The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (8 page)

Suckling finally stood trial for the murder of Jodie Larcombe in September 1996. New evidence was put forward, including
a statement from a relative who said Suckling had volunteered the information that he had cut the girl’s body into pieces and buried them. Together with admissions he had made while in prison, there was, finally, sufficient evidence to convict him of murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Jodie Larcombe’s body has not been found.

“Jigsaw Murder”

The first piece of New York’s “Jigsaw Murder” turned up in the form of part of a man’s upper body found by two boys swimming in the harbour on a summer’s day in 1897. During the following few days, further pieces of a dismembered corpse were retrieved, sufficient to piece together a complete body with the exception of the head.

Two teenagers cooling off in the murky waters of a disused dock had discovered a parcel wrapped in distinctive red oilcloth. Excited by their mysterious find, they removed the wrapping and, to their horror, revealed part of a man’s torso. The next day, two different boys, picking wild fruit along the banks of the Harlem River came across another parcel similarly wrapped in red oilcloth. Later in the same week sailors at Brooklyn Navy Yard found a pair of human legs.

Investigators put the pieces of the human jigsaw together and they fitted to complete a human corpse save the head. Significantly, a piece of skin had been cut away from the chest, suggesting that a distinctive mark, possibly an identifying tattoo, had been removed. Another feature of the torso was that it was well developed and the hands were smooth and well cared for.

While the police scratched their heads about the possible occupation and identity of the “Jigsaw Murder” victim, a young medical student came up with a possible answer. He thought the physical characteristics of the corpse indicated that in life the man might have been a masseur.

There were numerous Turkish bath establishments in New York City and enquiries revealed that a masseur at one of the baths, a man called Willie Guldensuppe, had not reported for
work for a few days. A description of the missing masseur matched the human remains in the post-mortem room and it was confirmed that Willie had a tattoo on his chest.

It appeared that Willie lived with a lady called Augusta Nack who was separated from her husband and had acquired a number of lovers. With the masseur now missing, Augusta had a new man in her life, one Fred Thorn. It appeared that he had been on the scene before but had been frightened off by Willie.

Fred Thorn and Augusta Nack were arrested on suspicion of murder and clinching evidence of violence was provided by bloodstained water which had drained into the street from the soakaway of Augusta’s house. Faced with this discovery, Augusta told police that she had lured Willie to her house where Fred Thorn lay in wait. Thorn shot the masseur and put the body in the bath where it was dismembered.

Augusta had bought a supply of red oilcloth for the purpose of parcelling up the remains. She and Thorn embedded the head in Plaster of Paris, which, unlike the oilcloth bundles, sank when jettisoned in the harbour. At their trial for murder, Augusta turned States Evidence and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. For her part in the killing of Willie Guldensuppe, she was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, while Fred Thorn went to the electric chair at Sing Sing in August 1898.

Power Assisted

Simone Weber, who restored vintage cars in her spare time, was widowed in 1980 when the elderly man she had married three weeks earlier died suddenly. When Marcel Fixart, a retired gendarme, left the world unexpectedly, she inherited his house and assets. Her neighbours in Nancy in eastern France gave full reign to gossip and rumour. This increased in December 1983 when she met forty-eight-year-old Bernard Hettier, the foreman at a local factory with a reputation as a ladies man.

The sixty-year-old and her toy-boy became lovers, but she proved to be too obsessive and Hettier tried to break off their relationship. In June 1985, he disappeared along with his Renault car and personal documents. The tongues wagged
and Weber was questioned by the police about her paramour’s disappearance. While there was suspicion, there was no evidence.

The police decided to consult Examining Magistrate, Gilbert Thiel, a man with a determined streak in his personality. As a result of this consultation, police tapped Weber’s telephone. She made calls to her sister in Cannes and there were references to “Bernardette”. This turned out to be a nickname for Bernard Hettier’s car.

