Seven Guardian Angels marched down a Phoenix street, with their distinctive red berets standing out against the fading light of dusk.
They peered down alleys and looked behind heaps of rubbish as passing cars honked their horns in support.
At one stage Robert McClintick, an Angel from Denver, Colorado, offered some sage advice to his comrades: "The shooter fires in the dark. That's not easy without a laser sight. If you see a small red light fix on your partner, please say something."
PHOTO: AP
He is only half joking.
The Angels are not on the trail of ordinary criminals. They are hunting serial killers. Plural. For Phoenix, a sprawling city in the desert of Arizona, has fallen victim to not one but two multiple murderers. They operate independently of each other, using different methods, but killing indiscriminately. So far there have been 55 attacks that have left 11 dead and dozens wounded.
Like all US killers, the pair have been nicknamed. One is the Baseline Killer, who has robbed, raped and murdered his victims.
He is believed to have been involved in at least 21 attacks and got his name from the road on which the first of his crimes took place.
The second is the Serial Shooter. He has never been seen by a living witness and fires on targets seemingly at random. He is suspected of 34 vicious attacks.
Phoenix police have assigned 120 officers to the case and put up a US$100,000 reward. The city, however, is not sitting back and waiting for the police to catch the killers.
Newspapers have been advising locals on how to cope and protect themselves. They should change their routines, not go out alone and get to know their neighbors. It is advice that many are heeding.
"I sure hope they get the sons of bitches," said Ronald Black, who was walking to the shops with his huge pitbull dog. "Normally I would leave her inside on a hot night like this but I don't want to go out alone."
There has been a surge in gun sales, parents are not letting children play outside, office workers walk in pairs to their cars while city streets, usually full of evening strollers, are eerily empty at night.
Few places are more suited for a dose of suburban gothic horror than Phoenix. It is a city that seems to have sprung up overnight from the desert soil on which it is built. Its streets are dead straight, its shops are strip malls and few buildings look more than a decade old.
The Serial Shooter emerged in May last year. He has killed five people and wounded 16 others. He even went on to kill three horses and five dogs. Yet no one has even caught a glimpse of him.
With the Baseline Killer there is more to work on. He committed his first crimes last August. He has robbed, assaulted, raped and killed, leaving five people dead. He is believed to be a black man, aged 25 to 40. A police sketch has been released, but he is known to wear disguises during his attacks.
The pool of victims has been as racially diverse as the rest of Phoenix's population. The list includes blacks, whites, Hispanics, several Native Americans and at least one Asian, and both men and women.
Experts believe it is perfectly possible that the killer pair are, involved in some sort of sick contest.
"It is possible. In the past some serial killers have contacted other serial killers, seeing them as involved in some sort of competition," said James Fox, an author of several books on the subject and a crime expert at Northeastern University in Boston.
In the case of the Baseline Killer, there is one intriguing possibility. A man who could know his identity is already in jail. He is James Dewayne Mullins and, while in jail in Kentucky on different charges, he confessed to killing 19-year-old Phoenix stripper Georgia Thompson.
However, her death, with a single shot to the head in her apartment complex's car park, has now been forensically linked to the Baseline Killer.
Mullins subsequently retracted his confession but transcripts of his police interview show tantalizing hints he knows other men who were involved. He talks of a unnamed "guy" who took him to Thompson's strip club. He then warns that he fears a terrible retribution if he ever implicated him in the crime.
The Angels have pledged to keep up patrols until the city is safer.
Last week, as his Angel night patrol walked down a dark street behind a complex of bungalows, McClintick admitted he was haunted by the sheer evil of serial killers.
"It is the wiring in their brain. Some people are just born that evil," he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not