Have you ever wondered how close your taste in music is to a serial killer's? Who do serial killers listen to when they're getting pumped up to kill?
Predictably there’s a bunch of heavy metal in there but there’s some choices in there that are going to surprise you. This is in no particular order by the way.
(See also Top 15 Serial Killer Artists)
(See also The 100 Best Serial Killer Movies)
(See also Top 35 Books About Serial Killers)
(See also The 25 Best Songs About Serial Killers)
8. Jeffrey Dahmer - "Black Sabbath"
While Dahmer was the subject of songs by metal bands such as Blood Duster and Slayer, he also spawned a concept album by the band Macabre.
Oddly enough, Dahmer himself was also a big heavy metal fan and he loved listening to Black Sabbath when he was raping, murdering, dismembering, eating and then dissolving the bodies of his victims in acid.
7. Richard Ramirez - "AC/DC", "Black Sabbath", "Judas Priest"
Richard Ramirez (aka The Night Stalker) was a drifter from El Paso Texas who started smoking weed when he was 10 and was fascinated by the exploits of his sicko older cousin who had served in Vietnam and liked to show him pictures of the women he had raped and killed over there whilst they both got high. Ramirez later witnessed his cousin murder his wife after a domestic argument when he was just 13 which probably set him down his road to ruin. When he was 22 he moved to California and in 1984 he started breaking into people’s houses randomly and murdering them violently.
Ramirez was a Satanist and demonstrated this by drawing an inverted pentagram on his hand during his trial. Again, it’s no surprise he was into heavy metal but it was more of the rocky kinda rather than the real heavy stuff that Dahmer was into. He liked nothing more than running around other peoples houses terrorising and murdering them with AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest on his stereo. ("He loved Black Sabbath and Judas Priest," remarks a friend from his teen years.)
Some even speculate that his method of killing – breaking into people’s house in the middle of the night and then ending their lives in a variety of different ways such as shooting them in the face, slashing their throats and bludgeoning their heads with a lamp and then stabbing them multiple times – was actually inspired by the AC/DC song ‘Night Prowler’, but this has never been proven.
6. Luka Magnotta - "Madonna"
After the snuff film found its way onto the internet Luka became the subject of an international manhunt and went on the run all over the world, eventually being picked up in Berlin in a cyber cafe where he was Googling himself. Rookie error pal.
Whilst on the run, Magnotta made several videos of himself smoking cigarettes and addressing his ‘fans’ and generally being a weirdo, all of which were uploaded to the internet. In one he was listening to Madonna’s ‘La Isla Bonita’ in the background which really set the mood and made the whole tape way creepier. Kinda like a David Lynch movie.
5. John Wayne Gacy - "REO Speedwagon"
John Wayne Gacy was a fat dude from Chicago who liked dressing up as a clown and raping and murdering teenage boys and young men in his spare time between 1972 and 1978. Although he didn’t do these activities at the same time, everyone still called him The Killer Clown – they thought it was extra creepy he liked to dress up as ‘Pogo The Clown’ at charitable events despite the fact he was also a killer . To be fair they’re right – that makes the whole thing way scarier. Pogo The Clown sounds like a real horrific character basically, kinda like Pennywise from IT but way fatter.
While awaiting his execution, he replied to a survey someone sent to him and stated that he looked up to JFK, read William S. Burroughs and enjoyed REO Speedwagon.
I am not going to make a joke about how REO Speedwagon probably made him murder people.
4. Arthur Shawcross - "GG Allin"
Michael H. Stone, Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and an authority on violent behavior, identified Shawcross as "one of the most egregious examples of the unwarranted release of a prisoner."
3. Roy Norris - "Bee Gees", "Mariah Carey"
Norris became known as the Tool Box Killer due to the fact the majority of instruments used to torture and murder his victims were items normally stored inside a household toolbox.
He was a Bee Gees fan and a Mariah Carey fan (at the time of the interview).
2. Wayne Williams - "B.B. King & Bobby Bland", "Tyrone Davis", "Z.Z. Hill"
Williams has always maintained his innocence in connection with the child murders and has insisted (along with others) that his implication was a conspiracy and that the killings were associated with the Ku Klux Klan. A DNA test in 2007 pointed further evidence linking Williams to the murder of an eleven-year-old boy named Patrick Baltazar. In 1995, Wayne Williams replied to a letter sent to him while he was in prison asking for sealed cassette tapes. First on the list was B.B. King and Bobby Bland's "I Like to Live the Love," followed by soul singer Tyrone Davis and blues singer Z.Z. Hill.
1. Charles Manson - "The Beatles"
Manson was a musician himself on the fringes of the LA music industry at the time, who knew Dennis Wilson from the Beach Boys as well as The Mamas And The Papas and Neil Young. His favourites were the Beatles though and he liked to play The White Album to The Manson Family, explaining that it was a hidden message intended only for him that an upcoming apocalyptic race war was coming and he was supposed to trigger it. I guess that’s one way of interpreting it, sure. His favourite song was Helter Skelter, and he used this term as his name for the upcoming race war.