The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases

by Marlowe, John

  He enrolled in another school, but was soon in conflict with one of the teachers. The dispute was elevated to such a point that Panzram brought a handgun to class, intending to murder the instructor in front of his fellow students. The scheme collapsed when the gun fell to the floor during a struggle. He left the school and the family farm, and started ‘riding the rails’. Any feeling of freedom the 14-year-old might have felt in this transient lifestyle probably came to an end when he was gang-raped by four men. For the rest of his 39 years, Panzram was enraged by the pain and humiliation he had suffered through the incident. As part of some warped idea of revenge, he went on to forcibly sodomize more than a thousand boys and men.

  Mere months after having left the Minnesota State Training School, Panzram was again in reform school, again for having committed burglary.

  He soon escaped with another inmate named Jimmie Benson. They remained together for a time, moving around the American midwest, causing havoc, burgling houses and stealing from churches before setting them on fire.

  After they split up, Panzram joined the United States Army. It was a strange choice of profession, one for which he was ill suited. During his brief stint in service, he was charged with insubordination, jailed numerous times for petty offences and, ultimately, was found guilty on three counts of larceny. Panzram received a dishonourable discharge and on 20 April 1908 was sentenced to three years of hard labour at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

  In prison, the 16-year-old Panzram was beaten and chained to a 50-pound metal ball which he was made to carry. He dreamed of escape, but found it impossible. It was only after serving his three-year sentence that he finally got out. Panzram returned to his old transient lifestyle, moving through Kansas, Texas, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah and Idaho. He committed burglary, arson, robbery and rape. In his autobiography, Panzram writes that he spent all his spare change on bullets and for fun would take shots at farmers’ windows and livestock.

  Another story involves a railway policeman whom Panzram raped at gunpoint. He forced two hobos to witness the act and then recreate it themselves.

  He was arrested many times and served a number of sentences under a variety of assumed names. After his second incarceration and escape from Oregon State Prison, Panzram made his way to the east coast. Ending up in New Haven, Connecticut in the summer of 1920, Panzram burgled the home of former United States president William H. Taft, the man who had once signed the paper sentencing him to three years in prison at Fort Leavenworth.

  The haul from the Taft mansion far exceeded previous burglaries. After fencing the goods in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Panzram bought a yacht. He then sailed the East River, breaking into the yachts of the wealthy moored along his route. He took to hiring unemployed sailors as deckhands. In the evenings, he would drug his crew, sodomize them, shoot each in the head with a pistol stolen from the Taft house and throw their bodies overboard. After about three weeks, Panzram’s routine came to an end when his yacht was caught in an August gale and sank. He swam to shore with two sailors, whom he never saw again.

  Following a six-month sentence for burglary and possession of a loaded gun, Panzram stowed away on a ship bound for Angola. While in the employ of the Sinclair Oil Company he sodomized and murdered a young boy. He later hired six locals to act as guides and assist in a crocodile hunting expedition. Once downriver, with crocodiles in sight, he shot all six and fed the men to the beasts. After travelling along the Congo River and robbing farmers on the Gold Coast, he made his way back across the Atlantic.

  Following his return to the United States, Panzram continued where he left off, committing robbery, burglary and sodomy. These ‘routine’ crimes were punctuated by the murders of three boys; each was raped before being killed.

  On 26 August 1923, Panzram broke into the Larchmont, New York, train depot and was going through the stored baggage when he was confronted by a policeman. He was sentenced to five years in prison, most of which were served at Clinton Prison in upstate New York. True to character, Panzram made no attempt to become a model prisoner. During his first months at Clinton he tried to firebomb the workshops, clubbed one of the guards on the back of the head and, of course, attempted to escape. This final act had consequences with which he would struggle for the rest of his life.

  The incident began when Panzram failed in his attempt to climb a prison wall. He fell nearly ten metres, landing on a concrete step. Though his ankles and legs were broken and his spine severely injured, he received no medical attention for 14 months. The months of agony Panzram endured intensified his hatred and he began to draw up elaborate plans to kill on a mass scale. One scheme involved blowing up a railway tunnel, then releasing poison gas into the area of the wreck.

