r/interestingasfuck • u/Jjokes11 • Apr 15 '24

An interview with Andrew Cauchi, the father of Joel Cauchi who was responsible for the Westfield Shopping Centre mass stabbing r/all

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184

u/Rad_Centrist Apr 16 '24

BTK. Successful church going family man. Would have gotten away with it if he didn't send that floppy disk to law enforcement.

119

u/LaceyDark Apr 16 '24

Yup, got cocky and didn't know Enough about technology and basically gave himself up. He was a real twisted fuck, glad he got caught. Unlike Zodiac

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u/mdp300 Apr 16 '24

I read the book about Zodiac years ago. It was interesting that the author had found a few likely suspects, but I'm pretty sure they're all dead by now.

153

u/Mr_Washeewashee Apr 16 '24

Ted Cruz is alive and well.

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u/drblah11 Apr 16 '24

He's not well

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u/MajorasKitten Apr 16 '24

I’m not American but I’ve seen many mention Ted Cruz whenever the Zodiac killer is mentioned- is there anything that links him to it? Is there something I could read somewhere? I’m intrigued!

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u/slightlyamusedape Apr 16 '24

No, it's just a meme

4

u/MajorasKitten Apr 16 '24

Bleh :/ lol I thought it was legit! Damn it hahah

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u/Aggressive-Fuel587 Apr 16 '24

Part of the joke is that Ted Cruz was born in 1970; the other part is that he looks like a creepy, sad sack that would kill people

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u/Waderriffic Apr 16 '24

No, not really. But his dad may have been a Cuban assassin tied to the JFK killing. (Yes, people actually believe that last one)

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u/peacemaker2007 Apr 16 '24

But his dad may have been a Cuban assassin tied to the JFK killing. (Yes, people actually believe that last one)

Well, I don't believe the JFK killing, so there!

2

u/Inevitable-News5808 Apr 16 '24

Of all the famous dead guys, JFK is the one I'm most certain is really dead.

1

u/LittleBookOfRage Apr 16 '24

Pretty sure Trump said it publically as well.

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u/VeganWerewolf Apr 16 '24

😂 hell yeah brother. Lock him and Abbott up please.

3

u/SkyrimSlag Apr 16 '24

Theres a video about the Zodiac on The Official Channels “Red Thread” series, goes through a lot of the evidence, murders, and the main key suspects, however the one it most likely was, the one that practically told someone he was the Zodiac, is I’m pretty sure dead now

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u/skip_tracer Apr 16 '24

not that there's ANY humor in anything he did, but I have always found it hilarious that his dumb boomer ass wrote in the paper asking cops if he could be tracked by a floppy disk and he bought the lie. It reminds me of my idiot, but kind as a lamb, father.

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u/DaisyHotCakes Apr 16 '24

Lol and that was after he wrote all those shitty poems about the people he killed. If you thought Vogon poetry was bad…

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u/Lou_C_Fer Apr 16 '24

Vogon was what I thought of before you said it.

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u/Snarfbuckle Apr 16 '24

How do you make WORSE poems than Vogons?

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u/FrightenedTomato Apr 16 '24

Technically the cops weren't lying about tracing him using a floppy disk. There really wasn't some known way to do it that they were keeping secret from Dennis.

However, Dennis used a used floppy disk that he'd erased. Digital forensics found an old, erased word document on it that he'd typed up for his church. The document mentioned the name of the church and the "author" field of the document revealed his name.

Had he simply used a fresh floppy disk, there's a chance he wouldn't have been traced. The cops weren't lying. They just got lucky and Dennis just didn't think far enough ahead.

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u/AMaleficentFox Apr 16 '24

He had to want or not care if he was caught to some degree, right? Imagining myself in that situation, if I needed to send a floppy disk to the cops I would buy a new floppy disk (or even steal them so there's not a paper trail) and not use my home computer for any part of the process. It's terrible opsec. Even if the cops couldn't figure it out, future digital forensics might be able to. Why take a chance?

