Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (30 page)

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and was angry at society, but refused to give further details about the abuse.

Death

For the next nine years Lupo remained in jail but his HIV

eventually metamorphosed into full-blown AIDS and he died in Durham Prison in February 1995, a month after his forty-second birthday. He died without showing any remorse for his crimes.

ANDREW PHILIP CUNANAN

Cunanan is interesting because only his third victim was repeatedly tortured – yet his sadism was evident from his teenage years.

Born on 31 August 1969 to a wealthy retired navy officer and his housewife spouse in California, Andrew was the youngest of four children. His Catholic family encouraged him to become an altar boy, and it’s likely that he was sexually abused by his priest. (The cleric was later charged with abusing several of Andrew’s contemporaries and Andrew himself phoned a sexual abuse hotline to report the man.)

By his teens he had become sexually interested in other boys and began to lead a double life, for at school he was openly gay, bringing a male date to a school function when he was 18, but at home he continued to conform.

Deserted

When Andrew was 19, his father was accused of embezzling at least $500,000 from his employer. Facing jail, he left his family and fled to the Philippines where he’d been born. Devastated, 250

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Sadists Who Kill Men

Andrew dropped out of college and joined him there, but couldn’t stand the impoverished conditions in which his father now lived. He returned to his mother’s house in San Diego but she too had had to settle for very reduced circumstances.

By now he was using violence as a means to an end and he threw her into a wall during one fight, dislocating her shoulder.

Determined to recover his life of luxury, he began to prostitute himself to wealthy middle-aged gay men.

Losing control

For the next few years, Cunanan lived life to the full, partying several nights a week with the jet set and smoking the finest cigars. Some of his lovers let him live with them for several months, lending him expensive cars and giving him a generous allowance. But as he reached his mid twenties his energy began to fade and he started to take drugs in order to revive his
joie
de vivre
and his libido. Two of his lovers finished with him as they were tired of his mood swings and Andrew failed to find another meal ticket – wealthy homosexuals could afford to buy slender boyish men rather than prematurely ageing and overweight ones.

By his twenty-seventh year, Cunanan was alone, bitter and in increasing debt. He even had to sell his car in order to pay his rent.

Animal abuse

He began to smoke crack to get through the day, and, as his life continued to disintegrate, he took to torturing animals, picking up crabs on the beach and burning out their eyes with cigarettes. But his main fantasies revolved around hurting men and he often bought gay bondage magazines to fuel his lust.

That spring, he had an argument with his best friend Jeffrey Trail and stopped speaking to him. The supposed slights that 251

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he’d suffered echoed around and around in his head. At the end of April or 1 May 1997, he phoned Jeffrey, asking the 28-year-old to meet him at David Madson’s house – David had been Andrew’s lover but they’d now split up at David’s instigation.

The rst murder

Jeffrey told his boyfriend that he’d be back soon to go dancing.

He entered Madson’s flat and within 15 minutes Cunanan had attacked him, battering his head 30 times with a claw hammer until he collapsed.

The unfortunate David Madson came back to find a corpse on his floor and blood everywhere. It’s possible that Andrew Cunanan now held him hostage. In any case, the men spent the next two days in the apartment with the corpse.

The second murder

When more and more people – concerned at Jeffrey Trail’s disappearance and David Madson’s uncharacteristic unsociability – began to knock on the door, Cunanan knew that it was time to leave. He drove 33-year-old Madson, a world-renowned architect, to a lake outside Minneapolis and shot him once through the back of the head and once through the eye, a third shot grazing his face. He dumped the body on the shoreline where it was found by fishermen on 3 May.

The third murder

Cunanan now travelled to Chicago and committed his only torture-murder of the series, that of 75-year-old Lee Miglin.

The older man was a wealthy businessman who had been happily married for many years. He had no links to the gay community so it’s still unclear why Cunanan targeted him. The killer had told friends that he knew Lee’s son Duke and that the two were going into business together, but Duke denied 252

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knowing Cunanan – and Cunanan had lied numerous times in the past to make himself look more exciting, claiming to be everything from a pilot to a naval officer. It’s even possible that Andrew Cunanan simply saw Lee parking in his garage as he drove past and hated the fact that the man had obvious wealth and status, things he himself had irrevocably lost.

What’s certain is that he made the older man suffer for untold hours, binding him to a chair in the garage and wrapping a plastic bag around his face. Cunanan made a little hole in the bag, a hole which he would pinch closed repeatedly whilst watching his victim fight for breath. During the beatings which followed, Cunanan broke every single rib in his victim’s body and hit him 15 times about the head.

The sadist eventually stabbed Mr Miglin in the chest with a pair of gardening shears and almost severed his head from his body with a saw. He also backed over the man’s torso with his car four or five times. Finally he left the corpse in the garage, where it was discovered by Mrs Miglin when she returned from a trip.

The fourth murder

The killer drove on to New Jersey in one of Lee Miglin’s cars but knew he’d have to exchange it for a less traceable vehicle.

He determined to steal the first suitable transport he found.

Driving past a cemetery on 9 May, he saw a pickup truck parked outside the cemetery keeper’s lodge. Shooting dead the owner, 45-year-old William Reese, he stole the vehicle and drove on to Miami in it.

Cunanan now moved into an inexpensive motel near Gianni Versace’s upmarket home. He was known to have met the fashion designer at an exhibition where they’d exchanged a few words but friends were adamant that they hadn’t had a relationship. Whatever his motivation, he’d spent the last month fantasising about killing the older man.

