Extreme Evil - Taking Crime to the Next Level (True Crime)

by Ray Black

  As the case began to grow cold, Shawcross struck again, murdering twenty-eight-year-old Anna Steffen, another prostitute from Rochester’s red light district. Two months went by before her badly decomposed corpse surfaced, found snagged on the river’s detritus. The lack of physical evidence saw her death follow that of her predecessor, and as time ticked by police grew less confident of solving either case.

  The following summer, Shawcross took his third life since his release from prison, shifting his murderous gaze to Dorothy Keller, a sixty year-old homeless woman working at a diner he frequented. Inviting her to accompany him fishing, he ended up beating her to death with a small log. When three fishermen found the body three months later, it lacked a head. Shawcross had been back to the spot and removed it. As the police descended on the dump site, they were unaware the killer was watching.

  RISING BODY COUNT

  Pretty soon more dead women started to show up, turning the once scenic Genesee River Gorge into a high-profile stage for murder. The press stirred up fear as the body count rose, charting the work of the Rochester Strangler. Police and prostitutes worked together to flush out the killer, creating a heightened sense of vigilance, yet still working girls were going missing.

  On 23 November 1989, while the country tucked into their Thanksgiving turkeys, the body of June Stotts was discovered face-down in a clearing near the industrial piers. Not only had she been strangled and anally penetrated post-mortem, but when police turned her over, they realized she had been sliced open; an incision running from chest to groin. On closer inspection, it came to light her killer had also removed her labia. June Stotts had been a friend to the Shawcrosses, now she lay gutted like an animal in the autumn cold.

  With a new body surfacing every week, it was time to make the call to the FBI. Agents from the Behavioural Science Unit at Quantico poured over the evidence and deduced the man dubbed the Genesee River Killer was white, about thirty years of age, working alone, and would be considered quite ordinary by the citizens of Rochester. Aside from the age the profile was spot on, but would they be able to catch this faceless loner before he killed again?

  A BRIDGE TOO FAR

  Three more streetwalkers disappeared in December intensifying the search in the harsh winter conditions. Police officers were pushed back by the icy winds blowing in from Lake Ontario and forced to abort as the year turned. On 2 January 1990 the authorities were back out en masse in the bitter conditions to locate the missing women of the night, but it was beginning to seem as if nothing would be found until the frozen rivers and creeks had thawed.

  Then the following day, as the hunt for bodies by land and air continued, a helicopter search team decided to make one final pass along Highway 31 towards the city. Sweeping low over Salmon Creek, they spotted a human figure beneath the ice. It was the seventeen-day-old corpse of June Cicero.

  She had made the fatal mistake of choosing Shawcross as her last trick of the night; it would be the last trick of her life. Squeezing her neck until dead, her final punter then savagely sawed off her genitalia before dumping her into the river. He would later claim he ate what he took away.

  As the helicopter hovered over June’s frozen body, the team noticed another figure upon the nearby bridge: an overweight man who appeared to be urinating. When they moved closer to him, he got into a Chevy Celebrity and drove away. It was none other than Arthur Shawcross. The killer had come to eat lunch and admire his handiwork.

  Shawcross made for the town of Spencerport, disappearing inside Wedgewood Nursing Home. When State Policeman John Standing caught up with him and ran a check on his identification, he discovered he had been convicted of manslaughter. This, he believed, could be their man.

  NOT MAD, JUST BAD

  Not wanting to spook their best suspect, the detectives attempted to build a rapport with Shawcross. They discussed where he liked to fish. Each spot seemed to mimic the dump sites. Slowly but surely they had him confessing to murder after murder, pointing on a map to where yet another corpse could be found.

  His seventy-nine-page-long confession proved to be the focus for the trial held later that year at Rochester County Court. Shawcross was advised to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, but despite numerous tall tales of evil, many psychiatrists testified that the defendant was sane. The jury concurred and he was found guilty on ten counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty-five years for each crime.

