Tuesday 31 March 2015

Serial Killers: Carlton Gary

Born: December 15, 1952 in Columbus, Georgia

Number of victims: 7+

Date of murders: 1977 - 1978

Method of murder: Strangulation 

Location: New York / Georgia




During 1977 and 1978, the city of Columbus, Georgia was terrorized by a serial strangler. The fiend targeted some of the most vulnerable victims of all, elderly women. His M.O. was to break into a victim’s home at night, surprise the frail woman in bed and then brutally rape her before strangling her with a stocking.

As the city was thrown into panic by the murders, the police received a number of letters from an organization calling itself the “Forces of Evil” and claiming responsibility for the murders. Those letters would prove to have been written by an army private named William Hance, a serial killer in his own right but not the elusive “Stocking Strangler.” Hance would later be tried and sentenced to death.

In the meantime, the Columbus police had a lead on a handgun that had been stolen from one of the murder victim’s homes and later pawned by a man named Jim Gary. Under interrogation, Gary told detectives that he had bought the weapon from his nephew, Carlton.

Carlton Gary was arrested on May 3, 1984 in Albany, Georgia. A Columbus native, he had a long criminal history for armed robbery, rape and various other charges. With a mass of physical evidence he was subsequently tried and found guilty of three of the “Stocking Murders” resulting in a death sentence. At time of writing that sentence has yet to be carried out.


Read the full, horrific story of Carlton Gary, plus 11 more serial killer cases in
American Monsters Volume 4. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Monday 30 March 2015

Serial Killers: Harvey Carignan

Born:  May 18, 1927 in Fargo, North Dakota 

Number of victims: 5+

Date of murders: 1949 / 1972 - 1974

Method of murder: Bludgeoning 

Location: Alaska/Washington/Minnesota




Harvey Carignan should not have lived long enough to become a serial killer. Convicted of a murder in Alaska in 1949, he was sentenced to death, only for the punishment to be overturned on appeal. After serving just nine years for attempted rape, he was released in 1960. 

Carignan did not learn he lesson of his lucky escape and was arrested several times (for burglary, assault, and other crimes) before drawing a 15 years prison term in 1965. With time off for good behavior he was back on the streets by 1969.

He settled in Seattle, Washington, where he had two failed marriages. During that time several young women went missing from the Seattle streets. One of them was 15-year-old Kathy Miller who disappeared in May 1973. When Kathy’s corpse was found raped and beaten to death with a hammer, police learned that she’d disappeared after attending a job interview at the service station that Carignan leased. Fearing that he was about to be arrested, Carignan fled to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The attacks on women soon started up there.

On June 28, Marlys Townsend was clubbed unconscious at a bus stop. In September, 13-year-old Jewry Billings was beaten and raped. Both survived. On August 10, Carignan’s girlfriend Eileen Hunley disappeared. Her decomposed corpse was found five weeks later. By then Carignan had carried out another attack, targeting hitchhikers Lisa King and June Lynch, both sixteen. June escaped, while Lisa was beaten unconscious with a hammer before Carignan fled. 
 
Gwen Burton was raped and bludgeoned to death on September 14, after her car broke down and Carignan stopped to offer assistance. On the day her body was found, the hulking killer attacked hitchhikers Sally Versoi and Diane Flynn.Two days later, eighteen-year-old Kathy Schultz was beaten to death. Her corpse was found the following day, the skull destroyed by savage hammer blows.

With a major manhunt underway, Minneapolis police showed mugshots of potential suspects to the surviving victims. One of those mugshots was of Harvey Carignan and all of the survivors unerringly picked him out. A search of his property turned up further evidence and Carignan was arrested. At trial he was convicted on multiple charges and sentenced to a total of 150 years in prison.


Read the full, horrific story of Harvey Carignan, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 4. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Sunday 29 March 2015

Serial Killers: Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez

Number of victims: 4 - 17+

Date of murders: 1947 - 1949 

Method of murder: Strangulation / Shooting / Drowning

Location: Illinois/New York/Michigan

Martha Beck was a lonely, obese nurse, Raymond Fernandez an aging, toupee-wearing lothario, when the two met and fell in love in 1947. That meeting would spell disaster for the women who they robbed and killed over the next two years.

Beck and Fernandez had already relieved several widows of their life's savings when they committed their first murder, albeit accidentally. Myrtle Young of Greene Forest, Arkansas was given sleeping pills so that the depraved pair could make their get away after robbing her. She died of an overdose.  

The murder of 66-year-old Janet Fay, though, was no accident. Fernandez had seduced the lifelong spinster and he and Beck had moved into her Long Island apartment, with Beck posing as her lover's sister. However, Beck became enraged after Fernandez had sex with Fay, and beat the elderly woman to death with a hammer.

Beck and Fernandez traveled next to Michigan where they moved in with Delphine Downing, a young widow who Fernandez had contacted through a Lonely Hearts magazine. Once again, Beck's jealousy got the better of her and she instructed Fernandez to shoot Downing. The victim's two-year-old daughter, Rainelle, was then drowned in a tub of water.

The bodies of Delphine and Rainelle Downing were buried in the garden, while the killers continued to live in the murdered woman's house. However, the neighbors became suspicious and called the police. Under questioning Fernandez quickly broke down and confessed.

Beck and Fernandez were tried in New York, for the murder of Janet Fay. Found guilty, they were both sentenced to death. The "Lonely Hearts Killers" were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing on March 8, 1951.


Read the full, horrific story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, plus 11 more serial killer cases in American Monsters Volume 2. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Friday 27 March 2015

Serial Killers: Anatoly Onoprienko

Born: July 25, 1959 in Laski, Ukraine

Number of victims: 52

Date of murders: 1989 - 1996 

Method of murder: Shooting / Bludgeoning 

Location: Ukraine




A serial killer so brutal he was known as “The Terminator,” Anatoly Onoprienko wiped out 52 people during a series of home invasion murders between 1989 and 1996. Onoprienko targeted isolated homesteads, entering under cover of darkness and then slaughtering the entire family. He usually dispatched any adult male with a gun, then axed and bludgeoned the women and children to death. No one, not even newborn babies, escaped his murderous rampages. Often he’d set the house alight before fleeing. He would also murder anyone unfortunate enough to be in his path as he made his escape.  

