The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (90 page)

Albert DeSalvo, 13 counts of murder lost in the shuffle As a practical matter, few serial killers are punished as DeSalvo accepted a life term on rape and burglary for all of their crimes. Some, like JOHN GACY and JUAN

charges.

CORONA, plant their victims in close proximity, facili-Serial murder trials are often long and costly, partic-tating multiple convictions, but most are less consider-ularly in California, where lawyers pride themselves on ate of the authorities. Where evidence is weak or billing by the hour and moving with glacial speed.

nonexistent—as in many of the crimes attributed to Ted Charles Manson’s first trial required a month of jury Bundy—prosecutors play their strongest hand, often selection and eight months of testimony to land four settling for one or two murder charges in lieu of 15 or defendants on death row. In the case of “Night Stalker”

20. Some jurisdictions stubbornly deny a killer’s guilt RICHARD RAMIREZ, jury selection took over three for reasons best known to themselves, as in the case of months, with nearly 3,000 interviews, while another San Diego’s willful blindness to the crimes of CARROLL

nine months were consumed by the trial. RANDY

COLE. In other cases, politics and economics override KRAFT’s Orange County murder trial lasted 13 months, the quest for justice, prosecutors ever mindful of the costing the taxpayers more than $10 million. These fact that trials cost money and taxpayers vote. Public cases pale, however, in comparison to the Los Angeles opinion may demand indictment in a sensational case, trial of “Hillside Strangler” ANGELO BUONO, with its but if the trial runs over budget—or results in an acquit-10-month preliminary hearing and two full years of testal—every prosecutor understands the risk of backlash timony, dragging on from November 1981 through at the ballot box.

November 1983. The hands-down champion of delay Prosecution, like politics, makes for strange bedfel-and evasion, sadist CHARLES NG, was arrested by Cana-lows. Negotiations is part of the game, and a shortage dian authorities in June 1985 on suspicion of killing of physical evidence sometimes mandates unsavory bar-more than a dozen victims in northern California. He gains for testimony. Child-slayer CLIFFORD OLSON holds stalled extradition until 1991 and managed to postpone the record for audacity, persuading the Royal Canadian his trial with a series of legal maneuvers; it finally com-Mounted Police to pay him $10,000 each for the bodies menced in September 1998, concluding with Ng’s con-of 10 missing victims, but most such bargains are trade-viction in April 1999 and a death sentence in June
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TROPHIES and Souvenirs Kept by Serial Killers

1999—more than 15 years after the discovery of his

“There are enough safeguards in the language [of the crimes.

statute] to protect any defendant.”

Outright acquittals in cases of serial murder are rare See also CAPITAL PUNISHMENT; INCARCERATION; but not unknown. Boston attorneys scored a surprise INSANITY DEFENSE

victory for defendant Mary Kelliher in 1908, persuading jurors that six of her close relatives had absorbed lethal doses of arsenic from a “contaminated mattress”

TROPHIES and Souvenirs Kept by Serial Killers
over a three-year period. In New Jersey, Dr. Mario Jas-It has long been recognized that some killers, especially calevich was acquitted of using curare to poison six those driven by sexual or sadistic MOTIVES, retain per-patients, but adverse publicity surrounding the 12-year sonal objects taken from their victims as mementos of investigation drove him back to his native Argentina, the event. In such cases, FBI analysts distinguish where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1984. Los between trophies (collected by “ORGANIZED” KILLERS

Angeles jurors acquitted VAUGHN GREENWOOD of two to commemorate a successful hunt) and souvenirs (kept murder counts in 1976, but conviction in nine other by “DISORGANIZED” KILLERS as fuel for their fantasies), cases sent him to prison for life without parole. Eight but since the items and their method of collection are years later, in another “Skid Row” case, Bobby identical, the distinction is largely semantic.

