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Serial Killers who used their jobs/position to commit murders?

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A common profile in criminology is that of an "Angel of Death", a medical professional or caretaker who intentionally harms or kills people under their care. I am curious about serial killers who specifically used their careers or positions of power (outside of the medical field) to find their victims or as part of their "modus operandi".

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Dennis Rader installed home security systems for ADT for 14 years. Although it is unclear if he ever installed security systems for any of his victims.

I wonder if his standing in his church ever “helped” with his BTK crimes? It was a big help in him finally getting caught!

It was a good cover, anyway.

He also helped himself to the collection plate, although he wasn't charged with that because the WPD had bigger fish to fry.

I recall an interview where he would pray harder he was feeling anxious to kill But he said it never helped.

He did use the church as a place to take pictures of one of his victims. So in a way it was unwillingly a private location to commit crimes.

u/GorgogTheCornGrower avatar

Sociopaths often seek out positions of authority/trust in order to cover their intentions and gain access to unsuspecting targets.

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I vaguely recall that he specifically wouldn’t target homes with ADT and would include that fact when pitching the benefits of ADT to clients, but take that with a grain of salt.

I will not target your home… I mean, BTK has never targeted an ADT home… good day sir”

If a home security employee knew specifics about an at-large serial killer’s MO I honestly don’t know if I would be concerned and suspicious or genuinely impressed by his dedication to his chosen profession.

u/johnbaipkj avatar

Lol I'd be torn. On one side its nice when find someone else that's knows enough about their favorite hobby of serial killers that I would prob feel I found a best friend in. Don't have anybody IRL to talk about it without coming off as a super fan.

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Also, wasn't he an inspector for his city at one point and used that job to case victims?

u/Actual-Interest-4130 avatar

According to Last Podcast on the Left he once used his position as a dog catcher to impound and destroy an intended victim's watchdog. Fuck that guy so hard.

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Dorothea Puente. She ran a boarding house for elderly and mentally disabled people and killed them for their social security money.

She’s from my hometown (Sacramento) and imo the new owners of the house are so disrespectful. They set it up like a tourist attraction and there’s shit like ghosts everywhere

u/TheSpiral11 avatar

This happened on my block where there was a horrible murder. Nobody wanted to buy the place because it was so notorious, and then someone bought it and turned it into a “haunted museum” for tourists. General consensus among the neighbors was that it was crass & tasteless. I felt awful for the victims’ families because they still lived in the neighborhood and had to watch some idiots making money off their loved ones death.

Ugh, that is disgusting. There should be a law against people profiting off of true crime in a way that is disrespectful to the victims.

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oh wow. never heard about that. I have to dig into this...this is just horrible...

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The Bender Family of Kansas certainly used their livelihood to assist them.

This is one case I rarely see mentioned, and the story is pretty wild.

u/loucast13 avatar

Someone should make a movie

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Thanks for the fun dive! Do you think they were indeed the same individuals as the Kelly family?

Oh wow, I’d never heard of them before, the wikipedia section for descriptions is wild: "Young Bender, seen when excited, recalled the grave-robbing hyena at once to mind."

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Wayne Couzens, the rapist and murderer who took Sarah Everard’s life. He was a police officer caught on camera falsely arresting her in order to get her into his car. Despicable.

u/champagnec0ast avatar

+ He has a history of sexual offences and nobody did anything about it.

His nickname on the police force was ‘the rapist’ ffs

That’s exactly why there is no such thing as a good cop. His buddies all knew

Holup, what?!

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The rest of that story is horrific

oof. this case never will not give me chills...

There have been a few...that cop in Florida? He abducted and murdered a number of young girls. His name is eluding me now. Shaeffer?

Gerard Schaeffer? I'm probably misspelling his last name but I remember reading about him.

That's him! It was on some crime show, probably Evil lives here or something.

