The past four months have been difficult for Dr. and Mrs. Blackwelder due to various health issues. They are slowly recoving and will begin posting on this site in the near future.
Thanks for taking time to visit the Criminology Research Project, ,Inc., website.
Criminology Research Project, Inc., has learned of a mass murder having occurred a short while ago in the small community of Hardin, Texas. Texas sources tell CRP that as many as 25 or more bodies have been discovered, a number of them children, in a residence in this small South East Texas town.
Criminology Research Project, Inc., Executive Director, Dr. Edward Blackwelder, will bring you updates as developments are made known. Blackwelder says that a reliable Hardin, Texas, source indicated that the crime rate, at least until now, rated of “1″ on a scare of 1 to 10. It seems this statistic will change and Hardin will become a name to be remembered in the anals of crime in America.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is sending in an Evidence Response Team to begin an immediate investigation.
The famous Chevrolet station wagon driven by infamous serial killer Wayne Williams the morning he drove slowly across the Jackson Parkway Bridge in the metropolital area is being offer for sale by Criminology Research Project, Inc., according to executive director Dr. Edward Blackwelder. The entire project’s criminology collection will be housed on the campus of Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, with William’s vehicle sold to help fund the establishment of the new crime collection.
Interested purchasers should contact Dr. Edward Blackwelder at Criminology Research Project, Inc., 518 South Center Avenue, Piedmont, Alabama 36272 by e-mail at crmnlgyresearch@aol.com or by telephoning 256 447-0040.
Jared Loughner the mass killer that took the lives of six and wounded thirteen others including United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords has been determined incompetent to stand trial for his killing rampage in January of this year. The federal judge, after reviewing various psychological and psychiatric evaluations determined that Loughner did not know right from wrong or, at least, did not understand the seriousness of his act. This means that Loughner will not be confined to a penal institution bur to a secure forensic unit which is a professionally sounding title of a mental institution. The problem for us all is that should psychological and psychiatric evaluations give cause to a determination that Loughner is no longer a threat to himself of to others he will be released back into society.
As Executive Director of Criminology Rresearch Project, Inc., I understand that mental illness, like various physical illnesses, is just that…an illness. However, the added reality of a potential reoccurance of his actions will be, within all probability, a repeat of his original act which would not be the case with other illnesses to the degree that innocent lives would be lost or serioius injury inflicted. Mental illness is a serious condition however and is no fault of the one suffering from it. The major problem is that upon release, be it a week from now or five years from now, Loughner will be given medications to control his urges and actions but only if he properly and regularly takes these medications. Statististics indicated that this type individual usually does not.
This past Monday the United States Supreme Court, in a 5 -4 decision, made public it’s ruling that the rights of conficted felons are viiolated if they are housed in over-crowded penal institutions. The results will be a mass release of prison inmates. This being said I point out that Loughner will not be one of these as he is not going to prison.
Loughner will most probably spend years in confinement but this is not a certainty. He could be released at anytime which is not a comforting thought. He will, to some degree, receive supervision which will decrease as he lives out his life in the free world. My research and “best guess” is that he will not maintain his appropriate medication intake and will revert back to his original diagnoses which brought about the January shooting spree.
Dr. Edward Blackwelder
Executive Director
Criminology Resesarch Project, Inc.
The infamous Chevy station wagon that convicted serial killer Wayne Williams is supposed to have used to transport several bodies during the late 1970′s and early 80′s may soon be available for purchase according to reliable sources. This vehicle is currently owned by Criminology Research Project, Inc., and consideration is being given to offering this infamous vehicle for sale. This vehicle is the station wagon that Wayne Williams was driving the night he first came to the attention of the Missing Children Task Force as he drove across the Jackson Parkway Bridge in the Atlanta metropolitan area.
More information will be available soon from Dr. Edward Blackwelder, Executive Director of Criminology Research Project, Inc.