The first victims were a family of four in Bratkovychi, slaughtered in their beds. Not long after, he murdered a family of five in the same village. Two witnesses to the crime were also gunned down. Then, as police flooded into the area, he shifted his killing field to other towns and villages.

The killings caused widespread panic, so much so that the Ukrainian authorities were forced to bring in the army to help in the search for the killer. Onoprienko was eventually captured at the home of his girlfriend on April 16, 1996, after a family member reported his suspicious behavior to the police. In his possession were found an arsenal of weapons, as well as items stolen from his victims. He had by then killed 52 people,  43 of them in the last six months of his rampage.

Sentenced to death in April 1999, his punishment was later commuted to life imprisonment. He died in prison on August 27, 2013.

Read the full, horrific story of Anatoly Onoprienko, plus 29 more serial killer cases in 
Human Monsters Volume 1. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Serial Killers: Herb Baumeister

Born:  April 7, 1947  in Indianapolis, Indiana

Number of victims: 8 - 16 

Date of murders: 1980 - 1996

Method of murder: Strangulation 

Location: Indiana / Ohio




Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Herb Baumeister had an apparently normal childhood, although by adolescence he was displaying some odd behavior. He liked to collect animal corpses and was also known for his macabre sense of humor. Nothing, however, suggested the killer he would become. 

From around 1980, a number of men began to disappear from gay bars in and around Indianapolis. With the police seemingly disinterested in investigating, the parents of one of the missing hired private investigator named Vergil Vandagriff to look into his disappearance. Vandagriff soon became convinced that a serial killer was preying on gay men in the area. He was supported in that belief by police detective Mary Wilson.

The two detectives began investigating and were contacted by a man who described an incident where a stranger had picked him up in a bar, taken him home and tried to strangle him. Further investigation revealed the identity of the stranger. He was local businessman, Herb Baumeister. 

After much difficulty, Detective Wilson eventually obtained a search warrant for Baumeister’s luxury home. That search turned up the skeletal remains of eleven men. Some of the corpses had been burned. Others were left to decompose in isolated areas around the property.  

Baumeister meanwhile had fled to Canada, where he committed suicide at Pinery Provincial Park on July 3, 1996, shooting himself in the head. 


Read the full, horrific story of Herb Baumeister, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 3. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Serial Killer Video: John Muhammad and Lee Malvo



During October 2002, Washington DC and its environs were terrorized by a serial shooter who became known in the media as the Beltway Sniper. The killer appeared from nowhere, picking victims at random, gunning them down as they went about their daily business. At least 10 people would fall victim to the deadly sniper with many more injured.

But just three weeks into the killing spree the police got a break when they arrested former army sergeant John Allen Muhammad and his teenaged accomplice Lee Malvo. Muhammad would eventually be sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection. Malvo was given a life sentence.  

Thursday 26 March 2015

Serial Killers: Yoo Young-Chul

Born: 1970  

Number of victims: 20  

Date of murders: 2003 - 2004 

Method of murder: Bludgeoning  

Location: Seoul, South Korea




South Korea’s most vicious serial killer, Yoo Young-Chul carried out a rage filled campaign of murder between 2003 and 2004, claiming at least 20 victims. His motive, Yoo later confessed, was a hatred towards the wealthy, although he did not confine his anger to that particular class. Many of his victims were prostitutes.

Yoo was already a habitual criminal when he began his murderous career on September 24, 2003, bludgeoning and stabbing an elderly couple in their home in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Just weeks later he committed a triple murder, battering the victims (aged 85, 60 and 35), with a hammer. Three more elderly victims would die before the year was out, while Yoo also murdered a baby during a home invasion in Jongro-gu.

On December 11, 2003, Yoo met a prostitute and fell in love with her. However, the woman soon broke off the relationship. Angered by the rejection, Yoo decided to murder prostitutes in revenge. Between March and July 2004, 11 women were lured to Yoo’s apartment, battered to death and then dismembered. Their body parts were scattered in the mountains outside Seoul. Yoo would later claim that he cannibalized some of the victims, eating their livers.

Yoo was eventually arrested on July 15, 2004, after a potential victim escaped his clutches and reported him to the police. In custody, he admitted to 21 murders and led the police to his various dump sites.  

Tried for murder in December 2004, he was sentenced to death. That sentence has yet to be carried out as South Korea has a moratorium on capital punishment.


Read the full, horrific story of Yoo Young-chul, plus 29 more serial killer cases in 
Human Monsters Volume 1. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Wednesday 25 March 2015

Serial Killers: Aileen Wuornos

Born: February 29, 1956 in Rochester, Michigan 

Number of victims: 7+ 

Date of murders: 1989 - 1990 

Method of murder: Shooting 

Location: Florida 




Contrary to popular belief Aileen Wuornos was not America's first female serial killer. She was, however, the most infamous. Abandoned by both parents at an early age, Aileen was raised by her grandparents and basically left to do as she pleased. She was pregnant at 14 and delivered a healthy baby who was put up for adoption. Shortly thereafter she dropped out of school and became a teenaged prostitute, drifting across the country and building up a lengthy rap sheet, for theft, assault, public intoxication and various other offenses. Eventually she graduated to more serious crimes and served 13 months for an attempted bank robbery.

In June 1986, Wuornos met a hotel chamber maid named Tyria Moore and the two became involved in a relationship, with Wuornos paying the bills by continuing to work as a prostitute. Wuornos and Moore were arrested in 1989 for assaulting a man with a beer bottle. Not long afterwards, Wournos obtained the .22 pistol that she would use to murder her clients.

