Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (35 page)

A photo taken in her mid teens shows a somewhat overweight girl glowering at the camera, her hair scraped back tightly from her forehead, her hands lightly balled into fists. Writers who saw this snapshot years later would describe her as plain and suggest that her sadism was aimed at more attractive women

– but Irma Grese blossomed after leaving home, and later witnesses described her as a beautiful blonde. These same 292

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writers simply said that she came from a ‘good hard-working family’ and neglected to mention that her mother had died at a pivotal time in her life and that her father was deeply conservative, very strict and physically chastised her.

A savage beating

The unhappy young woman left school at 15 and spent six months working the land before taking a job in a shop. After another six months she moved on to work as a nurse’s aid in a sanatorium, telling her sister that she was desperate to escape from home.

Irma decided that she wanted to become a nurse – people who have felt unnurtured often go into nursing, believing that they can’t be loved for themselves, only for offering endless care to others. She also hoped that such a job would allow her to meet and marry a doctor, but her work at the hospital was unsatisfactory and she was told to look for another job.

She took unskilled work in a dairy for a few months then turned to the local labour exchange for help. They explained that the concentration camps needed people with quasi-nursing skills (disease was rife) and in the summer of 1942 they sent her to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for training.

Thereafter, she went home for a short holiday but when her father found out that she was working at the death camps, he beat her mercilessly and threw her out of the house.

Revenge

Essentially homeless, Irma Grese returned to Ravensbruck and by 19 she’d been made a supervisor. The following year she was transferred to Auschwitz where she was in charge of 30,000

female Polish and Hungarian prisoners. All of these women were viewed by the guards as completely expendable so the beaten child could now have the ultimate revenge.

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At 7.30 a.m. each morning, Grese began to patrol the grounds, terrorising the camp dwellers. She would arbitrarily target a woman and flog her until she begged for mercy. She particularly liked to hurt large-busted women, ordering them to open their blouses whereupon she cut their breasts open with her plaited whip. Afterwards she would order one of the inmates with medical training to sew the woman up without benefit of anaesthetic and would sway orgasmically and foam at the mouth.

The youthful sadist also liked to set her two Alsatian dogs

– which she kept half-starved – on the prisoners. She would sometimes jump on the women’s stomachs so that their intestines spilled out for the dogs to eat. During these acts she would breathe heavily and appeared to be in a sexually excited state.

Grese arranged the murders of an unknown number of women by putting a shovel outside the loosely wired fence and ordering them to retrieve it. The women were then shot by the guard in the tower who thought that they were trying to escape.

She also shot many prisoners with her own pistol, sometimes carefully aiming a bullet so that it obliterated a victim’s face.

Like many sadists she kept souvenirs of her cruelty, having three of the victims skinned after death so that she could make lampshades of their skin.

Shortly after she was transferred to Belsen, it was liberated by the British and Irma Grese and the other sadistic guards were arrested. She was one of 44 guards indicted for war crimes by a British Military Court. Her trial took place in Hamburg, Germany in the autumn of 1945 and she pleaded not guilty, saying that she had occasionally struck prisoners but never tortured or murdered them.

But survivors from the camp spoke at length about both her legendary cruelty and homicidal actions and she was sentenced to hang. Reportage varies regarding her reaction at hearing her 294

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death sentence, with most accounts saying that she showed no emotion whilst some Holocaust deniers insist that she wept.

The famous hangman Albert Pierrepoint was sent to Germany to carry out her execution. She laughed when he had to weigh her and when he asked about her age (21).

She remained equally calm the following day as she entered the execution chamber and walked to the trap, for her defence in her own mind was that Himmler was responsible for all that had happened. She kissed a crucifix before the hood was put in place and quietly told the executioner to hurry up. Twenty minutes later her body was cut down and sent for burial, the executioner saying that he felt haunted at hanging someone so pretty and young.

