20dfvdfv

ER LL EN

Detective Monthly

L IA EC UE SP ISS

crime

KI OM W

true

3

THE HUNT FOR THE JOHANNESBURG HAMMER-KILLER

www.truecrimelibrary.com

JANUARY 2018

THE MURDER THAT SENT A 61-YEAROLD WOMAN TO THE DEATH CHAMBER THE MOST HATED WOMAN IN IRELAND “Hang her,” they cried Nine Victims The Mafia’s For The Unlikely Widow Of Godfather Toulouse

HORROR AT WINCHESTER STATION

TCreports

“CRUELLEST OF THE CRUEL” MAFIA BOSS MEETS HIS END W

e often think just of the terror and the fear the gangster mobs of the world inflict.

But these mobs also create a different but wider damage.

They can paralyse and kill off the trade and commerce of a region or country.

Salvatore Riina certainly did that, creating mass poverty in his home territory of Sicily – not only by the gun and relentless killing but by his infiltration into almost all areas of business life including the heroin trade.

He was the Mafia’s “boss of bosses” and his tentacles spread everywhere, not just in Italy but across the globe – so much so that he even ran his businesses from the jail cells.

But he went to meet his maker not through the gun but cancer just before Christmas, aged 87. In a realm of cruel men he was probably the cruellest of modern times – the head of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra since the 1970s.

His methods were kidnapping, strangling, shooting, extortion and trafficking. He killed his first victim at 17 but the worst example of his unrelenting cruelty was the dissolving in acid of the 13-year-old son of a Mafia informant.

In 1980, he went as far

as killing the president of Sicily. But his arrogance finally overreached itself in 1992 when he ordered the bombing assassinations of two leading anti-Mafia lawyers. The authorities had enough evidence to jail him for life in 1993. He got 26 life sentences and spent a big part of the rest of his life in isolation as the authorities curbed his outside contacts.

Clockwise from top left: Salvatore “Totò” Riina is escorted by Carabinieri officers as he arrives at the court house in Palermo, on December 1st, 1993; Riina in 1955; the medieval town of Corleone where he was born and which was immortalised as a Mafia stronghold in The Godfather book and film trilogy; Riina in court

He had four children, one of whom was also in prison for commiting four murders.

Riina was just 5ft 2in tall, a woeful example of the old claim that little men are

far more likely to develop power complexes. He had an assortment of nicknames, the most common being Totò or U Curtu (translated as Shorty) or The Beast.

Few people in Sicily mourned his passing and it was only parts of the older generation who felt any sadness at his death.

Many of the young, of the brightest and best, had already left the island and made for the US or more peaceful and economically stronger parts of Italy or the European Community.

But long before his death, Mafia links were weakening, at the end of the 1980s and the beginnings of the 1990s.

More people were willing to talk and identify the Mafia. Other mobs around the south of Italy also grew in brutality and influence including the Camorra in Naples and the ’Ndràngheta from Calabria.

Riina hadn’t read the times.The bombing assassinations were a step too far.

Enormous trials in the 1990s resulted in the arrest and jailing of more than 300 gangsters. That was the epitaph to his life of savagery. l See Master Detective March for a new series on the Sicilian Mafia.

TC Comp: Win BLACK DAHLIA RED ROSE On January 15th, 1947, the naked, dismembered body of a black-haired beauty, Elizabeth Short, was discovered lying next to a pavement in a Hollywood suburb. She was quickly nicknamed the Black Dahlia.

The homicide inquiry that followed consumed Los Angeles for years and the authorities blew millions of dollars of resources on an investigation that threw up dozens of suspects. But it never was solved. In this groundbreaking book, author Piu Eatwell reveals compelling forensic and eye-witness evidence for the first time, which finally points to the identity of the murderer. The case was immortalised in James Ellroy’s famous novel based on the case, in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon and Brian de Palma’s movie The Black Dahlia.

For a chance to win a hardback copy of Black Dahlia Red Rose (Coronet; ISBN 978-1-473-66632-0; £20.00) by Piu Eatwell, answer this question:

In which US city was Elizabeth Short born? n New York n Washington n Philadelphia n Boston

Send your answer to True Crime January competition, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ, or email truecrime@truecrimelibrary.com, with the subject line “TC January Comp.” The first correct entry out of the hat after the closing date of January 18th will win. The winner will be announced in the March issue.

The winner of the True Crime November competition with the answer 1868 is Mrs. F. A. McDonald of Dover. Well done!

Your copy of Launched Into Eternity will be with you soon.

2 truecrime

CONTENTS

was the finding of a woman’s blood-spattered tank-top blouse in the bedroom...

FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND...

16 MAJOR BRITISH MURDER CASES: 46,000 WERE FINGERPRINTED IN THE SEARCH FOR JUNE’S KILLER

38 GANGLAND CONFIDENTIAL: THE MAFIA’S UNLIKELY GODFATHER How the Russian-born and New York-bred Meyer Lansky became the Mafia’s treasurer – and the most influential figure in American organised crime

Who was the “white werewolf” who’d snatched a three-year-old girl from a hospital bed, raped her and then battered her to death? Blackburn Police were convinced he was a local man – but still had to go to extraordinary lengths to find the answer

...AND FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD

12 NEW SERIES – SOUTH AFRICA’S SUPERCOP: THE HUNT FOR THE JOHANNESBURG HAMMER-KILLER

35 DEATH ON THE RAILWAY: HORROR AT WINCHESTER STATION Hard times had left troubled ex-soldier William Gregory with much to ponder but no one could have foreseen the devastating events that were to come when he supposedly was leaving the Hampshire city for London...

First in a series of cases highlighting the much-heralded detective work of the late South African sleuth Piet Byleveld, who died in May 2017. In the mid-1990s Johannesburg had been hit by a spate of horrific murders with no fixed modus operandi. Traders, taxi drivers and courting couples were all slain. Were these killings linked or were there several killers on the loose?

45 THE MOST HATED WOMAN IN IRELAND A murder investigation was launched when a woman’s body, naked from the waist down, was found in a Dublin street. Soon the hunt for the killer was under way but a notorious nurse living just yards away soon became the prime suspect...

22 MURDER THE FRENCH WAY: NINE VICTIMS FOR THE WIDOW OF TOULOUSE The terrible tale of Françoise Lapierre, which shocked all France and led to calls for the widow’s execution on the guillotine...

FROM THE USA...

4 THE MURDER THAT SENT A 61-YEAR-OLD WOMAN TO THE DEATH CHAMBER

NEWS & VIEWS TC Reports 2 Competition 2  Comment 10  Chronicles of Crime 15, 44, 48, 50  Old-Time Movie Quiz 41  

The first hint police in Gans, Oklahoma, got that the killer of 20-year-old Cindy Baillie might not be a man Search “True Crime Library”

JANUARY 2018

@TrueCrimeMagz

@truecrimelibrary

www.truecrimelibrary.com

Letters: Please send your comments, suggestions and queries to: True Crime, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ or email truecrime@ truecrimelibrary.com Fax: +44 (0)20 8776 8260 Subscriptions: UK: £31.50 for 12 issues.

Surface mail: £50.00 (US$68.00/Au$84.00).

Airmail (Europe): £50.00 (€57.00). Airmail (rest of world): £61.00 (US$82.00/ Au$103.00) To subscribe visit www.truecrimelibrary.com or call +44 (0)20 8778 0514 or email enquiries@ truecrimelibrary.com or write to Forum Press, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ Back-numbers: Visit www.truecrimelibrary.com or phone Forum Press on +44 (0)20 8778 0514 or email enquiries@ truecrimelibrary.com Advertising: For ad rates contact: Forum Press, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ Tel: +44 (0)20 8778 0514 Distribution: True Crime can be ordered from any newsagent in Britain or Ireland. For your nearest stockist call our distributor, Marketforce, on +44 (0)20 3787 9001 True Crime Library: For book sales and information, contact Forum Press (details above) Cover and contents of True Crime produced

by Magazine Design & Publishing Ltd. Printed and bound by Acorn Web Offset, Loscoe Close, Normanton Industrial Estate, Normanton, West Yorkshire WF6 1TW, for the Proprietors and Publishers. Copyright and the rights of translation and reproduction of the contents of True Crime are strictly reserved. Distributed

by Marketforce (UK), 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU. Tel: +44 (0)20 3787 9001. www.marketforce.co.uk © Magazine Design & Publishing Ltd. We also publish Master Detective, True Detective and Murder Most Foul Visit our website at www.truecrimelibrary.com

truecrime 3

B

ECAUSE OF all the fireworks, none of the neighbours heard the gunshots that holiday morning of Independence Day, July 4th, 1982. There were nine shots altogether, irregularly spaced over a period of about five minutes.

Some dogs barked nearby in the small housing estate on the outskirts of the town of Gans, Oklahoma.

“Was that somebody shooting?” a woman asked her husband.

“No. It’s just kids out letting off fireworks.”

Thus the sound of violence was dismissed as too improbable in a peaceful little community like Gans.

It was a Sunday as well as a holiday, and it promised to be another scorcher. By 9 a.m. the sun was already high in the sky. Two local residents were on their way to Paul Dolan’s home on the estate to collect a car. The previous night Thomas Lindsey had loaned his vehicle to Paul and his wife Sadie as their own car had a flat tyre. Gerald Reynolds had driven Lindsey to the Dolans’ house.

When they arrived they were surprised to hear a loud quarrel in progress inside the Dolans’ home. Then a youth of about 18 came outside.

The quarrel continued. The youth, James Gregory Smith, seemed to have a chip on his shoulder. He ignored the row going on in the house and wiped his hands on a towel.

“It’s all right,” he assured the callers, shrugging. “Paul’s not home, but he’ll be back in a little while. Everything’s all right.”

Lindsey and Reynolds were not entirely convinced. By 9.30 a.m. they were banging on the front door of Vernon Barnes, the community’s middle-aged policeman.

He dressed when told of the disturbance at the Dolans’ home and sped to the housing estate. He arrived to see Dolan getting into his car to leave.

“Paul, what’s going on?”

Barnes asked him. Nearly everyone in Gans was on first name terms.

“Nothing,” Dolan replied.

But he seemed extremely nervous. “Everything will be just fine as soon as I leave.”

Barnes had no reason to doubt him. Everything did seem to be in order. A strange Cadillac was parked in the 4 truecrime

drive, but Barnes thought nothing of that. After all, the Fourth of July was a traditional day for family get-togethers.

He reported back to Gerald Reynolds and Thomas Lindsey, then returned home.

Two hours later, Reynolds was again banging on the officer’s door. “Vernon, you have to come right now!

Thomas and Paul just found a dead girl in Paul’s house!

She’s dead, Vernon. Looks like

she might have shot herself.”

Barnes returned to Paul Dolan’s house. Reynolds led him down the hallway to the master bedroom. The dead girl’s right hand grasped a black, pearl-handled .22-calibre revolver. She lay on her back on the carpet, arms spread, wearing a yellow print summer dress.

Dark-haired and sun-tanned, she had been pretty. Now, however, her face was grotesque in death.

There was a thick smear of blood on her throat. Her chest was riddled with tiny bullet holes. Dried blood crusted her dress-front. Dried blood on the carpet leading to her eventual resting-place

Case recalled by Charles W. Sasser

surprised leaving home barely two hours earlier. In Barnes’s estimation, judged from the developing rigidity of the body and the coagulation of the blood, two hours would about cover the time since the victim had been shot.

Barnes asked Dolan: “Who is she?”

Dolan said she was Cynthia Lee Baillie.

Everyone called her Cindy.

She was 20 and lived in Tahlequah, in adjoining

“Then we walked down the hallway. That’s when we saw the body lying on the bedroom floor. She was real bloodstained around the throat and had dark places on her face” indicated that she had been dragged across the floor.

Upon closer examination, Barnes discovered two additional gunshot wounds behind her right ear, plus another puzzling wound in her throat. This was no suicide. Not even the most determined suicide victim could do all this to herself.

Murder was Vernon Barnes’s opinion and he looked suspiciously at Paul Dolan. It had been a nervous Dolan whom the cop had

Cherokee County, some 50 miles north-east of Gans. Dolan admitted that she had been at his house that morning, when he encountered Barnes the first time. However, he insisted, she had then been alive.

“He seemed reluctant to discuss it,” the county Assistant District Attorney Mike Daffin later recalled.

“We didn’t know at the time if his hesitation was because of guilt or because he was afraid of something.”

Assistant District Attorney Mike Daffin who prosecuted Cindy Baillie’s killer

THE MURDER THAT SENT A 61-YEAR-OLD WOMAN TO THE DEATH CHAMBER Left, the death chamber at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. where Lois Nadean Smith (below) was executed in 2001 for the 1992 murder of her son’s ex-girlfriend

The other two witnesses told all they knew. “We’d been planning a barbecue at my place,” Reynolds said.

“Thomas Lindsey, Paul Dolan, me and our families.

Thomas and Paul went over to Paul’s house to get a grill to cook steaks on.”

Lindsey took over: “When we got there, the doors were locked and their shades were drawn. Paul didn’t have his key. I took a screen off the window and went in and let Paul in by the back door.

Then we walked down the hallway. That’s when we

saw the body lying on the bedroom floor. She was real bloodstained around the throat and had dark places on her face. I yelled to Paul to get out of the house, and we ran to Gerald Reynolds’s place.”

What puzzled Vernon Barnes most about the murder was the pistol in the dead girl’s hand. She hadn’t committed suicide, but had she been armed prior to her death and involved in a shootout with someone?

There were no bullet holes in the walls, floors, or ceilings of the house to indicate this.

Still puzzled, the policeman realised that he was going to need assistance. He requested help from the Sequoyah County sheriff and from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

Sheriff Sam Lockhart and his deputies arrived first, followed a few minutes later

by Agents Perry Proctor and Kevin Ottwell. Lockhart rounded up all the witnesses, including Paul Dolan, and took them to his office in Sallisaw for questioning while his deputies began enquiries in the neighbourhood for any additional witnesses.

Proctor and Ottwell conducted the murder scene investigation.

“Paul Dolan,” one of them mused. “Isn’t it logical that he did it? He lies to Vernon that everything’s all right at his house. Then a few hours later he’s stuck with a dead woman in his bedroom.”

Detectives know how middle-aged males often become romantically involved

with younger women.

Such involvements often lead to love triangles, to recriminations, to arguments and fights – and to murder.

But a love triangle didn’t seem to fit here – at least, not one involving Paul Dolan. To begin with, he was married to an attractive woman who, from all indications, had been present in the house the previous night and that morning.

Secondly, if Dolan had killed the victim, he would not have been foolish enough to leave her body in his bedroom for the police to find. And he didn’t appear harebrained enough to attempt to pass off as a suicide victim a person who had been shot at least six to nine times. So someone else was involved. But who?

“There was a coppercoloured or maroon Cadillac parked over there earlier this morning,” a neighbour told the officers. “I’ve seen it there on other occasions too.”

Barnes also recalled seeing the car parked in the drive when he responded to the disturbance complaint. Did the Cadillac belong to Cindy Baillie? If so, where was it now? If not, then whose was it? And who had driven Cindy from her home in Tahlequah to Gans?

While Sheriff Lockhart and Assistant District Attorney Daffin attempted to obtain answers to these questions, Proctor, Ottwell and Barnes continued their examination of the crime scene.

The gun might provide a clue. Its chamber was truecrime 5

filled with spent cartridges, indicating that it might be the death weapon. The detectives requested a registration check of the serial numbers, hoping this would lead to a suspect.

However, it might take a day or so for that information to come through.

“There’s a bloodstain on the living-room floor,” Proctor noted. “It looks like someone has tried to clean it up. I think she was shot in the living-room, then dragged to the bedroom.”

The others agreed, especially after they found a a bullet hole in the back of an armchair. That was the only bullet hole in the house, with the exception of those in Cindy’s body.

“The victim was sitting in that chair,” Proctor decided.

“Or,” Ottwell suggested, “she was standing here where the blood is next to the chair and one of the shots missed her, or went completely through her.”

Outside, next to the back door, they found two plastic bin liners, one stuffed into the other, along with a bloodstained towel, which must have been used to sponge up the blood in the living-room. What, though, was the purpose of the bin liners?

The most significant item of evidence was recovered from the bedroom. It was the first hint that the killer might not be male. It was a woman’s white-and-orange striped tank-top blouse, splattered with blood. There were no bullet holes in it. Did it belong to Paul Dolan’s wife?

“Blowback,” was Proctor’s opinion. Blowback is a term used to describe what happens to a human body struck by a bullet. Blood, flesh and body fluids erupt from the impact in the direction from which the bullet came.

“Whoever wore this blouse was standing very near the victim,” said Proctor. “And in the direction from which she was shot.”

By the early afternoon Proctor and Ottwell had accumulated a significant amount of evidence. Foreign hairs had been located and preserved from the victim’s body and from the blouse on the bed. A bullet was removed from the armchair. Judging from the state of the corpse, Cindy Baillie had died some time between 7 and 9 a.m. that day.

6 truecrime

The first hint that the killer might not be a man was the finding of a woman’s blood-spattered tank-top blouse in the bedroom. And there were no bullet holes in it Dr. Mohammed Merchant, a state pathologist, would later testify that the victim had been shot eight times – once in the back, twice in the head and five times in the left breast. In addition, there was a stab wound in the throat, made by a knife or some other sharp object, thrust upward to exit in the mouth, piercing the tongue.

Meanwhile, the sheriff and Daffin were learning more from the witnesses.

“Greg Smith was over there this morning,” Gerald Reynolds and Thomas Lindsey said. “We heard quarrelling. One of the voices belonged to Nadean Smith.

Nadean is Paul’s ex-wife and Greg’s mother.”

Thomas Lindsey’s wife told Daffin and Lockhart: “Sadie Dolan came over about 9 o’clock or so, and she was very upset. She said, ‘Nadean is at the house and they’re going to kill that girl.’”

By “they,” Sadie Dolan said, she meant Lois Nadean Smith, Nadean’s son Greg, and a young woman named Dolores Finn. Although Mrs. Dolan later testified that she was not present at the time of the murder – and therefore could not give an alibi for her husband – she nevertheless provided the investigators with the details of a bizarre set of events which seemed to point the finger of guilt away from her husband and at one of three other people: Nadean, Greg, or Dolores Finn. Perhaps even all three.

According to Mrs. Dolan’s courtroom account of that fatal morning, the four people, including the victim, had arrived at the Dolans’ home at about 7.30 a.m.

Cindy Baillie appeared terrified. She was bleeding from the neck and blood was soaking into the bodice of her dress. Nadean Smith ordered her to go to the bathroom and take a shower. As Cindy obeyed, passing Paul Dolan on the way, she paused to plead with Paul to help her.

“Nadean was behind Cindy when she entered

the bathroom,” Sadie Dolan testified. “Nadean said, ‘You can say anything you want to me, my ex-husband and his wife. It won’t do you any good. It’s gone too far.’”

After Cindy’s shower, Mrs. Dolan continued, the occupants of the house all sat together in the living-room and, in front of the intended victim, began discussing killing her.

“Cindy was begging for us to help,” Sadie went on.

“Nadean said they had to kill her, or Greg would be killed.”

“Do you know what they

coupled with crime-scene evidence, made it essential that Paul Dolan’s missing visitors, who had presumably come by the Cadillac, be brought in for questioning.

By now it was obvious that one of the people in the house that morning had executed Cindy Baillie in cold blood.

The question was: Which one – and why?

Shortly after 1.30 p.m., the investigators issued an alert for the occupants of the Cadillac. Lois Nadean Smith, 42, her son Greg and Dolores Finn were wanted for questioning in the murder of Cindy Baillie. A specific alert was radioed to the Tahlequah Police, as the trio were assumed to live there. It was a correct assumption, for they knew Lois Nadean Smith very well.

“Meanest damned woman in Oklahoma,” a Tahlequah officer commented. He

Right, the house in Gans where Cindy Lee Baillie (above) was shot and stabbed. Her body was then dragged off into a bedroom

meant by that?” Sadie was asked. She did not.

“Nadean asked my husband to take them to the 60 acres to kill Cindy,” Sadie continued. Paul Dolan had replied that they could not get there because the creek was up. Besides, he didn’t want to get involved.

“I heard Nadean say, ‘The girl is going to have to die slowly,’” Sadie testified.

“Then Cindy said she wanted to die fast. She was going to have a baby and she was concerned about the baby.”

Sadie said she left shortly after that.

Statements from witnesses,

cited several instances in which she had been involved in bar-room fights and disturbances. On at least one occasion, he said, she had drawn a gun and threatened to use it.

“Nadean is mean,” Mike Daffin would testify later.

“Nadean is a bully. I’ve never seen so many grown men afraid of one woman.”

During that hectic afternoon and the days that followed, the investigators delved into the lives and backgrounds of the Smiths, mother and son, Dolores Finn and Paul Dolan. They were to be reminded that things are seldom clear-cut when it

comes to murder, for several motives surfaced during the probe. Their problem was that each motive pointed to a different suspect.

Greg Smith did it, if one believed an informant who told the police that the victim had phoned a “hit-man” on the evening prior to her murder and offered to pay him an undisclosed sum of money if he would kill Greg Smith. No one seemed to know why Cindy would do this. Greg had found out about the arrangement, the informant said, and intended to kill Cindy before she could have him killed.

Nadean Smith did it, if one believed another anonymous caller, who said that Cindy had turned police informer against Nadean and Greg because of their involvement in drugs.

Other acquaintances of the group insisted that Nadean

had killed Cindy because Cindy had become pregnant

by Greg.

Dolores Finn did it, if one listened to other witnesses.

They were to testify that Greg Smith had been having an affair with both Cindy Baillie and Dolores Finn. This led to jealousy between the two women. One of the witnesses claimed in court that Dolores Finn had phoned her shortly after returning from Gans on the afternoon of July 4th, telling her that killing Cindy had been necessary because Cindy stood in the way of her happiness with Greg.

The only one who didn’t seem to have a motive for

murdering Cindy was Paul Dolan. As far as most of the investigators were concerned, everyone in the house that morning should be held at least partially responsible for what happened. But the law wouldn’t see it that way.

The law would want to know who pulled the trigger – eight times. ahlequah is a college town, the home of the Northeastern State University.

At about 3 p.m., not far from the sprawling university campus, Officer Albert Penson spotted a coppercoloured Cadillac parked in the street in front of the rundown little house he knew to be the home of the woman the police were calling Tahlequah’s notorious lady bully.

Penson radioed for back-up before attempting to approach the house or

T

questioning, while lab experts examined the Cadillac for any evidence that might link its occupants to the crime scene.

They found nothing.

Mike Daffin later described the arrival of the Smiths and Dolores Finn at the sheriff’s office. “Dolores was quiet and withdrawn. She looked frightened. But Nadean and Greg – they were really putting on an act.”

