Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (32 page)

The second murder

The following summer, Shirley Audette talked to one of her ex-boyfriends, telling him that she was getting into something dangerous with a new lover. The 24-year-old was doubtless talking about consensual sadomasochism

– she had no way of knowing that Boden wasn’t satisfied with this. On their final date he raped her, bit her breasts and strangled her, dumping her body behind an apartment complex in West Montreal.

The third murder

Four months later, on 23 November 1969, he collected his latest girlfriend Marielle Archambault from the jewellery store where she worked. He’d introduced himself using a pseudonym so her workmates heard her address him as Bill.

The 20-year-old was really pleased with her new beau and already kept a photograph of Bill in her room, telling friends that she was entranced by him. But all that was about to change…

Marielle must have been dumbfounded when her lover suddenly attacked her in her Montreal home. Recovering from the shock, she put up a ferocious struggle but was eventually raped, had her bra torn from her body and her breasts savagely bitten. She was cruelly strangled to death.

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The fourth murder

On 16 January 1970, Boden attacked 24-year-old Jean Wray in her Montreal flat, stripping her and biting at her breasts until he drew blood. Her boyfriend had arrived during the assault to find the door locked so he understandably assumed that no one was home. He went back shortly afterwards and found the door unlocked. His girlfriend’s still-warm naked and defiled body lay on the settee but the killer had fled.

The fth murder

Aware that the authorities were hunting him, Boden now moved 2,500 miles to Calgary. There he began dating teacher Elizabeth Anne Porteous, again introducing himself as Bill.

Some of her colleagues saw the immaculately dressed Bill in his blue Mercedes and noticed its distinctive window advertisement for a butcher’s firm.

In the early hours of 18 May 1970, Boden attacked his girlfriend in her bedroom and a violent struggle ensued. He eventually wrestled her to the floor and raped her. He also bit her breasts. Boden strangled Elizabeth during the assault, but not before she’d torn a cufflink from his expensive shirt. It was found under her naked body the following day.

Arrested

At last the police had one of the killer’s possessions, a tangible clue to his identity. With the help of Elizabeth Porteous’s colleagues, they also identified his car and he was arrested on 19 May. The vampiric serial killer of five lovely young women was still only 23 years old.

Boden admitted dating Elizabeth on the night of her murder but he denied mutilating or killing her. Fortunately a local dentist was able to confirm that they were his bite-marks on her breasts – there were 29 points of similarity between 268

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Boden’s teeth and the bite-marks on Elizabeth’s body. These bite-marks would later connect him with the other victims.

His underpants also had the victim’s pubic hair clinging to them.

At the Alberta Supreme Court, he stood trial for Elizabeth Porteous’s murder and was found guilty and given a life sentence. Returned to Montreal, he was tried for three of the other four murders – he denied killing the first victim, Norma Vaillancourt, though her body bore his trademark signature.

During these trials, the man dubbed the ‘Vampire Rapist’

admitted all but the first sadistic killing, telling the court that he’d only wanted to restrict the women’s breathing for their mutual pleasure, but that he’d got carried away. He explained that during the strangulation he’d been overwhelmed by the desire to bite their breasts.

Killing once by mistake was plausible – but killing four times wasn’t, and he was given another three life sentences. He was sent to Kingston Penitentiary where he began serving his sentence on 16 February 1972. By now, psychologists believed that he was a sadistic psychopath, as he’d admitted being indifferent when the women died during his biting frenzy and breath-restricting acts.

For the next three decades, the sadist remained in the Canadian penitentiary then he began to suffer from an undisclosed illness. In February 2006 he was admitted to Kingston Regional Hospital where he remained seriously ill for the next six weeks.

On 27 March, at 3.30 a.m., he passed away and the prison immediately began making funeral arrangements. He was 58

years old and had spent over half of his life in jail.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

SADISTS WHO KILL

CHILDREN

The sadist who abducts a child tends to be

particularly cruel because he (or she) loathes the
child’s innocence. Children who are loved and
supported are innately happy and their carefree
nature reminds the sadist of his own desperately
unhappy childhood and fills him with rage. The case
studies which follow are located in Wales, England
and America and the victims are a 14-year-old boy,
an 11-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl. (The
case of a woman who tortured and killed her own
child can be found in the Female Sadists chapter.)
MALCOLM KEITH WILLIAMS

Malcolm was born into a deeply dysfunctional family and had eight siblings. Two died during childhood and another two left home at the earliest opportunity, whilst one of Malcolm’s sisters was removed from her parents for her own safety when she was only eight.

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But Malcolm remained with his family in Glamorgan, Wales and by nine was attempting to have sex with other boys, a sign that he himself was a sexual abuse victim. At 12 he was sent to a children’s home where, desperately unhappy, he ran away several times. Brought back, he began to show signs of criminality, breaking into a school and stealing a bicycle. He subsequently broke into a factory.

Moved to an approved school, he was sodomised by some of the older boys. Subsequently, on visits home, he tried to sodomise his 12-year-old brother. Sent to borstal, he continued to practise homosexuality.

Towards the end of 1960, 20-year-old Malcolm Williams was once again released from borstal and returned to his parents’

house, finding work as a fitter’s mate alongside his father in a power station. 29 December started off as yet another potentially unfulfilling day. He worked at the power station all morning, had his lunch at a café and tried to talk to several schoolgirls there.

But instead of returning to work after lunch, he walked to the beach at Gileston, near Barry in Glamorgan, knowing that he wanted to be masturbated by a boy. There he approached a 14-year-old named Andrew Bonnick, who had been walking by the sea with two friends.

Malcolm Williams waited until Andrew’s friends left then he approached the boy and told him that another child had had an accident in a nearby concrete pillbox, a building which had been erected during the war and was now used to hold driftwood.

