World's Worst Crimes: An A-Z of Evil Deeds (22 page)

A Lucky Break

But then they had a break. The story had made the national news and someone had phoned in with information. This anonymous source had recently been in a bar where he had overheard a long-distance truck driver complaining that he had been ripped off by a mail-order CB radio repair service in Vermont and was planning to go down there and teach the guy a lesson. The truck driver’s name was Christopher Dean.

The detectives went to Dean’s house in Indiana, where they found hex nuts of the type and size used in the bomb, lengths of wire and even a plastic funnel with grains of what proved to be smokeless gunpowder residue. But again, these did not amount to conclusive proof.

To find out if the hex nuts in Dean’s house were the same as those found at the crime scene, forensic scientists took scrapings of both samples and placed them in a neutral solution before putting them in a plasma atomic emission spectroscope which vapourized the samples at an extremely high temperature. Different compounds such as zinc and copper vapourize at different speeds, revealing the chemical make-up of any metallic object, and computer analysis of the test results revealed that both sets of hex nuts had exactly the same chemical make-up. The residue of gunpowder found in the funnel was then analyzed by a scanning electron microscope which uses X-rays to identify the components of a given substance and it showed that the powder at both sites had a 17 per cent nitro-glycerine content as well as a stabilizing agent, nitro cellulose.

However, even this was considered not enough to convict, so detectives returned again to scour the bungalow at Fair Haven. This time they found a 9-volt battery used to detonate the bomb.

On the underside was printed a sequence of letters and numbers which subsequently proved to be an identification code relating to a specific batch made on a particular day at a particular factory.

Police later found an open packet of 9-volt batteries at Dean’s house with the same batch numbers. One battery was missing.

And the final nail in Dean’s coffin was the discovery of a file containing the fictitious return name and address in his computer. He had evidently deleted the file but wasn’t aware that by printing the label he had created another file which could easily be recovered from the hard drive. Dean had assumed that no one would ever connect him with the bombing because he had never been to Fair Haven and had never met the victim. He was wrong and now has a lifetime in prison to regret it.

Making Zombies

It was thirteen years after his first killing – sixteen dead bodies later – that Jeffrey Dahmer was finally arrested in Milwaukee as a mass murderer. By that time aged 31, he’d been earlier charged with a sexual assault against a young boy, bailed and put on probation after attending prison part-time. He’d been identified to police as responsible for another sex attack in his apartment; and he’d even got away with claiming that an incoherent and terrified young man found running away from him naked in the street was his drunk lover. Police on this occasion had actually visited the apartment, but apparently hadn’t noticed the smell of decaying flesh. Nor had they visited his bedroom, in which a dead body had been laid out, ready for butchering. All they’d seen was the plausible Dahmer, who showed them photographs and apologised – and then, a few minutes after they’d left, strangled the helpless young man they’d left with him.

It wasn’t, in fact, until July 22nd 1991 when, in eerily similar circumstances, police stopped a young black man found running hysterically down the street with a handcuff hanging from his wrist, that they finally discovered the man responsible for a rash of recent missing-person cases. For Tracy Edwards told them that some crazy white man in an apartment not far away had been holding a knife to him, threatening to cut out his heart and eat it. He took them to the apartment-building in question and told them the number; Jeffrey Dahmer calmly answered the door. And then, finally, standing in the doorway, the police smelt the smell of death.

Inside the apartment were five dried and lacquered human skulls and a barrel containing three male torsos; an electric saw stained with blood, and a drum containing acid which Dahmer had used to dissolve his victims’ bodies and to inject – with a turkey baster through holes drilled into their heads – into their living brains. In the freezer was a human head and a box containing human hands and genitals. The meat neatly wrapped in the refrigerator, Dahmer later allowed, was also human – waiting to be eaten the way he preferred it, with mustard.

The son of middle-class parents, Dahmer was born in 1960 and grew up in a small town in Ohio. He first killed at 18 when he invited a hitch-hiker he’d picked up to his parents’ house and strangled him after beating him unconscious. Nine years later, after a stint in the army, he began again where he’d left off. He picked up a man in a Milwaukee gay bar and invited him to a hotel room where he strangled him. Then he took the body back to his basement apartment in his grandmother’s house, dismembered it and left it out, wrapped up in plastic bags, for the garbagemen.

One killing in 1986; two in 1988; one in 1989; four in 1990, eight in 1991 – once Dahmer had his own apartment, the number of his killings began gradually to escalate. But the pattern was more or less exactly the same. He would pick up boys or young men for sex, then drug them and torture them before killing them and dismembering their bodies. Some he would try to turn into zombies while they were still alive, by injecting acid into their brains. But their fate remained the same. . .

At his trial, an attempt was made by Dahmer’s defence to claim he was guilty, but insane: a plea possible in Wisconsin. But the jury decided that he was sane when he committed the murders, and he was sentenced to fifteen life sentences, or a total of 936 years. In prison, he was offered special protection, but he refused: he wanted, he said, to be part of the general prison population. He was beaten to death by a black prisoner, another lifer, in November 1994.

Jeffrey Dahmer was one of the world’s most notorious killers.

The Masochistic Multiple Murders

Albert Fish has gone down in history as one of the most horrifying serial killers ever to live in America. He tortured and murdered several victims, including children, over a period of twenty years, and admitted to having molested hundreds more. He was a terrifying, sadistic murderer, but what was almost as disturbing was his extraordinary penchant for masochism: he inflicted all kinds of bizarre tortures on himself, and was always looking for women and children to assist him in these perverted activities.

