianchi (adopted as an infant) & his adoptive cousin Buono, were sentenced to life in prison for the rapes & murders of 10 women.
Source: http://courttv.com/news/flashback/January.html
BOWLES, Gary Ray, ("Florida Gay Bar Murders")
On Death Row at Union Correctional Institute, Raiford, Florida, awaiting execution on 3 counts of first degree murder. Bowles was born on 1-25-62, in Clifton Forge, Virginia, the 2nd son of Frances Carole Price Bowles. His was a stepparent adoption. Throughout his youth and adulthood he was able to provide for himself financially by prostituting his body to men & remained homeless for a majority of his teenage years & adulthood. He was not gay but was violent in his relationships with women. Source: http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/gary_bowles
BRIDEWELL, Sandra Camille, ("The Black Widow")
The few facts are that Sandra Powers was born on April 5, 1944, in Sedalia, Missouri, and adopted as an infant by Arthur Powers, owner and manager of the local Dr Pepper bottling plant. After high school graduation in 1962 and 1967, she remade herself, inventing stories about colleges attended, boys dated reportedly telling friends she dated a West Point cadet who later committed suicide and adopting the persona of a helpless-but-seductive Southern belle looking for Mr. Right to rescue her and provide a world of materialistic bliss..... Writer, Glenna Whitley, who over the years has closely followed Powers, reported in the Dallas Observer that the aspiring socialite used the same story many times over the next 15 years.... including stories about her several marriages and suspicious deaths of her husbands that resulted in headlines referring to Bidewell as "The Black Widow." For extensive details see SOURCE: (news stories by Glenna Witley for Dallas Observer) : "Return of the Black Widow," 1-22-04; "Seductress of the Saints," 12-9-04; "Black Widow Pleads Guilty," 2-27-08;
BUNDY, Ted, ("Florida Co-ed Murders"; "Lady Killer")
Born out of wedlock & told his mother was his sister to cover-up his in-family informal adoption by his grandmother, Bundy was executed in FL for serial killings of at least 28 women. http://www.CourtTV.com/news/flashbacks/January.html
BUONO, Angelo, ("The Hillside Stranglers")
...Alleged to have killed 25 women, Bianchi (adopted as an infant) & his adoptive cousin Buono, were sentenced to life in prison for the rapes & murders of 10 women.
Source: http://courttv.com/news/flashback/January.html
CONDE, Rory, ("The Tamiani Killer")
"Born in Colombia in 1965, his mother died of tetanus when he was 6 months old and informally adopted by his paternal grandmother...Sentenced to death for one murder, he pled guilty to murdering 5 prostitutes as part of a plea agreement to instead serve 5 consecutive life terms without parole" Source: http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/condo.html
DESALVO, Albert, ("The Boston Strangler")
Born 1937 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, as one of six children in his family, he grew up with a warped view of both sex and violence, mainly as a result of his alcoholic father, Frank, who beat both his children and his wife. When he was 12, his parents divorced & his father sold him and two of his sisters as slaves to a farmer in Maine who paid $9 for them all [black market adoption]. He was sentenced to Life for sexual assault & robbery in a plea bargain, despite formerly admitting to having killed at least 13 women. He was stabbed to death in prison. Source: Harold Schecter & David Everett, "A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers," p. 293; & http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/strangler.shtml
GEORGES, Guy, ("Beast of the Bastille")
Born in Paris, the son of a French woman & an American soldier who abandoned him as a small child, he was raised by a foster family but by adulthood had already racked up sexual offenses & his first killing in 1991. When arrested in 1998, he confessed to 4 rape-murders & us suspected of other murders. In 2001, he was sentenced to a light term of 22 years & has threatened suicide.
GRAHAM, Harrison T., 29, (Marty)
Born 9-9-59, a mildly mentally retarded Black man in Philadelphia who entertained children with a Cookie Monster puppet. On 8-9-87 upon being evicted from his apartment, police found the corpses of 7 women in his apartment. He was sentenced to one Life term & 7 electrocutions. Source: http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/a-h/grahamharrison.html
HALE, Bill, ("The Osage Killer")
Adopted by Ernest Burkheart & his wife, Hale was suspected of killing 8 people, including his natural father (1925) from whom he stood to inherit his "headlight," & also killed his father's attorney to whom Bugheart may have confided that the Osage Killer was his son. SOURCE: Michael Newton, "Serial Slaughter: What's Behind America's Murder Epidemic?"
