On my CAVDEF wiki, I've been compiling a lot of evidence along the same lines as McGowan: http://cavdef.org/w/index.php?title=Serial_killers It covers most of what he does in the book but also expands on it with new discoveries. Because that CAVDEF page is essentially a data dump, I considered it worthwhile to post it on this section of the board (formerly called the Data Dump). And anyone who is doing the same type of research is invited to post it here.
Some noteworthy discoveries, at least to me, include:
- When women began disappearing from the Seattle area in a series of grisly murders that would be attributed to Ted Bundy, several witnesses told the Seattle police that they had seen this "Ted" character leading cult meetings. And there are some curious indications that Bundy was not involved alone. As Bundy moved from Seattle to Utah and then Colorado, two persons-of-interest in the Seattle murders also moved to those locations at the same time, and they arguably fit the evidence better than Bundy. In Bundy's trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell in Aspen CO, the star witness identified not Bundy but Pitkin County Undersheriff Ben Meyers. Meyers had come to Pitkin County after resigning as Grand Junction CO police chief, which he did once investigators for Ken Botham began probing his financial dealings. Botham (who his sons maintain was framed) was on trial for the murder of Linda Miracle, killed just before she was able to come forward with "news that was going to shock the whole town". Miracle was one of numerous women murdered in Grand Junction in 1975, all of whom were involved in drugs and/or prostitution, often with police officers including the chief himself.
- John Wayne Gacy clearly did not act alone. A prosecution witness actually testified in court that, as Gacy was raping him, there was another young man in front of him "giggling". One of the murders happened when plane records prove Gacy was not even in the state of Illinois. And victim John Mowery disappeared right after Gacy's employee Michael Rossi moved in with Mowery; according to Mowery's friends, Rossi was glad to see Mowery gone and once bragged that he knew about a secret location where a bunch of dead bodies were buried. Rossi and his co-worker David Cram admitted to digging graves in Gacy's crawlspace but claimed not to know they were graves. Another employee of Gacy's was Phillip Paske, a pimp of young boys and girls who worked with pedophile John Norman. Norman operated multiple pedophile networks with clients around the country, some of whom were "prominent people" and "federal employees in Washington". In a 1992 interview Gacy would point the finger at Rossi, Cram, and Paske, which most people dismissed even though it seems likely that all three of them were accomplices to Gacy, and even had victims of their own who Gacy did not kill. I posted an earlier thread about this here: http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41197
- The conviction of Bobby Joe Long relied mainly on fiber evidence done by star FBI analyst Michael Malone. In the late 90s, Malone was utterly discredited for falsifying fiber matches that didn't exist. As a St. Petersburg Times article on the scandal noted about the Bobby Joe Long case: "the Justice Department review raises the possibility that the fibers, which had color differences, came from different sources."
- Bob Berdella of Kansas City, a sadistic killer similar to Gacy and Dahmer who tortured young men and boys while raping them, was well-connected within the city. He was formerly a chef at the city's most elite country clubs, fundraised for the mayor, was a liaison to boys' group homes, and somehow ended up as a drug counselor who a local judge would send addicted boys to for treatment. In fact, one of Berdella's victims was actually appointed to him by the court. Berdella told victim Chris Bryson, who managed to escape, that he was associated with others in town who also enjoyed sexually torturing young males. A Kansas City journalist who tried looking into Berdella's connections had her taped interview with Berdella seized and destroyed by authorities, then buried her evidence and left town.
- Officially, there is no doubt that all the DNA from the Golden State Killer crimes points to the same person. But in reality, there were many problems with the DNA that suggest there could be as many as five different perpetrators. Contra Costa County's DNA initially didn't match that of Orange County, then later after supposedly being retested it did. Ventura County for whatever reason couldn't test Orange County's DNA profile on their own, and had to send theirs to Orange County to get a match. Santa Barbara County said outright that their DNA didn't match the Orange County profile; later, however, they allegedly discovered never-before-seen DNA at a different crime scene in their county that did match. Sacramento County, upon hearing the news of these other DNA matches, said that they hadn't done a DNA test yet but they might be open to doing one; this never happened and they later acted as if it was because they had destroyed all their rape kits, contradicting their previous admission that they could have tested the DNA.
- A murdered prostitute whose killing was attributed to Joel Rifkin had been clubbed, manually strangled, wrapped in plastic, placed in a box, and dumped in the Hudson River, yet the coroner ruled her death a drug overdose.