Excitement's Crave - a line-by-line analysis.

[Deleted]

Apr 27, 2014 18:26:59 GMT stickette28 said:

Armchair,

I'm sorry city of chill. I fear we have gone way off topic on your thread.

No need for apologies. This certainly isn't my thread - it's our thread. I just started the ball rolling. And I'm so sorry I haven't kept it going...I've been finishing up a Master's degree in education and have had an enormous amount of work to do lately. Over the next few weeks I will be able to continue my work with EC and respond to all the insights from other members.

As for taking the thread off topic, I don't agree. I think all the posts have been relevant in one way or another to our main goal: trying to better understand the writer of the poem - presumably the EAR/ONS. I value everyone's insights and appreciate every post that people have made in this thread, even while I have been almost totally absent. It's really me who should apologize for starting this thread when I knew I couldn't really follow-up on it properly for a while. However, I have been working on my next major entry bit-by-bit, and it's going to be a big one. Not only am I looking at the second stanza of EC, but I'm re-visiting the first one and responding to many of the comments made by yourself, armchair, and others since my original post. I'm hoping to post it in the next couple of weeks, and then contribute regularly after that since I will have finished all my work and earned my degree. 

I notice your patient is from Florida, Stickette, and I'm assuming that is where you practice? If I'm not mistaken, Florida has the highest rate of violent crime in America so there must be a lot of interesting contemporary and historical cases that are local to you. I actually just found out from a major study that a university town just down the highway two hours from where I live is apparently the serial killer capital of North America. I thought that was pretty interesting. Living in the largest city in Canada, there have been plenty of terrible crimes and serial offenders right here in my own backyard, but I never realized that the city I used to visit quite often as a kid had such an awful history of cold cases that have only recently been connected to at least four different offenders (considering the city's population, that is a HUGE number of murders and murderers). In addition to that, Canada's westernmost province (BC) happens to have an abnormally high rate of serial murders, including the many victims of Robert Pickton and the mostly unsolved murders of (predominantly) First Nations women along the so-called Highway of Tears. What's up with the Paciifc Northwest and the West Coast in general that makes it such a hotspot for these people? 

[mb]

Psychopath test circulating the Internet. Just for the record, I failed!

PSYCHOPATH TEST

Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the bottom for the result.
This is not a trick question. It is as it reads. No one I know has gotten it right. Few people do.

A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing. She believed him to be her dream guy so much that she fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.

Question: What is her motive for killing her sister?

[Give this some thought before you answer, see answer below]

Answer:


She was hoping the guy would appear at the funeral again.

If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was a test by a famous American Psychologist used to determine if one has the same mentality as a killer. Many arrested serial killers took part in the test and answered the question correctly. If you didn't answer the question correctly, good for you.

[armchair]

The Thoroughbred With The Bum Leg: Bottom of Page 211 of Sudden Terror - suspect "Roy Morris." He lines up so well with EAR descriptions AND our EC analyses...except he had injuries from a motorcycle accident, a limp and injured shoulder. Well, the enticing details:

1) Never located or eliminated, but it was felt his injuries precluded him from being EAR.
2) Morris was adopted.
3) Father was a real estate agent who'd been in the mental ward.
4) Lived with his mother who was dying of cancer.
5) Drinks beer.
6) Arrested for prowling.
7) Worked for Student Loan Dept. for State...terminated during probation period because he was not liked and spotty attendance.
8) He had not worked on any of the nights that EAR struck.
9) Confidential informant notes that Morris lives in Vallejo, but every time he comes to Sac another rape occurs.

***********

I was going to relate this story in this thread and it may dovetail with this post: I was in line for the public library front desk and there were about 4 people ahead of me. You know how these things go...everyone, except me, has some weird, drawn out problem the desk lady needs to take care of. A 50-ish woman, limping with a cane, sidles up next to me and ever so weakly asks if she can go ahead in line. The pain of standing can get to be so much. (You know where this is going.) I immediately say "Yes, please go ahead." I forget exactly what she says, but she checks in again with me. "Are you sure it's ok if I cut ahead." With my approval out of the way, she works her way through the other folks in line to get to the front desk. She's returning or renewing some New Age crap book. Anyways, I wait my turn and finally get to the desk, then get that bit of business over with. As I'm walking away, the "crippled" woman strolls briskly across my path while folding up her cane. She's got a bus to catch out those non-sliding front doors.
 I wish I had video of this woman. Her acting was a little melodramatic (in retrospect), but her shtick was so practiced and manipulative that it worked. She sounded so pathetic and weak when she talked. I will always remember that second pass "You sure you want to do this? You don't have to." (see Cask of Amontillado) It's another layer for the con. I may have seen a tone change when she got to the front desk...it was definitely a different person walking out.

[Drifter]

... interesting story, armchair, about the lady with the cane.

That's an incident that would be hard to forget in one's life, and it probably will come back to you, every time you stand in some line.

