The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (48 page)

America’s most notorious murder case remained unsolved, despite dozens of confessions. In 1991, a Los Angeles detective
commented, “We have a lot of people offering up their fathers and various relatives as the murderer.” One of these was a Californian woman who recalled repressed memories from forty years previously. She named her father, who was killed in a car crash in 1962, as the possible murderer.

In 1994, another candidate was put forward by writer John Gilmore, who argued a persuasive case naming Jack Anderson Wilson. A former soldier, Wilson died in a hotel fire in San Francisco two years after Elizabeth Short was murdered.

A claim to have solved the twentieth century’s most baffling case was made in 2003 in a book by Steve Hodel, sensationally naming his father as the murderer. The author of this theory was a former Los Angeles police detective who began to research the case after his father’s death. In the course of dealing with the affairs of Dr George Hodel, his son found a photograph album which contained a picture of Elizabeth Short.

This discovery prompted a detailed look into his father’s background. Before training as a doctor, George Hodel had been a crime reporter in Los Angeles. He had led an unconventional life, mixing with the celebrities of the day but also enjoying a sleazy existence.

Steve Hodel painted an extraordinary picture of his father as a sadistic misogynist who committed incest with his daughter. Dr Hodel had been on the police list of suspects in 1947 because he had the surgical skills that had been demonstrated by the murderer in severing the victim’s body. The doctor had possibly committed other murders in Los Angeles and eluded suspicion by virtue of his connections with the police.

Dr Hodel deserted his first wife in 1949 and went to live in Hawaii where he spent the next forty years. Of his father, Steve Hodel said, “My journey’s end revealed to me a father who was evil incarnate . . .” His revelations did not convince everyone and, for some, the search for the killer of the “Black Dahlia” continues.

“I’ve Got To Kill”

An unknown serial killer stalked the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s, committing five murders and taunting the police with cryptic messages and telephone calls.

Two teenagers were killed on 20 December 1968 while out on their first date. They had been sitting in their car when they were confronted by a gunman. He shot them dead when they attempted to run away. On 5 July 1969, a gunman attacked another couple in their car, killing the girl and wounding her escort. Later that night, a man called the police and said he wanted to report a double murder. He told them where to find the victims. He added, “I also killed those kids last year.”

On 1 August, the
San Francisco Chronicle
received the first letter from the killer. It was signed with a crossed-circle and included a message containing eight lines of arcane symbols. The killer struck again on 27 September when he stabbed two students who were in their parked cars. The man survived and was able to describe his hooded attacker. The killer later telephoned the police saying simply, “I’m the one that did it.”

On 11 October, taxi driver Paul Stine picked up a fare in central San Francisco. A man put a gun to his head, there was a brief struggle and a shot was fired. Before leaving the scene, the gunman tore off a piece of the driver’s shirt. Onlookers gathered at the scene and the man walked calmly away as the cab driver lay dying in the driver’s seat. Four days later, the local newspaper editor received a letter bearing the symbol of a crossed circle. Accompanying the letter was a piece of material torn from a bloodstained shirt.

The murder of Paul Stine was the so-called Zodiac killer’s last but, although the killings stopped, the messages continued. His letters and threats made chilling forecasts about targeting school children. In one communication he wrote that he would be reborn in Paradise and all those he had killed would become his slaves.

“This is the Zodiac speaking” was one of his opening lines and he observed that he liked killing “because it is so much fun.” There were numerous cryptic messages, some with
drawings and maps and others in plain language. Experts in calligraphy, cryptography and astrology minutely examined the steady barrage of letters in the hope of gleaning some useful clues.

Ten days after the last murder, a man claiming to be the Zodiac killer called the Oakland Police Department and offered to give himself up provided he was defended by a well-known attorney. Melvin Belli, a high-profile criminal lawyer, accepted the challenge and received a number of phone calls from a man who complained of headaches and said, “I’ve got to kill.”