  When he was finally released from Clinton, in July 1928, Panzram emerged a crippled man. However, his diminished capacity did nothing to prevent his return to crime. During the first two weeks of freedom, he averaged approximately one burglary each day. More seriously, on 26 July 1928, he strangled a man during a robbery in Philadelphia. By August, Panzram was again in custody. Perhaps realizing that he would never again leave prison, he confessed to 22 murders, including those of two of the three boys in the summer of 1923.

  On 12 November, he went on trial for burglary and housebreaking. Acting in his own defence, he used the courtroom as a stage from which to scare the jury and threaten witnesses. By the end of the day he had been found guilty on all counts and was sentenced to a total of 25 years in prison.

  On 1 February 1929, he arrived at the United States Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. It was an area of the country he knew well; 20 years earlier he had served time at the nearby military prison. Standing before his new warden on that first day, Panzram warned, ‘I’ll kill the first man that bothers me.’ True to his word, on 20 June 1929, Panzram took an iron bar and brought it down with force on the head of Robert Warnke, his supervisor in the prison laundry. When the other prisoners attempted to escape, Panzram began chasing them around the room, breaking bones.

  He was tried for Warnke’s murder on 14 April 1930. Again, he undertook his own defence, smugly challenging the prosecutor to find him guilty. It wasn’t a difficult challenge. When the judge sentenced Panzram to hang, he was threatened by the condemned man.

  On 5 September 1930, Panzram was hanged. Many organizations had worked to prevent the execution, much to Panzram’s annoyance. Nine months before his death, he wrote to one such organization, the Society for the Abolishment of Capital Punishment: ‘The only thanks you and your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it.’

  THE LUST KILLERS

  In the 1960s a new term, ‘lust killers’, was coined to cover what appeared to be a series of psychopathic sexual predators. Some of these men mutilated sexual organs, performed acts of necrophilia and positioned the bodies of their victims in sexually suggestive poses, while others committed none of these crimes at all. However, all the lust killers had one thing in common: the attainment of sexual gratification through murder.

  HARVEY GLATMAN

  As a child, Harvey Glatman was taunted in the schoolyard. His large ears and buck-teeth earned him nicknames like ‘Weasel’ and ‘Chipmunk’. As he grew older his looks did not improve. His only recorded date was with a beautiful woman, whom he killed.

  Born in New York in 1927, Glatman was a peculiar child. This observation, first made when he was a baby, was shared by his parents. Alternately giggling or crying, his emotional reactions seemed to have no connection to his environment. He appeared to display no interest in his toys, or anything else for that matter. In private, however, he was cultivating an obsession with things sexual, particularly acts involving sado-masochistic behaviour. Decades later, on the witness stand, Glatman’s mother would trace her son’s fascination back to the age of 4, when she had caught him pulling a piece of string he had tied around his peni
s.

  In school Glatman proved to be studious, preferring the classroom to the playground, where he would be obliged to interact with other children. He was frightened of girls his age who often joined the boys in making fun of his looks. The schoolyard taunts began afresh, in a different location, after the family left the Bronx for a new life in Denver, Colorado.

  At a very early age, he discovered autoerotic asphyxia, and would use ropes in self-induced strangulation while masturbating. When Glatman was 11 years old, his parents discovered their son’s pastime, and sought the advice of a medical doctor. The result was that he took greater caution not to be caught in the future.

  As he entered his teenage years, he developed a bad case of acne, which only contributed to his isolation from others in his age group.

  In public an accomplished student, he began to secretly break into private homes. Glatman’s motivation was not material, but the thrill derived from a risky act. Usually, but not always, he would steal a souvenir with which to remember his adventure. A stolen handgun was among his most prized possessions. Eventually, the break-ins evolved into a more dangerous and violent act. Glatman took to prowling the streets looking for attractive women. Once an appealing subject had been spotted, she would be followed home. Later that evening Glatman would return, break into the house, tie up his victim and gag her mouth. He would then fondle the women, often through their clothes; they would never be fully undressed.