Drifter

[Deleted]

Apr 28, 2014 12:26:52 GMT portofleith said:

And let's not forget this strange cane incident.  I would imagine this to be something like the policemen walking by  the Zodiac after he killed the taxi driver, because they thought they were looking for a black man.

Sudden Terror p 358


"Near dusk, Wells watched a male subject about thirty years old, wearing

a concho and walking with a cane, walk east on Buckleberry Road

toward Arlington Boulevard. The concho and the beard that somehow

didn’t seem real caused him to call the Davis police department."


"The selected route will unmask

Character when plans take action"

My guess is that the EAR employed all kinds of disguises to conduct surveillance on neighbourhoods and homes. It could have very well been the EAR that this man in Davis saw.

I certainly have a lot to say about that phrase (unmask) when I get there. 

[northernjustice]

Apr 23, 2014 18:29:23 GMT warren said:

Northern - not the one you have posted but this one:

N MEMORIAM FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

O Death! why dost thou steal the great,
With grudging like to strongest hate,
And rob the world of giant minds,
For whom all nature mourns and pines.

So few have we upon the earth,
Whom God ennobled at their birth,
With genius stamped upon their souls,
That guides, directs, persuades, controls.

So few who scorn the joys of life,
And labor in contending strife,
With zeal increased and strength of ten,
To ameliorate the ills of men.

So few who keep a record clean,
Amid temptations - strong and keen;
Who live laborious days and nights,
And shun the stores of passion's blight.

O, why cannot these linger here.
As lights upon this planet drear;
Forever in the public sight,
To lead us always to the right?


O Douglass! thou wert 'mong the few,
Who struggles and temptations knew,
Yet bravely mounted towering height,
Among both to blacks and whites.

The sons of Ham feel desolate,
Without thee, O Douglass the Great;
A nation's tears fall now with mine,
While mourning at thy sacred shrine.

Eloise Bibb

The above poem by a relatively obscure poet (1910's?) is the closest I could find to Excitement's Crave. Certainly a different subject matter, but some common word usage. When I first found this quite a while ago, I completely missed the "sons of Ham" reference. Frederick Douglass was somewhat a contemporary of Custer, and was probably referenced in the high school or college level. Just for what it is worth.

Now that is interesting, wow. Thank you for finding it.

Structurally it is very similar to Excitement's Crave and even stylistically, not to mention parallels in the actual content. "Sons of Ham" and "Son of Sam" seems like too much of a coincidence. It also starts out talking about death stealing people, which is similar to the start of the EAR poem about mortals surviving birth. There is also the "labor" theme in both of the poems, discussion of finding/denying pleasure in life, and maybe some other similarities if you stretch things a bit.

It is such an obscure poem, too, that I would wonder where somebody might come across it during that time. Unless the EAR spent a lot of time browsing at the library, it must have been either a creative writing/poetry class or an American history. In either case, it still seems like a rare poem somebody would come across, let alone be influenced by. Add in the fact that this is a serial rapist/future murderer, and if the EAR/GSK was actually influenced by this, that is almost too much to think about.

I believe there is a strong likelihood this was an influence on Excitement's Crave. How did someone discover this, by the way? I have to imagine only the EAR himself could have shared such a connection if this was an influence.

[northernjustice]

Also, since someone mentioned the Bonanno family having a Lodi connection in the 1970's...

By that time Joe Bonanno, his son, and a small number of loyal followers had been exiled (there's that word again) to Tucson after losing a mob war in New York in the 1960's. They had business in Arizona and California for many years before this, though, and it seems they basically picked up where they left off, but were more or less "has-beens" by then.

Something interesting from Sudden Terror, though, is one woman who reports a possible suspect who is involved with the "Banayo Crime Family" from the East Coast. This is clearly a reference to the Bonannos and they just changed the name in the same way that many names are changed in the book, and given that the Bonannos are one of the few New York group to have had ties to California, it would seem that's what she was referring to. This suspect was eliminated, but it is an interesting connection.

There is also the one attack, which someone has pointed out on here before, where an Italian family is attacked and the man's father was visiting from Italy. The man calls the detectives and tells them if they find out who the rapist is, his father can take care of it as it's implied that he's a powerful mob guy. For all we know this could have just been someone who was very upset about what happened to his family and talking partially out of fantasy to make himself feel better.

Please also keep in mind that the Mafia in Los Angeles was rapidly on the decline at this time (read the book "the Last Mafioso" for reference) and that the northern California mob had even less going on. I personally believe he only referenced a "Mafia lord" in the poem because it would be a very brazen, daring move which he obviously would get off on, but it is an interesting coincidence if nothing else. This was a time period when the public was still learning a lot more about the mafia and many movies and books were coming out, not to mention newspaper articles. It would have been an easy thing for someone like the EAR to come up with off the top of his head.

[warren]

northern - I read Joe Bonanno's book and one thing that he mentioned was that the California Mob, which answered to Chicago, was weak, impotent, soft, and were non-earners. Had EAR done the deed against a mobster's wife in the cauldron that was New York, you can bet EAR would be found and dealt with in the time-honored way.

