The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (39 page)

Two more blacks would be killed, the author promised, if the murderer was still at large on September 1.

Police could find no record of a Gail Jackson missing from Columbus, but they did discover that a black prostitute, Brenda Gail Faison, had disappeared from a local tavern on February 28. A second letter to the chief, arriving March 13, suggested that a ransom of

“Acid Bath Murderer” John Haigh in custody (Wide World API) $10,000 might secure the hostage’s release if homicide
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HANSEN, Robert C.

murder and attempted extortion on April 5. He confessed to the murders in custody but later recanted and claimed innocence. A civilian jury convicted him of Brenda Faison’s murder on December 16, 1978, voting the death penalty (plus five years on the extortion charge). Convicted of the Hickman and Thirkield murders at a subsequent court-martial, Hance drew a sentence of life imprisonment at hard labor. He was executed in Georgia’s electric chair on March 31, 1994.

HANSEN, Robert C.

Born at Pocahontas, Idaho, in 1940, Hansen was the son of a Danish immigrant who followed in his father’s footsteps as a baker. In his youth, Hansen was skinny and painfully shy, afflicted with a stammer and a severe case of acne that left him permanently scarred. (In later years he would recall his face as “one big pimple.”) Shunned by the attractive girls in school, he grew up hating them and nursing fantasies of cruel revenge.

Hansen was married in 1961 and divorced within the year, following his first arrest on charges of arson.

Six years later, he wed another Pocahontas native and she followed him to Anchorage, Alaska, where he opened his own bakery and prospered in a new land, safely removed from the painful memories of childhood and adolescence. Hansen took flying lessons and purchased his own private plane, earning a reputation as an outdoorsman and hunter who stalked Dahl sheep, William Hance, “Chairman of the Forces of Evil” (Author’s wolves, and bear with a rifle or bow and arrow.

collection)

In 1972 Hansen was arrested twice more, charged with the abduction and attempted rape of a housewife (who escaped his clutches) and the rape of a prostitute detectives could not find their man before the deadline.

(who did not). Serving less than six months on a When police made no reply, a third note was delivered reduced charge, he was picked up again for shoplifting two weeks later, claiming that a second hostage named a chainsaw in 1976. Convicted of larceny, he was sen-

“Irene” had been abducted, scheduled to die on June 1.

tenced to five years in prison, but the verdict was over-Detectives learned that 32-year-old Irene Thirkield was turned on appeal, the Alaska Supreme Court regarding indeed missing, last seen on March 16 in the company his sentence as “too harsh.”

of an unnamed black soldier.

Unknown to local authorities, Hansen’s visible activ-In the predawn hours of March 30, 1978, an anony-ities were only the tip of a very lethal iceberg. Accord-mous phone call led MPs to a shallow grave, just off the ing to his subsequent confession, Hansen preyed military reservation, where they uncovered the remains consistently on women in the decade between 1973 and of Brenda Faison, her face and skull crushed into pulp 1983, murdering 17 and raping 30 more who survived.

by a savage beating. Four days later, another call As targets, he selected prostitutes, nude dancers, and directed CID agents to Maertens Range at Fort Ben-the like, transporting them by airplane to the wilderness ning, and Irene Thirkield’s headless body—plus scat-outside of Anchorage, where they were forced to act tered skull fragments—was found hidden behind a pile out Hansen’s private fantasies. “If they came across of logs.

with what I wanted,” he explained, “we’d come back to On April 4, an officer reviewing tapes of the anony-town. I’d tell them if they made any trouble for me, I mous phone calls recognized the distinctive voice, fin-had connections and would have them put in jail for gering a black 26-year-old private, William Hance, as being prostitutes.” Resistance—or demands for pay-the caller. An ammunition handler for the 10th ment after sex—resulted in assorted victims being mur-Artillery, Hance was arrested that day, charged with dered, sometimes with the ghoulish touch of Hansen
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HARVEY, Donald

stripping them naked and stalking them like animals, still dangling from one wrist as she ran for help. Her making the kill with a hunting knife or his favorite big-charges brought Hansen to the attention of task force game rifle.

detectives, and he ultimately confessed to a series of 17

The first indication of a killer at large came in 1980, murders, including that of Paula Golding, found by when construction workers unearthed a woman’s

hunters in September 1983. On a flying tour of the remains near Eklutna Road. Stabbed to death in 1979, wilderness, Hansen began pointing out graves to state she was never identified and was dubbed “Eklutna troopers and they recovered 11 bodies over the next Annie” by police assigned to work the case. Later that eight months. Several victims remained anonymous, year, the corpse of Joanna Messina was found in a their names unknown even to Hansen, but others were gravel pit near Seward, and a special task force was identified as Rox Easland, Lisa Futrell, Andrea Altiery, organized to probe the killings. Topless dancer Sherry Angela Fetter, Teresa Watson, and Delynn Frey—all Morrow had been dead 10 months when hunters found reported missing from the Anchorage area during her body in a shallow grave beside the Knik River, but Hansen’s reign of terror.

the discovery brought authorities no closer to a solution On February 18, 1984, Robert Hansen pled guilty in their case.

on four counts of first-degree murder in the cases of In 1983 Hansen decided to save time and energy by

“Eklutna Annie,” Joanna Messina, Sherry Morrow, and bringing his victims home. He called it his “summer Paula Golding. Charges were dismissed in the other project,” laying the groundwork by packing his wife cases, but it scarcely mattered, as Hansen was sentenced and two children off on a European vacation. Next, he to a term of life imprisonment plus 461 years.

began running ads in a local singles newspaper, seeking women to “join me in finding what’s around the next bend, over the next hill.”