KALLINGER, Joseph, 25, ("The Philadelphia Shoemaker")
"...adopted by sadistic Catholic parents....[his adoptive] mother forced him to hold his hand over an open flame, beating him if he cried. Kallinger grew up taking extreme pleasure in torturing others...[& slowly drowned his 13 year old son]...After beheading his [adoptive] mom ....he raped her headless body..." A cobbler by trade, he tortured and murdered young boys and women. After his capture, he was diagnosed paranoid & schizophrenic. In prison, Joe expressed repeatedly hi desire to kill every person on earth including himself & set fire to his own cell in a suicide attempt. In later years, Kallinger expressed remorse, refused to eat & attempted suicide again. He died of a seizure at age 59 on March 26, 1996.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/tick/abuse_3.html?sect=1
RAMIREZ, Richard Leyva, ("The Nightstalker")
His was a stepparent adoption. He was convicted in Texas of 12 Satanic-motivate murders & a few dozen lesser crimes including rape & burglary, that he committed 1984-1985. Some of his victims included children, some he left alive which is how he was caught & sent to San Quentin's Death Row.
RIFKIN, Joel, 34
Son of unwed teenage parents who gave him up for adoption 3 days after birth, adopted by Ben & Jeanne Rifkin & murdered at least 17 women, mostly prostitutes. He pleaded "Adopted Child Syndrome" as a mitigating factor, as he grew up believing his mother was a prostitute who couldn't afford and abortion. Source: "Dark Son," book by Denise Lang; & New York Times story, "A Novel Insanity Defense for Joel Rifkin" by John T. McQuistin, 9-25-94
ROGERS, Dayton Leroy, 22, ("Molalla Forest Killer"
Born in 1954 in Idaho & adopted & raised in Oregon, along with another boy & 2 girls by Ortis & Jasparelle Rogers, devout Seventh Day Adventists who told their adopted children they had "an evil entity inside their bodies." Dayton beat his male adopter to death, stabbed a girl who rejected his advances, committed several rapes & & was convicted of 6 stabbing/mutilation murders of young women; sentenced to Death in Oregon. Source: "Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Adoption," book by Marsha Riben; & Dayton Leroy Rogers web-site; & "Serial Killers A-Z", http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/q-z/rogers.html
SELLS, Tommy Lynn, 16, (Admitted to 70+ Murders)
Sells and his twin sister, Tammy Jean, contracted meningitis when they were 18 months old. Sells had a high fever but survived, while his sister died. Shortly thereafter, Sells was sent to live with his aunt, Bonnie Woodall, in Holcomb, Missouri, until he was 5. At age 8, Sells began spending time with Willis Clark who would later be identified as a child molester. Homeless, Sells started traveling to find work by hitching rides, hopping trains & at one point stole a car. He held various menial labor jobs. He claims he committed his first murder at age 16. While working at as a carnie in MO in summer 1985, he met 29 year old Ena Cordt who, Sells claimed, invited him to her home where they had consensual sex. The bodies of Cordt & her 4-year-old son were found 3 days later. Other murders he is suspected of committing are those of Suzanne Korczin New York (May 1987), a family in Illinois (Nov. 1987), & a co-worker in Texas (April 1998). On December 31, 1999 near Rio, Texas, Sells fatally stabbed 13-year old Katy Harris & slit the throat of 10-year-old Krystal Surles. Surles survived & Sells was apprehended from a sketch resulting from the victim's description. According to Columbia University forensic psychiatrist & personality expert, Dr. Michael J. Stone. (in Discovery Channel's "Most Evil"), Sells claimed to have murdered upwards of 70 people. SOURCE: Crime Library - "Tommy Lynn Sells, Serial Killer" & "Predator, Travels the U.S. Murdering"
STANO, Gerald Eugene, 27
Born in 1951 at Daytona Beach, FL, taken from his mother at age 6 months & adopted. Murdered an estimated 80 young women (41 were prostitutes, runaways, hitchhiking teenagers, youngest was age 12) from PA to FL before his arrest at age 27 in 1980. He said "Adopted kids like me, I now know, seek out rejection, believe on some level that no one will keep them." Prior to killing he has sought help from 3 psychiatrists who never raised the issue of adoption and so didn't treat him. Executed 3/23/98. Source: "Dark Son," book by Denise Lang
TOPPAN, Jane, 31, ("Angel of Death")
Born as Nora Kelly, in 1854 in Boston, she was adopted as an infant when her mother died & her father was institutionalized, for 2 decades worked as a nurse in New England, confessed to killing at least 31 people with morphine & atropine, & is believed to have actually killed more people than any man or woman who has ever lived.