Investigators discovered that an elderly couple living on the ground floor of the building in Avenue de Strasbourg, where Weber had an apartment, had observed some strange goings on. In June 1985 they had seen her with a man who appeared to be drunk. On the evening of 22 June they heard a noise that sounded like a vacuum cleaner or an electric motor of some kind. The next day they were surprised to see Weber carry down seventeen plastic refuse bags which she took away in her car.

It was known that Weber had hired an electric saw but failed to return it, saying it had been stolen. Sensing a breakthrough in their enquiries, police recollected that in September 1985 a fisherman had reeled in a suitcase from the River Marne. The suitcase belonged to Bernard Hettier and contained a torso, minus head and limbs. Pathologists believed the dismemberment had been effected with an electric saw.

It took Examining Magistrate Thiel four years to accumulate enough evidence to put Weber on trial for murder. Incredibly there were no traces of blood or tissue in Weber’s apartment although she had acquired guns, dynamite and a collection of official rubber stamps. Bernard Hettier’s car was found in a rented garage in Cannes. Weber had left a trail of deception including false documents, forged prescriptions and false names.

Tried for the murders of Hettier and Fixart in March 1991, La Sorcière, as she had been dubbed by the press, was found guilty of killing Hettier and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. She was cleared of murdering Fixart due to lack of evidence.

Fancy Knifework

A father and son out scavenging along the banks of the river near Lynwood, California, in the US in April 1928, found the torso of a young woman floating in the water. This was the start of what became known as the “Lynwood Torso Mystery”.

A post-mortem carried out on the torso determined that the limbs and head of the corpse had been detached by someone with dissection skills using surgical instruments. The immediate problem facing investigators was to identify the body. They began by checking reports on missing persons but, six weeks after the grim discovery of the torso, there was still no identification.

The big question was, where was the missing head? This was dramatically resolved on 18 May when some boys were seen fooling around with a head on a pole. Horrified residents of Lynwood at first thought the head was some kind of mask but then came the grim reality that it was a human skull.

Pathologists matched the head to the torso and were able to assess the age of the corpse as around forty to fifty years. Investigators continued to check out missing persons reports and sought help from the public to help identify the woman.

The breakthrough came when a man reported that his former wife, Laura Bell Sutton, had been absent from her Los Angeles home since 17 May. Another man, describing himself as a friend, also came forward saying Laura Bell had been distressed by the recent death of her mother and might have left for that reason. The informant was Frank Westlake, a recently widowed businessman.

Laura Bell was a forty-five-year-old divorcee who lived alone but was known to have an active social life and several men friends. Frank Westlake was one of these. Investigators talked to Laura’s family and friends and established that she was last seen alive on 29 March when she paid a visit to her attorney. When it was discovered that fresh flowers had been put on her mother’s grave, it led to speculation that Laura was still alive.

The missing woman’s dentist was consulted and he was able to confirm that, without doubt, the remains retrieved from the river at Lynwood were those of Laura Bell. Investigators turned their attention to the dead woman’s male companions and, in particular, Frank Westlake.

It seemed that while he may have been Laura’s lover, he was also her business manager. They shared a joint bank account and he was the beneficiary of her life assurance. When it turned out that Westlake had worked as a surgeon in Illinois, the police began to take a closer interest in him. They were mindful about the skill shown in dismembering the body.

Westlake told investigators that he and Laura planned to marry and said he had forsaken his medical career to come and live in California. With their suspicions growing, detectives followed Westlake on a trip he made to visit his son in Pasadena. In the garage roof of his son’s house, officers retrieved a set of surgical instruments wrapped in a newspaper dated 24 March.

Further enquiries about the doctor’s background established that at least five people close to him had died suddenly, leaving their properties and financial assets to him. There were also rumours that he had been involved in carrying out illegal abortions.

A coroner determined that Laura Bell had died of a blunt trauma to the head and traces of blood found in Westlake’s bathroom led to his arrest for murder. The evidence against him was circumstantial and he maintained that Laura was still alive.