The first to die was 51-year-old Richard Mallory, gunned down in Volusia County on November 30, 1989. Over the next year, six more men were lured to isolated spots with the promise of sex, then shot dead and robbed by Wuornos.

A major police investigation was launched, but it was going nowhere until July 4, 1990, when Wuornos and Moore were involved in an accident while driving one of her victims' cars. They fled the scene, but not before eyewitnesses spotted then and gave the police a description.

Fingerprints lifted from the vehicle identified Wuornos as the driver. She was eventually apprehended at a biker bar in January 1991. Tyria Moore was also arrested but she was offered immunity in exchange for coaxing a confession out of Wuornos. On January 16, 1991, Wuornos confessed to the murders.

Tried and found guilty, Wuornos was sentenced to die by lethal injection. She refused all efforts to appeal her sentence and was put to death on October 9, 2002.


Read the full, horrific story of Aileen Wournos, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 8. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Tuesday 24 March 2015

Serial Killers: Hans van Zon

Born: March 6, 1941 in Utrecht, Holland  

Number of victims: 5 

Date of murders: 1964 - 1967

Method of murder: Stabbing / Bludgeoning 

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands




A rare Dutch serial killer, Hans van Zon was born in Utrecht, Holland on March 6, 1941. A quiet child who grew up to be a dishonest young man, he was dismissed from several jobs for petty theft. At age 16, he moved to Amsterdam where he set up as a hustler and conman, seducing both men and women. 

Van Zon's first known victim was Elly Hager-Segov, knifed to death on July 22, 1964 after she spurned his sexual advances. In 1965, Van Zon claimed another victim, murdering his gay lover, film director Claude Berkeley. A short time later, he married an Italian chamber maid, living on her wages while he continued affairs with other women. 

On April 19, 1967, van Zon murdered his mistress, Coby Van der Voort, first drugging her, then bludgeoning her with a lead pipe, and stabbing her with a bread knife. Despite his relationship to the murdered woman the police had nothing on van Zon, something he boasted about to an ex-con named Oude Nol. Nol used the information to blackmail van Zon into committing a series of murders and robberies.

On May 31, 1967, Van Zon robbed a fireworks shop run by 80-year-old Jan Donse, clubbing the elderly man to death. In August, he killed farmer Reyer de Bruin at Heeswijk bludgeoning him and slashing his throat. Next, Nol instructed van Zon to murder a widow named Woortmeyer, but she survived to identify him to police. 

Van Zon was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Oude Nol drew a prison term of seven years.

Read the full, horrific story of Hans van Zon, plus 29 more serial killer cases in 
Human Monsters Volume 5. Available now on Amazon
 
 
 
 
 
 

Monday 23 March 2015

Serial Killers: Serhiy Tkach

Born: September 12, 1952 in Kiselyovsk, Russia  

Number of victims: 29 - 100  

Date of murders: 1980 - 2005 

Method of murder: Suffocation / Strangulation  

Location: Ukraine




Considered by some to be the most prolific serial killer in the history of the Soviet Union, Serhiy Tkach was a former homicide investigator who used his knowledge of forensic techniques to evade detection for over 25 years. During that time, Tkach is believed to have claimed as many as 100 victims.

Tkach had left the police force by the time he started his killing spree, and was working at a coal mine in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine. When young women started to turn up raped and strangled to death the police were baffled by how clean the crime scenes were, with not a fingerprint or fiber to be found. The victims were often found beside railway lines or at roadsides, leading investigators to believe that the killer was not local. This, of course, is exactly what Tkach wanted them to believe. Another favorite ploy was to spray cheap cologne at the crime scenes, in order to confuse tracking dogs.

But like most serial killers, Tkach eventually became overconfident, choosing a victim who was known to him - the daughter of a friend. Unfortunately for Tkach, some children had seen him with the victim shortly before her death. One of those children spotted Tkach at the girl’s funeral and pointed him out to an adult. Tkach was arrested soon after. When police arrived at his door, he asked what had taken them so long.

Tkach had no problem admitting to the murders. Indeed, he boasted of over a hundred victims and claimed he’d committed the crimes to highlight police incompetence. At trial he was convicted on 29 counts and sentenced to life in prison.


Read the full, horrific story of Serhiy Tkach, plus 29 more serial killer cases in 
Human Monsters Volume 4. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Sunday 22 March 2015

Serial Killers: Arthur Shawcross

Born: June 6, 1945 in Kittery, Maine

Number of victims: 13

Date of murders: 1972 / 1988 - 1990

Method of murder: Strangulation / Suffocation / Beating 

Location: Monroe / Wayne Counties, New York



Born in Kittery, Maine, Arthur Shawcross was a high school dropout who served in Vietnam and claimed to have committed his first murders there, killing and cannibalizing two young Vietnamese girls. Back in civilian life, Shawcross married four times, his wives invariably leaving him because of his violent and erratic behavior. And his violence was not confined to his matrimonial partners. In May 1972, Shawcross committed his first confirmed murder, killing 10-year-old Jake Blake. Four months later, he lured eight-year-old Karren Ann Hill into some woods where he raped and strangled her.

Arrested on those charges, Shawcross quickly struck a deal, confessing to the manslaughter of Karen Hill in exchange for a 25-year sentence. Charges in the Jake Blake murder were dropped for lack of evidence. Shawcross served just 15 years of his sentence and was released in March 1987. Thereafter, he moved to Rochester, New York. Shortly after his arrival in the area, the strangled corpses of prostitutes began showing up in the nearby Genesee River valley. 

Shawcross claimed his first Rochester victim, Patricia Ives, in March 1988. Over the next two years, ten more women would die at his hands, all but one of them prostitutes. Their battered bodies were unceremoniously dumped, all showing signs of strangulation and severe beating. Several of the bodies were mutilated as well and Shawcross would later claim that he had cannibalized them.