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u/areallyreallycoolhat avatar

I don't know if it was how he found his murder victims other than just placing him in the areas, but John Wayne Glover (Granny Killer) worked as a sales rep for a meat pie company and would assault elderly women while doing his sales rounds in hospitals and nursing homes.

u/hook3m13 avatar

EARONS aka Golden State Killer - He was a cop

u/doc_daneeka avatar

Worth noting though is that he only really switched his MO to deliberately murdering his victims after he lost his job as a cop.

u/supermethdroid avatar

I haven't read about him in a long time, but I assume he would've been active prior to being a cop as well?

u/doc_daneeka avatar

He was a very prolific fetish burglar, then a prolific home invasion serial rapist, and then he lost his job as a cop, and then decided to kill them each time.

Didn’t he lose his job as a cop because he was caught shoplifting or some other dumb reason? I wonder if he was already devolving into a more erratic personality before being fired and that’s why he lost the job.

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u/hook3m13 avatar

Fair enough! It definitely was a reason he escalated though - He had the time, an alibi, etc

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And now the whole world knows that he has a micropenis.

That's one thing the survivors all said, and the jailers confirmed this.

Who cares if the dude had micopenis?? The guy lost the genetic lottery. Sometimes 2 fucked up inherited genetic traits mix. The odds of another rapist/killer with micropenis is pretty much nil.

And if you think his micropenis was the cause of his behavior, you are sadly mistaken. He would have been a rapist/killer no matter what size he was.

Do you know how many downvotes I would get if I made fun of some female serial killer and blamed it on any part of their anatomy? I'd be torn apart.

I do not have one by the way.

Edited

I mean psychologically you can’t rule out that it was part of why he committed violent sexual crimes due to an insecurity and an inferiority complex.

A lot of sexual crimes by men are about taking power in an area they feel they have none. Believe it or not men don’t like having a micro penis. It’s linked to infertility at a primal level within us. That’s not to say that it’s true but a lot of people do think that way.

He would cry and repeat his ex girlfriends name over and over during attacks suggesting he suffered a huge rejection mixed with the above and that can lead to people snapping and committing these crimes… they feel the power and want to do it over and over.

Suggested he was a rapist just because of genetic traits can not be verified. It is usually due to lived experiences in childhood or young adulthood.

Also there is a link between female killers of children and their inability to have children of their own…. Which isn’t a crazy thing to say and people wouldn’t attack you for it.

Edit - just to clarify I don’t agree that having a micro penis should be used as a way to further humiliate people. Even killers. This just furthers the stigma that leads to feelings of sexual violence. I agree with your sentiment.

Edited

Thanks for a real reply. I don't deny it could be a strong contributing factor. But I am sure lots of men with micropenis are humiliated by girlfriends they love, unfortunately. But they don't become rapist killers. And lots have girlfriends that honestly don't care. That's how the gene gets passed on. But your right, environmental factors play a role in people becoming rapist killers. But are you really going to tell me genetics cannot also be a factor possibly?

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u/AlmostAlwaysADR avatar

I mean, men tend to take out their insecurities on women. It's not a stretch to say that his micropeen had something to do with the utter brutality he inflicted.

I won't deny it could be a contributing factor. And thanks for the real response. Just fukin irks me someone has bring it up every time EARONS is mentioned. Ok. We get it. He had a small dick that helped identify him. This is common fucking knowledge on this sub.

That or the pure feeling of superiority over a man because they know he has a small dick, for whatever reason. There are some sick ones here.

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u/Jimjimjihn avatar

Damn I've never been as sure that someone I've never seen or met has a micropenis. Stay strong king.

Sorry you have a tiny one

LOOOOL 😂

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I feel like only someone with a micropenis would write this response.

you might have one

Agreed that body-shaming is bad. It’s a damn shame to see some of the comments here :/

"Aileen Wuornos would have made so much more of an impact on the female serial killer culture, if she wasn't so damn ugly."

Normally I would be torn apart in any other comment thread on here.

But whatever. It's Reddit. Not everyone is gonna like my comments. I think I will still manage to sleep tonight...

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u/PunkLibrarian032120 avatar

Dean Corll. He ran a family-owned candy factory in Houston ,Texas, and encouraged teenage boys in the area to hang out there. He paid a couple of the boys (Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks) to entice their friends to hang out at Corll’s home, where he would rape, torture, and kill them. This case has always stuck with me, due to the sheer number of teenagers that Corll killed, the brutality of their murders, the depth of depravity that led Henley and Brooks to lure their own friends and acquaintances to what they both knew would be hideous deaths, and the fact that cops did jack shit to find any of these kids despite anguished pleas from their families, because they all came from a working-class /working poor neighborhood. I lived in Houston at the time, and if literally scores of teenage boys had disappeared from an affluent neighborhood in Houston, the cops would have been all over it.

