Thrill killing
Encyclopedia
A thrill killing is a term used to describe a premeditated murder
committed by a person who is not necessarily suffering from mental instability, and does not derive sexual satisfaction from killing victims, or have anything against them, and sometimes do not know them, but is instead motivated
by the sheer excitement of the act.
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
committed by a person who is not necessarily suffering from mental instability, and does not derive sexual satisfaction from killing victims, or have anything against them, and sometimes do not know them, but is instead motivated
Motive (law)
A motive, in law, especially criminal law, is the cause that moves people to induce a certain action. Motive, in itself, is not an element of any given crime; however, the legal system typically allows motive to be proven in order to make plausible the accused's reasons for committing a crime, at...
by the sheer excitement of the act.
Documented incidents
- May 21, 1924: University students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murder 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Leopold, age 19 at the time of the murder, and Loeb, 18, believed themselves to be NietzscheanPhilosophy of Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche developed his philosophy during the late 19th century amid growing criticism of G. W. F. Hegel's philosophic system.Nietzsche owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and admitted that Schopenhauer was...
übermenschÜbermenschThe Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
en who could commit a "perfect crime" (in this case a kidnapping and murder). Both were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years; Loeb died in prison at the age of 30, while Leopold was paroled in 1958 after serving 33 years in prison. - September 8, 1988: Twenty-year-old bank clerk Janine Balding was abducted from railway station at Sutherland, New South Wales, Australia by a group of five homeless youths with extensive criminal records, and driven to nearby Minchinbury where she was repeatedly raped by three of the male offenders before being bludgeoned, hog-tied and drowned in a dam. The ringleaders, 22-year-old Stephen Wayne 'Shorty' Jamieson, 16-year-old Matthew James Elliott, and 14-year-old Bronson Matthew Blessington, were arrested the next day and later sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release on parole; Blessington and Elliott are the youngest offenders to receive this sentence in Australian history.
- September 15, 1990: Debra Holt, the mother of future world champion boxer Kendall HoltKendall HoltKendall Holt is an American professional boxer fighting in the light welterweight class. He is a one-time world champion, having held the WBO junior welterweight championship from July 5, 2008 until April 5, 2009.-Personal:...
, and also known as Debra Holts and "Cocoa Tan", and three men she had met while staying at the Alexander Hamilton Hotel, were convicted of killing a homeless man during an evening of senseless violence and crime in Paterson, NJ. - August 19, 1992: labourer and career criminal Andrew Peter Garforth murdered nine-year-old schoolgirl Ebony Simpson at Bargo, New South Wales, Australia. Garforth snatched Simpson as she was walking home from school and threw her into the boot of his car, raped her repeatedly, bound her hands with speaker wire and weighted her schoolbag before throwing her into a dam where she drowned. Garforth joined in the search for Simpson before being arrested. Garforth, who showed no remorse for his actions in court, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years without the possibility of release on parole.
- February 12, 1993: Two 10-year old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, abducted and murdered toddler James BulgerMurder of James BulgerJames Patrick Bulger was a boy from Kirkby, England, who was murdered on 12 February 1993, when aged two. He was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables .Bulger disappeared from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, while...
in Liverpool, England. Thompson and Venables did not know the child but wished to kill someone. They were imprisoned for eight years. - October 29, 1995: Handyman and mechanic and convicted sex offender Paul Stephen Osborne raped and bashed to death 10-year-old Leanne Oliver and nine-year-old Patricia Leedie with a tree branch and a wheel jack at Warana Beach, Queensland, Australia. After drinking 12 beers and smoking marijuana at a barbecue, Osborne took the girls to the beach for a swim; Leanne Oliver's father, Alby Oliver, found Osborne's wallet and the bodies of the girls in sand dunes the next morning after having become concerned about the girl's welfare. Osborne told police the next day when they asked him why he killed the girls "I don't know. I don't know whether I blacked out or went crazy. They seemed pretty nice." Osborne pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of life imprisonment plus 46 years without the possibility of release on parole.