Source: Kay Russell, Ghost Dancer's Anti-Adoption Pages, http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/9950
WILKEN, Stewart
Born 11-11-66, in Boksburg, killed prostitutes. Article speculates "Perhaps it was anger at his biological mother for deserting him, his adoptive mother for not being the mother he wanted." When he was about 6 months old, he & his 2-year-old sister were left in a phone booth, where they were later found by a domestic worker, who took them to the home of her employer known only as "Dope," who subjected the boy to terrible abuse....burned him with cigarettes on his genitals.... engaged in acts of bestiality with his dogs, a made him lick his penis afterwards. At some point, his sister disappeared & he did not know what happened to her. When he was 2 years old, the neighbors, Mr and Mrs Wilken, adopted him out of compassion, named him Stewart Wilken, although he called himself "Boetie Boer." ...He failed the 3rd grade three times, was mocked by his peers because he was adopted, & when his teacher didn’t not intervene on his behalf, but instead had incited the others further, he assaulted the teacher & was severely beaten by the principal in front of the other children. He often bit his adoptive mother as well as other children.... At age 8, he started smoking marijuana. At 9, a deacon sodomized him; the same year, Stewart's adoptive father died. Stewart's adoptive mother felt overwhelmed by the difficult boy & sent him to a reformatory where he was locked up without clothes as punishment, & the older boys sodomized him. In later life he was accused of sodomizing his own sons.
Source: http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/stewart_wilken/7.html?sect=2
WOODCOCK, Peter (aka David Michael Krueger), Allegedly murdered 100 children
Hospital records show Peter Woodcock was born March 5, 1939 in Toronto, Canada. Depending on which forms you read, Woodcock's mother, Wanita Woodcock, was either a 17-year old factory worker or a 19-year old prostitute who got pregnant in 1938...His father was alleged to be a 19-year old soldier. WWII started when Peter was 6 months old. Four years later, Wanita gave birth to a girl who was adopted out & reportedly had a "normal" life while The Children’s Aid social worker allowed Peter's mother to keep him for a month to breastfeed him; he was then sent from one foster home to another; some foster families were uncaring & brutal. He ended up with a twisted neck as result of a beating. "When I was put up for adoption, I was bounced around from place to place, ignored for long periods of time, left to lie in darkness," he explained. When he was 3, Franck & Susan Maynard decided to keep him & raised him in their middle class neighborhood. From age 7 to 12, Peter was treated for behavior problems at the Hospital for Sick Children. In 1982 he legally changed his name to David Michael Krueger. When transferred to a medium security institution, he sexually assaulted & murdered Dennis Kerr & was sent back to Oak Ridge where he murdered Wayne Mallette (age 7), Gary Morris (age 9), Carole Voyce. Although it was estimated he actually murdered 100 children, he was prosecuted only for killing Crole Voyce & acquitted by reason of insanity. His following comment is noteworthy: "I often wondered what happened in my own pre-birth, whether my natural mother wanted me..."
