WORLD’S NO.1 TRUE CRIME QUARTERLY
14 TR
www.truecrimelibrary.com
RUE C CA AS SE ES S
L U O F T S MO
No.114
WHY CHRISTINE SHOT FOUR FRIENDS Serial Killer Used His Garden As A Crematorium
TERROR OF THE KRAKOW VAMPIRE From Liverpool To Melbourne...
A KILLING CAREER WITHOUT PARALLEL
What Did Mary Do With Lillian’s Head, Arms And Legs?
MURDER IN GREAT YARMOUTH – THEN A BOTCHED EXECUTION
WORLD’S NO. 1 TRUE CRIME QUARTERLY www.truecrimelibrary.com
No. 114 MOST FOUL
28Poisoner Who Liked Funerals Unsolved: Sex, 37 Wild Parties And Two Mystery Murders What Did Mary 40 Do With Lillian’s Head, Arms And Legs?
2 Why Christine Shot Four Friends Australia’s “Modern Ned Kelly” Murder In Great Yarmouth – Then A 44Killer 7 Botched Execution Terror Of The Couples Who Kill: 48 Krakow Vampire 12 Billy And Mary’s Who Threw Gulf Coast Murder 52 Arthur Out Of Spree The Window? Opinion 15 More of your Murder views 56Brutal In Pastor’s Love 16 Serial Killer 22 Used His Garden As A
A Killing Career Without Parallel
Crematorium
O
ne of the most extraordinary murder cases in criminal history features in this latest edition of MMF. Frederick Bailey Deeming’s psychopathic killings took him from Britain to Australia but the lifelong swindler’s crosscontinental criminal activities saw him active in South Africa and Europe, too. Born in Leicestershire, Deeming had run away to sea at the age of 16 and in 1880s Australia he was considered a reliable worker before he stole from his employers. When Deeming turned to murder the shocking savagery of it was enough to make headlines worldwide and invoke speculation in some quarters that “Mad Fred” could have been Jack the Ripper. Turn to page 16 and A Killing Career Without Parallel for the full story. Goofy and strange but also wealthy and successful, US thrift-store boss Herbert Baumeister was a devoted
Triangle
Going To Be 59“I’m Famous” Broadstairs 61 Murder By Mistake father and family man. The trouble was, he also had a liking for hanging out at gay bars in Indiana and strangling those who made the mistake of being lured away by him. See page 22 and Serial Killer Used His Garden As A Crematorium. Finally, for a Florida horror story, don’t miss Billy And Mary’s Gulf Coast Murder Spree on page 12.
Rachael Koloroutis (left) and Tiffany Rowell were at the top of Clear Lake high school’s social hierarchy
C p12
Don’t forget to enter our book competition on page 14 In some cases, fictitious names and places have been used. Where this has been done, a note of this fact appears in conjunction with the story. Cover and contents of Murder Most Foul Quarterly are produced by Magazine Design & Publishing Ltd. Printed and bound by Warners Midlands plc, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH, for the Proprietors and Publishers. Copyright and the rights of translation and reproduction of the contents of Murder Most Foul Quarterly are strictly reserved. Editorial and General Offices, P.O. Box 735, London SE26 5NQ. Single copies £4.50 post free in UK, available from Forum Press, P.O. Box 735, London SE26 5NQ or email: enquiries@truecrimelibrary.com. Advertising sales, subscription and back-number enquiries Tel: +44 (0) 20 8778 0514. Trade sales by Marketforce (UK), 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU. Tel: +44 (0)20 3787 9001. © Magazine Design & Publishing Ltd.
2 Murder Most Foul Why Christine Shot Four Friends
Despite problems Christine Paolilla was so much part of the in-crowd that the campus voted her Miss Irresistible... So why did she murder the friends that had transformed her from an ugly duckling into a swan?
HRISTINE PAOLILLA always examined her pillow first thing in the morning to see how much hair had fallen out in the night. Sometimes she could hardly bear to look at her face in the mirror as she tugged on her wig ready for school. The alopecia had claimed even her eyebrows and eyelashes. Other kids would often creep up behind her and tweak off the wig, throwing it down a corridor or across a classroom, shouting: “Baldie! Piggie!” Her cheeks used to burn with humiliation as she scrambled on the floor to pick it up. She’d had alopecia since she was a little girl. Her father died when she was two and her mother had drug problems. But no one seemed to care about that. She was ridiculed for her tacky hairpieces, bottle-end glasses, cheap make-up and dowdy clothes.
WHY CHRISTINE SHOT FOUR FRIENDS The drug-infested hotel room in San Antonio which newly-weds Christine Paolilla and Justin Rott used to take heroin
They befriended her, and with their help she began to shed her geeky image. Over the next year, the girls taught her about fashion and make-up, which Christine used with great confidence. The trio were inseparable, had fun together, swapped girlie notes in class, discussed boys, and were generally the best of friends. Christine was so confident with them that she even felt comfortable if they caught her without her wig – something only her mother had ever seen. By 2003, thanks to Rachael and Tiffany, she was so much part of the in-crowd that the campus voted her Miss Irresistible.
Christine Paolilla (above) had alopecia and suffered at the hands of bullies. Christopher Snider (right) was described as “a really nice guy until he got into drugs”
She attended a high school in Clear Lake City, a manicured suburb of Houston, Texas, inhabited mainly by high-powered engineers and executives from NASA’s space centre and big aerospace companies like Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. Like the community outside, the school had a strict social hierarchy, and at its apex were 18-year-old Rachael Koloroutis and her best friend Tiffany Rowell. Beautiful, affluent and popular, the
er mother, Lori Paolilla, was H delighted at her daughter’s new confidence and self-esteem, but worried
The trio were inseparable, had fun together, swapped girlie notes in class, discussed boys, and were generally the best of friends girls were also blessed with a kindness that saw through the cheap bullying Christine endured day after day. Rachael was an accomplished artist and creative writer, and Tiffany was a talented actress who wanted to become a social worker.
Case report by
Francesca Morrison
when she started seeing a new boyfriend who used drugs. Nineteen-year-old Christopher Snider had spiky hair and body piercing, and seemed to exert a strong influence over Christine. She dropped out of her usual social circle and, as the weeks slipped by, saw much less of Rachael and Tiffany. By July 2003, Rachael and Tiffany were sharing a house owned by Tiffany’s father – a college music professor who’d remarried after his first wife died. He’d moved to a town nearby with his new wife, but let his daughter remain alone in the home where she’d grown up so 3
she could finish high school with her classmates. Rachael had been staying with Tiffany for a while after graduating, but told her parents she’d be moving home that weekend. July 18th was a sweltering hot day and the girls had stocked the fridge with beer and pizzas because they were expecting a visit from Tiffany’s boyfriend, 19-yearold Marcus Precella, and his cousin Adelbert Sanchez, 21.
Snider starts iring wildly. Christine joins in the massacre, shooting her friends as they writhe and spasm on the loor and settee. More than 20 shots reverberate around the singlestorey villa. Blood spurts over the walls and furniture
The killers leave as quickly as they came. But halfway down the drive, Christine tells Snider she has to go back to make sure they’re all dead. They return and find Rachael still alive, choking on blood and vomit. She’s struggling to reach her mobile, and keeps whispering: “Why?” Christine takes out her gun, and smashes her friend’s head again and again with the butt till her shining hair is wet with blood and brain. At the same time, Snider pulps Marcus Precella’s skull till his face is barely recognisable. Before they leave, Christine goes to the bathroom to wash Rachael’s blood off her hands... Clear Lake was stunned and horrified at the carnage that had happened in one of its classiest streets, but there were no obvious suspects, and no one was arrested – although police interviewed hundreds of people, and followed up hundreds of tips. Rachael’s heartbroken father printed thousands of fliers, did mass mailings, door-to-door inquiries, and erected huge billboards along Houston freeways. A concert and community fund raised
Precella was a student who worked as a waiter in the holidays, and he’d begun selling drugs to friends – mainly ecstasy, Xanax, cocaine and marijuana. It isn’t unusual for Clear Lake’s young people to take recreational drugs, and many privileged students there use cocaine to maintain an active social life and still stay up half the night studying for the top grades their high-flying, status-conscious parents expect. The culture of Houston and its environs is known to be fiercely competitive and materialistic. Like many of their contemporaries, Tiffany, Rachael, Adelbert and Marcus snorted cocaine that afternoon, and were high on it when there was a knock at the door. tanding on the doorstep are S Christine Paolilla and Christopher Snider. Despite the heat, she’s wearing a tight-fitting hat that almost covers her face. They’ve come to buy drugs. It’s a quiet cul-de-sac and there’s no one about. “Chrissy, baby! Howya doing? Long time no see,” calls Tiffany from the sofa. For a few seconds, the girls are pleased to see their friend. But Snider has already pulled out a gun. He’s demanding cash and drugs. Christine also has a gun, and Snider tells her to walk Precella round the house to find whatever dope and money there is. Then a row breaks out between Snider and Precella, and Snider starts firing wildly. Christine joins in the massacre, shooting her friends as they writhe and spasm on the floor and settee. More than 20 shots reverberate around the single-storey villa. Blood spurts over the walls and furniture. 4
Above, the bloody murder scene. Christine and Snider had entered the house on the premise of buying drugs but the armed robbery quickly degenerated into a brutal slaughter
more than $100,000 reward money for information leading to the killers. It was the largest reward ever offered in national history. For three years the case went unsolved. Then in July 2006 a tipster called a police hotline with details of the crime only an insider could have known. He wasn’t sure about one of the killers, but he identified the other as Christine Paolilla. When the hunt for her began, police discovered she’d split from Snider and married another addict called Justin Rott, a man she’d met in rehab. The couple had spent their whole marriage on a heroin binge, ransacking hotel
rooms and crashing rented cars. Police found them eventually in a San Antonio hotel room where they’d been living for the last nine months. “The room looked like a murder scene,” said Sergeant Brian Harris. “There was blood on the walls, and needles and syringes all over the place, with boxes of new needles waiting to be used, and used needles on the ground. There were eighty-five needles lined up on a dresser with heroin in them. The smell from rotting food and unwashed clothes was terrible. It reeked.” Having inherited $360,000 from her father’s trust fund when she turned 18, Christine and Rott set about blowing
News that Christine Paolilla had been charged with quadruple-murder and implicated him in the killings must have reached him because he fled without warning from the house he was sharing with a woman he’d met on the internet. He took no money, car or change of clothes, only a bottle of painkillers. Police found his body a few days later beside a local lake. The murder weapons were retrieved from a gun safe at Snider’s father’s house where he’d stayed while on the run. A classmate described Snider as “a really nice guy until he got into drugs.” he police had long suspected that T drugs had played a role in the killings. They’d discovered that despite Clockwise from left, Tiffany Rowell, Rachael Koloroutis, Adelbert Sanchez and Marcus Precella. All were all gunned down. Below, the murder weapon
the lot. They holed up in the hotel, took drugs day after day, and only left the room to buy more drugs or get food. Wracked by guilt and confused by drugs, Christine eventually told Rott about the killings. “She’d see Rachael’s face and start hallucinating,” he told detectives. “She’d wake up in sweats, start hyperventilating and having panic attacks.” Rott shared this information with the tipster – who has never been named – and he in turn tipped off the police.
They quickly realised that the “Chris” he’d mentioned was Snider. Since they’d broken up, Snider had done time in jail for robbery, and Christine told detectives she was terrified of him, and had no idea where he was. Using his MySpace social networking page and mobile phone records, police tracked him down to Greenville, South Carolina.
Despite her friends having helped her survive and thrive during their school days at Clear Lake High, 17-year-old Christine helped her boyfriend execute them in the search for drugs and money
its tame exterior, Tiffany’s house had become a teenage hotspot. “There’d been no adults in the house for a while,” said Sergeant Harris. “After Tiffany’s father moved out, we believe Marcus Precella was selling party drugs like ecstasy and marijuana to Clear Lake students.” Christine told police that she and Snider went there to buy drugs. She said Snider got aggressive, and she wanted to run away, but he pressed a gun into her hands and made it go off. “In essence, she claimed Snider killed all those people and she just held the gun,” said Harris. “But the brutality of the crime showed rage and anger, and I think that came as much from her as Snider. She said she was scared if she didn’t do it he’d kill her too. But I didn’t buy that. “After leaving the house, she managed to compose herself enough to report for a shift at a local supermarket as if nothing happened.” Brian Harris is considered the grand inquisitor of the Houston homicide division, and is famous for teaching his interrogation techniques at police academies all over America. “She kept insisting Snider had either fired all the shots or forced her hand round the gun and made her fire,” he said. “So I ran a bluff on her and told her we had Snider in custody. We didn’t, of course. But it unsettled her. “I then asked her if she believed she deserved justice or mercy. When she answered ‘mercy’ I was able to say ‘I’d like to understand why.’ It’s an oblique way into someone’s guilt or conscience.” Snider’s suicide meant Christine would stand trial alone, and in September 2008 – five years after the murders – she wept silently in the dock as the judge denied her bail. As she was led in shackles back to the county jail, she paused to dab at her tears. She would do a lot of weeping over the course of her trial. With what remained of her trust fund, she hired top defence lawyer Mike DeGuerin. He said: “When I went and saw her in jail, I saw a scared, frightened little girl. The person that did the killing was a warped psychopath. When he 5
came up dead, they had nobody left to prosecute except her.” Her family blamed the murders entirely on Snider. Her mother said: “She wasn’t capable of doing this. She’s as much a victim as those poor kids. The one that did it is gone.” When Christine Paolilla finally appeared in court, DeGuerin told the jury: “My client never intended for anyone to be hurt. She didn’t know what Snider was going to do. Why would she want to kill her own friends? This drug-crazed madman puts the gun in her hands, and she’s got it by the handle, her eyes closed, and he puts his hands over hers, and goes one two three bam bam bam...” Ballistics evidence, however, painted a different picture. CSI investigators showed that Tiffany and Sanchez were found dead on the couch with their feet up, shot multiple times with no sign of struggle. Each was hit with bullets from two guns, indicating that two shooters were firing at the same time. A firearms expert said both murder weapons were difficult to fire, and would not have gone off as Chrsitine had claimed. “It defies logic that one gun is emptied first and one gun is emptied second,” said prosecutor Craig Goodhart. “When you get multiple gunshots from both guns at two kids on the couch who never move, these two guns were fired at the same time.” There was also the question of why
“Did she pull the trigger or did she assist the person who pulled the trigger? If you believe it either way, she’s guilty of capital murder” Christine Paolilla didn’t go to the police after the murders. She said she was too afraid of Snider to call, but phone records show that she rang him 1,100 times after the killings. “If you’re so afraid of someone, what are you doing on the phone to them over a thousand times?” asked Goodhart. The prosecution’s star witness was Justin Rott. He said Christine had told him everything. “She never said Snider threatened her. She knew she was taking part in a drug bust and when the bullets started flying, she joined in. She said he started shooting first, then they both started.” DeGuerin tried to discredit Rott’s testimony by pointing out that he was a convicted felon and drug addict who ratted on his own wife to save his skin. “He was facing a life charge for heroin, so he sold his testimony. He’s a liar. He picks up women in rehab, uses and abuses them, and takes money from them. He’s a leech. When he heard about Christine’s trust fund, his eyes lit up.” 6
ringing in their ears: “Did she pull the trigger or did she assist the person who pulled the trigger? If you believe it either way, she’s guilty of capital murder.” After less than three hours, the jury found Paolilla guilty of four counts of murder. Because she was 17 at the time of the murders, the state did not ask for the death penalty. Instead, she was sentenced to life, with a minimum of 40 years to be served before parole. As the judge read the verdict, Christine sobbed. Throughout the trial, many people commented that her only sign of grief seemed to concern her own fate. Not once did she appear to shed any tears for the death of her friends, or express remorse. “I felt like justice was served,” said Rachael’s father, George Koloroutis. “It felt good. I didn’t think it would, but it did. Tiffany and Rachael did everything for that girl at school. They befriended her when no one else would. They turned her into a princess. But no one Above, Christine Paolilla makes her irst court appearance after her arrest. Below, Christine weeps as she is sentenced to a minimum of 40 years before parole at the conclusion of her trial in October 2008
To drive home his point, he called a string of women to the stand to relate stories of Rott’s deceit and treachery. One said he claimed he had cancer; another said he would take her debit card and steal cash. But Goodhart went on the attack: “They sold drugs at that house. Christine knew about the drugs. Snider had only been there once before. She got them in. And how, in the name of God, did she get blood on her hands if she didn’t participate? Testifying for the defence, psychiatrist Dr. George Glass told the court that Christine Paolilla’s harsh childhood had influenced her relationships. “Her father died when she was two. He never came home after being killed by falling bricks on a building site in New York City. The accident left her mother overwhelmed with grief and two small children to support with no insurance. “She turned to drugs, and Christine went to live with her grandparents. They too died shortly afterwards, and her uncle committed suicide. It was probably the stress of all this that caused Christine to develop alopecia at kindergarten. Her life certainly wasn’t normal.” He added that she had not been in a fit state to waive her rights when police were questioning her, because she was in withdrawal from heroin. “All she’d be thinking about is drugs and needing to feel better,” he said. “On the police video she doesn’t look like anyone who could make reasonable decisions. She’d have said anything to get drugs to relieve the pain.” nine days of testimony, the jury After were sent out, Goodhart’s words
could remove the poison that festered in her heart.” Rachael’s older sister said: “We live as if she’s still a part of us, and that’s not going to change.” In the community of Clear Lake, the murders focused attention on the ubiquitous use of drugs among its young people. Parents with high hopes for their sons and daughters were forced to consider why a new and affluent generation should have the highest rates of depression, anxiety and drug use in America. Christine Paolilla remains incarcerated at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas, and despite several appeals, is scheduled to be there until 2046, when she is 60 years old.
MURDER IN GREAT YARMOUTH – THEN A BOTCHED EXECUTION
Case recalled by Matthew Spicer
G
REAT YARMOUTH’S prostitutes were at their busiest during the summer holiday season, and even 66-year-old Emma Howe had picked up a few extra punters. She usually sat in a corner of the Great Eastern Hotel in Howard Street South, nursing a port and lemon that often had to last several hours. For five shillings, she’d take a man back to her bedsit round the corner.
Prostitute Emma Howe lying between the sideboard and a table in her Owle’s Court home. Top, a close-up showing the marks of strangulation
It was almost afternoon closing time on Wednesday, August 9th, 1950, when a small man just over five feet tall strode up to the bar, ordered a pint and whispered to the landlord that he was looking for women. Emma knew the signs, slapped on a bright, inviting smile and quickly eased
“The hanging’s gone wrong,” the assistant executioner exclaimed. “He’s still alive!”
her shabby skirt above her knees to show off “a bit of leg.” The landlord shrugged when he saw her and the man leave the pub a few minutes later. Emma was back on Friday, sitting in her usual corner, but she left around 10.30 p.m., apparently without picking up a customer. She walked home wearily, and had just turned her key in the front door when a voice came out of the shadows. “Remember me? I said I’d come back.” She recognised him as the sandy-haired, freckled little chap who
Murder In Great Yarmouth – Then A Botched Execution Murder Most Foul 7
had introduced himself as Norman the other afternoon. “Come on in, dear,” she said. “I’ve got a nice drop of gin inside.” Norman Goldthorpe sat down on the twanging mattress and lit a cigarette, bringing to her humble room all the pain and fury stored up from his 40 years on earth. Grandparents in Yorkshire had brought him and his two sisters up as their father was an alcoholic and their mother had died when the children were very young. After getting on well at school, he joined an engineering firm and worked there for 18 months. He was laid off when orders fell, and decided to become a miner – a job he’d always wanted. But being underground made him feel faint and he moved to a firm making sports equipment. After 10 months there he grew unsettled and ran away from home to Peterborough where police arrested him for travelling on the railway without a ticket. A probation officer found him a job at a local brickworks where he stayed until orders got slack and he was laid off again. He returned to his father, who had remarried, and again got a job down the pit. But he fainted on his first day and had to leave. The failure so depressed him that he decided to commit suicide and jumped into a canal. But the shock of the cold water jolted him to his senses, and as he struggled to get out, the lock-keeper threw him a line. He was 17 years old. Arrested and charged with attempted suicide, Goldthorpe was bound over to the care of the Church Army and sent to a hostel in Leeds. Three months later, friends in Peterborough contacted him to say the brickworks were now hiring men again. He returned to Peterborough and remained there till the outbreak of war in 1939. Already in the Territorial Army, Goldthorpe saw action almost immediately, and took part in Dunkirk. He remained in England until 1943 when he was posted to north Africa. In 1943 he was diagnosed as suffering from “battle exhaustion” and sent to a recuperation centre in Algiers. As part of his medical treatment, he was employed as a military driver. While on duty one afternoon he followed a girl round the city, fighting a desire to attack her. He resisted the impulse and told his medical officer about it. The officer detained him in hospital for a month then sent him back to Britain. After a medical examination, he was allowed to continue working as a driver before being demobbed in 1945. After the war, while he was working as a stoker at a Bristol hospital, staff found him wandering round the children’s ward where he had no right to be. They were suspicious of him and he was dismissed. Norman Goldthorpse then moved back to the Peterborough brickfields and embarked on a life of petty crime. 8
He received a three-month sentence for robbing the local train station, and on his release drifted round the country, eventually ending up in Great Yarmouth in the summer of 1950. Goldthorpe told psychiatrists at various times in his life that he had wet the bed until he was 14 and stammered badly until the same age. He had been obsessed with sex since he was 15, he said, and masturbated frequently while thinking about girls. In 1933, at the age of 23, he married Lily, a 17-year-old. They had been having sex since she was 13, and when she fell pregnant they agreed to marry. His feelings of violence towards women became a reality when he hit Lily with a poker as she sat by the fire doing up her shoelaces. She was only 13. Several years later he tried to strangle her. But their baby crying in the next room stopped him, and again he consulted a doctor about his behaviour, which always seemed to worsen at the full moon. “I just wanted to put my arm round her neck and hurt her,” he said. The doctor told him to exercise more control over himself. Lily said later that the marriage was reasonably stable until Goldthorpe went away to war. The couple divorced in 1947.
U
nhappiness drove Goldthorpe to drink and bad company, but he returned to Yorkshire and made friends with a Plymouth Brethren lay preacher and his wife, John and Marguerite Myers. Goldthorpe became interested in the sect and even attended meetings. But he and Marguerite began an affair and often had sex when her husband was working away. When they moved to Great Yarmouth, the unsuspecting
husband invited Goldthorpe to come and stay with them, and even left them alone together in the house while he was away. Living with her lover probably convinced Marguerite Myers that she was better off without him, and on Wednesday, August 9th, 1950, she told him she was going up to Yorkshire to see her husband. Goldthorpe was furious and vowed to break faith with her by
“having” other women. Rage took him to the Great Eastern Hotel and Emma Howe, the peroxide tart who was almost old enough to be his grandmother, and by Friday evening he was determined to see her again to vent his wrath. But he wasn’t sure in which bit of Owle’s Court she lived so he knocked up one of her neighbours to find out. Emma Howe had been on the game for many years and didn’t hang about when it came to clients getting their five bob’s worth of no-frills sex. Almost as soon as he sat down on the bed she began fondling him until he was sexually aroused, then she slipped off her blouse, showed him her breasts and took off her knickers. Next morning an insurance agent called round – as he did every Saturday – to collect her premium. If she’d had a late night, he often had to hammer on the door to wake her. But no matter how hard he knocked there was no reply. So he peered through the window. Emma was lying on the floor on her back between a sideboard and a table. Her blouse was pushed up over her breasts and her stockings were round her ankles. She wore no underwear and her legs were wide apart. She was bruised and bloodied over most of her body, especially round her throat, which showed the mark of strangulation. The killer had also rammed the pin of a brooch into her neck with considerable force. There was no sign of a struggle, but the position of the eiderdown looked as if the body had been dragged off it. Her hands and face were smeared with faeces, and folds in the bedclothes held larger amounts of excreta – a common response to strangulation. Detective Sergeant Walter Painter, who was first on the scene, knew Emma Howe and her profession. But the smell and violence of the attack left him shaken.
was probably a psychopath prepared to use violence to obtain his satisfaction, he was not mentally ill. This diagnosis was to prove crucial to Goldthorpe’s trial at Norwich Assizes on October 11th, 1950, where he pleaded insanity.