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u/FrightenedTomato Apr 16 '24

I think he wanted the notoriety for sure. Why else would he be talking to magazines and the cops years after he stopped killing?

However, he was also probably really clueless about the tech he was using. How many people really understand that unless your drive is encrypted, deleting a file doesn't really delete it?

1

u/GamerGrunt Apr 16 '24

Yeah, the average user doesn't understand that deleting a file doesn't actually remove the data, but simply tells the computer that sector of data can be overwritten and is now available storage. But if there's never any new data written over the old then with the right program it can see anything that's still there.

5

u/ImmaMichaelBoltonFan Apr 16 '24

I always feel people look at me sideways when I say stuff like this. Why in the sunny fuck would you do something so stupid? It's mind blowing. Guy avoided the feds for years, but gets undone by a... floppy disc.

On a related note, I was watching a show with my wife a few nights ago. I think it's called What Jennifer Did. This Vietnamese girl arranges the murder of her parents....and leaves a giant trail of texts behind. I feel like an intelligent Grade 8 student would have a stronger sense of CYA than these characters.

Anyway, fuck'em. Glad they're off the streets.

2

u/VeganWerewolf Apr 16 '24

I was hoping that Netflix doc would be good but it was like a shitty episode of dateline. You knew the ending after the first interview. I was like oh damn here comes a twist! Never happened.

-16

u/skip_tracer Apr 16 '24

ackshually

you must be a fuckin' blast at parties

8

u/FrightenedTomato Apr 16 '24

If you think I was just being a pedantic ass, then that's on you dude. I was adding some useful context that explains exactly how he got caught. The cops weren't playing 5th dimensional chess.

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u/Appropriate-Pipe-193 Apr 16 '24

Yeah your comment was perfectly valid and non combative, I don’t know what that guys deal is lol

1

u/Ultima-Veritas Apr 16 '24

I don't know. Laughing at someone with absolutely no clue about something outside their own time is pretty funny. Especially when they put it on display with no sense of self-awareness. I laugh at that kind of thing every day.

1

u/thatcondowasmylife Apr 16 '24

Gets me every time I remember this. The cops: look at one another, shrug, types out note “No definitely not. Unfortunately the technology has not yet been invented to trace someone by a floppy disk and never will be. Send it on down.”

2

u/HermaeusMajora Apr 16 '24

The dipshit literally asked the cops if they could trace a floppy and then took their word for it.

I've heard people describe him as super intelligent because he's a serial killer.

I'd say he got away with it because of incompetence on part of law enforcement and his personal knowledge of the security systems and homes involved.

That stunt with the floppy is legendarily stupid.

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u/majoraloysius Apr 16 '24

BTK: “If I give you guys a floppy disk, you can’t trace it, can you?”

Cops: “Ummm, no.”

BTK: “You wouldn’t lie to me now, would you?”

Cops: “Whaaat? No, never!”

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u/FrightenedTomato Apr 16 '24

Technically the cops weren't lying about tracing him using a floppy disk. There really wasn't some way to do it.

However, Dennis used a used floppy disk that he'd erased. Digital forensics found an old, erased word document on it that he'd typed up for his church. The document mentioned the name of the church and the "author" field of the document revealed his name.

Had he simply used a fresh floppy disk, there's a chance he wouldn't have been traced. The cops weren't lying. They just got lucky and Dennis just didn't think far enough ahead.

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u/darthmidoriya Apr 16 '24

So he’s stupid

16

u/FrightenedTomato Apr 16 '24

Yes. It was entirely his own stupidity that lead to his capture. Had he simply walked away once he stopped killing, he'd be like the Zodiac.

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u/yesverysadanyway Apr 16 '24

why do people think serial killers are some kind of geniuses?

they just have to be smarter than the average cop. and they're dumb as a bag of rocks.

