The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (95 page)

November 3, 2003, during “a routine inspection of entertainment venues” in Hebei Province.

Little background information is available today on While most details of Wang’s crime spree were sup-China’s most prolific serial killer, since state security pressed by official order, the
Guangzhou Daily
told its forces imposed a gag rule on his case in 2003. Officials readers: “His methods were extremely cruel—he didn’t say that Wang Ganggang was born in Henan Province leave survivors, and more than a few families were in July 1968, and ran away from home in 1985. Wang’s exterminated by his hand.” Conflicting reports claimed parents described him as an introverted and studious that five or 10 victims survived with serious head child who did well in a village boarding school before wounds. Authorities described the

he left at age 17 to work in a coal mine. His last known MOTIVES for Wang’s

crimes as rape and robbery, involving detailed surveil-residence in Zhengyang County was a thatched hut lance of potential victims as he roamed from town to with one piece of furniture, a 20-year-old bed, illumi-town. In at least one case, Wang burglarized a home, nated by a single 15-watt lightbulb. He traveled widely then returned the next night to kill its inhabitants and as a rootless drifter, known by a list of pseudonyms, rape a teenage girl. Wang’s last raid claimed five victims including Yang Liu, Yang Xinhai, and Yang Zhiya. Train Dongliangxiang, on August 8, 2003, with two versing four provinces on a bicycle, Wang worked odd teenage girls raped after death.

jobs to survive, employed most often as a cook at vari-Wang’s murder trial in Henan Province, at Luohe ous construction sites. In 1996, he received a five-year City Intermediate People’s Court, consumed all of one sentence for attempted rape at Zhumadian, in Henan hour on February 1, 2004. Wang declined to appeal Province.

his sentence, and he was shot by a military firing Following his release from custody in 1999 or 2000

squad on February 14. His case, coinciding with the (reports differ), Wang was abandoned by his girlfriend.

prosecution of serial killer

That rejection sparked an epic killing spree, beginning HUANG YONG in Henan

Province, brought unwelcome attention to China’s in winter 2000, as Wang invaded rural homes and modern rash of serial murders. In both cases, police slaughtered whole families in the style of Ukrainian failed to broadcast alerts while the crimes were in

“Terminator” ANATOLY ONOPRIENKO. Variously armed progress.

with a hammer, meat cleaver, or shovel, Wang claimed at least 67 lives and raped an estimated 25 women during a two-year rampage, including 26 attacks in Anhui,

“WANNA-BES”:
Would-be serial killers

Hebei, Henan, and Shandong Provinces. Several crime In a society that often grants celebrity—even “folk scenes revealed evidence of necrophilia. Wang typically hero” status—to violent felons, it should come as no wore gloves, leaving a bloodied white pair at one crime surprise that certain twisted individuals admire and
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“WANNA-BES”

seek to emulate infamous killers. As with Wild West myself to kill all of these low-downs,” Vannatta outlaws, Prohibition bootleggers, Depression-era bank wrote, “and I’ll get them all. No stopping until the robbers, and modern ghetto “gang bangers,” so notori-last one is dead.” The list included a local judge ous serial killers also have a fringe-dwelling cult of rapt and prosecutor, plus six members of Vannatta’s admirers. Most such “fans” never progress beyond the family, his stepmother’s name heavily underlined.

stage of being GROUPIES, spending their hard-earned (or

“I’ll get her last,” Vannata wrote, “for in that way, stolen) money on ARTWORK AND MEMORABILIA related the old witch will suffer more from the suspense of to serial murder. Some correspond with caged killers waiting for her just deserts.”

directly; a smaller number visit their idols in person or

•
William Hollenbaugh:
Hollenbaugh tried his best accept collect phone calls from prison; a tiny handful to commit serial murder in Franklin County, Penn-

“fall in love” and marry slayers sentenced to death or a sylvania, between April 1964 and May 1966, but life behind bars.

the ex-convict and sometime mental patient was And some—thankfully a minuscule percentage—

continually frustrated by poor marksmanship in physically imitate the deeds of their “heroes” in real life.

his sniping attacks on local residents and

Contrary to the expressed fears of law enforcement motorists. For two years, the elusive “Mountain personnel and the plot devices of FICTION AND FILM, Man of Shade Gap” terrorized his chosen hunting there seems to be no case on record where an individual ground, but his sole fatality was FBI Agent Terry has consciously, precisely acted out a series of “copy-Anderson, shot from ambush on May 17, 1966,

cat” murders (although one Maryland defendant, near the end of an eight-day manhunt. By that

arrested for beheading his mother in 1989, initially time, Hollenbaugh had been identified, and he was identified himself to the arresting officers as “Hannibal killed while resisting arrest the following day.

