How to Be a Better Serial Killer

RAWWR! THE GOVERNMENT MUST PROTECT OPEN SOURCE STANDARDS!

Hey wow, did you hear? The news media - er, the police - caught the fat balding recluse suspected in the BTK killings! Big whoop-dee-doo.

Report: Daughter's DNA aided hunt for BTK suspect - Initially only eight killings were linked to BTK, but Sedgwick County Sheriff Gary Steed said police will file homicide charges for the previously unsolved killings of two Park City women: Marine Hedge in April 1985 and Delores Davis in January 1991. The killer coined his own nickname, BTK, "bind, torture and kill," a pattern he has followed with most of his victims.

I don't wanna toot my own horn here, but that greasy Linux-using BTK clown was an amateur, an idiot. He wasn't like me, he wasn't in the murder industry because he loved to murder the crap out of shit. He was one of those "new money" killers who enter the field for its fame and fortune, swayed by pop flicks like "Se7en" and that one Lifetime Network movie where Judith Light pushes her husband off a cliff and then creates a new personality in a new town with a new life but strangely enough the same old watermelon-sized shoulder pads. These rookies, they will never succeed because their hearts simply aren't in the right place. Everybody wants to be the next Ted Bundy or David Berkowitz or Jeffrey Dahmer, but how many people dream of being the next Clem Richards or the next Jeff Barxley? I'll tell you how many: none, because Clem Richards and Jeff Barxley are the two most successful serial killers who have never been caught or even suspected by police! Uh, well, I guess until now. Crap.

Regardless, I feel it's high time we start enforcing a more strict set of core values on the up and coming serial killers of America. We need to weed through these folks and separate the poseurs who kill because it's cool, from the real heroes who are truly dedicated to their craft and murder families of four because they honestly believe God communicates to them through their doorbell. And, like almost any current subject, I feel the best way to get this done is through an article on a webpage that nobody really reads.

Now many of you may not know this, but I am a highly accomplished serial killer. I've been butchering the innocent and not-so-innocent since 1976, when I fatally incinerated the nurse delivering me with one of my patented deadly optic blasts. In my nearly 29 years of existence, I have successfully murdered over 45 people to death, some of them multiple times if I was feeling particularly sassy that day. I feel my experience in the field of forcing living people to stop living makes me an expert in this industry, and hopefully I can offer a few tips and pointers to all those up-and-coming serial killers in the minor league circuit, hoping to some day bust through and take the murder business by storm.

THREE TIPS TO BECOME A MORE SUCCESSFUL SERIAL KILLER

While you'll probably get a lot of media attention murdering people while dressed like this, I imagine it would make being a successfully serial killer a bit more difficult.

1) MURDER A LOT OF PROSTITUTES. Scientists in a conservative thinktank located somewhere in the midwest between a Wal-Mart and a church recently proved that prostitutes and hookers, contrary to popular belief, are NOT real people. They are a sub-genre of people, like crippled leprechauns and sentient ceiling fans who grant wishes to mentally retarded children that have no friends. If you want to get more bang for your murder buck, leave a bloody trail of dead hookers on your next cross-country murder spree. The police won't exactly rush out to stop you because, hey, you're consolidating their problems for them. Every time a serial killer starts decorating motel rooms with finger paint from the innards of a glittered up harlot named "Starletta," the number of available prostitutes on any given night drops by at least 58%, even more if Mike Tyson is in town. As far as the police are concerned, you're helping them do their jobs. They'd probably give you a job on the force if you began murdering people who ran red lights.

Conversely, you do NOT want to go after high-profile targets like community leaders, minorities, children, or the Pope. I came up with this really awesome equation last night when I was watching "Puffy AmiYumi," one that shows a direct correlation in risk between not murdering the Pope versus murdering the Pope. Did you know that if you actually murder the Pope, you're 483% more likely to get arrested for murdering the Pope than if you didn't? It's true! I have an Excel spreadsheet that proves this, but I refuse to show it to you because my copy of Excel still has that talking paperclip on every page and I'm too ashamed to admit that I can't get rid of him. I think I'm going to drop a bunch of bug bombs inside my computer and hope to fumigate him out. One time I went to the bathroom and the Microsoft Office Paperclip Man appeared in my bathtub and offered me tips on how to wash my own ass. That was the night I swore off rum forever.

In summary, before murdering somebody, you'll want to ask yourself, "how much community outrage will this person's death cause?" If it's a lot, you should probably think about murdering somebody else, like a prostitute, bum, or webmaster. They are just walking shells of humanity anyway; their souls died long ago. Be careful not to murder a cop posing as a prostitute or a bum in some kind of sting operation, because then you'll end up on some stupid network reality show like Fox's upcoming, "Serial Killer Island," where three contestants compete to kill the most theme park ride operators in 24 hours. The winner gets a savings bond for $38 and a giant posterboard that reads "GOOD JOB" in permanent marker. To differentiate between real prostitutes and cops pretending to be real prostitutes, ask the potential victim to get into your car. Once they enter, ask, "so are you a real prostitute or a fake prostitute?" Then, when the person questioned begins to answer, pull out a gigantic knife and stab them in the throat. If a bunch of blood starts spraying all over your car's interior, congratulations, you just murdered a real prostitute! If you see a bunch of wires and gears inside their exposed neck, and arcs of motor oil begin spewing out, then you just murdered a cop and you should immediately drive your car into the nearest paint-changing garage. No wait, I guess that's a robot. Robots are perfectly fine to murder, so you shouldn't really sweat it either way. Unless that robot is the Pope.

