The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (24 page)

“have once again managed to protect themselves. They pulled from graves in his backyard. By nightfall, Dutroux are laughing at the death of my daughter and the other and company were charged with kidnapping and mur-ones.” Dutroux escaped from custody on April 23, der. On September 2, 1996, police found Eefje Lam-1998, during a trip to the Neufchâteau courthouse, but brecks and An Marchal buried beneath a garden shed at his stolen car bogged down in mud near Straitmont, Weinstein’s home, in the Charleroi suburb of Jumet.

and he was soon recaptured. Resignations ensued,
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beginning with those of Interior Minister Johan Vande regarded them as “savage beasts” who might attack her, Lanmotte and Justice Minister Stefaan De Clerck on but insisted that both girls were still alive when the same day, followed by Gendarmerie commander Dutroux left jail. The end had been quicker for Eefje Willy De Ridder on April 28.

Lambrecks and An Marchal, who were drugged,

Two months later, on June 27, the Belgian Justice bound, and buried alive.

Ministry announced that Dutroux’s murder trial would Judge Jean-Marc Connerotte wept while testifying on not commence before September 2000 “because

March 4, describing death threats and high-level intrigue inquiries into Dutroux’s alleged child sex crimes are not that obstructed his pursuit of Dutroux’s case. “Never complete.” That estimate proved wildly optimistic, before in Belgium,” he declared, “has an investigating though Dutroux faced trial for his jailbreak in March judge at the service of the king been subjected to such 2000. Belgium had no law against escape from custody, pressure.” Upon their release from the dungeon, Con-but Dutroux faced charges of car theft, assaulting a nerotte recalled, survivors Dardenne and Delhez “didn’t police officer, and stealing the officer’s pistol. Smiling at want to come out” until urged by Dutroux. “They the outset of those proceedings on March 20, Dutroux thanked Dutroux,” said Connerotte. “It was absolutely listened while his lawyers described his confinement as terrible. They kissed him. That shows how much he had

“inhuman,” complaining that Dutroux was no longer conditioned them.” Investigator Jacques Langlois

“in possession of all of his faculties.” An unsympathetic reviewed his 440,000-page dossier on the case, compar-judge convicted Dutroux of theft and threatening ing Dutroux’s early series of rapes to the later crimes that behavior on June 19, 2000, slapping Belgium’s “most climaxed in murder. On March 18, guards found a key hated man” with a five-year prison sentence.

to Dutroux’s handcuffs hidden in a bag of salt in the jail-Legal wrangling postponed Dutroux’s murder trial.

house kitchen, but Dutroux expressed “surprise” at In early 2003, a grand jury at Neufchâteau dismissed charges that he planned a fresh escape. Summarizing his the case against defendant Nihoul, but prosecutors defense on June 10, Dutroux called himself a “scape-appealed that decision and won a reversal on April 30.

goat” in an “organized lynching,” insisting to the court Even then, Dutroux and his codefendants did not face that “I am not a murderer.” Still, he said, “I don’t contest trial until March 1, 2004, a delay of nearly eight years.

any of my real faults. I am here to be condemned.” His When court finally convened at Arlon, defense attorney chief fault in the deaths of victims Lejeune and Russo, he Martine Van Praet complained that local hotels denied proclaimed, lay in “abandon[ing] them to the conscience her a room, while granting free suites to Dutroux’s of my wife,” who let them starve.

prosecutors. Six hundred witnesses were scheduled to On June 17, 2004, jurors convicted Dutroux on two testify before an audience of 300 police and 1,300 jour-murder counts (Lambrecks and Marchal), four counts nalists, who would beam the gruesome details of the of kidnapping (Dardenne, Delhez, Lejeune, and Russo), case worldwide. Kidnap survivor Sabine Dardenne and two counts of rape (Dardenne and Delhez).

described her 80 days in Dutroux’s dungeon, where she Michelle Martin was convicted of conspiracy, and subsisted on a near-starvation diet while she was raped and otherwise abused. Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo had starved to death in their basement cell, ignored by Dutroux’s wife while Dutroux was imprisoned for auto theft in 1996.