The poem I discovered by doing a Bayleen (sp?) phrase search on the internet. I just ran phrases and words from Excitement's Crave until I came up with the above. When I first discovered it I held off on bringing it up for a while, but later in looking at it I noticed the "sons of Ham" reference and posted it. Back when BTK was on the loose, I tried doing the same thing on a poem he had sent, with no luck.

In the early '70's when I was a freshman in college, we had in our English 101 class a textbook called something like "An Anthology of American Literature" with about 800 pages covering short stories and poetry, many of which were done by obscure (at least to me) authors and poets. Also, it was the era of racial enlightenment, and even at a predominately white, conservative school in the South, black American authors and subjects were being given their due (I'm proud to say that we elected a black as our student body president).

My hope is that if those with more knowledge of potential influences than me to deem this to be of interest, then maybe the poem will ring a bell with an English or History teacher from that era.

[northernjustice]

Apr 29, 2014 15:53:26 GMT warren said:

northern - I read Joe Bonanno's book and one thing that he mentioned was that the California Mob, which answered to Chicago, was weak, impotent, soft, and were non-earners. Had EAR done the deed against a mobster's wife in the cauldron that was New York, you can bet EAR would be found and dealt with in the time-honored way.

The poem I discovered by doing a Bayleen (sp?) phrase search on the internet. I just ran phrases and words from Excitement's Crave until I came up with the above. When I first discovered it I held off on bringing it up for a while, but later in looking at it I noticed the "sons of Ham" reference and posted it. Back when BTK was on the loose, I tried doing the same thing on a poem he had sent, with no luck.

In the early '70's when I was a freshman in college, we had in our English 101 class a textbook called something like "An Anthology of American Literature" with about 800 pages covering short stories and poetry, many of which were done by obscure (at least to me) authors and poets. Also, it was the era of racial enlightenment, and even at a predominately white, conservative school in the South, black American authors and subjects were being given their due (I'm proud to say that we elected a black as our student body president).

My hope is that if those with more knowledge of potential influences than me to deem this to be of interest, then maybe the poem will ring a bell with an English or History teacher from that era.

Ah, Joe Bonanno's book is another interesting one.

Great job on the poetry findings. I really think you've found something substantial in this. It may be difficult to turn it into a real lead of any kind, but it does possibly tell us a little more about the EAR's psychology and maybe even educational background.

I'm going to do a little comparison below. The first of which I should point out is that both poems are 7 stanzas long and each stanza except for the final one in the EAR poem are 4 lines. I'll quote a stanza from EAR's poem then the corresponding Frederick Douglass one below it, then offer my thoughts.

All those mortal's surviving birth

Upon facing maturity,

Take inventory of their worth

To prevailing society.

*
O Death! why dost thou steal the great,

With grudging like to strongest hate,

And rob the world of giant minds,

For whom all nature mourns and pines.


- First lines have a similar idea, though sort of the inverse. EAR is talking about the luck of survival, while the other is talking about the unluckiness of death. "Take inventory of their worth" and "rob the world of giant minds" don't sound similar on the surface, but both relate to people's "worth" -- in the Douglass poem it is essentially saying that the world is robbed of worthwhile minds. In the last line, it clarifoes who these people are "worthy" to, which is society in the EAR poem and nature in the other.



Choosing values becomes a task;

Oneself must seek satisfaction.

The selected route will unmask

Character when plans take action

*
So few have we upon the earth,

Whom God ennobled at their birth,

With genius stamped upon their souls,

That guides, directs, persuades, controls.


- Not too much to comment on here as far as comparison. You can find parallels between the idea of "character" and "genius stamped upon their souls", as both are indications of someone's true character. Basically these stanzas are both setting up for the next stanza in each respective poem.

Accepting some work to perform

At fixed pay, but promise for more,

Is a recognized social norm,

As is decorum, seeking lore.

*
So few who scorn the joys of life,

And labor in contending strife,

With zeal increased and strength of ten,

To ameliorate the ills of men.


- This is where things get really interesting in my opinion. The prior stanza in the EAR poem mentioned "satisfaction" and then in this one he begins talking about the expectation of being a worker bee. This stanza of the Douglass poem is very similar in that it explores a relationship between labor/pleasure. I might be taking the "strength of ten" part out of context, but it makes me think of the "others lifting" part of the next EAR stanza, though I think that's a bit of a stretch.


Achieving while others lifting

Should be cause for deserving fame.

Leisure tempts excitement seeking,

What's right and expected seems tame.

*
So few who keep a record clean,

Amid temptations - strong and keen;

Who live laborious days and nights,

And shun the stores of passion's blight.


