Obsessed with True Crime discussion

I'm currently reading a book called One Was Not Enough: True Stories Of Multiple Murderess, and the first chapter was about Lucian Staniak. I hadn't heard of him, or his murders, so, I jumped on Google to check him out ... and read that he never existed. Has anyone else come across this? As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating".

"Lucian Staniak was a Polish serial killer nicknamed the Red Spider. He murdered multiple women between 1964 and 1967. After each murder, he wrote letters in his own blood, taunting the police for their inability to catch him. Eventually, he left a clean set fingerprints on a bottle at the scene of the rape and murder of an 18-year-old student, which was remarkably accommodating of him.

Staniak was arrested and explained that he was driven to murder to avenge his parents and sister, killed in a car accident, because their killers had never been brought to justice. He pleaded guilty to the murders of 20 women and was sentenced to death, though this was commuted to life in an insane asylum.

All of which, it turns out, is complete rubbish. Staniak did not exist, the murders did not happen, and no one was ever prosecuted for them.

It is thought that Mr. Staniak may have been a figment of the imagination of true crime writer Colin Wilson, who wrote the first known “account” of the Red Spider’s career. This account was accepted as fact and circulated widely until researchers working on a biopic of the Red Spider and his crimes were forced to conclude that he had, in fact, never existed."
https://listverse.com/2019/01/22/10-r...

I have heard of this guy too and even added his kills to my BOTD, but then he was described as a hoax. He keeps appearing and disappearing from Wikipedia, I notice, but then so does that Scandanavian guy, a serial killer named Lovegren. He was also described as a hoax and then he reappeared and then once again disappeared.

Of course Saucy Jack has also been described as a hoax...

...Wow, Colin Wilson may have made up Staniak?

It's all so weird. He's referred to as a 'real' serial killer in heaps of places, and as a hoax in other places. Here is a comment regarding Colin Wilson, from this page - https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMy...
"Colin Wilson is a bit notorious in true crime (or "true crime", if you like) and paranormal circles for being a little... how to put this? A little more concerned with spinning a good yarn than strictly factual accuracy, if you catch me? To be absolutely fair, he came to prominence at a time when this was not uncommon among authors in those genres - Donald McCormick is another one that comes to mind who was very similar, so if you've ever read any of his books about spies or Jack the Ripper, be extremely careful about taking anything he claims at face value. The concept of documenting sources and subjecting them to serious scrutiny before going to press with them just didn't seem to occur to these guys; they were more concerned with a juicy story and appearing to be 'in the know' than anything approaching the scientific method or even just due diligence. So I would not be at all surprised if he just straight up invented a serial killer and slipped the story into one of his million Mammoth Books Of... back in the day. It's a little shocking how often things like that happened - and still do, although to a lesser extent, since it's much easier for the average person to do their own research these days. But people have a tendency to assume that if it's been published then it must be accurate - surely? And so repeat errors and confabulations without question. People also seem to actively prefer sensationalism, particularly when reading about lurid subjects like murders or spooky legends, so it's much easier to get away with inventing "facts" in writing about such subjects."

But making up a serial killer from scratch and saying it's a true story puts you in a whole different ballpark from someone who's saying he KNOWS who Jack the Ripper really was, based on the flimsiest possible evidence.

A whole new category of 'true' crime - true crimes that would have been crimes if they had actually been committed, but weren't.

Now, were these killings real and falsely attributed to the Red Spider?

Fishface wrote: "Now, were these killings real and falsely attributed to the Red Spider?"

According to the first article I posted, "Staniak did not exist, the murders did not happen, and no one was ever prosecuted for them."

OK, excellent. Still a whopping lie, but fewer lives lost...

...I didn't read the article because all the ones I read on him earlier just debated whether or not he existed.

Colin Wilson's stock has dropped with me. Now I'm really wondering where he got all that fascinating information I read about in The Killers Among Us 2: Sex Madness & Mass Murder about Bela Kiss.

Fishface wrote: "OK, excellent. Still a whopping lie, but fewer lives lost...

...I didn't read the article because all the ones I read on him earlier just debated whether or not he existed.

Colin Wilson's stock has dropped with me. Now I'm really wondering where he got all that fascinating information I read about in The Killers Among Us 2: Sex Madness & Mass Murder about Bela Kiss."

Yeah, I've always had a funny feeling about Colin Wilson. I guess we'll never know ... unless he tells us. *shrugs*

He can feel free to come forward with his sources. If there's anything that gripes my cookies it's a nonfiction book without citations.

