The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (92 page)

Florida, where Unterweger was captured without resis-days later. Peggy Booth, age 26, was found dead in a tance. (His girlfriend told police they had chosen Miami Malibu canyon on July 10. All three women were hook-as their refuge because she “liked Don Johnson,” star of ers, all three had been savagely beaten before they were the Miami Vice TV series.)

strangled with their own bras, and all three bodies were In custody once more, Unterweger was accused of sexually violated with tree branches. (Some accounts killing 11 prostitutes since his release from prison—six refer vaguely to a fourth, unnamed victim in San Diego, in Austria, three in Los Angeles, and two more in but no charges were ever filed in that case.)

Czechoslovakia. The Czechs didn’t want him, but Aus-Unterweger was safely back in Austria by the time tria and the United States squabbled over jurisdiction, Interpol officials recognized descriptions of the L.A.

Jack’s homeland winning out when Austrian officials killer’s MODUS OPERANDI in February 1992. An Aus-agreed to try Unterweger for five foreign murders as trian SWAT team raided Unterweger’s Vienna apart-well as the six committed on their own soil. Extradition ment, but their suspect was already gone, embarked was thereby approved, and Los Angeles authorities
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URDIALES, Andrew

packed up their forensic evidence for shipment across work from Urdiales, after he found her waiting at a bus the Atlantic.

stop, but she spurned his romantic advances. Returning Back home in Graz, Unterweger was indicted on 11

at the end of her shift, he lured Asbenson with the offer murder counts in August 1992, but legal maneuvers of another ride, then held a knife to her throat and delayed his trial for nearly two years. The proceedings bound her hands, proceeding to the nearby desert finally began on April 20, 1994, and lasted for two where he raped Asbenson and choked her unconscious.

months, including testimony by FBI experts imported Reviving in the trunk of her kidnapper’s rented car, from Quantico, Virginia. Unterweger seemed confident Asbenson managed to open the lid and escape on foot.

throughout the trial, never failing to smile for the cam-Urdiales returned the car and flew home the same day.

eras, but evidence was mounting up against him. A Chicago acquaintances, unfamiliar with his history bomb blast at the courthouse failed to disrupt jury of adolescent sadism toward animals, described deliberations on June 28, and Unterweger was con-Urdiales as “different” after his stint in the Marine victed that afternoon on nine murder counts and Corps. His childhood friend Gary Zabala later told acquitted of two others. The judge promptly sentenced reporters, “I think the Marines changed his life.” Be him to life imprisonment in maximum security, but that as it may, Urdiales took a hiatus from murder after Unterweger had the last laugh. At 3:40 A.M. on June 29, Asbenson’s escape. He would not kill again until March jailers found him hanging from a curtain rod in his cell, 1995, on another California visit. There, he met 32-the drawstring from his sweatpants looped around his year-old prostitute Denise Maney working the streets of neck. Several audio cassettes were recovered from his Cathedral City and drove her to the desert. As Urdiales cell, but their content has never been divulged.

later described the event to police, he bound Maney and raped her, then stuck a .45-caliber pistol in her mouth and “blew the back of her head off.” He then stripped
URDIALES, Andrew

the corpse of all clothing and possessions, leaving it for Chicago native Andrew Urdiales was 13 years old in desert scavengers.

June 1978, when he beat the family dog to death with a baseball bat, then persuaded his parents the animal had broken its neck in an accidental fall. After high school, Urdiales joined the U.S. Marine Corps and was stationed at Camp Pendleton, in southern California, from 1984 to 1991. While still in uniform, he used his combat training to commit a string of gruesome murders that baffled Golden State authorities for a decade.

