PrintSome Inconvenient Truths about American Mass Murderers
Whether our nation is mourning the victims of yet another mass murderer, or murderers, the liberal politicians and pundits, like a toddler in charge of the TV remote, continue to play the same sorry episode from their progressive programming: guns are to blame and the government needs to do something about it.
However, when it comes to the worst mass murderers in the United States, there are several very inconvenient truths for those of the liberal persuasion, and none of them involves guns. First of all, of the ten worst mass murderers in American history, only 3 of them -- Seung-Hui Cho, Adam Lanza, and George Hennard -- used guns as their primary means of killing.
Of the four worst American murderers, Gary Ridgway (71 victims), Andrew Philip Kehoe (44 victims), Ted Bundy (36 victims), and John Wayne Gacy (34 victims), none of them used guns to kill. Ridgway and Gacy strangled their victims. Bundy strangled, bludgeoned, and drowned his victims. Kehoe used bombs to kill his victims -- mostly school children ages 7-12.
As one looks beyond the means of killing and examines the lives of these men, other troubling patterns emerge. Virtually all were from broken, or at least troubled, homes. Ridgway’s parents remained married, but his mother, Mary Ridgway, was a domineering woman who was prone to terrible treatment of her son.
Early in his childhood Ridgway was a chronic bed-wetter. After he wet his bed, his mother would berate him in front of his siblings and then give him cold baths “while paying special attention to his ‘dirtiest’ parts, that is, his genitals.” She would often perform the baths barely clothed herself. In his teenage years, Ridgway fantasized about having violent sex with his mother. No doubt that this is often what he acted out as he raped and strangled (not always in that order) dozens of prostitutes over a 22-year period.
Ted Bundy was born to Louise Cowell at the “Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers.” Initially Bundy was raised by his maternal grandparents Samuel and Eleanor Cowell. They presented him as their son and Louise as his older sister in order to avoid the social stigma of an illegitimate birth. Bundy would eventually discover the truth and expressed lifelong resentment towards his mother for the deceit.
Bundy was especially fond of his grandfather. However, Samuel Cowell has been described as a “tyrannical bully and a bigot who hated blacks, Italians, Catholics, and Jews, beat his wife and the family dog, and swung neighborhood cats by their tails. He once threw Louise's younger sister Julia down a flight of stairs for oversleeping.”
Ted’s mother would eventually head west to Washington State. There she would meet and marry Johnny Bundy who would later adopt Ted. The Bundys would have four additional children and Ted would describe this home as a “wonderful… solid Christian home” with “two dedicated and loving parents.”
Outside the home, young Ted encountered printed pornography which he described as sparking and fueling his perverse and violent attitudes towards women. Just prior to being executed, Bundy would note that “The most damaging kind of pornography -- and I'm talking from hard, real, personal experience -- is that that involves violence and sexual violence. The wedding of those two forces -- as I know only too well -- brings about behavior that is too terrible to describe.”
John Wayne Gacy grew up with a violent, abusive, and alcoholic father who often belittled and beat him. Gacy also was regularly molested at a young age by a family friend. Married in his early 20s to Marilynn Myers, Gacy and his wife moved to Waterloo, Illinois in the fall of 1966. Not long after relocating, Gacy became involved in wife swapping, prostitution, pornography, and illegal drug use. At this time, Gacy was also having homosexual encounters.
In the late 1960s, Gacy was having sexual encounters with boys as young as 15. In 1968 Gacy was indicted on an oral sodomy charge -- a charge he would not face in these “enlightened” times. Gacy plead guilty and served only 18 months of a 10-year sentence. By the 1970s he was again sexually assaulting teenage boys. Gacy also indulged in gay pornography. In 1972 he committed the first of dozens of murders.
From 1970 to 1973, Dean Corll of Houston, Texas kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered at least 28 boys ages 13 to 20. Corll’s parents divorced when he was six. As a young adult, Corll frequently enjoyed the company of teenage boys. Corll was shot and killed in August of 1973 by one of his teenage accomplices, 17-year-old Elmer Henley.
After the shooting, police were skeptical of Henley’s description of Corll’s crimes. Henley was proven correct after the police searched Corll’s home. There they found a sexual torture chamber. “There was a board with handcuffs attached, ropes, a large dildo and plastic covering the carpeted floor. There was also an odd wooden crate with what appeared to be airholes cut into it.”
Over a six-week period in 1971, to satisfy his sadistic sexual desires, Juan Corona raped and murdered over two dozen men. Corona would sodomize and then stab his victims.
Adam Lanza’s parents were divorced. Aaron Alexis’ parents were divorced. Elliot Rodger’s parents were divorced and his father took pornographic photos that he sold online.
Instead of guns, the most common elements of the worst among us are broken homes and sexual deviancy. One reason liberals can’t stand to hear such information is that it defies a government solution. The left would much rather rant against firearms and seek legislation to restrict them.
Additionally, liberals in the United States have been complicit in the breakdown of the family and the spread of sexual immorality. Whether divorce, fornication, marriage, prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, and so on, for decades now, in the name of “sexual freedom,” liberals have called what is evil good, and what is good evil. They have preached, promoted, and even passed legislation in defense of these “values.”
Thus, to hear that such things are a significant part of the lives of those who commit mass murder is a terribly inconvenient truth for leftists. In our culture, we usually debate only the legitimacy of killing our fellow human beings when it occurs in the womb. (Of course, along with robbing us of tens of millions of lives, abortion devalues human life in general and breeds violence.)
When the fruit of liberalism is revealed in mass murder, then liberalism becomes more difficult to defend. This is why when mass murderers act, liberals would much rather focus on an instrument than the character of the killers.
Trevor Grant Thomas At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
