Snuff Films

Snuff Films – The "Urban Legend"

I lit a smoke, buying time. "One way you can tell a country's gone real evil...when the doctors are working the torture chambers. Telling the sadists how much a prisoner can take before he checks out completely. You know what a snuff film is?"

"I heard of them. Just rumors."

"They're no rumors. And they didn't start a couple of years ago. A guy I met in Africa told me the Shah of Iran had video cameras in his torture chambers. Idi Amin too. Why do you think Hitler's freaks kept the cameras rolling? There's always been people who get off on pain. Other people's pain. And people who like to watch."
Blossom, p. 284

Luka Magnotta's profile was posted Sunday on Canadian Inmates Connect Inc., a website that tries to hook up lonesome convicts — some behind bars for violent offenses like first–degree murder — with potential companions on the outside.

The profile features two photos of the former stripper and prostitute in an unbuttoned white dress shirt. He was convicted in December of first–degree murder for the 2012 killing and dismemberment of university student Jun Lin in Montreal in a case that horrified Canadians.

Magnotta's grisly crimes included filming some of Lin's dismemberment, posting the video online and mailing body parts to the Ottawa offices two political parties, as well as to schools in British Columbia.

He is serving a life sentence with possible parole after 25 years. He lists his expected release date as 2037.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/06/29/world/ap-cn-canada-body-parts.html?ref=aponline

[Charles Taylor] started a civil war [in Liberia] in 1989, with the stated aim of overthrowing the dictator Samuel Doe. Doe was overthrown the next year, and tortured to death on the orders of Prince Johnson, a former ally of Mr. Taylor's. (The death was captured on videotape by a Palestinian journalist, who had been filming a hostile documentary about Doe, whose regime recognized Israel. The tape is still commercially available.)
The Economist, August 16th–22nd 2003, p. 39, columns 1–2

Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy Norris abducted, tortured, raped, and murdered several women between 1979 and 1981 — the exact number is not known. The torture–homicides were recorded on audio, and documented with Polaroids. Norris testified against Bittaker, and was sentenced to life. Bittaker received the death penalty. Both are still alive. Comparing the parallel costs of incarcerating these two humans over the past decades indicates Bittaker has proven more costly to the taxpayers than Norris.

"I don't think so," I said. "Respectfully, I think it's a pair. And working close to home. Brady and Hindley did little kids that way years ago. Bernardo and Homolka worked the same thing, only with teenagers, up in Canada. All those maggots had something else in common, too."

"What?"

"They made tapes. Brady and Hindley used audio; Bernardo and Homolka, video. But they all take trophies," I told him, thinking about the word games the oh–so–sophisticated like to play with terms like "snuff films." No question freaks film people being killed. But if they don't make them "for commercial purposes," they don't qualify, so snuff films remain an "urban legend." How cute and clever.
Pain Management, pp. 150-151

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