HARVEY, Donald

On June 13, 1983, a 17-year-old captive escaped A homosexual and self-styled occultist, Don Harvey from Hansen en route to his airplane hangar, handcuffs attached himself to the medical profession at age 18, working as an orderly at Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky, from May 1970 through March 1971.

In 1987, Harvey would confess to killing off at least a dozen patients in his 10 months on the job, smothering two with pillows and hooking 10 others up to near-empty oxygen tanks, all in an effort to “ease their suffering.” Arrested for burglary on March 31, he pled guilty to a reduced charge of petty theft the next day, escaping with a $50 fine. The judge recommended psychiatric treatment for his “troubled condition,” but Harvey chose the U.S. Air Force instead, serving 10

months in uniform before he was prematurely discharged in March 1972, on unspecified grounds.

Back home in Kentucky, Harvey was twice committed to the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center in Lexington, from July 16 to August 25 and again from September 17 to October 17. His mother ascribed the committals to mental disorders, with Harvey kept in restraints, and his lawyers would later refer to a bungled suicide attempt. The recipient of 21 electroshock-therapy treatments, Harvey emerged from the VA hospital with no visible improvement in his morbid condition.

Concealing his record, Harvey found work as a part-time nurse’s aide at Cardinal Hill Hospital in Lexington between February and August 1973. In June he added a second nursing job, at Lexington’s Good Samaritan Hospital, remaining in that position through January Robert Hansen poses with a mountain goat he killed with 1974. (One of his lovers in Lexington, Harvey later a bow and arrow. (Wide World API)

said, was a local mortician’s assistant who also enjoyed
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HAYDON, Mark

having sex with corpses after visiting hours at the As Harvey played the numbers game with prosecu-funeral home.) Between August 1974 and September tors, adding victims to the tune of 52, then 80-plus, his 1975 he worked first as a telephone operator in Lexing-mental state was questioned, and psychiatric tests were ton, then moved on to a job as a clerk at St. Luke’s Hos-performed and scrutinized by experts. A spokesman for pital in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. He kept his killing urge the Cincinnati prosecutor’s office said, “This man is in check somehow, but it became increasingly difficult sane, competent, but is a compulsive killer. He builds to manage, finally driving him away from home, across up tension in his body, so he kills people.” Harvey, for the state line to Cincinnati, Ohio.

his part, insisted that most of the murders were From September 1975 through July 1985, Harvey

“mercy” killings, while admitting that some—including held a variety of jobs at the Cincinnati VA Medical attacks on friends and acquaintances outside of work—

Center, working as a nursing assistant, a housekeeping had been done “out of spite.” In televised interviews, aide, a cardiac-catheterization technician, and an Donald discussed his fascination with black magic, autopsy assistant. In the latter position, he sometimes pointedly refusing to discuss his views on Satanism, but stole tissue samples from the hospital morgue, taking authorities were treated to a sketch of his makeshift them home “for study.” On the side, he murdered at altar.

least 15 patients, supplementing his previous methods On August 18, 1987, Harvey pled guilty in Cincin-with an occasional dose of poison, once joking with nati on 24 counts of aggravated murder, four counts of ward nurses after a patient’s death that “I got rid of attempted murder, and one count of felonious assault.

that one for you.” Nor were Harvey’s victims limited to A 25th murder plea, added four days later, earned him a suffering patients. Fuming at neighbor Diane Alexander total of four consecutive life sentences, requiring Har-after a quarrel, he laced her beverage with hepatitis vey to serve at least 80 years before he is considered for serum, nearly killing her before the infection was diag-parole. (For good measure, the court also levied nosed and treated by physicians.

$270,000 in fines against Harvey, with no realistic hope On July 18, 1985, Harvey was caught leaving work of collecting a penny.)

with a suspicious satchel: inside, security guards found Moving on to Kentucky, Harvey confessed to a

a .38-caliber pistol, hypodermic needles, surgical scis-dozen Marymount slayings on September 7, 1987, sors and gloves, a cocaine spoon, two books of occult entering a formal guilty plea on nine counts of murder lore, and a biography of serial killer Charles Sobhraj.

that November. In breaking JOHN WAYNE GACY’s

Cited by federal agents for bringing a weapon into the record for accumulated victims, Harvey earned

VA facility, Harvey was fined $50 and forced to resign another eight life terms plus 20 years, but he was still from his job.

not finished. Back in Cincinnati during February Seven months later, in February 1986, Harvey was 1988, he entered guilty pleas on three more homicides hired as a part-time nurse’s aide at Cincinnati’s Drake and three attempted murders, drawing three life sen-Memorial Hospital, later working his way up to a full-tences plus three terms of seven to 25 years on the lat-time position. In 13 months, before his ultimate arrest, ter charges. With 37 confirmed murder victims (and he murdered at least 23 more patients, disconnecting confessions nearly tripling that body count), Harvey life-support equipment or injecting them with mixtures holds the official record as America’s most prolific ser-of arsenic, cyanide, and a petroleum-based cleanser.