- The obvious connection is the use of "tempts" and "temptations" in each of these. The EAR seems to be saying that "fame" (a word that can be interpreted a number of ways) often comes on the backs of others (lots of parallels with slavery with that idea), and that a life of leisure makes somebody look for new ways to find excitement. In the Douglass stanza, it is saying that those "who live laborious days and nights" must "shun the stores of passion's blight". Like in the first stanza in each poem, these two seem to be exploring a similar theme but exploring both sides of it, respectively. The EAR is saying that an easy life will cause somebody to seek excitement outside of what is right and expected, while the Douglass poem is saying that those who must work day and night (slaves) won't need to find excitement in that way ("passion's blight" could very well describe the EAR's behavior if I'm interpreting it right -- the dark side of passion).


"Jessie James" has been seen by all,

And "Son of Sam" has an author.

Others now feel temptations call.

Sacramento should make an offer.

*
O, why cannot these linger here.

As lights upon this planet drear;

Forever in the public sight,

To lead us always to the right?


- Here we see the word temptations come up again, but this time it is the EAR using that specific word and may even be suggesting that other people may be influenced by their own temptations because of the EAR attacks. The only obvious comparison I can make between these stanzas, though, is the idea of "public sight" -- "Jesse James" and "Son of Sam" are both examples of criminals entering the public sight. "Sacramento should make an offer" could also be compared to "... lead us always to the right?" as both poems are suggesting that when certain things enter the public sight, they can help to make things right. It might be a stretch, but maybe not.

To make a movie of my life

That will pay for my planned exile.

Just now I'd like to add the wife

Of a Mafia lord to my file.

*
O Douglass! thou wert 'mong the few,

Who struggles and temptations knew,

Yet bravely mounted towering height,

Among both to blacks and whites.


- I see the "wife of a Mafia lord" part as him saying that he'd be brave enough to attack the wife of a Mafia lord -- a challenge or goal, albeit a sick one. Could be compared to the other poem saying "bravely mounted towering height".

Your East Area Rapist

And deserving pest

See you in the press or on T.V.
*
The sons of Ham feel desolate,

Without thee, O Douglass the Great;

A nation's tears fall now with mine,

While mourning at thy sacred shrine.

- The "sons of Ham" draws back to the "Son of Sam" a couple of stanzas ago, as Walter pointed out. You can also see the press/TV as having control over "a nation's tears", since TV has long been most Americans' way of hearing about tragedy and their window to the world. You could also see the press/TV as a "sacred shrine" for someone like the EAR, who on some level revels in his own notoriety.

Conclusion:
Obviously some of this is a stretch, but the coincidences seem a little too coincidental, especially on an overall thematic level. If the EAR was influenced by this poem, I highly doubt he went through and analyzed his words in relation to the Douglass poem this deeply; he may have just been obsessed with this poem and copied the structure and everything else just naturally fell into place with little effort since he had read it many times, possibly even studied it in school.

The one BIG THING I take from this, assuming that this is what influence the EAR's poem, is the idea of "slavery". Even if the EAR had never seen this poem, he clearly thought that the life of a normal person was that of a slave and that being a worker bee/slave was not a way that he was going to derive pleasure from life. His poem is basically all about finding ways to make life more exciting and achieving infamy through his form of "excitement."

[armchair]

This is from Santa Barbara/Isla Vista mass murderer Elliot Rodger's manifesto. (Page 137 of 141?)  I'm including it here because there are some parallels, I think, in grandiosity to EAR's Excitement's Crave poem and  fixation on trivial slights in the Sixth grade teacher rant.  While ONS and Rodgers are different types of murderers, I feel like they share some traits, but at varying degrees. 


*************************************************

The Day of Retribution is all I have. It is the final solution to all of the injustices of this
twisted world. By doing this, I will set right all of the wrongs I've had to face in my sorry excuse of a life. Every single time I’ve seen a guy walk around with his beautiful girlfriend, I’ve always wanted to kill
them both in the most painful way possible. They deserve it. They must be punished. The males deserve to be punished for living a better and more pleasurable life than me, and the females deserve to be punished for giving that pleasurable life to those males instead of me. On the Day of Retribution, I will finally be able to punish them
ALL.
When I think about the amazing and blissful life I could have lived if only females were sexually attracted to me, my entire being burns with hatred. They denied me a happy life, and in return I will take away all of their lives. It is only fair. I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all.
I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious,supreme, eminent… Divine I am the closest thing there is
to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.

epilogue
And that is how my tragic life ends.
Who would have thought my life will turn out this way? I didn’t.
There was a time when I thought this world was a good and happy place. As a child, my whole world was innocent. It wasn’t until I went through puberty and started desiring girls that my whole life turned into a living hell. I desired girls, but girls never desired me back. There is something very wrong with that. It is an injustice that cannot go unpunished. There is no way I could live a happy life with such a scenario. Not only did I have to waste my entire youth suffering in loneliness and unfulfilled desire, but I had to live with the knowledge that other boys my age were able to have all of the experiences I craved for. It is absolutely unfair and unjust. In addition, I had to suffer the shame of other boys respecting me less
because I didn’t get any girls.

