Randall Woodfield - The 1-5 Serial Killer E-Book

Blake Simpson

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 88

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Randall Woodfield, also known as the I-5 Killer, was an American serial killer and former football player. He was convicted of multiple murders in the 1980s along Interstate 5 in Oregon and California. Woodfield was known for his good looks and charm but in reality was a violent thief, sexual predator, and killer. Randall Woodfield - The 1-5 Serial Killer offers a comprehensive profile of this harrowing and often overlooked serial killer. Woodfield is not as famous as the likes of Bundy, Gacy, and Dahmer but in his own disturbing way he was just as bad as any of them.

Leseprobe

Randall Woodfield - The 1-5 Serial Killer   

Blake Simpson© Copyright 2024 Blake Simpson

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ContentsChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenPhoto Credit

CHAPTER ONE

Randall Brent Woodfield was born in Salem, Oregon in 1950. Salem is the capital city of the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Willamette Valley. It is the third largest city in the state, with a population of around 175,000 residents. The city is also home to a number of parks and outdoor recreational areas, as well as several museums and heritage sites. Salem is located about an hour's drive south of Portland, making it a popular destination for day trips from the larger city. Randall Woodfield would go on to become one of the most vicious and dangerous American serial killers in living memory. A cold hearted man who inflicted brutal sexual assaults upon his victims and seemed to relish the feeling of power his crimes gave him. Woodfield was an all too real bogeyman at the start of the 1980s. A nightmare made flesh. A recurring pattern with serial killers and sexual predators is a time lag between their crimes - as if to lessen their chances of being caught. A cooling off period. Many killers tend to have gaps between their murders. The murder temporarily satisfies their dark desires and they can return to some sort of normality for a period until they need to kill again. They need time to prepare and plan for their next murder. That wasn't the case with Randall Woodfield though. He didn't conform to some of the patterns we usually see with serial killers. Woodfield even threatened to blur the line between serial killer and spree killer when he was active. Woodfield seemed in the grip of a frenzy that he had no control over. If anything his crimes escalated and became more frequent, sometimes occurring on the same day only hours apart. He couldn't seem to satiate his lust and darkness.Some of his victims were people he knew and some were random strangers. Many of them worked in the convenience stores he robbed. He is suspected too of being responsible for a number of unsolved murders involving female hitchhikers. Because this all happened so long ago now (with DNA evidence not always applicable anymore) it is obviously very difficult to connect some of these unsolved murders to Woodfield. One thing is certain though. Woodfield almost certainly killed a lot more people than we yet know of. The true tally of his crimes may well make him one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. When it comes to the worst American serial killers, Randall Woodfield is up there with the likes of Ted Bundy, Randy Kraft, Gary Ridgway, Samuel Little, John Wayne Gacy, and Rodney Alcala. Woodfield isn't nearly as famous as some other notorious American serial killers though. Why this should be is impossible to say for sure but there are a number of possible factors. Aside from Alcala, those other killers were all executed (with the resultant publicity the death penalty generates). Ted Bundy did prison interviews and fascinated the public because he looked more like a game show host than a killer. John Wayne Gacy would entertain kids at parties by dressing up as a clown. He was therefore The Killer Clown in true crime lore. Rodney Alcala famously appeared as a contestant on the TV show The Dating Game.Randall Woodfield, by contrast, is more obscure than these terrible men who shared his addiction to killing. If you search for Woodfield online the main thing you'll get is that he was a promising football player who could have played for the Green Bay Packers. Some bios even wrongly state that he played for the Packers. It was a tiny part of his life though and ended before it ever really began but it was certainly true to an extent. He could, with a bit more talent and a few more breaks, have been a football player. That's part of the morbid appeal of the Woodfield story. He was a young man who seemed to have everything but somehow ended up as a depraved serial killer and sexual predator. After he was convicted, Woodfield was a trifle forgotten. He wasn't executed and he did no prison interviews because his prison didn't allow that sort of thing. Woodfield had no interest in any sort of dark prison fame anyway. He just wasn't interested in talking about his life and crimes. Ted Bundy confessed to his crimes in the end (well, most of them anyway) and it was unavoidably fascinating to hear him talk in interviews about being a serial killer. Bundy attempted (in unconvincing fashion) to somehow blame girlie magazines and (even more dubiously) 'slasher films' for the strange and terrible tangent his awful life had taken but to hear him at least be honest about the fact he was a killer was morbidly interesting in a car crash sort of way. There was nothing like this from Woodfield though. He is the Greta Garbo of serial killers. All we know about Woodfield post-conviction comes from fragments of letters that have been made public. All we can deduce from these letters is that Woodfield (no surprise here) is a bit creepy (if a female person writes to him he wants a