
The Killers Trilogy
Including for the first time together:
The Town That God Forgot
The Curse Of New Hampshire And The Salem Witch Trials
Devils Walk Among Us
Martin McGregor 2010
Published by Martin McGregor at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Martin McGregor
Discover other titles by Martin McGregor at Smashwords.com
Discover other titles by Martin McGregor at Smashwords.com:
The town the God forgot
The curse of New Hampshire and the Salem witch trials
2012 Doomsday. The Mayan prophecy
The Collected Poems
Also by Martin McGregor
The Collected Poems
Published by lulu.com 2010
A collection of previously published poetry collected from over 50 different anthologies published worldwide.
An Ordinary Man In An Ordinary World.
The autobiography of Martin McGregor telling a heart wrenching tale of growing up with an alcoholic father, his doomed marriage and fatherhood and being in an abusive relationship.
2012 Doomsday The Mayan Death Prophecy.
Examining some of the very real threats that we face in 2012. Are the governments of the world aware of any threats, and why are they building a doomsday vault?
Martin McGregor was born in Cambridge in 1969. He lives in Andover with his wife Sarah. He has four children. Martin is an inventory and compliance manager for one of the largest French cookware manufacturers in the world.
My home Town Andover. Uncovering its dark history.
Andover. To any visitor, this is a quiet unassuming town. A town that is delightfully picturesque, and lazy. It is surrounded by areas of fantastic natural beauty. A drive through the surrounding villages on any sunny day, is one of sheer joy and bliss.
Andover was once described to me as
'an old market town'. This description came from a young policewoman, attending our house after my father had tried to done a really stupid thing, and had jumped from a railway bridge. As a pre-teenage boy, those words managed to stay with me all of my life. As I grew older, I married and had four children of my own here, and it's been my home for over thirty three years.
During these years I have seen a lot of good friends come and go. I have seen the beauty of the surrounding countryside, and the numerous areas of the local wildlife's habitats. Danebury Ring, and Chilbolton common, both have a special place in my heart. The lakes at Charlton and King Arthur's way, both hold special memories for me as I grew into an adult.
But deep down in my subconscious, there has always been an underlying element which has played on my mind. For this town, although containing many areas of beauty, also contains a violent and blood stained history. This town will always be my home, but if you scratch deep enough below the surface, the stories you will find, are the things of nightmares.
I started to research this book as I thought that there seemed to be quite a high rate of suicides in the area. In the last few years, I have seen stabbings in the area multiply. I even lost an old friend of mine to a violent death.
Whilst researching, I found that this town and the surrounding villages had experienced a seemingly disproportionate amount of blood thirsty events. I found murder, child abuse, torture, defamation and pain. I found stories of murder aplenty.
So join me dear reader as we experience this ride together. This is Andover. The town that God forgot.
Thanks as ever, go to family and friends near and far. Mum, this one's for you.
Thank you for giving me the chance to breathe.
Love you always.
Martin.
I would also like this book to be a lasting testament to those who were so cruelly and needlessly take before their time. I hope that the families can be at peace, and know that their loved ones will never be forgotten.
One last thank you to: Nick, Chris, Jordan, Owen, Sarah, Mum, Wayne, Dawn, Kyle, Ryan, Dylan, Jake, Liana, Zac, Alex, Richard, Rose, Andy (thanks for the laughter and friendship) Gemma, Bailey, Willow, Grandad Bob, Jackie and Robin, Phil, Kelly, Reece, all those on fb who contributed or least tried to, Baggy, Emma (where's the shoe horn?), Belinda, Paul, Fiona, Tony, Steve da Ginge, Mel, Julie, Liverpool F.C (I always wore my heart on my sleeve), Duran Duran (yes I like them, I always have, give it a rest already!) Mansun, Kaiser Chiefs, The Killers, Evanescence, Prince Tattoos by The Legacy, all at Le Creuset UK.
Thanks to the following websites for helping me with my research.
Google, Ask, Lycos, Alta Vista, Wikipedia, The Andover Advertiser, This is Hampshire, The Telegraph, BBC news, Facebook, Lulu.com, Hungerford virtual museum. Cover photograph by Evgeni Dinev.
Let my eyes be the mirror, to the murdered souls of Hampshire.
Martin McGregor. August 2010
Contents
Roger Panes
Beatrice Emily Worsdell and Horace Frank Hyde
Percy Topliss The monacled mutineer
The murder of Claire Cordner
Murder At Wherwell Abbey
The death of Sally Sinclair
The Kingsclere Murders
Sweet Fanny Adams
The Combe Gibbet
The Andover Workhouse
Michael Gifford-Hull
John Bodey
Roger Panes
March 1974. Roger Panes was a local cattle dealer. He was 39 years old, and husband to Pamela, and father to three children, Graham aged 7, Angela aged 6 and Adrian aged 4. Roger was a member of the Exclusive Brethren.
The Brethren were used to following what some would describe as a strict code of conduct. This would be instrumental in the deaths of the entire family.
It began in November of 1973. The Brethren deemed that Roger Panes had made what they would term, 'an error'. His crime was simply that he had acted on his own, without seeking permission from the Brethren leaders. He had 'shut up' or shunned another member.
The Brethren insist on having complete control, and react instinctively towards those who act for themselves without seeking permission. The leaders of the Brethren turned the tables on Roger Panes, and he himself was 'shut up' and shunned from the group.
It was recorded that:
"Roger Panes was shut up during November 1973, because of the way he treated another member of the brethren over a minor technical offence, and shut up that person wilfully."
"He shut up that person wrongly. That was not right. It was contrary to the accepted code and violations of the Divine Principles involved in the Brethren."
"This 'shutting up' was carried out by Mr. Panes without the consent of other members of the Brethren.Between November and February, members of the Brethren had called on Mr. Panes five or six times but the matter had not been resolved."
The punishment of being 'shut up' was far more severe than it sounds. The punishment meant that no other member of the Brethren, were allowed to associate with Roger Panes, or indeed any of his family. It also was agreed that if it was mutually agreed between him and his wife, he would be shut up from his family, that is to say he would be cut off from the rest of his family within his own household. This meant he did not sleep with his wife or eat with the rest of his family.
In February of 1974 Roger Panes was admitted to Winchester Hospital after taking an overdose. The doctor had asked his wife the reason her husband had taken the overdose, she was told
'It was a matter between him and God'.
She would offer no further explanation.
On March 2, 1974, a meeting was held by the Brethren but no decision was taken to:
"Withdraw from him or excommunicate him."
Three days later, a Post office engineer called at the Panes home, in order to fix a faulty telephone. He entered the premises in Salisbury Road. The body of Roger panes was hanging from a banister. A length of electric cable was around his neck. Immediately he called the police. But there were far worse secrets to be uncovered that day.
When the police arrived, they entered the house. In the front bedroom, they found the body of Mrs Pamela Panes. She had severe head injuries and had been hacked to death by an axe. The bodies of the three young children were found in other rooms, all had similar injuries, and all of them had been killed by axe wounds.
In another bedroom, the murder weapon a blood stained axe, with a seven and a half inch blade, was found. In Roger Panes bedroom a pair of trousers had been neatly placed. In these trousers was a note which read
"There's never been such a wicked man. This house will have to be left empty or bulldozed. You go to the Brethren. I trust they will take you in. "Cry to God for mercy for you all and the dear children. The Lord is coming very soon."
At the subsequent inquest, more than 150 members of the Brethren were in attendance in the public benches. Detective Chief Inspector Stanley Atkinson explained to the court, that when the 41 year old was cast out from the group, it was simply more anguish than he could bear.
The jury returned the verdict, that Roger Panes had murdered his wife and three children, and then he had committed suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.
When summing up to the jury, the coroner Mr Ronald Bowker recorded:
"It is up to anyone in this country to follow such religious beliefs as he pleases, without question. The only qualification I suppose one would make is if such beliefs are thought to be injurious to the community as a whole or individuals in particular.These might be matters for inquiry, but matters for inquiry elsewhere and not here."
As a footnote, a press commentary at the time had noted: The Exclusive Brethren is notorious for the severity of its discipline and was ruled with an iron hand by its world leader, Big Jim Taylor, until his death in 1970.
Beatrice Emily Worsdell and Horace Frank Hyde
The tiny village of Kimpton, lies just outside of Andover. In this tiny village a murder was committed so severe in its ferocity, that it remains one of the most gruesome murders ever to have happened in this country. It is simply a tale of unrequited love.
Miss Worsdell aged 25 had been in service in Cobham, where she was employed as a cook. It was here that she met Horace Frank Hyde aged 36. As lovers do, they spent time together, fell in love, and quickly became engaged to marry.For some reason unknown, the engagement was broken off.
Emily came home and she began working at Kimpton Manor, where she again found employment as a cook. Hyde was still desperately fond of Emily, and continued to write her numerous letters. The last of the letters asked that Emily would afford him, one final goodbye.
The day before he visited, Hyde had been having tea with his brother at around five in the evening. His brother recalled that he seemed very much affected by the breaking off of the engagement, to the point where he had turned to alcohol to try and drown his feelings.
His brother was later to mention "He had been strange since the engagement was broken off. The bottom of the matter is, I believe, he was jealous, and I think he had made up his mind that if he could not have Miss. Worsdell, no one else should."
He was asked:"Had he served in the army at all?"
His Brother replied:"Yes. He was a soldier. For seven years prior to the war he had served in India and he served all through the war with the Royal Field Artillery. He had not been injured or gassed, but his transport had been torpedoed twice."
The witness again mentioned the tea party on Saturday evening, when his father and his two brothers were together. Then the deceased told the family that he was going to Kingston, about five miles away from Cobham. He said that he was off to the Empire, and that was the last he knew of him till his brother was notified on Sunday night of what had occurred.
Hyde made his way to Kimpton on the Sunday. He made enquiries in the district on Sunday morning before he got to Kimpton, and he tried his best to find out where she was. He went to two wrong houses in his quest to find her.
Sidney Bews, who was a servant to Captain Leaf in Kimpton Manor, had known Emily, and knew she was a cook in the house. He knew she had been there for around a month. He saw Hyde talking to Emily in the New Inn, around midday. The only words he heard Hyde say were "this afternoon." He saw them again in the same Inn they were still talking at around 1.30pm. He later saw them again near Manor Farm House.
A witness saw the couple walking, he testified:
"There was no conversation passing between them. They were walking side by side and it struck me that he was walking hard against her, on her right hand, as if he were trying to get her to go up the other road which leads on to the downs. She more or less walked in front of him to take the other turning, so as to go to her home. They went along the road that leads to the bottom of the track, which goes to New Buildings. We lost sight of them in the bend of the road."
From this point on, we can understand the full nature of this horrific crime by examining the reports from the coroner and eye witnesses to the event that unfolded
"I heard a scream just afterwards," said the Witness "and I looked round and saw Miss. Worsdell running down the road. She ran straight across to Mr. Rose's cottage. Mr. Rose opened the door and as he did so, she collapsed and fell straight into his arms. I could not see any injury at the time, but I ran into the house and discovered that the girl had been very badly injured. I could see by her throat that it was nearly all up with her. We put towels round her neck, placed her on a chair and did everything we possibly could for her. She was dead in about a quarter of an hour. As soon as we had done all we could for the girl, I looked about for the man and found his body lying at the bottom of the track".
The Coroner asked,
"How far away did you find him from where you were standing when they passed you?"
He replied,
"About 70 yards."
"Did you hear them say anything?" he asked
"There was no conversation passing between them. They were walking side by side and it struck me that he was walking hard against her, on her right hand, as if he were trying to get her to go up the other road which leads on to the downs. She more or less walked in front of him to take the other turning, so as to go to her home."
The coroner then asked "Did the girl speak at all before she died?" to which he replied
"Mr. Rose and I were talking together and saying that we did not think that she could live, when she looked up and remarked
"I can hear all you are saying, I can hear all you are talking about."
She told us the name of the man, she said
'Horace Hyde is the man.'
And called for her poor mother."
Henry Rose, Job master of Kimpton, told how his house was situated right at the junction of Cow Lane and Shoddesden Road and the bottom of the track that leads up to New Buildings.
The Coroner asked,
"What time was it yesterday afternoon that you heard the screaming?"
Mr. Rose replied
"It was about 3.30. I was indoors sitting down at the time. I jumped up, looking out of the window, saw Miss. Worsdell come across the grass plot towards my door. I knew her. She shouted.
'Mr. Rose, Mr. Rose.'
I rushed to the door and saw what was the matter? Just as I got to the door and opened it she fell into my arms. I said
'Oh dear whatever have you done, have you had an accident?'
She did not answer for a minute, so I called my wife. We tried to make her comfortable.
We sat her on a chair outside in the air. I could see blood all over her, but thought that it was only coming from her hand. As I lifted her down I saw her head hang back and discerned that her throat had been cut.
'Oh dear,' I said 'whoever has done this?'
She answered
'That horrible man.'
'Where is he? 'I asked.
'He is over the road under the hedge.'
She said and I asked her what his name was, and she replied
'Horace Hyde.' quite distinctly.
She asked me for some water. I gave her some, but she only just sipped it. - As soon as we saw what had happened, we got towels and bound round her neck. In fact we did everything that we possibly could for the poor girl. We sent for the Doctor and the Police.
Three times Miss. Worsdell called for her mother. I asked her if she could hear what we were talking about. And she said that she could.
'My dear girl; I think you are dying.' I exclaimed. She looked up and said
'Yes.'
She died within twenty minutes of the tragedy. I then went back to look for the man who I had previously seen, but knew nothing about."
Medical evidence was given by Dr. J.E. Jones of Ludgershall, who stated that he arrived about 4 p.m. He saw the deceased lying on the piece of grass in front of the house.He announced,
"She was dead."
He said that he,"Found that her throat had been cut. The cut was six inches long, on the left side of her neck, extending about one inch to the right of the wind pipe. Muscles, Arteries and Veins had been cut, but the wind pipe had not been severed, which accounted for the girl being able to speak. The wound was from the left to the right, but was too far back to be self inflicted.
If inflicted by anyone else it must have been a right handed man. There was a second cut on, the inner side of the right forearm, two inches above the wrist. The cut was five inches long, and deeper on the inner side. The Tendons of the little ring finger had been cut, and in his opinion was, the girl must have put up her hand and tried to stop him curing her. In that way she received the cut on his wrist. Bleeding from the first described wound was the cause of death. Nothing could have been done to save her; the jugular vein had been severed".
Summing up, the Coroner remarked that,
"There seemed no doubt at all that Horace Hyde killed the young woman by cutting her throat. Had Hyde been alive, it would have been a most serious thing for him whether it was wilful murder or if he had killed her while temporally insane, the jury had to decide. If he had not cut his own throat the jury would have been very much inclined to that he killed the girl while temporally insane".
They had heard of people who had been disappointed in love going off their heads and killing objects of their affections as well as themselves. There was desperately strong feeling in this case, and no doubt. The brother was right when he said that he thought that the deceased had come to the conclusion, that if he could not have the girl, no one else should.
Had he got a sane mind at the time? Everything seemed to have been planned by a sane man. He had two razors on him. He came to the village to do it, and apparently he came prepared to do it The Coroner had two letters written by Hyde, which seemed to suggest that there was something coming. One stated that:
"I want to kiss you for the last time."
Everything pointed to a perfectly reasonable mind. The planning of the railway journey, the placing of the razors in his pockets, He was intending to do something. After about five minutes the jury returned a verdict to the effect that Hyde wilfully murdered Miss. Worsdell, and that there was no evidence to show that he was insane. They considered that he had done it while sane.
A Second Inquest was later held. At the inquest, the jury saw the body of Horace Hyde, which was lying in an outhouse (the body of Miss. Worsdell was in her home.)
Dr. Jones said
"After examining the young woman on Sunday afternoon, he saw this man's body about 50 yards away from the Rose's house. He was lying on the left side of the road going to Shoddesden and opposite the track that goes up to New buildings. The wound in his throat was six inches long. It was on a level with the top of 'Adams apple.' and was deeper on the right side. All the Arteries on both sides of the neck as well as the veins had been cut through; in fact he had cut right through to the front of the spinal cord, which was showing. It was a very determined cut, and no doubt self inflicted. The man must have been in a terribly determined state to have cut him like that".
Ernest Joseph Hyde proved his brother's identity and repeated most of the evidence that was tendered in the first case.William George Lucas, a servant employed at Delhi Mass, Tidworth Barracks, said he lived at Snoddesden. On Sunday afternoon he walked across to Kimpton with his friend from Winchester. He was near Manor Farm House about 3.10 and he saw the couple walking. He had not seen them before.
The man was quite a yard away from the girl. They came straight up the road leading from Kimpton to Shoddesden. The witness had said good bye to his friend, then walked on behind the couple with view to seeing some friends at the school corner. He spoke to three fellows there; Sturgess, Goodall, and Rose. They were there about two -minutes.
All at once he heard a scream from the girl, and saw her run across to Mr. Rose's house. Witness ran towards the house but Mr. Rose shouted to him to go up the road, as the fellow was along there, he said. Witness rushed up them and found a man in a kneeling position. An open razor was laying about a foot away from his left hand.
The witness picked up the razor put it in the hedge until the policeman came up. Witness took his handkerchief out of his pocket and fed it round the deceased's neck. He could see it was no good, and as he turned the man over to lay him down, he died.
He saw some 'girl's stuff' lying on the grass. There was some jewellery there to, a ring and a gold bangle in a box. Supt. Cox said these were presents which Hyde had given the girl, but which when she, came home to Kimpton, she returned to him.
The coroner thought that the jury would have no hesitation in finding that Hyde cut his own throat, for a witness had proved it to them that he had saw them walking along only a couple of minutes before the tragedy. A member of the jury wanted to know if there was anything that could throw some light on the breaking off of the engagement. The Coroner said he thought it would be advisable to read one letter which Hyde had wrote. It reads as follows:-
Dear Em, A line to tell you dear, that I should like to see you and kiss you a last goodbye, as I can't stand it any longer here. Every day you are in my thoughts, and I keep waking up at night since I saw you last.........
The Coroner said he could not go on with the letter. Supt Cox said the letters were addressed to her home. She finished with him entirely. He made enquiries in the district on Sunday morning before he got to Kimpton, and he tried his best to find out where she was. He went to two wrong houses in his quest of finding her.
The Coroner said, in one letter, Miss Worsdell had said he had taken to drink, but the brother had told them that were not 'till after the engagement was broken off.
The jury returned a verdict of felode'se. And the foreman on their behalf expressed the sympathy of the court with both families in the great trial that had overtaken them. The Coroner agreed and said he would pass on their words.
Percy Topliss The monacled mutineer
His story has captured the public's imagination for over 85 years, and the case was even turned into a BBC screenplay in 1985.
On the 24th of April 1920, a taxi driver named Sidney Spicer was murdered at Thruxton just outside of Andover. Topliss had deserted from Bulford, and became the prime suspect in the case. The inquest had found Topliss guilty in his absence. Now if he was caught, he now could be hanged.
Photographs and descriptions of Topliss, were posted in every police station across the country. He was apparently spotted in over a hundred different locations, while he was hiding out in the Highlands of Scotland.
Topliss had always been errant in his ways. At the age of 11 he was charged with theft, after he had convinced a tailor that he was to collect from him two suits of boys clothing, and then while wearing one, he successfully sold the other.
Topliss remained in and out of trouble until he joined the army and listed with the Royal Army Medical Corps. In 1914 while serving as a stretcher bearer in Egypt and India, he deserted several times. He could have faced death by firing squad, instead he simply rejoined the army using his own name. He was even alleged to have been at the supposed six day mutiny at Etaples, although historians dismiss the fact that this mutiny ever happened.
Topliss had a unique gift for being able to impersonate the upper classes. He charmed his way through society often frequenting luxury establishments, and dating high class women. He even impersonated a captain, he then paid for clothes with stolen cheques, while all the time sporting his signature gold monocle.
After the murder of the taxi driver, Topliss went to ground. His condition at the time, was described as probably mentally unstable, and his only true companion was said to be his gun. Topliss was running for his life, and fled to Scotland. While police scoured the country, he calmly played piano in an Inverness hotel. He found refuge in an old shepherd's cabin at the foot of the Lecht.
On the first of June a policeman, a gamekeeper and a farmer all approached the cabin, after seeing smoke rise from within. Topliss gave his name as that of an American soldier, George Williams, but then without warning he opened fire.
The shots seriously wounded the policeman and the farmer, and the gamekeeper fled to try and get help. Topliss calmly collected his belongings together and then calmly fled the scene. He sang 'good byeee, don't cryeee' as he cycled away. He was now wanted for another two attempted murders.
Topliss then headed south. He stopped at Edinburgh, so that he could pawn his watch, and he arrived at Carlisle castle, where despite him being the most wanted man in England, he still managed to receive lodgings for the night. The following day, he marched away towards Penrith.
Topliss was approached by a local policeman, but he managed to slip away in the woods. He changed into a civilian suit and shaved. Placing a Trilby hat in his head and carrying a brown paper parcel, he carried on his merry way. The policeman had been suspicious and returned with help.
Topliss was confronted near a church. The policeman, his son, and three other officers confronted Topliss. No words were exchanged they just commanded him to stop, and he was shot. He never got to face trial, and took all of the answers with him to an unmarked grave.
The murder of Claire Cordner
Stuart and Claire Cordner, had been married for less than four months. The newly-weds had set up home together in Borkum Close in Andover. In October 2006, the couple were allegedly drinking during the day, and at some point 33 year old Claire fell asleep on the family bed.
While she slept, 31 year old Stuart poured garden machinery fuel on to his wife. Stuart then produced a cigarette lighter and began to taunt his sleeping wife. He told her that if she did not wake up, then he would set her on fire. He then ignited the lighter, too close to the fumes, and his wife was engulfed in a ball of flames.
Instead of calling for any of the emergency services, or trying to save his wife, in act of total inhumanity, Stuart simply just left the house. Claire died in hospital a few days later.
At Stuart's trial in Winchester Crown Court, he pleaded guilty and received a life sentence. Of which he was told that he would serve a minimum of 19 years. The murder of a much loved daughter caused total devastation to the victim's family. Quite how anyone could be so inhuman is beyond explanation.
Murder at Wherwell Abbey
In the will of Kind Edred, the towns of Wherwell, Andover and Clere, were bequeathed to Hyde Abbey, Winchester. Wherwell Abbey was founded in the reign of King Ethelred. Elfrida, daughter of Ordgar, Duke of Devonshire resided in Wherwell, and knowledge of her beauty had reached the ears of King Edgar.
Edgar despatched Aethelwold, who was one of his closest confidantes to visit Elfrida, and instructed him, that if Elfrida really was so beautiful that he was to offer her the Kings hand in marriage. On his arrival at the Abbey, he found her beauty was indeed astounding, and hid his mission from the girl's parents. He decided that he should have the girl for himself.
Aethelwold returned to the King, and informed him that the girl was of a vulgar and common place appearance. As such she was not fit to be the wife of the King. The King soon lost interest in Elfrida, but soon he began to suspect that he had been duped by his friend, who had now married that same lady.
The King announced that he had set a date that he would visit the couple. Aethelwold was greatly alarmed at the thought of the Kings visit, and fearing what would happen, confessed what he had done to his wife. Aethelwold begged his wife to make herself look as undesirable as possible. Although Elfrida agreed to the plan, whatever she tried, she could not hide her true beauty.
The instant the King laid eyes upon Elfrida, he feel deeply in love with her. The King hatched a plan of his own, and sent the Earl into the woods at Wherwell. This was under the pretence that he was hunting. There, away from prying eyes, he ran him through with a javelin in an act of cold blooded murder.
Now in the depths of Harewood forest lies a plinth which bears this inscription"About the year of our Lord DCCCCLXIII (AD 963) upon this spot beyond the time of memory called Deadman's Plack, tradition reports that Edgar, surnamed the peaceable, King of England, in the ardour of youth love and indignation, slew with his own hand his treacherous and ungrateful favourite Earl Athelwold, owner of this forest of Harewood, in resentment of the Earl's having basely betrayed and perfidiously married his intended bride and beauteous Elfrida, daughter of Ordgar, Earl of Devonshire, afterwards wife of King Edgar, and by him mother of King Ethelred II, Queen Elfrida, after Edgar's death, murdered his eldest son, King Edward the Martyr, and founded the Nunnery of Wor-well"On the back of the plinth is another inscription saying"This Monument was erected by Col William Iremonger AD MDCCCMV (1825)"
This act of murder was not the only instance to strike within the family. King Edward the Martyr, Queen Elfrida's stepson, was later murdered at Corfe Castle. Edward went to visit his stepmother and half brother at Corfe Castle on 18th March 978, nearly three years after his father unexpected death in July 975.
That evening, after a day's hunting, the young king was murdered at the gap of Corfe and his body was thrown into a bog where it remained for nearly one year. Whilst there has never been any evidence to establish the complicity of Queen Elfrida, the result was that her own son, Ethelred, became King.
Ethelred, who was only ten years old at the time of the murder, but was so upset at the death of his half brother that he wept. This infuriated his mother, who picked up some candles and beat her son with then, the beating was so ferocious, that he dreaded the sight of candles for the rest of his life.
Ethelred showed no gratitude towards his mother for his elevation to King. When he came of age, he forced his mother to retire from political life. Queen Elfrida left to make her way to London, on her travels, she came upon the gates of Salisbury, where history records that the people of Salisbury closed the gates, and threatened to stone her.
She made her way to Amesbury where she came upon a nunnery, it was here that she did penance for her part in the bloodshed and in AD986 she founded Wherwell Abbey, she was to become its first Abbess. At a later stage she also founded the parish church.
The Queen spent the rest of her days in quiet contemplation and penitence, until one day in AD 1002 while gazing into the river. She then fell in to the water and drowned. The nunnery was destroyed by fire in AD 1141. During the civil war between King Stephen, and his cousin Empress Matilda.
The Empress had occupied Winchester, and was laying siege to The Bishop of Winchester in his castle. At this point Stephens's troops began to approach. Matilda sent a garrison of troops to guard the crossing of the river test in Wherwell. The garrison were soon attacked by Stephen's men.The troops were led by William of Ypres, neither a man known for having no respect for neither God nor man. The guards fled into the Abbey and claimed sanctuary. William ordered the nuns to hand over the men. The nuns refused so William ordered his men to burn down the abbey, killing the men, and driving out the nuns in the process.
The death of Sally Sinclair
The Sinclair family would have looked to outsiders as a normal successful family. They lived in a £1million rented house in the village of Amport just outside of Andover. Sally (40), was a successful business woman at a giant mobile phone company. Her husband Alisdair (48), was understood to have stayed at home, and looked after the couples ten year old twins. For a living, he traded second hand cars from the couple's house.
Alasdair's behaviour was said to have put a massive strain on the couple's relationship. Although Sally earned the families main wage, she was said to have had no control at all over the family finances. It was so extreme, that she did not even have her own bank account.
