
A Texas Ranger got a prolific serial killer to talk - mighty-fine
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-09-25/texas-ranger-got-one-of-the-nations-worst-serial-killers-to-talk-this-is-how
======
chiph
I once got a chance to chat with a psychologist who worked for the Rangers. I
ran into him at the Schlitterbahn water park south of Austin, and talked while
we waited for family members to finish their rides. He was involved with
tracking down members of MS-13, the Latino gang. They're known for being
particularly violent, so he was pretty eager to find them and get them
prosecuted.

One piece of Ranger history I didn't know was that their badges are made from
Mexican 5-Peso silver coins.

[https://www.americancowboy.com/people/history-texas-
ranger-b...](https://www.americancowboy.com/people/history-texas-ranger-
badge-26798)

------
tempguy9999
There was recently an article about the alien-ness of octopi, but to read
about a guy doing this, he seems more unhuman than even those. Someone who can
find life that disposable just for a bit of fun, will always be utterly beyond
me.

Just a note, I understand that serial killers almost exclusively stick with
their own ethnic group. If you watch the (short) video, that becomes very
apparent here. The photos in the article don't show that so well, the video
does.

"were almost all prostitutes, drug addicts or those he didn’t think would be
missed."

Christ, the ultimate throwaway culture. Well done James Holland, you did a job
I could not face.

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e40
_Pressed about his life story, Little traced the urge to kill to his youth. He
said he got his first erection in kindergarten when he watched his teacher
touch her neck. Later in grade school, he dreamed of killing a girl who
stroked her neck while teasing him._

He said it, but I have trouble believing that. There had to be something
before that, perhaps something too far back to remember?

~~~
Enginerrrd
It shouldn't be that hard to believe. The reality is some people are born with
biologically or structurally dysfunctional brains.

Is it hard for you to believe that someone could be born with schizophrenia?
What about autism? What about poor impulse control?

When you think about the complicated interplay of social interaction in
HEALTHY humans, which includes their innate capacity for violence (We
definitely are part hunters with a propensity for war), and you compare the
things we know that can go wrong and produce mental deficits of one form or
another, it really shouldn't be that surprising that some people in the
population would also be born with distinctly anti-social tendencies of one
form or another.

Brains are complicated... there's all kinds of interesting things that happen
too that may be related. For example, the disgust response of humans is
typically lessened or even reversed during sexual arousal. So you can have
almost a complete flip in behavior depending on context! The regions of the
brain responsible for aggression and sexual arousal are also really close
together and related. So is this really that much of a stretch?

~~~
johnisgood
You are not "born" with any of these. You are born with a genetic
predisposition, for example with genetic variants that increase the risk of
schizophrenia, but there are no certainties. It is an interplay between
genetics and the environment, both genetic and environmental factors play a
role in the development.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Causes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Causes)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_schizophrenia#S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_schizophrenia#Schizophrenia)

[...]

------
archeantus
Kind of sickening how he builds up his ego and tells him he loves him. Seems
like that kind of treatment could potentially skew the accuracy of the
confession.

“Hmm, I like being loved and praised and fed milkshakes here in prison, I’m
going to keep talking, even if it isn’t true!”

~~~
pessimizer
Very few details about the confirmations of the confessions here, and a lot of
insistence that Little has a "photographic memory" a pseudoscientific claim
which implies we shouldn't question whether these confessions are real.

There is a mutual relationship here: Little gets company, attention, and
praise, police get to wipe 57 cases off their books that they have no
intention of ever trying in a court, and this particular investigator gets
lionized.

edit:

> After the confessions came the painstaking work — confirming killings. There
> won’t be time to prosecute Little for all the deaths, but authorities
> believe they can sufficiently tie him to a homicide to consider the case
> solved.

This is the entirety of the content detailing the confirmations that I can
find in the article.

~~~
maxerickson
It's so weird to be deeply cynical about the detective's obviously cynical
relationship with the killer.

~~~
DanBC
This ranger is teaching his techniques to police officers.

These techniques may be useful for serial killers (although we don't know,
there's no research) but we know these interrogation techniques have caused
many miscarriages of justice.

------
bdittmer
Totally unrelated to the article (which I enjoyed), but the LA Times website
continuously jumped up and down on my iPad. I suspect ads reloading above or
below the fold. Incredibly annoying!

~~~
MaintenanceMode
On iOS and the reader mode makes long articles like this much easier to read.
I don’t use it enough myself but it’s quite handy.

------
stebann
It's amazing how can a professional solve this cases where others couldn't.
Why there is so much hate towards women in US? I mean, particularly, these
serial killers. Cases like this are rarely seen in South America, where
violence has other drives (many times much less psychological).

~~~
santiagogo
Unfortunately (I am South American) I think you are wrong. Some of the most
prolific serial killers have been South Smerican, but serial killers are not
such a popular topic on the news here so it's not as widely known.

I would think it's also logical that serial killers tend to focus on women and
children because they are generally easier to overpower than another male.
There is probably also a sexual component to killing and I would guess that
most serial killers tend to be heterosexual, hence why they mostly target
women.

For reference:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_numb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_number_of_victims)

~~~
stebann
Yes. Prolific, but I wasn't talking about the number of victims but the number
of produced serial killers. I know that there were (and are!) many serial
killers in other countries, but what I am asking is how and why did USA
produce more serial killers as a cultural and sociological phenomenon. You
could say "Ok, but you don't know that and your observation can be explained,
because in US they caught more of these guys while in other countries they
remain unidentified". That is really hard to believe because many LE and their
corresponding Investigation Divisions in the world have the same level and
resources that in USA and it is really hard to loose tracks of many linked
murder cases, even when they seem unrelated at first. Given enough time, data,
and evidence, someone will relate those cases if they were committed by a
mostly psychological-driven serial killer. I also know that they look for the
easy prey (as you said, it's logical), but there's something that seems out of
that dimension in this issue. I also find really hard to miss that mass-
shootings in USA are something far from logical (I'm not talking about
accessibility to guns, or laws and policies about guns). I apologize if I
offended someone.

------
dunkmaster
He only talked cause he had nothing to lose. The ranger didn't really have
much to do with it

~~~
mikhailt
If that's true, he would've talked a long time ago. He refused to talk to many
investigators from various states who also could've gotten the same letter not
seeking the death penalty (presuming the guy was already convicted for life),
only Holland got him to talk. So, yes Holland is partly if not entirely
responsible for getting him to talk.

~~~
ianai
I read the article, Holland definitely got the guy to talk through
unconventional means. He has killers draw their victims. He seems unaffected
by the flat way the killer describes his victims. It’s almost like becoming
the killers “advocate” (lack of a better word) instead of prosecutor.

~~~
Eloso
I’m not claiming you’re wrong; I’m just curious—are his methods actually
unconventional? Once a person is serving a life sentence (nothing to lose),
and there’s nothing his cooperation can do to get him out of prison (nothing
to gain), it seems pretty obvious to me that anyone wanting to work with him
would need to try something like what Holland has done.

