World's Worst Crimes: An A-Z of Evil Deeds (23 page)

A New Lead?

Meanwhile, there was another case in New York that could have led to finding the murderer, but did not. Albert Fish was arrested for sending obscene letters through the post. This time, Fish was posing as a Hollywood producer, offering to pay women to indulge his taste for sadomasochism. Fish was committed to a mental hospital, and stayed there for a month in 1930, during which time he behaved well. The psychiatrists acknowledged that he had sexual problems, but pronounced him harmless, and released him into the care of his daughter.

Four years later, despite his efforts, King was no nearer solving the case. However, on 11 November 1934, Mrs Budd received a horrible letter through the post, telling her the details of how the writer had cooked and eaten her daughter. Traumatized, Mrs Budd took the letter to King, who set about analyzing it for clues. He noticed right away that the handwriting was the same as the original telegram from Western Union, and concluded that ‘Mr Howard’ and the letter-writer were one and the same. He then put the letter under a microscope and noticed a tiny set of letters on the back of the envelope; the initials of the New York Private Chauffeur’s Benevolent Association.

Detective King paid a visit to the association and began an exhaustive check on all the people who worked there, without much luck: there was no one who fitted the murderer’s description. However, while he was there, one of the drivers paid him a visit to tell him that he might have left some of the association’s stationery at a room he had used some time ago, in a boarding house on 52nd Street. King went there and spoke to the landlady, who told him that a man named Albert Fish, who fitted the murderer’s description, had recently left, but that he still received a monthly payment there from one of his sons. From time to time, Fish would drop by to pick up his mail.

Encouraged, King took a room in the boarding house, from where he could see the comings and goings of visitors. One day, while he was at work, he received a call from the landlady telling him that Fish was in the building. King rushed to the scene, and found the grey-haired old man quietly sipping tea with his landlady. He asked Fish to come to the police station for questioning, whereupon Fish suddenly attacked him with a razor. Luckily, King was used to dealing with violent criminals, and soon had Fish handcuffed. He then found Fish’s pockets full of knives and razors, and was sure that he had his man.

The Case Is Solved

At the station, Fish began to confess his crimes, grinning insanely as he described Grace’s murder in the most lurid detail. Detectives were sent to Wisteria Cottage and found that Fish was telling the truth: the remains of Grace’s body were indeed buried near the house. And Grace was not Fish’s only victim: Fish went on to describe other child murders he had committed since 1910. Police were doubly horrified to find that Fish had been arrested several times since Grace’s murder, for relatively minor offences such as sending obscene material through the post, but that he had been set free every time.

A team of psychiatrists was then brought in to study Fish, who appeared to enjoy the experience. He boasted readily of his many perversions and activities. At first the medical men found it difficult to believe him as the stories seemed so bizarre. In an attempt to get at the truth, Fish was X-rayed and his pelvis was found to be full of needles. He was declared insane.

However, when he was brought to trial, the jury ignored insanity as a defence, and found him guilty of the murder of Grace Budd. The judge sentenced him to death by the electric chair. Fish went readily to his death, claiming that he was looking forward to being electrocuted, and that it would give him ‘the supreme thrill of his life’. When he was brought to the chair, he even helped attendants strap him in to it.

A six-year manhunt for one of the most vicious killers of all time, Albert Fish – otherwise known as ‘The Moon Maniac’, ‘The Gray Man’, and ‘The Brooklyn Vampire’ – came to a satisfying end. Even though the case went cold for nearly six years, King never gave up hope: and, ultimately, his determination to bring the killer to justice, together with his meticulous attention to detail, paid off handsomely.

Albert Fish in custody at the psychiatric unit of Grasslands Hospital, New York.

The Mummy in the Cupboard

It sounds like a scene from
Psycho
, but the case of the mummified corpse kept in a cupboard in a Welsh boarding house is one of the most bizarre true-crime cases on record. And the most extraordinary aspect is that the alleged murderer was not a psychopathic serial killer but the victim’s middle-aged landlady, who lived with the grisly secret for 20 years before dissension among the experts prevented her conviction for murder.

The mummified remains were accidentally uncovered in April 1960, when the landlady’s son broke into the locked cupboard on a landing to clear out what he believed were a former tenant’s belongings. When his mother, Mrs Sarah Harvey, returned from a short stay in hospital she found the cupboard bare and police officers waiting to interview her.

At first Mrs Harvey struck the police as a harmless old lady as she told them her lodger, Mrs Frances Knight, had moved out in April 1945 about the same time that a couple had asked her to store some of their personal belongings, then left taking the cupboard key with them.

