The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (66 page)

MULLIN, Herbert William

James and Susan Carson, self-styled “Muslim warriors”

MULLIN, Herbert William

who killed three suspected “witches” in compliance Born in Salinas, California, in April 1947, Mullin was with a verse from the Koran. Norman Bernard, who the son of Catholic parents, reared by his devout shot homeless transients as “a favor,” offers an example mother in an atmosphere that his own father regarded of the socioeconomic killer.

as oppressively religious. Still, Herbert seemed normal

“Mercy” homicides spring from a slayer’s warped enough through his teens, participating in high school desire to end suffering by ending lives. It is a motive athletics and winning the class vote of confidence as often seen in MEDICAL MURDERS, particularly in the case

“most likely to succeed.” The June 1965 death of of homicidal nurses or nurse’s aides. The FBI manual Mullin’s best friend in a car crash appeared to change cites Donald Harvey as a case in point, with his confes-everything, producing a sudden and startling shift in sions to murdering more than 50 hospital patients.

Herb’s personality. His bedroom was transformed into Closely related to “mercy” killing is another form of a shrine, with furniture arranged around the dead boy’s personal murder, hero homicide. In such cases, exempli-photograph, and Mullin warned his girlfriend that he fied by killer nurses GENENE JONES and Richard Angelo, might be “turning gay.”

the slayer creates life-or-death situations while planning By February 1969, Mullin seemed obsessed with

to “save the day” and garner adulation for himself, but Eastern religions, his family noting that he had become death results from careless planning or technique.

“more and more unrealistic” in daily behavior. A The final type of personal-cause homicide, hostage month later, they persuaded him to enter a mental insti-murder, occurs most often with serial killers at the time tution, but he refused to cooperate with psychiatrists of capture or when they are interrupted in commission and was released after six weeks. October found him in of another crime. Fred Klenner and South African the depths of full-blown paranoid schizophrenia, exac-pedophile Gert Van Rooyen both took girlfriends erbated by consumption of LSD and marijuana. Mullin hostage when authorities confronted them; each killed heard “voices” commanding him to shave his head or his hostage before committing suicide.

burn his penis with a cigarette, and he obeyed their
SEXUAL HOMICIDE

A third type of murder, sexual homicide, is clearly dominant in the realm of serial murder, where sexual motives are seen in two-thirds of all cases. The killer’s expression of sexuality may be symbolic, even bizarre—

as in cases of VAMPIRISM and CANNIBALISM—but it is there, all the same.

The FBI manual divides sexual murders into four broad categories. The “ORGANIZED” and “DISORGANIZED” types are discussed in separate entries, while the

“mixed” category provides a convenient dump for lust killers who defy pigeonholing. The worst cases on record are those of sadistic sex murder, typically including prolonged torture and bizarre mutilation of victims.

LAWRENCE (“Pliers”) BITTAKER is a prime example, his practice of tape-recording torture sessions with his victims mimicked and improved upon by others like Canadian Paul Bernardo in this age of minicams.

In closing, it should never be assumed that all serial killers are one-dimensional drones, obsessed with a single motive to the exclusion of all other thoughts. The same offender who has raped and killed a dozen women in the past may brain his spouse tomorrow in the heat of a domestic argument or poison an aging parent to hasten a financial windfall. By all accounts, killing becomes easier with practice, over time. When it becomes habitual, a way of life, no one within the slayer’s reach is ever truly safe.

Herbert Mullin killed to prevent catastrophic earthquakes.