A few weeks earlier, Sally had told her husband that she wished to leave him. He then became jealous and suspicious. He simply could not bear to let her go. His resentment grew and his suspicions finally led him to breaking point.
On the afternoon of August 16th 2008, Alisdair challenged his wife, and asked her if she was seeing someone else. Sally finally admitted that she was having an affair. Alisdair then became violent, he used a variety of knives to stab and cut his wife, in total he stabbed her thirty times.
The attack was witnessed by the couple's two children, one of the children saw both Mr and Mrs Sinclair with knives, but they only saw Mr Sinclair use his as a weapon. The other child heard his mother Mrs Sinclair screaming. The last words the child heard her say were:
"No Alisdair, please do not do this. I will stop all this happening. Please do not do it."
He replied: "No, it's too late for that now."
Neighbours said there had been a flurry of activity that evening. The police found sally's body at 10pm. She was pronounced dead at the scene, and her body was taken to Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester. A post-mortem examination showed that she died from injuries to her upper body. Later reports claimed that Alisdair had even tried to saw off his wife's head.
Officers carried out forensic tests at the secluded property, where eight vehicles --- including two high-powered rally cars, a Subaru Impreza and a Mitsubishi Evo, were parked in the property's drive.
Neighbours said, that the family did not socialise with neighbours, and that there was rarely activity at the home. It was if the people who lived there were either very private, or they were always on holiday as the majority of the time, the curtains in the property were closed.
At the trial, Alisdair claimed self defence, and was found not guilty of murder, he was found guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility and sentenced to nine years in prison. He may only have to serve three years for this gruesome act.
The Kingsclere Murders
On the fifth of October 1944, a shooting incident occurred in the village of Kingsclere. This incident was kept quiet by the allied forces at the time. They were worried that Anglo American relationships may be damaged. They also suppressed information as the incident mainly involved coloured American soldiers. Approximately ten percent of the American forces based in Britain were coloured, and government at the time described it was an unwelcome intrusion to British shores.
Until these coloured soldiers arrived on British shores many people in Britain, especially in rural areas had never seen a coloured person before, and the coloured population in Britain was negligible. This incident may point toward the underlying suppressed feelings of the American coloured soldiers.
On the evening of the 5th Of October 1944, The Crown Public house in the village of Kingsclere, was to become the scene of a gruesome triple murder. Earlier that day, a U.S Army engineering the all-black 3247 Quartermaster Service Company, had arrived in Kingsclere from Exeter, and were stationed at Sydmonton Court. The camp was about a mile from Kingsclere.
The men arrived at around 4.30 in the afternoon, and after cleaning their barracks they prepared their bunks. It was normal practice while on the move, for each man to have his own weapon, usually a rifle or a carbine, these were not taken away until around 10.45 that evening. After eating, some of the men decided that they would leave the barracks, even though they had been issued no passes to do so.
The men made their way to the Bolton Arms, one of several pubs in the village. They arrived shortly before 7pm, when they were approached by a group of American auxiliary military policemen. They were instructed to return to camp, as they had no passes and were improperly dressed. It was later claimed that one of the M.P's cocked his rifle at the one of the men. An hour later, they were headed back towards the base in a truck, and it was then they decided they would return to get the M.P's. They were going to take their rifles away, and beat them in revenge for the earlier humiliation.
At the camp, the men decided not to get changed as they had earlier been ordered. Instead they cut through the chains of a rack of M1 carbines and took 100 rounds of ammunition. The men made their way back to Kingsclere. They searched the town pubs for the M.P's eventually finding the M.P's were drinking in the Crown Inn. The soldiers waited for the M.P's to exit the pub.
Two of the M.P's exited the Crown Together. They were immediately confronted by the soldiers. One shot was immediately fired, followed by another flurry of gunshots. An M.P named Anderson cried out in pain, he dropped his flashlight. He had been shot in the chest. The other M.P named Brown dropped to the floor, he managed to dive back inside the pub without being hit.
Anderson managed to get to his feet and run for 150 yards. He then collapsed in the garden in North Street, he took his final breath while, laid between beanpoles in the garden of Mr Freddie Digweed. Meanwhile the soldiers continued to shoot randomly into the pub.
Private Coates was sat with his back to the window, he was killed outright with a shot to the back of his head. The landlady, Mrs Rose Napper was the most unfortunate of the three victims. When the firing had started, the landlord had dragged his wife to the ground, a stray ricochet bullet had entered her left cheek, passed through her tongue, and out through the right of her neck.
At around 10.17 pm, Station Sergeant Dudman at Kingsclere rang the CID office at Andover. Detective Sergeant Dick Whitehead picked up the phone and heard:
"You'd better get over here right away Dick. All hells let loose."
It was eleven o'clock by the time Sergeant Whitehead arrived at the Crown. Private Coates lay dead. Mrs Napper was in a critical condition. A U.S Colonel took her to Newbury hospital, where sadly she died on arrival. The suspects had fled, but the first was caught by 3am, all ten had been rounded up by Friday the 17th.
Whitehead never believed that the men regretted what they did. All he saw was that they were still full of hate. One of the murderers even fell asleep in the dock during his trial for a full ten minutes. At their court martial in Thatcham nine of the men were sentenced to imprisonment for the whole of their natural lives. The tenth man was sentenced to 10 years but later received equal penalty when he was retried at Shepton Mallet.
General Eisenhower himself became involved and at some time later, requested his second-in-command to apologise to the people of Kingsclere for the affair. The spirit of Private Anderson is said to haunt the inn to this day. Mr Napper moved out of the Crown in 1951.
Sweet Fanny Adams
Saturday the 24th of August, 1867 was a remarkable day, in that it gave rise to a saying that is still in common use today. However its gruesome origins are not commonly known. When this day ended, the small Hampshire town of Alton, would never be the same again.
Nothing much ever happened in Alton. It was a small and safe community. None of the residents had ever witnessed a murder in the town that they could remember, but this was about to change forever.
Harriet Adams (the mother of Fanny Adams), certainly thought that the town was safe enough place to live. So much so, that she allowed three small children to wander off towards flood meadow just 400 yards from the family home.
Fanny and her friend Minnie Warner, were both eight years old. They set off up Tan Lane with Fanny's seven year old sister Lizzie. At some point they were approached by a man. The man was dressed in a black frock coat, and propositioned Fanny, the manner is chillingly familiar to too many stories told to children today.
The man looked respectable, but it was obvious that he had been drinking. He offered Minnie three halfpence that she could go and spend with Lizzie, if she would accompany him up The Hollow. This was an old road, which lead to the nearby village of Shalden. Fanny took a halfpenny, but then refused to go with the man.
The man then picked the child up and carried her into a nearby Hopfield, she was taken out of the sight of the other children. The time of the abduction was around 1.30pm. The other children played until around 5pm, then the girls made their way home.
One of the neighbours noticed the two girls returning, but without Fanny, she questioned the girls about the whereabouts of Fanny. The girls explained to Mrs Gardiner, about what had happened earlier. She ran to tell Mrs Adams the story that the children had relayed to her.
The women were anxious, but made their way to the Lane, where they chanced upon the same man walking coming toward them from the opposite direction. Mrs Gardiner confronted the man, she asked him:
"What have you done with the child?"
He simply replied,
"Nothing."
The man maintained his dignity and composure through the further questions he was asked. He admitted that he gave the child money, but it was simply to buy sweets, and he often did this for children. He claimed that Fanny had left him to rejoin the other children at play. He informed the women that he was a clerk of a local solicitor William Clement, and they believed his story, so they allowed him to leave.
At 7pm, the child was still missing. Worried neighbours formed a search party. In the nearby Hopfield, they made a sickening discovery. The child's severed head lay on two poles, she had been deeply slashed from mouth to ear, and across the left temple. Her right ear had been removed, and sickeningly, both her eyes were missing.
A leg and a thigh were both found nearby, after widening the search, they found the dismembered torso. The entire contents of the girl's chest and pelvis had been cut out. Some of the organs had been slashed or mutilated. It took days before the rest of her body parts were found. Her eyes were finally found in the River Wey.
Mrs Adams was distraught upon hearing the news of her daughter's death. She ran to inform her husband of what had happened, upon reaching The Butts where her husband was playing cricket, she collapsed from grief utterly exhausted. George Adams then returned home to fetch his shotgun.
George Adams set out with his gun. He was headed towards the Hopfield's intent on finding and dealing with his daughter's killer. He was intercepted by some of his neighbours, and fortunately they managed to disarm him.
Later that very evening, the obvious suspect was arrested at his workplace. He did indeed work at a solicitor's office in Alton High Street. When Superintendent William Cheyney questioned the man, he simply said:
"I know nothing about it."
It was the first of his many claims of innocence.
Cheyney escorted the man to Alton Police Station, leading the suspect through an increasingly angry crowd.
For 29 year old Frederick Baker, the evidence was mounting against him. His trousers were spotted with blood. His boots, socks and trouser bottoms were still wet.
"That won't hang me, will it?"
He said nonchalantly, explaining that whilst walking, he had a habit of stepping into the water. He could not however explain the bloodstained clothing.
When Baker was searched, more evidence appeared in the form of two small knives, one of which was stained with blood. The suspect was locked away, while the officer checked on bakers movements that afternoon. Witnesses had confirmed, that he had left around 1pm, and had not returned until around 3.25pm. He then went out again and returned around 5.30pm.
Baker had been seen by the child's mother at around 5pm, walking away from the Hopfield. If he had indeed murdered the child earlier in the day, then why had he returned to the scene of the crime, perhaps it was to admire his handiwork, or possibly to mutilate the girl's body even further.
Baker's fellow clerk, named Maurice Biddle, had recalled seeing Baker in the office at around 6pm. He said that Baker had seemed disturbed. Baker had commented:
"It will be very awkward for me if the child is murdered"
Later the two men had visited The Swan for a drink, where Baker commented that he may have to leave town the following Monday. His colleague made an observation, that he may have trouble in finding a new job, to which Baler had replied: "I could go as a butcher".
On the following Monday, Cheyney searched the office where Baker worked. He struck gold when he found Baker's diary. It contained a damning entry which stated calmly:
"24th August, Saturday - killed a young girl. It was fine and hot".
During his trial, Baker maintained his innocence, and said that the entry was written while he was drunk, it simply meant that he knew that a girl had been murdered. Around this time, a local painter named William Walker had found a large stone in the Hopfield, it had long blonde hair and a piece of flesh stuck to it.
The police surgeon claimed that this was probably the murder weapon. His post mortem had revealed a crashing blow to Fanny's head. The following Tuesday an inquest was held at The Duke's Head Inn. After hearing all the evidence, and viewing the gruesome remains, the handcuffed prisoner was asked if he wished to say anything. He replied:
"No Sir - only that I am innocent"
The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Frederick Baker for killing and slaying Fanny Adams. Baker was remanded to Winchester Prison to await the formal committee hearing.
The hearing was held at Alton Town Hall on Thursday 29th August. Baker still protested his innocence. Baker was committed to trial at the next county Assizes. As he left the town hall, he almost himself became a victim to the waiting mob outside. The police struggled to protect him from the baying crowd. Baker's trial date was set for December the 5th.
Fanny's little sister Minnie, was called and testified in court. The defence challenged the girl's identification of Baker, and also claimed that it was impossible for the two small knives to have been used to dismember the body so thoroughly, there would certainly seem that it would have been difficult considering the size of the knives.
The defence case was based on Baker's mental health, which was a tale of hereditary insanity. His father had "shown an inclination to assault even to kill, his children"; a cousin had been in asylums four times; brain fever had caused his sister's death; and he had attempted suicide after an abortive love affair.
The jury rejected the plea, after retiring for only 15 minutes, the jury returned with a guilty verdict. Frederick Baker was hanged before a crowd of 5000, a large proportion of whom consisted of women, in front of Winchester's County Prison at 8am on Christmas Eve, 1867. Following his execution, it was made know that Baker had written to the parents of the murdered child to express deep sorrow over the murder of their daughter.
He wrote:
"In an unguarded hour and not with malice aforethought". He sought their forgiveness, adding that he was
"Enraged at her crying, but it was done without any pain or struggle".
The prisoner denied emphatically that he had violated the child, or that he had even attempted to do so.
Fanny Adams headstone was erected by public subscription. It sill stands in the town cemetary on the Old Odiham Road.
The saying, 'sweet Fanny Adams',
Was first coined by the macabre sense of humour of British sailors. When they were served with tins of mutton in 1869, they gloomily declared that the butchered contents of the tin, must be that of 'Sweet Fanny Adams'.
The term was gradually accepted throughout the armed services as a euphemism for 'sweet nothing' it passed into common use. Large tins, in which the meat was packed for the Royal Navy, were often used as mess tins and it appears that even today mess tins are commonly known as 'Fanny's'.
The Combe Gibbet
Between Andover and Newbury, at the Inkpen Long Barrow, is a sight of remarkable natural beauty. It is almost impossible to find without a guide, or satellite navigation. On the very top of this hill stands the Combe Gibbet. It is named after the village of Combe, but it is also close to Inkpen.
The original Gibbet was erected in 1676, as a warning to deter others from committing crimes. There are many stories as to the purpose behind the erection of the double Gibbet, but the most popular story is this.
In the town of Combe, there lived a labourer named George Bromham. He was married, but was having a relationship with a woman named Dorothy Newman. They decided that George's wife Martha was in the way of their relationship, so they decided to remove her. Divorce was not an option, at the time it was only available to nobility.
George drove his unsuspecting wife to market in Newbury. On the journey, he enquired if his wife had ever seen a hornet's nest. She said that she had not, so he offered to show her one, that he had found a few days earlier. Her curiosity would prove to lead to her untimely demise.
As she gazed into the hornet's nest, her husband grabbed her from behind. He forced her head into the nest. The insects were enraged and stung Martha to death. When he was sure his wife had died, he placed her body in his cart and returned home, he was prepared to act the part of the bereaved husband, shocked by the accident that had befallen his wife.
His wife's death was accepted as an accident, and he visited his lover to announce the success of his plan. His lover had two sons, and as they discussed what had happened, the eldest son heard the story and listened in horror. His mother then mentioned to her lover, that he should check to see if her children were awake, and that if they had heard the story, then he should also do away with them.
Her son desperately feigned sleep, and by doing so, saved his own life. The next day, he went to his schoolteacher and told the teacher what had happened. The pair were soon to be arrested, ready to be brought to justice.
While the pair waited to be hung, a dispute arose over which parish should bear the cost of the hearing. It could not be proved if the deed had been planned in Inkpen or in Combe. A compromise was soon reached and both parishes agreed to share the expense. The execution would be held. At the highest point on the border between the two parishes. The point would be where it crossed the Inkpen Beacon.
A date was set for the event, and on the day a crowd of thousands had assembled to witness the execution. Death records later show that they were hanged for the murder of Newman's children, and no mention was made of the murder of Martha, so perhaps the children were not quite so lucky.
The original Gibbet lasted for some time, but it was replaced in 1850 as the original had rotted away. This second Gibbet was struck by lightning, and was replaced by a third in 1949. A fourth was erected in 1950. It was again replaced in 1965 and then in 1969. It blew down in the gales of 1977-78 and the current Gibbet was placed there in 1979.
The Andover Workhouse
No book on the haunting history of Andover could ever be complete, without a mention of the Andover workhouse. In 1845 the Andover workhouse was run by a tyrant named Colin McDougal and his wife. He was inhuman man known or his cruelty. If the paupers miss-behaved, he would lock them in the mortuary as a punishment. The female inmates were sexually abused by both McDougal and his son.
McDougal once whipped a two year old child, who would not stop crying. He ran the workhouse like a concentration camp. He spent the bare minimum he could on food, and most of the inmates were starving.
The paupers ground bones to make fertiliser. They were often so hungry, that they would eat peelings that had been left for the pigs. They even sucked the bones dry that they were grinding in search of nourishment.
Women who would not sleep with McDougal, were also brutally treated. They were locked away in solitary confinement in a workhouse cage, known as 'The Black Hole'. Here, they stayed without any food or water, bedding or any access to toilet facilities.
Children who wet the bed were beaten and placed on half rations. If this failed, then they were placed in the stocks, especially designed for children. One child who was three and a half had been taken from his mother. The food made his stomach upset and he messed his bed repeatedly. McDougal thrashed the child with his cane, his force was so severe that he broke the cane on the child's back.
The McDougal's began stealing the provisions for themselves, including the milk that was meant for the children. They also stole alcohol that was meant to be used for medical purposed for the elderly. A twenty year old new mother was placed in the workhouse, her own child was taken way, but she was given two other babies to feed. One of the men who only had one leg, was found to have chewed on candles to calm his hunger.
Sometimes more than half a dozen girls were stripped naked, just so McDougal could inflict cruel floggings. Other times they were asked to uncover the top parts of their bodies, so the McDougal could strike them with a birch rod on their bare shoulders and waists. He would show no remorse at all for his actions.
McDougal had scant regard for the dead or the living. An infant child's body was buried with an old man's corpse, to save the cost of a coffin. Children born in the workhouse were rarely baptised to avoid the cost Any that then died in infancy were declared to have been stillborn to avoid any further questions arising about their lack of baptism.
Hannah Joyce, was an unmarried mother. The McDougal's knew had previously been accused of child murder. While at the workhouse, her five-month child died suddenly. Medical evidence suggested that this was apparently from natural causes. However, a few days afterwards, the McDougal's presented Hannah with her baby's coffin and forced to carry it a mile on her own to the churchyard for the burial.
One of the inmates once stole a horse's leg from the pile of bones in the kitchen. He removed the hair, and then proceeded to eat the flesh raw. It was not long before rumours started to circulate about the cruel acts that were happening in the workhouse. Mr Hugh Munday, whom was one of the guardians of the workhouse, contacted the local M.P who raised the matter in the house of commons.
The Home Secretary thought the stories to be totally untrue and asked the Poor Law Commission to send an Assistant Commissioner to investigate. This investigation was farcical and botched. In January 1846 Ralph Etwall again raised the matter in the House of Commons and asked for a Select Committee Inquiry. The Andover workhouse had received masses of publicity in The Times newspaper the request was granted and all of the rumours were found to be true.
Henry Parker, the Assistant Poor Law Commissioner responsible for the Andover union was despatched in order to establish the facts of the rumours. He found the stories to be true. McDougal resigned from his position, for his heinous treatment of the poor, he faced no further punishment.
Parker recommended the former master of the Oxford workhouse as a replacement for McDougal. When it arose that the man had previously been dismissed for misconduct, parker then became the scapegoat. He was asked to resign by the poor law commission.
Parker however did not go quietly. He published a pamphlet in his defence, and his cause was taken up by a group of anti-poor law M.Ps. He also found support from William Day, a recently dismissed assistant commissioner, and Edwin Chadwick, who was secretary to the poor law commissioners.
On the 8th of November 1845, the commissioners accepted the outcry against bone crushing and forbade its further use.
The Andover workhouse still remains in Junction Road. Today, it has been converted into blocks of flats. At the time, it was described as a place of horror. Some people believed that to be poor was in itself a crime, and that vagrants should be discouraged, by making them work hard. The workhouse was known locally as "The Spike"
Michael Gifford-Hull
When Kirsi Pihlajamaki the daughter of Juhani and Leena Pihlajamaki married her husband, Michael Gifford-Hull, they thought it was to be the start of a long and happy life together in England. A stormy 19 years later, it would end in cold blooded murder.
The couple had two children aged nine and twelve. The relationship had turned sour, and Gifford-Hull had been having sex with two prostitutes. Kirsi found out about this and the couple rowed. They tired marriage guidance, but while undergoing the counselling, Gifford-Hull made a new contact through a dating website.
Mrs McGeachey told the court how the couple had arranged to meet in the woods, two months before his wife was murdered. Gifford-Hull told her that he was enduring a bad time at home. They went to a seclude spot, and the couple then had sex. His wife had called him on the telephone, and she could hear his wife shouting and swearing. He had previously taken his son to the spot and they had camped there together.
Kirsi then just disappeared.
He told the couple's children that their mother had walked out on the family, and then he reported her missing to the police. He later took part in a televised appeal, begging for the safe return of his wife. He cried 'crocodile tears' during the appeal. A dog walker came across the decomposing body of his wife, and he was then arrested.
The day after the alleged murder he sent an email that read. "Hi babe, well my weekend hasn't been boring. Friday evening went rather badly. We had a big row -- it was a discussion about where our marriage is going.She slept the night on the sofa and I went to bed. In the morning she was gone. She's got her phone and quite a lot of money. I don't know what tomorrow will bring."
After their visit to the woods he sent one asking: "How is my forest nymph?"
In another email he said that he was worried that his wife may have found out about the mobile phone he was exclusively using to contact Mrs McGeachey. He referred to his wife as 'The Gestapo', and that if he was caught, he would be shot.
Gifford-Hull had in fact strangled his wife. He had then thrown her body from the window, and had then hidden her body in the family garage. Later he removed the body and buried it in shallow grave in woodland at Micheldever.
Gifford-Hull soon admitted the killing, and admitted he had made up the story about her disappearance. He was sentenced at Winchester Crown Court, a day after the jury had spent ten hours deliberating, and then had found him guilty of murder.
As the majority verdict of 10 to 2 was read out, Gifford-Hull showed no emotion at all. There were cries of joy with shouts of 'yes' from the public gallery. Judge Guy Boney QC sentenced Michael Gifford-Hull to life and that he would spend a minimum of 15 years and 332 days behind bars.
Juhani and Leena Pihlajamaki fought back tears as they finally saw justice for their youngest daughter. As the jury in the six-week trial delivered their verdict on Gifford-Hull, the couple clasped hands, and said: "There is justice."
They said: "As long as we live we will never forgive the man who took our daughter from us."
John Bodey
In 1762, the marriage of the prisoner Jean Drouett to Elizabeth Adkins, would lead to one of the darker moments in English history. For it would lead to the birth of John Bodey, a man who would become a postmaster in France, and would deny Queen Elizabeth 1st as head of the church. He would pay the ultimate price for his denial.
After studying at Winchester college, and then becoming a fellow at New College Oxford in1568 he then converted to Catholicism . He then studied civil law in France in 1576, deciding to return to England in 1578. It is possible that he married around this time.
He was arrested in 1580 and he was kept in Winchester gaol shackled in irons.
In April of 1583, he was condemned along with a schoolmaster named John Slade, the charge was of maintaining the old religion and denying the Royal Supremacy. The act of supremacy was passed in November of 1534. It was an act of the Parliament of England under King Henry VIII. He had declared that he himself was
"The only supreme head on Earth of the Church in England" And that the English Crown shall enjoy
"All honours, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity."
The wording of the act made it quite clear, that parliament were not granting the title to the King, and therefore they would later have the right to remove the title, but rather that it was stated as a recognised fact.
In 1521, Henry was declared Defender of the faith by Pope Leo X, after he had accused Martin Luther (a German priest), of heresy. Parliament conferred the title to Henry in 1544. The English reformation act was made official in 1534, allowing Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be annulled.
King Henry VIII had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, but Pope Clement VII was still refusing to grant the annulment, because of Catherine's relationship with the Holy Roman Emperor. The treason act was then issued vowing that to disavow the Act of Supremacy and to deprive the monarch of his dignity, title, or name, was to be considered as an act of treason.
There was strong feeling that the original condemnation of John Bodey, was both unjust and illegal. While in gaol, he communicated with Lawrence Humphrey the Dean of Winchester. A second trial took place in Andover in August 1583, and once again he was condemned on the same charge.
Whilst awaiting his fate in gaol, he wrote to Dr. Humphrey Ely. He already seemed to have accepted his fate when he wrote
"We consider that iron for this cause borne on earth shall surmount gold and, precious stones in Heaven. That is our mark, that is our desire. In the mean season we are threatened daily, and do look still when the hurdle shall be brought to the door. I beseech you, for God's sake, that we want not the good prayers of you all for our strength, our joy, and our perseverance unto the end. From our school of patience the 16th September, 1583."
Bodey's sentence, was barbaric, he was to be hung drawn and quartered in the 2nd of November 1583. This sentence, is far more horrific then it sounds, although there are numerous different explanations of this sentence, it involved numerous painful acts.
The prisoner was dragged to the place of hanging. They were then hanged by the neck for a short period of time, not long enough for the body to expire. The prisoner then had organs and the bowels removed, also the genitalia and entrails were removed and burned before the unfortunate victim's eyes.
The victim was then beheaded, and the body was then cut into four quarters. The body parts would then commonly be displayed in different parts of the town. This barbaric act was not abolished until 1870.
When faced with his executioners, Bodey kissed the halter, he exclaimed:
"O blessed chain, the sweetest chain and richest that ever came about any man's neck"
He was then told he died for treason, to which he replied:
"You may make the hearing of a blessed Mass treason, or the saying of Ave Maria treason, but I have committed no treason, although, indeed, I suffer the punishment due to treason"
He begged those present, to obey Queen Elizabeth and his last words were:
"Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus"
(Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, be to me Jesus).
Upon his death, his mother made a great feast. She exclaimed that her son's death was a happy death. She asked them to rejoice as that now his soul was now happily and eternally espoused to the Lamb.
Bodey's death was not in vain. After his death he became a martyr and he was subsequently beatified in 1929. He remains one of Andover's most famous, yet commonly unknown victims.
So we come to the end of the book. As you can see, Andover and its surrounding villages hold many dark tales of murder most foul. It now sends a shiver down my spine as I walk down some of these roads. I have walked them since I was 7 years old. I never knew the horrors that lay beneath the surface, as they were not spoken of.
Most of these murders are still not spoken about today. Whether it is a conspiracy to hide these horrors from young ones ears, or a deliberate attempt to gloss over the blood spilt, and keep the Towns image untainted.
Maybe it is just something to do with the name of the town? I did find doing this research, that time and time again, the mention of murder and Andover went hand in hand. The strange thing is, there is also another town called Andover.
Andover is situated in Ohio, America. It has experienced numerous cases of recent murders, especially amongst the young. Andover in Hampshire has a population of 52,000, Andover Ohio, has a population of 31,247.
Andover in Ohio, is also famous for the Salem witch trials, where two courts convicted 29 people for the capital crime of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged. One man, name Giles Corey, refused to enter a plea. He was crushed to death under heavy stones while attempting him to force a plea.
Both are considered safes places to live with low crime rates.
I have tried to be sensitive to the families of the deceased, as some of these murders were very recent. If in my attempt to uncover the truth I have offended anyone living or dead, I can only offer my sincere apologies, and my prayers for forgiveness for those who took the lives of others, and offer my deepest sympathies for your losses.
There may be the odd inaccuracy with some of the dates or spellings of names, these records do fade over time, so it isn't always easy to find the information that you need.
The Curse Of New Hampshire, And The Salem Witch Trials.
In August 2010 I published my first non fiction book. It was called The Town that God Forgot (it is still available on smashbooks). It was during the research for this book I noticed, that time and time again another place called New Hampshire kept popping up ( I did hint at this at the end of the last book). Well I decided that this was worth some further investigation.
