The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (30 page)

This extraordinary story of murder as a business fascinated and horrified at the same time. Twelve people were killed and their credit cards and state benefits were looted for a meagre A$100,000. For Snowtown, the murders brought unwanted publicity in the form of tourists posing for photographs outside the building that housed the murder factory.

The Tombstone Murder

The murder committed in Stratford-on-Avon on the day local people celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday in 1954, has never been solved.

Forty-five-year-old Olive Bennet was a state registered nurse and midwife. She had worked in various towns in Britain and in the 1950s was employed at a County Council Maternity Home at Tiddington, just outside Stratford.

On 23 April 1954, Bennet left the maternity home at around 8.10 p.m., telling a colleague she was going to Stratford and would be back later. She also said she was going to meet a friend. She was seen in several hotel bars that evening, including the Red House Hotel, and was observed standing outside at 11.45. That was the last time she was seen alive.

The following morning when the church gardener arrived at Holy Trinity Church to tidy up the graveyard, he spotted a pair of spectacles, a single shoe and part of a set of dentures lying on the ground. The gardener’s keen eye also noted that one of the tombstones was missing. The police were notified.

Olive Bennet’s body was found in the River Avon; she had been strangled. Half-buried in the silt was the missing tombstone from the churchyard. It bore the inscription, “Edward Adam. Died 1875. In the midst of life we are in death.” The stone, which weighed fifty-six pounds, might have been thrown in after the body was dumped or, alternatively, it might have been attached by means of a long woollen scarf.

Enquiries into Olive Bennet’s background revealed that she was not quite the reserved woman many believed her to be. There were suggestions that she might have had a secret lover. When she finished her nursing shift, she would appear in the evening with fresh make-up and smartly dressed ready to take the bus into Stratford. She often returned quite late in a taxi.

However, those who saw her there in hotel bars said that she was invariably alone, drinking sherry and chain-smoking. How she ended up in the graveyard at Holy Trinity Church was a mystery that the local police, even with the help of Detective Chief Superintendent Capstick from Scotland Yard, were unable to answer.

Stratford had been crowded with visitors on the day Bennet was murdered and there was talk of mysterious Americans who might have information about her and also a New Zealand man. Soldiers from nearby Long Marston camp also came under a degree of suspicion.

The police staged a reconstruction of Bennet’s likely movements on the evening she was murdered and made appeals to the public for information. No useful leads came forward, although, five years after the murder, two women told police of an encounter they had with two servicemen in the graveyard at Holy Trinity Church. One of the soldiers was supposed to have said that he would throw one of them into the river and weigh her down with a tombstone.

Enquiries were apparently made at Long Marston camp but no action resulted. In November 1974, as part of a series of unsolved murders, the
News of the World
ran the story of “The Tombstone Murder” and offered £100,000 to any reader who could help solve the case. There were no takers. Intriguingly, John Capstick made no reference to Olive Bennet’s murder in his memoirs. Perhaps that was because it was a case he could not solve.

The Little Old Lady Murders

A serial killer targeted elderly women in Mexico City during a three-year period beginning in 2003. More than thirty murders involving strangulation became known as “The
Little Old Lady Murders”. The fact that the victims were frail, elderly people raised public concerns and put the police under pressure. Investigators were guided by witness sightings that described seeing a transvestite at the crime scenes.

The breakthrough in the investigation came on 25 January 2006 following the murder of eighty-two-year-old Ana Maria de los Reyes in her apartment. A man in the building saw a person leaving the scene and gave a detailed description enabling the police to arrest Juana Barraza, a single mother with three children.

Barraza admitted killing Mrs de los Reyes “from economic necessity”, but denied the other killings. She was, nevertheless charged with ten murders and detectives thought a final tally might be twenty-seven.

In appearance, forty-eight-year-old Juana Barraza was of robust build, neatly dressed with dyed red hair. She had a rather unusual hobby; she was a female wrestler and an avid participant in Mexican masked wrestling called
lucha libra
. Her ringside name was La Dana del Silencio and she defined her style as “rudo to the core” that is a rule-breaker. She often attended wrestling events, organized small town meetings and sometimes participated in the ring wearing a pink outfit decorated with butterflies.

