The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (32 page)

sentence in lieu of facing additional murder and kidnap-Pereira residents feared a satanic cult at work, while ping charges in California. Her term completed, she other theorists attributed the crimes to black-market was duly released from custody in July 1997. Gerald, organ traffickers. Most of the victims were homeless meanwhile, clung to hopes of a reprieve in September street children, and hundreds more were missing 1997 after a federal appeals court ordered a new sen-nationwide.

tencing hearing on grounds that the trial judge issued In fact, by the time General Serrano sounded the faulty jury instructions. Nevada’s attorney general alarm, his quarry was already in custody. Luis Garavito missed the February 1999 deadline for appealing that was arrested in April 1999 for attempted rape, and sat decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and jury selection in jail thereafter while detectives chased Colombia’s for Gallego’s new penalty hearing began on September child-killer far and wide. Born in 1957 at Genova or 13, 1999. Two months later, on November 17, the new Pereira (reports vary), the youngest of seven children in panel condemned Gallego once again. The ink was a poor family, Garavito was frequently beaten by his barely dry on that verdict when, on November 20, alcoholic father and raped by two male neighbors. He 1999, skeletal remains of two Gallego victims were quit school in fifth grade and began drifting aimlessly at found in Lassen County, California. They were identi-age 16, a heavy drinker subject to depression and suici-fied in December as Sandra Colley and Brenda Judd.

dal urges. In his travels, Garavito worked as a handy-Cancer claimed Gallego’s life on July 18, 2002.

man and street vendor, sometimes posing as a monk or spokesman for fictitious groups serving the elderly and children’s education. The latter facade gained him
GARAVITO, Luis Alfredo

entrance to various schools as a “guest speaker,” where Colombia is one of the world’s most violent nations, he basked in attention from children. Acquaintances renowned for its drug wars and narco-terrorism, politi-throughout Colombia knew Garavito by various nick-cal upheavals, public assassinations, and random acts names—“Goofy,” “The Priest,” and “El Loco” (mad-of mayhem. Even so, jaded police and journalists were man). Garavito claimed his first victim in 1992, and shocked in the 1990s as some unknown predator

thereafter recorded his killings in a dog-eared notebook
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GARAVITO, Luis Alfredo

This mural in Pereira, Colombia, was made in the memory of the children that were killed by Luis Garavito.

(AP Photo/Scott Dalton)

that he carried in his pocket. By the time of his arrest, investigative unit, told reporters, “We aren’t looking the book contained 140 entries.

here at any criminal genius, rather at an individual who On October 30, 1999, prosecutor Alfonso Gómez

has absolutely no qualms about killing.” Garavito had told assembled reporters that Garavito had confessed lured his young victims with offers of food and drink, his crimes in detail. Police had followed his directions then escorted them to isolated areas where they were to more graves, Gómez explained, raising the proven stripped, raped, killed, and mutilated. As in the case of body count to 114. While most of the slayings occurred Pakistan’s JAVED IQBAL and Houston’s DEAN ARNOLD

in the western state of Risaralda—with 41 victims CORLL, Garavito had preyed on “throwaway” children unearthed at Pereira and 27 more in neighboring Valle who lived on the streets and whose disappearance—if de Cauca—bodies had been found near more than 60

reported at all—was ignored by police. Garavito’s self-towns, in 11 of Colombia’s 32 provinces. While Colom-assessment was unsparing. “I was tortured and raped,”

bia had suffered 25,000 murders in 1999 alone, many he declared. “I was tied up and obliged to do things at still unsolved, Gómez called the child-murder manhunt 12 years of age. I became a monster. There was a supe-

“the most important investigation of this type ever car-rior being inside me.”

ried out” in the country. Apparently forgetting PEDRO

December 1999 brought the announcement that

ALONZO LÓPEZ, Gómez further claimed that Garavito’s Garavito’s murder tally had been raised from 140 to rampage “has no precedent in Colombia.”

182, allegedly including children murdered when he Psychologists examined Garavito in custody, tracing traveled through Ecuador at various times, but prosecu-his crimes to vicious CHILDHOOD TRAUMA. Their report tors in that nation filed no charges. On December 17 a described Garavito as “a solitary sadist” who was “sui-Colombian judge sentenced Garavito to 52 years in cidal, very depressed, regrets his actions, and is easily prison for killing one boy at Tunja in 1996 and raping angered.” Pablo González, chief of Colombia’s forensic another at Villavicencio in 1999. On January 31, 2000,
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GASKINS, Donald Henry, Jr.

he received a 36-year sentence in Pereira, and a judge in raped and strangled 78-year-old Mildred Borom the Huila Province gave him 55 years for two more mur-same morning.

ders on February 25, 2000. By May 28, 2000, cumula-By early March, police knew they were searching for tive sentences in from 11 courts raised his sentence to a black man in the string of homicides, and since his vic-835 years, but the pileup had no legal effect, since tims had been white, a threat of mounting racial vio-Colombian inmates serve a maximum of 60 years, lence dogged investigators on the job. They were regardless of their crimes and sentences.

