The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (55 page)

This took place in April 1909 and much of the evidence was repeated from the first trial. Goddard argued powerfully that the evidence of bloodstains could not, beyond any question of doubt, permit a guilty verdict. As he addressed the jury in his closing speech, Flora Haskell wept uncontrollably. The jury found her not guilty on the grounds of insufficient evidence
and she left the court to cheering from the public gallery. While in custody, she told her wardress, “. . . if I did it, I don’t remember it.”

“Her Soul Wouldn’t Leave The Body . . .”

Twenty-year-old Banaz Mahmod, a Kurdish woman, was last seen by her sister some time in 2005 when she thought she looked rundown. She disappeared in January 2006 having told the police that her family had threatened to kill her because the man she was in love with was seen as unsuitable and naming five men, including Mohamod Hama, who might be implicated.

On the morning she was murdered, her father, Mahmod Mahmod, left his house in Mitcham, west London, so that her killers would have freedom to carry out their mission. Over a period of two and a half hours, the young woman was subjected to degrading sexual abuse, torture and rape. Finally, she was strangled and her body buried in a pit.

This horrific killing was ordered by her father and his brother and led by Mohamod Hama, assisted by at least three other men. The details became known after Hama was arrested in February 2006. While he was being held in Belmarsh Prison, he boasted about what had happened to Banaz to a visitor there. His conversation was secretly taped and eventually used at his trial.

Hama described how he stood with one foot on Banaz’s back while one of his gang of thugs prepared the ligature that was used to strangle her. He also spoke of stamping on the victim’s neck, “Her soul wouldn’t leave the body . . . I was kicking and stamping on her neck to get her soul out,” he said.

In another taped conversation, Hama described how they took her body from her father’s house in a suitcase and placed it in a car. He said there were police cars in the area and there were people in the street. He laughingly described dragging the suitcase until the handle broke off.

The dead woman’s sister, talking from behind a screen in court, spoke about Banaz as a caring person and also voiced
fears for her own safety. The Mahmod brothers were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment for a minimum of twenty-three years. Hama was also sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of seventeen years. Two other men thought to have been involved fled to Iraq. One of the suspects was arrested in northern Iraq in 2007 and awaits possible extradition to Britain.

The killing of a person to restore a family’s honour, as in the case of Banaz Mahmod, is often a brutal affair carried out by hitmen. It is estimated that there are twelve honour killings a year in Britain and an estimated 300 such killings every year in Pakistan. In 2008, it was reported that three teenage girls had been buried alive in “honour killings” in the province of Baluchistan.

“Systematically Selected And Murdered”

A reign of terror lasting six weeks descended on Suffolk in East Anglia in the UK at the end of 2006. During that time, five prostitutes were murdered and, with a serial killer at large, there was talk of a new Jack the Ripper.

Young women began disappearing from the red light district in Ipswich at the beginning of November. The first body turned up on 2 December. Twenty-five-year-old Gemma Adams was found in a brook at Hintlesham, Suffolk. In the following weeks leading up to Christmas, four other bodies were found.

The victims and the circumstances in which they were found had common characteristics. The women were all young prostitutes from the same area of Ipswich and they were regular drug users. When discovered, they were naked, showed no mutilating injuries nor were there any signs of a struggle. All had been strangled or suffocated and there were no indications of sexual assault.

The public were alarmed at having a serial killer in their midst and frightened by the speed of his actions. Police warned prostitutes to keep off the streets and large rewards were offered for information leading to the capture of the murderer.

The hunt for the serial killer involved over ten police forces and a trawl was made through the database of known sex offenders. DNA was found on three of the victims and a match was quickly found with a forty-eight-year-old truck driver whose DNA had been recorded after he was convicted of theft five years previously.

Steven Wright lived in Ipswich where he had a home in the red-light area, which he shared with his partner. He was arrested on 19 December. CCTV footage showed a red Ford Mondeo cruising in the district on significant dates when murder victims disappeared.

