4chan Hazbin Hotel story - serial killers

from /hhg/ - Hazbin Hotel General #345, #346 and #350
----------------------
Other serial killers roughly contemporaneous to Alastor, in no particular order:

Albert Fish, aka "The Gray Man" or "The Boogey Man": Serial child rapist and murderer in addition to being a cannibal. Apprehended and executed by electric chair.

Clementine Barnabet: A hoodoo (related to voodoo) practitioner who killed entire families, using an axe as her favored weapon and generally beheading her victims. Attempted to escape prison after capture but failed. Was later released, after which no known records of her exist

Eugene Butler: Serial killer who suffered from paranoia and hallucinations. Died after being placed in an asylum for these problems. His crimes and the bodies of his victims were not discovered until after his death.

Herman and Paul Petrillo: Serial poisoners/arsonists/general assassins who killed off individuals whom they'd taken out insurance policies on in order to collect on the policies.

Bertha Gifford: "Angel of Death"-type killer who fed poisoned food to the infirmed people she was charged with caring for. Died in an insane asylum.

Billy Gohl: Profit-motivated killer who targeted sailors passing though his area who were unlikely to be missed after disappearing. Died of pneumonia while serving a life sentence.

J Frank Hickey aka "The Postcard Killer": Poisoned his first victim, an adult, using laudanum to avoid trouble with his employer for being drunk on the job. Went on to strangle and sexually assault several children before his desire to taunt the public through post cards resulted in his capture.

Tillie Klimek: Poisoner who claimed to have precognitive abilities when in fact she was merely stating when she expected the regular doses of arsenic to finally kill her victims.
--
Wait, that lady that beheaded people was fucking released
What in the name of god were they thinking
-
>Tillie Klimek: Poisoner who claimed to have precognitive abilities when in fact she was merely stating when she expected the regular doses of arsenic to finally kill her victims.
Holy shit, this one is straight out of a fucking mystery novel, a villain of the week for Hercule Poirot.
-
Honestly Alastor seems like a Eugene Butler kind of serial killer, his crimes were probably only solved until the 1980's or 90's when DNA testing came around.

Its possible as an in universe explanation as to why a prolific serial killer like Al would be as well known as someone like Bundy, Dahmer, BTK or Son of Sam could be that the case he was assigned to was classified by the FBI, maybe even put into something like the X Files due to the possibility of Al getting assistance from otherworldly forces
-
>Honestly Alastor seems like a Eugene Butler kind of serial killer, his crimes were probably only solved until the 1980's or 90's when DNA testing came around.
No, I think his crimes were very well-known and publicized. Considering he's stuck in his 20s/30s style I want to assume he died in that era, and the only way he would have died then is if he was arrested and executed for his crimes or gunned down by the police red-handed. And if he was arrested, there's no way he didn't tell everyone and everyone about anything and everything he did.
-
I mean why we, the audience dont
-
Alastor died by dog-related incident
--
Carl Panzram: Murderer, arsonist, rapist, and robber. Spent a good deal of his life either on the run from the law or incarcerated under his own name or an alias. Unlike many serial killers, he did not have a proper "hunting ground", an area he was intimately familiar and comfortable with to stalk his victims. He ranged across the country as part of his other crimes, and internationally as a sailor during the 20s. An extremely violent, nihilistic, and angry man, he would admit after his capture that he'd been contemplating poisoning an entire city's water supply and sabotaging a British ship in order to spark a war between the US and Britain. He refused to wear a hood when he was hanged, and insulted the executioner for taking too long to kill him, declaring that he could kill dozens in the time it was taking him to kill one.

Amy Archer-Gilligan: Profit-motivated serial poisoner who targeted the elderly residents of her nursing home. Presented an extremely religious and pious face to the world in order to reduce suspicion. Official body count is only 5, but less legally viable evidence points to a substantially higher number of victims. Declared insane and incarcerated in an asylum until her death. The inspiration for the play "Arsenic and Old Lace" and its film adaptation.

Joe Ball aka "The Alligator Man": Bootlegger who later opened a legitimate liquor business after the repeal of prohibition, which featured an alligator pond with 6 gators, whom he would feed live cats and dogs and possibly the remains of up to 20 women and girls he may have killed, including ex-lovers and his wife. He drew a handgun and committed suicide immediately upon being confronted by authorities regarding the disappearances of women in the area.

