Serial killers

"My motive for what I am going to do is simply personal revenge. I do not expect to accomplish anything by it.… I certainly don't claim to be an altruist or acting for the "good" (whatever that is) of the human race. I act merely from a desire for revenge. Of course, I would like to get revenge on the whole scientific and bureaucratic establishment, not to mention the communists and others who threaten freedom, but that being impossible, I have to content myself with just a little revenge."

"After I had skipped 6th grade and begun feeling a great deal of hostility toward many of my schoolmates, I developed a habit of trying to find ways of justifying my hatred in terms of my moral system. By and by I got bored with this game. One day when I was 13 years old, I was walking down the street and saw a girl. Something about her appearance antagonized me and, from habit, I began looking for a way to justify hating her, within my logical system. But then I stopped and said to myself, "This is getting ridiculous. I'll just chuck all this silly morality business and hate anybody I please." Since then I have never had any interest in or respect for morality, ethics, or anything of the sort."

"Just then came a major turning point in my life. Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope. I thought I wanted to kill that psychiatrist because the future looked utterly empty to me. I felt I wouldn't care if I died. And so I said to myself why not really kill the psychiatrist and anyone else whom I hate.… I will kill, but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection so that I can kill again."

"This guy is clearly typical member of the technician class. Might even be one of the guys that has flown those fucking jets over my home. This gives great relief to my choking, frustrated anger and sense of impotence against the system. At the same time, must admit I feel badly about having crippled this man’s arm. It has been bothering me a good deal. This is embarrassing because while my feelings are partly from pity, I am sure they come largely from the training, propaganda, brainwashing we all get, conditioning us to be scared by the idea of doing certain things. It is shameful to be under the sway of this brainwashing. But do not get the idea that I regret what I did. Relief of frustrated anger outweighs uncomfortable conscience."

"Recently I camped in a paradise like glacial cirque. At evening, beautiful singing of birds was ruined by the obscene roar of jet planes. Then I laughed at the idea of having any compunction about crippling an airplane pilot."

"But what first motivated me wasn’t anything I read. I just got mad seeing the machines ripping up the woods."

"The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible."

"Many years ago I used to read books like, for example, Ernest Thompson Seton's Lives of Game Animals to learn about animal behavior. But after a certain point, after living in the woods for a while, I developed an aversion to reading any scientific accounts. In some sense reading what the professional biologists said about wildlife ruined or contaminated it for me. What began to matter to me was the knowledge I acquired about wildlife through personal experience."

"No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that's what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit."

"Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost."

"I must tell you that mathematicians are not scientists, they are artists. ... Apart from the most elementary mathematics, like arithmetic or high school algebra, the symbols, formulas and words of mathematics have no meaning at all. The entire structure of pure mathematics is a monstrous swindle, simply a game, a reckless prank. You may well ask: "Are there no renegades to reveal the truth?" Yes, of course. But the facts are so incredible that no one takes them seriously. So the secret is in no danger."

"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."

"The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine."

"If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later."

"The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call feelings of inferiority and oversocialization. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential"

"Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society."

"We are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not."

"Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression."

"In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one's physical needs."

"And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors)."

"Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. But we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today."

"A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society."

"Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren't interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process."

"In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work."

"Also, science and technology constitute a power mass movement, and many scientists gratify their need for power through identification with this mass movement. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research."

"One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness."

"In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people."

"A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do."

"People do not consciously and rationally choose the form of their society. Societies develop through processes of social evolution that are not under rational human control."

"The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior."

"The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system."

"The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress."

"A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on one another. You can’t get rid of the "bad" parts of technology and retain only the "good" parts."

"It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises."

"Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straightforward social problems. How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology?"

"We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be reformed in such a way as to reconcile freedom with technology. The only way out is to dispense with the industrial-technological system altogether. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature of society."

"Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.)"

"To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been."

"The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) don't think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it."

"Smashing up McDonald's or Starbuck's is pointless. Not that I give a damn about McDonald's or Starbuck's. I don't care whether anyone smashes them up or not. But that is not a revolutionary activity. Even if every fast-food chain in the world were wiped out the techno-industrial system would suffer only minimal harm as a result, since it could easily survive without fast-food chains. When you attack McDonald's or Starbuck's, you are not hitting where it hurts."

"The techno-industrial system is exceptionally tough due to its so-called "democratic" structure and its resulting flexibility. Because dictatorial systems tend to be rigid, social tensions and resistance can be built up in them to the point where they damage and weaken the system and may lead to revolution. But in a "democratic" system, when social tension and resistance build up dangerously the system backs off enough, it compromises enough, to bring the tensions down to a safe level."

"There are two kinds of morality—the kind of morality that one imposes on oneself and the kind of morality that one imposes on others. For the first kind of morality, that is, for self-restraint, I have the greatest respect. The second kind of morality I do not respect except when it constitutes self-defense. (For example, when women say that rape and wife-beating are immoral, that is self-defense.) I have noticed that the people who try hardest to impose moral code on others (not in self-defense) are often the least careful to abide by that moral code themselves."

