The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes Read online

  Robin Odell was born in Hampshire in 1935. After training as a laboratory technician and developing an interest in forensic science, he turned to crime writing as a pastime. His first book, Jack the Ripper in Fact & Fiction, published in 1965, is still regarded as an important contribution to the subject. In a writing career spanning over forty years, he has written or co-written eighteen books in the fields of true crime, forensic investigations and criminal history. He won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1980 for The Murderers’ Who’s Who and again in 2007 for Ripperology. He also lectures extensively to clubs and societies on crime cases.

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  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2010

  Copyright © Robin Odell, 2010 (unless otherwise indicated)

  The right of Robin Odell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

  Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN 978-1-84529-781-7

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  First published in the United States in 2010 by Running Press Book Publishers All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

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  Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

  US Library of Congress number: 2009929933

  US ISBN 978-0-7624-3844-0

  Running Press Book Publishers

  2300 Chestnut Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

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  Printed and bound in the EU

  In Memory of

  Wilf Gregg

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  1

  The Dog and the Parrot

  2

  Parts and Parcels

  3

  Playing God

  4

  On Demand and by Request

  5

  Justice Delayed

  6

  Final Journeys

  7

  Out of this World

  8

  Hold the Front Page!

  9

  Contract and Conspiracy

  10

  Mixed Media

  11

  Solved and Unsolved

  12

  Mysteries of the Missing

  13

  Motive, Method and Opportunity

  14

  Simply Bizarre

  Bibliography

  Index of Names

  Acknowledgments

  There have been many pathfinders on the trail of bizarre murders. Detectives, lawyers, judges, pathologists, coroners, forensic scientists and criminologists have published accounts of the murders they have encountered in the course of their professional careers. Their books offer a feast for researchers, historians and crime writers.

  Then there are the crime reporters, journalists and true crime writers themselves, who collect, interpret, analyse and expand on particular murders for the benefit of a wider audience. Playwrights, film script writers and dramatists add their contribution to the murder mix, exposing social issues and using drama to probe for explanations.

  I pay tribute to this college of crime cognoscenti in the exercise of their knowledge, descriptive skills and analytical acumen. The literature of true crime is vast, well-documented and s
upplemented by the internet. The writers are too numerous to acknowledge individually, beyond a select bibliography, but I would like to salute them collectively.

  I would like to express personal thanks to Pete Duncan and Duncan Proudfoot of Constable & Robinson for welcoming me to the inner circle of Mammoth authors. A big thank you goes to Annie Hepburn who processed all the words and provided encouragement and helpful comment.

  And finally, my thanks to Non Davies for her loving support throughout.

  Introduction

  Setting the Crime Scene

  “Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.”

  Lord Byron

  This book of bizarre murders was conceived in the gentle ambience of a garden party. The late Wilf Gregg, a chronicler of the criminous, held an annual lunch at his Middlesex home attended by friends, fellow crime writers and criminologists of every denomination.

  One of the benefits of Wilf’s hospitality was to browse in his extensive library of books on true crime and his meticulously archived collection of press cuttings. While idly turning the pages of books and leafing through press reports of murder cases, we commented not only on the sheer variety of murders but on the esoteric nature of the events described. Exclamations such as unbelievable, weird and bizarre came readily to mind.

  It might be thought that murder presented as fictional entertainment on cinema and television screens is frequently implausible. Yet in its bizarre, extraordinary and frequently farcical consequences it is invariably bettered by the real thing – truth really is stranger than fiction. This is often borne out in real life. It certainly applies to the realm of murder where it is underwritten by the circumstances and exotic details of many crimes. The reported details of murders featuring in the news media frequently fall into that category where the conclusion is, “You couldn’t make it up!” Why not, we thought, compile a collection of true murder stories distinguished by their stranger-than-fiction content?

  A cursory glance at a few randomly selected newspaper headlines illustrates the point. A German man weighing 127 kg (280 lb) squashed his wife to death following a domestic dispute. In China, a woman was reported to have killed her lover by kissing him while releasing a capsule containing rat poison which she held in her mouth. And, in Britain, a promiscuous married woman disposed of her unwanted husband by spiking his steak and kidney pie with toxic garden chemicals. The victim ill-advisedly kept a supply of paraquat in the garden shed and his wife saw her opportunity (see Chapter 13).

  Apart from the variety of methods, what many of these murders have in common is that they were committed in a domestic setting and were conceived as a way of solving personal problems. These incidents also underline one of the important common denominators of murder which is that murderer and victim, more frequently than not, are known to each other.

  Murder seems to attract weird behaviour beyond the basic elements of one person killing another. Tremayne Durham, for instance, a murder suspect in custody in the USA, became fed up with the monotonous institutional food he was served in prison and arranged a plea-bargain whereby he would admit guilt in return for a chicken dinner. The internet has inspired a boom in the sale of prison memorabilia manufactured by prison inmates serving life sentences for murder. Self-portraits of serial killers are popular and form part of a new merchandising sector which has been called psychopathic handicrafts.

  Murder is rooted in the ordinary and, sometimes, extraordinary, activities of human beings hence they encompass the full scope and depth of human diversity. For example, the motive that drove a grandfather to sacrifice his ten-year-old granddaughter in India in 2009 was to ensure a good harvest. While every excess of which the human mind is capable has probably been catalogued in one form or another, a killing such as this seems to belong to a primitive era.