“What’s going on here?” the mother and son demanded. “We don’t know what you’re talking about. We haven’t even been in Gans.”

“Both were arrogant and abusive,” Daffin recalled.

“With me were Sheriff Lockhart and Agent Kevin Ottwell. We eventually agreed that the only person who would give us the time of day was Dolores Finn.”

So Dolores was questioned further, while the Smiths were placed in holding cells at the county jail.

Minutes later the young woman had tears in her eyes. With her tears came a startling tale of terror that had begun shortly after 5 a.m. that Fourth of July at a motel near Gans. And even hardened policemen were horrified by her story.

If Dolores was to be believed, the list of suspects could now be narrowed down to two people – Greg and his mother Nadean. According to the girl’s story and her later testimony, Nadean phoned her at home at about

“I heard Nadean say, ‘The girl is going to have to die slowly,’” Sadie testified. “Then Cindy said she wanted to die fast. She was going to have a baby...” car. Patrolmen Loy Lee and Kenny Buchanan responded.

The officers then entered the house and surprised Lois Nadean Smith and Greg inside. They offered no resistance.

Nadean was partly drunk.

She was a hard-looking woman with short, reddish hair and a rough way of speaking. Her son was taller and slimmer, and he too was a rough-talker. Shortly after the Smiths were apprehended, other officers found Dolores Finn at her home. The three were escorted to the sheriff’s office in Sallisaw for

5 a.m. and asked her if she wanted to “go party.” Dolores described herself as Greg’s ex-girlfriend. Then, when she spoke to Greg, Dolores asked him: “What’s your mom buzzing on?”

“She’s just been drinking,” Greg explained.

The Smiths picked Dolores up in Tahlequah and the three drove to a motel. Nadean somehow knew which cabin Cindy Baillie occupied. She knocked on the door and asked if Cindy wanted to “go party” with them.

“What’s going down?”

Cindy asked Dolores,

unaware of any ill feeling towards her, but apparently suspicious nonetheless.

“It’s not cool for you to get in the car,” Dolores warned her, having overheard Nadean and Greg talking on the way over.

“I can take care of myself,” Cindy said as she got into the Cadillac’s back seat. Nadean got in with her. Greg drove, with Dolores beside him.

Somewhere along the way to Gans, Nadean began accusing Cindy of having snitched on Greg and of trying to “set us up.” Dolores didn’t know what she was talking about. Cindy made the same claim.

Nadean then took a pair of black gloves from her handbag, put them on, and then seized Cindy by the throat, saying: “You’ll never see Cherokee County again.”

Greg took a paring-knife from Cindy’s handbag and held it up. “Look, mom,” he said. “She was going to hurt you with this.”

Nadean grabbed the knife.

“Were you going to hurt me with this?” she demanded.

Then she thrust the blade deep into Cindy’s throat and twisted it slowly before withdrawing it. Cindy burst into tears of fright and pain as the blood streamed down her dress.

An hour later the four arrived at the home of Nadean’s ex-husband in Gans. Dolores told how the injured Cindy was forced to take a shower, after which Nadean ordered her to put on her sandals. From all the talk, she was to be taken somewhere and killed. By then Sadie Dolan had left the house and Nadean had compelled her ex-husband to remain in the bathroom.

“If you’re going to kill me, you’re going to have to kill me right here,” Cindy said.

“All right, bitch!” Nadean replied. “If that’s the way you want it. Hand me a pillow!”

Presumably, Nadean intended firing through the pillow to prevent blood blowback. Greg tossed his mother a pillow. Nadean gave it to Cindy, who was in near-hysterics, begging Greg to save her.

“Nadean started teasing Cindy with the gun,” Dolores told the investigators. “She pointed it at her head. And when Cindy moved the pillow up to her face, she pointed it at her stomach.” truecrime 7

Above, the main street of Gans, Oklahoma, where the murder was committed. Left, Officer Vernon Barnes who was one of the first on the scene

Nadean was laughing at the sport of it all. Sickened by the affair, Dolores said, she got up to leave the room. The gun went off as soon as her back was turned. This was the first shot. It went into the back of the armchair where Cindy was sitting. Cindy looked terrified as Nadean stood over her.

Paul Dolan came running out of the bathroom, but Nadean pointed the gun at him and warned: “Get back in and stay out of this!”

Dolores told how she turned to continue down the hallway. That was when she heard more shots. She saw Cindy’s head “bobble down and she fell out of the chair onto the floor. Nadean was standing over Cindy with the pistol.”

According to Dolores, Nadean calmly handed the gun to her son and told him to reload it. While Greg did so, he looked as calm as his mother.Then Nadean began stamping viciously on the victim’s neck. “Bouncing up and down on it,” was how Dolores described it. Cindy was still alive, but she was whimpering and struggling feebly.

“Greg handed the gun back to Nadean,” Dolores continued tearfully. “And he told her to go ahead and empty the gun. And she got behind Cindy’s body and fired two shots into the back of her head.”

8 truecrime

Four more shots were fired into Cindy’s body. That was when Paul Dolan burst from the bathroom, protesting: “If you had to do it, why did you do it here?”

The next few minutes, according to Dolores, were extremely busy. Officer Barnes pulled up outside.

Paul Dolan went out, sent him away, and then left himself. Nadean and Greg then tried to stuff the victim’s corpse into a pair of bin-liners. When it wouldn’t fit, Nadean dragged it into a bedroom and ordered Dolores to clean the blood off the living-room floor with a towel. Inside the bedroom, Nadean placed the murder weapon in Cindy’s hand, saying: “There, that’ll make it look like suicide...She won’t fit in the car. We’ll just leave her here. Paul will take care of it.”

As the three pulled down the window-shades and locked the doors prior to leaving, Nadean cautioned Dolores that she would be the next to die if she told anyone about the crime. “I – I was scared to death. I didn’t know what to do, because I knew Nadean meant what she said.”

Dolores Finn’s statement cleared up many points about the crime which had puzzled the cops. But as he filed first-degree murder charges against the Smiths on July 6th, Daffin knew that the case was by no means concluded.

The police believed Dolores was telling the truth, but Nadean and Greg were saying nothing, except to profess their innocence.

The investigation continued, detectives learning that the Smiths apparently proposed to blame Dolores

Finn for the murder, claiming that she had shot Cindy during a bitter quarrel over Greg Smith. Several witnesses surfaced who would support this. One of them was Paul Dolan.

According to what Gerald Reynolds later told jurors, Paul Dolan explained away the disturbance at his house that morning before the body was found by insisting that the group “was just roughing the girl up. Pulling her hair and things like that.” Dolan also told Reynolds that he had talked Greg Smith out of killing the girl, but then Dolores Finn spoke up: “We have to go ahead – it’s my ass too.”

Several other witnesses would support the Smiths, describing the jealousy between Dolores and Cindy.

Nadean and Greg’s plot to transfer guilt from themselves to the young woman who was being held as a material witness to murder, and who was already being identified as the state’s “star witness,” emerged when the authorities intercepted a jailhouse note from Nadean, intended for her son. The note instructed Greg as to what his testimony should be.

“Read this over and over till you learn what to say,” the note read. “Don’t let anyone see you with it. Flush down toilet when finished.

“Dolores put gun in Cindy’s hand. Me and you never touched gun. Dolores pulled Cindy to the bedroom.

“I didn’t stamp on her throat. Dolores did, if we are asked.

“You have got to say that me and you heard two or three shots, ran out into the hall. Cindy was in her chair,

holding knife. Dolores was standing beside her with gun.

“I was in the bedroom.

You came back in...We heard three or four shots and went into living-room and Cindy was laying on floor on her back. Dolores was standing with gun.

“We did not help clean up blood. Don’t know where gun came from. I did not once have gun.

“Dolores and Cindy were fussing. Dolores had been taking pills and drinking beer.

“I did not try to choke her coming from the motel.

“Dolores was very jealous of you. I was never fussing with no one. Dolores asked Cindy to go to Gans with us.”

Mike Daffin knew that the plot might succeed and the Smiths be freed by a jury, unless the investigators could produce sufficient evidence to counter the pair’s claims.

Proctor found, to his surprise, that it was the victim herself who had purchased the death weapon from a pawnshop in Tahlequah a few weeks earlier. However, a friend of the victim explained that Cindy had loaned the gun to Greg Smith in June and Greg had refused to

THE WOMEN EXECUTED IN THE US SINCE 1976 Velma Barfield, 52, North Carolina, November 2nd, 1984, Lethal Injection

Karla Faye Tucker, 38, Texas, February 3rd, 1998, Lethal Injection

Judy Buenoano, 54, Florida, March 30th, 1998, Electrocution

Betty Lou Beets, 62, Texas, February 24th, 2000, Lethal Injection

return it to her. Greg still had the gun on the day of the crime.

The state medical examiner dispelled all rumours that Cindy had been killed because she was pregnant.

His examination of her body showed that she was not.

Ballistics experts confirmed that the victim had been shot with the .22 pistol found in her hand. Other experts concluded that hair specimens recovered from the dead body and the bloodstained blouse found at the crime scene belonged to Nadean Smith. But the most remarkable piece of detective work came from a forensic chemist, Kenneth Ead, who was to add the final touch to the proof that Lois Nadean Smith pulled the trigger.

Other agents had already linked Nadean to the blouse.

They could prove that it was hers. But it was Ead who demonstrated that the person who wore the blouse was also the person who fired the fatal shots.

Using an elaborate system of experiments, the forensic scientist showed by comparing angles that the blowback that stained the

blouse matched precisely the angle of the bullet wounds in Cindy’s body.

“In other words,” said Prosecutor Daffin, “either Nadean killed Cindy, or someone had to stand directly behind Nadean and reach round her to fire the gun.”

Although no firm motive for the crime had been established, Daffin was satisfied with the investigation and was prepared to take the case to trial. A court date of November 29th, 1982, was set, and he announced that he

eloquently against the death penalty. He pleaded: “Give her, under your verdict, what this woman has never ever had. Give her the freedom to read, be creative, to find herself. Give her the day-to-day opportunity to exist in whatever she is allowed, or chooses, to involve herself in.”

But Prosecutor Daffin insisted that Lois Nadean Smith deserved no mercy, as Cindy’s murder had been “heinous, atrocious and cruel.” Nadean Smith,

“To the family, I want to say I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you. Please forgive me” would seek the death penalty.

On November 12th the defence lawyers succeeded in winning separate trials for their clients. Lois Nadean Smith went on trial first on December 6th. As expected, Dolores Finn was the state’s star witness, and Nadean – by now known as “the meanest woman in Oklahoma” – was found guilty of first-degree murder on December 18th.

Her attorney argued

he said, had shown no compassion for the pleas of the frightened girl she had tortured and then gunned down.

“There have been many tears shed during this trial,” he added, alluding to outbursts by the defendant and her witnesses. “But no one cries for Cindy.”

The jury recommended the death penalty, and on December 29th, 1982, Judge

Since 1976, when the US Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment, 16 women have been executed.

This represents just over one per cent of the 1,400+ executions performed in the United States during that period Christina Marie Riggs, 28, Arkansas,

Frances Newton, 40, Texas, September 14th, 2005, Lethal Injection

May 2nd, 2000, Lethal Injection

Teresa Lewis, 41,

Wanda Jean Allen, 41, Oklahoma, January

Virginia, September 23rd, 2010, Lethal Injection

11th, 2001, Lethal Injection

Kimberly McCarthy, 52, Texas, June 26th,

Marilyn Kay Plantz, 40, Oklahoma, May 1st,

2013, Lethal Injection

2001, Lethal Injection

Lois Nadean Smith, 61, Oklahoma, December 4th, 2001, Lethal Injection

Lynda Lyon Block, 54, Alabama, May 10th, 2002, Electrocution

Above, Teresa Lewis and (below) Velma Barfield

Suzanne Basso, 59, Texas, February 5th, 2014, Lethal Injection

Lisa Ann Coleman, 38, Texas, September 17th, 2014, Lethal Injection

Aileen Wuornos, 46,

Kelly Gissendaner, 47,

Florida, October 9th, 2002, Lethal Injection

Georgia, September 30th, 2015, Lethal Injection

Bill Ed Rogers sentenced Lois Nadean Smith to die by lethal injection.

At his subsequent trial Greg Smith was convicted of murder and given a life sentence.

Due to the almost interminable appeals process, his mother eluded the death chamber until she was 61. By then, however, she was “ready to go home,” said a prison spokesman. “She’s glad she’s almost done with this.”

“Lois Nadean Smith has had the privilege of breathing for twenty years too long,” commented her victim’s daughter, who was four when her mother was murdered.

It emerged that even at high school Nadean Smith had been known as “Mean Nadean.” But the now apparently contrite killer issued a statement. “To the family, I want to say I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you.

Please forgive me.”

Attending Nadean Smith’s execution at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary on Tuesday, December 4th, 2001, the victim’s daughter said: “I wish she’d thought about this before she did it. If she had, we wouldn’t be here right now. You do something of this magnitude, torturing somebody, and you’re going to have to pay the price for it.

She chose her path in life.”

For many, Lois Nadean Smith’s remorse had come 19 years too late. “There was not a peep in nineteen years saying, ‘I’m sorry,’” another relative of the victim said. “If there’s no apology in nineteen years, there’s no repentance.

She’s the same person now that she was nineteen years ago.”

Lois Nadean Smith’s last meal was barbecued ribs, onion rings, strawberrybanana cake and a cherry limeade. Then she was taken to the death chamber, given a lethal cocktail of drugs and pronounced dead at 9.13 p.m.

Greg Smith is still in prison. He didn’t attend the execution of the woman whose fiercely protective mother-love put him behind bars for life.

And if the victim’s daughter has her way, he’ll never be released. “I still have to go to parole hearings, so it’s not completely over,” she says.

“I’ll have to go and do that until he dies.” truecrime 9

Comment

Send your letters to: Comment, PO Box 735, London, SE26 5NQ or email truecrime@truecrimelibrary.com (please put your address on emails). We pay £8 for any that are published

DEATH FOLLOWED THE BABYSITTER Between February 1980 and July 1982, five children in northern Florida died suddenly of ailments or accidents, and three others had been taken to hospital. They had all been cared for by 19-year-old babysitter Christine Falling. Wherever she went, death seemed to follow, and gradually publicity began to catch up with her. Her story is compelling, set as it is in the context of her own poverty from birth; it had been poverty that had shielded her from detection.

Authorities were prepared to blame the deaths on diseases which seemed to exist only too readily in an environment of chronic poverty: encephalitis, myocarditis, Killer of five cot death and so on. children: She eventually admitted her guilt, but Christine qualified her confession with the words: Falling “The way I look at it there’s some reason God is letting me go through this. If God hadn’t wanted me to go through this, He wouldn’t have let it happen.”

Is there a chance of reading the full story of Christine Falling in your pages? It would perhaps effectively complement Jack Heise’s excellent article on Genene Jones (“The Killing Nurse From Hell”) in the December 2017 issue.

Also, has True Crime ever featured the Tylenol Murders, which happened in Chicago in 1982?

Pain-relief pills were laced with potassium cyanide and sold to the public. The victims were strangers to the killer or killers, and whoever was responsible was never apprehended. This caused a nationwide panic in the US, and copycat crimes appeared in Colorado and Florida, where corrosive acids were substituted for eye-drops and mouthwash.

Stuart Davies, Barnstaple It’s many years since TC looked at the Christine Falling case.Watch out for it in a future edition! As for the Tylenol Murders, would other readers like to know more about them?

WATCHING sIGNs OF

In last October’s edition we reported on the faked bullet holes which were drilled into a wall outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead some years ago as a way of attracting tourists (“Pub Faked Bullet Holes From Ruth Ellis’s Gun” – TC Reports). Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, had killed her lover David Blakely outside the pub on Easter Sunday 1955, but the “bullet holes” placed above a board recording the famous murder were the work of the landlady’s brother.

Reader Andrew Rigsby wrote in to say how fascinated he was by the story because of his own interest in the actual phenomenon of what he calls gunfire graffiti.

Andrew explains: “I have run a self-funded project called Gunfire-Graffiti UK since 2008. This investigates firearm and shotgun discharges of all descriptions into roadside structures as a means to

MOBSTERS IN SPORT AND HOLLYWOOD Did you know that in the 1920s and 1930s Irish bootlegger Bill Dwyer used his profits from the sale of illegally distilled alcohol to purchase the Brooklyn Dodgers NFL Team alongside the New York Americans, Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Quakers NHL hockey teams? I thought this could form part of a feature on mobster involvement in professional sports in the US, exploring how far the influence of organised crime used to reach in those far-off times.

Also, it would be an interesting to read about the life and careers of the Elephant and Castle gang of inter-war British gangsters. One of the gang leaders, a Charles “Wag” MacDonald, later emigrated to the US and worked as a bodyguard for Hollywood celebrities including Charlie Chaplin and LA Crime Boss Jack Dragna.

Cameron Camilla Boyle, Leicester Thanks for your interesting suggestions.Would other readers like to know more?

25 years ago this month...

True Crime magazine, January 1993

WHY RELEASE CHILD-MURDERER? I have seen recently, in the newspapers, photographs of notorious double child-murderer Colin Pitchfork who has recently been moved to an open prison. He is being prepared for release. I cannot understand the reasoning behind any person who has committed this type of appalling crime ever being put back into society. Who are the people that make these decisions and how on earth can they even consider releasing him or others like him, ever? This man may have had a minimum sentence of 30 years but just because he has reached that number why is he automatically to be freed?

Charles Bronson, a criminal who has served much

10 truecrime

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

G OUT FOR F GUNFIRe

“the third degree,” might not stand up in court today. “I never hesitated,” he said. “I’ve forced confessions – with fist, blackjack and hose – from those who would have continued to rob and kill if I had not made them talk.” It’s an old argument – do the means justify the ends?

By the 1920s, Willemse had adopted a more modern approach to crime. He was the first to identify American Bluebeard Helmuth Schmidt, Forced the lonely hearts killer who may have claimed confessions: up to 40 lives. He did this by comparing two Captain handwritten advertisements placed in different Cornelius names and found that they matched. I wonder if Willemse you have ever covered this fascinating case?

Andrew Stephenson, Newhaven A full account of the Helmuth Schmidt case appeared in TC February 2015. Copies are still available via the Back Issues section of our website shop at www.truecrimelibrary.com or by calling Forum Press on 020 8778 0514.

Above and below, road signs in the South-east of England showing the signs of gunshot damage

experiment, test and rehearse. A good proportion are drive-bys (weapons fired from a vehicle). I alone have found and recorded over 350 sites.”

According to Andrew, Michael Ryan, the perpetrator of the 1987 Hungerford Massacre, shot at road signs in the area and others are still doing it as a grim reminder of the Berkshire town’s darkest day.

“He [Ryan] perpetrated these type of acts and Thames Valley Police recorded sites that were found. There is still gunfire damage around Hungerford. ‘Gun-Trolls’ have visited and left ‘signatures’” Andrew claims.

He adds: “I have some violent, bizarre and particularly frightening examples. Some are very recent.” Andrew, who published a book on the subject – Gunfire Graffiti (Waterside Press, 2012) using the pseudonym Matthew Seiber – says he regularly liaises with the police and local authorities about the issue.

Pictured on the page are some of Andrew’s examples. Other readers, have you spotted any gunfire graffiti in your area?

longer in prison than Pitchfork, has never committed any murder and yet the authorities are able to keep him in prison. So why are they unable to do the same to a rapist and murderer of young girls? Inexplicable!

G. McKnight, Harlow

NEW YORK’S DUTCH-BORN CAPTAIN The story of the collapse of the Dropper-Augie mobs made for good reading (“How I Smashed The Dropper-Augie Mobs” – December). Dutch-born Captain Cornelius Willemse produced two books of memoirs – Behind the Green Lights (1931), which inspired an eponymous movie, and A Cop Remembers (1933). The books charted the development of the NYPD from being not much more than one of the Gangs of New York into the modern police force it is today.

From that first era, some of Willemse’s tactics, such as

Find us online at www.truecrimelibrary.com

METHENY WAS A FANTASIST LOSER I’ll wager that Joseph Metheny is a fantasist (“Barbecue Killer Sold Victims As Special Meat” – December). There’s no evidence that he served in Vietnam or that he ran a burger stand in his native America and only two of his ever-increasing claimed number of victims were ever found. Metheny was a morbidly obese man living in a trailer park who had lost his live-in girlfriend and also lost access to his son. He was a loser. Killing two prostitutes only made him of interest to the local police. But his claims that he’d murdered numerous people and that he was a necrophiliac and a cannibal made him a talking point. Interest in him grew stronger when he claimed that he had given human meat to innocent diners at his roadside stand. It’s obvious that he was an extreme example of Anti Social Personality Disorder and wanted to upset and frighten as many people as possible with his outlandish tales.

C. Davis, Weston-super-Mare

OLIVE’S KILLER WAS RIGHTLY HANGED After reading your fascinating case report, “My Father Was A Killer” (True Crime Winter Special, 2017), I had no doubt that Walter Rowland was indeed the killer of victim Olive Balchin and that he battered the poor girl to death with a hammer at a bombsite in Manchester in 1946. I really didn’t have to weigh up the options even though another prisoner, David John Ware, admitted to the same killing. In many cases one will get individuals claiming murders just for the sake of attention and notoriety.

Even though Ware looked like Walter Rowland it was easy to see he was not the killer as his account of the murder lacked details only the “real” killer and police knew about. Then, to my astonishment, when I turned the page I read the letter that Rowland’s daughter sent to your magazine in 1991 and in it she gave a damning indictment of her father. What a brave woman.

She also told of Rowland murdering her sister as a baby just so he could avoid responsibity for a family.

June Rowland explained how tough a life her poor mother had to endure at this fiend’s hand. It made harrowing reading.

I commend this lady for her letter, and she leaves no doubt just what kind of a monster her father really was. The right man was hanged in February 1947 for the murder of Olive Balchin. Had he been rightly executed for the murder of Mavis Rowland, years earlier, Olive would not have been battered to death.

Michael Minihan, Limerick

PARROT FOR THE PROSECUTION Your article “Pet Parrot Witness Nails Killer Wife For Murder” (Chronicles Of Crime, November) was a bit of an eye-opener.

“The parrot was not used in court proceedings, though this possibility was initially considered by the prosecutor” wasn’t something I ever thought I would read. Yes, African Greys are very intelligent animals and great mimics but how exactly were they going to be able to use the bird in court? The mind boggles!

I’m glad they saw sense and didn’t use the bird and turn the whole serious issue of murder into a joke.

Kevin Hollifield, Bargoed truecrime 115

SOUTH AFRICA’S SUPERCOP PART 1

“I

SEE THE person. I know immediately if the person I’ve caught is the right one,” said South Africa’s top detective for four decades, the Columbo-like Piet “Piet Byl” Byleveld.