"To judge from the Internet postings that people have sent me, probably most of what you learned [about me] was nonsense."

"A mistake that most people make is to assume that the more followers you can recruit, the better. That's true if you are trying to win an election. A vote is a vote regardless of whether the voter is deeply committed or just barely interested enough to get to the polls. But when you're building a revolutionary movement, the number of people you have is far less important than the quality of your people and the depth of their commitment. Too many lukewarm or otherwise unsuitable people will ruin the movement."

"Rebellion against technology and civilization is real rebellion, a real attack on the values of the existing system. But the green anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (The "GA Movement") have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values."

"Its is important, too, to realize that deadly violence among primitives is not even remotely comparable to modern warfare. When primitives fight, two little bands of men shoot arrows or swing war-clubs at one another because they want to fight; or because they are defending themselves, their families, or their territory. In the modern world soldiers fight because they have been brainwashed into believing in some kook ideology such as that of Nazism, socialism, or what American politicians choose to call "freedom". In any case the modern soldier is merely a pawn, a dupe who dies not for his family or his tribe but for the politicians who exploit him. If he's unlucky, maybe he does not die but comes home horribly crippled in a way that would never result from an arrow- or a spear-wound. Meanwhile, thousands of non-combatants are killed or mutilated. The environment is ravaged, not only in the war zone, but also back home, due to the accelerated consumption of natural resources needed to feed the war machine. In comparison, the violence of primitive man is relatively innocuous."

"There are many people today who see that modern society is heading toward disaster in one form or another, and who moreover recognize technology as the common thread linking the principal dangers that hang over us."

"People ... can think of nothing better to do than to continue attacking particular evils while vaguely hoping that their work will somehow help to solve the overall problem of technology. In reality their work is counterproductive, because it distracts attention from the technological system itself as the underlying source of the evils and leads people to focus instead on problems of limited significance that moreover cannot be permanently solved while the technological system continues to exist."

"The development of a society can never be subject to rational human control."

"In the short term, natural selection favors self-propagating systems that pursue their own short-term advantage with little or no regard for long-term consequences."

"Where (as today) problems of transportation and communication do not constitute effective limitations on the size of the geographical regions over which self-propagating systems operate, natural selection tends to create a world in which power is mostly concentrated in the possession of a relatively small number of global self-propagating systems."

"As technology progresses and globalization grows more pervasive, the world-system becomes ever more complex and more tightly coupled, so that a catastrophic breakdown has to be expected sooner or later."

"Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth's climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. ... We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions."

"It seems amazing that those who advocate energy conservation haven't noticed what happens: As soon as some energy is freed up by conservation, the technological world-system gobbles it up and demands more. No matter how much energy is provided, the system always expands rapidly until it is using all available energy, and then it demands still more."

"The ultimate goal of a revolutionary movement today must be the total collapse of the worldwide technological system."

"An antitechnological movement that focused on the elimination of capitalism would gain little in return for an enormous expenditure of energy. What is worse, by focusing on capitalism the movement would distract its own and other people's attention from the far more important objective of bringing down the technological system itself."

"Once a man is a murderer, I don't give a damn what his opinions are. His opinions are of no interest to me. What I know about him is that he's a murderer, a creator of pain and suffering, and his opinions are disqualified from being of interest to any civilized human being."

"It was a feeling of being trapped – trapped in this brother relationship, trapped in this dilemma in which people's lives were at stake either way. One way, if we did nothing, another bomb might go off and more people might die. The other way, I turned Ted in and he would be executed."

"[The first time Kaczynski's sister-in-law thought he might be the unabomber] I'd thought about the families that were bombed. There was one in which the package arrived to the man's home and his little 2-year-old daughter was there. She was almost in the room when he opened the package. Luckily she left, and his wife left. [...] And then he died. And there were others. And so I spent those days thinking about those people."

"In the 1960s there was a young man who had just graduated from the University of Michigan who was doing brilliant work in mathematics, specifically bounded harmonic functions. Then he went to Berkeley, where he was an assistant professor and showed amazing potential. Then he moved to Montana and blew the competition away."

"You know, clowns can get away with murder"

"Girls are no fun to kill. Guys are more interesting to kill."

"All the police are going to get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license."

"The idea that I'm a homosexual thrill killer, that I stroll down the streets and stalk young boys and slaughter them... Hell, if you could see my schedule, my work schedule, you knew damn well that I was never out there."

"I would definitely not be homosexual. I have nothing against what they do and I don't deny that I've engaged in sex with males but that I'm bisexual."

"The dead won't bother you, it's the living you got to to worry about"

"If they want to be convinced or [are] brainwashed into what they believe, then fine, then go ahead and kill me. But 'vengeance is mine saith the Lord' because you would have executed someone who didn't commit the crime."

"When they paint the image that I was this monster who picked up these alter boys along the street and swatted them like flies I said "this is ludicrous"."

"I don't believe in hitting children."