Opening Remarks
Dr. Edward Blackwelder
30th Annual Social Work Seminar
Jacksonville State University
Department of Sociology and Social Work
April 1, 2011
My eleventh grade term paper assignment was to research and write a report on Crime in America. It sounded interesting but I knew very little about the subject. I went to my high school library and began to search for book and articles on the subject of crime. I found several books and the more I read the more interesting the subject became; I was hooked. Forty nine years later I am as hooked as ever and see no end in sight for my craving to learn more and more, not about what people in society do but why they do it.
I was fortunate in that I went on to college, earned degrees in crime related fields—political science, sociology and criminal justice and then move into the realm of theology where crime is often mentioned. After graduating from college I landed a job as department chairperson for a criminal justice/sociology program at a North Alabama college and remained in this position until my forced retirement due to Parkinson’s disease and related health issues.
If the is one thing you learn after forty six years as a student of crime it’s that the world is full of predators and they are often very difficult to spot. They come in all shapes and sizes, from every nationality, from the nicest neighborhoods to the poorest, and from every walk of life, men and women.
They come in many forms: the seemingly nice elderly man who scams you of your life’s savings, the priest that repeatedly rapes the choir boy, the stalker who kills college women, the neighbor who lures innocent children, the toxic boss who makes life miserable for his employees, the nurse that wants to rid the world of the elderly, the father who iimprisons and rapes his own daughter, or the husband who terrifies and beats his wife daily. They are all predators; they are in every way psychopaths.
What psychopaths have in common is a profound sense of entitlement to do as they please, to seek reward by any method, to deviate from rules and social norms, to violate laws as well as the dignity of others. They feel no compassion for those they offend or victimize. They suffer no guilt feelings and have no remorse, they are without conscience.
Most people think of psychopaths as violent offenders, such as my friend and serial killer Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, the worst I ever met, David Berkowitz the prisoner turned preacher, Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Lynn Rader the BTK killer and others. To be sure there are many like these guys, but most psychopaths operate under the radar of judicial or law enforcement scrutiny. They are embezzlers, white-collar criminals, politicians, government leaders, teachers, attorneys, ministers, even members of law enforcement.
Like snakes, psychopaths are plentiful, but only a few snakes will kill you; the others, make us uncomfortable, fearful, and ruin a good day. Psychopaths can have dreadful, long-term effects when they are leaders of countries—Stalin, Hitler and Castro for instance—or when they live or work close to us. Their capacity to ruin lives fills the front pages of our newspapers and certainly constitutes the vast majority of cases that are brought to criminal trial. In fact, it is estimated that anywhere from 60-80% of our prison population—most of the recidivists—is composed of psychopaths as I define the term. I say “as I define” because not everyone can agree on what definition is most accurate for a psychopath.
Psychopaths or psychopathy are not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. They prefer the gentler euphemistic term “Antisocial Personality Disorder. The APA says that these Antisocial Personalities have a “pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others,” and who do at least three of the following things:
This list may work for those that are not on the front line of dealing with humanity but for those of you that are on the front line, in the trenches, dealing with humanity, many times at its worst you want and need more information.
It doesn’t help us to properly identify these individuals until their acts are so terrible either we, or someone we know, is victimized. You and I must deal with them as neighbors, workmates, spouses, or leaders. And we must deal with them in real time without the expectation that anyone else is going to step in and identify these individuals for us.
These has to be a better way to identify these social predators who do such great harm, who violate rules, know no boundaries, steal or plunder, all without remorse.
Dr. Robert Hare, considered the world’s leading expert on psychopathy has stated; psychopaths are “intra-species predators.” They have the “capacity to do great harm, repeatedly, without remorse.”
Lacking a conscience or remorse, they violate rules, laws, norms, and human rights with no regard for those they offend. And while they can be charismatic, charming, witty, intelligent and good looking, they can also be smelly, ugly, and creepy. They can be the nice looking older couple next door or the good-looking guy going to the gym. What they do have in common is a lack of empathy or concern for you and me.
They are cold and indifferent, almost reptilian in their attitude toward others. They suffer no guilt and are not bothered by socially restraining norms of decency. They hate getting cause, but not committing their offense.