WUORNOS, Aileen Carol Pittman
Illegally adopted in infancy, in 1960, along with her older brother Keith, by her maternal grandparents, Lauri & Britta Wurornos, abandoned at birth by her alcoholic mother, reportedly sexually abused by her father (a convicted child molester who committed suicide in prison), Aileen was pregnant at 14 by her brother Keith, & delivered and gave up her baby for adoption at a Detroiit Maternity Home; Aileen was also legally adopted as an adult by 44-year old born-again Christian Arlene Pralle & Pralle's husband. One of only 10 female murderers in the US to be executed, Aileen was executed in FL, 10-9-02, for murdering 6 FL truckers while working as a prostitute; she first claimed self-defense, later asked for death. Most detailed site on Wuornos is at http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/wuornos805.htm
YATES, Robert Lee, 23, (Spokane Serial Killer)
Yates grew up on Whidbey Island, Washington, where his mother died while he was still in high school. Records show that he was allegedly repeatedly sexually abused by an older neighbor boy when he was approximately 6 years old. A father of 5 children and retired from the Army; in exchange for his life he pled guilty to murdering 13 female prostitutes, from 1975 to 1996 and was sentenced to death in 2002. Curiously, when the story was aired on "48 Hours" TV series, there was mention that his grandmother murdered his grandfather with an axe and was sent to an insane asylum, but no mention of who raised him nor of his being sexually abused at age 6...only that his wife and the victims' families didn't have an answer as to "why" he killed the prostitutes. Source: "Serial Killers A-Z," http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/q-z/yates.html and "Kill and Kill Again," 48 Hours, 4-11-09.
I agree… a little bit spooky and a lot more than you wanted to know.
*****(top photo credit: ellrod bailbonds)
Christine Dellinger, Vallejo Adoptive Families Examiner
The adopted daughter of a 100% Italian mother and Irish and German father, Christine lives in the Bay Area in Northern California. When not being entertained by the slapstick comedy of her two dogs, she indulges in the passion of writing.
FAMILY & PARENTING August 1, 2010
Christine Dellinger
6 consecutive life sentences or 365 years in Attica State Prison was the final sentencing handed down by the judge on June 12, 1978.
It was the final sentencing for David Berkowitz, American serial killer and arsonist.
Berkowitz was convicted of the heinous “Son of Sam,” murders involving the gruesome deaths of 6 (six) people and injury to many others during a killing spree with his .44 caliber beginning July 29, 1976.
“My adopted child is a serial killer,” are the thoughts that could have plagued the mind of David Berkowitz’s father, Nathan, as he sat in the courtroom that humid New York morning.
However, despite the loud and pounding thoughts which kept Nathan Berkowitz questioning the unconceivable crimes of his adopted son, they were soon interrupted by commotion in the courtroom. It was the sound of his son's voice.
“Stacy was a whore,” was the monotonous haunting chant from David Berkowitz’s lips as the judge descended the sentencing. Berkowitz was referring to Stacy Moskowitz, his final murder victim July 31, 1977; 33 (thirty-three) years ago yesterday.
The Broken Blueprint of the Mind
According to the FBI, there are more than 500 recorded serial killers in U.S. history, and of those, 16% were adopted. An atrocious statistic to be noted, particularly since adoptees represent only 2-3 percent of the general population.
Since 1987,forensic psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. David Kirschner, has served as a consultant or expert witness in 20 (twenty) homicide cases in which the accused was adopted, usually as an infant, or in early childhood. Dr. Kirschner writes:
In every case of these adoptees who killed, we have found a remarkably similar pattern, including a history of sealed original birth records, a childhood of secrets and lies (re: birth parents and genetic history), frustrated, blocked searches for birth parents, and untreated, festering adoption issues of loss, rejection, abandonment, identity, and dissociated (split-off) rage.
“Adopted children syndrome,” a controversial term coined by Dr. Kirschner, refers to maladaptive behaviors expressed by adopted children. Although Kirschner states that the reference is related to only a small sub group, this unrecognized and neglected identification process among mental health experts, in his opinion should be more carefully measured when evualuating cases. The term has never been entered into the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders, but it has been used as criteria in the courtoom when speaking as a temporary insanity or deminished capacity notion.
In a murder case should everything and even those psychological ideologies be considered? The “mens rea” or state of mind during the killing is always considered during a homicide.
Further examination in the case of David Berkowitz, Dr. David Abrahamsen, who had many interviews with Berkowitz in prison, notes in his book, The Mind of the Accused:
"Berkowitz's adoption became a central concern in his life, and the notion of being different also engendered in him a feeling of ambivalence toward the rest of the world."
Abrahamsen states that Berkowitz "developed a deep and abiding feeling of estrangement; there was he felt, something basically wrong with him."
The late Dr. Marshall Schechter, who was a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine and a nationally recognized expert on adoption, states:
"No amount of reassuring can diminish what adopted persons perceive as a stunning difference (between themselves and other family members). They may develop fantasies, both positive and negative, about their birth family, and it often hampers their ability to move on with their lives."