Dr Westlake was sent for trial in August 1929 when Laura Bell’s mortal remains were exhibited in full view of the court. The prosecution case was that he had killed the woman, cut up her body in the bath and disposed of it in the river. The doctor continued to state his belief that she was still alive and protested his innocence.

After many hours deliberation, the jury brought in a guilty verdict but declined to recommend the death penalty. On 8 September, Dr Westlake was sentenced to life imprisonment in San Quentin. He was released on parole after serving fourteen years and he died in January 1950 at the age of eighty.

CHAPTER 3

Playing God

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle trained as a doctor and practised medicine for eight years before starting his illustrious career as a writer. With this experience and his characteristic insight, he had Sherlock Holmes comment that when a doctor goes wrong he is the “first of criminals” because he has both nerve and knowledge.

As a profession, doctors command all the skills and means to execute murder to perfection if that is where their mind takes them. By their very nature little is known of such crimes because subtlety and secrecy direct their commission. Yet doctors form an unusually large category in the annals of murder with the names of many well-known and infamous practitioners such as Crippen, Palmer, Pritchard, Ruxton, Webster, Petiot, Bougrat and others.

It is to be assumed that when doctors fall prey to the human frailties that inspire criminal activity, they do so for the same motives that drive others; gain, lust, elimination and jealousy. Once they have crossed the Hippocratic threshold of not preserving life but of extinguishing it, they have a number of attributes in their favour.

They are trusted and respected members of the community who enjoy access to people’s homes and private lives in the performance of their duties. Drs John Bodkin Adams and Harold Shipman were examples of medical men who exploited privileged knowledge of their patients’ lives for gain. Doctors, dentists and nurses have legitimate and regular access to drugs and possess the knowledge to guide their choice of unusual lethal agents that are difficult to detect. Dr Paul Vickers used a rare drug to poison his wife and Dr Carlo Nigrisoli employed curare with the same intention. Operating on a different principle, the expectation of disguising murder as fatal illness, Dr Warren Waite and Dr John Hill plied their victims with lethal concoctions of death-dealing bacteria.

Given the attractive subtleties of poisoning or administering a lethal overdose of a prescription drug, it is surprising that doctors even think of using violent means. Yet Dr Geza de Kaplany opted for the use of acid, ostensibly only to disfigure his wife but, nevertheless, condemning her to a horrific death. Dr Yves Evenou’s choice of a weapon to murder his wife was a knife, although he directed someone else to use it.

While doctors may sometimes by accused of playing god, it is a role better suited to the destructive impulses of nurses and carers who are entrusted with administering treatment to patients usually in hospital or nursing homes. The problems of dealing with sick, elderly and, sometimes fractious, patients can overwhelm the ethics of caring to the point where they opt for elimination. One such carer, Colin Norris, grew to despise those he was supposed to care for while Waltraud Wagner disposed of patients who were a nuisance. Access to hypodermic syringes, intravenous drips and prescribed drugs provided ample means.

Apart from the elimination of troublesome patients on hospital wards and in nursing homes, another motive is that of satisfying a craving for self-importance. Genene Jones thrived on emergencies in the wards where she cared for babies as did Beverly Allitt and, between them, they were responsible for at least five infant deaths. Jane Toppan was a nurse who enjoyed the power she had over patients because they trusted her. Robert Diaz had visions of grandeur and asked to be called “doctor” while Robert Harvey maintained the pretence that he was carrying out mercy killing. Between them this deadly trio accounted for the deaths of over eighty patients and possibly more.

With the notable exception of Harold Shipman who murdered 215 of his patients, doctors tend to limit themselves to one or two victims. Dr Michael Swango however, is an exception in every sense. Known to his colleagues at medical school as Double-O-Swango (licensed to kill), Swango left a trail of death behind him wherever he practised, accounting for thirty-five murders using lethal injections. He was obsessed with poisons and addicted to playing God.