Two of Americas Most Wanted and Renowned Serial Killers, Gary Ridgway and Dennis Rader - Essay Example

Assignment Society is inflicted with a large number of problems that arise from people who are not of sound mind. Such people have motives that do not suit the rest of the people that they live around as it threatens their sense of being and security and have the potentiality to put their lives in danger. Serial killers are extremely common and heard of because in the recent past, the crime rates have gone up tremendously, leaving the lives of people in jeopardy. It has become extremely difficult for people to trust others around them and leave their children alone at homes for fear of them being abducted or kidnapped by strange people who pretend to be nice. This paper deals with the lives of two of America’s most wanted and renowned serial killers, Gary Ridgway and Dennis Rader. Both of them have caused a great amount of grievances and havoc among the people by killing several individuals and were hunted down by the police with an aim to stop murder from taking place. This paper observes a compare and contrast of the lives of these two serial killers, their motives and the way that they went about murdering people. Gary Leon Ridgway and Dennis Rader were both born in the countryside; Ridgeway in Utah and Rader in Kansas, and only have a four year gap between each other. They both have gruesome nicknames which have made them quite unpopular among the people – Gary is called ‘Green River Gary’, the ‘Green River Killer’ or ‘The Riverman’ whereas Dennis has adorned the nickname of ‘BTK’ or the ‘Bind, Torture, Kill Strangler.’ Both of them have the commonality of strangling their victims and killing them, then dumping their bodies away in order to dispose of them. Both have been subject to life imprisonment without parole and are hated among people for having killed so many people without any reason at all. The police are still trying to understand their reasoning behind the killings. Delving into the personal lives of serial killers always helps a person understand the atrocities of their past and what made them become the way they are in the present. Ridgway had a very troubled childhood because he often witnessed his parents fighting violently with each other. He was dragged into the fight and abused by his mother for whom he began to develop both anger and sexual feelings. (Prothero, Mark; Carlton Smith ) Rader on the other hand had a very normal childhood and graduated from high school and then college. As a child, he loved torturing animals and hated them with all his might. He also had a sexual fetish for women’s under garments; this was seen in his killings as he often killed women, stole their under garments and went about wearing them on his own. What is common between the two is the sexual energy that they both contained in abundance. Both men were married more than once as well and even gave birth to children. Ridgway was obsessed with having sexual intercourse and despite being married, took to harbouring his fantasies with prostitutes. He has been known to demand intercourse from his second wife in public places as well. Rader married two women as well and as mentioned above, had very weird sexual fetishes for under garments. (Beattie, Robert) After graduating from high school, Ridgway joined the Navy however he had a very low IQ and his friends from school and college did not remember him much. As a child, he had stabbed a young boy in the woods and told people that he often wondered what it would be like to kill someone. Rader on the other hand was quite the society man as he was a Cub Scout leader, head of the Lutheran Church and elected president of the Congregation Council. He had worked a number of jobs including an assembler for a gear firm, census field operations supervisor and even a dog catcher. One of his neighbours had complained that he purposely euthanized their dog for no reason at all. Both killers were not afraid to admit to their wrongdoings and were arrested within a matter of time. Ridgway was also a religious fanatic and was sometimes torn between his love for religion and committing the sin of having sexual intercourse as well as necrophilia. Rader on the other hand did not believe in any such thing, and simply murdered 10 people. His wife complained that he would often leave home early, perhaps to bury the bodies or dispose of them somewhere where the police could not find them. Ridgway’s third wife also told the interviewers that after her presence in his life, the number of murders that he had committed had gone down a reasonable amount and she was happy that she was able to bring about such a change. Rader’s wife as well tried her best but divorced him because her mental health was getting affected dearly. Thus, women in both the killer’s lives helped them to an extent. Ridgway has been known to have murdered at least 71 women within a decade and his victims were mostly prostitutes or runaways who he had had sexual intercourse with. He strangled most of his victims, killed them and then dumped them in the wooded area around the Green River, earning his nickname. He has also been known to have intercourse with the dead victim’s body sometimes. Despite these killings, he could only have remained a suspect and not proven to kill these women because of lack of evidence. He also passed a polygraph test and thus the police could not do much but arrest him on charge of prostitution. (Keppel, Robert; Birnes, William J.; Rule, Ann) Rader on the other hand has been proven to murder 10 people by suffocating them with objects like ropes, belts and plastic bags. He has even been known to stalk two women who had to then move away for reasons of security. The police caught him because of the letters that he would send to them in which he described his killings. They finally were able to trace the document and put together his DNA samples because of which they arrested him for 175 years of imprisonment without parole. In conclusion, both these serial killers have committed a large number of wrong doings by murdering innocent people. What is extremely astonishing is that they both had so many aspects in common as discussed within the purview of this paper. This helps us to understand how every killer comes from the same line of thought, and mostly has a troubled childhood which causes him to become a bully in the first place. It is important to understand that the police have take every step in order to counter such problems and despite that they still exist in the world today. Works Cited Prothero, Mark; Carlton Smith (2006). Defending Gary: Unraveling the Mind of the Green River Killer. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Keppel, Robert; Birnes, William J.; Rule, Ann (2004). The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer. Simon and Schuster. Beattie, Robert (2005). Nightmare In Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler. New American Library. Read More