Parting Glances: Dropping the soap for Jesus

On the eve of his 58th birthday, and just hours after chatting for 20 minutes by telephone with his wife Primrose, Dr. Harold Shipman, Britain's most prolific serial killer, cheated the hangman's noose by committing suicide with bed sheets in his prison cell.
Over a 23 year period he murdered 215 patients. Jane Gaskill, the daughter of both parent victims, recently said, "He's won again. He's controlled us all the way, even to the last step. I hate him for it."
Dr. Shipman's horrific tally is matched by Luis Alfredo Gravito Cubillos, convicted in 2002 of murdering 200 children ages 8 to 13 in Columbia, South America. His victims were tortured, raped, and decapitated. His sentence: 2600 years (overkill of a positive kind).
Should you be inclined to ghoulish head counts (you're not alone), here are the tallies for some of America's notorious serial killers: H. H. Holmes (50 to 200); David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz (six killings; six maiming; 1400 acts of arson); Richard "Night Stalker" Ramirez (20 killings; 13 convictions); "Zodiac Killer" (6; his identity unknown); John Wayne Gacy (33); Ted Bundy (35 to 60), and Jeffery Dahmer (17, plus gruesome acts of necrophilia, mutilation, and cannibalism).
Though the percentage of female serial killers compared to males is small, Harold Schecter's "The Serial Killer Files" (Balantine Books; 2004) gives profiles on 13 of history's deadliest killer arachnids, including Aileen Wuornos, subject of the current box office hit, "Monster," starring Charlize Theron.
Wuornos, frequently dubbed "America's first woman serial killer," was abandoned by her mother at six months and sexually abused as a child by her father, who later hanged himself after being caught molesting a seven-year-old girl. Wuornos butchered seven truckers. At her 1992 trial her lesbian lover turned state's evidence and testified against her. She was executed in October 2002.
Serial killer memorabilia are hotter than hell in this country. Gacy's paintings are pricey (though one buyer bought a number of clown portraits just to destroy them). Trading cards, comic books T-shirts, snow globes, clocks, and personal belongings are available. Such items are aptly named "murderabilia."
Berkowitz's letters written to "fans" go for $200 plus on e-Bay. "I know what a nightmare it is to see some of these things marketed," he frets. "The sale of these things grieves my heart." Berkowitz, arrested in 1979; now 48, professes to be a born-again Christian and calls himself "Son of Hope."
Berkowitz is not the only serial killer to be "washed in the blood of the Lamb," as the old-time gospel hymn singsongs it. He was joined by Jeffrey Dahmer, who repented of his ghastly collective sins and accepted Jesus as his personal savior – shortly before being done in by a fellow convict he was unfortunate enough to share a prison shower with.
Back in 1992 Dahmer's attorney proposed that Dahmer was prepared to change his 15-count plea of murder from not guilty by reason of insanity to guilty but insane. (But sane enough to repent and be born again.)
If Dahmer – who savored his penchant for bloodlust and dismemberment as early as 1978 -, was indeed saved, something is sadly amiss in God's kingdom. Poor Matthew Shepard, who harmed no one during his short life, roasts in hell for all eternity (so preach the biblical brain dead), and bloodthirsty Dahmer's garments are now presumably laundered whiter than snow.
Is there no justice here or hereafter? (Or, is that too much to hope for?)