photograph and to talk to them on the phone) and also still ludicrously maintains he is innocent and that the police arrested the wrong man.Woodfield, like a number of serial killers, had the ability to blend into what we what call normal life. He had friends and girlfriends and he was also ruggedly handsome in a very 1970s sort of way. He used steroids to maintain his football physique and considered himself to be athletic and attractive. In reality though this was all a façade. His life was in freefall and he felt alienated and rejected from society. He was assuredly not out of central casting when it came to serial killers though. Notorious serial killers like Richard Chase, Richard Ramirez, Gary Ridgway, Gacy and all, well, they ticked a lot more boxes when it comes to looking mad or sinister. Woodfield on the other hand looked more like Tom Selleck's stuntman than a serial killer. Woodfield's ability to blend into society (albeit in Woodfield's case a world of boozy bars and aimlessness) was only one of the many disturbing things about this twisted killer. Another is that Woodfield didn't conform to any surface stereotype we have about such individuals. Woodfield's background was what one would describe as normal and loving and his older sisters went on to become a doctor and lawyer respectively. His parents were comfortable financially (Woodfield Sr had a managerial job at the phone company Pacific Northwest Bell) and one can only imagine how bewildered they were when their son's true nature was revealed. After his conviction, when Randall Woodfield was in prison serving a life term for four murders (though he would be linked to over forty), his father visited him and commented to prison stadff that this wasn't the son he knew. The family never mentioned Randall again. They just wanted to forget all about him. It has been speculated that Woodfield's descent into criminality and murder was partly because he felt overshadowed by the success of his sisters. He felt like the loser in the family, the black sheep. Woodfield's family ground gave no hint or clue to his dark destiny. There have been theories that because Randall Woodfield's father worked long hours, the young Randall came to resent growing up in a household full of women who had authority over him. This theory proposes that it somehow left Randall with a contempt for women or a need to get revenge on them. The theory feels rather fanciful though in truth and is contradicted by the fact that, by all accounts, Randall Woodfield had a very good relationship with his mother. His mother did not work so she had plenty of time to give all of her children attention and love. Besides, it isn't as if Randall Woodfield's father worked abroad and never went home. It is said that he took Randall fishing and did a good job as a father. Randall Woodfield grew up in Otter Rock, Oregon. Otter Rock is an unincorporated community in Lincoln County. It is situated on U.S. Route 101 along the Oregon Coast. Woodfield was known as 'Randy' to his friends and family but it was a nickname he grew to loathe. He much preferred to be called Randall. Randy felt like a juvenile name to him. Even at a young age he had a lofty opinion of himself and took himself seriously. There are certainly plenty of contradictions in Woodfield and a degree of confusion about his character and early life. Many biographies say he was highly intelligent and got great grades as a youngster. And yet, as an adult, he was basically unemployable and girlfriends who have gone on record about him say he was of low intelligence and not famed for being the sharpest knife in the drawer. Woodfield's background, for a killer of his notoriety, was certainly a contradiction too. Most experts think the theory that serial killers are 'bad seeds' who were born bad is a myth. You can't be born bad. Environments and experiences turn people twisted and bad - not genetics. A large number of serial killers had unhappy childhoods. There are exceptions to this of course (like Woodfield) but many serial killers had an awful start in life. In many cases they experienced grim poverty or suffered abuse - or in many cases experienced both of these factors. It is by no means completely universal but a common thread between many serial killers often seems to be a dysfunctional relationship with their mother. It seems to a recurring pattern too that many serial killers were beaten and verbally abused by strict fathers. The 1988 publication Sexual Homicide, Patterns and Motives said that 70% of families who raised a serial killer have had a history of alcohol abuse. None of this stuff applied to Randall Woodfield though. You could describe him then as something of an anomaly when it comes to famous serial killers. There have been many cases where serial killers grew up in a house where crime was the norm. Their relatives were criminals and even their friends too. There were no role models to teach them right from wrong. The childhood of Richard (The Night Stalker) Ramirez was not exactly helped by his adoration of a cousin who served in Vietnam. This cousin filled the head of Ramirez with tales (and often photographic evidence) of war atrocities and also taught Ramirez how to use a knife. The cousin of Ramirez later shot his own wife while Ramirez was present. Arthur Shawcross (who killed fourteen people) was said to have had sexual relations with his sister. He also said his aunt and mother sexually abused him. Andrei (The Butcher of Rostov) Chikatilo grew up listening to accounts of the mass death, torture, and cannibalism in the war on the Eastern Front between the Red Army and Nazi Germany. A number of serial killers were orphaned or abandoned as children. There have been many cases of serial killers who were bullied when they were growing up. Once again though none of this applied to Woodfield. He was an athlete as a youngster. He had no fear of bullies.