Dutroux seemed unconcerned, dozing off during jury selection and thereby earning rebukes from Judge Stephane Goux. (“He seems to be very tired and had a very bad night,” lawyer Ronny Baudewijn explained.) When conscious, Dutroux maintained his pose of wounded innocence, describing himself as a “small cog” in an international sex-slave network. His basement cells were built, Dutroux insisted, to “protect”

kidnapped girls from abuse by members of the ring.

Blaming “two policemen” for the abductions, Dutroux told the court on March 3, “I didn’t even know what pedophilia was. It was all Chinese to me.” Michelle Martin changed her tune on the witness stand, insisting Marc Dutroux (right) is led out of the courthouse in that she was “too scared” to feed Lejeune and Russo in Neufchateau, Belgium, on March 20, 2000. (AP Photo/Yves captivity while Dutroux served 106 days in prison. She Logghe)

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Michel Lelievre was found guilty on charges including voiced dissatisfaction with the verdicts, since the trial abduction, rape, and drug possession. The panel failed and eight-year investigation revealed no further evi-to reach a verdict on Jean-Michel Nihoul, charged with dence against Dutroux’s confederates in the alleged kidnapping victim Laetitia Delhez. Many Belgians international pedophile ring.

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E

EDWARDS, Mack Ray

According to the killer’s statement, he had sworn off A native of Arkansas, born in 1919, Edwards moved to murder for a dozen years, returning with a vengeance in Los Angeles in 1941, logging one arrest for vagrancy the fall of 1968. Gary Rochet, age 16, had been shot to that April, prior to finding work as a heavy equipment death at his home in Granada Hills on November 26, operator. In that role, he helped build the freeways that and 16-year-old Roger Madison had vanished in Sylmar made L.A. famous, and by early 1970 he was a veteran three weeks later. The last to go was 13-year-old Don-on the job, married and a father of two, the very model ald Todd, reported missing from Pacoima on May 16, of blue-collar propriety. If people suspected his involve-1969.

ment in a string of brutal murders spanning 16 years, On March 7, 1970, Edwards led officers into the San they kept the secret to themselves.

Gabriel Mountains, seeking the graves of two victims, On March 5, 1970, three girls, ages 12 to 14, were but altered terrain foiled the search. He had better luck abducted by burglars from their home in Sylmar, a Los four days later, directing his keepers to a section of the Angeles suburb. Two escaped from their captors, but Santa Ana Freeway where the skeletal remains of Stella one was still missing the next day when Mack Edwards Nolan were unearthed from an eight-foot-deep grave.

entered a Los Angeles police station, surrendering a Edwards maintained that Roger Madison was buried loaded revolver as he told the duty officer, “I have a beneath the Ventura Freeway, but authorities declined guilt complex.” Edwards named his teenage accomplice to plow the highway up in search of clues. The crimes, in the recent kidnapping and directed police to the Mack said, had all been motivated by an urge for sex.

Angeles National Forest, where the missing girl was With Edwards safely under lock and key, police found, unharmed. Before authorities could take his voiced skepticism at the 12-year gap in his killing statement down, the prisoner informed them there were career, suggesting that there might be other victims

“other matters” to discuss.

unaccounted for—a body count of 22, in all. Respond-As homicide detectives listened, dumb-struck, Edwards ing from his cell, the killer adamantly stuck by his con-voluntarily confessed to a half-dozen murders dating fession. “Six is all there is,” he told reporters. “There’s from the early 1950s. Stella Nolan, eight years old, had not any more. That’s all there is.” Before his trial, he been the first to die, in June of 1953. Abducted from her twice attempted suicide, slashing his stomach with a home in Compton, she had never been recovered, and her razor blade on March 30 and gulping an overdose of fate remained a mystery for 17 years until a killer’s con-tranquilizers on May 7.

science led him to confess. Mack’s second crime had been Charged in three of his six confessed murders, a doubleheader, claiming 13-year-old Don Baker and 11-Edwards was convicted and sentenced to die after year-old Brenda Howell in Azusa, on August 6, 1956.

telling the jury, “I want the chair. That’s what I’ve Once again, the bodies were missing, no solution in sight always wanted.” Immediate execution was his goal. As before Edwards surrendered himself to police.