Shawcross was eventually arrested after he was spotted standing on a bridge, watching as the police searched for his latest victim. Under interrogation he broke down and confessed.

Tried for 10 counts of murder in November 1990, Shawcross pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury found him sane and guilty. The judge then sentenced him to 250 years in prison. He died on November 10, 2008.


Read the full, horrific story of Arthur Shawcross, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 4. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Saturday 21 March 2015

Serial Killers: Melvin Rees

Born: 1928  

Number of victims: 5+ 

Date of murders: 1957 - 1959 

Method of murder: Shooting / Beating / Strangulation / Suffocation 

Location: Maryland / Virginia




On January 11, 1959, the Jackson family - Carroll Jackson, his wife Mildred, and their two daughters, Susan, aged four, and Janet, aged 18 months - was driving to their home in Apple Grove, Virginia when they disappeared. Their car was found abandoned at the side of the road, but of the family there was no trace.

A massive search was launched but it would be two months before the decomposing bodies of Carroll Jackson and 18-month-old Janet were found in a ditch. Carroll had been shot in the back of the head, while Janet had been thrown into the ditch alive and had suffocated under her father’s body. Two weeks later, on March 21, the bodies of Mildred and four-year-old Susan were discovered in a forest near Fredericksburg. Mrs Jackson had been strangled, the four-year-old bludgeoned to death. Both showed signs of torture and sexual assault.

Evidence found at the scene linked the crime to the 1957 murder of Margaret Herold near Annapolis, Maryland. Herold and her boyfriend had been driving when another car had forced them off the road. The boyfriend had been shot but had managed to escape. Herold had been raped and murdered.

A year after the murders of the Jackson family, the police received an anonymous tip-off naming their killer as a jazz musician named Melvin Rees. Tracked to West Memphis, Arkansas, Rees was taken into custody. After Margaret Herold’s boyfriend identified him as her killer, the police raided Rees’ home and found a .38 revolver and handwritten notes describing the Jackson murders.

Rees was eventually tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. That sentence was later commuted to life in prison, where he died in 1995. Investigators believe that he was also responsible for the brutal murders of at least four more young women, a killing spree that led the media to dub Rees the “Sex Beast.”

Read the full, horrific story of Melvin Rees, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 1. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Serial Killer Video: Paul Durousseau



A deadly cab driver who strangled seven young women in Jacksonville, Florida and in Fort Benning, Georgia (while serving in the US Army). Durousseau targeted young African-American women. Typically, he would befriend the victim, enter her home, then tie her up and rape her, before strangling her to death. Arrested in February 2003, Durousseau was eventually sentenced to death.

Friday 20 March 2015

Serial Killers: Marcel Petiot

Born: January 17, 1897 in Auxerre, France  

Number of victims: 27+  

Date of murders: 1942 - 1944

Method of murder: Poisoning 

Location: Paris, France 




France’s most prolific serial killer was a corrupt doctor who preyed on Jews desperate to escape Nazi-occupied Paris. Yet to all who knew him, Dr. Marcel Petiot presented himself as a benevolent caregiver who provided free treatment to the poor and served (he claimed) in the Resistance. That facade was to come crashing down on March 6, 1944, when police responded to a complaint about vile-smelling smoke billowing from a chimney in an  affluent Parisian neighborhood.  

The house belonged to Dr. Petiot and as the doctor was not a home the officers broke down the door and entered. In the cellar they found bodies being consumed in the furnace and more mutilated corpses stacked like cords of wood awaiting cremation.  

While the police were searching the house, Petiot eventually arrived, riding a bicycle. He earnestly called the officers aside and informed them that the bodies were of Gestapo officers and collaborators that he had killed in his capacity as a Resistance operative. He told them that unless they allowed him to flee immediately, his entire cell of freedom fighters would be captured, tortured and executed. Bamboozled by the slick talking doctor, the officers let him go. They would not see him again for seven months. During that time they learned that he had no connection to the Resistance at all.

The 27 bodies found in his house were of wealthy Jews who had contacted Petiot to smuggle them out of the country via an underground network he professed to run. Instead, he injected them with cyanide, claiming that he was giving them a required vaccination. Once they were dead, Petiot robbed them of their possessions, even calling at their homes to load up furniture and valuables.  

Petiot was eventually arrested in October 1944 when a woman recognized him at a Paris metro station. At trial his claims to be part of the Resistance were exposed as a lie and he was found guilty on 27 counts of murder, plus numerous other charges. He went to the guillotine on May 25, 1946, taking to the grave the true extent of his career of evil.

Read the full, horrific story of Dr. Petiot, plus 29 more serial killer cases in 
Human Monsters Volume 2. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Thursday 19 March 2015

Serial Killers: Darren O'Neall

Born: February 26, 1960   

Number of victims: 6+  

Date of murders: 1987 

Method of murder: Stabbing / Bludgeoning 

Location: Washington / Oregon / Idaho / Utah




On March 28, 1987, 22-year-old Robin Smith left a bar in Puyallup, Washington, in the company of a man named Herb Johnson and promptly disappeared. Three days later, the police found Johnson’s abandoned car near Marysville, north of Seattle. A search of the trunk turned up Robin Smith’s bloodstained jacket, as well as several human teeth.

The car, as it turned out, had been stolen from a trucker in Nampa, Idaho. He remembered the thief well and was able to provide the police with a detailed description which helped them to identify "Johnson" as Darren O'Neall. A drifter who had abandoned his wife and infant child six years earlier, O’Neall was wanted for skipping out on child support payments.
 
On April 29, 1987, Wendy Aughe, 29, disappeared after leaving a beauty school night class in Bellingham, Washington. Wendy had told friends that she had a date that night with a bartender, but when detectives followed up that lead, they found the barman had skipped town, not even bothering to collect his paycheck. Fingerprints on his job application identified him as Darren O'Neall.