Wright worked in and around Ipswich as a fork-lift driver. He openly admitted to using prostitutes although he denied killing them. His partner worked a night shift and during the time that she was away, Wright took prostitutes back to the house for sex. This partly explained why local streetwalkers were unafraid of him, even when the murder scare was at its height – because they knew him.

He appeared on trial for murder at Ipswich Crown Court in January 2008. He denied the charges, but the forensic evidence against him was compelling, particularly the DNA. The prosecution drew attention to the vulnerability of the prostitute victims, all of whom needed money to fund their drug habit. Wright, it was contended, “systematically selected and murdered” five of them.

While Wright admitted picking up four of the five women, he denied killing them. He asked the court to believe it was a matter of coincidence. He drove around at night because he couldn’t sleep and began taking prostitutes home because he was prone to cramp in his leg when having sex in the car. His defence was that he was a victim of misfortune.

The man who had terrorized a city for several weeks with echoes of Jack the Ripper was found guilty on 21 February 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment. While there were similarities with the infamous nineteenth-century murderer, especially with the killing of five victims, there was also a major difference. Whereas the Ripper, as his name suggested, mutilated his victims, Wright hardly left a mark on their bodies.
He incapacitated them with drugs and then suffocated them. One unresolved mystery concerns his motive for killing.

Derby Day Execution

Alfred Webb was found dying from a gunshot wound outside his flat in Bayswater, London, on 9 February 1928. He did not regain consciousness and died in hospital. The flat had been expertedly broken into and ransacked by the intruder.

The circumstances leading up to the shooting were that Webb and his son returned to the flat during the evening. The break-in was evident and the intruder was still inside. Webb sent his son to fetch the police and, as the boy ran off, he heard a shot and saw a dark figure leave the building.

It appeared that the thief had been disturbed by the arrival of the occupier and, finding his escape blocked, shot his way free. Detectives made house-to-house enquiries and learned from one householder that a man had knocked on her door saying he was from “Warwick Garage” and asking to speak to the chauffeur. The woman did not employ a chauffeur and had no knowledge of a garage by that name. She sent the man away.

Convinced that they were looking for a professional thief, detectives believed they recognized the tactics of someone looking for an opportunity. One of the officers in a moment of inspiration mentioned that a housebreaker known to them lived at Warwick Mews. Was there any connection, he wondered?

The thief in question was Frederick Stewart whose affinity for the racetrack gave an indication of where he might be found. As the horseracing season had not started, the dog-track was the most likely. Stewart was located in a pub near the dog-track at Southend and was invited to answer some questions relating to the shooting of Alfred Webb.

Stewart admitted entering the flat at Bayswater and claimed that when he found his escape route blocked by Webb, there was a struggle and his gun discharged accidentally. Diligent police work undermined his story. While searching gardens in the neighbourhood of the shooting, officers found the murder
weapon, a small calibre pistol. Crucially, firearms examiners found that a second shot had been fired but the bullet had jammed in the gun. Clearly, the gunman was prepared to do more than frighten the house-owner.

Stewart was tried for murder at the Old Bailey when his account of accidental shooting failed to convince the jury. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by Mr Justice Avory. His execution was due to take place at Pentonville on 6 June 1928, which happened to be Derby Day. Stewart asked if his hanging could be delayed so that he would know who won the race. His request was declined and it was reported that he had correctly tipped the winner before mounting the scaffold.

The Threepenny Piece Murders

At the end of a long sea voyage, the SS
Dorset
berthed at London Docks on 15 March 1909. The ship’s crew went ashore, heading for pubs and prostitutes. The seamen had money in their pockets and it was common practice to carry a supply of threepenny bits, which they would give to any beggars they encountered.

Among those making their way to Whitechapel and Stepney were second engineer William Sproull and an engine-room hand called McEachern. The two men encountered a couple of prostitutes in Rupert Street and went with them to a lodging house. A drunken dispute arose over money. The seamen were unaware that their movements were being observed from across the street at No. 3 by two men who controlled the prostitutes.

