Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (20 page)

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Air force

Perhaps Joubert wanted to escape the area of the murder, or maybe he just wanted to get away from home. Whatever his motivation, he now joined the air force and was soon sent 1,500 miles across country to Nebraska. It was the new start he craved.

He quickly made friends with another cadet and for his first few weeks he was very happy, but there were rumours that Joubert was gay and his best friend backed off, afraid of being seen as homosexual too.

Lonely again, John applied for the job of assistant master with the Boy Scouts and was accepted. He now had access to dozens of young boys. He became close friends with one boy and often played Dungeons and Dragons with him, though Joubert insisted on always taking the Dungeon Master role.

The second murder

But fantasising about being dominant wasn’t enough and on Sunday 18 September 1983 he stalked 13-year-old Danny Joe Eberle who was beginning his usual early morning paper round. Joubert threatened the boy with a knife, then bound his hands behind his back and gagged him with surgical tape.

Dumping him in the boot of his car, he drove to a quiet field where he laid the boy in a ditch.

The young airman now untied the boy and ordered him to undress down to his underwear. When he’d done so, the sadist retied him again. He then tortured the boy with his knife, stabbing him five times in the back and four times in the front.

He also sliced into his neck. His victim was probably dead or in shock by the time the teenage sadist began biting at his legs and shoulder. He then carved a chunk out of the boy’s left leg to remove the indentation left by his teeth.

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John Joubert

Within days police found Danny’s butchered and bondaged corpse, the crucifix he always wore still wrapped around his wounded neck. The FBI would later comment that the boy had been hog-tied and that this doubtless formed part of the sadist’s fantasy. (In fact it figures in many criminal and recreational sexual fantasies and there is at least one American bondage magazine that’s entirely devoted to it.) They found that the rope used to bind the 13-year-old was incredibly unusual, having 106 differently coloured textile fibres inside it. Though they searched throughout America and abroad, they couldn’t find a comparable rope.

The third murder

For the next few weeks, the young airman masturbated frequently to the memory of torturing Danny Joe Eberle, then the pressure built up again. He stalked various boys and girls but was always frustrated by potential witnesses before he could force them into his car. Then, on 2 December 1983 at 7.45

a.m., he saw 12-year-old Chris Walden walking to school and forced him into his vehicle at knifepoint. Driving to a nearby wood, he ordered his weeping victim to undress down to his underpants.

The sadist then manually strangled the boy until he lay on the ground, helpless. Taking out his knife he stabbed his victim twice in the back before slitting his throat. He also carved an emblem, resembling the Boy Scouts badge, on Chris’s chest, presumably to hide his trademark bite-marks. Then he fled the area, replete, for now, with sexual images of being in charge.

Three days later the 12-year-old’s body was discovered by horrified pheasant hunters, his school jotter with his name written on it lying nearby.

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A failed abduction

Overhearing people comment that the slasher killer must be gay, Joubert determined that his next victim would be female.

In truth, he’d attempted to abduct female children in the past.

He wanted to see his victims squirming in pain and begging for mercy so their gender was secondary. That said, he clearly had a fetish about young boys stripped to their underpants.

On 11 January 1984, he drove to a school, thinking that it was a church, and shakily ordered the female teacher he found there to get into his car. Instead she raced past him and summoned help. The police were given a good description of the kidnapper’s vehicle and found that it was rented to a John Joseph Joubert who was working as a radar technician in a nearby air force camp.

When they searched his room, they found the distinctive rope which had been used to bind Danny Joe Eberle. Further searches of the 20-year-old’s locker and car revealed the tape used to gag his victims and the knife which had inflicted the tortuous and fatal blows. Even more damning, one of Danny Joe Eberle’s hairs was found in Joubert’s car boot. The detectives knew that they had their man, though he still looked like an innocent boy.

Arrest and trial

For several hours, Joubert continued to protest his innocence, then he broke down and confessed to both Nebraska murders and also to being the Oakdale Slasher. (He was not yet linked to the Portland murder of Ricky Stetson.) He asked to be allowed to tell his young friend from the Boy Scouts, and afterwards the two boys shared a brotherly hug.

The young airman pleaded guilty to murdering Danny Joe Eberle and Christopher Walden, the defence noting that he was a sexual sadist with a schizoid personality disorder. In October 168

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John Joubert

1984 the Nebraskan court sentenced him to die in the electric chair.

Two years later, as he languished on Death Row, John Joubert was found guilty of the Ricky Stetson murder, his teeth matching the bite indentations on the child’s body. This time he was given a life sentence.

Though he sometimes attempted to withdraw his confessions, at other times the troubled young killer was more honest about his motivation. He said that ‘it was the power and domination and seeing the fear’ in his victim’s eyes which turned him on.

He didn’t add that their physical suffering had also aroused him – but sadists often keep quiet about this aspect of their crimes.

For the next ten years, John Joseph Joubert remained on Death Row in Nebraska’s Lincoln Correctional Facility, filing appeals declaring that society would benefit if they let him live and studied him. During these years he aged markedly and becoming increasingly bloated until all that remained of his earlier self was his sadistic fantasies. Realists knew that if he was ever released he’d put these fantasies into practice again, something Joubert himself had hinted to a journalist who befriended him. On 7 July 1996 at 12.25 a.m., the 32-year-old child-killer walked from his cell to the death chamber where he was executed in the electric chair.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

JESSE JAMES

CUMMINGS

A lifelong sadistic wife-beater, Cummings finally
persuaded one of his bigamous spouses to murder
his half-sister. He then raped and murdered his
11-year-old niece before committing further
paedophiliac crimes.

