Interesting,thanks for posting Entropy. Will give it a read this weekend. Personally, I think opening up a dialogue with serial killers that mail letters could be very fruitful. It allows you to keep him ‘connected’ with you, instead of just hiding under a rock, and each letter they send, is a chance to get a finger print, or catch some break. Look at BTK, if he didnt send that last letter, he might well have never been caught

I totally agree, morf, but I think these communications are often taken too much at face value by LE. Just ask Roger Valadez, who was suspected of being BTK and arrested based on a false biography BTK provided about himself.

http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/1186242.html

At least in the cases of Zodiac and BTK, I think the communications were primarily about misdirection and taunting but can still be useful as it obviously was eventually in the BTK case. The more communication, the more information they reveal about themselves even if it’s unintentional and there’s always a chance of making a crucial mistake.

I would actually be interested in compiling a list of cases in which a killer sent confirmed communications with either media or law enforcement (trying to eliminate hoaxes). I know you’ve found a bunch of these in your research. I think it would be interesting to look for common denominators such as requests to publish, threatening more victims etc. Perhaps you could PM me a list of cases you’ve run across like this in addition to the ones discussed?

I am going to make a list of murders which were accompanied by letters,possibly from the killer-

These are cases I found when simply ‘googling’ unsolved murders, and abductions in which a letter was mailed to the police,or family members of the victims. If I can only imagine that there are more out there.

Short of sending a bloody piece of shirt, or providing a specific detail not known to the public,I am not sure there would be any way to know if the letter writer would actually be the killer.

In all actuality, cases of letter writers ever sending any kind of letters in murder cases, would probably fit on a short list.
That’s how I found the Houston activity & Biechler cases,there were so few. I think the list of letters being sent to parents of murder victims, would be even shorter.

*Lindy Sue Biechler PA, killed in 1975, letter recived in 1977 just after the two year anniversary of her murder

*Laura Lynn Miller TX, killed in 1984. letter received December 20-21,2005? Sent to Father of Victim

*Us Attorney Thomas Wales,WA,murdered in 2001, letter mailed in 2006- http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2006/ap … ter041706/
*Murdered cabbie-
http://www.kdrv.com/new-information-on- … rder-case/

*Betsy Aardsma, murdered November 1969 in the Penn State Library, years later, a letter postmarked from Atlanta read, “you never did catch the guy that killed the c**t in the library, did you?”

*Dana Bailey murdered near Penn State in her apartment, later, on the anniversary of her murder, her Father received a weird letter,also, another letter was sent to police

* April Marie Tinsley case-Anonymous letters & notes, and demand to be published in local paper
http://www.fwpd.org/april/press.htm

*Colleen Orsborn /Deborah Quimby/Alicia Markovich
3 different females vanished and/or killed in 3 different states. The link, anonymous 3 anonymous letters mailed to police or to the victim’s Family members, telling them to look near a body of water for the bodies. A further link, all 3 of these letters were mailed from the same 3 square mile in NH. Without a doubt, by the same person. Not to pat myself on the back, but I linked these 3 cases to those letters and contacted police in each case. They investigated, and think the letters were likely from a single hoaxer. I tend to agree.

Cool, morf. Many thanks. It’ll give me a project to work on when I’m out of work for a few weeks. You’re right, of course, it’s often difficult to distinguish genuine communications from hoaxes. I guess I’m trying to focus on cases like this one in which there is little doubt that a killer sent communication(s) about the crime committed to see what commonalities there are in the communications.

The first victim, Janet Bowman, in this thread

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=34

was found because someone send an anonymous letter to the sheriff’s office telling where the girl’s body could be found. There were four victims total in these very similar cases but it was only the first victim where a note was written to LE. This one is a wobbler, IMO, because someone could have genuinely written the note out of concern for the girl being found but not wanting to be involved for any number of reasons.

Also Lindbergh kidnapper, Black Dahlia, NY Mad Bomber, Unabomber and Jack the Ripper.

Overall its pretty rare I would guess 98% of serial killers do NOT send in letters.

I think killers writing letters happens more often than we know about.

Don’t forget JonBenet.

Here is another–the murder of Charlene Hummert:

Tahoe, I agree there are a bunch of cases with letters mailed, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to the actual amount of murders that happen, and then we can go a step further and it’s even less in which the victim’s families get letters, that takes an especially cold individual

Tahoe, I agree there are a bunch of cases with letters mailed, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to the actual amount of murders that happen, and then we can go a step further and it’s even less in which the victim’s families get letters, that takes an especially cold individual

I agree. JonBenet fits the bill, imo.

It’s rare, but Zodiac is not the first, and surely won’t be the last.

Add another to the list, Albert Fish. It would be interesting to know if the serial killers who write to the press or their victims have the same type of compulsion that forces them to brag about their murders. It must fuel them some how, I wonder what part of their personality makes them different from other serial killers like Dahmer or Bundy who never felt the need to brag to anyone about the crimes they committed.

Pretty good article. But I’m annoyed to see it repeating the myth that authorities were "embarrassed" because they could not crack the Z408.

There’s also the case in the UK of the Yorkshire Ripper, where someone sent 3 letters and an audio tape to police claiming to be the killer. His words were carefully chosen so that police couldn’t rule then out as genuine, and unfortunately some of the top officers on the case believed so strongly that they were genuine that they closed down many leads that didn’t conform to the profile they’d built on the communications….. until the hoaxer had a crisis of conscience a couple of years later an made an anonymous call to admit it.
2 detectives even visited Peter Sutcliffe during his active period and reported to their senior officer that he made them very suspicious, but because he had the wrong accent he was dropped. This error combined with others allowed him to carry on killing for a few years before he was finally apprehended. There was a massive scandal over the way police handled the case and I think every lead detective over here will have that debacle in the back of their mind whenever they receive a suspected communication and letters will always be treated with some scepticism.
I’ve heard one of the Ripper detectives say something along the lines that this kind of thing should be seen as a part of the inclusive evidence against someone but never be used to exclude someone.