Sometimes, I stay up late in the night, knowing full well I have to work, and read about horrible things. I mean I might research for 10 hours and never get up out of the chair, and then be surprised when it is daylight. I read until I am irritated that I cannot find more information, and wonder where I can find it, or what to believe, and what it would be like to talk to the parties involved to get the real story and not the one that all these other people wrote up thinking they knew what they were talking about. I do not wonder this about the people most people wonder about, like celebrities, or politicians.....I wonder about killers. Killers and other bad-doers.
Tuesday nite, I stayed up most of the night reading about Leopold and Loeb. I realize that a person like me should know pretty much everything about them, but I really did not--just the basics. Something set me off though, and I got on a mission to know more, and it made me stay up all night. That makes it hard to get to work and deal with today's killers, which is really what I should be more concerned about than the killers of the 1920s. But that is what I did.
I do not even know what got me on them really. I have always been fascinated with killers--particularly serial killers, and killers who happen to be women but kill people other than their husbands and children. That is probably my main killer interest niche. That I have a killer interest niche at all is weird, but I can blame that on work mostly. I hope I can, at least, otherwise, we have a whole other batch of problems over here. I am going to pretend I was not always interested, long before I got sucked into the internal workings of some of these people
So now I am wondering about this. Richard Loeb was killed in prison but Nathan Leopold was ultimately paroled, moved to Puerto Rico, married and died there in the 1960s. I wonder what he was like then. Was he normal? What caused him and Loeb to be who they were? I do not believe it was as easy as planning the "perfect crime" as they were known for, especially because it seems like they sure screwed up a bunch of stuff, and clearly they were way too smart to screw up that bad. Was it the world of entitlement they lived in, along with some of the odd things they lived through growing up? Was it just spoiled brat-itis? Was there something more?
This is the kind of stuff I think about.
Do other people think like this? Is it odd that I get so drawn in by this stuff? Or that I have a whole bookcase full of true crime books, and can watch some Dateline or 48 Hours around the clock? Is that strange?
My other hang up right now is the story of William Heirens--a man who has been incarcerated longer than anyone in the US, and who is quite likely not guilty of the murders he is convicted of committing. He is almost 82 years old....but that is a whole other story.
A story for another day I guess
What kind of thing drags you in until you lose track of time?
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11 comments:
OMG this is great. I'm not the only one. I rad nothing but murder. I am fascinated by people who kill family. Just last night I stayed up because a mother in mansfield ct. stabbed her handicapped son 35 times and tried to blame it on a neighborhood kid.
And I spend a lot of time taping 48 hours and dateline and watching them until 2 in the morning because no one else appreciates my interests.
I don't like to read about murder or killers, but I tend to get busy doing things and stay up til about 1:00 a.m. I am a night owl and like to sleep late in the morning. When I was still working, it created a problem as I would stay up late even when I knew I would feel like crap the next day. hooves
Do other people think like this?
oh yeah, I am fascinated by abnormal psych stuff. Doesn't matter if it's animals or people either. Show me a polar bear stalking people and I'm drawn in (as long as I don't have to BE there) and I wonder all the time how people get to be where they are...how they make the choices they make.
I get sucked into all sorts of things.
Today it was all about a woman who has been diagnosed with breast cancer and wants to euth her 6 horses instead of finding homes. Then it was driving horse vids, and THEY were awesome.
There are so many time sucks on the internet. I am sucked in by 60's rock and roll and I spend hours spinning tunes on my online radio station. Next thing you know it is way past bedtime. I have to get up about 5:30 am for work. Imagine how nice I am to deal with then.....kinda ready to become a serial killer by that point...just kidding...no really I am kidding.
As usual----you present or suggest 'thought provoking' thoughts about getting involved in something that 'time flies'
I don't like to read ugly murders and I am old enough to remember Wm. Heirens and throw in William Specht and those headlines when we lived in Chicago.
Was it 'thrill' killing for Leopold, Loeb and Heirens? The L and L killings were something I listened to my parents discuss. Entitlements for the rich which made them 'above' the law or ? ? ?
Thought provoking.
What time consuming 'way of life' gets ahold of me-----? I thinkk it would be just plain old THINKING. Strange---I just can't stop thinking about many many things, planning, asking questions, insatiable desire to learn more ----during the day and it continues through the night.
Weird!
And I do this too.
Enjoy cool weather Carol
Never heard of L&L, but the wiki about them was interesting!
My secret weakness is avoidable disaster stories. Cave divers, Everest climbers, that idiot boy who died in Alaska - I can stay up way too late reading about their gruesome (and stupid and preventable) deaths.
Ed and I are completely addicted to 48 Hours and Datelines too! And nothing makes me madder than when it is a rerun. But last night I got completely wrapped up in the brain scans of murderers and how they are different than typical brains. I love this because it lines up with my work too. But I should have been sleeping since I'm convinced I'm dying of some unidentified virus. It's destroying me from the inside out. Despite that, I could not let go of the murderer brains. And guess who they interviewed first? Tommy Lynn Sells (no idea how to spell his name) and they focused on the Dardeen family. Made me shiver. But I love it. What is wrong with us? Maybe we should have our brains scanned. Or maybe not. I don't wanna know.
If this fascination with true crime and killers is odd, then there are ALOT of odd people.
Just think how many crime shows are on TV.
I will occasionally be obsessively reading or watching something that interests me and stay up until the wee, wee hours; the next day I'll be falling asleep by 7:30 to catch up on my Z's.
I like to clean and do laundry in the middle of the night - strange, I know. I do not like scary stories or murderers - in fact one time I fell asleep in front of the TV watching one of those Datelines about the killers and was suddenly awoken by an earthquake (yes, a real one -I live in CA) and I must have mixed in the killer story into my dreaming, so I thought there was a killer at my front door - not fun - and I no longer watch Dateline!
I don't get into the crime stuff, but I will stay up for hours watching programs on TV about the morbidly obese, shocking medical stories (like 100 lb tumors), people born without faces, parasitic twins, primordial dwarfism - basically any medical "abnormality". Then before I know it, it is 1 AM and I have to get up at 5:30 to get ready for work.
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