"Whether its [David] Berkowitz, whether its [[Ted Bundy|[Ted] Bundy]], whether its... Wayne Williams down in Atlanta..., or Charlie Manson—I don't comment about other cases for the simple fact is that I wasn't there."

"That one mother [of victim] that gets on television all the time, who thinks I should get 33 injections, I think she ought to take 33 valiums and go lay down."

"We've linked 16 of the bodies to one individual. We've linked 14 more to another individual. All these people had keys to the house."

"I am at peace with God."

"Taking my life will not compensate for the loss of the others. The State is murdering me."

"Your honor, it is over now. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did not for reasons of hate, I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil, or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness and now I have some peace."

"I had these obsessive desires and thoughts wanting to control them [victims], to–I don't know how to put it–possess them permanently."

"It's a process, it doesn't happen overnight, when you depersonalize another person and view them as just an object. An object for pleasure and not a living breathing human being. It seems to make it easier to do things you shouldn't do."

"To this day I don't know what started it [the killings]. The person to blame is sitting right across from you. It's the only person. Not parents, not society, not pornography. I mean, those are just excuses."

"If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what's the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing ..."

"The killing was a means to an end. That was the least satisfactory part. I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies with uric acid in the drill [to the head], but it never worked. No, the killing was not the objective. I just wanted to have the person under my complete control, not having to consider their wishes, being able to keep them there as long as I wanted."

"You think of the crimes that he committed, they're so horrific you kinda think only a madman or somebody totally evil–evil incarnate would do this but when you talked with Jeff Dahmer you did not get this idea. He could be engaging, he could be bright, witty, he could make jokes. He was able to fool a lot of people."

"He fooled everyone. He fooled me...he fooled his probation officer, his attorney, the police...He had bodies in the next room when the police were standing in his outer room."

"What do I think of Jeffrey Dahmer? I don't know the man personally, but I'll tell ya this, that's a good example as to why insanity doesn't belong in the courtroom. Because if Jeffrey Dahmer doesn't meet the requirements for insanity, then I'd hate like hell to run into the guy that does. Beyond that, I have no comment on Jeffrey Dahmer because I'm not Jeffrey Dahmer."

"When I was a young man, I found out that if you hurt somebody bad enough, they'll leave you alone. When I tried to leave everybody alone and just do my own thing, everybody just wanted to hurt me. Until one day I just decided, well, I've had enough of this picking. And there were like six young men still figuring they were going to mess with my head. And we went to war. To their surprise, I was no longer taking the beating, I was giving it."

"All the people who are hating me right now and are here waiting to see me die, when you wake up in the morning you aren't going to feel any different. You are going to hate me as much tomorrow as you do tonight. Reach out to God and he will hear you. Let him touch your hearts. Don't hate all your lives."

"In prison, I found out who God really was, who He is, and that too took some time. I had seen God as an arbitrary rule maker. He made His rules the same way my parents did. The reason was "Because I said so!". But that was a false image of God. The way Anton LaVey saw God also affected his view of Satan."

"Satanism to Anton LaVey was the celebration of that part of ourselves. His rituals were parodies of Catholic rituals. His philosophy was to embrace that "darkness" within ourselves, since it led to pleasure and pleasure was the real aim of life; after life there was nothing. No Heaven, no Hell, just the grave. We cease to exist."

"The fact is nearly everyone forces God to fit into his own perception. Even Christians serve a God they perceive rather than the God who truly is. They limit Him according to those special needs of their own psyche. It's actually hard not to do that, but every time we do, it has consequences. Seeing God for who He truly is takes effort and always has one inevitable result that many people cannot accept: our understanding will always fall short."

"It's so much easier to create our own gods; gods that are fully knowable. Those are the gods of atheism, occultism, religion and sometimes even Christianity. Then, of course, there are those prejudices that we demand of our gods. Women who take offense at a "male" God create for themselves a female or neuter god. There, we have all the racial gods, the black gods, white gods, and cultural gods, the Spanish gods, African gods, Indian gods and so on. All of them called god. And yet none of them are truly Him. Some may be tiny glimpses of Him. Maybe His big toe or little finger, but nothing more. Others are not even that. They’re only delusions from our prejudices."

"I've watched closely and I believe most people who turn from God do so for one of two basic reasons. One, they mistake some aspect of religion as God (like Anton LaVey did). Or two, they are unable to overcome their need to understand what can not be understood. I honestly don't think it's easy to turn from God if we see Him as He really is. Every Satanist I've ever encountered has fallen into one of those two categories. They either have a warped, distorted perception of God, based on what they were taught by some idiot, or they don’t believe in the goodness or even the existence of God because of the injustice of the world. The first is a problem of perception. The second is a problem of pride. Both are hard to get past."

"To be a Satanist is not to be liberated. It is to be bonded to death. The freedom it offers is an illusion. And this is something I know every Satanist knows, because I was there. In the dark and quiet, all alone, without the buzz of alcohol or drugs, or the rhythm of music to drown out the sounds, there is an empty echo inside us. A vacancy. A feeling of loss and cold and turmoil and hunger. That emptiness gnaws and hurts worse than anything else in life; we take up knives to carve our skin just to escape it, or run into the arms of a lover to smother it, but it doesn't go away. It grows. It is death at work, emptiness causing decay. No matter how much we feed it SIN, it will never fill up."

