Murder without mercy

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Serial Killers

MURDER WITHOUT MERCY NIGEL BLUNDELL

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Contents

Introduction

7

Raymond Fernandez & Martha Beck Unlikely lovebirds who became the ‘Lonely Hearts Killers’

10

Peter Sutcliffe The terrifying trucker who ‘felt an inner compulsion to kill’

15

Edmund Kemper Monster who used his mother’s head as a darts board

23

Thomas Cream Sensational death’s-door claim of the dirty doctor

29

Aileen Wuornos ‘I seriously hate human life and would kill again’

34

John Christie 10 Rillington Place – the address that chilled a nation

39

Henri Landru Ladykiller who tempted the gullible into his grasp

45

Charles Manson ‘Devil’s Children’ driven to kill by a messianic madman

50

John Haigh Handsome, suave and deadly: the ‘Acid Bath Murderer’

59

The ‘Zodiac’ Taunts of killer who ‘collected slaves for the afterlife’

65

Jack Unterweger The manipulative monster who fooled the literary world

70

William Burke & William Hare Deadly duo ‘created’ corpses for the medical profession

75

Gary Ridgway Two lost chances to capture the ‘Green River Killer’

81

Beverley Allitt What drove a dedicated nurse to kill kids in her care?

89

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SERIAL KILLERS: MURDER WITHOUT MERCY Luis Garavito Could this pervert be the world’s most prolific serial killer?

97

Belle Gunness Deadly invitations to romance from the vanishing widow

101

Robert Maudsley Real-life ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ ate fellow prisoner’s brains

107

Charles Schmid Rampage of a rich kid whose arrogance caused his murder

112

Jerry Brudos Shoe fetish fiend who liked dressing dead bodies

118

Gordon Cummins Dark heart of blitzed Britain’s ‘Blackout Ripper’

123

Nanny Doss The ‘Giggling Granny’ who left a trail of dead husbands

128

David & Catherine Birnie The besotted outcast couple who killed for love

135

Mary Ann Cotton Widow who killed husbands, lovers and children

140

Albert De Salvo Unanswered questions over first man labelled ‘serial killer’

145

George Smith Brides in the bath died at the hands of ruthless husband

152

Heinrich Pommerencke The shy kid who turned to murder after watching a movie

159

Earle Nelson ‘Gorilla Man’: the nomadic killer who roamed a continent

164

William Palmer Poisonous passions of the doctor who gambled with lives

170

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Introduction hey are the criminals who horrify us most … murderers without mercy. They may be driven by greed, hatred, sadistic urges or simply bloodlust.

But there is one added ingredient that makes their crimes utterly reprehensible in the eyes of a civilised society – and that is a total lack of remorse for their vile deeds.

This book is about the most perverse perpetrators of those crimes: the murderers who show no compassion, who kill without a hint of regret, without penitence, without shame.

And their lack of conscience is evident because they do so not once but over and over again.

These monsters are not one-off killers, for whom a single slaying may be seen as an isolated act of madness. Nor are they ‘mass killers’, whose multiple homicides are committed in one act of mayhem. The fiends catalogued within these pages are specifically ‘serial killers’, whose individual crimes are separate but whose modus operandi rarely changes.

A serial killer has long been defined by the United States Bureau of Justice as the perpetrator of crimes involving ‘the killing of several victims in three or more separate events’. A 2008 FBI report widened the definition, in these terms: ‘Serial murder – the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events’. It is a wide classification within which there are obviously significant subdivisions.

In the companion volumes to this book (Serial Killers: The World’s Most Evil and Serial Killers: Butchers and Cannibals) the author examined specific categories of homicide. In Serial Killers: Murder Without Mercy, a broader array of criminals are covered, but ones with a common flaw in their characters – the ability to commit homicide without any sign of recognition of their culpability. For all the wrong reasons, they are guilt free.

And that genetic glitch is what makes them so eerily fascinating.

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This disparate array of notorious criminals ranges from greed-driven poisoners of the Victorian Age to sex-obsessed stranglers of the present day. They provide unsettling evidence of the latent inhumanity lurking just beneath the surface of ‘civilised’ society. Although the author attempts to identify the triggers that cause seemingly ordinary men and women to turn into murderous monsters, each case raises intriguing questions …

Who can explain the maniacal fervour of Charles Manson, who manipulated the minds of his band of young assassins?

What perverted reasoning caused Beverley Allitt to abuse her trust as a nurse and harm the children in her care? And how could poisoners like Mary Cotton and William Palmer calmly dispose of their own kinfolk in the most agonising manner?

Literally hundreds of killers such as these have been studied by eminent forensic psychiatrist Dr Michael Stone, who believes that there are differing levels of evil among serial murderers.

Those who show no mercy or remorse are high on his list, among those for whom ‘all regard for the welfare of one’s fellow man evaporates, leaving one capable of immeasurable cruelty and harm’. Dr Stone, whose The Anatomy of Evil is must reading for criminologists, says: ‘Ordinarily, humans have a sense of shame, which acts as a braking mechanism to prevent us carrying our violent or vengeful fantasies into action. But in some who commit evil acts, this sense of shame was never properly developed to begin with.’

Serial killers who fall into this category have a fundamental core of humanity missing, says fellow American forensic psychiatrist Dr Helen Morrison, whose interviews with more than eighty murderers are catalogued in her book My Life Among the Serial Killers. She explains: ‘They can appear to be complete and whole human beings but are missing a very essential core of human relatedness. For them, killing is nothing. Serial killers have no emotional connection to their victims. That’s the most chilling part of it. Not only do they not care, they have no ability to care.’

