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?He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.?

~Friedrich Nietzsche

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A boy who slew his elderly grandmother and raped her corpse in a sordid act of incestuous necrophilia has had his application for clemency rejected. The boy, then a 14-year-old resident of Winnipeg, Canada, was in 2005 found guilty of murdering his 79-year-old grandmother by smothering her with a pillow as she slept. He then raped her corpse, spray-painted her genitalia and mutilated the cadaver with a knife. He also saw fit to poison her dog with anti-freeze.

Police were called to the scene, where they found the boy lying on her bed, her house in disarray and her corpse shoved in a closet. The boy received the maximum sentence possible for a minor after being convicted of first-degree murder – 6 years incarceration followed by 4 years of “open” custody in which he would be able to come and go from jail. Now 19, the young man begged the court to begin his open custody some 2 years early, a move supported by his mother and probation officer, but opposed by his father, the victim’s son. The judge was having none of it:

“I cannot ignore the seriousness of the offence he committed and his blatant, violently sexual behaviour during it. I truly commend (his) progress and his commitment to change … but (his) interests cannot and does not overshadow the interests of society.”

Doctors report that the boy shared fantasies of raping women who had “humiliated” him with them.

The full appalling details of how two brothers aged only 11 and ten tortured, beat and humiliated two innocent schoolboys were outlined for the first time yesterday. A courtroom fell silent as their acts of savagery and depravity beyond comprehension were described.  The hush was broken by sobbing when ten seconds of mobile phone footage taken by the older brother during the attack was screened. The horrific attack took place while the brothers were in foster care and despite the fact their family had been well known to social services for 14 years. The brothers were also both known to police. The ten-year-old ‘had the potential’ to become a psychopath, a child psychiatrist said.

Text from the Daily Mail (that’s why it may sound a bit sensational) The full article can be found here and the original news story here.

The Winchester Mystery House is a well-known California mansion that was under construction continuously for 38 years, and is reported to be haunted. It once was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, but is now a tourist attraction. Under Winchester’s day-to-day guidance, its "from-the-ground-up" construction proceeded around-the-clock, without interruption, from 1884 until her death on September 5, 1922, at which time work immediately ceased. The cost for such constant building has been estimated at about US $5.5 million (if paid in 1922, this would be equivalent to almost $70 million in 2008 dollars). The mansion is renowned for its size and utter lack of any master building plan. According to popular belief, Winchester thought the house was haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles, and that only continuous construction would appease them. It is located at 525 South Winchester Blvd. in San Jose, California.

‘Deeply saddened by the deaths of her daughter Annie in 1866 and her young husband in 1881, and seeking solace, Winchester consulted a medium on the advice of a psychic. The medium, who has become known colloquially as the "Boston Medium," told Winchester that she believed there to be a curse upon the Winchester family because the guns they made had taken so many lives. The psychic told Winchester that "thousands of people have died because of it and their spirits are now seeking deep vengeance." The Boston Medium told Winchester that she had to leave her home in New Haven and travel West, where she must "build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon, too. You must never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live forever. But if you stop, then you will die too."

Extensive Post with more Details, Photos & Videos

Ashura falls on the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram. It is the culmination of the mourning period commemorating the death of Hussein, who Shiites revere as the third Imam. The story of Hussein relates back to the struggle for supremacy within the Muslim community following the death of the Prophet Mohammed, a major event marking the split between the Sunni and Shiite sects. Imam Hussein was the grandson of Mohammed and the son of Ali, a caliph following Mohammed’s death.  After Ali’s death in 661 C.E., his sons, including Hussein, struggled with the first caliph of the Ummayad Empire, Muawiyah, and his son Yazid I, for control of the caliphate. The day of Ashura marks the final battle between Hussein and Yazid, outside the city of Karbala in 680 C.E. Above, in Istanbul, Turkey, a Shiite presses his hand to a portrait of Hussein.

Rite of passage: Often, Shiite boys will begin the ritual of self-flagellation while still quite young. In the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh, a boy makes the ceremonial cut on his forehead to mark Hussein’s death.

See the whole Photo Essay about the Ashura

Friedrich "Fritz" Haarmann (October 25, 1879 – April 15, 1925) was a German serial killer who is believed to have been responsible for the murder of 27 boys and young men between 1918 and 1924. He was tried, found guilty of 24 murders, and executed.

Haarmann, also known as Germany’s "Hanover Vampire",  was actually institutionalized at one point during the late 1800s, but he managed to escape.  Eventually he became a homeless vagrant.  Then he learned to butcher meat, which allowed him to have a home and start a business. Having his own place protected his attack on boys.

He would seek wandering waifs in the train station and take them home.  Soon he teamed up with a good-looking male prostitute named Graf who had much better luck.  They’d take the boys to Haarman’s home, feed them, and then Haarman would force them to have sex.  Often those victims would simply vanish.  Once the police caught Haarman in the act and arrested him for molestation.  They had no idea that he’d murdered another boy and had his head sitting there under some newspapers.

Graf and Haarman trapped and killed an estimated 50 young men over a five-year period. They were finally stopped when someone found a sack of skulls and bones in the Leine Canal and turned them into the police.  Since Haarmann lived near the canal and had been arrested before, investigators searched his home, They found clothing from missing boys and saw bloodstains on the walls. Again, they arrested Haarmann and he confessed. 

As he talked, he called his victims "game."  He described how he would grab the boys, sleepy from a large meal, and while sodomizing them would chew through their throat until the head was practically severed from the body.  As he tasted their blood, he achieved orgasm.  He would then cut the flesh from their bodies, consume some of it, and sell the rest on the open market as butchered meat.  The rest of the parts he dumped into the canal.  Armed with grisly evidence for 27 of the murders, investigators ensured Haarmann’s conviction and he was sentenced to die by execution. Moments before the blade fell, Haarmann announced that this was his wedding.

