This is the thing that nags at me. There is NO WAY Bittrolff killed three sex workers in three months back in the 90s—dubbed The Left Shoe Murders—and then just stopped. SKs don’t work that way. And even if you want to argue that he was going through a very, very long cooling off period, I still wouldn’t buy it because those three victims were killed with RAGE. Someone who holds that much rage doesn’t just get it out of his system in his 20s with three murders in three months and then wash his hands of all that rage and bloodlust.
I’ve always heavily leaned toward Bittrolff as The Manorville Butcher. And I went back and forth for a while over whether LISK and The Manorville Butcher were one and the same, but as time goes on and little pieces of new info come to light, I think we actually do have one killer. (But I could change my mind on that again!)
I’ve really had it with SCPD (I know, we all have) and I can’t understand why they won’t go into more detail about Bittrolff. Is he still a top suspect? Has he been ruled out for ANY of the LISK or MB murders (being out of town or whatever)? Is there anything at all that doesn’t line up and makes him unlikely to be LISK and/or MB?
Seriously… SK Bittrolff is discovered a couple years after the LISK case blows up, he lives in the same town where the torsos of JT and VM were found (within 10 years of his Left Shoe Murders), and yet we’re left in the dark as to whether or not LE is even exploring a possible connection.
Furthermore, and now I’m really complicating things, it seems to me like there could be some similarities between the way the victims of Bittrolff’s Left Shoe Murders were found and the way the victims of The Eastbound Strangler were found. But I suppose that’s a thought for another thread…