H
is ex-wife Lily was one of a number of witnesses called by the defence to show that he was indeed insane. She said her husband had “acted very strangely at times” and that they had not needed to quarrel for him to beat her. After these assaults, however, he would “cry like a baby,” and she once
The pub in Elton, Cambridgeshire, that Harry Kirk ran between 1942 and 1954. Right, Syd Dernley. He was Kirk’s aide at the Goldthorpe execution
Painter also knew that Emma often spent her afternoons at the Great Eastern Hotel, so it didn’t take the police long to identify Norman Goldthorpe as the punter she had met there and the man who had asked her neighbour on Friday evening where Emma lived. Later that day the police found Goldthorpe sitting in a corner of the bar at the Great Eastern Hotel, surrounded by empty beer bottles. He politely confirmed his name and was taken to the police station where he told officers he worked in the kitchen of a local holiday camp. When asked about Emma Howe, he said: “I done her in. I left my comb behind,” and then slumped forward on the desk in a drunken slumber. Officers soon found the comb at Owle’s Court engraved with his name in gold letters, and from his lodgings they seized a suitcase containing a bloodstained shirt which Goldthorpe said he tried to wash. Although he tried to play down the sexual elements of the killing, saying his head “seemed to burst like fireworks and I didn’t know what I doing,” he admitted to chief medical officer Dr. John Mathieson that he was sexually excited when he attacked Emma Howe. It was ironic that a man who’d had regular sex with a 13-year-old and showed violence towards women, should spend his time on remand in Brixton speaking about religion to other prisoners. But when Goldthorpe showed no sign of depression and ate and slept well, Dr. Mathieson concluded that although he
had to stop him cutting his own throat with a razor in a state of remorse. Medical reports from his time in the army in north Africa stated that he was a “psychopathic personality with anti-social trends” and “would harm
“I can’t remember an eve of execution which started better. We had bottles of beer and the warder joined us, and Kirky was in ine form. He was a much more outgoing and talkative person than Pierrepoint” others and himself without medical help.” Dr. Louis Rose, a consultant psychiatrist from London, said he thought Goldthorpe was insane within the meaning of the law, but not insane in a medical sense. Dr. Mathieson told the court that psychopathy was not in itself a legal form of insanity. Insanity, he said, is a disease of the mind, and Goldthorpe’s mind was not diseased. He knew right
from wrong. The trial lasted less than a day and the jury took only 58 minutes to find Norman Goldthorpe guilty of murdering Emma Howe. Jurors boldly requested a cup of tea during their deliberations, only to be given a public dressing-down by the stickler of a judge who told them he could have them locked up without “fire, food or drink” until they came up with a verdict. Asked if he had anything to say before he was sentenced to death, Goldthorpe replied: “Only that I thank my counsel. They had a rotten job.” An appeal was dismissed in early November and an execution date set for Friday, November 24th, at Norwich Prison. The usual executioners, Albert Pierrepoint and Steve Wade, had already accepted a job in Scotland on the date fixed for Goldthorpe, so assistant hangman Harry Kirk was called in. “Kirky” had assisted at 50 executions, but never before actually pulled the lever. He was a 56-year-old ex-police officer more used to pulling pints at the pub he ran in Elton, Cambridgeshire. When he first applied to the Home Office for the job of assistant hangman, it was noted on his report that he had a “somewhat morbid interest” in executions. Assistant hangman Syd Dernley was to be his aide at this debut, and the two were in good spirits when they arrived at Norwich Prison. A young warder showed them to their quarters, which were in the same wing as the condemned cell. They checked out the execution chamber and Kirky decided to give Goldthorpe a seven-and-a-half-foot drop because he was such a small, thin man. “I can’t remember an eve of execution which started better,” recalled Dernley. “We had bottles of beer and a warder joined us, and Kirky was in fine form. He was a much more outgoing and talkative person than Pierrepoint.” At one point Kirky described an assignment he and Pierrepoint had undertaken for the American forces during the war – a job far exceeding even execution days in Nuremberg. “We hanged twenty-two Yanks in one morning,” he said. “They’d got people from all over the place who’d been sentenced to death and brought them to the big military prison in Shepton Mallet. We did the lot in one morning. “It was a real production line. Shout the name out...bring the man in...read the crime and sentence...drop...down into the pit...check from the doctor... get them off the rope...re-set the trap- door and adjust the rope...next one... “We had no trouble because there were two bloody great American military policemen on the job just in case. They had to carry one or two in because they were almost fainting and couldn’t walk, but they all stood on their own on the drop. “Couldn’t leave them on the rope for an hour like we do, though. Three or 9
four minutes maybe. Certainly no more. They wanted them all out of the way that morning. All twenty-two of them. “Can’t remember any of their names. But I do remember they paid us for each man. Cash on the nail in dollars. I’ve never had such a pocketful of money.” Despite its gallows humour the narrative had a sobering effect on the young warder and Dernley, so Syd pulled out a little book of “dirty ditties” to lighten the atmosphere. He bet the young warder a shilling he couldn’t read one without laughing, and soon had him so helpless with mirth that he dropped the book. Syd and Kirky joined in and the room was rocking with noisy guffaws when they heard a loud pounding on the floor. The young warder stiffened and the smile froze on his face. “Oh, Christ!” he exclaimed. “Oh, bloody hell! It’s the condemned cell
down below. They must be knocking on the ceiling with something.” There was a dreadful hush as the three men sat in silence for the next few minutes contemplating the boorishness that had been overheard by a man waiting to die the next morning. They realised later how close Goldthorpe was when they heard him singing away his last night on earth – the sound floating up clearly through the floor. “At least he’s cheerful,” said Kirky tastelessly.
O
n the appointed day, Syd and Kirky got up early to prepare the execution chamber. The last job of all was to fasten the loose coils of rope so that the noose was hanging at the right height for Goldthorpe. Kirky gathered them together while Dernley tied the thread, then said: “Well, that’s it, young ’un. Let’s go and have our breakfast.”
www.truecrimelibrary.com
WILTSHIRE SHOCKER DECEMBER 2019 £3.50
WORLD’S NO.1 TRUE CRIME MAGAZINE
NO PAROLE FOR PARENTKILLER NIKKI
A Body In Concrete – In The Back Garden
Jungle Warrior’s Mission Mass-Murder Ended In Bloodbath – In The Name Of Ecology
CURSE OF THE QUEENSLAND DEMON
Poker Face! How Wife-Killer Tried To Bluff His Way Out Of Trouble
HANGED AT LIVERPOOL
The Photograph That Sent A Killer To The Gallows Acid Bath Psycho Tried To Dissolve Irish Nurse’s Body
December issue on sale at W.H. Smith and all good newsagents from November 7th or see the offer on page 50 10
Afterwards they made their way to the condemned cell and found Goldthorpe talking to a priest. He said: “Good morning,” and Kirky returned the greeting. “We had his arms strapped with no trouble at all,” said Dernley, “and Kirky walked off, leading the way to the gallows. Goldthorpe followed as quietly as a lamb. “He was so small I could see over his head as we went into the execution chamber. He walked right up to Kirky, who was waiting to receive him, and I bobbed down and got my strap round his legs. “I was just starting to move clear when Kirky tapped me on the shoulder. He was a fraction slower than Pierrepoint because as I stood clear of the trap, I saw him knock out the safety pins and push down the lever. “Goldthorpe plummeted down on the seven-foot-eight-inch drop, there was the boom of the great doors and the man was stopped with a great jerk. I was half turning to walk to the trap-door when I heard the most spine-chilling sound I’d ever heard in an execution chamber. “From the pit came a snort...and
“It had been a real rotten job from start to inish...I don’t know how Kirky explained it in his report but he’d made a bad mistake. He’d been trying to go too fast, trying to show he was as quick as Pierrepoint” another and another. The rope was still, but there were noises coming from under the hood. I stood in a state of shock, just rooted to the spot, that terrible sound echoing round the cell. ‘The hanging’s gone wrong,’ I cried. ‘Christ! He’s still alive!’ “I watched, horrified, expecting to see at any moment some movement from the hanging man. He remained still, but the breathing sound, almost like snoring, continued. “A few feet away from me across the yawning trap, Kirky looked aghast. The governor had a look of utter horror on his face and the little under-sheriff had turned from ruddy red to green. “Somehow I moved. I don’t know how I did it, but I turned and ran for the small trap-door. As I got it up the doctor followed me. I almost threw myself down the stairs, the sound of Goldthorpe’s breathing still coming from under the hood. “Down below I grabbed the steps, and as I lifted them into position near the hanging feet, the sounds ceased, thank God. I mounted the steps, ripped open Goldthorpe’s shirt and got out of the way so the doctor could get to him with his stethoscope. “‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’ he announced, and there was no mistaking
report, I went back to our quarters. It had been a real rotten job from start to finish – from the stupidity of last night to the horrific scene this morning. What a bloody botch-up. “I don’t know how Kirky explained it in his report, but he’d made a bad mistake. He’d been trying to go too fast, trying to show he was as quick as Pierrepoint. When he put the noose round Goldthorpe’s neck, he should have seen that the bag was not properly down. “As I sat there, a warder breezed in with a packet of cigarettes. Goldthorpe had left them for us, much to the screw’s amusement. I opened the packet. It contained five Woodbines, the last of the little man’s worldly possessions. “I thought it was only right to offer the fags to Kirky – after all, he was the hangman – but I had a pretty good idea who would end up with them. And I was right. He wouldn’t touch them. “Kirky and I would normally have gone off for a drink at a local pub, but neither of us felt like it. Outside the jail he said to me: ‘It was a bad job, wasn’t it?’ I didn’t lie to him. ‘Yes, but it could have happened to anyone,’ I said. ‘He was killed instantly. It didn’t
The report on the Goldthorpe hanging signed by the prison governor and the medical oficer. Because of it Kirk never worked as a hangman again, assistant or otherwise
the relief in his voice. When he’d finished I went back up the steps and put my hand round the back of the noose. I could put my fingers between the noose and Goldthorpe’s neck. The rope wasn’t tight. “I waggled my fingers to show the doctor. He nodded, but confirmed that Goldthorpe’s neck was broken and that he had died instantly. The terrible sound, he said, had come from an automatic muscular reaction. “The governor, under-sheriff and doctor were soon on their way, no doubt to stiff Scotches in the office. Kirky was quiet and subdued and walked out of the chamber without a word. There were no Scotches waiting in our quarters, so we had a few minutes to ourselves. I asked him what had happened and told him the noose wasn’t tight. The worried lines etching his forehead grew deeper. “I never knew an hour pass so excruciatingly slowly. I sat there with a kaleidoscope of thoughts flitting through my mind. What had happened? What had gone wrong? After a drop like that,
how could the noose be anything other than tightly round the neck? He must have been dead, the doctor said so, but the evidence of my own ears was that he was breathing on the rope for a minute, two minutes..? “A couple of warders helped us get the body Norwich Prison today. Norman Goldthorpe down, and we took was hanged here in November 1950 measurements, but there was no clue there to what make any difference.’ had gone wrong. They were precisely as “Kirky looked gloomy. ‘It was a bad they should be. job,’ he repeated. ‘See you, young ’un.’” “While Kirky and the warders worked Not surprisingly, Harry Kirk was aloft, I stripped the clothing off the never allowed to work as a hangman body, leaving only the underwear on for again, assistant or otherwise. It had decency’s sake. The warders lowered been a bad job for everyone – mainly a rope sling and I got it into position for an elderly prostitute with no family under the arms of the body. They or friends, who caught the force of heaved and lifted it upwards, taking Norman Goldthorpe’s rage through no the strain off the hanging rope. It was fault of her own. then that we discovered what had gone It was certainly a bad job for wrong. Goldthorpe, a man with a profound “Kirky leaned over to take the rope personality disorder who had tried and hood off. He pulled then he tugged. to warn doctors and psychiatrists But he couldn’t shift the noose. The about his violent feelings even linen bag had jammed in the eye of before he acted on them. But the noose. That thin little bag had they had no way then to help him stopped the noose going tight round control them, and we can only hope Goldthorpe’s neck. But the neck was that medicine has advanced far broken. He’d been killed outright. The enough in 59 years to protect other doctor was right. Emma Howeses. “While Kirky went off to make his 11
Billy And Mary’s Gulf Coast Murder Spree W
AYNE LANE had a bad feeling about how things were going to turn out. Why? Because at Thanksgiving 2016 his daughter Alicia Greer, 30, a mother of three from Pensacola, Florida, had paired up with William “Billy” Eugene Boyette Jr., 44. Wayne didn’t trust Billy. In fact, he was heard to observe that Billy “must have the gift of gab or a golden tongue because he can reel somebody in.” Those prophetic words were just the beginning of the nightmare.
Case Report By Donald Carne Alicia had always been the apple of her father’s eye, known for her sunny smile, infectious laugh and creative spirit. And indeed Billy Boyette, from Massachusetts, was the golden boy in Alicia’s life until January 19th, 2017. But then it all went belly-up when Boyette accused her of cheating on him. Wayne explained: “He choked her down to the ground, kicked her in the face, hit her in the head with an unopened two-litre bottle of soda, so bad she had to have stitches in the top of her head – had to have an MRI of her skull.” The attack lasted two days. “He kept her in a hotel room at the Blackwater Inn, over at Milton, for two days, and crushed her phone so she had no contact with the outside,” said Wayne. Although extreme violence tends to arrive unexpectedly, in this case it was predictable. Boyette had a record for domestic violence stretching back more than a decade. When she was able to leave hospital, Alicia stayed with relatives for a few days before moving into the Emerald Sands Inn in Milton, where she thought she would be safe. “Alicia told motel staff that she was hiding from an abusive boyfriend,” Wayne lamented. Even so, Boyette caught up with her on Tuesday, January 31st, 2017. This time he was angry because Alicia had
Mary Rice in police custody. She had been in an on-off relationship with Billy Boyette whom she claimed drugged and pistol-whipped her
raised charges against him over the attack. Wayne thought he knew what happened in that hotel room late that night. “He was like, ‘You’re going to rescind these charges or you’re not making it out of this hotel room.’ We’re a pretty strong-willed family. I’m sure she was like, ‘Well, I’m not rescinding the charges.’” Whatever was actually said, the outcome was horrifying. Boyette shot dead both Alicia and her friend Jacqueline Moore, 39. They were discovered the next morning at 7 a.m.
12 Murder Most Foul Billy And Mary’s Gulf Coast Murder Spree
by hotel staff. Boyette now went on the run in his black SUV. He dragged Mary Barbara Craig Rice, 38, from her bed in the middle of the night to take her along for the ride. This may not have come as a total surprise to Mary, as she and Boyette had been on-off partners for some while.
B
illy Boyette’s next victim was Peggy Phillips Broz, 52, a respiratory therapist, across the state line in Lilian, Alabama – the other side of Perdido Bay. It was Friday, February 3rd, 2017, and Peggy had just finished her shift when she was carjacked outside her home. Peggy was later remembered by her folks as kind and selfless. Boyette and Mary took Peggy’s white 2003 Chrysler Concorde to continue their escape. They zig-zagged back across the Panhandle and invaded the home of Kayla Crocker, 28, on Monday, February 6th. Boyette shot Kayla in the face in front of her 18-month-old child. They took Kayla’s 2006 white Chevy Cobalt. Kayla was discovered the next morning
The next morning, Mary went to reception. “She came around between 7 and 8 a.m. to pay for another night,” Danny said. “That’s when my wife actually recognised her.” They contacted the police who asked Danny to check the registration number on the white Cobalt parked in front of the cabin. “They ran the tags, and that was the one
Above (clockwise from top left), victims Alicia Greer; Jacqueline Moore; Peggy Broz and Kayla Crocker
by her mother. “She had her hands tied with shoelaces, her hands were purple, and white rope around her body.” Kayla died later in hospital. When they left Kayla, Boyette and Mary filled up at a Shell station on the Beulah Road and had breakfast at Hardee’s. They drove north, chased by officers from two states, before holing up at the West Point Motel, north of Montgomery in Georgia. Their flight across three states over seven days caused panic in the Panhandle. “This man likes to ambush people,” Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said. “When you go to work, when you come home, make sure a friend or family member knows where you are. We’re dealing with an extreme situation here.” “You’re scaring us,” someone called. “I want to scare you,” Sheriff Morgan said. “What we are experiencing is a running nightmare, quite honestly,” Chief Deputy Chip Simmons added. “In short we have a killer and he is in our midst – everyone, and I mean everyone, should be aware of this,
should be aware of what they look like.” Danny Patel, owner of the West Point Motel, explained what happened after Boyette and Mary checked in on February 6th. “My wife and my aunt were working, and my aunt actually checked them in between 2.30 and 3 p.m.,” he said. “Everything was smooth. They weren’t jittery. They didn’t act like they were trying to flee from a crime. They were just kind of chill.” Later that day, Danny’s wife was asked to fix the TV remote in the couple’s cabin. “It’s kind of scary now that you think about it,” Danny said. “She went in there and fixed it. No harm was done, and everything was fine.”
Killer-of-four Billy Boyette – his murderous flight across three states caused panic in the Panhandle 13
partner. Her texts to Boyette were full of “I love yous” and the suchlike. They had a close, romantic relationship. Mary was caught on security camera going in and out of stores during their week on the run, helping Boyette buy prepaid phones and filling up his tank at gas stations. Plus, Bridgette Jensen, said, “She went inside Kayla’s home and helped tie her up.” Defence attorney Kenneth Brooks stated in his opening remarks that Mary had been an unwilling partner in the killing spree. “The evidence will show she was tortured and if she didn’t do exactly what he wanted, he would use pain to bring her back in line.” She used to write to Mary Rice – she will many prison inmates, and ressed in a smart, grey suit, spend the rest of had allowed a few to stay Mary was brought before her life behind bars with her on their release. Circuit Court Judge J. Scott The first few days on Duncan at an Escambia County release were hard and she wanted to help. Court for a one-week trial in September “That was Mary,” he said. 2018. Assistant State Attorney Jensen She was charged with the murder countered with texts sent from Mary of Kayla Crocker and with being an to Boyette, seemingly bored by his talk accessory after the fact in the deaths of about Alicia. “Too much on phone just Alicia and Jacqueline. She has still to be done with them already – her two be tried in Alabama for the murder of kids too,” a text read. Peggy Broz. A number of witnesses – store clerks Assistant State Attorney Bridgette – told the court Mary had appeared Jensen said Boyette and Mary met when normal as she bought a range of he was in jail. He stayed with her for a products in different stores and garages, few weeks when he got out. not stressed at all. She added that Mary was a willing stolen in Florida. They moved in shortly after that and just sort of waited and waited before they took action.” Boyette and Mary’s room at the West Point Motel was surrounded by dozens of officers. The couple were ordered to come out – but Boyette had no intention of going back to jail. In a tense stand-off, Boyette sat with his back against the wall of his motel room and brooded on his three guns – a pistol, a revolver and a rifle. After three hours, he chose the gun he wanted, placed it to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. We can only imagine what was going through his mind at that point. His autopsy showed negative for drugs or alcohol. For the record, he was left-handed. Mary surrendered.
D
When arrested, Mary said in her police interview, played to the court, “I had to do what he said – or my kids would be dead.” She claimed Boyette drugged her and pistol-whipped her. “It’s only by God’s grace am I sitting here today,” she said. “It was like Billy was hunting people,” she continued. “He just had this, like, wild animal look to him, I’ve never seen anything like it.” Letters Mary wrote to her family from jail were more reflective. “I did meet a true monster,” she wrote. Her supportive brother replied, “I am real glad you made it through that alive.” After deliberating for two hours, the 15-person jury found Mary guilty of double homicide for Alicia and Jacqueline and first-degree murder for Kayla Crocker. Judge Duncan sentenced Mary to life in prison for Kayla’s murder plus 30 years to be served consecutively for the other two homicides. In Florida, life means life. Mary will need to serve at least 30 years in Florida under state laws before she can be extradited to Baldwin County, Alabama, to face a murder charge in the death of Peggy Broz. Alicia’s father, Wayne Lane, still blames himself for what happened. “There’s four women that are dead now because I didn’t do what I should have done as a father,” he said. “I knew his name and I had the opportunity. I should have went and taken care of that and I didn’t. That’s what I get to live with for the rest of my life.”
MMF 114 COMPETITION INHISTORY WTHE OF CULTS – FROM SATANIC SECTS TO THE MANSON FAMILY In The History Of Cults, Robert Schroeder examines movements of the 20th and 21st century in a historical and cultural context, tracing their existence back to the earliest days of mankind. Investigating the essence of their continued appeal with reference to the experiences of ex-members, along with proiles of their often enigmatic creators and leaders, he provides a compelling and sometimes disturbing insight into these mysterious organisations, be they modern or ancient. More than 50 cults, movements, cult leaders, sects and religions of the modern and ancient world are explained and explored. For a chance to win a hardback copy of The History Of Cults (Carlton Books, £16.99; ISBN 978-1-78739-268-7) by Robert Schroeder, just answer this question: In which year was Charles Manson born? n 1931 n 1932 n 1933 n 1934 The first correct answer out of the hat after the closing date of December 26th will win. Send your answer, with your name and address, to MMF 114 Competition, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ, or email murdermostfoul@truecrimelibrary.com with “MMF 114 Competition” in the subject line, and including your full postal address. The answer and winner will be announced in MMF 115. Good luck! The winner of the competition in MMF 113, with the answer Violet, is Jackie Bullivant of Preston. Congratulations! Your prize – a copy of Underworld – The Deinitive History Of Britain’s Organised Crime – will be with you soon! 14
OPINION
Write to: Opinion, Murder Most Foul, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ or email murdermostfoul@truecrimelibrary.com (please put your address on emails). We pay £8 each for any letters that are published
Claudia Got Her Just Deserts
Gospel founder Aimee Semple McPherson was “kidnapped.” Charismatic Aimee, with her film-star looks, blessed a ministry in LA full of Hollywood hokum – left-over props from epic movies were employed to tell Biblical stories. Aimee did an Agatha Christie and disappeared from Santa Monica beach on May 18th, 1926. She reappeared four weeks later in a Mexican border town. The hot money said Aimee took a break with a lover so when Oswalt claimed to have found her kidnapper, the DA shook his head in despair – even Aimee scoffed. It was a blow. Kidnapping became a theme with Oswalt. In 1939, his career fell apart when he was charged with kidnapping a Japanese gambler on behalf of a rival syndicate. In the 1940s, no longer a police chief, he launched a fertiliser company instead. Andrew Stephenson, Newhaven
You ask if Claudia Hoerig deserved 28 years to life in prison for shooting and killing her husband Major Karl Hoerig (“Don’t Turn Your Back On HusbandKiller Claudia,” MMF113). Karl was away much of the time due to his work. He was a pilot. To me, it seems Claudia was spoiled and wanted full attention. Her divorced previous husband stated they broke up over Claudia’s wastefulness. She had 28 credit cards. On the night of the Attentionkilling she shot her seeker: husband from the top Claudia of the stairs then went Hoerig down and finished him off. Then she fled to Brazil, the place of her birth. It took the intervention of President Obama to have her extradited, making her the first person ever extradited from Brazil to America. Why didn’t she just leave her husband and flee home? My answer to your question is, yes, Claudia deserves her prison time. Michael Minihan, Limerick
Horror At Bodies In The Garage Manfred Seel’s daughter must have had her life permanently ruined by the discovery of two bodies in her late father’s garage (“Was This Frankfurt’s Jack The Ripper?” MMF113). Worse, she was to find out he killed at least another eight women, torturing them first. Given his devotion to cannibal websites, it’s likely he ate the missing organs and body parts. I’ve worked with the elderly and many of Cannibalthem choose to destroy killer: their erotica collections Manfred when they become ill, Seel knowing that finding such explicit material after their deaths would upset their adult children. It’s sad that Manfred Seel couldn’t extend the same courtesy to his relatives, taking the corpses to a remote location when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. C. Ware, Weston-super-Mare
Oswalt And The “Kidnapper” El Centro’s Chief of Police, John Sterling Oswalt, gave us a gripping tale of the murder of local farmer “Mighty Mike” Fornasero (“How I Caught The Kindly Immigrant’s Killers,” MMF113). Months later, Oswalt was embroiled in another major case when Foursquare FIND US ONLINE AT
When 39 Cult Members Died I subscribe to MMF and its sister magazines, but often wonder what it is that constitutes murder most foul. I feel that it is not always the blatant spree-killer or bomber. Would you consider the pernicious and insidious crime of the cult? One I recall was masterminded by Marshall Applewhite (aka Do) and Terri Nettles (aka Ti). Their ideology was a potent mix of theology, psychology and UFOs. The followers were promised a never-ending life after they were picked up by aliens. The cult attracted young people who were indoctrinated, and had to drop certain behaviours, such as comfort, love and sex. They became androgynous, many allowing castrations to be performed. Many stayed in the sect for decades. Then in 1985 something pivotal happened, Ti Cult leader: died. This was totally Marshall against their ideology Applewhite of everlasting life. Do started to unravel and began to the read The Book of Hemlock – a guide to suicide. He now advocated that his followers shed their bodies, because they were merely vehicles. I believe that Heaven’s Gate was the first cyber-sect. The members all gave exit interviews prior to their demise. They all dressed in black and, following written instructions, took a cocktail of drugs that included a lethal dose of barbiturates. Following a tip-off from a former cult member, the police raided the San
www.truecrimelibrary.com
Diego apartments and found 39 dead. How harrowing this must have been for the loved ones left behind, with only decomposed bodies and “exit” interview tapes. I cannot even imagine. Lesley Driscoll, Seaford If you’re interested in cults, try our competition (opposite). And watch for a full account of the “Heaven’s Gate” case in our very next issue!
Chapman And The Ripper Thank you for Brian Marriner’s feature on the curious killing career of George Chapman/Severin Klosowski (“Serial Killer Who Police Thought Was Jack The Ripper,” MMF113). Clearly for the top policeman involved in the Ripper investigation there were compelling reasons to believe in him as Jack – his surgical knowledge and appearance perhaps among them. However, Chapman’s method of poisoning his victims is surely, as your writer suggests, a strong counterCruel argument to him having been poisoner: Jack. Chapman murdered George his mistresses but the Ripper Chapman killed vulnerable women who were more than likely strangers to him. The Ripper had an intimate knowledge of the Whitechapel area which Chapman, as a recent immigrant, surely would not have had. It’s also hard to imagine that Chapman would have been able to speak English without a heavy Polish accent – a point that would surely have been picked up by those who were said to have witnessed the Ripper speaking to his victims. Jonathan Brown, Workington
Train Ticket Saved Killer Did Nicholas Lotz (“Lover’s Suicide Turns To Murder,” MMF113) black out, so that he didn’t know what he was doing when he killed his lover Corrie Russel, or did he commit cold-blooded murder? You asked readers that question at the end of your case report, and it set me thinking. Obviously there was no conclusive proof but, like the authorities, I am swayed by the specialists’ advice that patients usually come out of a state of dissociation more gradually than Lotz would have had to. Despite all that, I also think the right decision was made to commute his sentence from death to life. The evidence of his train ticket could not be ignored and, as you said, it saved him from the scaffold. Like several other stories in this issue, the Lotz case kept me on the edge of my seat. It’s remarkable how you manage to fill every issue of MMF with in-depth reports that I can’t resist reading! Mrs. J. Vickery, Hornchurch Opinion Murder Most Foul 15
FROM LiveRpOOL TO MeLBOURNe...
A KILLING CAREER W H
E FELT honoured to have such a distinguished guest, the proprietor of the Railway Hotel at Rainhill, near Liverpool, told the new arrival. Apologetically, he said he feared his humble establishment could not compare with the accommodation to which Mr. Williams was accustomed. It was 1890, and Mr. Albert Williams had introduced himself as a government Inspector of Regiments. But he had not come to Rainhill on official business, he said. He was seeking a second home near Liverpool for his old friend Baron Brook – nothing too grand, just a modest, small house that was comfortable. Other old acquaintances, however, could have told the hotel’s proprietor that his new guest was not Albert 16 Murder Most Foul From Liverpool To Melbourne...A Killing Career Without Parallel
Williams. He was Frederick Deeming, the son of a Merseyside tinsmith, and he had a criminal record. As a young man he had decided never to do a stroke of work he didn’t have to, preferring instead to live on his wits. He had subsequently travelled the world, enriching himself at others’ expense in ways that would interest numerous police forces, and returning to Merseyside from time to time flamboyantly dressed and with a new woman on each occasion. Along the way he had also acquired a wife who bore him four children before he Left, Frederick Deeming and his wife Maria. Her arrival on Merseyside with their four children upset Frederick’s plans
Maria Deeming. Her husband had deserted her and their four children in Australia
Deeming said. And Emily Mather decided that the good-looking Inspector of Regiments was just what she wanted. Her mother was similarly impressed. She found Mr. Williams so charming and personable that she allowed him to move into the villa without any payment of rent in advance. He soon developed a relationship with little Emily, who was just five feet tall. As the courtship progressed, he remarked that his friends kept telling him he needed a wife, and the baron wanted to be his best man when he married.
