A thrill killing is premeditated or random murder that is motivated by the sheer excitement of the act. [1] While there have been attempts to categorize multiple murders, such as identifying "thrill killing" as a type of "hedonistic mass killing", [2] actual details of events frequently overlap category definitions making attempts at such distinctions problematic. [3]
Those identified as thrill killers are typically young males, but other profile characteristics may vary, according to Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Conflict and Violence at Northeastern University. The major common denominator among those who commit thrill killings is that they usually feel inadequate and are driven by a need to feel powerful. "To a certain extent, [thrill killers] may make their victims suffer so that they can feel good," said Levin. "Sadism is fairly common in thrill killings. The killer might torture, degrade, or rape his victim before he or she takes his or her life." [4] They frequently have an "ideal victim type" who has certain physical characteristics. [1] [5]
Thrill killers have been frequently romanticized in films. [6] [7]
This is a timeline of major crimes in Australia.
The Bega schoolgirl murders refer to the abduction, rape and murder of two Australian schoolgirls; 14-year-old Lauren Margaret Barry and 16-year-old Nichole Emma Collins of Bega, New South Wales, Australia on 6 October 1997. They were abducted by Leslie Camilleri and Lindsay Beckett, both from the New South Wales town of Yass. The men subjected the girls to repeated rapes and sexual assaults on five or more separate occasions, while driving them to remote locations throughout rural New South Wales and Victoria. Over a twelve-hour period, the girls had been driven several hundred kilometres from Bega to Fiddler's Green Creek in Victoria, where they were stabbed to death by Beckett under the order of Camilleri.
In England and Wales, life imprisonment is a sentence that lasts until the death of the prisoner, although in most cases the prisoner will be eligible for parole after a minimum term set by the judge. In exceptional cases a judge may impose a "whole life order", meaning that the offender is never considered for parole, although they may still be released on compassionate grounds at the discretion of the Home Secretary. Whole life orders are usually imposed for aggravated murder, and can only be imposed where the offender was at least 21 years old at the time of the offence being committed.
The murder of Ebony Jane Simpson occurred on 19 August 1992 in Bargo, New South Wales, Australia. Aged nine years, Simpson was abducted, raped, and murdered by asphyxiation when Andrew Peter Garforth drowned her. Garforth pleaded guilty to the crimes and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Mark Valera is an Australian serial killer who was convicted in 2000 of the murders of David O'Hearn and Frank Arkell in Wollongong, New South Wales. Valera handed himself into police after the murders, and in court accused his father of violent and sexual abuse, citing this as the reason he himself turned violent. His sister, Belinda van Krevel, later organised for their father to be murdered by a family friend. Valera is currently incarcerated at the Goulburn Correctional Centre, where he is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole.
The Greenough family massacre was the axe murders of Karen MacKenzie (31) and her three children, Daniel (16), Amara (7), and Katrina (5), at their remote rural property in Greenough, Western Australia, on 21 February 1993. They were killed by farm hand William Patrick Mitchell, an acquaintance of MacKenzie. Details of the murders were withheld from the public as they were considered too horrific. The case led to calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty.
Joshua Earl Patrick Phillips is an American man who was convicted of murder as a child. In November 1998, when he was 14 years old, Phillips killed Madelyn Rae Clifton, his 8-year-old friend and neighbor. The following year, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Phillips stated that he killed Clifton to stop her from crying after she was accidentally struck with a baseball while they were playing, and that he feared punishment from his abusive father. Although elements of Phillips's story are disputed, officials who were involved in his prosecution have subsequently expressed contrition over the severity of his sentence. In 2017, Phillips was re-sentenced to life in prison on appeal, but he has been eligible for re-sentencing as of 2023.
Terry Anthony Blair was an American serial killer who was convicted of killing seven women of various ages in Kansas City, Missouri, although investigators believed that there were additional unidentified victims.
Life imprisonment has been the most severe criminal sentence in New Zealand since the death penalty was abolished in 1989, having not been used since 1957.
Erika Elaine Sifrit and Benjamin Adam "BJ" Sifrit are an American couple convicted of murdering two tourists, Joshua Edward Ford and Martha Margene "Geney" Crutchley, in Ocean City, Maryland, in 2002. The case drew substantial media attention. In 2003, both Sifrits were convicted, he for one murder and she for both murders.
The murder of Kimberly Cates was a thrill killing that attracted national attention in the United States due to the crime’s brutality, the randomness by which the home was chosen with intent to murder, the apparent lack of remorse, and the perpetrators’ ages.
Stacey Mitchell was a British-born girl living in Australia who was murdered at the age of 16, on 18 December 2006, by couple Jessica Stasinowsky and Valerie Parashumti. She was bludgeoned with a concrete block and strangled with a chain. Her corpse was found in a wheelie bin shortly afterwards. Stasinowsky and Parashumti had known Mitchell for three days, and claimed they murdered her because they found her irritating.
Anthony Cook and Nathaniel Cook are American brothers and serial killers who committed at least nine rape-murders between 1973 and 1981. They were active in Toledo, Ohio, and surrounding areas with most of their victims being young couples. Anthony was arrested and convicted for the final murder, but his and Nathaniel's guilt in the other killings would not be uncovered until Nathaniel was detained for a misdemeanor in 1998, after which DNA profiling exposed their involvement. Both brothers were later convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment; Anthony received multiple life sentences, while Nathaniel was sentenced to 75 years with a minimum of fifteen years served, and he was paroled after eighteen years in 2018.
On February 26, 1995, Bryan and David Freeman murdered their parents, Brenda and Dennis, and their younger brother, Erik, at their family home with the help of their cousin, Ben Birdwell, in Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. For several years, Bryan and David had been embracing neo-Nazi culture, which escalated in the months leading up to the killings, including tattooing Nazi slogans on their foreheads. Both brothers and their cousin were given life sentences without the possibility of parole, though none of the three were convicted in the murder of Erik Freeman.
Elizabeth Olten was a 9-year-old girl who was murdered by her neighbor Alyssa Bustamante, who was 15 at the time, in St. Martins, Missouri on October 21, 2009.
Lorraine Thorpe is a British woman who is Britain's youngest female double murderer. Over the space of nine days in August 2009, Thorpe tortured and murdered two people in Ipswich, one of which was her own father. She came to national attention upon her conviction in 2010, when it was noted that she had only been 15 years old at the time of the killings. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 14 years' imprisonment, while her accomplice in the murders was issued with a 27-year minimum tariff. She remains imprisoned at HM Prison Foston Hall, having been refused parole in October 2023.
Life imprisonment is a legal penalty in Singapore. This sentence is applicable for more than forty offences under Singapore law, such as culpable homicide not amounting to murder, attempted murder, kidnapping by ransom, criminal breach of trust by a public servant, voluntarily causing grievous hurt with dangerous weapons, and trafficking of firearms, in addition to caning or a fine for certain offences that warrant life imprisonment.