Casualty Report: Lemonjacket

"The Skinwalker" an exert from A Killer's Mind by Mira Koray, p33.

Odell Morrison's 6th victim, Gedat Rakkin, is said to be his most gruesome and tragic, though it later led to a turning point in the case that would finally result in Morrison's arrest.

In the autumn of '93, Gedat Rakkin was reported missing by his university roommate. At the time, police had not received letters from Morrison in almost two years and the case had gone cold. The disappearance was later connected to Morrison when it was revealed that Rakkin had developed a deep obsession with the killer during his university studies at GCU. Sgt. Levine, who was lead investigator in the Morrison case, took a special interest in the disappearance, flying to Glasgow immediately.

Rakkin had gathered a large collection of notes regarding the Morrison murders, including one interview personally conducted with the family of the killer's first victim. Rakkin, a self‑described amateur detective, was known to be a member of several online newgroups dedicated to the sharing of information regarding serial killers and missing persons. According to his posts to online discussion forums, he believed he had found a pattern among evidence found at the crime scenes and how they related to certain key phrases in the letters which the killer had sent to the Glasgow Herald.  

It is believed that Rakkin used the evidence gathered to track down where Morrison lived, based on his theories. The exact details of what transpired is unknown; what is known is that two days after his disappearance, a strange incident occurred in Stirling which brought Levine to the town. A shop owner, in a frenzied panic, reported to local police that a man, which she described as “more of a thing", had entered her shop dripping with blood. She described the man's face as only loosely attached: a stretched mask of matted orange fur. This figure made demands for money from the shop's register before quickly fleeing. It is now believed that this was Morrison though, given the nature of his background, his motives for the relatively paltry robbery of £42 in broad daylight were never determined.

Sgt. Levine, tracing the path of Rakkin's findings, located an abandoned abattoir outside of the town as a likely location for disposal of bodies. The remains of several anthropoid bodies were found, but Rakkin could not be immediately located until a hidden door was found in the facility. In a secret back room, the sergeant reports that the skinless body of Gedat Rakkin was found, apparently skinned alive, with muscles and tendons bare and intact. According to Sgt. Levine, the body was still breathing and moving when he found it, with his on-site report claiming he had even spoken to Rakkin, who spouted a confused babble. Rakkin was declared dead on the scene when emergencies services arrived and Levine recounted Rakkin speaking from later reports, redacting what he claimed to have heard.

Gedat Rakkin's skin was never found despite Odell Morrison's eventual arrest the next year, thanks to predictions on other torture sites made by Rakkin before his death. Rakkin continues to be hailed as a hero, and a warning, among amateur detective societies to this day.