by Ray Black
During the selection parades in the main square, Irma often displayed her merciless streak. In September 1944 a mother, chosen for the gas chamber, escaped the line and joined her daughter in a row due to be spared that day. The eagle-eyed supervisor spotted the death dodger and ordered a guard to have her shot where she stood.
Such ruthlessness came as no surprise to the inmates of Birkenau. Earlier that summer they had witnessed Irma, nicknamed The Beautiful Beast by those she terrorized, personally assist the notorious Dr Mengele in a mass selection of between two and three thousand doomed captives. Her oppressed wards came to tremble at the very sound of her heavy boots, turning pale at the sight of her plaited whip, knowing full well anyone of them could be next to feel her cold malevolence.
In January 1945, Grese briefly returned to Ravensbrueck before ending the war in the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Now she had a whole new batch of victims to brutalize. To their relief, on 15 April 1945, the British 11th Armoured Division liberated the complex. While many of the guards had fled, Irma remained behind and was promptly arrested.
Accused of murder, torture and the general mistreatment of prisoners, she stood trial at Lueneburg before a British military tribunal between 17 September and 17 November 1945. On the fifty-third day of proceedings, a remorseless Irma Grese was sentenced to hang for her crimes.
Less than a month after the verdict was announced, the Blonde Angel of Belsen was escorted out of her cell at Hamelin jail to meet Albert Pierrepoint, the famous English executioner. Remaining defiant to the end, she approached the gallows like a martyr, ordering her hangman to be quick. Pierrepoint duly obliged and, dropping through the trapdoor, Irma Grese became the youngest woman executed under British jurisdiction in the twentieth century.
Jane Toppan
More Sister with a Syringe than Lady of the Lamp, this early American murderess showed no mercy to over thirty victims, delivering injections of death to the ill and infirm.
MADNESS IN MASSACHUSETTS
This Angel of Death began her days as Honora Kelley, born in 1857 to Irish immigrants and raised in the Bay State of Massachusetts. What little is known of her childhood paints a traumatic picture; with her mother dying of consumption and her elder sister confined to an asylum, life was grim for poor Honora. And it got worse. Peter Kelley, her father, was a renowned eccentric who ran a tailoring business in Boston. His bizarre behaviour allegedly escalated to such an extent that, on one occasion, he sewed his own eyelids closed. The Kelleys were, it seemed, touched by madness.
Unable to cope with two young girls in his unhinged state, Peter took six-year-old Honora and her sister Delia to the Boston Female Asylum, an orphanage for little girls. He pleaded for the officials to take them from him and, on seeing signs of neglect and possible abuse, they agreed. Two years later, in November 1864, Honora left the asylum to become an indentured servant at the home of Mrs Ann C. Toppan of Lowell, Massachusetts. While not officially adopted, she took her keeper’s surname and, leaving her past behind her, became known as Jane Toppan.
Life was much improved in Lowell. Jane worked hard for her benefactor and in turn received a stable upbringing. But living in the shadow of her elder foster sister, Elizabeth, brought out the green-eyed monster in her. The object of her envy was pretty, dainty and slim – all the things Jane was not. While Elizabeth received endless attention from suitors, she was left on the shelf, unwanted. Even when she managed to land herself a fiancé, he left the nineteen-year-old at the altar. This had a profound effect on the plump Irishwoman, adding to her already-developing neuroses, that would later reveal her own madness to the New England area.
JOLLY JANE
Jane remained at the Toppan house beyond her contract, and after her foster mother passed away, worked for Elizabeth and her new deacon husband, Oramel Brigham. Then, in 1885, she moved out and began training as a nurse at Boston’s Cambridge Hospital. She became a well-liked member of the team. Patients and personnel alike found her good company and a competent carer, and she soon acquired the nickname: Jolly Jane.
However, there was a dark side to this new trainee. Those in her care whom she liked would be prescribed unauthorized doses and have their charts falsified to ensure they stayed bedridden. Those patients she disliked she used as guinea pigs, secretly experimenting with various levels of morphine and atropine, bringing them in and out of consciousness. On several occasions these victims would die.