B Frederick Deeming. Photograph taken by Western Australian Police in March 1892
ut then there was a hitch: the unforeseen arrival of Deeming’s wife and four children. Maria Deeming had somehow scraped together the money to pay her passage back to England, intent on rejoining her husband, and she had traced him through his Merseyside relatives. Emily was understandably curious. Who, she wanted to know, was this woman with four children who had moved in with Mr. Williams? Deeming
WITHOUT PARALLEL deserted her in Australia, leaving her to support herself by singing on the streets of Sydney. He was a tall and handsome 48 when he arrived in Rainhill, where the Railway Hotel’s proprietor took an interest in his quest for a house for the baron. Dinham Villa might be suitable, he said. It was owned by a Mrs. Dove Mather, who had told him she was seeking a good tenant to whom she could let it fully furnished. Deeming called on her, described the baron’s requirements, and was shown round the villa by her 25-year-old daughter Emily. It was just what Baron Brook wanted, Right, Emily Mather photographed in a Liverpool studio prior to her marriage to Deeming
teasingly told her the visitors were his wife and children, before he said the woman was his sister whose husband had just taken up a well-paid appointment abroad. Before she could join him she had to attend to some family financial affairs, so she had come to stay briefly with her brother so that he could advise her. It was only a matter of time, Deeming realised, before Maria’s true identity was discovered. He did some quick thinking. Then he sought Mrs. Mather’s permission to make a minor improvement to Dinham Villa, to ensure it fulfilled Baron Brook’s requirements. The badly-laid floorboards downstairs were uneven, Deeming said, their gaps an invitation to rising damp. So if Mrs. Mather had no objection, at his 17
own expense he would have them taken up, the ground beneath cemented, and the boards properly relaid to form a suitably flat surface for the valuable carpets the baron would bring with him. Mrs. Mather agreed to this, and
MASTER
www.truecrimelibrary.com
Deeming promptly bought a pickaxe and a large amount of cement. His sister and her children had left, he told Emily, so now that he had the place to himself he would make the improvement straight away. He did the cementing himself, got a carpenter to relay the floorboards, and when the job was done he threw a small party at Dinham Villa. There was dancing on the now-smooth
DECEMBER
DETECTIVE WORLD’S BEST TRUE CRIME STORIES EVERY MONTH
FROM HOT MOM TO COLDBLOODED KILLER… TO DEATH ROW
Peggy’s Story Of Murder
“21 DEAD” At The Hands Of Germany’s Lunchtime Poisoner
Soho Killing Of The “Lion Tamer” 18
On sale at W.H. Smith and all good newsagents from November 21st or see the offer on page 50
MIDDLESBROUGH’S TATTOOED TAXI-DRIVER MYSTERY
HANGINGS BY THE HUNDRED
Why Pierrepoint Went To Germany…
SCOTLAND’S CLASSIC CASES
Greenock Murder That Led To Hangman’s Dismissal
Death Of A Nazi Dad
floors, and he used the occasion to announce his engagement to Emily. Shortly afterwards he told her and her mother that his work now required him to go to Australia for an indefinite period, so the marriage must take place without delay. Unfortunately, he added, Baron Brook had changed his mind about acquiring a second home near Liverpool, and at Deeming’s suggestion Mrs. Mather agreed to his leaving the villa and staying with her until the wedding. This move, he pointed out, would enable her to resume seeking a tenant. The wedding took place at Beverley, in Yorkshire – a Merseyside ceremony, Deeming realised, might attract the attention of someone who knew he already had a wife, albeit one now laid to rest under cement. He also told Emily and her mother that the baron was unable to be best man at such short notice, due to a prior commitment.
I
n December 1891 the newly-weds arrived in Australia and rented a small house in Andrew Street, Windsor, a suburb of Melbourne. At the same time Frederick Deeming ceased to be Albert Williams. To his new neighbours he was Mr. Droven, and shortly after Christmas they became aware of an offensive smell. It must be the drains, they said, and one of them mentioned the stench to the police. It seemed to come from the Drovens’ house which was now empty, the neighbour said, explaining that the Drovens had rented the place recently and had since left. Nobody had seen Mrs. Droven since the couple had a violent row on Christmas Eve, when she was seen to have a black eye and bruises. The police were suspicious, inquiries were made, and they learned that Droven had moved on January 5th, returning the keys to the landlord. The drains could not be responsible for the smell, the landlord insisted – they had been checked only a few
“Cement?” Mrs. Mather’s tear-filled eyes widened. She had first met her son-in-law Albert Williams, she said, when he made inquiries about a house she owned, Dinham Villa. She had let him rent the house on the understanding that a titled friend of his would become the tenant, and while he was there he’d had the floorboards removed downstairs, and the ground beneath covered with cement. This was just after a visit from his sister and her four children, who had left suddenly without saying goodbye to Emily. The reporters didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together. The police were called, the floorboards at Dinham Villa were removed, and the cement was broken up to reveal the bodies of a middle-aged woman and four children. The throats of the woman and three of the children had been cut, and the other child had been strangled. Who were they – and who was “Albert Williams?” The authorities had never heard of the bogus “Inspector of Regiments,” and the fancy uniform
-
weeks ago. Officers collected the keys, went to the house, and let themselves in.The stench met them in the hall, and it was strongest in the living-room. One of the flagstones forming the hearth had been removed, they noticed, and it had been replaced with cement. Tools were fetched, and the police broke up the cement to reveal the body of a small young woman clad in her nightdress. Six blows had shattered her skull, her throat had been cut, and the neighbours identified the remains as those of Mrs. Droven.
Katie Rounsevell was to have been Deeming’s next wife – but it was her suspicions that alerted the police to his whereabouts
T
he discovery of the bodies and the authorities’ efforts to learn their identity made headlines. Someone must know who they were, said the police, and they were right. Frederick Deeming’s relatives knew he had been
Frederick Deeming’s list of aliases included Albert Williams, Mr. Droven, Baron Swanston, “Mad Fred,” Lord Dunn, Mr. Ward and dozens more
Searching the house, detectives found a Bible with “Mather, Rainhill, Lancashire” inscribed on the flyleaf. Following this clue, at the docks they learned that a man matching Droven’s description had recently made inquiries about a passage to England. He had then sailed for Sydney, where detectives learned that he had again inquired about a passage to England and had then left the city. The name he had given was Baron Swanston. “Wanted” notices were sent to police stations throughout New South Wales and Victoria, and in Melbourne the newspapers asked their London correspondents to follow up the Rainhill clue found in the Bible. It didn’t take them long to find Mrs. Mather. Her daughter Emily, she said, had recently married and gone to Australia with her husband. And yes, said Mrs. Mather, she had given Emily a Bible which she had taken with her. “Don’t say something’s happened to her!” she cried. She was told that the Bible had been found in a Melbourne house, where the remains of a young woman had been discovered buried beneath the living-room hearth, under recently-laid cement.
“I wish to say a few words in my defence,” Deeming began before talking for an hour, and insulting the jury as he did so...
he had once appeared in at Rainhill turned out to have been hired from a theatrical costumier.
living at Rainhill – it was they who had directed his abandoned wife there. Now, they feared, they had unwittingly sent Maria and her children to their deaths. Deeming’s brothers were not surprised to learn that “Mad Fred,” as they called him, had been posing 19
as an Inspector of Regiments. He was always up to something – in Antwerp, it later transpired, he had passed himself off as “Lord Dunn,” until a spot of bother over embezzlement caused him to leave the city in a hurry. That was shortly before he appointed himself an Inspector of Regiments. The woman disinterred at Dinham Villa was photographed. Her face was sufficiently well-preserved to show her much as she appeared when alive, and “Mad Fred’s” relatives’ worst fears were confirmed when newspapers published the picture. Two of his brothers went to the police. “That woman found under the house in Rainhill,” they said, “we think she’s our brother Fred’s wife.” The Melbourne Police were cabled that “Droven” was Frederick Deeming, now also wanted for the murder of his wife and four children. As a fraudster he had conned jewellers in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg by posing as a diamond mine’s manager; in Klerksdorp he was remembered for a gold mine swindle that netted him about £3,000, and in England he had posed as a Yorkshire millionaire, defrauding numerous victims. Some 10 years earlier he had lived in Adelaide under the name of Ward, the Australian authorities were informed, but the cable from England was not much help to them. The only thing they could be sure of was that Frederick Deeming would not be using his real name. They had learned that during his voyage to Australia with Emily, he had made a claim against the ship’s owners for compensation for the loss of her valuable necklace. In view of what was now known of his criminal record, it seemed doubtful that the necklace ever existed. But there was no doubt about Deeming’s existence, and he had to be found before he killed again. By the time the police caught up with him in March 1892, he was in
Deeming’s death mask 20
Deeming’s life had been a series of cruel escapades and his “confession” prior to his execution would provide another twist
Western Australia planning to marry Katie Rounsevell whom he had met on his voyage from Melbourne to Sydney. He had told her he was on his way to take up an appointment at a well-known gold mine, and she had agreed to join him there later. But when she saw newspaper reports of the hunt for Emily’s killer and read the description of the Englishman known as Droven, she became suspicious and went to the police. It was her tip-off that led to Deeming’s capture in the gold-mining town of Southern Cross. “Baron Swanston?” asked the detective sent to bring him in. “I’m Swanston. What of it?” Deeming replied. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Emily Williams at Windsor.” “I’ve never been to Windsor,” Deeming protested. “If you’re innocent you’ll be released,” the detective told him. “Many an innocent man is hanged these days,” Deeming replied. The detective was accompanied by a man named Hirschfeldt who had been a passenger on the ship that took Deeming and Emily to Australia. As
soon as he saw Deeming, the man nodded. “That’s ‘Bert,’ as his wife called him,” he said. “They were on the passenger-list as Mr. and Mrs. A.O. Williams.”
N
ews of the arrest was cabled to England, and a senior Scotland Yard detective left for Australia. If Deeming cheated justice in Melbourne, he would be extradited to face trial in Britain for Maria’s murder. While he was being taken back to Melbourne he had a fit, either real or feigned, kicking and writhing for almost an hour. He also wrote to Katie Rounsevell, claiming he was innocent, saying his feelings for her were unchanged, and asking her to sell her jewellery to help pay for his defence. His capture had made headlines in all the papers, and crowds gathered at each railway station along his route to Albany, where he and his escorts boarded a ship bound for Adelaide. There spectators thronged the station platform when Deeming and his captors boarded a train for Melbourne. One elderly woman was so fascinated by the spectacle of the alleged multiple
murderer in custody that she walked along the platform several times to stare at him through his compartment’s window. This so enraged him that he threw whisky in her face. He shaved off his moustache before he reached Melbourne, but witnesses nevertheless picked him out as “Droven” on an identity parade at Melbourne Jail. When his trial began at the end of April 1892, the court heard that he had used at least 15 aliases in Melbourne alone. His defence was insanity, his counsel Mr. Arthur Deakin, a future premier of Australia, suggesting that Deeming had epileptic fits. Both his parents had been in a lunatic asylum, Deeming told the jury, but a prison doctor testified: “I have frequently conversed with him and I cannot believe anything he says.” Deeming had told him that his dead mother’s spirit appeared before him every morning. During one of these appearances while he was in Sydney his mother’s spirit had told him to kill all his women friends. The doctor said he had asked Deeming if he had any standards of right and wrong, and Deeming had replied that he thought it quite justifiable for a needy person to steal from somebody who could afford to be robbed. He also thought that murder was permissible in certain circumstances; he had gone out with a revolver, he said, looking for and intending to kill the woman who had given him venereal disease. He thought all such women should be exterminated. Victoria’s inspector-general of lunatic asylums told the court he had examined Deeming five times, and had found no sign of insanity. He had concluded that Deeming was simply an instinctive criminal. None of the doctors called by the defence would go so far as to say that Deeming was mad, and towards the end of the proceedings the judge allowed him to make a speech. “I wish to say a few words in my defence,” Deeming began. Then for nearly an hour he displayed the gift of the gab that had made him a successful con man. “I have not had a fair trial,” he complained. “It is not the law that is trying me, but the press. The case was prejudiced even before my arrival by
Illustration of Deeming’s corpse on view for inquest jury at Melbourne Gaol
Accused at the time of his arrest, Deeming certainly had the wardrobe (left) and the attitude to women and children that would have befitted Jack the Ripper...
the exhibition of photographs in shop windows, and it was by means of these that I was identified.” He realised that his conviction was almost a foregone conclusion, and he made no attempt to ingratiate himself with the jury. “If I could believe that I committed the murder,” he said, “I would plead guilty rather than submit to the gaze of the people in this court – the ugliest race of people I have ever
seen. I am as innocent as a man can be. That is my comfort.” With that offensive speech, whatever sympathy he might have attracted went out of the window. After an hour’s retirement the jury returned with a verdict of guilty, adding a rider that Deeming was not insane. After he was sentenced to death he thanked the judge and smiled at the jury. Finally, on May 23rd, 1892, Frederick Deeming smoked a cigar as he walked to the scaffold, where the two hangmen awaiting him wore false beards to avoid recognition. When the sheriff asked Deeming if he had anything to say, he replied, “May the Lord receive my spirit.” Then the cap was placed over his head and the lever was pulled. In the condemned cell he had claimed he was Jack the Ripper, but this was obvious nonsense because he was in prison at the time of the Ripper’s Whitechapel murders. Nevertheless, for a while Frederick Deeming’s death mask was displayed in Scotland Yard’s Black Museum as that of Jack the Ripper. The enduring enigma of his murders is their lack of motive. He gained nothing from them, so was he indeed mad? All that can be said for certain is that, utterly devoid of conscience, he was an out-and-out psychopath. But that condition is a character defect, not mental deficiency. To this day, his killings remain inexplicable...unless you accept his incredible story that his mother’s spirit ordered them... 21
SERIAL KILLER USED HIS GARDEN AS A CREMATORIUM Herb Baumeister was wealthy, a devoted father and family man. But he had a secret sex life that included killing gay men and burning their bodies a few yards from his kitchen window...
T
HIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD Erich Baumeister’s garden was like paradise for the other kids in the neighbourhood. There were 18 acres of grass and rough woodland, open space and dense bushes, and since none of it was very well cared for, there was no fear of offending Mr. and Mrs. Baumeister. You couldn’t offend the Baumeisters by tramping about in their garden anyway. Their huge mansion on the million-dollar-plus estate at Westfield, Indianapolis, was a tip. All the rubbish
Case recalled by
John Sanders
in the state seemed to be piled up there. Erich’s pal and neighbour Kevin Dennison dived behind a clump of bushes into a clearing. “Look what I’ve found!” he shouted, emerging from the other side of the bushes. What he’d found was a human skull, complete with teeth. Laughing, the boys held it aloft like a trophy. “Let’s see if we can scare the hell out of Emily,” said Erich. Emily was his younger sister. They hoisted the skull on a pole and marched back into the mansion. Emily screamed. Erich’s mother Mrs. Julie Baumeister, arriving to see what the noise was all about, looked startled. “Where did you get that, Erich?” she asked. She followed him back to the clearing and Kevin pointed to the ground. Julie stared. There were brown sticks that looked curiously like bones scattered about and she didn’t feel inclined to investigate. “Leave it where you found it,” she said with a shudder. “Come inside now, I’ve got some doughnuts.” When Herbert Baumeister returned home from work that evening Julie mentioned the skull to him. Herb shrugged. “I know all about
Herbert Baumeister. He was described as unique, but goofy and weird were the preferred words of others. Right, his wife Julie whom he met at university
it,” he said. “It used to belong to the skeleton my dad used when he was at medical school. The raccoons must have dragged it out of the garage.” That was all right then, Julie thought. She had never seen her father-in-law, the late Dr. Baumeister, with a skeleton in his surgery, but as she was to say
22 Murder Most Foul Serial Killer Used His Garden As A Crematorium
much later, “It wasn’t as if I had nothing else to think about.” She didn’t entirely erase the discovery from her mind, however. Several days later she went back to the spot where the boys found the skull. She stared hard at the ground. The brown sticks she thought might have been bones
The Indianapolis skyline
were all gone. Was she in the right place? She was certain of it but there were no bones. The woodland animals must have taken them away, she thought. Especially the raccoons. They were nesting in the roof of the mansion, leaving their pee everywhere, gradually causing the roof to collapse and raising a terrible stink. A year later Julie Baumeister, co-director of the Save-A-Lot chain of stores founded by her enterprising husband, had good reason to recall the skull found in her garden that December day in 1994. Without knowing it at the time, she had peeled off the first layer of her bi-sexual husband’s extraordinary secret double life of crime.
E
veryone who knew Herb Baumeister, including Julie, thought him strange. Unique, is how she euphemistically described him; goofy and weird were
the preferred words of others. He didn’t want intercourse on his wedding night, settling for the company of a magazine, and after that he had sex with his wife no more than half a dozen times. She testified that never once throughout their married life did she see him naked. A friend said: “He was a perfectionist in his work and a meticulous dresser, always neat and conscious of how he looked. He wanted other people to notice him and be impressed. What others thought about him mattered enormously to him.” Linked to this narcissism was a strong streak of arrogance, a belief that he could outsmart everyone. If something was white Herb would argue interminably that it was black, convincing himself that everyone else was colour-blind. Despite his 6 ft 2 ins, Herb didn’t excel at sports during his schooldays and fellow-pupils remember the highlights of his education as playing with dead animals and urinating on a teacher’s desk. As a teenager he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, for which he never received adequate treatment. All in all he was something of a misfit, but his parents were affluent, upper middle-class Americans and he went by rite of passage to Indiana University to study anatomy. There he met Julie, who
Above, Larry Eyler. He admitted drugging, handcufing and disembowelling up to 23 men and scattering their remains across two states
was to become a teacher. Herb didn’t graduate but he married Julie in 1971, and they became parents of Erich and two daughters. Everyone noticed that Herb was an excellent father. He spent lavishly on his children, building them playhouses and buying huge quantities of presents. As he worked his way up to a senior executive position in the bureau of motor vehicles he seemed to give every spare moment to his kids. When he left the bureau in 1985 he got a job at a local thrift store, and that gave him an idea to open one of his own. Herb’s thrift store, and those that followed it to become the Save-A-Lot chain, owned by his parent company Thrift Management, took in second-hand clothes, unwanted junk and everyone’s discarded odds and ends – a sort of cross between a car boot sale and an Oxfam shop. It was linked to a children’s charity, so that donors knew they were doing some good to others, with a percentage of the profits going to
The Baumeister mansion, situated in the Indianapolis suburb of Westield 23
the owners. Business quickly took off. For several years the stores brought Herb and Julie an annual salary of $225,000. Almost as quickly they crashed. When the Baumeisters filed for bankruptcy in 1996 they owed more than a million dollars. There were several reasons for the catastrophe. They had made bad leasing deals with their freeholders, and business was slowed often to a standstill by Herb’s insistence on everything
of the world was concerned, Herb was successful, a married man with three kids he adored, and that made him part of the American dream. The Baumeisters had moved to the prosperous suburb of Westfield, where everyone earned a six-figure salary. Their 15-room mansion was called Fox Hollow Farm and it had a barn and outbuildings in its 18 acres of ground. Soon, though, their business problems became entangled with their marriage. Herb left home “permanently” twice, and both filed for divorce, although they never went through with it. For Herb, his financial problem and his marital problem were dwarfed by the enormity of his third problem – one that he could never talk to anyone about.
I
n the early 1990s tension bordering on panic began to filter through the Indianapolis gay community. In the 20 months to August 1995, 10 gay men vanished without trace. They were all well known to each other and to everyone else on the circuit, but the police weren’t
Above, Private Detective Virgil Vandagriff. Right, one of the killer’s Save-A-Lot stores, a sort of cross between a car boot sale and an Oxfam shop
being perfect. But much of the plunge was attributed to Herb taking his eye off the ball. Employees noticed that he spent an increasing amount of time socialising with the young men on the staff, and he was frequently away from the office and unobtainable. “Sometimes when he arrived at the store in the morning you could smell alcohol on his breath,” said one former member of his staff. “He’d come in looking like a bum. His clothes just didn’t look as neat as they usually did.” Another said: “He was staying out all night and wasn’t getting home to wash and clean up properly. And he started wearing a baseball cap all day to cover his messed up hair.” Some guessed he was at least bi-sexual, probably more gay than bi. But they didn’t talk. As far as the rest 24
very interested. That was because the midwest city was staunchly Republican – the local newspapers were owned by a relative of Dan (“family values”) Quayle – and stories about gay men were regarded as circulation poison. Anyone who is gay in that sort of wider community usually keeps quiet about it. So while all the members talked to each other about the disappearances, that was all they did. There was also a curious regulation that fuelled this mindless attitude in the police department. When a relative reported a missing person, the rule was that the case was filed for a month before any police action was taken.
Panic began to ilter through the gay community. In 20 months,10 gay men had vanished without trace The mystery of the vanishing gay men was crystallised when a local man, Tony Harris, began to look into the case of one of them, his good friend Roger Alan Goodlet. A small man who had learning difficulties, Goodlet had been arrested 18 times on offences ranging from public indecency to prostitution. In August 1994, Tony Harris went to a gay bar and took a look around. He noticed a customer who he thought he had seen with Goodlet just before his friend disappeared, and that started him wondering. Could this man have had something to do with his friend’s disappearance? He decided to introduce himself. The stranger said his name was Brian – Tony thought he said “Brian Smart.” He was impeccably dressed, with leathery skin from too much tanning, and fairly good-looking. “Let’s go back to my place,” Brian said. It was an invitation to a homosexual encounter. Tony got into Brian’s Buick. Brian’s place was about 40 minutes’ drive away, and because it was night Tony lost his sense of direction. He knew they were going north, and that they pulled off the motorway somewhere after 121st Street. The area was affluent, the homes big and spread out well apart from each other.
He thought he remembered that the name of Brian’s house had the word “Farm” in it. The house – it was more of a mansion – was approached by a circular drive and was big and impressive. Brian claimed he was looking after it for the owners for a week, but Tony didn’t believe him. The place certainly didn’t look as if it was lived in – it was full of junk and needed a good clean. He remembered there were a number of mannequins scattered about in odd places, that there were cobwebs everywhere and there was an indoor pool. The two men smoked some pot and swam naked in the pool. While they were in the water Brian told Tony that he liked
A missing-person poster for Roger Goodlet and his headstone. He was known to be one of Baumeister’s victims
to half choke someone when he was having sex – it gave him a great rush. He showed Tony how he did it with the pool hose, gently caressing his neck, and gradually applying pressure. “You have to be careful,” Brian warned. “You really have to know how to play it. You can die doing this. There have been accidents.” He fetched a leather belt and showed Tony how to pinch two veins in his neck. Tony tried it out on Brian, pulling the belt tightly while Brian masturbated. Drugged, drunk and exhausted, the two men spent the night in the gloomy mansion. In the morning Brian went off for an hour, giving Tony a chance
to explore his Dickensian surroundings. When Brian returned he seemed reluctant to drive his overnight guest back to Indianapolis, but finally, unable to find an excuse not to do so, he acceded. When they parted Tony had no doubt at all that he had just spent the night with the man who had killed his friend Roger Goodlet, and that he was fortunate to be still alive. At the same time private eye Virgil Vandagriff had been briefed to investigate the disappearance of two other gay men, Alan Broussard, last seen in June 1994 in a gay club, and Jeff Jones, last seen in July 1993. Vandagriff had entered a grim and sleazy world. Broussard had been a gay stripper and a prostitute and was HIV positive, and both he and Jones were heavy drinkers.
