Crime waves present themselves as eras. Recall the the highway robber era, the pirate era, the stage-coach robber era, train-robber era, and then comes a crime era that starts to get messy in the Great Depression.
That was the era known as the Public Enemy Era. A shining example of the Public Enemy Era was the Barrow Gang. There was also the Dillinger Gang, and several other crazy motherless children who fought authority on behalf of a criminal's right to die a grisly death. These were sometimes 3 and 4 year reigns of terror, killing a lot of innocent bystanders and law enforcement officers during the Great Depression.
That's right. These gangs killed a lot of law enforcement officers, and the historical record indicates they concentrated most of their ordnance on law enforcement (as well as other people) during the Great Depression. They raced around stealing cars and gasoline. (Drive-away gasoline thieves are the lowest form of life on earth. We can thank Grant Depatie, of Vancouver, B.C., – R.I.P. -- for putting an end to much of that theft in parts of Canada).
The Public Enemies robbed general stores little mom and pop operations (the only kind that existed), robbed banks that didn't have much money in a 'Great Depression,' making it too often a fruitless imposition of death netting nothing but attention and gunplay. The criminal in the Public Enemy Era had a short, greedy, sparkling failure of a career. Was there a single successful Public Enemy Number One? These reprobates robbed old ladies in the streets, robbed honeymooning couples, robbed and stole, and sometimes took the lives of everything that moves. They wielded automatic weapons, Thompson machine guns, Browning Automatic Rifles -- high-calibre machine-guns designed for European battlefields. The Public Enemy Era was a harrowing era of crime.
Another era, the Crazed Mass-murderer Era, was launched by Charles Whitman, "a former Marine," (Wiki), raised in Florida, somehow ending up in Texas after the Marine Corps, where he studied engineering at the University of Texas, in 1965. He found his life coming apart in Austin, then killed his wife and his mother one night, and then climbed the tower in the middle of the Austin, Texas, campus before noon the next day, and starting shooting until he killed 14 more and wounded 32, then police blew him away and stopped his day of disintegration.
Turned out, he had a brain tumor that probably affected his ability to control emotions (to say the least). Also turned out, it had been Whitman who requested the autopsy in a note he left after killing mother and wife, before killing a mob on campus.
Leader of the crazy mass-murderer era was the head of the Manson family, a bunch of grievously manipulated sociopaths and psychopaths who could never begin to explain what the hell they were doing, except that Charlie told them to. And they followed because an endless amount of drugs were involved, and a lot of 'star-dust' was in eyes of Charlie. Nor do we know how many were actually killed besides the party guests at Roman Polanski's house and the LaBiancos.
Night one was the killing of Polanski's beautiful pregnant wife, primary victim Sharon Tate, who was hosting guests like Jay Sebring, et al, none of whom had any particular future worries, except, WHOA! Then the LaBiancos go down the next night.
Somebody else belongs with the inexplicably crazy mass-murderer era, and that's Richard Speck. He has a part in the crazy mass-murderer era having murdered eight nursing students in Chicago using sheets, as bindings and taking his time using a switchblade knife, in a 'demented man of the house' gone insane scenario. He ended up dying of a heart attack at age 49, rushed from the prison to the hospital, in 1991.
Youtube has video of Speck sporting a pair of substantial breasts in prison while he's smoking crack and showing off his blue panties. He's unfettered about fessing up the loving all the sex with men in prison ("If they knew how much fun I'm having they would kick me out," he said, snorting coke in jail, on an American crime report a few short years before his death).
From Speck we enter the unstoppable serial killer era, which includes the likes of Ted Bundy, the Hillside Stranger, and that clown in Chicago, John Wayne Gacy, not to mention the one in Canada, Clifford Olsen. As a matter of fact, the whole unstoppable serial killer era practically grinds to a stinking halt with Willy Pickton's pig farm extermination of God only knows how many lives. That is not to say serial killers are finished. It's just, they are part of another era.
Furthermore, we need sub-categories within eras, because disgusting and dishonorable mentions for murderous dementia must be proffered to the Night Stalker, Richard Ramierez, who sided with Satan during his serial killing and raping spree, and John Hughes, who sided with Jesus while luring truckers who wanted to have carnal knowledge with his girlfriend (bait?) where they died instead. Each of these are members of the serial-killer era who performed undertakings that were senseless, bloody, and involving around 15 dead on behalf of each own's version of a diety. Fifteen for Satan and 15 for Jesus. Existentialists might call that a 'push.'
Alas the serial killer era is not over, but perhaps the unstoppable part of it is passed, and stopping them seems to be less of an issue, but it's hard to stop them before they get started. In fact, police have interdicted two recent self-confessed or self-evident 'budding' serial killers in Canada, including Mark Twitchell, the idiot/savant (film-maker/killer) of Edmonton, Alberta fame, and police almost certainly interdicted any wider mayhem from a pair of deviant youth offenders in Victoria, British Columbia, whose names we are allowed to mention, but are not worth mentioning. We should just remember the young lady, Kimberly Proctor.
And that brings us to the modern era, and the new era of crime. It feels like we have entered a new era and it is hard to describe what is happening. How much different would the fate of these victims have been if the technologies didn't exist? Are we in some kind of Fourth Dimensional Crime Era, and if people like Alan Shoenborn are set free in my life-time, perhaps we should ask, Are we in a Fifth Dimensional Crime Era?
It could be partly technology that makes a new era worth noting. We can't ignore how much technology goes into crime these days. That's why we need a new crime era. Apparently crime is a leading-edge consumer, employer, participant in the use technology. But technology appears to be exposing crime at the same time as crime exploits technology.
The use of technology and the machinations around these marvels of human engineering makes you wonder if these new dimensional technologies are snaring people into death traps. Johnny Atlinger was lured by fake messages from an on-line dating service; Kimberly Proctor was begged, preened, annoyed, and seduced by text messages into stepping into one last night of horror; evidence of technology used as a lure goes all the way back to Lisa Marie Young, who disappeared in Nanaimo, B.C., in 2002, after one plaintive cellphone call at 4:30 A.M., on June 30, new dimensions, via technologies, that are leading people into death traps.
Well, the technology is also leading police to the killers. In the case of Qian Liu, a Chinese student at York University, whose alleged murder was done while she was in a webcam conversation, and it captured the attack upon her as it got underway. Her long distance boyfriend was a 'virtual' witness to the initial stages of the attack.
Since the murder in April of Qian Liu, we have to consider the era we have entered. It is the Close Surveillance era.
