by Ray Black
Extreme Evil
Taking crime to the next level
PHIL CLARKE, TOM & KATE BRIGGS
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CONTENTS
PART ONE: CANNIBALS
Albert Fish
Armin Meiwes
Daniel and Manuela Ruda
Dennis Nilsen
Eladio Baule
Gary Heidnik
Georg Karl Grossmann
Issei Sagawa
Jeffrey Dahmer
Karl Denke
Stanley Dean Baker
Ted Bundy
PART TWO: SERIAL KILLERS
Andrei Chikatilo
Arthur Shawcross
Earle Leonard Nelson
H. H. Holmes
Javed Iqbal
Joachim Kroll
John Haigh
John Wayne Gacy
PART THREE: LADY KILLERS
Belle Gunness
Beverley Allitt
Elizabeth Báthory
Ilse Koch
Irma Grese
Jane Toppan
Karla Homolka
Katherine Knight
Rosemary West
PART FOUR: CULT KILLERS
Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo and Sara Maria Aldrete Villareal
Charles Manson
David Koresh
Ervil LeBaron
Glenn Taylor Helzer
Jeffrey Lundgren
Jim Jones
Joseph Di Mambro
Shoko Asahara
PART FIVE: TYRANTS
Adolf Hitler
Attila the Hun
Caligula
Idi Amin Dada
Ivan the Terrible
Josef Stalin
Pol Pot
Saddam Hussein
Tomas de Torquemada
Vlad Tepes
PART SIX: CHILDREN OF EVIL
Bryan and David Freeman
Edmund Kemper
Eric Smith
The Jason Sweeney Murder
Jesse Pomeroy
Jon Venables and Robert Thompson
Joshua Phillips
Kip Kinkel
PART ONE: CANNIBALS
Albert Fish
This modern-day Marquis de Sade resembled a beloved grandfather, an innocuous, gentle-faced old man to whom you would happily entrust your child’s care. The truth: Albert Fish was a sexually-depraved sexagenarian earning the nicknames ‘The Boogeyman’ and ‘The Brooklyn Vampire’ following a number of cannibalistic acts that shocked pre-war America.
AWFUL ORPHAN
From religious mania and hydrocephalus to visual hallucinations, mental illness had always been rife throughout the Fish family line, so when Hamilton Howard entered the world on 19 May 1870 in Washington DC, few would have been shocked to learn he would later have problems. Yet nobody could have foreseen the extent to which his afflictions would play out to the detriment of so many lives.
His childhood was far from happy. His father, Randall Fish, died when Albert (the name he later took) was just five years old, forcing his mother to pack him off to the St John’s Orphanage. It was here that he was subjected to incessant teasing, humiliation and considerable physical harm. Beatings from the teachers became so commonplace he came to look forward to the pain, causing him to get sexually excited. And this brought yet more teasing.
Thankfully he escaped further torments, returning to his mother a few years later, but the damage was done. By the age of twelve, he had developed such perverse urges as coprophagia – the eating of excrement – and had begun to spend much of his time visiting public baths where he would watch other boys undress.
These predilections were however kept fairly private, hidden in the background while he endeav-oured to lead a normal life. In 1898 he married Anna, a woman nine years his junior and they would have six children together. The happy family man travelled from state to state through his job as a house painter, all the while his abnormal sexual cravings bubbling under the surface.
SINS OF THE FLESH
His clandestine molestations of young children soon began and continued unabated, arousing in him deeper carnal pleasures as the new century progressed. However in January 1917 his wife left him for a simple-minded handyman named John Straube, taking all the furniture but leaving behind all six children. It was this rejection that triggered a more outward display of perversion and mental illness.
Albert began acting like a madman. Hearing voices in his head and hallucinating, the forsaken husband turned fearsome father as his children witnessed him shaking his fist at the sky, exclaiming he was Christ. This led to serious self-harming episodes, abusing his own body with a nail-studded paddle in an attempt to atone for past sins. He even asked his own children to spank him with the device until blood ran down his legs.
When this religious self-punishment failed to provide satisfaction, Albert resorted to more obscene attacks on his person. He burned alcohol-soaked cotton pressed into his anus and embedded needles into his groin, many so deeply inserted he was unable to retrieve them. He then started to write obscene letters to lovelorn women, hoping to find a willing partner to share in his extreme self-cruelty. Surprisingly, he found no takers.
BUDD-ING EVIL
In the summer of 1928, during one of his regular searches through the classified ads, Albert Fish came upon the appeal of one Edward Budd, an eighteen-year-old from Manhattan, asking for work in the country to help out with his family’s money worries. Three days after placing the ad an old grey-haired man with soft blue eyes arrived on the doorstep of the Budds’ Chelsea apartment.
Introducing himself as Frank Howard, the meek old gentleman offered young Edward a job at $15 a week on his Long Island farm. It seemed too good to be true; it was. For this was Albert Fish on the hunt for a victim.