N
o one knew better than the private eye that the gay world of Indianapolis had an appalling history. In the 1980s police arrested a fearsome character, Larry Eyler, who admitted drugging, handcuffing and disembowelling up to 23 men and scattering their remains across two states. Eyler died of AIDS on Death Row, but the legend lived on, for both Broussard and Jones frequented the gay haunts that Eyler had used. Informants began to trickle into the private eye’s office. One told Vandagriff
that the night Goodlet disappeared he was seen getting into a light-blue car with Ohio licence plates. Then Vandagriff met Tony Harris, who told him all about his nocturnal encounter with the mysterious “Brian Smart.” Despite the fuzz in his mind created by a night of alcohol, drugs and sex, Tony remembered that there were several cars parked on the driveway of the mansion with the word “Farm” in its name, and one of them had Ohio licence plates. “There were acres of ground and there were horses,” he told the private eye. “And there was loads of junk and cobwebs. There was an indoor swimming pool. The owner, and he must be this guy Brian, must have had pots of money.” Tony wasn’t so communicative about the sexual side of the encounter, but he did explain “Brian Smart’s” strangulation technique. “He pinches the jugular vein. You get a rush of blood to the head. Then he uses a leather belt, and after that a silk tie. He wants me to do it first on him, then he reciprocates.” Vandagriff had no doubt from this description how “Brian Smart” killed his victims, and that the mansion was his killing ground. Tony was the lucky one. The unlucky ones were Goodlet, Broussard, Jones – and how many more were there? The problem was, Tony Harris couldn’t begin to find his way back to the mysterious mansion. They hunted through the gay bars for the elusive Brian and photographed the likely area from the air to see if Tony could identify the “Farm.” All was in vain. They called in a psychic named Wanda who could conjure up some pretty awful things in her inward eye, but couldn’t pinpoint the place. Their best informant turned out to be a policewoman. Detective Mary Wilson, in charge of missing-persons, was fascinated by people who vanished and she had a file full of them. There were 12 unsolved cases and they had all been strangled, probably with a ligature. Some had marks on their wrists that showed they had been handcuffed. All were gay. Wilson was convinced there had to be a connection, and that the connection had to be a serial killer. One autumn day in 1994, Wilson drove Tony Harris along the route he thought he had taken with Brian. They reached the town of Carmel, which Tony remembered was on the route, but beyond that he didn’t know where to go. For hours Wilson drove him around, looking at big houses in their own grounds, but the mansion with “Farm” in its name seemed to have vanished, along with its probable owner. Not quite vanished, though. On August 29th, 1995, Tony was in the Varsity gay club in Indianapolis when the door swung open and in walked the elusive Brian. With remarkable presence of mind Tony whispered to a friend: “Go out 25
The Varsity club in Indianapolis where the net on the elusive “Brian Smart” began to close, and another missing-person poster, this one for Alan Broussard, a gay stripper and prostitute
into the car park and wait there until you see him come out. Then take down the number of his car.” While his friend hurriedly left the club, Tony held Brian in conversation, introducing him to the other gay men present. He even persuaded Brian to show them his strangulation trick. After half an hour Brian left on his own, and Tony’s friend duly took down his car number. Next day the police checked it out. They found it was registered to one
Herb was known to be a “hard-core liar. He would never admit to something he’d done even if he was sitting in the electric chair” Herbert Baumeister living at Fox Hollow Farm, Westfield. At first glance this information made no sense. Baumeister lived like a millionaire. He had a huge property, a chain of stores, a wife, kids in private schools, a lakeside holiday home, made donations to charities…Something was wrong with this scenario – guys like him were a million miles away from the gay scene. But what things seem isn’t always what they are, Detective Mary Wilson discovered, as she trawled through the records. Herb Baumeister had a criminal record dating back a long while ago for an insurance fraud. A police officer involved in that case remembered that Herb was “a 26
hard-core liar. He would never admit to something he’d done, even if he was sitting in the electric chair.” The record led Wilson to the Save-A-Lot stores and its parent company, Thrift Management, all run by Herb Baumeister and his wife Julie and all falling over the precipice into bankruptcy. She discovered that his marriage was a mess and when she talked covertly to people who knew him she discovered he was weird. With Tony Harris sitting alongside her, Detective Wilson drove out to Fox Hollow Farm. Tony had no doubts about the place now. “This is it,” he said tensely as they reached the outskirts of the property. Detective Wilson decided not to go any farther for the moment. She still wanted more evidence. The next move was to confront Herb at one of his thrift stores. Accompanied by a detective colleague, she walked
up to him and said disarmingly, “Mr. Baumeister, we are on a missingpersons investigation. I wonder if we could ask you some questions?” Herb’s response was incredibly composed. “I’d like to help you,” he said, “but I’m very busy at the moment. Can you come back later?” So they went back later. This time Mary Wilson said: “Some men have gone missing from gay bars over the last few years and we believe you may know something about it.” “I’ve never been in a gay bar in my life,” Herb snapped. “I’m not gay, so I’ve no idea why you have come to me.” But, Ms.Wilson insisted, they knew he had been in gay bars. They had witnesses. They also knew his car had been parked outside a gay bar. At that, he came clean. The problem, he said, was that his wife and family knew nothing about that part of his life, and he wanted it kept like that. That couldn’t happen, of course. Ms.Wilson’s next call was to Julie Baumeister. “I’m working on cases of adult men who have gone missing,” she said. “I’d like to search your home.” Julie, who knew nothing about her husband’s secret sex life, was aghast. She metaphorically slammed the door in the detective’s face, but that couldn’t stop the story spilling out into the open, and it’s difficult to imagine what husband and wife had to say to each other in the ensuing evenings when Herb was home. What is known is that Herb called his lawyer, John Egloff, in despair in November 1995. He was distraught at the impending bankruptcy of his firm. Bizarrely, before ringing off, he said: “There’s a guy stalking me. I woke up one night and he was trying to strangle me. I hope he doesn’t come after Julie and the kids.” Was his mind coming apart because of the police investigation into his private life, or was he, characteristically, in complete denial of the reality of his situation? Egloff was unsure, but he alerted the sheriff. When the sheriff arrived at Fox Hollow Farm, Julie was furious and Herb called Egloff again. “You shouldn’t have called the law!” he yelled down the phone. “Don’t call anyone else,” and slammed down the receiver. There was no arrest, because so far there was insufficient evidence. Outwardly at least Julie remained very supportive to her husband. When she learned about Tony Harris she insisted he must be an evil man trying to set Herb up. Overwrought by her failing
marriage and their impending financial disaster, she really did have other things on her mind than missing men. Finally, on June 25th, 1996, Julie called her lawyer and said she was now willing to let them search the property. A couple of years ago, she added, a human skull had been found in the grounds of Fox Hollow. As the search party got busy, she pointed out places where she thought she had seen bones. A policeman bent down and picked up a charred object. “This looks like a piece of human bone,” he said softly.
wired $125 to him, and later that week, after another request, another $280. Brad told the police about the contact and they advised that he should tell Herb to call them next time he got in touch. But Herb never called his brother again. Around 11 p.m. on July 3rd he parked his Buick near the lakeside beach at Sarnia, Ontario, walked to the water’s edge and shot himself with a single bullet from his .357 Magnum revolver. Near the body Canadian Police found a three-page suicide note, lamenting the failure of his 25-year marriage and the financial disaster that engulfed Thrift Management and the Save-A-Lot stores.
T
here were dozens, scores, hundreds of burnt fragments, some finger size, some tiny, littering the ground all over the place interspersed with human teeth. A larger piece was an upper arm bone; two smaller ones had been someone’s lower arm. Some had been chewed by forest animals, but none appeared to have been buried. The bodies had been lain on the ground and burned on a giant bonfire – within a couple of dozen yards of the mansion’s patio, overlooked by its kitchen. Stephen Nawrocki, a scientist whose job it was to attempt to make something of all the fragments, said: “It looked like a mass disaster scene.” He and his assistants put orange flags at the places where the larger finds were made and soon the ground was covered with orange flags. The problem they had was that because the bodies were not buried, wind, rain and animals had scattered them over a huge area. Nawrocki continually revised his estimate as he found more body parts. When he had seven left thumbs his figure was seven bodies. Later he gave it as nine. A police officer working with him thought there were 12 bodies, although in the end only four of them were positively identified. In all there were more than 5,000 pieces of bone. An important find was two hyoid bones. This is the tiny bone above the voice box that is frequently fractured when someone is strangled to death. Sexual strangulation was of course Herb’s pièce de résistance, as graphically described by Tony Harris. Another important find was a pair of rusted handcuffs. These were hinged cuffs, which do not allow the wearer to move his hands. They were a type that could be bought by the public in the early 1990s. Investigators left the scientists to comb the grounds and turned their attention to the house. A police officer said: “It was stuffed full of things you wouldn’t believe. There were clothes and furniture and toys and tools. The garage was so full of crap you could hardly move. Certain rooms were full of boxes just lying around. The cupboards were stuffed full. You’d open a door and things would just come falling out.” They were looking for evidence,
Above, Baumeister. In his suicide note, he blamed his failing marriage and business as his reason for killing himself. He did not confess to the murders. Right, an aerial view of the mansion
things like videos and torture instruments, but they found nothing. Nor did they find anything in Herb’s town house, where he would go to live when he fell out with his wife. Apart from the fact that the bones were found on his property, there was no other evidence to link Herb with them. Indeed, until they were all DNA tested, no one even knew whose bones they were. Asked about all the junk, Julie said: “One day Herb was driving home and three or four cars hit him. His car was
Near the body Canadian Police found a suicide note. It seemed he was determined to remain a perfectionist to the very end... a total write-off. But he wanted to keep it – he never got rid of anything. He would keep used toilet paper. He just never cleaned up.” While the investigation proceeded, Herb had gone off to his lakeside holiday apartment, 100 miles away. Some time towards the end of June he packed his bags, locked up the apartment and drove north over the Canadian border. On the way he called his brother Brad asking for money. Brad
He was determined to remain the perfectionist to the end. “My whole life is falling apart,” he wrote. “But I have put only one bullet in the chamber, in case some unsuspecting child finds the gun and accidentally harms himself.” He ended the note saying he was going to eat a peanut butter sandwich, which he always used to do in the evenings when he was a lad, and then “go to sleep.” He made no mention of the bones at Fox Hollow Farm, or of his homosexual double life, or of the men police were now certain he had murdered. Months later the bones were DNA tested and found to be the remains of many of the missing men in Detective Mary Wilson’s file. They included the remains of Roger Goodlet, the man Tony Harris had set out to find when he was nearly murdered himself in the process. But that wasn’t the end of the story. During the 1980s and early 1990s detectives in Ohio had been investigating the deaths of nine gay white men found strangled and dumped in shallow streams in Indiana and Ohio. The killer had been seen leaving gay bars with his victims, and when all the evidence was brought together police could say almost for certain that that man was Herb Baumeister. “Since 1980 he killed about one a year,” said a senior officer. “First he left their bodies along the sides of the roads. After that he dumped them in streams. Then he found a more convenient way to dispose of his victims. He moved to Fox Hollow Farm.” 27
POISONER WHO LIKED FUNERALS Widowed Christa Lehmann had got away with murder three times – but when she tried to kill her best friend’s mother, her luck finally ran out...
C
HRISTA LEHMANN and Anni Hamann shared everything – even, it was whispered in the German city of Worms, their boyfriends. The two young women had a great deal in common. They were fond of male company – and they were widows. Anni Hamann’s husband, an army sergeant, had been killed during the Second World War. She now lived with her 10-year-old daughter Uschi at the home of her mother Eva Ruh. Christa Lehmann, a buxom and flirtatious blonde, had two young children. Her husband Karl had died suddenly on September 7th, 1952, his death certificate attributing his demise to “a stomach haemorrhage, due to chronic alcoholism.” During her marriage, the reputation of Christa Lehmann had been far from spotless. She had neglected her children and husband to frequent dance halls, beer halls and cinemas. It was believed by many, including Frau Ruh, Anni’s mother, that Karl Lehmann’s drinking problem had been caused by Christa’s misconduct, and after his death there were no brakes at all on her behaviour. It was then that she became extremely friendly with Anni Hamann, the two becoming inseparable. Uschi was constantly left alone with her grandmother, while Anni stayed out until dawn with Christa. By 1954, Eva Ruh was bitterly resenting her daughter’s relationship with Christa. Uschi saw very little of her mother, and word had reached Eva’s ears that Anni had been seen in disreputable places, that she was drinking heavily and that her conduct was hardly that of a respectable war widow and mother. In February 1954 Eva had a discussion with her son Michael about his sister’s friendship with the undesirable Christa. “Why not tell her not to see this Lehmann woman any more?” Michael suggested. “It’s not that easy,” said his mother. “After all, Anni’s over thirty. I can’t treat her as a child. I can’t choose her friends for her.” “All right,” said Michael. “I’ll talk to her. I’ll talk to Christa Lehmann, too.”
28 Murder Most Foul Poisoner Who Liked Funerals
He spoke to his sister that evening. She listened to him quietly. Then she answered, as her mother had predicted: “Christa’s my best friend. We’ve never quarrelled since we’ve known each other. Besides, I’m old enough to know what I’m doing. Christa says you might as well have some fun before you get old, and I agree with her.” “It’s none of my business,” said Michael. “And frankly, if you insist on behaving like a tramp, I don’t care. I
Case report by Ashley Phillips have my own family to look after. I’m asking you to stop seeing Christa for our mother’s sake. She’s an old woman, and she’s very worried about you.” Anni said vaguely that she’d give the matter some thought, and Michael left the house and went over to see Christa Lehmann. She was well into a bottle of schnapps when he arrived, and didn’t even hear him out. When she had gathered the reason for his visit, she exploded: “Why don’t you mind your own business? Attend to your own affairs! You think because Anni and I are widows that we should be recluses? We like fun! We’re going to have it! You go home and tell that to your meddling mother!” Convinced that he was getting nowhere in his
effort to break up the relationship between his sister and Christa, Michael gave up and went home. On the evening of February 12th, Anni and Christa went to a cinema. The film was called My Life For Love and it was the last movie they would ever see together. Christa spoke of Michael’s visit, and she spoke angrily. “Don’t blame my brother,” said Anni. “It’s really my mother’s fault. She just doesn’t want us to be together. But forget it. We needn’t pay any attention to her.” “Well,” said Christa, “I’m not really annoyed with her. I’ll send her a little present tomorrow to prove it.” The little present arrived in the late afternoon. Anni wasn’t home when Christa delivered it in person to Eva. “It’s a box of chocolates,” said Christa. “I bought it especially for you. It was the best in the shop.” Frau Ruh thanked her politely. She didn’t particularly like chocolates. After Christa had left, she didn’t bother to open the box. She decided to give it to
Left, Christa Lehmann (arrowed) at her friend’s funeral. She was grief-stricken but being carefully watched by Detective Albert Dahmen on her right. Background image: a cemetery in Worms, Germany
Uschi when she came in from play. Anni Hamann came home first. She saw the box of chocolates and casually opened it. She picked up a magazine and began to read. Her dog Heine sat at her feet. Anni took a chocolate from the
box and bit into it. It was liqueur-filled. She swallowed half of the chocolate before she noticed its intensely bitter taste and she dropped the other half to the floor. Heine snapped it up. In less than a minute, the dog’s eyes suddenly glazed. His legs stiffened, he dropped on the rug, and in another moment he was dead. Anni Hamann screamed. “I’m going blind!” she cried. “Get a doctor!” Her mother rushed to the phone as Anni writhed in agony on the sofa. The doctor arrived some 15 minutes later, but by that time Anni was dead. He examined her and he looked at Heine, “It seems obvious,” he said, “that both your daughter and the dog have been poisoned. You’d better call the police.” Shortly afterwards, officers led by the city’s Chief of Detectives Albert Dahmen arrived at the house. The doctor had administered a sedative to Eva Ruh and she was now much calmer. “It must have been the chocolate,” she said. “Anni hadn’t eaten anything else since she came home.” “That’s probably what happened,” agreed Dahmen. “She ate a chocolate and dropped a piece on the floor. The dog ate it. Now, where did these chocolates come from?” “Christa Lehmann, my daughter’s best friend.”
Christa Lehmann in court. She claimed that she had been surrounded by nasty people, with the exception of her friend Anni
“Do you think that Christa Lehmann would want to poison your daughter?” Eva Ruh took a deep breath. “No,” she said at last. “I dislike Christa intensely. I think she’s no good – and I think her companionship with my daughter was evil. But why should she wish to kill Anni?” After sending the box of chocolates to the police laboratory for analysis, Dahmen went to Christa Lehmann’s flat. Without preamble he informed her of the death of her friend, wanting to observe her reaction. It was one of utter hysteria. Christa stared at him for a moment, then cried out wildly. She threw herself on a couch in a paroxysm of grief. After a while, she sat up, tears streaming down her cheeks. “But how did it happen? How did she die?” she sobbed. “We aren’t sure – yet,” said Dahmen. “But we think she ate some poisoned chocolates. I understand you gave her mother some this afternoon.” Christa seemed horror-stricken. “I knew there was something the matter with those chocolates,” she said. “It’s a wonder I’m alive myself.” She went on to tell Dahmen that she had bought some of the chocolates for herself at the same time she had purchased the box for Frau Ruh. “I ate some last night and I was very ill. I had to call Hans – that’s my son – in the middle of the night, to get me some water.” “Where are the rest of the chocolates?” “There aren’t any. I only bought a small box for myself. I ate them all last night.” “And you bought a box for the Ruhs at the time? And even after you were ill, you gave them to them today?” “But I didn’t realise that it was the chocolates until just now. I thought some fish I ate last night had made me sick. I wouldn’t want to make Anni sick. I loved that girl very dearly.” “Where did you buy the chocolates?” After Christa told him where she had purchased them, Dahmen made his way to the shop. He was convinced that Christa’s grief for Anni was genuine. Perhaps, after all, her death was an accident. The chocolates might have been contaminated. At the shop Dahmen learned that it had been selling the liqueur-filled chocolates for about two years, and there had been no complaint in all that time. There were about three dozen boxes in stock, and he impounded them and sent them to the laboratory for analysis. Meanwhile, a vet had examined the dead dog. “He was poisoned, all right,” he told Dahmen. “But I’m puzzled as to 29
the nature of the poison. It’s something I’ve never come across before. Perhaps you should get a pathologist to examine the dog’s organs.” “We may do that,” Dahmen grunted. “We’ll wait until we get a post-mortem report on the girl.” The report from the police laboratory was along the same lines as that from the vet. A third of the chocolates which remained in the box from which Anni Hamann had eaten contained a deadly poison, but the experts couldn’t say what it was. They were still working on it. Late that afternoon, they found the answer. The poison, they informed Dahmen, was an organophosphate parathion, known as E605. It was very cheap to buy, even though it was one of the deadliest poisons in the world. An insecticide, it was used chiefly by farmers and vintners. More than 25 gallons of the poisonous spray could be made from a small phial of E605 – and the cost was negligible. The doctors who performed the post-mortem on Anni Hamann concurred with the laboratory experts. Anni had indeed been poisoned, less than a single cubic centimetre of E605 killing her. Dahmen sat at his desk and fingered the reports before him. Logical suspicion pointed directly at Christa Lehmann, but her hysterical grief had certainly seemed genuine. Moreover, all the evidence indicated that the two girls had been the closest of friends, although Dahmen learned quickly that neither had a very good reputation. They lived without much thought for tomorrow, neglecting their children and often being seen out with men. It was the manageress of the tobacco shop where Christa bought her cigarettes who told Dahmen about the dachshund, “I always like Christa,” she said. “If she didn’t make a good housekeeper, it was largely her husband’s fault. He was never able to hold a decent job. But I never got over what she did to that poor dog.” “What was that?” asked Dahmen. “Well, about two years ago, her dog died. Next time she was in here, I told her that I was sorry to hear about it. She told me not to waste my pity, for she had poisoned the dog herself.” “But why? Why should she want to poison her dog?” “She told me that it cost a great deal to feed it, and the time was approaching when she’d have to renew the dog’s licence – and she didn’t want to spend the money.” Dahmen thought this over. Anni and her dog had died of poison – and so had Christa’s dachshund. However, further questioning throughout the area in which Christa lived produced no evidence that she had ever quarrelled with Anni. On the contrary, everyone who knew the girls spoke of their intense friendship. On the day before Anni’s funeral, 30
A view of Worms today. In the 1950s Christa Lehmann, a married woman, shocked her acquaintances in the German city by frequenting dance halls, beer halls and cinemas and neglecting her children
Dahmen received a telephone call from one of the undertaker’s employees. The man asked for an appointment, saying he had some significant information. Dahmen went at once to see him. “I don’t know whether you’ll think that this is important,” the man began, “but it seems so to me. I was standing in the room when Christa Lehmann came in to view the body of her friend. She didn’t see me, I was standing behind a pillar.” Dahmen nodded. “You mean she was unemotional?” “No. Just the opposite. She wept, leaned over and stroked the dead girl’s hands.” “Well?” Dahmen was impatient. “Then she spoke. She said, ‘To you
“It wasn’t so much what she said. It was her intonation. She accented the word ‘you’ very heavily. It was as if she was saying, ‘Perhaps this should have happened to someone else, but not to you’” this should not have happened.’” Dahmen was unimpressed. “What about it?” “It wasn’t so much what she said. It was her intonation. She accented the word ‘you’ very heavily. It was as if she was saying, ‘Perhaps this should have happened to someone else, but not to you.’” Dahmen was no longer curt with the undertaker’s assistant. “You are an extremely observant young man,” the detective told him. “I’m grateful that you called me.”
When Dahmen left the undertaker’s his mind was already working along new lines. Perhaps Christa Lehmann had actually intended the death of someone else and Anni had died instead? That would account for her convincing hysteria when she heard of the tragedy. It would also account for her words at the underaker’s. He decided that the time had come to bring Christa in for a thorough interrogation. After further thought, however, he resolved to wait another day. He wanted to observe her behaviour at the cemetery. Anni Hamann was laid to rest in an elaborate coffin. It had been paid for by Christa Lehmann, though to do this she’d had to borrow money.
O
n the day of the funeral, Christa stood behind Frau Ruh and Michael. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Dahmen also attended, and three of his men waited outside the cemetery with orders to arrest Christa Lehmann when she emerged. She gave a low moan as the expensive coffin was lowered into the grave. She wept bitterly as it was covered with earth. As soon as the ceremony was over, she turned quickly and left the cemetery alone. She was still crying as she prepared to board a passing tram. Before she reached the second step, one of Dahmen’s men intercepted her, “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I have orders to take you to the police station.” Christa Lehmann’s eyes were suddenly dry as she turned and glared at the detective. “What for? How dare you arrest me?” “You’d better not make a scene. There’s a police car waiting just behind us.” Michael Ruh saw her enter the police car. Any suspicions he may have had that Christa was implicated in his sister’s death suddenly crystallised. He
ran across the street and pounded on the closed window of the car. “You damned murderess!” he cried. The car drove off, Christa keeping her head averted from the crowd which had gathered. In Dahmen’s office she remained defiant. “You have no right to arrest me!” she stormed. “Why have you brought me here? You have no real evidence!” That was true enough. Dahmen’s men had searched her home while she was at the funeral. They had found no E605. They had, however, found young Hans, her son, playing in the back garden. He had been asked a few questions, and his reply to one of them had interested the detectives. “You’re right, in a way,” Dahmen told Christa. “On the other hand, we have a very good reason to be suspicious of you. First, do you recall telling me that you yourself ate some of those chocolates on the day before Anni died?” “That’s right. They made me ill.” “So you said. You also said that you awoke your son and asked him to bring you some water. One of my men has just spoken to him. He says that you didn’t call him that night and that you’ve never awakened him in all his life to bring you a glass of water.” Christa Lehmann regarded Dahmen with contempt. “What sort of man,” she asked, “would turn a child against her mother?” “We’ve done nothing of the sort. Hans hasn’t any idea why he was asked those questions.” “All right. But what possible reason could I have had for killing my best friend?” “None,” said Dahmen quietly. “Then how can you accuse me?” “Because,” said Dahmen, “there was a mistake, I think you were trying to kill someone else. Frau Ruh, for instance. You didn’t like her. She was trying to break up the friendship between you and her daughter. I think you tried to kill her, but Anni ate the chocolates instead.” “All you have to do,” Christa snapped, “is to prove it.” And she refused to say anything else. Dahmen sent her to a cell and had her held on suspicion of murder. Then he asked his men to investigate the circumstances of Karl Lehmann’s death – and that of anyone else in the family who had died in recent years. The reports were on his desk when he came to work the following morning. Karl Lehmann, it appeared, had been forbidden by his doctor to touch alcohol. He had been on a strict milk diet when he died. On January 7th, 1953, Christa’s mother-in-law Kathe Lehmann had died suddenly of what appeared to be a brain haemorrhage, accompanied by convulsions. Eight months after that, Valentin Lehmann, Kathe’s husband, also died. Although he was 75 he was a husky man, and on October 9th he had drunk a glass
Christa Lehmann, pictured after the death of her husband Karl, with her two children and their dogs. She described her husband as “no good”
of milk at Christa’s home and set out on a five-mile bike ride, as was his morning custom. A mile from the house, however, he had fallen from his cycle, dead. The death certificate said this was due to heart failure, the family physician declaring that the old man had over-exerted himself. Dahmen considered the reports. He recalled that Christa’s dachshund had been poisoned shortly before Karl
“My theory is that you first poisoned your dachshund to test the efficacy of E605. When the dog died immediately, you tried it on human beings” Lehmann died. He picked up his phone and requested official permission for the exhumation of the bodies of Karl, Kathe and Valentin Lehmann. Then he sent for Christa. “We’re exhuming the bodies of your husband and his parents,” he told her. She was silent for a long moment, and when she finally spoke, Dahmen thought he detected a quiver in her voice. “Why?” she asked. “Why disturb the dead? Have you no sense of
decency?” “Had you?” Dahmen asked quietly. “Had you, when you poisoned them?” Christa went pale. Fear shadowed her eyes. “Why do you say I poisoned them?” “Didn’t you?” asked Dahmen. “My theory is that you first poisoned your dachshund to test the efficacy of E605. When the dog died immediately, you tried it on human beings. Your husband first, then your father-in-law and your mother-in-law. Then you tried it on Frau Ruh. Unfortunately, it killed Anni instead.” “You’re a liar!” raged Christa Lehmann. “One of us is,” agreed Dahmen. “After the exhumation, we shall know which one.” Christa was returned to her cell, and the next day Dahmen obtained permission to exhume the three bodies. This was being done in the late afternoon, when a gaoler told him that Christa wanted to talk to him. When she was escorted into his office, her eyes had lost their fire. “Have you dug up those bodies yet?” she asked in a dull monotone. “It’s being done now.” She nodded. “All right. I’m willing to tell you the truth. I did kill Anni, though God knows I didn’t mean to. I wanted to kill her mother. I had a reason to kill 31
her.” Dahmen lifted his eyebrows slightly. “Merely because she disapproved of your seeing Anni so often?” “More than that. She once called me a prostitute.” Dahmen’s eyebrows rose. “You consider that a capital offence?” “She was an old woman. She couldn’t have lived much longer anyway.” “How did you poison those chocolates you sent to her?” “With a hypodermic needle. I injected the E605 and smoothed the chocolate over the hole with a hot knife.” “What about your husband and your in-laws?” “Yes, E605. It’s very effective.” “I believe you,” said Dahmen. “But why?” “Karl was no good. He was always drunk and he never worked. Besides, he objected to my going out with other men.” “And Valentin and Kathe Lehmann? Weren’t they any good, either?” “They didn’t like me going out with other men. They always criticised me. They talked about me to the neighbours. They really weren’t very nice people.” “So you fed them poisoned chocolates?” “No. I poisoned her soup and his milk. It was milk that killed Karl, too.” “And the dog? You poisoned him as well?” “That’s right. I wanted to see if the stuff would work.” “You’ll live to regret that it did,” said Dahmen, calling the gaoler to return her to her cell.
T
he bodies of the Lehmanns were taken from the cemetery and delivered to the pathologists. Later, it was announced that they had all been poisoned by E605, and Christa Lehmann was indicted on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter. The murder charges entailed the matter of the three Lehmanns. Since the death of Anni Hamann had been an accident and not premeditated it was considered manslaughter, and Christa’s trial was set for September 1954. In May that year she sent a letter from the prison, addressed to her father. In it, she begged him to say that
32
Above, Christa weeps in court. Left, she’s escorted away in tears
he had committed the murders, thus setting her free. Whether or not he would have done so is a matter for conjecture, for he didn’t get the letter. It was intercepted by the police. On May 20th Christa dispatched a second letter, also to her father. It read: “I would like you to bring me my green dress. Sew an E605 phial into the seam of the skirt.” This note was also intercepted by Dahmen. Did Christa want to kill herself, he wondered, or one of her gaolers?