See also MODUS OPERANDI; PARAPHILIA; PROFILING

(Wide World API)

187

MUNCHAUSEN’S Syndrome by Proxy

every order. Briefly returned to the hospital, he began strophic earthquakes from destroying California.

writing letters to dozens of total strangers, signing them Charged and convicted in 10 of the murders (omitting

“a human sacrifice, Herb Mullin.” An ill-advised trip to White, Guilfoyle, and Tomei), Mullin was sentenced to Hawaii in June 1970 resulted in Mullin’s brief commit-life imprisonment. He will be eligible for parole in ment to a mental institution there. Back in Santa Cruz, 2020.

his odd behavior led to conflicts with police, and his problems were not erased by 15 months of hiding out in cheap San Francisco hotels. By the time he came home
MUNCHAUSEN’S Syndrome by Proxy

again in September 1972, the disembodied voices were Named in 1951 for the legendary 18th-century purveyor commanding him to kill.

of tall tales, Baron von Munchausen, Munchausen’s syn-On October 13, 1972, while driving aimlessly

drome is the psychiatric label for excessive hypochon-through the Santa Cruz mountains, Mullin spotted dria, a compulsive bid for sympathetic attention that elderly transient Lawrence White. Pulling his car to the includes false claims of illness and occasional self-injury.

side of the road, Mullin asked White to help him with A curious parallel condition with relevance to serial some “engine trouble,” then beat the old man to death murder, first described in 1977, is Munchausen’s syn-with a baseball bat and left his body where it lay.

drome by proxy, wherein those responsible for care of Eleven days later, he picked up coed Mary Guilfoyle, children, invalids, and the like seek attention by harming stabbed her in the heart, then disemboweled her, scat-their charges. A possible extension of the “hero” motive tering her organs on the shoulder of a lonely road, ascribed to some MEDICAL MURDERS in the FBI’s Crime where skeletal remains were found in February 1973.

Classification Manual (1992), Munchausen’s syndrome On November 2, Mullin spoke too freely in the confes-by proxy is also deemed responsible in certain cases sional at St. Mary’s Church, afterward fatally stabbing where parents—always mothers, in the cases logged to Father Henry Tomei in a bid to protect himself from date—kill their own children. MARYBETH TINNING is a exposure.

prime example, described by psychoanalysts as a virtual Mullin’s crimes coincidentally overlapped those of sympathy junkie who murdered eight of her children serial slayer EDMUND KEMPER, earning Santa Cruz an between 1972 and 1985, all for the attention she unwelcome reputation as “Murderville, USA.” By received in periods of mourning. Such killers are often November 1972, Herbert was hearing brand-new

adept at covering their tracks, and cases like Tinning’s voices, emanating from prospective victims, begging and that of MARTHA WOODS (seven children slain him to kill them. He bought a pistol in December and between 1946 and 1969) have led to urgent reevaluation resumed the hunt.

of families reporting multiple cases of SUDDEN INFANT

On January 25, 1973, Mullin went looking for Jim DEATH SYNDROME.

Gianera, the man who had “turned him on” to mari-See also MOTIVES

juana years earlier. Herb now regarded that act as part of a plot to destroy his mind, and he meant to avenge himself. Calling at Gianera’s old address, he received
MYTHICAL Murders Reported in “Nonfiction”

new directions from 29-year-old Kathy Francis. Moving
Sources

on, he found Gianera at home, shot the man to death, Serial killers at large are so frightening and fascinat-then knifed and shot Gianera’s wife for good measure.

ing—so “sexy,” in media parlance—that some “nonfic-From there, Mullin doubled back to kill Kathy Francis tion” authors seemingly cannot resist inventing cases of and her two small sons, shooting all three as they lay in their own. Sometimes, the fudging amounts to simple bed.

exaggeration of known body counts for well-estab-On February 6, Mullin was hiking in a nearby state lished slayers, while in other cases the reporters go all park when he met four teenage campers. Approaching out, apparently manufacturing killers and victims out the boys with casual conversation, he whipped out his of thin air for the sake of “a good story.” Unfortu-gun and killed all four in a rapid burst of fire before nately, those tales are proffered as fact and may lead the they could react or flee. A week later, driving through serious student astray. They are included here to set the Santa Cruz, Mullin pulled to the curb and fatally shot record straight.

Fred Perez while the old man was working in his gar-One of the earliest, most frequently exaggerated den. This time, neighbors saw his license plate and cases involves London’s “JACK THE RIPPER” in 1888.