The suspect sat before Byleveld in the Brixton

Case report by Donald Carne Murder & Robbery Squad’s interview room in Johannesburg. He was a gentle soft-spoken married handyman called Cedric Maupa Maake, 32.

“I want to see my wife,” he said through dry, white lips.

“I can arrange that,” Byleveld replied. The chain-smoking detective, who died in May 2017, aged 67, was renowned for the patient way he would befriend and entice a suspect to part with the information he needed. He liked to refer to them as his clients.

It was December 23rd, 1996, and at this time of the year Piet would rather have been somewhere else – at home with his own wife, Esmie, perhaps. “Cigarette?” he asked.

“I don’t smoke,” Maake replied.

Eight months earlier, in April 1996, the Wemmer Pan had been struck by a series of murders. Wemmer Pan, in central Pioneers’ Park, is a green oasis at the heart of the bustling city, used for recreation. The pan or lake is home to rowing clubs and sailing regattas, the Turffontein racecourse sits nearby and the Santarama Miniland remains a major tourist attraction.

The first death was of an unidentified woman.

12 truecrime

THE HUNT JOHANNE HAMMER She had been raped and murdered. This was followed in October by a series of attacks on homes, with robbery as the motive.

From December, tailors had become the target.

Mostly of Indian origin, these small family businesses can knock you up a new suit within 24 hours.

Most have also expanded into dry-cleaning and second-hand sales.

Maake would enter the store and listen to the bell above the door ring. He checked he was alone.

Producing an old sweater or other item of clothing, he asked the owner how much he could get for it. When the owner dissembled, Maake would pretend to get angry and hit the owner on the head with a hammer or rock before he took the day’s takings.

Many of the traders were permanently injured by the blows. At least one – Dhansuklal Thakor Patel – died. Were we looking at a second serial killer?

A survivor, Yogi Dheda, 34, became a local folk hero.

Maake had placed a bag of clothing on the counter for exchange. When Yogi looked at the goods, he was struck by a hammer. He fought

back and Maake ran out of the door. Later, when officers called to collect the clothing as evidence, Yogi informed them that he had sold the clothing to a well-wisher at a profit.

These attacks lasted until May and June 1997, when Maake switched tactics again.

Now a third series of attacks began. This time the victims were taxi drivers he lured to remote areas. He held them up with a pistol, like a highwayman of old, and stole their takings.

In June and July, he

Left, a mug-shot of Cedric Maake. Above, Maake is brought to court. Right, Wemmer Pan in Johannesburg’s Pioneers’ Park

adopted yet another new stratagem but for a different, even more sinister purpose.

Nine isolated couples sitting in their cars, enjoying the views of the Wemmer Pan, were attacked – the women brutally raped and the men killed. Amongst the first killed was Ralph Ngwenya, 49. Maake then proceeded to rape Ralph’s terrified friend, Christina, 42.

Maake’s technique now was to approach the man of the couple and ask for help

Maake even further. He appeared to go wild, roaming the streets and hurting any individual people he encountered. Samule Malame, 25, fought back until Maake shot him three times in the head. He raped Samule’s friend, Catherine Lekwene, 25, twice and shot her in the knee before running away. Almost immediately, he bumped into and killed David du Plessis and Sarah Lenkpane.

The mayhem continued between August and November with another 13 shopkeepers attacked and a woman killed. They included shopkeeper Anil Metha, 55, whose head had been cracked open like an egg by

in using a new mobile phone.

“It’s beyond me,” he said. “I want to make a call.”

Jerry Naidoo, 44, on July 11th, had been pleased to help.

As he held the phone, standing before Maake, he was shot twice in the stomach. Maake then raped his girlfriend, Charlotte Ndlovu, 28. The next day, Maake repeated the process with Moses Ramothlhwa, 35, and Dorcas Makhatsane, 26.

A week later, on July 18th, something must have upset

a sharp-bladed hammer.

Finally, in December, 1997, Maake switched back to an earlier approach.

Three more homes were attacked, including that of Arthur McIntyre, who was killed with a hammer.

Others included Chaun Yang Cao and Qi Cao, owners of Victoria Fashions in Rosettenville, and Cyril Slattery, killed in his own home with a hammer so his old television could be stolen.

Five of Maake’s victims were never identified and there were many more attacks where the victims survived. Maake did not always set out with the intention to kill but often robbery was the motive, or rape or, in one case, naked humiliation – when he ordered a courting couple to have sex in front of him.

The situation from the start of the attacks was confused and officers in 1996 lacked the computer power available today to correlate evidence across cases.

Investigators believed at first that they were dealing with two separate serial killers – one who focused on tailors, whom they named the Hammer Killer, and another who was responsible for the other deaths, called the Wemmer Pan Killer. aake had been picked up at the home of a girlfriend. It was a routine interview – his description matched that given by a witness – but Byleveld’s instinct kicked in when he

M

W ES N E RI SE

T FOR THE ESBURG R-KILLER

saw the look on his victim’s face. “I knew,” he said.

Byleveld had to act quickly. New laws said he could only detain Maake for 48 hours without making a charge. Through force of personality and reputation, he persuaded his technical officers at Pretoria to give up the remainder of their Christmas holiday to work on a DNA profile.

With only hours left before the deadline, Captain Luhein Frazenburg came through with the news on the phone – the samples had matched. “Suddenly Christmas had come for me too!” Piet said.

The confirmation was none too soon. Maake had been playing up in the holding cell, even throwing his faeces at the station officers. Byleveld had been called in to calm him down.

He sat beside him in the cell.

“I’ve been so kind to you,” he said. “I fetched your wife, and I’ll bring her again if you want me to – and your mother.”

Byleveld knew that Maake was very respectful of his mother, Malekgogo.

It appeared to do the trick and Maake became more amenable. They chatted about sport and entertainment and the gentle things in life.

With the DNA results in his hand, Byleveld spoke plainly to Maake – another of the great detective’s traits.

“Cedric, I know it’s you who killed all those people at Wemmer Pan, raped the women and did all those things.”

Maake watched him impassively for a moment and then a smile crawled across his face. “Yes, I did it. It was me,” he said. He seemed proud to have made his mark in life.

Maake could be described as an equal opportunities serial killer. He killed young and old, both sexes, any race and didn’t much care how he did it – with a gun for taxi drivers or couples in cars; or a knife for single males and females; or a heavy rock or hammer for tailors.

It was unusual behaviour for a serial killer but not as uncommon as some may think. By the time the small, wiry, fresh-faced Maake sat truecrime 13

before baggy-eyed Byleveld in that warm Brixton office, he could have clocked up 35 deaths and 15 rapes.

Twenty-seven deaths were later confirmed.

Byleveld arranged a tour of the crime sites with Maake as his guide – there were more than 40 in all.

From his victims, Maake would take a souvenir – a shoe from the man and sometimes other items of clothing. He left these with his mother in Tzaneen in

Above, Byleveld speaking outside court following Maake’s sentencing. Left, case files on Maake

Limpopo, close by Kruger National Park.

They drove to his mother’s house. Malekgogo, a gentle, soulful woman of great bearing, was devastated to see her son in police custody but it had to be done – the clothing would be invaluable evidence.

Maake’s mother said she had been the first wife of Maake’s father – but he had married a second time.

This had left her and Cedric impoverished. “It broke Cedric,” said Byleveld. “He told me that he hated his father with a passion.”

Maake had dropped out of school at 14 and taken painting and gardening jobs. His brother, oddly, had joined the police and was now a sergeant in Pretoria – the same background, the same home, the same poverty but different sides of the law.

On the way back to Brixton in Jo’burg, Maake offered to show Byleveld where he had hidden his pistol. They and two sergeants in tow stopped at a mine dump close to Wemmer Pan. The pistol was buried behind a tree.

Maake dug the pistol out and then turned it on Byleveld. “Suddenly he bent down,” said Byleveld.

“Luckily I was on guard.

Bloody hell! He was going 14 truecrime

to surprise me, grab the pistol and shoot me.” The killer was quickly overpowered.

Although he adored Sophie, his wife, Maake told Byleveld, he couldn’t trust her. He discovered she was meeting other men and had been having sex with them over the koppie (local hills).

It had tipped him over the edge. He said it explained why he liked to chase his female victims up the old mine dump before killing them.

Officers spoke to Sophie, the mother of Maake’s four children, and discovered that she had no idea what Maake had been up to for the past 18 months.

T

he connection between the Wemmer Pan Killer and the Hammer Killer was made by Byleveld on January 12th, 1998. Byleveld had taken Maake to a pawn shop where Maake had sold the bicycle of Gerhard Lavoo, one of the Wemmer Pan victims. He had got R120 (£15) for it. The alias used on the receipt was “Patrick Mokwena.”

Byleveld recognised the

name as the one used to check in a shirt at one of the tailors – one of the Hammer Killer victims. He confronted Maake with the news.

Cedric Maake’s trial before Judge Geraldine Borchers in the Jo’burg High Court lasted for 11 months until September 2000. He pleaded not guilty to 133 charges of murder (35), attempted murder, numerous robberies and possession of a firearm.

Geographic profiling had been used to identify the full extent of Maake’s activities.

It showed that most of his murders took place close to his home, his workplace, and the homes of his brother and girlfriend.

The variety in Maake’s approach had confused investigators but a pattern had emerged. The tailors had been the “day job,” normally attacked during the week.

The Wemmer Pan killings took place at the weekends.

Perhaps Maake liked to enjoy the tranquillity of the Pan when he could.

Dr. Micki Pistorius, South Africa’s leading expert on serial killers – the aunt of killer Oscar Pistorius – said there was always a pattern, even if it was hidden underneath. “Serial

The variety in Maake’s work had confused investigators but a pattern had emerged. The tailors had been the “day job,” normally attacked during the week. The Wemmer Pan killings took place at the weekends

murders are about patterns in the mind of the killer,” she said. “They are not always obvious. Serial killers are very conscious of their own patterns. Police have to decipher these patterns; they’re incredibly difficult to detect.”

The court heard from Maake’s survivors who said that the mild-mannered house painter would kick and scream obscenities at them as they lay close to death on the ground – like an animal out of control.

Maake behaved badly in court. He would lose control, scream and claw, scare members of the gallery.

Ferocious, he had to be restrained by court officials on more than one occasion.

He would bang his head on the dock and howl. He wept freely whenever his mother’s name was mentioned. On one occasion, he had to be carried from the court by six police officers, wriggling all the way.

Maake threatened state advocate, Yolinda du Plessis, with the same fate as his victims, scowling at the advocate as he did so. Judge Borchers asked that he be taken from the court. He was examined by a doctor and prescribed tranquilisers but he refused to take them.

Cedric Maake was convicted of 27 murders and provided with 27 life sentences. “The accused has caused pain and suffering on a very large scale,” Judge Borchers said. “The offences are extremely serious which indicate the accused is a very dangerous man who will kill his fellow man without compunction. It cannot be permitted that society has to run the risk of having such a man in its midst.”

His total sentence, that included all guilty verdicts for numerous offences, came to 2,499 years. He took naps as Judge Borchers read the verdicts allocated to him over several days of judgment.

South Africa scrapped the death penalty in 1994 but Maake’s case tested commitment to this policy. Whilst the families of most victims welcomed the verdict and sentence, one relative said to the media, “If the death sentence was still in place I would be happier.”

CHRONICLES OF CRIME True Crime’s monthly diary of criminal events day by day as they were reported in the national newspapers. This month, news from around the world in September 2017. Updates are indicated by the > sign. Researched by Tom Newman

COP SHOT IN 1980S DIES OF INJURIES September 8th A FORMER Chicago police officer who was shot in the head while on duty in 1988 has died from his injuries, aged 66.

Mourners, including hundreds of serving police officers, gathered to remember Bernie Domagala who died three decades after he was shot.

Above, Domagala in recent times. Left, in his police days

In 1988, Domagala was a volunteer with a Hostage Barricade Terrorist Team during an attempted

eviction of an unstable former policeman who was barricaded in an apartment.

Mr. Domagala was shot in the forehead from a .44-calibre pistol during the standoff. His shooter was declared mentally ill and died in a state mental health facility in the 1990s.

Mr. Domagala, who had worked for the city’s police department for seven years, suffered cognitive decline after the shooting.

The cause of his death was ruled as homicide.

31 YEARS IN JAIL FOR KILLER SEX-ATTACKER September 15th MARK BUCKLEY appeared at Manchester Crown Court in connection with a premeditated sex attack on 18-year-old aspiring vet Ellen Higginbottom as she walked through a park.

The 53-year-old defendant stole her laptop and mobile phone and left her for dead near a popular beauty spot near a wheat field close to Orrell Water Park in Wigan.

The psychology student was walking alone in the park after revising at Winstanley College in Orrell.

She had been intending to return and meet up with friends who were sitting exams.

Ms. Higginbottom was reported missing after failing to return home following the 20-mile bus ride from the college on June 16th, 2017.

Buckley later returned to the park planning to move her body, which he intended to bury under the cover of darkness. But he was thwarted

Above, a police officer stands guard at the crime scene. Left, killer Mark Buckley and his victim Ellen Higginbottom

as a police helicopter with heat-seeking equipment hovered overhead and he ran away.

The teenager’s body was found the next day. A post-mortem examination showed she had been strangled and her throat cut. She died from multiple wounds to the neck. A spade and leather belt were found near the scene.

Detectives were shocked by the brutality of the daylight assault, and described it as one of the worst killings in recent years.

Buckley was arrested at his home and admitted killing

Ms. Higginbottom but gave no explanation for his actions.

He did not know his victim and is believed to have been lurking, waiting for someone he could attack. Police recovered a bag containing condoms, lubricants, a ligature and some of his victim’s belongings together with a length of rope and cord plus a knife.

Found guilty of murder, Buckley was sentenced to 31 years in custody in what Judge David Stockdale QC, the honorary recorder of Manchester, said was a “chilling” sexual assault on a slightly built victim.

September 16th WHO REALLY KILLED DIRECTOR PASOLINI? THE DEATH of Giuseppe “Pino” Pelosi, 59, in Rome has reopened the debate over the mysterious murder of Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Pelosi was the only person ever convicted of the director’s killing.

Pasolini died aged 53, and at the peak of his fame, on the night of November 1st, 1975. He Above, had picked up Giuseppe Pelosi in his Pelosi.

Alfa Romeo Below, outside a bar. Pier Paolo Pelosi, then Pasolini 17, accepted his invitation for a ride and the two men went for a meal. Later, they headed for a rowing lake at Ostia.

In the early hours police stopped Pelosi speeding in the director’s car. Next morning Pasolini’s beaten corpse was found.

While on remand Pelosi confessed to a cellmate that he had killed Pasolini and told police the film director tried to sexually assault him with a stick.

He told them that he used the stick to beat the director and then fled.

Pelosi was convicted of the killing and jailed for nearly 10 years. However, the trial judge concluded that others had been present at the murder scene.

In 2005, Pelosi claimed that he had not been directly responsible for Pasolini’s killing but that he had witnessed it being committed by three men with Sicilian accents.

It is speculated that two of the men were the late Borsellino brothers, Franco and Giuseppe. l more Chronicles on page 44

truecrime 15

H S I T I R B MAJOR R CASES MURDE

Below, police officers check lists of Blackburn men against those who had been fingerprinted.

Below right, suspect Peter Griffiths. Below left, the incriminating fingerprints

I

T WAS CLOSE to midnight on Saturday, May 15th, 1948, when the children’s ward of the Queen’s Park Hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire, quietened down at last.

Nurse Sadie Thomas tiptoed through the rows of cots. She adjusted a blanket here, felt a fevered brow there. Then she slipped out into the corridor and made her way to the supply room.

Rather than illuminate the entire room at that hour she switched on a single gooseneck lamp and went to work at a table in a corner.

Completing her task she turned out the light. Just before she clicked it off she gave a quick glance around.

When her eyes fell on the window nearest her they widened in horror. Staring in at her from the other side of the glass was the face of a man.

She described it later as being the most evil face she had ever seen. It was long and thin, the corners of the mouth pulled down in a

46,000 WERE FIN THE SEARCH FOR cruel grimace.

But what lingered most firmly in her memory was the ghostly pallor of that countenance. Even the cap and the shoulders of the jacket he wore, she insisted, seemed touched with a “frosty whiteness.”

This phrase was later to be remembered.

Uttering a stifled cry she fled down the corridor to the office of the night sister.

There she collapsed in a chair. It was several minutes before she could gasp out an account of what she had seen.

16 truecrime

Nurse Thomas had the reputation of being a calm, well-balanced person. Her story was not taken lightly.

The sister went into action immediately.

First she called the switchboard and instructed the operator to request the night porter to check the hospital grounds for a prowler or peeping tom.

She also suggested that the doctors in the basement emergency ward be alerted.

“And call the police,” she added.

Next, she made a hasty visit to check on the

The naked body was found concealed in a clump of bushes. An examination disclosed that June had been sexually assaulted and battered to death

children’s ward. Immediately her practised eye detected something contrary to regulations. One of the windows in the ward was wide open and the room was being chilled by a damp spring breeze.

She hastened to close it.

Then her worst fears were realised. The small cot nearest the window was empty. The bedclothes were strewn about the floor and the bed’s former occupant was nowhere to be seen. A small night table had been moved and a distilled-water bottle which was customarily

Below, the ward at Queen’s Park Hospital, Blackburn, from which victim June Anne Devaney was snatched. Below right, the water bottle on which Griffiths’s fingerprints were found

Case report by Martin Lomax

Who was the “white werewolf” who’d snatched three-year-old June Anne Devaney from her Blackburn hospital bed?

Police were convinced that whoever had battered and raped the life out of her was a local man. And there was only one way to make sure they got him....

NGERPRINTED IN R JUNE’S KILLER kept on top of it was now standing on the floor underneath.

She summoned Nurse Thomas who identified the missing child as three-year-old June Anne Devaney, who had been treated for a pulmonary ailment. Then Nurse Thomas fainted, thoughts of the horrible face she had seen – along with fears for the missing girl – being too much for her.

Two Blackburn policemen then arrived in response to the original summons.

When they learned of

the child’s disappearance, they called headquarters for reinforcements. Inspector Stanley Barton and a squad of detectives rushed to the scene.

But the patrolmen had already made a shocking discovery. The naked body of golden-haired June Devaney was found concealed in a clump of bushes not far from the window through which she had been carried. An examination disclosed that she had been sexually assaulted and battered to death.

Inspector Barton went to work, for this was the third child murder in Blackburn within a few months. The others had gone unsolved.

Clues had been scarce in all of the cases, but detectives now worked with infinite patience as they studied minutely each square foot of the area into which the maniacal intruder had ventured. This painstaking study produced the following evidence: (1) A faint sock print visible on the highly polished floor beside the cot occupied by the small victim.

(2) Bloodstains on the victim’s night garments, which were found some distance from the body.

(3) Numerous, though almost microscopic, dark fibres found on the victim’s body and about the window sill through which the killer had entered the ground-floor ward.

(4) Tiny fibres retrieved from the sock print on the floor.

(5) Two well-defined fingerprints on the water bottle which had been removed from the table and placed on the floor. truecrime 17

The detectives were assisted by David Jones, staff biologist from the North-west Forensic Science Laboratory in Preston. He was one of the foremost scientific crime experts of his kind.

He arrived in Blackburn, along with detectives from Scotland Yard and Inspector Colin Campbell from the Lancashire County Police.

Nurse Thomas told and re-told her story of the face at the window. She maintained staunchly that the cap and shoulders of the jacket of the apparition-like figure were “frosted white.”

Officers, puzzling over this, concluded at the time that what she had observed was most likely an optical illusion created by the reflection of light. But, after reenacting the eerie occurrence many times under varied lighting conditions, with no similar results, it was concluded that the imagination of the frightened nurse had been stimulated by shock.

It was enough, however, to contribute an added touch of horror to an already blood-chilling case.

The killer came to be referred to as Blackburn’s “white werewolf.”

persons interviewed in connection with the most concentrated investigation ever undertaken in Blackburn. Hundreds of telephone calls were checked and re-checked in an effort to discover a lead of some kind.

At the end of two weeks the police found themselves exactly where they started.

The “white werewolf” might just as well have been the ghost that he had impressed Nurse Thomas as being, for all that officers were able to find out.

Busy Scotland Yard men gradually drifted off to other assignments.

By June the investigation was left entirely in the hands of Inspectors Barton Above, a police officer outside the ward where the abduction took place. Below, the spot where June’s body was discovered. Left, a mug-shot showing Griffiths in profile

F

ear clutched at the heart of every parent in the community.

Children were convoyed to and from school by members of their families. None was allowed to play in the streets, especially after dark.

Most panicky of all were the fathers and mothers of the tots confined in the children’s ward of Blackburn’s Queen’s Park Hospital.

Thousands of people turned out to attend June Devaney’s funeral on May 18th, and the child’s parents, Albert and Emily Devaney, received hundreds of sympathetic letters.

The principal clue was the fingerprints found on the water bottle. But they were of no immediate value as a check disclosed that they matched no known criminal.

There were more than 100,000 words in the statements taken from

18 truecrime

and Campbell, who held a lengthy conference with their men.

“What good is a police force that cannot protect the lives of our children?”

Barton asked. “I feel that the killer lives here.” He had

bottle, police decided on an unprecedented step – to fingerprint the entire male population of Blackburn. It was an almost superhuman task.

Pointing to a wall map of the community, Barton

By the second week in August nearly 42,000 prints had been taken but none had tallied with those of the killer. Then on August 12th, set number 46,253 was found to match the prints on the bottle come to that conclusion, he said, and, that being so, there was but one way to proceed.

Armed with the fingerprints from the

assigned detectives in groups to respective areas. They were to begin at streets in the vicinity of the hospital and fan outward. Each

was to be armed with a fingerprint pad and other essential equipment.

Inspector Campbell and his men, establishing themselves in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town, turned the building into a fingerprint comparison headquarters.

There they worked around the clock examining the prints as they came in and checked them against those found on the water bottle.

The exacting task began early in June and continued on through July. By the second week in August nearly 42,000 prints had been taken but none had yet been found which tallied with those of the killer.

There were few adult males left to contact. It began to look as though the gruelling work had been for nothing.

Then on August 12th, 1948, set number 46,253 was found to match the prints on the bottle. They belonged to one Peter Griffiths, 22, a flour mill packer. A former Welsh Guardsman, he had always been out when detectives called at his Birley Street home.

G

riffiths was arrested at his place of employment the same day. He was a tall, slender young man with thin lips that tended to draw down at their corners. His complexion was sallow and covered with a light dusting of the flour that he sacked, which gave him a definitely anaemic look.

Barton drew in his breath sharply when the prisoner

was brought into his office.

For his cap and jacket were sprinkled with a light frosting of white dust. In fact, it lay quite heavily on his shoulders.

Nurse Thomas hadn’t been imagining things after all. Here was the immediate explanation for her strange description of the face she had seen at the window.