Barraza came from a poor family background and never learned to read or write. She was abandoned by her alcoholic mother at the age of twelve and brought up by a relative who abused her. Psychologists who questioned her believed she held strong resentment against her mother and sought to release her rage by killing defenceless old ladies. Barraza’s fingerprints matched those found at ten murder scenes. She gained access to her victims by posing as a social worker or nurse, or offering to help with shopping and cleaning. Robbery was a factor in some of the killings.

In April 2008, Barraza was tried for the murders of sixteen elderly women. Defence attempts to have her declared mentally unfit to stand trial failed. She was convicted and sentenced to 759 years in prison. Her comment at the court’s verdict was, “May God forgive you and not forget me.”

Carbon Copy Killings

Two murders nine months apart, so similar that they were called the “Carbon Copy Killings”, were separated by an apparently unrelated murder in Germany.

On 11 June 1960, a man’s body was found in a ditch near the village of Baslow in Derbyshire in the UK. Sixty-year-old William Elliott had been savagely beaten and kicked to death. The lane where the body was discovered was recognized as a meeting venue for homosexuals. Elliott was a member of a gay group in nearby Chesterfield but despite appeals for information, there was no response. The dead man’s car was found abandoned in Chesterfield, presumably driven there by the murderer.

In the following year, on 28 March, the body of forty-eight-year-old George Stubbs, a gay man, was found in almost the same location as the previous murder. He too had been savagely beaten and his car, as on the previous occasion, was found dumped in Chesterfield. The similarity of the two murders inspired press references to the “Carbon Copy Killings” and the police had little doubt they were looking for a double murderer.

When reports of the killings published in the British newspapers found their way to the British forces serving in Germany, the Commanding Officer of the base at Werden made a connection. The previous November, the brutal stabbing of a teenage German boy had led to co-operation between the British military authorities and the German police in the search for the killer. The Commanding Officer of the base at Werden called for a list of names of all military personnel not on duty on the day of the murder. One of the men free on that day was Private Michael Copeland. Twenty-one-year-old Copeland was a former miner and a powerfully-built man with a history of violent behaviour. When asked about the murder of the young German boy, he denied any involvement.

When Copeland was involved a short while later in a bar room brawl with local Germans, he was arrested and, in due course, dismissed from the army. The grounds for his discharge
were that he was a psychopathic personality unsuited to military life. He returned to England and to his home town of Chesterfield.

Reading the press reports about the “Carbon Copy Killings” and the Chesterfield connection prompted the officer at Werden to contact the police in Derbyshire and tell them about Copeland. The ex-soldier had alibis for the days of the two murders in Chesterfield and denied any involvement in the killing of the German boy. Over a period of several months, Copeland was questioned and re-questioned. He spent time in a mental institution after attempting to commit suicide in 1962 and, when released, was embroiled in an assault that led to his arrest. Finally, over two years after the first Chesterfield murder, Copeland confessed to all three murders.

Copeland admitted he had a hatred of homosexuals and described the pleasure he derived from killing the two gay men. He had killed the German boy for no other reason than that he was aroused seeing him kissing his girlfriend. Michael Copeland appeared on trial at Birmingham Assizes in March 1965. He was found guilty of the three murders and sentenced to death. He escaped execution at a time when the death penalty was being discussed in Parliament. Hence, he was reprieved and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Dracula Killer

The Dracula Killer began by torturing and killing animals and drinking their blood. Throughout his anguished life, Richard Chase was fascinated with blood, and fellow patients at the psychiatric institution where he spent some time in 1976 nicknamed him “Dracula”.

After his release from psychiatric care, twenty-seven-year-old Chase lived with his mother in Sacramento, California. She ejected him from her home after he killed the family dog and he went to live in a rented apartment.