- April 19, 1997: New Jersey teens Thomas Koskovich and Jayson Vreeland ordered a pizza and ambushed the two men who delivered it, Georgio Gallara and Jeremy Giordano, before going bowling. Koskovich and Vreeland later admitted to police that they wanted to experience what it was like to commit murder.
- July 17, 1997: Jesse McAllister and Bradley Price killed a man and a woman on a Seaside, OregonSeaside, OregonSeaside is a city in Clatsop County, Oregon, United States. The name Seaside is derived from Seaside House, a historic summer resort built in the 1870s by railroad magnate Ben Holladay. The city's population was 6,457 at the 2010 census.-History:...
beach for no other reason than "to experience it [murder]." - September 30, 1997: 18 year old Todd Rizzo bashed 13-year-old Stanley Edwards to death with a 3-lbPound (mass)The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...
sledgehammer after he lured the teenager by telling him that they would hunt snakes in his backyard. Rizzo was convicted of the murder in 1999 and is currently on Connecticut's death rowCapital punishment in ConnecticutCapital punishment in Connecticut currently exists as an available sanction for a criminal defendant upon conviction for the commission of a capital offense. Connecticut, along with New Hampshire, are the only two New England states that maintain a death penalty. Since the 1976 United States...
. - October 6, 1997: Bega schoolgirl murdersBega schoolgirl murdersThe Bega schoolgirl murders refers to the abduction, rape and murder of New South Wales schoolgirls, 14-year-old Lauren Margaret Barry and 16-year-old Nichole Emma Collins of Bega, New South Wales on 6 October 1997....
: New Zealand-born career criminal Lindsay Hoani Beckett and Victorian prison escapee Leslie Alfred Camilleri murdered 14-year-old Lauren Barry and 16-year-old Nichole Collins at Fiddler's Green Creek, Victoria, Australia. After accepting an offer of a lift to a party, the girls were abducted, raped and tortured over the next 10½ hours before being stabbed by Beckett on the orders of Camilleri; Beckett and Camilleri drove back to Yass and had breakfast after the murders. Beckett pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 35 years in exchange for testifying against Camilleri, who was found guilty and sentenced to two consecutive sentences of life imprisonment plus 155 years without the possibility of release on parole. In sentencing Camilleri, Justice Frank Vincent told him that "Through your own actions, you have forfeited your right ever to walk among us again". - May 25, 2002: In what was described as a "sick game," Benjamin Sifrit and his wife Erika lured 32-year-old Joshua Ford and his 51-year-old girlfriend Martha "Geney" Crutchley to their Ocean City, MarylandOcean City, MarylandOcean City, sometimes known as OC, or OCMD, is an Atlantic Ocean resort town in Worcester County, Maryland, United States. Ocean City is widely known in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and is a frequent destination for vacationers in that area...
condo and ordered them to disrobe before shooting Ford three times and stabbing Crutchley several times in the abdomen. Their bodies were then dismembered and disposed of in DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
. After separate trials, Benjamin Sifrit was sentenced to 38 years imprisonment and Erika Sifrit to life imprisonment plus 20 years. - March 29, 2005: James Patrick Roughan, nephew of convicted killer Katherine KnightKatherine KnightKatherine Mary Knight was the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. She was convicted of the murder of her partner, John Charles Thomas Price in October 2001, and is currently detained in Mulawa Correctional Centre now known as Silverwater women's...
, and his friend, Christopher Clark Jones, stabbed and bashed 17-year-old Morgan Jay Shepherd more than 133 times before removing his head with an axe in Dayboro, Queensland, Australia after a lengthy drinking session; Shepherd's head was used as a puppet and bowling ball, according to witnesses. Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 27 years; three youths, who cannot be named because of their age, were sentenced to two years detention for assisting in the disposal of the body. - May 2005-August 2006: Two men in Phoenix, AZ (dubbed "Serial ShooterSerial ShooterThe Serial Shooter refers to what authorities now believe to be two men who committed multiple drive-by shootings targeting random pedestrians. The shootings occurred in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, between May 2005 and August 2006, simultaneous to the search for the serial killer known as the...
