Serial Killer Investigations (49 page)

On the other hand, I am inclined to wonder if there is such a clear distinction between sadists and non-sadists. Lake committed suicide because he was trapped and faced life in jail. Chris Wilder, a spree killer who murdered and raped half a dozen women on a cross-country rampage in the spring of 1984, turned his gun on himself when cornered. But at least one thing is clear: sex murder is addictive, which is why most sex murders carry on until they are caught, even if, like Rolling and Onoprienko, they come to feel that they are serving some evil force.

One of McCrary’s first major cases at Quantico is a good example of obsessive addiction—in this case to a kind of necrophilia. The man who became known as the ‘Genesee River Killer’ murdered 11 women in the Rochester area of New York in the late 1980s. In trying to profile the man responsible, McCrary was struck by the evidence of one prostitute who recognised his picture as a client who had wanted her to ‘play dead’. Like Christie, this man had problems raising an erection with a conscious woman.

Noting that the murders continued even though there was panic in the red light district, McCrary deduced that the killer seemed so ordinary and non-threatening that prostitutes felt he was harmless. He probably drove a nondescript car. From behavioural evidence he was probably in his late twenties or early thirties, McCrary felt that the killer would be older than that, perhaps late twenties. He would probably work at some menial job, and might well be a fisherman, since so many victims had been found in the Genesee River Gorge, known for its good fishing.

In many of the 11 murders, there were signs that the killer had returned, probably to have sex with the body. But in the case of the last but one, he had also disembowelled his victim. It was this victim, June Stott, who proved to be the turning point in the case. It was at that point that local authorities called in the FBI—and Agent McCrary. For McCrary, the Stott murder showed that the killer was ‘growing into this___Killing wasn’t enough. He had to come back and cut her open.’

The police decided to make use of helicopters, since the gorge has so many twists and turns where a body might be dumped (it is sometimes called the Grand Canyon of the East). After much frustrating searching, a pilot spotted the body of a woman, clad only in a white shirt, half-concealed by a bridge, and above it, a man who was either urinating or masturbating. The helicopter followed the man and he drove away to the town of Spencerport, where he parked close to a nursing home. The airborne observers watched the heavily built, middle-aged man go inside. After alerting troopers on the ground, the helicopter flew off to protect the crime scene, while the troopers confronted the driver. Lacking ID, he nonetheless admitted that he was Arthur Shawcross, 44, who had once served 15 years for murdering two children.

When arrested, Shawcross at first denied his guilt. But when asked whether his mistress—who worked in the nursing home—was involved in the murders, he hung his head, and said: ‘No, I was the only one involved.’

McCrary’s profile proved remarkably accurate—the killer’s appearance, the kind of car he drove, the love of fishing in the gorge, the fact that Shawcross returned to the scenes of his crimes to masturbate. It was not murder that he found most satisfactory; that was merely a means of rendering his victims passive. Like Christie, Shawcross needed an unconscious woman.

The only inaccuracy was the killer’s age—he was 44, not 29 or 30. Then it struck McCrary that Shawcross had been in jail for 15 years, and that in a sense his development had been on hold during that time. Forty-four was therefore not a bad estimate after all.

Arthur Shawcross, who earlier in life had suffered a number of severe head accidents, one involving a blow from a sledgehammer, was sentenced to a total of 250 years in prison.

This notion of murder as an addictive drug also seems to apply to another case that McCrary profiled, the ‘Scarborough Rapist’, Paul Bernardo, whose case would have fitted perfectly into the chapter on sex slaves except that Bernardo’s three murders do not qualify him as a serial killer.

The rapes began in May 1987. The perpetrator, who was described as young and white, would follow women who alighted from buses in the Scarborough area of east Toronto, attack them from behind, and make sure that they did not see his face. Scarborough is a middle class area, and he would sometimes drag them behind bushes on the edge of lawns, or between the houses. He would call them foul names, and use more violence than was necessary—in one case he broke the victim’s shoulder bone, and smeared her hair with dirt. He would rape and sodomise them, and then force them to give him oral sex.

McCrary profiled him as a young man who lived in the area—hence his care in making sure that his victims did not see his face. He felt hatred and resentment towards women. He was probably incapable of sex unless he was inspiring fear, and he was most likely unmarried and lived at home, since as a young man he would be unable to afford his own house in Scarborough.