Everyone knew I was a virgin. Everyone knew how undesirable I was to girls, and I hated everyone just for knowing it. I want people to think that girls adore me. I want to feel
worthy. There is no pride in living as a lonely, unwanted outcast. I wouldn’t even call it living. I am not meant to live such a pathetic, miserable life. That is not my place in this world. I will not bow down and accept such a horrific fate. If humanity will not give me a worthy place among them, then I will destroy them all. I am better than all of them. I am a god. exacting my Retribution is my way of proving my true worth to the world. In the midst of my suffering, I have been able to see the world much clearer than others. I have vision that other people lack. Through my suffering, I have been able to see just how twisted and wrong this world really is. The current state of humanity is what makes it wrong. I look at the human race and I see
only vileness and depravity, all because of an act known as… sexuality…

Sex is by far the most evil concept in existence. The fact that life itself exists through sex just proves that life is flawed. The act of sex gives human beings a tremendous amount of pleasure. Pleasure they Don’t deserve. No one deserves to experience so much pleasure, especially since some humans get to experience it while some are denied it. When a man has sex with a beautiful woman, he probably feels like he is in heaven. But the world is not supposed to be heaven. For some humans to actually be able to feel such heights of heavenly pleasure is selfish and hedonistic.

The ultimate evil behind sexuality is the human female. They are the main instigators of sex. They control which men get it and which men don’t.
Women are flawed creatures, and my mistreatment at their hands has made me realize this sad truth. There is something very twisted and wrong with the way their brains are wired. They think like beasts, and in truth, they are beasts. Women are incapable of having morals or thinking rationally. They are completely controlled by their depraved emotions and vile sexual impulses. Because of this, the men who do get to experience the pleasures of sex and the privilege of breeding are the men who women are sexually attracted to… the stupid, degenerate , obnoxious men. I have observed this all my life. The most beautiful of women choose to mate with the most brutal of men, instead of magnificent gentlemen like myself. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate and breed with. That decision should be made for them by rational men of intelligence. If women continue to have rights, they will only hinder the advancement of the human race by breeding with degenerate men and creating stupid, degenerate offspring. This will cause humanity to become even more depraved with each generation. Women have more power in human society than they deserve, all because of sex. There is no creature more evil and depraved than the human female. Women are like a plague. They don’t deserve to have any rights. Their wickedness must be contained in order prevent future generations from falling to degeneracy. Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they need to be treated as such. In fully realizing these truths about the world, I have created the ultimate and perfect ideology of how a fair and pure world would work. In an ideal world, sexuality would not exist. It must be outlawed. In a world without sex, humanity will be pure and civilized. Men will grow up healthily, without having to worry about such a barbaric act. All men will grow up fair and equal, because no man will be able to experience the pleasures of sex while others are denied it. The human race will evolve to an entirely new level of civilization, completely devoid of all the impurity and degeneracy that exists today. In order to completely abolish sex, women themselves would have to be abolished. All women must be quarantined like the plague they are, so that they can be used in a manner that actually benefits a civilized society. In order carry this out, there must exist a new and powerful type of government, under the control of one divine ruler, such as myself. The ruler that establishes this new order would have complete control over every aspect of society, in order to direct it towards a good and pure place. At the disposal of this government, there needs to be a highly trained army of fanatically loyal troops, in order to enforce such revolutionary laws. The first strike against women will be to quarantine all of them in concentration camps. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death. That would be an efficient and fitting way to kill them all off. I would take great pleasure and satisfaction in condemning every single woman on earth to starve to death. I would have an enormous tower built just for myself, where I can oversee the entire concentration camp and gleefully watch them all die.

If I can‘t have them, no one will,I’d imagine thinking to myself as I oversee this. Women represent everything
that is unfair with this world, and in order to make the world a fair place, they must all be eradicated. A few women would be spared, however, for the sake of reproduction. These women would be kept and bred in secret labs. There, they will be artificially inseminated with sperm samples in order to produce offspring. Their depraved nature will slowly be bred out of them in time. Future generations of men would be oblivious to these remaining women’s
existence, and that is for the best. If a man grows up without knowing of the existence of women, there will be no desire for sex. Sexuality will completely cease to exist. Love will cease to exist. There will no longer be any imprint of such concepts in the human psyche. It is the only way to purify the world.

In such a pure world, the man’s mind can develop to greater heights than ever before. Future generations will live their lives free of having to worry about the barbarity of sex and women, which will enable them to expand their intelligence and advance the human race to a state of perfect civilization. It is such a shameful pity that my ideal world cannot be created. I realized long ago that there is no way I could possibly rise to such a level of power in my lifetime, with the way the world is now. Such a thing will never become a reality for me, but it did give me something to fantasize about as I burned with hatred towards all women for rejecting me throughout the years. This whole viewpoint and ideology of abolishing sex stems from being deprived of it all my life. If I cannot have it, I will do everything I can to
DESTROY IT.

