The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (38 page)

When the police were alerted to the evident similarities between the murder under investigation and a fictional killing, Bala was questioned. He was released because of lack of evidence and there the matter might have rested but for an astute piece of police work. Officers reviewing the case noted that Janiszewski’s mobile phone had not been retrieved from the crime scene. His service provider co-operated fully by tracing his SIM card. It seemed that the phone had been bought from an internet auction site within days of Janiszewski being reported missing. The seller was Krystian Bala.

Bala was arrested in September 2005. He denied any knowledge of the killing but a search of his apartment told a different story. Information stored on his computer referred to Janiszewski and the dead man’s telephone card had been used to make calls to Bala’s friends.

Bala was a philosophy graduate, married and father of a ten-year-old son. He separated from his wife in 1999 and she had been meeting Janiszewski. This liaison appeared to have inspired pathological jealousy in Bala who was described as a control freak. In his novel, Bala described the murder of a young woman, tied up in the same manner as Janiszewski and stabbed to death. The murder weapon, in an echo of the fate of Janiszewski’s mobile phone, was auctioned on an internet site.

In April 2006 Bala made a confession but declined to sign it on the grounds that he had not been well. He was put on trial in September 2007. Psychologists referred to his high IQ and described him as a narcissist who craved attention. Evidence was also given that he had physically abused his wife. When
they separated, he plagued her with e-mail messages and tried to keep track of any partners she might have. Bala said that he included the circumstances of Janiszewski’s murder in his novel by reading the details reported in the media.

Bala was convicted on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment. The judge said the evidence showed he planned and orchestrated the crime. This was a case in which art, in the form of Bala’s novel, imitated life or, more correctly, death.

Fiction Becomes Fact

Dromedary, a camel-breeding station in Western Australia, was the unlikely venue for a discussion about committing the perfect murder. In October 1929, Arthur William Upfield, a writer of detective fiction, stopped at Dromedary and joined a group of men gathered around the campfire. One of the topics in the conversation that ensued was Upfield’s crime-writing career and the concept of the perfect murder. The novelist offered a small prize to anyone who could provide him with a scenario for the perfect crime.

One of those present who took a particular interest in the discussion was Snowy Rowles, a young man from Perth. However, the prize went to the station manager whose suggestion was to shoot the victim in the back of the head, burn the corpse together with an animal carcass to disguise the remains and sieve what was left for any metal fragments. This storyline was used by Upfield in his novel,
The Sands of Windee
, published in 1932, by which time the impressionable young man at the campfire soirée, Snowy Rowles, was on trial for murder. After the meeting at Dromedary, Upfield had recommended Rowles for a job with a fencing business working at Mount Magnet.

Around the end of 1930, the police in Western Australia were searching for a man who was reported missing. Leslie John Brown had last been seen in the company of Snowy Rowles earlier in the year. Rowles was interviewed and said that he had worked with Brown who he believed had moved to the
north of the territory. The police persisted in their enquiries and investigated reports that human remains had been found in the bush.

At a deserted encampment known as 183 Mile Gate, they found evidence of three campfires. Careful sifting of the ashes revealed bone fragments, some shirt buttons, a gold ring and false teeth. Rowles was questioned again about Brown’s disappearance and, when Upfield’s book was published, the similarity between his fictional crime and the discoveries made in the bush seemed curious, to say the least. Upfield confirmed that Rowles had been present when the idea of the perfect murder was discussed.

Snowy Rowles was tried at Perth for the murder of Leslie Brown. Much of the evidence was circumstantial in view of the fact that there was no victim’s body. Unfortunately for him, Rowles failed to carry out every detail of the perfect murder plan. Had he done so, he might never have been convicted. He claimed in court that he could not be found guilty of a crime that had not been committed. But those fragments that survived the fire in the bush told a different story – the gold ring and false teeth were positively identified as belonging to the missing man. Taken together, this was sufficient to deliver a guilty verdict and Rowles was sentenced to death. He was hanged at Fremantle Prison.