Eddie Adams: General criminal who killed both other criminals and policeman during a 14 month primarily profit-motivated crime spree across the midwest before being surround and gunned down by police after evading them several times
-
Two killers who have never been identified:

The Cleveland Torso Murderer aka "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run": Killer who targeted the impoverished and generally marginalized peoples, mainly in the "Roaring Third", before dumping the dismembered bodies in Kingsbury. Targeted both men and women, and is believed to have selected the victims out of convenience rather than having a specific "type", as some other killers did. Eliot Ness, of the famed "Untouchables", pursued the case for a time. He believed that the killer was a wide-ranger who used the common practice among hobo populations of hopping trains in search of work as a means of locating victims well outside their usual hunting grounds. His undercover operations traveling by rail throughout the country failed to ever yield results. Letters were discovered in Ness's personal effects following his death that appear to be the killer mocking him for failing to capture them. The killer reportedly also taunted him by leaving two of his victims bodies outside of his office window.

The Axe Man of New Orleans: Killer who tended to target Italian immigrants, popping a panel out of the back doors of his victim's houses to gain entrance, then attacking the residents with either their own axe or a straight razor. Although they would occasionally kill all residents, there exist cases where the men were spared while the women were killed, and the men he killed appeared to have been attempting to stop them from harming the women, leading some to suspect that the killer was motivated by a hatred of women or a severely warped sexuality. In a letter attributed to the Axe Man, they claim to be in league with "His Satanic Majesty" and to have a "close relationship" with the Angel of Death. They also mock the police for failing to catch them and claim a fondness for jazz music, declaring that they will soon embark on a killing spree but will leave the occupants of any building that is hosting a jazz band in peace
-----------------
Anon who's been posting about real life serial killers lately here. I found another killer cannibal who might offer a different view of Alastor's madness.

Richard Chase, "The Vampire of Sacramento", experienced a combination of paranoid schizophrenia and hypochondria. His delusional mind convinced himself that he was sick with a variety of improbable ailments, often related to past abuses. In particular, his short but horrific killing and cannibalization spree was rooted in an irrational belief that he was somehow perpetually running out of blood or that his blood was deteriorating in some fashion, and that he could replenish it/heal himself of his imagined illnesses by consuming human remains.
-
I've heard some theories that Alastors motivations for his killings were based off of vengeance, hence why Alastors name translates into "avenger" in greek. It could be that he sought out individuals who he found reprehensible or who reminded him of people that may have crossed him early in life, which also slots into the idea that i've had that Al's mom was murdered in front of him by burglars/robbers, effectively making Al a horribly twisted and misguided batman-esque figure, using the vast wealth from his mothers estate to consistently evade law enforcement and allow him to accrue immense amounts of power, including the purchasing of forbidden texts, which could've set him on the path that he's on today
-
That's also a good theory, particularly given that we're talking about a fictional serial killer and fictional killers tend to be heavily romanticized. Antihero-type fictional SKs tend to have tragic backstories that also provide a clear avenue for vigilante justice that the audience will tend to empathize with.
-
I actually bet many in law enforcement would harbor a certain level of respect for Al, if they knew his identity as a vigilante killer. All he's going is cleaning out the undesirable scum of New Orleans, free of charge, hosts a damn good radio talk show and has the looks to be a hollywood superstar
-
Having been a vigilante-type killer would be an interesting take on the character but he's a little bit incongruent with the idea. If your power as a demon is at least partially tied to how evil you were in life, then choosing other evil people as targets seems like it wouldn't have given him such unusual strength compared to the arguably more wicked practice of killing the innocent. There's also the voodoo theming to him, and I'm not sure how directly that could tie in to a vigilante killing spree.
-
Theres also something unusual I noticed about his appearance that seems to set him apart from most other sinners (and especially overlords) is how human he actually looks. Take away the bright red hair, ears and sharp teeth and he looks almost exactly like how he did when he was alive, he even has an (albeit slightly sickly looking) skin tone, which contrasts heavily with most sinners who have either paper white porcelain skin or artificial concrete grey looking skin, as well as a variety of other unusual deformities (Rosie completely lacking any eyes, Velvet looking like a stuffed doll and whatever the hell is going on with Vox)
It leads me to think that theres something else going on with him
Note from pic related how similar he looks to his "demonic" form (pic related is said to be the most canon accurate human image of him)

In regards to his practice of voodoo, it probably isn't a cultural connection that Al has, since in my mind he doesn't exactly look Afro Caribbean, but it could be that voodoo had some limited spillover into New Orleans high society. May even be that Alastors mother was a part of a kind of secret society/cult of New Orleans socialites who descended from French Imperial Aristocracy
-
So, kind of like The Saturnine cult from Bioshock, except practicing Voodoo and engaging in petty demonology, and not drinking sea-slug stemcells and teleporting around like a bunch of spergs?
-
That's an interesting though, though I'm not sure where to take it. But regardless, assuming you can quantify evil in some concrete way, it IS kind of odd that Alastor's demon form is quite human looking when he's presumably more evil than Angel Dust, who has taken on the form of a gigantic slutty effeminate spider creature in death.