The first victim was 23-year-old Robbin Brandley, a fine arts student at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo, California. On the night of January 18, 1986, following a concert on campus, Urdiales attacked Brandley in a dimly lit parking lot, stabbing her 41

times in the back, neck, chest, and hands. Police were still puzzling over that crime in July 1988, when Urdiales claimed his second victim. Julie McGhee was a 29-year-old prostitute whom Urdiales shot repeatedly with a .45-caliber pistol, leaving her corpse near Cathedral City, in Riverside County. Two months later, on September 25, police found 31-year-old Mary Ann Wells, another prostitute, shot with the same pistol at an abandoned industrial complex in San Diego. The same gun was used again, on April 17, 1989, to kill 18-year-old streetwalker Tammy Erwin at Palm Springs.

After the Erwin slaying, Urdiales dismantled his pistol to scatter its parts far and wide. He left the Marine Corps with an honorable discharge in 1991, returning home to his parents in Chicago, but September 1992

found him back in southern California for a holiday.

Nineteen-year-old Jennifer Asbenson accepted a ride to Andrew Urdiales (AP Photo/Illinois Dept. of Corrections)
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URDIALES, Andrew

Success in far-off California seemingly persuaded intent to seek the death penalty against Urdiales. His Urdiales that it would be safe to hunt at home. While trial for the murders of Lynn Huber and Laura Uylaki working as a security guard at a store in downtown began on April 8, 2002, including reports from one psy-Chicago, Urdiales spent his free time trolling for prosti-chiatrist that Urdiales claimed a history of childhood tutes in suburban Hammond, Indiana. His first home-molestation. Siblings refuted that story, and jurors con-town victim was 25-year-old Laura Uylaki, a

victed Urdiales of both murder counts on May 23. The Hammond resident found floating in Cook County’s same panel imposed a death sentence on May 30, 2002.

Wolf Lake on April 14, 1996. Uylaki had been shot The story might have ended there, bogged down in twice in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. Exactly two long-winded appeals spanning years or decades, but Illi-months later, on July 14, police hauled 21-year-old Cas-nois was rocked by a series of scandals at the turn of the sandra Corum from the Vermillion River in Livingston new millennium, involving gross misconduct by police County, 90 miles south of Chicago. The Hammond and prosecutors in high-profile capital cases. In the woman had been shot and stabbed repeatedly. On 1990s, private investigators from Northwestern Univer-August 2, 1996, the action shifted back to Wolf Lake, sity’s Center on Wrongful Convictions revealed evidence with discovery of 22-year-old Lynn Huber.

of coerced confessions and suppressed exculpatory evi-Later in 1996, Chicago police detained Urdiales for a dence that freed 17 Illinois inmates from death row.

weapons violation involving that same .38, but he was Finally, on January 11, 2003, outgoing governor George released without charges. In April 1997, a Hammond Ryan proclaimed that “the Illinois capital punishment prostitute fled screaming from his car after Urdiales system is broken.” By executive order, he commuted all flashed a gun and tried to handcuff her. Police arrested death sentences still pending in the state—167 con-Urdiales on April 23, and ballistics tests on his weapon demned men and women in all, including Andrew

were still in progress when he confessed eight murders Urdiales.

and the rape of Jennifer Asbenson. Lab reports con-Angry appeals of Ryan’s decision proved fruitless in firmed that the .38 registered to Urdiales had indeed court, but Illinois prosecutors still had another shot at killed victims Uylaki, Corum, and Huber. His confes-Urdiales, for the murder of Cassandra Corum in Liv-sions were chilling, including admissions that Urdiales ingston County. Facing another death sentence under

“was turned on by watching women suffer.” Often, he revised rules of procedure, Urdiales changed his game said, victims begged for their lives, saying things like plan on April 24, 2004, revising his INSANITY DEFENSE

“ ‘Please don’t kill me’ and the usual babbling.” Palm to a plea of “guilty but mentally ill.” Prosecutor Springs detective John Booth described his conversation Michael Hood denigrated that claim while branding with Urdiales as “the worst interview I’ve ever had. He Urdiales “a cold, calculated killing machine” who had just sat there and said things like, ‘Then I blew her head

“honed his craft” through successive murders. Defense off,’ like it was no big deal.”

