Catching GSK

[evaliant]

Jan 17, 2014 9:22:52 GMT Drifter said:

danmiami wrote:

I wonder if agencies did ballistics tests on his murder scenes or even the boy shot chasing the subject over the fence to see if they matched the slugs to the Maggiore murder.? Could he have used same weapon ? Perhaps Guessting, Drifter or Greg can shed light on the firearms used at each scene involving a shooting.

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Posted by Port ...

Dec 5, 2013 at 12:13pm f1guyus likes this.
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Post by portofleith on Dec 5, 2013 at 12:13pm

We do know the calibre of the guns used in the various murders involving guns, but I have never seen any information that indicated the same weapon was used more than once. Both the VR and GSK stole many, many guns, so he would have had access to a variety of weapons. Since he so carefully chose weapons from the victim's homes to kill them with, I think he would be too smart to use the same gun in his crimes.

I find his use of knives, to be of more interest than the guns. In the Sacramento attacks, he used his knives as a supreme form of psychological torture. He would run the knives blade side up and down the victims bodies, sometimes drawing blood from the pressure. In one home, he broke the blade of every knife in the victim's kitchen.

The psychological profiles suggested that the use of the knives in this fashion, demonstrated the urge to kill early on in the progression of his crimes.
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Drifter

I'd just question one aspect of the above quote to the posters that know more than myself.

Did he really carefully chose weapons from his murder victim's homes or did he find items of opportunity as he was burglarizing/ransacking? It seems so odd to me that he had this weapon cache but ended up beating his victims to death with a garden tool, fireplace log, pipe wrench, etc.

I suppose there is some sort of psychological insight to those choices when he had a knife and probably gun readily available.

[agatha]

Jan 17, 2014 11:51:30 GMT lepke said:

Jan 17, 2014 5:25:53 GMT agatha said:

Hi lepke, if I understand where you are going with your question, I think I can make a comment. Since the 60s the trend in the US has been away from institutional settings for kids, so, at the time of the crimes, most communities had no orphanage or the like. Children without families, or at risk with their families, would have been placed by the state in licensed foster homes. These are ordinary single families who open their homes to kids who are in need. You would not necessarily know that the people down the street are foster parents, and those children living there are not their biological offspring. If our man was in the foster system, he could easily have become a familiar neighborhood face. Often, because of their difficult origins, some,( not all), foster kids have emotional, psychological or behavioral issues. GSK might  have been a weird or troubled kid whose oddness was ascribed to the fact that he was a foster child. And of course, there were some residential facilities for children with special needs. I know in Santa Barbara there was Devereaux school, and Alpha school. I don't know what problems they treated. Later, maybe around the 90s, group homes came into vogue for teens. These are single family houses inhabited by trained counselors and a number of teen clients, who are kept under close supervision. They do, however, interact with their neighborhood, and the larger community. Do they still have orphanages in England, or do they have something similar to the foster care system here?

I think that the system in England is probably along the same lines as in America, where children and teenagers are considered better off with families, as long as all concerned get along, and if not, such young people are housed in some kind of group environment with other young people and older staff members.

I notice you return to this idea intermittently, lepke. Am I reading you correctly; you think GSK started out as a ransacking teen foster child, with inadequate supervision,( and, therefore, freedom to be gone for long periods of time.)? It's entirely possible and would explain a lot. A. 

[lepke]

I think that VR and/or EAR/ONS could well have been abused, possibly by a parent, or perhaps in another situation, where he was no longer living with his parents. Group homes, orphanages, juvenile halls and so on, are known for having many troubled young people, and it is possible to learn about things like burglary and violence, and develop a hatred of those whose lives are much nicer.