It’s difficult for us to understand why someone would kill a young child and it becomes almost impossible to understand the killing of 30 million people, but that’s exactly what Joseph Stalin, a psychopath, did. Look to at Theodore Robert Bundy, a friend of mine for a number of years leading to his execution in Florida; Wayne Williams the infamous Atlanta child murderer, Ken Bianchi, an inmate I have come to know quite well. Then there is Charlie….Charles Milles Manson, the one psychopath more people ask me about that all others combined even after forty plus year since his rampant crime spree took place.
It’s difficult for us to understand because we aren’t psychopaths. Stalin made the statement, “Kill one person and it’s a national tragedy, kill a million people it is a statistic.” And so he did because he could and that is the nature of the psychopath. They get away with as much as they can.
When Ted Bundy was on Florida’s death row and facing the electric chair in less than twenty-four hours his question to a corrections officer was, “how does my hair look?” This was as he was about to begin the standard press conference given to a condemned inmate the day before his or her execution.
Some of these individuals live in our neighborhoods and it’s up to us to try to identify them, not law enforcement because they don’t have the manpower and police officers can’t be everywhere. Some of these psychopaths work with children or even as church leaders. A case in point is Jack Walls III the Lonoke, Arkansas, Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year, son of a prominent Chancery Judge, strong church worker and Boy Scout Troop Leader.
Of course not all psychopaths kill in brutal ways. Sometimes their need for power, control, and God-like dominion over others can be exercised in more subtle ways. We must be prepared to look for clues because the police can’t do it alone, and the people who do these kinds of crimes are psychopaths.
And then there are the parental psychopaths, these are the ones that main, torture, humiliate, degrade, or kill their own children. Some do it slowly over the years, breaking bones, burning them, binding them to poles and there are others who do is swiftly as a matter of convenience.
FBI HIGH RISK REGISTER
Lee (1988) also created a variety of labels to differentiate killers according to motive. Serial murderers generally fall within “power or domination.” Lee’s label listing includes:
1. Profit
2. Passion
3. Hatred
4. Power or domination
5. Revenge
6. Opportunism
7. Fear
8. Contract killing
9. Desperation
10. Compassion
11. Ritual
A serial killer is typically defined as an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time (a “cooling off period”) between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is largely based on psychological gratification. Other sources define the term as “a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone” or, including the vital characteristics, a minimum of at least two murders. Often, a sexual element is involved with the killings, but the FBI states that motives for serial murder include “anger, thrill, financial gain, and attention seeking.” The murders may have been attempted or completed in a similar fashion and the victims may have had something in common; for example, occupation, race, appearance, sex, or age group.
Don’t walk in front of me,
I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me,
I may not lead.
Walk beside me
And just be my friend.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
He was a criminal justice professor at Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, teaching a course on mass murderers and serial killers. But the textbooks were inadequate. Blackwelder wanted to give his students a more visceral experience. So he and a female intern named Janice drove 400 miles to death row at Florida State Prison in Starke.
“When visiting a jail,” Blackwelder said, “you never know for sure that you’re going to get in until that metal door slams behind you.”
They were ushered through a series of gates and metal doors before being greeted by a correctional officer.
“Mr. Bundy has been waiting for you,” the officer said.
Down the hallway and around a corner was a small cage in the middle of a large room. Inside the cage sat Theodore Robert Bundy.
“Just call me Ted,” Bundy said, smiling. “You must be Professor Blackwelder.”
Instinctively, Blackwelder reached through the bars and shook hands with one of the most notorious serial killers in history, hands that had strangled and bludgeoned to death upwards of 30 women, including 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, whom Bundy was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering before dumping her body in an abandoned hog pen.
With his hands and feet shackled, Bundy was led into a small room . Though a guard stood outside, the only thing separating student and teacher from this cold-blooded killer was a wooden table. From the moment they were alone, Blackwelder wasted no time in getting to the point.
“I’m here to use you,” he said, “because you’re an exquisite specimen.”