  Incarcerated at Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York, Arthur Shawcross would not serve even one term to completion. On 10 November 2008, he complained of pains in his right leg and was taken to Albany Medical Centre, where he had a heart attack and died at 9.50pm.

  Earle Leonard Nelson

  During the middle of the roaring twenties, a simian-looking strangler armed with a Bible and big hands relentlessly preyed on luckless landladies right across America, leaving a trail of elderly corpses behind him in memory of an overbearing grandmother.

  A STREETCAR NAMED DEMENTIA

  One of the recurring traits found in the backgrounds of many serial killers is the presence of a dominant maternal figure during childhood. For Earle Leonard Nelson, born 12 May 1897, this was no different. When his parents died of syphilis while he was still in nappies, he went to live with his maternal grandmother in San Francisco.

  Raised by this devout Pentecostal woman, Earle became obsessed with the Bible. He would often declare his unusually large hands that would one day bring havoc to so many US States were made to hold the good book. Yet despite such a religious upbringing, young Earle soon developed into a problem child. He lacked manners, slurping his food which he soaked in olive oil, and also hygiene, refusing to bathe for long periods.

  At the age of seven he was expelled from Agassiz Primary School for his continual bad behaviour. Highly temperamental, he was prone to fits of violence, becoming increasingly withdrawn. Then around the age of ten a serious bike accident involving a streetcar left him unconscious for six days. The head injury he suffered only aggravated his volatile nature and soon, plagued by severe headaches, he began a slow descent into madness.

  When his puritanical grandmother passed away in 1908, Earle moved in with his Aunt Lillian. It was while under her roof that he became a chronic masturbator, a raging alcoholic, and began frequenting the red light district in Fisherman’s Wharf to satisfy a burgeoning sexual appetite.

  Not that he was always home. Earle would often disappear for days on end, wandering the hinterland of northern California, committing petty crimes on his travels. When he broke into a cabin he believed abandoned, he was arrested, convicted of burglary, and sent to San Quentin Prison.

  The two years’ incarceration gave Earle time to ponder, but unfortunately did nothing to improve his state of mind.

  HOUDINI OF NAPA HOSPITAL

  With the outbreak of the Great War, Earle then chose to enlist in the army, hoping to join the conflict abroad. However, he soon realized the regimented life did not suit him and he went AWOL. Two further stints as a Navy cook and an army medic ended in two further desertions before he was committed to Napa State Mental Institute aged just eighteen. His superiors had grown concerned at his refusal to work and his endless apocalyptic sermons to the other men, not to mention his increasing capriciousness.

  Once in the hospital’s care, Nelson tested positive for both gonorrhoea and syphilis and proved highly restless. During his thirteen month stay, he escaped three times earning the nickname Houdini from the staff. After his third flight in 1919, hospital personnel gave up the chase and simply discharged him from military service, signing off his notes that he was improved and considered non-violent.

  Less than two years later he would prove his doctors wrong. On 19 May 1921, pretending to be a plumber sent to fix a leak, Earle Nelson entered the home of Charles Summers. Finding twelve-year-old Mary Summers playing in the basement, he snapped, launching himself at her, his enormous hands circling her tiny neck. Putting up a fight, the l
ittle girl screamed, alerting her older brother who fought with his sister’s assailant. He was eventually apprehended and returned to his second home, Napa State Mental Institute.

  ROOM FOR MURDER

  Following a longer stay at the hospital with only one escape attempt reported, Earle Nelson was officially released in 1925. A year later the wild-eyed, olive-skinned ex-patient grabbed his Bible and began his reign of terror. His first victim was sixty-two-year-old Clara Newmann, who owned several boarding houses in the San Francisco area.

  When a suited stranger responded to her ‘Room To Rent’ sign in the window, she was more than happy to show him up to the third floor of her Pierce Street home. However, once inside, his mild-mannered exterior gave way to something more sinister, his huge hands choking the life from her.

