Thrill killing

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A thrill killing is a term used to describe a premeditated murder committed by a person who is not necessarily suffering from mental instability, but is instead motivated by the sheer excitement of the act.

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[edit] 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 Nietzschean übermenschen 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.[1]
  • September 15, 1990: Debra Holt, the mother of future world champion boxer Kendall Holt, 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. [2].
  • February 12, 1993: Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, two 10-year old boys, abducted and murdered toddler James Bulger. Thompson and Venables did not know the child but wished to kill someone. They were imprisoned for eight years.[3]
  • 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.[4]
  • July 17, 1997: Jesse McAllister and Bradley Price killed a man and a woman on a Seaside, Oregon beach for no other reason than "to experience it [murder]."[5][6][7]
  • September 30, 1997: 18 year old Todd Rizzo of Waterbury, Connecticut bashed 13 year old Stanley Edwards to death with a 3-lb 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 row.[8][9]
  • October 6, 1997: Bega schoolgirl murders: Career criminal Lindsay Hoani Beckett and 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 pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences with a non-parole period of 35 years in exchange for testifying against Camilleri, who was found guilty and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus 155 years without the possibility of parole.
  • March 29, 2005: James Patrick Roughan, nephew of convicted killer Katherine Knight, and his friend, Christopher Clark Jones, murdered Morgan Jay Shepherd, 17, in Dayboro, Queensland, Australia after a lengthy drinking session. The pair stabbed and bashed the teenager more than 133 times before removing his head with an axe; the head was used as a puppet and bowling ball, according to witnesses.[10] Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 27 years.
  • 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's death.[11][12] Both girls were sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 15 years.
  • December 17, 2006: Couple[13] Jessica Ellen Stasinowsky, 20, and Valerie Page Parashumti, 19, drugged, bashed and strangled their 16-year-old flatmate, Stacey Mitchell, before disposing of her body in a wheelie bin. Parashumti and Stasinowsky originally claimed to 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 31 years, the longest non-parole period handed down to a woman in Australia.[14] 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 parole.

[edit] In film and television

[edit] In print

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Leopold and Loeb Trial: A Brief Account by Douglas O. Linder. 1997. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
  2. ^ Fredrick Kunkle (January 3, 1992). "PATERSON THRILL KILLER SENTENCED TO 32 YEARS". The Record (Bergen County, NJ). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-22617056.html. 
  3. ^ James Bulger murder at www.guardian.co.uk (accessed 25 April 2005)
  4. ^ Dwyer, Kevin and Fiorillo, Juré. True Stories of Law & Order 2006: Berkley/Penguin. ISBN 0425211908.
  5. ^ O'Kane, James (2005). Wicked Deeds: Murder in America. Transaction Publishers. p. 110. ISBN 0765802899. http://books.google.com/books?id=ia4Iyk8LAe8C&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=jesse+mcallister+thrill+kill&source=bl&ots=fi0gxwoqhD&sig=ehJH4n135SUSZHbH3BLmznGHJhE&hl=en&ei=4tLpSqPaO4eotgO2rpjqCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBgQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=jesse%20mcallister%20thrill%20kill&f=false. 
  6. ^ "Gunman takes stand against murder defendant". Eugene Register-Guard: p. 14. May 12, 1999. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=pHgVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zOsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6852,3156315&hl=en. 
  7. ^ "Second Suspect Goes On Trial In Thrill Kill". Eugene Register-Guard. May 7, 1999. p. 21. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=n3gVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zOsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4594,1732059&hl=en. 
  8. ^ New York Times (1997-10-03). "Affidavit Shows Obsession With Serial Killers". p. B6. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E3DA143DF930A35753C1A961958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink. Retrieved 2009-01-06. 
  9. ^ Hartford Courant. "Connecticut's Death Row Inmates". http://www.courant.com/hc-deathrow-pg,2,3261515.photogallery?index=hc-rizzo-deathrow. Retrieved 2009-01-06. 
  10. ^ AAP (2008-07-16). "Man used teen's head as bowling ball, court told". Stuff.co.nz. http://www.stuff.co.nz/4620596a12.html. Retrieved 2008-07-16. 
  11. ^ BBC News (2007-05-07). "Perth girls get life for murder". BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6639027.stm. Retrieved 2008-12-21. 
  12. ^ Daily Telegraph (2007-04-24). "Eliza Jane murder pact mystery". News Limited. http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,21612806-5006009,00.html. Retrieved 2008-12-21. 
  13. ^ Barnier, Ben (March 14, 2008). "The 'Lesbian Killers' Who Shocked Australia". http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4452601&page=1. Retrieved 2009-07-21. 
  14. ^ "Valerie Page Parashumti". Mahalo.com. http://www.mahalo.com/valerie-page-parashumti. 
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