Maxwell was convicted of two murders and acquitted Items collected by serial slayers range from the mun-of three more, while a hung jury left five counts unre-dane—snapshots, a driver’s license, jewelry, or some solved. A similar compromise verdict in Indiana con-article of clothing—to ghoulish and bizarre, including demned shotgun slayer Christopher Peterson in four of amputated body parts. Author Joel Norris labels such seven “identical” slayings, while acquitting him of behavior as the “totem phase” of serial murder, wherein three. In Georgia, nurse Terri Rachals confessed three killers cling to symbols of their momentary triumph, murders and was charged with six, but her precarious hoping to prolong a satisfaction that evades them in mental state prompted jurors to acquit on most of the reality. Other slayers strive for the same result by fol-charges, finding her guilty but mentally ill on one count lowing their cases in the media, saving press clips or jot-of aggravated assault.

ting their thoughts in a diary, even revisiting crime With 50 states and countless local jurisdictions try-scenes despite the great personal risk.

ing murder cases every day, it is perhaps too much to For sheer outrageousness, no case to date can match hope for any semblance of consistency in sentencing.

ED GEIN’s Wisconsin house of horrors—with skulls Since 1900, 68 percent of America’s convicted serial mounted on bedposts, skinned-out faces hanging on the killers been sentenced to varying prison terms; another walls, and dangling mobiles made from female body 25 percent have been sentenced to die for their crimes, parts—but serial killers display no end of variety in and 40 percent of those condemned have actually been their selections. JEROME BRUDOS photographed his vic-executed.

tims and preserved one severed breast as a paperweight.

California, boasting more serial killers than any Cannibal Stanley Baker carried the knuckle bones of other U.S. state and most foreign countries, moved to one victim in a pouch on his belt, while Alex Mengel mitigate the cost of separate, repetitive trials in Septem-scalped a woman and wore her hair as a disguise in his ber 1998, with passage of a new “Serial Killer, Single next attempted kidnapping. Sadists LAWRENCE BIT-Trial” statute. In an age when long-winded serial mur-TAKER and Ian Brady recorded the screams of their tor-der trials cost taxpayers an average of $1.5 million per mented victims, while LEONARD LAKE and others have victim, lawmakers viewed consolidation as the fiscal preserved their crimes on videotape. In Egypt, a prolific cure. Defense attorneys loudly disagreed, complaining

“BLUE BEARD” caught in April 1920 kept the severed that the single-trial requirement imposed crushing bur-heads of 20 women in his home.

dens on lawyers and placed their clients on a fast track An interesting (if inconclusive) aspect of the FBI’s to death row. “It allows district attorneys to pile on a research suggests that random shooters are more prone lot of cases into one,” said San Francisco public to certain types of follow-up behavior than are hands-on defender Jeff Brown, “and really undercuts the ability killers. Bureau analysts divided their captive subjects into to mount a defense. It’s not fair.” To that, state senator two groups, one for killers who used firearms exclusively, Richard Rainey replied, “Serial killers who go on brutal the other limited to slayers with a preference for sharp or killing rampages do so without consideration for blunt instruments. Eighty-two percent of the gunmen county lines. The current system is not only a waste of admitted following their cases in the press, while only 50

time and money, but it causes unnecessary pain for vic-percent of the hands-on killers were interested. Of the tims and their loved ones.” As for potential errors, dis-shooters, 64 percent saved clippings about themselves trict attorney Art Danner of Santa Cruz told reporters, and 56 percent kept diaries, versus 26 percent of the
259

TUGGLE, Debra Sue

clubbers and hackers on both questions. Twenty-one perfor treatment. The doctors there pronounced her cent of the gunmen photographed their victims, while

“cured,” and she was on the street in time to bear and only 11 percent of the manual killers brought cameras kill her fourth child—Terranz Tuggle—at Malvern, along. Gunmen were also marginally more likely to Arkansas, in 1979. As far as Malvern’s finest could revisit crime scenes, 44 percent to 34 percent, but no sig-determine, it was simply one more SIDS-related death.

nificant difference was seen in collection of physical tro-For all her aversion to children, Debra seemed to phies. FBI spokesmen stop short of drawing conclusions enjoy men and sex. Gravitating back to Little Rock, she from their data, but logic dictates that gunmen crave met George Paxton, 10 years her senior, on a blind date.

reaffirmation of their crimes since shooting is a more They hit it off at once, and by early 1982, Paxton had remote act, lacking the physical contact—and thus, satis-asked Tuggle to share his home. If anyone asked, she faction—of beating, stabbing, or strangling their victims was there to care for Paxton’s three children, but to death.

