The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (68 page)

killer family, was gone without a trace when Hancock Money always seemed to be a problem for the tran-revived and staggered off in search of help.

sient lovers who saw themselves as latter-day outlaws.

Initially, police saw no connections in the string of Sometimes they called each other “Boney and Claude,”

recent crimes. That changed on October 12 with help a joking reference to depression-era desperadoes Bonnie from Linda Adair. The Hancock shooting had occurred Parker and Clyde Barrow. On the highway, driving sep-near her home, and descriptions of the slender blond arate cars, they kept in touch with CB radios. Al Neel-with two young children rang a bell. Adair supplied ley called himself “The Nightrider,” while Judith detectives with a snapshot of the Neelley twins, mug preferred “Lady Sundance.” In case anyone missed the shots of Al and Judith quickly filling in the family point, she was glad to explain: “You know, like Butch album. Hancock recognized their faces in a photo Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. ” The cars were bought lineup; so did two young women earlier approached by with $1,800 Alvin pilfered from the first job he Judith on the street, both wise enough to turn her invi-obtained upon release from jail.

tation down.

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NELSON, Leonard Earle

Police got a break on October 14 when the Neelleys her first husband. Altogether, Browning’s performance were arrested for check fraud in Judith’s hometown of left much to be desired.

Murfreesboro. Alvin initially denied raping Lisa Milli-Jurors retired briefly before convicting Judith on all can, but he finally caved in. Even so, he insisted, the counts, but they were sympathetic enough to recom-crimes had been Judith’s idea. She enjoyed rough sex mend life imprisonment over death. Judge Randall Cole with women, Alvin said, but the real turn-on was disagreed, pronouncing a sentence of death on April 18, power—in this case, the literal power of life and death.

1983. At 18, Judith Neelley became the youngest resi-Neelley fingered his wife for a minimum of eight murdent of Alabama’s death row.

ders, perhaps as many as 15, committed in her role as Police were still intrigued by Alvin’s tale of other

“enforcer” for an elusive white-slave ring. More to the homicides, and while they found four Georgia cases point, he sketched and signed a map of rural Chattooga between December 1981 and June 1982 still unsolved, County, Georgia, where police found Janice Chatman’s no evidence connected either Neelley to the crimes. In decomposing corpse.

August 1984, a young woman in Murfreesboro identi-The sketch sealed Alvin’s fate in Georgia, but author-fied newspaper photos of Judith as the same “Casey”

ities in Alabama had no evidence to place him in the who lured her to a motel in October 1982, there pulling neighborhood of Little River Canyon where Lisa Milli-a gun and joining her husband in an all-night marathon can was killed. Indicted for murder and aggravated of sexual assault. Between rapes, “Casey” had boasted assault in the Chatman-Hancock case, Alvin pled guilty of numerous murders, but again, no further evidence and was sentenced to a double term of life imprison-was found.

ment. He would not testify in Alabama when his help-Judith Neelley’s motion for a new trial was denied on mate went to trial.

September 6, 1983, and her conviction was later And the wheels of justice were already turning for affirmed on appeal. Her death sentence was commuted Judith across the border in DeKalb County. On

to life imprisonment on January 8, 1999.

December 17, she was denied youthful offender status and ordered to face trial as an adult on charges of first-degree murder, abduction with intent to harm,
NELSON, Leonard Earle

and abduction with intent to terrorize and sexually Born in Philadelphia on May 12, 1897, Nelson was violate. It was a lethal combination, “special circum-orphaned at nine months of age when his unmarried stances” that could send her off to the electric chair mother died of advanced venereal disease. Raised by an unless she beat the rap. Judith responded with a dual aunt whose religious zeal bordered on fanaticism, he plea of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, was described as “quiet and morbid” during early her trial set for March 7, 1983. Psychiatrists found childhood. At age 10, while playing in the street, he was her competent and legally sane, despite some evidence struck by a trolley and dragged 50 feet; the accident left of “situational depression” and a vague personality him comatose for six days with a hole in his temple, disorder—“either of the passive-aggressive or depen-resulting in headaches and dizziness that grew progres-dent type.”

sively worse. Near the end of his life, Nelson suffered Dependency, in fact, would be the key to Judith’s from pain so severe that he was sometimes unable to defense, painting herself as a battered wife who fol-walk.

lowed Alvin’s every command in fear of her life.

