The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (21 page)

CROSS-DRESSING and Serial Murder

Kenneth Whitacre. The victim had been stabbed, his holics. None of them had been reported missing by surface and skull torn open by the blows of something like viving relatives. The bank and meat receipts placed a cleaver or machete. Detectives logged the case as a sex Juan Corona at the murder scenes, and he was held for crime, after finding pieces of gay literature in Whitacre’s trial. Defense attorneys tried to blame the murders on pocket.

Natividad, a known homosexual given to fits of vio-Four days later, workers on a nearby ranch reported lence, but no one could document his presence in Cali-the discovery of a second grave. It yielded the remains fornia during the murder spree. Jurors deliberated 45

of drifter Charles Fleming, but police were still working hours before convicting Corona on all counts in Janu-on identifying him when they found the next burial site, ary 1973. A month later, he was sentenced to 25 con-and the next. In all, they spent nine days exhuming bod-secutive terms of life imprisonment.

ies from the orchard, counting 25 before the search was The case—which set an American record for individ-terminated on June 4. In Melford Sample’s grave, ual murder convictions at the time—was not com-deputies found two meat receipts dated May 21, signed pleted, yet. Reports issued in December 1973 linked with the name of “Juan V. Corona.” On June 4, Joseph Corona to the death of a 26th victim, but no new Maczak’s remains were discovered with two bank charges were filed. In May 1978, an appeals court receipts, bearing the same signature. Some of the ordered a new trial for Corona, finding his prior legal corpses were fresh, while others—like that of Donald defenders incompetent. The retrial was delayed by peri-Smith—had clearly been in the ground for months.

ods of psychiatric observation and a jailhouse stabbing (Medical examiners estimated that the first murders had in 1980, which cost Corona the sight in one eye. Con-occurred about February 1971.) Most of the victims victed again in the spring of 1982, Corona was returned were stabbed or hacked to death, with several bearing to prison with a new sentence of 25 life terms.

signs of homosexual assault. Four of the dead were ultimately unidentified; the rest were migrant workers, rootless drifters, with a sprinkling of skid row alco-CROSS-DRESSING and Serial Murder

While frequently used as a plot device in FICTION AND

FILM portrayals of serial murder ( Psycho, Dressed to Kill, Silence of the Lambs etc.), adult transvestism is rare among serial killers. OTTIS TOOLE sometimes donned women’s clothes while trolling gay bars for a one-night stand, but when he killed—often without regard to gender—he adopted no particular disguise, as likely to behead a child or run down a hitchhiker as to slay a casual lover.

Perhaps ironically, the point in time when cross-dressing does affect the lives of some male serial killers is in childhood, when they have no choice. In fact, it is worth noting that seven unrelated sex killers were subjected to the identical trauma of compulsory cross-dressing during their formative years. In every case but one, the masquerade was orchestrated by a female relative or guardian, and while their stated motives varied, the results were strikingly consistent.

An exception to the rule of torment by a brutal mother figure was CHARLES MANSON, sent to elementary school in a dress by his uncle, with the sage advice that it would teach him “how to fight and be a man.”

HENRY LUCAS was also sent to school in skirts and dainty curls until administrators filed injunctions to prevent his mother from abusing him in public. It is curious (and possibly irrelevant) that Manson and Lucas both suffered their peculiar torment in Virginia in the early 1940s. Further south and 10 years later, Ottis Toole was dressed in petticoats and lace by an older sis-Juan Corona (Wide World API)

ter who treated him as a living “doll.” (As an adult,
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CULTS and Serial Murder

ironically, he teamed with Lucas for a murder spree that responsible for California’s “ZEBRA” MURDERS—are spanned the continent.) In California, CARROLL COLE

aware of the group’s illegal aims, does it then cease to was forced to dress as “Mama’s little girl” while serving be a cult? And if so, what is it?

coffee to his mother’s friends. Yet another Californian, Modern history is rife with examples of cult-related GORDON NORTHCOTT, was habitually dressed as a girl murders, by no means limited to stereotypical practi-by his mentally unbalanced mother until age 16. A tioners of Satanism or black magic. Ervil LeBaron’s wicked stepmother was the culprit in Rodney Beeler’s polygamous Church of the Lamb of God committed case, her favorite dress-up “punishment” producing a numerous homicides spanning three decades in the serial rapist now sentenced to die for the one murder United States and Mexico, pursuing the 19th-century California authorities are able to prove. And worlds Mormon concept of “blood atonement” for sin. The away, in Ecuador, child-killer Daniel Barbosa bitterly aforementioned “Zebra” killers belonged to a Black recalls the way his mother dressed him as a girl to Muslim splinter group, while ADOLFO CONSTANZO’s

“keep him out of trouble” in the seedy barrio they disciples mixed “Christian” Santeria with the Afro-occupied.

Caribbean teachings of palo mayombe. Devotees of the Children subjected to trauma of this sort are prime antisemitic “Christian Identity” creed have robbed candidates for gender confusion and disruption of the banks and murdered select victims as part of their war

“cognitive mapping” that determines future thought against the “Zionist Occupational Government” in patterns, ideally providing control of emotions and Washington, D.C. CHARLES MANSON’s followers killed linking the individual to his social environment. In the seven persons while attempting to spark the American cases noted above, each subject came of age with differ-race war they dubbed “Helter Skelter.” In Japan, mement personality quirks, but all were prone to sudden, bers of Aum Shinrikyo (“Supreme Truth”) unleashed unpredictable violence. Toole and Northcott were nerve gas on crowded subways in obedience to orders openly gay, the former killing indiscriminately, while from their mad guru.

the latter preyed exclusively on boys. Lucas was As with any other case involving TEAM KILLERS, cult another indiscriminate killer, though he favored female murders may spring from any of the MOTIVES that drive victims. Manson was a hard-line career criminal, spe-homicidal individuals. Profit, power, sex, revenge—all cializing in auto theft and prison life before an unwel-these and more have mingled with religion throughout come parole propelled him into the 1960s drug culture, history, producing deeds that scandalize mild-mannered with youthful runaways ripe for the picking. After one sects. Few violent cults have been as flagrantly merce-impulsive murder in childhood, Cole restricted his mur-nary as the Persian Assassins or lasted as long as the ders to women who reminded him of his drunken, adul-Kali-worshiping Thugs (responsible for 40,000 ritual terous mother. Barbosa, for his part, killed

murders in the year 1812 alone), but each has done its children—more than 70 in all—preferring a machete as part to tarnish the name of religion in general and that his weapon of choice.

of “unorthodox” sects in particular.