My orchestration of the Day of Retribution is my attempt to do everything, in my power, to destroy
everything I cannot have. All of those beautiful girls I’ve desired so much in my life, but can never have
because they despise and loathe me, I will destroy. All of those popular people who live hedonistic lives of pleasure, I will destroy, because they never accepted me as one of them. I will kill them all and make them suffer, just as they have made me suffer. It is only fair.
Why do things have to be this way?

I’m sure that is the question everyone will be asking after the Day of Retribution is over. They will all be asking
why. Indeed, why? That is the question I’ve had for everyone throughout all my years of suffering. Why was I condemned to live a life of misery and worthlessness while other men were able to experience the pleasures of sex and love with women? Why do things have to be this way? I ask all of you. All I ever wanted was to love women, and in turn to be loved by them back. Their behavior towards me has only earned my hatred, and rightfully soj I am the true victim in all of this. I am the good guy.
Humanity struck at me first by condemning me to experience so much suffering. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t start this war… I wasn’t the one who struck first… But I will finish it by striking back. I will punish everyone. And it will be beautiful. Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth.

[witchofendor]

I only gave the poem a cursory glance,but your analysis is quite astute. I have been interested in this particular killer for a long time.He is,as you say,a malignant narcissist.The first stanza demonstrates how inadequate he feels,and has felt for a long time.He feels a sense of entitlement to take what he wants.I believe he felt himself unable to cope with,in his mind,both the desired/despised object(women).That dichotomy only fueled the rage he was expressing in the rapes.As his fantasy life progresses,we see the double homicides,begin.The fact that he spent so much time at these particular scenes,given the excessive violence he used against these victims,does give one a sense that psychologically torturing them before the murders had become an intricate part of his ritual.He would have had ample opportunity to tell them to cooperate while simultaneously threatening to "blow your * brains out." He had developed into a sexual sadist carefully choosing his victims,and upping the ante whenever he felt that would be useful,and pleasurable for him.We think we know so much about him,but I wonder-do we really know him at all?

[Deleted]

I wrote the following post over a year ago in response to armchair's post, which he seems to have deleted (where did armchair go? He had some great insights and always had something interesting to contribute to the discussion). I never put it up because it wasn't finished. It was supposed to have my analysis of the second stanza of Excitement's Crave, as well as my thoughts on the title. At the time, I was just finishing up a post-grad degree and was under tremendous stress, writing thousands of words a day. I had to let this project go and I've never returned to it because I didn't see what good it actually did for the investigation. Also, I caught myself eating breakfast one morning and reciting the poem quietly to myself as I tapped my fingers to the rhythm of the poem's stressed and unstressed syllables. When I realized what I was doing, I thought it was time to take a step back for a while.

However, I've been thinking a lot about the poem and what it could tell us about the writer's mentality. Because I do believe the writer to be the perpetrator of the crimes (I've explained in some detail why I believe this and my reasons remain the same), that means it can tell us a lot about the mentality of the EAR (he was not yet the ONS when this poem was written). It can tell us about his worldview, his view of himself as a person and a rapist/criminal, about his motives, and even perhaps some biographical details like I discussed in my post about the first stanza. In that instance, the EAR gave a clue that tied in with other evidence...namely, that he might have some kind of congenital disorder or disease that made his birth precarious and his survival no sure thing. As he grew up, he would have been told the story of his birth and near death over and over, and his sense of being a survivor would have been deeply embedded in his conscious and subconscious minds. He would have been acutely and terminally aware of the fragility of life. Perhaps God had spared him as an infant...would he be so gracious with the mortals whose lives he held in his hand?

All of this was just me ruminating — I have no evidence that the EAR almost died at birth. But we do have the fact that animals — dogs, in particular — behaved very strangely around him. One of the very weird things about this case is just how many times dogs play an important role: dogs are beaten and killed, stabbed, stomped, brought to murder scenes, and one dog was being walked by its owners when someone — perhaps the EAR — chased them down and murdered them. Another dog was owned by a woman who couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen. She brought this dog to a friend's house to play with his dog, but when the two pooches were let out to play in the backyard, they seemed frightened and did not leave the area lit by the porch lamp. It wasn't long before the EAR was in the home holding the woman and her friend at gunpoint.

Anyways, you get the picture. Dogs acted very strange around the EAR, or when they picked up his scent in the aftermath of a crime. The handler noted that this happened sometimes when the dog was tracing the scent of someone strung out on certain drugs, or someone with a disease. I don't think the EAR used drugs — at least not habitually, and not while he was active. He was too on-point, too in-control to be out of his head on any drug. When he found drugs (cocaine, I believe) in the fridge of a victim, the police found it tossed in a neighbouring backyard. Hardly the actions of an addict. Same with him leaving money and expensive jewelry behind time after time — not something an addict would do. So then it was probably a disease or disorder of some sort (or perhaps medication he was taking for it) that caused the bloodhounds to react so strangely when they picked up his scent. It could also have been another sign of this criminal's shrewdness — knowing the police were going to try and track him with dogs he may have used predator urine or some other kind of hunter's trick to screw with the dogs.