Aside from headaches, there were other side effects Alabama detectives countered with descriptions of from Nelson’s accident. His moods grew more oppres-Judith as “one mean bitch” who “liked scaring people, sive, broken up by manic periods in which he took to dominating them.”

walking on his hands or lifting heavy chairs with his Judith’s trial opened in Fort Payne on schedule, with teeth. He read the Bible compulsively, underlining the defendant spending three days on the witness stand.

numerous passages, but also shocked his aunt by talk-Predictably, she blamed her husband for everything, ing “smut” and spying on his female cousin as she describing a three-year ordeal of rapes and beatings. To stripped for bed. When not preoccupied with voyeurism each and every charge, the answer for her actions was or the scriptures, Nelson spent his time in basements, the same: “Because Al told me to.”

relishing the solitude and darkness.

Alvin’s first wife, Jo Ann Browning, also spoke for On May 21, 1918, Earle was charged with dragging the defense, describing a similar pattern of spousal a neighborhood girl into one of those basements and abuse, but her testimony was muddled and contradic-attempting to rape her. In court, it was revealed that tory. At one point, she told the court she had never Nelson had been called for military service and rejected divorced Alvin; moments later she reversed herself, as insane by the Naval Hospital Board, but he was con-explaining that she had married Alvin before divorcing victed regardless and sentenced to two years on a penal
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NESSET, Arnfinn

farm. His third escape attempt was successful, on Christmas, he strangled 23-year-old Bonnie Pace, December 4, and Nelson would remain at large until rebounding on December 28 with the double murder of the spring of 1921.

Germania Harpin and her eight-month-old son.

On August 5, 1919, posing as “Roger Wilson,” Earle On April 27, 1927, Nelson strangled 53-year-old married a woman 36 years his senior. Their relationship Mary McConnell in Philadelphia. A month later, in Buf-was short lived, with Nelson’s sexual perversions and falo, New York, the victim was 53-year-old Jennie Ran-obsessive jealousy driving his wife to the point of a ner-dolph. Moving on to Detroit, he murdered landlady vous breakdown after six months. He called upon her Fannie May and one of her tenants, Maurene Oswald, in the hospital, there attempting to molest her in her on June 1. Two days later, he strangled 27-year-old bed before the staff responded to her screams and drove Cecilia Sietsema in Chicago.

him off. Arrested as a fugitive, he escaped again in Nelson feared police were closing in on him by then November 1923.

and made a move to save himself that ultimately The next two years of Nelson’s life are lost, but brought him to the gallows. Crossing the border into sometime in the interim between his flight and reap-Winnipeg, Canada, he rented a room on June 8, 1927, pearance, Nelson made the jump from rape to homi-and strangled Lola Cowan, a 13-year-old neighbor, the cide. In 16 months, from February 1926 to June 1927, same day. On June 9, housewife Emily Patterson was he claimed at least 22 victims, preying chiefly on wid-found bludgeoned and raped in her home, her body ows and spinsters who took him in, believing him to be hidden underneath a bed.

a mild-mannered boarder, and were impressed by his Hoping to cash in on his last crime, Nelson stole charm and the Bible he carried.

some clothing and sold it at a Winnipeg secondhand On February 20, 1926, Earle rented rooms from 60-shop. Spending his cash on a haircut, he aroused further year-old Clara Newman in San Francisco; she was suspicion when the barber noticed flecks of dried blood strangled and raped the same day. Following the identi-in his hair. Recognized from a wanted poster in the cal murder of 65-year-old Laura Beale in San Jose, local post office, Nelson was picked up and jailed in newsmen began writing stories about the “Dark Stran-Killarney; he escaped after picking the lock on his cell gler,” but their suspect remained elusive.

with a nail file, but he was recaptured 12 hours later, On June 10, Nelson was back in San Francisco,

trying to slip out of town.

where he raped and strangled 63-year-old Lillian St.

