The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (103 page)

membership in the group, and it seems likely that eco-Their deaths wrote finis to an era, since Kansas—while nomic interests will spare Vadim Yershov from the firing maintaining CAPITAL PUNISHMENT—has executed no squad. At that, considering the state of prisons in more inmates to this day.

Siberia, he may eventually wish he
had
been shot.

YOUNG, Lila Gladys

YORK, George R., and LATHAM, James D.

Lila Coolen, the daughter of devout Seventh-Day George York, 18, and James Latham, 19, were privates Adventist parents, was born at Fox Point, Nova Scotia, in the U.S. Army when they met at Fort Hood, Texas, in in 1899. At age 26 she met and married William Peach the early part of 1959. Something clicked between them Young, an Oregon native transplanted to New

as it has with other lethal soul mates, and they privately Brunswick, where he aspired to the role of an Adventist decided on a course of robbery and murder that would

“medical missionary” without benefit of ordination or carry them—almost—from coast to coast.

medical training. Soon after their marriage, with Lila That May, the friends went AWOL from Fort Hood, expecting the first of five children, the Youngs moved to making York’s hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, the Chicago, where William was licensed as a chiropractor first stop on their itinerary. On May 29 in Jacksonville, in December 1927. Two months later they moved back
297

YOUNG, Lila Gladys

to Nova Scotia, opening the Life and Health Sanitarium at a three-day trial in May 1936, but the Royal Cana-in East Chester, 40 miles southwest of Halifax. Lila dian Mounted Police adopted a policy of investigating entered service as a professional midwife, and their each reported death at the home in years to come.

establishment was soon rechristened the Ideal Mater-One problem, of course, was the issue of
un
reported nity Home and Sanitarium, with William acting as infant deaths. Handyman Glen Shatford would later superintendent and Lila as managing director. Clients admit burying between 100 and 120 babies in a field flocked to the “home” in response to newspaper adver-owned by Lila’s parents near Fox Point, adjoining the tisements that read:

Adventist cemetery. “We buried them in rows,” he said,

“so it was easy to see how many there were.” In a typi-IDEAL MATERNITY HOME “Mothers Refuge” also cal case, recalled by Shatford from April 1938, an
department for girls. NO PUBLICITY INFANTS home
unnamed infant lay in the Youngs’ tool shed for five
in connection. Write for literature. East Chester, N.S.

days, covered by a box, before it was driven to Fox Point for burial. A motive for the surreptitious disposal Brochures for the home promised to shield “Expec-may be found in Lila’s standard charge of $300 to tant Mothers from gossip,” but every service has its board a baby “for the rest of its natural life.” Some price. Married women seeking refuge with the Youngs were farmed out to a neighbor who cared for their paid an average $75 each for delivery and two weeks of needs at a cost of three dollars a week, while others convalescence in the early days of operation, but unwed reached the end of their “natural lives” in record time.

mothers, frightened of scandal, faced a stiffer price. The Some adoption “rejects”—including children of mixed Youngs demanded an average $100 or $200 in advance race or those with physical defects—were reportedly for room and board, delivery of the infant, and arrang-starved to death on a diet of water and molasses.

ing subsequent adoption, plus another $12 for diapers For all the money paid to Lila and her husband by and supplies, with an average two-dollar weekly main-their pregnant clients, the Youngs made their greatest tenance fee for warehousing infants between delivery profit from adoptive parents, charging an average of and adoption. If a baby died at the home, the mother $800 to $1,000 per infant in the 1930s, escalating to an was changed $20 for a funeral—performed by the average $5,000 per head during World War II. In the Youngs’ handyman at a standing rate of 50 cents per 1940s, Ideal Maternity earned $60,000 per year from corpse, with white pine butterboxes standing in for its live-in clients, including a special $50 fee from any coffins.

mother who specified adoptive parents of a particular In short, it was the classic “BABY FARMING” racket, religion. On the flip side, Lila and William banked at elevated to an art form. Girls without the ready cash in least $3.5 million from the “adoption”—that is, sale—

hand were sometimes allowed to work off their debts at of infants between 1937 and 1947. One client who the home, thus providing the Youngs with a steady changed her mind in 1946 and sought to get her child stream of unpaid domestic help. Medical care was back was told the boy had already been placed for another realm open to shortcuts, with Lila and William adoption, but he might be retrieved . . . if the mother each billing themselves as “doctors” on their letter-could come up with $10,000 in cash.

