The Predator With A Badge — 1

The murder of Sarah Everard earlier this year by a serving police officer and the recent conviction of Wayne Couzens for that murder has generated hysteria by the usual suspects. To some extent this is understandable, the victim was kidnapped, raped, then after her murder her body was disposed of in a particularly horrible way.

As if matters couldn’t get any worse, a police officer who is said to have worked for the same unit as Couzens has now been charged with rape. The circumstances of this case are entirely different, and the officer concerned is maintaining his innocence, so he should be given the due process every accused deserves, and no further mention will be made of him at this stage. Back to the usual suspects.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has been pressured to resign, by Harriet Harman no less. Cressida Dick is the first woman to become Commissioner, and realistically she was only appointed because she is a woman; anyone who remembers the tragic death of Jean Charles de Menezes in which she played a major part will realise that. She is also a lesbian, which gives her another notch on the totem pole of oppression. Others have claimed there is a culture of misogyny and “sexism” in the Met and other police forces, indeed much of their efforts is now going into spying on male police officers who make lewd comments on social media, and even bugging them, as if there were some connection between this and a man who rapes a woman, strangles her, then burns her body. This is par for the course, and no one should be surprised, but are police officers more inclined to this sort of psychopathic behaviour than other men?

One would hope they would be less so, but they have more opportunities than most, and it isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that some are attracted to the uniform and the warrant card for such ignoble reasons. In spite of the horrific nature of his crime, Wayne Couzens is far from the worst of the worst, that accolade goes to Joseph DeAngelo by a country mile, a man who committed thirteen murders and fifty rapes over a twelve year period.

DeAngelo served as a police officer in California for a shade over six years. He was sacked in October 1979 after he was caught shoplifting in Sacramento – a hammer and some dog repellent, a strange combination indeed. These were the tools of his trade. DeAngelo was known by a number of appellations including the Golden State Killer. He got away with it for literally decades, but after being traced through DNA, he was finally charged in April 2018.  He was tried last year, by which time he was 74 years old and confined to a wheelchair. He was given life without parole. You will find his story all over YouTube and many other websites. Unlike Wayne Couzens who was described as creepy and known by colleagues as “The Rapist”, DeAngelo appeared for the most part to be a regular guy.

Another American police officer who became a serial killer was Gerard Schaefer. In 1972, while on duty, he picked up two teenage hitchhikers, took them into the forest, and tied them to a tree. He was called away on his radio, and by the time he returned, they had escaped.  This led to his arrest, but just over two months later, after posting a bond, he kidnapped two more teenage girls, torturing and murdering them both. Their bodies, or what was left of them, were not found until April 1973.

As might be expected, the discovery of the two bodies led to Schaefer becoming a suspect; he was tried later the same year, was convicted, and received two life sentences. Although murder can be capital in Florida, the death penalty was suspended between 1967 and 1977. In December 1995, Schaefer was murdered by another inmate; at that time, the authorities were preparing to charge him with three more murders. He is believed to have murdered as many as nine teenagers and young women.

To Part 2.