Nelson’s trial for the murder of Emily Patterson Mary, stuffing her body under a bed in her home. Ollie opened in Winnipeg on November 1, 1927. Only two Russell was the next to die, in Santa Barbara on June witnesses—his aunt and ex-wife—were called by the 24. On August 16, Mary Nisbit suffered an identical defense in support of Nelson’s insanity plea. Convicted fate in Oakland.

and sentenced to die, he was hanged on January 13, California had become too hot for Nelson, and he 1928. Before the trap was sprung, he told spectators, “I sought a change of scene, selecting Portland, Oregon, at am innocent. I stand innocent before God and man. I random. On October 19, 32-year-old Beata Withers forgive those who have wronged me and ask forgive-was raped and strangled, her body stashed in a trunk.

ness of those I have injured. God have mercy!”

The next day, Nelson killed Virginia Grant and left her In addition to his 22 confirmed murders, Nelson was corpse behind the furnace in a house she had advertised also the prime suspect in a 1926 triple murder in for rent. October 21 found Nelson in the company of Newark, New Jersey. The victims included Rose Valen-Mable Fluke; her body, strangled with a scarf, was later tine and Margaret Stanton, both strangled, along with found in the attic of her home.

Laura Tidor, shot when she tried to defend them from Police in Portland finally identified their man, but their killer.

finding him proved much more difficult. (Interviews with Nelson’s aunt recalled his hand-walking exploits, prompting reporters to dub him “The Gorilla Mur-NESSET, Arnfinn

derer.”) Nelson struck again in San Francisco on Norway’s premier serial killer was exposed in 1981 as a November 18, strangling the wife of William Edmonds.

result of journalistic curiosity. The Orkdal Valley Nurs-Six days later he strangled Blanche Myers in Oregon ing Home had opened for business in 1977, and its City, tucking her body beneath a bed in her boarding patients soon experienced a high rate of mortality. Con-house.

sidering their ages, this was not especially unusual; in As police dragnets swept the West Coast, Nelson early 1981, however, local journalists received a tip that moved eastward, hitchhiking and riding the rails. In hospital manager Arnfinn Nesset had ordered large Council Bluffs, Iowa, on December 23, he killed another quantities of curacit—a derivative of curare, the same landlady, Mrs. John Brerard. Settling in Kansas City for poison used by South American Indians on the tips of
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NILSEN, Dennis Andrew

their hunting arrows. Under questioning, Nesset first He was finally charged with killing 25 of the established claimed he purchased the poison for use on a dog, then Orkdal Valley victims; five counts of forgery and changed his story and confessed to the murders of 27

embezzlement were added, based upon Nesset’s theft of patients between May 1977 and November 1980.

some $1,800 from those he killed.

At 46, Nesset had already cinched the Scandinavian Nesset pled innocent on all counts when his trial record for serial murder, but he was not finished talk-opened in October 1982. Five months later, on March ing. “I’ve killed so many I’m unable to remember them 11, 1983, jurors convicted him on 22 counts of murder, all,” he told police, prompting authorities to request one count of attempted murder, plus all five counts of lists of patients who had died in three institutions where forgery and embezzlement. Nesset was acquitted on the Nesset had worked since 1962. In all, detectives were three remaining murder charges, but it scarcely mat-left with a list of 62 possible victims, but autopsies were tered. Judges were unmoved by the defense plea that futile, since curacit becomes increasingly difficult to Nesset considered himself a “demigod,” holding the trace with the passage of time.