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The fth murder

On 15 July 1997, he waited outside Versace’s apartment with his handgun at his side. When Gianni approached the gates of his house, the 27-year-old killer shot him in the face. Versace collapsed and Cunanan walked up to him and shot him execution-style through the head.

Suicide

Aware that he was now on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, Cunanan phoned a friend and endeavoured to secure a false passport. Meanwhile, he lived in various houseboats which he’d broken into – but his cover was blown on 23 July when a caretaker boarded one of the boats. Knowing that the police were closing in on him, and realising that to kill the caretaker would only buy him a few more hours of freedom, he shot himself in the head.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SADISTS WHO KILL

WOMEN

Sadists kill women far more often than they kill
men – hardly surprising given that sadists prefer to
torture the gender they are sexually attracted to and
only three to ten per cent of the population is gay.

As the following cases from Austria, Germany and
Canada show, many of these heterosexual sadists kill
serially, the period between murders diminishing
with time.

JOHANN JACK UNTERWEGER

Unterweger served 15 years for a 1974 murder, was paroled early due to media pressure and went on to torture and kill at least 11 more women.

In a way, Unterweger went to jail before he was even born, as his prostitute mother Theresia was behind bars in Austria during much of her pregnancy. He came into the world on 16

August 1952 and she swiftly abandoned him. The little boy never knew his father, rumoured to be an American soldier, and was initially raised by his violent alcoholic grandfather.

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After seven years of horrendous neglect and abuse, Jack

– for he preferred to be known by his middle name – was sent to various foster homes which were equally abusive. His guardians were so disinterested in his welfare that he didn’t even learn how to read and write.

Women had failed him utterly and now he was going to make them pay, so at 16 he attacked a prostitute. He served jail time for this sentence but came out ready to harm other prostitutes.

He would hurt such representations of his neglectful mother over and over again.

Jack Unterweger became a violent pimp, abducting a female and forcing her into prostitution. He went to jail for this offence and served further jail time for burglary and for receiving stolen goods and stealing cars.

The early murders

In 1974 he teamed up with a prostitute to rob her friend Margaret Schefer’s house. The pair then lured 18-year-old Margaret into Unterweger’s car. Unterweger drove her to the woods, bound her hands behind her back, stripped her and mercilessly beat her. He also battered her about the head then strangled her to death with her own bra. Covering his trail as best he could, he pulled her naked body into the bushes and covered it with leaves.

That same year he sadistically killed prostitute Marcia Horveth, gagging her with adhesive tape, restraining her and eventually strangling her with her own stockings and a necktie.

His accomplice was questioned by the police about Margaret Schefer’s murder and soon implicated Unterweger, who was arrested and charged with this crime. He was given a life sentence, so the authorities saw no point in having an expensive trial to try him for Marcia Horveth’s equally cruel death.

Yet the authorities were aware of how dangerous the young man was as, talking of the Schefer homicide, he’d told the 256

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Salzburg court: ‘I envisioned my mother in front of me and I killed her.’ The court psychologist labelled him a sexually sadistic psychopath who would kill again if released.

A second chance

At the start of his life sentence, Jack behaved like most of the other prisoners, building up his body at the gym and adorning it with numerous intricate tattoos. But eventually he learned to read and write and became so adept with language that he produced widely praised poetry, short stories and plays – a cruel background often generates an exceptional writer or artist as the child has to create a rich inner life in order to survive.

After ten years in jail he wrote his autobiography
Purgatory
which became a bestseller and was later made into an equally lauded film. The prison guards were impressed by his talent and won over by his personal charm, running errands for him and encouraging him to edit the prison newspaper.

Meanwhile, the public and the press clamoured for his release, seeing the man of letters rather than the underlying psychopath. Fifteen years into his sentence, on 23 May 1990, he was given parole.

For the next few months, he was the darling of the media and regularly appeared on radio and television to discuss literature and to promote his plays. Enjoying the attention, he bought himself a car with a personalised number plate, a wardrobe of designer suits and lots of men’s jewellery. He also frequented the best nightclubs, buying champagne for the numerous women who shared his bed.

But Unterweger wanted much more than a consensual lover.

He ached to cuff a woman, to brandish his knife or whip and hear her plead for mercy. His cruel lust built and, four months after his release from prison, he killed again.

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The rst post-prison murder

On Tuesday 14 September 1990, during a trip to Czechoslovakia, he went to the red-light district in Prague where he encountered Blanka Bockova, a butcher’s assistant. Jack struck up a conversation with the pretty brunette in an upmarket bar, and the two were still drinking as midnight approached and Blanka’s friends left.

The sadist probably persuaded Blanka to go with him for sex – she was known to have had many lovers and sometimes swapped sex for favours. She had no reason to fear the well-dressed and ostensibly charming journalist.

But when he got her to a quiet location, he handcuffed her hands behind her back, stripped her, beat her and stabbed her.

She fought back as best she could but was no match for the angry, lustful man.

Like most sadists, Unterweger probably orgasmed whilst causing his victim’s suffering. Eventually he strangled her with her own stockings and dumped her in the forest, pulling her legs wide apart and finding that she had a tampon inside her. After covering her corpse with leaves, he threw her clothes and her ID in the nearby Vlitava River and left the scene.

The second murder

Jack Unterweger returned to Austria and committed his next known murder. On 26 October 1990 he picked up Brunhilde Masser, a street walker, and took her to a forest north of Graz. He stripped her, tortured her with a knife and possibly beat her – her buttocks had been eaten by animals by the time her body was found so the pathologist couldn’t be sure. She had been violently strangled with her own stockings and left naked in a stream.