The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (3 page)

The usual suspects were questioned but to no avail and the investigation into the murder was beginning to founder when someone suggested that the parrot, known for addressing patrons by their first name, might not be saying, “Robber! Robber!” but “Robert, Robert”. With this new line of enquiry, detectives began checking on the late Max Geller’s customers who were called Robert. By a process of elimination, they arrived at the name of Robert Butler.

Butler was a cab-driver who frequented the Green Parrot but had disappeared since the shooting. His friends had no
knowledge of his whereabouts and a year went by with no progress in the efforts to locate him. But determined detective work eventually traced Butler to the Bethlehem Steel plant at Baltimore.

Officers were waiting for him when he came off the late night shift. Butler said he had left New York after a quarrel with his wife but agreed to accompany detectives back to Harlem. Asked if he knew anything about the shooting of Max Geller he responded with a question of his own; “What makes you think I did it?” One of the officers enquired, “What do you think of Geller’s parrot?” “Smart bird”, came the reply. When told that the parrot had named him, Butler said, “I never did like that bird”.

Charged with murder, Butler said that he had got into trouble over gambling and armed himself for protection. He had a few drinks because he was scared and was angry when Geller refused to serve him. In his fury, he drew his gun and shot the restaurant owner. Tried for murder in February 1944, Butler was convicted and sentenced to up to fifteen years in Sing Sing. History does not relate what happened to the parrot.

Silent Pooch

The dog that did not bark in the night added a strange dimension to an unsolved murder in the UK’s capital in 1920.

Fifty-three-year-old Frances Buxton was the licensee of the Cross Keys Inn in Chelsea. She was regarded as rather eccentric, living alone at the pub since her estrangement from her husband and having as her sole companion a pet Pomeranian dog. She was thought to be secretive and a bit of a hoarder.

On the night of 18 January 1920, a policeman patrolling in Lawrence Street noticed smoke coming from the Cross Keys Inn. He promptly called the fire brigade and the blaze was put out. A search of the premises revealed Frances Buxton’s body in the cellar. She was dead from head wounds inflicted with an axe or knife. The body had been covered with sawdust and sacking which had been set on fire.

Examination of the body showed the full extent of the battering she had received; her features were practically unrecognizable. It also appeared as if an attempt had been made to strangle her. The dead woman’s pet dog was found in the room behind the bar, unharmed and apparently unalarmed. Curiously, the dog had not reacted to the disturbance by barking. Neighbours found this odd as the animal had a shrill bark with which it greeted strangers.

The motive for the murder seemed to be robbery. Frances Buxton was in the habit of keeping her bar takings in a basket beside her bed. She also had a collection of valuable jewellery including diamond brooches, gold rings and bracelets, which had disappeared, presumably stolen by her attacker.

Her ex-husband was interviewed by detectives and was cleared of suspicion. There was, though, talk of a tall stranger who had visited the Cross Keys Inn and taken a fancy to the lady behind the bar in her sparkling jewellery. In the manner of the day, bar staff thought he was their employer’s fancy man. This individual was never traced and neither was the stolen jewellery.

The murder investigation was losing impetus when a witness at a magistrates’ hearing four years later into an assault case announced that one of his relatives had information about the Chelsea murder. Like other possible leads, this came to nothing. There was a similar negative outcome to an alleged confession made by a man being held in a French prison. This turned out to be a hoax. Another suggestion regarding a motive other than robbery for killing Frances Buxton, a lady with a string of lovers, was that she had infected one of them with venereal disease and he took his revenge.

If the dead woman’s pet dog was performing to type by not barking, it seems likely that the intruder on the winter’s night was not a stranger.

Inside Job

In the early hours of 1 August 1980 an intruder gained entry to the house of the Marques de Urquizo in the Somosauguas
district of Madrid in Spain. The family dog did not react and the security system was disarmed. The quiet assassin shot the fifty-seven-year-old Marques with one bullet through the brain while he was sleeping and then shot the Marquesa with two bullets through the throat. The live-in maid registered no disturbance, possibly because she was drugged.