So, here I am on a Saturday afternoon, when I should be resting from my day job, about to embark on a new journey. The path seems to have been trodden a few times before, but this is a new journey of discovery for me. The main attraction for me, was a little place called Salem.
If you a child of the 80's like me, then the word Salem may conjure images of vampires, largely thanks to the efforts of Stephen King. In fact it is better known for the Salem witch trials of 1692. This is where I shall begin my journey, but my account of Murders in Andover, Massachusetts. This is another Hampshire. I have been left thinking to myself, Is the name of this place cursed? There certainly seems to be echoes of the Devil hard at work here.
Thanks to: Google, Wikipedia, Maine Sunday Telegram, Peace for the missing, Facebook, Smashbooks. Smithsonian Magazine, Boston News, IMDB.com, wbztv.com, unionleader.com, activemostwanted.com, coldcasecenter.com, Yahoo, Altavista, The Andover Advertiser.
Contents
Alexander Stolte
The Dartmouth Murders
Melanie Melanson
Pamela Smart
Kathy Gloddy
The Murder of Dr. William Dean
Sivaguru
Kimberley Cates
This second of the three books is dedicated to my four sons,
Nicholas, Christian, Jordan and Owen.
I love you all.
Follow your dreams, always do everything to the best standard that you can love your wives and children for they are what make you whole.
Never let the zeroes bring you down.
Love you always, Dad x.
A special thank you also to: My long suffering wife Sarah, Mum, Brother Wayne John Proudfoot, Michelle, Stuart, Katie, All at Le Creuset for their continued suppot. All those who bought the first two books, Alan 'Baggy' Batchelor, Rebecca, Steve, Karl, all those who have supported me on Facebook. To the other loves of my life Liverpool F.C.and Duran Duran. To anyone I may have forgotten, the memory fades with time so please accept this as my apology.
I would also like to thank those who got me into this in the first place. A special thank you to:
Stephen King
James Herbert
Shaun Hutson
Dean R Koontz
Sam Raimi
John Carpenter
Anthony Hopkins
Thanks for the nightmares, you have made my life a little more tense, but I wouldn't have given you up for the world.
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692
The story begins in June 1692. It ends with one of the most unjust and inhumane mass killings in American history. Nineteen people would meet their deaths by hanging. Another would be mercilessly killed, in an even more barbaric manner.
John Putnam was one of the most influential elders of the village of Salem. He invited a man named Samuel Parris, to preach in the village church. Parris was a successful farmer and merchant in Barbados. It took a year of strong negotiations, but after deciding on his salary, Parris relented and accepted the role as the village minister.
Parris relocated with his wife whom was named Elizabeth, and his year old daughter named Betty. His niece also decided to accompany the family, as did their Indian slave named Tibuta. Tibuta has been acquired by Parris whilst he was in Barbados. When they arrived in Salem, they arrived at a town that was in the middle of an evolving process.
a cereal, it was also an ingredient of bread that may have been infected with Ergot.
A derivative of ergot, was later used to make L.S.D, the hallucinogenic. It does appear that the young girl may have suffered the symptoms of this disease, another theory, was that she simply may have been bored and was pretending to have those symptoms. It would not however explain what was to happen to the other residents of Salem later that year.
Around this time, an author named Cotton Mathers, had published a popular book named
Memorable Providences. It described in detail the suspected act of witchcraft and the supposed possession of an Irish washer woman from Boston. The behaviour of young Betty mirrored the events that were described in the book, which was now becoming widely read and discussed.
An Indian war was raging less than seventy miles from the village and at the time superstition and fear was rife. Death was close to the door of the village, and many of the refugees from the war were now even taking haven in the village. Talk of more deaths was never far away, and neither were rumours that what was happening to the child, was in fact the work of the Devil.
Three more young girls were then struck down with similar symptoms, who were playmates of Betty, they were named Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott, and were soon afflicted and talk of the Devils work and witchcraft became even more rife.
The local doctor named William Griggs examined the girls. He failed to diagnose the illness effectively, and despite trying different cures, nothing seemed to have any positive effect. The Doctor himself then suggested that the disease may indeed by supernatural in origin. At the time, it was believed that witches targeted children, and this made the diagnosis even more prudent.
The townsfolk decided to fight fire with fire, and a woman named Mary Sibley proposed a form of counter magic. She told the Indian slave Tibuta to bake a cake made with the urine of the affected girls, he should then feed the cake to a dog (dogs were thought to be instruments that were used by witches to carry out tasks).
For Tibuta (who was commonly know to tell tales of Omens Voodoo and witchcraft from her native tribe, suspicions had started to be raised at the part she had played a part in the witchcraft herself. By allowing herself to participate in the cake baking, it was to make her a more obvious scapegoat.
The number of the affected began to grow at a more alarming rate, soon seven girls became afflicted with the same illness. The girls turned into what was described as a gang of 'juvenile delinquents'. They would fall down in frozen postures, contort into horrifying poses, and complain of being bitten or pinched. In the village this was now common belief that this was indeed the work of the devil, and the affliction of the girls was fast becoming the villager's obsession.
Tibuta did indeed bake the witch cake, and as her reward she was promptly arrested, along with two other women. Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, had both now in fact named those who had been responsible and so began the start of the infamous witch hunt. That the two girls actually named the people responsible, points to a conspiracy between the two girls.
Ann Putnam and Mercy Lewis began to claim that they had seen witches flying through the winter mists. The Putnam family supported the girl's accusations and this was to give the prosecution considerable leverage to hunt down those who were responsible.
The first three women to be accused were Tibuta, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn. Good was a beggar, Osborn was old and ill tempered, she had not attended the village church for over a year, and Tibuta was an obvious target. On the accusations raised by the Putnam's, the three were bought before the local county magistrates, who were named Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne. The magistrates set a date for examination of the suspects on March 1st 1692 in Ingersoll's tavern.
Hundreds of spectators turned up to witness the examination, and the Inn proved too small a venue, so the examinations were moved to a larger meeting house. During the examinations, the three girls described being attacked by spectres of the three women. The girls then proceeded to contort their bodies as they had previously done, and the routines were now almost perfect. If this was an act on the part of the girls, It was now one that they had finely crafted.
Other villagers presented evidence of food that had become spoiled for no particular reason, and told tales of animals that had been born with deformities. In these uneducated times, it was far easier to blame the Devils hand rather than to wait until the real explanations were uncovered. The women were all asked repeatedly:
If they were witches, and
'Had they seen Satan?'
They were also asked, if they were not witches, then why were the girl's appearances being contorted whenever the three were present? It would appear that all through the trial the form of the questioning would point to the pre-determined verdict of the magistrates, that the women were all indeed guilty.
A transcript remains from the examination of Tibuta the Indian. Translation into modern day English gives us some of the points that were covered and the defence that Tibuta was able to put forward. There may be a few inaccuracies in the translation.
Q is the question asked by the examination, A is Tibuta's response.
Q. Why do you hurt these poor children? What harm have they done to you?
A. They do no harm to me I have not hurt them at all.
Q. Why have you done it?
A. I have done nothing, I can't tell when the Devil works.
Q. What does the Devil tell you, that he hurts them?
A. No, he tells me nothing.
Q. Do you never see something appear in some shape?
A. I never see anything.
Q. What familiarity have you with the Devil or what is it if you converse with all? Tell the truth who it is that hurts them?
A. The Devil for all I know.
Q. What appearance or how does he appear when he hurts them, with what shape or what is he like that hurts them?
A. Like a man I think. Yesterday I was in the Lentoe Chamber, I saw a thing like a man, that told me to serve him and I told him no, I would not do such a thing.
The examination recorder noted that Tibuta then accused Osborne and Sarah Good, as those that hurt the children, and that they would have had her hurt them too. She said that she saw four people, two of which she did not know. She saw them last night as she was cleaning the room, they had told her they would hurt the children, and would have her as well if she would not go and hurt them as well. At first she had agreed to join them, but then refused to do so no more.
Q. Would you have hurt the children last night?
A. Yes but I was sorry and I said I would do so no more, but told I would fear God.
Q. But why did you not do so before?
A. They told me I had done so before, and therefore I must go on, these were the four women and the man
The recorder then noted she knew none but Osbourne and Good alone, as the others were from Boston
Q. At first beginning with them, what appeared to you, what was it like that made you do it?
A. One like a man, just as I was going to sleep, he came to me he came to me this was when the children were first hurt. He said he would kill the children and she would never be well, and he said if I would not serve him, he would do so to me.
Q. Is that the same man that appeared before to you, that appeared the last night and told you this?
A. Yes.
Q. What other likenesses other than a man have appeared to you?
A. Sometimes like a hog, sometimes like a great black dog, four times.
Q. But what did they unto you?
A. They told me to serve him and that was a good way, that was the black dog. I told him I was afraid, he told me he would do worse unto me.
Q. What did you say to him after that?
A. I told him I would serve him no longer, he told me he would do me hurt then.
Q. What other creatures have you seen?
A. A bird.
Q. What bird?
A. A little yellow bird.
Q. Where does it keep?
A. With the man who has pretty things there besides.
Q. What other pretty things?
A. He has not showed them to me yet, but he said he would show them to me tomorrow and he told me if I would serve him I should have the bird.
Q. What other creatures did you see?
A. I saw two cats, one red, another one as big as a little dog.
Q. What did these cats do?
A. I don't know, I have seen them two times.
Q. What did they say?
A. They say they serve him.
Q. When did you see them?
A. I saw them last night.
Q. Did they do any hurt to you, or threaten you?
A. They did scratch me.
Q. When?
A. After prayer, and scratched me because I would not serve them. When they went away I could not see, but they stood before the fire.
Q. What service do they expect from you?
A. They ask me to hurt the children more.
Q. How did you pinch them when you hurt them?
A. The other pulled me and called me to pinch the children, and I am very sorry for it.
Q. What made you hold your arm when you were searched? What had you there?
A. I had nothing.
Q. Do not those cats suck you.
A. No never yet I would not let them, but they had almost thrust me into the fire.
Q. How do you hurt those that you pinch/ Do you get those cats or other things to do it for you? Tell us, how is it done?
A. The man sends the cats to me and bids me to pinch them and I think I went over to Mr Griggs and have pinched her this day in the morning. The man brought Mr Griggs maid to me and made me pinch her.
Q. Did you ever go with these women?
A. They are very strong and pull me to make me go with them.
Q. Where did you go?
A. Up to Mr Putnam's, and they make me go with them.
Q. Where did you go?
A. Up to Mr Putnam's and make me hurt the child.
Q. Who did make you go?
A. A man that is very strong and these two women, Good and Osbourne but I am sorry
Q. How did you go, what did you ride upon?
A. I rode upon a stick or pole with Good and Osbourne behind me we ride taking hold of one another. I don't know where we go for I saw no trees nor path but presently we were they when we were up.
Q. How long since you began to pinch Mr Parris's children?
A. I did not pinch them at first, but he made me afterwards.
Q. Have you seen Good and Osbourne ride upon a pole?
A. Yes I have, and held fast by me. I was not at Mr Griggs but once, but it may be he sent something like me with or I would have gone, but they tell me that they will hurt me, last night they told me I must kill someone with the knife.
Q. Who was it that told you so?
A. Sarah Good and Osbourne and they would have had me killed Thomas Putnams Child last night. The child also affirmed that at the same time they would have had her cut off her own head, for if she would not then Tibute would cut it off. She then complained at the same time of a knife cut, when her master asked her about these things, she said that they would not let her tell, and if she tells her head would be cut off.
Q. Who tells you so?
A. The man, Good and Osbourne's wife. Goods wife came to her last night, when her master was at prayer and would not let her hear. She could not hear for a good while. Good has one of the birds, the yellow bird and would have given me it, but I would not have it, at prayer time she stopped my ears and would not let me hear.
A. What should you have done with it?
Q. Give it to the children the yellow bird which has been seen several times by the children. I saw Sarah Good have it on her hand when she came to the fore finger and long finger upon the right hand.
Q. Did you never practise witchcraft in your own country?
A. No, never before now.
Q. Did you see them do it now?
A. Yes. Today, but that was in the morning.
Q. But did you see them do it now while you are being examined?
A. No, I did not see them, but I saw them hurt at other times. I saw Good have a cat beside the yellow bird which was with her.
Q. What has Osbourne got to go with her?
A. Something I don't know what it is. I can't name it. I don't know how it looks she has two of them. One of them has wings and two legs and had like a woman. The children saw the same, but yesterday it afterwards turned into a woman.
Q. What is the other thing that Good Osbourne has?
A. A thing hairy all over, all the face is hairy and it has a long nose. I don't know what it is, i can't name it. I don't know how it looks, she has two of them. One of them has wings and two legs. It goes upright and is about two or three feet high. It goes upright like a man, and last night it stood before the fire in Mr Parris's hall.
Q. Who was it that appeared like a wolf to Hubberd as she was going from proctures, what clothes does the man appear to you in?
A. Black clothes sometimes, sometimes searge a coat of other colour, a tall man with white hair I think.
Q. What apparel do the women wear?
A. I don't know what colour.
Q. What kind of clothes has she?
A. A black silk hood with a white silk hood underneath it with top knots. Which woman i know not but have seen her in Boston when I lived there.
Q. What clothes the little woman?
A. A searge coat with a white cap I think.
The children started having fits at this very time she was asked who hurt them, she answered Good. Hubbard had an extreme fit, and after she was asked who hurt her, but she said she could not tell. She said that they blinded her, and would not let her see, after that she was taken dumb once or twice.
It appeared Tibuta was afraid for her life, at first she had denied any guilt but her testimony was damning. She was perhaps afraid of being made a scapegoat for what was happening. Claiming she was approached by the tall man from Boston, a man who sometimes appeared as a hog, and sometimes as a dog, this was interpreted as being Satan himself, who had called upon Tibuta to sign his book, and to do his bidding.
Tibuta had herself admitted to being a witch along with four other witches including Good and Osbourne had indeed flown though the air on poles. When she had tried to run to the minister for help, but she said the Devil had blocked her path. Her confession had the opposite effect of what she had intended. Instead of her just being under suspicion, she was to now become the central figure in the prosecutions. Her confession silenced almost all of the critics and a large scale witch hunt began.
There were soon reports of the spectres of other women attacking the girls. The spectral forms of Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, Sarah Cloyce, and Mary Easty, were all reported to have attacked the girls, and were subsequently all accused of witchcraft. On the 20th March, Ann Putnam was attending a church service when she suddenly announced
"Look where Goodwife Cloyce sits on the beam suckling her yellow bird between her fingers!"
The mother of Ann Putnam would soon join in with the accusations, and horrifyingly, a four year old girl, the daughter of Sarah Good, named Dorcas Good was also accused of being a witch after three of the girls claimed to have been bitten by the spirit of her. The girl would be arrested, gaoled for eight months, saw her mother taken to the gallows, and slowly she was driven insane.
In gaol, the women believed that if they confessed, they would be spared from the gallows. The testimony of the afflicted girls was damning and they were believed to be credible witnesses. Deliverance Hobbs admitted to being a witch, she confessed that she had pinched the girls upon the command of the Devil himself. She also admitted that she had flown on a pole and attended a Witches Sabbath.
The governor Phips was in England at the time, but upon his return he decided that prompt action should be taken. The gaols were at close to full capacity and the village was close to chaos. Phips took it upon himself to create a new court. The court was the court of the 'oyer and terminer'. It was to hear the witchcraft cases. Five judges were appointed to the court, included were three close friends of Cotton Mather.
The most influential member of the court, was a ruthless witch hunter named William Stoughton. The judges were urged to accept the confessions, and accept the evidence that the afflicted had been visited by the spectres of the accused as actual damning evidence. The ministers looked toward the judges for guidance in the matter, but most of the judges were without legal training at all, they certainly had little or no previous experience of witchcraft matters.
The judges allowed what was called 'the touching test'. If the afflicted persons were suffering a fit or contortions, then the touch of a witch was assumed to be able to stop the contortions. The accused's bodies were also examined for signs of being a witch, or witches marks. Moles, or birthmarks would be possibly cited as being evidence of being a witch. Gossip stories and hearsay, were also admitted as evidence of guilt in Salem.
The accused were offered scant defence. They were afforded no legal counsel, no witnesses were allowed to testify as to their innocence, and they had no avenues with which to launch any appeals. They were however, allowed to speak for themselves, and produce any evidence they had, or to cross examine the accusers, although it is doubtful that these were of much use to the accused as they depended on their own ability to defend themselves.
The first to be brought to trial on them accusation of witchcraft was Bridget Bishop. Bishop was in her late fifties and was the owner of a tavern. She was a critical woman, unafraid of breaking the laws of the Sabbath, and was reluctant to pay her bills, it made her a fitting candidate for the accusation of being a witch. It was thought that Bishop was selected to be the first prosecuted, as there was a high chance of a conviction. The case against her was considered to be very strong.
At Bishops trial, a field worker testified, that he had seen an image of Bishop stealing eggs, he then saw her transform into a cat, Deliverance Hobbs and Mary Warren also testified that Bishop was a witch. By this point, the two women were most likely under considerable duress, if not suffering from some form of insanity. A villager told the court that Bishop had visited his bed at night and had tormented him. When the court matrons examined Bishop's body they said they found an "excrescence of flesh".
An account of Bishops cross examination still remains.
THE EXAMINATION OF BRIDGET BISHOP, APRIL 19, 1692
Bridget Bishop before the Worshipfull John Harthon and Jonathan Curren esq'rs
Bridget Bishop being now coming in to be examined relating to her accusation of Suspicon of sundry acts of witchcrafts the afflicted persons are now dreadfully afflicted by her as they doe say.
(Mr. Harthon) Bishop what doe you say you here stand charged with sundry acts of witchcraft by you done or committed upon the bodyes of mercy Lews and An Putnam and others.
(Bishop) I am innocent I know nothing of it I have done no witchcraft
(Mr. Har) Looke upon this woman and see if this be the woman that you have seen hurting you. Mercy Lewes and An Putnam and others doe [doe] now charge her to her face with hurting of them.
(Mr. Harthon) What doe you say now you see they charge you to your face
(Bish) I never did hurt them in my life I did never see these persons before I am as innocent as the child unborn
(Mr. Harth) is not your coate cut
(Bish)[RECORDER'S NOTE: answers no but her garment being Looked upon they find it cut or toren two wayes Jonathan walcoate saith that the sword that he strucke at goode Bishup with was not naked but was within the scabbord so that the rent may very probablie be the very same that mary walcoate did tell that she had in her coate by Jonathans stricking at her apperance The afflicted persons charge her, with having hurt them many wayes and by tempting them to sine to the devils Booke at which charge she seemed to be very angrie and shaking her head at them saying it was false they are all greatly tormented (as I conceive) by the shaking of her head]
(Mr Har) good Bishop what contract have you made with the devill
(Bish) I have made no contract with the devill I never saw him in my life. An Putnam sayeth that shee calls the devill her God
(Mr. Har) what say you to all this that you are charged with can you not find in your heart to tell the truth
(Bish) I doe tell the truth I never hurt these persons in my life I never saw them before.
(Mercy Lewes) oh goode Bishop did you not come to our house the Last night and did you not tell me that your master made you tell mor than you were willing to tell
(Mr Har) tell us the truth in this matter how comes these persons to be thus tormented and to charge you with doing
(Bish) I am not come here to say I am a witch to take away my life
(Mr H) who is that that doth it if you doe not they say it is your likenes that comes and torments them and tempts them to write in the booke what Booke is that you tempt them with.
(Bish) I know nothing of it I am innocent.
(Mr Harth) doe you not see how they are tormented you are acting witchcraft before us what doe you say to ths why have you not an heart to confese the truth
(Bish) I am innocent I know nothing of it I am no witch I know not what a witch is.
(Mr H) have you not given consent that some evill spirit should doe this in your likeness.
(B) no I am innocent of being a witch I know no man woman or child here
(Marshall Herrik) how came you into my bed chamber one morning then and asked me whether I had any curtains to sell shee is by some of the aflicted persons charged with murder
(Mr Harth) what doe you say to these murders you are charged with
(B) I am innocent I know nothing of it now she lifts up her eyes and they are greatly tormented again
(Mr Har) what doe you say to these things here horrible acts of witch craft (Bish) I know nothing of it I doe not know whither be any witches or no
(Mr Har) no have you not heard that some have confessed.
(Bish) no I did not.
Numerous villagers had claimed to have seen and even been haunted by Bishops spectre, and some even claimed that Bishop was responsible for events of bad fortune that had befallen them. When Bishop was being transported to the examination, she was said to have looked at a building and at that point a part of it was said to of had fallen down. One of the judges resigned at the conduct of the trial, but the Chief Justice signed Bishops death warrant. On the 10th June 1692 Bishop was carted to Gallows Hill and was hanged.
During the summer of 1692, the trials increased in pace. Rebecca Nurse was a respectable woman. According to Ann Putnam Junior, she had been attacked by the spectre of both Rebecca Nurse and Abagail Williams in march of that year. Ann Putnam Senior, had also claimed that nurse had demanded that she sign the devils book and had then pinched her. Nurse was one of three sisters,of a Topsfield family, who it transpired has been in a long running dispute with the Putnam family. All three sisters had been accused of being witches.
There was little evidence against Rebecca Nurse, except that Nurse had lectured a man named Benjamin Houlton, who had allowed his pig to root in her garden. Houlton had soon after died. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, but the chief justice ordered the jury that they should go back and re-examine a statement that nurse had made, that could be considered an admission of guilt.
The Examination of Rebecca Nurse
Mr. Harthorn. What do you say (speaking to one afflicted) have you seen this Woman hurt you?
Yes, she beat me this morning
Abigial. Have you been hurt by this Woman?
Yes
Ann Putman in a grievous fit cryed out that she hurt her.
Goody Nurse, here are two An: Putman the child & Abigail Williams complains of your hurting them. What do you say to it
Nurse: I can say before my Eternal father I am innocent, & God will clear my innocency
Here is never a one in the Assembly but desires it, but if you be guilty pray God discover you.
Then Hen: Kenny rose up to speak
Goodm: Kenny what do you say
Then he entered his complaint & farther said that since this Nurse came into the house he was seizd twise with an amaz'd condition.
Here are not only these but, here is the wife of Mr. Tho: Putman who accuseth you by credible information & that both of tempting her to iniquity, & of greatly hurting her.
N:I am innocent & clear & have not been able to get out of doors these 8. Or 9. Dayses.
Mr Putman: give in what you have to say
Then Mr Edward Putman gave in his relate
Is this true Goody Nurse
N: I never afflicted no child never in my life
You see these accuse you, is it true
N: No.
Are you an innocent person relating to this Witchcraft.
Here Tho: Putmans wife cryed out, Did you not bring the Black man with you, did you not bid me tempt God & dye How oft have you eat and drunk y'r own damaon What do you say to themOh Lord help me, & spread out her hands, & the afflicted were greviously vexed
Do you not see what a solemn condition these are in? when your hands are loose the pesons are afflicted.
Then Mary Walcot(who often heretofore said she had seen her, but never could say or did say that she either bit or pincht her, or hurt her) & also Eliz: Hubbard under the like circumstances both openly accused her of hurting them
Here are these 2 grown persons now accuse you, w't say you? Do not you see these afflicted persons, & hear them accuse you.
N: The Lord knows I have not hurt them: I am an innocent person
It is very awfull to all to see these agonies & you an old Professor thus charged with contracting with the Devil by the [a] effects of it & yet to see you stand with dry eyes when thee are so many whet---
N: You do not know my heart
You would do well if you are guilty to confess & give Glory to God
N: I am as clear as the child unborn
What uncertainty there may be in apparitions I know not, yet this with me strieks hard upon you that youa re at this very present charged with familiar spirits: this is your bodily person they speak to: they say now they see these familiar spirits com to your bodily #[spirits com to your bodily] person, now what do you say to that
N: I have none Sir:
If you have confess & give glory to God I pray God clar you if you be innocent, & if you are guilty discover you And therefore give me an upright answer: have you any familiarity with these spirits?
N: No, I have none but with God alone.
How came you sick for there is an odd discourse of that in the mouths of many---
N: I am sick at my stomach---
Have you no wounds
N: I have none but old age
You do Know whither you are guilty, & have familiarity with the Devil, & now when you are here present to see such a thing as these testify a black man whispering in your ear, & birds about you what do you say to it
N: It is all false I am clear
Possibly you may apprehend you are no witch, but have you not been led aside by temptations that way
N: I have not
What a sad thing it is that a church member here & now another of Salem, should be thus accused and charged
Mrs Pope fell into a grevious fit, & cryed out a sad thing sure enough: And then many more fell into lamentable fits.
Tell us have not you had visible appearances more than what is common in nature?
N: I have noe nor never had in my life
Do you think these suffer voluntary or involtary
N: I cannot tell
That is strange every one can judge
N: I must be silent
They accuse you of hurting them, & if you think it is not unwillingly but by designe, you must look upon them as murderers
N: I cannot tell what to think of it
Afterwards when this was som what insisted on she said I do not think so: she did not understand aright what was said
Well then give an answer now, od you think these suffer against thewir wills or not
N: I do not think these suffer against their wills
Why did you never visit these afflictewd persons
N: Because I was afrid I should have fits too
Note Upon the motion of her b ots fitts followed upon the complainants abundantly & very frequently
Is it not an unaccountable case that when you are examined these persons are afflicted?
N: I have got no body to look to but God
Again upon stirring her hands the afflicted persons were seized with violent fits of torture
Do you believe these afflicted persons are bewitcht
N: I do think they are
When this Witchcraft came upon the stage there was no suspicion of Tituba (Mr. Paris's Indian Woman) she profest much love to that child Betty Paris, but it was her apparition did the mischief, & why should not you also be guilty, for your apparition doth hurt also.
N: Would you have me bely myself---
She held her Neck on one side, & accordingly so were the afflicted taken
Then Authority requiring it Sam: Paris read what he had in characters taken from Mr. Tho: Putmans wife in her fitts
What do y ou think of this
N: I cannot help it, the Devil may appear in my shape.
This a true account of the sume of her examination but by reason of geat noyses by the afflicted & many speakers, many things are pretermitted
Memorandum
Nurse held her neck on one sid & Eliz: Hubbard (one of the sufferers) had her neck set in that posture whereupon another Patient Abigail Williams cryed out set up Goody Nurses head the maid's neck will be broke & when some set up Nurses head Aaron Wey observed that Betty Hubbards was immediately righted
Salem Village March. 24'th 1691/2
The Rever't Mr. Samuell parris being desired to take in wrighting the Examination of Rebekah Nurse hath Returned itt as aforesaid
Upon heareing the afores'd and seeing what wee then did see together with the Charge of the persons then present---wee Committed Rebekah Nurse the wife of fran's Nurce of Salem village unto theire Majest's Goale in Salem as p a Mittimus then given out, in order to farther Examination
John Hathorne }
Assists Jonathan. Corwin
Nurse was old and was very nearly deaf, the statement she made may have shown that she was confused. Never the less, the jury returned, and this time they returned a verdict of guilty. On the 19th of July Nurse was taken to Gallows Hill and was hung with four other supposed witches.