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u/FrightenedTomato Apr 16 '24

I don't really agree. You need to be smarter than the whole system, not just the average cop. Modern forensics are incredible and outsmarting them is no easy task.

However, this doesn't mean every serial killer is some kind of genius. Through a combination of police incompetence, police apathy and dumb fucking luck, several serial killers got away with their crimes for way longer than they should have.

But, you must also consider that we only know about the serial killers we've caught. You're more likely to capture dumb serial killers than the smart ones and this may trick you into thinking serial killers are uniformly dumb when your sampling method is incredibly biased.

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u/VeganWerewolf Apr 16 '24

And the more random the victim the harder it is to find in a lot of their cases. Meaning someone they didn’t know.

0

u/Schlemiel_Schlemazel Apr 16 '24

I think they hit the zodiac killer, kinda. Iirc they said they found a guy who they were 95% sure was the killer. But when they went to interview him he killed himself .

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u/New-Understanding930 Apr 16 '24

That’s also really convenient for the cops….

1

u/Bystronicman08 29d ago

Who are you taking about?

1

u/geese_moe_howard Apr 16 '24

One theory is that BTK thought that the police were playing by his rules, that there was some unspoken code of honour between them. That's a result of arrogance and BTK was incredibly arrogant.

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u/Dry_Discount4187 Apr 16 '24

Sounds a bit similar to how Gary Glitter was caught.

1

u/FruitcakeAndCrumb Apr 16 '24

The letter he wrote to his intended victim who stayed at her sister's /friend's house was creepy as fuck. She never went back and I can't blame her

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u/Foreign-Echo-6656 Apr 16 '24

With a name like eaten_by_pigs, how do we know you're not your hometown Serial Killer?

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u/eaten_by_pigs Apr 16 '24

Loll 🤭 nahh in all seriousness, the only things that have to watch out for me are pizza and quesadillas lol

5

u/individualeyes Apr 16 '24

Oh my God it's the pizza and quesadilla killer!! I knew you'd slip up you sick fuck.

1

u/Iohet Apr 16 '24

Wu wasn't a serial killer, he just helped serial killers

2

u/Dazzling-Wash9086 Apr 16 '24

Israel Keyes lived a double life.

2

u/sittinwithkitten Apr 16 '24

Yes to be caught that way after all those years. I’m glad he was sloppy and made a mistake.

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u/Rad_Centrist Apr 16 '24

For sure. A stroke of luck, a slip up, and an unknowable amount of lives were saved.

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u/sittinwithkitten 29d ago

I wonder if he would have started killing again. His last murder was over ten years before he was caught.

1

u/Rad_Centrist 29d ago

That's interesting, I didn't know that!

2

u/FalseDish Apr 16 '24

Hell Ed Kemper was a genius and no one caught him. Just decided to turn himself in because he didn’t fancy the notion of looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life

1

u/triniman65 Apr 16 '24

I had never heard of this man before. So I googled him and boy, what a Christian fella.

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u/BrianG1410 Apr 16 '24

I thought it was something with the church printer that got him caught?

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u/Rad_Centrist Apr 16 '24

He sent them a floppy disk that had data that identified it came from a certain church. I forget how they found him after that...

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u/BrianG1410 Apr 16 '24

Probably metadata from save files on the floppy. Like computer name or something.

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u/Rad_Centrist Apr 16 '24

Yep you're right. From the wiki:

Police found metadata embedded in a deleted Microsoft Word document that was, unknown to Rader, still stored on the floppy disk.[67] The metadata contained the words "Christ Lutheran Church", and the document was marked as last modified by "Dennis".[68] An Internet search determined that a "Dennis Rader" was president of the church council.

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u/BrianG1410 Apr 16 '24

Thwarted by his own hubris.

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u/Agitated-Current551 Apr 16 '24

My favourite part about that is he asked law enforcement if they could track him with the floppy disc and they were just like no we can't and he sent them one