“I don’t suppose I should have done it. But, with the exception of Anni, they were all nasty people. Besides, I love to go to funerals” By this time the German newspapers were full of stories of the cold-blooded murderess who had killed her husband, her in-laws and her best friend. And E605 suddenly became the best-known poison on the market, with tragic results. During the next three months there was a wave of deaths in West Germany. There were more than 20 murders and 77 suicides, all caused by E605. It seemed that as soon as the public learned that a cheap poison could be bought in almost any store, it appeared too good a bargain to be missed. No fewer than four housewives included E605 as an added ingredient in their layer cakes. It didn’t improve their confectionery, but it made them widows in short order, which was what they
wanted. And just before Christa was brought to trial, a 16-year-old youth locked himself in a soundproof booth in a Wuerburg music shop and mixed himself a drink of E605 and lemon soda. He died, presumably happily, to the strains of Richard Wagner. The police, in desperation, asked the newspapers to refrain from printing the name of the poison which was causing so much havoc. On one single day, eight people committed suicide by drinking E605. Three teenage girls, who decided that their boyfriends needed a lesson, fed them a bottle of wine heavily loaded with insecticide, and the police estimated the number of E605 deaths since that of Anni Hamann at more than 400. On September 21st, 1954, Christa Lehmann, pleading not guilty, was brought to trial. She was now 31 but looked more like a woman of 45. Her blonde hair had faded, her figure had lost its charm and her clear blue eyes were shadowed. Her lawyer summoned a psychiatrist to testify as to her sanity. He didn’t argue that she was insane from a legal point of view, but he insisted that she was a “moral primitive.” That, like Christa’s appearance, didn’t particularly impress the court, and she was eventually found guilty on every count. The maximum penalty for murder in West Germany was a prison sentence for life – and that is what the judge gave Christa Lehmann, imposing three life sentences, all to run concurrently. Before Christa was taken to the women’s prison, she made an odd and wistful remark to reporters, “Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose I should have done it. But, with the exception of Anni, they were all nasty people.” She stopped for a moment and sighed. “Besides,” she added, “I love to go to funerals.”
GI F T S H O P
truecrimelibrar y e of the year to think about unique Doesn’t time fly? Already it’s the tim . gifts for the crime devotee in your life look any further, because True The good news is – there’s no need to surprise and delight any crime buff. Crime Library has a range of gifts to yourself too?) (And while you’re here, why not treat h special offers! PS: Look inside now! It’s packed wit
NEW!
BOOKAZINEBUNDLES! SAVE £££s ON THE ULTIMATE CRIME BUFF’S GIFT! It’s the perfect present for anyone who likes to read true crime stories. It’s a bumper pack of three of True Crime Library’s story-packed “bookazines” – the size of a magazine, but with as much content as a book. Your bumper bundle consists of... British Murders That Shocked The World In these 20 intriguing case reports you’ll discover psychopaths, serial killers and killer couples; a deadly doctor and a nefarious nurse; sex-killers, cop-killers and paedophiles; conspiracy theories and missing bodies; lonewolves and a Black Panther… They may have been Britain’s worst – but these killers would have become infamous no matter where in the world they chose to ply their grisly trade... Gangland Confidential Discover the bullet-riddled careers of gangland’s most notorious figures – laid bare! Here, fresh from True Crime magazine’s renowned Gangland Confidential series, is a collection of the most fascinating – and chilling – tales from the days of the mob. In these tales of power, corruption and extreme violence, you’ll meet the mobsters who once ran America! America’s Most Evil II In this second special edition we’ve packed 22 chilling cases exploring the seemingly endless inventive ways found by some of the world’s most depraved individuals to inflict pain, horror and death. You’ll learn what made them tick – what their victims went through – and how they were brought to justice.
And here’s the best part: you get ALL THREE – a £29.97 value – for just £18.99. Simply tick the box on the form at the back of this pull-out catalogue to secure your gift copy – and maybe one for yourself, too – of the BIGGEST BARGAIN in true crime reading today!
BOOKAZINES UNBUNDLED! Yes! You CAN buy these fantastic story collections individually as well, at the original shop price of £9.99 each. Just tick here the one(s) you want:
n Gangland Confidential
n British MurdersThat Shocked The World
www.truecrimelibrary.com
n America’s Most Evil 2
DIGITAL GIFTS
BOOKS
Want to send a subscription to one of our magazines to a friend with a digital device? Easy – all four of our true crime magazines are available on digital subscription, to read on your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. Easy-to-use apps are available for both Apple and Android devices.To order, go to www. pocketmags.com and search on True Detective, True Crime, Master …then select your subscription and tick “Give as Detective, Murder Most Foul…then gift” in the shopping cart. Result: one happy gift recipient!
n £9.99
n £19.99
n £12.99
n £14.99
n £19.99
n £7.99
n £12.99
n £6.99
n £12.99
n £19.99
n £7.99
n £9.99
n £19.99
n £7.99
n £7.99
n £7.99
n £12.99
n £7.99
n £7.99
n £7.99
n £19.99
n £12.99
n £19.99
n £12.99
Binders keepers
High-quality binders to hold a yearʼs issues of True Detective. Keep your issues of True Detective magazine together, in order and in good condition – and turn them into a permanent work of reference... a storehouse of stories you can re-read and enjoy, time and again. Specially designed in an elegant red leather-effect with the True Detective logo gold-blocked on the front and spine, each one holds a yearʼs worth of issues. £9.00 each – or buy 3 and get 1 FREE!
The write stuff FOUL DEEDS & – stylish pens SUSPICIOUS DEATHS Stylish... elegant...the mark of a true sophisticate... our True Crime Library pens write beautifully and they come emblazoned with the True Crime Library logo. Order yours today! £1.99 each or buy 3 and get 1 FREE!
Want to know about crime in YOUR area? FOUL DEEDS has got it covered. Select from these titles: n Bath ................................................. £12.99 n Black Country .......................................£12.99 n Brighton .............................................. £9.99 n Dublin .................................................£10.99 n Durham ...............................................£12.99 n Hull .......................................................£9.99 n Leeds .....................................................£9.99 n Reading ............................................ £12.99 n South Yorkshire .....................................£12.99 n Staffordshire .........................................£10.99
Remember, you can always browse and order from our full range of magazines, books
GIFT SUBS
n £7.99
n £7.99
A subscription to one of True Crime Library’s renowned non-fiction crime magazines is the ultimate gift for anyone who’s interested in crime and loves a good story. And each time a new issue arrives, they’ll think of YOU! Why give a gift subscription? l it brings a year’s supply of the very best crime reports, fascinating stories and astonishing photos l no missed issues l delivered direct to your door – before they’re available in shops l BIG SAVINGS on the shop price of a year’s issues! What’s more, when you order a gift subscription we’ll send your gift recipient a special greetings card to tell them it’s from you! You can also use the form on the back of this pull-out catalogue to order a subscription to any of our magazines for yourself, too...
NEW!
n £25
n £19.99
! L A … E S S D I M 9 T ’ 9 N £ O D THE Never miss out on an issue • Save £££s
It’s a simple proposition: get every monthly issue of True Detective, Master Detective and True Crime, plus every quarterly issue of Murder Most Foul, for a whole year! That’s a total of 40 issues – with a total shop price of £144 – for just £99! And they’re delivered direct to the address you specify, with no issues missed – guaranteed. Whether it’s a gift for a friend or relation, or even for yourself, there’s no better way to gorge on the world’s finest true crime stories n £7.99
n £8.99
Just tick “The £99 Deal” on the form overleaf and fill in the recipient’s details. We’ll do the rest…
MURDER & CRIME
BACK ISSUE BUNDLES?
Want to know about crime in YOUR area? MURDER & CRIME has got it covered. Select from these titles: n Boston ................................................ £9.99 n Cheshire ................................................£9.99 n Lake District............................................£9.99 n Lancashire..............................................£9.99 n Lincoln ...................................................£9.99 n Norwich .............................................. £9.99 n Pendle ...................................................£9.99 n Rotherham .............................................£9.99 n Stirling ...................................................£9.99 n Whitechapel ...........................................£9.99
Back issues of our monthlies, quarterlies and Specials are also available. • Save up to £16 off the full cost of buying a year’s worth of issues – see the back page for details
and other True Crime Library products at www.truecrimelibrary.com
BUY ONE T-SHIRT – GET ONE FREE! Support your favourite true crime magazine – by wearing it on your chest! Choose one for yourself - and another for a friend! £8.99 each (buy one, get one FREE)
T-SHIRTS (enter number and size you want of each design)
n True Detective n Master Detective n True Crime n Murder Most Foul
Please circle size(s): S M L XL XXL £8.99 each. SPECIAL OFFER: Don’t forget to select a second, FREE, T-shirt for each one you buy!
Name _________________________________________________ Email _________________________________________________ Address _______________________________________________
Complete this form and return the entire four-page Gift Shop FOUL DEEDS & SUSPICIOUS DEATHS BOOKS
_______________________________________________________
Select and tick your books inside and enter total here BOOKS TOTAL £____.____
Country _______________________ Postcode _______________
MURDER & CRIME BOOKS
Phone _________________________________________________
Select and tick your books inside and enter total here BOOKS TOTAL £____.____
SUBSCRIPTIONS
If it’s for you, simply tick the subscription(s) you want below. If it’s a gift, tick the subscription(s) then complete the recipient’s details. n True Detective (12 monthly issues @ £31.50 – saving 25% on the shop price) n Master Detective (12 monthly issues @ £31.50 – saving 25% on the shop price ) n True Crime (12 monthly issues @ £31.50 – saving 25% on the shop price) n Murder Most Foul (4 quarterly issues @ £13.50 – saving 25% on the shop price) Recipient name _________________________________________ Email _________________________________________________
BACK ISSUE BUNDLES
n True Detective 2018 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n Master Detective 2018 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n True Crime 2018 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n Murder Most Foul 2018 (4 issues).................£13.50
n Please send me a complete list of available back issues (you can view the complete selection at www.truecrimelibrary.com) (2019 bundles available from November 20th)
Address _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Country _______________________ Postcode _______________ Phone _________________________________________________ Your gift message (which we’ll send to your recipient in a special greetings card):_________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTIONS TOTAL £____.____ BOOKAZINE BUNDLE
Select your bookazine bundle(s) and enter total here BOOKAZINE BUNDLE TOTAL £____.____
n True Detective 2019 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n Master Detective 2019 (12 issues)..............£31.50 n True Crime 2019 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n Murder Most Foul 2019 (4 issues).................£13.50
THE £99 DEAL!
n If it’s for you, simply tick the box. If it’s a gift, tick the box then complete the recipient’s details. Recipient name _________________________________________ Email _________________________________________________ Address _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Country _______________________ Postcode _______________ THE £99 DEAL! TOTAL £____.____ T-SHIRTS
BOOKAZINES
Select and tick your T-shirts above and enter total here T-SHIRTS TOTAL £____.____
Select and tick your bookazines inside and enter total here BOOKAZINES TOTAL £____.____
PAYMENT
BOOKS
Select and tick your books inside and enter total here BOOKS TOTAL £____.____
n Cheque/postal order payable to Forum Press for £ ____.____ OR n Charge my n Visa or n Maestro card £ ____.____
BINDERS
Card no. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
n Please send me ___ binders(s) @ £9.00 each SPECIAL OFFER: Order 3 binders for the special price of £20.25 BINDERS TOTAL £____.____
Expiry date ___/___ Security code ___ Switch/Solo issue no. ___
PENS
n Please send me ___ pen(s) @ £1.99 each SPECIAL OFFER: Buy 3 pens and get 1 FREE! PENS TOTAL £____.____
NOW SEND COMPLETED FORM TO
True Crime Library, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ, UK l If you prefer, you can phone your credit or debit card order to 020 8778 0514.
You can browse and buy all True Crime Library products at www.truecrimelibrary.com
All prices shown include UK postage and packing • For US DOLLAR and EURO prices and postage rates outside the UK, see our website www.truecrimelibrary.com or call us on +44 (0)20 8778 0514 • Alternatively, write CALL ME on your completed form and we’ll contact you with the exact amounts.
www.truecrimelibrary.com
MMF114
YOUR DETAILS
UNSOLVED:
Sex, Wild Parties And Two Mystery Murders On the surface Nellie’s death looked to be a straightforward suicide – until a female undertaker saw her laid out in the mortuary...
T
HE WOMAN undertaker looked at the suicide spread out on the marble slab of the funeral parlour and wrinkled her nose disdainfully. “I’ll tell you something,” she said.
Case recalled by Colvin Leonard “No woman ever dressed herself like that!” The pathologist who accompanied the corpse to the undertaker’s looked up, puzzled. “Like what?” he asked. “Well, she’s got her stockings and all her underwear on inside out,” replied the woman undertaker. “No normal person does that. If you ask me, someone killed her when she was naked then dressed her in a hurry. And from the look of her clothes I’d say it was a man.” All of which was intriguing because the body of 22-year-old Nellie Ballinger had been brought to the mortuary as a simple case of suicide. If her clothes were put on after she was dead the last thing she could have done was to have killed herself. As the woman undertaker peeled off Nellie’s clothes there were more startling disclosures in the shape of bruises on her neck and shoulders. And since she was supposed to have shot herself, why wasn’t there a bullet hole through her dress? Not only did it appear that Nellie had been murdered but her body must have been moved after she
Below, party animal Nellie Ballinger pictured just before her death. Above, the house where her body was found. The circled window indicates the room
was killed. For only a small amount of congealed blood was found on the floor near the corpse. And then the undertaker’s assistant, preparing the body for burial, reported that she was able to draw from the corpse a much smaller quantity of blood than is found in the average body. Murder as an option came more sharply into focus when inquiries were made into Nellie’s background. She had been frequenting sex parties at the home of Robert Smith, a 64-year-old bachelor and retired clothing salesman. Smith had become something of a legend in Greensboro, North Carolina, for his wild orgies, a magnet for all the party people for miles around.
Indeed, there was much more to Nellie than first met the investigators’ eyes. She was a married woman who was filing for divorce after only two years of wedlock on grounds of cruelty and desertion. However, her husband Ernest Ballinger was swiftly eliminated from the investigation. He was a US Navy officer on board the USS Texas. At the time his wife was murdered he was with his ship in the Panama Canal.
N
ellie, a judge’s daughter, was found dead at her mother’s home in Greensboro on Tuesday evening, January 13th, 1929. She had died two days earlier – on Sunday night. Her body was discovered by the eight-year-old daughter of a next-door neighbour, sent by her mother to “make a borrowing.” Nellie had been shot through the left breast, just below the heart. A .32-calibre Smith and Wesson revolver was lying beside the body. Just one chamber had been fired. There were several empty drink
Sex, Wild Parties And Two Mystery Murders Murder Most Foul 37
bottles, empty glasses and empty cigarette packs scattered around the room, leading police to surmise initially that there might have been a party before the shooting. That was a wrong assumption since she was almost certainly killed somewhere else. Her killer, or killers, then transported her body to her mother’s home. Nellie’s mother was away at the time, so they let themselves in using the dead woman’s key. Police searching the house found Nellie’s diary. Every page had been torn out up to and including January 13th, the day her body was found. There wasn’t a written word in the book, in fact. Piecing together her movements in her last hours, police learned that during the afternoon she had been out
true
DECEMBER
crime Detective Monthly
with two friends, Mrs. Thelma Guyer and her husband Blaine. She got out of the Guyers’ car at the King Cotton Hotel, Greensboro, around teatime, where they said goodbye. Nellie had been staying at the King Cotton for several days. She checked out that evening, shortly after leaving the Guyers, and outside she was met by Max Chandgie, a boyfriend, who drove her home. Later that evening Chandgie went to see another woman friend and then caught a train to Philadelphia. Chandgie was asked to return to Greensboro at once for questioning. When he arrived he spoke in detail about what had happened on Sunday evening. “When she came out of the King Cotton Hotel she asked me to drive her to her mom’s place on Pearson Street,”
AS SCORSESE’S THE IRISHMAN HITS NETFLIX…
WHO OFFED HOFFA?
www.truecrimelibrary.com
Did Nicole Order Her Husband’s Death? 50 YEARS ON…
MURDER WHILE THE BAND PLAYED ON The Rolling Stones And The Altamont Stabbing
“I’ll Always Regret Killing Julie”
BLACKPOOL SEX BEAST WAS RELEASED TO KILL “Like A Time Bomb Waiting To Go Off”
Was This Jack the Ripper’s Final Victim? BY A DETECTIVE WHO WAS THERE…
CON-MAN BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT
REPRIEVED! HOW THEY DODGED THE HANGMAN
What 13 Years In Prison For Murder Can Do To A Man On sale at W.H. Smith and all good newsagents from November 28th or see the offer on page 50 38
“When she came out of the King Cotton Hotel she asked me to drive her to her mom’s place in Pearson Street. On the way there I told her I couldn’t stay long because I had an engagement with another woman. That made Nellie angry” he said. “On the way there I told her I couldn’t stay long because I had an engagement with another woman at 9 o’clock that evening. “That made Nellie angry. We had a bit of a tiff while we were standing in the porch of her mom’s house. We talked, or rather argued, for some time. She didn’t want me to see this other woman and pleaded with me to stay the night with her. When I said I couldn’t, she said she was planning to make a trip, possibly to New York, and would probably leave that night.” As he turned to walk down the drive to his car Nellie called out, “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight? You should, because this may be the last time you ever see me.” He went back and gave her a kiss, leaving her at the front door. Detectives checked out his “engagement” that night with the other woman, and found that everything Chandgie had said was true. So did Nellie, angry perhaps that her lover was going to see another woman, shoot herself? Or was the female
inquiries about renting a room in a Greensboro boarding-house only hours before she died.
N
ellie’s movements seemed more covert, more shadowy, the deeper investigators probed. She had spent several days at the King Cotton Hotel, and now she was planning to rent a room in a local boarding-house. But her mother’s home in Pearson Street, where she habitually lived, was only a few minutes’ bus ride from both places. When the inquest opened the police still half-clung to the suicide theory. A The house in which sex party organiser detective told the jury that Robert Smith was Nellie could have shot shot – the room herself, especially as they had is indicated by an since learned that she was X. His killer fired ambidextrous. through the open “She could have held the window gun in her left hand and thrust it through the neck of her dress to the left breast, undertaker right when she suggested where she was fatally wounded,” he that someone had murdered Nellie said. That would have explained the Ballinger? lack of a bullet hole in her dress, but it The undertaker was definitely wrong, didn’t explain why she went to all that according to Thelma Guyer, who had trouble. spent that Sunday afternoon with her She could of course have shot herself friend. “Nellie habitually wore her using her right hand to hold the gun knickers inside out,” she said. “She once while thrusting it down her dress. told me that she liked to feel the silky Curiously, though, the witness didn’t side close to her skin.” suggest that. “That’s rubbish,” replied Mrs. Local folk, loving a mystery, chipped Kathleen Jones, Nellie’s mother. “About in with their views. A woman who three weeks ago she left my house to identified herself only as “Mrs. B” catch a bus three blocks away but came wrote to the local newspaper: back almost at once. She wanted to “The idea that Nellie committed change her clothes – she had discovered suicide is absurd. I knew her well that she had put her knickers on inside and she was not the type. Neither out.” remorse nor introspectiveness was in Detectives also discovered that Nellie her make-up; in fact she was serenely was planning on making a trip the self-satisfied. I think it was an accident, evening that she was murdered – but probably caused by drinking.” not as far as New York. She had made More interesting was another letter The King Cotton Hotel – Nellie had been staying there for several days
to the local paper signed by “Night Hawk.” He was delighted to pass on to readers all the details of Nellie’s death: “She was murdered in cold blood by a prominent Greensboro businessman, killed at a hunting lodge about 25 miles from the city on Sunday night, about 2 a.m., but was not carried to her home until Monday night. “They had had a row about money. She wanted him to finance a trip she was going to make. He refused to give her the money and she threatened to expose him. So he shot her, put another woman’s clothes on her and had two men sham the suicide. “I am withholding my name, or else I might be found in the same fix as Nellie was. But if the police ever arrest the right man I will testify against him.” If this version was somewhere near the truth, who could Nellie be threatening to expose? A possible startling answer surfaced nine months
“She was murdered in cold blood by a prominent Greensboro businessman, killed at a hunting lodge about 25 miles from the city on Sunday night, about 2 a.m., but was not carried to her home until Monday night” later when, on September 5th, 1929, Robert Smith – the sex party organiser – was found dead in a pool of blood in a ground-floor room of his old home where he lived alone. He had been shot through the back of the head with a powerful shotgun by someone who had fired from the outside of the house through an open window. Investigators could find no grudge issues in Smith’s life, no acquaintances that wanted him out of the way, and none of his valuables had been taken from the house. But shortly before his death he had a visitor. An ashtray was found full of cigarette stubs that were still fresh. Smith didn’t smoke cigarettes. He only smoked cigars – in fact, one was still in his mouth when he was killed. Rumours began to fly around Greensboro. Nellie Ballinger, it was said, was murdered in Robert Smith’s house before her body was taken back to her mother’s home, and Smith was murdered because he “knew too much” about Nellie’s death. It’s unlikely that we shall ever know the truth now, because the police couldn’t solve either of the two whodunits when they happened back in 1929, when the evidence was still fresh. The verdict at both inquests was “Murder by person or persons unknown.” 39
What Did Mary Do Wit Head, Arms And Legs? report, when Lillian and Mary arrived in Pomona, the relative wasn’t home. Lillian’s thoughts were strictly devoted to her black cat, so she instructed Mary to go home immediately so that Pretty wouldn’t be lonely. “Don’t worry about me,” Lillian reportedly told Mary. “If my brother doesn’t show up, I’ll take a taxi home.” Even though she hadn’t heard from Lillian for two weeks, Mary didn’t fret or worry particularly. Neither did the neighbours at the mobile home park – although in light of subsequent events they all had good cause to worry.
L
I
T WAS TIME to go. On April 5th, 1992, Mary Louise Asbury, 59, helped her companion, 79-year-old Lillian Shepherd, down the steps of their single-width mobile home and into the car. Mary pulled out of the caravan home park on Third Avenue. Even in the dim light, “Pretty,” Lillian’s black cat, was visibly nervous, and meowing in anticipation of another one of Lillian’s too familiar trips. According to Mary, the last words Lillian said were, “Take good care of Pretty.” It wasn’t unusual for Lillian, who hobbled with a cane following abdominal surgery, to go off on treks without telling anyone. Joe Moss, a neighbour who would have coffee and doughnuts with the two ladies every Wednesday morning, said he never knew when he showed up for their weekly date whether he was going to be informed by Mary that “Miss Lillian got itchy feet and took off for a while.” Residents of the caravan park affectionately referred to Lillian Shepherd as “Miss Lillian.” Joe Moss remembered Mary having driven Lillian to the airport several months earlier so she could visit out-of-state friends. “We didn’t hear from Miss Lillian for several weeks, until she called Mary to tell her to pick her up at the airport,” he said. Mary Asbury, an old friend, had
been Lillian’s constant companion for the three years since Lillian’s husband had died. She’d resigned from a good job in Northern California to come to San Diego County. The room and board, plus the $100-a-week salary, was immaterial. But on this day, Mary drove Lillian to Pomona for a visit to her brother, and no one ever heard from Lillian again. According to the missing person
illian’s sister in Montana telephoned two weeks after Lillian had been dropped off in Pomona, and Mary’s information worried her. She telephoned her brother and was horrified to hear that he had not seen Lillian in months. When informed of this, Mary called the Chula Vista police to report Lillian Shepherd missing. That night, the little mobile home just inside the gate of the ranch-style park was packed with sympathisers trying to calm Mary Asbury down. “If anything has happened to her, I blame myself,” Mary said apologetically to neighbours. “I never should have left her alone. But she was so worried about
Law officers investigating the disappearance of Miss Lillian, who called at this mobile home on several occasions over a period of three weeks, actually passed the dismembered body. Plastic rubbish bags on this porch (arrowed) contained pieces of the missing woman, Mary recalled with some amusement after her arrest. But her neighbours at the mobile home park (top) were very angry
40 Murder Most Foul What Did Mary Do With Lillian’s Head, Arms And Legs?
When the dog-walker realised it was a dead body, he went scrambling back up the hill faster than he went down, with his mutt right She was an unlikely murderess. behind him. From the nearest public Her motive was bizarre. As she telephone he called described it in her own words: the San Diego “I took a pillow and smothered County Homicide Department. her for no apparent reason…” In a flash, a CASE REPORT BY BILL KELLY team of homicide detectives arrived Pretty. She wanted me to get back here on the heels of road deputies. They were as soon as I could to take care of her met by the man who had discovered precious cat.” the body, and, although he was agitated, Neighbours cast a sympathetic eye towards Pretty. The shiny black cat was sitting on the windowsill, peering Mary Louise Asbury through the window, meowing. It was an eerie, ghostly yowl, almost as if Pretty knew something terrible had happened to Miss Lillian. The old lady’s sudden disappearance had an unprecedented effect among the close-knit community of the caravan park. While neighbours held prayer meetings for her, the baffled Chula Vista police launched a search for the missing woman. Chief Bill Winters called on the state police, the Boy Scouts and various other organisations to join in a massive effort to find Lillian Shepherd. Aided by low-flying helicopters, police took to the outlying wastelands to concentrate their search. But the short, slight Lillian had disappeared. Three more weeks passed without a word from her. Although Chief Winters didn’t want to alarm Mary, or anyone else for that matter, he had grown increasingly concerned for the elderly woman’s safety. He was well aware that she had been wearing expensive jewellery when she disappeared, and would be easy prey for those who roam the streets at night. The city of Chula Vista had a population of about 84,000. Although crime was not unknown to the city’s residents, the sudden disappearance of Lillian Shepherd had people, especially residents of the mobile home park, feeling more concerned than usual. “It’s beginning to look bad,” one said, shaking his head. “Looks to me like one of them drug addicts got hold of her. Those dopers will kill anybody for he pointed out the canyon bordering enough money to get their next fix.” on the Miramar Naval Air Station, and t was almost dark and unusually hot explained how he had discovered the even for Southern California on the corpse. Friday evening of May 1st. A man The detectives couldn’t immediately walking his dog peered into the pit of a determine how the victim had died. 25-foot-deep canyon before cautiously But one thing was certain. Since the making his way down the side, half victim’s face was twisted into a repulsive sliding, half stumbling. Curiosity had grimace, it would be safe to assume that got the better of him and he was easing whoever the unfortunate creature was, himself towards what looked like a large he or she had died a terrifying death. melon that had burst open. Since this was obviously a homicide,
ith Lillian’s ?