Some were sceptical of the trials and did not entertain the stories of witchcraft, but they had to be careful or they themselves faced running the risk of accusations of witchcraft. John proctor was one such man. Proctor was the owner of a local tavern who openly denounced the witch-hunt. Elisabeth Booth testified that ghosts had visited her and accused Proctor of serial murders. Ann Putnam, Abagail Williams and an Indian named John all also testified against Proctor.
Proctor fought back furiously. He accused the self confessed witches of lying, and claimed that he had been tortured. He demanded that his trail be moved to Boston. Proctors request was denied, and he was hanged. His wife was also convicted of witchcraft, but was spared the noose due to her being pregnant.
The locals showed unease at the execution of the villages ex minister George Burroughs. He had been identified by several of the accusers as being a ringleader of the witches. Ann Putnam had claimed that Burroughs has been responsible for bewitching soldiers during a failed military campaign in 1688-89. It was the first of many military failures that were blamed on an alliance between Indians and the Devil.
Burroughs was accused by thirty of the accusers. A nineteen year old named Mercy Lewis offered a damning testimony against him. She claimed that Burroughs had flown her to the top of a mountain. He had pointed towards the surrounding land and had promised her all the surrounding kingdoms, if she would sign his book. Lewis said she would not sign, even if he had thrown her down on a hundred pitchforks.
At the point of his execution, Burroughs was expected to confess, by doing so, he would in fact save his soul. Burroughs refused, instead he maintained his innocence. He then proceeded to perfectly recite the Lord's prayer. This stunned the watching crow, as witches were not supposed to be capable of doing so. The crowd was moved by the recital, and became agitated. Cotton Mather addressed the crown and reminded them that Burroughs had indeed already faced his trial and had been found guilty at that very same trial.
One of the victims was to face a far less humane execution. Giles Corey (who was in his eighties), spent five months in chains in gaol along with his accused wife. He showed a great deal of disregard for the proceedings, and refused to stand for trial. He was sure that if he faced trial it would be futile. He was sure he would be convicted and his farm would be given to the state, instead he wanted the farm to be given to his two young sons in law.
For refusing to face trial, he was sentenced was peine et fort, which translates to 'pressing'. The sentence meant that the victim has heavy stones placed onto his or her chest. The stones were heavier and heavier and continued to be placed until the victim suffocated. The method has been around since roman times, when elephants were used to crush the victims. Three days after Corey's death, Giles wife Martha, and seven other convicted witches were hung. These were the last victims of the witch hunt.
By the Autumn of that year doubts had started to arise amongst the people of the village. The question was raised, that how could so many respectable people have been found to be guilty of witch craft. Why would so many decent citizens, in so sparsely populate an area, suddenly turn to the Devil? The more educated amongst the town folk, made efforts to ensure that the witch hunt was ended.
Increase Mather published a work, stating that it would have been better that ten suspected witches to have escaped justice, rather than one innocent person be condemned. He urged the court, that they should exclude any spectral evidence. A Boston Minister also issued a publication, claiming that there was a possibility that the Devil might create the spectre of an innocent person. Both of these were given to Governor Phips.
Phips relented after studying the writings, he then ordered the court that they must exclude spectral evidence, he also ordered they were no longer to use the touching tests, and that guilt could only be proved by clear and convincing evidence. Twenty eight of the last thirty three trials ended in the accused being acquitted, as there was simply not enough clear evidence to convict them anymore.
Three of the convicted witches were later to receive a pardon, and in May of 1693 all of the accused or convicted witches were released from prison.
The Salem witch hunt, ended with the death of nineteen people accused of witch craft
June 10
Bridget BishopJuly 19Rebecca NurseSarah GoodSusannah MartinElizabeth HoweSarah WildesAugust 19George BurroughsMartha CarrierJohn WillardGeorge Jacobs, Sr.John ProctorSeptember 22Martha CoreyMary EasteyAnn PudeatorAlice ParkerMary ParkerWilmott Redd
One other was pressed to death after refusing to attend his own trial.
Giles Corey
At least four other witches died in prison, although it was suspected that there were many more, the four confirmed deaths were
Sarah Osborn
Roger ToothakerLyndia DustinAnn Foster
During the course of the trial between one and two hundred people were arrested, and were imprisoned on charges of witchcraft. Two dogs were also wrongly executed for being suspected accomplices of witches.
It has been noted that most of the accusers were financially better off than those accused, they also stood to gain financially mostly in the form of property that was gained from the convictions of the accused witches.
George Burroughs was eventually forced to leave Salem. After the release of the last of the accused witches, one of the judges by the name of Samuel Sewall offered a public confession of guilt, and an apology. Revd Parris also accepted that there had been serious errors in judgement.
Parris was soon replaced as the minster of Salem Village by the Revd Thomas Green, the new minister then spent his entire career mending the wounds that had been afflicted on the village by the whole affair. Governor Phips passed the blame on to William Stoughton.
Although Stoughton had committed grave mis-judgements, he steadfastly refused to apologize or even offer any explanations for his decisions or his part in the convictions. He even accused Phips of interfering, just as he was about to clear the land of witches. Stoughton went on to become the next Governor of Massachusetts.
There are plenty of theories as to what happened in Salem, illness, disease, or even childish boredom, who knows, maybe there were even more sinister hands at work. Maybe it was that the Devil did visit Salem, and when he left, he had taken many innocent lives with him.
Two of the accused petitioned for mercy and copies of the petitions still remain. I have enclosed them here as they make for interesting reading. It also shows how fearful and God fearing the people of the village were.
Petition of Mary Easty
The humbl petition of mary Eastick unto his Excellency's S'r W'm Phipps to the honour'd Judge and Bench now Sitting in Judicature in Salem and the Reverend ministers humbly sheweth
That whereas your poor and humble petitioner being condemned to die Doe humbly begg of you to take it into your Judicious and pious considerations that your Poor and humble petitioner knowing my own Innocencye Blised be the Lord for it and seeing plainly the wiles and subtility of my accusers by my Selfe can not but Judge charitably of others that are going the same way of my selfe if the Lord stepps not mightily in i was confined a whole month upon the same account that I am condemned now for and then cleared by the afflicted persons as some of your honours know and in two dayes time I was cryed out upon by them and have been confined and now am condemned to die the Lord above knows my Innocence then and Likewise does now as att the great day will be know to men and Angells -- I Petition to your honours not for my own life for I know I must die and my appointed time is sett but the Lord he knowes it is that if it be possible no more Innocent blood may be shed which undoubtidly cannot be Avoyded In the way and course you goe in I question not but your honours does to the uttmost of your Powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft and witches and would not be gulty of Innocent blood for the world but by my own Innocency I know you are in this great work if it be his blessed you that no more Innocent blood be shed I would humbly begg of you that your honors would be plesed to examine theis Afflicted Persons strictly and keep them apart some time and Likewise to try some of these confesing wichis I being confident there is severall of them has belyed themselves and others as will appeare if not in this wor[l]d I am sure in the world to come whither I am now agoing and I Question not but youle see and alteration of thes things they my selfe and others having made a League with the Divel we cannot confesse I know and the Lord knowes as will shortly appeare they belye me and so I Question not but they doe others the Lord above who is the Searcher of all hearts knows that as I shall answer att the Tribunall seat that I know not the least thinge of witchcraft therfore I cannot I dare not belye my own soule I beg your honers not to deny this my humble petition from a poor dying Innocent person and I Question not but the Lord will give a blesing to yor endevers
(Reverse) To his Excellency S'r W'm Phipps: Govern'r and to the honoured Judge and Magistrates now setting in Judicature in Salem.
Petition of John Proctor
SALEM-PRISON, July 23, 1692.
Mr. Mather, Mr. Allen, Mr. Moody, Mr. Willard, and Mr. Bailey
Reverend Gentlemen.
The innocency of our Case with the Enmity of our Accusers and our Judges, and Jury, whom nothing but our Innocent blood will serve their turn, having Condmened us already before our Tryals, being so much incensed and engaged against us by the Devil, makes us bold to Beg and Implore your Favourable Assistance of this our Humble Petition to his Excellency, That if it be possible our Innocent Blood may be spared, which undoubtedly otherwise will be shed, if the Lord doth not mercifully step in. The Magistrates, Ministers, Jewries, and all the People in general, being so much inraged and incensed against us by the Delusion of the Devil, which we can term no other, by reason we know in our own Consciences, we are all Innocent Persons. here are five Persons who have lately confessed themselves to be Witches, and do accuse some of us, of being along with them at a Sacrament, since we were committed into close Prison, which we know to be Lies. Two of the 5 are (Carriers Sons) Young men, who would not confess any thing till they tyed them Neck and Heels till the Blood was ready to come out of their Noses, and 'tis credibly believed and reported this was the occasion of making them confess that they never did, by reason they said one had been a Witch a Month, another five Weeks, and that their Mother had made them so, who has been confined here this nine Weeks. My son William Proctor, when he was examin'd, because he would not confess that he was Guilty, when he was Innocent, they tyed him Neck and Heels till the Blood gushed out of his Nose, and would have kept him so 24 Hours, if one more Merciful than the rest, had not taken pity on him, and caused him to be unbound. These actions are very like the Popish Cruelties. They have already undone us in our Estates, and that will not serve their turns, without our Innocent Bloods. If it cannot be granted that we can have our Trials at Boston, we humbly beg that you would endeavour to have these Magistrates changed, and others in their rooms, begging also and beseeching you would be pleased to be here, if not all, some of you at our Trials, hoping thereby you may be the means of saving the shedding our Innocent Bloods, desiring your Prayers to the Lord in our behalf, we rest your Poor Afflicted Servants,
JOHN PROCTOR, etc.
Alexander Stolte
In March 2010, Nineteen year old Alexander Stolte was babysitting one year old Kyleigh McDaniel in Chelsea Vermont. Alexander had been dating the childs mother for about three months.
On a Wednesday evening, the emergency services were called to report that the child was not breathing. The child was rushed to a hospital in Randolph where she was pronounced dead.
A police affidavit claimed that Stolte had called the girl's mother three times on that evening. During the first call, he had told her mother, that the child's eyes looked droopy. A second call was made to inform the mother that the child would not sleep. The third call had informed the mother that the child was not breathing.
Stolte told police that the child had earlier fallen into a stroller. The police had suspected that he had been drinking. At first he denied this was the case, but later admitted that he had been drinking vodka. A breathalyzer test put his blood alcohol level at .07 the police said.
The child had been killed by blunt impacts to the head, and Stolte was held without bail. The mother had left Stolte to care for the child while she went to work.
At his trial, Stolte pleaded not guilty to second degree murder. The child's family all viewed from the gallery. Stolte again claimed that the child had tripped into a walker earlier in the night. The doctor's reports told a very different story.
Doctors had found several injuries to the child. They found she had multiple skull fractures, bleeding in the brain and a broken right leg. The injuries were consistent with a child that had been beaten. She died of injuries to the head, and Stolte was the only person who had access to the child at that time.
Stolte in court invoked his right to choose the fifth amendment, and chose not to speak to investigators. He was a former High School star La Crosse player, but had spent several years homeless and had admitted to have dabbled with drugs.
Chief Medical Examiner Steven Shapiro ruled that Kyleigh died of blunt impacts to the head and classified her death as murder. Stolte showed no emotion during the hearing, while the child's mother clutched at a stuffed animal that had belonged to her daughter.
The child's mother wept openly as the child's injuries were described to the court. Her head dropped until it was almost touching her knees. Stolte is charged with murder, and a DNA test was requested to ensure there was adequate evidence to conduct an independent investigation.
The Dartmouth Murders
In January of 2001, the quiet rustic town of Etna New Hampshire, was the location of a horrifically brutal double murder. The victims were two college professors. A married couple named Half and Susanne Zantop. Half was of German origin.
While studying at Stanford University, Half was to meet his future wife Susanne Korsukewitz. Half was studying for his doctorate, while Susanne who was also of German origin was working towards her master's, it was at this point that they began dating.
In 1969 Half received his PHD in geology, and was offered job in South America as a field Geologist. He asked Susanne if she would accompany him and she agreed. A year later the couple were wed. Through the union, they bore two daughters named Veronika and Marianna.
In 1975 the family moved to Germany so that half could become a research fellow at Heidelberg University, but in 1976, he was offered a position at Dartmouth College, so the family headed back toward the United States.
Dartmouth University is renowned for being one of the most academically esteemed Universities in America. It also enjoys a reputation for high frolics and fun antics amongst the fraternities, it is said to have been the inspiration behind the film 'animal house'.
For 25 years half remained as a professor at Dartford. He was well liked among students and colleagues and had even gained the nickname 'Mr Sweetness'. Susanne was said to be of a high energy nature, and she would often bake cookies for her students. She also authored numerous books and won an outstanding book award from the German studies association.
On Saturday the 27th of January 2001, Roxanna Verona, who was a professor of French and Italian at Dartmouth College, drove to the village of Etna in New Hampshire. She was to have dinner with the Zantop's. She arrived around 6.30pm and pulled up into the driveway.
Fresh snow had fallen and she left footprints as she walked to her colleague's house. She could see that lights were on in the house and Susanne had told her that the front door would be unlocked. Upon entering the house, she felt what she would later describe as an eerie sensation. The scent of food cooking could be smelt throughout the house, but she could hear no sounds from anywhere in the house.
Verona called out to Susanne, asking where she was, but she heard no response. As she wandered into the house, she could see food on the kitchen counter. She called out again to Susanne and Half, but again there was no response. She walked to the study, and found a scene of utter horror. Her colleagues were both laid silent, but were both covered in blood.
Verona ran from the house, she made her way to her car and fled to the nearest house. The house was that of former college dean Dr Robert McCollum. She pounded on the door,. Verona was distraught when she was taken into the house, she explained to the McCollum family about what she had found at the house of the Zantop family.
Robert McCollum took his daughter Cindy, and together they drove to the house. They found the bodies of the Zantop's laid on the floor. They then contacted the local services. The area was quickly secured and the scene was examined, but there was no visible sign of a forced entry into the premises. They did however find a blood stained foot print on the wooden floor.
The police found two 12inch long black plastic knife sheaths, each embossed with the letters SOG, but despite extensive searching, they could not find the murder weapons anywhere in the house. It was assumed that as there were two knife sheaths, there was a strong likelihood that there were two knives for two killers.
The murder scene was described as messy. This did not appear to be a carefully planned killing. The murderers had also been very careless in leaving evidence at the scene. If theft had been the motive, then the murderers had left behind a large amount of valuables in the house. Only Half's wallet was missing from the scene. It did appear that the Zantop's may have let the killers in voluntarily, and that they may even have known their killers personally.
Dartmouth college held a private service for the deceased where the community gathered together to mourn the loss of two good friends. The air of suspicion arose around Roxanna Verona, but only because she was the first person to discover the bodies, but she was very quickly cleared of any suspicion.
Another odd suspect arose in the form of a character who had then worked as a dishwasher in a local restaurant. He had claimed that he was the greatest living scientist, and that the college administrators were involved in varied conspiracies. He was later sacked from the job.
He also claimed that Dartmouth College was cursed. He even suggested that as there were two knives present at the murder scene, it was possible that the Zantop's had killed themselves. That these murders may in fact may have been a double suicide.
When detectives tracked the former caretaker down, it was found that on the day of the murder, he had in fact been posting messages on the internet all day. His internet provider was able to prove his alibi, and he was quickly removed from all suspicion.
A third suspect arose in the form of a former professor. He had applied for a position at Dartmouth but the only position that he would have been suitable for, was the one that half already held. He had also been in Hanover attending a party on the day of the murders.
Detectives were able to trace the suspect via his rental car from that day. In the boot, they found a brown stained cardboard box. The suspect and his wife were both interviewed. The local press were given information regarding the name of the suspect, and there were stories which were untrue, published claiming that this may have been the result of Half having an adulterous love affair.
The publication was later forced to issue a humble apology to the family, when it evolved that the story was in fact untrue. The story was described as irresponsible sensationalism about a couple who had never undertaken any such affairs. The third man was then ruled out and was no longer a suspect.
Two sets of fingerprints had been found on one of the knife sheaths. Sadly the prints were not helpful as they did not match any on the FBI database. It then became a matter of hunting down stores in which the knives branded SOG (Speciality knives & Tools of Lynwood), had been sold, state by state, store by store.
Despite visiting numerous stores and searching through internet sales, no leads were to be uncovered. It did however emerge that the material used to make the sheaths called Kydex, had only been used since early 2000. This helped to narrow down the search somewhat.
The big break came, when a supplier called Fox firearms of Scituate Massachusetts, announced that they had stocked the knives, but had only sold one pair. The buyer of the knives was named James Parker. Parker lived about 30 miles from the murder scene, in Chelsea Vermont.
New Hampshire police officers arrived in Chelsea the next day, and after contacting local officials were told that Parker was sixteen years old, and was not a known trouble maker. Parker was interviewed and admitted to buying the knives for him and a friend Robert Tulloch, he said that the knives were for building forts, but they were too heavy, so they had sold them to a stranger.
Robert Tulloch was also interviewed and came up with the same story regarding the knives. It then had emerged that the day after the murders Rob had shown up at his high school with a cut above his right knee. When questioned about the cut, he explained that while walking down an embankment to urinate, he had simply fallen and cut his knee on a metal spigot.
Both of the boys agreed to be fingerprinted, and Robert's parents consented to having their sons boots examined. The boys were not arrested and were allowed to return home to their parents. The next morning, both of the boys had fled.
A warrant was issued for the arrest of Jim Parker for the double murder, and Robert Tulloch was also wanted for questioning. Criminal investigators had matched Tulloch's boots to a bloodstain in the Zantop's house, and soon after both of the boys prints would match those left on the sheaths left at the murder scene. The knives were found in a box in Roberts room. Both had blood stains that had matched that of the victims.
The pair had fled in Jim Parker's car, but left it half buried in snow at a truck stop. They borrowed a C.B. radio and were soon picked up by a trucker named James Hicks. Hicks later described the boys as looking worn out. He said that they reminded him of his own sons.
Indiana Sheriff Sergeant William Ward heard Hicks on his radio, asking if anyone could offer two boys a lift to California. He suspected that these were the two boys wanted for murder, and asked the trucker to leave the boys at the fuel desk of a truck stop. He then radioed some deputies for backup and drove to the truck stop.
When confronted by the officers, the two boys gave false names. Soon they admitted they had given false identities. Hicks eventually lost his job as it was against company policy to pick up hitch hikers. The boys were arrested and officers went about questioning the boy's friends and relatives.
Both boys were from good stable families. Both were described as good kids, smart intelligent and calm. The town of Chelsea had only 1200 residents and both boys were well known. Neither would be the type to be suspected of murder. They were both described as fine upstanding young men.
Beneath the surface, things were not all as they seemed. In 2000, Rob had written an essay at school, showing that he was unhappy at school, he wrote:
"So now, after defying school for the last five years, having regular conflicts with the teachers, enjoying myself by doing exactly what I want, I am ready to depart. School is not for me and now I can leave."
During High School, Jim and Rob were best friends and spent a lot of time together. When Jim got his driver's license, they would spend a lot of time together riding around in Jim's car. Rob would often describe himself as a 'higher being' and would say how much more evolved himself and Jim were compared to most other humans. Rob had told classmates that he wanted to be President of the United States.
Rob ran for president of the student council in 1999, and won, causing a major upset. He soon tired of the meetings and the sorting out of the student issues, so he regularly skipped meetings. The student council tried to impeach him, and they angered Rob in the process.
Rob turned his hand to debating, but it soon became evident, that he was no match for some of his opponents. He would fail to research the subjects of the debates properly, and would end up just throwing insults at his opponents. When cross examining a fellow German student, he exclaimed incredulously:
"You're just a German. How can you know?"
There were gasps among the crowd at the inappropriate and highly offensive remark. After the slur, Rob's team were declared losers when up to the point of the slur, they had previously been winning the debate.
The boys were taken to Henry County Jail In new castle Indiana following their arrest. They were fingerprinted and photographed. They were kept apart and Rob was reported to have cried inconsolably for hours. He was described as the more emotional one of the pair.
While alone, Rob assumed that he could not be heard and he placed his hands together as if in prayer. He stared at the ceiling and announced:
"Jim, I'm so sorry. Jim, I'm so sorry. Maybe if I'd used my brain a little more. So sorry for everything. I'm so sorry."
He never expressed any remorse for the murder of the Zantop's .
In November of 2001, it was ruled by a state court, that Jim Parker would be tried as an adult. Prosecutors had already revealed that they would not seek the death penalty for the young killers. It did however mean that Jim could be facing a sentence of life in prison, with no possibility of parole.
While in gaol awaiting trial, Jim agreed to co-operate with the authorities, and to testify against Rob, in exchange he would then be allowed to plead guilty as an accessory to second degree murder in the killing of Susanne Zantop alone.
This arrangement would mean that Jim would serve a sentence of 25 year to life, but he would be eligible for parole after 16 years. He could be released at the age of 33. There was widespread dismay at the agreement especially among friends of the murdered couple.
Before the deal was made public, Rob's attorneys had announced that they would not pleasd guilty by reason of insanity, but in late November of 2001, his attorneys had filed a motion claiming that psychiatrists had found that their client suffered from a "serious mental illness" and that "his acts were the direct result of the mental defect or disease."
When Jim stood before the Judge named Peter. W. Smith to formalize the please bargain, he was asked if he was under the influence of drink or drugs, to which her replied 'never'. He was asked how he pled, he answered 'guilty'. The plea bargain was accepted provided that the entire story was told.
Jim revealed, that although Rob and he had achieved the required grades for college, they had both decided that the college was too confining. They both longed to travel, and had discussed the possibility of travelling to Europe or New Zealand.
They had finally agreed on the destination of Australia. Australia was attractive because of its varied environment, and that it offered a variety of places that they would be able to rock climb. They would support themselves by either living off the land or by remarkably by offering themselves as hired assassins.
To make the journey viable, they would require $5000 dollars each. This would provide them with the airplane tickets and money to sustain them for a short period. Jim said that the fastest way for the pair to raise the funds, was by turning to crime.
Crime was attractive as it was seen as an easy and fast way to raise the money, also because the pair assumed that as they were smarter than everyone else, then they could get away with it as well.
The boys stole credit card numbers but were unable to find a way to use them to raise funds. They then stole an ATV and tried to sell if for $3000 after removing the serial numbers. A potential buyer asked to see the title and registration of the vehicle, but the boys did not have it, again the plan had failed.
They then discussed jumping people and mugging them. Rob said that they would have to kill any potential witnesses. He also said they needed the experience of committing murder, so that they could live as criminals in Australia. Jim told investigators that he thought it was a good point.
Soon the boys decided that they would break into someone's home. They would then tie up the captives and force them to disclose their cash point or credit card pin numbers. The boys would then take the cash and kill the captives
The pair then drove to an abandoned house in Vermont, they then dug a grave for the bodies in preparation of the murder they were about to commit. Dressed in black the pair armed themselves with knives hidden in their boots and visited a secluded house.
Rob knocked on the door, he asked if he could use the residents phone as his battery was dead. The homeowner refused and Rob looked through a window and saw that the homeowner was holding a gun. The pair then hurriedly left.
Rob was still determined that this plan would succeed, but they would change the angle of their approach. They would pretend to be students who were taking an environmental study. When they were in the house, Rob would ask for a drink of water.
Upon this pre-ordained signal, Jim was to round up any other residents in the house, then they would tie them up, and then force the captives to reveal their pin numbers. Then they would take any cash in the house and kill the residents.
After a failed attempt in December, the pair waited until January and then drove to Etna. Jim wore a back pack, in which he had carried notebooks, duct tape and cable ties to restrain the victims. The paid also carried the SOG knives, which they would use to threaten and kill the victims.
Rob knocked on a door, and it was Half Zantop who answered. Rob announced that they were students in the area who were conducting an environmental survey. Half asked them to hold on for a second, as his wife was making lunch, he wasn't sure that they could do it.
Half went back inside the house, leaving the boys outside. He spoke briefly with his wife. And they agreed to let the boys into the house. The couple had devoted their lives to education and they were more than willing to help out these needy students.
When the boys were inside the house, Jim remembered that he had forgotten a tape recorded, that the pair had planned to use as a prop. He then took out his notebook, but he had also forgotten to bring his pen, Half gracefully handed him one.
The pair were not properly prepared, and had not even rehearsed the questions they would ask. Rob stumbled through his made up questions while Jim made notes. Meanwhile, Susanne was in the kitchen chopping vegetables, they could hear her chopping them, but they could not see her.
Jim said that he began to have second thoughts. He was thinking that the guy was all right, and that they didn't need to kill him. Meanwhile Half it seems, had reminded Rob of the debate he had previously blown. It came out in the conversation that Half was from Germany as well.
While asking the questions Half remarked that the pair, really needed to be more prepared, and it appears that Rob took the comment on a more personal level. A fuse had been lit in Rob's mind. Half offered the duo a telephone number of someone that may have been able to help the boys.
Rob had changed the plan again, when Half turned around, he unzipped Jim's back pack, he then pulled out a knife and removed it from the sheath. He waited for Half to turn back around.
As half turned in his chair, He was confronted with Rob lunging toward him with the knife. Half screamed as the blade pierced into his chest. The grappling couple then both fell to the floor. Rob continued to stab at his victim. He was so frenzied in his attack that he accidentally cut his own leg.
Meanwhile Susanne had heard the noise, and had ran into the room, she grabbed hold of Rob's leg and was speaking in German, Jim caught her, and told her to shut up, at this point Rob shouted
'slit her throat!'
Jim initially hesitated, but then plunged the knife into the woman's neck. He then dragged the knife across her throat. Susanne fell to the floor gasping for breath, blood was gurgling in her throat as she gasped for air.
Rob slashed Half's throat as well, but at this point, he may have already been dead. Rob went over to Susanne. He told Jim that he wanted to see if the knife would go through her skull, he repeatedly stabbed her through her skull to satisfy his curiosity. They then stole Half's wallet.
As they fled the scene, they took nothing else from the house. Running through the hallway, Jim handed his bloodied knife to Rob. The pair then hid the knives in their car under the passenger side floor mat, and the pair then fled from the scene.
Rob had a deep cut in his leg. Jim had blood on his right hand. They then counted the money from half's wallet and found the paltry sum of $340. Jim asked why Rob had not asked for the water so they could get the pin numbers, Rob said that he had simply forgotten.
Jim decided in his head, that this was not the way he wanted to make money. He didn't want to kill people. He was not showing signs of remorse, but he had decided that the risk to his own safety was far too great. He had been injured and that was not part of the plan. He chose not to tell Rob, so that he would not anger his partner.
The boys pulled into a wooded area with which they were both familiar and had used snow to clean the knives, also the car, and then themselves. It was at this point, that the boys realised that they had left the knife sheaths behind. The decided to return to the scene in order to retrieve them, but as they drove to the house, they saw a police car parked in the drive, so Jim just carried on driving past.
