The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (13 page)

“We are a family of cannibals, we always have been, cases of cannibalism were reported (including parents and I feel queasy if I go too long without tasting human who devoured their own children), but authorities meat. But just because we like to eat human flesh, does responded in very different ways. Soviet officials exe-that mean we’re bad people?” Sserwadda admitted eat-cuted an unknown number of cannibals, while sentencing seven corpses in the past year, then added that his ing some 350 others to life imprisonment; Chinese brother “is the really greedy one. He’s eaten dozens.”

leaders, on the other hand, sometimes applauded acts of Presuming that Sserwadda dined on corpses without homicide and cannibalism, especially where the victims committing murder, the court sentenced him to three
34

CANNIBALISM and Serial Murder

years in prison. He shocked the judge by asking if he had also involved an abortive $3,000 ransom demand.

could take a human leg, introduced as evidence at trial Detectives found “several books on black magic” at one in 2001, to prison with him for a snack. “It’s still got suspect’s home, suggesting that the murders sprang plenty of meat on it. It’s a shame to let it go to waste.”

from Satanism. Once again, no disposition of the case In Nigeria, authorities jailed two alleged cannibals at has been reported.

Lagos, in February 1999. The suspects, identified as Across the Atlantic, accused cannibal Dorangel Var-Clifford Orji and Tahiru, lived beneath a local bridge gas was arrested by police in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, and were accused by neighbors of supplying human in February 1999. A former mental patient who was organs to black-magic practitioners. Raiders found the briefly held on similar charges in 1995, Vargas con-pair grilling parts of a fresh corpse, and seized the flesh fessed to murdering and eating 10 men over the past and various bones as evidence. A police spokesman two years. “Sure I eat people,” he told reporters. “Any-accused Orji and Tahiru of murdering women, and one can eat human flesh, but you have to wash and gar-claimed they preferred “young, fine girls with long nish it well to avoid diseases.” Notwithstanding those hair.” No disposition for that case was available at admissions and the reported discovery of human press time, but new reports of widespread cannibalism remains at his home, some observers defended Vargas emerged from the neighboring Congo region in 2003.

as a hapless “scapegoat,” allegedly framed by illicit There, dwindling tribes of pygmies complained to the organ-traffickers. No judgment in the Vargas case had United Nations that rural guerrillas regularly killed and been announced by press time for this volume.

devoured members of their race, driving their people On April 14, 2001, police in Kansas City, Kansas, toward extinction. Reports published in Europe, during charged 21-year-old Marc Sappington with murdering August 2003, described mobile armies of “child sol-and cannibalizing three men over the past week. Dis-diers” dragooned by their elders to fight in a long-run-membered remains of one victim, 16-year-old Alton ning civil war, subsisting on flesh from their slain Brown, were found in Sappington’s basement. Held in enemies as they prowled the countryside.

lieu of $2 million bond, Sappington was examined for Modern Asia has no shortage of cannibalism reports.

psychiatric abnormalities by analysts who reported his In January 2001, Western journalists revealed that fascination with Milwaukee cannibal-killer JEFFREY

human flesh (dubbed
saram hoki
) was sold in the mar-DAHMER. After being certified as sane, Sappington faced ketplace at famine-blighted Hoeroung, North Korea.

trial in July 2004. Jurors convicted him across the Films and photographs supported the claim, depicting board, on three counts of murder plus one count each parts of a dismembered child in one cooking pot.

of kidnapping and aggravated burglary.

Reporter Carla Garapedian told the world, “All of the In 2004, European authorities announced their dis-North Koreans we interviewed knew about it.” North covery of an Internet cannibal network that “links Korean officials declined to comment. A year later, in maneaters from Austria to America.” That revelation March 2002, authorities in Hyderabad, India, alleged emerged from the murder trial of German defendant that members of “a nameless sect” consumed human Armin Meiwes, a cannibal who advertised online for a flesh as part of a
puja
ritual designed to help them find

“young well-built man who wants to be eaten” and hidden treasure. No charges were filed in that case, but thus met Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, whom he killed and several alleged cannibals were reportedly slain by their devoured in 2001. Defense attorneys for Meiwes sub-neighbors on suspicion of practicing evil magic.

