The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (25 page)

In June 1983, Marie Hilley entered the State Women’s Prison in Alabama. Her appeal against conviction failed in 1985. She
worked hard to secure lenient terms for herself, including day release from prison. On 19 February 1987 she walked out of the prison on a three-day pass. She did not return. She was found dead from hypothermia a week later. She was fifty-four years old.

As If In A Dream

On 29 July 1986, Robert Healey left a suicide note at his home in Stockport, Cheshire in the UK. It was addressed to his wife Greeba and read, “I cannot cope anymore.” References were made to his inability to perform lovemaking adequately. After cancelling milk and newspaper deliveries and taking a pupil for a driving lesson, with echoes of a famous television programme, he faked his death by leaving his clothes on a beach at Prestatyn in North Wales. Ostensibly, he had walked into the sea and drowned. A note left for his mother said, “I might as well die now.”

Fifteen days later the bodies of Healey’s wife and stepdaughter were found in a shallow grave on farmland at Holywell in North Wales. Greeba had been bludgeoned to death and fifteen-year-old Maria asphyxiated. Two weeks after this grim discovery, Healey, who had been living in London under an assumed name, gave himself up to the police. There had been massive coverage of the deaths and the media played an important role in exposing the deception.

Healey admitted the killings but denied they had been premeditated. He said they occurred during a struggle. He produced a notebook in which he made various admissions, one of which was that Greeba, his second wife, had taunted him about his inadequate sexual performance. He went into the kitchen “as if in a dream” took up a rolling pin and battered her to death while she lay in bed. He said that when Maria ran into the room, he caught her by the throat to stop her struggling.

In fact, he had crushed the life out of her by putting pressure on her chest and throat. After the killing, he washed the rolling pin and restored it to its usual place in the kitchen. Then, he
changed the bloodstained bed sheets and tidied up the house. He put the two bodies in his wife’s car and drove to North Wales where he buried them in woodland.

Unknown to his second wife, Healey, who was a former petty-officer in the Royal Navy, had a conviction for child molestation. Greeba had answered a “lonely hearts” advertisement and made contact with him. Her friends advised her not to continue the liaison.

He was tried for murder at Liverpool Crown Court in March 1987. The scale of his charade was fully exposed as was the fact that before committing murder he had sexual intercourse with both his wife and their fifteen-year-old stepdaughter. He said when he killed them it was “like watching someone on TV”.

It was given in evidence that a psychiatric assessment made when he was convicted of indecent exposure in 1982 suggested that he was getting back at women because his wife had left him for a second time.

Healey wept in court as the injuries sustained by his wife were described by counsel. Mr Justice McNeil commended the part played by the media in conjunction with the public and police in bringing him to justice. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty. Healey was sentenced to life imprisonment and escorted, weeping, to the custody cells.

No Angel

When Patricia Allen and her two children, aged five and seven, disappeared from their home at Salcombe, Devon in the UK, late in May 1975, her husband John did not report them missing. He answered enquiries by saying that his wife had gone to live in America with another man after they had argued.

Devon and Cornwall police had their suspicions about Allen, one of whose forenames was “Angel”, and from witnesses’ statements a picture of marital discontent emerged. It was also significant that his wife had left her passport behind. Enquiries in the US about her supposed entry into the
country produced negative responses. The police mounted a huge search operation in their efforts to find the missing trio, but to no avail.

Within two months of his wife’s disappearance, Allen moved in with his lover, Eunice Yabsley, who had recently been widowed.

Despite his name, Allen had a far from angelic background. He was already married with two children when he wedded Patricia. He had lived with his first family in Surrey when he was found to be defrauding the company he worked for. His answer to this was to stage a fake suicide at Beachy Head. Later he reappeared and bigamously married Patricia. When his deception was discovered, he was given a suspended sentence for bigamy, theft and false pretences. Between 1974 and 1990 he served various terms in prison for fraud and deception.