A federal warrant were issued for O'Neall’s arrest. But while the police were hunting him, O’Neall was hardly laying low. In May, he sexually assaulted a woman in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Later that month, the skeletal remains of Robin Smith were discovered near Greenwater, Washington. On June 9, 1987, Lisa Szubert disappeared from a truck stop at Mountain Home, Idaho, last seen in the company of a man matching O’Neall’s description. Her body was found on June 13, southeast of La Grande, Oregon. A week later, O'Neall failed in an attempt to abduct a woman in Burly, Idaho and he was elevated to the FBI's "Most Wanted" list.  

O’Neall would remain at large for seven more months before his eventual capture in Florida, on February 3, 1988. During that time three Salt Lake City women were shot with the same small caliber pistol, with a man of Darren O’Neall’s description seen at each of the crime scenes (all of the witnesses described the word "JUNE" tattooed across the killer’s knuckles. O'Neall had just such a tattoo).

But O’Neall would never be tried for those murders. Returned to Washington to stand trial he was sentenced to life without parole in January 1989.

Read the full, horrific story of Darren O'Neall, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 9. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Serial Killers: Earle Nelson

Born: May 12, 1897 in Philadelphia   

Number of victims: 25+  

Date of murders: 1926-1927 

Method of murder: Strangulation 

Location: Several states USA / Canada




One of America's first known serial sex killers, Earle Nelson was a  born in Philadelphia in 1897. Both of his parents died of venereal disease before he was a year old, and he was adopted by his grandmother, a devoutly religious woman who indoctrinated the boy into her  Bible-thumping ways. After his grandmother died, he was taken in by his Aunt Lillian. Shortly after, the ten-year-old Nelson suffered a severe head injury when he was hit by a  streetcar. This trauma left him with physical and mental problems throughout his life.

In 1918, Nelson was admitted to a mental institution after her tried to rape a neighbor's daughter. He absconded several times and eventually the authorities gave up on chasing after him. In 1926, he married a spinster 40 years his senior, but the marriage broke down over Nelson's excessive sexual demands.

On February 20, 1926, Nelson appeared at the San Francisco rooming house run by 60-year-old Clara Newman. He was there to enquire about a room, but after being shown to the attic he attacked the landlady, strangled her and then raped her corpse. 

The killing of Clara Newman whetted Nelson's taste for murder and necrophilia. Between February 1926 and June 1927, he ranged up and down the west coast and across America, strangling and raping. His targets were usually elderly boarding house proprietors but the killings caused panic across the country as the press ran lurid stories about the so-called "Gorilla Murderer."
 
On June, 8 1927, Nelson crossed into Canada where he would commit two more murders (including that of 14-year-old Lola Cowan) before his eventual capture on June 10, 1927.

Tried at Winnipeg in November 1927, Nelson's insanity defense proved unsuccessful. He was hanged on  January 13, 1928.  

Read the full, horrific story of Earle Nelson, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 2. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Monday 16 March 2015

Serial Killers: Herb Mullin

Born:  April 18, 1947 in Salinas, California   

Number of victims: 11 - 13  

Date of murders: 1972 - 1973

Method of murder: Shooting / Stabbing 

Location: Santa Cruz County, California




Born in Salinas, California, in April 1947, Herb Mullin grew up as a relatively normal boy who was voted “most likely to succeed” by his high school class. However, the death of his best friend in a car crash in June 1965, caused a startling shift in his behavior. He built a shrine to the boy, became obsessed with Eastern religions, and began displaying symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

Eventually, his family admitted him to a psychiatric hospital, but Mullin refused to cooperate with doctors and was released after 6 weeks. Thereafter he began taking copious amounts of LSD and marijuana, further exacerbating his symptoms. He shaved his hair, started burning himself with cigarettes and started talking about an earthquake that was going to destroy California. By September 1972, he was hearing voices commanding him to kill.

On October 13, 1972, while driving in the Santa Cruz mountains, Mullin spotted a transient named Lawrence White. Pulling his car to the side of the road, Mullin got out and beat the old man to death with a baseball bat.

Eleven days later, Mullin picked up coed Mary Guilfoyle, stabbed her in the heart, then disemboweled her, scattering her organs on the shoulder of a country road. On November 2, Mullin entered St. Mary's Catholic Church, and stabbed the priest, Father Henry Tome, to death.

On January 25, 1973, Mullin visited an old school friend, Jim Gianera. He shot Gianera to death, then butchered his wife with a hunting knife. Moving on from there, he went to the home of Kathy Francis, wife of another associate. Francis and her two young sons were forced to lay down on a bed and were then shot.

On February 6, Mullin was hiking in a state park when he encountered four teenaged campers.  Drawing his gun, he shot all four boys to death before they had a chance to flee. A week later, Mullin claimed his final victim, shooting 72-year-old Fred Perez while the old man was working in his garden.  This time, though, there was a witness who passed Mullin’s license plate number on to the police. Mullin was pulled over by a patrolman and arrested a short while later.

In custody, Mullin admitted freely to his crimes, although he claimed that he had carried them out in order to prevent a catastrophic earthquake from destroying California. The jury was unimpressed.  Convicted of 10 murders, Mullin was sentenced to life imprisonment.  

Read the bizarre story of Herb Mullin, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 2. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Sunday 15 March 2015

Serial Killers: Bobby Joe Long

Born: October 14, 1953 in Kenova, West Virginia

Number of victims: 10

Date of murders: 1986

Method of murder: Strangulation / Stabbing / Shooting 

Location: Tampa Bay, Florida




Like most serial killers Bobby Joe Long’s criminal career escalated from petty crime to sexual assault and eventually to murder. Between 1980 and 1983, the Florida communities of Miami, Ocala and Fort Lauderdale were terrorized by a serial rapist who the police dubbed the "Classified Ad Rapist.” The man targeted housewives during a series of daytime attacks. He would gain access to the victim’s home under the guise of responding to a classified ad. Once inside, he’d produce a knife, tie up the victim, then rape her repeatedly. Before fleeing, he’d usually ransack the home.

