The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (38 page)

question forever open.

Charged with four counts of murder and one count As late as 1935, subscribers to a detective magazine of arson, Ray Lamphere’s case went to the jury in allegedly recognized Belle’s photograph as the likeness November 1908. On November 26, he was convicted of a whorehouse madam in Ohio. Confronting the old on the arson charge alone, suggesting that the jurors felt woman and addressing her as “Belle,” one amateur Belle’s death had not been proved “beyond a reasonable sleuth was impressed by the vehemence of her reaction.

doubt.” Surviving for two years in prison, Lamphere Pursuing the matter through friends, he was urgently talked endlessly about the case, crediting Belle with 49

warned to let the matter rest . . . and so it has.

murders, netting more than $100,000 from her victims If Gunness did, in fact, survive her “death,” she between 1903 and 1908. The basement victim, he con-stands with BELA KISS in that elite society of slayers tended, had been found in a saloon, hired for the who—although identified, with ample evidence to win evening, and murdered to serve as a stand-in. Belle had convictions—manage to escape arrest and so live out promised she would get in touch with Lamphere after their lives in anonymity. Her legacy is rumor, and a she was settled elsewhere, but it seemed that she had snatch of tawdry rhyme that reads, in part:

changed her plans.

The first reported sighting of a resurrected Belle was There’s red upon the Hoosier moon

logged on April 29, six days before the new bodies were For Belle was strong and full of doom;

found at her farm. Conductor Jesse Hurst was certain And think of all those Norska men

Mrs. Gunness went aboard his train at the Decatur, Who’ll never see St. Paul again.

106

H

HAARMANN, Fritz

the first was Friedel Rothe, age 17, whose parents Born October 25, 1879, in Hanover, Germany, Haar-learned that he had met “Detective Haarmann” just mann was the sixth child of a real-life odd couple. His before he disappeared. Police searched Haarmann’s flat father, a surly railroad fireman, was dubbed “Sulky but came up empty. Six years later, he confessed that Olle” by acquaintances; his mother, seven years her Friedel’s severed head, wrapped in newspaper, was lying husband’s senior, was an invalid. In early childhood, on the floor behind his stove while officers poked Fritz became his mother’s pet and grew up hating his through the drawers and cupboards.

father, preferring dolls to the sports enjoyed by other Late in 1918 Haarmann was sentenced to nine

boys his age. Packed off to a military school at age 16, months in prison on charges of indecency with a minor.

Haarmann was soon released when he showed symp-On release he found new quarters for himself, falling toms of epilepsy. Back in Hanover, he was accused of into company with 24-year-old Hans Grans, a homo-molesting small children and was sent to an asylum for sexual pimp and petty thief. They became lovers and observation, but he escaped after six months in custody.

business associates, Haarmann adding new lines of used Thereafter, Haarmann earned his way through petty clothing and black market meat to the stolen items he crimes, while molesting children for amusement. Turn-sold for a living.

ing over a new leaf in 1900, he became engaged to a Together, Grans and Haarmann launched a whole-local girl but abandoned her for the army when she sale scheme of homicide for fun and profit. Homeless became pregnant. Honorably discharged in 1903, he boys were lured from the railway station, subsequently returned to Hanover and successfully avoided his raped and killed by Haarmann (who informed police father’s efforts to have him certified insane. A series of that his technique involved the biting of a victim’s arrests followed for burglary, con games, and picking throat). The corpses were dismembered, sold as beef or pockets before Haarmann’s father set him up as propri-pork, and the incriminating portions were dropped into etor of a fish-and-chips shop. Fritz promptly stole the the River Leine. Grans took his pick of the discarded business blind, but he was less successful when he clothing prior to selling off the rest; one victim was preyed on strangers. Convicted of a warehouse burglary reportedly disposed of after Grans expressed a wish to in 1914, he was sentenced to five years in prison. Upon own his trousers.

parole, in 1918, he joined a Hanover smuggling ring Hanover police were strangely blind to Haarmann’s and prospered, simultaneously working for police as an murderous activities. On one occasion a suspicious cus-informer. On occasion he would introduce himself to tomer delivered some of Haarmann’s meat to the strangers as “Detective Haarmann.”

authorities for testing, and the “experts” wrote it off as Wartime Hanover was jammed with homeless

pork. “Detective Haarmann” further called attention to refugees, and Haarmann had his pick of boys, enticing himself by visiting the parents of a boy named Keimes, them with offers of a place to spend the night. Among found strangled in a Hanover canal, and subsequently
107

HAIGH, John George

boy identified a coat, now owned by the son of Haarmann’s landlady.

In custody, the suspect suddenly decided to confess his crimes in gory detail. Asked the number of his victims, Haarmann replied, “Thirty or forty, I don’t remember exactly.” Haarmann’s trial opened on

December 4 and lasted for two weeks, the defendant grandly puffing on cigars, complaining that there were too many women in the courtroom. Convicted of 24

murders and sentenced to die, Haarmann was beheaded on April 15, 1925. Grans, his accomplice in murder, received a sentence of 12 years in prison.

HAIGH, John George

A British slayer, Haigh was born in 1909 and subjected by his parents to the strict regimen of the Plymouth Brethren, regarding all forms of amusement as sin. As a child, Haigh won a choral scholarship to Wakefield Grammar School, requiring his participation as a choir boy in Anglican services held at Wakefield cathedral.

The contrast between those services and the drab Plymouth Brethren rituals confused him, allegedly prompting bizarre visions of forests with trees spouting blood.

