Reddit reviews The Last Victim: A True-Life Journey into the Mind of the Serial Killer

If this shit interests you, you should check out a book called The Last Victim. The author spent a good bit of time while in college writing back and forth with John Wayne Gacy pretending to be Gacy's "Perfect target." He got close enough to him that they were having weekly phone calls, and Gacy even paid to fly him over to visit him. He apparently also wrote to Manson, Ramirez, & was one of the few that Dahmer replied to before getting killed. Manson's replies, though were unreadable chicken scratch, and Ramirez was a bit too freaky (He pretended to be a satanic admirer and Ramirez was wanting details about how he abused his gf, and was asking him to send bondage porn). The author went on to work in criminal defense, and was said to have a gift to get criminals to talk. That said, it seemed to have gotten to him as he killed himself at 31.

The Last Victim
by Jason Moss. Only book that’s ever made me feel both physically dirty and compelled to keep reading at the same time.

The author started corresponding with serial killers—including Ramirez, Dahmer, Manson, and Gacy—in college for a project (think he was studying forensic psychology?) and it kind of consumed him. He ended up corresponding a lot with Gacy and actually visited him in prison before Gacy was executed. To put it briefly, Gacy really, really fucked with Moss’s head. I don’t want to suggest any spurious correlations here, but Moss ended up committing suicide six years after the book was published.

I highly recommend this book if you’re interested in psychology. It’s so interesting. But, fair warning that Gacy is just fucking gross. That’s obviously a given, but there’s a lot of direct quotes from Gacy that make you really confront that grossness at a mind-bogglingly gross level. I realize I’m not doing a super good job of selling this book, but I promise it’s really good! You just have to know what you’re getting yourself into.

Related: Have you read the book The Last Victim? If you like true crime and can handle something really dark, it’s pretty unique for the genre.

It’s written by a guy who struck up a bizarre relationship with Gacy after Gacy was in prison. The kid was pen pals with quite a few serial killers, but it spun way out of control with Gacy. It ended up very literally destroying his life.

I think you would enjoy this book.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Victim-True-Life-Journey/dp/0446608270

Tell your friend it's already been done from the inside out:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/

Then have him read about the dangers of thinking you can outwith master manipulators, and ask him to think really long and hard about this project of his and whether he has anything useful to add to what's already out there.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Victim-True-Life-Journey-Serial/dp/0446608270