'The Candy man'

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Edited

Long-haul truck drivers. Too many to list

u/RoguePhoenix89 avatar

This. I don't trust most of them.

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welp, that's me

I'm sorry! I should've mentioned that they represent a tiny percentage of long -haulers.

And that it's dangerous for the drivers to offer rides to people. There's been instances where the passenger killed the driver 😔

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u/No_Duty6279 avatar

what?

u/TrueCrimeDiscussion-ModTeam avatar

This appears to violate the Reddit Content Policy. Reddit prohibits wishing harm/violence or using dehumanizing speech (even about a perpetrator), hate, victim blaming, misogyny, misandry, discrimination, gender generalizations, homophobia, doxxing, and bigotry.

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Willie Pickton used his pig farm to dispose of his victims' remains.

Maybe not a serial killer, but could argue that Dellen Millard used his family's property to incinerate victims' remains because he had access to the property.

Robert Black was a lorry driver, which allowed him to get away with murders more easily.

Or even Russell Williams... No one suspected him, due to his military status.

yes but he didn't USE it as a ruse to lure his victims.

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Ugh, Dellen Millard. I hope he never gets out. And that poor girl he murdered, his girlfriend.

And that guy (I feel so bad for his family... not going to lie. His wife was pregnant at the time iirc) As well as allegedly his own father.

You mean the man with the truck that they murdered? His wife wasn't pregnant but they had an infant daughter.

Ah right, it has been a while since I looked at it sorry

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u/TapirTrouble avatar

The people who disappeared in this Ontario case were tenants of these unscrupulous landlords.
https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/muskoka-mystery-missing-seniors/

In at least one case, this Canadian military officer targeted and killed a female soldier at his base.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/col-russell-williams-timeline-1.913312

I worked with the officer who first arrested Russell during the investigation. Man was never the same after trial.

u/TapirTrouble avatar

Poor guy -- I hope he was offered counselling and support. The people working on cases like these see some horrible things.

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Jack Unterweger went on ride alongs with cops as a journalist covering murders, and they pointed out areas where vulnerable sex workers could be found. He would later go back to those spots and murder those women.

Harold Shipman, doctor, UK. Murdered hundreds with morphine.

u/GorditaPollo avatar

Lucy Letby would be a new addition to that genre of killer. 

And the fact that she was so cowardly, she wouldn't face the families in court.

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u/StfuJohnny avatar

I know that “the bedsit murders” David fuller worked in a hospital with access to a mortuary for nearly 30 years and didn’t get caught during that. He didn’t necessarily murder from this position, but I think what he did qualifies as vile and disgusting enough to add into this discussion.

Ian Huntley, he was a school caretaker who had complaints of rape and sexual assault. He used his position to lure and murder 10 year old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. He went on to appear on the news giving an interview about the local search, as well as joining the search himself. His girlfriend Maxine Carr helped cover his tracks, but eventually turned on him. After this more criminal checks were used on anyone working with children.

Gerald Schaeffer used his multiple positions of authority (teacher, cop) to kill.

Edited

The hog farmers who fed the bodies to the hogs.

The lab custodian who killed the research scientist and put her in the wall at work.

The numerous apartment handymen who killed tenants.

The hotel worker who killed the hotel guest. Iirc he took her jewelry and that helped catch him.

Chris Watts hid the bodies at his job site.

That fire investigator who set fires.

That cop who met a guy at a police call for a rowdy party and they became lovers and he killed him for fear of being exposed as cheating and gay to his wife.

The Zookeepers who carpooled- at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and he killed her, and everyone assumed it was her Marine husband.

The furniture store owner who killed his partner. Al Zullo Furniture store.

Aileen Wuornos was a sex worker who killed the Johns.

do you have the names of 7 and 8?

this might be the cop one

https://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/05/23/rios/

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