[ WP ] You meet a serial killer . His next target is you and the only way to dissuade him is to persuade him why he is the worst serial killer .

( Part 1 of 2 ) 
 
 `` Meet Bitterman.'' 
 
 `` You know his work. I know his work. One hundred and twenty-three men and women know his work, though, you and I are the only ones still around to talk about him. In his past, I gave him a nickname. I called him Patience. It was n't an endearment. It was n't a name to denote his character, though, perhaps it was. I called him Patience, because when he was hunting his pray, he was incredibly patient.'' 
 
 `` Bitterman, or Patience, is a serial killer. He came to my attention August 23, 2003. How he came to my attention was with a written confession, telling of forty-three men and women he had killed in six different states. I know. It was my question too. Why would a man who relished murder as much as he confess in writing to murders we did n't even know had happened? He confessed because we had n't noticed.'' 
 
 `` Patience was one of those serial killers who liked to pit his mind against the minds of men who thought themselves smarter. A homicide detective fit that profile for him. He was n't happy when the FBI tried to take over the investigation. Evidently, Patience does n't like others horning in on his competition. FBI agents were dropping like over-ripe fruit for seven months until the powers that be realized that law enforcement would n't be touched so long as Patience got the investigator he wanted.'' 
 
 `` I, sadly, was that investigator. He gave me a written confession because he was confining his game to my city. He did n't want distractions pertaining to those other murders he'd committed I suppose, or it was his way of wiping the slate clean. Perhaps he changed his motive. I do n't know.'' 
 
 `` I'd like to say, I was amazing. I'd like to say I put Patience on his heels with him trying to keep ahead of me. The truth was, there were a genius intelluct at work during the murder investigation and that genius was him. He would string me along. He would let me think I was getting close, then reveal I'd been walking the wrong way for months. I'm a homicide detective. The FBI helped with this as much as they could, but the task force was inadequate. I was inadequate. February 6, 2010, Patience confessed in writing again to every murder he'd committed in my city.'' 
 
 `` He told where he'd buried the bodies. He told where he had hunted them. How he took them. What they were wearing. What they said when they were begging him for mercy. He confessed to it all. We even found three of his safe houses because the transcripts of his murder victims was so complete and accurate. He even provided recordings. If we had caught him, this would have sealed his fate. It would have been -- *Hello. See ya later. * -- and would have ended with a needle in his arm. No. Instead, it was a complete docket with a confession, a carefully catalogued spread sheet of details only the killer could have known, a list of everyone he'd murdered plus six we did n't know had existed, and an ambiguous note that read: *Let's play a new game. *'' 
 
 `` The next six months was like I was a prisoner who'd been given his freedom by accident, and I was living with the knowledge that at any moment my jailer would figure out his mistake and haul me back to prison. It's funny I use this analogy.'' 
 
 `` August 2, 2010, Patience did just that. I told you a moment ago that Patience had killed one hundred and twenty-three men and women. That number, it is the official number of men and women that he had killed. The number in reality was roughly three times that. In August of 2010, he started his new game by killing all the employees at the State Prison. He killed all the guards. He killed all the administration. He killed the physicians on call. He killed the counselors who came in to rehabilitate the inmates. He killed the holy men trying to save the inmate's souls. He killed the warden.'' 
 
 `` At first, we thought it was some form of outbreak. The FBI and Homeland had the CDC out there. They worked every angle, and in the end, they called me, because on the warden's desk was a letter addressed to me, and the letter inside said only that the game had begun.'' 
 
 `` Inmates started dying the next day. We locked down the blocks, they died faster. We locked the men in their cells the died still faster. We broke up the inmates into groups and sent them to different facilities. The moment we sent them off, inmates at each prison began to died and at prisons we had n't sent any prisoners too. This, it was our break. We figured out that Patience was one of the inmates in the prison. We compared what the prisons had in common.'' 
 
 `` They all received copies of the Koran and the Bible. They were donations. We traced their shipment back to a courier service. The courier service gave us a pickup location. Here is where it got interesting. The shipping was automated. It could be initiated with a phone call. Back at the lab the CDC had set up, they were going over every inch of the bibles collected from the inmates and the korans. They had n't found anything though. We traced the call from the shipping facility back to the prison, cell block D. While I was tracing the call, the FBI was tracing the owners and employees of the shipping company. They found them before I found Patience.'' 
 
 `` The employees and the owner of the company were the six people he had killed we had n't known about that was in his confession from six months ago. I located the phone he called from, identified his prisoner phone code, which gave me the cell he was locked in -- was supposed to be locked in. He evidently died the day we started shipping prisoners off. We found the assistant medical examiner in his body bag. Even now, I'm amazed at the audacity of the man.'' 
 
 ( Continued in Reply )
