The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (76 page)

years old, respectively. Before he finally left, their father A sister of Ramirez told the press he wanted to plead never missed an opportunity to set the boys at odds guilty, a desire frustrated by his attorneys, but the sus-with one another. On one occasion, Larry recalls, “He pect made no public display of repentance. Sporting a took out a quarter and threw it in the middle of the pentagram on the palm of one hand, Ramirez waved to floor. He told us to fight, and whoever won got the photographers and shouted “Hail Satan!” during a pre-quarter. We literally tried to kill each other, you know, liminary court appearance. Back in jail, he told a fellow over this damn quarter. Naturally, Danny won, and I inmate, “I’ve killed twenty people, man. I love all that detested him for it, even more so because the old man blood.”

grabs him and pulls him down next to him, gives him The Night Stalker’s trial was another Los Angeles the quarter, and I’m standing there crying.” Even with marathon. Jury selection began on July 22, 1988, but it their father gone, the battles continued. “I used to hit was September 20, 1989, before jurors convicted him

[Danny] with boards, throw knives at him, shoot him
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with bows and arrows, and shit like that,” Larry said, the community stunned by her death. Fifteen weeks in a prison interview.

later, on July 4, two 19-year-olds from Chicago—Linda As they grew up, the brutal competition extended to Clark and Claudia Bidstrup—stopped for gas at the ser-girls. Both ultimately married the same woman, first vice station where 28-year-old Danny Ranes worked Danny, then Larry, catching her on the rebound after with Brent Koster, age 15. Ranes and Koster abducted she and Danny were divorced. It made no difference to the young women, drove them to a nearby lake in the younger Ranes that he was already in prison serving Danny’s van, and raped them both repeatedly before life when they tied the knot. It was still a victory of they were strangled to death. The final victim, 18-year-sorts over the brother he had simultaneously loved and old Patricia Fearnow of Kalamazoo, was kidnapped by hated all his life. Danny, for his part, calls Larry “the Ranes and Koster on August 5, raped by both men, and only companion I had most of my life. He’s the only suffocated with a plastic bag. A month later, Brent true foe I’ve ever had in my life. He’s the only competi-Koster broke down and confessed his role in the mur-tion I’ve ever had in my life.”

ders, leading police to Fearnow’s corpse and naming That twisted competition ultimately claimed at least Danny Ranes as his accomplice.

nine lives. Larry, the younger brother, was first to turn Arrested on Labor Day, Danny insisted he was inno-homicidal. Discharged from the army in the fall of 1963

cent of any wrongdoing. Two separate juries disagreed, after spending his last 90 days of military service in the convicting him of Patricia Howk’s murder in March stockade, Larry drifted across country in April and May 1973 and of Patricia Fearnow’s four months later. Sen-of 1964, thumbing rides, robbing at least five men, and tenced to life on each count, Ranes later pled no contest killing them with point-blank gunshots to the head.

in the Clark-Bidstrup slayings and received yet another Three of his victims were gas station attendants mur-life sentence. Brent Koster, for all of his assistance to the dered during holdups: Vernon LaBenne in Battle Creek, state, still drew a life prison term in the Fearnow case.

Michigan; Charlie Sizemore in Lexington, Kentucky; As if the saga of these twisted brothers was not and Charles Snider, in Elkhart, Indiana. The other two strange enough, Danny’s ex-wife (divorced from him in were motorists who picked Ranes up while he was July 1970) went on to wed brother Larry in prison.

hitchhiking: an unnamed victim in Nevada whose Larry Ranes, meanwhile, had legally changed his name corpse was never found, and schoolteacher Gary Smock to “Monk Steppenwolf,” claiming some unspecified of Plymouth, Michigan, who offered Ranes a lift on

“significance” in Herman Hesse’s novel of the same Memorial Day. Larry was arrested at his girlfriend’s title. In 1987, Michigan author Conrad Hilberry pre-house wearing Smock’s shoes, and while he confessed to sented the brothers as “Ralph and Tommy Searl” in his five murders, he was only charged in the latter case. At book Luke Karamazov (Hilberry’s pseudonym for trial, supporting an INSANITY DEFENSE, psychologists

“Monk Steppenwolf”), a case study which has

testified that Ranes’s crimes were acts of symbolic prompted certain careless writers to recount the bloody revenge against his father (a gas station worker like saga of the “Searl” brothers, complete with false names three of Larry’s victims), but a jury shrugged it off and for their victims.

sentenced him to life imprisonment.

