The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (5 page)

A farm labourer hunting wild fowl in the Essex mud flats in the UK on 21 October 1949 discovered a headless torso in the water. The grisly remains were clad in a silk shirt and underpants wrapped up in a parcel with grey felt and rope. There was evidence of stab wounds in the chest and the lower limbs appeared to have been severed using a sharp knife and saw.

The remains were identified by fingerprints held on file at Scotland Yard. The dead man was Stanley Setty, a car dealer and black marketeer who had a conviction for fraud. He was last seen on 4 October – a day when he had made several car deals for cash. One of Setty’s associates was Donald Hume, a former serviceman in the Royal Air Force, who held a civilian pilot’s licence.

The police checked up on Hume’s movements and learned that he had hired a light aircraft from the United Services Flying Club at Elstree on 5 October. He had taken off from the airfield carrying two parcels as freight. Hume was located on 26 October and questioned about the purpose of his flight.

His explanation was that he had agreed for a payment of £50 to ditch at sea two parcels containing parts of a printing press used to produce counterfeit petrol coupons. On his return, the man with whom he had been dealing offered him a further £100 to dump another parcel. Hume described the parcel as bulky and there was a gurgling noise when he moved it which made him think it might be a body.

Nothing Hume had said could be corroborated and he was arrested and charged with murdering Stanley Setty. At his Old Bailey trial in January 1950, the prosecution set out a scenario whereby Hume killed Setty in the living room of his flat and then had the carpet cleaned and wiped the place clean of fingerprints. The jury were unable to agree a verdict and were discharged. A new jury was sworn in and as the prosecution declined to offer any evidence against him, the judge directed that they should return a verdict of not guilty. He was, though, found guilty of being an accessory to murder and was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment.

Hume was released from Dartmoor Prison in February 1958 and in May, he travelled to Switzerland. In June, his confession to murder appeared in a Sunday newspaper, with the headline, ‘
I killed Setty . . . And Got Away With Murder
’. He was safe in the knowledge that he could not be charged again with the same offence.

He was involved in bank robberies in the London area in 1958 before returning to Switzerland. On 30 January 1959, in the aftermath of robbing the Gewerbe Bank of Zurich, he shot and killed a taxi-driver. As he fled from the scene, he was pursued by members of the public who held him captive until the police arrived.

Hume was tried for murder in a Zurich court in September when he pleaded guilty. The jury found him guilty of murder, attempted murder, robbery and other offences. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour. In August 1976, having served seventeen years, Hume was returned to Britain. Following psychiatric examination, he was admitted to Broadmoor where he died, aged sixty-seven, in 1988.

If The Shoe Fits . . .

A rail track inspector working on the line between Aberdeen and Edinburgh in Scotland on 24 March 1969 found a parcel. On inspection it was found to contain the severed leg of a human female, the limb still clad in a nylon stocking. On the same day, another parcel was found about four miles away; it contained the other leg.

Pathological examination determined that the remains were those of a female in the age range of thirty to forty. The police checked all the missing persons lists for the United Kingdom and used the broad description of the dismembered woman in a process of elimination. The police made an appeal on press and television for anyone with information about a missing neighbour or acquaintance to come forward.

On 26 March, a thirty-five-year-old man, James Keenan, reported that his wife, Elizabeth, was missing from their home in Lanark. She had been gone about six days following a domestic argument, leaving their baby to be looked after by her mother. The report had the sound of a fairly commonplace domestic upset and no immediate action was proposed.

As part of the ongoing process of eliminating women from the missing persons register, detectives asked Keenan if he would give them a pair of his wife’s shoes. When the shoes were tried on the amputated limbs, they were found to fit perfectly. At the end of April, in a copse about a mile from the Keenan’s home, a headless torso wrapped in a blanket was discovered by passers-by. A check on fingerprints and an abdominal scar proved that these were the remains of Elizabeth Keenan.

Keenan’s house was searched and investigations found evidence in the bathroom of an intensive clean up. Traces of blood were found in the bath waste outlet. Keenan, nicknamed “Tarzan” by his workmates on account of his bodybuilding, was arrested and charged with murder.