In 1992, Eunice Yabsley published a book entitled,
Presumed Dead
, in which she recounted some of the background of her relationship with Allen. Her revelations proved pivotal in bringing him to justice. She recollected that he told her of his break-up with his wife and that she had left him. During their conversation, she noticed he had scratches on his arm extending from elbow to wrist.

Allen had been arrested in 1977 but the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled there were insufficient grounds to bring proceedings against him. But in the light of the new evidence and twenty-seven years after his family disappeared, Allen, aged sixty-eight, was charged with murder and sent for trial at Plymouth Crown Court.

He denied the charges and persisted with his story that his wife and children had gone to live in the US. The prosecution made out the case that Allen had eliminated his family in order to be free to join his lover. His wife disappeared first and he made attempts to get friends and relatives to look after his children. When these efforts failed, they too disappeared. The prosecutor said that nothing had been seen or heard of Allen’s family – it was as if they had “disappeared off the face of the earth”.

Allen was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mr Justice Steele told him there was no possible explanation for the disappearance of his wife and children “other than you murdered them”. Anthony John Angel Allen took his secrets with him to his prison cell while his wife’s family expressed the hope that one day he would reveal what he had done with his victims’ bodies.

“My Will Was Their Will”

Dr Fred Covell was a chiropractor in Brandon, Oregon, USA. He was married to Ebba and he had four children from a previous marriage. They lived in a spacious house that also accommodated Covell’s invalid brother, Arthur, on the top floor. He had been confined to his bed since an accident had paralysed him.

On 3 September 1923, Dr Covell took a telephone call at his office from Arthur, urging him to return home quickly as “something terrible has happened to Ebba”. Fred rushed home to find his wife dead. There were no obvious injuries but a post-mortem determined that her neck was broken.

Detectives thought she might have committed suicide as she was known to be depressed at times. The alternatives were accident or murder. They opted for murder and directed suspicion at Dr Covell for no better reason than his job called for a strong pair of hands. In a fast-moving scenario, Dr Covell, who strongly protested his innocence, was arrested and Ebba was duly buried.

The mystery of Ebba Covell’s death was a big story locally and the gossips were soon at work. Suspicion strengthened around her husband and an independent criminologist, Luke S. May, was called in to assist with the investigation. Regarded by some as a veritable Sherlock Holmes, May enjoyed a reputation as a crime solver. He asked for Ebba’s body to be exhumed and the first thing that was ascertained was that she had not died of a broken neck. That was a mistaken diagnosis. It was also noted that there were curious red blotches around her mouth.

Meanwhile, scrutiny of the arrangements in the Covell household revealed the extraordinary influence exerted by “Uncle Artie” from his upstairs room where he was confined to bed. He studied astrology and hypnotism and exerted a strong hold on those around him, particularly his nephew, sixteen-year-old Alton. Among his papers were coded instructions relating to twenty-nine potential murder victims. One of these was Ebba, earmarked in his diary to be eliminated on 3 September.

When he was questioned, Arthur Covell simply asked why he would want to kill anyone. He said that his coded plans were fictitious and helped him to escape from the boredom of being a cripple. The next person to be questioned was young Alton who was clearly under the influence of “Uncle Artie”. He made a confession saying that, following his uncle’s instructions, he had clamped an ammonia-soaked cloth over his stepmother’s nose and mouth, thereby asphyxiating her. This accounted for the red marks found on her face.

Confronted with his nephew’s admissions, Arthur made a written statement. He said that Alton and his sister were at all times under his control. “My will was their will,” he said. He exonerated his brother from any involvement and said his reason for removing Ebba was because she impeded his complete control over the children. He instructed Alton how to commit murder without using violence.

At his trial, “Uncle Artie” pleaded not guilty, claiming he had only admitted the crime to spare his nephew. Perhaps believing his influence extended to the jury, he predicted, “The stars are in my favour, you’ll see.” It was a prophecy doomed to failure when he was found guilty and sentenced to death.

