Abomination: Devil Worship and Deception in the West Memphis Three Murders (36 page)

The Matamoros crime “family” were drug runners who sought the assistance of Costanzo to overcome obstacles in their illicit venture in the face of mounting pressure from rivals and police. The sacrifices they carried out were conducted with extreme brutality and cruelty---one victim was skinned alive. The practice of Satanism, including practices of bloodletting and torture, created fear and terror in the hearts of its drug running competitors and insured personal loyalty and control of the Matamoros group by Costanzo.

Beast of Satan killers

Daniel and Manuela Ruda

(2002)

In 2002, a German couple killed a man---stabbing him 66 times in a Satanic ritual in a trial that fascinated and horrified Germany. Daniel and Manuela Ruda never denied killing their victim, but argued it was not murder because they were acting on the Devil's orders. They beat the man with a hammer, then drank his blood. The decomposing body of the dead man, Frank Haagen, was found in the couple's flat with a scalpel protruding from his stomach and a pentagram carved into his chest. The couple showed no remorse for their crime and shocked the court with their extroverted behavior, striking defiant poses for photographers.

Note the pentagram on Manuela’s ring finger

Accounts of the gruesome killing, which occurred in a room full of human skulls, cemetery lights, and a coffin in which Manuela slept, were covered in detail by the German media.

Manuela Ruda, aged 23, told the court that Satan had called her when she was 14. She said she shunned strong light and had become involved in vampirism at "bite parties" in London. After contacting willing blood donors on the Internet, she learned to drink blood at the "bite parties."
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They would bite all parts of the body except the jugular, which was strictly forbidden. Then Manuela delivered her soul to Satan, who had ordered the "sacrifice" in what she described as an aura of light and energy. Daniel and Manuela considered themselves merely Satan's instruments and had to "make sure the victim suffered well."
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After killing their victim, who worked with Daniel selling car parts, the couple said they attempted suicide during several days on the run. Daniel also bought a chainsaw, saying he did not want to be empty-handed when the Devil ordered him to kill again.

14. CAUSE CELEBRE KILLERS

Jack Abbott

In the Belly of the Beast

Born on a U.S. military base in 1944, Jack Abbott’s mother was alleged to be a Chinese prostitute. After spending most of his youth in refrom schools, Abbott got nabbed forging checks, earning him a five year sentence in the Utah State Penitentiary. While interred in prison in 1965, he stabbed and killed another inmate, adding another 5 to 20 years to his sentence. He escaped, but was soon caught and sent to the federal prison.

While in prison, he spent his time reading; he preferred the works of classical philosophers. His literary skills increased, and after hearing about Norman Mailer’s interest in the Gary Gilmore murder case (which occurred in Utah in 1976-7), he sent a letter to the author offering expert insights into the federal criminal justice system. Mailer, impressed with Abbott’s letter, supported the release of the convicted murderer. Mailer also worked to get his book based on their correspondence published by Random House publishing. Mailer wrote that Abbott “had the makings of a powerful and important American writer and I have encouraged him in that direction.”
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Mailer attended Abbott’s parole hearing and passionately argued for his parole as a now reformed aesthete. Released as a conditional parolee employed by Mailer in 1981, Abbott appeared on television and was lauded as a reformed killer. His book,
In the Belly of the Beast
, became a nationwide bestseller. Toasted by the New York literati, his book earned a review by the
New York Times Book Review
. He even stayed with Mailer at his house in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Strangely, Abbott dedicated his book to Carl Pazram, a serial killer responsible for twenty-one deaths and additional rapes. Six weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed to death Richard Adan, a twenty-two year old waiter, over an argument about the use of a restaurant bathroom. Norman Mailer, Susan Sarandon, and actor Christopher Walken attended his trial in Manhattan. Found guilty, he returned to jail with a fifteen years-to-life sentence. Denied parole, Abbott hanged himself with a shoelace and a bedsheet in 2002.

The Vienna Strangler

Jack Unterwager

Nicknamed “The Vienna Strangler,” Jack Unterwager was not the average killer. The offspring of a prostitute, he rose above his poor, neglected childhood and became lauded by the literary elite in Vienna, Austria. What separated his murders from other killers was the attention paid to him by the Austrian cognoscenti. Living a life of petty crime which included pimping and burgalry, he committed fifteen separate offenses between the age of sixteen and twenty-five, landing him in and out of prison like an Austrian Charles Manson. A psychologist who interviewed Unterwager described him as:

an emotionally impoverished, sexually sadistic psychopath with narcissistic and histrionic tendencies. He tends to sudden fits of rage and anger...His physical activities are enormously aggressive, with sexually sadistic perversion.
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He was convicted of the murder of a prostitute in 1976 and earned a life sentence. Unable to read at the time of his conviction, incarceration provided time for study, and soon he began writing poems, short stories and plays about his criminal past:

I wielded my steel rod among prostitutes in Hamburg, Munich, and Marseilles...I had enemies and I conquered them through my inner hatred.

I was no knave, but a beast, a devil, an ungrateful child who was happy to be bad. I had no remorse.
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Unterwager eagerly proffered himself to the credulous public as a victim of the system. Due to his notoriety throughout Austria and his growing esteem within the literary community, demands began for his release.