Lecter,” psycho-psychiatrist from
Red Dragon
and
The

•
Rodney Gene Beeler:
A fetish burglar and rapist
Silence of the Lambs
). The closest thing yet to a series in Orange County, California, Beeler was—like at of “copycat” crimes was reported from Georgia in the least seven serial killers before him—forced to late 1970s, where sex slayer WILLIAM HANCE masquer-wear girls’ clothing as a child. That may (or may aded briefly as a racist vigilante, his letters to police not) help to explain his habit of stealing women’s alleging (falsely) that his crimes against black women underwear from homes and laundromats and

were a response to “Stocking Strangler” CARLTON

masturbating into the bras and panties. Later, fol-GARY’s murder of elderly whites. (Hance himself was lowing a burglary conviction, Beeler was exam-black, the notes an effort to divert suspicion form himined by psychiatrists, one of whom wrote in his self to a nonexistent “Chairman of the Forces of Evil.”) report: “Beeler is naturally evil, as some men are Elsewhere, we know that serial killers including CAR-naturally passionate or bellicose, tender or

ROLL EDWARD COLE, British gay-slayer COLIN IRELAND, weak.” A second analyst went so far as to call him and New York “Zodiac” killer Heriberto Seda collected

“soulless” and “a natural enemy of mankind.” In books and/or newspaper clippings about other serial July 1985, Beeler raped and robbed a 53-year-old slayers before they embarked on their own killing woman; five months later, he shot and killed 23-sprees. Cole especially admired “Boston Strangler”

year-old Anthony Stevenson, apparently during a ALBERT DESALVO, while Ireland studied “the FBI man-bungled robbery attempt. Convicted of murder in ual” for details on how to succeed at his game. When July 1988, he was sentenced to death on May 4, asked why he had killed five victims, Ireland told police, 1989.

“I have got the book; I know how many you have to

•
Michael Sams:
A British felon known as “Metal do.” Other practitioners—the frustrated “wanna-bes”

Mickey” for the artificial leg he wore, Sams

examined here—apparently set out to murder a series of abducted 18-year-old prostitute Julie Dart from victims but somehow fell short of their goal, either Leeds on July 9, 1991, demanding $280,000 ran-through clumsiness or pure bad luck. This list includes: som in a series of letters Dart was forced to write.

(One note threatened that a local department store

•
Robert Vannatta:
Vannatta, of Mr. Vernon, Illi-would be firebombed if police ignored the

nois, was sentenced to 199 years in August 1943

demands.) The ransom was never paid, but it

for the July sex-murder of local waitress Norma made no difference to Dart, who was murdered as Bradford. Prior to the killing, Vannatta raped a soon as she had finished writing the letters. Her 19-year-old girl and burglarized local shops, steal-body was found July 14. A final note from the

ing money and weapons. At his arrest, police

killer warned that “Prostitutes are easy to pick up seized Vannatta’s “Diary of Revenge,” including a and I won’t spend any more time in prison for

hit list of eight intended victims. “I promised killing two instead of one!” His second victim,
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“WANNA-BES”

abducted from Birmingham on January 22, was

that “It makes me happy to think of all the hurt I not a hooker, though: 25-year-old Stephanie Slater can cause.” Massey hoped to murder 700 victims was a real estate agent. Sams demanded $300,000

before he died, thus achieving the “greatest

for her safe return, and this time the ransom was slaughter and carnage wrought upon the earth by paid, his victim released unharmed. Detectives one man.” Convicted on all counts at trial, he was tracked Sams to his home in Newark, arresting

sentenced to death on October 12, 1994. Massey him in January 1992; he subsequently confessed to was executed by lethal injection on April 3, 2001.

Julie Dart’s murder, whereupon he was sentenced

•
Todd Rizzo:
An 18-year-old resident of Waterbury, to life imprisonment.