List of some victims // Extensive article at the Crime Library (good read!)
The picture shows Haarmann (top) and the police searching his home.

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Daciana Viorica Brezeanu was a Romanian ballet dancer and gymnast who died from self inflicted wounds to the stomach and chest. She was said to have suffered from delusions that were religious in nature.

"She was always quoting scripture to ward off evil spirits – sometimes screaming at the top of her lungs. Soon after she quit the sports she so dearly loved, it all happened, " said her mother the night after her death. The police discovered several hundred animal bones beneath her bed in cardboard boxes. In one of the boxes was a letter written by Daciana and adressed to God, that stated "The demon has entered me. there is nothing to do now but give in to death." She was 19 years old.

The photo was taken Halloween day,1996 – about one year before her death.

On the afternoon of 6 May 1993, West Memphis was rocked by the news of the discovery of the mutilated bodies of three eight-year-old boys. They were naked; each had had both left and right hands tied to their corresponding feet with black and white shoe laces. One child, had multiple wounds apparently made by a serrated knife, and injuries of a type often seen as a result of forced oral sex. A second boy had multiple stab wounds and indications of forced oral sex. The police believe that these two boys died by drowning. The third child appeared also to have been forced into oral sex. The skin of his penis was removed and he had been castrated. He had many cuts from a knife with a serrated blade. He had bled to death. Christopher Byers had welts on his back from the buckle of a belt. These were initially interpreted by the police to have resulted from ritual abuse by Satanists. However, Christopher’s step-father John Byers testified at the trial that he had beaten his step-son with a belt at 5:30 PM on the day of the murder.

By 12.00 p.m. the next day, police were questioning their first suspect, Damien Echols. Several weeks later Jessie Misskelley, an associate of Echols, confessed to the murders, implicating Damien Echols and another friend, Jason Baldwin. Soon after, following a confession by Misskelley, the three teenagers were arrested and charged with the murders of James M. Moore, Steven E. Branch and Christopher M. Byers.

The citizens of West Memphis were relieved that the monsters that had committed these heinous crimes had been apprehended and justice would be served. There was a great deal of anger in the community directed towards these three adolescents, supposedly involved in Satanic cults, who were accused of killing three innocent boys as part of a Satanic ritual. Rumors of Satanic groups had abounded in this dominantly Baptist community for decades. Details of their exploits were well known although there was never any proof of any murders actually having been performed in the past. From the time the arrests were made until they were tried, local papers fed the community’s blood-lust, with stories of Satanic abominations appearing on a regular basis.

On Wednesday 19 January 1994, Jessie Misskelley was sent to trial after an attempt to have his confession suppressed was denied. Two weeks later, he was found guilty on one count of first degree capital murder and two counts of second degree capital murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole. He was seventeen years old. The trial of Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols began on Tuesday 4 February 1994. On Monday 18 April 1994, they were both found guilty on three counts of capital murder. The next day Jason, just sixteen, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of forty years. Eighteen-year-old Damien Echols was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

DNA evidence presented in 2007 has conclusively proved that all three are innocent. However, the DNA of a step father of one of the boy’s was allegedly detected at the crime scene. The legal process is still ongoing. An extensive but partly outdated article can be found here.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills is a 1996 documentary film directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky about the trials of the three teenage boys in West Memphis, Arkansas for the murder and sexual mutilation of three prepubescent boys. The boys on trial for the crime are: Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, also known as the West Memphis 3.

Omen remake aside, there haven’t been any big studio "killer kid" movies in ages, and the few that there were have been pretty weak. The Good Son, for example -- it was rated R, but for what? He kills a pet and says "fuck". Ooooh. So I wasn’t expecting much from Warner Bros.’ Orphan; maybe she’d cause a car accident or something, but I didn’t think she’d actually kill anyone.

So imagine my surprise when, not even an hour into the (2 hour) movie, she takes a hammer to a woman and kills the ever-loving shit out of her. Yes! A "killer" kid movie with actual kills! And while the body count doesn’t get much higher (one more kill, though a fairly surprising one), Esther is a vicious little bitch. She attempts to kill both of her siblings on several occasions, threatens to castrate the brother ("I’ll cut your hairless little dick off before you even know what it’s for"), brains a bird, stabs a guy to death… it’s pretty goddamn brutal. There’s also a taut scene where a girl who bullied Esther at school is inside of a giant playground castle/house thing. Because it has corridors and doorways and such, it actually feels like a typical stalking scene that would occur in a real house, only now with children. It’s an interesting visual, and ends with the little girl getting tossed down the slide and breaking her leg. Again -- Esther’s not all talk and no action like some of her killer kid brethren.

But even without Esther the film packs a punch. The opening nightmare scene is more horrifying and disturbing than anything in the Nightmare on Elm St. films ever presented for a nightmare (the fact that it actually RESEMBLES a dream, with unexplained character/location changes and such, doesn’t hurt). And then later there is a terrific bit that plays on our understanding of cinema. Our hero mom (Vera Farmiga) pulls up to a red light and begins daydreaming as she spies a pregnant woman walking across the street. She keeps watching for a while, and then we hear a car honk. We all know this means that she’s daydreamed past the light turning to green again, so she starts driving toward. And then BAM! she narrowly misses getting side-swiped. It is then that we see the light, which is still red -- the honking was unrelated. Great misdirection.

Read the full Review…