up t-shirts that said, “Run, Ted, Run” to support his escape. We didn’t want to believe that the man we may have dated or fantasized about last week could actually kill us when we weren’t looking. Bundy also brought the debate of violent pornography and its effects to the table, using it as his defense. If he never would have watched violent pornography, he might not have committed the murders. So should we ban pornography to save ourselves from the Ted Bundys of the future? Leopold and Loeb were two attractive, upper class young men from very affluent families who decided to kill a teenage boy just to see if they could. They had no motive other than hedonism and a feeling
of superiority. Should we fear the intelligencia? And how can we hope to protect ourselves when the least likely of people could be our killer? This was part of what was so shocking about Jeffrey Dahmer, a man with no violence in his background from a good, normal family – who happened to eat people and sleep with dead bodies. Again, how do you get from A-Z and will it happen to me? John Wayne Gacy was the model citizen. He was involved in local politics, a pillar of the community, and entertained children at birthday parties. He also raped and killed 33 boys and buried them in his house. Gacy falls under the “Kane Effect”: can you ever truly understand another person?
JFK showed us that no one, not even the President of the United States, is beyond reach. His death was violent, tragic, and public. We have analyzed those 486 frames of the Zapruder film more than any movie a Bergman or a Welles ever made, still almost 50 years later trying to discern its truth. How could it happen? Why did it happen? And will it happen again? Lee Harvey Oswald was not only the accused assassin of our beloved President, but the first man ever killed on live television. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein continue our fascination with Hitler. How can one person get so many others to do their bidding? Manson, Jim Jones, and Marshall Applewhite are microcosms of this