Fishface wrote: "He can feel free to come forward with his sources. If there's anything that gripes my cookies it's a nonfiction book without citations."

I agree, Fishface.

Now every time someone refers to a Colin Wilson book, someone will say, "Did that really happen?"

We might need to be saying that more about a lot of authors.

Besides, no one really knows the whole truth ... except for the person whose hand committed the murder.

But, yes, I abhor nonfiction writers that like to 'embellish' the facts. I just want the facts. If I wanted fiction, I'd read fiction.

Fishface wrote: "We might need to be saying that more about a lot of authors."

And the ones who can't be bothered to mention when they cross the line from fact to speculation. Or someone else's speculation. They need to cut that out yesterday.

Fishface wrote: "And the ones who can't be bothered to mention when they cross the line from fact to speculation. Or someone else's speculation. They need to cut that out yesterday."

Bravo!

Fishface wrote: "And the ones who can't be bothered to mention when they cross the line from fact to speculation. Or someone else's speculation. They need to cut that out yesterday."

Sing it with me brethren!

Search brethren, not what I wanted.

This is more like it.

Not just brethren, also sistern.

But "sistern" sounds too much like "cistern" and next thing you know we all lapse into potty jokes.

I have read extensively on serial and other types of killers, including several of Colin Wilson's crime books. I am not sure whether or not he did invent Lucian Staniak (or was perhaps cleverly hoaxed?) but here's my thoughts:
I've been able to independently verify all the other cases he mentions in the books of his that I've read, even the less well-known ones like Carl Folk and Jeannace Freeman/Gertrude Jackson.
I have seen very little online about Lucian Staniak beyond a mention of him on Listverse. I love Listverse but I sure wouldn't call that a good sole source of info. Nothing is mentioned about Staniak on Wilson's Wikipedia page.
In communist countries, especially in that era, the government worked hard to suppress news of crime and other things that might look bad to western capitalists. This was the case with Andrei Chikatilo in Russia, for instance. I can't imagine how Wilson would have gotten any info on a serial killer roaming the streets of Poland in the 1960s.
Then again, if he did acquire such information somehow, how would anyone check?
But what would be his reason for inventing a Polish serial killer with a distinctive MO? To pad the text? I doubt it. And since all the other cases he described are real and documented, I really can't see him just making one up for the hell of it.
If he made it up, I wonder if he did so for the same reason that the very first edition of Trivial Pursuit included an incorrect answer in its cards: to foil copycatters too lazy to do their research.

Aimee wrote: " I can't imagine how Wilson would have gotten any info on a serial killer roaming the streets of Poland in the 1960s."

That part isn't too hard. Back when they had print newspapers at stands everywhere, you could also subscribe even in the USA to English-language versions of foreign papers. Of course for all I know Wilson is a polyglot who can pick up a newspaper in Hungarian or Polish and read the heck out of it.

I recently read a book about killer women and many of the cases were from Europe and new to me. I tried to find out some info about some of them but found it next to nothing. The guy who wrote it probably had access to newspapers from decades ago in various languages (he was a journalist if I remember correctly). I don´t think he made anything up but I could not begin to know where to look for original sources. Some of the cases were weird though, so much so that I just had to find out more, but I got nowhere with most of them.

I once read a book about a famous psychic from back in the day, from either Holland or Belgium, and the most exciting part was a story about a case he "worked" on in the USA. Apparently, while still in Europe, he had a vision of the killer of a little girl and he contacted authorities in America and solved the case very paranormally. This case was decades old but easy to find information on online, everything added up except there was no mention of a psychic from Europe helping out (but nothing to say that he didn´t either).

I was just reading about Staniak earlier tonight and found this thread when trying to find out if he was really just a hoax. It just makes me wonder about the cases in the killer-women book and how much information can actually be found online, if it happened that long ago in a different language/culture area.

Anna wrote: "I recently read a book about killer women and many of the cases were from Europe and new to me. I tried to find out some info about some of them but found it next to nothing. The guy who wrote it p..."

What are the title and author of this book?

Even if someone is trying to be factual, errors -- and whopping lies -- creep in. IDK where the one author got his info that the ballistics didn't match in the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Ever since that book was published other authors have been citing it. And one legit issue with a famous case like that pne is that if you try to read everything there is to read your brain will melt. One mistake led to the publication of a whole library of "Sacco and Vanzetti Were Framed" books. And that's just one case.