Her disturbing behaviour did not stop there. While she played with the lives of the sick and elderly, she found she derived a sexual thrill from watching them slip away. In their last moments she would slide into bed with the dying and snuggle up close to witness the final throes of death.
Amelia Phinney later would testify to finding the plump frame of Jolly Jane in her bed as she slipped in and out of a coma, kissing her face until she was interrupted. The delirious patient put it all down to a strange dream until hearing news reports of Toppan’s actions years later.
Sister Slain
Despite around a dozen patients dying on her watch, Nurse Jane managed to persuade a number of influential doctors to give her glowing references, allowing her to continue her training at the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital. Here she continued her deception, doctoring charts and sleeping with her sick charges, until rumours of her stealing from the patients forced the authorities to dismiss her in the summer of 1890.
Next, Jane returned to Cambridge Hospital for a brief spell until she was fired for improper provision of opiates to patients. Unbowed, she forged a nursing licence and began a career as a full-time private nurse in the following year. Her talents as a care-giver became much sought after, despite enduring rumours of petty theft and fabricating stories, and over the next few years her benevolent role in the community blossomed.
However, in May 1895, she abused this respected position, poisoning her landlord, Israel Dunham. Jane then moved in with the dead man’s wife who, two years later, also fell foul of this live-in nurse. Next, she turned her evil attention to someone she hated with a passion. In August 1899, she invited her envied foster sister to her holiday home in Cape Cod. Over a period of several days the resentful wretch spiked her drinks with strychnine, allowing her to slip into a death-delivering coma.
DEATH AT THE DAVISES
Moving on, Jane rented a cabin on the property of the Davis family. Alden and Mattie had two daughters, Minnie and Genevieve, portraying a vision of familial bliss – something Jane had never enjoyed. The fact that the Davis girls were also married stuck in her craw and she secretly plotted to bring misery into their lives.
The Davises, however, took to their overweight lodger, often allowing her to fall behind on rent. When the missed payments reached $500, Mattie Davis decided to collect, paying Jane a visit at her new accommodation. Using her signature move, she spiked mineral water with poison causing her former landlady to fall violently ill. Nurse Toppan played carer during the sickness, toying with her lucidity for seven days before she died. She even attended the funeral, scattering earth upon Mattie’s grave.
Such rare attentiveness caught the eye of the grieving Davis family and they asked Jane to move in and help run the house for the elderly Alden. Little did they know they were inviting death into the home. Soon after her arrival a series of mysterious fires broke out in various rooms and then, on 26 July 1901, the youngest daughter Genevieve fell ominously ill. The sickness took her life and all agreed the cause was suicide; a desperate reaction by a grief-stricken daughter to her mother’s death.
Less than two weeks later, the widower Davis followed his wife and daughter, gradually poisoned by their new housekeeper. Doctors missed the truth and deemed his death the result of a massive stroke. Jane was still not finished with the family.
In mid-August she brought out the vials of venom to poison the last remaining daughter, Minnie Gibbs. After imbibing the morphine-tainted cocoa wine, the dying girl suffered the pain of having her poisoner cuddle up to
her whilst she held her ten-year-old son.
By the summer’s end Jane Toppan had successfully wiped out four members of an entire family. She then returned to her home town and set her sights on Oramel Brigham, her late foster sister’s husband. Nobody was going to get in the way of luring the deacon into wedlock, not even his seventy-year-old sister whom she poisoned to death. Next, she fed the object of her affection a deadly cocktail to prove, quite literally, he could not live without her. Happily, while he had ingested the poison, Oramel refused to swallow the ruse and kicked her out of the house.
PARANOID POISONER
Meanwhile, Captain Gibbs, father-in-law to the final Davis victim, had returned from sea and, on hearing the horrific tales of the Davis deaths, instantly suspected foul play. He contacted Dr Wood, an eminent Harvard professor and toxicologist, and demanded tests be made on the exhumed body of Minnie Gibbs. Following the discovery of morphine and atropine in her system, Jane Toppan was swiftly arrested in late October 1901 and held for trial at Barnstaple Jail House.