  Nightly activities

  Glatman’s parents, believing an improbable story that their son had joined in extracurricular activities with schoolmates, were not suspicious of his nightly absences.

  On 18 May 1945, carrying a handgun and some rope, he was caught by police while attempting to break into a woman’s apartment. Taken into custody, he confessed to several burglaries, none of which involved bondage and molestation. While awaiting trial for burglary, he committed a much more serious crime in abducting an attractive woman named Noreen Laurel. After tying her up, he drove 50 kilometres into Sunshine Canyon, where she was fondled. Later, he drove his captive back to Denver, where she was released. Laurel went directly to the police and identified her abductor from a picture in a book of mugshots. Glatman was again arrested. That November he was sentenced to one year in Colorado State Prison.

  This model student also seemed a model inmate. Eight months into the sentence, he was paroled. Accompanied by his mother, who was well aware of her son’s reputation in Colorado, Glatman relocated to Yonkers, New York. He obtained a job as a television repairman, a trade he had learnt while incarcerated.

  Glatman waited until his mother left before resuming the lifestyle that had caused so much trouble. Well aware that, for a parolee, possession of a handgun could lead to an extremely long prison sentence, he purchased a realistic-looking cap gun.

  On 17 August, a mere three weeks after leaving the Colorado State Prison, Glatman pulled the cap gun on a young couple. The incident departed from that of a typical mugging when he produced a rope and bound the legs of the male. Pressing the cap gun against her stomach, Glatman was fondling the female’s breasts, when her boyfriend managed to escape his bonds. He grabbed the assailant from behind, but was stabbed in the shoulder. Glatman escaped and was soon on the move to Albany.

  Five days later, he assaulted an off-duty nurse, but she started to fight back as he was tying her wrists. Again, Glatman ran away. He then mugged two young women. Within days, Glatman was caught. In October, having received a five-to-ten-year sentence, he was living at New York’s Elmira Reformatory. Upon reaching the age of 21, he was transferred to the famous Sing Sing Correctional Facility, but not before having been diagnosed as having a psychopathic personality.

  Again, Glatman proved to be an exemplary inmate, so much so that he was granted parole after having served just over half of his five-year minimum sentence. Obliged to stay in his parents’ custody, he returned to Denver, where he began the first of what would be a long series of jobs.

  In September 1956, Glatman was released from parole. No longer required to live in Denver, he drove around the westernmost states. After four months, he settled in Los Angeles. Glatman set himself up as a television repairman and returned to photography, a hobby he’d had as a teenager. In the evenings he took advantage of local modelling agencies, which offered girls and women willing to pose semi-nude or nude.

  On the afternoon of 1 August 1957, he brought a 19-year-old model named Judy Dull to his apartment. Told that the photographs had been commissioned for a true crime magazine, Dull was bound and gagged. Once she was secure, Glatman threatened the model with a gun, taking pictures all the while. From time to time he would untie Dull’s legs, rape her, and again replace the ropes. As the day drew to a close, he announced that the time had come to let her go. With her wrists tied, Dull was led to Glatman’s car and made to sit inside. The television repairman drove for two hours, pointing his gun at Dull, until he had passed Thousand Palms, 200 kilometres away from Los Angeles. According to Glatman, while pretending to release the model he used the ropes deftly to break her neck. He then arranged her body for a few more photographs.

  Glatman’s next victim was a 24-year-old named Shirley Ann Bridgeford, whom he met through the Patty Sullivan Lonely Hearts Club. Calling himself George Williams, on 7 March 1958 he arrived at her home for what was meant to be a first date; there he was introduced to several of Bridgeford’s relatives. He was supposed to take his date out to dinner, followed by square dancing. They did share a meal, but afterwards Glatman drove with Bridgeford into the Vallecito Mountains. After raping her, Glatman used flashbulbs to take photographs of his victim in the dark countryside. He then waited for the sun to come up so that he could take even more pictures. Eventually, he strangled Bridgeford with a rope and took additional photographs of her corpse.