Rob eventually decided that he would drop the insanity plea, and that he would plead guilty to the murders. Insanity pleas are often remote in having any chance of success, and it was thought that Rob had wished to spare his family the trauma of going through the duration of a trial.
By pleading guilty, Rob was now readily accepting his sentence would be that of life imprisonment without the possibility of any parole. Both men were sentenced on the same date.
When Veronika Zantop the daughter of the murdered couple spoke in court she described her anger pain and sadness at the needless murder of her parents. Jim wept at what he had heard and asked to address the court saying:
"I'm sorry," he said. "There's not much more I can say. I'm just really, really sorry."
While Rob was in the court room, reporters wrote that
"Tulloch, presenting the image of an iron-cold killer, locked eyes with the sisters and the Zantop's friends in the courtroom. He wore a faint smirk throughout his hearing, showed no remorse, and did not make a statement."
Both men are now held in New Hampshire State Prison, but neither man is allowed any contact with the other. Jim is classified as a Custody Level 3 inmate. Rob was first put into Concord, where he was placed in the Secure Housing Unit, the tightest level of security. Inmates are locked alone in their cells 23 hours per day.
Eventually he was transferred to Custody Level 4. Inmates at that level are locked in their cells for 21 hours per day.
The town is said to still bear the scars of the brutal double murder to this very day.
Melanie Melanson
On the 27th Of October 1989, Melanie Melanson had attended a party in the woods of Woburn, New Hampshire. She was almost fifteen years old and she was doing what most normal girls of this age do, she was partying with her friends.
Melanie was last seen walking with two males who were from the neighbourhood. The three were walking through a wooded area near to Henshaw Avenue. This was where the party was taking place. Rumours at the time had suggested that the girl may have fallen and bumped her head. Her friends may have not even noticed that she fell.
Investigators believed that the girl had never made it out of the woods that night. It may even be that a tragic accident occurred that night and that the details may never be fully known. No remains of her body have ever been found.
The family announced a reward of $5000 dollars for information leading to the recovery of her body and the district Attorney and Woburn Police, are still actively trying to find leads for this long cold case.
After more than twenty years, her disappearance is still a mystery. On what would have been her 35th birthday, friends and family gathered together outside of Woburn Memorial High School, they held Vigil candles instead of birthday candles. They read poems, shared memories and they wept together.
Melanie's family have posted a page on myspace, hauntingly written as if they were the words of Melanie herself. Anyone with any information is asked to call the Woburn Police Department at 781-933-1212
The Pamela Wojas Smart Story
On New Year's Eve in 1986, Pamela Wojas was to meet her future husband Gregory Smart at a new year's party. Within two months, the couple had formed a serious relationship and were married within two years of first meeting.
Both were keen lovers of heavy metal music, and had shared similar tastes. Seven months after the marriage, the first cracks started to appear in the couple's relationship. Close to the couple's first wedding anniversary, Gregory had admitted to his wife, that he was in fact having an affair.
The couple continued to argue regularly, and every time that they did, Pamela would choose to bring up the matter of the affair. Pamela had taken a job at Winnacunnet High Scholl in Hampton New Hampshire. She was working as a media co-ordinator. It was here that she would meet a student by the name of Billy Flynn.
Billy Flynn was volunteering in Project self Esteem, which was a local drug awareness program at the school. All freshmen were expected to participate in the program. The friendship grew, as Pamela had an impressive knowledge of heavy metal music, she certainly had impressed on Flynn.
Smart also had another position as a media services co-ordinator with the Hampton school board, where Flynn was a sophomore. It was here Smart met another intern by the name of Ceila Pierce. Celia was friends with Billy Flynn. It seemed that Flynn would go out of his way to do what he could to help Pam, and he paid visits to her office every day.
On the 1st of May 1990, Pamela came home from after attending a meeting at work. On her arrival at home, She found that her condiminium had been ransacked, and that her husband was inside and he had been murdered.
In Derry, murder was seldom seen. In fact this would be the only murder investigation in the whole of that year. The police described the scene as one that was looking like a disrupted burglary.
Smart was later accused of seducing the 15 year old Billy Flynn, but had then threatened that she would stop having sex with him, unless he killed her husband. Flynn recruited his friends to aid him in the gruesome task.
Flynn, along with Patrick Randall, Vance Lattime Jr, and Raymond Fowler set out to kill Pam's husband. Gregory was held down by Randall and Flynn executed him in cold blood with a gun. Lattime and Fowler had just waited outside in the getaway car.
While the investigation was underway, Lattime's father found a .38 calibre pistol in his house. He thought it may be the murder weapon and had surrendered it to the police. Around the same time, the police received an anonymous tip off, that a girl named Cecilia Pierce had information about the murder.
Cecilia was bought in for questioning. She agreed for the conversation to be recorded. Investigators hoped that she would say something incriminating, and she did not disappoint them.
On the 1st of August 1990, and unexpected guest appeared at the office of Pamela Smart. As Detective Daniel Pelletier entered her office, Smart recognised him and asked him what was up. The Detective responded that he had some news both good and bad.
He told her that the good news, was that they had solved the murder of her husband, but that the bad news, was that she was under arrest. "What for?" Smart asked. The detective replied.
"First-degree murder. Stand up and face the wall."
Smart was handcuffed and removed from the building, she was arraigned at Derry district court and jailed at Rockingham County Jail for the murder of her husband.
The trial of Pamela Smart gathered massive media attention. If she was convicted, she would face life in prison. The prosecution portrayed Smart as an evil woman who was hell bent on murder. Her teenage accomplices were portrayed as the naive victims of Smart.
Smart was portrayed as a mastermind who had seduced her young lover and controlled him. It was claimed that Smart had seduced Flynn in order to persuade him to murder her husband. In doing so, she would be spared the expense of divorce proceedings, and she would also reap the rewards of a $140,000 life insurance policy.
Smart accepted that she had in fact had an affair with the teenager, but claimed that the murder was wholly down Flynn and his friends. She had wished to end the affair and work at repairing her failing marriage. She insisted that she had not participated in, nor that she had any knowledge of the plot to kill her husband.
Flynn claimed that he had fallen in love with Smart the first time that they met, but Cecilia Pierce testified that the couple were just friends. It changed in February when Smart had confessed to Pierce that she loved Bill. Flynn claimed that he was a virgin until he had sex with Smart.
The trial lasted for fourteen days, and resulted with Smart being found guilty of being an accomplice to first degree murder. This was largely due to the testimony and secretly taped conversations, in which the conversations appeared to contradict the earlier claims That Smart had made, that she had wished to repair her marriage, or that she had no knowledge of the plot to murder.
Smart was to claim that the media had influenced the outcome of the trial, and the subsequent conviction. She was given a mandatory life sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. She could have been charged with capital murder but the prosecution had decided against it.
The Pamela Smart trial was the first fully televised trial in the United States. It was viewed by millions of people live on television, and perhaps it is true that this may have had some influence on the outcome of trial in some respects.
Smart has never admitted responsibility for any part in the murder, but she did concede that if she had not had the affair with Flynn, then her husband would still have been alive. She continues to teach other inmates and has completed two master's degrees while serving her sentence..
William Flynn received a sentence of forty years to life, with twelve years suspended. In 2015 he will be made eligible for parole after serving twenty five years. He later apologised to Gregg Smart's family for murdering Gregg.
Patrick Randall received a sentence of forty years to life, again with twelve years suspended. In 2015 he will be made eligible for parole after serving twenty five years.
Vance Lattime received a sentence of thirty years to life also with twelve years suspended. This was reduced by three years in 2005 and he was paroled.
Raymond Fowler received fifteen to thirty years. He was paroled in 2003. He later returned to prison for a parole violation in 2004.
Cecillia Pierce signed a $100,000 option for the screen rights to her story.
Kathy Gloddy
In November of 1971, 13 year old Kathy Gloddy Left her home in Franklin, New Hampshire. Kathy was making her regular trip to the ice cream store, and she took her constant companion her German Shepherd named Tasha along with her.
Tasha had returned later in the day, but she was without Kathy. The dog was climbing up at the door, scratching and clawing trying to get in the house. The family were concerned that Kathy had not returned. On entering the house, he dog frantically ran around seemingly searching for her.
The family were panic stricken and set out to find Kathy, but they could find no sign of her. That night they called the police, they also called in the neighbours to assist with the search, of the area, and they searched the area but with no success.
The police informed the family that they would have to wait 24 hrs before they could file a report that she was missing. The family continued to search all through the night, but it was in vain. Kathy had just simply vanished.
The next day was to bring terrible news. News that no family would ever wish or should be forced to hear. The body of a young girl had been found dumped in a patch of woods a mile and a half from the family home. The girl had been raped and killed. It was that of Kathy Gloddy. The police had no suspects and no leads at all.
A hunter passing through the forest had stumbled across Kathy's body, clothed only in a pair of knee socks, and thought, at first, the hunter had thought that it was a deer carcass. Her sister Karen stated:
"That's not what you expect in a little town, that she had been brutally raped and murdered," said Karen Gloddy. She went on to say:
"To think that she was left there, you know?
In the cold of a dark winter's night, and with no clothes on.
And what had happened to her just came crashing down. It was really hard.
My mom was sobbing. My dad was crying. I just stood in the doorway and I said, 'What's wrong?' And they just blurted out they found Kathy and she's dead, she's been murdered."
Tom Shamshak is a private investigator whose pro bono work on the case has given the Gloddy family new hope. He went on to describe the murder to ABC news as
"This was a savage killing. It's one of the most heinous crimes that I have encountered in my 31 years of professional experience."
As the years went on, the family was to hear more and more details about the cruel fate that had befallen their daughter. She had been strangled. She had also suffered from a massive blow to the head. She had also been run over by a car four times.
The case was been left without hope of a resolution for almost 40 years.
The Murder of Dr. William Dean
On the 13th of August 1918, close to the latter end of the First World War, Dr William Dean was brutally murdered at his farm in Jaffrey New Hampshire. To this day it remains the only unsolved murder in Jaffrey. 
At the time of his death, Dr Dean had a lodger living in his home. It was thought that the lodger was in fact a German spy. It was believed that the lodger was being investigated by the F.B.I. Dr Dean is believed to have had information relating to his lodger, and had decided to travel to Boston to inform the authorities.
The evening before he was to travel to Boston, Dr Dean was murdered. During the summer of that year, there were hundreds of sightings of strange lights around the peaks of Mount Monadock, and Temple Mountain. The lights were of differing colours and some suspected they were signals to German submarines in nearby Boston harbour.
Dr Dean had confided to another local, named Mrs Morrison, that he had information to tell the authorities, but it was too dangerous for a woman to know. That same night he was murdered.
His body was placed in a cistern. It was completely bound, and his head was covered with a bag. A large rock was placed in the bag which was used to weigh the body down. When the body was discovered, it was found in six feet of water.
After the murder, there were many suspects, including the Doctors wife, his friends and his tenants who rented the main house on the farm. Despite investigations and Government inquiries, and even a full grand jury investigation the murder still remains unsolved. No one has ever been able to prove who was responsible for the Doctors death.
The Connecticut River Valley Killer
In the mid 1980's, three young women named Ellen Fried, Eva Morse and Bernice Courtemanche, all disappeared from around the Claremont in New Hampshire area. Skeletal remains of two of the women appeared in 1985 and 1986. Between the two bodies being discovered, a third woman was repeatedly stabbed to death during a frenzied knife attack.
It was around this point that the investigators began searching for prior murder cases in the same area, and they came across two previous cases that had occurred 1978 and in 1981. They began to suspect that this was in fact the work of a serial killer.
The killer had developed certain patterns, he would often use dump sites and the wounds followed specific patterns. There was also a non fatal attack, and the evidence mounted that the attacker was indeed the same man.
The 16 year old Bernice Courtemanche, had last been seen by her boyfriend's mother. The nurse's aide was last seen in Claremont on the 30th of May 1984. She had set off to see her boyfriend in Newport, and had decided to hitch hike along route 12. She never arrived at her destination and was subsequently reported missing.
The next woman to disappear was Ellen Fried. On the 20th of July 1984, the 27 year old supervising nurse had stopped late at night to use a payphone. She used the phone outside of Leo's Market in Claremont. Ellen spoke with her sister for about an hour, when she suddenly remarked that she had seen a strange car had been driving back and forth in the area.
Ellen stepped away from the phone for a few seconds to ensure that her car would still start, and then she returned to the telephone. She spoke for a few minutes longer, and then she ended the call. The next day, she had failed to turn up for work and her car was found abandoned on Jarvis Road, it was just a few miles away from the telephone that she had used the night before.
On the 28th of July, Eva Morse, who was a single parent, was seen hitch hiking near the border of Claremont and Charlestown, New Hampshire. Again she was on route 12, again this was the last time that anyone would see her alive. Soon after she was also reported missing.
The disappearance of Ellen Fried was resolved on the 19th of September on 1985. Her remains were later found in a woodland area close to the banks of the Sugar River in Kelleyville, New Hampshire. Her post mortem revealed that she had signs of multiple stab wounds and probably had been sexually assaulted.
On the afternoon of April the 15th 1986, Lynda Moore was outside doing some work in the yard of her home in Saxton's river in Vermont. That evening her husband returned to find the body of his 36 year old wife. The body bore multiple stab wounds, and the crime scene suggested that she had struggled and had tried to fight off her killer.
There were numerous witness sightings of a man spotted near the murder scene that day. The man was described as being slightly stocky, with dark hair and was wearing a blue knapsack. He was assumed to be around 20-25 years old, with a clean shaven round face and was wearing dark rimmed glasses. The following year a composite sketch of the man was released.
It was just four days after the brutal stabbing of Lynda Moore, when a fisherman had chanced upon the remains of Bernice Courtemanche. The body was found around a thousand yards from where the body of Ellen Fired had previously been found. She had knife wounds to the neck and also an injury to her head
Six more days passed, before the remains of Eva Morse were found by loggers. Her body was around 500 feet from where the body of Mary Elizabeth Critchley had earlier been found in 1981. The post mortem also revealed that she had knife wounds to the neck.
On the 10th of January 1987, 38 year old nurse Barbara Agnew was on her way back from a skiing trip in Stratton, Vermont. The same evening a snow plough driver was to come across her abandoned green BMW at a northbound rest stop in Hartford, Vermont. The car door was cracked and the steering wheel was stained with blood.
Investigators were puzzled as to why she would have pulled into the rest stop, as it was at a point less than ten miles from her home, but there was a heavy snow storm that night. Her body was not found until the 28th of March 1987. It was found near to an apple tree in Hartland, she had been stabbed to death.
On the 6th of August 1988, 22 year old Jane Boroski was returning from the county fair in Keene, New Hampshire. She was seven months pregnant at the time, and she made a stop at a closed convenience store to buy a drink from a vending machine.
She returned to her car and began to consume the drink. It was then that she noticed there was a Jeep Wagoneer parked next to her car. In her rear view mirror, she saw that the driver was walking around the back of her car. He approached the window of her car and asked if the pay phone was working.
He then suddenly grabbed her and pulled her out from the car. Boroski struggled and the man accused her of beating up his girlfriend. He asked her if she had Massachusetts plates on her car, she responded that she had New Hampshire plates, but the man was relentless. He stabbed the then heavily pregnant Boroski a total of 27 times and then drove away expecting his victim to die.
The woman who was now bleeding profusely, somehow managed to get back into her car. She then drove to a friend's house for help. While on the way, she noticed that the car in front of her was that of her attacker. She reached the house of her friend, and the occupants came to her aid. Her attacker turned his car around and slowly passed by the house, and then he quickly sped away from the scene.
Boroski was taken to hospital where she received treatment. She was found to have a severed jugular vein, both her lungs had collapsed, her kidney had been lacerated and tendons had been severed in her knees and thumb. Both mother and baby survived the attack, although the baby would later be diagnosed as having mild cerebal palsy.
The authorities were now able draw a composite sketch of the attacker, using Boroskis description and she had also managed to remember the first three letters of her attackers licence plate. The authorities now had two composite sketches and formed a task force to find the attacker.
Despite the sketches, and the task force, and even after pulling in all local suspects and an unsolved mysteries section in connection with the murders, no arrests were made. After the attack on Boroski, the killings just stopped, and the case went cold.
The on the 20th of may 1984, 16 year old Heidi Martin went for a jog on Martinsville Road in Hartland, Vermont. The next day her body was found in a swamp area behind Hartland Elementary School. She had been raped and killed. She has also been stabbed to death.
A 21 year old man named Delbert C Tallman came forward and confessed to the crime and then faced trial. He later retracted his confession and was acquitted It would be three years later that Barbara Agnew's body would be found around a mile from where the body of Heidi Martin was found.
Tallman had lived around the area of the killings. In 1996, he was convicted on two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child and was sentenced to serve time in Florida prison for failing to comply with sex offender registration requirements. There was no evidence though that he was involved in any of the murder cases.
In 2001 the mother of Michelle Marie Ashley hired a private investigator named Lynn Marie Carty. Michelle Ashley was a Vermont woman who had been missing since December 1988, along with her two children. The woman hired the private detective Carty, to gather information relating to the possible location of her daughter and her grand children. She believed the children were with Ashley's common law husband named Michael Andrew Nicholaou.
Nicholaou was a Vietnam veteran. He had served as a helicopter pilot in the United States army. He received several medals of conduct, but then was charged in 1970 of strafing civilians in Mekong Delta. He was later described by fellow servicemen as having often left the camp without permission when he sought out the enemy, for one to one combat with a knife.
Nicholaou returned home disgraced and bitter, subsequently filing a law suit against the U.S. Army. During this time and throughout the remainder of his life, Nicholaou received treatment from the Veterans Administration for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Whilst living in Virginia Nicholaou ran a sex shop called the pleasure chest. The store was raided twice and both he and his business partner were both charged with selling obscene materials.
In Virginia, Nicholaou had met Michelle. They soon after moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts, and had the two children. Michelle's family considered him strange and quiet. The marriage was soon failing and soon Michelle tried to leave.
Nicholaou pursued his wife and children. He contacted her family trying to find their whereabouts. Michelle told family members that she feared for her life, but she eventually returned to Nicholaou. Soon afterwards she expressed a desire to leave him permanently.
In December of 1988, Michelle's mother had dropped by the home of Michael and Michelle to check on her daughter. They had had no contact for weeks and she was concerned for her daughter. She found spoiled food in the refrigerator, an abandoned baby book, and the apartment was completely empty. There was no trace of Michelle, Nicholaou, or the two children.
In 2001, after being hired, Carty had easily found Nicholaou with a simple internet search. He was now living in Georgia. She called him on the phone and Nicholaou was curious about how he had been found. He asked how she had done it. He then denied having any knowledge of the families whereabouts.
He then added that Michelle was a slut who had been doing drugs and had ran off. He said that she had abandoned the children. He claimed that the children were fine and Carty was able to confirm this the next day. She also found out that Nicholaou had remarried.
In 2005 his second wife Aileen had tried to escape him after he had attacked her. He tracked her down to her sister's house in Tampa, Florida. He entered the house wearing a black suit and tie, he also carried a suitcase filled with guns.
Nicholaou led his wife and his stepdaughter Taryn Bowman who was 22, to a bedroom to talk with them. His sister in law fled the building and contacted the police. While the SWAT team were on route, Nicholaou shot Aileen, Taryn and then turned the gun on himself. Taryn was the only one to survive the house, but she sadly died soon after in hospital.
When Carty read about the tragedy, she decided to look deeper into Nicholaou's past. She also examined other crimes around the time of Michelle's disappearance. Carty began to read about the Connecticut River Valley killings, it was around this time she suspected he may be a suspect. Michelle was also a nurse.
Nicholaou lived in Holyoke about ninety miles away from Claremont. Michelle had relatives in the area, and Michelle's baby book had shown her to be at the same hospital that Barbara Agnew would disappear from a year later. He also owned a Jeep Wagoneer in the 1980's, the same vehicle described in her attack by Jane Boroski.
Carty started a dialogue with Boroski, and revealed to her, her suspicions. She showed her pictures of Nicholaou. Boroski admitted that there was indeed some resemblance between him and the man that attacked her. Boroski is now convinced that Nicholaou was the man who attacked her.
In 2007, New Hampshire detectives announced that they were examining evidence that Nicholaou may have been possibly connected to the murders. To date, no conclusions have been publicly announced, and Nicholaou has not been conclusively linked to the crimes of the Connecticut River Valley killer.
It is perhaps worth noting that Nicholaou's suspicion as a suspect is hampered by the fact that he appears to have been living in Virginia at the time of the Courtemanche, Fried, and Morse murders (this is backed up by the date of his obscenity trial).
Nicholaou's name has also been linked to other murders namely throwing him up as a suspect in the cases of: The Colonial Parkway Killer, The Route 29 Stalker, and The Blue Ridge Parkway Rapist. He was also a possible suspect in the murders of Julliane Winans and Lollie Winans at Shenandoah National Park, but there has never been any physical or circumstantial evidence linking him factually to any of the cases, nor to any of the Connecticut River valley cases aside from his likeness to the sketches.
In October of 1997, in Grafton, New Hampshire, a paraplegic named Gary Westover was also to reveal a shocking revelation. He announced to his uncle the former Grafton Sheriff's deputy named Gary Westover that he had a confession to make.
He revealed to his uncle that in 1987 both he and three of his friends had set off for a night of partying. They made their way to Vermont where it was then allegedly that they abducted and murdered Barbara Agnew. Westover took down the details of the three friends.
Westover shared the information of the names of the three men. Minnon recorded them and then shared them with his wife, his daughter and then with the authorities. Minnon thught that the authorities were not interested in his information. Westover died in 1998, and Minnon later died in 2006.
In August 2006, Anne Agnew received a letter about the death of her sister. It was from one of Westover's aunts. It detailed the information that had been relayed previously by Westover. Agnew forwarded the information to Carty. She in turn asked the aunt if she had ever heard the name of Michael Nicholaou before.
Weston's aunt said that the name had sounded familiar. Carty believed that Westover may have been a former acquaintance of Nicholaou they were both thought to have been at an area veteran's affairs hospital, but this had never been fully confirmed. To this day the Connecticut River Valley killings have still not been solved, and the cases remain open.
There were numerous other unsolved cases in the area which also may have been attributed to the Valley killer
Joanne Dunham aged 14. Sexually assaulted and strangled on June the 11th 1968. Charlestown, New Hampshire.
Sylvia Gray aged 76. Bludgeoned and stabbed to death on the 5th of October 1982. Planfield, New Hampshire. Found in a wooded area.
Sarah Hunter aged 36. Strangled. Her car was found abandoned at a gas station on 19th September 1986. Her remains were discovered two months later on the edge of a cornfield in Pawlet, Vermont.
Steven Hill aged 38. His body was found with multiple stab wounds on July 15th 1986. He had been missing since June 20th. His body was found in Hartland, Vermont, across the Connecticut River from where Sylvia Gray's body had been found four years earlier.
Carrie Moss aged 14. After leaving to visit friends on July 25th 1989, she simply vanished. Her skeletal remains were uncovered two years later in a wooded area in New Boston, the cause of her death could not be determined, but she was thought to have been murdered.
Locations of all the murder sites. Courtesy of Google maps.
Sivaguru
On the 12th of August 2010, Salem police announced that they had made a breakthrough in a case relating to the murder of six members of one family in Dasanaickenpatti. They arrested 48 year old Sivaguru, and his 17year old son Gokul who had surrendered to authorities. They also arrested a relative named Rajni, a head constable of the armed reserve.
It is alleged that the 48 year old man killed six relatives. His father mother and brother Rathinam, sister-in-law Santhaku-mari and their children Gowtham and Vigneswari. He then surrendered in a court in Chennai. He had been involved in a dispute with his parents over his share of a family property. 
He had been living with his 78 tear old father Kuppuraj who was a retired police inspector, and his 72 year old mother Chandrammal in Sowdambiga Nagar at Dhasanaickenpatti near Salem. His father owned six acres of land, and had given the land to his brothers.
Sivaguru was not given his share as money had already been spent on treating his kidney problem, and Sivaguru had argued with his parents over this. Sivaguru later surrendered to a court in George Town taking responsibility for six murders.
After his amazing confession, the authorities rushed to his parent's house and found six victims had been hacked to death on the remote farm. Sivaguru was a DMK functionary in the area, and a former vice president of Dhasanaickenpatti Panchayat.
The Salem SP formed a special police team to investigate the case. Police soon picked up Sivaguru's son Gokul aged 19. They questioned him as he had absconded since the crime had occurred. They hoped that he could throw more light on what had happened. They took him to an undisclosed place on the condition of anonymity. They tracked all incoming and outgoing calls from Gokul's phone while Sivaguru was taken into police custody. The special team then arrested Gokul, the son of the prime accused Sivaguru, aged 48, and also Sivaguru's son-in-law Rajni, aged 33, who was an Armed Reserve constable based in Dharmapuri district.
A case under Section 304 was registered against Gokul. After he was remanded in custody by Judicial Magistrate Shanthi of Court, Gokul was lodged in the minor's gaol. Due to statements that Gokul and his friends had made, Inspector Thiruneelakandar of the Mallur Police Station seized a few knives and sickles used for the murders from a well at DasanikenpattiThe investigation had revealed that Sivaguru and his son had committed the crime in two phases. Together they killed the 78 year old retired police inspector and his wife his brother's wife and his brother's son. They immobilised them using chilli powder then hacked them to deathThe duo then waited for Rathnam and his daughter who had gone out to return. When they came, they threw chilli powder on them and also hacked them to death.
After executing the murders, Sivaguru surrendered before a Chennai court leaving Gokul in the custody of his son-in law and police constable Rajni, who, police claimed, knew of the devilish plan.
None of the accused has yet been convicted, and are now all awaiting trial.
Middle School Animal Cruelty Case
In Andover, Massachusetts 2005 three boys aged 12,13 and 14 were convicted of animal cruelty. The three middle school boys video-taped themselves as they blew up frogs with fireworks, and killed chickens with a blow torch at a summer camp that spent the last 41 years relating children to animals and nature.
Digital camera footage showed the boys laughing as they ran around the camp. They violently whipped chickens with a fishing rod, and then sprayed them with flames from the blow torch. They also struck animals with lacrosse sticks. The video also showed the boys spraying swastikas on frogs, then cutting them open with a knife, they then blew the frogs up with firecrackers that they had placed in the frogs mouths.
The boys were arraigned on a number of animal cruelty charges, but were released to their horrified parents. The boys were only caught after the camps owner's daughter found the video and watched it. Her father gathered the three boys and called the police.
They were very uncomfortable, to say the least, at having them on their premises. Animal cruelty is seen as a potential hallmark of a future serial killer.
Kimberley Cates
On the 4th of October 2009, a gang of youths entered the house of 42 year old nurse Kimberley Cates and her 11 year old daughter, In Mont Vernon, New Hampshire. Before they left, Kimberley Cates had been murdered, and her daughter had sustained serious injuries.
