Murders in California

On the night of August 20, 1989 Lyle, age 21, and Erik Menendez, age 18, shot their parents, Jose and Kitty, to death with a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun in the den of the family’s Beverly Hills, California, home. After committing the murders they drove to Mulholland Drive, where they dumped the shot guns. They went to a local movie theater to buy tickets as an alibi. After attending the show, they returned home when Lyle frantically contacted the Beverly Hills police department and cried “Somebody killed my parents!”. The BHPD showed up to find a gruesome crime scene. They shot their father, Jose, twice. The first shot hit him in the left arm the second was a point blank shot to the back of the skull. The boy's mother, Kitty, made a desperate

People go missing all the time and are found in just a short amount of time. But what about the people who go missing and are never found again? Murders in Illinois are more common than not. In these four cases, the individual goes missing mysteriously and are recovered in pieces or not at all. How does this happen? People may never know but the families will keep fighting until someone gives them an answer.

Los Angeles, California went through a time period where serial killings happened and the suspect was on the run for over two decades. Most of the victims were prostitutes in South Los Angeles. The serial killer began his killings in 1987, apparently stopped for 13 years then resumed with his killings. The killer left little to no evidence, besides his DNA from sexually assaulting his female victims. For decades LAPD failed to find the killer or anyone who was related to him (Dolan & Landsberg, 2010).

With the leading number of gangs in the country, Los Angeles is thought of as the gang capital of the world. Employing gang suppression strategies that take distinct forms, from anti-gang injunctions to high rate of incarcerations, the City of Angels has failed to live up to its angelic name. Known instead for its demonic gang activity and police suppression efforts, Los Angeles has taken over media headlines as one of the most dangerous places to subsist. Representing a worrisome issue for residents, visitors, city government officials, as well as urban planners, gang violence has rapidly become a threat to public safety. Although current-day gang culture has eased off on the violence, it continues to be one of the greatest planning challenges

Serial murder crime though rare, is not a a new phenomenon. This crime has been committed for centuries and will continue to be a crime that is committed throughout the world. It is unfortunate and scary that this is probably one of the most serious of crimes that cannot be prevented. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, serial murderers commit their crimes because they want to. Rehabilitation is not obtainable for serial killers due to their inability for remorse and empathy, or to see people as people and not objects(Knight 2006). This research paper will focus primarily on serial murder within the U.S. First and foremost, a legal definition provided by the U.S. Department of Justice will be presented to set forth the discussion of this research paper. As follows will be a detailed discussion explaining serial killer typologies with the use of examples of known serial killers in the U.S. Types of serial killers are: power oriented, mission oriented, visionary, and hedonistic, each typology will be clearly defined and explained. Some serial killers can have a mixture of each typology’s characteristic. Serial killers that will be discussed and used as examples to represent the content of this research paper will be, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Robert Berdella, Jeffery Dahmer, and lastly the most prolific serial killer in American history, Gary Ridgeway. Problems with studying serial killing, are that because of rarity and access. Most of what we think

It has been five years today that my cousin Stacy Lynn Sparks was murdered. I always thought that something like this could never happen to my family. This is the first time that something so tragic has happened in my life. It will also lead me to pain and frustration years to come. The loss of her has had a great impact on how I live my life today.

There have been many horrific and disturbing murders in Illinois. There have also been gangs that have been born and destroyed in Illinois. Two of these terrible happened to take place in little Skidmore. One of the gangs in Illinois was Charlie Birger and his Boys. A dreadful and unfortunate murder happened on the famous Chain of Rocks Bridge. The last murder took place in a young woman’s house. Many of these murders and gangs were terrible and scarred the state of Illinois.

A little after a year of the McVicker incident, William found himself in an Orange County jail. But due to the officers getting his record’s mixed up; William was cleared to walk and given a court date. But William would of course not show up for the court date and would eventually start his reign and terror as the Freeway Killer.

California in 2011 had the highest gun murder rate with 1,220 homicides, which accounted for 68 percent or 3.25 gun murders per every 100,000 people. Washington DC had the highest per 100,000 people gun murders with 12 per 100,000 and the highest gun used robberies with 242.56 out of every 100,000 people (Howerton, 2013). Seeing these statistics would probably get you thinking California and Washington DC must be pretty lax on their control, wrong, California was actually even the honors as the strongest state on control, while Washington DC dating back to 1976 required all gun owners to register their gun, banned new purchases of handguns, and requires all gun owners to store their guns dissembled (Howerton, 2013). Take a look at Texas who has one of the lesser gun control laws, they saw only 699 gun related homicides or 2.91 homicides per 100,000 people (Howerton, 2013). While state with the least amount of control, Utah had just 26 gun homicides. These statistics are not just limited to the United States, other nations known for having strict gun control laws, have seen increases in murder rates. The nine nations with the highest gun control have 3 times the murders than the nine nations with no or relatively low gun control (Howerton, 2013).

Do gun control laws work and are there better ways to reduce violence in the state ? New figures from the nation’s most populous state, which also happens to have the nation’s toughest statewide gun laws, suggest they do.

The late 1960s when the first murder occurred it sent California into a panic. Fear gripped the public as more murders started happening. Letters began to surface to the public by newspaper companies. After decoding a letter the mystery murderer became known as the Zodiac. The mysterious Zodiac made the public fear him by threatening the lives of numerous civilians.

The first news event that was chosen for this assignment is the Flint “Serial Stabbings”, a string of 18 stabbing attacks in the spring and summer of 2010, which resulted in five deaths.

I do realize that some murders are not premeditated, sometimes it is an accident or it just happened in the heat of the moment. For these particular situations I do believe a life sentence is not needed if the murder occurred in an accident because the killer did not have any intentions to kill just to hurt/injure. For example, in the article named “A Teenager is Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter After Unintentionally Shooting His Cousin. The Case Shouldn’t End There,” by Justin Peters it discusses a young teenage boy who killed his little cousin. The teenaged boy had a hand gun and thought it was not loaded and happened to kill his cousin his cousin. In fear he told the police his cousin was shot in a drive by, but later admitted he accidently killed his cousin. He was charged with involuntary

Being from and growing up in Phoenix where there are various different gangs that are in close proximity of each other, has made me quite aware of gangs, their characteristics, the way they do things and, why. While reading the questions, I was already aware of what some of the answers may have been before actually reading the answers.

The idea of serial killers and the role they play in our lives has fascinated people since the cases of Jack the Ripper and H.H. Holmes, although serial murderers existed before them. The infamous and mysterious complexities of these cases have puzzled and terrified people for over a century. Perhaps due to the deviant and taboo nature of serial killings, people in our society and others have tried to attribute many reasons for why they occur. In this search for answers, one major scope has been widely left out of the research: the sociological imagination. It is through this method of understanding that I will attempt to explain the development of serial killers and apply theories that explain the frequency of serial killings in our society.