See also CHILDHOOD TRAUMA; WARNING SIGNS

Despite its social and political advances since the 1960s, Africa remains a “dark continent” in some respects, including cult-related homicides. Nigeria is a
CULTS and Serial Murder

grim case in point, with ritual murders reported from There is no standard, universally accepted definition of the 1930s to the present day. In 1989, Nigerian author what constitutes a “cult.” J. Gordon Melton, in his Wilson Asekombe claimed that “human sacrifice will Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America (1986), soon become the number two cause of death in West defines the term as “a pejorative label used to describe Africa, second only to traffic accidents.” Although such certain religious groups outside the mainstream of homicides, like all homicides, are banned by law, blood Western religion.” Six years later, the FBI Crime Classi-sacrifices continue in the 21st century. Thirty-three resi-fication Manual further complicated matters by describ-dents of Igboland faced trial in May 2002, on charges ing a cult as “a body of adherents with excessive of illegally possessing fresh human remains. Three devotion or dedication to ideas, objects, or persons, months later, a two-week spate of cult mayhem in Cal-regarded as unorthodox or spurious and whose primary abar, Nigeria, left 11 victims hacked and shot to death.

objectives of sex, power, and/or money are unknown to Police deployed in armored vehicles failed to apprehend the general membership.” The FBI’s definition leaves the transient killers.

critical questions unanswered: Who decides when devo-Uganda produced even more shocking revelations in tion is “excessive” and which ideas (much less persons) October 1999, as police unearthed 24 corpses at a are “unorthodox or spurious”? If all members of a reli-camp run by Wilson Bushara’s Doctrine of Brotherhood gious group—like the self-styled “Death Angels”

sect. If that discovery was not bad enough, a second
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CULTS and Serial Murder

cult—Gredonia Mwerinda’s Movement for the Restora-sure-hunters was uncovered at Hyderabad. Members of tion of the Ten Commandments—fell under scrutiny in the cult indulge in CANNIBALISM, police maintain, using March 2000. On March 25, police exhumed 153 bod-human flesh in puja rites to help them find hidden ies from three mass graves at the cult’s rural compound, wealth.

a tally that mounted to 778 by July 7, 2000. While Halfway around the world, in Brazil, authorities some reports described Mwerinda’s sect as a “suicide blamed a black magic cult for the mutilation-murders of cult,” police reported that some of the victims had been 20 boys, aged nine to 14, in the decade preceding Octo-strangled and hacked to death. Media reports indicate ber 2001. Many of the victims were sexually assaulted that Mwerinda escaped and has thus far eluded police.

prior to death, and most were castrated. Ritual objects, South Africa is another hotbed of human sacrifice, including black ribbons and black candle wax, were where human flesh and organs are prized as muti (med-found near the bodies. James Cavallaro, spokesman for icine) in various occult ceremonies. September 2003

the human rights group Global Justice, complained to brought accusations against a ritual “healer” in Eaton-the Organization of American States (OAS), reporting side, after a three-year-old neighbor was slain, his body that “[t]he investigation has been abysmal despite the discarded minus brain, heart and other vital organs.

gravity of the cases and the proof is we have 20 corpses That murder was the third suspected muti case in three and no convictions.” The OAS accepted Cavallaro’s weeks. On September 9, police in Free State Province petition and called upon Brazilian leaders to defend their arrested six men for trying to sell a human head, hands lack of progress in the case, but no further reports have and feet, genitals, heart, and intestines. On September emerged from the region thus far.

20, picnickers found the head of a murdered five-year-In Honduras, meanwhile, 2001 brought reports that old child floating near a dam outside Johannesburg.

police in Tegucigalpa were investigating local gangs Few such crimes are solved, and British authorities fear suspected of graduating from satanic animal sacrifices they may have spilled over to London, after a child’s to kidnapping and murdering children. Inspector Flo-dismembered corpse was pulled from the Thames. An rencio Oseguera, chief of Tegucigalpa’s gang crime African immigrant was charged in that case, and had division, reported that the headless corpse of one miss-yet to face trial when this work went to press.

ing boy had been found in June. “The boy,” he said, Echoes of the Thug cult sounded from India in July

“as well as being without a head and bloodied, had 1997, when Calcutta University professor Bratindra symbols and markings on his body, in women’s eye-Mukherjee declared that “human sacrifice is once again liner, just like the cats and hens that were found in being practiced in the name of God.” A 40-year student areas where the gangs are known to have performed of Indian cults, Mukherjee reported a dramatic rise in Satanic rites.” A specific gang, Los Rockeros (the child abductions during the past 18 months, alleging Rockers), was under scrutiny in that case, but no that many of those snatched from home and the streets arrests resulted. Similar charges of satanic activity had been ritually murdered. Sankarshan Ray, an Indian emerged from Italy in 2004, where police accused cult scientist ostracized by peers after he published a report members of multiple murders committed by the elusive on child sacrifice, told journalists, “There are things