Over the course of a week Albert ingratiated himself further with the Budd family, bringing gifts for all the children. His attention had now turned from Edward to their oldest daughter, ten-year-old Grace, whom the benevolent benefactor invited to accompany him uptown to his niece’s birthday party. Keen not to offend Edward’s future employer, her trusting parents allowed little Grace to leave with ‘Mister Howard’. It was the last time they would see her alive.
A six year long manhunt followed led by chief investigator, Detective William King; a tenacious veteran of the force nearing retirement. No sign of Grace or the old man could be found and, despite media involvement generating hundreds of leads, the case began to grow cold.
Then one autumnal November day in 1934 Mrs Budd received an anonymous letter. It told of a Captain John Davis who, while travelling in China during the great famine, had eaten human meat. The author continued, confessing he had also partaken of the flesh of a child, namely that of their lost daughter, Grace.
What followed was a lurid disclosure of what hap-pened to her child. The morbid message explained how the writer had taken her by train up to Westchester County, Washington to an isolated house. Here, he choked her to death before chopping off her head and cutting her in half. He then proceeded to devour her over a period of nine days; each cannibalistic course served with vegetables. The letter finished with a poor consolation, that she died a virgin.
CATCHING A FISH
Immediately the distraught Budd family passed the murderous missive on to the police. After a dearth of recent clues this fresh evidence brought fresh hope. The search was back on. Using a spectroscope, the authorities discovered an almost invisible mark on the back of the envelope revealing the let
ters: N. Y. P. C. B. A. - an acronym for the New York Private Chauffeurs’ Benevolent Association.
An appeal to its members resulted in a confession from one Lee Sicowski, who admitted to stealing some of the stationery and leaving some in a flop-house on 200 East 52nd Street, New York. Further investigation revealed an elderly gentleman fitting the description of the fictitious Frank Howard had recently stayed in the same room. When the signature in the doss house register was compared to the handwriting of the letter they matched.
Speaking to the landlady, Mrs Frieda Schneider, the police learnt their man was expected to return. Detective King rented a room at the top of the stairs and waited. Three weeks went by until Fish showed up. On 13 December the veteran cop came face to face with the killer, a seemingly harmless old fellow. However, before King could slap on the handcuffs, Albert lunged at him with a razor. One final attempt to avoid arrest. Thankfully, it failed.
Once in custody, Albert Fish delivered a never-ending flow of shocking tales and unforgivable acts, admitting to as many as fifteen child murders and up to four hundred sexual assaults over twenty-three states. He confessed how he was ordered by God to castrate as he travelled about the country, his grip-bag filled with knives, saws and a meat cleaver – his self-titled ‘Implements of Hell’ – used to carve up his victims. The authorities were further disturbed to learn that Fish had been arrested as many as eight times during their six-year search. Fish had even had two spells in Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, but had been released after examination, perceived as no threat to society.
SUPREME THRILL
The jury at the White Plains trial of Albert Fish took a mere ten days to come to a collective decision. Charged with the first degree murder of Grace Budd, whose remains had been retrieved from Wysteria Lodge, the defendant sat motionless as grisly details of his sexual abnormalities and sadistic cannibalism were read out to the court.
These despicable acts left several expert wit-nesses under no illusion that Albert Fish was insane, supporting the official plea from his own defence. Described as a psychiatric phenomenon who associated his cannibalism with the holy communion, Albert Fish simply stated, ‘I am not insane, I am just queer’. The jury agreed and found him suitably sane to be granted a guilty verdict.
On 25 March 1935 Albert Fish was sentenced to the electric chair. Far from fearful of his imminent death, Albert rather relished the method of his demise saying, ‘It will be a supreme thrill – the only one I haven’t tried!’
When he took his place in Sing Sing’s hot-seat as the oldest inmate to be executed on 16 January 1936, the convicted cannibal appeared almost enthusiastic, assisting the guards with his own straps.
It took two jolts to deliver the state-appointed justice. Many still believe the rumour that the first one short-circuited thanks to the twenty-nine various needles later found embedded in his nether regions. His final words were: ‘I don’t know why I am here.’ Those who had the misfortune of hearing the details of his crimes against children would not have been as confused.
Armin Meiwes
To those who came into contact with him, he was just an introverted computer repairman but the man – later dubbed the ‘Hannibal of Hesse’ – held a shocking secret of unrivalled savagery; a gruesome belief-defying pact of sadomasochistic fantasy that was to shock the world.
Smothered by Mother
Many a twisted mind is forged by an atypical upbringing and in this tale of extreme evil it is no different. Born on 1 December 1961 Armin Meiwes was raised in the small central German village of Wustefeld, where he spent most of his early childhood inside the family home; a huge medieval mansion dating back some seven hundred years. However, at the tender age of eight, Armin’s world was to be thrown into turmoil when his father and, soon after, his two brothers left the house leaving him in the care of his mother.
Waltraud Meiwes was a domineering woman who ruled the roost with an iron hand, stifling poor Armin with an all-invasive love. She would intrude all areas of his life, demanding to know where he was and who he was with at all times. This resulted in Armin spending an unhealthy amount of time on the extensive premises and he soon began to lose touch with reality.