Long was arrested in connection with the rapes in November 1981, but he was cleared due to lack of evidence. After his release, the attacks started up again. Soon they’d escalate to murder.

However, Long changed his M.O. once he started killing. Instead of housewives, he began targeting prostitutes and strippers, stabbing, strangling and shooting 10 victims in the space of just eight months from May to November 1984.  

In early November, Long varied his M.O. again when he snatched 17-year-old Lisa McVey from a Tampa street. After holding McVey prisoner for several days, during which he repeatedly raped her, Long inexplicably released his victim. She went straight to the police.  

Arrested on November 17, 1984, Long was charged with nine counts of first-degree murder, plus various counts of abduction, rape, and sexual assault. Convicted on all charges in February 1985, he was sentenced to death.


Read the full, horrific story of Bobby Joe Long, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 1. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Saturday 14 March 2015

Serial Killers: Roger Kibbe

Born: 1940   

Number of victims: 6+

Date of murders: 1977 - 1987

Method of murder: Strangulation

Location: California 




On the face of it, Roger Kibbe makes an unlikely serial killer. A hen-pecked husband who turned to murder at the relatively late age of 37, Kibbe had a long police record but had never resorted to violence until he began stalking California’s I-5 highway.

His first victim, Lou Ellen Burleigh, was murdered on September 11, 1977. Afterwards, Kibbe took a long hiatus (a behavior common among serial killers after their first kill) before returning with a vengeance in 1986, claiming five victims in just seven months.

Kibbe’s M.O. was to stalk the freeways south of Sacramento looking for female motorists who might be stranded with car trouble. He’d stop and offer to help, but instead he’d abduct the woman, drive her to a remote location then rape and strangle her. As the body count mounted, detectives honed in on Kibbe as their main suspect. However, there was scant evidence until the police discovered microscopic fibers on one of the victims. These were found to be from a parachute cable, and linked Kibbe (a keen skydiver) to the crimes.

Under intense interrogation Kibbe cracked and admitted that he was the “I-5 Killer.” At trial, he pleaded guilty in order to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to six consecutive life terms on November 4, 2009. Police consider him the prime suspect in several other murders. 

Read the full, horrific story of Roger Kibbe, plus 29 more serial killer cases in 
Human Monsters Volume 1. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Friday 13 March 2015

Serial Killers: Calvin Jackson

Born: 1948  

Number of victims: 9+ 

Date of murders: 1974 - 1975

Method of murder: Strangulation / Stabbing  

Location: New York City




Despite it's grand name, the Park Plaza Hotel was a dive occupied mainly by financially strapped widows. But in 1973, the derelict hotel would acquire an even more unsavory reputation when it became the hunting ground of a small-time crook turned serial killer. His name was Calvin Jackson and he was one of the most heinous killers in New York’s long criminal history.  

The first to die at Jackson’s hands was Theresa Jordan, 39, found strangled to death in her room on April, 10, 1973. Two months later, Kate Lewisohn, 65, was found strangled and bludgeoned. Like Theresa Jordan, she’d also been raped. The next victim was Mable Hartmeyer, discovered on April 24, 1974. Just days later Yeria Vishnefsky, 79, was found tied up with a stocking, a butcher knife protruding from her back. On June 8, Winifred Miller, 47, was killed. Eleven days after, Blanche Vincent, 71, was found suffocated to death.

Yet despite this spate of killings in the same building, the police response was tepid at best. And the killer wasn’t done yet. 69-year-old Martha Carpenter was murdered on July 1. On August 30, Eleanor Platt, 64, was found suffocated to death. It was only once the killer changed his pattern that he was eventually caught.

On September 17, 59-year-old Pauline Spanierman was strangled to death in a building one block away from the Park Plaza. A search of the building turned up her television in a room rented by a man named Calvin Jackson. It turned out that Jackson worked at the Park Plaza as a janitor and it didn’t take much of a stretch to link him to those murders. 

In custody, Jackson quickly confessed to the spate of homocides. He was eventually convicted and sentenced to eighteen consecutive life terms.

Read the full, horrific story of Calvin Jackson, plus 49 more serial killer cases in 
50 American Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard Of Volume 2. 
Available now on Amazon 
 
 

Serial Killers: Wayne Adam Ford

Born: December 3, 1961 in Petaluma, California  

Number of victims: 4  

Date of murders: 1997 - 1998 

Method of murder: Stabbing / Strangulation 

Location: San Bernardino County, California




Wayne Adam Ford is the rarest of creatures, a serial killer who gave himself up to the authorities. The incident occurred on November 4, 1998, when Ford walked in to the Humboldt County Sherriff's Department in Eureka, California and confessed that he'd done some "bad things." He then tearfully admitted to killing and mutilating four women. Just in case the police did not believe him, he'd brought along a souvenir, a woman's severed breast that he had in his pocket.

Arrested on the spot, Ford was charged with four murders. Las Vegas prostitute Tina Renee Gibbs, 26, had been found floating in a Kern County aqueduct on June 2, 1998. She had been strangled. Four months later, the nude body of Lanett Deyon White, a 25-year-old prostitute from Fontana, was found in an irrigation canal in San Joaquin County.

Patricia Ann Tamez's nude body had turned up in the California Aqueduct near San Bernardino in October 1998. She had been strangled and one of her breasts removed. The fourth victim had been so severely mutilated that she was never identified. Ford had picked up all of the women while working as a long-haul trucker. 

Wayne Adam Ford was found guilty of four counts of murder on June 27, 2006. Despite his surrender and obvious remorse, he was sentenced to death. He currently awaits execution.  