Marks Reubens and his brother, Morris, both in their early twenties, were well-known to the police for their thieving and protection rackets. The brothers rushed across the street and attacked the two seamen. Morris was armed with a
sjambok
(whip) made of hippopotamus hide with which he set about McEachern. Meanwhile, Marks Reubens used a knife to stab Sproull repeatedly.

McEachern managed to escape from this onslaught, which left Morris free to join his brother’s attack on Sproull. Mortally
wounded, the second engineer, staggered into the street where he collapsed. The police were called to the scene led by the redoubtable Inspector Frederick Wensley. Sproull was found to be dead and there was a trail of threepenny bits leading from his body across the street to No. 3. Wensley and his men raided the house where they found the Reubens brothers and two women.

Questioning had hardly begun before Morris accused his brother of stabbing Sproull. A broken
sjambok
provided ample evidence of his part in the affair and the dead man’s watch was found in his pocket. He admitted robbing Sproull as he lay dying in the street. Marks Reuben, did not say very much but his bloodstained clasp knife was found hidden behind a stove. In a desperate appeal to Wensley, Morris Reubens declared, “We never meant to kill the man, and you wouldn’t want to see a couple of young fellows like us lopped.”

The two women who made up the foursome gave a graphic account of the night’s events. “Morrie had the stick,” said Emily Allen, “and Markie the knife.” The Reubens brothers were sent for trial at the Old Bailey in April 1909. The case against the two women was dropped on the grounds that they had been used by the brothers. Emily Allen proved to be a good witness for the prosecution.

Morris Reubens put on a display of histrionics in the dock and a doctor was called to attend to him. This did not elicit any recommendation to mercy from the jury which took ten minutes to return a guilty verdict and Mr Justice Jelf sentenced the pair to death. The Reubens Brothers were hanged at Pentonville Prison on 20 May 1909.

“I’m Sorry To See You Here Again”

Wherever she went, Louise Peete seemed to be followed by the Grim Reaper. Seven men died as a result of knowing her.

Lofie Louise Preslar was the daughter of a publisher and was brought up in Louisiana in the US. She received a private education and married Henry Bosley in 1903 when she was
twenty years old. They moved to New Orleans where she began to pursue extra-marital activities. After finding her in bed with an oilman from Dallas, Bosley was so heartbroken that he took his own life.

She moved to Shreveport and then to Boston under a different name and led the life of a call girl, supplementing her earnings by stealing from her clients. Her next adventure occurred in Waco, Texas, where she met another oilman, Joe Appel, who was found dead soon afterwards. When questioned, Louise admitted killing him on the grounds that he had tried to rape her. She was tried and acquitted of murder.

In 1913 it was back to Dallas where she married Harry Faurote. When his new wife proved unfaithful, he hanged himself. Not letting the grass grow under her feet, she moved to Denver where, in 1915, she married Richard C. Peete, a sales representative. They had a daughter but argued constantly and decided to separate in 1920.

Louise Peete decided to seek her fortune in Los Angeles and, looking for somewhere to rent, came across Jacob Charles Denton, a millionaire industrialist. She moved in with him as housekeeper-companion but was irked when he declined to marry her.

In May 1920 Denton vanished and Louise’s colourful explanation was that he had gone into hiding after being injured in an argument with another woman. At about this time, Louise arranged for a delivery of soil to be placed in the basement of the house where she intended growing mushrooms. Meanwhile, she set about forging Denton’s name on cheques and selling off his art collection.

The police began to take an interest in Denton’s disappearance and decided to search the house. Lying under a heap of soil in the basement, they found his mouldering corpse with a bullet wound in the back of the head. Louise was tried for murder in January 1921 and, this time, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mr Peete remained faithful, however, visiting her in jail but when she became fed up with him he committed suicide.

After serving thirteen years, Louise was released from prison on parole. She moved to Pacific Palisades, California, where she met Arthur and Margaret Logan, her parole sponsors, who took her into their home. In 1944, she married Lee Borden Judson, an elderly widower but they did not live together. Louise continued to reside with the Logans and trouble loomed when money started disappearing. Diverting possible accusations, Louise set about persuading Margaret Logan that her husband was deranged and should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital.