The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (42 page)

presented itself. Even those who served sporadically as Hoch’s first—and only legal—wife was Christine marshals habitually kept an eye out for “easy pickings”

Ramb, who bore him three children before he deserted in the form of an unguarded stagecoach or bank. Their her in 1887. By February 1895, as “Jacob Huff,” he latter-day deification through FICTION AND FILM has lit-had surfaced in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he won tle or nothing to do with the facts of their everyday lives.

the heart and hand of Caroline Hoch, a middle-aged In this century, serial killers have provided the media widow. They were married in April, and Caroline fell with some of its gorier headlines. LEONARD NELSON, the gravely ill three months later. Called to her beside, Rev.

Bible-quoting strangler, raped and murdered landladies Hermann Haas watched “Huff” administer a potion from coast to coast in the 1920s before a Canadian that Haas believed to be poison, but the minister took hangman’s rope cut short his career. Cleveland’s “MAD

no action and Caroline died days later in agony. “Huff”

BUTCHER” was a 1930s sensation, outwitting Eliot Ness cleaned out her $900 bank account, sold their house, and dissecting his 16 victims so expertly that 10 of the collected $2,500 in life insurance benefits—and van-skulls were never found. National Guard units were ished. Suicide was suspected, with his clothing, his used to track Charles Starkweather, random slayer of watch, and a note found on the bank of the Ohio River, 11 victims in 1957–58, and “Sex Beast” MELVIN REES

but no body was ever recovered.

appalled the nation with his grisly murders of eight vic-Hoch kept his latest victim’s surname—described by tims in Maryland and Virginia two years later. By the prosecutors as “a warped keepsake stored in an evil time ALBERT DESALVO confessed to a series of 13 mur-mind”—and moved on to Chicago, finding work in the ders in Boston, escaping prosecution with a crafty plea meat-packing plants when he was not engaged with the bargain in 1967, authorities had recognized the early business of swindling women. Selecting his victims from warning signs of what one FBI spokesman has called newspaper “lonely-hearts” columns, Hoch went merrily

“an epidemic of homicidal mania.”

about his business until 1898, when he was sentenced to And in fact, while serial murder is anything but a year in jail for defrauding a used-furniture dealer.

“new,” the numbers of killers and victims
have
Police Inspector George Shippy also suspected Hoch of increased dramatically in recent years. Between 1900

bigamy, and murder was added to the list upon receipt and 1959, American police recorded an average of two of a letter from Rev. Haas in West Virginia. Shippy serial murder cases per year nationwide. By 1969, started digging into Hoch’s background, turning up authorities were logging six cases per year, a figure that reports of dozens of missing or deserted women from nearly tripled in the 1970s. By 1985, new serial killers San Francisco to New York City, but solid evidence were being reported at an average rate of three per remained elusive. In Wheeling, Caroline Hoch was month, a rate that remained fairly constant through exhumed in a search for arsenic traces, but surgeons 2005. America, meanwhile, was challenged for primacy found the body gutted, all her vital organs missing.

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HOMOSEXUALITY and Serial Murder

Hoch was released at the end of his jail term, chalk-arguments to the contrary, there is no evidence of ele-ing up another 15 wives before his ultimate arrest in vated insanity rates among homosexuals, nor do they 1905. Aware that Shippy and others were charting his commit a disproportionate number of crimes (except, movements, Hoch killed more often and more swiftly perhaps, in jurisdictions where homosexual activity is now, relying on primitive embalming fluids—with their itself criminalized).

high arsenic content—to cover any traces of poison in That said, homosexuality
does
play a significant role his victims. On December 5, 1904, he married Marie in some cases of serial murder. It is not true, as stated in Walcker in Chicago, killing her almost at once. Wasting a
Penthouse
magazine article (March 1998) that some no time, Hoch proposed to his new sister-in-law on the 45 percent of American serial killers in the past quarter-night of Marie’s death, and they were married six days century were identified as homosexuals. The author of after the hasty funeral. Amelia Hoch bestowed a gift of that piece based his calculation on “the roughly 80

$750 on her husband, prompting him to vanish with known serial slayers of the past 25 years in the United the cash, and she immediately summoned the police.