attorney Stephen Richards told reporters, “Any serial-Despite that calm facade, Urdiales was placed on a killer case is going to be used as a poster child for the round-the-clock suicide watch following his formal death penalty. However, [Urdiales] has serious mental arraignment on April 29, 1997. Chicago authorities health issues and suffered abuse. You can’t just look at filed two murder counts against him (Uylaki and what the number of murders is.” Judge Harold Fro-Huber), while prosecutors in California and downstate bish disagreed, rejecting the defendant’s plea and con-Illinois prepared other cases. Formal Cook County victing Urdiales of first-degree murder on May 10, indictments followed on May 13, while Urdiales was 2004. Two weeks later, a jury chosen for the trial’s held without bail. A new arraignment followed on June penalty phase imposed a new death sentence. Califor-13, 1997, at which time Urdiales pleaded not guilty.

nia prosecutors have suggested that they may wish to Legal wrangling over capital punishment in Illinois try Urdiales for his murders in that state, but no extra-state courts postponed further progress in the case until dition requests had been filed when this work went to April 30, 2001, when prosecutors filed a notice of press.

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V

VACHER, Joseph

berth. Transferred to the Asylum of Saint-Robert in Known to history as the “French Ripper,” Vacher was 1893, he seemed to improve dramatically—so much so, one of the few serial killers on record who looked and in fact, that doctors released him as “cured” on April 1, acted the part in daily life. Born in 1869, the last of 15

1894.

children in a poor farming family in southeastern Vacher started drifting, adopting a vagrant lifestyle, France, Vacher was known throughout his life for hiking from one town to the next with no clear destina-erratic fits of temper. He joined the French army in tion in mind. What he
did
have in mind was the sadis-1890, published accounts disagreeing on whether he tic rape and murder of anyone who caught his fancy, a was drafted or enlisted voluntarily. In any case, Vacher homicidal compulsion which claimed at least 11 lives seemed to enjoy military service at first, striving hard to (some accounts say 14; one claims 26) before his next earn the rank of corporal. When his promotion was arrest, in August 1897. Gender seemed irrelevant to delayed—unjustly, in his view—Vacher attempted sui-Vacher, though he apparently murdered more women cide by slashing his throat with a razor. The wound was than men. His first known victim was 21-year-old not fatal, and his superiors were so impressed with Eugénie Delhomme, a factory girl Vacher stabbed, dis-Vacher’s dedication to the service that they hastened his emboweled, and raped after death near Vienne in June promotion.

1894. Most of the victims that followed were farm It soon became apparent that Corporal Vacher had workers, each in turn stabbed to death, then raped and serious problems. He intimidated his fellow soldiers, grossly mutilated after death, some of the bodies bear-eyeing their throats and mumbling comments about ing human bite marks. Authorities discerned a pattern

“flowing blood,” to the point that some of them com-from descriptions of a filthy, scar-faced tramp seen in plained and Vacher was sent to the infirmary for obser-the neighborhood of several homicides, but no one vation. Out on sick leave, he met a young woman at seemed to know the drifter’s name and tracing him Baumes-des-Dames and fell in love at first sight. The took time.

lady did not spurn him outright, but her response was On August 4, 1897, Vacher spied a woman collecting cool enough to provoke one of Vacher’s tantrums.

pine cones in the Bois des Pelleries and attacked her, but Whipping out a pistol in the midst of an argument, he she fought back with surprising strength, screaming for shot the woman three times (she survived) and then help. Her husband, children, and several neighbors turned the gun on himself. No great marksman, even at rushed to the scene, overpowered Vacher, and dragged point-blank range, Vacher survived his second suicide him to the local inn, where he entertained his captors attempt with a damaged right eye and a partially para-with accordion music while waiting for police to arrive.

lyzed face. Committed to the Asylum of Saint-Ylle, Charged with the relatively minor crime of offending Vacher behaved in such outrageous style that even the public decency, Vacher was sentenced to three months in most violent of his fellow inmates gave him a wide jail. For reasons yet unknown, he then wrote a confession
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