"I'm not in any way trying to pass blame to any other person. There are reasons why I did what I did, but I'm still the one who did it, and the responsibility, no matter the reasons, is still mine."

"I was not a cruel person. I didn't commit murder because I enjoyed causing pain. I had pets all my life and I wanted to be a veterinarian. I never was a bully, or provoked fights, or picked on people weaker than I was."

"I was mad at God, I didn’t LIKE God because of how I perceived Him, and the stuff I read on Satanism said two things that appealed to me. #1 — it offered freedom, and #2 — it promised power to control my life, and others. I’d been carted all around the state and Colorado all my life, slapped, smacked, hit, and had whatever I wanted ignored. I was mad and the idea of controlling my life to get what I wanted was like candy to me. Plus I looked at the way everyone around me lived and the stuff I read in the Satanic Bible in principle was lived out in lifestyle by Mom and Dad and everyone else I knew. No one was a real Christian. We didn’t go to church. We didn’t talk about God. … What was the point of pretending to serve God when we lived like Satanists? Satanism taught me that I should make my own rules to live by in life, and that’s just what everyone I’d grown up around did, so I got very involved in Satanism. I truly thought it was an honest way to live, and the rituals of it would enable me to control my life. Even then I didn’t want to kill anyone. That desire didn’t start until later."

"These are the ghosts I live with and I hate myself for all I became and did. I am not just sorry, I am haunted. I think of all the people I hurt, of all the moments I stole from your lives, and I know I deserve to die."

"Please, know that for as long as I live I will be haunted with the sorrow for what I did and when I die I will have counted it more mercy than I deserved to have lived the life I did. Until that day, I want you to also know, I will spend my life trying to do things that will touch the world in a good way, to give back for all I took from you. That’s the only thing I can offer with my hands and my heart. It’s simply all I have."

"He took his last dig at us. … It is very presumptuous that he would know how we would still feel."

"He was quite a thinker … I think if his life had been different, if he'd zigged instead of zagged, I could see him growing up to become a college professor — at a Christian college, probably, though the administration would no doubt have bitten their nails to the quick more than once over some of his ways. I have several letters from him where he expounded on the oddities of life. The joys and the quirks. He might have been a sociologist, even. People fascinated him. Life fascinated him, since he had squandered his chances of living a normal one. But he made the most of it, more so than anyone I've ever met."

"I believe the term ‘serial killer’ is highly misleading, in that it implicitly suggests to the general public that murder is the paramount object or motivating urge in the mind of the killer … They naturally attribute this motivation partly because they value human life above all else, and partly because, as their endless fascination with the subject suggests, they have a vague conception of murder as being somehow mystical, highly dramatic, or even a nebulously romantic experience, replete with unimaginable connotations of eroticism. And guilt for it must be paid for in full."

"[Churchill's wartime menus] show him slurping bottles of whisky, champagne [and] brandy with every sumptuous meal, while the underclass fought and starved for the privilege of poverty and unemployment. Thankfully, the Germans bombed Glasgow back to full employment. Even in the 1960s Earl Mountbatten was prosecuted for adding water to the milk on his farm so you can imagine how the landed gentry 'rationed' themselves during the war."

"Trivia and pettiness consume mankind, surely the most pretentious creation of all."

"It's the theatricality, Wuthering Heights, Hound of the Baskervilles."

"I can't stand feeble, robotic psychiatrists. They give you false drugs and turn you into a zombie."

"You're just a package. You're in a cage and people poke you with a stick."

"In a captive environment, paranoia is unavoidable. Only the prison authorities call it paranoia; prisoners call it sensible precautions."

"Most prisoners are perfectly mentally healthy compared with the paranoia of prison officials."

"I have known people who ... radiate vulnerability .... Their facial expressions say 'I am afraid of you.' These people invite abuse ... By expecting to be hurt, do they subtly encourage it?"

"I'm the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet."

"Okay, you've got the indictment, that's all you're gonna get... I'll plead not guilty right now."

"I'm not gonna be in this room when that jury walks in. I'm not going through this and you knew that, your honor. You know how far you can push me..... You wanna make a circus? You got a circus. [points to prosecutor] I'll rain on your parade Jack. You'll see a thunderstorm. This will not be the pat little drama you've arranged."

"Tell the jury they were wrong."

"I didn't know what made things tick. I didn't know what made people want to be friends. I didn't know what made people attractive to one another. I didn't know what underlay social interactions."

"Guilt. It's this mechanism we use to control people. It's an illusion. It's a kind of social control mechanism and it's very unhealthy. It does terrible things to our body."