What might have been a promising contact was broken off, but in 1971 the Zodiac killer began writing to the newspapers again claiming he had collected more “slaves”. This phase continued until 1974 with more threats and the claim that he had killed thirty-seven times. Analysis of homicide patterns in the USA suggested that the Zodiac killer might have killed forty victims at locations forming a large letter “Z” when plotted on a map covering several states.

Contact with the Zodiac killer petered out and police believed that he might have died. In 2007, a film was produced based on the lives of those involved in attempts to trace the killer. Chief among them was Robert Graysmith, a writer who had chronicled the quest for the Zodiac killer for thirty years.

Inevitably, comparisons were made between the Zodiac killer and Jack the Ripper, two unidentified serial killers, who were separated by time and continents. A trait they shared, however, was to write letters containing menacing threats and taunts.

“Yes, I’m The Man . . .”

In 1934, the seaside town of Brighton in the UK experienced two trunk murders in the space of a month.

On 17 June 1934, staff at Brighton railway station became concerned over the smell associated with a trunk deposited at the left luggage office. Police were called and the trunk was
opened to reveal the headless, legless body of a woman. The discovery created sensational newspaper headlines but, despite intensive enquiries, the identity of the dead woman was never established nor was the mystery of her murder solved.

Among the many people interviewed at the time was twenty-six-year-old Tony Mancini who worked as a waiter at the Skylark Café in Brighton. A parallel line of enquiry was to check on missing persons in the hope of identifying the woman found in the trunk. When it became known that Violette Kaye who had disappeared on 10 May, had been living with Mancini, the investigation took on fresh impetus.

Forty-two-year-old Violette Kaye was a former dancer who had become a prostitute and formed a liaison with Mancini. They lived together at various addresses in Brighton and after an argument at the Skylark Café on 10 May, Kaye disappeared. Mancini said she had gone to Paris.

Soon afterwards, Mancini changed lodgings and moved into a room in Kemp Street, near the Railway station. A friend helped him with his belongings, which included a very heavy trunk. After being questioned by police, Mancini took flight to London and was not present when officers entered his room at Kemp Street.

There, on 15 July, they found a trunk, which contained the decomposing body of Violette Kaye. Thus, enquiries into Trunk Crime No. 1 led to the discovery of Trunk Crime No. 2. Two days later, Mancini was arrested; he said, “Yes, I’m the man – I didn’t murder her though.” Post-mortem examination indicated that Kaye had been killed with blows to the head inflicted with a hammer.

Tony Mancini, whose real name was Lois England, was charged with murder. His explanation of Kaye’s death was that he had returned to their rooms one day in May and found her lying dead on the bed. He panicked at what he had discovered, and its implications, and concealed her body in a trunk. He pointed out that because of her calling, Violette Kaye entertained many men in her room. Asked why he had not contacted the police, he said that a man who has previous convictions would not get a fair deal.

Mancini was tried at Lewes Crown Court in December 1934 where he was defended by Norman Birkett. Counsel played on the panic that overwhelmed Mancini when he found the body and decided to conceal it. He pointed out that concealment of a body did not necessarily amount to murder. Birkett’s argument based on a chain reaction of panic, concealment and lies persuaded the jury, and Mancini walked away a free man after the court acquitted him. Forty-two years later he confessed in a Sunday newspaper that he had murdered Violette Kaye. The first Trunk Murder remained unsolved.

Getting A Grip

A man with a mutilated right hand, tried and acquitted of murder by strangulation, later confessed to the crime.

Rose Ada Robinson was a sixty-three-year-old widow who managed the John Barleycorn public house in Portsmouth. She had been in business there for forty years and was in the habit of keeping the takings on the premises. When the pub closed on 28 November 1943, she took the money out of the cash till, put it in her handbag and retired to her bedroom.

The following morning, she was found dead in her room and the takings, amounting to £450, were missing. Police found a broken window on the ground floor, which had allowed an intruder access. Rose Robinson had been strangled and there was evidence of a struggle. No fingerprints had been found at the scene and the only trace left by the attacker was a small black button found beneath the broken ground floor window.