Some people have mentioned Graves Disease as a good candidate for a disease EAR/ONs might have had, but there is a key problem with this diagnosis — Graves Disease almost always causes muscle wasting and weakness, which does not match either the description of his body type given by victims or his ability to vault fences and elude the police on foot and bicycle. I consider that a key problem for the Graves Disease theory. However, it could have been some kind of metabolic disorder that made him sensitive to the heat (note that there are many medications that make people extremely sensitive to the heat). Other than that, we have no indication of what disease or disorder the EAR may have had, but in the poem he seems to have an acute awareness of mortality. It's as if he has been living his whole life believing he could die at any moment. He manages to use the words "mortals," "surviving," and "birth" all in one short line of poetry — the first line.

At this point, I think it is important to tackle the intent vs. coincidence issue that people who like to read but do not study literature tend to grapple with. I hear it in classrooms all the time, and it usually takes the form of a complaint that goes something like this: "Sir, you can't possibly believe that Shakespeare intended to put all these hidden meanings into his plays!" No more or less so than Van Gogh intended to put a particular brushstroke here or there. In other words, artists mean for their work to have depth and richness. However, that's not to say that every instance of symbolism in a work of literature is intentional. But that doesn't make it any less meaningful. I am not comparing EAR to Shakespeare, but the same rule applies: whether or not he intended to emphasize mortality, and to connect birth with death, he did it nonetheless, and it is significant. Because even if he didn't mean to do it, he did it subconsciously, which could be even more revealing because that would mean that he is giving something about himself away unintentionally: perhaps a biographical detail, or simply the knowledge that he was fixated on death. Which is also important...because of the title of the poem.

Anyways, that's enough for now. But I wanted to update this thread and resume my work on giving the poem a close read and analysis in order to get in our offender's head a little. I'm going to start working on the title and second stanza. I hope people find this useful, because it takes a lot of time and energy.

May 5, 2014

Armchair:

Absolutely Correct. Psychopathic predators like the EAR do not have good impulse control, have lower cortisol and seratonin levels which makes them less susceptible to fear; for example, the fear of punishment. In youth, they almost always display conduct disorders that should raise red flags for parents and educators. For those who work with them - teachers and youth workers, etc. - they are often referred to as "behavioural" kids because they display behaviour that includes aggression, deceitfulness, destructive tendencies, low impulse control, and a poor grasp of other peoples' fundamental rights. For the parents, having a child with a severe conduct disorder can be a very difficult experience. However, in an already dysfunctional family, the conduct disorder may be less noticeable and therefore not addressed properly.

There are reams of research available about the brains of youth with conduct disorders that show structural changes that are not unlike those with anti-personality disorder, which is not diagnosed until 18. But not all conduct disorders are of equal severity. Persistent defiance and antisocial behaviour in the adolescent years may resolve itself with lots of support for the youth at school and home. But there are a small percentage of youth with conduct disorders who do go on to have the characteristics of anti-personality disorder, and those headed on that trajectory typically do not do well in school. The vast majority of American and Canadian serial rapists and killers have had no more than a high school diploma, worked blue collar jobs, and were evidently troubled as youth. Many of them were the victims of abuse themselves, primarily domestic in nature.

Imagine the EAR sitting in high school classroom. Do you really think this kid gives a * about calculus or chemistry or literature? Does the EAR just appear at age 18 or 20 fully formed? Hell no! He is made in the years of adolescence, just before that time when he choses to pursue his excitement's crave to infamy. Could he have been a star pupil? Sure. It's possible. But I've seen more than a few youth with budding ASPD's and none of them were academically inclined. Someone with ASPD generally does not have the brain chemistry to be rewarded by the boredom and tediousness of academic pursuits. Psychopaths are risk-takers because it is only through excitement that the reward centres in their brain are sufficiently stimulated. I'm going to get to the theme of excitement and the significance of the title of the poem shortly, but I think it is important to note that the reason I don't think the EAR was a good student is because psychopaths almost never are. They can and do excel in athletics because that does provide the stimulation and excitement their brain craves (man, those two words just keep coming up). The competition, adulation and attention; the thrill of winning and the rush of endorphins and adrenaline that competitive athletics provide are all important reasons why someone like the EAR could have definitely been a high school athlete - it would have appealed to his ego and his need for stimulation. Also, it's the only way I see him making it through school without dropping out, flunking out, or being expelled. Very few rapists and serial killers have more than a high school diploma or GED, and many of them do not even have that. If you look at the personal history of known offenders like EAR, they almost universally work in low-paying, unskilled jobs and trades, often switching jobs many times. Again, the malignant narcissist's brain works against them being upwardly mobile and employed in many professions - their "excitement's crave" makes it very hard for them to be successful academically when they are young, and then when they get stuck in a shitty low-paying job as a result, their egos and thirst for excitement and stimulation generally causes them to perform poorly, leading them to be fired (often, they have other problems at work like stealing, harassing and manipulating co-workers, lying, etc.) or to quit. The reason that the corporate world, LE and the military have more psychopaths than other sectors is because they are some of the only jobs that are exciting enough (and with a considerable amount of ego fortification) to sustain a psychopath, and where the psychopath's qualities can allow them to thrive without their other, nastier tendencies overshadowing them.