mitted that he should be freed because Brandes volun-Eastern Europe has produced its share of cannibals teered to be slain and consumed. Jurors convicted in recent years. Ilshat Kuzikov, a 37-year-old resident of Meiwes on a reduced charge of manslaughter, sending St. Petersburg, Russia, was convicted in March 1997 of him to prison for eight and a half years, but police were killing and devouring at least three male acquaintances more concerned with evidence that two more victims since 1992. Officers who raided his home found dried may have been eaten in Europe. German criminologist ears hanging on the walls and soft-drink bottles filled Rudolf Egg told reporters, “There are several hundred with human blood. Four years later, in April 2001, people with cannibalistic tendencies in Germany alone, authorities in Chisinau, Moldova, arrested two women and many thousands around the world.” Inspector for selling human organs in the city’s marketplace. A Isolde Stock announced that Meiwes’s e-mail corre-full-scale investigation was announced, but its results spondence with members of various “cannibal forums”

are presently unknown. Four Ukrainians were jailed at would fill two large trucks if it were printed out. The Kiev in July 2002, charged with killing a teenage girl haul included several thousand photos of nude men, and devouring her body. Police claimed that the prison-downloaded from the prisoner’s computers, in addition ers, including three men and a woman, had killed at to scenes of torture.

least six victims for their flesh. The latest kidnapping
See also
JOACHIM KROLL; PARAPHILIA; VAMPIRISM

35

CAPITAL Punishment and Serial Killers

CAPITAL Punishment and Serial Killers

might have been eliminated early on had the judicial Always controversial in America, imposition of the system not intervened. An overzealous sheriff had death penalty for murder (or other serious crimes) elicited confessions from the suspect with assurances remains a constant point of heated debate. Serial killers, that Carignan would not be executed, a condition that whose multiple murders frequently incorporate brutal appeals courts found disturbing. Carignan’s death sen-torture and sexual assault, are often described as tence was overturned in 1951, and after serving nine

“poster children” for capital punishment, but abolition-more years for attempted rape, he was paroled in 1960.

ists would spare all felons, without regard to the nature There would be more arrests, for burglary, assault, and or number of their crimes. Arguments range from the other crimes; in 1965, Carignan was sentenced to a moral (“All killing is wrong”; “All lives are precious”) term of 15 years in Washington, but with time off for to the economic (“Life imprisonment is cheaper than good behavior, he hit the street again in 1969, con-lengthy death-sentence appeals”), but results of every sumed with an abiding rage against society in general published poll to date suggest that a majority of those and women in particular.

surveyed support execution in cases of first-degree (pre-Harvey married a Seattle widow shortly after his meditated) murder.

parole, but their relationship was doomed from the The 1960s saw a sharp decline in American execu-beginning. Sullen and uncommunicative, Carignan tions, with seven inmates executed in 1965 (down from would frequently get up at night and drive long dis-152 in 1947), and only one in 1967. No more had been tances “to be alone and think.” When he refused to dispatched by 1972, when the US Supreme Court ruled share his thoughts or name his destinations on the long that all American death penalty statutes, as currently nocturnal drives, his marriage fell apart. Remarrying written, were unconstitutional under the Eighth another widow in 1972, Carignan showed no improve-Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

ment. His lascivious attentions to a teenage stepdaugh-Across the country, 648 condemned inmates—including ter finally forced the girl to run away from home, and such notorious serial killers as Richard Speck and six he was faced with yet another failing marriage in the members of the MANSON FAMILY—saw their sentences spring of 1973.

commuted overnight to life imprisonment with possible That May, young Kathy Miller answered Harvey’s parole (though few of the repeat offenders have been advertisement for employees at a service station that he freed to date). By 1976, a groundswell of public opin-leased. The girl was missing for a month before two ion induced the high court to revise its opinion, permit-boys discovered her remains while hiking on an Indian ting execution in the case of certain felonies specifically reservation north of Everett, Washington. Nude and defined by law. Multiple murder (or murder accompa-bundled in a sheet of plastic, Kathy had been blud-nied by torture and/or sexual assault) is among those geoned with a hammer, knocking holes the size of nick-crimes authorized for capital punishment in all 38

els in her skull.

death-penalty states. Texas was the first state to specifi-Detectives in Seattle were aware of Harvey’s record, cally list serial murder as a capital offense.

and they hounded him with such intensity that he The first condemned inmate to die in America after a departed from their city shortly after Kathy Miller’s nine-year hiatus in executions was serial slayer Gary body was discovered. Later a speeding ticket from Gilmore, shot by a Utah firing squad in January 1977.