The most eloquent description of this kind of crime was penned four centuries ago by William Shakespeare when he spirited up the ghost of one of literature’s most famous murder

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Introduction

victim, who warned Hamlet: ‘Murder most foul, as in the best it is; but this most foul, strange and unnatural.’ If, just as in any other human activity, there are grades of evil, then the killers whose stories follow must fall into that category.

A less erudite example of this ‘most foul’ form of homicide, of murder without mercy or shame, was provided by Californian serial killer Jerry Brudos. When arrested, he was asked by a detective: ‘Do you feel some remorse, Jerry? Do you feel sorry for your victims, for the girls who died?’ Brudos picked up a piece of paper, screwed it up and threw it on the floor. ‘That much,’ he said. ‘I care about those girls as much as that piece of wadded up paper …’

Jerry Brudos and his evil ilk make up the catalogue of killers whose cases are contained within these pages – all frighteningly remorseless examples of Murderers Without Mercy.

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Edmund Kemper Monster who used his mother’s head as a darts board d Kemper was a serial killer whom even policemen looked up to. They had to, because he was 6ft 9 inches tall. Which might be why they failed to take him seriously when, after an unimaginably brutal and perverted murder spree, he tried to give himself up. When he telephoned acquaintances at Santa Cruz Police Department, California, and confessed to the murder of six female hitch-hikers and that of his own mother and a friend, the officer who took the call believed he was being hoaxed. It took several further calls before they took seriously the fact that they had been sharing bar room beers and small talk with a homicidal maniac.

When they finally realised that Kemper’s confessions were not just a bad joke, officers visited the home of his mother and discovered that she had indeed been murdered, by having her head bashed in with a hammer while she slept. She had then been sexually assaulted and her head severed and placed on the mantelpiece to be used as a darts board. And having accomplished all of that, Mrs Kemper’s son had invited a friend of his mother to visit the house of horror and had decapitated her too. These were surely the acts of a madman.

Yet Ed Kemper was tested by a team of psychiatrists and found to be perfectly sane. He was, quite simply, a merciless, cynical, single-minded murderer.

There are usually clues in a killer’s childhood that reveal the influences that make monsters of men like Kemper. In this case, it was the emotional turmoil of his parents’ separation.

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Henri Landru Ladykiller who tempted the gullible into his grasp enri Landru was a ladykiller in every sense of the word. He wooed and seduced literally hundreds of women, and he murdered at least 11 of them. His success at either romance or slaughter remains a mystery, because Landru was a stunted individual with an overgrown ‘Toulouse Lautrec’ style of beard and a propensity to bore by his extreme verbosity.

The French motor mouth was born on April 12, 1869, to poor but God-fearing Parisian parents. His father, a stoker in a foundry, and his mother, a dressmaker, already had a daughter but yearned for a son. When baby Henri was born, they gave him the middle name Désiré, meaning much desired. His father eventually left the foundry to become a salesman in a book shop, and instilled in his son the virtues of hard study. At first, young Henri reacted well. He went to a school run by monks where he displayed a sharp mind, sang in the choir of a Paris church and was an altar boy. At the age of 19, he left school to work in an architect’s office – but his real, dissolute nature now began to show.

In 1891 he fathered a baby girl by a laundry assistant. After a two-year break for compulsory military service, he married her and they went on to have three more children. But if Marie Landru had hoped that her husband would turn out to be a respectable family man in the mould of his father, then she was bitterly disappointed. There were a string of short-lived jobs but for most of the time he was occupied with petty crime. He numbered pimps, thieves and bar room brawlers among his friends, and as his dishonesty became more

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ambitious, he notched up a string of court appearances. He spent more time away from home than with his family. As a court threat of transportation hung over him, his existence became increasingly nomadic. His father was so distraught at the wayward behaviour of his adored son that he hanged himself.

Finally, Landru abandoned his wife and children and moved to another part of the capital to ‘re-invent’ himself and begin a new, nefarious life under the name of Henri Diard. Ignoring the fact that he was already married, he advertised for a new wife. His newspaper invitation read: ‘Widower with two children, aged 43, possessing comfortable income, affectionate, serious and moving in good society, desires to meet widow of similar status, with a view to matrimony.’

Landru could not have timed his search for lonely women better. During the First World War, Paris was full of females whose menfolk were away fighting. The women were vulnerable and only too keen to seek some distraction from the conflict just to the north. The short, dapper little man attracted them like flies to a spider’s web. His first victim was Madame Jeanne Cuchet, a 39-year-old widow, who answered Landru’s first newspaper advert and agreed to a meeting.

Mme Cuchet was greatly impressed with ‘Monsieur Diard’, not only by his charm as he wined and dined her but by the interest he showed in her 18-year-old son André.

Despite pleas from her sister that it was too early and too dangerous to commit to a man she hardly knew, Mme Cuchet gave up her apartment and in December 1914 moved with ‘Diard’ to a house called The Lodge in the small town of Vernouillet, outside Paris. Mme Cuchet and her son then disappeared without trace. Landru was now the owner of 15,000 Francs worth of jewels, furniture and securities. Two other women were lured to The Lodge during 1915 and both mysteriously vanished. The first was Madame Therése Laborde-Line, aged 47, newly arrived from Argentina and with no close relatives to concern themselves over her disappearance. The second was Madame Desirée Guillin, a 51-year-old former governess who had inherited 22,000 Francs.