Shocking Death In The Bath

A novel that described the death of someone in the bath when a radio connected to the electricity supply was thrown into the water provided a plan for a murder in real life.

On 11 June 1967, police were called to an apartment in Toronto following a report by Terence Milligan that his wife had died in the bath. Officers found nineteen-year-old Jane dead, sitting in about twelve inches of water with her back to the taps. A mains radio with its electric lead connected to a socket in the living room lay immersed in the water.

Milligan appeared remarkably calm in the tragic circumstances of his young wife’s death. They had been married less than a year. He laid great emphasis on her habit of placing the radio on the edge of the bath. Suspicion began to form when it emerged that he stood to gain a considerable sum from her insurance. Added to which was the statement by neighbours that the couple were heard engaging in a noisy argument on the day Jane Milligan died.

The pathologist reported that death had probably been caused by asphyxia resulting from electrocution. Examination of the dead woman’s organs told a different story, though, indicating that drowning rather than electrocution had been the cause of death. Milligan’s behaviour continued to excite suspicion when it was learned that he had frequently referred to his wife’s habit of using the radio in the bathroom in conversations with workmates.

The police decided to search a little deeper into Terence Milligan’s background and made an interesting discovery at his uncle’s farm on Prince Edward Island, which he visited after his wife’s death. There they found a copy of a book called
The Doomsters,
which told the story of a person killed when a radio connected to the electricity supply was thrown into the bath.

At the inquest into Jane Milligan’s death on 27 July 1967 a verdict was reached of “Homicide at the hands of her husband”. Terence Milligan was arrested and charged with non-capital murder.

The bathtub had been removed from the Milligans’ apartment and taken to police headquarters where various tests were carried out. Crucially, it was shown that it was not possible to balance the radio on the edge of the bath as alleged. Accidental drowning was ruled out by an experiment in which a volunteer sat in the bath in twelve inches of water with her back to the taps in the position in which Jane Milligan was found. In that position, drowning by accident would have been impossible.

At Terence Milligan’s trial in May 1968, the prosecution made a powerful case to the effect that he drowned his wife and then simulated accidental electrocution. When he was first questioned by the police, he said he touched his wife when
he found her to see if she was still alive. In that case, said the detective, he must have received an electric shock. Milligan’s response was that he must have disconnected the radio from the mains electricity supply first.

Milligan was convicted of non-capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Black Widow

“Widow, sixty-four . . . would like to share the quiet autumn of her life with a widower.” Lonely hearts responded to this advertisement in Austrian newspapers in their droves. Among the replies was one from Alois Pichler, a seventy-six-year-old retired post office worker. He had a house and savings, and after altering his will in favour of Elfriede Blauensteiner, died of a heart attack in November 1995.

The dead man’s relatives were suspicious of the circumstances and a post-mortem revealed there was more to his death than a failing heart. It seemed that he had also been poisoned. The trail inevitably lead to Blauensteiner who had been caring for him. At first she denied any involvement, but enquiries uncovered a series of deaths of elderly men, including her husband.

Following sustained questioning in January 1996, she confessed to two murders and then to a further three. The police thought there might be many more. She told detectives that, following her childhood upbringing in poor circumstances, her aim in life was to become rich. In 1986, she developed her strategy, drawing men into her web with promises of all-round caring companionship. Her advertisement in the “Lonely Hearts” pages tempted lonely old men, whom she accepted after carefully scrutinizing their bank balances. Then she slowly but surely disposed of her clients by dosing them with diabetic medication, which fatally reduced their blood sugar level without raising suspicion.

Blauensteiner benefited from numerous bequests and, at the time of her arrest, was thought to be worth £6 million. She also had a full social life, appearing in furs and jewellery at the roulette and blackjack tables in Vienna’s Casino.

