Interview.Vicente Garrido: "Certain serial killers believe they are 'creating' when they kill"
Murders: From the Asunta to Alcàsser case: why we love stories based on real crimes
In the mind of a filicide: what leads a father to kill his son
In 1888,
Jack The Ripper's
fame
spread
from London to the rest of the world through the press and the telegraph.
The
Lloyd's Weekly
was the first newspaper to echo the crimes of the first media murderer in history.
With a mixture of trepidation and interest, the society for the first time followed in detail the police investigations and the successive appearance of the five bodies of prostitutes brutally murdered in the East End. In 2014, a 22-year-old called
Elliot Rodger uploaded a video to YouTube in which he recounted the details of the massacre he was preparing to commit that day.
Later, he emailed a long autobiographical manuscript to acquaintances and relatives in which he admitted his
frustration at not being able to find a girlfriend
and his plans to commit the slaughter.
He then drove to the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he made several stops where he killed six people and injured 13 others before committing suicide.
many criminals have become celebrities
But never as now, in the digital age, have we been able to have so much detail and so immediately about the murders, their victims and their motivations. So, has the murderer adapted to modernity?
Has your
modus operandi
, his way of selecting and catching the victims?
What leads a murderer to contact journalists and appear on TV?
Does the media influence the copycat effect?
These are some of the questions that Paz Velasco de la Fuente answers in
Homo criminalis
(Ariel). "Besides being
Homo sapiens
are
Homo criminalis
.
We always find a way to use everything to our advantage.
The
Homo criminalis
knows how to use any advance in technology, in the economy or in the new professions that arise to create new spaces to commit crimes, "says this criminologist during an interview. Traditional crimes, some updated, coexist with new forms of crime for women that an endless list of terms has emerged, many in English: the
copycat killers
(imitators of other murderers),
cyberstalking
or
cyberbullying
(different forms of harassment or defamation through the internet),
happy slapping
(to record and broadcast attacks),
sexorsion
, misogyny
on-line
of the
incels
(acronym in English for
involuntary celibates
, who blame women for not being able to have sex, like Elliot Rodger). "
The crime scene has changed:
from a physical scene in which there was an interaction between the victim and the criminal, whether it was a rape, a jerk or a murder, we have passed to a new virtual space in which there are potentially millions of victims and millions of perpetrators.
Millions of people who can steal from your account, harass you, blackmail or locate you through your computer or your mobile "
, says this professor of Criminology and Security Sciences at the International University of Valencia.
"Through the Internet we carry out behaviors that we probably would not do in real life. It gives the opportunity to be another person, both victims and aggressors, you can be whoever you want."
Homo criminalis
that we have turned crime into a form of entertainment.
From the black novel to the countless movies and series about real or fictional murders and detectives who solve them.
"The Internet allows you to see a death or an autopsy live, corpses and dying victims. On the internet you can be whoever you want and consume whatever you want"
.
Learning from the killers
Besides entertaining, they inspire other killers.
There have always been criminal impersonators, but the internet makes it extremely easy to get ideas to kill or get away with it.
Naturally, says Velasco de la Fuente, "there are individuals who have repeated a crime after reading about it in a book or newspaper but
never before have we had so much material available "
This criminologist maintains that at present there are a series of elements that have led to a change in serial crime.
There are fewer murders overall and fewer serial killers emerge for various reasons, including because there are longer sentences, they are more adept at leaving no traces, and investigators are much more prepared:
"The number of murders has dropped thanks to advances in forensic science, the use of mobiles and geolocation, and behavioral analysts
.
But also because there have been important changes in society, which is less sexually repressed.
Before many serial murders occurred to satisfy paraphilias and now there are many places to satisfy them without resorting to crime, "he argues." Until 30 or 40 years ago a serial killer could kill between 8 and 14 people before being arrested, some to many more, like John Wayne Gacy,
Pogo the clown
, who raped and killed 33 people.
Now they are usually arrested after the second or third victim, although there are exceptions, such as the Long Island murderer, who the police have not yet identified, "he says. American Sammuel Little, who died in prison last year, even killed 93 women, while the Russian Mikhail Popkov, nicknamed by the press
The purger
, murdered 76, all of them women.