The Handsome Devil
Berkowitz was far from alone if he had any thoughts of deep rooted frustration about his birth mother . If he had any conscious, sub conscious, supressed or any other driven motives or excuses on why he committed his crimes, perhaps Ted Bundy could have shared the same defense lawyer.
Electrocuted in Florida for his last murder in 1989, known as being one of the most prolific and attractive of all serial killers, Bundy admitted to the horrific killing spree of 30 women. Bundy's modus operandi would include bludgeoning his victims, and strangling them to death; he also preferred rape and necrophilia. It is believed that the number of his victims could have reached 100. No one really knows when the murdering rampage began; Bundy was always unclear. We only know when it ended.
Ted Bundy confessed to over 30 murders
Every Child doesn’t come with a Manual
There is genetic research being conducted in determining if a child has a predipositon to kill. No child comes with a manual or genetic blueprint whether adopted or biological, and the information has been futile. If there is a wand to determine the future of anyone, let me know, I’ll put it one on layaway.
In the 1970s the attempt to dissect the serial killer originated, but today according the British Journal of Medicine, the information is limited. London GP, James La Fanu states, “… there have been substantial achievements and fascinating insights, the prevention and treatment of genetic disorders remains as elusive as ever.”
Adopted Killers
A study of 14,427 adopted children, conducted by Dr. Sarnoff A. Mednick discussed in the New York Times, reveals how a propensity to chronic criminal behavior may be passed through the genes. Although Mednick does not believe criminal behavior is directly passed down, he holds that certain biological factors that might be associated with crime can be inherited. He cites a biological predisposition towards substance abuse as an example.
Vallejo’s own Zodiak killer was thought to be adopted. However, there are also hundreds of people who have come forward claiming to be his son or daughter, alleging to be his long time lover, mother of his illegitimate children or claiming to have barbecued with him one 4th of July weekend. I guess we all want our 15 minutes of fame.
The following are a list of highlighted Serial Killers and their crimes (source:Lori Carangelo):
BARONE, Cesar Francesco, 31, (aka Adolph James Rode)
Born 12-4-60 as Adolph James "Jimmy" Rode Jr., and adopted as "Barone," he was convicted of sexually assaulting & killing 4 women in the Portland area in the 1990s & sentenced to Death in 1995. Source: Washington County Corrections web-site.
BARTSCH, Guergen
"Between 1962 and 1966, four schoolboys were abused, tortured and killed in Germany's Ruhr District. Their tormentor, Juergen Bartsch, was fifteen at the time of his first crime; nineteen when he was caught. Source: http://TheChosenChildren.com, & "The Child I Never Was" - http://www.scoops.be/movies/moviedetail.asp?movid=6260
BIANCHI, Kenneth, ("The Hillside Stranglers")
Alleged to have killed 25 women, Bianchi (adopted as an infant) & his adoptive cousin Buono, were sentenced to life in prison for the rapes & murders of 10 women.
Source: http://courttv.com/news/flashback/January.html
BOWLES, Gary Ray, ("Florida Gay Bar Murders")
On Death Row at Union Correctional Institute, Raiford, Florida, awaiting execution on 3 counts of first degree murder. Bowles was born on 1-25-62, in Clifton Forge, Virginia, the 2nd son of Frances Carole Price Bowles. His was a stepparent adoption. Throughout his youth and adulthood he was able to provide for himself financially by prostituting his body to men & remained homeless for a majority of his teenage years & adulthood. He was not gay but was violent in his relationships with women. Source: http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/gary_bowles
BRIDEWELL, Sandra Camille, ("The Black Widow")
The few facts are that Sandra Powers was born on April 5, 1944, in Sedalia, Missouri, and adopted as an infant by Arthur Powers, owner and manager of the local Dr Pepper bottling plant. After high school graduation in 1962 and 1967, she remade herself, inventing stories about colleges attended, boys dated reportedly telling friends she dated a West Point cadet who later committed suicide and adopting the persona of a helpless-but-seductive Southern belle looking for Mr. Right to rescue her and provide a world of materialistic bliss..... Writer, Glenna Whitley, who over the years has closely followed Powers, reported in the Dallas Observer that the aspiring socialite used the same story many times over the next 15 years.... including stories about her several marriages and suspicious deaths of her husbands that resulted in headlines referring to Bidewell as "The Black Widow." For extensive details see SOURCE: (news stories by Glenna Witley for Dallas Observer) : "Return of the Black Widow," 1-22-04; "Seductress of the Saints," 12-9-04; "Black Widow Pleads Guilty," 2-27-08;
BUNDY, Ted, ("Florida Co-ed Murders"; "Lady Killer")
Born out of wedlock & told his mother was his sister to cover-up his in-family informal adoption by his grandmother, Bundy was executed in FL for serial killings of at least 28 women. http://www.CourtTV.com/news/flashbacks/January.html
BUONO, Angelo, ("The Hillside Stranglers")
...Alleged to have killed 25 women, Bianchi (adopted as an infant) & his adoptive cousin Buono, were sentenced to life in prison for the rapes & murders of 10 women.