Armchair, thank-you for sharing your story about your childhood fantasy. I think it is quite illustrative. You're mother may have some issues, like you say. But you don't express any anger towards her. In fact, from the little you write you seem to really care about her despite her "challenges." Your fantasy reflects that your brain is not that of a psychopath or budding sexual deviant. In your fantasy, you are simply lying in a bed with a woman you cared about. I think that for a sexual predator, these early fantasies would have involved some kind of sadistic element. Like you say, he externalized the anger he felt about whatever was going on at home. Like the article you posted suggests, EAR felt a need to do to others what he felt was being done to himself - he was being unwillingly controlled and manipulated. Your fantasy seems to express a deep-seated desire for a stable relationship with a loving female - the tying up doesn't strike me so much as being about bondage or even sex as it does making sure that she is there; that she can't abandon you. How thin the line is between that kind of desire and that of someone who wants to tie up women against their will is not clear, but I think that if you had more serious issues with your mother, the fantasies might have progressed in that direction. Of course, I'm not an expert on these matters and someone like Stickette could probably offer a much better analysis than me. I'm just noting my thoughts.

A big part of what makes any profiling of the EAR difficult is that we simply don't know how old he is. If he is between 18-20 we have to think about him very differently than we would an older offender. Of he's even younger than 18...*, that would just blow my mind. Was he old enough to have served in Vietnam? Or was he really just an 18-year-old punk who got lucky? Because if he's older, his predatory nature has had time to develop and mature, which explains the advanced tactics and experienced feel of the crimes. This suggests that this offender must have gained a certain amount of "technical" knowledge from somewhere. However, if he's young there's a lot of factors that must have come into play - first of all, he would have had to be a friggin' criminal genius of the kind that one almost never finds among rapists and serial killers. Nonetheless, he would have also gotten lucky. Many times. But if he were young, he had to have been breaking into houses and nursing fantasies for a really long time. He would have a history of problems with girls and women at school and in the neighbourhood that would have gone on for a long time, and either his parents moved around to avoid the fallout or something else prevented him from experiencing severe consequences for his behaviour. If he was young - a teenager, for example - I think that would really increase the odds of him being the Visalia Ransacker. This would go a long way to explaining how he got so good at getting into people's' homes, learning about the residents and their schedules, peeping, fantasy progression and escalation, etc. The VR seemed to really fixate on certain women, but he also operated primarily in a neighbourhood he was comfortable with and then zeroed in on girls in that area who he was attracted to...or was it the other way around? Either way, the connections to these two cases haven't been made over and over for no good reason. There are clearly parallels.

If he was LE or from the armed forces, then it is easy to see where he learned his skills. But if he's younger and barely out of high school, then it's hard to imagine where he got the "talent" for B&E's, night time home invasions, stalking and surveilling, extensive reconnaissance, calling victims' homes before he hit to learn who was at home and when, burglarizing and setting up many more houses than he actually hit - he literally turned a neighbourhood into a rapist's buffet. If one option didn't work out, he had one or two other possible vics on standby. He walked through yards and entered homes almost at will. If he learned to do this at the tender age of 18 or 21 then one has to wonder wtf this guy was doing to get this kind of education.

[Deleted]

So I've already started taking detailed notes in order to continue my essay on 'Excitement's Crave.' The more I read the poem, parse its words and ponder their meaning, the more possible revelations I uncover.

The thing is, the effort I am planning to undertake is going to take many hours of my time that I could spend working on my other writing. I need to know if anyone is going to even read what I write and participate in a discussion. Many of the members who posted here and carried on the debate after my first post have stopped posting long ago.

So this is what I'm going to do...if, by Wednesday of this week, fewer than ten people have "liked" this post, I probably won't take the time to continue. But thank-you to all who have contributed to the thread.

Cityofchill

***As of 6:07pm on Tuesday evening, there are 9 likes, so I think there is enough interest for me to proceed. Thank-you to those who have offered their support. At this point I'm still taking notes and thinking about different aspects of the poem, but I hope to get started on the written portion in a few days. 

[almagata]

I hope you don't cancel class for low enrollment. I've found your analysis of Excitement's Crave very interesting. Thank you for the work you have done.

[Drifter]

I'd be interested in the guy's seeming preoccupation with death. Since I am inclined to think he was at the older end of the age range, some speculative brush with death might have occurred far more recently for him than at physical birth.

And, we assume that birth refers to being born into this physical world.  But suppose "birth" is a metaphor for survival ... following ... a brush with death in the guy's recent past?

D.