Alex De Saro
Mindhunter (II)
Mindhunter is about serial killers, at least about the beginnings of the investigation in this regard, special agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) travel the country giving classes to local police, and on the fly, they decide to take advantage of those trips to visit the prisons and interview the most ruthless murderers of recent years, during these trips he presents the opportunity to verify the theories that they are developing thanks to their interviews so they help the local police to solve homicides, and this is where one of the main doubts of the spectators arises: Are the cases that are presented in Midhunter real? And if so, who are or were those murderers?
Well, yes, the answer is that yes, the murderers that appear in the series are real cases, as well as the cases in which they help in the investigation, so then we will tell you who they were.
Ed Kemper
Born in 1948 under the name Edmund Emil Kemper III. From an early age he suffered abuse from his mother who forced him to sleep in the basement of his house for fear that one day he would abuse his sisters, after escaping from home to live with his father, he was also rejected by this one and forced to live with his grandparents, until at the age of 15 he murdered them first, he murdered his grandmother with a shotgun, I waited until his grandfather came home and murdered him too, after the murders he called his mother to tell her what he had done and sat down to wait for the police. When questioned about the murders, he declared that “he just wanted to know what he would feel when he killed his grandmother” and that he murdered his grandfather because he assumed that he would be upset when he saw what have done.
After the murders he was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Atascadero, California, however, five years later he was released and placed under the supervision of his mother, this decision created great controversy among the doctors in charge of Kemper.
Just under three years after his release, Ed Kemper started the murder spree for which he would gain infamy and a name in history, the murders that earned him the nickname «The Co-Ed Killer.» of Colegialas). Between 1972 and 1973 he murdered 6 students from the same school where his mother was a secretary -After murdering them he beheaded them and buried their heads in his mother’s garden, he also embarked on necrophilic sexual practices-, to finally murder his mother and her best friend. During the time he was released, Kemper became a regular in the bars that the police attended, making great friends with several of them, so after murdering his mother, he took the car and drove to Colorado, desperate Because the murders did not appear on the radio, he called the police to tell them where he was and what he had done, after several hours he called again and asked to speak with a detective friend of his, to whom he again confessed what had happened, After convincing him that he was the murderer they were looking for, he sat down to wait for several hours until the police came to arrest him
In November 1973 he was found guilty of eight murders, he asked for the death penalty to be imposed, even recommended to the judge that the method of execution be «death by torture», however at that time the death penalty was prohibited. in California. To this day Kemper remains in prison, he has been denied parole 4 times, so he has decided to stop opting for freedom since he knows that no one will ever grant it to him
In the series, Ed Kemper is masterfully portrayed by actor Cameron Britton.
Ben Miller “The Bra murders”
Born Benjamin Franklin Miller Jr. Between 1967 and 1971 five women were murdered in Stamford, Connecticut, all of the women were black prostitutes, all of them were strangled, four of them wearing their bras, hence the name with the one who knew the case.
Miller had a long history of mental problems, but he was also a religious fanatic who preached in the poor neighborhoods where the majority of the black population lived, so he became a suspect in the police almost immediately until that he was finally arrested in 1972, during his arrest he denied having committed the murders, however, he was pressured by some of the psychiatrists who interviewed him to admit to having committed them. In 1973 he was found not guilty on grounds of mental incapacity and was sentenced to stay for 25 years in a psychiatric hospital.
In 1989 a federal judge ruled that there were irregularities in his trial and ordered his release, however, Miller voluntarily agreed to stay in a psychiatric hospital where he died in 2005.
At the time Ressler and Douglas conducted the interviews, Miller was still found guilty of «The Bra murders.» The case remains unsolved to this day.
In Mindhunter, Ben Miller is the murderer who cannot be interviewed because he has refused to receive them in the mental hospital.
Richard Speck
Richard Speck was Born in 1941 under the name Richard Benjamin Speck. Speck is the only one of the murderers that the agent’s interview in the season who is not a serial killer, he for the part of him is a mass murderer – in other articles, I will explain the difference.
Speck had a difficult childhood, especially since his father passed away and his mother remarried a man who had a drinking problem and a long criminal history. He spent his entire adolescence accumulating rage and getting in trouble with the law repeatedly, until something in him exploded and the fateful July 13, 1966, arrived. That day Speck lost control completely, he spent all day drinking until the afternoon he raped and robbed a 53-year-old woman who had spent the day drinking in the same bars as him, in the robbery he obtained a knife and a gun that he would use later, after the rape he returned to the bar where he continued drinking until the night has come.