Her psychiatric evaluation revealed the disturbing sexual gratification she obtained from holding the dying as well as traces of mental ill-health in her family history. The attending doctors diagnosed an irresistible sexual impulse that caused her to kill. With such a damning judgement, it took less than twenty minutes for the jury to find her guilty of the four Davis murders, and she was sentenced to life in Taunton Insane Hospital. She took the news with a smile.
Her surprising reaction to the verdict came from the mistaken belief that due to her court-supported insanity she would be free within a few months. A post-trial confession published in the New York Journal revealed she wanted the jury to find her insane and went on to declare she had killed more than thirty-one people.
In fact, she would spend the rest of her life inside the asylum, accusing her carers of giving her poison, until she died of natural causes aged eighty-one.
Karla Homolka
Portraying a damsel in distress, this Barbie doll deviant masked her evil soul from the world while helping her violent boyfriend sexually abuse young girls, proving beauty is only sin deep.
ANIMAL LOVER
Born on 4 May 1970 into a Czech immigrant family, Karla Leanne Homolka grew up in a lower middle class neighbourhood on the southern shore of Lake Ontario in Canada. Blessed with affectionate, loving parents, who doted on Karla and her two younger sisters, she developed into an attractive well-adjusted young girl. She excelled at school, proving a studious pupil, and with her blonde locks, doe eyes and Eastern European features soon became popular with the boys at Sir Winston Churchill High.
However, despite such a perfect start in life, the teenage Karla began to demonstrate a disturbing fascination with sexual violence. After dabbling in self-mutilation, Karla experimented with early boyfriends, allowing them to tie her up and beat her during sex. Her masochistic tendencies awoken, she now longed for a man who could play her sexual master. She would not need to wait for too long.
Leaving school with her high school diploma, Karla found work as a veterinary assistant – the ideal role for a life-long animal lover. On 17 October 1987, she travelled to Toronto to attend a pet convention, staying at the Howard Johnson in Scarborough, a nearby suburb. That evening, in the hotel dining room, she met Paul Bernardo; a confident, fresh-faced twenty-three-year-old, who charmed her into coming up to his room. Such an instant connection sparked between them that within hours of meeting the pair were engaging in wild sex. Karla had found her soul mate.
SISTER ACT
The new man in her life appeared to be the perfect catch. He was training to be an accountant, welcomed into the Homolka family and made Karla extremely happy. But Paul harboured a sinister secret. Since May 1987 a number of young women had been sexually assaulted alighting from buses by an unknown assailant dubbed the Scarborough Rapist. Unbeknownst to Karla, the perpetrator of these attacks was none other than her Paul Bernardo.
The couple grew ever closer as the years passed. Karla’s infatuation with her deviant boyfriend created a disturbing dynamic in which she would do almost anything for him. Throughout the summer of 1990 Paul made it increasingly clear to Karla that he wished to deflower her fifteen-year-old sister, Tammy. Rather than reprimand him, Karla considered the twisted request and set about planning the most sickeningly-inappropriate gift anyone could give.
On 23 December 1990, following a Christmas party at the Homolka house, Karla and Paul invited Tammy downstairs to watch a film with them in the basement den. Karla slipped her tipsy sister some sleeping pills and then smothered her face with a cloth soaked in Halothane – a general anaesthetic she had stolen from work. Handing Paul his early Christmas present, she recorded him raping the young virgin on videotape, taking time out from directing duties to perform oral sex on her own comatose sister.
Such shocking defilement and debauchery brought about one final surprise. Thanks to the concoction of drugs and alcohol in Tammy’s system, she started to choke on her own vomit and soon stopped breathing. The demonic duo cleaned the poor victim and redressed her before calling 911 ensuring by the time paramedics reached the scene Tammy was long gone. The subsequent autopsy deemed her death an accident, leaving Karla and Paul free to continue their evil sexual escapades.
