The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (44 page)

In an eerie reminder of the classroom massacre carried out in November 2007 by Pekka-Eric Auvinen (
see
here
), Saari had posted a video on YouTube showing him at a shooting range, pointing a weapon at the camera and saying, “You will die next.” He added that his hobbies were computers, guns, sex and beer and had commented that the “whole of life is war and whole life is pain”.

It transpired that Saari had been questioned by the police about his video but he was not detained and was permitted to keep his .22 calibre pistol for which he had a gun licence. He had broken no laws. The next day, he took eleven lives, including his own.

As before, the shocked people of Finland questioned their country’s gun culture. Youngsters from the age of fifteen years have the right to seek a firearms permit providing they have their parents’ permission. Hunting and target shooting are national pastimes and Finland has one of the highest levels of gun ownership in the world.

People who knew Saari described him as “. . . one of us – quiet but not a hermit”. Police believed he had been planning his day of violence for several weeks, posting videos showing him firing a handgun.

Sociologists looked for deeper meaning and referred to the tendency of some parents to leave their children on their own. While this breeds self-sufficiency, it may also encourage an excess of individualism. It has been suggested that where young men become over-introspective, they have a tendency to turn to violence rather than discussion. Saari’s obsession with
song lyrics such as “. . . you will fight alone in your personal war”, suggests a degree of fatalism.

In the wake of the fatal shootings, Finland’s interior minister promised to give police greater powers to question applications for gun licences. Meanwhile, the shocked community of Kauhajoki received a visit from their Prime Minister on 24 September to share a national day of mourning. He told reporters that he was very critical of gun ownership.

A Man Of Many Words

Dr William C. Minor was a wealthy American Civil War surgeon who came to London in 1871 on a cultural visit. It was a visit that was to end in tragedy, for in the early hours of 17 February 1872, Minor shot dead a man he believed was an intruder.

George Merrett worked at a Lambeth brewery and was on his way to work when he was pursued in the street by a gunman who shot and killed him. The gunman did not flee. He was still holding his smoking revolver when the police arrived. Dr Minor explained that it was an accident; he had shot the wrong person after someone broke into his room.

William Chester Minor was an American citizen holding medical qualifications and a commission in the US Army. He was a cultured man who had a liking for the seamier side of life, frequenting bars, music halls and brothels. It was also discovered that he had a history of mental illness and had been diagnosed in the US as suffering from monomania. He spent some time in an asylum and, on his release, took passage to England.

At his trial in April 1872 for the murder of George Merrett, his defence was one of insanity. The judge applied the McNaghten Rules and the judgment was that thirty-two-year-old Dr Minor was innocent of murder although he had unquestionably killed a man. He was sentenced to be detained at the Asylum for the Criminally Insane at Broadmoor.

The prisoner was allowed to buy books and his cell soon turned into a library. Feeling deep remorse for his act of violence
that had widowed a mother and six children, he contacted Eliza Merrett through the US Embassy. She accepted his sincerity and asked if she could see him. It was unprecedented for a prisoner to be allowed a visit from a relative of his victim. But permission was granted and Eliza offered to obtain books for him.

Then, an event occurred which completely changed Minor’s life in prison. He responded to a call he had read from the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, Dr James Murray, for contributions to this great editorial task. In 1880 Minor wrote to the editor offering his services and, over the next thirty years, he read countless books and refined tens of thousands of contributions to the dictionary.

All Murray knew about his most diligent contributor was that he lived in Crowthorne, Berkshire. When he first visited in January 1891 he was astonished to find that Minor was confined to an asylum. The two men became friends and as Minor’s health began to fade, Murray campaigned for him to be repatriated. Winston Churchill, Home Secretary, granted this request in 1910. Thus, after thirty-eight years at Broadmoor, Minor returned to the USA where he died, aged eighty-five, on 26 March 1920.