That same night, Speck rang the bell of a house that rented rooms for students, inside there were nine nursing students, threatening them with his weapon, he tied them and then took them one by one to the next room where he was murdered. , until he reached the eighth victim whom he raped and murdered when he found himself completely drugged and drunk, he lost count and did not realize that he had only murdered eight of the students, one of them had hidden under the bed and went she, the only survivor who was able to give clues to the police that led to Speck’s capture.
Four days after committing the murders, Speck tried to commit suicide, so that hospital staff where they treated him when they saw the «born to raise hell» tattoo alerted the police, thus managing to capture him. Speck was sentenced to death in 1969, however, his sentence was modified on appeal and he was sentenced to eight consecutive sentences of between fifty and one hundred and fifty years. Finally, Richard Speck died of a heart attack in prison in 1991 one day before his 50th birthday.
In the series, Richard Speck is portrayed by Jack Erdie.
Monte Rissell
Mount Rissell was Born in 1959 under the name of Monte Ralph Rissell. He began his criminal career at a very early age, by the time he was fourteen he had already been imprisoned for committing a couple of rapes, however, he was confined in a psychiatric hospital where he was discharged four years later. It is necessary to point out that while he was hospitalized he managed to deceive the doctors who believed that he was being cured, however, he continued to commit violations during the permits that were granted to him from time to time.
Once released, Rissell tried to direct his life, began a relationship with a girl and everything went more or less properly until she left him, determined to know what was happening, he went to spy on her and while he did, he realized that She was already with another boy, curiously he did not make the slightest attempt to attack her or the boy he was with, but returned to his home in Alexandria, Virginia. She remained in her car in the parking lot of the apartments where she lived, drinking and taking drugs until a woman alone in the parking lot, instantly began to fantasize about raping her and unloading her frustrations and anger on her, however, the woman was a prostitute for What, upon realizing that she was in danger, she preferred not to resist the rape, hoping that it would help her get out of the situation unscathed, curiously this submission triggered Rissell’s rage, convincing him that women wanted to be treated like that. way and deserved to be punished for it he murdered her.
Before being captured Monte Rissell murdered a total of five women. Interestingly, Rissell was able to add a sixth victim, however, while he was driving the car with her on board to go to the place where he planned to rape and murder her, she began to cry and asked him not to harm her since her father had cancer and she was the only help he had, as strange as it may sound, this moved Rissell who had lost a relative – it seems like a brother – to cancer and he empathized with her for what he let her go.
Once he was arrested, Monte Ralph Rissell was sentenced to five life sentences, currently, he remains in prison as parole was denied in 2012.
In the series Monte Rissell, he is portrayed by Sam Strike
Gene Devier
There is practically no information available about this murderer, it is only known that his real name was Darrel Gene Devier. He was not a serial killer, although the chances that he had ended up becoming one are high, what prevented this from happening was that they managed to stop him after the first murder.
In 1979 he kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 12-year-old girl, the police managed to arrest him and John Douglas had the opportunity to put his theory of «The Stone» into practice. According to this Douglas theory, everyone, criminals and normal people have a stone, an element that when confronted with it is capable of immediately disarming us, it is likely that Douglas formulated the theory after carrying out the investigation and the interrogation with Devier.
For this crime Devier was arrested and sentenced to death, his execution took place in the electric chair in 1995.
In the series Darrel Gene Devier is portrayed by Adam Zastrow
Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris “The Tool Box Killers”
Born the first as Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker in 1940 and the second as Roy Lewis Norris in 1949. Both came from troubled families in which they grew up practically as unwanted children, on the other hand, they both had a long criminal history before the meeting, which unfortunately happened in 1977 when they were both in the San Luis Obispo, California jail. During the time they shared in jail, they both became friends, almost immediately they discovered that they shared a sick interest in sexual violence and misogyny, that is how they planned the crimes they would commit, setting the rape and murder of a girl as their goal. of each year of age, from thirteen to nineteen.
Once they were out of jail, they soon found each other again, in February 1979 they met in a hotel to finalize their plans and bought a Van –in which they would commit the crimes- which they nicknamed “Murder Mac”
At first, they did not rape or murder any of the girls who were getting into the Van, as they took it as a kind of training for what they were about to start, however, everything changed on June 24, 1979, when they murdered his first victim. From that moment on, their violence escalated, until on October 31, 1979, they murdered their fifth and last victim.
Finally, the need to brag about his adventures was stronger than his prudence and Norris told in great detail to another of his friends what he had been doing with Bittaker, he decided to inform the police, and after checking the information that the Norris himself had given his friend the police arrest to the pair in November 1979.