Solano County, California, on June 20 placed Carignan Between that event and September 2004, at least 81

in the vicinity where a half-dozen women had been other serial killers were executed in 19 American states.

murdered in the past two years, but there was nothing In retrospect, there seems to be no statistical validity for solid to connect him with the crimes, and he continued the abolitionist argument that suicidal slayers migrate on his way cross-country, seeking sanctuary in his old, to death-penalty states in search of an “easy” death.

familiar haunts in Minneapolis.

New York, as a prime example, has consistently ranked On June 28, Marlys Townsend was assaulted at a among the top five U.S. states in cases of serial murder bus stop in that city, clubbed unconscious from behind.

reported, although the state banned capital punishment She woke in Harvey’s car, still groggy from the blow, for more than 20 years, from 1972 to 1994.

but when he tried to make her masturbate him, she
See also
GEOGRAPHY

found strength enough to save herself by leaping from the speeding vehicle. Police made no connection with the human time bomb ticking in their midst.

CARIGNAN, Harvey Louis

Jewry Billings, age 13, was thumbing a ride to her By all rights, Harvey Carignan should never have boyfriend’s house in Seattle on September 9 when become a serial killer. Sentenced in Alaska to be hanged Carignan pulled up and offered her a ride. Inside the for murdering a woman in 1949, the hulking killer car, he threatened Jewry with a hammer and forced her
36

CATOE, Jarvis R.

to perform sexual acts on him while he assaulted her with some 181 red circles drawn in isolated areas of the with the hammer’s handle. When he finished with her, United States and Canada. Some of the circles yielded Carignan released his battered captive, but the incident nothing, others indicating points where Harvey had was so humiliating that the girl maintained it as a applied for jobs or purchased vehicles, but others closely guarded secret for a period of several months.

seemed to link him with a string of unsolved homicides A year would pass before detectives witnessed Har-and other crimes involving women. One such cryptic vey’s handiwork again. On September 8, 1974, he circle marked the point where Laura Brock had disap-picked up Lisa King and June Lynch, both 16, while peared, near Coupeville, Washington. Another, at they were hitching rides in Minneapolis. He offered Medora, North Dakota, coincided with discovery of a money if the girls would help him fetch another car that murdered girl in April 1973. Yet another had been had been stranded in a rural area. Once out of town, drawn around the very intersection in Vancouver where however, Harvey stopped the car and started beating a woman, waiting for a city bus, had been assaulted June about the head and face. When Lisa ran for help, from behind and beaten with a hammer.

he sped away and left his latest victim bleeding on the An ill-conceived INSANITY DEFENSE involving mes-roadside.

sages from God did not impress the jury at Carignan’s A month before, on August 10, another romance had trial for attempted murder (of Gwen Burton) in March collapsed for Harvey, ending no less tragically for his 1975. He was convicted and received the maximum of intended. Eileen Hunley was a woman of the church 40 years in prison. Since no criminal in Minnesota may who looked for good in others. She had looked for be sentenced to a term exceeding 40 years, the other tri-good in Harvey Carignan when they began to date, but als and sentences were merely window dressing: 30

there was none to be found. She had informed her years for the assault of Jewry Billings; 40 years for friends of her intent to terminate the sour relationship, Eileen Hunley’s murder; 40 years for killing Kathy but Eileen Hunley disappeared on August 10. Her Schultz. One hundred fifty years in all, of which the corpse was found in Shelbourne County five weeks killer may be forced to serve no more than 40, with the later, her skull imploded by the force of savage hammer usual potential for time off for “good behavior.”