The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (41 page)

Court rejected his automatic appeal on March 7, 1991, Four months later, on October 5, he was surprised whereupon the “Madman of Marshall Street” ordered once more while prowling the apartment of an army his attorneys to forego any further appeals. An execu-nurse, 27-year-old Lieutenant Evelyn Peterson. Heirens tion date was ultimately fixed for April 15, 1997, Heid-decked her and fled, leaving fingerprints behind, but nik insisting that he wanted to die on schedule, but his police failed to match them with the records of his ear-daughter intervened at the 11th hour, winning an indeflier arrests.

inite stay of execution while Heidnik’s sanity is reexam-On December 10, 1945, 33-year-old Frances Brown ined. Heidnik was executed by lethal injection on July emerged from her bathroom to find Heirens rifling her 6, 1999, pronounced dead at 10:29 P.M., less than an purse. As she began to scream, he shot her twice, then hour after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final fetched a kitchen knife to finish off the job. Dragging appeal.

his victim into the bathroom, Heirens tried in vain to wash her blood away, then left her draped across the tub, half-covered with a housecoat. Across one bed-HEIRENS, William George

room wall, in Brown’s own lipstick, Heirens wrote: On the surface, William Heirens seemed to have every

“For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot advantage. Born in November 1928, he was the only control myself.”

child of affluent parents in the Chicago suburb of Lin-Chicago police were still seeking the elusive “Lip-colnwood. His father, a steel company executive, stick Killer” on January 7, 1946, when Heirens invaded
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HENLEY, Elmer Wayne

the bedroom of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan, abducting the child and leaving a written demand for $20,000

ransom as a ruse to baffle detectives. Retreating to a nearby basement, Heirens strangled the child and dismembered her body with a hunting knife, wrapping the pieces in paper and dropping them into storm drains as he roamed the streets in early morning darkness.

The case was still unsolved on June 26, when police answered a prowler call on Chicago’s north side. Confronted with uniforms, Heirens drew a pistol and squeezed the trigger twice, his weapon misfiring each time. Undaunted, he began to grapple with the officers, struggling fiercely until he was cracked on the head with a flower pot.

In jail, under the influence of “truth serum,” the teenage killer blamed his crimes on an alter-ego,

“George Murman”—short for “Murder Man.” In

August 1946, his lawyers cut a deal with the state to save William—s life, accepting three consecutive terms of life imprisonment in exchange for a detailed confession. On the date of formal sentencing, September 5, Heirens tried to hang himself with a bedsheet but bungled the job and escaped without injury. In 1965, Heirens was placed on institutional parole for the Degnan slaying, but he still owed time for the Ross and Brown murders. A federal judge ordered his release in April 1983, citing William’s alleged rehabilitation, but the order was overturned on appeal by the state in February 1984. Rejected for parole some 30 times, Heirens remains in custody at this writing and has served more prison time than any other inmate in the history of Illi-Herman Mudgett prepares to kill his last two victims.

nois. Today, supported by a small but vocal group of (Author’s collection)

friends on the outside, he denies any role in the murders that sent him to prison, insisting that he was framed by corrupt police, pleading guilty to save his own life in the

“lynch atmosphere” of the times.

Bestia, killed multiple wives by means of aconite—a poison that he manually inserted into their vaginas during sex. Around the same time, Cicero accused one
HENLEY, Elmer Wayne

See CORLL, DEAN

Oppianicus of murdering victims who included his pregnant wife, two sons, a brother, his father-in-law, and others unnamed. Locusta, a female poisoner for
HISTORY of Serial Murder

hire, was publicly executed by order of Emperor In November 1983, Time magazine described serial Galba in 69 A.D. The following year, a defendant murderers as “a new breed of killer,” and while such named Asprenas was charged with murdering 130 vic-comments were routine in the 1980s, they were also tims. Some 400 years later, in fifth-century Yemen, grossly inaccurate. Some authors with a slightly better wealthy Zu Shenatir lured young boys to his home grasp of history profess to see the first serial killer in with offers of food and money, sodomizing them 19th-century London’s “JACK THE RIPPER,” but even before he tossed them to their deaths from an upstairs they are off the mark by more than two millennia.

window. His body count is unknown, but history The first recorded case of serial murder dates from records that Zu Shenatir was stabbed to death by an 331 B.C., when Roman authorities convicted 170

intended victim in his home.

lethal women of poisoning “countless” male victims An early example of CULT murder was seen in 11th-and blaming their deaths on the plague. Another century Persia (now Iran), where the Assassins, mem-Roman defendant, “BLUEBEARD” slayer Calpurnius bers of a Muslim splinter group, took their name from
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HISTORY of Serial Murder

the descriptive term hashashin (users of hashish). Assas-ERZSEBET BÁTHORY was convicted of torturing young sins viewed murder as a sacred duty to their god and women to death for personal amusement. French poi-earthly ruler—the “Old Man of the Mountains”—but soner Marie de Brinvilliers practiced her art on invalids their frequent use as mercenary hit men during the Cru-before switching to friends and relatives and was exe-sades has blurred the lines between slayings considered cuted for her crimes in 1676. Four years later, France holy work and those that were strictly business. Inas-was rocked by the “chambre ardente” scandal, impli-much as killers were dispatched to their assignments cating the king’s mistress, a self-styled witch, and a with elaborate rituals, including use of sex and psyche-rogue Catholic priest in the ritual murders of several delic drugs to generate “visions” of the paradise that hundred infants. In 1719, Italian authorities executed awaited faithful servants of the cult, there may have another female killer, La Tofania, on conviction of poi-been no real distinction on the part of those who did soning 600 victims.

