African American Serial Killers Part 2

Legendary and late, great comedian and writer Paul Mooney almost delineated exactly what the brute Maury Travis wrote to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The comic referred to a serial killer outlining the idea of pointing out more bodies to be found. In Travis’ case, he played with the idea of letting journalists know his secret places where his victims could be located as well. While this is merely coincidental, the thought that a creative mind and a destructive one could coexist in the same country at the same time is intriguing.

Maury “Toby” Travis, also known as the Streetwalker Strangler, poured down punishment on at least twelve confirmed women, killing them. It is suspected that he committed even more crimes, up to seventeen murders or more. Thankfully, he roamed as one of the sloppiest monsters on record. In an interrogation, one of the authorities offered Travis a can of soda. Forensics experts swabbed the can for DNA and linked it to two corpses found in the St. Louis, Missouri area.

This case is a textbook one. It showed how Travis abused insects and animals. It showed that he had been messed up in the head “since 14” as he self-described. He had military experience. His neighbors and co-workers said he exhibited shy and quiet behavior. Something, yet, lurked deeper in his consciousness. A sinister streak developed in Travis’ character.

Into bondage and dominating his victims, he had placed camera systems throughout his basement. Said space turned out to be a torture dungeon. He brought prostitutes (more textbook: a predator attacking those on the outskirts of society) and forced them to say that he reigned as “the master” and that they mentioned to their families on tape how “sorry” they had been for even getting mixed up in his tangled web of horror. It gets worse. The psychological effect combined with the physical strangulations only produced a vicious side that only a few people will ever experience or escape.

Travis committed suicide in prison. The miscarriage of justice blamed on the guards and somehow another inmate allowed for Travis to have a forty-five minute window in which he was able to shackle his hands, stuff cotton in his mouth, and hang himself. More irony. The male known for strangling women had now been discovered with his body in his cell by his own actions. When the word had gotten out, blood boiled. Instead of spending his days confined behind the wall, or receiving lethal injection, Travis weaseled his way out of punishment that had been due to him.

The whole case is so macabre like many others. But the tapes seem to be the most heinous. He actually found in his rotten brain the idea to video the lethal goings on in his dungeon. Those tapes spelled for him a fate that should have been sealed in the favor of the families of the victims. Instead, they are the fodder for documentaries.

In his demeanor, he carried himself well. As an employee at a restaurant, his fellow employees described him as “quiet” and that he “kept to himself.” This monster ruined lives and his own. For his inability to interact properly with the world around him, he didn’t fully get to suffer for his crimes. To try to say that he was a victim himself is completely removed from reality. He instead lived as a coward who couldn’t handle women and chose to prey upon those who would be the most vulnerable.

His nonchalant attitude in brutalizing women contributed to his mindstate that he could fetishize sexual assault and murder. Why he did all this would have to be rooted in his inability to be a man and court a woman or lead her to paths of righteousness. With the ineptitude and impotence of this ogre, it can be spoken that he never comprehended the realm of reality. Either that or he rejected it in total. He had the opportunity to live a life of substance and morality. He chose to become a despicable maggot.

Travis decided to abuse and murder women because of his lack of masculinity. He might have thought that he was their master, but he had been a slave to irrationalism. No thought at all led him to betray reason and take the lives of these women. His toying with authorities and journalists only showed the vacancy in his brain that told him to do right. This is a good thing, really. For him to give up so much DNA and other evidence brought him to the cell in which he took his own life.

As time keeps ticking, it’s like a tutorial for investigators to understand the psyche of an inept, frightened, little boy.