Source: http://courttv.com/news/flashback/January.html
CONDE, Rory, ("The Tamiani Killer")
"Born in Colombia in 1965, his mother died of tetanus when he was 6 months old and informally adopted by his paternal grandmother...Sentenced to death for one murder, he pled guilty to murdering 5 prostitutes as part of a plea agreement to instead serve 5 consecutive life terms without parole" Source: http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/condo.html
DESALVO, Albert, ("The Boston Strangler")
Born 1937 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, as one of six children in his family, he grew up with a warped view of both sex and violence, mainly as a result of his alcoholic father, Frank, who beat both his children and his wife. When he was 12, his parents divorced & his father sold him and two of his sisters as slaves to a farmer in Maine who paid $9 for them all [black market adoption]. He was sentenced to Life for sexual assault & robbery in a plea bargain, despite formerly admitting to having killed at least 13 women. He was stabbed to death in prison. Source: Harold Schecter & David Everett, "A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers," p. 293; & http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/strangler.shtml
GEORGES, Guy, ("Beast of the Bastille")
Born in Paris, the son of a French woman & an American soldier who abandoned him as a small child, he was raised by a foster family but by adulthood had already racked up sexual offenses & his first killing in 1991. When arrested in 1998, he confessed to 4 rape-murders & us suspected of other murders. In 2001, he was sentenced to a light term of 22 years & has threatened suicide.
GRAHAM, Harrison T., 29, (Marty)
Born 9-9-59, a mildly mentally retarded Black man in Philadelphia who entertained children with a Cookie Monster puppet. On 8-9-87 upon being evicted from his apartment, police found the corpses of 7 women in his apartment. He was sentenced to one Life term & 7 electrocutions. Source: http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/a-h/grahamharrison.html
HALE, Bill, ("The Osage Killer")
Adopted by Ernest Burkheart & his wife, Hale was suspected of killing 8 people, including his natural father (1925) from whom he stood to inherit his "headlight," & also killed his father's attorney to whom Bugheart may have confided that the Osage Killer was his son. SOURCE: Michael Newton, "Serial Slaughter: What's Behind America's Murder Epidemic?"
KALLINGER, Joseph, 25, ("The Philadelphia Shoemaker")
"...adopted by sadistic Catholic parents....[his adoptive] mother forced him to hold his hand over an open flame, beating him if he cried. Kallinger grew up taking extreme pleasure in torturing others...[& slowly drowned his 13 year old son]...After beheading his [adoptive] mom ....he raped her headless body..." A cobbler by trade, he tortured and murdered young boys and women. After his capture, he was diagnosed paranoid & schizophrenic. In prison, Joe expressed repeatedly hi desire to kill every person on earth including himself & set fire to his own cell in a suicide attempt. In later years, Kallinger expressed remorse, refused to eat & attempted suicide again. He died of a seizure at age 59 on March 26, 1996.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/tick/abuse_3.html?sect=1
RAMIREZ, Richard Leyva, ("The Nightstalker")
His was a stepparent adoption. He was convicted in Texas of 12 Satanic-motivate murders & a few dozen lesser crimes including rape & burglary, that he committed 1984-1985. Some of his victims included children, some he left alive which is how he was caught & sent to San Quentin's Death Row.
