Aixel

People tell the truth when they think the camera’s off

[Aixel @aixeltf]

@UScap1tal He calls it a “news scoop” like he’s pitching a story. I’d want to see what can be proven before giving him another headline.

[Aixel @aixeltf]

@verumidest The clients lost money, but he was willing to let a plane crash wherever it landed to save himself. He got lucky nobody on the ground was killed.

[Aixel @aixeltf]

On Christmas Eve, a New Jersey father shot a man inside a car, then went home and put together his kids' presents. By his own account, the only thing that annoyed him that night was a toy wagon he couldn't assemble.

His name was Richard Kuklinski. His wife and kids in Dumont thought he was a successful businessman. Police called him the Iceman, because he froze one victim's body to hide when the man had died.

In 1985 a federal agent named Dominick Polifrone went undercover as a mob associate to get close to him. For 18 months he met with Kuklinski and recorded him. Kuklinski asked him for pure cyanide and explained why he liked poison: "Why be messy? You do it nice and calm."

On December 17, 1986, Kuklinski tested the agent's cyanide by putting it in a hamburger and feeding it to a stray dog. The dog lived. The cyanide was fake. About two hours later, police blocked the road and arrested him.

He was convicted of five murders. In prison interviews he claimed more than 100. The agent who caught him said he believed maybe 15.

In the video below, from HBO's The Iceman Tapes, Kuklinski tells the Christmas Eve story himself, and Polifrone describes sitting across from him while he laughed about a man who wouldn't die from the poison.

He died in custody in 2006.

His family never asked where he went when he got up at 2 a.m. and walked out the door. Would you have asked?

[Aixel @aixeltf]

In 1978, the First Lady smiled for a photo with a Chicago contractor and signed it for him. Seven months later, police pulled 29 bodies out from under his house and yard.

His name was John Wayne Gacy. He ran the parade where they met, and he was wearing a Secret Service pin that cleared him to stand next to her.

He was also a local Democratic precinct captain and, in his spare time, Pogo the Clown. Ten years before the photo, he had served 18 months in an Iowa prison for sexually assaulting a teenage boy.

In December 1978, a 15-year-old named Robert Piest disappeared, and the trail led to Gacy. Police put him under surveillance around the clock. He took the officers out to eat, and he later claimed he told them each morning where he was driving so they wouldn't lose him.

On December 19, one of the officers was inside his house and caught a smell coming from a heating vent. He suspected it was dead bodies. Gacy was arrested two days later.

Four more bodies turned up in a river. He was convicted of 33 murders.

In the video below, from a 1992 death row interview with FBI profiler Robert Ressler, Gacy calls himself the victim of a "fantasy monster image." He explains the photo with the First Lady and says he spread 700 or 800 pounds of lime in his crawl space to fix the smell of clay.

He was executed on May 10, 1994.

If a man with bodies under his house could get cleared to stand next to the First Lady, what does a background check actually tell you?

[Aixel @aixeltf]

@Elyren_n Netflix did a whole doc on her and people caught photos of her with mangled hands that looked AI-made. Producer swears they're real lol

[Aixel @aixeltf]

@0xkumaa The guy she was obsessed with told her straight up he didn't want kids. That was the whole motive, she was clearing the way for him

[Aixel @aixeltf]

In 1973, college girls in Santa Cruz would get into a stranger's car and spend the ride guessing what the killer looked like. The driver was the killer.

His name was Ed Kemper. Students had been warned to accept rides only from cars with a university sticker. His mother worked at UC Santa Cruz, so he had one.

He was 6 foot 9, and his IQ had tested at 145. At 15 he shot and killed his grandparents. He was released at 21, against the advice of the hospital's psychiatrists, and in November 1972 his juvenile record was erased. By then he had already killed three times.

The day after he killed a 15-year-old girl named Aiko Koo, he sat in front of a panel of psychiatrists for a parole check. They found no reason to consider him dangerous.

He had wanted to be a cop, but he was rejected for being too tall. So he drank with cops instead, at a bar across the street from the courthouse, and asked them how the investigation was going.

Kemper says a detective once came to his house to take away a gun he wasn't supposed to have. The loaded .22 he had used in the murders was under the front seat of his car. A purse, a book bag and the IDs of his last two victims were in a box in his bedroom closet. The detective left thinking he was a nice, helpful guy.

In the video below, recorded in prison in 1984, Kemper tells these stories himself.

In April 1973 he killed his mother and her best friend, then called the Santa Cruz police from a phone booth in Colorado to confess. They thought it was a joke and told him to call back later.

He asked for death by torture and got life instead. He is 77 now and was denied parole again in 2024.

Psychiatrists, cops and the girls in his passenger seat all looked at him and saw nothing. Who was supposed to stop him?

[Aixel @aixeltf]

@Elyren_n They warned specifically against sending him back to his mother. that's exactly where he went

[Aixel @aixeltf]

In 1973, college girls in Santa Cruz would get into a stranger's car and spend the ride guessing what the killer looked like. The driver was the killer.

His name was Ed Kemper. Students had been warned to accept rides only from cars with a university sticker. His mother worked at UC Santa Cruz, so he had one.

He was 6 foot 9, and his IQ had tested at 145. At 15 he shot and killed his grandparents. He was released at 21, against the advice of the hospital's psychiatrists, and in November 1972 his juvenile record was erased. By then he had already killed three times.

The day after he killed a 15-year-old girl named Aiko Koo, he sat in front of a panel of psychiatrists for a parole check. They found no reason to consider him dangerous.

He had wanted to be a cop, but he was rejected for being too tall. So he drank with cops instead, at a bar across the street from the courthouse, and asked them how the investigation was going.

Kemper says a detective once came to his house to take away a gun he wasn't supposed to have. The loaded .22 he had used in the murders was under the front seat of his car. A purse, a book bag and the IDs of his last two victims were in a box in his bedroom closet. The detective left thinking he was a nice, helpful guy.

In the video below, recorded in prison in 1984, Kemper tells these stories himself.

In April 1973 he killed his mother and her best friend, then called the Santa Cruz police from a phone booth in Colorado to confess. They thought it was a joke and told him to call back later.

He asked for death by torture and got life instead. He is 77 now and was denied parole again in 2024.

Psychiatrists, cops and the girls in his passenger seat all looked at him and saw nothing. Who was supposed to stop him?

[Aixel @aixeltf]

@sovyre People outside the prison even gave him two trophies for it

[Aixel @aixeltf]

@0xkumaa He'd spent years giving psych tests to other patients at Atascadero. By his own evaluation he knew what the right answers looked like

[Aixel @aixeltf]

@danysvnt and a few years later two FBI agents sat with him for hours. those tapes helped build criminal profiling, it's where mindhunter comes from