Thor Nis Christiansen

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Thor Nis Christiansen (born December 28, 1957 in Denmark , † March 30, 1981 in Folsom , California ) was a Danish - American serial killer . He murdered three young women in Isla Vista, California, between November 1976 and January 1977 . In the spring of 1979, he murdered another woman in Los Angeles and tried to kill another. This woman contributed significantly to Christiansen's arrest in July 1979 when she recognized him in a bar. Months after serving life imprisonment , he was murdered by a fellow inmate in Folsom State Prison .

Life

Origin and youth

Born in Denmark , Thor Nis Christiansen immigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of five . The family settled in Inglewood , California , but shortly afterwards they moved to Solvang , the self-proclaimed “Danish capital of America”, where the father Nis ran an inn . He was an alcoholic and often beat him up. He himself was considered irascible among classmates and was prone to sudden outbursts of anger. In his childhood he was considered a good student, although this also changed drastically in his junior year at high school, because he neglected his duties more and more often. Thor was already drinking regularly in adolescence, smoking marijuana and putting on weight drastically during this time. He withdrew further and further from his friends and became a loner. A short time later he left the home, was kicked out of school and found work at a gas station .

Murders

As a child, Thor killed animals for the first time, preferably birds and frogs. This escalated into necrophilic fantasies in adolescence , in which he murdered women in order to assault their dead bodies. He stole a 22 caliber pistol from a friend and began ambushing young women on the University of California, Santa Barbara campus in Isla Vista . On November 20, 1976, he committed his first murder of the 21-year-old student Jacqueline Ann Rook. This was last seen on a busy street while hitchhiking and was picked up by Christiansen. He shot her in the head with the stolen gun and sexually abused her post mortem . He retained this modus operandi in his next murder of the waitress Mary Ann Sarris on December 6, 1976. The disappearance of the two women threw the university town into turmoil. Spontaneous demonstrations against violence against women were held in response to the missing persons cases. One of the most committed young women was Patricia Marie Laney, who distributed leaflets to draw attention to the topic. On January 18, 1977, Laney himself fell victim to the hitchhiker Slayer , as he was recently called by the media.

On January 19, 1977, the day after Laneys disappeared, her body was found next to a remote road in the Santa Ynez Mountains , northwest of Isla Vista and near Rancho del Cielo . After the area was then extensively searched, the partially undressed body of Jacqueline Rook was discovered the next day. This made the connection between the two murders and the missing person case obvious and an extensive search for the perpetrator was started. The police focused on young male loners according to a perpetrator profile created by the FBI . In February, Christiansen and a friend ran into a police checkpoint where he was fined for possession of alcohol. The pistol he used in the murders was also discovered in the trunk of his car. However, this did not make Christiansen a suspect, as he credibly stated that he used this weapon to practice target practice and hunt rabbits. He then interrupted his series of murders and left Isla Vista to gain a foothold in Oregon . For what reason he moved there, or what work he did there, could never be clarified. On May 22, 1977, the body of Mary Ann Sarris, the last victim of the series of murders, was discovered near Los Alamos , California.

Months later, he returned to Santa Barbara County , significantly lighter , to catch up on his high school graduation. He moved into an apartment in Goleta with a woman in her twenties , whom he met when she got into his car while hitchhiking. Since his return he has been driving to Los Angeles for no apparent reason and frequently cleaning his trunk meticulously. The startled population in Isla Vista and the increased police presence induced Christiansen to change his approach. He found prostitutes on Sunset Boulevard who got into his car voluntarily and without asking. On April 18, 1979 he met the prostitute Lydia Preston, with whom he drove to the Hollywood Hills , where he shot her in the head. Preston grabbed the steering wheel and the car collided with a guardrail. The seriously injured young woman fled to a nearby house and was taken to hospital. She survived and had a deaf ear, but she remembered the incident very well. On May 26, 1979, Christiansen murdered the African-American prostitute Laura Sue Benjamin, whom he came across on Sunset Boulevard. Her body was only found after he was arrested in a waterway near the Angeles Forest Highway and Big Tujunga Road, north of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Mountains .

Arrest and conviction

On July 11, 1979, Thor Nis Christiansen entered the Bottom Line Bar in Hollywood , where Lydia Preston recognized him and alerted the police. Christiansen was arrested and it quickly became clear that he had committed the three Isla Vista murders. He confessed to this soon after his arrest, explaining that they had made fun of his excess weight and thus deserved it. He has been charged with triple murders in Isla Vista, as well as murder and attempted murder in Los Angeles, and pleaded not guilty of insanity . The expert in charge found Christiansen hating women together with impulse control disorders , hypersexuality and excessive alcohol and drug abuse. He later declared himself guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1980 for quadruple murder and attempted murder in one case . He was sent to Folsom State Prison .

death

On March 30, 1981, the then 23-year-old Thor Nis Christiansen was stabbed to death in the prison yard. His killer was never identified. Prior to his conviction, psychiatrists predicted a high probability that he would be murdered in custody because of his serious crime and appearance.

Isla Vista Juggling Festival

Patricia Marie Laney has become a well-known symbol of violence against women in Santa Barbara County. In her honor, the Isla Vista Juggling Festival was held for the first time in 1977 , which has taken place annually since then.

Cinematic processing

The case of the hitchhiking slayer Thor Nis Christiansen was featured in the seventh episode of the fifth season of the television series Born to Kill? picked up.

literature

  • Aggrawal, Abil: Necrophilia: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects Crime , CRC Press LLC, Boca Raton 2011, ISBN 978-1-4200-8912-7 .
  • Willard, Jess: The Hitchhiker Slayer: The True Story of Thor Nis Christiansen: An anthology of True Crime , 2020, ISBN 979-8-6082-0232-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jess Willard: The Hitchhiker Slayer: The True Story of Thor Nis Christiansen: An anthology of True Crime . 2020, ISBN 979-86-0820232-2 .
  2. ↑ Anil Aggrawal: Necrophilia: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects Crime . CRC Press LLC, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4200-8912-7 , pp. 118 .
  3. ↑ a b c Anil Aggrawal: Necrophilia: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects Crime . CRC Press LLC, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4200-8912-7 , pp. 119 .
  4. ^ Harriet Eckstein: The Gravity of a Juggling Festival. In: The Independent. 1996, accessed March 8, 2020 .
  5. ↑ sbjuggle.org: The Annual Isla Vista Jugglers Festival. In: Santa Barbara Jugglers Association & Club Juggling at UCSB. 2019, accessed on March 8, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Christiansen, Thor Nis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Christiansen, Thor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish-American serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Denmark
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1981
Place of death Folsom , California