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A thrill killing is premeditated or random murder that is motivated by the sheer excitement of the act. While there have been attempts to categorize multiple murders, such as identifying "thrill killing" as a type of "hedonistic mass killing", actual details of events frequently overlap category definitions making attempts at such distinctions problematic.Those identified as thrill killers are typically young males, but other profile characteristics may vary, according to Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Conflict and Violence at Northeastern University. The major common denominator among those who commit thrill killings is that they usually feel inadequate and are driven by a need to feel powerful. "To a certain extent, [thrill killers] may make their victims suffer so that they can feel good," said Levin. "Sadism is fairly common in thrill killings. The killer might torture, degrade, or rape his victim before he or she takes his or her life." They frequently have an "ideal victim type" who has certain physical characteristics.Thrill killers have been frequently romanticized in films. Documented incidents May 21, 1924: University students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Leopold, aged 19 at the time, and Loeb, 18, believed themselves to be Nietzschean Übermenschen who could commit a "perfect crime" (in this case a kidnapping and murder). Both were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years; Loeb was murdered in prison in 1936, while Leopold was paroled in 1958 after serving 33 years, and died in 1971 of natural causes. September 13, 1931: Szilveszter Matuska, a clinically insane man had placed a high explosive charge on a railroad bridge near Biatorbágy, Hungary. The charge was set off under a passenger train headed from Budapest to Vienna, Austria, shortly after midnight, pushing the locomotive and six cars off the bridge. Matuska did not have specific plans to kill anyone, but just wanted to blow up any train that came next for his own amusement. In fact the Budapest–Vienna train involved in the attack was late, and it overtook a freight train which was supposed to reach the bridge before it: 22 people died and 17 were seriously injured. The police found a handwritten note at a disaster site with Communist slogans and threats, and it was assumed that Communists had perpetrated a terrorist attack: the government used this as a pretext to declare martial law, and initiated a police crackdown on the illegal Communist Party of Hungary (KMP). Although Matuska was apprehended in Vienna in October 1931 and confessed to the bombing, martial law remained in effect, and two leading Communists were executed in 1932. This later fueled many conspiracy theories that the attack was a false flag operation orchestrated by the government. December 18, 1968 – October 1969: The Zodiac Killer terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California, US. In cryptic letters he wrote to newspapers, he claimed killing people "is so much fun. It's even better than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal. To kill gives me the most thrilling experience. It's even better than getting your rocks off with a girl." September 8, 1988: Twenty-year-old bank clerk Janine Balding was abducted from a railway station at Sutherland, New South Wales, Australia by five homeless youths with extensive criminal records, and driven to nearby Minchinbury where she was repeatedly raped by three of the male offenders before being bludgeoned, hog-tied and drowned in a reservoir. The ringleaders, 22-year-old Stephen Wayne 'Shorty' Jamieson, 16-year-old Matthew James Elliott, and 14-year-old Bronson Matthew Blessington, were arrested the next day and later sentenced to life imprisonment plus 25 years without the possibility of parole; Blessington and Elliott are the youngest offenders to receive this sentence in Australian history. September 15, 1990: Debra Holt, the mother of future world champion boxer Kendall Holt, and also known as Debra Holts and "Cocoa Tan", and three men she met while staying at the Alexander Hamilton Hotel, were convicted of killing a homeless man during an evening of senseless violence and crime in Paterson, New Jersey, US. August 19, 1992: Laborer and career criminal Andrew Peter Garforth murdered nine-year-old schoolgirl Ebony Simpson at Bargo, New South Wales, Australia. Garforth snatched Simpson as she walked home from school and threw her in the boot of his car, raped her repeatedly, bound her hands with speaker wire and weighted her schoolbag before throwing her into a dam where she drowned; he also joined the search for Simpson before being arrested. Garforth, who had 76 prior convictions, showed no remorse in court; he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years without the possibility of parole, with Justice Peter Newman calling the crime "chilling in the extreme". February 12, 1993: Two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, abducted and murdered toddler James Bulger in Liverpool, England. After skipping school together, Thompson and Venables engaged in a spree of petty criminal activity including shoplifting and vandalism at a local shopping mall before spotting Bulger alone and deciding to abduct him. After leading Bulger away from the mall, the boys took him to a railroad track, where they beat him with rocks and a metal bar before leaving him on the tracks in hopes he would be killed by a train. It was later determined that Bulger died from the beating well before his body was struck by a train. Thompson and Venables were imprisoned for eight years. October 29, 1995: Handyman and mechanic and convicted sex offender Paul Stephen Osborne raped 10-year-old Leanne Oliver and nine-year-old Patricia Leedie before bashing them to death with a tree branch and a wheel jack at Warana Beach, Queensland, Australia. After drinking 12 beers and smoking marijuana at a barbecue, Osborne took the girls to the beach for a swim; Leanne Oliver's father, Alby Oliver, found Osborne's wallet and the girls' bodies in sand dunes the next morning, after which Osborne was arrested. When asked by police why he killed the girls, Osborne told police "I don't know. I don't know whether I blacked out or went crazy. They seemed pretty nice." Osborne pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of life imprisonment plus 36 years without the possibility of parole; in sentencing Osborne, Queensland Supreme Court Justice Glen Williams said that he was "beyond redemption". April 19, 1997: American teens Thomas Koskovich and Jayson Vreeland ordered a pizza and ambushed two men who delivered it, Georgio Gallara and Jeremy Giordano, before going bowling. Koskovich and Vreeland told police they wanted to experience what it was like to commit murder. July 17, 1997: Jesse McAllister and Bradley Price killed a man and a woman in Seaside, Oregon, US only "to experience.... Discover the Debra Holt popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Debra Holt books.

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