The Urquizo family were wealthy members of the Spanish establishment. The Marques was head of one of the country’s most important commercial banks. The house contained a priceless art collection but nothing was stolen by the deadly intruder. The circumstances of the killings suggested someone with inside knowledge.

Suspicion fell on the dead couple’s son-in-law, Rafael Escobedo. In 1978, Escobedo, the son of a lawyer, married the Urquizos’ only daughter Miriam de la Sierra against the wishes of her family. The marriage proved to be unhappy with heated disagreements and came to a head when the Marques cut off his daughter’s finances with a divorce pending.

Escobedo was interviewed by the police in April 1981 during which he allegedly made a confession that he subsequently retracted. More importantly, detectives found a cache of .22 calibre ammunition at the home of his parents where he had set up a firing range. Ballistics tests allegedly matched some of these rounds to the bullets fired at the crime scene.

In June 1983, Escobedo appeared on trial at Madrid’s Palace of Justice charged with murdering his wife’s parents. His estranged wife attended court supported by an American friend. The prosecution argued that the bullets found at Escobedo’s home matched those used in the fatal shooting. The problem was that this vital firearms evidence had disappeared since it was taken into safe-keeping by the police.

Another plank in the prosecution case was the handwritten confession that was said to have been made by Escobedo. He retracted this, saying he had only written it to save his family from harassment. In a further embarrassment for the police, this document had also disappeared.

Newspaper coverage of what was billed as “The Trial of the Century” emphasized the social standing of the participants,
with Escobedo being described as a playboy. Due to police ineptitude, the evidence against the defendant was mainly circumstantial. The dog that did not bark in the night suggested an inside job and disagreements with the family over his marriage provided Escobedo with a possible motive. There were also strong suggestions that he had not acted alone.

“The Trial of the Century” concluded on 7 July 1983 with a conviction for murder. Escobedo was sentenced to a jail term of fifty-three years.

Snakes Alive!

Robert James was a Californian barber who earned the nickname “Rattlesnake” on account of his novel method of murder. On 5 August 1935, James called the police to his home in La Canada telling them that he had found his wife dead in the garden pond.

Detectives found twenty-five-year-old Mary James, who was pregnant, lying face down in six inches of water in the lily pond. Doctors established that one of her legs was badly swollen, possibly from an insect bite. It was thought that she might have become dizzy as a result of the bite and fallen into the pond.

Accidental death was recorded and, several weeks later, the grieving husband collected a modest insurance payout. There matters might have rested if James had not drawn attention to himself. He ran a barber’s shop in Los Angeles and apparently made an offensive suggestion to a woman passing by in the street. She reported the incident to the police, which prompted the authorities to take a closer look at James’ background.

They uncovered an extraordinary trail of failed marriages and questionable deaths. It seemed that James had been unlucky in his choice of partners. His first wife divorced him claiming that he had tortured her; the second marriage also ended in divorce and his third wife drowned in the bathtub. In each case, James had collected the insurance. His fourth wife was more astute. She refused to be insured, saying that strange things happened to people with life insurance.

In the course of their now intensified enquiries, detectives came across a character called Charles Hope who had helped James in his barber shop. He had an interesting story to tell after investigators discovered that he obtained snakes on behalf of Robert James. Receipts were found for two rattlesnakes bought from a dealer in Long Beach known as “Snake Joe” at the going-rate of 75 cents per pound.

Hope said that James had asked him to buy the snakes and he duly turned up at La Canada with two reptiles called “Lethal” and “Lightnin”. He was then drawn into James’ scheme to kill his wife by posing as a doctor. He told Mary that she did not look well and thought that having the baby would endanger her life. There and then, she agreed to have an abortion.