It appears the youths had only chosen this house as it was isolated on a forested patch of land along a dirt road. They entered the house in the very early hours of the morning armed with a knife and a machete. They were intent on killing anyone inside.
When authorities entered the house they found Kimberley Cates hacked to death in her bed. Her daughter was found to have very every serious injuries. It was around 4.30am when they were discovered. Her daughter underwent extensive surgery and survived.
Cathy's husband was away from the house on business at the time, and rushed home to be with his daughter. The attack was described as premeditated. It had been cold in its planning and had been executed by a gang of troubled teenagers who it appeared had nothing in common with the victims.
Prosecutors have charged 17 year old Stephen Spader and 19 year old Christopher Gribble with first-degree murder, and attempted murder. As is customary for such serious crimes in New Hampshire, neither man entered a plea. Both were held without bail.
Two other teenagers were charged 18 year old William Marks, and 17 year old Quinn Glover both faced charges of burglary, conspiracy to commit burglary, and armed robbery. Prosecutors said that both were armed with deadly weapons, and were willing participants in the lethal plan.
Prosecutors did not disclose why Marks and Glover were not charged with murder, but did not present any evidence, that either of the teenagers had attacked either Cates or her daughter.
Residents in the area, and friends of the group described the teenagers as a group of disaffected youths who were led by Spader. He was a high school dropout, who had been frequently in trouble with the law over the previous few months, and saw himself as some kind of gang leader. Gribble was home schooled, and was once a boy scout, just like Spader. He wrote on his facebook account, that he had a fondness for anything sharp, and even posted a photo of himself smiling as he held his favourite knife. He also wrote that he was prone to extreme anger.
Marks was described as a troubled teenager who was easily led. His behavious was said to have taken a worrying turn for the worse after he had met Spader earlier that year. His father was said to have rued the day he ever met Spader. Afterwards he said that the teen acted as though he were a gang leader.
The final suspect, by the name of Autumn Savoy, agreed to plead guilty to charges of conspiracy and hindering apprehension or prosecution. Prosecutors said he came up with a plan to toss clothing and other items from the crime scene into the Nashua River. Prosecutors
had recommended a minimum of 8½ years in prison for his part in the affair.
In court, prosecutors said that Spader had driven to the Cate's home and that he had wielded the machete. During the proceedings Spader was said to have stood motionless during the proceedings.
Spader had a lengthy criminal record. In August he had served thirteen days in gaol after he admitted that he had waved a tyre iron at a group of teenagers after he had rammed their car following a chase.
In February, another man told police that Spader threatened to kill him, before abducting his daughter and holding her in a car trunk for days. The girl was said to be Spader's 'sometimes' girlfriend. The father of the girl was trying to end the relationship.
He was also facing charges of possessing stolen stereo equipment and he had former convictions for trespassing, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. He had also been caught in possession of marijuana, all in the space of the previous few months. Gribble's last online status was said to have been posted hours after the killing. He wrote that he had enjoyed hanging out with two friends, and watching a television show about a serial killer. Gribble had also once posted:
"Although everyone has a light and a dark side, mine are very extreme,'' Gribble said. "If I like you (or at least don't dislike you) I'm the sweetest nicest person ever. But heaven help you if I truly lose it. It's not pretty.''Gribble, who lived about ten miles from Mont Vernon, was accused of stabbing Cates with a knife. Her autopsy had revealed that she had died of multiple sharp injuries to the head, her torso, left arm and her left leg.Glover's lawyer described his client as a solid high school student who had no previous criminal record. He said that there was no evidence that Glover had acted violently. Prosecutors argued that Glover and Marks were both armed with deadly weapons, and all four of the teens knew the plan was to kill anyone at the house.
Glover and Mark's were both held on $500,000 bail. Resemblances have been drawn to the earlier story of the murders of the Dartmouth College professors Half and Susanne Zantop, who were stabbed to death by two teenagers that they did not know.
Spader and Gribble were described by residents as both being ominous figures. It was also revealed that the Cates daughter was a Black belt in Karate, she was a strong and happy young lady. The night before she was attacked she had attended a school dance. According to a police affidavit, Spader and Gribble allegedly bragged to friends about killing Cates. They were indicted on a new charge of tampering with witnesses and informants, for allegedly threatening a friend with a knife.
Indictments were handed up by a special grand jury meeting in Hillsborough Superior Court in Nashua. The 18-year-old Quinn Glover, agreed to plead guilty to robbery and other charges. Prosecutors will recommend a minimum prison sentence of 20 years for him.
Spader's attorney has insisted that his client will plead not guilty. He would not comment any further. When he was questioned by police the previous year, Spader denied having anything to do with the crimes. Gribble had given a detailed account of the killing.
According to an affidavit, , Gribble, now aged 20, told police that he and Spader, now 18, agreed they would break into the house in Mont Vernon and that if anyone was inside ''they would just kill the people in the home for fun.'' They shut off the electricity and navigated their way through the home with the light from an iPod that police said belonged to Cates' daughter, Jaimie.
Gribble told police the group found their way to the master bedroom, where Cates woke up and said,
''Jaimie, is that you?''
According to the statement, Marks admitted he took part in the breakin and entered the master bedroom but stayed by the door. Glover told police he had an anxiety attack while the four were driving around the neighborhood, and he went out for a walk and meditated.
Stephen Spader attacked Kimberly Cates with a machete, Christopher Gribble told investigators. Her daughter was stabbed in the face and chest by Gribble, who then threw her against a door and assumed she had died, police said. The girl later told police she pretended to be dead.
Friends of Kimberley Cates, described her as very energetic she was often jogging in the area.. They struggled to make sense of her needless death. It had been the first murder in the town for two generations. Residents were unnerved, and also were said to be saddened by a sense that life in their quiet village had unalterably changed. Spader maintains his innocence, and even wrote a four page letter to The Telegraph.
Spader accused the media of having swayed the opinion of the public through its coverage of the murder, he wrote
"THINK FOR YOURSELVES PEOPLE YOU BRAINLESS, MEDIA-DRIVEN CONFORMISTS,"
"As Americans I shouldn't have to repeat this, but it seems like I must, because everyone seems to have forgotten the constitution. Everyone in this great country of ours is, and I quote, 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty' not the other way around," Spader wrote.
He went on to write, "In conclusion I think the citizens of this state should take a new look at the situation and smarten up, because ya'll are looking real stupid right now New Hampshire. As I said before wait, and think for yourself."
The case continues.
So it is that we reach the end of the second book of murders and heinous crimes. Some of these cases will never be solved. Some families will never find closure at the loss of a loved one. It deeply saddens me at the state of our society where murder has now become common place.
We seem to have lost our way, and it seems that murder is just another thing we have to accept as part of our daily lives. Evil seems to lurk in all corners of this truly beautiful planet. Whether it is Hampshire in England or New Hampshire in the United States, perhaps the places are indeed cursed.
There does seem to be something very wrong in the heart of both places, although both are deemed fairly safe places to live. No doubt most people who live in these areas are happy God fearing people. Murder would never even enter the mind of most, but what does it take to push someone over the edge of sanity?
So as a society we punish those who maim, torture or kill. It now seems that we also have found a way to glorify murderers and serial killers. So much so, that it is now a way to become famous by being infamous. Books films and television drams warn us of the dangers of these people, men and women alike, but these people can just seem like normal teenagers, or once loving sons. Maybe they were someone who was once your paperboy or possibly even a friend at your school.
So as parents I think we all still have a responsibility to bring our children up the best way that we can, to teach them right from wrong and try and be there for them as much as we can. I wish that I had spent more time playing with my children as they grew up. I write so that one day my books may become best sellers worldwide, and in turn I may be able to give them all the life I always wanted to give them.
So until the next instalment, I bid you all farewell. I hope that you have enjoyed this book, and will consider publications future and past. I leave you with a prayer for peace for the murdered souls of New Hampshire. I hope that one day all the questions will be answered and that the families of the victims finally find some peace, and for those awaiting trial, fair justice to be served.
Devil's Walk Among Us
The World's Worst Little Known Serial Killers And Murderers
This book is dedicated Liverpool Football Club
And to all its dedicated fans all over the world.
You'll Never Walk Alone. It isn't just a song, it's a way of life.
J.F.T. 96
The world is a place of darkness and light. It is full of miracles but it is also full of murderers. Murderers may range from a single murderous individual, to the military might of an entire nation. We seem to delight in stories of murder and of torture and persecution, if you need proof you only need to look at the success of the any slasher film series. So what draws us to examine the stories of those that commit these atrocities, and even worse, leads us to explore these acts in such gory details?
This is probably a tricky question to answer, but I shall try to give you my perspective on the subject. We have ingrained within us as all, some sort of primal instinct. We long to know more about our own mortality, and we are curious about death. We revel in hearing these stories, and search to find the most intimate details, as we so love to hear about any horrific death. We are the horror spawned generation.
I for one had discovered horror films at a fairly young age. I had a small black and white television, and even though I was supposed to be asleep, night after night I was secretly nurturing my need to feel scared. A few of those late night films really did the trick. I couldn't sleep the night I watched Halloween, and the first Alien film left my literally gasping for breath.
So I became an avid horror film fan (I suppose addict me be a better description), and something of an expert in the field. Films like The Silence of the Lambs, elevated these films to an intense new level. These films along with the numerous true story based films such as Gacy, Ed Gein and Monster, all showed that the real horror stories in this world were being actually lived every day. So what is it that fascinates us about murderers and serial killers? The term 'serial killer' relates to someone who kills three or more people over a period of time, I guess this is part of the attraction following a path and the mind of a killer over time.
So at what point does someone feel the need to take the life of another human being? Do they feel real remorse for their crimes? How do you spot a serial killer? What are the mistakes these killers make what actually cause their downfalls? By looking at some of the most vicious and sadistic killers, we may just be able to find some answers.
This has probably been the hardest book I have written. Examining some of these cases, such as that of Albert Fish made me feel physically sick. That is something when I have been writing these accounts that I have never come up against before. The callousness of this killer in particular has stayed with me. The way he wrote letters to his victim's families describing in gory detail of what he had done as he ate the bodies of their loved ones was quite affecting.
In some of the cases, I really feel that I felt some of the pain these victim's families felt, I tried to imagine myself in the same position they would have been in with loved ones missing and it is far from anything I ever wish to experience. I ask you to join me as I take the trip down to darkest hidden corners as we examine the cases of some of the worst killers in history.
Martin McGregor 2010.
This book would not have been possible without the help of the following people and websites. The FBI, Getstuff.com, Shanna Freeman, Wikipedia, About.com, Bukisa.com, aboutserialkillers.com, serial killer central.
Thanks also go to Sarah, Mum, Nick, Christian, Jordan, Owen, Wayne, Dawn, Family McGregor, Family Kingston, friends and readers near and far.
Contents.
Defining a killer
Why do serial killers kill?
Dr Henry Howard Holmes
Lizzie Borden
Albert Fish
Jerry Brudos
Richard Chase
Gary and Thaddeus Lewingdon
William Bonin
Alton Coleman and Debra Brown
Herb Baumeister
Kristen Gilbert
Defining a killer
The term 'serial killer', was first used in the mid 1970's. The term was devised by Robert Ressler, who at the time was the former director of the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. The Police in England had referred to these types of repeat murders as 'crimes in a series', and so he coined this phrase from the English reference and from the serial films that he had grown up watching.
The FBI's official definition of a serial killer is: 'one who murders three or more victims with a cooling off period in between each murder'. The term mass murderer is given to those who kill more than four persons at one time. Spree killers kill multiple people with a short period of time. Serial killers usually work alone, and normally kill strangers and these are not normally crimes committed of passion.
A study conducted by the FBI, concluded, that there had been around four hundred serial killers in the United States within the last century. They estimated these killers to have killed between 2526 to 3860 people, according to the report that was published by Eric W Hickey in 2002. Experts believe that there may be between 50 to 300 serial killers active at any one time, but there is no conclusive evidence to support this claim.
Frighteningly, serial murders appear to have increased in number over the past thirty years. Eighty percent of those 400 serial killers have emerged since 1950. Since this time it has emerged that there are in fact two types of serial killers. One whose killings are based on motives, and the other based on organised and social patterns.
The motive method is called the Holmes typology, after authors Ronald M and Stephen T Holmes, authors who penned many books on the subject of serial murders and violent crime. According to this specific typology, some of these killers can be art focused, and kill quickly, or are process focused who tend to kill slowly. There are also two different sub groups, called the visionary and the missionary.
The visionary will commit murder saying that they have been instructed to murder by unknown voices, possibly thinking they hear the voice of God or the Devil, and who is simply following instructions to kill. The missionary, will murder as they have a firm belief that they must kill a certain group of people. Processed focused killers enjoy the torture element, and the slow deaths of the victims. Again these can be broken down into three different categories: hedonists who kill for lust, for the thrill, or to seek some form of gain, and there are also power seeking killers.
The lust killers derive some form of sexual pleasure from the act of murder. Thrill killers experience some form of natural high from the act or murder, and gain killers murder to profit from the act in some way. Power killers are in some respect playing God and enjoy the thrill of having the power of taking lives or deciding to grant the ability for an attempted victim to stay alive.
Serial killers can also be classified by two categories, those who are classed as organized and non social, and those who are disorganised and asocial. These two types have commonly associated character traits and profiles. They also follow common behavioural patterns which have been charted.
The majority of serial killers investigated are organised and non social and are normally associated to common factors and behavioural patterns. These include:
They will have a normal IQ of between 105 to 120
They are socially adequate
Normally they are married, or living with a partner or in a relationship or dating
They will have had a stable father figure type whilst growing up.
They may have experienced harsh physical abuse within the family either to themselves or witnessing the abuse of another family member.
They are likely to follow what is happening in the news
They are also likely to have had a college education
Maintains good hygiene and has a good level of cleanliness at home
May drives an expensive car
They will often return to the scene of the crime to watch as the police investigate the scene
They may also contact the authorities to engage in games to add to the thrill of the murders.
May have had a longing to have been a policeman or in the armed forces
They are likely to dismember the body
Will likely commit these acts in the daytime rather than at night
Will possibly seduce the victim in order to restrain them
May kill in one location and then they are likely move the body to another place
May first engage in conversations with the victims
Will leave a controlled scene of crime
Upon questioning, they will respond better at a direct interview
The disorganised and asocial are almost the opposite in characteristics and behavioural patterns. These patterns of behaviour and common acts may include:
Possibly having a low IQ of around 80-95
They may be socially inadequate possibly a loner
They may live alone and not date or be dating.
They may have had an absent or abusive father
May have experienced emotional abuse within the family
They have little or no interest in the news and current affairs
They may have failed at school and left early or been expelled
They may have poor hygiene and poor housekeeping skills
Will most likely commit these acts at night
Will possibly have a hiding place at their home
Will most likely drive a clunky car or pick-up truck
May revisit the scene of the crime to relive the act of murder
May contact the victim's family in order to taunt them
Never have had any wish to be in the police force
Will seek out self help programs
Kills and then leaves the victim at the same scene
Will usually not dismember the body
Will generally leave a chaotic crime scene
May leave physical evidence behind
Will respond best to having counselled interviews
Often in childhood, serials killers will exhibit three behaviours which are known as the 'MacDonald triad'. These three behaviours will consist of: bed wetting, arson and cruelty to animals. They are more likely to have come from broken homes, and may have been abused or neglected. Some theorise that the troubled childhoods may actually be a reason behind them committing these acts in the first place.
Around eighty percent of serial killers are white, aged 20 to 30, are normally intelligent and predominantly kill white women. There are always exceptions to the rule though.
Why do serial killers kill?
There is no simple answer as to why serial killers have the urge to kill. There have been numerous studies conducted all over the world, but the answers may never fully be known. There are ample theories as to why these people are driven to commit the acts of murder, these include: Childhood abuse or neglect, mental illness, and brain injuries.
The FBI conducted a study that involved interviewing dozens or murderers and serial killers. They found that there were similar patterns of childhood neglect within those they studied. During childhood, the child should be learning about love, trust and interaction on basic levels with other human beings. If these things are not learned during childhood, they may never be learned later in life. Not all neglected children will grow up to become serial killers, so this detracts somewhat from this theory.
Some claim that all serial killers are insane, and that this could be the only real explanation for these barbaric killings. To be classed as guilty by insanity, the murderer must prove that at the time of the acts, they did not fully understand that the actions would lead to the death of the victims. Only two serial killers to date have ever successfully pled insanity.
Some serial killers have been classed by professionals as psychopaths. The official diagnostic term is known as antisocial personality disorder of APD for short. A person diagnosed with APD will have been behaving in a pattern of disregard and of violating others rights from around the age of fifteen years old.
This pattern will include seven different factors, of which three must have been met for the diagnosis. These include:
Failure to conform to social normality
Irritability and aggressiveness
A lack of remorse for what they have committed
Persistent lying or stealing
Disregard for safety
Promiscuity
The inability to tolerate boredom
Psychopaths are not insane, they do know right from wrong and they know that they are committing the act of murder.
Another theory is that serial killers could have some form of brain deformity or injury. Damage to areas such as the frontal lobe, the hypothalamus and the limbic system, can cause loss of control, loss of judgement and violence, and can sometimes lead to extreme aggression.
It may just be that the killer actually enjoys the thrill of taking the life of another person, and enjoys having the power to end another life. Some may actually believe that they are on a mission from God, or that they are actually fulfilling a destiny by ridding the world of undesirables. The truth however, may never ever truly be fully revealed.
So now the only thing we can really do is to try and take a closer look and to try to understand the reasons why these events occur. Most of those killers are not well known amongst the general public, but they are some of the worst killers in history. We should start where we can find a first logical starting point a man named Dr Henry Howard Holmes. The first ever officially recorded case of a serial killer.
Dr Henry Howard Holmes
Herman Webster Mudgett was born on the 16th of May 1861in Gilmanton Hew Hampshire. Herman later took on the alias of Dr Henry Howard Holmes. He is the first officially recorded case of a serial killer in America. He confessed to killing twenty seven people, nine of which were confirmed as true, but his actual victim count may have numbered even higher.
The Mudgett family were descended from one of the first original settler families in the Gilmanton area. His father was known to be a strict disciplinarian, and it was well known that Herman was bullied at school. At a local doctor's office, he first encountered a human skeleton, in invoked a great deal of fear in him. His schoolmates discovered his fear and would then force him to touch the skeleton. He then claimed to have become fascinated with the bones.
Herman attended the University of Michigan medical school. He graduated in 1884. It was during his time at the University, that he began to steal bodies and he would then disfigure the corpses. He would then claim money from insurance policies that he had taken out on the dead bodies.
After his graduation, he decided to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals and then he moved to Chicago. It was here that he began trading in real estate and in promotional deals, both of which were often shady. It was at this time that he first began to use Dr Holmes as his alias.
In July of 1878, he met and married a woman named Clara Lovering of Alton in New Hampshire. Then in January of 1887, he committed bigamy and he also married Myrta Z Belknap, she was to later bare him a daughter named Lucy Theodate Holmes. Together as a family they then resided in Wilmette Chicago.
He eventually filed a petition for divorce from his first wife, but this was in fact never finalized. He then committed bigamy again and went on to marry a third woman named Georgiana Yoke in 1894. I was around this time that he employed a man named Ned Connor and Homes would later have an affair with Connors wife who was named Julia Smythe, she would later become one of Holme's victims.
Holmes then came across a drugstore that was owned by a Dr E Holton. Holton was suffering from cancer, and it was his wife that actually minded the store. Holmes charmed his way into a job working in the store, and eventually persuaded the Holton's that they should sell the store to him, on the provision that Holton's wife could continue to live upstairs. After the death of E Holton, his wife then mysteriously vanished.
Holmes bought a plot of land across the way from the drugstore, and it was here that he built a block long building, locals in the area nicknamed it 'the castle'. It was here that he opened a hotel just in time for the 1893 world trades fair. Suspicion arose as to the whereabouts of Mrs Holton, but he claimed that she had simply moved to California and the matter was then closed.
Part of the hotel he had built was used for commercial purposes. The drugstore was also moved to a shop unit within the building, there were also other shop units built inside on the ground floor as well. The two upper floors had been constructed to seemingly bizarre designs, but they were designed this way for a horrific reason, that was to reduce the risk that he would ever be caught in what he was doing.
The two upper floors of the building contained over one hundred rooms which were bizarrely all built without windows. Some of the doors would open up to face brick walls, some stairways would lead to nowhere, and the hallways were oddly angled. Some of the doors could only be opened from the outside, there were also other strange constructions commissioned inside. Holmes regularly changed the construction workers on the site to avoid and awkward questions, and so that only he would ever understand the full layout of the building.
After the construction of the hotel was complete, Holmes then began to select victims mostly from his female employees at the hotel (some of whom he would insist that they took out life policies of which he would pay the premium and then claim from the policy later on), but he also chose victims from his lovers and sometimes they were guests staying at the hotel. His victims were often tortured before eventually being killed.
Some of the bedrooms in the hotel had been made soundproof. In these bedrooms there were gas lines installed and these were used to asphyxiate the victims. He also installed a sound proof bank vault near to his office. This is where he would suffocate some of his other victims. A secret chute had also been installed where he could drop the dead bodies into his basement.
In the basement, there were two giant furnaces. There were also lime pits, pits of acid, various bottles of poison and even a stretching rack. It was here that he would dissect his victims, strip them of all flesh, and create skeleton models. Through his medical connections, he then sold on the skeletons and also human organs. He also used one of the rooms in the hotel to perform illegal abortions. Often the patients would die during the abortion procedures. He would carry out the same ritual of stripping the flesh from these corpses too.
After the World's Fair, the economy took a turn for the worse, and Holmes soon found that he was being pursued by creditors. He left Chicago, and then he appeared in Fort Worth in Texas. It was here that he had inherited property from two railroad heiress sisters. He has previously promised that he would marry them both, but had then gone on to murder them both instead.
He hatched plans and then began to construct another castle in Texas, but he soon found that the local authorities were somewhat more inhospitable, and he soon abandoned his building plans. Instead he continued to move around the United States where he is thought to have continued his killing spree. He killed one of his close business associates and his three children around this time.
In 1894, Holmes was arrested for a horse swindle in St Louis. While he was in gaol, he struck up a conversation with a fellow inmate named Marion Hedgepeth. Following this conversation, he hatched a plan to fake his own death. He would first insure himself for the sum of $20,000. After swiftly being bailed from prison, he then set about putting his plan into action. Hedgepeth had given him the name of a lawyer who he said that he could trust, in exchange for a $500 commission.
The lawyer was named Colonel Jeptha Howe, and he was the brother of a public defender. He thought that Holmes's plan he had devised was brilliant. The plan however was doomed to failure. The insurance company became suspicious and so they refused to pay out on the claim, so he then concocted another plan with an associate named Benjamin Pitezel.
Pitezel agreed that he would fake his own death, and in doing so his wife would then be the beneficiary of his $10,000 will. She would then split this with Holmes and Howe. The plan was a simple one. It was to fake Pitezel's death in a laboratory explosion. Holmes was tasked with finding a body that could be substituted for Pitezel, instead he actually went ahead and killed Pitezel. Holmes then collected on the insurance policy.
Holmes then had to manipulate Pitezel's wife, which he did successfully. He convinced her that three of the couple's five children should remain in his custody. He lied to Pitezel's wife about her husband's claiming that he was hiding out in South America. He then took the three children on a route across the country. He led the wife with him across a similar route, but always keeping a safe distance between them.
Eventually he killed two of the young girls in Toronto. After killing the children he was then tracked by a detective to Indianapolis. In Indianapolis, Holmes had rented a cottage, and it was here that he had killed the third child who was in his care. He then chopped up the body and burnt it in the fire. Traces of the boy's teeth and bones were later found in the fireplace.
Holmes reneged on his deal with Hedgepeth, and did not pay him for the information he had given him. In turn Hedgepeth then tipped off the police about his former cell mate. In November of 1894, Holmes's killing spree was finally brought to an end when he was arrested in Boston. He was held on a warrant for horse theft. It was only when a custodian of the castle told police that he was never allowed to clean the upper floors, the police began to grow suspicious of what had happened in the castle.
During the next month, the authorities set about conducting a full investigation of the building. They discovered Holmes's secret methods of killing and of body disposal. They estimated that he may have killed up to 200 people, but the only number verified by Holmes was 27. In 1895, a mysterious fire burnt the castle to the ground, taking the last of the castles ghastly secrets with it. It is now the site of a United States Post office building.
While Holmes was in prison, the authorities attempted to piece together the course of his travels, and of his operations in Chicago. The discovery of the Pitezel children's bodies eventually sealed Holmes's fate. After initially claiming his innocence, he later claimed that he had been possessed by Satan. At trial he confessed to the murders of 27 people, and six attempted murders. For his confession, he was paid by a newspaper the sum of $7500.
Holmes was then sentenced to death, and remained calm until the moment of his execution. His death was justifiably slow and painful, as during the execution, his neck did not snap immediately, instead his body twitched for fifteen long minutes, and it took another five minutes before it was pronounced that he was dead. He had requested that his corpse would be buried in concrete so that in death no one could dissect his body as he had done to so many others. His request was granted.
After receiving a pardon for his information on Holmes, Marion Hedgepeth was later shot and killed in a saloon bar by a police officer. The former caretaker of the castle took any last hope of revealing any further secrets about what took place at the hotel, when after being haunted by what had been revealed to have happened in the castle for several months, he decided to take his own life.
Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Borden was born on the 19th of July 1860. She would become one of the first women to face a trial by media after the death of her father and step mother. Although the case can neither be classed as either that of a serial killer or mass murder case, it still deserves review. Both of the victims were killed with a hatchet, and the case is still known and referred to in American folklore to this day. Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders, but doubts remain as to the identity of killer or killers and arguments about who was responsible for the murders still continues to the present day.
In August of 1892, Andrew Borden travelled to Fall River to do his usual banking and to visit the post office, he returned home around 10.45 am. His body was then discovered by his daughter Lizzie Borden around half an hour later. During the trial, one of the key witnesses was the housemaid, a 26 year old named Bridget Sullivan. Sullivan testified that she was in her room on the third floor of the house when the first body was discovered.
At just after 11.am said that she heard Lizzie Borden call out to her. She told her that someone had killed her father. His body of Andrew Borden was slumped on a couch in the living room. He had been killed by a hatchet blow to the head, which had sliced though his left eye, cutting it cleanly in two. While Lizzie was tended to by neighbours, Sullivan said that she then discovered the body of Abby Borden in the guest bedroom. She had also been killed by a hatchet blow to the head.
During the trial it emerged that the family led a split existence. The two sisters lived in the front of the house, while Andrew and Abby lived in the rear of the house. They were said to have seldom even ate together. Andrew was well known for his penny pinching ways. He generally refused to succumb to modern conveniences, and the family still used buckets for a toilet which they would empty into the back yard of the house.
