The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (36 page)

Gwen Graham, meanwhile, had gone to work at

Gwendolyn Graham (Author’s collection)

Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, keeping in touch with Cathy on the telephone.

Grand Rapids police were skeptical of Ken Wood’s story at first. Some 40 patients had died at Alpine Manor in the first quarter of 1987, all listed as natural deaths, but on reflection eight cases seemed to stand out. Three of those were finally eliminated by detectives, leaving a victim list that included 60-year-old Marguerite Chambers, 89-year-old Edith Cole, 95-year-old Myrtle Luce, 79-year-old Mae Mason, and 74-year-old Belle Burkhard. In no case was there any scientific evidence of murder, but Ken Wood’s statement and the second thoughts of staffers at the home were strong enough to make a case.

Both women were arrested in December 1988, Wood held without bond in Grand Rapids on charges of Catherine Wood\\ (Author’s collection)

killing victims Cook and Chambers. In Texas, where rumors of the Michigan investigation had already cost Gwen her job, a $1 million bond was sufficient to keep The homicides at Alpine Manor spanned a three-her in jail. A brief extradition fight grew tedious and month period, from January to the early part of April Graham soon waived the legalities, returning to face 1987. Gwen’s first plan, the MURDER game, fell through charges on her own volition.

when her selected targets put up such a fight that she The Alpine Manor staff was “overwhelmed” by the was forced to let them live. Despite her bungled efforts, arrests, though some remembered Gwen as “unpre-there were no complaints on file. Both Wood and Gra-dictable,” remarking casually on Graham’s quick tem-ham earned exemplary reports from their superiors and per. Former nurse’s aides Deborah Kidder, Nancy were “well liked by patients” on the ward.

Harris, Lisa Lynch, Dawn Male, and Russell Thatcher In the future, Gwen decided, she would only pick on reevaluated the “sick jokes” and souvenirs they had women who were too far gone for self-defense. Her lover managed to ignore while lives were on the line. At trial, was the lookout, standing by where she could watch the all five would testify against Gwen Graham for the murder and the nurse’s station all at once, diverting any prosecution, with Cathy Wood emerging as the state’s member of the staff who strayed too close while Graham star witness overnight.

snuffed her chosen victim with a washcloth pressed A September 1989 guilty plea to charges of second-across the nose and mouth. Sometimes the sheer excite-degree murder spared Wood from life imprisonment, ment of a killing was too much, and they retired immedi-earning her a sentence of 20 to 40 years. In return for ately to an empty room for sex while memories were that relative leniency, she took the stand against Gra-fresh. In several cases Gwen kept SOUVENIRS—an anklet ham three months later, thereby sealing her ex-lover’s or a handkerchief, a brooch, a set of dentures.

fate. Aside from the five victims murdered, said Cathy, Murder is a risky business, but the lethal lovers Gwen had tried to suffocate at least five others who sur-seemed to thrive on danger, boasting of their body vived. Wood’s ultimate confession to her husband had count to colleagues who dismissed the comments as been prompted less by guilt than fear that Graham
100

GREENWOOD, Vaughn Orrin

would continue killing in her new position at the Texas been dead several days when hotel maid discovered his hospital, this time with infants as her chosen prey.

body—a bayonet protruding from his chest—on Janu-

“When she was killing people at Alpine and I didn’t ary 17, 1975. The final Skid Row victim, 49-year-old do anything,” Wood told the court, “that was bad Samuel Suarez, was also killed indoors, his body found enough. But when she would call me and say how much in a sleazy fifth-floor hotel room.

she wanted to smash a baby, I had to stop her some-Inexplicably, the killer switched his hunting ground how. I knew she was working in a hospital there. She to Hollywood on January 29, stabbing 45-year-old said she wanted to take one of the babies and smash it George Frias to death in his own apartment. Two days up against a window. I had to do something. I didn’t later a cash register mechanic, 43-year-old Clyde Hay, care about myself anymore.”

was found in his Hollywood home, his body marked by Graham’s attorney tried to portray Wood as a jealous, the Slasher’s characteristic mutilations.

vindictive liar, setting his client up as “a sacrificial lamb,”

By that time, L.A. detectives had formed a mental but jurors disagreed. They deliberated for seven hours picture of their suspect, described as a white male in his before convicting Gwen on five counts of first-degree late twenties or early thirties, six feet tall and 190

murder and one count of conspiracy to commit first-pounds, with shoulder-length stringy blond hair. A psy-degree murder. On November 2, 1989, Graham was sen-chiatric profile published on the morning of Clyde tenced to six life terms without possibility of parole.

Hay’s murder described the killer as a “sexually impotent coward, venting his own feeling of worthlessness on hapless derelicts and down-and-outers. . . . He
GREENWOOD, Vaughn Orrin

strongly identifies with the derelicts and drifters he kills, The first of southern California’s “Skid Row” slayers and we think he’s trying to resolve his own inner con-launched his one-man war in 1964, taking a decade off flicts by turning his wrath and hatred outward.” The before he returned to terrorize Los Angeles with nine Slasher was further described as a friendless, poorly more murders committed over the space of two

educated loner, probably homosexual, with an unspeci-months. Victims were ritually posed by the slasher in fied physical deformity.

death, with salt sprinkled around their bodies and cups On February 2 a prowler invaded the Hollywood

of blood standing nearby, their wounds surrounded by home of William Graham, assaulting him with a

markings of unknown significance. Police recruited hatchet before houseguest Kenneth Richter intervened psychiatric “experts” to create a profile of the killer, and both men plunged through a plate-glass window.

publishing assorted sketches of their suspect, but the The attacker fled on foot, stopping next at the home of case was ultimately solved by accident, embarrassing actor Burt Reynolds and carelessly dropping a letter—

authorities whose profiles of the murderer were sadly addressed to himself—in the driveway. Police picked up off the mark.