The crippled arch-manipulator who had appeared at his trial on a stretcher was strapped to a board to prepare him for his destiny with the gallows. His nephew suffered life imprisonment.

Scheming Wizard

“The Great Billik”, as he billed himself, was a card-reader, seer and general all-round wizard. He sold charms and potions
to the good citizens of Chicago at the turn of the nineteenth century, and decided to extend his wizardry by plotting murder.

Billik targeted his neighbour, Martin Vzral, who ran a successful milk-delivery business, with his Svengali-like talents of intimidation. Well versed in the art of preying on people’s gullibility, he persuaded Vzral that he had an enemy who was out to destroy him. Billik offered to counteract this malign influence, who turned out to be a rival businessman, by using one of his potions against him.

Convinced that his enemy had been thwarted, Vzral was effusive in his thanks and pressed Billik to accept some payment. The wizard declined but he now had his victim firmly ensnared. Slowly and remorselessly Billik took control of Vzral’s life, family and finances. He slept with his wife, turned his daughters into slaves, made his sons work for him and skimmed off all the business profits into his own account.

Inevitably, Vzral and his family slid into poverty as his assets were milked. Billik next instructed Mrs Vzral to insure the lives of her husband and daughters, which she did without question. At last, Martin Vzral began to rebel against his usurper but it was all too late and on 27 March 1905, he died and his life insurance found its way into Billik’s account.

The relentless reduction of the Vzral family continued with the deaths of the four daughters over the next year and a half. What was left of the milk-delivery business was sold and Billik used some of the proceeds to pay for a holiday at Niagara Falls. When he returned to Chicago, it was to attend Mrs Vzral’s funeral. Out of the nine original family members, only three were left.

The destruction of the Vzral family, witnessed by friends and neighbours, eventually led to finger-pointing in the direction of “The Great Billik”. There were accusations of murder and a police investigation was started. Little headway was made due to lack of co-operation by the insurance companies and the reluctance of witnesses to give firm evidence. Nevertheless, Billik was tried and convicted of murder for which he was sentenced to death. There was a campaign to save his life
and in January 1909, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Sympathy for the Vzral family seemed to evaporate and the wizard served only a few years in prison before being released with a full pardon in 1917. His powers to influence the order of events seemed undiminished.

Psychic Detective

Myrna Joy Aken, aged eighteen, worked as a typist in an office in Durban, South Africa. On 20 October 1956, she left after work at about 6.00 p.m. and was seen to join a man, presumed to be her boyfriend, and drive off with him. She was not seen alive again.

Her parents called the police when she failed to return home and enquiries were made at her workplace. Colleagues had seen her leave with a man older than herself driving a Ford Anglia. She appeared to be a little depressed and friends thought that perhaps her social life was not going too well.

The police ran checks on Ford Anglia cars but after more than a week had passed, her parents became impatient at the lack of progress and decided to contact a psychic to see if he might help. Nelson Palmer had been successful in tracing missing persons and agreed to assist. He asked for some articles of clothing belonging to Myrna to aid his investigation.

The first conclusion Palmer came up with was to confirm the parents’ worst fears that their daughter was dead. Then he determined where her body was. He described a location in the countryside outside the city where the body lay in a culvert and believed he could lead detectives to the spot.

A search party drove sixty miles out of Durban to the village of Umtwalumi and to a place in the roadside scrub where there was a culvert concealing a body. The naked, mutilated corpse was identified as the missing teenager. She had been shot in the head.

A breakthrough in the search for the driver of the Ford Anglia came when detectives traced such a car to a shop owner. He had loaned it to one of his employees who returned it the day after Myrna went missing. Thirty-three-year-old Clarence
van Buuren was a neighbour of the Aken family. He seemed to have disappeared.

Surveillance was maintained on van Buuren’s house and he was spotted on 11 October acting furtively outside his property. When challenged, he attempted to run off but was quickly seized and caught in the act of hiding a .22 calibre gun, which proved to be the murder weapon.