RIFKIN, Joel, 34
Son of unwed teenage parents who gave him up for adoption 3 days after birth, adopted by Ben & Jeanne Rifkin & murdered at least 17 women, mostly prostitutes. He pleaded "Adopted Child Syndrome" as a mitigating factor, as he grew up believing his mother was a prostitute who couldn't afford and abortion. Source: "Dark Son," book by Denise Lang; & New York Times story, "A Novel Insanity Defense for Joel Rifkin" by John T. McQuistin, 9-25-94
ROGERS, Dayton Leroy, 22, ("Molalla Forest Killer"
Born in 1954 in Idaho & adopted & raised in Oregon, along with another boy & 2 girls by Ortis & Jasparelle Rogers, devout Seventh Day Adventists who told their adopted children they had "an evil entity inside their bodies." Dayton beat his male adopter to death, stabbed a girl who rejected his advances, committed several rapes & & was convicted of 6 stabbing/mutilation murders of young women; sentenced to Death in Oregon. Source: "Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Adoption," book by Marsha Riben; & Dayton Leroy Rogers web-site; & "Serial Killers A-Z", http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/q-z/rogers.html
SELLS, Tommy Lynn, 16, (Admitted to 70+ Murders)
Sells and his twin sister, Tammy Jean, contracted meningitis when they were 18 months old. Sells had a high fever but survived, while his sister died. Shortly thereafter, Sells was sent to live with his aunt, Bonnie Woodall, in Holcomb, Missouri, until he was 5. At age 8, Sells began spending time with Willis Clark who would later be identified as a child molester. Homeless, Sells started traveling to find work by hitching rides, hopping trains & at one point stole a car. He held various menial labor jobs. He claims he committed his first murder at age 16. While working at as a carnie in MO in summer 1985, he met 29 year old Ena Cordt who, Sells claimed, invited him to her home where they had consensual sex. The bodies of Cordt & her 4-year-old son were found 3 days later. Other murders he is suspected of committing are those of Suzanne Korczin New York (May 1987), a family in Illinois (Nov. 1987), & a co-worker in Texas (April 1998). On December 31, 1999 near Rio, Texas, Sells fatally stabbed 13-year old Katy Harris & slit the throat of 10-year-old Krystal Surles. Surles survived & Sells was apprehended from a sketch resulting from the victim's description. According to Columbia University forensic psychiatrist & personality expert, Dr. Michael J. Stone. (in Discovery Channel's "Most Evil"), Sells claimed to have murdered upwards of 70 people. SOURCE: Crime Library - "Tommy Lynn Sells, Serial Killer" & "Predator, Travels the U.S. Murdering"
STANO, Gerald Eugene, 27
Born in 1951 at Daytona Beach, FL, taken from his mother at age 6 months & adopted. Murdered an estimated 80 young women (41 were prostitutes, runaways, hitchhiking teenagers, youngest was age 12) from PA to FL before his arrest at age 27 in 1980. He said "Adopted kids like me, I now know, seek out rejection, believe on some level that no one will keep them." Prior to killing he has sought help from 3 psychiatrists who never raised the issue of adoption and so didn't treat him. Executed 3/23/98. Source: "Dark Son," book by Denise Lang
TOPPAN, Jane, 31, ("Angel of Death")
Born as Nora Kelly, in 1854 in Boston, she was adopted as an infant when her mother died & her father was institutionalized, for 2 decades worked as a nurse in New England, confessed to killing at least 31 people with morphine & atropine, & is believed to have actually killed more people than any man or woman who has ever lived.
Source: Kay Russell, Ghost Dancer's Anti-Adoption Pages, http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/9950
WILKEN, Stewart
Born 11-11-66, in Boksburg, killed prostitutes. Article speculates "Perhaps it was anger at his biological mother for deserting him, his adoptive mother for not being the mother he wanted." When he was about 6 months old, he & his 2-year-old sister were left in a phone booth, where they were later found by a domestic worker, who took them to the home of her employer known only as "Dope," who subjected the boy to terrible abuse....burned him with cigarettes on his genitals.... engaged in acts of bestiality with his dogs, a made him lick his penis afterwards. At some point, his sister disappeared & he did not know what happened to her. When he was 2 years old, the neighbors, Mr and Mrs Wilken, adopted him out of compassion, named him Stewart Wilken, although he called himself "Boetie Boer." ...He failed the 3rd grade three times, was mocked by his peers because he was adopted, & when his teacher didn’t not intervene on his behalf, but instead had incited the others further, he assaulted the teacher & was severely beaten by the principal in front of the other children. He often bit his adoptive mother as well as other children.... At age 8, he started smoking marijuana. At 9, a deacon sodomized him; the same year, Stewart's adoptive father died. Stewart's adoptive mother felt overwhelmed by the difficult boy & sent him to a reformatory where he was locked up without clothes as punishment, & the older boys sodomized him. In later life he was accused of sodomizing his own sons.
