When the Police Let Brutal Serial Killers Go…
When Pure Evil is Given the Chance to Roam Free
Almost unthinkable it can be that law enforcement can be so imperfect; but, indeed, sometimes they can be. We’re all human, at the end of the day. They had a serial killer in their hands, caught, helpless, right where they wanted them — and they let them go…they just let them go free to kill again. I’m not talking about a scene from a movie or suspenseful crime novel. This happens all too often in real life- that police catch serial killers and other dreadful members of our society, only to let them go later to get back to their crimes. Sometimes they simply don’t know who they have; other times they don’t have enough evidence to hold them. While this is terrifying to think that our supposed protectors can be so fallible, it’s also kind of easy for all of us to laugh at police mistakes and similar professional buffoonery of the people we see as authority figures. Our media is littered with fat, overweight, silly police officers and idiot bosses making mistakes that make us laugh. While I do laugh at these scenes in comedy movies, I must say that I’m appreciative of the diligence and devotion of law enforcement, especially homicide detectives, in tracking killers down and bringing the monsters to justice, and I realize the true sinister nature behind these unfortunate catastrophes. Just the very idea that the worst of the worst monsters can be so slick as to go undetected even when speaking to the very police who are tracking them face-to-face.
Disclaimer: This story seeks to tell several tales from a historical perspective; I in no way wish to glorify or condone violence and nothing herein should be construed as such. These are real facts that happened to real people.
Arthur Shawcross
Arthur Shawcross was a serial killer who was active in the late 1970s and again in the late 1980s, who was convicted of 10 counts of murder in December of 1990. Shawcross’ career of serial murder took place in two different waves, the first of which was the murder of two children, 10-year-old Jack Blake, and 8-year-old Karen Ann Hill. The body of each was found mutilated and raped. Shawcross would eventually confess to the slaying of both children in 1972 and begin a 25-year prison sentence for his crimes- he wouldn’t be released until he was 57 years old.
Shawcross would later be released to kill again, however. Just shy of serving 15 years of his sentence, the parole board released him back into society to strike again in 1987. After a ruthless two year spree of mutilation, mayhem, and murder that took the lives of 11 prostitutes, Shawcross would ultimately be tracked down and spotted by a police helicopter near one of his bodies after returning to the scene to relive his murder. After tracing his plates, police arrested Shawcross for his crimes and he was sentenced to prison for the rest of his life, where he would die in 2008. His interviews can be found on Netflix for viewing, quite a creepy little piece of video.
Henry Lee Lucas
Henry Lee Lucas is a name that will live in infamy as one of the sizably bizarre and macabre serial killers of all time. In combination with his accomplice and lover Ottis Toole, the duo would confess to hundreds of slayings, ravishment, mutilation, and cannibalism. Toole confessed to the murder of Adam Walsh, son of America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh in what would become a public spectacle of serial homicide. During his 23 year span of killings, Lucas would not only be released after having been caught once, but two times, on two separate occasions. In 1960, Lucas murdered his mother and began serving a prison sentence of 20 to 40 years, though he would only end up doing 10 years of that sentence before being released in 1970.
Almost immediately after his release, Lucas would again be arrested, this time for molesting teenage girls in 1971. This charge would ultimately be reduced to kidnapping and he would be convicted, but only to be paroled a second time and set free in 1975. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Lucas would go on to kill an undisclosed number of people, though his confessions (although not entirely believed) would end up totaling more than 350 people. Regardless of the body count, the fact is Lucas was right where authorities wanted him at least two times, only to be released to unleash voracious fury on the world once again.
John Christie
John Christie was a cold, calculated British serial killer who was active in the 1940s and 1950s and would kill at least 6 people. Christie would pretend to have some knowledge of abortion (then illegal) or some medical procedure to lure his victims into a vulnerable state and, once he rendered them helpless with gas under the guise of surgery, would rape and kill them. Christie would prove entirely heartless and willing to betray anyone and everyone for his own selfish desires when he murdered his wife and accomplice of more than a decade, Ethyl Christie. In 1949, less than a year after a young couple by the name of Timothy and Beryl Evans had moved into the same flat complex, Beryl and their infant would wind up missing and an investigation would soon begin. John Christie had promised the couple to perform some operation on Beryl, but instead Beryl and their daughter Geraldine somehow ended up dead- both victims strangled.