"A factor that is almost indispensable to this kind of behavior [serial killing] is the mobility of contemporary American life. Living in large centers of population, and living with lots of people, you can get used to dealing with strangers. It's the anonymity factor, and it has a twofold effect. First of all if you're among strangers you're less likely to remember them, or care what they're doing or what they should, or should not, be doing. If they should or shouldn't be there. Secondly, you're conditioned almost not to be afraid of strangers. Mobility is very important here. As we've seen...the individual's [himself in third person] modus operandi was moving large distances in an attempt to camouflage what he was doing. Moving these distances, he was able to take advantage of the anonymity factor."

"The ultimate possession was, in fact, the taking of the life. And then … the physical possession of the remains."

"Well, had he been cautious, he would’ve probably killed the first individual before leaving to get the second girl, but in this instance since we’ve agreed he wasn’t acting cautiously, he hadn’t killed the first girl when he abducted the second."

"Which one do they pick? Do they pick the law student with no criminal background, who was probably even known by some of the prosecutors working the case? Or are they going to go after the types, you know, the guys in the files... the real weirdos?"

"But he found himself with this girl who was struggling and screaming. Uh, not screaming, but let’s say just basically arguing with him. There were houses in the vicinity and he was concerned that somebody might hear. And so, in an attempt to stop her from talking or arguing, he placed his hand over her mouth. She stopped and he attempted to remove her clothes and she began to object again. At this point, he was in a state of not just agitation, but something on the order of panic. He was fearing that she would arouse somebody in the vicinity. So, not thinking clearly but still intending not to harm her, let’s say, he placed his hands around her throat… Just to throttle her into unconsciousness so that she wouldn’t scream anymore. She stopped struggling, and it appeared that she was unconscious. But not, in his opinion, to a point where he had killed her... Then let’s say he removed her clothes and raped her and put his own clothes back on. At about that point, he began to notice that the girl wasn’t moving. It appeared, although he wasn’t certain, that he’d done what he had promised himself he wouldn’t do. And he had done it, really, almost inadvertently. Uh, so he took the girl by one of her arms and pulled her to a darkened corner of this little orchard and then, in a fit of panic, fled the scene. He got back in his car and drove back to his house, still not knowing if the girl was alive or dead. But once he returned to the house, upon reflection he began to wonder. He didn’t know if he’d left anything at the crime scene. He hadn’t thought about publicity and physical evidence. So he decided to return to the scene and if the body was there to recover it and take it somewhere else where it wouldn’t be found."

"You're like a fisherman who fishes for years and catches a small fish. Sometimes a medium fish. [You] get lucky and get a big fish. But you know that there's a real big fish under there that always gets away. You and your group are going to get a lot of serial killers and they're going to help you. But with the real good ones, the only way you're going to know what goes on under the water is to go under the water. The fisherman drowns going underwater. But I can take you there without drowning. If I trust you. And if I decide."

".....murder is not just a crime of lust or violence. It becomes possession. They are part of you … [the victim] becomes a part of you, and you [two] are forever one … and the grounds where you kill them or leave them become sacred to you, and you will always be drawn back to them."

"When you feel the last bit of breath leaving their body, you're looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!"

"I just said that the Hawkins girl's head was severed and taken up the road about twenty-five to fifty yards and buried in a location about ten yards west of the road, on a rocky hillside. Did you hear that?"

"One of the things that makes it a little bit difficult is that at this point she was quite lucid, talking about things. It’s not funny, but it’s odd the kinds of things people will say under those circumstances. And she said that she had a Spanish test the next day, and she thought that I had taken her to help tutor her for her Spanish test. It’s kind of an odd thing to say. Anyway."

"I'm not looking for anything. I understand now a lot of stuff about myself that I didn't understand then. It makes me realize what was going on. The senselessness of it appalls me although I'm sure not so much as those who were so close to it."

"I don't think anybody doubts whether I've done some bad things. The question is: what, of course, and how and, maybe even most importantly, why?"

"That's why it's so much easier for me to try to locate the bodies than it is to talk about the actual thing. It's so much more positive such as it could be."

"Jim [Coleman, his defense attorney] and Fred [Lawrence, his minister], I'd like you to give my love to my family and friends."

"Sure, I get angry. I get very, very angry and indignant. I don't like being locked up for something I didn't do, and I don't like my liberty taken away, and I don't like being treated like an animal, and I don't like people walking around and ogling me like I'm some sort of weirdo, because I'm not."

"I'm not guilty? [Laughs] Does that include the time I stole a comic book when I was five years old? I'm not guilty of the charges which have been filed against me."

"I don't know all of what you're speaking about Lucky [Severson, reporter interviewing him] it's too broad and I can't get into it in any detail. But I'm satisfied with my blanket statement that I'm innocent. No man is truly innocent. I mean we all have transgressed some way in our lives and as I say, I've been impolite and there are things I regret having done in my life but nothing like the things, I think, that you're referring to."

"I wanted to become a part of my defense because I am such a part of it. Obviously I'm going to bear the consequences, so why not bear the responsibilities?"

"People say "Ted Bundy didn't show any emotion, there must be something in there". I showed emotion. You know what people said? "See, he really can get violent and angry"."

