Helen Louise Morrison (born July 9, 1942) is an American forensic psychiatrist, writer and profiler. She was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and attended Temple University, the Medical College of Pennsylvania, and the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. [1] Her work involves the psychology of serial killers.
The focus of her research has been to find common personality traits among serial killers. She has published a book, My Life Among the Serial Killers . [1] ...
Morrison was a witness for the defense at the trial of John Wayne Gacy, testifying that he was legally insane because he was "unable to separate from his mother psychologically" and never developed a separate identity. [2] The jury rejected Gacy's insanity defense and found him guilty. After his execution, Gacy's brain was removed and was in Morrison's possession. [3]
John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 young men and boys in Norwood Park Township, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He became known as the Killer Clown due to his public performances as "Pogo the Clown" or "Patches the Clown", personas he had devised, prior to the discovery of his crimes.
John Wayne Glover was an English-Australian serial killer convicted of the murders of six elderly women, over a period of 14 months from 1989 to 1990 including Winifreda, Lady Ashton, widow of the English-Australian impressionist painter Sir Will Ashton, in suburbs located in Sydney's North Shore. The fact that the victims were all elderly women led to Glover attaining the nickname by the press of The Granny Killer. Following his arrest in 1990, he admitted to the murders and was sentenced to consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He hanged himself in prison on 9 September 2005.
Dorothy Otnow Lewis is an American psychiatrist and author who has been an expert witness at a number of high-profile cases. She specializes in the study of violent individuals and people with dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Lewis has worked with death row inmates as well as other prison inmates convicted for crimes of passion and violence, and was the director of the DID clinic at Bellevue Hospital, associated with New York University in New York City. She is a professor of psychiatry at Yale and New York University and is the author of Guilty by Reason of Insanity, a book she wrote based on research done in collaboration with neurologist Jonathan Pincus.
Robert Kenneth Ressler was an FBI agent and author. He played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the term "serial killer", though the term is a direct translation of the German term "Serienmörder" coined in 1930 by Berlin investigator Ernst Gennat. After retiring from the FBI, he authored a number of books on serial murders, and often gave lectures on criminology.
Arthur John Shawcross, also known as the Genesee River Killer, was an American serial killer active in Rochester, New York from 1972 through 1989.
My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers is a book written by Helen Morrison and Harold Goldberg. It presents the cases of ten serial killers, and touches on many more. Morrison spent hundreds of hours in face-to-face interviews, over many years, with several of the subjects. She uses the individual stories to explain and put forth her ideas on what makes a serial killer. The book has received criticism for being factually inaccurate on several topics.
Jason Michael Moss was an American attorney who specialized in criminal defense. He was best known as the author of The Last Victim: A True-Life Journey into the Mind of the Serial Killer (1999), a memoir about his exploration of the minds of incarcerated serial killers, which started as a research project in college. He corresponded and conducted personal interviews with several notorious killers.
Robert Fiske was an American actor on film and stage during the first half of the 20th century.
The Oakland County Child Killer (OCCK) is the name given to the perpetrator(s) responsible for the serial killings of at least four children in Oakland County, Michigan, United States, between 1976 and 1977. The victims were held captive before being killed, and forensic DNA testing has indirectly implicated two suspects, one of whom has since died, with the other serving life in prison for offenses against children. A DNA profile created from samples taken from some of the victims' bodies is from the main perpetrator, but does not match the DNA of anyone named in connection with the case; the perpetrator's identity is unknown.
Brian James Dugan is a convicted rapist and serial killer active between 1983 and 1985 in Chicago's western suburbs. He was known for having informally confessed in 1985 to the 1983 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville, Illinois, which was a highly publicized case. He was already in custody for two other rape/murders, one of an adult woman in 1984 and the other a female child in 1985. He was sentenced to life after pleading guilty to the latter two crimes.
The Last Victim: A True-Life Journey into the Mind of the Serial Killer (1999) is a non-fiction work by author Jason Moss, co-authored with counseling professor Jeffrey Kottler, in which he details his fascination and subsequent correspondence with several notorious American serial killers.
To Catch a Killer is a two-part television film from 1992, directed by Eric Till and starring Brian Dennehy and Michael Riley. It is based on the true story of the pursuit of American serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Gacy is a 2003 American crime horror thriller film written and directed by Clive Saunders, and co-written by David Birke. A direct-to-video release, it is based on the crimes of John Wayne Gacy, an American serial killer who raped, tortured, and murdered at least thirty-three men and boys in Chicago, Illinois during the 1970s. It stars Mark Holton as Gacy.
"'Sacrament" is the fifteenth episode of the first season of the American crime-thriller television series Millennium. It premiered on the Fox network on February 21, 1997. The episode was written by Frank Spotnitz, and directed by Michael W. Watkins. "Sacrament" featured guest appearances by Philip Anglim, Dylan Haggerty and Brian Markinson.
Dear Mr. Gacy is a 2010 Canadian drama thriller film directed by Svetozar Ristovski, and starring William Forsythe and Jesse Moss. The film is based on Jason Moss's memoir The Last Victim.
John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender.
"Devil's Night" is the fourth episode of the fifth season of the anthology television series American Horror Story. It aired on October 28, 2015, on the cable network FX. This episode was written by Jennifer Salt and directed by Loni Peristere.
Louis B. Garippo was a former Cook County judge and supervisor in the state’s attorney’s office best known as the presiding judge over the trial of John Wayne Gacy. He also made notable contributions during the trial of Richard Speck and the controversy which surrounded Chief Illiniwek.
Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes is a limited docuseries created and directed by Joe Berlinger for Netflix. It is the second installment in the Conversations with a Killer series and succeeds Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. The series depicts the murder spree of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who killed at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. The story is depicted through never-before-heard archival audio footage that was recorded during Gacy's incarceration, interviews with participants close to the case and from one of the surviving victims. It was released on April 20, 2022.
John David Norman was an American pedophile and sex offender convicted numerous times between 1960 and 1998 on charges of child molestation and child pornography. Throughout his life, Norman operated various mailing services dedicating to distributing child pornography and arranging sex trafficking. Among these operations were the Odyssey Foundation based out of Dallas, Delta Project based out of Chicago, and Handy Andy based out of Pennsylvania. Norman is also known for his alleged ties to serial killers Dean Corll and John Wayne Gacy. He was eventually arrested for the last time in August 1987, in Illinois, and spent the rest of his life in state custody. He died in 2011, at age 83.