Mullin was arrested by patrolmen moments later.

Authorities involved in the manhunt generally agreed In custody, Mullin confessed to his crimes, insisting that Jack killed five women—and only five—between that the homicides were necessary to prevent cata-August and November of that fateful year. Still, specu-188

MYTHICAL Murders Reported in “Nonfiction” Sources lation on additional victims, ranging in number from

“The Executioner”: Described as an unidentified seven to 20 or more, continues in various published stalker who “killed at least nine transients”

accounts to the present day. Some of the “extra” vic-around Los Angeles in 1986, with the method of tims really were killed in London during the Ripper’s murder unstated, this “unsolved” case mirrors the heyday but in circumstances radically divergent from crimes of “Skid Row Slayer” Michael Player, who Red Jack’s pattern; others—generally cited only as shot nine men (eight of them homeless) before

anonymous statistics—are apparently figments of the killing himself in October 1986. The case was

individual author’s imagination.

closed in February 1987 after ballistics tests Other examples of misstatement in the field include: linked Player’s weapon to the murders.

Salvatore Agron: Described in one text as a serial SOURCE: Hickey, Serial Murderers and Their slayer who “dressed like Dracula” and drank the Victims.

blood of “several” victims, this 16-year-old resi-Joliet murders: Erroneously presented as the dent of New York City was in fact a street gang unsolved 1983 slayings of “fifteen victims” in member, convicted (with others) in the routine Joliet, Illinois, this series actually included 17

1959 murder of two rival gangsters.

deaths in two counties. Authorities consider at SOURCE: J. Gordon Melton, The Vampire least 12 of the murders solved with the 1984

Book (1994).

arrest of serial killer MILTON JOHNSON.

Arizona (“Ma”) Barker: The notorious mother of SOURCE: Hickey, Serial Murderers and Their depression-era bank robbers appears in one

Victims.

strange account as a sadistic lesbian who kid-

“Los Angeles Slasher”: Vaguely described as the napped, tortured, and murdered countless young slayer of eight unspecified victims in 1974, this women, afterward ordering her outlaw sons to

nonexistent UNSUB was apparently spawned by a

dump the bodies in various Minnesota lakes. No hasty reading of inaccurate reports on the “Skid such corpses were ever found, and no evidence

Row Slasher” case (see below).

exists to support the story.

SOURCE: Hickey, Serial Murderers and Their SOURCE: Jay Robert Nash, Look for the Victims.

Woman (1981).

“Midtown Slasher”: A brief but notorious series of Australian “Ripper”: An alleged series of mutilation-Manhattan stabbings, solved in July 1981 with

murders claiming at least seven victims between the arrest of Charles Sears, but still sometimes 1976 and 1979. While certainly plausible, no such erroneously cited as an unsolved case.

crimes have been discovered through repeated

SOURCE:
Norris,
Serial Killers.

queries to Australian police and journalists.

Moscow beheadings:
An alleged series of decapitations
SOURCE:
Jay Robert Nash,
Crime Chronol-claiming “several” female victims during 1979. No ogy (1984).

supporting evidence for this case has been found in

“Chicago Ripper”: Presented as the unidentified the 15 years since its original publication.

mutilation-slayer of 20 women, the last killed in SOURCE: Nash, Crime Chronology.

January 1906. (A second, garbled version claims Joseph Mumfre: Named definitively in various all 20 murders occurred in 1906.) Chicago news-accounts as the “

papers reveal that the victim in question was shot, AX MAN OF NEW ORLEANS,”

although he apparently never existed. One such with no reported mutilations, and that her death was speculatively linked to one other slaying. No report, by Jay Robert Nash, states that “Between trace of the elusive Ripper or his 20 victims is 1916 and 1920 Mumfre . . . systematically mur-found in contemporary reports.

dered, according to reports, twelve members of SOURCES: Nash, Crime Chronology; Eric the Pepitone family, using an axe to bash in each Hickey, Serial Murderers and Their Victims (1997).