The horror which Irma Grese and her contemporaries had perpetrated lived on after the camps were liberated as many of the starving prisoners tried to eat a full meal only to have their shrunken stomachs burst, leading to an agonising death.

WOMEN WHO KILL WITH

PARTNERS

Female sadists who kill with a male accomplice are more likely to abduct and torture strangers: Charlene Gallego, acting alongside her common-law husband, bit her teenage victims’ nipples; Judith Neelley injected drain cleaner into a 13-year-old girl whom husband Alvin Neelley had previously sexually assaulted; and Rose West violated young women with oversized dildoes whilst Fred West observed. Though young themselves, all three women lured even younger victims into their sadistic web.

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Similarly, in 2001 a 46-year-old Long Island woman was arrested in conjunction with her husband for torturing an 18-year-old girl in her home. The woman had befriended the teenager online for six months before abducting her, tying her up and abusing her for a week.

In other instances, one party is more reluctant than the other to cause anguish. Karla Homolka winced as she followed her husband’s instructions to insert a bottle neck into the anus of a teenage victim, and Gwen Graham – who enjoyed consensual sadomasochistic games with various lesbian lovers – showed no sadism towards her nursing charges once she ended her relationship with the manipulative Cathy Wood. Similarly, Myra Hindley showed few traces of sadomasochism in her admittedly histrionic personality, yet she allowed Ian Brady to flog her and showed off the whip marks on her buttocks for his camera.

ANGELS OF DEATH

Several female serial killers who have operated alone showed their sadistic side when dealing with the young and the elderly. Anna Zwanziger, a housekeeper turned nurse, went into paroxysms of ecstasy as her male and female victims writhed from the effects of arsenic poisoning and nurse Genene Jones appeared to have an orgasm in front of paramedics as one of her child victims died. These medical killers are euphemistically known as Angels of Death, though their primary motives are sadism and the creation of drama through euthanasia.

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CRUELTY WITHOUT

SADISM

But sometimes women commit acts of atrocious cruelty which aren’t sadistic. For example, there have been several well-documented cases in which a female who is desperate for a baby overpowers a heavily-pregnant woman and cuts the foetus from her womb, then strangles her or leaves her to die of her wounds. The killer has caused considerable pain but the motive wasn’t sadistic and she quickly diverts her energies into pretending to be a new mother and showing off the stolen infant to her delighted family.

Similarly, abused children who kill aren’t always sadistic.

Ten-year-old Mary Bell cut the legs of one of her toddler victims with a razor – but the cuts were made post-mortem and the motive wasn’t to cause pain or terror.

The unfortunate Mary had watched her prostitute mother performing picquerism on her clients and she was simply emulating this.

The final case in this chapter is unusual in that a gang was involved and the two females were the sadistic leaders.

The case went to trial in November 1993 and received comparatively little publicity as this was also the month when Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were tried for James Bulger’s tragic death.

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BERNADETTE MCNEILLY AND JEAN

POWELL

McNeilly and Powell were living lives of increasing chaos in Manchester, England long before they befriended their eventual victim, Suzanne Capper. Bernadette McNeilly, a 24-year-old mother of three, had a 16-year-old boyfriend called Anthony Dudson. Bernadette was friends with another mother of three, Jean Powell, and eventually moved in with her. Jean Powell also had sex with Anthony Dudson and Anthony had sex with 16-year-old Suzanne Capper, a polite girl who was of limited intelligence. Suzanne also briefly dated Jean’s younger brother, 17-year-old Clifford Pook.

In October 1992, Suzanne spent the night in Bernadette and Anthony’s bed, after which they found that they had pubic lice and blamed the teenager. They were also angry when one of Suzanne’s boyfriends encouraged her to make advances towards Jean Powell. The latter was also enraged as she believed that Suzanne had stolen her pink duffle coat.