  As he sexually assaulted her corpse the killer had no idea there was someone else in the house. Clara’s nephew, Merton Newmann, was busy with his book-keeping in his second floor apartment. Feeling cold, he ventured downstairs to check on the furnace but as he passed the kitchen and the sound of sausages cooking on the stove, he spotted a strange man. His coat turned up at the collar and sporting a hat, the man was halfway out the door.

  Before exiting, the hulking stranger turned to Merton and asked him to inform the landlady he would return to rent the bedroom. Thinking him just a prospective lodger, Clara’s nephew then returned to his accounts. It would be several hours before the landlady would be reported missing. Her severely-abused corpse was eventually discovered following a search of the house by the boarders.

  CROSS COUNTRY KILLING

  Soon the landladies across the west coast had reason to fear this stranger. Two weeks after Clara’s demise, Nelson struck again; this time in San Jose. The body of Laura Beal, another boarding house owner, was found naked from the waist down in one of her vacant apartments, strangled by the silk belt from her dressing gown. She had been raped post-mortem. It was clear to both the police and the papers that these two murders were connected and that landladies were being targeted. Telegrams were despatched across the west coast warning women not to show rooms unaccompanied.

  This attempt at protecting these vulnerable ladies out west was sadly in vain as the spectral-like killer continued to attack, strangle and sexually abuse more elderly women. Sixty-three-year-old Lillian St Mary became Nelson’s third victim, her defiled body found by one of her boarders. Next he headed south to Santa Barbara and took the life of Ollie Russell, and then in mid-August, Stephen Nisbet discovered his wife’s dead body crammed into a toilet area, her head violently slammed against the bathroom tiles before her death.

  Three more murders of landladies followed in Oregon throughout October 1926. Nelson was now venturing further afield, crossing state lines. Over the next sixteen months the now-dubbed Gorilla Killer swept across the country, killing at will and leaving no clues. Florence Monks of Seattle, Bonnie Pace in Kansas City, and Mary McConnell of Philadelphia fell to the dark strangler as he reached the other side of the country by the following spring. After throttling Mary Sietsema in Chicago on 3 June he then chose to head north and cross the border into Canada, leaving a trail of dead American landladies stretching from one side of the country to the other.

  A MURDERER MIGRATES

  On 8 June 1927 Nelson crossed into Canada from Minnesota. Hitch-hiking to Winnipeg, he traded his clothes for workman’s overalls. He then took a room at Catherine Hill’s boarding house on Smith Street, registering as Mister Woodcoats. Mrs Hill would be one of the lucky landladies not chosen as a victim. During his short time here would take two lives. First to fall was fourteen-year-old Lola Cowan.

  Nelson met the teenager on the street selling paper flowers to make money for her family. On 8 June 1927 he charmed her into coming back to his rented room. There he wrapped a cloth around her neck and squeezed till she stopped moving. He then slept with her corpse which he kept under his bed for three nights, slowly decomposing beneath him.

  The morning after murdering Lola, he came upon another house offering a room to rent. Enquiring inside, his trusted bible in his over-sized hands, he informed the owners he had no money but could fix their screen door instead. At around 11am Nelson killed Emily Patterson, his fifth victim in ten days. Her husband came home to find his wife missing. That night, after a search came up empty, he knelt by his bed praying for his wife’s return. When he stood up, his eyes were drawn to beneath the bed. His prayers had been answered; his wife lay there cold, dead and abused thanks to the infamous Gorilla Killer.

  The town was reeling from the attack and a search of all lodging houses eventually revealed the foul-smelling corpse of Lola Cowan beneath Nelson’s rented bed. The Winnipeg police issued a manhunt. They now had full descriptions of the killer from the locals and it became just a matter of time before they caught up with the Bible-toting strangler. He managed to escape from the jail cell following his first arrest, but was eventually apprehended by one William Renton of nearby Crystal City Police Department.

  Indicted for murders from San Francisco to Buffalo, Nelson first had to stand trial in Canada. Following an open and shut case at Manitoba Law Courts bringing an unsurprising death sentence, Nelson would never face the charges waiting for him in his homeland. On 13 January 1928, Nelson hanged at Vaughan Street Jail, Winnipeg at 7.30am. Reportedly, he choked for eleven minutes before dying the same way as his twenty-two victims.