Read the full, horrific story of Wayne Adam Ford, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 4. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Thursday 12 March 2015

Serial Killer Video: Bobby Joe Long


A brutal rapist and strangler, Long abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least 10 women in the Tampa Bay Area over just eight months, from March to November 1984. He was caught after he inexplicably let his last victim go after sexually assaulting her over a period of 26 hours. Lisa McVey went straight to the police and provided the information that enabled them to arrest Long. He is currently on Death Row in Florida.

Serial Killers: Walter Ellis

Number of victims: 7  

Date of murders: 1986 - 2007

Method of murder: Strangulation  

Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin






Known as the North Side Strangler, Walter Ellis raped and murdered seven women in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1986 and 2007.

The Strangler first appeared in October 1986 when he murdered Deborah Harris, 31, and Tanya Miller, 19, on consecutive nights. Thereafter, he disappeared for nearly a decade, re-emerging in 1995 to strangle 28-year-old Florence McCormick. Her body was discovered in an abandoned house on April 24, 1995. In June of that year the killer struck again, strangling Sheila Farrior.

August brought another gruesome discovery, when the body of 16-year-old runaway Jessica Payne was found, stabbed to death. The police now had DNA evidence to link a single killer to the murders, but they still had  no idea who the elusive strangler might be. And, anyway, he’d gone into another of his long hiatuses. 

On June 20, 1997, Joyce Mims, 41, was found strangled in an abandoned house. Then the killer was gone again, laying low until April 2007 when he strangled 28-year-old Ouithreaun C. Stokes. 

On September 7, 2009 police acted on an anonymous tip off to arrest 49-year-old Walter E. Ellis in connection with the series. DNA provided a match linking Ellis to all seven murders. Found guilty, he was sentenced to seven life terms, to be served consecutively, without the possibility of parole. Ellis would spend less than three years in prison. He died on December 1, 2013.

Read the full, horrific story of Walter Ellis, plus 49 more serial killer cases in 
50 American Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard Of Volume 2. 
Available now on Amazon
 
 

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Serial Killers: John Duffy and David Mulcahy



Number of victims: 3+  

Date of murders: 1985 - 1986 

Method of murder: Strangulation  

Location: London, England

Starting in 1982, the area near Hampstead railway station in London, England was plagued by a series of brutal sex attacks on women. The perpetrators were two men, but despite a massive operation the police were unable to catch them. Then, on December 29 1985, the rapists graduated to murder when 19-year-old Alison Day was abducted from a train at Hackney Wick station, repeatedly raped, and then strangled to death.

On April 17, 1986, the Railway Killers struck again when they pulled 15-year-old Maartje Tamboezer from her bicycle on a bike path in West Horsley. Maartje was raped and strangled and her body was set on fire. Just a month later on May 18, 1986, local TV presenter Anne Locke, 29, was abducted and murdered near the Brookmans Park train station in Hertfordshire.

With a strong police presence now watching the rail network in the area, the killers lay low for a while. Then, on November 7, 1986, the police made a breakthrough when they arrested a man named John Duffy who was spotted stalking women at a railway station. Under interrogation, Duffy admitted to the rapes and murders, although he insisted that he had acted alone.

Duffy went on trial in February 1988 and was convicted of two murders and four rapes. He was sentenced to life in prison. Following his conviction, he admitted to a prison psychologist what the police knew already - that he had an accomplice. However, he did not give up the man’s name until 1997 when he implicated David Mulcahy, a lifelong friend.

Mulcahy was eventually arrested when DNA evidence linked him to the rapes and murders. He was sentenced to three life terms.  

Read the full, horrific story of the Railway Killers, plus 9 more serial killer cases in
British Monsters Volume 1. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Monday 9 March 2015

Serial Killers: Beverley Allitt

Born: October 4, 1968 in Corby Glen, Lincolnshire, England      

Number of victims: 4  

Date of murders: 1991 

Method of murder: Poisoning 

Location: Lincolnshire, England




There is something particularly vile about child killers but even by that yardstick, Beverley Allitt stands out as one of the most evil. Over a period of just 59 days between February and April 1991, Allitt attacked 13 children at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, overdosing them with injections of insulin. Four of the children died. 

The first victim was seven-month-old Liam Taylor who died on February 21, 1991. Just two weeks later, Timothy Hardwick, 11, was admitted to the hospital after suffering an epileptic seizure. He was murdered on March 5, 1991. Four more children suffered mysterious seizures over the following two weeks but were fortunately resuscitated. Two-month-old Becky Phillips was not so lucky. She died on April 3, 1991, after Allitt injected her with insulin. 

Allitt then tried to murder Becky’s twin sister, Katie. Although the child survived, she suffered permanent brain damage, as well as partial paralysis and partial blindness. The manipulative Allitt appeared so concerned about Katie’s wellbeing that Katie’s parents asked her to be the little girl’s godmother. 

The series of unexplained deaths was by now causing alarm at the hospital. Unfortunately, the administrators did not act quickly enough to save the life of Allitt’s final victim, 15-month-old Claire Peck. She died of cardiac arrest after being left alone with the murderous nurse.

After Claire’s death the police were eventually called in. They soon picked up a common denominator. All of the children had been attended by Allitt shortly before their deaths. Allitt also had access to the drugs that had killed them.

Charged on four counts of murder, plus several of attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm, Allitt was found guilty and sentenced to 13 concurrent terms of life imprisonment. She is currently serving that term at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire. It is highly unlikely that she will ever be released.


Read the horrific story of killer nurse Beverley Allitt, plus 9 more serial killer cases in 
British Monsters Volume 2. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Saturday 7 March 2015

Serial Killers: Gary Heidnik

Born: November 22, 1943 in  Eastlake, Ohio 

Number of victims: 2+ 

Date of murders: 1986 - 1987 

Method of murder: Starvation / Electrocution 

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania




By some definitions, Gary Heidnik would not be classified as a serial killer. He claimed only two known victims, yet the cruel inhumanity of his crimes leaves us in no doubt that many more would have died at his hands had he not been captured.