To a mature person, Jean Powell’s house would have held no allure. There was virtually no normal furniture so the eight occupants of the house and the numerous hangers-on had to sit in car seats. But to Suzanne Capper it was an exciting prospect, as Powell dealt in drugs, owned a CB radio and had an interest in the occult.

Eight days of torture

Suzanne had fallen out with Jean Powell before, and Powell had beaten her. But after an argument at home on 7 December 1992, the 16-year-old returned trustingly to Powell’s house.

Her stepfather assumed she had remained there voluntarily so wasn’t alarmed when she didn’t return.

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For the next few days she was to be horrifically abused by Jean Powell, Bernadette McNeilly and her teenage boyfriend Anthony Dudson. (Later in the week other gang members joined in.) They grabbed her as soon as she arrived and shaved her head and her eyebrows then held her down whilst both women took turns beating her with an enormous ornamental wooden spoon (which was at least three foot long and heavily built) and with a belt. Afterwards Jean Powell locked her in a wardrobe overnight.

The following day they took Suzanne to Bernadette McNeilly’s former house, a few doors down from where she lived with Jean Powell. There they spreadeagled her to the slats of an overturned bed, binding her with electric flex. Bernadette McNeilly injected her with amphetamines and tortured her with a lit cigarette and with music played through a headset at high volume. She used the phrase ‘Chucky’s coming to play’

(taken from a popular horror film called
Child’s Play
) before each torture session and soon the words themselves were enough to make Suzanne Capper scream.

Jean Powell also took part in many of the torture sessions and the judge would later note that she, her ex-husband and Bernadette McNeilly were the ringleaders.

Halfway through the week Jean’s 17-year-old brother Clifford Pook and another young man named Jeffrey Leigh called at the house and were shown the trussed and gagged teenage girl.

It’s open to dispute when Jean Powell’s ex-husband Glyn Powell joined in. Anthony Dudson said that Glyn Powell was involved from the first day and was responsible for shaving Suzanne’s head but Glyn Powell later said in court that he was only involved from midweek. The situation was further complicated as Jean Powell later changed her story to play down Bernadette McNeilly’s role as she was with her on remand in Risley jail. What’s certain is that Glyn Powell became the third ringleader and played an active role in the teenager’s death.

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After several days of leaving the 16-year-old lying in her own excrement, Bernadette McNeilly filled a bath with disinfectant (which Jean Powell provided) and dumped Suzanne in it. She then scrubbed the screaming girl with a broom and a scrubbing brush, the action leaving numerous cuts and abrasions all over her body. Afterwards Clifford Pook pulled out two of Suzanne’s front teeth with pliers.

Jeffrey Leigh would later say that he was too cowardly to help the victim – in truth he had locked Suzanne back in the wardrobe after being shown her by a happy-looking Bernadette McNeilly. He admitted that Suzanne had had a black eye, was cowering with her hands in front of her face and looked terrified. Jeffrey Leigh already had a record for violence as he had threatened his 86-year-old disabled aunt with a knife and robbed her, a crime for which he’d served three years in a young offenders institution.

Another man who visited the house and whom Suzanne begged for help said that he didn’t get involved because he was afraid that Jeffrey Leigh would batter him. The man had overheard Anthony Dudson shouting ‘Shut up you slag,’ to someone in the back room. He asked who it was and Jeffrey Leigh had shown him Suzanne who was tied to a bed and had blood around her mouth from the extractions. Later, when he was alone in the house, she pleaded for the man to untie her but he refused because ‘if I said owt, they’d of all got me, wouldn’t they?’

After a week the gang had tired of torturing the 16-year-old and four of them dumped her in the boot of a car stolen by the Powells and drove her to Benfield Clough. Clifford Pook and Jeffrey Leigh remained at the house.

When they reached a brambled area, they threw Suzanne down and she curled into the foetal position. Bernadette McNeilly then poured the petrol, which Anthony Dudson had fetched in a can from a nearby garage, over her. Anthony 300