distracted later in the month by threatening communications from another killer—self-styled “Chairman of the Forces of Evil”—who threatened to murder selected
GARY, Carlton

black women if the strangler was not swiftly appre-A black native of Columbus, Georgia, born December hended. Three deaths would be traced to the Chairman 15, 1952, Gary was blessed with a near-genius IQ, but before his arrest on April 4, but prosecution of the that gift of nature was cruelly balanced by the rigors of Stocking Strangler’s competition brought police no childhood and adolescence. Rejected by his father at an closer to their man. On April 20, the killer claimed his early age, Gary was malnourished as a child, and he final victim in Columbus, strangling 61-year-old Janet suffered at least one serious head trauma in elementary Cofer in her home, leaving the usual stocking knotted school, knocked cold in an accident that left him around her neck.

unconscious on the playground. A heavy drug abuser in A week later, on April 27, Greenville, South Car-his teens, he began logging arrests in 1966, his rap sheet olina, experienced the first in a series of armed rob-listing charges of robbery, arson, and assault before he beries by the “Steakhouse Bandit,” a gunman who reached his 18th birthday.

invaded restaurants near closing time. Eight months Gary surfaced in Albany, New York, during the

passed before Carlton Gary was arrested in nearby spring of 1970, in time for a series of rape-murders Gaffney following a similar holdup, and he confessed to targeting elderly women. In May, Marion Brewer was the entire series, drawing a sentence of 21 years in strangled with a pillow case in her Albany hotel prison for armed robbery. Transferred to a minimum-room, followed two months later by 85-year-old Nel-security prison at Columbia four years later, he escaped lie Farmer, slain in a nearby apartment. Gary was from custody on March 15, 1983.

arrested as a suspect in the latter case and he admitted Another 14 months would pass before Gary’s ulti-being on the scene, but he fingered an accomplice—

mate arrest, on May 3, 1984, at a motel in Albany, John Lee Williams—as the killer. Williams was con-Georgia. Held as a fugitive from South Carolina and victed and sentenced to prison on the basis of Gary’s linked to an October 1977 burglary in Columbus, Gary testimony, his verdict subsequently overturned after was charged with the Scheible, Thurmond, and

Gary recanted. Escaping prosecution for the murder, Woodruff murders on May 4. A jury convicted him on Gary was convicted of burglary, receiving stolen all counts in August 1986, deliberating for three hours property, and possession of drugs, drawing a term in before his penalty was fixed at death. He presently the Onondaga County Correction Institution at

awaits execution in Georgia’s electric chair.

Janesville, New York. He escaped from custody on August 22, 1977, and headed home to launch a oneman reign of terror.

GASKINS, Donald Henry, Jr.

On September 16, 60-year-old Ferne Jackson was Few observers would agree with Donald Gaskins’s raped, beaten, and strangled to death at her home in the claim that he was “born special and fortunate” in South Wynnton district of Columbus, found with a nylon Carolina on March 31, 1933. The runt of a litter born stocking knotted tight around her neck. The same MO

to an unwed mother named Parrott, Gaskins was

was demonstrated nine days later and a few blocks dis-known throughout his early life as “Pee Wee” or tant in the slaying of 71-year-old Jean Dimenstein. Flo-

“Junior Parrott,” hearing his true name for the first rence Scheible, age 89, was killed in identical fashion on time as a teenager, in court, when he was convicted of October 21, and 69-year-old Martha Thurmond died juvenile crimes and sentenced to a state reformatory. By the same way, two days later. On October 28, 74-year-that time, his mother had married one of Donald’s old Kathleen Woodruff was raped, beaten, and manu-numerous “step-daddies,” a brutal disciplinarian who ally strangled at home, her slayer forgetting the beat Donald and his half siblings “just for practice.”

traditional stocking in his haste to escape. Ruth Schwob Pee Wee was “pissed off” at girls from his earliest mem-survived the “Stocking Strangler’s” attack on February ory, unable to explain coherently the hatred he felt 12, 1978, triggering a bedside alarm, but the killer was toward females. Dropping out of school, he joined two determined, traveling a mere two blocks before he adolescent cohorts in a local crime wave that included
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GASKINS, Donald Henry, Jr.

numerous burglaries and at least one gang rape (of an Gaskins escaped in 1955 but was soon recaptured in accomplice’s younger sister). The spree ended when a Tennessee, now facing federal charges for driving a former classmate surprised Gaskins during a burglary stolen car across state lines. His three-year sentence on and survived a hatchet blow to the head, identifying that charge was set to run concurrently with his Car-him for the police.

olina prison time, and Gaskins was paroled in August Sentenced to reform school until his 18th birthday, 1961, with 20 dollars and a bus ticket back to Flo-Gaskins was first gang-raped in the lockup, then “prorence. Charged with the statutory rape of a 12-year-old tected” by an older boy who used him sexually and girl in 1962, Gaskins escaped through a courthouse passed him around to friends. Upon release in 1951, he window prior to trial and joined a traveling carnival, found work on a tobacco plantation, soon deciding but he was soon recaptured and sentenced to eight there was better money to be made from stealing the years in prison. He was paroled in November 1968 on crop and torching barns to cover his thefts. Arrested for the condition that he not return to Florence for at least ARSON and attempted murder in 1952 (after striking a two years.

woman with a hammer), he won acquittal on the first By that time, Gaskins was seething with rage, a blind charge and bargained the second down to assault and hatred of society in general and females in particular battery. His lawyer promised Gaskins 18 months in jail, which, he later said, afflicted him with physical pains but the judge handed down a five-year sentence, plus