I
one of the detectives put in a call for the county medical examiner. By morning, police obtained confirmation that the body in the morgue was not that of the missing Lillian Shepherd. This victim was a male, Robert Raymond Evans, former owner of a Northern California goldmine. As word spread about this killing, the phone at police headquarters rang unceasingly. People wondered if the person who had tossed the body in the canyon might also have kidnapped or killed Lillian Shepherd. Police beefed up their search for the missing Chula Vista woman. Every law enforcement officer in the vicinity worked on the search. Off-duty lawmen returned to work on their own time.
For two Coronado residents, getting up at 5.00 a.m. and jogging around Spreckels Park in the 500 block of C Street was a welcome respite from their routine. On April 30th, however, when the two men were trotting down C Street towards the park, a sickening odour hit their nostrils. There, on a corner lawn facing the park, not 10 feet from the asphalt, was a brown rubbish bag. As the two men jogged past the 41
foul-smelling bag, one cursed the litterbug who had tossed it onto a neighbour’s lawn. More annoying was that the repugnant litter was only two blocks from the Coronado police station. By mid-afternoon, the glaring sun had bulged the bag, bursting it at the seams. People on their way to the park could see bloody flesh protruding from the sack. A steady stream of flies was buzzing above the sun-hardened lawn. The stench was unbearable. Finally, someone called the animal control board about a dead dog lying on a lawn, and said it was stinking up the entire neighbourhood. Animal control officers were shocked by the sight. Inside the bag was not the carcass of a dog, but parts of a human body which had been crudely hacked into pieces. The humane society officials notified the Coronado Police Department. By evening, the sleuths had found no weapon or any other clue that would point them towards the person who had dumped the bag. But pathologists at San Diego’s forensic science laboratory reassembled what body parts had been recovered – minus the head, arms, and legs – and X-rayed the spinal cord. In addition to identifying surgical scars – one from a mastectomy and another from abdominal surgery – indisputable evidence that the corpse was that of
Bag of body parts was dumped on the grass (arrowed)
Castillo of the Sheriff’s Department and Sergeant Jeffery C. Hutchins of the Coronado Police Department declined to speculate on what had become of the missing head and limbs. Authorised personnel at the county coroner’s office refused to give out any information concerning the case, including the time and date of death. Those details were part of the ongoing investigation. For those who had known and loved Lillian Shepherd, the wait was unbearable. hile Sergeant Hutchins and various Coronado sleuths huddled at headquarters in an effort to reconstruct possible scenarios for the murder, an incessant flow of phone calls flooded the switchboards. It also set off an unusual number of the type of rumours that usually accompany such horrible crimes – and those rumours were checked out by the authorities. Said one neighbour, “I’m not blaming Mary, because I don’t know what I would have done. I’d like to think that I would have seen to it that Miss Lillian got safely into her brother’s house. But Mary said she wasn’t too worried after two weeks. She told me, ‘Well, I’m not going to worry yet.’ We all figured maybe it was somebody who wanted to rob Miss Lillian that killed her.” “I feel sorry for Mary,” another neighbour said. “Miss Lillian was her entire life. I don’t know what she will do now.” Still another neighbour confided, “If you saw Miss Lillian, you saw Mary helping her up and down the stairs, helping her in and out of the car. She took Miss Lillian everywhere. She looked out after her.” As the lawmen continued questioning family members and friends of the deceased woman, they ferreted out important information which pointed to an unlikely suspect. “Mary told us that Miss Lillian asked to be dropped off at the car park of a family restaurant in Pomona, and later called and told her to send her a suitcase of clothes there. She said that Lillian
W
“Some of Lillian was on the front porch for a few weeks. You even walked past her,” Mary chuckled to Sergeant Jeffrey Hutchins (above)
Miss Lillian mounted up to a definite identification. Mary Asbury was totally devastated by the atrocity, and Pretty seemed to take the news hardest of all. “That cat just yowled the eeriest sounds,” Moss later told investigators. “The cries kept up during the dead of night until even Lillian’s closest friends complained to the management.” Since no suspect and no motive had been established, both Sergeant Manny 42
was wearing all her jewellery, but gave her no address to send the suitcase,” a neighbour confided to police. “We were beginning to think that Miss Lillian had flipped her lid.” So Mary Asbury’s conflicting stories, first about having dropped Miss Lillian off at her brother’s house, and later about dropping her off in the restaurant car park, immediately aroused suspicion among lawmen working on the case. There is an old adage among investigators that any homicide case begins by looking close to home for suspects. Now, Sergeant Hutchins was convinced that he had to look no further than Mary Asbury to find Lillian Shepherd’s killer. Armed with a search warrant and a crew of laboratory technicians, he drove into the caravan park in Chula Vista, and rapped on Mary’s door. “We want to offer you the opportunity to explain the discrepancies in your stories,” Sergeant Hutchins told the woman. “Do you want to talk about it?” Mary said she did; she was immediately advised of her rights. Meanwhile, fast-moving forensic technicians began sifting through the tiny trailer for clues. Out in the toolshed, they found spatters of blood. They also found Pretty there, curled up among miscellaneous debris. The cat was meowing pathetically for her departed mistress. On May 5th, 1992, with this and other incriminating information, Mary Asbury was placed under arrest and taken to the Chula Vista police station for questioning. After her interrogation, in which she staunchly maintained her innocence, she was taken to the Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility in Santee, where she was held without bail pending an arraignment. At her May 7th arraignment, Mary Asbury pleaded innocent to a charge of murdering her beloved friend and employer. But Deputy District Attorney Lori Koster produced a videotape in which a rambling Mary Asbury said she had killed Miss Lillian because she treated her like a dog. Then she changed
her mind and said she killed her because she feared her job was in jeopardy, and that she would have no money to live on. Judge Harvey Hiber ordered that Mary Asbury be held in lieu of $1 million bail, and set a preliminary hearing for May 20th. At the May 20th hearing, Public Defender Deborah Carson asked for more time to prepare her case. The judge postponed the trial until July 1st. When that date arrived, the judge allowed another defence request for more time and set a new pre-trial date for July 30th. An anonymous source at the district attorney’s office confirmed what the news media had already printed. If convicted of murder, Mary Asbury might be sentenced to no more than 25 years to life behind bars because in the state of California there was no additional punishment for dismemberment of a body, unless it could be proved that the act caused death.
O
n the day of her rescheduled preliminary hearing, Mary Louise Asbury told DA Koster that she wanted to make a statement. Outside the courtroom, she calmly gave the prosecuting attorney two reasons for killing and dismembering the woman she had lived with for three years. With her hair neatly coiffed, and looking more like a grandmother than a cold-blooded killer, she pleaded “guilty” when Municipal Court Judge Joan Weber asked her how she wanted to plead to a second-degree murder charge. The first-degree murder charge against her had been dismissed moments before, in light of her confession to the district attorney. Judge Weber set sentencing for August 24th. The courtroom was packed with the victim’s relatives and friends. Some came from as far away as Montana. DA Koster told Judge Weber that her office was being flooded with phone calls from Lillian Shepherd’s neighbours, demanding the most stringent sentence allowable by law. “I don’t think second-degree murder is a good disposition of the case,” Ms. Koster told the judge. “Our intention is to keep her in custody for ever.” A neighbour who lived across from Mary and Lillian told the court that she had adopted the victim’s black cat mostly because it was keeping everybody in the park awake at nights with its yowling. “Pretty would stand in the room in the middle of the night, making these awful odd noises,” the woman said. According to Mary Asbury’s own statement, Pretty had begun her wailing while she was sawing through Miss Lillian’s bones in the toolshed, and had continued wailing for three weeks. According to another resident of the caravan park, Mary had shown no
Joggers at Spreckels Park (above) upset Mary’s plans
remorse for killing Miss Lillian. “On the Sunday before they arrested her, she came over and said she had reservations to an expensive restaurant which she and Miss Lillian had never cancelled,” the witness said, adding that throughout dinner, Mary never once showed any concern about the disappearance of her devoted friend and employer. Mary Asbury’s version of the murder was even more sadistic. At first she said she had killed the old lady because Miss Lillian was grieving for her husband and wanted to join him in heaven. Then Mary changed her story and said she had killed because she thought her job was in jeopardy, and she would be out on the street with no money. Asked how she went about the killing, Mary replied matter-of-factly, “I went into her bedroom on Sunday morning to wake her up for church, and she was lying so peaceful. I took a pillow and smothered her for no apparent reason.” Mary now had the problem of disposing of the body. She couldn’t lift it so she dragged it into the toolshed. Locking the door she went back and made coffee, pondering what to do. Next day she set about cutting Lillian up. Piece by piece her body was popped into dustbin bags and placed on the front porch. “Some of Lillian was on the front porch for a few weeks. You even walked past her,” she recalled to Sergeant Hutchins. The sergeant, shuddering, asked if anyone had noticed an odour. Mary shrugged her shoulders and replied matter-of-factly, “Apparently not.” Neighbours who came by frequently to visit her had walked right past the hacked-up pieces of Miss Lillian’s remains. Ironically, so had police officers who periodically stopped by to question Mary about Lillian’s disappearance. Sergeant Hutchins later told the court that Mary had chuckled when she told him he had walked right past Lillian’s remains on the front porch.
R
esponding to questions from Judge Weber, Mary said she’d decided to dump the bag containing Miss Lillian’s head, arms, and legs in a skip at the
back of a supermarket. They were never recovered. Picking up the story from there, Mary said she placed the second bag of body parts in the boot of her car and drove them across the Coronado Bridge. After cruising around for a while, she decided to drop the last of Miss Lillian in Spreckels Park. But she noticed some people jogging around the park, so she dumped the bag on a lawn opposite, then drove home and had a cup of tea. Public Defender Deborah Carson begged the judge to be lenient with Mary, citing the fact that although she had had access to Lillian’s bank and safety deposit box, she’d only spent enough money to pay the rent and other necessities after the killing. Furthermore, Carson said, at Mary’s age, anything other than a minimal sentence would be a death sentence. If anyone hoped to see Mary Asbury break into tears as Judge Weber sentenced her to 15 years to life, they were disappointed. She sat emotionless and never batted an eyelid as Judge Weber berated her. “It is my sincere hope that this will be a life sentence,” the judge said. “This was a particularly brutal and heinous crime against a defenceless seventynine-year-old woman.” The murderess showed little in the way of fear or remorse even when she was being placed in a Chula Vista prison van and whisked away to the Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility. Friends and relatives of the victim said they were outraged by the plea-bargain agreement which had reduced Mary’s conviction to second-degree murder. It was unfair that the murderess could apply for parole in 10 years. “The prosecutors were too lenient with Mary,” said one of the dead woman’s relations afterwards. “She didn’t have to stay with Lillian. She could have moved. Cold-blooded killing is too much. Mary could have had a life with Lillian for as long as she wanted. Lillian left her everything she owned.” As for Pretty, the black cat who witnessed the brutal murder, a detective remarked, “If only that cat could talk, what an eerie story she could tell.” 43
AUSTRALIA’S “MODERN NED KELLY” KILLER
He was the double-killer who went on the run and evaded justice for seven years. Some likened Malcolm Naden to Australia’s most famous outlaw of yesteryear
I
N JUNE 2005, Malcolm Naden, 32, a former abattoir worker, went missing from his grandparents’ home in West Dubbo. His grandparents were confused – they thought he was happy there. Admittedly, Dubbo, deep in the heart of New South Wales agricultural country, may not be the most exciting place in the world, but it boasts all the amenities that a modern city of 130,000 could be
Case Report By Donald Carne expected to offer. Naden had always lived quietly with his grandparents. He’d earned some money as a boner and skinner in the local meat factory and had always done his chores when asked. His absence was completely out of character. The reason for Naden’s sudden disappearance soon became apparent. The body of Kristy Scholes, 24, his cousin’s partner and a mother of two, was found strangled in a bedroom of the home. Naden was already a suspect in the disappearance of Lateesha Nolan, 24, in January of the same year. Lateesha, a mother of four, had left her home in her Ford Falcon “for a sec,” but never returned. Naden’s grandparents had never really believed he was involved.
Above, Malcolm Naden – he gained grudging respect from his pursuers. Left, Ned Kelly, the legendary Australian outlaw who eluded police for two years
The discovery of Kristy’s body launched one of the longest manhunts in Australia’s history. Naden was smart and succeeded in staying undercover. He dispensed with all the trappings of the modern electronic age. His identity appeared to have simply vanished. For this, he gained a grudging respect
44 Murder Most Foul Australia’s “Modern Ned Kelly” Killer
from his chasers. Once, a carefully boned and filleted kangaroo was found in an abandoned camp. The Police Minister Michael Gallacher urged newspapers not to turn Naden into a cult figure like Ned Kelly. From time to time, sightings, true or false, appeared to be made. In December 2005, he was spotted at Taronga Western Plains Zoo, Dubbo. A month later he was seen at Lightning Ridge in north-west New South Wales. In March 2006, he was almost captured at the aboriginal reserve in Condobolin – and then things went quiet. It was generally believed that Naden, of aboriginal descent, had gone walkabout and was living on his wits in
Left, armed searchers who took part in the huge manhunt for Naden. Below, a police dog which helped in the capture
the bush. This appeared to be the case when police received information that he was living between Gloucester and Scone in 2010 in the Upper Hunter Valley. They closed in on Barrington Tops after a wild-pig farmer confirmed he’d come across one of his camps. Naden became known as a considerate burglar, often returning things he had stolen – such as binoculars – when he no longer had a use for them. If he stole food and prepared himself a meal in someone’s absence, he would wash up after himself. He lived mostly off wild nuts and berries, carefully researched in survivalist manuals. A martial arts expert, he was also an avid reader of the Bible.
T
he reward for Malcolm Naden was now one of the biggest in Australia’s history, at A$250,000. In fact it was the largest since the price put on the head of bushranger Ned Kelly. In December 2011, police closed in on Naden near Nowendoc, a hamlet in the Northern Tablelands. He shot a police officer, 33-year-old Brad McFadden, whilst making his escape. “As soon as they sighted a sleeping bag, they heard a shot ring out,” a senior police source said. “He was like a ghost. They couldn’t even determine which direction it came from.” “Naden was of the opinion that Brad was looking at him, so he’s taken aim at his heart using the sights on his rifle,” explained Sergeant Ricky Henderson. “He didn’t know this but Brad moved at the time the shot was fired and it struck through his shoulder.” The police were not amused and a squad of 50 officers were sent in hot pursuit. Naden was now Australia’s
Left to right, victims Kristy Scholes and Lateesha Nolan. The discovery of Kristy’s body sparked one of Australia’s biggest-ever manhunts
most wanted man. The respected Sydney Morning Herald summed up why Naden, despite the evil he had perpetrated, had captured the imagination of the public after six years in the bush. He symbolised the romance of the wild, still close to the heart of most Australians – and the elegiac stand of traditional ways against modern technology. “They are tracking a man who survives as his ancestors did,” the Herald said. “He lives in a hootchie under starlit skies in Barrington Tops. His ears are trained by silence and hunger to pick the sound of a suckling joey across a canyon. Our guys arrive eating McDonald’s in their throaty
V8 Land Cruisers, static crackling on the VHF, mobiles glued to their “town ears.” They have ably spared our city from sophisticated terrorist plots but a blackfella in the bush eludes them. “Later the whitefellas head to their showers, warm beds and pay TV. Refuelled choppers hovering all day over a patch of bush can’t find a trace. Meanwhile the phantom begins a moonlit walk through the high country – perhaps to his next stash of ammo, blankets and food.”
T
he residents of Nowendoc, a close-knit community, were worried. They began locking their doors and windows. Kim Hart said, 45
“Everyone knows each other – we’ve never felt the need to lock up like this before. Under these circumstances we will have to keep going this way until he is caught.” Anthony Green, another resident, added, “He’s been known to break in and steal food around here and Barrington Tops. He’s never hurt us though – because we’re one of his own. If he sees us, he runs. I think he’s more scared of us than we are of him.” Finally, on March 22nd, 2012, Naden was captured by officers of the Tactical Operations Unit and the Dog Unit in a run-down cabin near Gloucester. When he opened the door, he found himself confronted with officers and Chuck, the police dog. Naden raced inside. The dog followed in hot pursuit and after Naden was bitten on his ankles, wrist and face, he surrendered. “I am very pleased to be able to confirm for you today that Australia’s most wanted man is behind bars. This result could not have been achieved without the cooperation of communities in northern NSW, whose assistance and vital information has helped police over a long period of time,” said NSW Commissioner Scipione. “People in those communities deserve praise for their assistance and their perseverance.” Mr. Scipione defended the length of the police chase, which ultimately had lasted seven years and cost millions of dollars. “This man is a master bushman,” he argued. “He has been in this area for a number of years. He knows it better than the back of his hand. The conditions that we encountered were atrocious, and the terrain was second to none when it came to difficulty.” Assistant Commissioner Carlene York said they had acted on a tip-off from the local police officer, Senior Constable Michael Cartwright. He told them that Naden had returned to a cabin he’d used before. “That was something that was quite common to his movements,” she said. “That he was often going back to the same residence where he’d done break-and-enters over a period of years, often using similar tracks that we thought he was travelling along. “It was that painstaking gathering of that evidence by my officers that assisted us in the successful operation last night.” “What you see here is the culmination of months and months of intelligence work that my husband’s done,” 46
were up by nearly 20 per cent. He was happy.
O
n June 15th, 2013, Justice Derek Price told Naden, “Life outside of prison is not an option for you.” Malcolm Naden had shown no remorse for the killings although he did plead guilty to all the charges levelled against him – 32 in total, including doublemurder, attempted murder of a police officer, multiple burglary and an assault on a 15-year-old girl. The judge felt Naden continued to be a danger to society, and so sentenced him to life plus 40 years. “Thank you, your honour,” Naden replied. There was little in the way of a formal trial but victims of Naden’s actions were empowered to speak in court. “The question I don’t think will ever Above, Malcolm Naden – his legs shackled be answered is why?” and wearing handcuffs – in police custody Lateesha’s father, after his capture. Left, the double-killer’s Michael Peet, asked police mug-shot of Naden. “Lateesha trusted you. She was family, she was blood and you betrayed Constable Cartwright’s wife her – you took away her future. If I said. “I want the victims of think about what Lateesha would say that guy Naden to know that today, she would ask you why too.” it wasn’t just put in place Joan Nolan, Lateesha’s mother, said, because of the shooting of “There is no closure, no moving on. It the police officer.” doesn’t get any easier over the years.” A month later, Naden Naden sat impassively through the showed officers where the impact statements. remains of Lateesha Nolan Naden’s exploits on the run had taken could be found. on a semi-mythical tone. Reports said Lyn Steghs, who lived in the area he would set up defendable campsites where Naden was captured, had on hilltops that would give him a wide suffered a number of break-ins and was angle of vision over several miles. His ability to survive on bush-tucker, “Lateesha trusted you. supplemented by the “borrowing” of She was family, she tools, came from a lifetime of reading was blood and you survivalist manuals, encyclopaedias and the Bible behind his locked bedroom betrayed her – you door. His motivations were unknown. took away her future. The reality though was different, as explained by Senior Constable If I think about what Mangan, one of the three officers who Lateesha would say interviewed him over an extended today, she would ask period after his arrest. “We had a whole number of theories you why too” that he was following trails, but he just said he was wandering,” Mangan said. relieved at the capture. “We’ve had the “His only motivation was surviving tactical force out there, the dogs, the to the next day. It was the same thing helicopters,” she said. “It was kind of every day.” living with a bit of pressure, pressures It will be much the same for we shouldn’t normally have.” Naden in prison – surviving to the Other Australians had taken the next day, every day – with every whole affair more in their laconic stride. day being the same as the day Publican Gary Daley said the affair had before. Not much bush romance brought in more tourists and beer sales about that.
DON’T MISS THIS YEAR’S TRUE DETECTIVE WINTER SPECIAL STORIES INCLUDE Inside The Torture Chamber On The Highway To Hell Lying Ex Killed Michelle – Then Denied It On Dr. Phil Bournemouth Horror Of The Beheaded Flatmate Murder On Christmas Day The Crosshill Railway Murder “By The Way – My Husband’s A Convicted Murderer” Couple’s Killer Had Been In Britain For Just Eight Days Massacre Of The Deer Hunters
BIG E 84 -PAG ISSUE On Sale NOW!
Four ways to order your Special l Ask your newsagent to save one for you – this is a free service they will be pleased to provide l Order direct from Forum Press by sending a cheque or postal order for £4.80 to PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ, UK (post-free in UK; Europe €9/rest of world $12 including postage) l Call our order hotline on 020 8778 0514 to order by credit/debit card l Order worldwide via our website: www.truecrimelibrary.com
Stories from the pages of True Detective, Master Detective, True Crime and Murder Most Foul
T
Report by Donald Carne
HE RECENT release of the Polish movie Red Spider has reopened the case of one of Poland’s most tragic serial killers. “It was September 1964,” Karol Kot, 18, explained. “I woke up in the morning and realised that today would be the day. I had a notion to kill someone in a church. I went to the Capuchin Church of the Sacred Heart in the centre of Krakow – and there she was – an old lady kneeling before the altar, praying. I walked up behind her and plunged my knife deep into her heart from behind her back.” The attack was unsuccessful – the knife barely penetrated through the woman’s jacket and skin. Kot ran off. The old woman turned and saw him, and was later able to give a full description – she even managed to
leafy parks or going to dances to listen to the avant-garde jazz of the Warsaw City Stompers, Jerzy Milian, Krzysztof Komeda and the Polish Jazz Quartet. It was a vibrant and optimistic time. Karol Kot came from a fairly normal family background. His father was an army engineer, often away from home, and his mother was a school governor and active in the League of Women.
symptoms associated with many serial killers. He used to like to visit the abattoir at Pcim and watch the pigs being dispatched. When he could, he would steal a cup of their warm blood and drink it. “My parents drove on holiday to Pcim, a village in southern Poland,” he explained. “It was boring, so I went to the slaughterhouse. I liked the view of,
Karol wasn’t like other boys: “...I liked the view of, and finally got a taste of, warm blood. I drank the blood of both calves and pigs. I began to kill frogs, chickens, crows, moles and calves when I could. I liked to pop out the eyes of birds, rip their guts out and lick the blood...”
TERROR OF KRAKOW VA complete her shopping before reporting the attack. So began the career of the young student who was to become known as the Vampire of Krakow. Why did he kill? “I was interested in anything that could destroy a man,” he said later. “Poison, knives, firearms – their methods and their most effective use. I had a large collection of knives: Finns, flick knives, fishing and more. I collected medical and forensic textbooks. I studied the course of arteries, the location of organs – and what would result in sudden death shock.” An able and willing student, Karol Kot had passed his high school exams and was planning to become a member of the Officer Cadet Corps. He lived with his mother and sister and had always been highly strung. He once had a “nervous breakdown” after unexpectedly failing an exam. Poland was enjoying a period of rapid economic growth, mass urbanisation and heavy industrialisation in the early 60s. Emerging at last from the destitution of the war, it had developed into a land full of promise for the future. Young people of Kot’s age enjoyed visiting the cinema, walking through
48 Murder Most Foul Terror Of The Krakow Vampire
Kot’s numerous fascinations and fetishes for weapons included both firearms (left) and the long-bladed knives and daggers he used for his murders (right). “I ordered special blades for my ‘projects,’” he said. “I carried them with me always. I loved everything about them – I think that was probably my biggest love. For me, the knife was like a living creature...”
Young Karol enjoyed outdoor activities, shooting and hunting, trekking and camping. He was a member of the League of Socialist Youth and took part in most of their “boy scout” type activities. Around the time he began his campaign of terror, he joined the National Defence League – the Polish equivalent of the Territorial Army. As a child, he had shown the early
and finally got a taste of, warm blood. I drank the blood of both calves and pigs. I began to kill frogs, chickens, crows, moles and calves when I could. I liked to pop out the eyes of birds, rip their guts out and lick the blood. When I had a BB gun in the house, I used to shoot it at meat that my mother had bought for dinner, so I could feel the energy and power of the bullet.”
fter the thrill of his first victim, Kot A could only wait a fortnight before choosing his second. He followed an old woman as she stepped off the tram on September 23rd and, as they turned into a dark lane, he stabbed her in the back as she stepped onto the stairs of an apartment building in Skawinska. On this occasion, his aim was disturbed by the sudden change in light and this woman also survived. Disappointed by this setback, Kot set off again on the 29th and followed an old woman into a secluded spot where he dispatched her from behind with a knife through the heart. She was 86 years old. “Did you know,” he later asked, “that the easiest way to the heart is through the back?” Meanwhile, he regaled his fellowstudents at the Technical College with
Karel Kot happily demonstrates his favoured murder technique – a stab to the heart
F THE AMPIRE tales of his involvement in attacks on old women, his prowess at shooting rifles and his desire to kill – perhaps not the most discreet way for a serial killer to carry on. He talked of wanting to kill all women – except for his sister and
Karol Kot – teenage serial killer
He talked of wanting to kill all women – except for his sister and cousin – cutting off their breasts and using their skin to line soldiers’ helmets cousin – cutting off their breasts and using their skin to line soldiers’ helmets. After a school visit to the nearby camp of Auschwitz, he told a teacher if war should come again, he could think of even crueller ways to punish the victims. It earned him the nickname of Lolo the Madman amongst his fellow-students. There were further victims for Kot during 1965. He spent the whole of the year refining a different approach. He had decided that he would like to poison someone. To do this, he bought some arsenic and went to a popular bar in the town – the Przy Błoniach. He sat at a table and ordered a beer and some pickles. The waiter brought his order with some salt and vinegar to help spice the pickles. When he was
sure no one was looking, Karol dropped some arsenic into the vinegar, hoping that someone would use it later and be poisoned. Similarly, as the summer unfolded, he would leave bottles of soda pop on park benches with arsenic added – but he never saw anyone take the bottles or drink from them. “How annoying,” he later lamented. “No one showed up.” He even did the same with a college friend, Kota, offering him a drink of soda – but the friend said it smelt funny and he wouldn’t drink it. In the end, Kot decided this was a most unsatisfactory approach to murder. He would return to his earlier methods – to his greatest love, the knife. “Initially, it was only a hobby. I really liked to look at the immaculate profile of knives. Over many years, I collected them, bought them, exchanged them. I ordered special blades for my ‘projects.’ I carried them with me always. I loved everything about them – I think that was probably my biggest love. For me, the knife was like a living creature.” n the bitterly cold day of February O 13th, 1966, Karol Kot stabbed to death an 11-year-old boy called Leszek, after watching a toboggan context near Kosciuszko Mound. He had changed his method: no longer the deep plunge from behind to the heart, but a series of rapid stabs to the back and stomach – what professionals call “overkill.” Two months later, it was the turn of an eight-year-old girl called Gretel. He waited for her outside her apartment building in Sobieskiego Street. As she came down the stairs to collect some 49
Get your copy of Murder Most Foul delivered direct to your home – at 25% off the shop price!