“The Black Widow”, as she was called by the Austrian press, was tried for murder at Krems in February 1997. Her three-week trial turned into something of a pantomime; clutching a gold crucifix she declared that only God could judge her. She warned journalists, “If there’s a vampire among you, he will turn you into a heap of ashes.”

The press had a field day reporting on The Black Widow’s excesses. She had confessed to five murders, commenting to detectives that they deserved to die. The public, while feasting on the details, cast its mind back to the 1980s when Waltraud Wagner was convicted in an Austrian court over the deaths of thirty-nine hospital patients. Many questions were asked about the attitudes and responsibilities in the care of old people.

The Black Widow was not without supporters, though, and her trial was twice interrupted by bomb scares. Finally, on 7 March 1997, Blauensteiner was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. And, in a final bizarre twist, it was noted that she had donated the body of her third husband, Friedrich Döcker, who died in 1995, to medical science. His remains were preserved in a tank of formaldehyde in Vienna’s Anatomical Institute.

Look What I’ve Done Sweetheart

Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, two individuals looking for romance, met through a Lonely Hearts Club and formed a deadly duo.

Thirty-one-year-old Martha Beck was obese and emotionally unstable, possibly as a result of being abused as a teenager. She qualified as a nurse and in the 1940s worked at a home for disabled children in Florida. She was sexually overactive and entered into several disastrous relationships.

In December 1947, Martha responded to a Lonely Hearts Club advertisement placed by Raymond Fernandez, a thirty-seven-year-old charmer who preyed on vulnerable women. He believed he had hypnotic powers that compelled women to fall in love with him. The two misfits met and began an amorous partnership.

Martha quickly recognized that her new partner’s ability to charm the opposite sex could be turned to advantage. Their hunting ground for potential victims was the Lonely Hearts Clubs. Initially, the idea was that Fernandez would woo lonely women with the promise of affection and Beck would help him fleece them of their savings.

Swindling elderly women led to more sinister approaches involving murders. In December 1948, the deadly duo tricked New York widow, Janet Fay, into marriage with Fernandez and, at a stroke, withdrew all her savings. Not content with this, they killed Janet Fay with a hammer and hid her body in a trunk. This was placed in the cellar of a house they had rented.

The murderers moved on to Michigan in search of another victim and made the acquaintance of forty-one-year-old Delphine Downing who had a two-year-old daughter. They shot Delphine and Beck drowned her child in the bathtub, calling Fernandez and saying, “Oh come and look what I’ve done, sweetheart.”

After burying the bodies in the cellar, they went off to the cinema. They had a surprise when they returned and found the police waiting for them. The murder of Janet Fay had been discovered and the New York police alerted their colleagues in Michigan. Beck and Fernandez pleaded guilty to double murder, probably believing they would be spared the death penalty as Michigan had no capital punishment. In the event, despite resisting extradition to New York, they ended up on trial for the murder of Janet Fay.

The trial lasted forty-four days and Beck’s account of her love life with Fernandez provided the newspapers with sensational headlines. They were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. While being held at Sing Sing prison, they exchanged notes with each other and generally managed to make a spectacle of themselves.

While the couple were known to have claimed three murder victims, they were suspected of a dozen further killings. On the eve of execution, Beck sent a note to Fernandez expressing her undying love for him and was granted a final request to have her hair curled before facing the electric chair. On 8 March
1951, the Lonely Hearts Murderers were electrocuted. In the wake of the trial, regulation was passed to prevent participants in Lonely Hearts Clubs being so easily targeted by swindlers.

“. . . Reside With Us”

George Nichols and Alfred Lester, an enterprising pair of ex-convicts, devised a murder-for-profit plan by advertising for victims in an Australian newspaper.

The Parramatta River Murders caused a stir in Sydney in 1872 when bodies began turning up from their watery graves. On 12 March, John Bridger was found floating in the river. The former wardroom steward from HMS
Rosario
had been discharged from the navy a few days before he was found dead. He had suffered severe head wounds and his body had been weighted with a large stone tied to his feet.