Questioned, the ex-Welsh Guardsman denied he had ever been near the hospital, let alone having been in the children’s ward the night of the slaying. “I know absolutely nothing about it,” he declared.

“But we have your fingerprints,” remarked the inspector. “How do you suppose they got on that water bottle if you hadn’t been in the room and touched it?”

The flour-packer studied the tips of his fingers in silence for a long time. Then he replied, quite matter-offactly: “Very well. If they are my prints I will tell you all about it.”

In essence, Griffiths said he removed his shoes outside the ward, abducted the child and silenced her cries by hitting her head against a wall.

He had been drinking heavily, he said, ever since his girlfriend had broken off with him three weeks before, and it was this that caused him to commit such a terrible crime.

“He was a boy with a restricted home life,” his former girlfriend stated. “At least – he said so. I tried to help him, but I can hardly believe what has happened.”

She added that on the Sunday following the murder, she accidentally met him on the street. They went for a walk together out to the edge of town. Discussing the murder, she asked in jest, “And where were you last night?”

He told her that he had had a couple of drinks in the pub and gone home about 11 o’clock.

“Never for a moment,” she said, “did I suspect that I was out strolling with the killer of that little girl. I never did see him after that.”

Now police marshalled all available evidence against Griffiths. This included, besides the fingerprints, the sock print and fibres found at the scene and on the child’s body. These

Below, an aerial view of Queen’s Park Hospital, showing the spot marked A where Griffiths broke in, and the spot marked B where June’s body was found

A

B

matched similar fibres taken from a suit which Griffiths placed with a Blackburn pawnbroker. The garment was still impregnated with flour. It also bore bloodstains of a type which matched that of the Devaney girl.

A

fter a preliminary hearing on September 2nd, Griffiths was ordered to be held for trial on October 15th at Lancashire Assizes.

He entered a formal plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Inspector Colin Campbell testified that the prints on the bottle were a precise

The suit Griffiths had pawned after the murder was heavily bloodstained with the same type of blood as June’s match for the samples Griffiths had twice provided for investigators, and which he readily acknowledged were his own. To demonstrate this, enlarged copies of both sets of fingerprints were displayed to the jury, with Inspector Campbell indicating 16 ridge characteristics which were in agreement on both sets of impressions.

Inspector Campbell also testified as to the stockinged feet impressions

Peter Griffiths in his Army uniform. The ex-soldier was working as a packer at a flour mill when he murdered June

Griffiths had provided for investigators also being remarkably similar in characteristics with those found upon the ward from which June Anne had been abducted.

The court heard that the suit Griffiths had pawned shortly after the murder was heavily bloodstained in several locations on both the jacket and trousers, that the bloodstains were of the same blood type as June Anne Devaney’s, and that fibres from this suit were of a perfect match to fibres found upon the child’s clothing, body, and the window ledge where her murderer had evidently entered the hospital.

During the trial, Griffiths’s defence counsel said they were not fighting for his freedom, but for his life, murder being a capital offence in the United Kingdom at the time. The evidence against Griffiths was overwhelming, but all that remained was a question of his sanity.

Dr. Alaistair Robertson Grant, for the defence, said that Griffiths was displaying the early signs of schizophrenia, a condition for which he had treated Griffiths’s father 30 years earlier when he had been hospitalised with the condition.

Dr. Grant told the jury that although Griffiths knew what he was doing, he did not realise the criminality of his actions.

To refute this testimony, the prosecution produced the medical officer truecrime 19

from Walton Gaol, Dr. F.H. Brisby. Dr. Brisby testified that, based on his observations of Griffiths throughout his incarceration at Walton since August 14th, Griffiths had been sane when he had committed the crime.

During the trial, Griffiths described how he had entered the hospital while drunk, and had then picked up the sterile water bottle,

which he told the court he had intended to use as a weapon if he was challenged.

He also described how he had lifted June Anne from her cot and then carried her, in his right arm, out of the hospital, down the field to where he had proceeded to beat and rape her. His victim had trustingly placed her arms around his neck as he had carried her to this destination.

Although Griffiths confessed to having swung the child’s head into the boundary wall approximately four times, he made no response when he was asked about the sexual aspect of the assault.

Defence counsel tried to show that damaging admissions Griffiths had initially made to police had been made either under pressure or through

www.truecrimelibrary.com

FEBRUARY

WORLD’S NO.1 TRUE CRIME MAGAZINE

HE MURDERED A POLICE OFFICER Crimes That Made The Headlines

HANGED IN AUSTRALIA: KILLER RAN AMOK

VICTIM TORTURED SHARON TO DEATH WAS IN “FAKE DEADLY COP” SEX WITH GAME A GUN...

HANGED AT PENTONVILLE Her Shocking Crimes END OF THE ROAD FOR Judge In Tears As He Dons The Black Cap SERIAL-KILLING TRUCK DRIVER MURDER OF THE WHY IRELAND HANGED WOLFE PATRICK KELLY SISTERS ON SALE AT YOUR NEWSAGENT FROM JANUARY 4TH OR SEE THE OFFER ON PAGE 34 20 truecrime

ignorance of his situation.

They had nothing, however, to counteract the damning fingerprint evidence.

On October 18th the jury, after retiring for just 23 minutes, found Griffiths guilty of murder.

He was sentenced to death by hanging, the judge Mr. Justice Oliver telling him: “Peter Griffiths, this jury has found you guilty of a crime of the most brutal ferocity. I entirely agree with their verdict. The sentence of the court is that you be taken from this place to a

Griffiths confessed to having swung the child’s head into the boundary wall.

He made no response when asked about the sexual aspect of the assault lawful prison and thence to a place of execution, and that you there suffer death by hanging, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

G

riffiths lodged no appeal and so the 22-year-old 5ft 10in “white werewolf ” of Blackburn dropped through the trap at Walton Gaol, Liverpool, on the morning of November 19th, 1948. The execution was carried out by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by Harry Allen.

Griffiths’s hanging was only the second after a hiatus of several months as Parliament debated a Bill on the abolition of capital punishment.

Later, in his diary, Harry Allen described the execution as “a very good job,” the death of the condemned man having been achieved in 30 seconds.

Griffiths had paid the ultimate price for his crime, and the investigation – with its huge fingerprint probe – had proved a landmark in the history of British police detective work.

YEAR’S DON’T MISSE TWHINIS TER SPECIAL TRUE DETECTIV STORIES INCLUDE AMITYVILLE REVISITED...THE HORRIFIC SLAUGHTER FOURTH VICTIM FOR THE SUNDERLAND STRANGLER SOLVED...20-YEAR MYSTERY OF THE MURDERED MODEL MURDERED FOR A CIGARETTE THE BEAST OF THE BASTILLE NINA CUT HER HUSBAND INTO TINY PIECES FATHER CHANGED SEX AND MURDERED MUM KILLER KEPT VICTIM’S HEAD IN HIS BED

BIG E G A P 4 8 ISSSUalEe On 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

HIS is the story of Françoise Lapierre. It is a story so terrible, so utterly fantastic, that it defies reason and leaves us wondering how such a monster could take on human form.

Françoise was once a beautiful woman – too beautiful, she thought, to remain for long the property of one man. She became a prostitute in Toulouse with a licence to carry on her profession, for in those days prostitution was entirely legal in France. But as the years dragged by she realised that she would never earn enough money to keep her in reasonable comfort in her old age when her face and figure

wife was certainly a good businesswoman; the Jug was booming. The underworld of Toulouse were not long in discovering Françoise’s den of iniquity and did more there than sip an occasional aperitif. The Jug became a meeting place, a home-from-home for thieves, murderers and convicts on the run. Françoise found she could carry on there her old occupation without the knowledge of her husband.

On a night in February, 1932, the Jug was graced by the presence of a particularly drunk and distraught customer. He pleaded with Françoise to extend him credit. She refused. The customer became demanding,

She’s rarely mentioned today, but there was a time when the incredible case of Françoise Lapierre shocked all France, with calls for the widow’s execution on the guillotine...

disappointedly on hearing that he was still alive. The result of this little incident was that Françoise spent three years in gaol. It was her first attempt at homicide. She made a better job of it next time.

She walked out of prison in 1935 into the arms of her ever-faithful Gustave.

But how old he looked, how infirm. The Jug, he explained, had been forced to close owing to the persistence of its creditors. He had nothing to offer her but himself. Things might be a little difficult for a time, but surely, he pleaded, love would find a way. Françoise did not deny this possibility, but looked to herself. The years she had spent behind bars had taken their toll. Her cheeks were sunken, her face had a broken, stricken look. But her figure was still almost superb.

Françoise lived quite happily on Gustave’s pension for a few months. She began to feel much brighter

his face contorted, his eyes staring. His hands were clasped to his stomach and his breath came in short gasps. “My stomach!” he screamed. “It is on fire!”

On March 28th, 1936, Gustave Lapierre died of heart failure. Françoise dabbed at her dark eyes with a lace handkerchief as the doctor explained her husband’s death. “He was only forty-seven,” complained Françoise.

The doctor tried to comfort her. He patted her on the shoulder. “Sometimes these things happen without warning, Madame Lapierre.”

The women of Toulouse thought there was something strange in the death of poor Gustave. The menfolk shrugged it off and exchanged knowing glances among themselves.

A sick man like Gustave should never have married so passionate a woman as Françoise, they claimed.

A week after her husband’s

NINE VI

FOR THE WIDOW began to sag. She needed a man who would support her for a lifetime, one who would not escape with the dawn.

Françoise, in fact, felt the need of a husband.

At this crucial time there entered Françoise’s life an unfortunate by the name of Gustave Lapierre. Françoise gladly took his name, marrying him in January, 1927. It was Gustave’s hope to reform Françoise and mould her into a model wife. He was a sick man and unable to do much work. He therefore welcomed his wife’s suggestion that his excess cash should be invested in a bar that was up for sale.

She called her bar the Jug and spent most evenings behind its counter. Gustave’s efforts at reformation were having little effect, but his

22 truecrime

obscene. He banged his fist on the bar and told Françoise what she was and what he thought of her.

Françoise’s fine bosom heaved with anger. “You shall not insult me, you filthy drunk,” she screamed.

She fumbled under the bar,

whilst Gustave was looking paler than ever. A great sluggishness had come over him. Throughout the day he would sit around the house half asleep and at night was in no mood to respond to Françoise’s tender caresses.

And tender she was to her

“What you need,” she breathed, “is someone to take care of you, someone to mother you when you’re sick and make you strong again” brought up a rusty revolver and let loose with a volley of shots.

The drunk pitched to the floor. He lay there, bleeding profusely until the police arrived. Françoise had made her first kill, or so she thought. She screamed

ailing spouse. The young bloods of Toulouse were amazed and sorry that she was still an unobtainable pleasure.

One evening Gustave rose from the dinner table with an agonising groan. He staggered about the room,

death Françoise left the city of Toulouse. The bright lights, the pavement cafés and the tree-shaded avenues were out of harmony with her grief. If some housewives thought her departure was abrupt, their suspicions were tempered by the realisation that the widow Lapierre wanted to flee from her sorrow. Moreover, they were relieved that there was one less temptation in the streets to lure away their husbands.

Françoise took her grief and the pension paid to a war veteran’s widow by the government, to Saint Girons, 60 miles from Toulouse.

Here, indeed, was a place to be alone with one’s thoughts.

On Saturdays the farmers came to Saint Girons to do their shopping. The rest of the week the place was

No longer the glamorous, lethal lady, Françoise Lapierre is escorted to the kitchen for a re-enactment of the grisly murder

ICTIMS

W OF TOULOUSE a ghost town with geese waddling uninterrupted down the street and children playing to their hearts’ content on the pavement.

On a bright morning soon after her arrival Françoise saw Juan Dedieu taking his morning constitutional a few paces behind the geese of Saint Girons.

He was a 75-year-old ex-bandit with a patch over his right eye and had served a five-year term in prison for murdering his mistress.

Françoise decided he was altogether to her liking. He was old, infirm and lonely, not to mention the fact that he was rumoured to be exceedingly well-to-do.

It was love at first sight.

Dedieu and the widow Lapierre had a great deal in common. They had both

lost their mates in similar circumstances and shared the same interests. She followed him to the zinc-lined bar of the local café and introduced herself. Soon he was exercising the privilege of buying decanters of wine for her.

“And,” Françoise continued, huskily, “I need you.”

That did it. On September 12th, 1936, Dedieu moved into Françoise’s blue-shuttered cottage. He brought with him a steel safe, the contents of which had not been left out of

One philosopher of Girons expressed the opinion of many. “Such an old man had no business marrying such a woman of fire,” he said Françoise’s technique was simple: “What you need,” she breathed, “is someone to take care of you, someone to mother you when you’re sick and make you strong again.”

Françoise gazed at Juan, her soul in her eyes. The old man became lost in their depths.

Françoise’s calculations. It was said that the aged Juan did not trust banks and that the safe contained the loot of his lifetime of crime.

Juan Dedieu’s marriage was well timed. Within 24 hours he had reason to bless his devoted spouse.

She ministered unto him constantly while agonising pains burned his stomach and his heart pounded until it shook his whole being.

For four days he tossed on his deathbed, babbling incoherently, screaming, whimpering, groaning.

Through a haze of agony he saw her. She was ever by his side, watchful and ever ready with a soothing drink.

Perhaps in a moment of agonised delirium before death Juan Dedieu saw the creature beside his bed as she really was. Perhaps she

E TH AY R W an E rd H D o J C R y r U EN en art M R y H P 19 F B 9 truecrime 33 truecrime

Above, a street in Toulouse. The underworld fraternity were not long in discovering Françoise’s den of iniquity

even taunted him.

“He was seventy-five,” the doctor consoled Françoise.

“You must remember that the Grim Reaper likes to go after the old. In his condition it was better that he should die.”

The citizens of Saint Girons shrugged as they watched the gilded hearse go up the hill to the cemetery. Behind it, clad in black and alone, was the mourning widow, the widow Dedieu. One philosopher of Girons expressed the opinion of many. “Such an old man had no business marrying such a woman of fire,” he said.

As far as Saint Girons was concerned the incident was closed. The widow Dedieu left by bus the next day for Toulouse. She sent men to the cottage she had shared with her late husband. They collected her belongings and the steel safe from the cottage and brought them to her.

In Toulouse Françoise returned to “The Jug.” Once more she became the belle of the dive. The young men were fascinated by this mature, disdainful woman. But she had no time for the youths and seemed little interested 24 truecrime

in middle-aged men desirous of her charms. She loved a gentle nature, a wry neck, a wheezing chest. Relentlessly she pursued the elderly men who came to “The Jug.” It became a joke with the habitués that Françoise found old men better lovers – how grim a joke they never knew.

May, 1938.

A week after taking up residence with the widow Dedieu, Dupont asked her to get him a bottle of hepascol, a liver medicine, from the local chemist. He had severe cramp in his stomach and found himself feeling drowsy all the time. When Françoise returned with the hepascol, Dupont, a retired police department clerk, noticed that the seal of the bottle had been broken.

With hands clasped to his aching stomach he eyed Françoise suspiciously.

“Why is the seal of the bottle broken?”

Françoise smiled. “I felt somewhat ill myself. I thought you wouldn’t mind my taking a little of the medicine.”

“But the bottle,” gasped Dupont, terror in his eyes, “it is full!”

Françoise claimed she had been insulted by her lover’s inference. She pouted her sensuous lips. “For that, Monsieur Dupont, you can in future buy your own medicine!”

She flounced out of the room taking the broken-sealed bottle with her. Shortly after her angry exit Dupont left the house with his luggage. He stumbled with the weight of his cases and the lethargy that seemed to have come over him with his illness. He went at once to a doctor.

The doctor was not long in making his diagnosis.

“Monsieur, you have swallowed a great deal of poison. I suggest you go at once to the police.”

Adrien Dupont was in no

Louis Lebreton saw no omen in the fact that Françoise had bought a black dress. His only thought was that it showed off her figure She bought a small house in the Pyrenees foothills not far from Toulouse and installed therein an admirer by the name of Adrien Dupont. He was 69.

Well-meaning friends cautioned Dupont and told him he was acting like an old fool over so young a woman as Françoise. But their warnings were unheeded. He dipped into his life’s savings and furnished her new cottage from top to bottom. He paid her a year’s keep in advance and moved in with her in

condition to go anywhere.

For four long months he was confined to hospital with violent stomach trouble.

Moreover, he was sure that Françoise would have had the intelligence to destroy the incriminating evidence. He was also certain that he could not take his accusation into court and decided to go into a home for the aged and forget the whole affair. It was thus that Françoise’s third attempt at poisoning failed.

Françoise returned to the Jug and found herself

another elderly admirer. At 73 Louis Lebreton was still man enough to admire a beautiful woman. She encouraged him and flattered his senile vanity. Within a few weeks he was a slave to her slightest whim. He accompanied her to another small house she had purchased not far from Toulouse. Lebreton liked the house and moved in with his new mistress. He brought with him two van-loads of furniture and an assortment of jewellery and cash.

Lebreton had heard the rumours about Dupont and his sudden illness. However, Françoise laughed the matter off and flattered Lebreton that he was of far sturdier physique than poor Dupont.

Lebreton swelled with pride.

He saw no omen in the fact that Françoise had just bought a black dress; he only saw that the sombre garment showed to perfection every line of her lovely figure.

She was by his side when the agony came. This creature, this horror of a woman, sat and watched another of her victims die an agonising death. The screams, groans and pitiful writhings of a defenceless old man could not move her.

Gossip now spread rampant about the Toulouse area. Four men had become enamoured of Françoise; three of them she had escorted to their graves and the fourth was in hospital. There was also the matter of the man she had shot in the Jug, bringing her victims to five in number.

Gossips began at last to whisper, but nothing was done. It seems incredible that the French police had not investigated deaths that were so obviously unnatural.

As if to discredit these whispers, Françoise pursued a younger man, Leon Andrieu, a robust man of 45. He was strong and handsome.

The only drawback as far as Françoise was concerned was that he was a married man with five children. She was not, however, one to let such a minor consideration stand in her way. Andrieu was a building contractor and had a sizeable income. Françoise persuaded him to move into the cottage that Dupont had so hurriedly fled.

Andrieu’s health seemed to blossom in the country air and continued to do so for

u continued on page 29

truecrimelibrar y e of the Doesn’t time fly? Already it’s the tim the crime year to think about unique gifts for devotee in your life. look The good news is – there’s no need to rary has any further, because True Crime Lib t any a range of gifts to surprise and deligh why not crime buff. (And while you’re here, treat yourself too?)

GIFT SHOP PS: Look inside now! It’s packed with special offers!

A gift they’ll enjoy all year round – 12 months’ supply of unputdownable true crime stories

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...

Don’t just give – receive something too! Claim a FREE subscription!

Here’s a special offer to make the gift-buying process even sweeter: spend £50 or more when ordering from this catalogue and you can choose a FREE six-month subscription to one of our best-selling monthly magazines! Use the form overleaf to select yours...

(Offer available only with this catalogue)

Choose exclusive items from our catalogue...solve all your gift problems...save money – and get something free for yourself!

www.truecrimelibrary.com

BOOKS Simply tick the boxes for the books you wan True Crime Library doesn’t just publish some of the world’s best true crime books. We also specialise in tracking down, evaluating and making the best non-fiction crime books from other publishers around the world available. Here’s just a selection from the 250-

n £12.99

n £14.99

n £7.99

n £12.99

n £14.99

n £12.99

n £9.99

n £9.99

n £12.99

n £19.99

n £25

n £7.99

n £16.99

n £12.99

All titles shown are Region 2 DVDs. Full details of contents available at www.truecrimelibrary.com

n £9.99

DVDs

n £12.99

Blood Money n £8.99

In The Line Of Duty n £8.99

n £18.99

n £7.99

The Hitmen n £8.99

3 DVD Collection “M” SPECIAL OFFER: buy all FOUR Ultimate Crimes DVDs for £34.97 (saving £8.99 – or one DVD FREE!) For Murder n £16.99

Remember, you can always browse and order from our full range of magazines, books and ot

nt and add the total to the form overleaf...

9

9

plus books we stock – go to www.truecrimelibrary.com or alternatively write to us for a full brochure

n £9.99

n £12.99

n £14.99

n £16.99

BACK ISSUES

SALE! 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

The write stuff – stylish pens 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! n £9.99

n £7.99

n £20

n £39.95

Binders keepers

High-quality binders to hold a year’s 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

n £19.99

n £19.99

n £9.99

n £8.99

DON’T BE A MUG – BUY ONE! These two attractive mugs – featuring Master Detective and True Crime – should be on everyone’s “wanted” list. Both are suitable for holding liquids and are available at a mere £5.99 each. Buy 3 and get 1 FREE!

ther True Crime Library products at www.truecrimelibrary.com

leather-effect with the True Detective logo gold-blocked on the front and spine, each one holds a year’s worth of issues. £9.00 each – or buy 3 and get 1 FREE!

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!

YOUR DETAILS

Name _________________________________________________ Email _________________________________________________ Address _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Country _______________________ Postcode _______________ Phone _________________________________________________

Complete this form, return the entire four-page Gift Shop – and claim your FREE subscription!* BACK ISSUE BUNDLES

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Recipient name _________________________________________

n True Detective 2016 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n Master Detective 2016 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n True Crime 2016 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n Murder Most Foul 2016 (4 issues).................£13.50

n True Detective 2017 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n Master Detective 2017 (12 issues)..............£31.50 n True Crime 2017 (12 issues)...............£31.50 n Murder Most Foul 2017 (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) (2017 bundles available from November 19th)

Email _________________________________________________

PENS

Address _______________________________________________

n Please send me ___ pen(s) @ £1.99 each SPECIAL OFFER: Buy 3 pens and get 1 FREE! PENS TOTAL £____.____

_______________________________________________________ Country _______________________ Postcode _______________ Phone _________________________________________________ Your gift message (which we’ll send to your recipient in a special greetings card):_________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTIONS TOTAL £____.____ BOOKS

Select and tick your books inside and enter total here BOOKS TOTAL £____.____ MUGS

Select and tick your mugs inside and enter total here MUGS TOTAL £____.____ DVDS

SPECIAL OFFER 1: Buy all 4 ULTIMATE CRIMES DVDs for £34.97 DVDs TOTAL £____.____ BINDERS

n Please send me ___ binders(s) @ £7.50 each SPECIAL OFFER: Order 3 binders for the special price of £20.25 BINDERS TOTAL £____.____

T-SHIRTS

Select and tick your T-shirts above and enter total here T-SHIRTS TOTAL £____.____ PAYMENT

n Cheque/postal order payable to Forum Press for £ ____.____ OR n Charge my n Visa or n Maestro card £ ____.____ Card no. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Expiry date ___/___ Security code ___ Switch/Solo issue no. ___ *Spending £50 or more? Don’t forget to select your FREE six-month subscription – just tick one: n True Detective n Master Detective n True Crime 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

TC 01 18

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)

u continued from page 24 months. The tongues that had wagged suspiciously against Françoise were stilled.

Obviously the Toulouse gossip grapevine had been too hasty in seeking sensationalism.

While one could not dispute the fact that three of Françoise’s mates had perished, one had to admit that they had all been in the twilight of life when she married them. Françoise had now chosen a man of good health and young. Perhaps tragedy had stopped stalking her.

Curiosity as to the cause of death of Françoise’s various amours was interrupted by the Second World War. Leon Andrieu, who had made such good money in his construction business, found

There is a limit to the pain that a human being can endure, and the agony Leon Andrieu felt in his stomach reached that point and he died result of being a brothel. The better-class citizens of Tarbes had given it a wide berth.

She pointed out that she was entirely competent, no matter to what use the establishment might finally be put. But Leon was cautious.

“You are losing your spirit,” Françoise flared, adding pointedly, “You are getting too old.”

This last gibe struck home.

Leon was afraid that he might lose his beloved Françoise.

He agreed to talk business with the bar owner, a retired circus magician by the name

In her domestic life Françoise was now the soul of respectability, that is by comparison to what she had been. The war years were roaring past and Andrieu seems to have been quite healthy. He was not allowed to set foot in the Flash, for Françoise did not consider him the right type to mix with her exalted customers. It seemed, at last, that murder would not this time figure in the calculations of Françoise Lapierre.

It was inevitable, however, that Françoise should in time

Pierre Larran’s house in Tarbes.

“Someone is being cooked on Madame Fourasté’s stove,” a witness told police

few people anxious to build houses that any day might tumble before Hitler’s guns.

Leon decided to retire into the country with Françoise, but found to his dismay that his loving mistress was in no mood to retire.

“We cannot simply vegetate in the country,” she told him in the autumn of 1940. “I have heard of a wonderful business opportunity, one too good to miss.”

The venture that Françoise proposed was the acquisition of a bar in the nearby city of Tarbes. She told him it was a jewel and pointed out that she was not altogether inexperienced in the running of such an establishment. The bar had previously failed as a

of Alfred Tourrat. But it was Françoise who set the terms. Tourrat was to receive 500,000 francs a year for the rest of his life. He did not realise the manner of creature with whom he was dealing and looked forward to an adequate income.

Françoise named her new venture the “Flash.”

Overnight she turned it into a sordid, filthy rendezvous of convicts, prostitutes and drug dealers. It was even more of a success than the Jug had been, and she kept it open day and night. She was nearly always there, bellowing orders to her underlings, reproving drunks and encouraging German soldiers and officials.The Flash paid well.

grow tired of Andrieu. The next victim of her charity was Jean Fourasté.

Françoise was immediately attracted to him. She strode over to his table, smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress and swinging her hips.

He eyed her silently. She smiled slowly. She informed him that she had a private room upstairs and that he would be most welcome.

Her eyes told him the rest.

Before long Fourasté was a regular customer of both the Flash and its upstairs room. Everyone knew of the romance except Leon Andrieu.

About this time, Alfred Tourrat, the former owner of the bar, began to complain

that he was not being paid the annuity Françoise had promised him. He had sued her twice already for the money through the years and was threatening to file suit for the third time. Françoise felt that she should do something to make her relationship with the former bar-owner more amicable.

She put on her most seductive clothes and painted the lines out of her haggard face. As a token of her esteem she had a duck roasted which she took with her to Tourrat’s home. Her efforts at seduction seem to have been successful for Tourrat abandoned the idea of suing her. The duck, uneaten, lay on the kitchen table. After she had gone Tourrat took the duck out to his pigs. He did not wish to waste it but was not hungry himself. The next morning his pigs lay stiff and bloated in their sty. Tourrat must have realised that the duck was poisoned, for he informed Françoise that the threatened suit was on again.

She was forced to give up the Flash and let it return to Tourrat in 1944.

It was not altogether unfortunate for Françoise that she was forced to give up her lucrative business. The war was drawing to its close and Frenchmen were beginning to wreak their revenge upon those of their countrymen who had collaborated with the German occupation forces.

The Flash had been popular with the Germans in Tarbes.

Françoise saw the danger.

When victory came for the allies and the ancient bells of Tarbes Cathedral rejoiced, Françoise was safe in yet another country hideout. With her was Leon Andrieu. and Leon were F both making plans for the future. Françoise was rançoise

scheming to win the devotion of Jean Fourasté. while Leon was anxious to get back into the building business. On hearing that Leon would need a new foreman for his construction gangs, Françoise suggested strong, virile Jean.

Leon was blissfully unaware of the relationship that had existed between his mistress and Fourasté. He met and hired Jean Fourasté with no misgivings.

At night as she lay in Leon’s arms, Françoise would dream of Fourasté, the only man, it seems, she had ever loved. truecrime 29

in her life. The only way she could possibly be near him was to move into a two-room apartment in the Fourasté cottage on the outskirts of Tarbes. This she did, but there seemed no way for her to have Jean to herself. There was only one way she could think of attracting Jean other than with her body. Françoise went off once more in the pursuit of money.

She knew there was no point in her returning to the streets for if she could not attract Jean there was no reason to suppose that she would be able to attract anyone else. Early in the spring of 1950 she heard of Martha Bron. Martha was a poor old soul of 80 and badly in need of charitable services.

She owned two cottages but was unable to take care of herself. Françoise visited her one day and pointed out that for a consideration she

Françoise Lapierre’s last love, Jean Fourasté, is escorted to Toulouse for questioning.

He insisted his mistress was innocent of all charges

Somehow Leon became aware of her love. Perhaps he heard her whisper Fourasté’s name in the long night or perhaps, again, he saw the look in her eyes every time he beheld her. The fact remains that he came to know that his mistress had been unfaithful to him.

“You filthy adulteress!” he bellowed. “You unspeakable harlot!” Leon Andrieu did not know that Françoise had once shot a man for a similar insult.

Françoise said nothing but her eyes, those dark eyes, flickered for a moment. If Leon could have seen them, if he had not been blinded with rage, he might have lived longer.

A few days after Leon’s accusation he became ill.

Time had no meaning to him.

The day was as agonising as the night and the dawn brought no peace. There is a limit to the pain that a human 30 truecrime

being can endure; a point is reached where pain becomes so intense, so terrible, that the spirit and the will to live surrender. The pains in Leon Andrieu’s stomach reached that point and he died.

The doctor shook his head sadly. “A congestive condition of the heart,” he said.

“Hastened on by the summer heat. One learns to expect these things.”

Françoise attempted to cry.

The sounds that came forth were hardly sobs. They were more muffled waves of hard suppressed laughter. She had succeeded once again. The doctor was impressed with the love Françoise displayed for her dead lover.

This sub-human being, Françoise, was not yet content. She had seen the last of Leon but Jean Fourasté was not yet hers. He seemed to remain faithful to his wife

Madeleine Conte was completely taken in by the widow’s kind offer and moved in. Two days later a doctor pronounced her dead and children and to have forgotten all about Françoise.

But she was frank with herself. Françoise was no longer simply not beautiful, she was ugly, grotesque. Her face had lost its beauty years ago, but now her figure had reached such proportions that none of her seductive dresses would fit her. And yet she felt a great longing to be loved.

She wanted Jean more than she had ever wanted anything

would be willing to take care of her. “Just sign your houses over to me and move into my apartment,” Françoise advised. “I will take care of you and I feel sure I shall find it a pleasure.”

Martha reached out for the helping hand. Françoise agreed to house, clothe and feed her and in addition agreed to pay an annuity until her death. The feeble old woman did not ask much of

life. She wanted to live the rest of her days in the peace and comfort to which her age entitled her. A contract was drawn up before a solicitor and on June 4th Martha Bron moved into Françoise’s garret apartment.

How Martha died is not quite clear. She may have been a victim of the same poison that was given to Françoise’s victims or she may, by some ludicrous twist of fate, have died a natural death and saved Françoise the trouble of another murder. The fact remains that she died. She died and left Françoise the two cottages that were her only possessions. It seems too much of a coincidence that Martha’s death fell only a week after June 4th, the date on which the agreement for the cottages was reached.

At long last a number of people began to act on their

all the tests known to modern science. He found no traces of poison.

It seemed that Françoise had been vindicated, but lingering in young Andrieu’s mind was the doctor’s statement: “There are poisons that can always be detected and analysed. But there are others that leave no trace after a while.” The doctor’s words haunted Andrieu and left him still suspicious of Françoise Lapierre. He knew, however, that he could not prove his father had been murdered.

What Andrieu could prove was that his father’s jewels and money were missing, as well as his furniture and personal belongings.

The little man sobbed with sheer terror...

“I am not joking, I saw a foot, a human foot in a pail...It was sticking out, I saw it, I saw it!”

The small house and land Françoise purchased in the foothills of the Pyrenees not far from Toulouse. It was here that she installed an admirer by the name of Adrien Dupont

suspicions. One of these was a soldier, the son of Leon Andrieu, who had just returned from the front in French Indo-China. He heard of the death of Martha Bron and decided that his father’s death should be investigated.

Andrieu had no idea of the number of people who had fallen victim to Françoise’s charms. He was only interested in the strange death of his father. “My father was as healthy as a bull,” he claimed. “I do not believe that he died of natural causes and I want his remains exhumed.”

A court order was granted instructing that the police dig up the body. A highly competent pathologist made

of money to the Andrieu family by court order. She was an ugly, destitute old woman without attraction or charm. Her outlook was bleak.

There was but one friend to whom she could turn; one man yet remained who had at one time been captivated by her sensuous charm. Jean Fourasté was still alive.

On the second day of her freedom she appeared at the door of the Fourasté cottage.

There was still enough magnetism in Françoise’s eyes to make Jean remember the little room above the Flash.

He invited her in. Once more she took over the two-room garret in his house. She viewed his wife and mother-

Investigation proved that Françoise had taken these items. She was arrested on a charge of misappropriation of Leon Andrieu’s estate and sentenced to serve one year in prison. Andrieu also had the satisfaction of knowing that Françoise would have to pay damages. But this was not enough. His father, Andrieu was sure, had been murdered.

But he could produce no evidence to support his fears.

And so it was that in February, 1952, Françoise Lapierre was free once more, free to go in search of further victims, free to seduce, free to torture, free to murder. She was now penniless from the expense of paying large sums

in-law with distaste. They still stood in her way. decided that it was F in her own interest to be charming to the two women rançoise

in Jean’s life. She invited them to her room for cocktails before dinner. She plied them with wine during the meal and even produced liqueurs with the coffee. Whether the wine tasted bitter or the ladies were simply suspicious is not clear. When Jean returned to his home that day he found that his wife and motherin-law had fled and that Françoise had moved from her garret and installed herself in his bedroom. Exerting her utmost charm, Françoise persuaded Jean that things would be better this way.

They lived together in the cottage for some time. They heard that Mme. Fourasté and her mother were living in a mountain cabin about 100 miles from Tarbes, afraid, it seems, to return.

In time Françoise suggested that she and Jean move to Arreau, a town about 30 miles from Tarbes. Françoise was not very popular in Tarbes and Jean found that his old friends avoided him. He was agreeable to the idea.

Agreeing with Françoise was beginning to become a habit with him. They moved to Arreau.

Jean managed to get three jobs in Arreau. He was church bell ringer, special policeman and helped the slaughterhouse

inspector. But Françoise had time on her hands. Moreover, the money that Jean earned at his three jobs was not enough for her requirements.

The house that Françoise and Jean were renting in Arreau belonged to 70-year-old Madeleine Conte.

Madeleine lived in a miserable hovel in order that she might rent out her house. It seemed a golden opportunity to Françoise. Once again she played upon the weakness of the aged. The cool, cold-blooded ruthlessness of Françoise is almost beyond belief. She told Madeleine the old story of how she would care for her, how she would supply her every need.

Old age can be lonely and Françoise spoke soothingly, sympathetically. The old woman was completely taken in. She agreed to Françoise’s favourite annuity and caretaking offer and moved into the rooms at the top of the stairs. Two days later a doctor pronounced Madeleine Conte dead.

The people of Arreau knew little of Françoise. They knew nothing of her reputation in Tarbes, Toulouse and Saint Girons. They were seeing her in black for the first time and were doubtless impressed by so great a display of grief.

There was considerable confusion about the death certificate on this occasion.

Everyone seemed to remember everyone else having signed it or seen it.

Françoise claimed that she was too distressed over poor Madeleine’s death to worry about legal papers. She managed, however, to show interest in the document that had been made out a few weeks before. The cottage now belonged to her. This was Françoise’s sixth successful murder.

In one respect Françoise did not profit by Madeleine’s murder. Jean lost all three of his jobs as a result of increasingly bad publicity, and there was no money for them in Madeleine’s estate. They sat in the cottage through the long evenings trying to think of some way to raise money. They drank heavily and soon found themselves with nothing to live on but memories. But Françoise was in no mood to reminisce. She learnt that there was another old woman in Arreau who was anxious to share her cottage. truecrime 31

Jeanne Rumeau was far more wealthy than Madeleine had been. She was subject to dizzy spells and claimed she needed constant attention.

Françoise assured Jeanne that she was able to give it to her.

The old lady remembered nothing of the sad fate that had befallen Madeleine while under Françoise’s care and accepted the offer with delight. She had hardly unpacked her luggage in the cottage when she suffered from a severe dizzy spell.

Françoise was forced to call a doctor.

She met him at the door.

He entered the front hall of the little cottage and bent down on one knee to examine the old lady who lay at the foot of the stairs. Her head was twisted to one side and her thin, scrawny neck looked broken. The expression on her lined old face was so horribly contorted that it gave the doctor, experienced as he was, a start. The woman

handful of earth on the cheap pinewood coffin. But the people of Arreau knew that two old ladies had died while under her care. It was time to move on. Yet despite the open hostility displayed by Arreau’s citizens, Françoise decided to stay. She was tired of running.

Françoise was no doubt pleased when an old friend came and visited her. Bazeline Pascaud was indeed an old friend. She and Françoise had been cellmates at one time.

They had vowed to meet on the outside and Bazeline had just finished her term of imprisonment. After a warm greeting Françoise took her friend into the parlour of the little cottage. Fourasté was sitting at a table, very drunk.

He did not move as the two friends entered.

“Get rid of him,” advised Bazeline. “We have some business to talk over.”

Bazeline explained that there was a house for sale in Tarbes that could be snapped

Françoise returned to the cottage deep in thought. Jean was still slumped at the table when she returned. He did not look up. She sat herself before the fire and stirred the glowing ashes with a poker. Inspiration is said often to come to a twisted mind when contemplating the hereafter. In the glowing embers Françoise saw the face of La Villet. La Villet, that was her name, La Villet.

She had been a prostitute in the old days and almost as beautiful as Françoise. The glow of the fire shone on Françoise’s haggard features.

La Villet had been taking care of an elderly gentleman in Tarbes when Françoise had last heard of her, perhaps with the same intentions that had

sitting-room where stood Pierre, a straight, upright man despite his years. Françoise made out that her call was purely a social one. She was charming to La Villet and not so attentive to Pierre as to arouse suspicion. When La Villet had gone from the room for a moment, Françoise sidled over to the old man.

She stood very close to him and smiled her old, slow smile. She told him that she would be waiting at a certain café in Tarbes that evening.

She would be waiting for him.

That evening Françoise waited impatiently for Pierre.

Much depended upon his co-operation. He arrived a little late and very nervous lest La Villet should learn of his clandestine meeting.

In the kitchen a man was stirring a huge vat, while on the table, in a mixture of blood and sawdust, lay the headless, legless torso of Pierre Larran was dead. Her neck had been broken by a fall down the stairs. But the expression on her face! The doctor turned his questioning glance on Françoise.

“She must have fallen down the whole flight,” said Françoise. She paused a moment. The doctor continued to stare. “I saw her standing at the top of the stairs. She swayed, she flung out her arms, and then suddenly she was falling down the stairs...It was terrible, doctor...terrible.”

The doctor signed the death certificate without comment. Perhaps he could tell from the look on the dead woman’s face the manner of her death. He did not know that Jeanne Rumeau had turned over her money to Françoise before falling to her death. Had he known, he might have investigated more thoroughly and made some kind of a report to the police.

F

rançoise was punctual at the funeral, her seventh.

She cried at the right moments, she threw the

32 truecrime

up for a song. She needed someone to go in with her and had remembered her old friend Françoise. The house had been a brothel but since 1948. when all houses of prostitution had been outlawed, it had stood empty.

“We could buy it together,” said Bazeline. “We could open the place again and really make it run. Of course I would not like this Fourasté of yours to have anything to do with it.” She glanced over to the table where Jean sat slumped and muttering.

Bazeline had already worked out exactly what Françoise’s share in the partnership would be. She brought a gold fountain pen out of her bag and calculated in front of her friend.

Françoise would require some 60,000 francs.

Bazeline had no way of knowing that Françoise was again without money.

Together the two friends walked to the bus stop. “I will see what I can do and get in touch with you,” said Françoise as Bazeline boarded the bus.

Before his death Deferdente Bizichini, or Bikini (in white scarf) as he was known, became a celebrity in the town after his startling discoveries

prompted Françoise to be a ministering angel. She would look up La Villet, thought Françoise, throwing another log on the fire. It shattered the glowing images that had danced before her eyes. The fire blazed forth anew.

The next day Françoise took a long time getting ready.

She intended visiting La Villet, and one did not visit another woman without making preparations. She hoped to be able to talk to Pierre Larran, who had been keeping La Villet. The old man was nearing 65, but might yet consider her more attractive than his present mistress.

La Villet and Françoise exchanged warm greetings at Pierre’s house in Tarbes.

They entered a comfortable

Françoise had a novel proposition to put before him. She tried to inspire his interest in an annuity agreement. Pierre would not even consider the proposition.

In desperation she asked him quite bluntly for the 60,000 francs she needed for the half-share in the house.

“I’ll think it over,” was Pierre’s only reply.

Pierre Larran was wiser than Françoise had at first supposed. He took a very long time thinking it over.

However, the old man decided that Françoise was, or, since old men live on memories, had been, more beautiful than La Villet. He moved into the house at Arreau with Françoise. Jean Fourasté did not seem to mind.

Françoise tried time and again to persuade Pierre to invest his money in the proposed brothel. He would not. She confessed to herself that she was no longer attractive enough to persuade the opposite sex to do anything. Psychology, she thought, might work. She asked Bazeline to explain to the old man how profitable such an establishment might be. She and Françoise, explained Bazeline, were not going to be the attractions of the place, they would simply manage the house.

This seemed to reassure the old man. He gave Françoise the 60,000 francs for which she pleaded but on the understanding that he should get a full share of the profits.

his money was well invested.

The three of them had dinner together and went thoroughly into the matter. The old man decided after dinner to spend the night with them. He felt too tired, he said, to make the journey back to Tarbes. He stumbled up the stairs of the cottage to his room, a tired, bent old man.

T

he next morning Françoise and Jean were out early.

They visited almost every café in Arreau and drank a great deal of wine. In their travels they picked up a popular local by the name of Deferdente Bizichini, or simply Bikini to his many friends. He considered himself a great friend of Jean and Françoise that morning

staggered out of the Fourasté home and lurched his way down the main street of Arreau. There was something troubling him. He tried to shake off the cobwebs, fighting against the alcohol he had consumed. At length he found himself before the Arreau police station. He entered and strode unsteadily up to the sergeant. “I would like to see the capitaine,” he said.

The sergeant took him into Captain Cayle’s office and seated him in front of the large desk at which the police officer was working.

The captain was engrossed in his reports. Now and then he would flip over a page to jot down a note. Bikini sat. At length the captain looked up.

“What can I do for you, M. Bizichini?” The captain noted the fact that Bikini was very drunk.

“You will excuse me, capitaine, but someone is cooking on Madame

car. They quietly opened the kitchen door at the rear of the cottage.

A billowing stench hit the captain as he entered the kitchen. Clouds of steam made it difficult to see the horror that lay about. A figure rushed past him and out of the door. The captain called to the gendarme to stop whoever it was that was trying to escape. He advanced into the steaming kitchen. In front of the stove sat a man.

It was Jean Fourasté. He was stirring a huge boiling vat on the stove. There was blood up to his elbows and out of the vat protruded a foot, a human foot.

Fourasté was in a drunken, terrorised stupor. He stirred the cauldron automatically.

He had become Françoise’s creature. He obeyed her every command as would a slave without a soul of his own.

“What is that?” the captain choked out “Papa Pierre,” Fourasté

“I believe Françoise poisoned Pierre Larran, probably with gardenal,” Bazeline told police.

“Fourasté only finished him off”

The date of this agreement was February 5th, 1953.

During his stay at Arreau, Pierre met several friends.

They urged him to have no dealings with Françoise and told him of two old women and the rumours from Toulouse. The old man did not like the tone of their accusations. He hurried to a lawyer but found to his dismay that the deal he had made with Françoise was perfectly binding. There was no way that he could retrieve his money from Françoise other than by pleading with her. He therefore began badgering for the return of his money.

Françoise sent for Bazeline in order that she might once again explain to Pierre that

and joined in their journey around the cafés.

At 10 o’clock the trio were more than drunk. They staggered in the streets, arm-in-arm. Bikini had never known Françoise to be so generous before and decided to stay with her until the mood was past. At length he excused himself saying that he had to do an odd job for a farmer just outside the town.

Jean and Françoise staggered home to join Pierre Larran who was still asleep.

At 3 p.m. Bikini was once again feeling thirsty. He left his job and decided to visit Jean and Françoise in the hope that the festivities continued. It is not known how much Bikini was given to drink but at 6 o’clock he

Fourasté’s stove.”

“I see no reason why with Madame Fourasté’s consent the whole world should not cook on her stove. Monsieur Bizichini, you are drunk!”

“Oui, capitaine, but I am not joking. Someone is being cooked on Madame Fourasté’s stove!”

The captain sprang to his feet. “I warn you Bikini that if this is some kind of joke...”

“Capitaine, do I look as if I am joking? I have seen it in a pail!”

The captain saw terror in Bikini’s bloodshot eyes.

The little man began to sob with sheer terror from what he had seen. Captain Cayle interrogated him gently.

“What have you seen in a pail, Bikini?”

“I saw a foot, a human foot in a pail!”

The captain was for a moment speechless. “You saw a human foot in a pail!”

“It was sticking out, I saw it, I saw it...”

Captain Cayle took Bikini by the arm and called for a gendarme to accompany them to Françoise’s house.

They sped to the cottage by

grinned foolishly.

Unable to control himself, Captain Cayle caught hold of Fourasté and shook him.

“Where is the rest of him?”

Fourasté glanced towards the kitchen table. There, in a mixture of blood and sawdust, lay the headless, legless torso of Pierre Larran. On the floor, covered in blood, were strewn a saw, a knife and an axe. The captain turned away, horrified.

Through the door came Françoise, struggling violently, in the arms of the gendarme who had been sent to catch her. She had not got far. She was screaming. When released from the gendarme’s grip she hobbled crazily about the bloody kitchen. She screamed, she clawed her matted hair.

She was drunk and half mad.

“Bikini killed him, Bikini killed him, Bikini killed him!”

The captain leant out the door. He told the gendarme in the kitchen to collect reinforcements. Somehow the captain stayed in the kitchen until more gendarmes arrived and were able to take Jean Fourasté and Françoise Lapierre away.

The next day it was truecrime 33

SUBSCRIBE TODAY l 25% off the shop price l Never miss an issue l Get your copy first l Delivered direct to your door l Post-free in UK

GET TRUE CRIME DELIVERED TO YOUR HOME EVERY MONTH... ...AND 25% SAVE off the shop price!

3

ways to subscribe

Visit www.truecrimelibrary.com Call 020 8778 0514 Post Complete the order form below

SEND TO: Forum Press, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ

3Yes! I would like to subscribe to TRUE CRIME for one year (12 n issues) n UK £31.50 n Outside UK (surface mail) £50/US$68/Au$84 n Europe (airmail) €57 n Rest of World (airmail) US$82/Au$103 l You can also subscribe to n True Detective and n Master Detective at the same price YOUR DETAILS: n Mr. n Mrs. n Miss. n Ms. Forename..............................................................................

Surname ...............................................................................

Email .....................................................................................

Address ................................................................................. .............................................................................................. ............................... Postcode ...............................................

Country ................................................................................. l For gift subscriptions see our GIFT SHOP insert in the centre of this issue

n Maestro

nnnn nnnn nnnn nnnn Expiry date n n n n Security code n n n

34 truecrime

!

PAYMENT: n by cheque made payable to Forum Press n by credit/debit card: Please debit my: n Visa n Mastercard Card number:

TC0118

Telephone..............................................................................

impossible to interrogate either of the murderers.

Fourasté babbled incoherently and incessantly: “Bikini did it, Bikini, Bikini, Bikini.” Françoise was sullen in her cell. She would not speak to or look at anyone.

She stood with her face to the wall of her cell.

On the second day the Sûreté men came from Toulouse.

“Bikini killed him,” was all Françoise would say.

“Bikini, Bikini, Bikini,” muttered Fourasté.

The men of the Sûreté questioned the three prisoners endlessly. Bikini insisted that he had no idea what was going on in the house from 3 to 6 o’clock.

He had been in the house, yes. But he had not been in the kitchen. He had been drinking in a room next to it.

Françoise had told him they had a rabbit stew cooking. He had believed her.

Fourasté was the first to break down under

I heard him go upstairs.

There was a noise. Then he went back to bed again. I believe Françoise poisoned Pierre Larran, probably with gardenal. Fourasté only finished him off.”

Françoise denied having given the poison to Pierre.

She accused Bazeline of having done so. The police never for a moment suspected Bazeline of the murder, for although she had picked an estimated 60,000 pockets in her time she had never hurt a fly.

Françoise’s accusation against Bikini was unsubstantiated. But it seemed obvious that he knew more than he was telling.

At length he confessed that while drunk he had helped Fourasté and Françoise to cut up the body, holding a leg here, a shoulder there, while Fourasté sawed. But as the questioning proceeded it became obvious to the police that whatever part Bikini and Fourasté may have

People remembered the old women whom she had taken care of and how they had died under her care interrogation. He admitted the murder. During the night of February 25th, he said, he had strangled Pierre Larran.

In the afternoon Bikini had come for a drink. He had helped him cut up the body.

He insisted that Françoise was entirely innocent of the murder.

The Sûreté men searched the house. They found two tubes of a sleeping drug, gardenal, two pounds of arsenic and bottles of various heart stimulants. These finds put Françoise’s past life into focus. Witnesses suddenly came forth in droves. The bodies of all the men she had married or lived with were exhumed. People remembered the old women whom she had taken care of and how they had died under her care.

Bazeline came forth as a witness to the last of Françoise’s murders. Her evidence was vital in the case, for she was sure that Fourasté was not the real murderer of Pierre Larran. She told the police: “I slept at Fourasté’s house on the night of the murder.

At four in the morning

taken in the dissection of the body, Françoise alone had committed the murder, In December, 1954, before a court sitting at Tarbes, the trial of Françoise Lapierre and Jean Fourasté was begun.

Both the accused continued to blame Bizichini for dismembering the body and claimed that Pierre Larran had died in his bed. Bizichini had died before the trial, and his terrible description of the dismemberment and boiling of the body was read to the court by Judge Pons.

On December 16th, Françoise Lapierre and Jean Fourasté were both found guilty of the murder of Pierre Larran and sentenced to hard labour for life.

France was shocked at the killing of poor old Pierre Larran and there were calls for Francoise and Fourasté to be sent to the guillotine.

By 1954 the death sentence was reserved for crimes against the state, assassination, and poisoning, so the couple were eligible for execution. Why they were spared is another story.

W

ILLIAM GREGORY was one of those strong, silent men. Silent, in fact, to the point of being taciturn.

A long-serving soldier, he had entered the army as a boy, stationed first at Pirbright in Surrey, and being posted in 1901 to Winchester, where he served in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Subsequently he became a hero of World War One, in which he was wounded. By that time he had come to regard Winchester, where he had spent most of

HORROR AT WINCHESTER STATION had hoped for, but she had a conscience. “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. “That would leave you alone up here, Bill, and it wouldn’t be fair.”

“It’s sensible,” her husband told her. “Look, Emily. Time’s going by. I’m thirty-nine now, and you’re thirty-seven. Even George is coming on sixteen, and there doesn’t seem to be anything up here for any of us. You’ve given it a fair crack, more than I had a right to expect, by sticking it for two years. And we won’t be apart for long. What I’ll do after you’ve gone is to finish up here, getting us out of it as best I can financially. Then I’ll join you and we’ll get things going for us down there.”

It seemed to make sense, but both of them knew that they couldn’t hope for much in Winchester. There was little work for anyone anywhere at that time.

Case report by Theresa Murphy his army career, as his home town.

There he met and married a local girl, Emily Dearlove, while his sporting prowess enabled him to play for Winchester City Football Club, and his skill at cricket made him an all-year-round sportsman. He seemed to have it made. With his war record in the past and sports

DEATH ON THE RAILWAY Part 13 skills in the present, there seemed no way that anything could go wrong.

But in 1923 times were hard, and a national economic crisis was looming. Germany, the only likely enemy, was defeated and also in financial disarray, and faltering Britain couldn’t afford a large army for which there no longer seemed to be a need. Bill Gregory, and others like him, had to go. Discharged from the army with the trade of shoemaker, he found himself in an economic climate where even the would-be tycoon was hamstrung.

The city of York, however, seemed to offer an opportunity. In times of depression, Bill Gregory reasoned, more people had shoes repaired because they couldn’t afford to buy new ones. So, as a novice civilian, he moved north, setting up in business as a cobbler and sending for his wife and son to join him.

“It’s not much, Emily,” he explained as he showed his wife the dingy rented rooms that they were to live in.

“But it gives us a start. I can

I Above, an illustration of the tragedy that unfolded in the city. Background image, Winchester today develop the business and buy us a proper home.”

“We’re together, which is the main thing,” said Emily.

Over the ensuing two years, however, Bill Gregory’s shoe-repairing business did anything but prosper.

Although she kept her feelings to herself, Emily yearned for Winchester, her home.

As things turned out, her opportunity to leave York arose without any prompting on her part. Her widowed mother was ailing in Winchester, and Bill Gregory returned home from his workshop one evening to hear the bad news from his wife.

“We had a letter from Mum this morning,” she told him.

“How is she?” Gregory asked, guessing from Emily’s manner that the news wasn’t good.

“Worse than ever, poor dear. She’s had to take to her bed, and the doctor says she’ll be bedridden for the rest of her life. I know my duty lies here with you, Bill, but I am terribly worried about her.”

“It wouldn’t be you if you weren’t, Em,” he told her.

“To tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking a lot just lately.

Any prospects that there may have been here for us no longer exist. If you take young George back down to Winchester, you could look after your mother then.”

This was more than Emily

n the late summer of 1925 Emily Gregory and her son went back to Winchester, to live with her mother at 32 Eastgate Street. In the months that followed, Bill Gregory worked even harder in York, desperate to build a business he could sell as a going concern, to raise enough money to start anew in Winchester.

A year later, however, he felt defeated. Nothing had worked out, but he still had aspirations. One thing that couldn’t be taken from him was his fine army record, and he wrote to the 14/20 Hussars, confident that he would obtain a position.

Sadly, however, the “land fit for heroes” had no jobs for them. Gregory got his reply – he wasn’t wanted.

He was by nature so quiet and reserved that his wife couldn’t measure the depth of the wound this rejection by the army had inflicted on him.

She knew he was profoundly truecrime 35

hurt, but that was all. Five weeks of unemployment in Winchester had so depressed him that he now said even less than usual. But then there was good news for the family.

“Our problems are over,” he cried as he came in one day, in a show of emotion so out of character that his wife and son knew something big had happened. “I’ve got a job in London, a good one.”

“Oh, wonderful!” said

MASTER

Emily. “When do you start?”

“October the first,” Gregory replied.

Emily’s eyes clouded, for the wait – though short – would seem an eternity for them in their poverty. Her husband couldn’t stand seeing her unhappiness, so he added what he should have told her in the first place, but had withheld as a tease: “But the man who will employ me is keen for me to start earlier, so

we’ve agreed on September 27th.”

Gregory was to leave for London by train on Sunday, September 26th, to start work, and was confident that he would be sending for his wife and son to join him before he had been in the big city for very long.

“You deserve this break,” Emily told him.

“You deserve it even more, because I’ve been able to do

FEBRUARY

DETECTIVE

www.truecrimelibrary.com

On sale at your newsagent from January 18th, or see the offer on page 34

WORLD’S BEST TRUE CRIME STORIES EVERY MONTH!

SCOTLAND’S WORST EVER SERIAL KILLER KYLE KNEW HE HAD TO ESCAPE HIS TORTURERS OR DIE MACABRE METHODS OF MURDER Pipe connected to running car and passed over the conservatory

Box to be placed over face of wife

MAGISTRATE’S MURDER PLAN

THE LAST MAN HANGED IN IRELAND

After 42 years...

SISTERS’ KILLER DODGES NEEDLE

Murder In Your Village This month: Cassington, Oxon

FROM PEEPING TOM TO MURDERER ...TO THE ELECTRIC CHAIR

OLD MURDER SOLVED

BY NEW TECHNOLOGY “Your DNA Is Inside Her”

KILLER SARAH AND THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK 36 truecrime

little for you since I left the army.”

“I love you, Bill,” she said.

“Somehow it’s easier to say that now our worries are over.”

“I’ve wanted to say it to you a thousand times in the past three years,” he said tenderly, “but it never seemed to be the right time.”

“Then tell me now,” she said, and he obliged.

But after the first joyful news of his pending employment, William Gregory slipped back into one of his deepest moods of taciturnity, barely communicating with anyone in the house.

September 26th came and went, but he was still at 32 Eastgate Street, having made no move in the direction of London, or anywhere else. It

In horror she saw the man cut his throat while the woman, trying to hold the two parts of her own slit throat together, made groping movements towards him was the same the next day, with Emily caring for her 75-year-old mother during the day, and preparing to go to a whist drive at St. John’s Church Room.

“Do you want to come?” she asked her husband, but he shook his head and continued reading a newspaper.

In her mother’s room Emily told the old woman that she wouldn’t be back late, but Mrs. Dearlove stopped her daughter with a whisper as she was about to leave: “What’s happening, Emily?”

“I told you. I’m going to the whist drive.”

“I don’t mean that, and you well know it. I mean what’s happening with your husband? He was supposed to leave for London yesterday.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t he go?”

“I don’t know,” said Emily despondently. “And you know Bill – I can’t ask him.”

“That wouldn’t do for me,” muttered her mother. “If it was your father, I’d soon have tackled him.”

Maybe you would, Emily

thought as she left the room and the house, but then her father hadn’t been like Bill Gregory, who was so reticent.

She went off to play her game of cards, resigned to letting this hitch in her husband’s life work itself out. She didn’t have long to wait.

O

n the morning of Wednesday, September 29th, it was a very different Bill Gregory who came down from the bedroom.

“Good morning, Em,” he greeted his surprised wife cheerfully. “Not too bad a morning. I’m going to make the most of it, as it’s my last day here.”

“Your job?” asked Emily, delighted that it had come true at last.

“That’s it. I’ll be catching the seven o’clock train for London this evening.”

So that was that. Emily assumed that her husband, considerate as ever, had not wanted to worry her with whatever had delayed him starting the new job. It was typical of him.

Just after 6 o’clock that evening she had to call through the back window to her husband, who was playing with a ball in the garden with their son and her brotherin-law, James Paton. It seemed a shame to take Bill from the game he was enjoying so much, roaring with laughter one minute, bursting into song the next. She had never seen him so relaxed and happy, but she had to shout to him.

“It’s gone six, Bill. You’d better get ready if you’re going to catch that train.”

“Be right with you, Em,” he called back, letting out a whoop as he kicked the ball.

“Will you walk to the station with me?”

He came in and got changed ready to go, talking in what for him was a torrent as he said how excited he felt about starting his new employment, which was in Edgware Road.

“Next time we see each other will be in London,” he told his son.

Off the couple went together, the first short walk on a journey into a fresh life. Yet they showed no sign of elation as they went along North Walls. A neighbour who knew Emily was approaching in the other direction and went to greet her friend, but then stood

still in astonishment as Emily Gregory passed by as if she hadn’t seen her.

The next person to notice them was Morton Macklin, a porter at the Southern Railway station, at 10 minutes to seven that evening.

With little interest, he saw the couple walk up Station Hill together. But then the porter became a keener observer as the woman walked straight to the station’s verandah, where she read a bus timetable, while the man, for some odd reason, tried several times to open a locked door. As Macklin momentarily looked the other way, he heard a thud, and spun round to see the man falling to the ground.

Believing the man was having a fit, the porter ran forward to give assistance, but stopped when he saw blood pumping and squirting in all directions. The man’s throat had been cut, and Macklin dashed into the station to get help.

A clearer view of the incident was obtained by a chauffeur, Robert Kemble.

He was standing beside his employer’s car outside the station when he saw Gregory, whom he didn’t know, put his hand on Emily’s shoulder.

Kemble then looked away to get into the car in order to adjust a seat. When he emerged from the car again he was shocked to see the woman huddled on the ground, bleeding heavily. He ran forward to help, but soon realised from the gaping gash in the woman’s throat that she was beyond assistance.

Shop assistant Gwendolyn Newman was about to catch the 6.58 p.m. train home to Southampton. In horror she saw the man cut his throat while the woman, trying to hold the two parts of her own slit throat together, made groping movements towards him.

The man had slashed the woman and then himself without a word being exchanged between them.

Another porter, William George Stone, would never forget the close-up spectacle of Emily’s severed windpipe, the detached muscles of her neck and the cut and protruding arteries.

Police investigating the tragedy were told of the man going off to London to work, and being accompanied to the station by his wife. But

Gregory had not bought a ticket for London, and a search of his clothing revealed that he didn’t have enough money to buy one.

All he had in his pockets were two rolled-gold cufflinks, a tiepin and the letter from the Hussars rejecting his earlier job application. There was nothing to support his claim that he had got a job London.

In Emily’s purse were two threepenny bits and four pennies. Had she learned on that last walk that there was no job after all? That would account for her strangeness when meeting her neighbour.

A

t the police mortuary a surgeon confirmed that Gregory’s fatal wound had been self-inflicted, and there was no doubt as to who had cut Emily’s throat. So instead of having to decide who was responsible for the deaths, the inquest jury were concerned with why they had taken place.

“Have you heard your father threaten your mother?”

Winchester Railway Station entrance today the coroner, Theophilus Brown, asked George Gregory, the deceased couple’s son.

“No. They were on good terms for the five weeks he lived with us in Eastgate Street, and he was perfectly normal when they went off to the station.”

“Other than this five weeks,” the coroner continued, “did you hear him threaten your mother at any other time?”

“Only once, when we lived in York, and then it was just a joke.”

“In what way did he threaten her?”

“He said he would like to cut her throat,” said George Gregory.

James Paton, the brotherin-law who lived with the family, testified that he had never heard of any rows

between Emily and William Gregory.

“Do not answer so quickly,” said the coroner. “Think – had there been any rows between them?”

“Not in my presence.”

“Then have you heard of any rows between them?”

“No.” “None?”

“None, sir,” repeated Paton.

“Wasn’t there ever any unpleasant talk between them? Didn’t you ever hear him threaten his wife?”

“No.” “Then how do you explain the fact that they were apart for twelve months?”

“Because Emily came to Winchester to look after her mother,” said Paton.

Hardly able to speak because she was so upset, Emily Gregory’s widowed sister, Mrs. Ward, told the court that there had never been a rift of any kind in the Gregorys’ relationship.

But this didn’t satisfy the coroner. “Hadn’t there been some trouble between this man and his wife?” he persisted. Then, as Mrs. Ward remained silent, he added, “It is going to extend this inquiry very much if you don’t give straight answers to my questions.”

Mrs. Ward then admitted there had been some trouble between her sister and brother-in-law.

“Trouble about his doings and her doing?” asked the coroner.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that the real reason why they lived apart for some twelve months?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have heard evidence of a state of disharmony between this couple,” said the coroner when Mrs. Ward stepped down. “I am not going to apportion blame on dead people, but there were equal faults on both sides.”

Although they may have wondered how he reached this conclusion, the jury returned a verdict that William James Gregory had feloniously killed his wife before taking his own life while of unsound mind.

Before the couple were buried together, a Union Flag draped the coffin of William Gregory in belated tribute to the man who had found that braving German bullets was one thing, but coping with unemployment was quite another. truecrime 37

v

#19

Suchowlansky in Grodno, Russia, into an Orthodox Jewish family. He was eight years old when the family arrived in New York on April 8th, 1911, aboard the SS Kurst to begin a new life away from the anti-semitism

While still at school Lansky ran his own crap game and began raking in more cash than his father earned as a tailor.

During one of these games a handsome kid a few years younger than himself

a wild reputation and was considered by some to be as crazy as a bedbug – which gave him his nickname, “Bugsy.”

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was the complete opposite of Lansky. Siegel was brash

I

N A SCENE from the movie Godfather II, Hyman Roth, a character thinly based on Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky, boasts to Mafia don Michael Corleone about the Mob. “Michael, we’re bigger than US Steel!” he says.

These words were adapted from dialogue picked up from an FBI-bugged hotel room occupied by Meyer Lansky.

No tape exists to prove that Lansky actually spoke those words but as with much of Lansky’s life the myths and legends are larger than the little man himself.

Police, federal agents and journalists have labelled Lansky the Mob’s treasurer, the syndicate’s chairman of the board and the most influential godfather in the history of American organised crime.

He was reputed to have a personal fortune of over $300 million. From bootlegger in the 1920s to being dubbed one of the most dangerous men in the world in the 1970s, the factors surrounding Lansky’s life are often stranger than fiction.

He was born Meyer

Above, Meyer Lansky early in his criminal career. He soon rose through the criminal ranks in Brooklyn 38 truecrime

The Mafia’ This police mug-shot (above) from 1932 featuring “Lucky” Luciano, centre, and Meyer Lansky, right, would return to haunt Lansky in 1970 when he applied for Israeli citizenship. It was irrefutable proof of his connection to organised crime

of Czarist Russia.

The family established themselves in the Brownsville district of Brooklyn where Meyer and his elder brother Jake attended school under their now Americanised name of Lansky. Although a good scholar, little Meyer would spend most of his time studying the gamblers along Delancey Street on New York’s lower East Side.

After losing his meagre pocket money several times, it didn’t take long for the shrewd boy to realise that there were no lucky gamblers, only winners and losers – and the winners always controlled the game.

started a fight between rival dice shooters. The kid had

Lansky had stood up to Salvatore Luciano, the dreaded Lucky Luciano who one day was to become leader of the American Mafia with help from this puny little Jew who now refused to pay tribute to any Italians

and powerfully built. The diminutive Lansky was quiet and shy. But he was no less tough than Bugsy. The pair soon became inseparable.

With Meyer’s brains and Siegel’s brawn the two boys attracted other street kids into a gang that was soon to be known as the Bugs and Meyer Mob. Lansky’s toughness was put to the test one day in 1915 when he was surrounded by a gang of young Italians who preyed on solitary Jews, beating them up if they did not pay protection. Hopelessly outnumbered, Lansky was ordered to pay up by the gang’s leader, a tough young

Case recalled by

Tom Prior

’s Unlikely Godfather

Meyer Lansky. The Russia-born, New York-bred Mafia don and treasurer became the most influential figure in American organised crime

Sicilian with a pockmarked face. Like a bantam rooster Lansky squared up to the stocky gang leader. “Go do yourself,” was his defiant reply.

Lansky had stood up to Salvatore Luciano, the dreaded Lucky Luciano who one day was to become leader of the American Mafia with help from this puny little Jew who now refused to pay tribute to any Italians. The young Lansky didn’t get beaten up and didn’t pay any tribute.

Another friendship was formed with Luciano that day – a friendship that would change the face of organised crime in the decades to come.

W

hile working as a tool and die mechanic by day the 16-year-old Lansky moonlighted as a bouncer in a gambling joint. He wielded a lead pipe during labour troubles and tried his hand at pimping. He was arrested on October 25th, 1918, on a charge of felonious assault.

Less than a month later he was charged with disorderly conduct. Both charges were entered by prostitutes whom

Lansky tried to get to work for him.

Over the next decade he would appear in court regularly. On March 6th, 1928, for example, he was charged with the attempted murder of another hoodlum.

The case was dismissed but not before Lansky was fingerprinted and his mug-shot taken. A couple of months later he was up on another attempted murder

charge. Both charges were dismissed. That same year he became an American citizen, stating on his papers that he had no criminal record!

In 1929 Lansky, with Siegel as his best man, married his sweetheart Anne Citron. Exactly nine months later they had a son they named Buddy. The child suffered from cerebral palsy.

Lansky couldn’t handle the thought of having a truecrime 39

“cripple” for a son. He at first walked out on his family, but later took his wife and baby to doctors all over America for treatment, spending considerable sums of money, but to no avail.

During 1929 Lucky Luciano began the process of Americanising the mob.

With Lansky’s help he organised a meeting at Atlantic City, attended by the country’s top mobsters.

They agreed on a loosely based combination to oversee the bootlegging and gambling rackets.

Lucky next ordered a purge of the older Sicilian bosses who refused to work with Lansky and Siegel.

