Sword and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

I remember someone started screaming and at one point I heard like a shh-h-... And then some of the screaming stopped.

This is Sword and Scale, episode 116, a show that reveals that the worst monsters

are real. Hey, don't let the music fool you.

We got a bad one coming.

I mean, probably not of the stirring the mom brains variety, but still pretty bad.

You see, a lot of the stories we tell here are pretty predictable.

There's a lot of lovers quarrels or issues with money or just some sort of extreme mental

illness that's been untreated.

This one is arguably much more horrifying because it's like there's none of those things.

It's just a random, senseless, incredibly violent act.

Well, let me not give away the story.

Listen for yourself.

And hopefully you're not alone tonight. We've all heard the statistics before.

We've all heard the statistics before.

We know that the vast majority of murder victims have some sort of connection

to their killers. Maybe it's a co-worker, an ex-lover, a relative, or a spouse. These are the stories

that we've become accustomed to hearing. But what about the rest?

What about the small percentage of murders carried out at the hands of strangers?

Cases in which a killer takes another life, not out of anger or passion or revenge, but simply for the thrill of it.

On the evening of Saturday, October 3, 2009,

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