The full story of the murderer who turned lexicographer was told by Simon Winchester in his bestselling book,
The Surgeon of Crowthorne
, published in 1998.

“The Executed Ones”

Stephen Wayne Anderson was a murderer with a passion for eating who went on to distinguish himself as a poet and playwright.

On the night of 26 May 1980 Anderson broke into a house in Bloomington, California. He was intent on robbery and cut the telephone line before checking each room of the house. The house was owned by eighty-one-year-old Elizabeth Lyman, a retired music teacher, who screamed at the presence of an intruder in her bedroom. Anderson responded by shooting her in the face.

As she lay bleeding to death, Anderson busied himself making a meal of noodles and sat down to eat it while watching television. A neighbour, sensing that something was wrong, called the police who interrupted his meal by arresting him.

Anderson was a man with form. He had been imprisoned in 1971 and 1973 on burglary charges and, while serving time in Utah State Prison, he had murdered a fellow inmate. When on the run from prison in 1979, he became involved in contract killings and at the time he killed Elizabeth Lyman, he was a fugitive from justice.

He was tried for murder in San Bernardino County and convicted on 24 July 1981. He was sentenced to die by lethal injection at San Quentin Prison. As Anderson put it later, “I was passing through California when I shot someone during a bungled burglary, and found myself a permanent resident.”

Anderson spent his time in prison constructively, writing poetry and plays, which gained wide recognition. His published work won him two Pen awards for prison writing and his
Doing Time
was taken as an example of the way creativity can mellow even the most callous mind.

He spent twenty-two years on Death Row and his poetry, particularly
Conversations with the Dead
, seemed to reflect his remorse for those he had killed, whose lives were stolen away by his actions. Anderson did not deny killing Elizabeth Lyman; “I was very wrong,” he told his trial jury.

His supporters believed that the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father had not been properly presented in court. There were also questions raised over the quality of the defence provided for him by the state. Criticism was directed at his attorney, now deceased, who was described variously as incompetent and lacking in integrity. The bigger question was whether capital prisoners received fair representation.

Writers’ groups and human rights activists fought long and hard to win clemency for Anderson but his final appeal was turned down by the Governor of California in January 2002. It seemed that the condemned man had a hearty appetite on his last day, consuming toasted sandwiches and large quantities of cottage cheese and ice cream.

One of Anderson’s poems referred to the “executed ones” whose ranks he joined at 12.30 a.m. on 29 January 2002, following death by lethal injection.

“Here You Go!”

A popular novelist was shot dead in a public park in New York by a man who believed a character in one of the writer’s novels represented a slur against his sister.

Forty-four-year-old David Graham Phillips wrote under the pen name of John Graham, and made his reputation in America with novels that exposed political corruption and attitudes towards women. He lived in New York and it was part of his daily morning routine to walk in Gramercy Park, Manhattan.

On 23 January 1911, as he took his customary stroll in the park he was suddenly confronted by a man who appeared from behind some bushes menacingly waving a pistol at him. Shouting, “Here you go!” he fired five shots at Phillips who fell dying to the ground. As passers-by gathered at the scene, the gunman put the gun to his head and exclaimed, “Here I go” before pulling the trigger. In the space of a few minutes, victim and murderer lay dead and dying together on the ground.

The novelist lay mortally wounded for several hours before dying. His final words, worthy of a novel, were, “I can fight one bullet, but not five.” One of Phillip’s best-known novels was
Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise
, published after his death, which told the story of a country girl who resorted to prostitution and later became a successful actress. The reason he lost his life was that a character in another novel,
The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig
, inspired a murderous impulse in one of his readers. That reader was Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, a neurotic, spoiled young man of twenty-one who was from a wealthy Philadelphia family. He was a man with little inclination to work or follow a profession whose days were spent reading novels and idolizing his socialite sister.

In fact, Goldsborough was captivated by his elder sister to the point of madness. He guarded her with a neurotic jealousy,
refusing to allow her to be criticised in any way, even by her father. He had a fiery temper and a reputation for throwing punches at people he thought were critical of his idol.