Some other thoughts bouncing around in my drunken brain:

We've already gone over how Alastor's asexuality puts him in a minority status, since most male serial killers tend to be lust murderers, and in particular, cannibalism by serial killers is most frequently motivated by a severely warped sexuality. Something else about lust murderers is that they generally never stop killing until caught. People experience sexual desire from puberty, through most of their lives, all the way until old age, so even though they may go through exceptionally long cooling-off periods, a killer for whom murder is a sexual act will never give up killing completely unless they are caught. Profit-motivated killers likewise will tend to kill indefinitely. The ease of lining their pockets with murder-for-profit tends to make them just keep killing rather than finding any other means of making money, and they usually don't stop until they get caught or perhaps on the off chance that they enrich themselves to such a degree that they can retire.

On the other hand, I'm not that familiar with vigilante or other mission-oriented killers other than "Killer Petey" pictured in >>31271130. The thing about him that's interesting in this context is that unlike lust and profit killers, he seems to have "outgrown" his desire to kill. He's been released from prison, he's getting into Larry King territory with his age, and as far as we can tell, hasn't murdered anyone in a very long time, he's just working as a groundskeeper and minding his own business.

Cont.
-
With Alastor, we currently don't have enough information on his life and crimes to draw any wide reaching conclusions about him, but we definitely can rule him out as a lust killer. It's a toss-up if he was a profit killer, particularly depending on how broad your definition of profit is. Given that he probably didn't live past his mid 30s (most killers tend to be 35 and under), and he's been in hell since 1933, putting him at around a century of existence in total, it's possible that he too has lost his compulsion to kill.
-
It could be that whatever dark forces Al tapped into recognized his emotionally vulnerable state and exploited it, for reasons unknown. I don't buy that he's a pure evil character, but that he's also not a victim of pure happenstance. If in the event that he's redeemed in the show, he's going to have to address the crimes that he committed head on, as well as the possible source of his neurosis.

Furthermore, he's most likely going to have to ditch the voodoo and black magic, since its kind of an affront to god to tap into dark eldritch forces to get what you want. I really would hate to see this show squander a character like him and relegate him to a generic irredeemable bad boy. What could be done instead is to gaslight the audience into thinking that, but revealing later on a potential big bad that's far worse than him (and this possible big bad would draw the MC of the hotel together into a genuine friendship).

If I were to guess what a pure evil character would be, it would definitely have to be Rosie. Compared to Al, she has a far less human and uncanny appearance. Most telling thing is her complete lack of any eyes. Generally its said that the eyes act as the gateway to the soul, so if you have no eyes whatsoever as your demonic "true" form, thats quite telling.
-
>he's going to have to address the crimes that he committed head on

Given that the goal is to get a damned soul out of hell and into heaven, that's going to be awkward as FUCK, and probably hard to do with any kind of seriousness. It'd be like a higher stakes version of that AA thing where you have to go around and apologize to everyone your drinking problem has affected.

Just imagine being someone who lived a decent enough life that was tragically cut short by GETTING FUCKING MURDERED BY A DARK MAGIC PRACTICING NUTCASE AND HAVING YOUR CORPSE FRIED UP AND GOBBLED DOWN LIKE A RASHER OF BACON. You end up in the good afterlife though, because you didn't really do anything wrong, so that's nice enough. Then after a while, here comes the psychopath who killed and ate you and they're like

>Hey old sport, terribly sorry about having stabbed you in the chest forty-seven times and then cutting off your legs and stewing them with a pot of beans. I wasn't in my right mind at the time.

If Al gets the kind of full-tilt redemption Charlie is going for, unless every single one of his victims was as rotten as he himself was and ended up in hell alongside him, it's going to be really weird for a really long time after he gets to heaven.
-
Christ I hope Vivzie actually goes through and get Al redeemed. That would be hilarious to watch the horribly awkward meetings he'd have to go through, with Charlie being blissfully oblivious to the situation.
-
>with Charlie being blissfully oblivious to the situation.

