District killer

District Killer was the name given by the public to several unidentified serial killers active in the Themiclesian capital city of Kien-k'ang from 1938 – 40, 1957 – 59, 1992 – 1993.

A known person, Syam Ti-rep, used this monicker in 1999, for the murder of Kwar Peng; however, Kwar being Syam's only victim, the latter cannot technically be called a serial killer.

While at least two unknown individuals assumed this title, most authorities hold that each of the three spells of activity belonged to at least one person, meaning at least three individuals committed murders under this title.

No. 1

The first District Killer was active in the outskirts of Kien-k'ang (the eponymous "districts", as opposed to the "manors" of city), at a time when the central government had evacuated to Qpah. This person paid for large advertisements by anonymous letters with money inside on consecutive days on the Kien-k'ang Times, asking the enemy to stop sending "snoops" into the countryside. When unheeded, this homicide became known for hanging Menghean and Dayashinese scouts up-side-down on trees and telegraph poles, leaving them to die of various complications or exposure. A search for the District Killer was unsuccessful, and their identity remains unknown today.

The number of victims killed by the first District Killer is disputed but believed to be between 15 and 25, discounting other hang-ups elsewhere in Themiclesia where it would have been difficult for the same person to travel so far unnoticed.

Post-war, the identity of the first District Killer was heavily debated, but historians believe they may not have been a single person.

No. 2

First stint

The second District Killer seems to have committed crimes mostly for notoriety and personal gratification. In June 1957, a mysterious death was reported, of a schoolgirl in her minority. Within days, an anonymous message was sent to the Supervisory Board of Police, stating "I have returned to this city" and signed "District Killer". When the Board took no action, recording it as a prank and not making a connection with the recent homicide, the same message was sent to the Times of Kien-k'ang, which is the newspaper where the first iteration of this name appeared 20 years before.

Second stint

When this was also ignored, the District Killer went into dormancy for the year and killed three schoolchildren between December 8 – 10, 1957, inscribing on their denuded bodies the names of Kien-k'ang districts, plus the flag of the Great Menghean Empire on girls and that of the Dayashinese Empire on boys. Autopsies reveal that the inscription was done while the victims were alive.

Their deaths were reported on the press in full graphic detail on the new colour television service which had begun transmitting only weeks earlier, censorship principles not having been adopted yet. Public shock and horror ensued, with parents taking time off to walk their children to and from school for several weeks. With no progress at the police investigation, two more homicides followed in January and February 1958, while parcels containing body parts were mailed to broadcasters, which were told that they must broadcast the parcel's contents in colour in the same day if the new District Killer's visitation is to be assuaged. None of the broadcasters complied, and the body parts were all eventually united with their bodies.

Ghwang Put's death

In April 1958, the Times of Kien-k'ang printed an opinion piece by its editor Ghwang Put, stating that the new District Killer travelled through the city's many large drains and gutters to avoid detection. On May 10, Ghwang's dead body was found limbless and noosed in a city gutter, and by that time he had been dead for multiple days. An initial autopsy had not discovered that the word "no" was etched into Ghwang's left thigh. This happened during the time of the Road Improvement Programme (RIP), one of whose objectives was indeed to cover the large drains in which sometimes individuals drown.

Last stint

From November 1958 onwards to May 1959, the second District Killer murdered a further 13 victims, this time no longer limited to schoolchildren and newspaper editors. The homicide continuing the earlier practice of inscribing a district's name onto the body of a victim before killing them. Notes were sent to the press "for immediate publication", failing which the newspaper staff was threatened. The killer stated that "they shall all fall", probably indicating the 52 districts that made up the city and that he took a district by killing a victim inscribed with the district's name. The very last victim, a schoolteacher, had Justice of Appeal written on his face; this was the district of the royal palaces, and his body was found there. After this homicide, the second District Killer never appeared again.

Speculations about identity

The most notable fact about the second District Killer was not that they chose to commit crimes under a pseudonym previously used for the opposite orientation, but rather that they were always inactive during summer. Many have speculated that this could indicate only one thing—the killer was a student at a high school that had a semester system vacating during summers. Further, this suggests the killer probably intended to use school attendance as an alibi should they ever come under suspicion, which would have been an excellent alibi because once attendance was recorded in the morning it was not checked again, and students naturally come in and out of sight of each other. Thus, while the alibi was not perfect for the killer, that imperfect alibi exists for all students, and so it was impossible to pin suspicion on a single one.

Additionally, the second District Killer likely had a car whereby victims were abducted and transported, since their victims were invariably some distance away from the places where they were last sighted. In the 1950s, children as young as 12 could legally drive in Themiclesia, and economical cars from Maracaibo were often taken by children who lived far from their schools. Such cars were of a uniform design and paint colour, making them virtually impossible to identify short of the license plate, which could be easily forged. Then, the second District Killer's first victims were schoolchildren, which meant that schoolchildren were placed into public imagination as a victim body and therefore disassociated with suspicion.

