The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (87 page)

on December 29, 1975; and 23-year-old Mary Mul-Arrested in April 1980 after an intended victim doon, shot and drowned at New Smyrna Beach on

managed to escape his clutches in Daytona Beach, November 12, 1977.

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SUDDEN Infant Death Syndrome as Cover for Serial Murder Stano came within moments of execution on July 2, victed of murder in 1984; even then, a sympathetic jury 1986, before an appellate court granted him an indefi-recommended the minimum 10-year sentence. In 1994, nite stay. He continued to play the legal system like a Illinois resident Gail Savage pleaded guilty to smother-master until his luck ran out 12 years later, finally keeping three of her children, and Debra Gedzius Fornuto—

ing his date with “Old Sparky” on March 23, 1998.

suspected of killing six children and her husband One of the investigators active on his case, Detective between 1972 and 1989—escaped prosecution thanks John Carlton, witnessed Stano’s execution and later to confusion of “expert” opinions on SIDS. (Fornuto told the press, “It wasn’t traumatic for me to see some-died in a Las Vegas car crash on July 8, 2002, leaving one who had killed forty-one people put to death. What the mystery forever unsolved.)

was traumatic for me was that we had to wait from the Today, most pediatricians dismiss the notion of time of his arrest in 1980 to 1998, for his execution.”

“hereditary” SIDS, agreeing with San Antonio medical examiner Vincent Di Maio that “two SIDS deaths [in one family] is improbable, but three is impossible.”

SUDDEN Infant Death Syndrome as Cover for

Even so, at this writing only 10 states routinely autopsy
Serial Murder

all alleged SIDS victims. Too many hospitals and prose-A catchall label for the otherwise inexplicable deaths of cutors still apply what Di Maio calls the Three-Baby babies (also known as “cot death” in Britain), sudden Rule. “You wait until they kill the third kid,” he infant death syndrome (SIDS) has apparently provided explains, before exhumations and court-ordered autop-a convenient cover for those serial-killing parents who sies begin. Even then, there may be no conclusive evi-murder their own children, either for profit (as from life dence of homicide, with “gentle” suffocation the insurance) or some morbid compulsion to kill. An aver-method of choice among serial baby-killers. Yet another age 7,000 to 8,000 babies die from SIDS in the United problem with some physicians is the application of States each year with no symptoms of any recognizable SIDS diagnoses to unexplained deaths of children age illness, and while such deaths have been routinely two years and older. Majority opinion now concurs ignored for decades, authorities now believe that as that SIDS should
never
be listed as a cause of death for many as 20 percent of alleged SIDS victims may in fact children more than 12 months old.

have been murdered by parents or other caretakers.

Analysis of SIDS cases in Britain, where they are Ironically, it was a 1972 article on SIDS itself, pub-known as “cot deaths,” created a furor in January lished in the medical journal
Pediatrics,
which 2004, with the announcement that a legal review of 258

prompted the reversal opinion among physicians and infant deaths without apparent cause would be severely law enforcement officers. The article’s author, Dr.

curtailed. That decision emerged from the case of defen-Alfred Steinschneider—later president of the Sudden dant Angela Cannings, whose murder conviction was Infant Death Syndrome Institute in Atlanta—profiled overturned on appeal. Britain’s Appeal Court ruled on one anonymous family with five children lost to SIDS, January 19 that medical study of SIDS was “still at the using the case to support his theory that a genetic defect frontiers of knowledge,” dictating that in cases where may produce prolonged apnea (disruption of an infant’s trial depended “almost exclusively on a serious dis-breathing during sleep), and so cause death. District agreement between distinguished and reputable experts, Attorney William Fitzpatrick of Onondaga, New York, it will often be unwise, and therefore unsafe, to pro-read the article in 1986 as background material for an ceed.” The Cannings decision followed a 2003 appel-unrelated infanticide case and instantly suspected foul late decision reversing Sally Clarke’s conviction for play in the family identified only as “H.” Years of killing two young sons, and the acquittal of pharmacist detective work in public records finally identified Trupti Patel on charges that she murdered three infants.

Waneta Hoyt, a Berkshire, New York, housewife con-See also
“BLACK WIDOWS”; MUNCHAUSEN’S SYN-victed in 1995 of murdering five babies and sentenced DROME BY PROXY

to a prison term of 75 years to life.