Luciano’s boss Salvatore Maranzano was the first victim. Posing as federal tax agents, Jewish killers from the Bugsy and Meyer mob gunned him down in his Park Avenue office. That same night, legend has it, 60 Mafia bosses across the country were murdered, although no hard evidence exists to support this. After Maranzano’s death, Luciano was the most powerful Mafia

tracks around the country and opened many carpet joints – gambling and drinking houses – around major cities across the nation.

The brutal death of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (left and below, in the morgue). Lansky took over the Flamingo and the crowds that came to see the folly that had cost Siegel his life made it a huge success

the firm went bust in 1935, having made a small fortune for the little man. uring the mid-30s Meyer returned to his first love, gambling. With his brother Jake, Lucky Luciano and New Jersey crime boss Joe Adonis as partners, Lansky moved into the plush gambling rackets around Saratoga in upstate New York. He bought controlling shares in a number of dog

D

America’s top Mafia bosses gathered for the send-off. They heard Luciano offering some advice. “Listen to Meyer,” he said, acknowledging the role that the little Jewish gangster had played in shaping the future of organised crime boss in the United States with Meyer Lansky at his side.

Towards the end of Prohibition in 1933, Lansky and Siegel had built a profitable bootlegging business. Lansky had become a partner in the Molaska Corporation, a supplier to the newly legal distilling industry. The company was, however, supplying several illegal stills until agents from the Bureau of Alcohol and Tax closed them down. A confusing web of frontmen enabled Lansky to escape prosecution when 40 truecrime

The Lanskys in the 1940s. From left, sons Paul and Buddy, daughter Sandi, wife Anne and, standing, Meyer Lansky

The sunshine of Florida beckoned Lansky to winter at Palm Beach. By 1937, South Florida had become Lansky’s base of operations with extensive gambling activity around the Dade-Broward county line.

In all these operations Lansky preferred to stay in the background, pulling the strings on a gambling empire that was soon to spread to Cuba. There Lansky had begun to sew the seeds for a lucrative deal between the Mob and Cuban politicians.

On February 11th, 1942, while being converted into a troopship at New York’s Hudson pier, the French liner Normandie was destroyed by fire. US Naval Intelligence suspected sabotage and, as the Mob virtually controlled the docks, came up with a plan to enlist the help of the underworld.

Fulton Fish Market racketeer Joe “Sock” Lanza was approached first. He quickly told the naval officers to look much higher for help. They were told to approach Luciano who was serving a 30-to-50-year sentence for controlling New York’s prostitution racket.

Luciano’s lawyers recommended Meyer Lansky be recruited to act as go-between for the US Navy and Luciano. Meyer quickly won a concession for Lucky. He was moved to the more relaxed Great Meadow Prison near Albany.

Within weeks of Lansky meeting Luciano, eight German secret agents were rounded up in New York and Chicago.

By the end of 1942 all sabotage had practically ceased on the waterfront.

As the war progressed, Luciano was asked for his help in the invasion of Sicily.

Through Lansky hundreds of Sicilians familiar with the Sicily coastline were passed to naval intelligence. Vital information was gleaned from these reports, and helped the Allied landing in Sicily.

At the end of the war, New York Governor Thomas Dewey, the man who had jailed Luciano 10 years earlier, granted the gangster executive clemency on the condition that he was deported back to his native Sicily. A farewell party was held aboard the SS Laura

Keene, the ship that was to take Luciano into exile.

America’s top Mafia bosses gathered for the send-off.

They heard Luciano offering some advice.

“Listen to Meyer,” he said, acknowledging the role that the little Jewish gangster had played in shaping the future of organised crime.

Joe Adonis, Frank Costello and Longy Zwillman all listened to Meyer and were all rewarded with a piece of the future action in Cuba and Las Vegas where mob casinos, under Lansky control, generated millions of dollars into the Mafia’s coffers through a scheme supposedly dreamt up by Lansky, known as skimming.

Money was removed from casino winnings in the counting rooms, placed into bags and Mob couriers would deliver it to Lansky before any federal or state taxes were paid. uring the late 1930s, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel had been sent by the New York syndicate to establish gambling on the West Coast

D

Siegel told his pal Meyer that the place would cost $2 million and Lansky gave the green light to use Mob money. When the Flamingo opened its doors on December 26th, 1946, the costs had rocketed to over $6 million – and it was still unfinished.

The first night turned into a financial disaster. Losses at the tables forced Siegel to close down a month later. The eastern syndicate mobsters who had backed the project on Lansky’s say-so demanded their money back. They believed Siegel had pocketed some of the construction money and had it secreted away in Swiss bank accounts held by his mistress, Virginia Hill. When they demanded their money back, Siegel reportedly told them, through Lansky, to go to hell.

On the night of June 20th, 1947, as Benny Siegel relaxed at the Beverly Hills home of his mistress, a syndicate assassin cut loose with a stream of steel-jacketed bullets through a downstairs

Senator Kefauver’s crime hearings of the early 1950s named Lansky as one of the principal partners in the crime syndicate dominating New York and the eastern half of the United States. The publicity that Meyer had successfully shied away from was beginning to catch up with him and run the lucrative racing wire that relayed results to bookmakers. With his film-star looks, Ben was a natural for the Hollywood crowd. George Raft was his best pal and he was soon socialising with many other big stars. Hollywood women fell for his dazzling smile and rough Brooklyn charm.

The desert town of Las Vegas began booming during the war years. Legalised gambling in Nevada meant small casinos were springing up everywhere to cater for the growing population.

Siegel bought into some small casinos but dreamed of building the biggest and best casino in Las Vegas. In 1945 he purchased a desert plot some miles outside Las Vegas and began to build the fabulous Flamingo Hotel on what was to become known later as the Strip.

window. Three bullets smashed into Siegel, demolishing the handsome gangster’s face. His right eye was blown out completely, and was later found some 15 feet away from his body.

Lansky moved his own men in to run the Flamingo and the casino soon began turning in fabulous profits – even after Lansky had skimmed money to pay back the syndicate investors.

Siegel’s death acted as a magnet that drew the crowds. Las Vegas expanded and so did Lansky’s control of the casinos. ighteen months after Siegel’s demise, Meyer Lansky remarried. His first wife had divorced him on the grounds of extreme cruelty but the truth was that Anne Lansky had suffered a number

E

OLD TIME MOVIE QUIZ Win a pair of cinema tickets to see the current film of your choice. All you have to do is answer a simple crime movie-related question. Answer the bonus question too and you could win an extra £25!

PLUS

£25

1. After the critical and box-office success of his adaptation of Mario Puzo’s best-selling Mafia novel, The Godfather, director Francis Ford Coppola returned to his epic Mafia saga in 1974.

The Godfather Part II presents two parallel storylines. One involves Mafia boss Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in the late 1950s, after the events of the first movie; the other is told in a series of flashbacks following his father, Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro, above, playing the younger version of Marlon Brando’s character from the first film) between 1917 and 1925, tracing the formative days of the Corleone crime “family” in New York.

Vito, who fled from Sicily as a child, struggles on the cusp of criminality, trying to make a living for his wife and family in Little Italy. After killing Fanucci (Gastone Moschin), the representative of Black Hand, who attempts to extort money from local business, Vito finds himself newly elevated and respected in the community. The Corleone Family business is born there in a web of family and tradition, a new dark “American Dream,” with crime organised and driven by corporate ambitions.

By the 1950s, his son Michael (Al Pacino, right) heads the family business, now based in Lake Tahoe. Michael conspires to expand into Las Vegas and Havana in cutthroat fashion but is gripped by paranoia upon realising that his allies want to kill him. His marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) sours and his brother, Fredo (John Cazale), betrays him. After avoiding government investigators, Michael annihilates his enemies...

Your question: Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, how many did the film eventually win?

2. For the additional £25: Al Pacino and Robert De Niro do not appear together in The Godfather Part II but later shared the screen in which 1995 heist drama directed by Michael Mann (right)?

Send your answer(s) to True Crime, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ or email truecrime@truecrimelibrary.com First correct entry out of the hat after the closing date of January 18th, 2018, wins. Answers and winner will be screened in True Crime March 2018.

Last time we featured L.A. Confidential (1997). Our question asked which actress (below right) won an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role as the surgically-altered Veronica Lake lookalike and high-class call girl Lynn Bracken? The answer was Kim Basinger.

For the additional £25 we asked about The Black Dahlia, another novel by writer James Ellroy made into a 2006 neo-noir movie, featuring which actress (left) played victim Elizabeth Short? The answer was Mia Kirshner. Our winner is Donna Anderson of Belvedere. Well done – your prizes will be with you soon! truecrime 41

of nervous breakdowns brought on by her husband’s work. After a four-month romance Lansky married Thelma “Teddy” Schwartz on December 16th, 1948 in Cuba.

Teddy was the perfect Mob wife. She never questioned her husband’s activities and was fiercely loyal to Meyer. He in turn confided in her about his business. She even accompanied him when they stopped off to meet Lucky in Rome during a luxury cruise of Europe.

The Lanskys travelled to Switzerland where Meyer supposedly opened secret bank accounts to stash away the Mob’s money and conferred with his top money man John Pullman, an ex-bootlegger who was an important cog in Lansky’s worldwide financial empire.

millions of dollars for the American Mafia and Batista’s crooked regime.

Lansky also cleaned up the casinos and American tourists flocked to Havana.

The city soon rivalled Monte Carlo as a prestigious gambling resort.

Lansky, using most of his personal fortune, built his own hotel there called the Riviera. It was the largest purpose-built casino in the world outside of Las Vegas, but with this project his luck ran out. After only a year of operating, the

Riviera and the rest of the American-owned casinos were closed down after Batista fled from the young counter-revolutionary Fidel Castro. The Lansky brothers and their cohorts made a quick exit from Cuba. The golden age of gambling was over.

A

fter the Kefauver hearings and the uncovering of a Mafia conclave at Apalachin in 1957, the heat from law enforcement and the Mob wars took its toll on Lansky’s

S

enator Kefauver’s crime hearings of the early 1950s named Lansky as one of the principal partners in the crime syndicate dominating New York and the eastern half of the United States. The publicity that Meyer had successfully shied away from was beginning to catch up with him.

The Internal Revenue Service began investigating his tax affairs. The Justice Department began denaturalisation proceedings on the grounds that Lansky had lied about his arrest record when applying for citizenship back in 1928.

He managed to escape prosecution but in May 1953 he was arrested in Saratoga and charged with being a common gambler.

Convicted, Lansky spent his one and only stretch in prison after being sentenced to a $2,500 fine and a three-month spell in the county jail. He swore it would be his last time behind bars.

In March 1952, Fulgencio Batista led a bloodless coup that installed him as President of Cuba. Before long the president had hired his old pal Meyer Lansky as adviser on gambling reform with an annual retainer of $25,000. The fix was on. Laws were passed that helped gambling to flourish.

Batista and the Mob shared the gambling profits.

Under Lansky control the Mob casinos generated

42 truecrime

When the Kefauver crime hearings began, the closer scrutiny of organised crime saw many of Lansky’s contemporaries retired or murdered – many allegedly on Lansky’s orders. Above left, Joe Adonis was deported and left for Italy in 1956; Frank Costello, right, wounded in an assassination attempt in 1957, soon left the business to become “The Prime Minister of the Underworld.”

“Little Augie” Pisano and his companion Janice Drake were murdered in Pisano’s Cadillac in 1959, after he had attempted to muscle into Lansky’s Florida interests

Meyer and his wife were watching a TV documentary on organised crime.

According to the FBI report Lansky remarked to his wife that organised crime was bigger than US Steel contemporaries in crime. Joe Adonis, under deportation, followed Lucky back to Italy.

Frank Costello “retired” after a gunman grazed his scalp. Albert Anastasia was shot to death in a barber’s chair. Vito Genovese was jailed on narcotics charges and Longy Zwillman supposedly committed suicide.

According to Mob-watchers, Lansky had a hand in some of the rub-outs.

Lansky had enemies and he dealt with them as he did in the old days – with violence. In 1959, when New York mobster Little Augie Pisano tried to muscle in on Meyer’s interests in Florida, the little man despatched his trusted enforcer Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo to deal with the situation.

Alo set up a meeting with Pisano in Alo’s apartment.

Little Augie never arrived.

He and his beauty queen companion Janice Drake were found slumped together in the front seat of Little Augie’s black Cadillac.

Several bullets had been pumped into the back of their heads. Lansky had no more problems in Florida – or anywhere else.

In 1962, an FBI surveillance bug placed in the counting room of the Fremont Casino in Las Vegas overheard Lansky couriers counting the skim from the casino profits.

While nothing could be done with the illegally obtained information, the FBI had begun to target Lansky for prosecution under the Bureau’s top hoodlum programme.

Lansky was followed by agents everywhere he went.

Staying in an FBI-bugged room at the Volney Hotel in New York, Meyer and his

wife were watching a TV documentary on organised crime. According to the FBI report Lansky remarked to his wife that organised crime was bigger than US Steel. Five years later when Lansky’s comment was leaked it had become a direct quotation: “We’re bigger than US Steel.”

Publicity about Lansky was growing. A British Royal Commission suspected him of having hidden interests in the Bahamas with his sidekick “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo. The British

Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo was a close associate and friend of Lansky, after being introduced to him by Lucky Luciano in 1929.

After retiring from the Mob in the 1970s, Alo died of natural causes, aged 96, in Florida in March 2001 Home Office prohibited Lansky and actor George Raft from entering Britain after the FBI suspected Lansky of organising Mafia involvement in Raft’s Colony Club in London’s Berkeley Square.

From South America, Canada and Australia came reports of Lansky aides infiltrating gambling enterprises.

In 1970 the Reader’s Digest published a profile of Meyer: “The Shocking Success Story of Public Enemy Number One.” Other articles followed.

This publicity forced the FBI to step up the pressure on the little man. Returning from a gambling conference in Acapulco, Lansky was searched at Miami airport.

A vial of mild sedatives that Meyer took for his three ulcers was found on him.

They had been obtained without prescription and Lansky faced a felony drugs charge. He was acquitted but with the justice department breathing down his neck Lansky fled to Israel. ansky landed in Israel on July 27th, 1970, and applied for citizenship under the Law of Return which granted citizenship to anyone born of a Jewish mother. After a two-year court battle and sworn testimony about his underworld influence, supplied by US authorities, the Israeli high court denied Lansky’s bid to become an Israeli citizen on the grounds that his past made him a “danger to public safety.”

A 1932 Chicago police department photograph, showing Meyer in a line-up with Lucky Luciano, Chicago Mob boss Paul Ricca and three other hoodlums, contradicted Lansky’s arguments that he had never been involved with organised crime.

Because his American passport had been withdrawn for his refusal to return to America to face several indictments, Lansky was given Israeli travel papers and the little man embarked on a desperate 36-hour flight from Tel Aviv across four continents.

Each country en route refused him entry and the 70-year-old exile was forced to land in Miami where the FBI waited to charge him with contempt of court, tax evasion, and a Las Vegas skimming conspiracy.

A year after his return to America, Meyer underwent open-heart surgery. He recovered and was ultimately adjudged too ill to stand trial on all the charges laid against him. His own doctors and court-appointed

L

Meyer Lansky, aged 70, gets into his attorney’s car after being freed on bonds totalling $250,000, nine hours after landing in Miami from South America in July 1972 physicians found he was suffering from heart trouble, chronic bronchitis, ulcers, bursitis and arthritis. By 1976 the justice department had admitted defeat and given up trying to put the 74-year-old behind bars.

Meyer Lansky spent his retirement in seclusion.

His name was mentioned repeatedly in hearings relating to casinos in Atlantic City and in connection with loans from Teamster union pension funds but the little man was far away from the action, content with taking his dog Bruzzer for leisurely walks along the Miami beach front.

On January 15th, 1983, Meyer Lansky died of cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital, Miami.

Newspapers around the world announced the death of the underworld’s financial genius, all recalling the $300 million Lansky fortune.

But there was no fortune.

It was just another part of the Lansky legend.

Meyer Lansky had set up a trust for his children but this provided only a modest sum. Lansky’s widow and two younger children, both married, lived comfortable yet unpretentious lives that had none of the trappings of a hidden fortune.

The Lansky myth was finally shattered when his son Buddy was evicted from a private nursing home after the Lansky trust money had dried up. Seven years after his father’s death, Buddy Lansky died in a Dade County charity hostel – a final sad indictment on the life and legend of Meyer Lansky. truecrime 43

CHRONICLES OF CRIME September 21st STUDENT MURDERED AFTER HAILING CAR THE MURDER of a Mexican university student after she used a ride-hailing service has sparked outrage and prompted street protests by activists who say that the country’s authorities have done little to prevent a litany of femicide.

Mara Fernanda Castilla, 19, had hailed a car from Cabify, a Spanish ridesharing service, in the early hours of September 8th, after going out clubbing with friends. Her body was found abandoned in a ditch some 60 miles south-east of

Above, the site where the body was discovered. Left, victim Mara Fernanda Castilla

Mexico City.

The cab driver passed by her apartment, which ended the paid portion of the ride, and sent a receipt to her email. But security cameras did not show Mara exiting the car or entering the building. According to investigators, she was taken to a hotel where she was sexually assaulted and

strangled. The driver has since been arrested.

News of the murder came during Mexico’s independence holiday.

Protesters in major cities marched to protest against violence against women.

Puebla, where Ms. Castilla was studying, has seen 83 femicides in 2017.

In recent years, ride-hailing services such as Cabify and Uber have grown in popularity in Mexico because they are perceived to be safer than ordinary taxis.

Meanwhile, armed robberies occur regularly on public transit in the suburbs of Mexico City, while the subway in the capital has female-only cars to prevent sexual assault.

BRITISH ADVENTURER KILLED ON THE AMAZON September 21st BRITISH CANOEIST and self-confessed “adrenaline junkie” Emma Kelty was tortured and raped before being killed while kayaking the Amazon River in Brazil.

The primary school teacher, from Finchley, north-west London, was last heard of when one of her attackers triggered her distress signal while in a notoriously dangerous area.

Local police arrested seven men on suspicion of her murder while searching for the teacher’s body. Their gang leader, Evanilson Gomes da Costa, 24, died after being shot by rival gangsters.

Residents of the small riverside community of Lauro Sodre, near to where the crime took place, said all seven men accused of her murder are well-known drugs users in the village.

A local man said the woman had put up her tent on the beach in exactly the area where the Colombia drug traffickers go through and which is crawling with pirates who wait for them to arrive so they can attack.

The local said one of the 44 truecrime

Murdered while on a kayak journey: Emma Kelty

gang confided in him that when the men saw Emma’s tent they thought it belonged to a Colombian with drugs, so they started firing shots from 50 yards away. Emma was hit in the arm and started waving frantically and screaming for help.

The witness said that when the four men saw that she was a woman they attacked her, believing she was carrying drugs. They cut off her hair with a knife while demanding to know where the drugs were.

According to the witness, one of the group then slit her with a knife, before all four men sexually assaulted

her. He said they then dragged her body to the river and dumped it in the fast-moving water.

The men fled into the forest after the killing.

Disgusted locals reportedly provided the police with the details and their identities.

The “SOS” button on her GPS device had been pressed inadvertently by one of killers. The signal led investigators straight to the riverside village, 150 miles west of Manaus, in an area without a telephone line or mobile phone signals.

A spokesman said that the criminals thought they could kill her with impunity, but then they pressed the button which alerted the police.

Police recovered the GPS device, as well as a mobile phone and a memory card, which the gang sold to local villagers after killing Emma.

Emma Kelty was an experienced traveller who had previously skied alone to the South Pole.

She had resigned as head teacher of Knollmead Primary School in Surbiton for the trip and was 42 days into the 4,000-mile journey when she went missing.

l continued from page 15

September 22nd EX-CON BATTERED STEPFATHER TO DEATH MARTYN FORD pleaded guilty at Bristol Crown Court to the murder of his 58-year-old stepfather Ian Baker.

The court heard that Ford had been released from prison just days before his stepfather picked him up to collect some of his Above, killer belongings. Martyn Ford.

Below, victim But while Ian Baker the pair were alone at Mr. Baker’s home in Brislington, near Bristol, on June 4th, 2017, Ford attacked him in the kitchen before dragging him into the living-room and attacking him again with what police believe was a hammer.

Ford then tried to clean up the blood and searched the house for cash and goods before calling a cab.

Mr. Baker, a fatherof-three and stepfather to another three, was described as caring and kind.

Ford, 38, said he and his stepfather had got into a row when he was picking up his belongings and found that Mr. Baker had thrown out some of his mother’s possessions.

The court heard the attacks started when Mr. Baker was pushed onto a chair. He suffered a fractured skull after several blows from a hammer and was kicked while on the floor.

Ford was given a mandatory life sentence and told by Judge Peter Blair QC that he would spend at least 20 years and four months behind bars before being considered for parole. l more Chronicles on page 48

When a pregnant woman’s body was dumped in a Dublin street, a notorious nurse became a prime suspect for murder...

THE MOST HATED WOMAN IN IRELAND W

HO IS likely to be the first person to spot something wrong? Perhaps an early bird, first-on-the-street milkman. And that’s how it was shortly before 6.30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18th, 1956, when something caught the eye of Patrick Rigney as he delivered milk in Dublin’s Hume Street.

Case report by Matthew Spicer Near the front doorstep of number 15 he noticed what he thought was just a bundle of old clothes, until he saw two legs protruding.

Police were called, and closer inspection revealed the legs were those of a young woman. Her body, naked from the waist down, was covered by a black raincoat, a skirt and some pillows.

A stocking was tied loosely around her neck, and her legs were lashed together above the knees by another stocking. Beside the body was a woman’s handbag and a box containing a pair of women’s shoes. The woman was dead, and there were signs that her body had been dragged some 25 yards along the pavement from 17 Hume Street.

At 8.20 a.m. the state pathologist Dr. Maurice Hickey arrived at the scene.

Judging the woman to be around 30, he found that she was about five months pregnant and had died during an abortion.

Further inquiries

Above, Mamie Cadden under arrest in April 1956.

Five years earlier, showgirl Brigid Breslin had died in Hume Street (top) established that her body had been where it was found at least 90 minutes before Mr. Rigney spotted it. Another milkman had seen the heap of clothes just after 5 a.m.,

but hadn’t noticed the legs.

Conducting a post-mortem, Dr. Hickey found that the woman had died after a liquid or gas had been pumped into

her to destroy the foetus by separating it from the wall of the womb. Air had entered the bloodstream, and on reaching the heart had proved fatal. The pathologist thought the woman would have lost consciousness 15 seconds after the pump was inserted in her vagina, and she would have died about two minutes later. Under Irish law at that time, if an abortion was performed illegally by another person and death resulted, this was murder.

Papers in the woman’s handbag identified her as 33-year-old Helen O’Reilly.