"I think I stand as much chance of dying in front of a firing squad or in a gas chamber as you do being killed on a plane flight home. Let's hope you don't."

"...this guy is responsible for twenty or thirty more deaths at least, and there's a certain aspect of possessiveness in that. I think that's one way of describing it in rather bland terms, a possessiveness where the corpse could easily be as important as the live victim, in some respects. I mean, it's that physical possession and ownership, a taking, if you will, that is just part of the syndrome. I think that sense of power and ownership is one of the reasons why I think in some cases—not all, certainly—is why I think he might be individually intending to return to the scene to either view his victim, or in fact, interact with the body in some way."

"In my opinion, the best chance you have of catching this guy is to get a site with a fresh body and stake it out."

"...just like anybody else with an obsession, whether it be fishing, bowling or skiing, he has ways he can vicariously satisfy it. Maybe he is going to peep shows and reading detective magazines. I think there's an excellent chance that one way he gets off is by going to look at what they call the slasher films."

"This guy doesn't want to be caught. He doesn't want to play around. He's not Son of Sam and he's not even the LA Hillside Strangler. He doesn't want notoriety. That's why he's going to all these length to dispose of these people in the way that he has."

"Listen, I'm no social scientist and haven't done a survey. I don't pretend to know what John Q citizen thinks about this. But I've lived in prison for a long time now and I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography. Without question, without exception. Deeply influenced and consumed by an addiction to pornography."

"Those of use who are, who have been so much influenced by violence in the media, in particular pornographic violence, are not some kinds of inherent monsters. We are your sons and we are your husbands. And we grew up in regular families. And pornography can reach out and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of my home twenty, thirty years ago."

"I don't want to die. I'm not going to kid you. I'll kid you not. I deserve certainly the most extreme punishment society has...I think society deserves to be protected from me and others like me."

"...well meaning decent people will condemn [the] behavior of a Ted Bundy while they're walking passed a magazine rack full of the very kinds of things that send young kids down the road to be Ted Bundys."

"It was like coming out of some kind of a horrible trance or dream, I can only liken it to, after, I don't want to dramatize it, but to have been possessed by something so awful and alien, and then to next day wake up from it and remember what happened and realize, basically, in the eyes of the law and certainly the eyes of God that you're responsible."

"He's definitely a premier serial killer. He is probably the model. But I don't think there's many of them like him, fortunately."

"Ted did not have any guilt. He did not have any remorse. He did not have a conscience. And so when he talks about being 99% normal and 1% abnormal, its an ugly joke. He was 100% abnormal."

"Ted was never as handsome, brilliant or charismatic as crime folklore deemed him. But as I said before, infamy became him."

"I would describe him being as close to being like the devil as anyone I ever met."

"Ted was the very definition of heartless evil."

"If he killed all those lovely young women–we have several beautiful daughters of our own, we know how we would feel and its a terrible thing. And he wasn't raised that way! He was raised in a good, loving, caring family.... We still love and care for him, but we want to know: what caused this?"

"[Ted] would walk me out to my car at two in the morning when my shift was over, and he'd say "Ann please lock your doors, I don't want anything bad to happen to you on the way home". Well, I'd just been locked up with probably the most dangerous man in the western states."

"For everything he did to the girls–the bludgeoning, the strangulation, humiliating their bodies, torturing them–I feel that the electric chair is too good for him."

"Bundy's a rumpkin. Bundy's a poopbutt. Bundy's his momma's boy. Bundy's out there trying to prove something to his own manhood. That's got nothing to do with me. I don't roll around with poop people like that. I stand with people that can stand with themselves."

"I did not oppose his execution. I believed he deserved it. I never said to Ted that he did not deserve to die. I think I was pretty open with him about that. If there was a case where an individual deserve to face the maximum penalty, I think he did.....I'm not an apologist for Ted Bundy."

"Take care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely; take care of yourself, please. It is an utter tragedy for this court to see such a total waste of humanity as I’ve experienced in this courtroom. You’re a bright young man. You would have made a good lawyer and I would have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went another way, partner. Take care of yourself. I don’t feel any animosity toward you. I just want you to know that. Once again, take care of yourself."

"He ruined our lives and he's still part of your life, unfortunately."

"Snow doesn't look evil to the people in Panem's Capitol. Bundy didn't look evil to those girls. My wife and I were driving through Colorado when he escaped from jail there. The car radio's warning was constant. 'Don't pick up any young men. The escapee looks like the nicest young man imaginable'. Snow's evil shows up in the form of the complacently confident threat that's ever-present in his eyes. His resolute stillness."

"I don't think about him. I don't let myself think about him. I don't want to think about him. We know he is in hell."

"In some ways, Ted Bundy is an icon of the '70s. He mixed show biz and violence in a way that had never been done before."

"If you're looking for a Ted Bundy, go talk to Ted Bundy."

"Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland."

"Serial killers do, on a small scale, what governments do on a large one. They are a product of the times and these are bloodthirsty times. Even psychopaths have emotions if you dig deep enough. Then again, maybe they don't."