Longing for companionship the repressed child was forced to look inward and soon invented an imaginary younger brother named Frank. While not uncommon for lonely and imaginative youngsters to fabricate friends, this fictitious relationship soon went beyond the banal when Armin began to wish he could consume Frank’s body in an attempt to absorb his soul. This quickly developed into fantasies of dismembering and devouring his fellow schoolmates. A disturbing perversion was now taking shape.
Then on 2 September 1999 Waltraud Meiwes died after a long illness. Armin was now all alone. Freed from his mother’s claustrophobic attention Armin attempted to live a normal life. He took a job fixing computers and endeavoured to interact with the outside world, becoming the perfect neighbour, repairing the cars and mowing the lawns of his fellow villagers. But he could not shake off the urges.
FRANKY ONLINE
Armin soon lost himself once more inside the manor house, discovering whole new worlds via the internet. He quickly found that there were others out there whose passions matched his own and began to connect with these like-minded deviants online.
Within the imaginary walls of chatrooms dedicated to cannibalism, torture and sadomasochism, Armin fed his obsession using the alias: Franky – after his make-believe brother. In one of the forty rooms he constructed a ‘Slaughter Room’ in which he built a cage and a blood drainage system, uploading photos for his fellow freaks to see.
Unable to resist the craving to cannibalise, Armin then posted a morbid message calling for, ‘a well-built eighteen- to thirty-year-old to be slaughtered then consumed’.
Shockingly, he received over two hundred replies from interested parties, some of whom made the trip to the big house in the tiny village. These willing participants in Armin’s lust-filled amusement would allow him to draw lines on their naked bodies, marking out where he would cut them. Others he hauled up by their feet on the custom-built pulleys inside the Slaughter Room. For all of Armin’s guests, though, this was all pure role-play. None would give their consent to go further.
BERND BRANDES
Then on 5 February 2001 during another session online he met Cator99 in the cannibal chatroom. Rather than wishing to merely pretend, this member appeared to share Armin’s cannibalistic dream, bewitchingly replying: ‘I am your meat.’ The pair engaged in fetishistic talk over the coming weeks, exchanging naked photographs, whipping one another into an erotic frenzy. Within a month, they would meet.
Cator99 was, in fact, Bernd Jurgen Brandes, a software developer for Siemens in his early forties. He had worked for the telecommunications company for fifteen years and was known to his colleagues as a normal, sociable human being. They had no idea of the darker side that existed outside of work, hidden away from public scrutiny.
Bernd’s mother had died in a car crash when he was just twelve years old, a tragic accident for which he blamed himself. Carrying this guilt through into adulthood, his mental frailty was exacerbated by confused feelings of bisexuality. Splitting from his long-time girlfriend and unable to stand being alone, Brandes threw himself into a number of relationships before moving in with his male lover Rene, a baker ten years his senior.
Sadly, this stable relationship failed to curb his burgeoning sexual desires and Brandes secretly began visiting male prostitutes for violent sex. He would plead for them to bite off his penis, for him the ultimate masochistic thrill. This perverted path of self-destruction stemmed from a need to belong. Finding Franky online was a godsend. He now had someone who wanted him in a way that would answer all his grotesque prayers.
DINNER AND A MOVIE
On the morning of 9 March 2001 Bernd Brandes was on a train bound for Berlin, his mind filled with thoughts of his impending mutilation, his stomach empty in order to improve his date’s dining experi-ence. On
reaching the capital he bought a one-way ticket to Kassel some 150 kilometres from Armin Meiwes’ home, paid in cash to leave no trace. Outside the station, the two paraphiliacs met for the first time.
Back at the mansion the pair settled in, drinking coffee whilst naked. Small talk over, the pair adjourned upstairs to the Slaughter Room for the main event. While Armin set up a video camera to record for posterity the awful occasion, Brandes washed down a score of sleeping pills with a bottle of schnapps. It was at this point their mutual fantasies became one single, horrible reality.
In an opening act of unparalleled immorality a drowsy yet compliant Brandes allowed Armin to take out a knife and promptly slice off his penis. Following the acquiesced amputation the couple turned cannibal tasting the raw dismembered organ. When they found it too tough to swallow, the host disappeared downstairs to fry the offending article, but – in his overriding excitement – accidentally burned the meat, rendering it inedible.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Brandes had climbed into the bath, where he began to bleed to death. His host waited over three hours for his guest to die, passing the time by reading a Star Trek novel. Keen to partake of more human flesh, an impatient Armin then stabbed Brandes in the throat, before beginning the inglorious process of dividing up the body.
Two days later, after he had packed the juicy cuts of Brandes into freezer containers and buried the skin, guts and skull in the vast garden, Armin Meiwes sat down to tuck into his first proper meal: steak and potatoes covered in a pepper sauce, accompanied by a South African red wine. Over the next ten months he feasted on the defrosted flesh consuming as much as 20kg; with each morsel believing he grew closer to his willing victim. He would also revisit the footage of the slaughter itself many times over, masturbating to the video nasty.