The Virginian-Pilot
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Monday, May 15, 1995                   TAG: 9505150057
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: BY ROBERT J. WARREN
        HIGH POINT ENTERPRISE 
DATELINE: HIGH POINT                         LENGTH: Long  :  133 lines

SERIAL KILLING HAS MIGRATED DOWN SOUTHERN HIGHWAYS THE KILLERS HAVE PASSED THROUGH NORTH CAROLINA.

A testament to a disposable industrial society, a new breed of hunter stalks American cities and highways.

They callously use innocent victims for sadistic, sexual fantasies before tossing them away like crushed soda cans.

``Addicted to the act of murder as if it were a drug, serial killers compulsively and silently troll for their victims amid shopping malls at twilight, darkened city streets or county roads in isolated rural communities,'' Joel Norris wrote in ``Serial Killers.''

However, statistics show you have a better chance of being struck by lighting than dying at the hands of a serial killer.

It's a U.S. epidemic that began toward the end of the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution and exploded during the 1970s.

Thrill killers used to be somewhat confined to the big cities of the North and West: Los Angeles with Charles Manson and family, Richard Ramirez (``The Night Stalker'') and ``The Zodiac'' killer; New York with the ``Son of Sam'' killings; Chicago with John Wayne Gacy; Texas with Henry Lee Lucas; Seattle and vicinity with Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper and the ``Green River'' killer; Milwaukee with Jeffrey Dahmer.

But along with urbanization and migration in the South, so came serial killings.

In the past five years, no less than three serial killers have passed through North Carolina's Piedmont Triad area.

Lesley Eugene Warren, 27, visited High Point in 1990 and left a 21-year-old woman victim in a car trunk, police said.

The Asheville native worked as a truck driver out of Anderson, S.C. He has been convicted in South Carolina of murder; pleaded guilty to an Asheville murder; is suspected of a murder in New York state; allegedly admitted to police he killed in Canada; and will stand trial in Guilford County for the High Point killing.

Michael Sonner, 26, dropped out of Northwest Guilford High School and worked several odd jobs, including two in High Point.

After his second escape from Davidson County Jail in 1993, Sonner killed a Nevada state trooper and is awaiting trial for slaying two people outside a truck stop in Texas. He also claims he killed two women in California, although detectives have found no evidence to support that assertion.

Sean Patrick Goble, a 28-year-old Asheboro truck driver, confessed to killing two women in Tennessee and one in North Carolina - dropping the body near Greensboro - while driving a tractor-trailer for a Winston-Salem trucking company, police said.

He awaits trial on three first-degree murder charges. Police believe he may be linked to dozens of interstate slayings throughout the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest.

Unlike popular myth and media portrayals, serial killers are not analytical geniuses, beyond good and evil like Friedrich Nietzsche's superman, nor are they homoerotic fruitballs with sex-change fetishes as portrayed in the movie ``Silence of the Lambs.''

Instead, most serial killers are white men, loners and few are legally insane. They drink beer and work blue-collar jobs, some have wives or girlfriends, and few have telltale psycho-killer giveaways like swastikas tattooed on their foreheads.

In fact, most seem somewhat normal. That is, until investigators dig beneath the house.

Seventy-five percent of the world's serial killers are found in America, according to criminologists. They are overwhelmingly white men between the ages of 24 and 35.

In comparison, the average single-victim murderer is a black male between the age 18 and 30.

According to criminologist Michael Newton, who compiled the stories of 544 serial killers in 1990's ``Hunting Humans - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers,'' most are territorial (they stalk a specific territory like a neighborhood, city or set of highways); one-third are nomadic (transients wandering the country and killing) and a few are stationary (they kill only in one place, like a nursing home or hospital).

Goble would be considered territorial. According to police, the three female victims were all picked up and killed along interstate highways on his trucking routes.

Sonner was a nomadic killer. On his short burst of violence, he killed in Nevada, allegedly in Texas and possibly in California.

Warren was also nomadic, without a specific hunting ground, when he killed women in South Carolina, North Carolina, allegedly in New York state and possibly in Canada.

Serial killings usually have strong sado-sexual overtones and compulsive, ritualistic behavior.

As part of the ritualistic compulsions, serial killers tend to select, stalk and then kill victims. They prefer hands-on slaying with knives, hands or fists, wrote criminologists Ronald Holmes and James DeBurger of the University of Louisville.

They feed off the victim's fear and agony, Norris said. They thrive on the power.

The killing is usually a ritual from the past. Victims often resemble a mother or ex-girlfriend and are killed slowly, often tortured, to make the killer feel powerful. Often the victim is raped and sometimes mutilated before or after the killing.

Goble followed a compulsive killing pattern, police accounts of his confessions say. He picked up women who were prostitutes and drug users, had sex in his truck, strangled them and then dumped the partially nude bodies beside or near an interstate, police said.

Warren, like Goble, drove a truck and strangled his victims, police said. But he attempted to conceal the bodies. He buried one victim in a shallow grave, threw two in lakes and left one in the trunk of a car.

Also in contrast to Goble, Warren had prior relationships with most of his victims, either as an acquaintance or friend.

As part of the ritual, in an attempt to relive killings, most serial killers keep tokens or mementos. This can range from Jeffrey Dahmer's cannibalism to detailed scrapbooks. Police confiscated dozens of articles of women's underwear from Goble's truck and home.

Serial killers tend to be somewhat intelligent, or at least street smart, and are often charming and sociopathic, Holmes and DeBurger said. They lure victims who are easy to control - women, young men and children - into places they can trap them, and then feed off the terror. They usually prey on prostitutes, drug users, homeless people, gays, runaways or others without many friends or family who notice they are missing.

After the murder, most serial killers report self-hate and even some guilt, Norris said. The ritual fails to reverse the roles of childhood and depression sets in. The killer may even send a confession to police or call the local paper for help.

Often serial killers feel out-of-control and get sloppy, Norris said. They leave hints to get caught. Police said Goble left fingerprints on a bag near a victim's body; Warren's last two victims were killed after numerous witnesses saw him with the women; and Sonner called police himself.

Once caught, most confess and are enamored by the attention of law enforcement officers. Goble confessed to three killings before his public defenders shut him up.

Warren and Sonner allegedly confessed to more killings than they are charged with. Similarly, Henry Lee Lucas confessed to more than 350 murders, but probably killed between 100 and 150. by CNB