The ailing, enfeebled figure elicited the sympathy of detectives who dutifully followed up the false leads she had given them, but when neither Mrs Knight nor the fictitious couple could be traced, the police ordered an autopsy to determine the identity of the corpse. However, it wasn’t as simple as they hoped. Although the body was in a remarkable state of preservation thanks to a constant stream of warm, dry air which had retarded decomposition, the pathologist was unable to confirm it was the body of Mrs Knight. Dental records were of no use as the victim had false teeth and these had disappeared along with a wedding ring which might have proved identity. All that could be said with certainty was that the body was that of a white female aged between 40 and 60, who had been 163cm (5ft 4in) tall, right-handed and walked with a limp. Moreover, she shared the same blood group as members of Mrs Knight’s family.

An Odd Story

It was clearly the mummy of Mrs Knight, but without a positive identification it could not be stated as a fact in a court of law. Fortunately, Mrs Harvey broke down under questioning and admitted that she had concealed the body in a state of panic. But what reason could she have had for fearing anyone would have queried her version of events if Mrs Knight had died of natural causes as she claimed?

Harvey alleged that Mrs Knight had collapsed in her room on the day she died. Unable to lift her onto the bed, Harvey left her lodger on the floor. Yet when she returned to find her lodger had died, she had miraculously found the strength to drag the body into the hall and stuff it into the cupboard along with a mattress to soak up the seeping body fluids.

However, she couldn’t explain the stocking that had been tied around the neck of the corpse with a knot so tight that it had left a groove around the throat and an impression on the thyroid cartilage.

It appeared that Mrs Knight had been strangled, yet at the trial various forensic specialists disagreed as to the manner of death, with one even suggesting that she might have hanged herself and another that there was no evidence that the stocking had been tight enough to act as a ligature. The impressions on the neck, he argued, might have been caused by swelling in the neck post-mortem. Yet even if Mrs Knight had taken her own life, there would have been no reason for Mrs Harvey to conceal her body and in so doing bring suspicion upon herself.

With dissension among the experts, the judge was forced to direct the jury to find Mrs Harvey not guilty of murder. In the end she was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 15 months for having deceived Mrs Knight’s solicitors into believing that the old lady was still alive so that she could draw her £2 maintenance payments every week for almost 20 years.

65-year-old grandmother Sarah Harvey was not all she seemed.

Murder In Belle Haven

Sometimes murder investigations lead nowhere. The reasons are many: firstly, a lack of leads, of clues that could tell the police something about who might possibly have committed the crime. Secondly, incompetence: leads that are not followed up, clues that are missed. Thirdly and perhaps most disturbing of all, a lack of will: a fear of turning up evidence that could compromise those in high places.

In the case of Martha Moxley, a girl of fifteen who was brutally beaten to death in 1975, all these factors may have come into play. Whatever the truth of the matter, a few years after Martha’s murder the case went completely cold. But over two decades later, the publication of a best-selling novel based on the murder reignited interest in the case. As a result, in 2002, twenty-seven years after Martha Moxley’s brutal murder, the culprit was brought to trial, and convicted.

‘Harmless Pranks’

Martha Moxley was born in 1960 in San Francisco, California. Her family were prosperous, middle-class people who were able to offer their daughter all the privileges of a stable, well-to-do family life. In 1974, the family moved to the neighbourhood of Belle Haven, a gated community in Greenwich, Connecticut. With its big houses and immaculately kept lawns, Belle Haven seemed the perfect place to raise a family. It was, above all, safe. But, as it turned out, the move was a fateful one: Greenwich proved to be anything but safe for Martha. A year after the family moved to Belle Haven, Martha Moxley was dead.

On the night of 30 October 1975, Martha set out with her friends to have some fun. The night before Halloween was known in the area as ‘mischief night’, when youngsters would amuse themselves by throwing eggs, spraying shaving cream, and trailing toilet paper around. These pranks were sometimes a nuisance, but usually harmless enough. However, that evening Martha and her girlfriends stopped at the house of the Skakel family to see their friends, brothers Tommy and Michael.

The Skakels were well known in the area. They were related to the Kennedy family through Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Robert F. Kennedy and were extremely wealthy. However, despite their social connections and money, there were serious problems in the family. The boys’ mother, Anne Skakel, had died of cancer two years earlier, leaving her husband Rushton in charge of the household. After his wife’s death, Rushton had taken to drinking excessively, and their teenage children had been allowed to run riot. They were a constant source of worry to the neighbours, and behaved in a rude, unruly, and undisciplined way. However, because of their class position, the bad behaviour of the young Skakels was largely tolerated – with dire consequences, as it turned out.

Beaten With A Six-Iron

Martha’s mother became worried when her daughter did not return that night. She phoned Martha’s father, who was out of town, as well as her neighbours and friends. Finally, she phoned the police, who although they drove around the area looking for her daughter, were unable to locate Martha. In the morning, the terrible truth was revealed. Martha’s body was found under a tree not far from her house, beaten to death with a six-iron golf club. During the assault, the shaft had broken, and a piece of it had been used to stab her through the neck. Her jeans and underclothes had been pulled down, but she did not appear to have been sexually assaulted. When police took the golf club for analysis, they found that it was an expensive one, part of a set used by Anne Skakel.