Whatever the actual source, Haigh displayed early signs of hematomania, the obsession with blood which would ultimately haunt him throughout his life.

Briefly married in 1934, Haigh deserted his wife after serving his first jail term, for fraud, in November of that year. Before the end of World War II he chalked up numerous arrests for theft and minor swindles, com-Fritz Haarmann (center) on his way to trial (Author’s collection) pleting his last prison term in 1943. Appearing to “go straight” at last, Haigh moved into the respectable Onslow Court Hotel in South Kensington and rented a told police that Grans had done the murder. Since the nearby basement room for use in perfecting his “inven-pimp was then incarcerated on another charge, police tions.” The makeshift lab was stocked with tools, a dismissed the tale and never bothered checking Haar-welding set—and a 40-gallon vat of sulfuric acid.

mann’s interest in the case.

On September 9, 1944, Haigh lured a longtime

On May 17, 1924, a human skull was found beside acquaintance, Donald McSwann, to his basement

the Leine; another was unearthed May 29, two more on workshop, killing his prey with a hammer, afterward June 13, but Hanover authorities dismissed the matter slashing his throat for the purpose of drinking his as a “practical joke.” Their attitude changed on July 24

blood. The dismembered remains were dissolved in when some children discovered a sack filled with Haigh’s acid vat, with the resultant sludge later poured human bones, including another skull, on the river-down a manhole. Taking over control of McSwann’s bank. Panic erupted, with newspapers reporting some nearby pinball arcade, Haigh told the dead man’s par-600 teenage boys missing in the past year alone. Drag-ents that their son was hiding in Scotland to avoid mili-ging the Leine, police recovered more than 500 bones, tary conscription. Once a week he went to Scotland, accounting for an estimated 27 victims.

mailing forged letters to the anxious couple, but their By coincidence, Fritz Haarmann was arrested during suspicions grew over time, even as Haigh’s compulsive this period and charged with another count of public gambling devoured his stolen income.

indecency. A routine search of his flat revealed copious On July 10, 1945, Haigh invited McSwann’s parents bloodstains, initially dismissed as a result of his unli-to his lab, bludgeoned them both, and dissolved their censed butcher’s operation. Homicide detectives found remains in acid. Forged documents enabled him to their first hard evidence when the parents of a missing usurp their estate, including five houses and a small for-108

HANCE, William Henry

tune in securities, but gambling, poor investments, and Mrs. Durand-Deacon. In custody, Haigh confessed a lavish lifestyle left him strapped for cash again by Feb-everything, playing up the VAMPIRISM angle in his bid ruary 1948.

for an INSANITY DEFENSE. He confessed two more mur-Haigh’s next victims were Archie and Rosalie Henders—of victims “Mary” and “Max”—committed

derson, touring his new workshop at Crawley, south of solely in the pursuit of fresh blood, but some authorities London, when they were shot and slipped into an acid dismissed the whole story as a theatrical ruse. (Haigh bath on February 12. Haigh later told police of sam-was also observed drinking his own urine in jail.) pling their blood, but he was rational enough to execute Haigh’s trial opened on July 18, 1949, with a defense the forgeries that netted him $12,000 from the dead psychiatrist branding him paranoid and describing his couple’s estate.

acts of vampirism as “pretty certain.” Unimpressed, A year later, in February 1949, 69-year-old Olivia jurors voted him guilty and sane, and the court imposed Durand-Deacon approached “inventor” Haigh with her a sentence of death. Haigh was hanged at Wandsworth scheme for marketing artificial fingernails. Invited to Prison on August 6, 1949.

the Crawley lab, she was there shot to death, with Haigh allegedly slitting her throat and quaffing a glass of blood before he consigned her to the acid vat. It took
HANCE, William Henry

a week to finally dispose of her remains, and Haigh had On September 6, 1977, the nude and lifeless body of an little to show for his effort, selling off her jewelry for army private, 24-year-old Karen Hickman, was discov-

$250 to cover some outstanding debts.

ered near the women’s barracks at Fort Benning, near Police responding to a missing-person report were Columbus, Georgia. Beaten with a blunt instrument, suspicious of Haigh’s glib answers and his too-helpful then run over several times with a car, Hickman had attitude, and search warrants were obtained for his been killed elsewhere and her corpse transported to the basement workshop. Investigators skimmed 28 pounds spot where it was found. Investigators learned that the of human fat from the acid bath, along with bone frag-victim—a white woman—had dated black soldiers

ments, dentures, gallstones, and a handbag belonging to exclusively, picking them up in bars near the post. An anonymous call led authorities to her missing clothes a month later, but no new evidence was found. The crime was treated as an isolated incident, almost forgotten in the manhunt for the “Stocking Strangler” who terrorized Columbus between September 1977 and April 1978.

By mid-February the Strangler, described as a black man from evidence found at the crime scenes, had raped and murdered six elderly white women in Columbus. Georgia is Klan country, and racial tension was already mounting when, on March 3, 1978, the chief of police received a letter signed by a self-styled “Chairman of the Forces of Evil.” “Since the coroner said the S-Strangler is back,” the note read, “we decided to come here and try to catch him or put more pressure on you. . . . From now on black women in Columbus, Ga., will be disappearing if the Strangler is not caught.” The first victim, a local black woman named Gail Jackson, had already been abducted by “an organization within an organization,” and she was scheduled to die if the Stocking Strangler was not apprehended by June 1.