See also SOTO, ERNO

By that time, Danny Ranes had legal problems of his own, confined to state prison for assault and other charges. He was paroled on February 17, 1972—five
REES, Melvin David

days before his brother’s retrial, ordered on appeal, was A Maryland native born in 1933, Rees attended the scheduled to begin in Kalamazoo. Legal maneuvers state university at age 20, dropping out before gradua-delayed those proceedings for nine months, and Larry tion to pursue a career in music. On March 12, 1955, pled guilty on November 2, receiving a new life sen-he was arrested on charges of assaulting a 36-year-old tence the following day. Meanwhile, Danny had stolen woman and dragging her into his car when she refused the local headlines with a series of brutal rape-slayings to enter voluntarily, but the case was dropped when his that marked him as the Ranes family’s second serial victim refused to press charges. Melvin’s friends ignored killer.

the incident, if they were even conscious of it, viewing Danny waylaid his first victim, 28-year-old Patricia Rees as mild-mannered and intelligent, a talented artist Howk, on March 18, as she left a local discount store who played the piano, guitar, clarinet, and saxophone with her 17-month-old son. He kidnapped her and with equal skill. He had a taste for modern jazz, and his drove her to the outskirts of town, where he raped and employment often took him on the road.

stabbed her to death. Her child was found that night, On June 26, 1957, Margaret Harold was parked

wandering Kalamazoo’s south side and crying for his with her date, a young army sergeant, on a lonely mother; Howk’s body was recovered the following day, lover’s lane near Annapolis, Maryland, when a green
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thrown alive into the ditch and suffocated by her father’s weight.

On March 21, hunters stumbled across a grave site in Maryland, not far from the spot where Margaret Harold had been murdered in 1957. The bodies of Mildred and Susan Jackson were unearthed by investigators, both bearing signs of sexual assault and savage beatings with a blunt instrument. A stocking was knotted around Mildred’s neck, but she had not been strangled, police surmising that the tourniquet had been applied to coerce her participation in oral sex. A quarter mile away, manhunters found a rundown shack with

“fresh” tracks outside, a button from Mildred Jackson’s dress lying on the floor.

The case was still unsolved in May when homicide detectives received an anonymous letter from Norfolk,

“Sex Beast” Melvin Rees is led to court in manacles. (Wide naming Melvin Rees as the killer. A background search World API)

revealed his link to the University of Maryland—and a former close relationship with Wanda Tipton—but solid evidence was scarce, and no one seemed to know Chrysler pulled up in front of their car. A tall, thin-the traveling musician’s whereabouts. In early 1960, the faced man approached, identified himself as the prop-anonymous informant came forward with a recent let-erty’s caretaker, then produced a gun, and climbed into ter from Rees, describing his latest job at a music store the back seat. He demanded money from the couple, in West Memphis, Arkansas. FBI agents made the col-shooting Margaret in the head when she indignantly lar, and a search of Rees’s home in Hyattsville turned up refused. Her date escaped on foot and called police, an instrument case with a pistol inside, plus various returning with an escort to discover that her body had notes describing assorted sadistic acts. One such was been raped in death.

clipped to a newspaper photo of Mildred Jackson. It Nearby, the search team found a building made of read, in part: “Caught on a lonely road . . . Drove to a cinder blocks with a broken basement window, and select area and killed husband and baby. Now the they crept inside. The inner walls were covered with a mother and daughter were all mine. . . .”