  The acid test of murder is intention and what the law calls mens rea or guilty mind. Guilty intention is described as malice aforethought and it is this which distinguishes it from manslaughter. The classic definition of murder based on malice aforethought goes back to English Common Law and takes account of the age and mental status of the offender. This was set out by Lord Chief Justice Edward Coke (1552–1634) when he referred to “a man of sound memory and at the age of discretion”. In practical terms, this meant an individual who was not insane and aged at least ten years.

  While intention is all-important and constitutes the essence of what murder is, there are other factors that give structure to the act of killing. These broadly come together as modus operandi and may be defined as motive, method and opportunity. No matter how bizarre the circumstances of a particular murder, it will be given substance by the perpetrator’s attention to these three principles. They are the factors that energize and give form to the intention to kill.

  Other behavioural patterns emerge periodically and these are reflected in official figures and studies of homicide. Analysis of homicide statistics over a ten-year period in New York City has shown that while murder rates in general have declined there are peaks during the summer months, July to September. This is a time when people socialize more frequently and when drinking and drug-taking become more prevalent. Emotional temperatures tend to rise, creating an environment in which violence lurks in the shadows. When murder erupts, it is in a familiar context involving husbands, wives and lovers.

  The weapon of choice in these scenarios is the handgun. Fears about possible curbs on the purchase of firearms in the USA in 2009 led to a boost in weapon sales. The arguments about gun control were emphasized by a spate of shootings in several states, including the killing of Dr George Tiller, a late-term abortion doctor gunned down in the lobby of the Lutheran church in Wichita, Kansas where he worshipped.

  Homicide figures in the UK for 2007/8 showed a decline in the annual murder rate for England and Wales. Patterns indicated that female murder victims were most likely to be killed by someone known to them. One reason given for the decline in homicide was more effective emergency medical treatment of knife and gunshot wounds. Injuries which would have resulted in murder were not fatal and thus the crime reduced to attempted murder.

  In common with all human activities, murder has evolved over time, absorbing and reflecting changes in social conditions with greater awareness and self-knowledge on the part of individuals. Yet underlying this sophistication lie dark forces that come to the surface when triggered by elemental drives such as self-preservation, ambition, power, aggression and domination.

  The collision of basic instincts and moral values has been explored by some of the great novelists such as Emile Zola and Fyodor Dostoevsky. In La Bête Humaine Zola gives a portrait of a personality tormented by the struggle between his social nature, or better self, and a desire to test his powers to the absolute limit. It is not the intention of this book to dwell on the psychology of murder. This has been admirably achieved by others and, in particular, by Colin Wilson in his book, Order of Assassins. We are concerned here, though, with what happens when the threshold of intention, of malice aforethought, is crossed and actions lurch into the unpredictable realm of the extraordinary and idiosyncratic.

  Premeditation should, theoretically at least, afford the best possibility for committing the perfect murder. This seems logical compared with crimes of passion which, by their nature, pay scant regard to either caution or discretion. They just happen.

  Most murders are committed by people who in the ordinary course of events would be regarded as normal and rational. They are the sort of people who would be expected to make some sort of risk assessment before investing their money or committing themselves to a new business venture; the sort of people who, having formed the intention to extinguish the life of another human being, might formulate some kind of murder management plan after taking into consideration factors such as method and opportunity, assessing risk factors and allowing for contingencies. But how often do they?

  There are exceptions, such as the teenage daughter
of a millionaire businessman who compiled what amounted to a murder blueprint. Her intention was to enrich herself by killing a wealthy elderly person. She committed a detailed action plan to paper, together with a list of equipment needed for the task. Her mistake was to leave the blueprint where it could be found and provide incriminating evidence against her (see Chapter 13).

  The murderer’s chief aim is to fulfil the intention while minimizing the chances of being caught – the essence of perfect murder. Yet, at the very moment when planning is called for, calm detachment quickly turns into unforeseen turmoil. Rationality gives way to the beast within and events take an uncharted and erratic course. The release of elemental forces precipitates unthinking responses to the trauma of death, once the murderer’s intention is made real. Confronted with his victim’s corpse, possibly bloodied by violence, the first decision is whether to stay or flee. Already, the forensic trail has been started and every subsequent action is likely to leave a footfall, fingerprint or fibre behind. After all, it is the detectives’ mantra that every murderer makes mistakes.

  There are at least two groups of people who should, theoretically at least, be competent at carrying out the intention to kill: first, those who choose not to bloody their hands and can afford to pay someone else to do their dirty work for them, which puts distance between themselves and their victim. Such plans often come unstuck, however, because the hit man lacks guilty intention and falls down on attention to detail but the converse of this is politically motivated assassination where resources and professionalism come together with lethal efficiency (see Chapter 9).

  The second group that might be expected to have a head start over everyone else consists of members of the medical and nursing professions, who have the knowledge, skills and agents at their disposal. In practice, though, they frequently turn out to be bunglers when it comes to murder and their professional acumen deserts them when they most need it. An example is the Austrian doctor who successfully murdered his mistress but kept her head as a sort of trophy in a jar of preserving fluid (see Chapter 3).