One of the characters in Phillips’ novel was a self-centred girl who moved in the higher flights of society. It was an unflattering portrait of a spoilt personality, which Goldsborough took as a slur against his sister. The insult, as he saw it, preyed on his mind and he decided to take revenge on the author. In a moment’s madness, a man of little substance but full of jealous hatred terminated the promising life of the writer and destroyed himself in the process.

Murder In Disguise

Greed inspired a cunning scheme to gain an inheritance but when plan A failed, plan B was murder. Wearing a disguise, the killer used a pretence to lure his victim into the shadows and shot her dead.

Karl Hau was a handsome young German who wanted to follow a career in law. He also aspired to be rich and when he met Lina Molitor in Baden-Baden in 1901 he was as much attracted to her beauty as he was to her widowed mother’s wealth. When his proposal of marriage to Lina was vetoed by her mother, the couple eloped. After Lina attempted to commit suicide, her mother relented and allowed them to marry. Mr and Mrs Hau moved to Washington DC where Karl took up his legal studies.

In October 1906, Frau Molitor, who suffered from a heart condition, received a mysterious telegram from Paris asking her to come at once as her daughter, Olga, who was visiting the city with Lina and Karl, was very ill. The old lady made hasty travel plans only to find on her arrival in Paris that Olga was perfectly well. It was not clear who had sent the telegram. Frau Molitor returned to Baden-Baden with Olga and the Haus moved on to London.

During the evening of 6 November, Frau Molitor was again the recipient of an urgent message. On this occasion she was asked to call at her local post office where an important message from Paris awaited her. She hurried down Kaiser-Wilhelm Strasse, accompanied by Olga, and when they reached a poorly lit section of the street, a shot rang out and Frau Molitor died where she fell with a bullet in her heart. Olga noticed a man in a long overcoat running down the street.

Karl Hau became the immediate focus of suspicion, especially in the knowledge that he stood to gain financially from his mother-in-law’s death. He had absconded to London but was arrested and returned to Germany. He admitted being the sender of the messages to Frau Molitor but denied killing her.

He was charged with murder but before he appeared on trial at Karlsruhe, his wife, Lina, committed suicide. Hau proved to have a murky past. He had contracted venereal disease in his teenage years while travelling around the world, and enjoyed a succession of mistresses. His lavish lifestyle meant that he was constantly in need of funds and Frau Molitor had generously provided him with an income during his legal studies in America.

Hau’s trial began on 17 July 1907 amid scenes of great public disorder in which the police had to be supported by two infantry companies. Inside the court, there was a stark reminder of the reason for the trial; on a bench stood a glass jar containing the heart of the late Frau Molitor.

Hau opted to defend himself. He admitted sending the mysterious telegram summoning his mother-in-law to Paris and indeed admitted everything else, including being dressed in disguise in Baden-Baden on the evening of the shooting. But he denied the murder. The only reason he offered for his actions was that he was secretly in love with Olga, his wife’s sister. He even managed to imply that she committed the murder.

The jury returned a guilty verdict and the judge sentenced him to death. By now, public opinion had swung in his favour and troops with fixed bayonets helped to keep order outside the court. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he served seventeen years before being pardoned by the Grand Duke of Baden in 1924.

Hau wrote two books,
Death Sentence
and
Life Sentence
, which shed no light at all on his actions or predicament. A leading psychiatrist suggested that he was schizophrenic and possibly suffering mental disorientation due to his having contracted venereal disease. On 4 February 1926, he was found dying in the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa near Rome. He had taken poison.

Lethal Immunity

The mass murder of twelve bank employees in 1948 by a Japanese artist has never been fully explained. Sadamichi Hirasawa would have hanged for the crime but for a Japanese law. Instead, he became a celebrity and spent the rest of his life in prison while conspiracy theories and allegations of a cover-up swirled around him.