Debra’s duties were not limited to housekeeping. By the See also MODUS OPERANDI; WEAPONS

spring of 1983, she would herself be carrying a Paxton child.

But first, she had an urge to thin the herd.

TUGGLE, Debra Sue

On June 23, 1982, Paxton was out at the movies The case of Debra Tuggle perfectly exemplifies how when Debra had him paged, sobbing out the news that loopholes in “The System” may allow determined mur-his daughter, two-year-old Tomekia, was dead. She had derers to roam at large for years. As the rarest of preda-no explanation, and the hospital demanded none. It tors—a black female serial killer of children—she fell was stretching credibility to blame SIDS for the death of through the cracks of a government network designed a child Tomekia’s age, but stranger things have hap-to protect those she killed, claiming at least five victims pened in the world of pediatric medicine. Case closed.

before she was brought to a semblance of justice. Sadly, Almost.

even when her crimes had been revealed, the very agen-The news that she was pregnant in the spring of cies that should have stopped her killing spree a decade 1983 knocked Debra for a loop. That May, she tried to earlier were more concerned with bad publicity than give herself a coat-hanger abortion, but she bungled the human lives.

attempt. George Paxton’s family doctor tried to have With 20/20 hindsight, it is easy to declare that Debra her booked for psychiatric treatment by the state, but Tuggle never should have been allowed to have a child, his petition was denied. A healthy girl, G’Joy Paxton, much less the five she ultimately bore to different was born in October 1983 . . . but Debra’s time was fathers in 11 years. She clearly lacked the temperament swiftly running out.

for motherhood, but there was something else at work It took an employee of the state mental health in Tuggle’s mind as well, beyond mere rage or boredom department, Dr. Alexander Merrill, to finally see with the drudgery of her maternal role: a dark and through Tuggle’s years of “bad luck” in November deadly “something” that compelled her to eliminate the 1983. Merrill was the first to analyze a list of unrelated very lives she brought into the world.

victim surnames, recognizing that a single woman had Debra’s first child, William Henry, was born in 1972.

been linked to five child deaths within a decade. Pulaski Eighteen months later he had a half-brother, Thomas County’s coroner, Steve Nawajoczyk, was interested, Bates, and the pressure of raising them was mounting and so were the police. On March 20, 1984, Debra was on Debra, pushing her over the edge. Both children died jailed on four counts of first-degree murder; Terranz suddenly in 1974, Thomas barely two months old, Tuggle’s case, in Malvern, remained “open.” Two days William three months short of his second birthday.

later, the court set her bond at a prohibitive $750,000.

Physicians in Debra’s hometown of Little Rock, Little Rock physicians and Arkansas public health Arkansas, were sympathetic to the grieving mother’s officials were quick to absolve themselves of any negli-plight. In the absence of physical symptoms, they gence in Tuggle’s case. Debra’s children each had differ-blamed William’s death on pneumonia, listing Thomas ent fathers, after all—and besides, her explanations of as a victim of SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME

the sudden deaths were “credible.” In retrospect, we (SIDS).

know that “normal” SIDS does not haunt any given A third son, Ronald Johnson, was nine months old mother, claiming the lives of child after child, but when he suddenly stopped breathing in 1976. Again, Arkansas doctors appeared to be learning their craft by Debra’s public display of grief was convincing; once trial and error.

again, SIDS was blamed for the death. Two years later, In custody, Tuggle admitted pressing a pillow over Tuggle shot herself in the abdomen, an apparent suicide Tomekia’s face to “stop her crying” while Debra attempt, and was briefly committed to a state hospital watched television. She held the pillow in place for
260

“TYLENOL Murders”

some two minutes with the desired result but claimed on the bathroom floor next morning at 7:00 A.M. and she still “didn’t think Tomekia was dead.” Only later—

she died three hours later at a local hospital. Autopsy presumably when her program was finished—did the results determined that the capsule Mary Kellerman murderess realize her “mistake.”