heads. In fact, Lila delivered the babies herself, while By 1943, the Youngs were housing 70 infants on any William knelt at the bedside in prayer, but some clients given day. Their original cottage had grown to a saw a more ruthless side of the Youngs, complaining of sprawling complex of 54 rooms, 14 bathrooms, and Lila’s rough—even brutal—handling. “She was physi-multiple nurseries, valued at $40,000 with no outstand-cally immense,” one client recalled. “She had an overing mortgage. Clients could reserve private or semipri-powering presence and a great sense of power. She vate rooms, if they were put off by the thought of could strike terror into people. No one dared to chal-sleeping on a common ward. Business was so good, in lenge her.”

fact, that Lila began to brag . . . and thereby caused herIn short order, the Ideal Maternity Home became a self no end of grief.

virtual baby factory, hosting scores of unwed mothers Public health officials had been watching the Youngs averaging age 17. Between 1928 and 1935, Lila

for a decade, but they found their first concrete evi-reported 148 births and 12 infants deaths at the home, dence of neglect in 1945, inspectors reporting squalid a mortality rate of 8.1 percent that nearly tripled Nova conditions, swarming flies and filthy bedding, some Scotia’s 3.1 percent average. On March 4, 1936, Lila infants weighing 50 percent of the norm for their age.

and William were changed with two counts of

Lila fired back with charges of harassment, but her time manslaughter in the January deaths of Eva Nieforth and was running out. A new amendment to the Maternity her newborn child, allegedly caused by negligence and Boarding House Act of 1940 broadened licensing unsanitary conditions at the home. Both were acquitted requirements to incorporated companies, and the
298

YUKL, Charles William

Youngs’ license application was swiftly rejected, Ideal City, when he claimed his first victim in 1966. On Octo-Maternity ordered shut down in November 1945.

ber 24 of that year, police responded to a homicide It was not that simple to close a multimillion-dollar report at Yukl’s apartment house, where they discov-business, of course, and the Youngs continued to oper-ered the body of 25-year-old Suzanne Reynolds. A stu-ate without a license while their case was appealed. U.S.

dent of Yukl’s, she had been beaten, stripped, and Immigration officers joined the chorus of complaints in stabbed to death before the teacher “found” her in a early 1946, citing evidence that Lila had smuggled vacant flat, investigating after he “noticed” the open black-market babies into the United States. In March, door on his way upstairs.

the Youngs were arraigned on eight counts, including Arrested and charged with the murder the next

violation of the Maternity Boarding House Act and morning, Yukl confessed under questioning, before his practicing medicine without a license, but their convic-attorney arrived at the jail. Months of wrangling over tion on three counts on March 27 resulted in a piddling constitutional issues led to a plea bargain in February fine of $150. On June 4, 1946, they were convicted of 1968, with reduced charges of manslaughter earning illegally selling babies to four American couples and Yukl a sentence of seven to 15 years in prison. A model fined a total of $428.90. William, drinking heavily by inmate, Yukl was released on parole in June 1973, two now, was later convicted of perjury based on his testi-years before the expiration of his “guaranteed mini-mony at the June trial, but babies were still being born mum” sentence. Objections from the state were over-at Ideal Maternity in early 1947.

ruled, with Yukl cited as “a good risk for parole.” He The end, when it came, was as much a result of Lila’s waited all of 14 months before he killed again.

arrogance as any official action. Fuming at media cover-On August 20, 1974, the nude and strangled body of age of her case, she filed a $25,000 libel suit against a Karen Schlegel, an aspiring actress, was discovered on local newspaper, thereby opening the floodgates of the rooftop of an apartment house in Greenwich Vil-damning testimony from all sides. Jurors dismissed her lage. She had been dead 12 hours when a janitor dis-suit after brief deliberation, and the trial exposed her covered her remains, but authorities had no difficulty operation for the brutal, mercenary sham it was. Ideal selecting a suspect. Charles Yukl was a tenant of the Maternity was closed before year’s end, the Youngs house where Schlegel died, and he confessed to luring bankrupt and debt-ridden, finally selling off their prophis victim with an advertisement placed in a theatrical erty and moving to Quebec. The “home,” scheduled for magazine. Upon arrival, Karen Schlegel had been stran-conversion into a resort hotel, burned to the ground on gled with a necktie, stripped, and carried to the roof September 23, 1962. Cancer had claimed William’s life where she was found.

by year’s end, and Lila died of leukemia in 1967 after Psychiatrists found Yukl competent for trial, and he moving back to Nova Scotia. Her tombstone bears the was formally indicted on September 6. On June 3, legend: “till we meet again.”