Christie’s influence as a man of great public respect over the young family was so strong that, even after the murder of Beryl and Geraldine, Timothy Evans would confess to the accidental death of his wife and newborn child- two murders he did not commit. Evans later retracted his statement, claiming that Christie had accidentally killed them in an operation which had gone wrong, handing the police their man and a serial killer who’d been at it for years. But police ignored Evans’ testimony that Christie was, in fact, a serial murderer and believed Christie over Evans that Timothy Evans was the actual murderer. John Christie would testify against Evans framing the man for the murder he himself had committed; Timothy Evans would be hanged for a crime he didn’t commit on March 9th of 1950. A more thorough investigation would have shown that it was Christie and not Evans who was the murderer and many more years of serial homicide could have been prevented. Christie would go on to kill 4 more people and was later convicted of murder and hanged in 1953. Timothy Evans would later be pardoned for the murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans.
A book that details the full story of this bizarre instance can be found here on Amazon, titled John Christie of Rillington Place: Biography of a Serial Killer.
Ed Kemper
When it comes to brazen serial killers, Ed Kemper rivals everyone at the top. Edmund Kemper, aka The Coed Killer, was a ruthless serial killer who didn’t mind killing out in the open and would even go hang out at local bars during his murderous heyday in the 1970s and even talk with the cops about the serial killer on the loose; that serial killer, of course, was him. His murderous reign would come to a close in 1973 when Ed killed his mother, no doubt what fueled his rampage and finally turned himself in to authorities.
But the early-70s wave of killings wasn’t actually Kemper’s first. Before he began locking women in the trunk of his car before ultimately beheading them and keeping their bodies in his apartment for a series of days, Ed had been tried and convicted of the murder of his grandparents, of which he said he, “Wanted to know what it felt like.” He would be sent to Atascadero Hospital for the Criminally Insane in 1964 but would be released after only 5 years into his mother’s care in 1969. From here he would go on to pick up hitchhikers, kill them, decapitate them, and have sex with their corpses.
Ed Kemper inspired some of story in the Netflix series Mindhunter; here’s some recommended reading for those who may be interested. Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit.
Gary Ridgeway (The Green River Killer)
Possibly the most terrifying figure on the list is the story of Gary Ridgeway, aka The Green River Killer, due to his notably long killing spree where he went undetected. Ridgeway had one of the longest serial homicide sprees in recorded history, killing from 1982 until 1998 (though he may have killed as late as 2001). With DNA technology not as strong then as it is today, Ridgeway was interviewed by police in his home and added to a short list of suspects the police were closing in on as possibilities of who might be the Green River Killer; but ultimately, the police lacked enough solid evidence to arrest Ridgeway and take him to trial, and were forced to let him go.
Ridgeway was able to keep his composure under investigation and maintain a seemingly normal life on the surface, leading police to second guess the evidence used to establish him among a list of suspects. Gary Ridgeway would then be free to kill again amassing a long list of victims; he would be convicted of 49 counts of murder, confessing to over 70 killings, and it’s believed he may have killed over 90 people.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Even The Milwaukee Cannibal himself, Jeffrey Dahmer was once captured by the police, only to be let go to murder freely again. Jeffrey Dahmer was a cannibal serial killer whos name rings in infamy as synonymous with serial killer; between 1978 and 1991 Dahmer would kill 17 men in one of the longest killing sprees in history. He would also cannibalize and necrotize them, even photographing their dead bodies and trying to drill holes in the heads of his drugged victims in an attempt to create living zombies.
Jeffrey Dahmer would have already taken the lives of several men on the night of May 27th, 1991. Police received a call about a young, nude Asian boy wandering aimlessly in the streets. Dahmer had drugged the boy and planned to murder him, but got drunk and fell asleep instead and the boy wandered into the streets. Upon arriving at the scene, police investigated and interviewed all witnesses, but Dahmer was quick on his feet and somehow managed to convince police that the 14-year-old soon-to-be-victim was really his 19-year-old lover who’d had too much to drink. Against the protests of witnesses, police let Dahmer and his victim go — the boy would later be murdered and dismembered. For more information, I recommend reading Jeffrey Dahmer: A Terrifying True Story of Rape, Murder & Cannibalism.
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