Irish and no longer living with her husband, she had returned to Dublin on April 4th from Preston in Lancashire. On April 13th she had taken lodgings in Ely Place, near Hume Street, and the neighbourhood’s publicans told the police they thought she was a prostitute. During the Second World War her husband had been interned for helping Nazi Germany – he was Ireland’s equivalent of the Nazi propagandist William Joyce, the notorious “Lord Haw-Haw.” Mrs. O’Reilly’s bankbook found in her handbag showed that she had withdrawn £15 on April 16th. Nearly £5 was still in the bag, so she had spent £10 in the last two days of her life.

One witness was a Mrs. Farrelly, lodging at 17 Hume Street. She told the police that in the early hours of April 18th she was woken by truecrime 45

what sounded like something being dragged along the landing. Another witness, a man lodging in a front-room at 15 Hume Street, said that sometime after 3.30 a.m. that day he heard what he thought was someone sweeping the pavement. The sound ceased after six or seven minutes.

The most colourful tenant at number 17 was a blonde American of Irish descent, Mary Anne “Mamie” Cadden, a 65-year-old former midwife. In the late 1930s, when there were few women motorists in Ireland, she had become a familiar figure in Dublin as she drove around the city in a red sports car.

Known to many as Nurse Cadden, she now eked out a living giving advice on constipation, rheumatism and hair problems. But that wasn’t all. Two episodes in her past now made her the prime suspect in the murder inquiry. In the 1940s she had been given a five-year jail sentence for performing an illegal abortion which put her client in hospital. Then in 1951 another woman was believed to have gone to Nurse Cadden to have her pregnancy terminated.

Detectives suspected that after returning home the client – a 30-year-old showgirl, Brigid Breslin – had begun haemorrhaging, and had collapsed and bled to death in the street while heading back to Mamie Cadden for help.

At that time the police had insufficient evidence against Mamie to charge her with Brigid Breslin’s murder, but now the appearance of a second dead woman almost on the abortionist’s doorstep seemed more than a coincidence.

Asked if she had heard anything in the early hours of April 18th, Mamie said her room was at the back of the house. She had kept her radio on all night to help her to sleep as she was suffering from arthritis, and she’d heard nothing suspicious.

46 truecrime

Helen O’Reilly, the 1956 victim.

During the war her husband had been interned for helping Nazi Germany When police informed the occupants of No. 17 of the body’s discovery, she had commented, “Sure, it must have been a man who did that.”

While conducting the post-mortem Dr. Hickey had noted a strong smell of disinfectant in the womb. He suspected that disinfectant had been used to help destroy the foetus, and when officers saw Mamie in her rooms they had smelled disinfectant.

Their suspicions

intensified, and they returned with a search warrant.

“You won’t find anything here,” she told them, but in a hatbox they found forceps, two syringes and two instruments used to examine wombs. Mamie said these items were from her last medical job at a maternity home which had closed in 1939, and the hatbox had not been touched for years.

Detectives noticed finger marks in dust on the box, however. Asked about some rubber tubes found in her rooms, Mamie said she used them for enemas.

The officers also took away a medical manual, some surgical lamps, a few rubber

Inside Mamie Cadden’s Hume Street flat. “You won’t find anything here,” she told detectives

sheets and her diary.

In response to further questions she said that on April 17th she went to bed at 2 p.m., got up at 7 p.m., and after chatting with Mrs. Farrelly for a few minutes she went to bed again until 10.30 p.m. Then a man called to consult her about a hair problem. She thought he came from Kilkenny, some 75 miles away, and she didn’t know his name. She said the consultation lasted about an hour, and this was confirmed by witnesses who had seen her talking to a man in the hall.

Mamie added that she went to bed shortly after the patient’s departure, and didn’t awake until 8 o’clock the next morning.

According to Mrs. Farrelly, however, Nurse Cadden had spent much of the afternoon talking to two women in her room. Then in the evening she had gone up and down the stairs several times, fetching water from a landing tap.

A week later Mamie was questioned about entries in her diary and the instruments the police had removed from her room. She said that an April 17th entry “2 p.m. blue coats” referred to two clients who wore blue coats. The patients had made a 2 p.m. appointment for hair treatment, but hadn’t shown up. Superintendent George Lawlor told her he thought the entry was originally “black coat.” It had been made in red ink and he believed she had written something over it in black to make it illegible.

Denying this, Mamie claimed she didn’t know the names of any of her patients, saying she identified them by the colour of their attire.

A diary entry for April 10th appeared to read “6 p.m. black coats.” Asked about it, she said it was for a woman client, and she couldn’t recall her treatment.

The diary showed that Mamie’s fees were usually less than a pound, so £50 recorded for March 30th prompted more questions.

She said it was for her services to two or three members of a family.

Superintendent Lawlor then said that Helen O’Reilly’s coat was black, and he had reason to believe that she was in Mamie’s room on April 17th.

“I never saw her face before,” Mamie replied, reaching for the evening paper which had a photograph of the victim. “I passed a remark when I saw her photograph, to a man who was here, that she had the mouth of a prostitute.”

In answer to questions about her instruments, Mamie said the syringes were for enemas, and the forceps was a clamp used in maternity cases to prevent bleeding after the umbilical cord was cut.

Questioned further about the man who had called to see her at about 10.30 p.m. on April 17th, she seemed to have forgotten her earlier account of his visit. She now said she had talked to him about his arthritis, and about the use of cortisone. “If I knew this dirt was going on I would have let him up to my room to show him there was no corpse there.”

She also now said he had come “from nearly 200 miles away.” She had been too tired to “give him some stuff,” had told him to call again, and she hadn’t seen him since.

Nothing in this account seemed to add up. If she was so tired, why had she kept the man talking in the hall for an hour, when she could have treated him upstairs in a matter of minutes?

Was there something in her rooms that she couldn’t let anyone see?

The police thought so, and traces of blood found on the floor of her apartment and its approaches strengthened this suspicion. So on May 27th Mamie Cadden was arrested and charged with murder.

Having already told the police that she suffered from arthritis, she now said she had nothing to say except that she denied the charge.

“As a matter of fact, I am unable to stand up,” she added, saying she would get a doctor to confirm that.

And as for Helen O’Reilly, she had never even heard of her, she said.

H

er 10-day trial began at Dublin’s Central Criminal Court on October 22nd, the prosecution saying that if she had performed or helped to perform Helen O’Reilly’s illegal, fatal abortion, she was guilty of murder, whatever her intent

appointment with a patient in a black coat.

Nearly three days of the trial were occupied by Dr. Hickey’s evidence. He said that all the instruments found in Mamie’s rooms could have been used in an abortion, and whoever carried out the operation on Helen O’Reilly had some skill, as neither the vagina nor the cervix had been damaged. The victim’s clothes and skin were dirty and dusty, as if she had been dragged along a pavement, and he thought she died around two or three a.m.

If the woman’s appointment was at 8 p.m., the defence suggested, Mamie Cadden was unlikely to have been involved in the death some six or seven hours later.

The garda technical bureau had also compared hairs and fibres from the Above,the basement steps of 15 Hume Street where Helen O’Reilly’s body was found. Right, a page from Mamie Cadden’s diary for April 1956. Police believed the entry for the 17th had been changed from “black coat” to “blue coats” and regardless of whether the victim consented to the operation. (An illicit operation was a felony, and the killing of someone while committing a felony was murder in both Irish and English law at that time.

This rule was removed from English law in 1957, and from Irish law in 1964.)

Mr. Rigney, the milk roundsman, told the court that while heading for St. Stephen’s Green in the morning of April 18th he had glanced down Hume Street. On the pavement where he later found Helen O’Reilly he saw a woman crouching. She wore glasses, was stockily-built and was wearing something white.

When he reached the body shortly afterwards he saw a woman looking up at him from the adjacent basement.

He noticed only that she had fair hair “raised up” on her forehead, and he

couldn’t say if she was the woman he had seen earlier in a crouched position on the pavement.

Mamie Cadden had fair hair and spectacles, as everyone in the court could see, and her build was stocky.

A forensic expert from the garda technical bureau had photographed Mamie’s diary entries. By using a filter he had eliminated the black ink, and the original entry for 2 p.m. on April 17th clearly read “blue coats,” so in that respect Mamie had told the truth.

But the photographer’s use of another filter revealed that another obliterated entry for April 17th read: “8 p.m. black coat.” So Mamie had tried to conceal the fact that just hours before the body was discovered she had an

On the pavement where he later found Helen O’Reilly he saw a woman crouching. She wore glasses, was stockily-built and was wearing something white

victim and her clothes with hairs and fibres found in the defendant’s rooms. In colour and texture the samples were similar, but the evidence was not conclusive.

Mamie Cadden did not go into the witness-box to testify on her own behalf, and in his closing speech her counsel Mr. Noel Hartnett asked the jury to consider why a stocking had been tied round the victim’s neck, and who owned it. It belonged to neither the victim nor the defendant, he said, so was it another abortionist’s, tied round Helen O’Reilly’s neck to suggest strangulation?

Furthermore, the victim’s truecrime 47

CHRONICLES OF CRIME l continued from page 44

September 23rd KILLER-FOOTBALLER, 27, HAD BRAIN DISEASE MEDICAL RESEARCHERS in Boston have revealed that Aaron Hernandez (right), a former American footballer who committed suicide while in prison for murder, had the most advanced case of degenerative brain disease

CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) seen by them in a young man.

Hernandez was aged 27 when he hanged himself in his cell in April 2017. Days earlier he had been acquitted of a 2012 double-murder but was still serving a life sentence for the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.

At the time of his death, Hernandez was in the process of filing an appeal for that conviction.

WIFE-KILLER ADMITS SEX GAME WAS A LIE September 26th A BRITISH car salesman who claimed his wife choked to death during a sex game in Majorca that went wrong has admitted killing her with a phone cable during a fit of rage. Warren Lyttle, 52, made his dramatic confession after taking the witness-stand in a Spanish court following an 11-hour plea-bargain with prosecutors who were demanding a murder conviction and 20-year jail sentence. Taking the stand, Lyttle said: “We argued about money and because we had been drinking.”

Lyttle was asked by the state prosecutor during questioning if he had strangled his wife with a mobile phone cable and gave the one-word reply: “Yes.” Jurors at a criminal court in the Majorcan capital Palma were told that as part of a deal involving him owning up to ending his wife’s life, the British expat was now facing a lesser charge of homicide and a 12-year prison sentence.

Lyttle was arrested in January 2016 after he called police and paramedics to his home in Costa de la Calma where 49-year-old Lisa Jane was found dead.

A post-mortem showed the mother-of-one, whose main residence was in Kilburn, north London, but who travelled regularly to Majorca to spend time with 48 truecrime

Warren Lyttle with police

her husband, had died from asphyxia due to strangulation.

Lisa Jane had only flown to Majorca two days before she was killed in the early hours of January 23rd, 2016, for a week’s holiday.

Her self-confessed killer told a judge in a remand hearing 24 hours later that she choked to death during a sado-masochistic role-play she proposed. However, state prosecutors did not believe his claims and said Lyttle had an argument with his wife during which he attacked her with a mobile phone cable.

“He placed it round her neck and strangled her with it, compressing her neck and causing her death from a lack of oxygen.”

Once the nine jurors had been selected, no mention was made about the sex game claims. The trial was shortened with evidence from police and forensic experts because of the plea-deal and Lyttle’s trial admission. He will serve 12 years in prison. l more Chronicles on page 50

An early police photo of Mary “Mamie” Cadden when she was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment umbrella, found with her corpse, bore a fingerprint which was neither hers nor Mamie Cadden’s. So whose was it? It had been left by the actual abortionist, the defence suggested.

Mr. Hartnett went on to point out that when the milkman witness described the woman he had seen near the body, he said he saw the glint of her glasses. But that was impossible, as the sun did not reach Hume Street until 8.30 a.m.

The jury might wonder, Mr. Hartnett continued, why the milkman did not speak to the woman he saw in the basement. How did he know the victim was dead and not just drunk? Mr. Rigney was clearly deeply shocked by what he had seen and wanted to leave as quickly as possible, the defence counsel said, so how could the jury rely on his evidence?

The court was not initially told that Mamie Cadden was known to the police.

Anxious not to prejudice her trial, officers giving evidence said nothing of her abortion conviction, but one of them

let slip that although he did not know her by sight, he knew of her.

This had prompted the defence to ask the judge to send the jury out, but he rejected their submission that the trial should be halted, and Mamie’s counsel had then decided to tell the jury everything.

The court had consequently heard not only that Mamie was a convicted abortionist but that in 1939 she was described as “the most hated woman in Ireland” after she was found guilty of abandoning a six-week-old child. She was working at a maternity and children’s home in County Meath at the time, and the baby was found dumped at a roadside shortly after witnesses saw Mamie driving off in her red sports car.

For that offence she had been given a 12-month jail sentence.

In an attempt to turn her reputation as an abortionist to advantage, Mr. Hartnett argued that she was so well known in this role in Dublin that it would be only natural

In 1930s Dublin, Nurse Cadden was a familiar figure driving around the city in her red sports car

for another abortionist to dump a dead client near Mamie’s doorstep so that she would get the blame.

But the jury took just an hour on November 1st to decide that Mary Anne Cadden was guilty, and the American’s response to the death sentence was characteristically robust.

“You will never do it!” she said defiantly. “This is not my country. I am reporting this to the president of my country.” Then she referred to her abortion conviction, saying it was false.

She was then told she would be hanged on November 27th at Mountjoy Prison. No woman had been executed in Ireland since 1925, and in the court the death sentence was greeted with quiet sobs. Outside, a large crowd shouted, “Hang her!”

Mamie Cadden appealed against her conviction, so her execution was postponed.

On Christmas Eve her appeal was dismissed and her hanging was set for January 10th, but her prophecy was soon proved correct. On January 4th she was reprieved, to ultimately become the last woman sentenced to death in Ireland for murder under the ordinary law. (In 1976 Marie Murray was sentenced to death for a policeman’s murder, after being convicted by a Special Criminal Court which sat without a jury and dealt with terrorist cases.)

In 1958 Mamie Cadden was transferred from Mountjoy Prison to Ireland’s equivalent of Broadmoor at Dundrum, where she died from natural causes on April 20th, 1959.

Forty-six years later, interest in her case was renewed with the publication in 2005 of a book by Ray Kavanagh: Mamie Cadden – Backstreet Abortionist.

According to this account, Mamie was justly convicted

of murder, and she had an accomplice, one Standish O’Grady.

A married member of an old Anglo-Irish farming family, O’Grady lived in a mansion on a large country estate in County Cork. He was having an affair with Brigid Breslin, and when she became pregnant he organised her abortion, the book claims The cost was £20, and she died on Mamie’s “operating” table at 17 Hume Street, O’Grady and Mamie then putting her outside No. 19.

The dead woman’s handbag contained a letter from O’Grady, topped by his family crest, and – like Mamie – he was interviewed by the police but never charged.

Over the years, according to Kavanagh, O’Grady was a contact man taking women to Mamie’s flat. He had property in Dublin, and when Helen O’Reilly died just after 8 p.m.

Mamie sought his help. There were too many people around when he arrived at 9.20, so he said he would return at 6 a.m.

Apparently unfazed, Mamie then got into bed with the corpse.

Kavanagh says that as Helen O’Reilly weighed only nine stone, Mamie was able to help O’Grady carry the body to No. 15 despite her arthritis. And while the police were interviewing her shortly after 8.15 a.m., she received a telephone call from a man.

This was possibly O’Grady, wanting to know if the body had been found.

When questioned by the police he denied knowing Mamie, but he may well have been “the man from Kilkenny” seen talking to her in the hall at No. 17 on the night in question. The location of his home in County Cork would explain Mamie’s later statement that the late-night caller had travelled 200 miles to see her.

For old-timers the case was a reminder of the early 1940s when travel from Ireland to England was severely restricted.

Dublin had consequently experienced a rise in abortions, which before the war would have taken place in Britain, many Irish women going there for that purpose.

true

crime PRIZE COMPETITION ANSWERS In November 2017’s TC we challenged readers’ true crime knowledge with a special prize quiz.

Below are the questions with the correct answers – and the names of our lucky winners. Many thanks to all those readers who took part!

1) What’s the name of this Scottish serial killer (right)? B) Peter Tobin 2) What nationality were the bodysnatchers Burke and Hare? C) Irish 3) Which Chicago Mob boss was known as “the only man Al Capone feared”? B) Hymie Weiss 4) How old was American murderess Louise Peete at the time of her execution in 1947? B) 66 5) In which English city did the unsolved murder of Julia Wallace take place in January 1931?

C) Liverpool 6) Which killer, in 2003, sedated her victim with a strawberry milkshake before bludgeoning him to death? A) Nancy Kissel 7) Which English serial killer lived at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill? D) John Reginald Halliday Christie 8) Which infamous English killer attended Gresham’s School in Norfolk? C) Jeremy Bamber 9) How did serial killer Stephen Port murder his four known male victims? B) Drugs overdose 10) In which year did rampage killer Michael Ryan strike in the market town of Hungerford, Berkshire?

C) 1987 11) How many times has John Lennon’s killer, Mark Chapman, been denied parole? C) 9 12) Which award-winning US podcast investigated the 1999 murder of Baltimore high school student Hae Min Lee? D) Serial 13) Can you name the Aussie killer (right)?

C) Mark “Chopper” Read 14) In which Australian state was HM Prison Pentridge? C) Victoria 15) At which jail was the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly hanged? A) Melbourne 16) What was the name of the “Brides in the Bath” killer? A) George Joseph Smith 17) Which of the following was NOT an executioner?

D) Gordon Cummins 18) In the August of which year did the Great Train Robbery take place? B) 1963 19) What nationality was 19th-century killer Martin Dumollard? B) French 20) What was the nickname of English gangster Jack Comer? B) Spot

PRIZE WINNERS The winner of the £100 first prize, with 20 questions answered correctly, was Mrs. Carol Thorp of Sheffield. Congratulations!

Your prize will be with you soon. The three runners-up, also scoring top marks and each winning a six-month True Crime subscription, were Mr. Steven Fisher of Hedge End; Miss Amber Blakeman of Bordon; and Mr. Brian Johnston of The Wirral. Well done! truecrime 49

CHRONICLES OF CRIME

l continued from page 48

“CANNIBAL COUPLE” MADE HUMAN MEAT PIES September 27th

fridge, freezer and elsewhere.

Natalia Baksheeva, 42, and husband Dmitry Baksheev, 35, have been detained as police investigate Natalia’s

INVESTIGATORS IN Russia suspect a couple of alleged cannibals made human meat pies and sold them to restaurants. They did this from their home at a hostel in a military academy in Krasnodar, southern Russia. Dismembered human remains were found in their

true

www.truecrimelibrary.com

February

crime

confession that the couple killed and ate 30 or more victims.

Detectives were tipped off after road workers found a phone belonging to Baksheev which included “selfie” photographs of him with a woman’s severed hand and other body parts. He is believed to have killed

MANCHESTER’S INCREDIBLE

the woman after the couple quarrelled with her during a drinking session.

Phones belonging to other victims were found during searches as well as recipes and video lessons for cooking human meat.

Investigators later discovered fragments in a salt solution and frozen meat in the couple’s home. A photograph was also found of the male suspect apparently with a severed hand in his mouth.

It’s believed the couple trawled dating websites

Detective Monthly

JAILED FOR KILLING TEENAGER...

41 YEARS AGO

Above, detectives with a mystery jar found at the hostel. Inset above, suspected cannibal Dmitry Baksheev

JANET’S FATAL HOLIDAY IN FRANCE

...TEETH MARK MURDER CASE

GANGLAND CONFIDENTIAL

CARNAGE IN A TEXAS CAFE

THE CHARMED LIFE OF LEGS DIAMOND

MURDER ON THE 7.42 TO WATERLOO

46 Mowed Down

WHY DID HE SET FIRE TO THE DOCTOR?

South Africa‘s Supercop

KIDNAPPER FROZE LEIGH’S BODY On sale at your newsagent from January 25th or see the offer on page 34 50 truecrime

to find their victims.

Neighbours say Natalia, a former nurse, made and sold pies to boost her income.

According to newspaper reports, Natalia offered to supply meat to a café in the city and sought work as a chef.

Café owner Vitaly Yakubenko said: “It was in 2010. She was very active, asked lots of questions but mainly about where we buy our meat and fish and how fresh it is. She made clear she could supply meat.

“I said that we work only with certified suppliers.”

The couple reportedly supplied human meat pies to Russian pilots, including military trainees and student pilots attending the academy where Natalya worked.

Lyubov Baksheeva, second wife of Vladimir, Dmitry’s adoptive father, said the alleged cannibal had grown up in an orphanage before Vladimir and his first wife adopted him.

Ms. Baksheeva said he had been jailed in his teens for robbery and theft. “We knew that this woman Natalia influenced him in a bad way,” she said.

More Thrilling Reading – Guaranteed Don’t miss this year’s True Crime Winter Special

STORIES INCLUDE: MURDER ON THE WEBCAM SICK SECRETS OF THE CROSSDRESSING KILLER KILLER WHO ALWAYS TIDIED UP RUISLIP’S MYSTERY MUTILATION MURDER “GIVE ME HALFAN-HOUR WITH MY SISTER’S KILLER” EXECUTED BY HIS BROTHERS IN ARMS MY SON THE MASS MURDERER WHY A DAUGHTER WENT SHOPPING FOR A MINCER BODIES SEEMED TO FALL FROM THE SKY PORN ADDICT WHO FILMED GEORGIA’S MURDER WILL NEVER BE FREE

Four Ways To Order Your Special: l Ask your newsagent to save one for you – this is a free

THE NAZI SERIAL KILLER

At W.H. Smith and all good newsagents NOW!

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!

MURDER MOST FOUL Issue No.106

Don’t Miss The Latest Issue Of Britain’s No.1 True Crime Quarterly...

FIVE WAYS TO GET YOUR COPY OF MURDER MOST FOUL 106: 1. Go direct to your local newsagent – it’s available right now!

2. Order by mail – send your name and address plus £4.50 cheque/postal order, made out to Forum Press, to Murder Most Foul, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ

No.105

3. Order by credit/debit card on 020 8778 0514 4. Or online at www. truecrimelibrary.com 5. Take a money-saving subscription – and never miss another issue!

Get each new issue of Murder Most Foul sent direct to you, hot off the press. It’s just £13.50 for a year’s issues, saving 25% on the shop price.

Send cheque/postal order to the address above, go online to www. truecrimelibrary.com or call 020 8778 0514.

(For rates outside UK, please call or visit our website.)

No.104

No.103

No.102

No.101

Back฀issues฀at฀£4.50฀each฀•฀For฀full฀range฀of฀issues฀available,฀see฀www.truecrimelibrary.com

SOLD OUT

No.100

No.99

No.98

No.97

No.96