States,” concluding that 36 of them (all but 10

Modern science was Hoch’s downfall. His late wife’s unnamed) were gay or lesbian. In fact, America pro-mortician employed a new embalming fluid with no duced some
800
serial killers during the decades in taint of arsenic. Medical examiners found poison in question, 90 percent of them ignored by the author in Marie Walcker’s system and Hoch was charged with his quest to make a point. Analysis of a more complete her murder, his photograph mailed to every major sampling indicates that gay serial killers driven by sex-American newspaper. In New York City, a middle-aged ual urges account for roughly 5 percent of all known landlady recognized “Henry Bartels,” a new tenant cases where the killers (or their MOTIVES) are identified.

who had proposed marriage to her 20 minutes after Ironically, while gay serial killers represent a tiny renting a room. At his arrest, police seized a revolver, minority of the broader group, their ranks include some several wedding rings with their inscriptions filed off, of the most prolific slayers in modern times. DONALD

and a fountain pen filled with arsenic—which Hoch HARVEY, convicted of 37 murders (and guilty, by his claimed was intended for himself, a foiled attempt at own admission, of some 50 others), leads in the official suicide.

body count, closely followed by JOHN GACY (33 convic-Chicago journalists dubbed Hoch the “Stockyard tions), DEAN CORLL (27 dead), JUAN CORONA (25), and Bluebeard,” trumpeting the speculative details of his PATRICK KEARNEY (28 confessed, 21 convictions). JEF-criminal career. At trial he whistled, hummed, and FREY DAHMER seems almost an underachiever in such twirled his thumbs throughout the prosecution’s case, company, with 17 victims. Convictions lag behind apparently well pleased with his position in the lime-known body counts in other cases: William Bonin was light. On conviction of Marie Walcker’s murder, he was executed for 10 of California’s 21 “FREEWAY MUR-sentenced to hang, telling the court, “It’s all over with DERS”; “Scorecard Killer” RANDY KRAFT stands con-Johann. It serves me right.” Mounting the gallows on victed of 16 homicides and suspected of 51 more; OTTIS

February 23, 1906, Hoch reverted to a claim of inno-TOOLE was ultimately sentenced for six murders in cence, declaring, “I am done with this world. I have Florida and one in West Virginia, but police believe he done with everybody.” As the trap was sprung, a local claimed more than 100 victims in company with side-newsman quipped, “Yes, Mr. Hoch, but the question kick HENRY LUCAS; LARRY EYLER was sentenced to die remains:
What
have you done with everybody?”

for only one of his 23 murders. In England, gay ex-Part of the solution was unearthed in 1935 when policeman DENNIS NILSEN slaughtered 15 men and kept human bones were found inside the wall of a Chicago their bodies in his home for “company.”

house once occupied by Hoch. It was a meager bit of Homosexual slayers clearly have no monopoly on evidence, the victim unidentified, and Johann’s body violence, but it is true that their crimes often display count, the names and number of his murdered wives, extremes of “overkill” and mutilation. Dismemberment will probably remain a mystery forever.

is almost routine in such cases, exemplified by Kearney’s
See also
“BLUEBEARD”

“trash bag” murders in California and the simultaneous

“bag murders” committed by Paul Bateson in New York (which inspired the movie
Cruising,
with Al Pacino). On
HOMOSEXUALITY and Serial Murder

balance, it seems fair to say that while homosexuals Long regarded as a sin or disease in Judeo-Christian sometimes fall prey to “gay bashing” violence by big-society, homosexuality and lesbianism are today widely oted “straights,” they are more likely to be murdered by regarded (at least in liberal circles) as an alternate sexu-another homosexual than in a random hate crime.

ality, perhaps genetically ingrained, presumably beyond One myth dispelled by time and weight of evidence is the individual’s conscious choice or control. Religious the presumption, common in the West as recently as
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HOSPITAL for Sick Children (Toronto)

World War II, that male homosexuals are somehow soup. Administrators had no explanation for the inci-more likely to commit sadistic murders of women and dent, and rumors flourished of a “phantom” or a children. In fact, while some rare specimens like Ottis

“maniac” stalking the hospital corridors.