Andrew entered into a conflict with both of his daughters over his decision to divide his valuable properties to family members before his death. He sold the family's farm in Swansea, and the sisters received a rental property, which they later sold to their father for cash. Shortly before the murders, a serious argument ensued with another family member named John Morse, and subsequently both sisters were asked to leave the family home. Lizzie however soon decided to go back home earlier than expected.
The family had a barn on the land, and on the second floor, Lizzie kept pigeons. She returned home one day to find that the heads of the birds had all been cut off with an axe. Her father admitted that he had killed them, as he was afraid that they would attract attention to the barn from young boys in the neighbourhood who he feared would enter the barn and get hurt or possibly even start a fire.
Shortly before the murders, the entire household became ill. Abby feared that as her husband was an unpopular man, the family were being poisoned. It was later diagnosed that the family had food poisoning after Andrew had bought cheap mutton as food for the family and the meat had been left on the stove for days. The family also suspected that milk was being tainted as well. This proved to be also untrue after examinations of the milk were made.
After the murders were committed, police went to examine the scene of the crimes. They found a hatchet in the basement and this was assumed to be the murder weapon. The hatchet was clean, but part of the handle was missing. The police had little faith in the new technology of finger printing and did not take any prints from the hatchet. Lizzie Borden was then arrested on the 11th of August 1892, and her statements proved to be inconsistent, and her behaviour was also deemed suspicious.
Lizzie Borden did not face a murder trial until June of 1893. During the trial it was disclosed that no blood soaked clothing was ever found, but a few days after the murders, Lizzie had burnt a dress on a kitchen stove, claiming that she had brushed against fresh baseboard paint and had smeared paint on the dress.
Despite testimony and incriminating evidence, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders on the 20th of June 1893. There was no blood evidence, and no proven murder weapon and the short duration between the two murders all stood in her favour. It took the jury just ninety minutes to find there was enough reasonable doubt that she was not in fact guilty. It also emerged that shortly before the double murders another hatchet murder had taken place.
A man named Jose Correira has committed a hatchet murder shortly before the trial. The case bore many similarities to the double murder. It was eventually proved that Correira had not even been in the country when the double murders were committed. No evidence was ever presented to show conclusively who was responsible for the killings and the case remains unsolved to this very day.
There are many theories as to who the actual murderer was. One theory suggests that the maid may have actually committed the murders, after being asked to clean windows on a hot day just as she was recovering from food poisoning. Another theory was that Andrew Borden's illegitimate son William, may have actually committed the murders after trying unsuccessfully trying to extort money from his father. The truth is that the killer will probably never now be known.
The house where the murders were committed is now a bed and breakfast on Second Street in Fall River Massachusetts.
Albert Fish
Some would describe Albert fish as a vile monster. A better description would be one of the most evil men that has ever walked this Earth. He was a paedophile who molested hundreds of children and he murdered and tortured numerous others. He became known by several names during his life, including: The Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, and the Boogeyman. He was thing of nightmares, he was a cold killer and he was also a cannibal with a taste for chid flesh.
Hamilton Howard Fish, was born in Washington D.C on the 19th of May 1870. At the time of his birth, his father was 75 years old, 43 years senior to his mother. He was the youngest of four children and he spent most of his childhood in an orphanage. It was here that he received the nickname 'ham and eggs', so he used the name Albert to escape from the nickname.
There was a history of mental illness within his family, including an uncle who had suffered from religious mania, a brother who was confined to a mental hospital, another brother who died of hydrocephalus, and a sister who was said to have also had a mental affliction. Three other close relatives were thought to have had mental issues including his mother who said she heard voices and often hallucinated.
His father died of a heart attack in 1875. His mother was then forced to go out to work, which lead to Albert being taken away to the orphanage. It was at the orphanage that he along with other boys would be stripped naked. He would then be whipped or beaten by the teachers. After a while he started to enjoy the punishments, and would often gain an erection during the beatings for which he was teased by the other orphans.
At the age of 10, his mother found that she was then in a position to support her son. Two years later, Albert Fish entered a relationship with another boy who introduced him to the practices of both drinking urine, and eating faeces which is known as Coprophagia. He then began to visit public baths so that he could watch other boys while they would undress.
In 1890, Fish moved to New York City, and it was here that he said that he became a male prostitute. It was also around this time, that he began to rape young boys. In 1898, his mother had arranged for him to marry, and the woman was nine years his junior, she bore him six children, named, Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John and Henry. Even with a family of his own, he still continued with his molestations of children.
At some point around this time, a male lover took him to visit a waxwork museum. During the visit he became besotted with a bisection of a penis. He later entered into a relationship with a mentally retarded man, he tied the man up and tried to castrate him. The man screamed violently, and Fish fled the scene, leaving a $10 bill behind. Fish began to visit brothels where he would ask to be beaten and whipped.
In 1903, Fish was arrested for embezzlement, and was sent to Sing Sing, which was a maximum security prison. By 1917 Fish's wife had left him for a handy man who had lodged at the family home. She left the children behind at the mercy of Fish. After the rejection of his wife, Fish said that he began to hear voices. He once wrapped himself in a carpet, saying that he had been instructed to do so, by John the Apostle.
It was also around this time that he also began to self harm himself. X rays at the time of his death found that he had 29 needles lodged in his pelvic area. They were embedded so deep that they became impossible to remove and he would also repeatedly beat himself with a nail studded paddle.
Fish was thought to have first attacked a child around 1910 in Wilmington Delaware. In 1919 he stabbed a mentally challenged boy. In 1924 he stumbled across an 8 year old girl playing alone on a Staten Island farm, he offered her money to help him look for rhubarb, and she accepted. As the girl was just about to leave with him, when the girl's mother appeared and chased Fish away. He was later found trying to sleep in the barn for the night and was asked to leave the property.
At the age of 55, Fish began to hear voices and was deluded, saying that God had ordered him to torture and kill little boys. In February of 1930, he remarried, but the marriage only lasted for a week. Later that year he was arrested for sending an obscene letter to a woman who had answered an advert he had placed for a maid.
In May of 1928, the 58 year old Albert Fish called at the home of Edward Budd. He was responding to an advert Budd had placed seeking employment for himself. He was calling on the pretence of wanting to hire him. He called a few days later, where he convinced the parents to allow him to take their 10 year old daughter grace to a birthday party that evening, she never returned home again.
Six years later, an anonymous letter was sent to The Budd family. Mrs Budd could not read, so she asked her son to read it to her, it read:
Dear Mrs Budd. In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1-3 per pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep the others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak-chops-or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl's behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys, one 7 and one 11. He took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them-tortured them - to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head -- bones and guts. He was roasted in the over (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St. Near --right side. He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3rd, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese -- strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell mamma. First I stripped her naked. How did she kick -- bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.
The letter was to lead the authorities back to Fish. It had been delivered in an in envelope that had a small hexagonal emblem on it. On the emblem were the letters N.Y.P.C.B.A. This stands for the New York Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association. A janitor of the company had taken some of the stationary home and had left it at his boarding house when he left. The address was at 200 East 52nd Street.
When the police arrived, the landlady told them that Albert Fish had moved out of his room just a few days earlier. However Fish's son had sent him some money and Fish had asked her to hold a cheque for him. William F King, who was leading the investigation waited at the house until Fish returned. Fish soon made his way back to the house to collect the cheque.
When confronted by the investigator, Fish initially agreed to be taken for questioning, but then suddenly without warning he brandished a razor blade. King quickly disarmed him and took him to the police headquarters. During questioning, Fish did not deny the murder of Grace Budd, he did comment that he had meant to kill the girl's brother Edward, but it had never entered his head that he would rape the girl.
Fish later admitted to his attorney that he had in fact had two involuntary ejaculations at the time of the murder, and this was later used at his trial to show a sexually motivated kidnapping. By doing so, this would avoid the mention of cannibalism. A picture of Fish appeared in the paper, and through this, Fish was also linked to the disappearance in 1927 of a four year old child named Billy Gaffney. A three year old friend who he had been playing with at the time, said that Billy had been taken by the Boogey man.
Gaffney's mother visited Fish in Sing Sing prison, to try to find out some further details about her son's death. It was here that Fish confessed to the child's mother. He said:
I brought him to the Riker Avenue dumps. There is a house that stands alone, not far from where I took him. I took the boy there. Stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked out of the dump. Then I burned his clothes. Threw his shoes in the dump. Then I walked back and took the trolley to 59 Street at 2 A.M. and walked from there home. Next day about 2 P.M, I took tools, a good heavy cat of nine tails. Home made. Short handle. Cut one of my belts in half, slit these halves in six strips about 8 inches long. I whipped his bare behind til the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears -- nose-slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out his eyes. He was dead then. I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood. I picked up four old potato sacks and gathered a pile of stones. Then I cut him up. I had a grip with me. I put his nose, ears and a few slices of his belly in the grip. Then I cut him through the middle of his body. Just below the belly button. The through his legs about 2 inches below his behind. I put this in my grip with a lot of paper. I cut off the head --feet -- arms hands and the legs below the knee. This I put in sacks weighed with stones, tied the ends and threw them into the pools of slimy water you will see along the road going to North Beach. I came home with my meat. I had the front of his body I liked best. His monkey and pee wees and a nice little fat behind to roast in the oven and eat. I made a stew out of his ears -- nose -- pieces of his face and belly. I put onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper. It was good. Then I spilt the cheeks of his behind open, cut off his monkey and pee wees and washed them first. I put strips of bacon on each cheek of his behind and put them in the oven. Then I picked four onions and when the meat had roasted about ¼ hour, I poured about a pint of water over it for gravy and put in the onions. At frequent intervals, I basted his behind with a wooden spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy. In about two hours, it was nice and brown, cooked through. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did. I ate every bit of the meat in about four days. His little monkey was as sweet as a nut, but his pee wees I could not chew. Threw them in the toilet.
Fish stood trial for the murder of Grace Budd. The trial began in March 1935. Fish tried to plead insanity. Various psychiatrists testified about the numerous sexual fetishes that Fish had. To them Fish was a phenomenon, they had never seen such a case before where one person had so many sexual abnormalities.
Fish was said to be obsessed with religion and especially the story of Abraham and Isaac. By sacrificing a boy, he believed that it was penance for his own sins. He also believed that if God thought what he was doing was wrong, then he would surely send angels to Earth to stop him. Edward Budd was his intended victim to sacrifice, but he had turned out to be larger than he anticipated. He looked at Grace as a boy and considered her cannibalism to be a form of communion.
The expert for the defence, named Frederick Wertham declared Fish insane. Wertham was asked if Fish knew right from wrong. He concluded that he did know, but it was a perverted knowledge that was based on his views of sin, atonement and religion therefore it was an insane knowledge. Two other experts backed up his findings.
Fish had been treated in Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in 1930. Menas Gregory who had treated Fish, described him as abnormal, but sane. The jury found him to be sane and guilty, and he was sentenced to the death penalty. After being sentenced, Fish also confessed to the murder of eight year old Francis McDonnell on Staten Island, who he had assaulted and then strangled with his suspenders.
Fish arrived at prison in March of 1935. He was executed in January of the following year. On facing his execution, he said that the electrocution would be the supreme thrill of his life. He entered the chair at 11.06 am and he exclaimed, 'I don't even know why I am here'. It took two jolts of electricity before he was pronounced dead just three minutes later.
Rumours arose that the equipment short circuited after the first attempt, and it took two attempts to electrocute him due to the amount of metal inserted into his body. He was buried in the prison cemetery.
Jerry Brudos
Jerry Brudos was born in Webster South Dakota in 1939. He was the youngest child of four sons. His mother had always wanted a daughter and took to dressing him in girl's clothes. He suffered constant belittlement and abuse at the hands of his mother. During his childhood, the family constantly moved home, until they eventually settled down in Salem, Oregon.
At the age of five, Brudos found a pair of spike heeled shoes at a junkyard. This developed into an obsession with women's shoes from a very young age. He developed his obsession to women's underwear and would try and steal underwear from female neighbours. He also attempted to steal shoes from his grade school teacher. He spent most of his teenage year in and out of mental hospitals.
As a teenager he began to stalk local women. He progressed to knocking the down, or choking them unconscious, and then he would steal their shoes. At the age of seventeen, his behaviour developed to a more sinister level. He abducted and beat a young woman, and then he threatened to kill her if she did not follow his sexual demands. He was shortly after arrested and spent the next nine months in the psychiatric ward of Oregon State Hospital. At the hospital, they discovered that his sexual fantasies were fuelled by his hatred for his mother and wanting to exact a revenge on women in general. They diagnosed him with having schizophrenia.
Despite the diagnosis, he still somehow managed to graduate from high school in 1957. He then went on to work as an electronics technician. Then in 1961, his life appeared to turn around when he married a seventeen year old girl. He then went on father two children and seemed to settle down in Salem. He still continued to have strange fetishes though. He would ask his wife to do the housework while naked, except for her wearing a pair of heels. He would then take pictures or her.
Around this time he started to complain of headaches, migraines and blackouts. He would relieve his symptoms by going out on night time raids for lacy underwear and by stealing shoes. He would keep these stolen items in his garage, where his wife was forbidden to enter unless she first requested permission via an intercom he had installed. It was not the only thing he was hiding from his wife. He had now also progressed to far darker deeds.
In 1968 to 1969, Brudos bludgeoned and strangled four women. For a time, the bodies of these victims were also stored in his garage. The only evidence that first linked Brudos to the murders was that a large man was seen wearing women's clothing clothes to one of the murders. In the garage, Brudos ended up keeping souvenirs from his victims.
His first victim was 19 year old Linda Slawson. She had called at the home of Brudos selling encyclopedias and she was looking at a smeared piece of paper unsure of the correct address to visit. Brudos invited the young woman into his house, and told her that his mother and daughter were playing upstairs. He suggested that they go down into his basement where they would not be disturbed.
Slawson agreed to go into the basement and they continued the conversation about encyclopedias. Brudos pulled up a chair for her to sit on, then went behind her and smashed her over the head with a lump of wood. She fell to the floor unconscious, and he then choked her to death with his bare hands. He undressed and re-dressed the body in a variety of the clothes that he had stolen. When he had finished his games, he waited until darkness and moved the body to his car. He then disposed of her body in the Willamette river.
His second victim was the 57 year old Jan Susan Witney. In November of 1968, she had left her friend's house and was travelling on interstate 5. It was here that she encountered car trouble, and Brudos was the man who stopped to help. Her car was found locked and intact and it seemed like a random isolated disappearance.
The third victim was named Karen Sprinkler. She was due to meet her mother for a lunch meeting, but then she failed to show up. Her mother searched for her for a few hours, but there was no sign of her, her mother then reported her missing to the Salem police. Police had to wait for the mandatory 24 hours before they would begin to search for the girl.
Police soon found the girl's car at the top level of a garage, but with no visible sign of a struggle and the car intact, it again appeared as if the girl had just vanished. Witnesses at the area did mention that they had seen a cross dresser at the scene, who was seen adjusting his suspenders. This was the first link to a potential suspect.
The next victim was a pretty blonde named Linda Salle. The woman failed to turn up for a meeting with her boyfriend. The next day, she also failed to turn up for work. Her car was also found at the top level of a parking garage. Her body was found in a river less than a month later.
Widespread investigations were launched by the local police. They knew that they had a killer on the loose that would soon kill again. They questioned people who knew Karen Sprinkler at Oregon State University. Interviews with co-eds soon led them to an interesting discovery. Three women had recently received phone calls and were asked for directly by name, the man on the phone claimed to be a Vietnam vet, and asked the girls if they were available for coke and conversation.
In a separate investigation a red haired man with freckles, had recently tried to wrestle two girls into a car. One of the girls who had received the phone call had actually met with the man, but didn't like him. The police asked her that if he ever rang her again then she was to stall him until they could get to her. A few weeks later, the man rang again, and she agreed to meet him in an hour.
When the caller showed up at the meeting point, he was greeted by the police. He gave his name as Jerome Henry Brudos. The police let him go, but by now they had started to delve deeper into his back ground and then they started to tail him. Officers caught him as he tried to load up his boot in a suspected effort to flee and at this point they arrested him. Brudos, despite warnings from his attorney just kept talking and he quickly confessed to the murders of the four women in detail.
Brudos revealed details of how he murdered the women. He dragged them to his garage tied them up and put a noose around their necks. He secured the rope to an overhead beam and then winched them off the floor to strangle them. As they were dying he liked to take pictures. In one of the pictures, the face of the photographer was reflected in the mirror. It was the face of Brudos. Police now had solid evidence.
In his garage Brudos kept two pairs of breasts that he had removed from his victims, he used these as paperweights. He also kept the foot of his first murder victim, 19 year old Linda Slawson. He used her foot to model the shoes that he had collected. Whenever he committed the act of murder, he would dress up in women's clothes and he would masturbate.
Brudos was sentenced to life imprisonment, and appealed on numerous occasions. While in his cell, he substituted pornography with catalogues of women's shoes that he requested from major retailers. Brudos died in prison of liver cancer in March 2006.
Richard Chase
In January of 1978, Richard chase went on a four day killing spree. The blood binge would claim the lives of six people and earn him the name the Vampire Killer of Sacremento.
Chase was born in May 1960. As a child he had unusual hobbies. He liked to start fires, and he liked to torture animals. His mother and father would constantly bicker and argue and his father was a strict disciplinarian. By the time he was ten years old Chase was killing cats. Entering into his teenage years he would drink and also smoke cannabis. He was constantly in trouble but never showed any signs of remorse.
When he started dating girls, he found that he had trouble maintaining an erection. The problem got so bad for him that at the age of 18 he went to see a physiatrist about the issue. The root of the problem was diagnosed as being repressed anger, it was also thought that he may be suffering from a major mental illness, but it was not suggested that he be committed.
After he moved out of his parent's house, he had numerous different room-mates, a number of them recalled that he had exhibited strange behaviour and excessive drug usage. It got to the point that even his close friends considered him weird. He also was convinced that he was suffering from major medical problems and these delusions appeared to increase in intensity. At one point he even nailed his bedroom door closed.
Chase once entered a hospital emergency room claiming that someone had stolen his pulmonary artery. He was looking for the person responsible for the theft. He also complained on separate occasions that the bones were coming out of the back of his head, that his stomach was backward, and that his heart would often stop beating. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.
Chase moved back in with his mother, but he believed that she was poisoning him. His father then got him an apartment and made him move out. Chase then started catching or buying rabbits. He would then kill the animals and disembowel them. He would sometimes eat the animal's entrails raw. On occasion he would put the intestines into a blender with the animal's blood and liquidise them and drank them in order he believed, to stop his heart from shrinking, as he thought that if he didn't then his heart would disappear from his body.
He once injected blood from a rabbit directly into his veins. He then became very ill with blood poisoning, but he believed that the rabbit had ingested battery acid, and that had made its way into his stomach. Eventually he was committed to hospital as a schizophrenic suffering from somatic delusions. Doctors tried various different medications, but none of them appeared to have worked. He escaped from the hospital and then went to his mother's house.
Chase was returned to hospital, and ended up at a facility for mental patients named Beverly manor. It was here that he earned the nickname of 'Dracula'. He often spoke about killing rabbits, and he was once found with blood around his mouth from two birds that he had killed. At some point he was assessed as not being a danger to anyone and was then released. His mother then paid his rent and would also do his shopping for him.
Chase moved apartments and he then started to catch and torture cats, dogs and rabbits. Once again he began to drink the blood of the animals. Chase was still on his medication but became unsupervised. His mother decided that he no longer needed his medication and she stupidly weaned him off of them. His mother once found her son at her door holding a dead cat, she saw him tear the animal open in front of her and smear blood all over his face and neck, but she did not report it.
In August of that year, police officers found Chase's car, it was stuck in sand in Nevada. There were two rifles in the car, along with some men's clothing. There was blood on the inside of the car, and a plastic bucket filled with blood and a liver. They became suspicious and they spotted Chase through binoculars. He was naked, and he was covered in blood. He ran, but the police caught him, and he claimed the blood was his and it had seeped out of him. The liver was actually a cow's liver.
In the news, the Hillside strangler was making headlines. Chase was following the case with increased intensity. He became a fan of the killer and of what was happening. He followed events closely in the press and on television. He became totally fascinated with the murders.
On the 29th of December Mr Ambrose Griffin and his wife returned home from a shopping trip. Mrs Griffin heard her husband shouting at someone and then he just seemed to drop to the ground in front of her. She suspected that he had had a heart attack. At the same time she heard two noises that made a popping sound, but had thought no more of them. Her husband had actually been shot.
The following day, a twelve year old boy was riding his bike when he was also shot at. While under hypnosis, he managed to recall the number plate of the car which was a brown Pontiac Trans am, but the investigation would lead no further. Police then discovered a report had been filed two days before the murder. It told of where a shot was fired into a kitchen. A .22 calibre slug was found, and it matched those that had killed Ambrose Griffin. The investigations then went stale.
In early 1978, Chase's neighbours recalled incidents of erratic behaviour from Chase. He was seen carrying animals into his apartment, but they never came back out again. He asked a neighbour for a cigarette, but then stopped her from walking away, he only moved when she gave him the rest of the packet. He was also seen trying to gain access to a property, when he was confronted he simply lit a cigarette and just calmly walked away.
He was actually later caught in one of his neighbour's houses. He managed to escape by running away, but he had left the house in an utter mess, and it appeared that he was trying to steal valuables. He had also defecated on a child's bed, and urinated into a drawer of babies freshly washed clothes.
Chase had an unusual method that he used to select his victims, if he tried the door and it was locked he took it to mean that he was not welcome, if he found the door unlocked, he would enter. By leaving the door unlocked, it would mean the death of a 22 year old woman, who at the time was three months pregnant. Before he entered her house, he placed a .22 calibre shell in her mailbox. Then he ran into her house.
As Chase ran into the house, he encountered 22 year old Terry Wallin just as she was taking out her rubbish. As Chase raised his gun, Wallin dropped her bag of rubbish. As she did so, she was shot twice. One bullet struck her hand then nicked her neck as it exited then her hand, the other bullet hit the top part of her skull. As she fell to the ground, Chase fired another bullet into her skull. Chase then dragged the woman into a bedroom and returned with a knife and an empty container.
When David Wallin returned home at around 6 that evening, he found the family dog waiting. Music was playing and there seemed to be some sort of stain on the carpet, there was also rubbish strewn all over the floor. He could not locate his wife and so he followed the stains to where he made a horrific discovery that would turn his world upside down.
David located his wife just inside the couples bedroom. She was on her back and her sweater had been pulled up over her breasts. Her pants and underwear were around her ankles and her knees were forced apart as if she had been sexually assaulted. Her left nipple had been carved off, her torso had been cut open and her spleen and intestines had been pulled out.
It was later discovered that Chase had repeatedly stabbed her in the lung, liver and in the left breast. He had cut out her kidneys and then cut her pancreas into two. He then had replaced the kidneys. He has used an empty yoghurt pot to drink the woman's blood and in a gruesome act of depravity, he had then shoved animal faeces into her mouth.
On the 27th of January, the body of 51 year old Daniel Meredith was discovered. He lay in a hallway in a pool of blood. He had a gunshot wound to the head. In the bath lay the body of 38 year old Evelyn Miroth. She had also been shot in the head. Her legs had also been splayed open and her intestines removed. Two carving knives lay nearby. She had previously been dragged to the bed and stabbed through the anus at least six times.
Chase had also made several cuts across the woman's neck, and had tried to remove one of her eyes. There was a large amount of semen in her anus, where she had been sodomised, and the killer had once again stabbed internal organs and had drank the victim's blood. Blood stains covered the carpet. The body of a six year old boy named Jason Miroth was also found by the bed, and he had also been shot twice in the head. Police discovered bloody footprints at the scene, and witnesses provided a good description of a man who was recently seen in the neighbourhood asking for magazines.
Dan Meredith's car was missing from the house. It was around this time that Karen Ferreira had realised that he baby son David was missing from the house. David had also been left with Evelyn that morning and a bullet hole was discovered in a pillow that had been in the crib. There was also a lot of blood in the area.
While Chase was in the house, he had drunk Evelyn's blood. He had taken the baby's body to the bathroom and mutilated the tiny body. He had opened up the head and pieces of the child's brain had fallen into the bath tub. He was then disturbed by a knock and the door and fled with the child's body. He took the body home and severed the head, and then he removed and ate some of the child's organs. The Police were quick to act and were closing in on Chase.
The FBI had already drawn up a profile of the killer. They thought him to be a white male in his mid twenties. He was sloppy and left evidence at the scenes. He had seemingly not planned any of these killings as he had left this evidence. It was likely he was walking around in broad daylight and was covered in blood. He was a local who was likely to continue killing until he was caught, and he was likely to be suffering from psychosis. He would also be a drug user or have been a mental patient at some point. He probably lived alone and was paranoid.
The police questioned many people in the area, and one young woman recalled a rather strange encounter. At a local shopping centre, a strange man approached her, who appeared to be somewhat confused. She tried to avoid him but he came directly up to her. He asked her
"Were you on the motorcycle when Kurt was killed? "
Ten years prior, the woman had actually been dating a boy called Kurt, who had actually been killed in a bike accident. She thought the man looked familiar so she asked him his name, and he replied
"Richard Chase."
It then emerged that in December of 1977 Chase had bought a .22 calibre handgun, and in the following January, he had purchased ammunition for the gun. Detectives ran a background check on Chase, and his history of mental illness then came to light. He also had several minor drug charges and also a concealed weapons charge. The day after the triple murder, they went to visit Chase's apartment.
Chase was at home when they called, but he refused to answer the door. The police pretended that they were leaving the house and then waited for him to emerge. He left the house holding a box in his arms, and made his way towards a car. It was at this point that the police surprised him. After a somewhat violent struggle, he has finally apprehended. His shoes appeared to be covered in blood. He also carried a handgun that had blood stains on it, and one of the victims wallets in his back pocket, he also had a pair of latex gloves with him.
The box that Chase was carrying contained bits of bloodstained paper and rags. They took him to the police station but he would only confess to killing several dogs and would not talk about any of the murders. While he was held captive detectives were desperate to find information about the missing child, and decided to search Chase's apartment for clues. They encountered a putrid disgusting smelling lair.
Almost everything in the apartment, including food and drinking glasses, that were nearly all covered in blood. In the kitchen were small pieces of bone, and various body parts were in the fridge. One container had human brain inside. A food blender was badly stained and smelt of rotten flesh. A calendar showed the date of the triple murders with the word 'today' written on it. He had also written the same world on a further 44 future dates.
While in custody Chase admitted to another cellmate, that he had drunk the blood of his victims because he had blood poisoning. Then on the 24th of March, the decapitated body of the missing child was found. The body had been stabbed several times, and a bullet wound was found in the head. Several of the child's ribs had also been broken. The evidence against Chase was growing by the day. Chase's defence team entered a plea of 'Not guilty by reason of insanity'. The prosecutor said that he intended to seek the death penalty.