Keenan admitted killing his wife with an axe following a quarrel and described how he cut up her body with a hacksaw and wrapped it in pieces of blanket. He put the parcelled-up segments of the body in the boot of his car and drove his child
to his mother-in-law’s house for her to look after, then drove around distributing his parcels. He led police to a wooded area near Carnwath where he had left the head of his murdered wife. James Keenan was tried at the High Court in Edinburgh on 3 June 1969 where he pleaded guilty to murder. He said that after he killed his wife he drank a bottle of whisky and the next thing he remembered was seeing her cut up in the bath. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Kelly’s Head

The notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly became a cult figure after his execution in 1880. Unlike many criminals of this era, he had not been transported to Australia from England, although his father had. Kelly senior was transported to the penal settlement at Van Diemen’s Land (modern Tasmania) in 1842. He worked on convict gangs for seven years before being released. His years of servitude brought a hatred of law and order which was inherited by his son, Ned.

The Kelly gang were notorious for their exploits, roaming at will and using their knowledge to hide when trouble loomed and to protect their friends. They had virtual free reign because the police were spread so thinly; in the northeast of New South Wales, an area of over 10,000 square miles, there were fifty officers.

It was in this sprawling territory, known as Kelly country, that Ned Kelly shot and killed Constable Thomas Lonigan. This was the crime committed at Stringybank Creek in October 1878 for which Kelly would eventually have to answer. During the next two years there was a spate of bank robberies and other escapades. But, on 27 June 1880, Kelly and three of his gang were located at Glenrowan. The police called for backup and the rebels were surrounded by fifty armed officers. Wearing improvised armour consisting of pieces of scrap iron and cooking pots, Kelly tried to shoot his way to freedom.

In the fire-fight that followed, all of Kelly’s followers were killed and he was taken prisoner. In due course, Ned Kelly was tried at Melbourne for the murder of PC Lonigan. He
was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. The judge, in passing sentence, used the customary words, “And may the Lord have mercy on your soul” to which Ned Kelly reputedly replied, “Yes, I will see you there.” Kelly was hanged on 1 November 1880 and Mr Justice Barry died two weeks later.

Kelly became a figure of legend and folklore, featuring in films and books. After he was executed, his head was removed from his corpse and his skull was subsequently displayed in an anatomical museum before ending up in the prison museum at Melbourne. There the gruesome relic remained until 1978 when it was stolen. In 1999, a man living in Western Australia admitted stealing the skull from the museum. He said that as “an angry young man” he could not understand how someone’s skull could end up in public custody. He reportedly believes that Ned Kelly’s home at Beveridge in Victoria should be restored. He refused to say where the missing skull was but said he wanted it to be buried near Kelly’s home.

A Lot Of Work!

In July 1927 in the US, parcels wrapped in brown paper began appearing in the Brooklyn area of New York. The first was spotted by a policeman patrolling in Battery Park, a second was found in a churchyard and a third near a theatre. The contents of the parcels included dismembered portions of a human body.

Several more parcels were discovered in various parts of the city and the combined parts constituted two female bodies, minus their heads. The only available clue was the brown wrapping paper which originated from the Brooklyn branch of Atlantic and Pacific grocery stores.

The police checked missing persons registers and began to focus on the disappearance of a Mrs Bennett who had last been seen entering a boarding house in Prospect Place, Brooklyn. Officers called and asked to speak to Sarah Brownell who ran the establishment. They were admitted to the house by one of the tenants, thirty-eight-year-old Ludwig Lee, a Norwegian who described himself as an odd-job man.

Questioned about Miss Brownell’s whereabouts, Lee said, after some hesitation, that she had gone to stay with relatives. During this interview, one of the detectives with a keen nose, picked up the unmistakably cloying smell of decomposition which seemed to pervade the air around Lee. A search of the basement revealed various human body parts and the head of Mrs Bennett. Leaning against the furnace was a large axe which had evidently been cleaned recently.