Toole kill indiscriminately, without regard to age, race, A preliminary hearing in the case of Susan Nelles or gender, gay killers overwhelmingly prefer same-sex opened on July 11, 1982, with prosecutors citing 16

victims, while most female victims of serial murder are other “carbon copy” murders in addition to the four killed by heterosexual men. Multiple murders of chil-already charged. Four months later, on May 21, the dren, meanwhile, are chiefly committed by pedophiles pending charges were unconditionally dismissed, the or parents (in which case mothers are predominant).

presiding judge describing Nelles as “an excellent
See also
PARAPHILIA; SEX CRIMES

nurse” with “an excellent record.” At the same time, he noted that five of the hospital deaths were apparently murders, committed by persons unknown.

HOSPITAL for Sick Children (Toronto)

Fresh out of suspects, the state launched its first judi-Between June 1980 and March 1981, the cardiac ward cial probe of the case on May 25, requesting assistance at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children experienced a from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control traumatic 616 percent leap in infant mortality, with the four months later. CDC’s report on 36 submitted cases number of actual deaths pegged between 21 and 43

called 18 deaths “suspicious,” with seven listed as babies in various police and media reports. The first probable homicides; another 10 cases were “consistent”

“suspicious” death was that of 18-day-old Laura with deliberate digoxin poisoning, but there was insuffi-Woodstock, lost on June 30, 1980. Two months later, cient evidence for a definitive conclusion.

after 20 deaths, a group of nurses on the ward voiced A new judicial inquiry was ordered on April 21, their concern to resident cardiologists, and a fruitless 1983, and Gary Murphy, six months old, died on the investigation was launched on September 5, in the inter-cardiac ward two days later, his passing notable for est of resolving “morale problems.”

“elevated digoxin levels” discovered in postmortem Still, the deaths continued, and on March 12, 1981, testing. Murphy’s death was excluded from the “offi-a staff physician aired his personal suspicions in a concial” list when hearings began on June 21, with testi-versation with Toronto’s coroner. An autopsy of the lat-mony pointing vaguely toward a different suspect on est victim, 27-day-old Kevin Garnett, found 13 times the staff. By February 1984, cardiac nurses were voicing the normal level of digoxin—a drug used to regulate suspicions against Phyllis Trayner, one reporting that heart rhythm, itself fatal if taken in too large a dose. On she saw Trayner inject infant Allana Miller’s IV bottle March 21, following more deaths and the discovery of with an unknown drug three hours before the baby died elevated digoxin levels in two more corpses, the coroner on March 21, 1981. Trayner flatly denied all charges of met with police and hospital administrators in an emer-impropriety, and the commission left her denials gency session. Members of the cardiac nursing team unchallenged, refusing to name a suspect in its January were placed on three days’ leave while officers began to 1985 report. That document describes eight infant search their lockers and compare work schedules to the deaths as murders, while another 13 are listed as dates and times of suspicious deaths.

“highly suspicious” or merely “suspicious.” Eighteen On March 22, with the locker searches under way, years down the road, a solution to the case is improba-another baby died on the cardiac ward at Sick Children.

ble at best.

Justin Cook is generally named as the last victim in a
See also
UNSOLVED MURDERS

bizarre string of slayings, his death attributed to a massive digoxin overdose, inflicted by persons unknown.

Three days later, police arrested nurse Susan Nelles on
HUANG Yong

one count of murder, adding three identical charges to A native of China’s Henan Province, born in 1974, the list on March 27. As “evidence” of her involvement Huang Yong fulfilled his mandatory army service within the crimes, officers referred to certain “odd” remarks out incident and then returned to farming at

and facial expressions mentioned by other nurses, not-Dahuangzhuang. Between September 2001 and Noveming that 24 of the suspicious deaths occurred on Nelles’s ber 2003 he prowled neighboring towns, luring boys and shift, between 1:00 and 5:00 A.M.

young men away from Internet cafés and video arcades With Nelles on leave pending trial, bizarre events with phony job offers. Huang’s favorite ruse involved a continued at the hospital. In September 1981, nurse nonexistent video game, “God Riding on a Wooden Phyllis Trayner found capsules of propanolol—another Horse,” which he allegedly devised and planned to mar-heart regulator—in the salad she was eating for lunch, ket in the near future. Those who accepted invitations to and a second nurse spooned more capsules out of her help Huang perfect the game were conveyed to his home
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