2) SEND A LOT OF RAMBLING, INSANE NOTES TO ORGANIZATIONS LIKE THE POLICE AND THE NEWS MEDIA. It's no secret that I eschew the "West Egg" breed of serial killers these days, the folks attracted to the glitz and glamour of the celebrity spotlight, but I admit that a real successful serial killer uses these groups to their own advantage. Like an artist, every mass murderer must find their own technique and style to make an impact on the world, and the best way to advertise your motif is through the media, who will undoubtedly interrupt their nonstop ads for Geico and "World's Sexiest Spring Break Car Chases Caught On Tape 9: New Orleans" to air police news conferences exposing your latest work.

After strangling somebody to death, preferably a hooker, the successful serial killer will then retreat to his secret hideout and begin writing an eloquent letter to the authorities. This note should offer clues into your twisted, warped mind, detectable to only trained forensic psychologists who have spent years studying the brains of sociopaths throughout the world. This note should be broken down into the following sections:

1) Introduction. You should announce who you are to the world in the first sentence, because 99.9% of America's population will stop reading anything after that. The other .1% is illiterate. Be sure to adopt some catchy, semi-clever name that will really stick out in the major newspapers and sell plenty of copies. You'll want something that sounds scary and mysterious, a nickname that will pass around the average workplace with reverence, like "Jesus Christ" or "free lunch buffet." Here are some good examples:

2) Body. This is the "meat" of your letter, which means it should be written on steak. Ha ha, I am of course kidding, PETA would single handedly track you down and strangle you with your own small intestines if you actually did such a thing. This section should cover your motives and drop subtle hints regarding any future crimes you may have in store for the police. Do not be afraid to tease and taunt any government agencies who may attempt to foil your plans of murdering every citizen of an entire state before 7:30 AM. After all, if the police were smart, then they would be the ones murdering folks and getting away with it, right? Right? Huh.

Now the key in this part revolves around creativity. You must cleverly drop a trail of bread crumbs leading to your next crime clue without brazenly announcing it to the entire world. Speak in a pseudo-code language that you make up as you go along. For example, at first glance something like "death has come beneath the astronauts" seems confusing and worthless, but it all makes perfect sense when you decipher it. Who was the most famous astronaut? John Glenn. What's a "John"? Somebody that pays hookers to sleep with them. Where do hookers sleep? Motels. Where is the Glenn Mariott Motel? At 300 12th Avenue North, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Then, at 300 12th Avenue North, you drop off something else terribly mysterious and spooky like a black box with a pink ribbon containing nothing inside except a coupon for Arby's and a some dentures. This clue should lead to the next location with something even more mysterious, and so on and so on and so on, until the police spend so much of their time on a treasure hunt for your retarded little clues that they stop trying to personally find you or solve any real crimes. If you want to get really clever, have your last clue lead them into an active volcano or some water that instantly kills you if you touch it like in Super Mario Brothers.

3) Conclusion. Try to summarize your letter with something witty, possibly a new catchphrase that could sweep America by storm. Try to avoid copyrighted material such as "the death of the innocent, I'm lovin' it," because I guarantee the lawyers for McDonalds have a lot more power and resources than your average police force. Make sure to sign your super-spooky killer pseudonym at the bottom so members of the media and police don't get confused and accidentally think it's from their own mother or something. Unless, of course, you are their own mother, which I guess would be considered "ironic" to many English scholars such as Alanis Morissette. Speaking of which, whatever happened to her? She kind of dropped off the face of the Earth. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, I just want to make sure a serial killer didn't murder her. Yet.

GOOD NOTE:	BAD NOTE:

I am the gay porn reaper!

3) MURDER PEOPLE IN FUN, CREATIVE WAYS. What's the one thing that all of America's founding fathers had in common? Besides being dead, I really don't know. That's okay though, because it has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm trying to say here. The key to your popularity in the murder industry not only revolves around the quantity of victims you rack up, but the quality in which you rack them up. Prisons are chock full of no-name average slobs who murdered a bunch of people by simply shooting them, so you should view a gun as nothing but a gateway to a world of boring mediocrity. Keep in mind that serial killing will now be your full time job for the rest of your life, so try to work some serious fun and creativity into it or else you'll end up like those blue-collar zombie drones who absolutely loathe their jobs working at Sprint or Best Buy. Besides the whole "murder" thing, there's really not much of a difference between being a professional serial killer and working for Sprint.

Think about what you're trying to accomplish before you actually go out and start exterminating all the folks your psychic frying pan demanded. If you've named yourself "The Bridgeport Telephone Cord Strangler," then you've pretty much limited yourself to strangling people with telephone cord in the Bridgeport area. The last thing you'd want to do is accidentally slip out of character and beat somebody to death in Black Rock with a golf club, because then your name would change into "The Bridgeport-Black Rock Telephone Cord and Golf Club Strangler / Beater," and that would look like utter crap on a business card. Remember the flexibility is a major issue when choosing your own name, so pick something broad such as "The Planet Earth Death Guy," a name that will stay appropriate as long as you murder people on Earth. Oh, and you can't suddenly switch genders either, so don't go get any sex changes in an attempt to enter the LPGA or something.

While the serial killer world may seem to grow more and more crowded each day, the human population is expanding at an even much quicker rate, so there will always been demand for trained mass murderers to keep the hooker and innocent victim rate of expansion at bay. Hopefully a new breed of killers, ones not lured into the profession by the media popularity, will read this update and reflect upon how to better spread their death like a poisonous margarine upon the bread of humanity. Now you'll have to excuse me, I'm going to head out and reduce the hooker population in downtown Kansas City by one or two. It's the only way I can stop Jesus from screaming at me through the follicles in my hair.

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)