Andrew helpfully entered the pillbox, whereupon the 20-year-old sadist attacked him, tearing at the boy’s trousers so hard that he jerked the garment down to the boy’s thighs but left his belt around his waist.

But Andrew fought back, grabbing at his attacker’s donkey jacket. Enraged, the sadist hit him in the neck and eye then 271

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began to beat him with a notched stick. He beat the teenager again and again, aroused by his screams.

An hour or two later, realising that he’d probably been seen with the boy, Malcolm Williams concocted a story. He went to a nearby house and reported finding the lad. But the woman he reported this to was suspicious as the sadist’s hands, face and clothing were covered with blood. She called her husband, Albert Bonnick, and he accompanied Malcolm Williams to the pillbox – only to find that the dying boy was his own son. He only recognised Andrew by his clothes as his face had been beaten to an unrecognisable pulp. The badly injured teenager was taken to hospital but died within hours of shock and loss of blood.

Asked to give a statement, the 20-year-old said that he’d been at work all day – but witnesses came forward who’d seen him loitering on the sand and in a nearby café. And Andrew’s departing friends had noticed he was being followed by a young man.

The sadist then admitted to the murder, saying that the boy wouldn’t take his jeans off so he had punched him in the neck.

Holding him against the wall, he’d ripped at his trousers but the boy had refused to cooperate so he blacked his eye then began to beat him mercilessly with a branch. Eventually he’d thought the boy was dead so had made up the story about finding him.

Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was later refused the right to appeal.

ARTHUR SALVAGE

Details of this sadist’s background have been lost in the annals of time as he was born in 1908 – but it’s on record that at 20 he was sent to borstal for a series of petty thefts. It was noted at the time that he was of unbalanced mind.

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By 1931 he was working as a poultry farmer and living with his 50-year-old widowed mother in a cottage in Upper Ruckings, Kent. He also socialised with his mother, who was in poor health, often taking her to the cinema.

But on 3 July 1931, the older woman went out for the afternoon, leaving Arthur to plant 300 cabbages. The tall, fair-haired young man did so until he saw his 11-year-old neighbour Ivy Godden playing with a ball. She’d been sent into the woods with her older brother to fetch firewood but had lagged behind, feeling bored.

The exact sequence of events will never be known, but little Ivy ended up in Arthur Salvage’s bedroom where he tied her hands together and firmly bound her feet, looping the same piece of rope around her neck. He proceeded to beat her about the face, delivering a particularly savage blow to the left side of her head. He also inserted an object into her rectum in a deliberate attempt to cause pain. (He’d doubtless been sodomised by older boys whilst in borstal and had become anally fixated as a result.) During this period, Ivy’s mother thought she heard her daughter screaming ‘Mammy, mammy.’

She searched the nearby woods in vain.

Ivy’s ordeal continued. It would later be ascertained that she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, Salvage doubtlessly gaining sufficient pleasure from hurting her. Eventually – though she was already dying from her rectal injuries – he strangled her to death.

A makeshift burial

The sadist put his victim’s corpse in a sack and buried it in the woods that night and when Ivy’s parents asked if he had seen her, he replied that he hadn’t. The following day, a Saturday, he joined the local search party, telling the Goddens that Ivy was a nice little girl. On the Sunday the shallow grave was found by several of Ivy’s relatives who saw that the earth had been 273

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disturbed in the clearing. They dug down a few inches and found her bound and bloodied body dressed in underwear.

On the Monday, the killer played cricket with his friends and suggested they send a message of support to Ivy’s parents. He felt invincible, but, unknown to him, the police had brought in a bloodhound and taken it to the makeshift grave – and it led them straight to Arthur Salvage’s cottage gate.

There, the police found sacking identical to that used to hold Ivy’s body. They also found the type of rope which had been used to bind her hands and feet. Goat hair had been found on the sack – and the Salvages owned several goats. Salvage could also tie the type of reef knots which had been used to bind the child.

Confronted with the evidence, the 23-year-old admitted to the sadistic murder, saying that, for his mother’s sake, he was going to be honest with the detectives. He calmly gave details of the homicide, though he wept en route to the pre-trial hearing. But by the time the case went to trial at the Old Bailey, he’d changed his mind and pleaded not guilty, saying that he’d falsely admitted to the crime in order to please the detective and get the questioning over with.

Finding him guilty after only 30 minutes of deliberation, the judge said that Salvage was ‘possessed by some hideous sexual perversion’. He duly sentenced him to death. Salvage was given the opportunity to make a statement but merely stammered ‘I say…’ then appeared lost for words.

He refused to appeal and was questioned by three psychiatrists at Wandsworth Prison who all suggested that he be certified insane, noting that his ‘sadistic impulses were sometimes uncontrollable’. His death sentence was then commuted to life imprisonment in Broadmoor.

There, the sadist admitted that six months previously he’d murdered an 18-year-old maid called Louisa Steele, attacking her at Blackheath in south-east London and biting her all 274

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over, before beating and strangling her. Detectives believed his account of the murder but he was never charged for this sadistic crime.

THEODORE FRANCIS FRANK

Sex was a forbidden subject during Theodore Frank’s strict religious childhood in the USA and he understandably became obsessed by it. This obsession, combined with the beatings he received at home and at school whilst he was very young, doubtless helped inform his extreme sadism.

At 14 his parents sent him to a seminary to study for the priesthood, but he was thrown out two years later for having sex with one of his colleagues. Later he joined a monastery but was told to leave after he was found masturbating, a natural act (even animals do it) but one that many believe is forbidden by Biblical text. He then went to St Louis University to study electrical engineering but remained plagued with anger and self doubt.