The prosecutor was determined to show that Chase knew the difference between right and wrong, and that Chase was not compelled to murder. To assist in the case, he researched blood related crimes and blood rituals that were used in other cultures, he also read about vampires as part of his strategy. During his research, he noted that some believed that by ingesting another person's blood, they would be strengthened or healed, but this in itself was no reason to commit murder.
In early January 1979, Chase was put on trial for six counts of murder. The prosecution reminded the court several times during the case, that Chase always had a choice not to kill. When he went to commit the murders, he carried latex gloves with him with the intent to murder. Altogether the prosecution showed 250 exhibits of evidence including Chase's gun and a wallet he had taken from one of his victims.
Dan Wallis was the first person to have to describe the scene that greeted him when he found his dead wife. Almost one hundred other witnesses came forward over the next four months. Chase then took the stand in his own defence. He said that he was semi conscious during the Wallis murder, and then told the court about how he had been mistreated during most of his life. He did then admit to drinking Wallis's blood.
He said that he did not recall much about the next series of murders, but he did recall shooting the baby and removing its head. He said how he had left the baby in a bucket hoping to get more of its blood. He said that his problems stemmed from being unable to have sex, and then expressed remorse for his actions. The defence asked for a plea of second degree murder, so that Chase would not face the death penalty, but the prosecutor said he was a sexual sadist and a monster who they said could not be saved.
In May of 1978, Chase was found to be legally sane, and guilty of six counts of first degree murder. He was sentenced to die by the gas chamber. Up until the point of his death, Chase was visited on numerous occasions by various FBI profilers, all hoping to gain some more insight into the criminal psychology of serial killers. It eventually emerged that he was formerly released from treatment even though some of the staff warned that he was dangerous. He had thought that his blood was turning to powder and he needed other blood to replace it.
Chase genuinely believed that he had to kill to save his own life, and that he was going to appeal based on his belief. He was delusional in prison saying that he was being poisoned, he said that was persecuted by the Nazis as he was Jewish (which he wasn't), and UFO's had telepathically told him to replenish his blood. He said that these UFO's would show up on radar if the FBI tracked him.
On Christmas day in 1980, Chase was found dead in his cell. He had saved up doses of his prescription medication and had then overdosed. His official cause of death was toxic ingestion.
Despite worrying all his life, his heart was found to be normal sized, and in a good condition.
Gary and Thaddeus Lewingdon.
In Colombo Ohio in the late 1970's, there were a series of ten seemingly unrelated murders. Homes were invaded and the murders were committed in the most brutal fashion. Police had no clues as to who was responsible until one of the murderers used a credit card that was stolen from one of the victims, and when Gary Lewingdon was taken into custody, he soon confessed about the crimes he, and his brother Thaddeus had committed.
On December 10th 1977, two women were gunned down in cold blood at the back door of Forkers cafe in Newark Ohio. They were both shot as they left work at 2.30 am. The frozen bodies of 37 year old Joyce Vermilion and 33 year old Karen Dodrill were found in the snow. Shell casings from a .22 calibre gun were found in the surrounding snow. For reasons unknown, a 26 year old woman confessed to the police that she had witnessed her boyfriend shooting the women, but she was lying.
The 26 year old go-go dancer named Claudia Yasko, had walked into a police station and told the police that she had actually been with two men when they had committed the murders. She gave the police a very strong description of the crime scene. As a result Yasko, her boyfriend and one of his associates were all arrested and charged with the murders. The police assumed that the case was now closed.
On February 12th 1978, the bodies of 52 year old Mickey McCann his 77 year old mother Dorothy and his 26 year old girlfriend Christine Herdman were found in McCann's home in Franklin County, all three had been shot multiple times around the face and head. Similar .22 cases were found around the bodies.
Herdman had been shot in the right cheek, her right shoulder and twice in the forehead. Dorothy McCann had been shot in the mouth, her head, and in her right leg. Richard McCann had been shot twice in the forehead, once in the mouth and twice in the back of the head. Telephones lines to the house had been severed and there appeared to be no clear motive for the murders.
Then on the 8th of April 1978, another body was found. The body was that of 77 year old Jenkin T Jones. He had been gunned down in his own home. The victim had also been shot multiple times, six times in total, with two shots to the back of his head His four pet dogs were found and they had also been shot. Shells were also left at the scene belonging to a .22 calibre gun.
On the 30th of April 1978, a part time security guard named Rev. Gerald Fields was murdered while at work in a private club in Fairfield County. Shell cases found at the scene matched those from previous locations. Then on May 21st 1978, another two victims were found. Jerry and Martha Martin were both shot multiple times in the head while they were at home in Franklin County. Shell cases at the scene also matched those previously found belonging to a .22 calibre gun.
On the 21st of May two more bodies were discovered. The bullet riddled bodies of 47 year old Jerry L Martin and his 50 year old wife Martha, were discovered by a visiting relative. Both of the victims had been shot repeatedly about the head, the police now began to think that there may be more than one person involved in these killings.
Police began to examine old case files, when they happened to come across the murders of Joyce Vermillion and Karen Dodrill, and they then decided to take another look at the evidence relating to the case. The shells found at the scene were sent away to be analyzed, and they came back as match to the recent series of murders. The three people who had previously been charged were all then released. No explanation was ever given to the confession.
All then went quiet until the 4th of December 1978, when 56 year old Joseph Annick was shot five times in the chest and stomach and killed while he was in his garage. A different weapon was used for this murder though. Police still thought that this type of killing had to be related to the previous chain of murders.
The case was swiftly brought to the point of being solved by an astute 17 year old girl named Cheryl Young. The shop assistant had noticed that she had been handed a stolen credit card for payment of goods. Her manager had previously posted on a register of stolen cards. Managers at the store detained 38 year old Gary Lewingdon until the police arrived. Lewingdon was then detained on suspicion of murder.
Investigators discovered that Gary had served in Vietnam. He was discharged from the Air Force in 1962. Over the following years he was arrested many times from theft, indecent exposure and for concealed weapons charges. Investigators took him to an investigation room hoping to gain a confession from him, they were not disappointed.
Gary soon revealed that both he and his brother Thaddeus had in fact committed multiple murders. The authorities then arrested his brother Thaddeus, who was also happy to recount the events of the murders. Thaddeus told detectives that he and his brother had fallen out after he himself had grown tired of the slayings. Detectives searched both men's homes and discovered various weapons and items that had been stolen from many of the victims.
On the 14th of December 1978, both men were indicted. Gary faced 20 felony counts including 10 for murder, and Thaddeus faced 17 counts of which 9 were for murder. Thaddeus received three life terms on conviction from murders of Vermillion, Dodrill and Jones. A month later, he received another sentence of six life terms after being found guilty of the murders of the McCann's and Martin. Gary received 8 consecutive life terms for all ten murders.
On the 17th of April 1979, Gary died of lung cancer. Gary was repeatedly denied parole, and died of heart failure in October 2004. None of the members of his family wished to claim the body, and he was then buried at the prison in Mansfield.
William Bonin
Bonin was born on the 8th of January 1947. He was a serial killer and repeat sex offender, he became better known as 'The Freeway Killer'. The exact number of his victims is unknown, but at least 21 boys were tortured, raped and killed, with the possibility that there may have been in excess of another twelve more victims. As is the case of many serial killers, Bonin came from a troubled family background.
Bonin was the middle son of three brothers. His father was a compulsive gambler an alcoholic and was abusive. Bonin's mother was also an alcoholic. The father would repeatedly beat his wife and children. The mother would often leave Bonin in his grandfather's care for periods of time, and his grandfather was a convicted child molester. Often the three brothers were so neglected that they had to be fed by neighbours.
At the age of six, Bonin was placed in an orphanage, and he would remain there until he was nine years old. At ten years old, he was arrested for stealing license plates and he soon ended up in a juvenile detention centre. Bonin was sexually abused by other boys at the centre, and when he was released home to his mother, he then himself began molesting younger children.
After leaving High school, Bonin joined the U.S. Air Force and also became engaged to marry. Bonin served during the Vietnam War and logged over 700 hours of active duty, he even earned a good conduct medal. At one point he risked his own life, to save that of a fellow soldier. It was only later that it came to, light that he had sexually assaulted two other soldiers at gunpoint.
Bonin left the Air Force in October of 1978, and returned home to live with his mother. He then decided to make a move to California. At the age of 21, he committed a sexual assault on a youth. Within a few months he had kidnapped and had assaulted a further four youths. The same year he was indicted for five counts of kidnapping and of four counts of sexual assaults. He pled guilty and was sentenced as a mentally disordered sexual offender.
After spending two years at Atascadero State Hospital, he was then considered unfit for further treatment and was transferred to prison. In May 1974, Bonin was declared to no longer be a danger to others, and was released. His good behaviour failed to last, and eighteen months later, he was again back in prison after raping a fourteen year old hitchhiker at gunpoint and then attempting to abduct another youth. This time he was sentenced to serve 1-15 years at Orange County Jail.
Four years later in October 1978, he was again released from prison. He took a job as a truck driver and found himself a girlfriend. While on probation, he then molested another teenage boy. Instead of being sent back to prison, a technical error meant that he was instead set free once again. A close friend collected him from the police station and Bonin told him
'No-one's going to testify again. This is never going to happen to me again.'
His words were chilling as they were a glimpse into an even darker turn of events that were about to unfold.
A killing spree then ensued. Most of the victims were between 12 and 19 years of age. They were mostly enticed into Bonin's Chevy van and then they were tied up, sexually assaulted and usually strangled, most of the time they were strangled with their own shirts. It was suspected that Bonin had an accomplice for at least nine of the murders and the suspect was named Vernon Butts.
On the 29th of May 1979, fourteen year old Thomas Lundgren was hitchhiking. He was kidnapped and assaulted. His body was found near a freeway in Agoura. His autopsy showed that he had been emasculated, stabbed and strangled. On the 4th of August 1979, seventeen year old Mark Shelton was also abducted and killed. The following day an exchange student named Marcus Grabs was stabbed more than seventy times and his body then dumped in Malibu.
On August 27th, fifteen year old Donald Hyden was abducted and killed. Another five more youths were killed between September and December that year. Another accomplice named James Munro, was also known to have assisted in the murder of a seventeen year old named Dennis Frank Fox in December of that year. The killing spree continued on into the next year.
In January, 16 year old Michael McDonald was assaulted and killed. In February, 15 year old Charles Miranda was kidnapped, raped assaulted with other objects and then garrotted. Miranda's naked body was dumped in an alleyway and just a few hours later that very same day, 12 year old James McCabe was beaten, raped and strangled with a tyre iron. His badly beaten body was not found for another three days.
The killings ceased until March 14th when eighteen year old Ronald Gaitlin was abducted and killed. Then on the 29th of April, nineteen year old Darin Kendrick was lured in Bonin's van. He was forced to drink chlorohydrate acid and then he had an ice pick driven into his ear. His body was discarded near to the Artesia freeway. On the 19th of May fourteen year old Sean King was also abducted and killed.
The press had picked up on stories of the Freeway Killer. Reports of the killings were broadcast on local radio stations and this is where the police received a lucky break. From his prison cell, a former accomplice of Bonin had heard about the killings on his radio. He suspected that this was the work of Bonin, and reported his suspicions to the Police. The Police looked at his Bonin's previous convictions and decided to place him under surveillance.
As fate would have it, the police surveillance started on the 2nd of June. This was the day of the last murder that Bonin committed. It was however too late to save eighteen year old Stephen Wells who was raped, beaten and then strangled with his own t-shirt. Police observed Bonin's actions for the next nine days. In that time he had been observed trying to pick up five different teenagers. He eventually succeeded in luring one into his van, and was followed to a desolate area. It was here that he was caught in the act of sexual assault on a fifteen year old boy.
While in custody, Bonin confessed to abducting, raping and killing 21 boys and young men. He was charged with 16 of the murders to which he had confessed. The prosecution thought that they now had enough to obtain a conviction. Bonin showed no remorse for his crimes and said that if he was still at large he would still be killing. He said he couldn't stop killing and that it got easier every time.
Vernon Butts was charged with accompanying Bonin on five of the murders. He was later charged with four other murders. Two more accomplices were also charged with murder, but were all spared the death penalty in an agreement to testify against Bonin. On the 5th of January 1982, Bonin was found guilty of ten of the murders, and was subsequently sentenced to death.
Bonin spent the next fourteen years on death row, awaiting his execution. He launched numerous appeals but none were successful. On the 23rd of February 1996, he was executed by lethal injection in San Quentin State Prison. The day before his execution, Bonin gave an interview to local radio from the prison he stated:
"They feel my death will bring closure, but that's not the case. They're going to find out."
Alton Coleman and Debra Brown
Alton Coleman was born on the 6th of November 1955. He grew up with a mother who was a prostitute, who would often entertain clients and engage in sexual intercourse in front of him. By the time he had dropped out of middle school, he was living in Waukegan Illinois with his 73 year old grandmother who was also well known to the authorities. He was charged with ten sex crimes between 1973 and 1983.
Two of the sex crime cases were dismissed. Coleman pled guilty to two of the lesser charges and he was twice acquitted. He was supposed to begin trial for the rape of a fourteen year old girl, but he ran. This was then to spark a murderous killing spree along with an accomplice named Debra Denise Brown.
Brown was borderline retarded, she was one of eleven children, and she had suffered from a major head trauma as a child. In 1983 she was engaged to another man, but broke off the engagement to move in with Coleman. She had never been in trouble in her life before she met Coleman. Soon she would become a willing accomplice to murder but her I.Q. was measured at less than 75.
In June of 1984, the couple were in Gary, Indiana. It was here that they came across two young girls, 9 year old Annie and 7 year old Tamika Turks. The decomposing body of Tamika was found on the 19th of June, she had been strangled. Annie somehow managed to survive the attack. Although she was alive, she had suffered a vicious sexual assault by the pair.
On the day that Tamika's body was discovered, Coleman befriended 25 year old Donna Williams, also of Gary, Indiana. On the 11th of July, the body of Williams was discovered in Detroit. She had also been strangled. On the 28th of June that same year, the pair entered the house of Mr and Mrs Palmer Jones of Dearborn Heights in Michigan. The couple were badly beaten by Coleman and Brown, who then stole money from the house and the Palmer's car.
On the 5th of July 1984, Coleman and Brown were in Toledo Ohio. Coleman then befriended a young mother by the name of Virginia Temple. Virginia just seemed to disappear along with her nine year old daughter Rachelle. Relatives were concerned and entered the young mother's house, they found the younger children alone in the house and the bodies of Virginia and Rachelle were both found in a crawlspace. Both of the victims had also been strangled.
A bracelet was stolen from the Temple residence, and this was later found under the body of Tonnie Storie which was found in Cincinnati. Coleman and Brown then tied up another couple and again stole a car and a watch. The watch was also later found under the body of another victim. It appears they were leaving a trail possibly to taunt the authorities.
On the 12th of July 1984, the F.B.I were actively seeking Coleman. He was added to the top ten most wanted list as a special addition. This was only the tenth time since the lists inception in 1950, that such an addition had been made. The very next day, Coleman and Brown arrived at the home of Harry and Marlene Walters. They were enquiring about a camper van the Walters had for sale. By the time they left the house with the camper van, Marlene was dead, and Harry was unconscious.
Sheri Walters arrived at the home of her parents at around a quarter to four. At the bottom of the basement steps, she found her dead mother and her father who was barely alive. Her father had his hands cuffed behind his back, and her mother's hands were tied behind her back. Her head was covered up with a bloody sheet. The coroner's report was sickening as it disclosed the full horror of what her mother had endured.
Marlene Walters had been struck across the head between twenty and twenty five times. She had twelve lacerations across her face and scalp, some of these had been made with a pair of vice grips. The back of her skull had been completely obliterated and parts of her skull and brain were found to be missing as well. The couples Plymouth Reliant car had then been stolen. Coleman's finger prints were found on shards of broken glass left at the scene.
Two days later, the stolen car turned up in Kentucky. This was where the couple kidnapped a college professor named Oline Carmical Jr. He was bundled into the boot of the car, and the couple drove to Dayton. When they reached Dayton they abandoned the car with the professor still in the boot. They then stole another car from Reverend Gay and his wife.
On the 20th of July 1984, Coleman and Brown were recognised crossing the street. They were spotted by someone who knew Coleman from his old neighbourhood. He pulled into the next gas station and called the Police. When the authorities arrived in the area, Brown tried to casually walk away, but both were stopped. Brown was found to be carrying a handgun. Both were taken into custody, where they were identified by fingerprints.
Back at the police station, Coleman was subjected to a strip search. It was here it was discovered that he was carrying a steak knife in between two pairs of socks that he was wearing. The killing spree had finally been brought to an end. The week after the pair were arrested, 50 police officers gathered to decided how the pair should be prosecuted. Michigan was ruled out, as it did not have the death penalty. It was decided to take the trial to Ohio.
The murderous pair were convicted of two murders. They were found guilty of the murders of Tonnie Stone and of Marlene Walters. They were also charged with many other violent crimes. Both were sentenced to face execution. Coleman was to then launch numerous arguments against his conviction and subsequent sentence. His appeals were to ultimately fail.
In total Coleman had received four death sentences. He had the death sentence issued in three different states. On the 26th of April 2002, Coleman was finally put to death by lethal injection in Lucasville state prison in Ohio. In 1991, Debra Brown had her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment but without the possibility of parole.
Herb Baumeister
Herb Baumeister was born on the 7th of April 1947. He was the eldest of four children and had a perfectly normal childhood. During his teenage years he was observed to have exhibited forms of antisocial behaviour. He played with dead animals, and once urinated on a teacher's desk. He also was claimed to have picked up a dead crow, and placed it on a teacher's desk when she wasn't looking. He once told a friend he pondered what it would be like to taste human urine.
Herb's father grew concerned with his son's erratic behaviour and had him sent for tests. He was soon diagnosed with having schizophrenia, but received no further psychiatric treatment. At school, it was clear that he did not fit in. As he grew into an adult, he displayed a strong work ethic, but also more bizarre behaviour, he worked in various different jobs, but he still never seemed to fit in with any other social groups.
Herb moved through many different jobs, at one point he was working for BMW, when he urinated on his boss's desk. He was later fired after urinating on a letter to the Governor of Indiana. He then married Julie Salter in 1971 and fathered three children, then in 1988 he founded the chain of Sav-a-Lot discount stores. He soon became an affluent member of society, and was well liked by his neighbours. Then in the early 1990's gay men started to disappear in the Indianapolis area. Police were soon looking deeper into the cases.
The mother of 28 year old Alan Broussard contacted the police to tell them her son was missing. He was a heavy drinker who had last been seen leaving a gay bar. The year previous a 31 year old man named Jeff Jones had also just vanished without a trace. This had not been solved. Then in July another man the 34 year old Alan Goodlet also vanished after visiting a gay bar.
In 1993, the same investigators were contacted by a man named Tony Harris. He claimed that a gay friend of his had been killed by a man named Brian Smart. He also claimed that the same man had tried to kill him as well. The caller gave the police a license plate number. The license plate turned out to belong to Herb Baumeister. At first the information was dismissed, but then the witness opened up and told more of his story to the police.
Tony told the authorities about the sexual encounter he had had with Herb. Police soon came round to the idea, that this information may actually be vital in solving the cases. The investigators decided to approach Herb Baumeister and they then informed him that he was a suspect. When they asked to search his house, Herb refused.
Investigators then approached Julie Baumeister his wife, but she also refused permission for the family home to be searched. The detective left her with a card, and he told her if she ever changed her mind, then she should call him. It wasn't until June of 1996, that Julie finally changed her mind and consented to a search. She had recently become so scared of her husband's mood swings and erratic behaviour that she had filed for a divorce, and then she finally agreed to the search.
The couple lived on an 18 acre estate that was named 'Fox Hollow Farm'. The house had four bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool and stables. The search of the property took place while Herb was away on holiday. The bodies of eleven men were found during the search of which only five of the bodies were ever properly identified. Herb fled the scene and made his way to Ontario. It was in Pinery Provincial Park in Ohio, that he took his own life. He shot himself in the head with a .357 magnum.
Herb Baumeister left a three page long suicide note. In the note, he blamed his suicide on his failing marriage and failing business. He did not confess to any of the murders of the men found at the estate. He was also suspected of killing another nine men, whose bodies were all found along a business route he travelled often. He was also suspected of killing his brother in Texas, whose death also remains unsolved. His suicide note told that he was going to eat a peanut butter sandwich, and then go to sleep.
Julie was to later disclose that Herb had a controlling nature. They had only had sex six times in twenty five years of marriage, and during those years she had never seen her husband naked. She also revealed that in 1994, one of the couple's sons had been playing in the garden, when he had uncovered a complete human skeleton. Herb had just dismissed the skeleton as one of his father's old dissecting skeletons and he had buried it. The subject was then closed.
The children of the couple had often played in the garden amongst the bones and the teeth of many of the victims, and had never even known.
Kristen Gilbert
Kristen Heather Strickland was born on the 13th of November in 1967. She was the eldest of two daughters. Unlike most other serial killers she had a normal childhood and adolescence. As she grew she took on an air of sophistication and was greatly admired by her friends. She did have one serious flaw to her character though, she was a chronic liar. She convinced her friends that her mother was an abusive drunk, and told her friends that she was related to Lizzie Borden.
She soon started to steal from friends, and her boyfriend's from the time described her as strange and controlling. She would sometimes fake suicide and when angry she would tamper with or scratch her boyfriend's cars, sometimes she would scratch them with her nails or physically attack the boys themselves. The more people got to know her, the more they shied away from her.
In 1988 Kristen earned a degree and married a man named Glenn Gilbert. In 1989 the couple moved into a new home and she began a new job working at the Veterans Administration medical centre in Northampton MA. She soon settled into her new job and colleagues described her as competent and she seemed committed to her job.
Kristen was described by her superiors as highly skilful. They also noted how well she reacted during medical emergencies. All seemed to be going well in her life. She fell pregnant and soon gave birth to a baby boy. Kristen took time out for maternity leave and when she returned to work, she changed her work shifts. She now worked from 4pm until midnight. The death rate on that particular shift would then triple to that of the previous three years. Throughout each emergency, she was calm and professional and soon won the admiration of her fellow workers.
Kristen soon gave birth to a second child, but now the couple's marriage seemed to begin to falter. Kristen found friendship with a security guard at the hospital named James G Perrault, and they worked almost the same shift pattern. They began to socialise together and would often go for drinks together after work. Kristen impressed Perrault with the way she always handled emergencies.
The following year, the relationship between the couple became an intimate one. Around this time Kristen's husband began to notice that his food often had an odd taste to it, whenever Kristen served him. Glenn Gilbert became convinced that his wife was trying to kill him., and told his friends what he suspected. Perrault soon issued her with an ultimatum to choose to be with her husband or to be with him, soon after she left her husband and children.
In early December Kristen and James moved in together, and they seemed blissfully happy. At the medical centre, the deaths were increasing. It wasn't long before co-workers were whispering among themselves as to how the deaths always occurred on Kristen's shift. Some of the patients were seriously ill, but it was suspicious that patients with no history of heart complaints were now dying of cardiac arrests.
Although the whispering continued by other members of staff, they could not believe that Kristen could actually be in any way responsible, she was after all a dedicated employee. Some however grew suspicious as to what was happening and began to monitor the drugs that could cause cardiac arrest especially a drug called epinephrine. Soon they discovered that this drug was constantly going missing.
Some of the nurses were now keeping an unofficial eye on the ward. It was one episode that finally drew serious suspicion toward Kristen. In February of 1996, Kristen was desperate to leave early to meet James, she asked that if her patient died would she be allowed to leave work early, and her supervisor agreed. With a short space of time her patient had died from cardiac arrest.
On the 15th of February, Kristen was flushing the intravenous lines of an AIDS patient, when he suddenly passed out. Fellow nurses decided that it was time to report their suspicions to the authorities. Federal investigators soon discovered that on ward C over the previous three years, there had been 350 deaths, all of which had occurred when Kristen was on her shift.
Investigators wanted to know why the death rate had triple on ward C. They soon discovered a motive in that whenever an emergency was called on the ward, Perrault would be summoned. Kristen would administer epinephrine to the patients so her lover would be called and she could be close to him. She could then impress her lover with her medical skills and then in front of other colleagues she would flirt with him.
During the investigations Kristen was no longer working at the hospital and the death rate soon returned back to the normal rate. The relationship between her and Perrault began to dissolve after she displayed outbursts of aggressive behaviour during the course of the investigation. Perrault decided that he should end the relationship as all the fingers of blame were now seemingly pointed at Kristen.
Kristen tried to change Perrault's mind, but he would not be swayed. She then took an overdose and was admitted to a psychiatric ward. From the ward she phone Perrault and told him:
"You know I did it. I did t. You wanted to know. I killed those guys."
The following week Perrault told a grand jury what Kristen had confessed to him. Kristen then became disturbed and displayed unpredictable behaviour. She was sure that her lover had now turned against her, so using a toy to disguise her voice, she telephoned the hospital where he was working. In a disguised voice she claimed that there were three bombs in the building which would go off within two hours. The whole hospital had to be evacuated as they took the threat so seriously.
The bomb threat was investigated and Kristen was found to be responsible, she was sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment. During the bomb threat trial, investigators were exhuming bodies of patients that had died suspiciously. In 1998 at the age of 30, Kristen was finally indicted for the murder of four patients, and attempting to kill three others using epinephrine. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.
It was speculated that she may have been responsible for 80 or more deaths, and may have been responsible for over three hundred emergencies. She recently dropped her federal appeal for a new trial for fear that prosecutors could now seek the death penalty.
So now the title of this book should disclose a true meaning, for Devils really do live and walk among us. There is no way to tell what serial killer looks like. The old man who lives in your road may very well be a serial killer, but so to could be that young man who does odd jobs in the neighbourhood. We really have no idea. This may very well be my last book on murderers and serial killers. I now intend to write a novel. These dark stories have invaded too much of my life already.
Midway through this book, I wrote my autobiography. As I stated at the beginning of this book, some serial killers were abused as children. Writing the book, I uncovered parts of my past that I did not wish to relive. I too suffered abuse as a child, but for some reason my path led me in different directions to some who have suffered the same. As much as I felt hurt, I never ever felt the urge to murder.
So what is it that finally pushes a man or a woman over the edge? Who could ever really be sure. We live in a world where horror is one of our favourite pastimes, and we are now so de-sensitized to it. People write jokes about children who have disappeared while parents cry themselves to sleep every night worrying about their lost loved one. We have become a sick society, and we just simply forgot to appreciate the good things that we once had.
Now children cannot play safely in the streets without parents fearing for their safety. We laugh at things that would sicken our forefathers, and we simply forgot to love and support those who need us the most. In this technical day and age, it saddens me that we still cannot find Maddie McCann. Someone somewhere knows what happened to this little girl, and my heart goes out to her parents. I pray that one day she will be found alive safe and well.
My thoughts about where she may be are far darker and sadden me greatly. To Kate and Gerry McCann, I say never give up hope, or you will have nothing left to hold on to.
Martin McGregor 2010