“Dr” Hope prescribed whisky as an anaesthetic and once the “patient” was inebriated, James produced a box containing the two rattlesnakes and placed Mary’s foot inside. The two men then went into the garage for a smoke and to await developments. Checks were made and although Mary’s leg was badly bitten, she was still alive. “The damned snakes didn’t work,” exclaimed James, adding, “I’m going to drown her.” The semi-conscious woman was put in the bathtub and then transferred to the garden pond where she finally expired.

Armed with Hope’s confession, police went in search of James who they found engaging in a spot of sado-masochism with one of his consorts. In due course, Charles Hope was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder. Robert James was given the death sentence and spent four years on Death Row in San Quentin where, unsurprisingly, he was known as “Rattlesnake”. He was hanged on 1 May 1942, and was the last man in California to be so executed. After this, death sentences were carried out in the gas chamber.

A Dog That Barked

The violent death of a wealthy widow, signalled by the barking of her dog, was judged on first appearances to be a mysterious murder in a locked room. The eventual explanation proved to be more commonplace.

In the summer of 1969, tragedy struck a residential suburb of Salisbury, Rhodesia, with the death of fifty-eight-year-old Mrs Whitworth. A widow, she lived alone, except for her dog, and led an active life looking after her garden and engaging in sporting pursuits.

Neighbours were disturbed by the constant barking of Mrs Whitworth’s dog throughout the night. The following morning, a near neighbour telephoned to ask if everything was OK. There was no reply, so he walked over to the bungalow and knocked on the door. Again, no reply. When he looked through the bedroom window, he could see a pair of feet on the floor close to the bed. Fearing there had been an accident, he called the police.

Officers entered the bungalow through an unsecured side door but when they reached the bedroom found it locked. They burst the door open and as they did so, heard the key drop to the floor inside. Mrs Whitworth lay on the floor, dead from injuries to the head. She had marks on her face and had bitten her tongue, resulting in a great loss of blood, which had choked her.

When it was discovered that she was epileptic, investigators believed she might have locked herself in her room if she felt unwell and was then overcome by a fit, which proved fatal. A search of the bungalow threw doubt on this explanation. Mrs Whitworth was known to be a meticulously tidy person, yet there was an empty beer bottle in the fireplace and a corned beef tin that had been crudely opened with a penknife. Thoughts began to gather about a possible intruder.

Fingerprints in the bungalow were matched to a man called Mpani who was a temporary gardener. He was known to the police on account of convictions for assault. He admitted having asked Mrs Whitworth to lend him money or at least to give him an advance on his pay. Then he claimed that an accomplice had assaulted his employer while he simply ran away. The accomplice was tracked down and proved to have an unshakeable alibi. Mpani now admitted that he had killed Mrs Whitwor th.

His story was that she had refused to lend him money and threatened him with a poker to which he responded by attacking and strangling her. When she fell, she hit her head which accounted for the injuries to her face. The mystery of the locked room was resolved by a simple explanation. What officers believed was the key falling inside the bedroom when they broke down the door was actually the latch-plate, which had broken on impact.

Mpani explained that he dragged his victim’s body into the bedroom and placed it on the floor. When he left the room, he locked the door from the outside and, using a piece of newspaper, slid the key under the door and into the room. Pathologists established that Mrs Whitworth had been strangled which resulted in her badly bitten tongue.

Mpani was brought to trial for murder and found guilty. He told the court, “I did not mean to kill her but a devil got into me”.

CHAPTER 2

Parts and Parcels

One of the first challenges facing a murderer is what to do about the victim’s body. The first instinct is probably to escape from the scene of the crime and abandon the body to forensic scrutiny by investigators. This is a risky strategy, however, especially if there has been contact between victim and perpetrator, as this usually yields important investigative evidence. Strangling, stabbing and bludgeoning offer ample opportunity for the transfer of contact traces such as blood, hair and fibres. Shooting, on the other hand, puts distance between victim and killer, but firearms evidence has powerfully incriminating qualities. While it may involve close contact, poisoning is subtle and gives scope to ingenuity on the part of the clever operator, with many ways to disguise his true purpose and simulate natural causes.