Rodney Alcala, 66 years old former Los Angeles Times typesetter and amateur photographer, alleged serial killer with a genius IQ, is on trial for the murder of four women and a young girl between 1977 and 1979.

The trial against 66-year-old Rodney Alcala is winding down after more than a month of testimony that included several bizarre twists in which the accused murderer questioned himself on the stand – Alcala is acting as his own attorney. Alcala is currently facing five counts of murder, with special circumstance allegations of murder in the commission of rape, torture and burglary. He is accused of the 1970’s brutal rape-murders of 27-year-old Malibu nurse Georgia Wixted, 21-year-old Pasadena key punch operator Jill Parenteau, 32-year-old Santa Monica legal secretary Charlotte Lamb, 18-year-old New York runaway Jill Barcomb, and 12-year-old Huntington Beach ballet student Robin Samsoe. Twice, Alcala has been found guilty of murdering Samsoe, but both convictions were overturned on appeal.

“He is not hunting deer or pheasants,” said Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy. “He is hunting people. You’re talking about a guy who is hunting through Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it. Murphy told the packed courtroom that Alcala took his time terrorizing his victims by choking them with his bare hands, waiting for them to wake up at least once, then strangling them again — sometimes using shoelaces or panty hose. “It is a staggeringly horrific way to die,” exclaimed Murphy. “There is ample evidence the women put up some resistance….He gets off on it. It was fun.”

Alcala has pleaded not guilty to five counts of first-degree murder for the slayings of four Los Angeles County women and 12-year-old Robin Samsoe from Huntington Beach in the late 1970s. At the center of the prosecution’s case is a gold ball earring that prosecutors and Samsoe’s mother say belonged to the 12-year-old girl with Alcala’s DNA on it. Prosecutors say the earring was found in a jewelry pouch in a Seattle storage locker rented by Alcala. He has focused much of his defense on the earring and has argued that it was his. In a bizarre twist, Alcala showed jurors clips of himself as the winning contestant in a 1970s episode of the TV show “The Dating Game” to prove that he was wearing the gold ball earrings before Samsoe’s death:

“You’ll see my hair go up over my left ear and you’ll see a little flash of gold,” he told jurors. “You need to look closely, but there are two little specks there.” In one of the strangest moments, Alcala said the earring wasn’t Lamb’s. Instead, “It was an earring with Charlotte Lamb’s DNA” on it. The jury should begin deliberating on Tuesday.

Alcala has been in custody since his arrest and has remained in prison while prosecutors appealed both overturned convictions. He was one of the first inmates to arrive on death row after California reinstated capital punishment. Did he really kill all five women and was he trying to say the police planted evidence to convict him remains unclear. Even if they can’t link him to the murder of 12 years old Samsoe, there are still four other deaths.

-articles by Carlin DeGuerin Miller and Christine Pelisek rewritten and adapted by admin-

Larry Murphy, a suspected Irish serial killer is due to be freed in August this year, authorities have confirmed. Murphy is one of Ireland’s most notorious criminals and he is a suspect for the disappearance of some of the six women missing in Leinster in the 1990s.

One of the Larry’s victims is believed to be an American Irish woman, 26-year-old Annie McCarrick, from New York who returned to Ireland in 1993 after attending college there and falling in love with the place. The last thing anyone knows for sure about her is that on the morning she disappeared, she’d run errands at the local bank and grocery store. What happened after that is a mystery. One witness says she saw Annie later that day on a No. 44 city bus. The bus route ends in the pretty Irish small town of Enniskerry in nearby Wicklow where Annie often visited.

Murphy was eventually convicted of the rape of a Carlow businesswoman who he took to the Wicklow Mountains, but she was saved when men out hunting came across him assaulting her.

Murphy is a suspect for the disappearance of some of the six women missing in Leinster in the 1990s. Police investigated him in the disappearance of Jo Jo Dullard, Deirdre Jacob and Annie McCarrick in the 1990s. Missing woman Jo Jo Dullard was last seen in Moone, Co Kildare, just 13 miles from Humewood Castle. The other victims were also in the area.

Larry Murphy’s ten-year sentence is now up, just as police are investigating what may be a hidden grave just two miles from his old home. Police confirmed they conducted an examination of the open plot last month and removed earth fragments for analysis. One of the men that made the new grim discovery told the Evening Herald how the hole looked remarkably like a grave: “My friend and I were shooting in the wooded area just outside the grounds of Humewood Castle when we discovered this strange hole,” he said. “It was dug out like a grave. It was six feet long, two and a half feet wide and three feet deep. It looked like it was dug a number of years ago, there was moss growing in it. It is in a pretty open area and can be seen from the road.”

Murphy refused to cooperate with the police, and seeing how there is no evidence to prosecute him or even confirm there is a serial killer, the case remains open, and Larry is getting freed.

-article by Patrick Cooper rewritten and adapted by admin-

Eight drunken men have drowned in the Mississippi river in the La Crosse area since 1997. The rumors of a serial drowner on the loose in La Crosse are resurfacing again after the body of 21-year-old Western Technical College student Craig J. Meyers was found in the river the day before yesterday.