CONCRETE PROOF
Two months later the perverted lovers rented a wood-panelled bungalow in Port Dalhousie, and by the summer the pair were back on the prowl for prey. In the early hours of 15 June 1991, fourteen-year-old Leslie Mahaffy returned to her Burlington home after attending the wake of a friend. Finding she was locked out, she walked around to the rear of the house only to find Paul Bernardo sitting on a bench in the backyard.
His magnetic personality quickly charmed the young girl, luring her to his car with a promise of a cigarette. In a flash, Paul had Leslie at knifepoint, bundling her into his ride and spiriting her off to the house some fifty kilometres away. On their arrival, Karla awoke and joined her boyfriend in sexually abusing the teen, though not before prettying herself in front of the recording camera.
Even when left alone with Karla, Miss Mahaffy’s pleas fell on deaf ears. The evil vet assistant simply plied her with more sleeping pills before the couple garotted the girl with an electrical cord. The next day a circular saw was taken to the corpse and, with the heads and limbs removed, her body parts were encased in quick-drying cement.
They then travelled out to Lake Gibson and dumped the eight blocks into the water. Two weeks later, a husband and wife canoeing on the lake came upon the odd concrete blocks. Paddling over to them, they discovered some had split, revealing human remains. On the very same day, sixteen miles away at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Karla and Paul were exchanging their wedding vows before a packed church of friends and relatives. Off on their Hawaiian honeymoon, the couple were now bound together in holy matrimony as well as by murder.
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT
The infernal newlyweds’ next victim disappeared into their sick and twisted world of sadomasochism on 16 April 1992. Fifteen-year-old Kristen French was spotted by the couple in a church parking lot and this time it was Karla’s turn to lure in the victim. Pretending to need directions, the siren-like beauty baited Kristen towards the car whereupon she was snatched by Bernardo.
Back at their bungalow, Karla and Paul abused, tortured and raped Kristen for three days running. Due at the Homolkas for an Easter dinner and feeling unable to leave her alive, they murdered the teenager on 19 April, returning after their meal to discard the body. The naked corpse was found eleven days later in a Burlington ditch.
The following month the Green Ribbon Task Force was set up to handle the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, but was hampered from the start thanks to erroneous witness testimonies. The couple were sufficiently spooked to file for a change of surname from Bernardo to Teale. This move would not come in time to help them.
By the winter of 1992 the killer couple’s volcanic relationship had reached eruption p
oint. Following a savage beating with a torch, Karla left her husband and moved in with relatives in Brampton. By the end of January, the investigation into the Scarborough Rapist case finally matched Paul Bernardo’s blood sample, given after an earlier interview, to the physical evidence at the crime scenes. On 17 February the violent sexual deviant was taken into custody. By the time of the arrest Karla had already taken steps to distance herself from her accomplice.
HOMOLKA HOODWINKS
A week before Bernardo’s arrest, Karla had confessed her involvement in the murders to her aunt and uncle. She then went to Metropolitan Police Station where she told detectives she was frightened for her life, explaining she had been coerced into performing sinister acts by her dominating husband.
Playing the victim became Karla’s focus to ensure blame for the deaths fell on her husband. The authorities, keen on building an airtight case against Bernardo, offered the blonde Jezebel a plea bargain. Agreeing to turn state’s evidence, Karla received the guarantee of a reduced sentence and total immunity from prosecution in the murder of her sister. This pact would later be dubbed the worst deal in Canadian history.
With the deal set in stone, Karla stood trial, pleading guilty to manslaughter. On 6 July, she received her commuted prison sentence of twelve years. Nearly two years later, Paul Bernardo’s trial began and the evidence shown in court caused a public outcry, thanks to some hidden videotapes held back by the defence counsel. These clearly revealed that Karla was by no means a victim. The footage showed her smiling at the camera, licking her lips and actively engaging in the sexual abuse of their victims. Having already been tried and sentenced for her involvement in the crimes, this conniving Canadian had successfully avoided the full force of the law.