Source: http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/stewart_wilken/7.html?sect=2
WOODCOCK, Peter (aka David Michael Krueger), Allegedly murdered 100 children
Hospital records show Peter Woodcock was born March 5, 1939 in Toronto, Canada. Depending on which forms you read, Woodcock's mother, Wanita Woodcock, was either a 17-year old factory worker or a 19-year old prostitute who got pregnant in 1938...His father was alleged to be a 19-year old soldier. WWII started when Peter was 6 months old. Four years later, Wanita gave birth to a girl who was adopted out & reportedly had a "normal" life while The Children’s Aid social worker allowed Peter's mother to keep him for a month to breastfeed him; he was then sent from one foster home to another; some foster families were uncaring & brutal. He ended up with a twisted neck as result of a beating. "When I was put up for adoption, I was bounced around from place to place, ignored for long periods of time, left to lie in darkness," he explained. When he was 3, Franck & Susan Maynard decided to keep him & raised him in their middle class neighborhood. From age 7 to 12, Peter was treated for behavior problems at the Hospital for Sick Children. In 1982 he legally changed his name to David Michael Krueger. When transferred to a medium security institution, he sexually assaulted & murdered Dennis Kerr & was sent back to Oak Ridge where he murdered Wayne Mallette (age 7), Gary Morris (age 9), Carole Voyce. Although it was estimated he actually murdered 100 children, he was prosecuted only for killing Crole Voyce & acquitted by reason of insanity. His following comment is noteworthy: "I often wondered what happened in my own pre-birth, whether my natural mother wanted me..."
WUORNOS, Aileen Carol Pittman
Illegally adopted in infancy, in 1960, along with her older brother Keith, by her maternal grandparents, Lauri & Britta Wurornos, abandoned at birth by her alcoholic mother, reportedly sexually abused by her father (a convicted child molester who committed suicide in prison), Aileen was pregnant at 14 by her brother Keith, & delivered and gave up her baby for adoption at a Detroiit Maternity Home; Aileen was also legally adopted as an adult by 44-year old born-again Christian Arlene Pralle & Pralle's husband. One of only 10 female murderers in the US to be executed, Aileen was executed in FL, 10-9-02, for murdering 6 FL truckers while working as a prostitute; she first claimed self-defense, later asked for death. Most detailed site on Wuornos is at http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/wuornos805.htm
YATES, Robert Lee, 23, (Spokane Serial Killer)
Yates grew up on Whidbey Island, Washington, where his mother died while he was still in high school. Records show that he was allegedly repeatedly sexually abused by an older neighbor boy when he was approximately 6 years old. A father of 5 children and retired from the Army; in exchange for his life he pled guilty to murdering 13 female prostitutes, from 1975 to 1996 and was sentenced to death in 2002. Curiously, when the story was aired on "48 Hours" TV series, there was mention that his grandmother murdered his grandfather with an axe and was sent to an insane asylum, but no mention of who raised him nor of his being sexually abused at age 6...only that his wife and the victims' families didn't have an answer as to "why" he killed the prostitutes. Source: "Serial Killers A-Z," http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/q-z/yates.html and "Kill and Kill Again," 48 Hours, 4-11-09.
I agree… a little bit spooky and a lot more than you wanted to know.
*****(top photo credit: ellrod bailbonds)
Christine Dellinger, Vallejo Adoptive Families Examiner
The adopted daughter of a 100% Italian mother and Irish and German father, Christine lives in the Bay Area in Northern California. When not being entertained by the slapstick comedy of her two dogs, she indulges in the passion of writing.