  H. H. Holmes

  A grisly tale of murder and deception worthy of his sleuthing namesake, H. H. Holmes surrounded himself in a surfeit of lies, luring young females to his Chicagoan castle of death going down in history as America’s first documented serial killer.

  FROM HERMAN TO HOLMES

  The enigmatically-named H. H. Holmes began life as Herman Webster Mudgett. Born 16 May 1861 in the wealthy New Hampshire town of Gilmanton, he received a privileged upbringing although did fall foul of his strict Methodist parents on more than one occasion. Often sent hungry to the attic for long periods when he misbehaved, little Herman soon became detached from the outside world and found it difficult to make friends.

  When not suffering the austere punishments of home, he would be tormented by school bullies. On one occasion they forced him to enter a doctor’s office and touch a human skeleton. Rather than being consumed by fear, Mudgett was mesmerized by the articulated collection of bones. It may have been this act of cruelty that awoke in him the morbid fascination with the human body.

  In spite of these early setbacks, he developed into a handsome, charming young man and, in the summer of 1878, married Clara Lovering; the daughter of a well-heeled family from nearby Alton. His new bride financed his education at Vermont then put him through medical school at the University of Michigan.

  It was here in Ann Arbor where his criminal ingenuity took shape. Stealing corpses from the university laboratory, Mudgett would disfigure them then leave his handiwork around the area, but not before taking out life insurance policies on each one. When their bodies were discovered, Mudgett would appear, make the necessary identification and collect as sole beneficiary. Such devilish deception spelled the end for humble Herman Mudgett. Following his graduation in 1884, Dr H. H. Holmes was born.

  NO PLACE LIKE HOLMES’

  Holmes now took his ill-gotten gains to Chicago to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals and in the summer of 1886 took a job at Dr E. S. Holton’s drugstore in Englewood. Shortly after, the owner succumbed to cancer, and Holmes charmed his widow into selling him the store. When he stalled on the payment, Mrs Holton filed a lawsuit. It was then she mysteriously disappeared. The new owner informed customers she had moved to be near relatives in California. In fact, Holmes had committed his first murder.

  This first kill opened the floodgates and he set about orchestrating a plan of unbelievable evil. Purchasing a lot opposite the drugstore, he built an imposing three-storey edifice stretching an entire block. It was to be a hotel for the expected influx of tourists that would descend upon Chicago fo
r the World’s Fair in 1893. In fact, this was just a cover, yet another deceit in the life of H. H. Holmes.

  Dubbed ‘Holmes’ Castle’ by the neighbourhood, its construction was shrouded in secrecy. He used a number of builders to ensure only he knew the whole truth behind its devilish design. While the ground floor housed the relocated drugstore, the upper levels were a maze of over a hundred windowless rooms. Staircases led nowhere, doors opened to brick walls and secret passageways behind false partitions created a hidden world away from the unsuspecting public on the street.

  CHUTE TO KILL

  As if taken from the pages of a Gothic horror novel, the evil doctor lured a series of unwitting victims to his labyrinthine lair. Pretty blonde women caught his eye. Stenographers straight out of secretarial college whom he employed at his legitimate copying company, along with those visiting the Fair, came to stay at Holmes’ hotel. Many would never return home. Lost within the honeycombed house of horrors, his doomed prey were held prisoner inside asbestos-lined chambers and slowly gassed. Others were strangled or beaten to death once they had surrendered details and whereabouts of any cash and capital. At the centre of the castle ran a greased chute taking the dead down into the basement. Here in the bottom of the building the evil continued.

  A medieval torture cellar equipped with large pits, some filled with acid others with quicklime, and an enormous crematorium allowed the proprietor to make his guests magically disappear. Dissecting and dismembering the corpses on an operating table, Holmes would clean up the bones and sell their skeletons for profit. No doubt memories of that night in the doctor’s office bringing a smile to the mass murderer’s face.