Today, from their home in Piedmont, Blackwelder and his wife, Shirley, run the nonprofit Criminology Research Project, an academic Web site dedicated to the study of serial, spree and mass murder. Blackwelder, 63, retired from teaching in 1992, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Through encounters with notorious killers like Bundy, Charles Manson and Jeffery Dahmer, Blackwelder built a career not only of science, but of faith.
On that summer day in 1984, Blackwelder was impressed by Bundy’s cool demeanor.
“Bundy was an average guy,” he remembers. “If I had a daughter, he’d be the kind of guy I’d want her to date, because he seems so normal. But that’s just a mask. Underneath, he’s a diabolical killing machine.”
For more than three hours, they interviewed Bundy, discussing everything from football and abortion to the death penalty.
“Society needs to be protected from people like me,” Bundy said. “And there are others out there just like me.”
That was the first of four interviews that Blackwelder had with Bundy before he was executed in Florida’s electric chair on Jan. 24, 1989. Bundy told Blackwelder that, from his cell in the hours before an execution, he could smell the diesel fuel and hear the generator warming up. Through a nearby window, he could see the hearse waiting outside.
Yet when Blackwelder asked if Bundy was “right with the Lord,” Bundy’s answer was as enigmatic as the killer himself — a once bright and charming law student who savagely preyed on young women.
“I’m not worried about what happened yesterday, and I’m not concerned about what may happen tomorrow,” he said. “I’m cosmic and you’d be better off if you were cosmic too.”
Looking back, Blackwelder still isn’t sure what Bundy meant.
“But I’ve got to believe when that jolt of electricity hit him, he found out what being cosmic is all about.”
‘Among the evil’
He’s befriended the Atlanta Child Murderer and accepted collect calls from The Hillside Strangler. In 1970, he used Christmas money to fly to California to watch the trial of Charles Manson.
He has FBI files and letters from Manson, Ted Bundy and The Unabomber. He’s interviewed Jeffrey Dahmer, calling the serial killer/cannibal “a doll … just as sweet as can be.”
Blackwelder performed the wedding of Heath Stocks, who murdered his entire family with a .45 handgun, and stood less than six feet away when child-killer Ernest Dobbert was executed in Florida’s electric chair.
During every interview, Blackwelder, who’s been an ordained minister since 1990, talks of salvation, serving as a witness — a flawed man of faith — to those whom society would rather throw away.
“That’s where the preacher is supposed to be — among the evil, the wretched, the unforgiven,” he says. “You can’t do any good in church. There comes a time when you’ve gotta say ‘Amen,’ then get up, get out and go do something useful. …
“If we got what we deserved, we’d all go straight to hell,” he says. “It’s only through the saving grace of Jesus Christ that we’re given the choice.”
Growing up in Piedmont, Blackwelder, like most kids in the rural South, regularly attended church. He did and said all the right things — joining Piedmont First Baptist Church when he was 12 — but the cavalier attitude and transgressions of a hard-headed young man ultimately won out.
“Sin was fun,” he says, grinning at memories better left untold. “I tried to be good. I wanted to be good, but I was just too busy living Eddie’s way.”
Then his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In the years to follow, she wouldn’t recognize her husband, waking up frightened by the stranger sharing her bed. Blackwelder, who was working full time, would have to lock his mother in the house so she wouldn’t wander the streets.
“That was probably the first time I ever really thought about God,” he says. “I started praying because I needed help. But even though I’d moved closer to God, I was still living the way I wanted to live.”
Blackwelder’s journey wouldn’t be complete until New Year’s Eve 1985. He was celebrating at the Officer’s Club at Fort McClellan, when around 9:30 he received an emergency phone call. His father had suffered a stroke. The night was so thick with fog, Blackwelder could barely see over the hood of his car driving to the hospital. Not knowing if his father would live or die, he made a promise.
“I said, ‘God, let him live. But if he’s gonna die, let me be there when he does. And if you do that, I’ll live the rest of my life for you.’ “
Blackwelder’s father survived the stroke, but was severely weakened. His mother died in 1989, followed by his father in 1990.
