May 10, 2007
Weird Coincidence
Today's an auspicious day for the dark side: John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), James Earl Ray (1929-1998) and Mark David Chapman (52) were all born on May 10. In 1865, Booth shot and killed President Abraham Lincoln, who was attending a performance at Ford's Theatre. Ray took the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, as King stood on a hotel room balcony in Memphis, TN. And in 1981, Chapman murdered John Lennon as Lennon arrived at his home in NYC.
Also, does anyone know why assassins are almost always known by their full names, meaning their middle name is also always included? Why not just Lee Oswald, for example?
Posted by Abbas Raza at 06:05 PM | Permalink
Comments
It's mostly the result of news organizations wanting to minimize the chance of confusing a normal person with a killer. There were probably dozens of other Lee Oswalds in America. There were probably no other Lee Harvey Oswalds. Minimizes both confusion and the chance of lawsuits.
The down side of this, of course, is that using three names makes someone seem guilty, since it's a pattern used mostly with criminals.
Posted by: Josh | May 10, 2007 8:42:16 PM
[...]Jerry also maintains that all serial killers have two names, but all assassins have three. He notes that serial killers Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz have two names while assassins Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray have three. In this respect, Jerry's full of it. The top serial killer of all time, with 33 victims, was John Wayne Gacy, a three-name serialist. Huey Long's killer was reported to be Carl Weiss, a two-name assassin. Jerry's wrong, but what prophet or mystic or hunch-player isn't, sometimes? The guy with the uncanny knack for playing the stock market or the horses is not infallible, he's wrong almost as often as he's right, but he's right enough times to earn his living at it.
In the realm of conspiracy-denial, the tendency is to dismiss someone like Jerry[the mel gibson character taxi driver in Conspiracy Theory] because he's got his serial killer and assassin nomenclature wrong or because he slips on George Bush's background. But the fact is, Jerry is right enough times for a powerful government agency to want him dead.
But Cassar noted that his assassin was among a gang of bad guys and called him simply [et tu] Brute. Perhaps he had enough breath left for a full name.
Posted by: fred lapides | May 10, 2007 9:35:19 PM
At least they didn't have the middle name "Wayne." Steven "Freakonomics" Levitt has come across another odd connection.
Posted by: Hootsbuddy | May 11, 2007 8:47:26 PM
[shiver] !!
Posted by: george walker bush | May 12, 2007 7:11:35 AM
I tend to think it's a combination of media desire to avoid confusion with others, and also the fact that when police release the name, they release the entire name. Media pass on the entire name. This happens moreso when a person leaps to notoriety, than when they get to it slowly. Assassination, therefore, tends to result in fuller (or complete) name ID.
Posted by: Jonathan | May 13, 2007 2:42:58 PM
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