Man blames girlfriend's threesome for murder 1
Grandpa randomly punches kids at Walmart 2
Inmate seduces 5 female prison workers 3
By Steve Huff in assault, homicide, robbery
Wednesday, Apr. 22 2009 @ 5:45PM

Twenty-three-year-old alleged Craigslist killer Phil Markoff supposedly was motivated by gambling debt. Police in Boston are saying they believe he was seeking a way to pay back what he owed from losses, perhaps at casinos like the Foxwood in Connecticut. Yet investigators also revealed today that Markoff may have done something that wasn't too typical of someone who was primarily seeking to rob others of their money. From CBS News:

A law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said police found items belonging to both women in Markoff's apartment in Quincy, south of Boston. The source wasn't authorized to speak about evidence in the investigation. [...] ABC News said two unidentified law enforcement sources said Markoff appeared to be collecting underwear as "souvenirs" from his alleged victims.

To be clear, the only known sexual element of Markoff's alleged crimes so far was trolling for victims in the erotic services section of Craigslist. Otherwise, JuLissa Brisman's killer allegedly struck her in the head before shooting her several times. The two other robberies possibly linked to Brisman's murder did not end in violence.

I've rarely heard of robbers keeping 'souvenirs' from victims, though, short of something like a valuable piece of jewelry. And the use of the word 'souvenirs' - the quotes suggest it was not chosen by the writer of the CBS article, but came from the police source - is very clear and specific in law enforcement parlance. It almost always implies a criminal who was acting out of a sort of pathology, usually sexual.

District Attorney Daniel Conley said the following about Markoff: "This was a brutal, vicious crime - savage, and it shows Philip Markoff is a man who is willing to take advantage of women, to hurt them, to beat them, to rob them."

The last part of Conley's statement leads me to believe his view of Markoff is that the now-former BU med student was more than just a desperate guy with a gambling problem. Maybe some of the dramatic comparisons drawn in blog comments here and elsewhere between Markoff - whom police think committed just one murder - and someone like Ted Bundy, who killed dozens of women, are slightly more apt than I thought.

Then again, maybe not. Realistically: Bundy was a sexual sadist of the worst kind, and no one really knows how many he killed. He was a necrophile, on top of all that. The comparisons between him and Markoff only work on the surface - both presentable college guys going after top-shelf careers in high-end professions, both young Republicans, both the kind of guy no one could ever believe might do such a thing.

So, let's stop comparing Phil Markoff to Bundy, after all.

That said, I believe the story here will ultimately be much more complex and perhaps stranger than the public knows, at the moment. And it will have one thing in common with the long horror movie that was the life of Ted Bundy. My bet is that we'll learn that there were two very different Phil Markoffs. He kept them separate, much of the time. There was the one whom his fiancee, Megan McAllister, claimed couldn't hurt a fly, and there was the Phil Markoff whom the authorities say cold-bloodedly battered then shot JuLissa Brisman. The latter was the wolfman to the former's Lon Chaney. It's an old split in the human psyche, but it explains a lot about the huge interest in this story. We are eternally fascinated by the remorseless beast behind what some consider to be an inoffensive facade. Because it scares us, and makes us look around and ask, 'do I know someone like that?'

Do you? 

NOTE, 4/23/09 - This article in the Boston Herald seems to support the idea that Markoff wasn't just some guy with an out-of-control gambling habit who may have figured erotic services workers for easy marks. Quote:

The bombshell revelation that accused Craigslist killer Philip Markoff allegedly kept a secret stash of panties in his apartment and a gun hidden in his copy of "Gray's Anatomy" had investigators yesterday zeroing in on a deeper, darker motive behind the depraved rampage.

The article went on to term some of the things found in Markoff's residence as "creepy 'mementos'."

Guys bent on getting easy cash from a vulnerable mark don't usually do that. There was very likely a "deeper, darker motive" at work here, after all.