POLICE: Hannah Graham Kidnapper a Serial Killer

The vanishing of Hannah Graham from her Virginia university town in mid-September is the fifth such disappearance of a young female from that particular locale in as many years. And only one body has ever been found. 

That's the bad news, considering the search for Graham -- or what remains of the 18-year-old -- has become more desperate by the hour.

The good news is that police now believe they finally have the serial killer in custody after DNA evidence linked Jesse Matthew, the prime suspect in Graham's disappearance, to a similar attempted abduction and sex assault in 2005 as well as to the rape and slaying of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington four years later.

If their theory is correct, then the 32-year-old exceptional athlete with an exceptionally checkered past that includes a rape charge would also be an exceptional serial murderer too, since, by and large, such violent sadists are supposed to be young white males.

That has been the longstanding supposition, of course, with infamous Ted Bundy the standard bearer.

Lately, though, experts have been cautioning homicide investigators that the rule book on this class of deadly perpetrator contains some outdated and extremely faulty data; namely that black offenders just like Jesse Matthew are grossly underrepresented in it, and they and their victims wrongly falling under the radar as a result.

How, in the land of Rodney King, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown could that happen?!

Because, as with most other types of criminal profiling, when law enforcement officials try to pinpoint who a likely serial killer may be, and who he likely could not be, they rely on age-old beliefs borne mainly out of bias: Maniacally murderous men who successfully evade detection and arrest are smart (really, really smart like Jack the Ripper was) and Caucasian males are obviously way smarter than African American males are. At the very least because they're better educated.

It's called racial stereotyping at its most perverse and reverse, but the myth of a deviously-brilliant white man butchering for sport and eluding capture for years or even decades might not only be bigoted to the core. It could in fact be the only reason why some serial killers are never caught.

After all, the crime experts appear to be dead right in their latest assessments -- a majority of the world's homicidal sociopaths did not turn out to be anywhere near the geniuses once thought, and a fair number of them have also been dark-skinned as well.

So too the perceived status of victims and their communities unjustly factor into the criminal justice equation, more often than not, determining the speed and depth to which certain investigations are conducted, if at all. 

Thus, cases of affluent individuals who are missing or murdered in affluent areas typically garner greater public attention and resources than those of down-and-out vagabonds, prostitutes or drug addicts. Especially if the latter unfortunates fell victim to foul play in economically-depressed neighborhoods -- the exact environments where, studies show, serial killers of color almost exclusively prey.

That historically prejudicial treatment by police and the press explains why we know and care so much right now about still-missing college coed Hannah Graham and her unlucky lookalike predecessor Morgan Harrington. Yet the same killer's equally tragic victims who were themselves either black or lesser privileged ... not so much.

A societal slant which, to the opportunistic predators hiding among us, makes for fertile hunting grounds.

Eponymous Rox

*Look for more case updates in the comment section

UPDATE: Authorities are offering a $100,000 reward for information which leads to the safe return of Graham. The University of Virginia sophomore’s been uncharacteristically missing since September 13th.

Additionally, they are now examining a number of other unsolved homicides and missing person cases of young people throughout the Virginia areas that suspect Jesse L. Matthew was known to have either lived or worked in.

For instance, in Campbell County police are searching for a link to the abduction, rape and murder of Cassandra Morton, whose body was dumped in woods near Lynchburg in late 2009. 

Orange County police are also re-investigating the case of Samantha Ann Clarke, missing since September 13, 2010.

And in nearby Montgomery County, the sheriff's office is revisiting the 2009 double homicide of Virginia Tech students Heidi Childs and David Metzler. The two were in a long term relationship and sitting together in a parked vehicle the night they both were shot to death and then robbed. DNA evidence emerged in the case a few years later but their murders remain unsolved to date.

Michael Brown Autopsy: Shot Red-handed and Stoned?

Michael Brown autopsy reveals the hulking robbery suspect had drugs in his bloodstream and wasn't killed running in fear from officer Darren Wilson, as claimed by Brown's companion and alleged accomplice Dorian Johnson:

Johnson and Brown -- who stood 6-foot-4 and weighed 300 pounds -- were both the prime suspects in a cigar store robbery that had just taken place only minutes and blocks from the scene of Brown's botched arrest on August 9th.

Witnesses to the events which led up to Brown's street killing that day admit the gargantuan youth fiercely struggled with, and even likely injured, patrolman Wilson who during the altercation discharged his revolver approximately six times.

The four initial gunshots Wilson fired were apparently intended to disable Brown, standard protocol in cases where a suspect is presenting deadly force to resist arrest. 

Autopsy diagrams also indicate that each of those first bullets lodged nonlethally in Brown's extended and massive arms. The last ones, however, were aimed directly at his head and deemed fatal.

Said to be found on Brown's person at the time of his premature demise: A fistful of cigarellos, traceable to the cigar store heist.

These qualifying factors and other incriminating evidence are finally beginning to trickle out this week, just as Missouri's heavily armed National Guard is being dispatched to the beleaguered suburb of Ferguson in Saint Louis where Michael Brown once lived.

Indeed, the rioting, looting and related criminal acts going on there now -- all purportedly staged in protest against the in-custody death of an allegedly unarmed Michael Brown -- have gotten so out of control and over the top that the first day of school for many of Saint Louis' youngsters had to be postponed today.

And further stoking the already tragic-enough situation is "Reverend" Al Sharpton, who evidently hopes to make the Brown shooting controversy akin to the Trayvon Martin slaying.

Opportunistic, rabble-rousing Sharpton rose to public prominence decades ago under similarly dubious circumstances when he aided infamous teen Tawana Brawley in falsely accusing local police officers and high-ranking officials of beating and gang-raping her, then smearing her suspiciously unbruised body with racial epithets using their own bodily fluids and feces.

One gigantic nationwide uproar later, astonished Americans learned that the emotionally troubled young girl had completely fabricated her frightening story in order to avoid punishment from her parents for having been wayward again. 

Today Ms. Brawley lives and works under an alias, shunning the limelight she once so shamelessly sought. Neither she nor Sharpton have ever fully paid the money damages awarded to their numerous victims for what was at the time an unprecedented campaign of slander and defamation.

E.R.