The rapes had reached a total of 15 when, in June 1991, 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy disappeared. Two weeks later, parts of her body, encased in concrete, were found on the edge of Lake Gibson, Saint Catherine’s. Then, in April of the following year, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, Kristen French, vanished on her way home from school. A witness who had seen a cream-coloured car speeding away left the police in no doubt that she had been abducted, almost certainly by two people. Two weeks later her body was found dumped down a side road. She had been beaten and strangled.

The killer was arrested in late January 1993. It happened after DNA profiling had finally identified the Scarborough rapist. There had been 224 suspects, among these Paul Bernardo, who resembled an identikit drawing of the rapist. Bernardo had given blood, hair and saliva samples to be compared with the rapist, but had heard nothing further in two years, and assumed he was in the clear. In fact, the DNA testing had proceeded slowly, and Bernardo was among the last five suspects whose body samples were tested. It was only then that the police knew that Paul Bernardo was the Scarborough rapist they had been seeking for more than five years. The person who revealed him as the killer of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French was his wife—and accomplice in the murders—Karla.

Once again, Gregg McCrary’s profile of the rapist proved remarkably accurate. Bernardo lived in the Scarborough area, was then 23, and was living at home with his parents.

The story, as it then emerged, began when Paul Bernardo, a handsome young businessman of 23 met the 17-year-old blonde Karla Homolka in a Howard Johnson’s in 1987, and the two lost no time in climbing into bed. Later, it became clear that their affinity was based upon the fact that his sexual tastes veered towards sadism, and hers towards masochism. At 16, Karla had allowed a boyfriend to tie her up with his belt and slap her during sex, and discovered that she enjoyed it. The first time she and Paul were alone in her bedroom, he found handcuffs in her pocket, and asked: ‘Are these for me?’ He then handcuffed her to the bed and pretended that he was raping her. As their relationship progressed, she had to dress up as a schoolgirl—with her hair in pigtails tied with ribbons—and he also liked her to wear a dog collar round her neck when they had sex. If she failed to comply with his demands, Bernardo beat her. She soon became expert at explaining away her bruises to friends.

When she met Bernardo, Karla was unaware that he was the Scarborough Rapist, whose attacks continued for years after they had met and become engaged.

Some time before Christmas 1990, Karla had asked Bernardo—by now her fiance, and living in her home—what he wanted for Christmas, and Bernardo had replied: ‘Your sister Tammy.’ Tammy was 15, and still at school. Desperate to please Bernardo, Karla obtained sedatives from the animal clinic where she worked, and on the evening of 23 December, 1990, they invited Tammy to join them in watching a film after midnight in the basement ‘den’. They plied the unsuspecting girl with drugged drinks and, when she fell unconscious, Bernardo undressed her and raped her on the floor.

It was while Bernardo was raping Tammy—filmed by Karla—that he noticed that she had stopped breathing, and her face had turned blue. The couple’s attempts to revive her failed so they re-dressed her and called an ambulance. No suspicion fell on Karla or Bernardo; the inquest ruled the death as accidental. It was assumed that she had drunk too much and choked on her own vomit.

In June 1991, a 14-year-old schoolgirl named Leslie Mahaffy arrived at her home at 2 a.m. to find herself locked out. Bernardo came across her sitting disconsolately on a bench in her backyard, and offered her a cigarette. Then he held a knife to her throat, and took her back to the house that he and Karla now shared—they were due to get married in two weeks. There he raped her and videotaped her urinating.

The next day Karla had to join in, having lesbian sex with the schoolgirl while Bernardo videotaped them. Leslie was raped repeatedly. When left alone with Karla, Leslie begged her to let her go; Karla replied that if she did, she would be beaten. She gave Leslie two sleeping tablets to ‘make her feel better’, and while Leslie was asleep, Bernardo looped electrical cord around her throat and strangled her.

Two days later, he dismembered the body with an electric saw, encased the pieces in quick-drying cement, and then dropped them off a bridge into Lake Gibson, with Karla acting as lookout.

