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 8, 1988: Twenty-year-old bank clerk Janine Balding was abducted from railway station at Sutherland, New South Wales, Australia by a group of five homeless youths with extensive criminal records, and driven to nearby Minchinbury where she was repeatedly raped by three of the male offenders before being bludgeoned, hog-tied and drowned in a dam. 22-year-old Stephen Wayne 'Shorty' Jamieson, 16-year-old Matthew James Elliott, and 14-year-old Bronson Matthew Blessington were arrested the next day, and all three were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole; Blessington and Elliott are the youngest offenders to receive this sentence in Australian history. [2]
  • 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. [3].
  • August 19, 1992: labourer and career criminal Andrew Peter Garforth murdered 9-year-old schoolgirl Ebony Simpson at Bargo, New South Wales, Australia. Garforth snatched Simpson as she was walking home from school and threw her into the boot of his car, raped her repeatedly, bound her hands with speaker wire and weighted her schoolbag before throwing her into a dam where she drowned. Garforth joined in the search for the girl before being arrested; he showed no remorse for his actions. Garforth pleaded guilty to the crimes and was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years without the possibility of parole. [4]
  • February 12, 1993: Two 10-year old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, 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.[5]
  • October 29, 1995: Handyman and mechanic and convicted sex offender Paul Stephen Osborne raped 10-year-old Leanne Oliver and nine-year-old Patricia Leedie and bashed them to death with a tree branch and a wheel jack at Warana Beach, Queensland, Australia. After drinking 12 beers and smoking marijuana at a barbecue, Osbourne took the girls to the beach for a swim; Leanne Oliver's father, Alby Oliver, found Osborne's wallet and the bodies of the girls in sand dunes the next morning after having become concerned about the girl's welfare. Osborne told police the next day when they asked him why he killed the girls "I don't know. I don't know whether I blacked out or went crazy. They seemed pretty nice." [6] Osborne pleaded guilty to the crimes and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus 46 years without the possibility of parole.
  • 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.[7]
  • 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]."[8][9][10]
  • 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.[11][12]
  • October 6, 1997: Bega schoolgirl murders: Career criminal Lindsay Hoani Beckett and Victorian 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 release on parole; in sentencing Camilleri, Justice Frank Vincent told him that "Through your own actions, you have forfeited your right ever to walk among us again".
  • March 29, 2005: James Patrick Roughan, nephew of convicted killer Katherine Knight, and his friend, Christopher Clark Jones, stabbed and bashed 17-year-old Morgan Jay Shepherd more than 133 times before removing his head with an axe in Dayboro, Queensland, Australia after a lengthy drinking session; his head was used as a puppet and bowling ball, according to witnesses.[13] Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 27 years; three youths, who cannot be named because of their age, were sentenced to two years detention for assisting in the disposal of the body.
  • 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.[14][15] Both girls were sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 15 years.
  • December 17, 2006: Couple[16] Jessica Ellen Stasinowsky, 20, and Valerie Paige 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 told 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 24 years, which was increased to 31 years on appeal under new legislation, the longest non-parole period handed down to a woman in Australia.[17] The sentencing judge, 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 release on 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. ^ http://www.thecrimeweb.com/murder_of_janine_balding.htm
  3. ^ 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. 
  4. ^ http://www.mako.org.au/tempgarforth.html
  5. ^ James Bulger murder at www.guardian.co.uk (accessed 25 April 2005)
  6. ^ http://www.mako.org.au/temposbourne.html
  7. ^ Dwyer, Kevin and Fiorillo, Juré. True Stories of Law & Order 2006: Berkley/Penguin. ISBN 0425211908.
  8. ^ 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. 
  9. ^ "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. 
  10. ^ "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. 
  11. ^ 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. 
  12. ^ 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. 
  13. ^ 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. 
  14. ^ 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. 
  15. ^ 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. 
  16. ^ 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. 
  17. ^ "Valerie Page Parashumti". Mahalo.com. http://www.mahalo.com/valerie-page-parashumti. 
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