Known criminals in the area were questioned but no suspects emerged. The murder enquiry was faltering when two alert detectives in Waterloo Road, London, picked up a man who was behaving furtively. When questioned, he volunteered the information that he was wanted “for more serious” things.

The man was Harold Loughans and he had a great deal of guilt that he wanted to get off his chest. The police just allowed him to incriminate himself and dig an even larger hole to fall into. He admitted killing a woman in Portsmouth and said it so preyed on his mind that he committed other crimes
as a diversion. The problem with his story about killing Rose Robinson was that his right hand was mutilated and four of the fingers were just stubs. There were, though, various fibres on his clothing, which linked him to the crime in Portsmouth.

During preliminary hearings, Loughans changed his tune and now claimed that the police had distorted what he had told them and protested his innocence. He was tried at Winchester Crown Court in March 1944 when three witnesses came forward saying that they had seen Loughans in London on the night of the murder. The jury could not agree a verdict and a retrial was ordered.

This took place two weeks later at the Old Bailey when defence counsel called Sir Bernard Spilsbury as an expert witness. The pathologist testified that he had examined Loughans’s mutilated hand and did not believe he had sufficient gripping power to enable him to strangle anyone. Faced with this new testimony and the alibi, which the police had been unable to shake, the jury found Loughans not guilty.

Loughans was in and out of prison with convictions for other crimes but twenty years after he had been acquitted of the Portsmouth murder, he sued the prosecutor, J. D. Casswell, for libel, on the grounds that the barrister had suggested he was lucky to have been acquitted. The libel case went to court in 1963 and Loughans lost. In effect, the jury in a civil case had overturned the verdict in a criminal trial but, as the law stood, Loughans could not be tried again.

In a final twist, three months after losing the libel case, Loughans talked to a Sunday newspaper and signed a confession to murder. He claimed he had not long to live and wanted to set the record straight. He died at the age of sixty-nine two years later.

Veil Of Silence

The investigation into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in her holiday home in Ireland was re-opened over a decade after her mysterious death.

The thirty-nine-year-old French television producer was married to Daniel Toscan du Plantier, a distinguished figure in the French cinema world. She was found battered to death on 23 December 1996 at her home in Schull, West Cork. She had been spending a few days on her own before returning to France to celebrate the New Year with her husband. She had booked her flight ticket and spoken to him a few hours before meeting a violent death.

Her body was found inside the gateway of her home. She was dressed in nightwear, suggesting she had opened the door to a late caller. She had been battered to death with a concrete block, which lay close to the body. Crime scene investigators found hair and blood in her fingernails, possibly originating from her attacker.

The local community was shocked by the violent death of one of its wealthy visitors. The area had seen an influx of celebrity figures seeking a tranquil place to live and the beautiful natural environment attracted filmmakers and movie stars.

The Gardai organized a man hunt to track the killer who had acted with such brutality. It appeared that a struggle had occurred at the du Plantier’s home and that Sophie had broken free and run out of the house. She was attacked with a metal implement, possibly a hatchet, and her fingers were broken as she tried to fend off the attack. Cruelly injured, she was dealt a death blow from a heavy concrete block smashed over her head.

A characteristic of the murder investigation was lack of information. A newspaper correspondent was reported as saying, “. . . You sometimes think you’re dealing with an affair of state because everyone is so secret.” It was acknowledged that the dead woman, who was well-connected in French social circles, was a private person not courting publicity. Locals in Schull saw her as gentle and friendly. After her death, family and friends refrained from responding to questions from the media.

The veil of silence, of course, did not stem the rumours, which ranged from sexual indiscretions to criminal links in the world of filmmaking. In the immediate aftermath of the murder, the Gardai appealed to the local community for
anyone who might have information to contribute about the possible identity of the murderer to come forward.