GET 4 ISSUES,, PACKED WITH GREAT STORIES,, FOR JUST £13. 50
3
ways to subscribe
“The pleasure I felt when the knife was cleaving the meat – no, it’s impossible to describe the feeling. The experience is worth the gallows”
Visit www.truecrimelibrary.com Call 020 8778 0514 Post Complete the order form below Karol Kot in court
SEND TO: Forum Press, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ
YOUR DETAILS: n Mr. n Mrs. n Miss. n Ms. Forename..................................................... Surname ...................................................... Email ............................................................ Address ........................................................ ..................................................................... ............................... Postcode ...................... Country ........................................................ Telephone.....................................................
MMF114
n Yes! I would like to subscribe to MURDER MOST FOUL for one year (4 issues) n UK £13.50 n Outside UK (surface mail) £23/US$31 n Europe (airmail) €26 n Rest of World (airmail) US$40 l You can also subscribe to n True Detective n Master Detective and n True Crime at the reduced price of £31.50 for 12 monthly issues
PAYMENT: n by cheque made payable to Forum Press n by credit/debit card: n Visa n Mastercard n Maestro Card number:
nnnn nnnn nnnn nnnn Expiry date n n n n Security code n n n 50
letters from the mailbox, he grabbed her and stabbed her eight times in the stomach and back. Luckily she managed to pull away and raise the alarm. Rushed to hospital, she was saved by a team of doctors. Kot’s next idea was to move into mass-murder. He began to research how to make a bomb, his intention being to leave it in a public place such as the popular central square in Krakow or perhaps a department store. Meanwhile, he tried to set fire to apartment buildings
but without any fatal results. Unknown to Kot, the police were moving in. He was arrested a couple of days before his final exams but was allowed to sit them so as to prove that he was not insane. He was charged with two murders, 10 attempted murders and four acts of arson. Kot displayed no remorse at his trial, but argued that his actions were morally sound on the basis that they provided him with a sense of satisfaction and fulfilled duty. He acknowledged that he was a murderer but had decided that he was not evil. “The sense of relaxation that I experienced after the act allowed me to behave normally,” he told investigators. “The voices would retreat from my head. I loved to find a quiet spot and lick the blood from the knife. “After the attack on Gretel, I went to the shooting range and had a good session. Then I ate a good lunch. I felt euphoric. After killing Leszek on the Mound, I went to a friend’s place, listened to some albums and then we bought cakes and went to visit her parents.” This friend, whom Kot liked to call his “girlfriend” though the feeling was not mutual, was also nearly a victim. Kot once held a broken glass to her neck and threatened to cut her throat, “so I could
see the fear in her eyes.” But the girl laughed it off, told him he would be caught as the only suspect, suggested he see a doctor, and sent him home with some vitamins. Karol Kot pleaded guilty on July 14th, 1967. Reporters noted his sunny disposition at the trial – the judge had to remind him twice to take the proceedings seriously. Newspapers branded him The Krakow Vampire, The Red Spider or The Cat (kot is Polish for cat) He was sentenced to death – and also stripped of his rights as a citizen. “The conduct the accused has shown,” said the judge, “shows that he is more dangerous than a wild beast – because unlike a wild beast, he is endowed with reason.” Was Kot afraid of death? “Soon I will be able to talk with my victims,” he said. “Here on Earth, I have no one to talk to.” Did he regret his actions? “The pleasure I felt when the knife was cleaving the meat – no, it’s impossible to describe the feeling. The experience is worth the gallows.” Karol Kot was executed by hanging on May 16th, 1968. He was 21 years old. An autopsy showed that he had suffered from a large untreated brain tumour. We will never know whether this was the cause of his reign of terror...
MURDER MOST FOUL goes digital! At last! Digital editions of our magazines!
By popular demand... Now you can read digital editions of MURDER MOST FOUL and ALL True Crime Library’s magazines on any device, anywhere!
out the astonishing You already know ab e pictures you can find bl n stories and remarka es. And now you ca in az ag m , in our crime ternet-connected PC read them on any in tphone, wherever and ar laptop, tablet or sm e. lik u rld, whenever yo er you are in the wo That means wherev st issues as soon as you can get our late waiting for snail mail! no they’re released – , m the latest issues fro se oo You can ch d and back issues. An subscription offers r magazines: True that applies to all ou ctive, True Crime and te Detective, Master De . ul Fo t Murder Mos now, go to To get started right r d search for Murde Pocketmags.com an our other Most Foul (or one of magazines). cketmags OR Download the Po Google s or app from the iTune e. or Play app st ine apps in OR Find our magaz ay: iTunes or Google Pl ine az ag m ive ct True Dete agazine m ive ct te Master De e True Crime magazin azine ag m ul Fo t os Murder M
AVAILABLE
NOW!
BUY ONLINE... READ ONLINE for as little as £3.99 an issue
H
E WAS never drunk in the house, never noisy, and never late with his rent. So Arthur White, a 60-year-old warehouseman, was the perfect paying guest for Mrs. Louise Fairweather at 17 Claremont Terrace, her large lodging-house on Bradford’s Great Horton Road. He had lived there for about five years when, in the spring of 1953, she asked him to share an attic room with a new lodger. Mr. White raised no objection, and at first he and his room-mate seemed to get on well enough together, although the newcomer was more than 30 years the old man’s junior. But as one month followed another, a
WHO TH OUT OF T
Case report by
MATTHEW SPICER tension began to develop between them, and on Saturday, April 3rd, 1954, they were heard arguing over their tea in the house’s communal kitchen. Later, they went out for a drink, choosing separate pubs although their row seemed to be over. Arthur White spent the evening in two bars, leaving the last one in the Westgate area of the city at 10.20. As usual, he was moderate in his alcohol consumption, which was more than could be said of his room-mate Edward Reid, a 23-year-old labourer who downed eight pints before he made his way back to Great Horton Road. About 25 minutes after Arthur White left the city centre another lodger, Albert Clough, returned to Claremont Terrace. He, too, had been drinking and, needing to relieve himself, he headed for the outside lavatory in the lodging-house’s back yard. He was near the steps to the basement when he stumbled over what he at first thought was a bundle of old clothes. Then he realised it was a body, and as his eyes adjusted to the poor light he looked down and saw Arthur White lying dead in a pool of blood. The rest of the house was alerted, the police were called, and one of the first officers on the scene, Detective Constable Priestley, thought Mr. White had got drunk and had fallen from his attic window 35 feet above where his body lay.
Above, the back of the house at Claremont Terrace. Inset above, the attic window which Arthur White had been thrown out of
In the attic, the detective found Edward Reid half-undressed and apparently drunk, but it was not until he saw blood in the room – around the door, on the walls and around the bath which was in the room – that DC Priestley became suspicious. Noting signs of a struggle, he also saw blood
52 Murder Most Foul Who Threw Arthur Out Of The Window?
on Reid’s face, and on the bottom of the window-frame and the lead flashing outside. How, the constable asked Reid, had his face been cut? He had done this while shaving at 6 p.m. before he went out, Reid replied. DC Priestley didn’t believe him. He
HREW ARTHUR THE WINDOW? When the body of a 60-year-old warehouseman was discovered in a pool of blood outside a Bradford lodging-house, police initially thought he was the victim of a tragic accident. Bloodstains found inside his attic room above, however, told a different story...
the window. When he was charged with murder, Reid seemed genuinely shocked, saying he had “nowt to do with that.” He appeared before the city’s magistrates two days later, and after several remands his committal hearing began on April 29th.
O
utlining the case for the prosecution, Mr. M.D. Hutchinson said that as there were so many lodgers
Above, Arthur White’s body on a stretcher and right, the stairs leading to the basement
told Reid he would be seen by a more senior officer, and Detective Chief Inspector Cheshire arrived shortly afterwards. The constable pointed out what he had seen, and after a brief conference the two officers agreed that there had probably been a fight, Reid killing his room-mate and then throwing him through the window to make his death appear accidental. For further questioning Reid was taken to the police station, where his right hand was seen to be badly swollen, as if he had been in a fight. Had he confirmed this, subsequent events might have been different. Instead, he said he had injured his hand at work, and he had no idea how Arthur White met his death. He had no explanation for the blood in their room, and when asked when he had last seen Mr. White he at first said this was at dinner-time, and then changed it to tea-time. He had returned
to the lodging-house at 10.40 p.m. and had gone straight to bed, he claimed, only to be woken soon afterwards by the police. If Arthur White had fallen out of the window, Reid added, he was himself asleep and heard nothing. Somewhat surprisingly, nothing had been heard either by Mrs. Fairweather, her daughter, son-in-law and nephew who all lived in the house, or her 19 other lodgers. Cheshire was told of Reid’s tea-time row with Mr. White, and when asked about it Reid said his room-mate had accused him of being sick on their dressing-table after he had been out drinking the previous night. Denying that he was responsible, Reid said he had told Mr. White to “shut his gob.” As nobody had heard a disturbance, the investigators suspected that Reid had suddenly attacked his room-mate without warning, quickly subduing him and then pushing his body out through
in the house, all using the communal kitchen/dining-room, the police had no shortage of witnesses who had heard Reid and Mr. White arguing at the table on April 3rd. Officers called to the house that night found clear evidence that Arthur White had fallen from his bedroom window, which was too small for him to have toppled through accidentally. The police found that a damp cloth had been used to mop up blood on the bedroom floor. The window, which was hinged at its top, opening upwards and outwards, was fastened shut when DC 53
Priestley examined it, so someone had obviously closed it after Mr. White went through it. And small though it was, it was large enough for Mr. White to have been pushed through it after being rendered unconscious, the prosecutor told the court. After hearing evidence for two days, the magistrates committed Reid for trial, and on July 5th he pleaded not guilty when he appeared before Mr. Justice Donovan at Leeds Assizes. Mrs. Fairweather told the court that most of her lodgers went out drinking at weekends. She saw Reid return to the house at about 10.40 on the Saturday night, and she noticed nothing unusual about his appearance or manner. Reid’s return had also been witnessed
witnesses, and Reid did not give evidence, his counsel Mr. Harold Shepherd urging the jury to be very wary of considering the case one of murder. Apart from the tea-time row, he said, Reid and his room-mate had apparently got on well for more than a year. The police had thought it strange that if there were a fight, no one in the house heard the sound of a disturbance coming from the two men’s room. So was Mr. White attacked, the defence counsel asked, before Reid’s return and perhaps outside the house, and did he fall through the window while Reid was still making his way home? No motive for murder had been shown, Mr. Shepherd concluded, and the prosecution’s case was not strong
Above, a police photograph of suspect Edward Reid from behind. Left, Reid’s swollen hands which indicated he had been in a fight. Right, Armley Prison, Leeds
by Mrs. Fairweather’s daughter, who said he did not appear to have an injured hand, and she saw no blood on him. One of the lodgers, Thomas Garget, testified that he had often gone drinking with Arthur White, “a quiet fellow,” who certainly wouldn’t want to get in a fight. There were traces of blood in several parts of the room shared by Reid and Arthur White, DC Priestley told the court, and the area that had been mopped-up was the floor immediately beneath the window. He also saw spots of blood on Reid’s forehead, and on his vest near his neck. The police surgeon Dr. Kenneth Sheldon then testified that he had examined Reid at the police station at 1.05 a.m. on the night of Arthur White’s death. Reid smelled of alcohol, but wasn’t drunk. In addition to a swollen, scratched right hand, he had a grazed left elbow, and dust and dirt had been rubbed into the skin of his upper arms and both elbows, suggesting involvement in a fight. Dr. Frederick 54
Tryhorn, director of the North Eastern Forensic Science Laboratory, said he had found human blood on Reid’s overcoat, trousers, jacket and shirt. Dr. David Price, who performed the autopsy after examining Arthur White’s body where it was found, told the jury
The skull had been fractured, a bone penetrating the brain. These injuries, as well as a broken neck and legs, had been caused by the fall that the skull had been fractured, a bone penetrating the brain. These injuries, as well as a broken neck and legs, had been caused by the fall, and had combined to cause death from shock and haemorrhage. Non-lifethreatening injuries inflicted before the fall included a fractured cheekbone and jaw, and a black eye. The defence called no
enough to sustain the charge. On the second day of the proceedings the jury retired to consider their verdict.
A
fter 75 minutes’ deliberation, the jury at Edward Reid’s trial found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to death. When his appeal was heard on August 17th, his counsel argued that the jury had been misdirected. The charge should have been manslaughter, Mr. Shepherd contended, because before Mr. White fell from his window he was possibly already dead from injuries that were not normally fatal. But the only ground for reducing a murder charge to manslaughter was provocation, one of the appeal judges pointed out, and there was no evidence of that in this case. The appeal was dismissed, and on September 1st, 1954, Edward Reid was hanged by Stephen Wade and Harry Smith at Leeds’s Armley Prison. Had he admitted there had been a fight in his room he might have been convicted only of manslaughter, some court observers believed. And there was no reprieve, they speculated, because the Home Office thought Reid knew his victim was still alive when he pushed him out through the window.
The bulletriddled careers of gangland’s most notorious figures – laid bare!
www.truecrimelibrary.com
On sale NOW at W.H. Smith and Eason, price £9.99 • Or order direct from www.truecrimelibrary.com Call 020 8778 0514 • Or send £9.99 (post-free in UK)* to True Crime Library, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ, UK. *Please make cheques payable
THRILLING CASE HISTORIES 132 PAGES AMAZINGS PICTURE
to Forum Press
Also available in digital edition through the True Detective magazine apps (iOS and Android) and via www.pocketmags.com/true-detective-magazine
PLUS: DON’T MISS THESE BUMPER COLLECTIONS, STILL ON SALE AMERICA’S MOST EVIL Volume I:
BRITISH MURDERS THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD
AMERICA’S MOST EVIL Volume II:
Prepare to be shocked at the evil men – and women – do. A bumper collection with full case histories of 17 American sadists, psychopaths, cannibals and serial killers, including Gein • Heidnik • Manson • Dahmer • Kemper etc. • Digital only – see below
What makes a murder echo round the world? Find out in this collection of 20 intriguing case reports featuring notorious figures including Brady and Hindley • Allitt • Sutcliffe • Shipman • Neilson • Sams etc. • Available in print or digital – see below
Sadists, cannibals, psychopaths and serial killers – you’ll find 24 of the very worst in this bumper collection, including Rifkin • Rader • Unruh • Speck • Ridgway • Lucas & Toole and more. • Available in print or digital – see below
•Print: order direct from www.truecrimelibrary.com or call 020 8778 0514 •Digital: go to www.pocketmags.com/true-detective-magazine
E
VERYONE WAS pleased with the wedding. The bride and groom were mature churchgoers, and they had what seemed like a sound relationship based on trust and their shared faith. The groom, Tracy Bernard Burleson, 30, was the choir drummer at their church, and dreamed of one day becoming the Pastor. Pauletta Ross, his bride, was a dozen years older than her groom but that didn’t seem to matter. When the knot was tied in July 1995, the small party of family and friends were sure the sun would shine forever on this marriage. Who could have guessed that a web
of treachery, lies and theft would land one in prison and the other in the mortuary? The Burlesons’ place of worship, the First New Mount Calvary Baptist Church, was one of the oldest in Houston, Texas, in the deprived north-eastern suburbs, and when 13 years after they were married Tracy Burleson became its Pastor, their joy was complete. The couple settled into running the congregation between them, and at the same time they raised two adopted children as well as 18-year-old William Fuller, Burleson’s son from a previous marriage. But not everyone was happy. Pauletta was proving to be decidedly unfriendly to some of the parishioners. Her husband was taking a hard-nosed approach to the job too, sending formal letters to those members of the congregation who hadn’t paid their subscriptions, telling them to leave and never come back. The congregation began whispering among themselves. Was their new spiritual guide a demon Pastor? He and his wife seemed much more interested
brutal mu pastor’s l
Victim Pauletta. Below, William Fuller, the pastor’s-son-turnedkiller, and Tyonne Pollard-Palmer – the object of desire, and an obstacle to justice
56 Murder Most Foul Brutal Murder In Pastor’s Love Triangle
in making money for themselves than they were in the will of God. The church qualified for relief aid from the Federal Government after Hurricane Ike tore through its neighbourhood in 2008. The money was earmarked to repair the church roof, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the Burlesons bought two new cars. On top of that, ominous cracks in their personal lives began to surface. They already had a reputation of being bad-tempered when stories began to circulate that Burleson had attacked Pauletta with a baseball bat. All this came to a head when they were both arrested for abusing their two adopted boys, then aged three and four. They were charged with three counts of injury to a child, including beating the two little boys with an iron, shovel, extension cord and a flat wooden board. A teacher said: “I saw knots on the older boy’s face. He broke down and asked for help because he and his little brother were being abused.” A former neighbour told a welfare officer that she saw Pauletta hit one of the boys on the head with a shovel and with her fist. She then heard the child being dragged around the house as his mother beat him and screamed at him. Paulette pleaded guilty to injuring a minor, and avoided prison by taking three years’ probation.
urdEr in lovE trianglE Case report By Mark Davis
The buzz around the congregation was that Pastor Burleson was having an affair with the woman who was caring for his son William while the young man was ill. William had become friends with the carer, and he would bring her round to his father’s church for Sunday service Within months, the Pastor had charmed his way into the carer’s life – and into her bed, Her name was Tyonne PollardPalmer. She was in her 30s and she was just one of the Pastor’s many extramarital affairs. In the case of another one, a choir member who Pauletta caught having sex with the Pastor in his study, Pauletta blew her top and moved out – even though she owned the house. When parishioners heard that the couple were separated, and the reason for it, they asked the church elders to remove Pastor Burleson from his duties. But before that could happen church members woke up in the night of May 12th, 2010, to see their church on fire. Three-quarters of the roof caved in as firefighters battled flames. Then came the nadir of Pastor Burleson’s stewardship of this extraordinarily ill-fated church. Six days after the roof caught fire, the Pastor arrived home to find his wife lying dead – shot by a bullet through the head. “We were separated, and she had moved out,” he told the emergency phone call operator. “But she had just had a hip operation, so she moved back here to avoid walking upstairs to the apartment where she was living. “I’d just gone out to buy potato chips and a bar of chocolate as a corner shop. I’d only been gone for a few minutes, and when I got back she was lying there dead.” True or false? Detectives were puzzled over his story. There were no chip or chocolate wrappings in his car, and the shop he said he went to was already closed by the time he left home. An investigation was launched.
The demon clergyman wanted his wife dead so he could live with his mistress. He asked his son William to do the killing, but that gave William a problem – he preferred to keep Dad’s mistress for himself... his carer friend Tyonne Pollard-Palmer, accused of tampering with the evidence. A week later investigators got the break they needed when a woman phoned Crime Stoppers, a TV investigative programme, to tell police that William Fuller had confided to her sister that he killed his stepmother. Using a social networking site, detectives tracked down the caller and she agreed to participate in a recorded call about what happened on the night
of the murder. With detectives listening in, William Fuller said: “My dad hired me to kill Pauletta. She had a $60,000 policy on her life, and he agreed to pay me $2,000 for the job.” It was an extraordinary confession. How could a father ask his son to kill for him, let alone his wife? And why, for a minuscule $2,000, did William Fuller agree? Furthermore, how did William’s carer
Pastor Tracy Bernard Burleson in court
o
n Tuesday, June 8th, 2010, a month after Pauletta Burleson was shot down in cold blood, federal agents arrested Pastor Burleson for his wife’s murder. In a surprise move, they also picked up William Fuller, his son, accusing him of Pauletta’s murder, and 57
friend, Tyonne Pollard-Palmer, who was having an affair with his father Pastor Burleson, fit into the murder story? This puzzled detectives, because her black car was seen by a neighbour outside Burleson’s house on the night of the murder. “I was concerned for William,” explained Tyonne. “I gave him a lift home after he called me to tell me what had happened. I’d been having an affair with his father for months.” A very serious affair, apparently. According to a friend, Tyonne and Pastor Burleson were engaged to be married – even though Burleson was still married to Pauletta! Tyonne and Pastor Burleson asked William to kill his stepmother for them. Tyonne waited in her car while William went through the back of the house and into the garage, where he shot Paulette. Tyonne then took William to her cousin’s house to shower, change, wipe down the gun and dump it somewhere outside the city. The prosecution had very little physical evidence, so they worked closely with detectives to search for clues that would corroborate William Fuller’s statement. A source close to Tyonne said that Tyonne had asked for help to buy a gun. That information linked the carer to the weapon and established her motives. Prosecutors claimed that the Pastor
to use part of the life insurance policy to finance his wedding with Tyonne Pollard-Palmer, Detectives also believed that Pauletta was about to tell police about the church fire. She knew that her husband had set fire to the building to collect the insurance money. She had told some fellow-congregants she knew Burleson had a plan to burn down the church in order to collect a hefty insurance payout. But in police interviews Burleson insisted he loved his church and would never consider such a heinous act as burning it down. “I had nothing to do with it,” he declared. “Anyway, I was asleep at the time it happened.“ Pauletta also said she knew all about her
husband’s sex life, but it seems she had no idea he was planning to kill her. It seemed clear that Pauletta was using the suspicious church fire as leverage to get her husband out of her house. Pauletta was not the kind of women to go back on a threat, so Pastor Burleson believed there was only one way of getting her to keep her mouth shut – and that was by putting a bullet in the back of her head.
t Pastor Burleson paid his son William (on trial, above right) a paltry $2,000 to kill the woman who had raised him
was about to lose everything. Pauletta remained a member of the church after they separated and found Burleson having sex with yet another girl in the Pastor’s study. She flew into a rage, attacking both of them. Church officials wanted Burleson out of the church and Pauletta wanted him out of the house. He killed his wife to gain control of her assets, and intended 58
he trial that shocked the religious world of Houston began in September 2013. The charges against William Fuller were downgraded from capital murder in exchange for his testimony against his co-defendants – his father and his father’s mistress. In another twist to the steamy and sordid affairs of the Burleson family, William now claimed that he too had been having an affair with Tyonne PollardPalmer. The defence argued that there was no evidence the Pastor offered to pay the killer to murder his wife, other than the word of the killer. The murderer, they declared, must be William Fuller; it was he who framed his father and killed his
stepmother. Why? Their reasoning was that William, now 20, could no longer tolerate the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and Pauletta. William had told the court that during the 10 years he lived with his dad and his stepmother the Pastor repeatedly asked him to kill Pauletta, and when he disagreed, “he would beat me with a leather strap.” His stepmother also mocked him for being permanently ill. Pastor Burleson’s defence lawyers argued that Fuller wanted to see his dad in prison so he could have Tyonne all to himself. They argued that they were more than just carer and patient, and indeed Fuller had told investigators he had sex with Tyonne at her house after the murder, to prove his love for her. Fuller, it was argued, was jealous of his father’s relationship with Tyonne, a woman he loved so much he had her name inked on to the back of his neck. Although much of the evidence was circumstantial, the jury found William Fuller a believable witness, and Pastor Burleson was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. The verdict and sentence delighted many of the church congregation who were in court to hear this astonishing saga of a son hired by his father to kill his stepmother. The congregation linked arms in prayer and thanks that the demon Pastor would never have a chance to ruin their church again. A month later Tyonne Pollard-Palmer was brought trial for her part in the murder, accused of tampering with the evidence as an accomplice. She emerged as a hard-working nursing assistant with three children and a husband. According to her lawyer, David Preece, “Her only crime is she fell in love with some bad people.” For that she was sentenced to seven years plus 10 years’ probation, which the state was most unhappy about. “Seven years!” expostulated Assistant District Attorney Kari Allen. “That’s not right. You just can’t kill someone because you don’t want to go through a divorce. She may not have been the mastermind, but seven years is definitely not enough.” Last to go on trial, nine months later, was William Fuller, the hit-man who confessed and testified against his father and his mistress. In return for his cooperation the prosecution dropped the capital murder charges, and the threat of the death penalty or life without parole. As is often the case in murderfor-hire sentencing, masterminds are treated more harshly than their cold-blooded triggerman. In Fuller’s case, also taken into account were the years of abuse he suffered from his father and stepmother, exacerbated by his serious illness. Weighing all the pros and cons, the judge decided to jail him for 20 years.