Hoyt’s case, sadly, is far from unique. Another New Yorker, MARYBETH TINNING, is suspected of killing eight
SURADJI, Ahmad

children, but was convicted on one murder count.

An Indonesian cattle breeder and self-styled sorcerer, Diana Lumbrera lost seven children before authorities Ahmad Suradji was 36 years old in 1986 when his late intervened; she now stands convicted of murdering two, father appeared to him in a dream, commanding him to in Texas and Kansas. MARTHA WOODS also lost seven increase his occult powers by killing 70 women in black infants before she was sentenced to life on one count of magic rituals. According to his later confessions, first-degree murder in Maryland. DEBRA SUE TUGGLE

Suradji—aka Nasib Kelawang or Datuk Mariniggi—

claimed at least five tiny victims before she was con-wasted no time in following the old man’s orders.

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SUTCLIFFE, Peter William

It was easy enough to find victims, since local responsible for other unsolved murders on the Euro-women often visited his home outside Medan, the capi-pean continent.

tal of North Sumatra, to purchase love charms and sim-The roots of Sutcliffe’s homicidal rage are difficult to ilar items. Each sacrifice followed the same pattern: trace. His family appears to have been torn by dark sus-after charging his victim a fee that ranged from $200 to picions on his father’s part of infidelity by Peter’s $400, Suradji led the unsuspecting female to a nearby mother, and the boy’s opinion of all women may have sugar plantation, where he dug a hole and buried her suffered in an atmosphere of brooding doubt. As a up to the waist, supposedly as part of a ritual designed young man, he found employment with a local mortu-to ensure her lover’s fidelity. Once the victim was effec-ary and was prone to “borrow” jewelry from the tively immobilized, Suradji then strangled her with an corpses; in his comments, easily dismissed as “jokes” by electric cord, drank the victim’s saliva, stripped the coworkers at the time, there is a hint of budding corpse, and buried it with the head pointed toward his necrophilia, more disturbing than the strain of larceny.

home to channel the spirit’s mystical powers. If all else A favorite outing for the would-be Ripper was a local failed and willing customers ran short, Suradji would wax museum, where he lingered by the hour over torsos hire prostitutes and murder them instead.

that depicted the results of gross venereal disease.

Suradji was still short of his 70-victim goal on April Before his marriage, Sutcliffe frequently expressed his 28, 1997, when three bodies were found on the planta-fears of having caught “a dose” from contact with the tion and police arrested him for questioning. In custody, prostitutes of Leeds and Birmingham.

he initially confessed to killing 16 victims over the past Sutcliffe’s first attacks on women, in July and August five years, but a search of his home turned up clothing 1975, were unsuccessful in that both his victims managed and personal items linked to 25 missing women, and to survive the crushing blows of hammers to their skulls Suradji finally confessed to a total of 42 murders span-and the slashes he inflicted on their torsos after they were ning 11 years. His three wives, all sisters, were jailed as down. October was a better month for Peter: on the 29th accomplices, but two were later released, with only the he slaughtered prostitute Wilma McCann in Leeds and oldest—38-year-old Tumini—charged after confessing thus officially began the Ripper’s reign of terror.

her role in the crimes.

There seemed to be no schedule for his crimes. On Police unearthed 40 corpses on the plantation, vic-January 20, 1976, housewife/hooker Emily Jackson tims ranging in age from 12 to 30 years, and while was bludgeoned to death in Leeds, her prostrate body some 80 local families had reported missing females bearing 50 stab wounds. Sutcliffe did not strike again during the span of Suradji’s rampage, Ahmad and for 13 months, attacking Irene Richardson, another Tumini were charged with only 42 counts of murder prostitute, again in Leeds. He move to Bradford for the when their trial began on December 21, 1997. By that April butchery of Tina Atkinson, another prostitute, time, both defendants had recanted their confessions, found murdered in her own apartment, mutilated after claiming they were tortured by police, but no denials death.

could explain the corpses unearthed near Suradji’s On June 16, the Ripper struck again, but his selec-home. On April 27, 1998, Suradji was convicted and tion of a victim made the slaying different, more sentenced to death by firing squad. Tumini was also appalling to the populace at large. At 16 years of age, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Suradji’s Jane MacDonald was an “innocent,” the perfect girl lawyers have announced that they will appeal his con-next door, cut down while strolling to a relative’s house, viction.

almost within sight of home. Her murder put the Ripper on a different plane, immediately serving notice that no girl or woman in the northern counties was safe.