1976, he managed to strike another bargain with the state, accepting a sentence of 15 years to life in return for his guilty plea. This time, however, there would be
YUKL, Charles William

no premature parole. On August 22, 1982, the killer A child of divorce, Charles Yukl was 31 years old and hanged himself in prison with a shredded mattress married, self-employed as a piano teacher in New York cover, and his death was ruled a suicide.

299

Z

ZARINSKY, Robert

driello abduction. According to acquaintances, Zarin-Born in New Jersey during 1941, Robert Zarinsky sky had been boasting of the murder, confident that he exhibited signs of mental instability in adolescence. By could not be prosecuted in the absence of a corpse.

the early 1960s he was calling himself “Lt. Schaefer, Authorities felt otherwise. On February 25, 1975, leader of the American Republican Army.” Convicted Zarinsky was charged with the murder of Rosemary of ARSON and grave desecration after he torched five Calandriello and held in lieu of $125,000 bond. His trial lumberyards and vandalized Jewish cemeteries in Monin April ended with Zarinsky’s conviction of first-degree mouth and Union Counties, the one-man army spent 13

murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The months in Trenton State Psychiatric Hospital. Despite verdict was affirmed on appeal in July 1976, the appel-his daily contact with psychiatrists, Zarinsky still late court ruling that failure to produce a victim’s body slipped through the net, his lethal quirks unrecognized was no bar to prosecution in a murder case—particularly by trained professionals. Settling in Linden upon his when the suspect brags about the killing to his friends.

release, Zarinsky opened a wholesale produce business, Zarinsky made headlines again in August 1999,

but his darker fantasies cried out for satisfaction.

when FBI agents and officers from seven other law In April 1969, 17-year-old Linda Balbanow was kid-enforcement agencies scoured his former home in Lin-napped on the short walk home from her job at a drug-den, Pennsylvania, seeking traces of four additional vic-store in Union County, New Jersey. Her lifeless body tims. Zarinsky inherited the house from his mother, and was recovered soon thereafter, floating in the Raritan after his arrest it had acquired a local reputation for River near Woolbridge. When 16-year-old Rosemary being “haunted.” At the same time, Zarinsky’s sister Calandriello disappeared from Atlantic Highlands later implicated Zarinsky and cousin Theodore Schiffer in that year, Zarinsky was charged with her kidnapping.

the 1958 murder of Rahway, New Jersey, police officer Authorities delayed prosecution while the futile search Charles Bernoskie. Schiffer pled guilty in that case and for her body continued, and Zarinsky’s attorney won turned state’s evidence against Zarinsky, but a jury dismissal of the charge on grounds that his client was acquitted Zarinsky of Bernoskie’s murder. Undeterred, denied a speedy trial.

Bernoskie’s widow filed a civil suit against Zarinsky for In December 1974, police had their eyes on Zarinsky wrongful death, and a second jury found him liable on again, this time investigating the murders of 14-year-old August 21, 2003, awarding the plaintiff an uncollec-Doreen Carlucci and 15-year-old Joanne Delardo in table $9.5 million in damages.

Middlesex Country. The victims were kidnapped

together, their bodies discarded in Manalapan Township, half naked, each strangled with electric cord.

“ZEBRA” Murders

Detectives were still seeking positive links in the two For a period of 179 days, between October 1973 and recent crimes when they got a fresh break on the Calan-APril 1974, white residents of San Francisco were ter-300

“ZEBRA” Murders

rorized by a series of random, racially motivated and wounding a fifth in the space of two hours. The attacks that claimed 15 lives, leaving another eight vic-dead included 32-year-old Tana Smith, shot down on tims wounded or raped. By January 1974, authorities her way to a fabric store; Vincent Wollin, killed on his knew with fair certainty that the killers were members 69th birthday; 54-year-old John Bambic, shot repeat-of a Black Muslim splinter group, the “Death Angels,”