Report by Francesca Morrison
“I’M GOING TO BE FAMOUS” ...Boasted Killer Who Wanted To Be A Second Jack The Ripper
“
Y
OU WILL hear of me,” Derek Brown told a woman friend. “I’m going to be famous.” But as he was a 47-year-old lorry driver working nights delivering newspapers, his claim seemed to be wishful thinking...until, two murders later, he began to make horrific headlines. His victims, an Old Bailey jury was told on September 4th, 2008, were two young mothers whose bodies had not been found. Xiao-Mei Guo, 29, was the first to disappear. She and her husband
flat in Laburnum Court, Rotherhithe, south-east London, where he was supposedly going to check the quality of her DVDs, and she had never been seen again. Leaving her sons, aged 11 and 12, in China, she had come to Britain in August 2006. The Guos had paid the Snakeheads, a Chinese Mafia gang, “a considerable amount of money” to smuggle them into the UK, and their marriage, said Mr. Altman, “was a happy one, by all accounts.” When his wife disappeared, Jin Guo was serving a prison sentence for selling the counterfeit DVDs, and he was not released until two weeks after she vanished. A friend reported her missing six days after she was last seen. he court was told by Mr. Altman, T “These two young women disappeared from the east of London Left, Whitechapel underground where one of Brown’s victims was last seen. Above, the man who wanted to be the next Whitechapel serial killer
“To be a witness to a murder is quite rare, and to witness two, in your own lat, in the space of two weeks, is almost impossible”
were illegal Chinese immigrants who made their living by selling pirate DVDs on the streets of Whitechapel in London’s East End, and she vanished on August 29th, 2007. Three weeks later, on September 18th, Bonnie Barrett, a 24-year-old, also disappeared in Whitechapel. Denying the two women’s murders, Brown was alleged to have lured the victims to his flat. Then, “following a murderous attack,” he had disposed of their bodies, the prosecution claimed. “Both women lived on the edge of society,” said Mr. Brian Altman QC, opening the case for the Crown. “Both were street workers, and both were soft targets for a predatory killer who thought neither would be missed, and their disappearance would not trigger a massive police hunt. He was wrong.” Mrs. Guo had met Brown in Whitechapel Market, the court was told. She had gone with him to his
and off the face of the Earth...Not only has each not been seen or heard from again, neither woman’s body has been recovered, despite a massive police investigation into each of these disappearances. “Save for the evidence you are going to hear about in this case which links them together, they were entirely unconnected with each other. Evidence of both a direct and substantial nature links the disappearance of both young women to this defendant, Derek Brown.” And what was his background? He was an habitual user of prostitutes, and he came from Preston, in Lancashire, the court was told. He had recently left his long-term partner, and he had seven children by four different women. As the month-long trial continued, the jury heard that it was with Brown that Mrs. Guo was last seen, in CCTV images taken outside Whitechapel Tube station, just half a mile away from where Ms. Barrett subsequently disappeared Sixty-five separate traces of the women’s blood had been found spattering the walls, floors and ceiling of Brown’s flat, where police also discovered a receipt for items including a bow saw, heavy-duty gloves, cleaning materials and rubble sacks. When officers entered the flat they saw that the carpet had been taken “I’m Going To Be Famous” Murder Most Foul 59
Left, Bonnie Barrett and right, Mrs. Guo, who met Brown at Whitechapel Market (below)
up, and the walls had been stripped. A bucket of water stood ready to be used, and the number of bloodstains in the bathroom indicated that the bodies might have been dismembered in the bath. And that wasn’t all. In the flat detectives also found a library book, Killers – The Most Barbaric Murderers Of Our Time. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and Dennis Nilsen, the London policeman turned multiple killer, were among those featured.
in front of her 14-month-old son, and he had also been identified by the victims of five other sex attacks spanning two decades. It also emerged that he had been a suspect in an earlier murder inquiry outside London. The police believed he craved becoming as famous as the notorious Whitechapel killer, Jack the Ripper. “If Brown kept killing prostitutes from the Whitechapel area, then that link would be made,” said Detective Chief Inspector Mark Kandiah, who led the
Right, the library book about serial killers found in Brown’s flat
Analysis of the blood found in the flat suggested that Mrs. Guo was murdered in the hall, perhaps as she tried to flee; and Ms. Barrett tried to save her life by wedging herself against the washing machine under the kitchen worktop. n his defence Brown claimed that Iwomen intruders had murdered the two in his flat. The jury didn’t believe him. On October 3rd, 2008, after less than three hours’ deliberation, they found him guilty of both murders. Then they heard that in 1989 he had been jailed for seven years for raping a woman 60
investigation. “If this was a spree, it seems likely that we stopped him at number two. He is clearly a very evil man, and in my opinion he was not going to stop.” Commenting on Brown’s attempt to blame intruders for the murders, the detective said: “To be a witness to a murder is quite rare, and to witness two, in your own flat, in the space of three weeks, is almost impossible. Derek Brown targeted these women because of their vulnerability – he thought no one would care.” Two people who did care had the
distressing task of telling the victims’ children what had happened. “Due to the actions of Derek Brown I had to sit Bonnie’s boy down and explain to him that his mum had been killed,” said Ms. Barrett’s mother. “I will never understand Brown’s actions. I can only describe him as a total beast.” Mr. Guo was still trying to find the right words to explain his wife’s fate to his sons. “I have tried to tell them,” he said, “but I really don’t have the courage to tell them the truth.” Like Bonnie’s mother, he made an emotional appeal for the killer to say what he had done with the victims’ remains. Brown’s dumb-bells were missing, suggesting that he had dumped the body parts in the Thames, which divers had searched unsuccessfully. Another theory was that he had disposed of the women by using an industrial compactor. Jailing Brown on October 6th for a
“You have shown not a licker of remorse, and how you killed them we cannot know. What we do know is that you disposed of their bodies with frightening eficiency so that not a trace of either has been found”
minimum of 30 years, Judge Martin Stephens told him: “The anguish of both families is made much worse by their inability to lay each lady to rest in accordance with their beliefs. What you did to these women before you killed them we can only speculate about. You have shown not a flicker of remorse, and how you killed them we cannot know. What we do know is that you disposed of their bodies with frightening efficiency so that not a trace of either has been found.” Detectives suspected that Brown might have killed before, and they planned to question him about a number of unsolved murders. If his ambition had been to emulate Jack the Ripper, as the police supposed, he had failed. But he achieved a different distinction. He was believed, The Times reported, to be the first person in living memory convicted of two murders in the absence of bodies.
BROADSTAIRS MURDER BY MISTAKE Who Dumped Lillian’s Body By The Roadside?
N
OTHING COULD have contrasted more shockingly with the quiet, uneventful life of Lillian Chubb than her sudden, mysterious death. Most of her 52 years had been spent acquiring the expertise which had led to her appointment as hosiery buyer at a department store at Cliftonville, near Margate, Kent. A quiet, plump spinster, she had no men friends; or, if she did, those who knew her best had never heard of them. Her
Case recalled by A.W. Moss address book contained only the names of women. For seven years she had been living with her brother Ernest, a 49-year-old plumber, his wife Edith Daisy, 46, and the couple’s five children at their house on the Northdown Hill estate on the outskirts of Broadstairs. But on the evening of February 6th, 1958, Lillian didn’t come home from work, and shortly before 9 o’clock the next morning some schoolchildren found her body lying beneath a hedge at the side of Reading Street Road, about 250 yards from the Chubbs’ house in Hugin Avenue. A neighbour called to the scene looked down at the dead woman, recognised her and phoned the police. At first it was suspected that a hit-and-run driver was responsible – he could have carried Lillian, dead or dying, to the spot where her corpse was found. But this theory didn’t explain the faint red mark round her neck and the discoloration of her face, although a doctor later confirmed that she had been strangled. Her handbag was missing, but she
Above, police question a motorist near the spot where the body of victim Lillian Chubb (left) was found
was fully dressed and there was no evidence of sexual assault. As her hands bore no defensive wounds it seemed that she had been taken by surprise, and she was estimated to have been dead for about 24 hours. She was believed to have been killed elsewhere and dumped, because her body was found stiffened in a sitting position. Leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Fred Everitt wondered if she had been kept in a car seat for some time after her death. Informed of the discovery of his sister’s body, a shaken Ernest Chubb told the police that she had no enemies. “I can only think,” he said, “that some thief must have snatched her handbag and choked her to prevent her crying
out.” He went on to say that Lillian had travelled four miles each day to her work at the department store in Cliftonville. “Did she go there by bus?” asked a detective. “I don’t know. She always did, but just lately I’ve heard that somebody was picking her up in a car each morning. Her season’s bus ticket had run out. Of course, she could have been paying the full fare each way.” It appeared that his sister had for years held a commuter ticket, but the current one had expired three weeks earlier. Lillian, for some reason he didn’t know, had not renewed it. “Do you know who was picking up your sister each morning?” “No, I never saw the driver. It’s only a rumour. If it’s true it must have been someone Lillian knew – a woman, I’d say. She wouldn’t accept a lift from a man.” “Was she short of money? Could that be why she didn’t buy another season ticket?” “Oh, no! She had plenty. She had a Broadstairs Murder By Mistake Murder Most Foul 61
good job – well paid.” “Never asked you to lend her any cash?” “No.” “Do you know what her handbag looks like?” “Oh, yes. The one she most often used is of grey leather – a light, silvery sort of grey. It’s got her initials fastened on it – L. C., made of some gold-coloured metal.” At the detective’s prompting, Ernest Chubb did his best to remember what the bag contained. There was a purse
Plumber Ernest Chubb – the brother of the victim – and his wife Edith follow Lillian’s coffin into the cemetery
fastened with a clip, and a round make-up box of green plastic. Finally he recalled a pigskin diary for 1958. “Do you have a photo of your sister?” asked the detective. Chubb said he’d soon find one. The police had it copied and officers showed it around Lillian’s neighbourhood in an effort to find someone who had seen her on her last, fatal journey to work. Other detectives went to the department store in Cliftonville to interview the firm’s employees. Lillian’s boss said he wasn’t surprised when she hadn’t shown up on that Thursday morning. She had had a bad cold on Wednesday, so he hadn’t made enquiries about her absence. Most of Lillian’s colleagues echoed the general opinion – she 62
was a quiet and retiring type, unlikely to accept the casual offer of a lift in a man’s car. Despite Ernest Chubb’s statement that his sister might have been given a ride to work daily, none of the employees had seen her arrive in a car on the Thursday morning or on any other day, or enter a car in the evenings to be taken home. No regular passenger on the buses could recall having seen Lillian on either the outward or homeward trip on the day in question; nor could any of the conductors. Edith Chubb said that her sisterin-law had left for work at her usual time on Thursday morning. “She told me she intended to stay in Cliftonville to go to the pictures with a friend, and that I mustn’t expect her back until late in the evening. When she didn’t return we thought she’d decided to stay overnight with her friend, as she occasionally did.” From a neighbour of the Chubbs the investigators were able to establish that Lillian had been seen walking towards her bus stop on the Thursday morning.
Arthur Gurr remembered noticing her as she passed his house. She had strolled out of sight, going down the hill, and she hadn’t stopped or got into any waiting car. The neighbour even recalled the time: 8.40 a.m. Lillian had had only 250 yards farther to go to catch the bus. The witness seemed to be the last person known to have seen the spinster alive. Where had she gone in those 250 yards? For the moment the investigation had stalled. But it was early yet to think in terms of failure. It was still only Sunday evening. Everitt believed that some clue to the mystery would come from the place where Lillian’s body had been found. There was no sign on the ground of even a feeble struggle, so the victim had almost certainly been dumped there, already dead. Assuming that Lillian had been picked up in a car instead of going to the bus stop, that must have occurred in the morning. To have dumped a body in this place by daylight would have been far too risky for the killer; so after Lillian had been strangled, her corpse must have been hidden somewhere nearby – in a garage, perhaps. When darkness fell the killer had set out from the hiding place, carrying the victim and heading for a suitable spot to dispose of her. Re-examining the cordoned-off crime scene, the investigators made a discovery which thoroughly shook the dumping-by-car theory. As a detective sergeant studied a bare patch of earth about 12 feet from where the body had lain, he saw a long, straight shallow depression in the
Two photos of the police reenacting one theory on how the body was dumped by the side of Reading Street Road
ground at an acute angle to the road. It was clearly a wheel track of some kind. It could have been made by the rubber-tyre wheel of a pram, except that this would have produced two lines, about three inches apart, the front wheels being closer together (having a
shorter axle) than the rear pair. The detective searched for the track of the opposite wheel, which he thought would parallel the first at a distance of about two feet. But the strip of bare earth was narrow, so it seemed that the other wheel must have passed over the grass. The sergeant’s discovery drew, at his shout, the prompt attention of his colleagues. One of the officers pointed out that if a pram had made the mark, it could have contained nothing heavier than a baby – the wheel had hardly sunk into the sandy soil at all. “What about the weather?” countered another detective. “We’re pretty sure the murdered woman was dumped here at night, and the frosts we’ve been having would have made the ground as hard as a brick.” All the officers scrutinised other bare patches, but there were no more tracks to be seen. The pathologist’s post-mortem examination found that very little force
Suspect Edith Chubb leaves her home with Chief Inspector Fred Everitt (right) and Inspector John Welsh
had been used in strangling the victim. Then her body had lain for at least 12 hours in some unheated place, such as a shed or a cold-room, resting on a soft, yielding surface, such as a bed or couch. Apart from the strangling, there were no injuries except for some slight abrasions or pressure marks at the back of the knees. The strangling, it was pointed out, could have been accidental. There is a certain spot on everyone’s neck upon which even a light pressure can produce death, and apparently that is what happened in the case of Lillian Chubb. A fierce, quick-tempered quarrel, with threatening gestures culminating in a clutching of the victim’s throat, might have killed her. And the fatal clutch would not have needed the strength of a man’s hand. At least, this was what was theorised.
S
tudying the pathologist’s report, the detectives were particularly interested in the pressure marks on the back of the victim’s knees. Ever
Very little force had been used in strangling the victim. Then her body had lain for at least 12 hours in some unheated place, such as a shed or coldroom, resting on a soft, yielding surface such as a bed or couch since the discovery of the wheel mark, the investigators had concentrated on locating a pram which might have made it. Now the search switched to wheelbarrows and pushcarts. Prams have padded edges, but wheelbarrows and pushcarts do not, and the red pressure marks behind the corpse’s knees had been made as the feet had dangled over a hard edge on the victim’s last journey. A reconstruction was even undertaken in which a wheelbarrow was used to dump a dummy by the side of the road. Everitt had also received a report from the forensic laboratory at Scotland Yard, to which he had sent Lillian’s garments for examination. The scientists had found that the clothing bore traces of coke dust. This meant that the body must have been kept in a place where coke was stored. That was where it had sat in a wheelbarrow or cart, before being dumped. Everitt gave instructions for a search of sheds and cellars throughout the area for any wheeled carrying devices found in them. By evening, however, all such vehicles found in the area had been eliminated – except one. This was a home-made cart 63
constructed from a large wooden box and two pram wheels. Everitt had it sent to the forensic laboratory in London to determine whether it bore fibres from the victim’s coat or other incriminating evidence. The cart had been found in a coke shed behind a small cottage not far from the Chubbs’ home. The tenant, a handyman, said he did not even know what Miss Chubb looked like. His alibi for the day she disappeared was that he had been at home alone. Police records revealed that he had spent several years in jail for assault and robbery. Everitt ordered him to remain available to the police until the results of the tests on the cart were known. The police could find no one except Arthur Gurr who had seen Lillian Chubb out of doors the morning she disappeared. This seemed remarkable because many people said they passed along Reading Street Road between eight and nine every morning.
“Lillian left here at her usual time on Thursday, and in her usual happy way. The only thing different from any other morning was that she said she was going to the cinema in the evening” On the 13th the laboratory reported that there were fibres from the victim’s coat on the two-wheeled cart. But fertiliser, lime and other substances had been found in the cart. These would have transferred themselves to the coat had the victim been carried in it. That cleared the handyman. Everitt decided to have another chat with Arthur Gurr. “You’re the only person who saw Lillian Chubb on that Thursday she disappeared,” he said. “Are you certain she passed your house that morning?” Gurr answered him thoughtfully. “I’m glad you came, because I’ve been thinking it over, and all I can definitely say is that I think I saw her that Thursday morning. But it’s quite possible that I’m confusing that day with the day before. I’m no longer positive that she did pass that Thursday.” Everitt went down the street to the Chubbs’ home. The door was opened by Edith, who repeated her earlier story. “Lillian left here at her usual time on Thursday, and in her usual happy way. The only thing different from any other morning was that she said she was going to the cinema in the evening.” While Everitt was questioning her, Ernest came home from work. It was a cold, damp night and Edith sent out for a scuttle of coke for the fire... 64
Above, a thoughtful Edith Chubb. Below, a detective with the canvas-covered invalid’s wheelchair found in the attic of the Chubbs’ house
Everitt asked Inspector John Welsh, “Was the Chubbs’ coke shed searched for a wheelbarrow?” “I think so,” Welsh said, “but I’ll check and make sure.” He made a phone call, spoke briefly, and hung up. “Yes, it was searched. No wheeled
vehicle of any sort was found there. Why did you ask?” “Because I’m no longer certain that Lillian Chubb left home at all that Thursday morning.” Everitt told Welsh of his talk with Arthur Gurr. “What time does Ernest Chubb leave for work in the mornings?” he asked. “Quite early. About 6 o’clock. We checked that,” Welsh told him. Further enquiries the next day revealed that the Chubbs had been behind with their rent, but Mrs. Chubb had settled that and had also paid money off her grocery account on the day Lillian Chubb disappeared. The officers returned to the Chubbs’ house, where they asked permission to search it again. “Certainly, if you think it necessary,” Edith said. They found nothing of significance in the coke shed, but in the attic was an invalid’s wheelchair. It had a metal frame – a frame that might have made the ridge on the underside of the victim’s legs – and the seat and back were covered with canvas. Everitt rubbed a finger along a metal arm of the chair. It was black with coke dust. “Mrs. Chubb told me about being confined to an invalid chair for two weeks some time ago,” Welsh said. “But could she have pushed her sisterin-law’s body along the road in that chair without attracting attention?” “Somebody pushed it,” Everitt said. “And in view of the payments she made on February 6th, I suspect Edith Chubb.” The mother of five agreed to leave her chores and accompany the detectives to the police station, where she was asked where she had got the money to pay off the bills. “As a matter of fact,” she replied, “I obtained two pounds from my husband, another three pounds from my mother’s pension and five pounds from my sister in Ireland.” “We’re now convinced,” Everitt told her, “that your sister-in-law was not out of doors at all on Thursday. That suggests that she met her death in your house at about 8.30 a.m. after she had put on her coat, hat and scarf to leave for the bus. Your husband and children had already left. What can you tell us about that?” Edith Chubb sat silently for a moment, then tears came to her eyes. “I killed her,” she said softly. “My husband doesn’t know I did it, but I’m ready to make a confession.” Lillian had been no help, just another burden, prim, opinionated and overbearing. “Lillian was so smug, so complacent,” Edith said. “It was the way she put her cup down.
chair in the attic. Then I called to the children to get up at about the same time as usual. Nobody knew anything had happened. “There was about twelve pounds in Lillian’s bag. I kept the money, but everything else in the bag I burnt.” When Ernest Chubb was informed that Edith had been charged with Lillian’s murder, he collapsed with shock. He simply could not comprehend that Edith could have been unhappy with her lot or that she could have resented Lillian so bitterly.
A
Shocked at charges against her, local people watch as Edith Chubb enters the police vehicle after a court appearance
If you have a home of your own, don’t ever have a relative come to live with you. Nobody knows what I have been through these last years. “It happened just as Lillian was going out of the front door on her way to work. The children had all gone to school and we were alone in the house. Something just came over me. I grabbed her scarf and pulled it tight. She fell backwards onto the floor and hit her head on the post of the stairs. I heard the milkman outside and Lillian was making gurgling sounds. I put my hand over her mouth to stop it. When I realised she was dead I was horrified. I couldn’t think. “Then I saw the invalid chair in the garden beside the front door. The children had been playing in it and had left it out of the shed overnight. I dragged Lillian over and put her in the chair. Then I wheeled her into the shed and left her there. I brought plenty of coke into the house, and when my
husband and the children came home, I somehow kept them from going out to the shed.” Edith Chubb said that when her husband left for work the next morning she wheeled the chair out of the shed. “I covered Lillian with my travelling rug, like an invalid, and pushed her over to Reading Street Road. It was still quite dark and very foggy. Several cars passed but the drivers did not notice me. “I tipped Lillian under the hedge by the side of the road and went home. I was back indoors by 7.15. I hid the
t her trial which began at the Old Bailey on April 30th, 1958, Edith Chubb told the court: “When Lillian first fell down, I thought the blow on her head had stunned her. My attention was attracted to that, rather than to anything else.” “Did you have any intention whatsoever of killing her?” asked Mr. A. P. Marshall QC, defending. “No, sir, I did not intend to kill her.” “Did you desire at any time to do her any grievous bodily harm?” “No, sir, I could easily have told her to leave the house had it been that bad.” “Did you bear any ill-feeling towards her?”
“The children had all gone to school and we were alone in the house. Something just came over me. I grabbed her scarf and pulled it tight. She fell backwards and hit her head on the post of the stairs” “No, sir, not really.” “Was it any more than a feeling of exasperation that came over you?” “No, sir.” “Do you deeply regret it?” “Oh, yes, sir.” For the Crown, Mr. Lawton asked: “Were you fond of Lillian?” “No, I was not fond of her, it depends on what you mean by fondness. I did not regard her as one of my own family.” “By February 6th, had you come to dislike her?” “No, I never disliked her at any time.” Mr. Lawton persisted, “I am going to make the suggestion to you, and I want you to answer it, that on February 6th the relationship between you and Lillian had degenerated to such an extent that you had got into a position where you positively disliked her?” “No, sir.” Mrs. Chubb said that her sister-in-law had come for one week to see how initially it would be. “And she stayed for seven years?” asked Mr. Lawton. 65
“Yes.” Edith Chubb admitted that she had sometimes asked Lillian to lend her money. Mr. Lawton asked, “On that particular morning had you asked Lillian to lend you money to tide you over with the rent?” “No, sir.” Questioned further, Mrs. Chubb said Lillian had done nothing particular that morning to exasperate her and there were no words between them. But as Lillian left the kitchen, the defendant had decided to go after her. “What was it exactly that you intended to do?” asked Mr. Lawton. “To give her a shaking.” “Had you got to the stage when you just boiled over with your sisterin-law?” “That could possibly explain it.” “Having boiled over, you flew at her. Is that right?” “Yes, sir.”
The Old Bailey where Edith Chubb’s murder trial was held
“And you flew at her from behind?” “Yes.” The prosecutor then asked her to demonstrate how the scarf was put
DDY A D R A G U S Y H W RGINA O E G D E L G N A R ST
UYY”” GU ““N NIICCEE G KEEPPTT NK NN G GLLEEN N BBO ODDIIEESS IIN BBAARRRREELLSS
#
E QUA RTER LY 1 TRUE CR IM WOR LD’S NO.
Y A SURVIVOR’S STOR
THE BEAST WHO TRADED IN CHILDREN’S BODIES
What Has He Done With Theresa, Joan And Christine’s Bodies?
Horror Of The Heaven’s Gate The Evidence Cult That Hanged 39 Dead With Plastic Bags On Their Heads
Sidney Fox
115
w w w.truecr
com imelibrary.
Horror In Western Australia
KILLED KILLED BY BY HIS HIS DAD DAD –– BURIED BURIED BY BY HIS SIBLINGS HIS SIBLINGS
All this and more, in our next issue – IN SHOPS ON JANUARY 30th. Or subscribe and save – see page 50 66
around her sister-in-law’s neck and how it was pulled. Mrs. Chubb placed a yellow scarf around the neck of the woman prison officer who sat by her side. The scarf was loosely knotted on the left side of the neck and Mrs. Chubb put out her left hand and pulled it tightly. “I did not intend to pull her over,” she said, “although it was a hard pull.” “Why pull the scarf?” Mr. Lawton asked. “Well, it just happened to be there.” “Did you pull it tight?” “Not consciously.” Mrs. Chubb said that when she put her hand over her sister-in-law’s mouth she “rather panicked.” She knew when her sister-in-law’s face turned blue that she was choking, and that putting her hand over her mouth would make this worse. This concluded Edith Chubb’s evidence.
“It is not an answer to say ‘I did not intend to kill or do grievous bodily harm’ if what you do to a person is something which will inevitably lead to that happening. That is exactly what Mrs. Chubb did” In his closing speech Mr. Lawton told the jury: “There is a danger of trying to escape from one’s plain duty by wallowing in the sentiment which obviously surrounds Mrs. Chubb. It is not an answer to say ‘I did not intend to kill or to do grievous bodily harm’ if what you do to a person is something which will inevitably lead to that happening. That is exactly what Mrs. Chubb did. “Mrs. Chubb was having the sort of problems to deal with which many women have to deal with. It is hard on them, and ought not to be, but does it substantially reduce their mental responsibility?” Summing-up on May 2nd, Mr. Justice Jones told the jury that at the very least they should return a verdict of manslaughter. The jury agreed, and Edith Chubb was sentenced to four years in prison. However, her time behind bars would prove to be even shorter than that due to growing public support for her in the light of a family tragedy. In July 1958, the Chubbs’ eldest daughter, who had been acting as mother to the other children in her mother’s absence, tragically died. Several petitions calling for Edith Chubb’s release followed, and in January 1961 the killer walked free having served just two years and eight months behind bars.
More Thrilling Reading – Guaranteed
Don’t miss this year’s True Crime Winter Special STORIES INCLUDE: SHOULD THEY HAVE HANGED JEAN’S HUSBAND? END OF A TEENAGE ROMANCE AFTER 28 YEARS… HOW AN INVISIBLE CLUE CAUGHT ELAINE’S KILLER EXECUTED BY GUNSHOT – OCTOBER 2014 COLUMBINE’S LAST VICTIM? LORI’S MURDER SOLVED AFTER 30 YEARS YOUNG LOVERS SLAIN BY THE LANDLORD FROM HELL PREGNANT MARINE BURNED IN FIRE PIT 11 VICTIMS FOR “THE TEENAGE BONNIE AND CLYDE” DEATH, MYSTERY AND MAGIC IN THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN WAS HOLLYWOOD STAR THELMA TODD MURDERED? “SHOULD I STRANGLE, DROWN OR SET FIRE TO EMILY?” THE POPPY DAY MASSACRE INCEST WAS THE KEY TO COLD CASE KILLER
At W.H. Smith and all good newsagents from November 7th
Four Ways To Order Your Special: l Ask your newsagent to save one for you – this is a free
service they will be pleased to provide l Order direct from Forum Press by sending a cheque or postal order for £4.80 to PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ, UK (post-free in UK; Europe €9/rest of world $12 including postage) l Call our order hotline on 020 8778 0514 to order by credit/debit card l Order worldwide via our website: www.truecrimelibrary.com
8 4 - PAGE NOT TO BE MIS SED IS SUE!
SOLD OUT No. 113
No. 112
No. 111
No. 110
No. 109
No. 108
Don’t miss out on these reasonably priced back issues! They’re ideal if you can’t wait for the next issue – or if you have gaps in your collection. But hurry. Some issues have already sold out and others are in short supply! Each of the issues shown here costs just £4.90 post-free in the UK. Europe incl. Ireland: €9.00 incl. postage. Rest of World US$10.00 incl. postage. To order send a cheque or postal order, payable to Forum Press, to MMF Back Issues, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ, UK. l You can also order and pay by card on 020 8778 0514. l And you can always view and order our complete range of back issues at www.truecrimelibrary.com
BACK ISSUE FOCUS Missed an issue of MURDER MOST FOUL? Snap up these bargain back issues NOW for just £4.90 each, POST-FREE in the UK!
No. 107
No. 106
No. 105
No. 104
No. 103
SOLD OUT No. 102
No. 101
No. 100
No. 99
No. 98