Yet despite his insane behaviour and his many crimes, police were unable to track him down, and for over five years, his trail went cold. Then, as a result of clever detective work on a letter Fish sent to the family of one of his victims, the chase was on again – and this time, the monster was caught.

Born Hamilton Fish in 1870, Albert was abandoned by his well-to-do family, who had a history of mental illness. He was sent to an orphanage in the Washington DC area, where he was often subjected to corporal punishment. He later claimed that he acquired a taste for being whipped and beaten as a result of this experience. In 1898 he married, and the couple went on to raise six children. Luckily for them, Fish did not take to beating them, but he did behave strangely, often asking his wife and children to spank him with a paddle which had nails stuck into it. His wife was also somewhat eccentric: she eventually ran off with another man, but then returned with her lover and hid him in the attic, until Fish found out and ordered the pair to leave. After that, Fish constantly looked through personal columns in newspapers: he was not interested in finding a new wife, but wanted a woman to beat him with the paddle. To this end, he wrote many obscene letters to widows and spinsters; but not surprisingly, he received no replies.

The Grey-Haired Cannibal

Fish was an itinerant painter, drifting around the country in search of work. On his travels, he began to molest, abduct, torture, and murder children from the poor families that he encountered. He later claimed to have killed dozens of children in this way, committing a murder in every state of America. He said that he tied up his victims and whipped them with a belt studded with nails, to make their flesh tender for cooking. Then, having killed them, he ate them. He also ate their excrement, and drank their urine and blood. When he was finally caught, he confessed to killing a mentally retarded boy of ten in New York City in 1910; a young black boy in Washington in 1919; a four-year-old, William Gaffney, in 1929; and a five-year-old, Francis McDonnell, in Long Island in 1929. Amazingly, the families of these children – many of whom were at the lowest end of the social scale – found little redress from the law, so for many years Fish was able to continue his sickening activities without much opposition.

During this time, Fish exhibited characteristics of being completely insane, but again, nobody took much notice. His children reported that after their mother left, he would drag them to the family’s summer home, Wisteria Cottage, and yell ‘I am Christ’ from a nearby hilltop. They also said that whenever there was a full moon, he would howl, and eat large quantities of raw meat. It later emerged that he was also engaged on a full-scale masochistic assault on his own body, poking needles into his genitals and pelvic area, and stuffing lighted balls of cotton wool into his rectum. In retrospect, it seems extraordinary that such a man was able to remain in charge of his children, all the while travelling the countryside freely; but according to many reliable witnesses, Fish had a mild, pleasant manner that made people trust him – or at least dismiss him as a harmless eccentric.

It was not until 1928, when Fish took a victim from a white, working-class New York family, that the authorities really began to take notice of him. At the age of fifty-eight – by this time with a string of child murders and molestations behind him – Fish responded to an advert from a young man wanting work, eighteen-year-old Edward Budd. Edward’s father worked as a doorman, and Edward was seeking to improve the family finances by taking on a job. Fish visited the family at their apartment and told them that his name was Frank Howard, a farmer from Long Island. He promised to hire Edward and pay him a good wage for work on the farm, saying that he would call back the following week. In the meantime, he sent the Budds a telegram, telling them the day he was to arrive.

Impressed with his good manners and his promise of well-paid work for their son, the Budds invited him to lunch. Fish behaved like an affectionate grandfather, handing out treats and dollar bills to the children. He then asked if he could take Edward’s younger sister, ten-year-old Grace, to a children’s party his married sister was holding at her house that evening. Tragically for all concerned, Grace’s parents let her go. The pair left, Grace still wearing the white dress she had put on for church that morning. She was never seen again.

Murder Hunt

The Budds were surprised when Mr Howard did not return with their daughter that evening, but presumed that the party had carried on late, and that they would return in the morning. When they did not return, Grace’s father went to the address Mr Howard had given them, to look for his daughter. He found that there was no such address. He then went to the police station and reported his daughter missing. He was referred to the Missing Persons Bureau and, through this, came into contact with a veteran New York detective known for his tenacious police work: William King. King made enquiries, and soon found out that there was no Mr Howard and no farm on Long Island. King ordered the Western Union telegram service to look for the record of the telegram ‘Howard’ had sent the Budds – ‘Howard’ had asked for the Budds’ copy back when he came to lunch, claiming that it had been wrongly addressed. King also tried to trace a carton of strawberries ‘Howard’ had given Mrs Budd, and found where he had purchased them. He gained a description of Fish, but from there, the clues petered out.

As it later emerged, Fish had taken Grace up to his summer house, Wisteria Cottage, where he had first of all let her run around, picking flowers. He had then tied her up, tortured, and killed her. He had eaten parts of the body and buried the rest near the house. Over a nine-day period, he had drunk her blood. Then he had gone on his way, continuing to travel the country in search of work, always on the look out to abduct children when the opportunity arose.

However, Fish had met his match with William King. King launched a massive manhunt, and soon the story hit the headlines. Grace’s photograph appeared in many newspapers, and several witnesses came forward with new information. But even though all new leads were followed up, the police came no closer to finding Grace’s murderer. There were several false alarms: in one instance, King was alerted to a man named Albert Corthell who was caught trying to abduct a girl from an adoption agency, but when he finally captured Corthell, it was found that he had been in jail at the time of Grace’s murder. In another case, a man named Charles Pope was reported by his wife to have kidnapped Grace. Pope was arrested, but Mrs Budd pointed out that he was not the right man. It turned out that Pope’s wife had accused him of the kidnapping out of spite, so he was released.