Vaughn Greenwood, charging him with counts of bur-The “Skid Row Slasher’s” first known victim was an glary and assault, their search of his residence netting a aging transient, David Russell, found on the library steps pair of cufflinks stolen from victim George Frias. A year with his throat cut and numerous stab wounds on later, on January 23, 1976, Greenwood was indicted on November 13, 1964. The following day, 67-year-old Ben-11 counts of murder in the Slasher crimes.

jamin Hornberg was killed in the second-floor restroom Unfortunately for police, the “suspect profile” was a of his seedy hotel, throat slashed from ear to ear, numer-stumbling block to their solution of the case. For open-ous stab wounds marking his head and upper torso.

ers, Vaughn Greenwood was a 32-year-old black man, Police saw a pattern of sorts, but it seemed to lead lacking any obvious deformities, and from the testi-nowhere, and the early victims were forgotten by mony of acquaintances he was not impotent. He was a December 1974 when the killer returned with a

loner and a homosexual, who finished seventh grade vengeance. On December 1 he murdered 46-year-old before he fled his Pennsylvania foster home and Charles Jackson, an alcoholic drifter, on the very spot thumbed a ride to California. Most of his adult life was where David Russell had been slain a decade earlier.

spent drifting from Chicago to the West Coast and back Moses Yakanac, a 47-year-old Alaska Native, was again, riding the rails and earning his keep as a migrant knifed to death in a skid row alley on December 8, and farmworker. In Chicago, during 1966, he had

54-year-old Arthur Dahlstedy was slain outside an demanded cash from 70-year-old Mance Porter follow-abandoned building three days later. On December 22, ing a sexual encounter in the latter’s skid row apart-42-year-old David Perez was found in some shrubbery ment. When Porter refused, Greenwood slashed his adjacent to the Los Angeles Public Library. Casimir throat and stabbed him repeatedly with two different Strawinski, 58, was found butchered in his hotel room knives, spending five and a half years in prison on con-on January 9, and 46-year-old Robert Shannahan had viction for aggravated battery.

101

GRETZLER, Douglas, and STEELMAN, William Luther While awaiting trial on murder charges, Greenwood Steelman had compiled a lengthy record of arrests was convicted of assaulting William Graham and Ken-around Lodi, California, serving prison time on con-neth Richter, drawing a prison term of 32 years to life.

viction of forgery. He recognized a kindred criminal On December 30, 1976, the defendant was convicted soul on sight, and soon the men became inseparable, on nine counts of first-degree murder, jurors failing to trolling the Southwest in their search for victims, steal-reach a verdict in the case of victims David Russell and ing to finance their travels and Steelman’s heroin Charles Jackson. Greenwood was sentenced to life on addiction.

January 19, 1977, the judge recommending that he On October 28, 1973, they invaded a house trailer never be released because “His presence in any commu-near Mesa, Arizona, binding 19-year-old Robert Rob-nity would constitute a menace.”

bins and 18-year-old Katherine Mestiter, then shooting both victims to death. Drifting into Tucson, they killed 19-year-old Gilbert Sierra and dumped his body in the
GRETZLER, Douglas, and STEELMAN, William

desert, doubling back to murder Michael and Patricia
Luther

Sandberg in their Tucson apartment. On the Supersti-A native of the Bronx, New York, born in 1951, Doug tion Desert, Gretzler and Steelman found victim num-Gretzler was drifting aimlessly around the country ber six, leaving his body in the sleeping bag where he when he met 28-year-old Willie Steelman on October was shot to death. In Phoenix the killers abducted 11, 1973. Once committed to a mental institution, Michael Adshade and Ken Unrein, both 22, dumping Douglas Gretzler in custody (Wide World API)

102

GRETZLER, Douglas, and STEELMAN, William Luther William Steelman is arrested (Wide World API)

their nude corpses in a creek bed near Oakdale, Califor-to find him. Jenkins started a search of her own, stop-nia, rolling north in their stolen van.

ping short when she found Walter and Joanne Parkin in Authorities in Arizona had already issued warrants the master bedroom, shot to death execution-style.

for Gretzler and Steelman by the time they reached Vic-Deputies responding to the call found seven more tor, California, 40 miles south of Sacramento, on bodies jammed into the bedroom’s walk-in closet. Vic-November 6. Walter and Joanne Parkin went bowling tims had been gagged with neckties, bound with nylon that night, leaving their two children—11-year-old Lisa cord—secured with as many as six knots in places—

and nine-year-old Robert—in the care of 18-year-old before they were massacred. In all, medical examiners neighbor Debra Earl. In the course of the evening, would remove 25 slugs from nine bodies, plus one stray Debra’s parents dropped by to visit, along with brother from Bob Parkin’s pillow.