SUTCLIFFE, Peter William

Maureen Long was assaulted on the streets of Brad-A long-haul trucker and “harlot killer” who proved ford in July, but she survived the blows that Sutcliffe rather indiscriminate in choosing victims was Great rained upon her skull. In October, he crossed the Pen-Britain’s “Yorkshire Ripper,” Peter Sutcliffe. While nines to murder Jean Jordan in Manchester, crushing residing in apparent harmony with his beloved wife—

her skull with 11 hammer strokes, stabbing her 24

herself a diagnosed schizophrenic who spent time in times after death. When she had not been found within institutions—Sutcliffe waged a five-year war against the a week, he would return to move the body and slash it female population of England’s northern counties. With further, making its location more apparent to police.

his ball-peen hammer, chisel, and assorted other imple-In January 1978, Sutcliffe killed a prostitute named ments of slaughter, Sutcliffe claimed a minimum of 13

Helen Rytka in the town of Huddersfield. In April victims killed and seven wounded. In addition to the 1979, another “innocent,” 19-year-old Josephine Whit-documented body count, he is believed by some to be taker, was butchered in Halifax. A civil servant, Mar-251

SUTCLIFFE, Peter William

guerite Walls, was murdered at Pudsley in August, and imprisonment for 13 homicides and various assaults.

12 days later Sutcliffe slaughtered coed Barbara Leach, (Author David Yallop, in
Deliver Us from Evil
[1982], in Bradford.

links the Ripper to four additional murders and seven In the middle of their manhunt, homicide investiga-nonfatal assaults, including crimes in France and Swe-tors were bedeviled by a mocking tape and several letters den.) From the cab of Sutcliffe’s truck, detectives had from “the Ripper.” Later, with their man in custody, they retrieved a written statement that appeared to summa-learned that all were hoaxes, perpetrated by another rize the Ripper’s twisted view of life:

twisted mind that found vicarious release in toying with detective. Countless hours were wasted by police and In this truck is a man whose latent genius, if unleashed, independent searchers, looking for a man whose pen-would rock the nation, whose dynamic energy would
manship and accent bore no smallest similarity to Sut-overpower those around him. Better let him sleep?

cliffe’s own. The charlatan responsible—suspected in two unrelated homicides—remains at large today.

Shortly after his conviction, Sutcliffe was examined The Ripper had two more near misses in October by prison psychiatrists and pronounced insane, where-and November, wounding victims in the towns of Leeds upon he was transferred to Broadmoor Hospital. On and Huddersfield. Both would survive their wounds, March 10, 1997, he was attacked by another homicidal and Sutcliffe took a year’s vacation prior to killing coed inmate and stabbed in both eyes. Emergency surgery Jacqueline Hill at Leeds in November 1980. The latest saved the sight in his right eye, but Sutcliffe was perma-victim’s mutilations were familiar to police, but Sutcliffe nently blinded in the left. Public outrage erupted in also stabbed her in the eye, unsettled by the corpse’s April 1999, with tabloid revelations that authorities

“reproachful stare.”

planned to let Sutcliffe visit his dying father, and the On January 2, 1981, police arrested Sutcliffe with a mercy excursion was promptly canceled. In November prostitute in one of several areas that had been subject 2002, Yorkshire police announced preparation of new to surveillance through the manhunt. Even so, they charges against Sutcliffe, on the chance that he someday almost let him slip the net by stepping out of sight to requested parole, but the Ripper showed no desire for urinate behind some shrubbery, there dropping the freedom. In April 30, 2003, members of parliament incriminating weapons he carried beneath his jacket. At from Leeds alleged that Sutcliffe had deceived psychia-the station, Sutcliffe finally broke down, confessing trists and they requested his transfer from Broadmoor everything. Detectives noted that their subject seemed hospital to a normal maximum-security prison. No relieved to have it all behind him. So he seemed, as well, action had been taken on that effort when this volume to spectators in court when he received a term of life went to press.

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