Connecticut, Rizzo was yet another avid fan of

•
Todd Everett Fluette
and
David Allen Kring:
This infamous serial killers, citing JEFFREY DAHMER as pair may actually have achieved serial-killer status his personal favorite. Discharged from the Marine in San Diego, California, but since they were

Corps after less than a year in uniform, Rizzo set charged with and convicted of only one murder, about emulating his hero in October 1997. Luring they officially rank as “wannabes.” Between

a 13-year-old neighbour into his back yard “to November 4 and December 8, 1991, three men

hunt snakes,” Rizzo then knocked the boy down, were stabbed to death in the vicinity of Balboa

“sat on him like a horse and hit him a bunch of Park, their bodies hacked and mutilated in a grisly times in the head” with a sledgehammer. Linked to pattern of overkill. Investigation led detectives to the murder by a witness who saw his car near the US Navy seamen Fluette and Kring, who had

spot where the body was dumped, Rizzo told

boasted to fellow sailors of “rolling bums” and police the murder was committed for “no good

“killing faggots” in Balboa Park. Their “jokes”

reason. It was like a sort of urge, I guess.”

included references to “skinning the skin off the

•
Aida Nourredin Mohammed Abu Zeid:
A 25-faggots like you would skin a potato,” and while year-old Egyptian nurse at a Cairo hospital, Abu other seamen did not take the conversations seri-Zeid was arrested on December 17, 1997,

ously, they described Kring and Fluette as “serial charged with killing one patient and attempting to killer nuts” who openly admired JOHN GACY,

murder 29 others. Her MOTIVE was revenge

THEODORE BUNDY, and the unidentified “ZODIAC.”

against a hospital physician who shunned her

Indicted for the murder of 48-year-old Michael romantic overtures. After confessing the crimes, Hamilton (the third victim), Kring pled guilty in Abu Zeid attempted suicide by leaping from a

July 1992; on August 13, he was sentenced to a third-story window.

prison term of 25 years to life. Fluette went on trial

•
Hayward Bissell:
A 37-year-old Ohio resident, five days later, was convicted of the same murder on Bissell went berserk in DeKalb County, Alabama, August 31, and was sentenced to life imprisonment on January 23, 2000, ramming one man with his

without parole. Both defendants deny any role in car and stabbing another, then knifing the second the other two murders, and those cases remain offi-victim’s dogs to death before he fled the scene.

cially unsolved.

When police stopped Bissell’s car, they found a

•
Jason Massey:
Another fan of Ted Bundy and of woman’s headless body strapped in the passenger

“Night Stalker” RICHARD RAMIREZ, Massey

seat. In addition to beheading girlfriend Patricia recorded his ghoulish aspirations in a 500-page Booher, Bissell also cut out her heart, then severed diary he titled “Slayer’s Book of Death.” He also one hand and one leg. Arresting officers removed kept a cooler filled with rotting animal heads at her larynx from his pocket. Police subsequently his home in Ennis, Texas, 60 miles southwest of determined that Bissell killed Booher at a rest stop Dallas. On the night of July 26, 1993, Massey

in Georgia. At trial in February 2002, Bissell pled began his campaign by murdering 14-year-old

“guilty but insane” and received a life prison James King and his 13-year-old stepsister

term.

Christina Benjamin from Garrett, Texas. Both

•
John Allan:
British slayer John Allan poisoned were shot, then decapitated, with their hands and girlfriend Cheryl Lewis with cyanide in October feet severed and further mutilations inflicted on 1998, while the couple was on holiday in Luxor, their torsos. Local police had a record of com-Egypt. One year earlier, the 48-year-old industrial plaints against Massey dating back to 1987 when chemist had forged a will in Lewis’s name, making he was 15 years old. Investigators turned up evi-himself the beneficiary of her £460,000 estate.

dence linking him to the murders, and he was

When police arrested Allan in February 1999,

indicted on August 11, 1993. At trial, his diary they found enough cyanide in his car to kill 600

helped the prosecution, with its frank admission people—some of it allegedly earmarked for cur-276

WARNING Signs of Violent Tendencies

rent girlfriend Jennifer Hughes. Detectives dubbed present danger of the repetition of serious criminal Allan a profit-motivated “BLUEBEARD KILLER,”