By now, Chase had graduated from animals to humans and on 29 December 1977, he shot and killed a man in the street using a pistol which he had recently acquired. On 23 January
1978, he committed a burglary and then moved to a nearby house where he shot dead the occupier, twenty-two-year-old Teresa Wallin. She was found by her husband when he returned home. The young woman had been shot in the head and eviscerated. Nearby was a yogurt pot containing blood. There was no evidence of burglary or robbery and the victim, who was three months pregnant, had not been raped.

Four days later, Evelyn Miroth, a single mother, and her six-year-old son were found shot dead in their home with her boyfriend, Danield Meredith, while a two-year-old boy, David Ferrara, whom they were looking after was missing. Miroth’s body had been mutilated and two blood-stained knives were found on the floor. The bathtub was full of blood-stained water. The missing boy’s body would be found two months later, gutted and headless, discarded in an alleyway.

Neighbourhood enquiries produced a report of a weird-looking man seen in the vicinity and a woman encountered him in a grocery store. He demanded that she give him a lift in her car. She recognized him as Richard Chase from the days when they attended the same school. Police headed for Chase’s apartment and he opened the door to them. When he was searched, Danield Meredith’s wallet was found in his back pocket.

The apartment was in a disgusting state and investigators found food blenders encrusted with blood and a box containing dog and cat collars. On one wall was a calendar with the date of Teresa Wallin’s murder marked with the word “today”. Forty-four other days were similarly marked. Under questioning, Chase was asked if he had committed the most recent murder. He admitted it and when asked why he had done it, he replied, “I did nothing wrong . . . I had to kill them to save my life.” Asked to elaborate, he said, “I needed their blood.”

The man whom newspapers now called “The Sacramento Vampire”, was put on trial in San José in January 1979. There were real concerns that if he were found to be insane, Chase would be committed to a mental institution and at some time in the future would be freed. Chase testified in his own defence, admitting the killings and, as expected, pleading he
was insane. There was clear evidence of premeditation in his crimes and psychiatric testimony was given describing him as paranoid and anti-social, but sane. The jury agreed and he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Sent to San Quentin Penitentiary, Chase managed to accumulate a supply of anti-depressants prescribed on a daily prescription and, on 26 December 1980, took his own life.

Mad Butcher Of Kingsbury Run

A series of brutal murders between 1934 and 1938 turned Cleveland Ohio into a city of fear. Even the talents of legendary crime-buster Eliot Ness failed to solve the twelve grisly killings.

Kingsbury Run was a tract of wasteland in an industrial area on the edge of the city. It carried the railway lines to Pittsburgh, which in several places ran between steep embankments. The area was unkempt and strewn with litter and scruffy vegetation, which attracted hoboes and down-and-outs and also children seeking an adventure playground.

On 23 September 1935, two boys exploring this wasteland found two headless bodies lying among weeds in a clearing. The corpses were male, naked and evidently castrated. Police searches of the area turned up the missing genitalia where they had been thrown in the undergrowth. The severed heads were found planted in a railway embankment.

Post-mortem examination indicated that decapitation had been carried out with some skill and, possibly, while the victims were still alive. The younger of the two corpses, a man of around twenty-eight, was identified as Edward Andrassy, a petty criminal. With little firm evidence to guide it, the police investigation soon petered out.

Then, four months later, another mutilated corpse was found. The victim was soon identified as a local prostitute and again, dismemberment suggested some skilful knife work. “The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run” struck again on 6 June 1936 when boys playing in the area discovered an old pair of trousers and their curiosity was rewarded when the garment was found to be a wrapping for a severed head. The rest of
the body lay close by. It was hoped to achieve identification by means of fingerprints and tattoos but neither produced results.

By now, the citizens of Cleveland were terrified by the horrors occurring on their doorstep. People were afraid and this was reflected in declining business for store-owners. Railway track inspectors felt vulnerable and would only work in teams. The police came in for criticism because of their inability to capture the “Mad Butcher”. All that was known was that the killer selected his victims from the poorer members of the community, that both sexes were at risk and that males were castrated. A unifying factor in the murders was the killer’s use of the knife, which suggested some practical knowledge of anatomy and butchery.