That could be a really good source of fish-out-of-water type gags. Charlie isn't a mortal soul, she was born straight into the afterlife to immortal parents. She probably can't even properly wrap her head around the concept/fear of death as we mortals would understand it. She'd be there trying to coax them into playing nice with each other like a kindergarten teacher trying to get the mean kid to say something nice to the kid they were picking on.
-
I have to say, getting 20-30 pissed off people from 1930's Louisiana is a recipe for disaster
Guarantee you someone would bring a holy pump action 12 gauge to the meeting
-
>She'd be there trying to coax them into playing nice with each other like a kindergarten teacher trying to get the mean kid to say something nice to the kid they were picking on.
Which was basically what Viv (or was it Faust?) said about how Charlie would try to solve the problem.
Honestly, she's out of her dept, and no-one seems to be willing to tell her that Sinner's need more than just to dry up their tears with a napkin and send them into the time-out corner in case they've been naughty.

I'd always imagined a sort-off alternate scenario where, after Katie had finished insulting her, and both her and Tom had a laugh, the latter would suddenly switch into serious mode, and began grilling her about how she would even set about "redeeming" sinners, perhaps, using himself as an example of someone who'd need more attention than that of a nursery caretaker.
-
Yeah there's definitely a great deal of room in the premise for Charlie to go through some serious growth as a person. I want to like her, but I also think of the phrase "you're rich, you can afford to be nice" in terms of her goofily optimistic attitude. She's a literal magic princess who probably hasn't faced too much truly challenging adversity in however long she's been around. She's got a good heart for sure, and there's a part of me that finds it inspiring, but the rest of me just thinks she really is kind of an idiot for thinking that singing a banging show tune will be enough to convince the inhabitants of HELL to check in to her sunshine-and-rainbows rehab clinic.
---------
Another one of Alastor's contemporaries: Earle Nelson, "The Gorilla Man"

Born with erratic and bizarre behavior, such as drenching all his food in olive oil and then just shoving his face in the plate and slurping it up like an animal, isolating himself in dark spaces for extended periods, and compulsive quoting of the most macabre passages of the bible. This may be attributed to a combination of his parents both having syphilis (which killed them when he was a toddle) and a series of head injuries he suffered throughout his life. He grew into an exceptionally large and strong man, capable of walking on his hands and lifting weights with his mouth.

After repeated incarcerations and releases from prisons and mental institutions for assorted petty crimes, he graduated to murderer and necrophiliac. His MO was to carry a bible and act the part of an extremely pious and soft-spoken man seeking to rent rooms in boarding houses run by female landlords. Once he had his target alone, he would strangle them to death and proceed to violate their corpse. Unlike many serial killers, who often have a familiar hunting ground where they both stalk and dispose of their victims, Nelson was a nomad, moving on quickly after his kills across both the US and Canada. Though he initially left the bodies where they were when he was finished with them, he eventually learned to hide them, so as to provide extra time before his crimes were discovered. His number of confirmed victims stands at 21 women and 1 infant, though there may be more, making him the most prolific killer in US history until Dean Corll's killing spree in the 70s.

He was apprehended in Canada, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for his murders. The US declined to attempt extradition; as long as he was dead, it didn't matter how many more murders they tried him for. He was executed by hanging.

He was one of the first killers to be widely covered in the press. including the then cutting-edge medium of radio.
-
what are you talking about? is this canon?
-
This is a real life serial killer. I've been running down a list of real killers from the same time period as Alastor lately for no particular reason.

Also sometimes killers from other eras who might provide insight into what's going on in Al's head.
-
what's been going on in his head is he's an autist. simple as
-
I mean more in terms of his motivations for killing and cannibalism. Most male serial killers are sexually motivated, and cannibalism usually has a sexual element to it for such people, so Alastor doesn't fit the usual mold.
-
I think it was just a power thing. Thinking he held power over life and death and he also hunted upon a time didn't he, hence his deer motif? Like im not denying what you said, its usually true, but for Al i think it was merely a huge power fantasy thing of being some kinda "god".
-
Power and control are usually an element of a killer's motivation, yes. Alastor is probably a megalomaniac to some degree. As for the cannibalism, I can think of two cannibalistic killers off the top of my head who were motivated by delusions. Richard Chase was a hypochondriac who thought that drinking human blood would cure his imaginary ailments. Perhaps somewhat more relevantly, Ahmad Suradji had a vision that told him that consuming the saliva of his victims would make him indestructible if he claimed enough victims.
-
and given his power, i'd number 2 there falls more into how alastor is. Prob didn't know the truth depths of how hell is and felt offering/eating them up would make him untouchable, he DID have a radio show and had a ego then and now.