" by the media), Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman, went on a year-long random shooting spree. The murderous acts were called by the offenders themselves "Random recreational violence". In total 8 people were killed in the spree and 17 injured. Both men were found guilty. - June 18, 2006: Two 16-year-old girls, who cannot be named because of their age, strangled Eliza Jane Davis with electrical cable and buried her body under a vacant house in Collie, Western Australia, Australia, after the three had attended a party. The girls told police they knew it was wrong to kill but it "felt right", and they did not regret Davis' death. Both girls were sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 15 years.
- December 17, 2006: Couple Jessica Ellen Stasinowsky, 20, and Valerie Paige Parashumti, 19, drugged, bashed and strangled their 16-year-old flatmate, Stacey Mitchell, before disposing of her body in a wheelie bin in Perth, Western Australia, Australia. Parashumti and Stasinowsky originally told police that Mitchell had moved to Queensland after an argument, but later confessed to the crime; they had discussed killing people on several occasions. Both women pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 24 years, which was increased to 31 years on appeal under new legislation, the longest non-parole period handed down to a woman in Australian history. Justice Peter Blaxell said that had the women been convicted by a jury, he would have sentenced them to life imprisonment without the possibility of release on parole.
- June 25, 2007–July 16, 2007: Two young men, Viktor Sayenko and Igor SuprunyuckDnepropetrovsk maniacsThe Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs is the media epithet for the killers responsible for a string of brutal murders in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine in June and July 2007. The case gained additional notoriety because the killers made video recordings of some of the murders, with one of the videos leaking to the...
, murdered 21 people from June 25, 2007 to July 16, 2007 in Ukraine. There is no apparent motive for the murders. Many photographs and videos were taken by the killers as a "memory" of their brutal spree, of which one video was leaked onto the Internet. Both men were sentenced to life in prison. - October 2009: Two teenagers, Steven Spader and Christopher Gribble murdered a mother and severely injured her daughter during a home invasion in Mont Vernon, New HampshireMont Vernon, New HampshireMont Vernon is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 2,409 at the 2010 census.It is not clear why it is spelled differently from the many other towns in the United States named after Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington...
. Spader had always been fascinated in committing a murder. Both Spader and Gribble were sentenced to life in prison while three other accomplices are also serving prison time.
In film and television
- Rope (film)Rope (film)Rope is a 1948 American thriller film based on the play Rope by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions...
- The Thrill KillersThe Thrill KillersThe Thrill Killers is a horror/thriller film released in 1964 and directed by low-budget film-maker Ray Dennis Steckler. It stars Cash Flagg and Liz Renay....
- American Psycho (film)American Psycho (film)American Psycho is a 2000 cult thriller film directed by Mary Harron based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the same name. Though predominantly a psycho thriller, the film also blends elements of horror, satire, and black comedy...
- Murder by NumbersMurder by NumbersMurder by Numbers is a 2002 psychological thriller film produced and directed by Barbet Schroeder. It stars Sandra Bullock, Ben Chaplin, Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt. It is loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb case....
- Hostel (2005 film)
- Mr. BrooksMr. BrooksMr. Brooks is a 2007 thriller film directed by Bruce A. Evans starring Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, and William Hurt. It was released on June 1, 2007...
- Dexter (TV series)Dexter (TV series)Dexter is an American television drama series, which debuted on Showtime on October 1, 2006. The sixth season premiered on October 2, 2011. The series centers on Dexter Morgan , a bloodstain pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who moonlights as a serial killer...
- A Clockwork Orange (film)A Clockwork Orange (film)A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick...
- Natural Born KillersNatural Born KillersNatural Born Killers is a 1994 crime/black comedy film directed by Oliver Stone about two victims of traumatic childhoods who became lovers and psychopathic serial killers, and are irresponsibly glorified by the mass media...