Quotes from Stephen G. Michaud

To the sexual offender, possession is power, and total possession is absolute power.

The day Spenkelink was put to death a popular Jacksonville disc jockey aired a recording of sizzling bacon and dedicated it to the doomed man.

All were dissected or decapitated or sexually assaulted after death. He cut leg meat from two of his victims into a macaroni casserole he prepared and ate. Kemper bludgeoned his mother with a hammer as she slept. He sawed off her head, had sex with her corpse, and carved out her larynx and shoved it down the garbage disposal.

Bundy also cleared cases with detectives from three other western states, acknowledging in all a murder toll of 31 victims, certainly fewer cases than he actually committed, but as many as Ted in his confused final hours was prepared to admit.

Every single sexual deviation is overwhelmingly dominated by white males. And most sexually related ritualistic crimes are committed by white males.

TB: The overexcited, overaroused, driven, compulsive state this person was in… could in no way be integrated with what we characterize as the moral, ethical, law-abiding part of the individual. We'd probably be more accurate if we stated that this normal self had been repressed… to such a degree that even the encounter with the first victim did not sufficiently arouse it… so it could take predominance.

Liebert and his team added that an offender so slick and bold and self-assured probably was practiced in committing this sort of crime and that he did so compulsively. He'd killed before and would want to kill again. There also was a good chance that he was a necrophile. If we ever found the victims, they likely would have been mutilated or dismembered.

When I asked if a guy so obviously crazy would have a history of mental problems, including institutionalization, neither of them believed he necessarily did. In contrast to the brutal and primitive murderer they described, Liebert and Berberich agreed that the public "Ted" obviously was highly credible, which suggested to them that he was well-concealed within his community and circle of friends. For that reason, he likely would be difficult to isolate as a suspect.

One of our elusive killer's critical advantages was the ingrained habit among police agencies not to share information with one another.

To a degree, Sharpton, Mason, and Maddox succeeded in making the truth of the case irrelevant. They promulgated a "could have been" theory that had resonance for many blacks distrustful of white authority.

C. Vernon Mason was disbarred for seven years by the New York State Supreme Court for price-gouging his poorer clients. He entered the New York Theological Seminary as a student.

On July 13, 1998, after eight months of protracted and acrimonious legal wrangling, a six-person jury decided that Sharpton, Mason, and Maddox indeed had defamed Pagones. Sixteen days later, they assessed Sharpton $65,000 in damages, Maddox $95,000, and Mason $185,000.