  Four months later, he returned to the Vallecito Mountains with a model named Ruth Mercado. He had already raped the 24-year-old in her Los Angeles apartment. There, in the wilderness, Glatman raped her again, had her pose for photographs and strangled her with a rope. Other models were much more lucky – they were hired, photographed and returned home, unaware that they had been in the company of a rapist and murderer. He had begun to use Diane Studio, an agency that was more respectable and pricier than his former choices. On 27 October, he hired Lorraine Vigil, the agency’s newest model.

  From the time he picked her up, at eight in the evening, Vigil was careful around Glatman. Caution turned to suspicion when Glatman changed the location of their shoot. When she confronted him verbally, Glatman pulled over to the side of the road, took out a handgun and told her to hold out her arms. He attempted to tie her wrists, but she fought back, holding on to the barrel of the gun. It fired through Vigil’s skirt, the bullet skimming her thigh. She then kicked open the door and, holding the gun, fell out on to the gravel shoulder of the road. Glatman was grabbing at her sweater, trying to pull Vigil back inside when he was interrupted by the headlights of a passing police car.

  Whimpering, Glatman was arrested and taken to Orange County, where under interrogation, he confessed to the murders of Judy Dull, Shirley Ann Bridgeford and Ruth Mercado. He surely knew it was only a matter of time before the authorities came upon his collection of their photographs.

  Glatman’s trial was a short one. At its centre was the playing of a four-hour taped confession in which the accused described in detail and without emotion each of the three murders. On 15 December 1958, Glatman was condemned to death.

  During the nine-month wait until his execution date, Glatman was held at San Quentin State Prison. He was separated from the rest of the inmates; his home was a cell that would a decade later hold Charles Manson.

  On 18 September 1959, Glatman was taken to the prison gas chamber. After he was strapped to a chair, the door was sealed and sodium cyanide pellets were dropped. He took just under nine minutes to die.

  THE BOSTON STRANGLER

  Albert DeSalvo’s father, Frank DeSalvo, was
a Newfoundland fisherman who had found work in Boston as a machinist. A sadistic monster, he would beat his wife and six children on a regular basis. Fists, belts and pipes were used for the smallest of indiscretions. As a boy, Albert DeSalvo witnessed his father beat his mother until all her teeth had fallen out. Then, as she lay on the floor in pain, Frank DeSalvo took his wife’s hands and proceeded to break each finger in turn. His father would repeatedly pick up prostitutes, bring them into the family home and have intercourse with them in front of his children. Forever being arrested for not supporting his family, Frank DeSalvo once attempted to relieve the financial burden by selling Albert and his four sisters to a farmer for nine dollars.

  Many serial killers suffered as children, and Albert DeSalvo’s early years appear to have been exceptionally horrific. Might his tragic childhood have influenced his future as a serial killer, as some have claimed? Or might there be something else in play? After all, none of DeSalvo’s siblings became murderers. Perhaps, though, these are the wrong questions. A better one might be: was Albert DeSalvo really the Boston Strangler?

  The murders attributed to the Boston Strangler begin on 14 June 1962 with that of Anna Slesers. The body of this 55-year-old Latvian seamstress was discovered in the early evening when her son arrived at her apartment intending to take her to church. He thought initially that his mother had committed suicide; indeed the fear had led him to break down her door when she hadn’t responded to his knocking. However, the police quickly came to a different conclusion. Slesers’ body was found, half-clothed in a robe, lying on the bathroom floor. It was obvious that she had been sexually assaulted and then killed. Death had been brought about by the cord of the robe, which had been tightly knotted around her neck. Slesers’ apartment appeared to have been burgled, though many valuables had been overlooked. The police theorized that the murderer’s original plan had been to steal from the apartment, but had come across Slesers, who he then molested.