Edwards told the court, “My lawyer told me there are a
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hundred men waiting to die in the chair. I’m asking the year-old Florence Tisdall were found dead on successive judge if I can have the first man’s place. He’s sitting mornings.

there sweating right now. I’m not sweating. I’m ready By then, police were working overtime to find the for it.”

“Stockwell Strangler,” so called after the southwest Ready or not, Edwards was faced with the prospect London neighborhood where five of his victims were of automatic appeals, conscious of the fact that no Cal-slain. There had been petty thefts in several cases, with ifornia inmate had been executed in the past four years.

a television stolen from Crockett’s apartment and On October 30, 1971, he cut the process short, using an roughly $900 missing from Carmen’s home, but rob-electric cord to hang himself in his death row cell at San bery did not appear to be the driving motive. All of the Quentin.

victims were strangled manually, left on their beds with See also MISSING PERSONS

the sheets pulled up to their chins. Five had been sexually molested, but authorities could not determine whether the acts were committed before or after death.

ENRIQUETA, Marti

Kenneth Erskine was arrested on July 28 at a social A self-styled witch who made her living through the security office for trying to conceal one of his numerous sale of charms and potions, Enriqueta was arrested by savings accounts. In custody, his palm print matched police in Barcelona, Spain, in March 1912 on charges one lifted from a Stockwell murder scene, and he was of abducting several local children. Her most recent vic-picked from a lineup by victim Frederick Prentice, 74, tim, a young girl named Angelita, was rescued alive who had survived an attempted strangulation on June from the witch’s lair, appalling police with a tale of 27. Under questioning, Erskine seemed to plead amne-murder and CANNIBALISM. According to the girl, she sia. “I don’t remember killing anyone,” he told police.

had been forced by Enriqueta to partake of human

“I could have done it without knowing it. I am not sure flesh. Her “meal” had been the pitiful remains of yet if I did.”

another child, kidnapped by the murderess a short time The court had little difficulty sorting out the prob-earlier.

lem. Charged with seven counts of murder and one As ultimately pieced together by authorities, Enri-count of attempted murder, Erskine was convicted queta’s local crimes had already claimed at least six vic-across the board on January 29, 1988. (Two additional tims. After murdering the children, she would boil their murders, dating from 1986, were eliminated from the bodies down for use as prime ingredients in her expen-list on grounds of insufficient evidence.) The presiding sive “love potions.” Convicted on the basis of her own judge sentenced Erskine to seven life terms plus an addi-confession, coupled with the testimony of her sole sur-tional 12 years for attempted murder, recommending viving victim, Marti Enriqueta was condemned and that the killer serve a minimum of 40 years before he is executed for her crimes.

considered for parole.

ERSKINE, Kenneth

ETHERIDGE, Ellen

At age 24, Kenneth Erskine was diagnosed by court A solid family background and religious training did psychiatrists as possessing “a mental age of eleven.” A not spare the second wife of Texas rancher J. D.

persistent loner, abandoned by his English mother and Etheridge from pangs of jealousy. When they were mar-Antiguan father, he drifted through a milieu of special ried in the spring of 1912, she thought the wealthy wid-schools and flophouses, compiling a record of arrests ower admired her for herself. It soon became apparent, for burglary in London, living on the proceeds of his though, that he was more interested in finding someone thefts. Business was good enough for Erskine to open who would cook his meals and clean his large Bosque 10 separate bank accounts for his stolen loot, but County home, northwest of Waco. Ellen warmed his money isn’t everything. Somewhere along the way, the lonely bed and tended house, but she began to feel simple-minded youth picked up a taste for homicide.