When other boarders at Prospect Park were interviewed, detectives became acquainted with Christian Jensen who worked as a clerk at Atlantic and Pacific grocery stores. He told them that he had given a quantity of wrapping paper to Lee who wanted it to wrap up gifts to be sent to Norway. Jensen identified his handwriting which appeared on one of the body part parcels.

Doctors pieced together the remains of Mrs Bennett and Miss Brownell on the table in the kitchen of the boarding house. Confronted with their macabre reconstruction, Lee vigorously denied killing the women. The discovery in his room of Sarah Brownwell’s savings book showing deposits of $4,000 told a different story. In a final piece of theatre, the police brought Lee and Jensen together. The store clerk confirmed that he had provided Lee with wrapping paper. At this point, Lee broke down and confessed to murdering the two women.

He said Mrs Bennett had come down to the basement looking for Miss Brownell and caught him in the process of disposing of her body. He killed Mrs Bennett to conceal the first murder. “There was nothing to do but chop them into little pieces . . .” he said, adding with reference to his parcel deliveries, “it was a lot of work – doing all that running around.” New York’s self-confessed parcel murderer was convicted in 1928 and went to his death in the electric chair.

The Sausage Maker

Adolf Luetgert emigrated to the US from Germany and set up a business in Chicago. He brought with him the skills he had learned in making sausages and his products were sought
after. He was a man of considerable size, weighing around 109 kg (240 lb). The forty-nine-year-old also had a big sexual appetite, keeping several mistresses and installing a bed at his factory just in case the opportunity for coupling should arise.

Not surprisingly Luetgert’s wife, Louisa, became fed up with his ill-disguised antics; she was also worried by the declining state of their business. For his part, Luetgert was tired of his wife and wanted her out of the way so that he would be free to entertain his lovers.

Louisa disappeared on 1 May 1897 and, when her absence was noted, Luetgert told friends that he would hire private detectives to find her. Eventually, Louisa’s family reported her as a missing person and the police started to take an interest.

Several searches were made of Luetgert’s sausage-making factory and investigators began to take a close look at some of the equipment, including the numerous steam vats. The vats were systematically drained and in one of them police found pieces of bone, some teeth and two gold rings, one of which was engraved with the initials L.L.

Confronted with these discoveries, Luetgert tried to explain away the bone fragments as being of animal origin. He found it difficult to account for his wife’s wedding ring, however, particularly as it was known that because her finger joints were swollen she was unable to remove her rings.

Luetgert was charged with murder and sent for trial. One of his employees testified that he had bought a large quantity of potash and given instructions that it was to be crushed and put in one of the steam vats. Luetgert was seen late one evening tending the vat and next morning his workers cleaned up a sticky sludge that had run out on to the floor.

While all this was circumstantial evidence, the sausage-maker’s mistresses used his trial to take their revenge. One of these ladies said he told her he hated his wife and “could take her and crush her”. Another of his mistresses told the court that he had given her a bloodstained knife for safe-keeping after Louisa disappeared.

Luetgert consistently maintained his innocence but the jury at his trial in 1898 found him guilty and he was sentenced to
life imprisonment. He died at Joliet State Penitentiary in 1911. Chicago’s appetite for sausages declined after Luetgert’s trial but it was by no means certain that Louisa became sausage meat. Her sad fate was to be boiled into sludge.

Bunker Mentality

Men towing a barge on the River Clyde in Scotland on 15 October 1927 spotted an odd-looking bundle on the bank. They retrieved it and on unwrapping it their curiosity was rewarded by the discovery of a collection of human remains. There was a head, two legs sawn off below the knee, an upper leg and an arm. The grisly remnants also included bits of clothing and a newspaper dated 9 October 1926.

The body was quickly identified as Agnes Arbuckle whose home was in Main Street, Glasgow. The police lost no time in making a house call where they found the dead woman’s son, James M’Kay, sitting by the fire eating a meal. In answer to questions, he said, “She is dead – she died about ten days ago. I put part of her in the Clyde and the rest is in the bunker.”