Heidnik is a very odd killer indeed. The former soldier was a stock market genius who amassed a fortune from a stake of just $1000. He also founded his own church, declaring himself “Bishop.” But Heidnik’s real dream was to father children and to achieve this he abducted five women and held them as sex slaves in the basement of his Philadelphia home. The captives were raped, beaten and tortured. They were fed dog food and even forced to indulge in cannibalism of Sandra Lindsay, one of the captives who died due to mistreatment.

Heidnik demanded absolute compliance from his captives. If any of them disobeyed him, she was forced into a four-foot-deep, water-filled pit. Boards would be placed over the pit and weighed down with stones. Heidnik would then pass an electrical cable through a gap in the boards in order to shock the victim. It was while inflicting this torture that Deborah Dudley was electrocuted after the live wire came into contact with her handcuffs.

With his “harem” now reduced to three, Heidnik decided to replenish, recruiting one of his captives, Agnes Adams, to help. Adams had won his trust by pretending to go along with his perversions and Heidnik was so convinced of her loyalty that he even allowed her a “furlong” to visit her family. Instead, she went to the police.

Arrested on March 24, 1987, Heidnik was eventually convicted of two counts of murder. He was sentenced to death, that sentence carried out by lethal injection on July 6, 1999.


Read the full, gruesome story of Gary Heidnik, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 9. Available now on Amazon
 
 





















 

Friday 6 March 2015

Serial Killers: Ed Gein

Born:  August 27, 1906 in La Crosse County, Wisconsin 

Number of victims: 3+

Date of murders: 1954 - 1957

Method of murder: Shooting  

Location: Plainfield, Wisconsin 




One of America’s most notorious serial killers, the inspiration behind Psycho and Leatherface, Ed Gein in fact committed only three murders. What made this such a sensational case was what Gein did with the bodies, turning his home into a macabre museum of artifacts fashioned from human skin and bones.

Gein was born in La Crosse County, Wisconsin. He grew up on a farm outside the small town of Plainfield, with his parents and older brother George. Gein’s mother, Augusta, was a religious fanatic who constantly preached to her sons about the evils of the world, especially drinking and the immorality of women. Ed was devoted to her.  

Ed’s father died of a heart attack in 1940. In May 16, 1944, the Gein brothers were fighting a brush fire close to the farm, when George was killed, ostensibly by smoke inhalation. However, bruises on his head suggested that he might have been bludgeoned, with Ed the only suspect. No charges were filed.

After his brother's death, Gein lived alone with his mother until her death on December 29, 1945. It left him devastated. Afterwards he boarded up the rooms used by Augusta and confined himself to the kitchen and small bedroom.  

Over the years that followed Gein became increasingly reclusive, remaining at the farm, supporting himself by doing odd jobs for neighbors. Then, on November 16, 1957, hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared, and police found evidence to suggest Gein might have been involved. They headed out to the Gein farm where they found  Mrs. Worden's decapitated body in a shed, hung upside down and butchered like a deer. She had been killed by a .22-caliber rifle. The mutilations had been performed after death.

Inside the house police discovered the full extent of Gein’s depravity. Among the items found were; masks made of human skin, soup bowls made from human skulls; chairs upholstered with skin; a belt made of female nipples, a pair of lips on a draw string for a windowshade, a lampshade covered with skin from a human face.

Although so many body parts pointed to a major killing spree, Gein had in fact got most of them by robbing graves in the local cemeteries. He had killed only one other woman, 54-year-old Plainfield tavern owner Mary Hogan, who had gone missing December 8, 1954. Her face was one of those used for Gein’s macabre masks.
    
Gein was quite obviously insane, but he was initially declared fit to stand trial and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was later acquitted and found not guilty by reason of insanity. He remained incarcerated at a mental hospital until his death on July 26, 1984.

Read the full, horrific story of Ed Gein, plus 11 more serial killer cases in 
American Monsters Volume 4. Available now on Amazon
 
 

Thursday 5 March 2015

Serial Killers: John Reginald Christie

Born: April 8, 1899 in Halifax, England

Number of victims: 8 

Date of murders: 1943 - 1953

Method of murder: Strangulation 

Location: London, England




Britain's notorious "Strangler of Rillington Place" was a deadly necrophile who claimed eight victims over a ten-year period, from 1943 to 1953. Christie lived with his wife Ethel in a dilapidated house in Notting Hill London. Although employed, he was a petty criminal who served time for various offenses including theft and assault. He also regularly frequented prostitutes.

In August 1943, he graduated to murder, strangling 21-year-old prostitute Ruth Furst at his home while Ethel was away visiting relatives. Furst was buried in the garden, to be joined a year later by Muriel Eady, a co-worker who Christie lured to his home and killed.

In April 1948, the Christies took on boarders, Timothy Evans, his wife Beryl and the couple's baby daughter, Geraldine. Beryl was pregnant again and as the couple could not afford another child, she wanted to have an abortion. Christie said that he could perform it for her, but instead he rendered her unconscious with gas, then raped and strangled her. Baby Geraldine was also strangled. The bodies were hidden in a drain in front of Christie's home. Once discovered, Timothy Evans was arrested. He would eventually be hanged for the murders. The star prosecution witness was Christie.

Christie had gotten away with murder, but he could not stop killing. In December 1952, he murdered his wife, hiding her body under the floor boards. Now free to pursue his sexual perversions he brought home three prostitutes between January and March 1953, strangling them and hiding their bodies in an airing cupboard which he wallpapered over. 

On March 20, 1953 Christie walked away from Rillington Place for good. A few days later the new tenant discovered the bodies and a warrant was issued for Christie’s arrest. He was found aimlessly wandering the streets of London on  March 31, 1953.

Tried and found guilty of murder, John Reginald Christie was hanged at Pentonville Prison on July 15, 1953.      

Read the horrific true story of John Reginald Christie, plus 9 more serial killer cases in 
British Monsters Volume 1. Available now on Amazon