Norris negotiated a settlement with the prosecutor to avoid the death penalty, in return he agreed to testify against Bittaker. In 1980 he was sentenced to between 45 years and life imprisonment.
In 1981 Bittaker was sentenced to the death penalty, on the condition that if one day his sentence was commuted then he would have to serve a sentence of 199 years and 4 months in prison.
As of today both remain in prison, Norris is in the Richard J. Donovan jail in California, his next hearing to seek parole will take place in 2019, Bittaker on the other hand is in the San Quentin jail.
In the series they do not appear on the screen, however agent Ford puts one of the new agents to listen to the recording of his interview with them, so they are part of the murderers who already interviewed for that moment of their investigation.
Jerry Brudos
Born Jerome Henry Brudos in 1939. The second son of his family, his sister wanted to have a daughter, however when Jerome was born his illusions were frustrated so he began to despise and abuse him, as a result of these abuses and contempt, from a very young age Brudos began to develop a fetish with women’s shoes, this fetish led him to commit different crimes, for which he spent practically all his adolescence in psychological therapy and psychiatric hospitals until at age 17 he attacked a girl, which caused him to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Shortly after leaving the mental hospital, he married a 17-year-old girl whom he forced to walk around the house naked and do all the housework naked, except for a pair of heels while he photographed her. During his marriage he had two children when his wife could no longer satisfy his sexual desires, Brudos became frustrated and became a violent man.
Between 1968 and 1969 Brudos murdered at least four women, of which he kept parts of their bodies as souvenirs, later it was discovered that he used to dress as a woman, stalk the university campus and that he also used to buy women’s shoes to wear when no one saw him, arrested for his crimes, Brudos was sentenced to life in prison in Salem, Oregon. Brudos died of liver cancer in 2006 while in prison.
In the series, Jerry Brudos is played by Happy Anderson.
Dennis Rader “BTK”
Born Dennis Lynn Rader in 1945. According to his confessions, he began to torture animals from a very young age, also from a very young age he developed a fetish for women’s clothing that he began to steal and wear when no one saw him. In his youth, he enlisted in the United States Air Force, in which he spent four years. In 1971 he married, during their marriage he had two children, which is one of the most surprising things in his case because he was an exemplary father and husband according to his own family, which is why they never suspected that he could have something that does with the «BTK» murders
His murder career began in January 1974 when he murdered the Otero family, murdering the four members of the family within his own home, which is atypical for a serial killer – committing multiple murders – a few months later he committed his second murder, however, after this murder he stopped killing for 3 years, until in 1977 he claimed 2 more victims, to enter a new period of peace that was interrupted when between 1985 and 1986 he claimed 2 more victims, his last victim was murdered in 1991 although this victim was not related to him until he was arrested and confessed to his crimes.
Rader or BTK as he is better known is one of the most peculiar murderers since he used to tempt the police with his letters – which ultimately led to his arrest. The letters began after some young men tried to claim the murder of the Otero family, angrily he sent a letter to the newspapers claiming responsibility for the murders and demanding that they refer to him as the BTK strangler – Bind them, Torture them, Kill them, ( Bind them, torture them, murder them) -. On the other hand, Rader dismantled one of the great myths about serial killers, before knowing his case, the consensus was that a serial killer was not able to stop, once they started their homicidal career they are not able to stop killing, but surprise, by the time Rader was arrested he had not committed a single murder for 13 years and was a respected member of his community.
In 2004 the Wichita newspaper in Kansas published a report on the 30th anniversary of the Otero family massacre, in the article, it was speculated that BTK should be dead, otherwise he would have continued killing. When Rader read the article he could not contain himself and started a new chain of correspondence with newspapers and police, finally, in 2005 Rader asked the police if they could trace him using a floppy disk – diskette – to which the police answered no, handing him a trap, he was eventually traced back to the Kansas Lutheran Church computer, where they realized that the fearsome killer they were looking for was Dennis Lynn Rader, President of the church council, a prominent member of the community and exemplary father
Rader was arrested in 2005, in his trial he was sentenced to ten life sentences having to serve a minimum of 175 years in jail, to this day he remains incarcerated in the El Dorado prison in Kansas.
In the BTK series, he has not been arrested, on the contrary, he is the suspicious man who appears at the beginning of each episode, he is played by Sonny Valicenti.
The cases of Benjamin Barnwright, Frank Janderman, Rose Barnwright Janderman, and Dwight Taylor all indicate that they were created purely for television fiction, although they may be based on or inspired by real cases.
* In the series, David Berkowitz «The Son of Sam» and Charles Manson are spoken on several occasions, so we assume that they were part of the second season that has already been announced.Anderson
