A New Century of Sex Killers

by Brian Marriner

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0330421050
• ISBN13: 9780330421058
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Pan Books
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The ultimate in true-crime horror

"A New Century of Sex Killers" is utterly chilling but compulsive reading. Until his death in 1999 Brian Marriner was one of Britain's leading true crime authors and he does more than report the details of a crime---he also attempts to probe the motive and thinking behind the gruesome acts in this book. Crime writer Colin Wilson writes a long forward on how our interpretation of sex crimes has changed through the years. He believes the 'Age of Sex Crimes' was "launched by the unknown maniac known as Jack the Ripper." He also believes that because of great strides in the science of forensics "sex crime is one day destined to become as obsolete as stage-coach robbery or cattle rustling." Thus this book could contain the major cases from what Wilson predicts is the world's worst century of sex crime. I hope his optimism proves to be justified. In Marriner's introduction, he makes no secret of the fact that "writing a book which detailed the most sordid and depraved acts of which human beings are capable was not a pleasant experience." However he believes that sex killers speak to us through their crimes in a kind of code, and that this book can contribute to understanding that code. Unlike Colin Wilson, this author believes that the 'modern age of the sex killer' was ushered in by Reggie Christie, who killed at least six women in his London home in the 1950s. "His crimes were as passionless as they were perverted and, perhaps for this reason, the Christie case still has the power to horrify and shock." Christie's crimes were the ones that forced the knowledge onto the rest of us that such acts were not committed by those possessed by devils, or the completely insane. We began to recognize another kind of sex criminal, one who "employed a cool, twisted logic to satisfy his gruesome predilections..." This is the age of the sexual psychopath, or to employ more recent terminology, sexual 'sociopath.' Sociopaths commit crimes because they want to, not because they're insane, and they seem to have no empathy for their victims. These are the topics Marriner covers in his eighteen chapters and conclusion: "The German Sex Killers;" "Peter Kürten: 'King of Sexual Delinquents';" "Lovers of the Dead;" "Reggie 'No-Dick' Christie;" "The British Years;" "New Light on the Moors Murders;" "America: Land of the Free;" "The Appliance of Science - Tessnow - Pitchfork - Duffy;" "Peter Sutcliffe - The Yorkshire Ripper;" Dennis Nilsen - The Deadly Scavenger;" "Robert Black - Murderer of Childhood;" "The Stockwell Strangler;" "Heidnik;" "Jeffery Dahmer: The Milwaukee Cannibal;" "The Monster of Florence;" "Jack Unterweger - The Killing Poet;" "Colin Ireland - Killing for Fame;" "Andrei Chikatilo - The Rostov Ripper;" "Inside the Mind of the Sex Killer." As you can see from the above, the author picks and chooses his cases so this book is by no means an encyclopedic treatment of sexual predators. However, no true-crime buff will want to be without "A Ne