""Violent delights tend to have violent ends." Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker - Crimes Lab"

"“One time I told this lady to give me all her money. She said no. So I cut her and pulled her eyes out.” interview with Ramirez"

"Quite a few of us get pissed with liver crippling draughts of prison hooch, that last vestige of herbal medicine still available to cons."

"The devil makes work for idle thirsts. But given the choice between booze and cannabis, I go for ganja every time."

"It is frustrating to be translating other people's autobiographies whilst mine is lying unpublished, banned by the Home Office."

"Being a loner has its advantages, a self-containment necessary for keeping body and 'soul' alive and progressing. Dying in prison is not such a great problem as living in prison."

"My troubles started there. It blighted my personality permanently. I have spent all my emotional life searching for my grandfather and in my formative years no one was there to take his place. It is the custom up there in Fraserburgh that when there is a death in a household they draw the blinds and curtains. When my grandfather died it seemed that these blinds had been drawn across my life... Relatives would pretend that he had gone to a 'better place'. 'Why', I thought, 'should he go to a better place and not take me with him?' 'So death was a nice thing,' I thought. 'Then why does it make me miserable?'"

"Many years ago I was a boy drowning in the sea. I am always drowning in the sea... down amongst the dead men, deep down. There is a peace in the sea back down to our origins... when the last man has taken his breath the sea will still be remaining. It washes everything clean. It holds within it forever the boy suspended in its body and the streaming hair and the open eyes."

"In those days I could hate Adam Scott very easily. I was, I suppose, very jealous of him having a relationship with and the attention of my mother. I sometimes felt that we, the Nilsen kids, were an impediment to her fulfillment in her new life and family. I was a very lonely and turbulent child. I inhabited my own secret world full of ideal and imaginary friends. Nature had mismatched me from the flock."

"I eased him into his new bed [beneath the floorboards] ... A week later, I wondered whether his body had changed at all or had started to decompose. I disinterred him and pulled the dirt-stained youth up onto the floor. His skin was very dirty. I stripped myself naked and carried him into the bathroom and washed the body. There was practically no discoloration and his skin was pale white. His limbs were more relaxed than when I had put him down there."

"I could only relate to a dead image of the person I could love. The image of my dead grandfather would be the model of him at his most striking in my mind. It seems necessary for them to have been dead in order that I could express those feelings which were the feelings I held sacred for my grandfather ... it was a pseudo-sexual, infantile love which had not yet developed and matured. The sight of them [my victims] brought me a bitter sweetness and a temporary peace and fulfillment."

"No-one but Nilsen's lawyer and one or two close confidantes have read [his autobiography] (it's not published don't forget) so who the hell can say whether it "glorifies his crimes" or not? And even if it does, and that's honestly how he feels towards his actions, isn't that extremely interesting? Shouldn't the public and psychiatrists and forensic psychologists and criminal profilers be grateful for such a first-hand account and unashamed glorying of such a crime? To me such a book would be extremely useful and insightful to many people. So whether it glorifies the crimes or tries to explain them I think the book has every right to be published, and I think it's in the public interest to do so. For the argument that "it’s not in the victims' interest to do so” well, I don't believe that's true, but even if it were, I don't think a handful of bitter people (bitter for very good reason) should decide the fate of the nation. If the books published the victims have every right not to read it and the public has every right to boycott it, but it MUST be available. As my mother recently said: Why the fuck should he have his book published! Though yeah, if it were published I'd probably read it."

"[To] call Nilsen a monster is to avoid the issue. People identified as 'witches' were once burned without further ado, it being simpler to get rid of them than to examine the questions which their alleged conduct, and society's hysterical reactions to it, raised. Nilsen has done monstrous things, and the responsible attitude would be to study his personality probingly in the hope of finding out why. Not for his sake, to give him the chance of redemption, but for ours, to deepen our knowledge and improve the chances of detecting such an aberrant personality before it does harm and causes grief. If the death penalty were still in force, it would be idiotic to kill Nilsen, for that would be to destroy the only evidence worth exploring."

"I would say that he wanted the bodies to be there because it assured him how in control he was of other people. This is what is arousing to an individual like Nilsen; to be in complete control and domination of others."

"He's nothing. He's a liar. He's taken human lives. I feel sorry for his mother, to give birth to such a monster."

"I'm not a man-hater. (I am) so used to being treated like dirt that I guess it's become a way of life. I'm a decent person."

"With Tyria I was going to begin. But she always spent my bread that I’d make. and I never had a chance to. So the next day I’d go out and make more. It was so easy to. And big bucks. All the bars, fancy night clubs, and restaurants we’d hit. As well as her buying clothes for herself. I had one beat up bra, a few pair of underwear—recked tennis shoes. 3 pairs of pants and 5 T-shirts to my name. She had gobs of clothes. I couldn't help it. I was insanely in love with her. And just wanted her to have it all. I was her puppet."