“God will get your attention one way or another,” Blackwelder says. “And he never forgets.”
Hooked on Crime
The first time Blackwelder visited a prison was with his father in 1959, when they toured the old Holman Prison near Wetumpka. He even got a chance to see and touch the electric chair, nicknamed “Yellow Mama” — though he declined to take a seat.
But it was a term paper that spawned Blackwelder’s macabre curiosity. In 1964, while a senior at Piedmont High School, Blackwelder wrote a research paper for political science class on “Crime in America.”
“From that moment I was hooked,” Blackwelder says, grinning. “I read every true crime magazine I could get my hands on, looking for the stuff boys like best — blood and guts.”
After graduating from Jacksonville State University in 1975, Blackwelder pursued criminal justice and sociology, gathering graduate and post-graduate degrees from the University of Alabama, JSU, UAB and Nova-Southeastern University. By the early ’80s, he was teaching criminal justice at Gadsden State and political science at St. Bernard College, before developing the curriculum for the criminal justice program at Wallace State Community College.
His research is meant to gain insight into the minds of serial and mass murderers. It’s a philosophy that Blackwelder maintained with his students, whom he often took to trials and jails to gain firsthand knowledge. But more than the legal side, he also showed his students the devastation that criminals wrought on families, by having victims share their stories.
“I always wanted to give students both sides,” he says. “These were not just stories in a book, names and dates to memorize. These were people’s lives, and some of those lives had been destroyed. I wanted my students to see that.”
Through his access to various jails, Blackwelder began to focus his faith on prisoners. But it wasn’t until 1984, sitting at home watching Jerry Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour, that he found his calling. During the program, Falwell mentioned Liberty Prison Outreach, one of the largest such ministries in the country.
“I didn’t know how to run a prison ministry,” Blackwelder says. “All I knew was that when these guys died, I wanted them to go to heaven.”
Blackwelder called Falwell’s church in Lynchburg, Va., where he spoke with Garry Sims, director of the prison ministry. As soon as Blackwelder learned that Sims was from Weaver, their friendship was immediate — as long as conversations didn’t linger too long on high school football. Blackwelder was invited to Virginia, where he met with Falwell for advice.
“Eddie’s a dedicated — some might say eccentric — and passionate man,” Sims says. “Eddie’s not your typical preacher — not by a long shot. If you go to the Huddle House in Piedmont at 3 a.m., that’s where you’ll find Eddie — that’s when the drunks, the whores and the drug addicts come in. Now you couldn’t put Eddie up in the pulpit at the First Baptist Church, because the people he’s lookin’ to save wouldn’t be there anyway.”
Faith was always a part of Blackwelder’s prison interviews. While the more notorious killers — Bundy and Charles Manson for example — offered little in return, all were respectful about the subject … save for one: John Wayne Gacy, Chicago’s “Killer Clown,” who murdered 33 boys and buried them under his house.
“He wouldn’t even let me get started,” Blackwelder says of their phone interview. “He just said, ‘Look, you son-of-a-bitch, I know what you’re all about, and I don’t wanna hear it.’ That was pretty much the end of it.”
But there have been success stories.
In 1972, Ernest Dobbert was tried and convicted for beating his 9-year-old daughter to death. Later evidence linked him to the death of his 7-year-old son as well as two other children. In the months leading up to Dobbert’s execution in Florida, Blackwelder met with him, for both academic and spiritual purposes.
“I know that when he died, Ernie went to be with the Lord,” he says. “What he did was awful … killing his own children … but he left that prison a changed man, a better man.”
“What could this guy want?” Blackwelder thought.
Blackwelder knew Bianchi wanted something. His correspondence with Bianchi had proven as much. Whether it was typewriter ribbon or opinions on his unpublished novel, Bianchi always had ulterior motives.
“He wanted us to help him find his son,” Blackwelder remembers. “It was a long shot, but I said I would try.”
Blackwelder and his wife, Shirley, who is a paralegal and his best research assistant, started digging. Within a few days, a photograph arrived from Bianchi, a worn-out picture of the boy who was an infant when Bianchi was convicted. All he knew what that the boy was living with his maternal grandfather somewhere in California.
After getting the man’s last name, Shirley called every name in the phone book until she found the right one. The boy, who was in his teens, wouldn’t come to the phone. Instead, Shirley spoke to the grandfather.
“He’ll never see that boy again,” he said. “Don’t ever call again.”
Though they failed at the reunion, Blackwelder took the photo Bianchi sent and had it blown up to an 8-by-10, giving him at least something to hold on to.
“And that’s something at least,” Blackwelder says. “Probably more than he deserved.”
“He’ll never see that boy again,” he said. “Don’t ever call again.”
Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono Jr. were dubbed The Hillside Stranglers for their signature method of dumping the bodies of their victims in the hillside surrounding Los Angeles during a four-month period between 1977 and 1978. Buono died in jail of a heart attack, while Bianchi continues to serve a life sentence at Washington State Penitentiary.
One by one, as they walked into the house after a basketball game on Jan. 17, 1997, Heath Stocks shot and killed his mother, father and younger sister. Once an Eagle Scout growing up in Lonoke, Ark., Stocks, who was 20 years old at the time of the murder, had been molested for years by his scout master.
Though he doesn’t condone Stocks’ killing spree, Blackwelder has remained close to the young man, offering advice both legal and spiritual.
“I would consider Heath Stocks an exception in that he should eventually be considered for parole. As a general rule, however, I have never be for letting APD offenders out of jail,” he says. Heath Stock, however, is more of a victim than an offender and there is ample evidence to prove that he is.
Blackwelder even agreed to perform Stocks’ wedding to a woman who had seen his case on Court TV, left her husband and moved to Lonoke to be closer to him. Knowing the marriage was doomed, Blackwelder opposed it, but after prayer and counseling the couple, he honored the request.
The wedding was at the prison chapel. The bride wore a white gown with a train, and Blackwelder’s wife served as the maid of honor. After the service, Stocks and his new bride sat in a pew holding hands for 15 minutes before the guards took Stocks back to his cell.
Angry and bitter for having her wedding night ruined by the reality of marrying a convicted killer, the new bride was consoled by Blackwelder and Shirley over dinner at Garfield’s.
“You’ll never be any closer to Heith than you were tonight,” Blackwelder told her. “That’s the kind of marriage you’ve gotten into.”
The couple divorced within a few months. Stocks has since remarried to a loving, caring, dedicated and professional lady who understands the turmoil that Heath tolerated during his early years.
“These guys are incapable of love,” Blackwelder says. “I don’t feel sorry for them, but it’s sad that they have no conscience and no concept of what love is.” Dr. Blackwelder points out that Heath Stocks, only as an adult, is learning the meaning of true love and considers Stocks a rare exception.
In 1982 Edward Blackwelder got a phone call from the legal team representing Atlanta Child Murderer Wayne Williams as he stood trial for murder.
During the trial, Blackwelder served as a consultant, splitting his time between sitting at the table with Williams and sitting beside his mother and father, Homer and Faye Williams, in the gallery.
At the time, Homer was already an old man, and Faye had cancer. She wanted someone to help look out for her son.
“We’re all Wayne’s got,” Faye Williams told Blackwelder one afternoon after her son had been sentenced to life in prison. “I want you to promise that you’ll never forsake my son.”
Through countless appeals, DNA testing and requests for a new trial, Blackwelder kept that promise, visiting Williams in prison and writing letters often.
“It hasn’t been easy,” Blackwelder says. “Wayne’s not always the easiest person to get along with.”
Blackwelder’s relationship with Williams lured him to Columbus, Ga. on a muggy, overcast afternoon in August, where in the backyard of a house on Meadow Drive sat a 1970 Chevy station wagon, left to rot among the weeds and fallen tree branches.
The car became infamous in 1981 when around 2 a.m. on May 22, Williams was stopped by police while driving the station wagon, which belonged to his father, after an officer staking out the James Jackson Parkway Bridge heard a splash below in the dark waters of the Chattahoochee River. Though police let Williams go that night, he became a suspect in the Atlanta Child Murders two days later, when the body of 27-year-old Nathaniel Carter was found floating in the same river.
When Williams was convicted of two murders and implicated in 22 others, it was based largely on dog hair and carpet fibers, many of which were related to the Chevy station wagon. After the trial, Homer Williams reclaimed possession of the car, often taking it fishing.
After Homer died in 2005, the car was parked by an old shed, its windows rolled down until the doors had nearly rusted shut.
Blackwelder was given custody of the car by Wayne Williams, and went to Columbus to have it towed back to Piedmont. A camera crew from CNN was there filming a documentary about the Williams case.
“I’m still collecting pieces,” said CNN executive producer Jim Polk, who has interviewed and is working closely with Blackwelder on the documentary. “I don’t even know what the puzzle looks like.”
Blackwelder was simply doing his due diligence for a piece of evidence that could become relevant again. “Not saying that it will, but if this ever got back to trial, it’s better to have it and not need it, than it is to need it and not have it.
After he retired, Edward Blackwelder sought a greater purpose for the research materials and FBI case files he’s collected throughout his long career studying mass murderers and serial killers. Blackwelder makes his research materials available through Criminology Research Project, Inc; all of his files are available online or for the asking to college professors, attorneys, students, law enforcement agencies and those curious to learn more about serial killers. Visit the Criminology Research Project at http://criminologyresearch.org.
Dr. and Mrs. Blackwelder live in Piedmont, Alabama and are members of Bush Arbor Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia. The professor is a frequent lecturer and author. His book, Deadly Little Secret, the detailed story of the Heath Stocks multiple murders of his father, mother and teenaged sister in Lonoke County, Arkansas, is expected to be available soon.
On January 28, 1958, Charles Starkweather, a 19-year-old high-school dropout from Lincoln, Nebraska, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, kill a Lincoln businessman, his wife and their maid, as part of a murderous crime spree that began a week earlier and would ultimately leave 10 people dead. The killer couple’s deadly road trip, which generated enormous media attention and a massive manhunt, came to an end the following day, when Starkweather and Fugate were arrested near Douglas, Wyoming. The crimes later inspired a slew of books, movies and music, including Terence Malick’s 1973 film “Badlands,” starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, and Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 song “Nebraska.”
Growing up, Charles Starkweather (1938-1959) was bullied and did poorly in school. He later idolized James Dean and identified with the actor’s rebellious, outsider image. Starkweather committed his first murder on December 1, 1957, when he robbed a gas station and killed the attendant. Reportedly, an attendant at the station had previously refused Starkweather’s attempt to buy a present for Fugate (1943- ) on credit.
Starkweather turned serial killer on January 21, 1958, when he shot Fugate’s stepfather and mother after arguing with them at their home, and strangled Fugate’s two-and-a-half-year-old sister. Starkweather and Fugate remained holed up at the scene of the crime for several days, before taking off in Starkweather’s car and murdering three more people–a farmer and two teenagers–on January 27. On January 28, the couple killed another three people–the Lincoln businessman, his wife and their maid. Starkweather and Fugate’s final victim, a shoe salesman, was killed on January 29; the couple was captured later that day.
Starkweather and Fugate were convicted of murder. He was given the death penalty and died in the electric chair on June 25, 1959. Fugate was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in 1976
For now and continuing for an undetermined period of time, various experts in a multitude of professions will delve into the web that culminated in the Tucson, Arizona mass murders. I believe it’s much too early to determine a sound and accurate explanation as to why the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, carried out his devastating rampage. However, it is beginning to appear that some degree of “stochastic terriorism” is responsible. Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random ”lone wolves” to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. Stochastic terrorism is basically inflammatory rhetoric that tends to insight inappropriate action within certain individuals, generally those that are mentally ill or dysfunctional is some manner.
This is what occurs when Ben Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting. There are many other examples: the resulting deaths at the Tennessee Unitarian Church, the three police officers killed in Pittsburg, the mass murders at a Virginia Tech University, the Fort Hood mass murders, etc., and the list continues.
We see stochastic terrorism in media in comments made by many politicians. Stochastic terrorism, or “hate talk,” has become a common denominator in our political climate today and we must pause to reflect upon its strength and force that causes it to become as lethal is the Arizona shooters Glock .33 magnum weapon.
Stochastic terrorism activates societies “lone wolves” with its “get your guns” and “someone has to come forward to save the nation” mentality. The actual “shooter,” no doubt a mentally ill young man, actually pulled the trigger and should be dealt with. Nevertheless, what this young former college student did was an inappropriage reaction to the actions of supposedly tempered media commentators and politicians who, for years, have been more interested in winning a political battle or war than tempering the truth by yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre.
I urge you to review the news concerning this tragedy and zero in on the terminology—the words—that have been spewed out. To someone already mentally sick these words are inflamatory, they are a call for immediate action, they are nothing less than shouting “fire” in the crowded theatre.
Dr. Edward Blackwelder
Criminology Research Project, Inc.
Executive Director
Criminology is not always serious, at least when it comes to property once owned by infamous murderers. Let me give you a few examples. The 1972 Chevrolet station wagon pictured above is the infamous vehicle that convicted serial murderer Wayne B. Williams is accused of having used to transport several bodies onto the Jackson Memorial Parkway Bridge slowing down only long enough to dump a single body into the Chattahoochee River. Williams was convicted of having killed two of a large number of young black children in the late 70′s and early 80′s and is considered on of the nation’s most infamous serial murderers.
Wayne William’s 1972 Chevrolet station wagon could bring a huge amount of money. This vehicle is currently owned by Criminology Research Project, Inc. located in Piedmont, Alabama. Executive director Dr. Edward Blackwelder says the vehicle is not for sale at any price. If it were to be sold Blackwelder estimates it would sell from $50,000 to $75,000.
Nevertheless, there are equally infamous items owned or used by murderers that are being offered for sale. For instance, Lee Harvey Oswald was buried in a wooden casket for 18 years in Fort Worth’s Rose Hill Cemetery but is now up for bid. Oswald’s original casket is a wooden one being offered by Baumgardner Funeral Home in Fort Worth, Texas. This casket was dug up in 1981 when crime conspiracy buffs pushed hard enough to have Oswald’s body exhumed to prove once and for all whether or not the body contained inside was actually that of Lee Harvey Oswald….it was.
A post-mortem examination was conducted by a former Jefferson County, Alabama, forensic pathologist and the wedding band on Oswald’s ring finger was presented to Maria Oswald who identified it as that of her infamous husband. Oswald’s body was reburied in a new casket.
Since 1981 apparently this original casket was stored in Baumgardner’s Funeral Home and has remained there all these years. Allen Baumgardner, funeral home owner, said that he had decided to sell the casket and various related items (embalming equipment, related Oswald documents) and is offering it at a starting bid price of $1,000. Some knowledgeable sources indicate that the price could go as high as $100,000.
Also interesting is Oswald’s death certificate that is also being auctioned. This certificate originally indicated that Oswald had been shot and killed by Jack Ruby whose legal name was actually Jack Rubenstein. This death certificate was amended due to the fact that Ruby (Rubenstein) had not been convicted of actually killing Oswald.
How much would Wayne William’s infamous station wagon sell for? Blackwelder would not speculate but surmised that the price would likely be in line with the price of the Bronco that O.J. Simpson took his famous slow speed chase in. It sold for approximately $65,000. The morgue “toe tag” on the foot of Jack Ruby sold for thousands of dollars.
Blackwelder says there is a demand for crime memorabilia but has never sold any of the crime related items his Criminology Research Project, Inc., owns. According to Blackwelder’s wife, Shirley, curious minded crime buffs stop by regularly to take photographs of William’s vehicle. Many times, according to Mrs. Blackwelder, “the people actually pose next to the station wagon for a photo.”