The choice of the "conquering the city" as a theme to the homicides has been variously interpreted. A genuine grudge held against Themiclesia or the city is considered unlikely even though it is prosecuted with enthusiasm, and so the vociferous support for the failed invasion seems to have been a device to arouse public attention and lead away from the killer's genuine motivation, which remains unknown.

All these factors led Lewis Stanley to write that of all the individuals assuming the name of the District Killer, the No. 2 was so sophisticated as to be unlike a schoolchild.

Syam Ti

Syam claimed to be the same killer active during 1992 – 93, which would make him but 10 years old at that time. He supported this claim by spraying the sentence "your friend is back". As this was too far contradictory with what is known about No. 3, no authority accepts Syam's claim.

As rubgy team captain of the Sar-kam-ta High School, Syam was responsible for organizing a visiting team's stay at a nearby lodging house. On the night of Nov. 29, 2000, he lured three of his victims, one after another, to the rugby field where play was expected the following day. He slew them there and strew their body parts across the field. By his own confession, he forced the second and third players to acknowledge what has happened to the previous teammate before killing them. The next day, Syam declared early in the morning that his team had won because the opposing team had insufficient team members. Syam made no attempt to escape or distance himself from culpability after the homicides.

Syam told the court that as team captain it was his job to ensure his team is well-prepared for victory and also because his advances to the opposite sex at the opposing team's school would be more effectual if he were to win this match.

Syam Ti's arrest and arraignment opened a discussion about legal reform and the justiciability of offence committed by minors. The law under which he was tried provided that minors at 8 years old can be put on trial and held criminally responsible, but there is a proviso that sentences are considered fully served upon amercement (收贖) in criminal process. Minors enjoy this privilege until they turn 19 years old, at which point adult law applies. Unlike amercement in civil process, where the amount is proportional to violation caused, criminal amercement is fixed to ₤4.3 (2023); such a commutation is comparable to a sentence to the "Rising of the Court, for which purpose the court now rises" in other jurisdictions.

Not co-operating with his attorney, Syam repeatedly made fun of the judge, jury, and judicial system while on trial and taunted court officials (奈何, "[what] can [you] do [about me]"), landing him detainment for contempt on three occasions (this is possible because he was an adult by the time the trial opened). Such taunts drew inferences from the prosecution that Syam should in fact be considered insane and therefore liable to asylum indefinitely, while the defence maintained that his ability to make fun thereof indicated he was of sound mind. In the end the jury found him guilty as charged, and the court's master took in amercement to certify that the sentence that would have given has fully been served.

Two of Syam's three victims were of Dayashinese origin and drew ire from the diaspora community. For many months after his conviction, crowds appeared at his home and shouted "now-go-away" (早くお引越し！) for hours a day, using drums and trumpets, which in turn drew muted and weary complaints from his neighbours since he lived in an apartment block.

Three years later in 2004, the Juvenile Offenders Act became law and would apply to young people aged 17 – 19 on trial for murder, rape, and burglary, known as the "big three violent offences" (大暴三). This legislation had been deferred some time because the concept of legal insanity was first brought into closer congruence with a more medical notion of derangement, as physicians had complained for years that "a court's opinion of insanity has been aribtrary, inconsistent, and difficult to comprehend"; furthermore, it seemed to some commentators that "a tendency to commit crimes, in children, is to some judges in se a form of insanity". After this change, if the minor offender is of sound mind, the court may optionally impose "compulsory rehabilitation in confinement" (灋收治) lasting no more than five years.

In 2005, amercment for minority was implicitly abolished by raising the age of criminal responsibility explicitly from 8 to 19, which has long been the case in practice.

Brandname

Syam's admission to the name of the District Killer was criticized by the "District Killers Club", which had been on the Internet since 1991, formed by those interested in the mystique of the three unidentified killers under this name and hypothesized connections between them. The Club released a statement on its portal webpage saying that his "petty and base motives, immediate arrest, juvenile behaviour in court, and unashamed admission of guilt are insults to the nation's favourite serial killer brandname".

The District Killers Club seems to have correctly predicted the decline of the name "District Killer" after Syam's homicides: individuals who claimed to be the District Killer as a threat sharply dropped from an average of 2 cases per year to only 2 cases after 2004.

Three years after Syam's actions in 2000, the Twa-ts'uk-men Incident occurred whereby an armed religious cult held the Twa-ts'uk-men Station hostage for ten days and released sarin gas, thereby causing the deaths of 202 persons including policemen. Spiking interest in the millenarian salvationism that motivated the cult provoked media personality Charlie Kra to say that "serial killer mania is officially over—we fawn over mass murderers now."

See also

• Themiclesia