"Let me tell you what can happen in a rape. Your hair gets pulled out, he shoves his penis fully erected down your throat and bruises your esophagus, as well as the roof and sides of the (inside cheeks) of your mouth... Also telling you, if you scratch my cock with your teeth, your dead. Then he pulls your pussy hairs out, for additional pain, grabs your ass real hard like (kneading dough) as he’s cramming his cock in you, same thing in anal screwing. Bites nipples, to also, nearly cutting em off as he’s screwing you viciously, pounding as fast and as hard as he can... And also while all this is going on, threats are being made, and dirty talk at the most provocativeness profanity you could imagine. So rape is not just get on and get off.! Stupid fuckers. Society apparently doesn't understand this, nor cares to, especially if you’re a hooker. There allowed to treat you like this, and also kill you..."

"I still love her. Can’t let her go! She could shoot me, and if I survived it. I woulda had open arms, still, with lots of love to give. That’s Just the way I am. I Love to give Love. I know I’ve hurt, myself over being this away. But the pain, doesn’t feel, so bad, when you know your struggling to give love, for a cause that really pays off. I know for a fact. Ty and I would've stayed together for life. If this Shit hadda never of happened. She told me on the phone, in one of the recorded phone calls at VCBJ. Lord did I cry on that phone. Cut me up like a machete attack to the heart. Arlene, wants to keep her away from my funeral. I want Tyria at my funeral more then Anything."

"Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal., How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck., Yours truly, Jack the Ripper, Don't mind me giving the trade name,"

"LPOTL - Ep'21: The Illuminati http://www.lastpodcastontheleft.com/episodes/2018/1/6/episode-21-the-illuminati"

"Every single game has a gun"

"Started in a literal closet in 2011"

"Official site"

"‘Last Book on the Left’ Cuts Serial Killers Down to Size"

"http://www.vulture.com/2020/04/last-podcast-on-the-left-book-interview.html"

"http://aux.avclub.com/they-ve-got-2-studios-now-but-last-podcast-on-the-left-1842710398"

"http://discoverpods.com/last-podcast-on-the-left-episodes-lpotl/"

"Tell that to the BTK killer, I said. He was a churchgoer, raised two kids, married, and resisted the urge to kill for decades. He was a person, but he was a monster, too"

"The...home...is one of the finest organizations of its kind in the world...I know this to be a fact...I have every confidence in Miss Georgia Tann."

"I always had a desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me."

"I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt. The desire to inflict pain, that is all that is uppermost."

"I am not insane, I'm just queer."

"I saw so many boys whipped, it took root in my mind."

"None of us are saints."

"In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1 to 3 Dollars a pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girls behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid [sic] there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys one 7 one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them—tortured them—to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was Cooked and eaten except the head—bones and guts. He was Roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 st., near—right side. He told me so often how good Human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3—1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said Yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick—bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin."

"I brought him to the Riker Ave. dumps. There is a house that stands alone, not far from where I took him. ... I took the G boy there. Stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked out of the dump. Then I burned his clothes. Threw his shoes in the dump. Then I walked back and took trolley to 59 St. at 2 a.m. and walked from there home. Next day about 2 p.m., I took tools, ... a good heavy cat-of-nine tails. Home made. Short handle. Cut one of my belts in half, slit these half in six strips about 8 in. long. I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears – nose – slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out his eyes. He was dead then. I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood. I picked up four old potato sacks and gathered a pile of stones. Then I cut him up. I had a grip with me. I put his nose, ears and a few slices of his belly in the grip. Then I cut him thru the middle of his body. Just below his belly button. Then thru his legs about 2 in. below his behind. I put this in my grip with a lot of paper. I cut off the head – feet – arms – hands and the legs below the knee. This I put in sacks weighed with stones, tied the ends and threw them into the pools of slimy water you will see all along the road going to North Beach. Water is 3 to 4 ft. deep. They sank at once. I came home with my meat. I had the front of his body I liked best. His monkey and pee wees and a nice little fat behind to roast in the oven and eat. I made a stew out of his ears – nose – pieces of his face and belly. I put onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper. It was good. Then I split the cheeks of his behind open, cut off his monkey and pee wees and washed them first. I put strips of bacon on each cheek of his behind and put in the oven. Then I picked 4 onions and when meat had roasted about 1/4 hr., I poured about a pint of water over it for gravy and put in the onions. At frequent intervals I basted his behind with a wooden spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy. In about 2 hr., it was nice and brown, cooked thru. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did. I ate every bit of the meat in about four days. His little monkey was as sweet as a nut, but his pee-wees I could not chew. Threw them in the toilet."

"I will never show it to anyone. It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read."

"I just wondered how it would feel to shoot Grandma."

"This seemed only appropriate, as much as she’d bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years."

"Death by torture."

"The original purpose was gone. It was starting to weigh kind of heavy. The need I had for continuing death was needless and continuous. It wasn’t serving any physical or emotional purpose. It was just a pure waste of time. I wore out of it."

"What do you think, now, when you see a pretty girl walking down the street? One side of me says, "Wow, what an attractive chick. I'd like to talk to her, date her." The other side of me says, "I wonder how her head would look on a stick?""