The True Crime Thread (tw: all)

Here's a more detailed rundown of the case from CNN, and another one from the NYT. (And happy National DNA Day, 'cause apparently that's a thing?)

 

Rating those Winner because FINALLY!! They finally caught the bastard!!

 

Well, it's like they say: Old serial killers never die, they just live quietly in Sacramento for forty years while other, better-known serial killers usurp their nom de murder. I think that's how the saying goes.

Seriously though, I'm real interested to find out what it was that made this guy a suspect, and whether he was ever looked at before. And I wanna get a copy of Michelle McNamara's book, too.

 

They just arrested someone in the disappearance/assumed murder of Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman, too, it's been a good week for arrests in unsolved cold cases!

 

I've been reading articles about how they caught him. NPR seems to have indicated that they found trophies he took in his house, but they didn't say what they found. I'm sure it will come to light what they found. I know they found his DNA from an unnamed place at the crime scene too. That seems like pretty solid so I hope the trial is a slam dunk!

 

apparently he was kicked off the police force because he was caught shoplifting dog repellent and a hammer (red flag), and when he was put on probation they were like "we can put u under investigation" i.e. dig around a bit and check him out and he was like "......nah im just gonna quit, seeya" (RED FLAG)

 

I had been wondering how the police got the DNA. Turns out they used a genealogy website. It initially lead them to the wrong guy. I hope this doesn't complicate stuff too much.

 

Peter Madsen sentenced to life in prison for murder of Kim Wall.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kim-wa...trial-verdict-denmark-live-updates-2018-4-25/

 

good :| that whole case was just fuckin wild

 

A friend of mine said a while back that the single most horrifying video he's ever seen of Hitler was a casual thing taken by Eva Braun, where he was joking around and acting like a normal middle-aged man goofing off for his wife, specifically because it's such a chilling example of his humanity. And thinking about it, I think I might have the same feelings about the Harris Levels.

See, Eric Harris was an avid fan of DOOM. He even created a few custom levels of his own--a fairly common pastime among hardcore fans of the game. After the Columbine massacre, rumors about the "Harris Levels," as they're often called, began to circulate. Specifically, it was widely believed that Harris had created levels specifically modeled after parts of his school, and that he'd populated them representations of classmates.

But the only truth to this is that Harris created a few custom levels. They were pretty standard DOOM fan level fare, from what I know of the game. The notion that he made levels in the image of his high school and classmates is completely incorrect.

And in a weird way...I think that honestly makes it more chilling. The game wasn't some devious plot--it was a simple pastime, the kind that plenty of perfectly normal and harmless people enjoy, and it just shows that human fucking beings are capable of pure evil.

Sorry if this is the wrong thread for this, and for rambling. I've just been thinking about this a lot lately.

 

As the OP and therefore Thread God I decree it to be exactly the right place for any and all such thoughts. (Speaking of Columbine, I absolutely recommend Dave Cullen's book—it's really interesting and debunks a lot of the myths and misconceptions about the shooting.)

 

I’ll have to check it out!

Speaking of books, I’m in the process of reading I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. I’m not very far in but I feel like I can already recommend it. REALLY fascinating, EXTREMELY well-written, and utterly groundbreaking for obvious reasons.

 

Well, yeah, human beings have evil thoughts all the damn time. They just don't usually ACT on them.

Spoiler: TW for thoughts of geeky kids the day it happened

On the day of the Columbine shooting some friends and I were chatting online and we both expressed surprise that something like this hadn't happened sooner. We had been bullied at school and had problems with kids who were popular, particularly kids who were into sports and evangelical kids. That's why I left school early to go to college early. We all understood why Harris and Klebold might have had fantasies about shooting up their school, and frankly we all felt kinda weird about it because we knew it was a really bad thing but it felt like something that had been coming for a long, long time. But none of us would ever have actually done it. And for most of us, access to guns wasn't really that difficult. We didn't refrain from shooting up our schools because we couldn't get guns, we refrained from doing so because we didn't actually want to commit murder.

The difference between good people and evil people is that they both sometimes have really awful horrible thoughts, but good people choose not to act on thoughts that they know are horrible, and they keep choosing not to act on them.

 

I feel like more people need to see Hitler acting normal. Because when we other him to the point that he's a monster, something not human, there's that problem where we divorce his hate from reality. Sometimes people seem to treat him like a mythical villain.

I also think People tend to use Hitler as a measuring stick. 'well, he's not as bad as Hitler'/'I mean, it's not like I'm Hitler.' but the thing is, Hitler was a person, not a moral measurement. His contemporaries are people. And I think it's important to remember that so we know what we're looking out for.