Early hell

Jesse was born on the 19 November 1955 to Marie and Jesse Cummings in Modesta, California. His parents were migrant workers so they moved around constantly, harvesting fruit, picking cotton or chopping wood. They went on to have a daughter together but their itinerant lifestyle meant that neither of the children enjoyed any stability.

Marie was a violent woman, possibly schizophrenic, who beat both children with a bullwhip from the time they were small. She particularly picked on Jesse, who would often arrive at school with a bloodied and lacerated back. A kindly boy, he tried to shield his little sister from similar punishments, but eventually passed on the cruelty and began to catch and torture small animals.

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Jesse Cummings

At 12, barely able to read and write, Jesse left school to help his father support the impoverished family. But by 14 he could no longer stand the abuse from his mother and ran away from home. He lived by stealing and also went joyriding, taking some vehicles to nearby towns. Eventually he was caught and sent to a California detention facility.

In the same time frame, the Manson family were put on trial and Jesse became fascinated by Charles Manson as their lives were somewhat similar. Manson, too, had been ill-treated by his mother before spending time in juvenile detention halls.

Manson was also as poorly educated and impoverished as Jesse

– but he’d made himself irresistible to girls who had low self-esteem then had persuaded them to prostitute themselves, bringing him both kudos and cash. Damaged men are often drawn to even more damaged women whom they can control and demean.

By the time he emerged from youth custody, Jesse Cummings knew just how to become top dog. Like Manson, he would find women with desperately low self-esteem and persuade them to fall in love with him – then he’d treat them the way he wanted to treat his cruel mum.

The rst marriage

At 18, whilst living with his parents in Oklahoma, he began dating a small, heavyset 15-year-old girl called Margaret. She’d had polio as a child and required a leg brace and crutches to get around. Jesse pretended to adore her – sadists are initially very loving – and she gladly ran off to Mexico to become his bride.

But as soon as Jesse got his new wife back to Oklahoma, everything changed. She found out that they were to live in a dilapidated bus in his parents’ backyard and she realised that Jesse’s mother was a violent and terrifying neighbour who sometimes fetched a gun and took pot shots at her son. It doubtless made Jesse even more keen to victimise Margaret, 171

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who closely resembled his mother, and he’d hide her crutches so that she had to crawl around. Eventually she realised that having no man was better than marriage to a mad man. Fearing for her life, she fled whilst he was out at work.

The second marriage

Early-stage sadists like Jesse Cummings in this period hate to be alone – after all, they can only feel good about themselves when they are torturing other people. So Jesse moved to Arkansas and soon found himself a new girlfriend, Janet, whom he married bigamously when he was 23. By now he was living from stealing and conning people, using some of the money for painkilling drugs. Like many people haunted by an unhappy childhood, he used these drugs to excess, once remaining in a semi-conscious drugged state for five days.

The third marriage

Whilst still living with his second wife, Jesse began courting his third. Sherry was only 16 and already had a failed violent marriage behind her and a recent miscarriage. She had desperately low self-esteem which she tried to bolster with drink.

By age 17 she was pregnant by 28-year-old Jesse and she moved with him and his wife Janet back to Oklahoma. Again they lived in the old bus in his parents’ yard, with Janet sleeping at the back, and Jesse and Sherry at the front. Janet was understandably humiliated by this arrangement, which was just what Jesse wanted. He now had two women at his beck and call. But he pushed his luck too far, beating Janet mercilessly during one argument and attacking her with scissors, just as his mother had often attacked him with knives.

Janet fled back to her parents, ending eight years of hell. In the same time period, Jesse’s mother died so he was even more 172

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desperate than usual to exert control. He now bigamously married the teenage Sherry, four months after she gave birth to a baby girl.

Like many violent men (and women), Jesse originally seemed to adore his new daughter, showing her off to his many relatives.

Sherry had no idea that he’d become cruel to his children when they were old enough to walk.

Meanwhile his abuse towards Sherry increased. At first it was verbal and he criticised her so relentlessly for not losing her post-pregnancy weight that she stopped eating. Then he told her to prostitute herself to other men for money, and when she refused he broke her jaw.

The fourth marriage

Cummings still wanted to create a mini Manson family, so searched for a fourth wife he could control and realised he’d struck gold when he met single parent Juanita, always known as Anita. She’d been beaten by a previous boyfriend and had a very poor self-image. She was short and well built, just like Jesse Cummings’ mother. In other words, she was the kind of woman he loved to hurt.

On 14 June 1989, he bigamously married her, insisting that his third wife Sherry watch the ceremony. Within three weeks he persuaded both women to make up a
ménage à trois
– and when Anita threatened to leave him, he broke her jaw and knocked out one of her teeth.

The family moved to a run-down house in Oklahoma, where Jesse’s cruelty deepened. He persuaded Anita to let him handcuff and tie her to the bed then he left her there for several hours. When he came home he had sex with the distraught woman, reminding her that his father (who often visited unannounced) could have walked in and found her in her naked and bondaged state. On another occasion he sat on 173

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her chest for three hours, slapping her repeatedly in the face and laughing at her increasing distress.

The cruelty took its toll and Anita stopped eating. Jesse then acquired a bullwhip and beat her until she agreed to eat.

Cruelty to children

By now he was regularly beating his own little daughter and handcuffing her to the bed, sometimes sending her to relatives when he knew that Child Protective Services were due to visit.

But when Anita’s son was only one year old, he beat him too, whipping him with a belt until he went into convulsions and lost consciousness.

As the children grew older, he beat them with a paddle and with sticks and encouraged the women to spank the children, warning them to spank hard or they’d have to repeat the entire punishment. Both women chose to stay in this environment rather than free their offspring from such daily pain and fear.