Meyers went missing after attending a wedding reception at a La Crosse bowling alley, and visiting two bars on Saturday night. He was found Tuesday in 25 feet of water, about 20 feet from shore. Many people blame alcohol for his and all other deaths, but some people think there has to be more to the story. Even though all the conspiracy theories about college age men that drown in La Crosse have gained national attention, the police doesn’t buy it – they’re treating all the cases as accidents. Other eight victims are: Richard Hlavaty, 19; Charles Blatz, 28; Anthony Skifton, 19; Nathan Kapfer, 20; Jeffrey Geesey, 20; Patrick Runingen, 23; Jared Dion, 21; and Luke Homan, 21.

The FBI has conducted a separate investigation looking for clues that link the deaths, but they say the drownings were a result of too much alcohol. An autopsy on Craig Meyers’ body is scheduled for Thursday morning and preliminary results are expected by Thursday afternoon. There are a lot of theories regarding those nine cases of deaths by drowning, but no conclusive evidence to prove any of these claims. If you want to read more speculations about every one of these cases, I suggest you to visit Missing drowning student mystery page.

And here is a two part video about news investigation into La Crosse deaths:

-article by Hart Van Denburg rewritten and adapted by admin-

Dr Amy Bishop Anderson, now 42, a biology professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, is accused of fatally shooting three colleagues and injuring three others at a faculty meeting on Friday. Police Department recalled that Amy Bishop had murdered her 18 year old brother, Seth back in 1986, but it was ruled out as an “accident”.

The 40-year-old, Harvard-educated geneticist and her husband, Jim Anderson, are credited with inventing a mobile cell incubation system touted as a replacement for the old-fashioned petri dish: “She was just really passionate about what she was doing, and very energetic,” Stuart Obermann, a former board member of the BizTech technology incubator, said of Bishop. “I’m really quite shocked.”

Three biology faculty members were shot to death in a third floor conference room and three others were wounded, when Anderson began shooting for no apparent reason. Huntsville police spokesman Sgt. Mark Roberts said Bishop was charged Saturday morning with one count of capital murder. She was taken Friday night in handcuffs from a police precinct to the county jail and could be heard telling TV reporters, “It didn’t happen. There’s no way …. they are still alive.”

Nearly 25 years ago she “accidentally” killed her 18 years old brother. By her account, Amy decided at this time “that it would be a good idea if she learned how to load the shotgun in the house.” She suggested she had been concerned about her safety due to a break-in the year before. “Amy said that she was carrying the gun pointed beside her leg and that Seth told her to point the gun up,” the report says. “Amy had the gun in one hand and started to raise it. Amy further states that someone said something to her and she turned and the gun went off.” That being the second time a weapon that fires only when the trigger is pulled just “went off.” The report declared the shooting accidental “due to the testimony of the members of the Bishop family.” The case was closed.

Now a cover up is being investigated, because the police records have turned up missing in the Bishop murder case. The former police chief denies any cover up and doesn’t know why the case would go missing.

Also, back in 1993 Dr. Amy Bishop Anderson was accused of mailing a bomb to a professor that she was angry with. So loved ones of the victims are now left wondering why Professor Amy Bishop Anderson was even hired by UAH because of her criminal background even if she was not charged in the cases. She was obviously unstable, but it took three lives, maybe even four if we include her brother, to finally arrest her.

Here is a video on the former police chief speaking out on why the records of the shooting were gone and also on the mail bombing.

And another video on the present Braintree police chief making a statement on the 1986 shooting of Bishop’s brother.

-articles by Bella Rose and Victoria Cumbow rewritten and adapted by admin-

Russian serial killer, Alexei W, 23 years old man, put powerful tranquillizers in brandy and then invited people to share a drink and toast with him “on the birth of his little daughter.” He was arrested and suspected of having murdered at least 13 people and injured another 12, some of them seriously, over a period of three years.

According to the police, the suspect had arrived in Moscow from Vladivostok in eastern Russia, where he had previously been imprisoned for theft. He used to single out apparently well-off men who seemed to be on their way home from parties and in high spirits. When invited to share a drink with him, most of the victims readily agreed. Alexei had used medication intended for the treatment of strongly psychotic patients, police said. He would rob his victims as they lost consciousness and then he would leave them to die in icy cold winter temperatures in Moscow commuter trains.

When the young man was arrested in the capital on Wednesday, he tried to hide the drugs he used in his underwear, media reports said. A search of the 23-year-old’s flat after his arrest turned up numerous wallets, credit cards, passports and mobile phones, prompting police to suspect that the number of Alexei W.’s victims could be significantly higher.

Investigating the killings had taken years, police said. The suspect was finally tracked down after one victim survived the attack. Because he was ill, the elderly man had only taken a small sip of the lethal cocktail out of politeness. He regained consciousness and helped produce the composite photograph that led to the suspect’s arrest. It’s still unknown how many people he actually killed.

-article by dpa rewritten and adapted by admin-