Bernardo now decided to seduce a 15-year-old schoolgirl, Jane, who had been a friend of Tammy’s, and who bore a remarkable resemblance to the dead girl. As a ‘wedding present’ for her husband, Karla invited Jane to their house. Jane was flattered by the attention of two adults, and developed a schoolgirl crush on Karla. Once there, the newlyweds served her drugged liquor, and after she fell asleep Karla anaesthetised her with halothane, again obtained from the animal clinic. Bernardo then raped and sodomised her while Karla videoed the acts; Bernardo was particularly delighted to find that Jane had been a virgin. Fortunately for her, she remained unconscious during the rape.

On 6 April 1992, ten months after the murder of Leslie Mahaffy, Karla accompanied Bernardo as they drove in search of another victim. They passed 15-year-old Kristen French, walking alone on her way home from school, and Karla called out to ask her instructions. The girl came over to their car as Karla produced a map. Bernardo then moved behind her and forced her into the car at knifepoint.

After three days of being repeatedly raped and forced to take part in videotapes in which she had to address Bernardo as ‘master’, Kristen, like Leslie Mahaffy, was murdered. Her naked body was thrown on a dumpsite full of old washing machines.

During the New Year 1993, Bernardo beat Karla more violently than usual, clubbing her with a rubber flashlight and blacking both her eyes. Finally, her mother and sister called when Bernardo was out, and insisted on taking her to hospital. After that she agreed to go home with them.

To prevent Bernardo from discovering her whereabouts, she moved in with an aunt and uncle.

Instead of arresting him immediately, the police went to interview Karla. She refused to admit that she knew her husband was the rapist, but when they had gone, blurted out to her uncle and aunt: ‘Christ, they know everything.’ Pressed by her aunt, Karla finally told her about the murder of the two schoolgirls.

Bernardo was arrested on 17 February 1993.

When he finally met the killer, McCrary was able to gauge the remarkable accuracy of his profile. Bernardo hated women because he hated his hostile, neurotic mother, who had told him when he was ten that he was a bastard fathered by her lover. His sex life was therefore dominated by a desire to humiliate and punish woman. His preferred method of sex was to beat a woman as he sodomised her.

In due course, Karla turned state’s evidence, in exchange for a promise of a lighter sentence. She was tried first, and was sentenced to 12 years.

On 1 September 1995, Paul Bernardo was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the proviso that he should serve a minimum of 25 years before he could apply for parole.

Perhaps the most fascinating of all the cases that McCrary profiled was that of Jack Unterweger, poet, dramatist and TV celebrity. He was also Austria’s first serial killer.

In the summer of 1992, McCrary received a phone call from Vienna. A man was about to go on trial for the murders of 11 women. Would he be willing to profile the case? He replied that if they had the right man, a profile would be unnecessary, and that a signature crime analysis would be more to the point. A ‘signature’ means certain typical elements in a criminal’s modus operandi—for example, the way he ties a knot or takes a certain kind of ‘trophy’.

Two leading investigators on the case, Ernst Geiger, the policeman who had put the suspect behind bars, and Thomas Muller, chief of the Psychiatric Service, agreed to travel to Quantico. McCrary mentioned in advance that he wanted to know nothing whatsoever about their suspect—just about the crime scenes.

When Geiger and Muller arrived, the three men devoted several days to studying the files. The murders had taken place in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Los Angeles. The women had all been beaten, and then strangled with an item of their underwear, either bras or pantyhose. No semen was found, either in the bodies or on them. The victims were often killed in woodland, near water, and left covered in leaves.

When McCrary had studied the files, and established that the modus operandis seemed to indicate the same killer, they turned to the man who had been arrested: Jack Unterweger, ex-convict and now one of Austria’s best known writers.

Born in 1950, the son of a prostitute and, according to rumour, an American GI, Jack had been abandoned by his mother. He was brought up by an alcoholic grandfather, who often brought prostitutes to the small hut where they lived in a single room. In his teens, Jack was in trouble repeatedly for offences such as burglary and car theft, and became a pimp who was known for beating up his hookers. Then, in 1974, he was arrested for two murders. The first was of 18-year-old Margaret Schaefer, who happened to be a friend of a prostitute named Barbara Scholz. As Unterweger and the latter drove past her in the street, Unterweger invited the girl into the car, then decided on impulse to rob her and her family’s home. After that he took her to the woods, forced her to undress, and demanded oral sex; when she refused he beat her unconscious with a steel pipe and then strangled her with her bra. Barbara Scholz gave him away, and he was arrested.