Of others we have no traces.
Researcher Thomas Hargrove claims that there are at least 2,000 unidentified serial killers in the US.
And it is that just as the investigators are now better prepared, the murderers also learn quickly: "They have information everywhere, specialized criminology magazines, they can attend conferences in which they explain how not to leave traces at the scene of a crime ... That is why there is a symbiosis between investigators and criminals. They have at hand, and sometimes with a single click, material and information to assassinate someone, for example, putting a chemical or a medicine to simulate a natural death and get away with it. , at least during his first crimes. "
A form of entertainment
Another issue that he addresses in his book is how the mass media influence serial murder.
"It is always interesting news, which is consumed a lot. There is a symbiosis between the press and serial murders;
the press feeds on the news and many murderers have also used the press, to justify themselves or to become famous "
Both the American Susan Smith - she killed her two children - and Ana Julia Quezada, the confessed murderer of the child Gabriel, the son of her partner, sent letters to journalists to justify themselves.
And just a few days ago, Rosa Peral, the urban guard sentenced to 25 years in prison for being an accessory in the murder of her husband, intervened on Tele5 They also wrote letters to the press or the police stating their motives for killing and even creating his own aliases Dennis L. Rader, better known as
BTK
, and David Berkowitz,
The son of Sam.
Because one can leave a mark on history in many ways and murder is certainly one of them.
Some couldn't help it and others have sought it out.
"I just wanted to be someone, to let people know who I am," Robert Benjamin Smith declared in 1966 after killing four women and a child in an Arizona beauty salon.
During the previous weeks, Smith was following the investigation of two criminal stories that occurred in the United States that same year: that of Richard Speck, who murdered eight women in Chicago in a single night, and that of Charles Whitman, who killed 15 people since the clock tower of the University of Texas.
From one day to the next they went from being anonymous subjects to being on the front pages of newspapers and in all the news.
Benjamin Smith was inspired by them to commit his crimes, becoming the first
copycat mass shooter
, as serial killers who imitate others are called. "Everyone knows who he is
Deck Killer
[killed six people] or Tony King [murderer of Sonia Carabantes and Rocío Wanninkhof].
Killers become celebrities ",
says the criminologist, who remembers how we have gone from reading
The key
, the famous newspaper of events, to television programs with journalists specialized in these events. The criminologist believes that despite the search for an audience and that "some media continue to delve into the pain",
the treatment of these events has greatly improved in the Spanish media
.
The Alcasser murders in 1992, he says, "were the turning point" and an example of what is not admissible as a society.
"Nowadays a circus like that would be unthinkable, although I think that sometimes data on the victims are still given that are not necessary." As an example of the improvement in the coverage of murders, he mentions the disappearance of Marta Calvo: "It is a crime media in which the murderer has used new technologies to select his victim. I think that, in general, the media have explained the case well and taken advantage of it to warn of the risks involved in meeting strangers, but the crime has also been committed. error of giving personal data of the victim with which it seems that it was hinted that due to his behavior he was looking for him to meet strangers. A victim is always a victim ". From his point of view,
the biggest risk of the digital age right now in our society is interacting with strangers.
New offenders
"On the internet you can get everything you want to get, also people", says Velasco de la Fuente.
Activities linked to organized crime such as human trafficking have also evolved thanks to new technologies: "Before it was essential to kidnap and transfer people before selling them, now there are other ways to publicize 'this merchandise' and negotiate with buyers taking fewer risks, "he says.
The call
dark web
or the dark internet and browsers like Tor make it easier for traffickers. Cyberspace also offers the feeling of greater impunity.
"There are a series of elements that make it seem safe for many subjects to commit a crime. People who in real life would never commit a robbery or rob a bank due to planning and the risks involved can take advantage of their computer knowledge to achieve the same benefit, installing spyware and stealing passwords from homes, for example. "
Therefore, he warns, "everything you upload can be seen by millions of people. When you go online, you are the product."
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