the killing. The sect was theoretically destroyed in 1256

The European tradition of serial murder continued by Mongol invaders under Hulaku, grandson of

into the 19th century, with German defendant Gessina Genghis Khan, with some 12,000 members slain, but Gottfried beheaded in 1828, convicted of poisoning French observers noted remnants of the group surviving 20-odd victims since 1815. In England, “resurrection-into the early 19th century.

ists” Burke and Hare soon tired of robbing graves for It may be sheer coincidence that the “demise” of the medical specimens, killing 11 persons before they were Assassins coincided with the birth of yet another homi-captured in 1828. An Austrian beggar named Swiatek cidal cult, this time in India. Dating from the early 13th fed at least six murdered children to his hungry family century, the sect called
thag
—Hindi for “deceiver”—

in 1850, and French cook Helene Jegado was executed saw its members labeled “Thugs” in a corruption of the a year later, accused of poisoning 60 persons over two label they selected for themselves. Cultists were also decades. Joseph Phillipe butchered French prostitutes known as
Phansigars,
after the Hindi word for in the 1860s, and “Jack the Ripper” carried the game

“noose,” since they preferred to strangle victims with to London 20 years later, inspiring a rash of imitators the scarf each member wore around his waist. Thugs in Moscow, Vienna, Nicaragua—even Texas—by the worshiped Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, and end of the decade. Amelia Dyer, the British “BABY

aside from random homicide, their rituals also incorpo-FARMER,” was convicted in 1896 of killing at least 15

rated masochistic elements in which devotees were infants. The following year, French necrophile JOSEPH

flogged and mutilated by their priests or hoisted aloft VACHER was executed for slaughtering 14 victims over with hooks in their flesh, while the ecstatic audience three years’ time.

chanted, “Victory to Mother Kali.” It is impossible to In the United States, the bloodthirsty Harpe brothers say how many victims were annihilated by Thugs in the terrorized the Wilderness Trail in the 1790s, gutting 600 years before they were suppressed by British mili-their victims and dumping the rock-laden corpses into tary force. Colonial records indicate that some 4,500

rivers and lakes to avoid discovery. John Dahmen, con-Thugs were convicted of various crimes between 1830

demned for two Indiana murders in 1820, confessed and 1848, with at least 110 sentenced to death for mur-several others in Europe and America before he was der. One of those, Thuggee Buhram, single-handedly hanged. New England slayer Samuel Green was cred-disposed of 931 victims before his arrest in 1840, and ited with “numerous” murders when he went to the British authorities estimated that cultists accounted for gallows in 1822. Four decades later, the Espinoza some 40,000 murders in the year 1812 alone. Assuming brothers sought vengeance for the Mexican War by that to be a record year, even 10 times the normal body slaughtering 26 Anglos across the Southwest. The mur-count, it is apparent that the thugs must still have derous Bender clan dispatched at least a dozen Kansas slaughtered several million victims during their six cen-travelers in 1872–73, fleeing the state one jump ahead turies of active hunting.

of vigilante justice. The years 1875–76 brought grim In Europe, meanwhile, serial killers emerged from news to Boston, with church sexton Thomas Piper con-the ranks of nobles and peasants alike. GILLES DE RAIS, victed of killing three women, and teenager Jesse the richest man in France and a confidant to Joan of Pomeroy sentenced to life for the torture-slayings of Arc, was executed in 1440 for slaying upward of 100

neighborhood children. Stephen Richards, the

children in perverted sex-and-magic rituals. Margaret

“Nebraska Fiend,” murdered at least nine victims Davey, an English cook, was boiled alive in 1542 for before his arrest in 1879. In Chicago, sadist Herman poisoning a series of employers without apparent Mudgett built a custom-tailored “murder castle” to dis-motive. At least five cannibal killers were prosecuted as pose of female visitors to the 1893 World’s Fair; con-

“werewolves” in France and Germany between the victed of one murder, he confessed to 26 others before years 1573 and 1590. In 1611, Hungarian Countess he was hanged. New England nurse Jane Toppan

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HOCH, Johann Otto

started poisoning her patients in 1880; at her trial, two in the grim competition by Russia and South Africa, decades later, she recited the names of 31 remembered where social and political upheavals coupled with victims, while her prosecutors placed the final tally relaxation of longstanding news censorship produced a closer to 100.

glut of new serial murder reports at the turn of the 21st Ironically, considering the present state of public century.

anguish over crime, America owes much of its frontier folklore—and a significant part of its modern character—to pathological killers who have been transformed
HOCH, Johann Otto

into heroes (or, at least, legends) by a historical twist of Born John Schmidt in 1855, at Horweiler, Germany, fate. Mountain man John Johnston (
Jeremiah Johnson
Hoch immigrated to the United States as a young man in the Hollywood rendition) killed scores of American and dropped his surname in favor of assorted pseudo-Indians on sight and ate their livers raw as a gesture of nyms, frequently taking the name of his most recent vic-contempt. Henry McCarty, aka William Bonney or Billy tim. At age 51, Chicago police would dub him

the Kid, killed less than half the victims claimed for him

“America’s greatest mass murderer,” but statistics in 19th-century dime novels, but he was still a remorse-remain vague in this puzzling case. We know that Hoch less cop-killer and feudist. Alcoholic Clay Allison once bigamously married at least 55 women between 1890

murdered a bunkmate for snoring. The truly prolific and 1905, bilking all of them for cash and slaying killers, like Bill Longley and John Wesley Hardin (40

many, but the final number of his murder victims is a known victims, “not counting Mexicans”), were quick-matter of conjecture. Sensational reports credit Hoch trigger racists who slaughtered blacks, Hispanics, and with 25 to 50 murders, but police were only certain of Indians at the drop of an imaginary insult, never hesitat-15, and in the end he went to trial (and to the gallows) ing to shoot a lawman in the back if the opportunity for a single homicide.