mix of pornographic photos and morgue shots of dead Maryland officers finally linked Rees to four other women; the only “normal” photo was a college yearsex slayings. Schoolgirls Mary Shomette, 16, and 14-book picture that depicted Wanda Tipton, a 1955 grad-year-old Ann Ryan had each been raped and killed in uate from the University of Maryland. Under

College Park near the University of Maryland; 18-year-questioning, she denied knowing anyone who fit the old Mary Fellers and 16-year-old Shelby Venable had killer’s description.

been fished out of nearby rivers. Rees was not indicted On January 11, 1959, a family of four disappeared for their deaths, but prosecutors felt they had enough to while out for a drive near Apple Grove, Virginia. A rel-keep him off the streets. Convicted of Margaret ative found their abandoned car later that day, but no Harold’s murder in Baltimore, Rees was sentenced to trace remained of Carroll Jackson, his wife Mildred, or life imprisonment, then handed over to Virginia author-their two daughters, five-year-old Susan and 18-month-ities for trial. Upon conviction of multiple murder there, old Janet. ’While police were beating the bushes in vain, he was condemned, but the sentence was commuted to a young couple reported that they had been forced off life imprisonment in 1972. Two decades later, still the road by an old blue Chevy that morning. The incarcerated, the “Sex Beast” died of natural causes.

strange driver had climbed out and approached their car, at which time they made good their escape.

Two months later, on March 4, Carroll Jackson’s
RENCZI, Vera

body was discovered by two men whose car had bogged Born to affluent parents in Bucharest in the early 1900s, down in the mud near Fredericksburg, Virginia. Homi-Vera Renczi displayed a precocious interest in sex by age cide detectives found the victim’s hands were bound 10 when her family moved to Berkerekul. At age 15 she with a necktie, a single bullet in his head. When they was found in the dormitory of a boy’s school at mid-removed his body from the roadside ditch, another night, and Vera afterward eloped with several lovers, corpse was found beneath it. Janet Jackson had been coming home each time when she grew bored with their
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attentions. It was fine for Vera to desert a paramour, but For his second tour of duty, Ressler chose assignment none must ever try to turn the tables, as she had begun to the military police and wound up commanding a pla-to demonstrate a pathological possessiveness.

toon in Germany. Later, transferred stateside, he served Vera’s first husband was a wealthy businessman, as commander of the Criminal Investigative Division many years her senior, and she bore him a son before he (CID) unit at Fort Sheridan near Chicago. Ressler was disappeared one day without a trace. Declaring that her still on active duty when he returned to Michigan State man had left without a word of explanation, Vera for his master’s degree; aside from classwork, he was passed a year in mourning, finally reporting “news” of also assigned to infiltrate the campus chapter of Stu-her husband’s recent death in a car crash.

dents for a Democratic Society and report on the She soon remarried to a younger man, but he was group’s antiwar campaign. After Michigan State, he flagrantly unfaithful, vanishing a few months later on spent two more years as an army provost marshal, what Vera described as “a long journey.” Another year including one year of duty in Thailand.

passed before she announced the receipt of a letter, Ressler’s application to the FBI was accepted in penned by her spouse, declaring his intent of leaving her 1970. Four years later, he was tapped for duty as a forever.

counselor for police officers training at the FBI National Vera Renczi would not wed again, but she had many Academy in Quantico, Virginia. On the side, he became lovers—32 in all—as years went by. They never seemed acquainted with the founders of the FBI’s Behavioral to stay around for long, and none were ever seen again Science Unit, learning as much as he could about abnor-once they “abandoned” Vera, but she always had an mal psychology and criminal behavior. Soon, he was explanation for her neighbors . . . and another lover part of the BSU team, lecturing to police around the waiting in the wings. Police became involved when country and abroad. Ressler was visiting the British Vera’s latest was reported missing by the wife he left at police academy at Barnshill in 1974 when he claims home; a search of Renczi’s basement turned up 35 zinc (incorrectly) to have coined the term SERIAL MURDER.