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

by Marlowe, John

  A man named Enzo Spalletti, known to be a voyeur, was arrested for the murder. The authorities’ case was based on nothing more than Spalletti’s wife’s belief that she had been told of the murder by her husband before it had been reported by the press.

  Less than five months later, on 23 October 1981, the killer struck again. The victims this time were 26-year-old Stefano Baldi and his 24-year-old girlfriend Susanna Cambi. They had both been shot and stabbed numerous times. Cambi had been mutilated in a manner similar to Carmela De Nuccio and Stefania Pettini.

  It was clear that Enzo Spalletti, who had been in prison awaiting trial, was not the murderer.

  On 19 June 1982, a couple were killed while making love in a parked car south-west of Florence. The woman, 20-year-old Antonella Migliorini, died instantly. Her partner, 22-year-old Paolo Mainardi, though injured, managed to attempt a getaway. He was shot several more times. Not found till the next morning, Mainardi died without ever regaining consciousness. As there had been no mutilation, the authorities theorized that the killer had been unnerved by the near-escape. They built upon this assumption by planting a story that Mainardi had regained consciousness and provided an accurate description of his assailant before dying.

  Later that afternoon, one of the emergency workers received two calls from a person claiming to be the killer, demanding to know what Mainardi had said.

  A few days later, a member of the police force began to wonder whether the current rash of murders might in some way be linked to the 1968 slaying of Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco. Sure enough, a forensics test revealed that the gun used in committing the recent murder was the same one that had fired on the two lovers 14 years before. A new theory was formed in which Stefano Mele, who had been in prison for all but the most recent murders, had had an accomplice. When approached by the authorities, Mele refused to co-operate in any investigation.

  Over a year passed before the killer, now dubbed ‘the Monster of Florence’, killed again. These murders, committed on 9 September 1983, were almost certainly a mistake. The victims were Horst Meyer and Uwe Rusch Sens, two German boys who were shot to death as they slept in a Volkswagen camper 30 kilometres south of Florence. It is thought that the murderer mistook one of the victims for a girl because he had long blond hair. The theory is supported by the fact that there was no mutilation performed on either male.

  Shortly after the murder of the two German youths, the emergency worker who had been badgered by the killer in June 1982 received another threatening phone call. Again, the speaker demanded to know exactly what it was that Paolo Mainardi had said before he died. What troubled police about the call was that the emergency worker had been on holiday in Rimini. They questioned how it was that the man claiming to be the killer knew where to track him down.

  After another period of inactivity lasting a little under a year, on 29 July 1984 the Monster killed a couple north of Florence in Vicchio di Mugello. The male victim, 21-year-old Claudi Stefanacci, was found half-clothed, shot to death in the back seat of his car. The body of his girlfriend, 18-year-old Pia Rontini, was discovered spread-eagled behind some nearby bushes. Her genitals had been mutilated and the left breast had been completely removed. It was estimated that Rontini had been slashed over a hundred times. Like her boyfriend, she had been shot with the same gun used in all the other murders.

  Beginning in 1982, the Monster appeared to be limiting himself to one double-homicide in each calendar year. In 1985, he struck on 8 September, murdering a French couple who were camping outside San Casciano in the Florentine countryside. The pathologist determined that 36-year-old Nadine Mauriot and 25-year-old Jean-Michel Kraveichvili were very likely making love at the moment of the assault. Mauriot was hit by four bullets and died instantly. Kraveichvili was also hit four times, but managed to scramble out of the tent and run 30 metres before being overtaken and stabbed to death. It was determined that the killer then returned to the tent where he removed the vagina and left breast from Mauriot’s corpse.

  The next day the public prosecutor’s office received an envelope containing a small cube of flesh taken from the dead woman’s left breast. Intentionally or not, it was the final communication from the murderer – the Monster of Florence never killed again.

  Over the next eight years, more than 100,000 people were questioned as the investigation continued. Gradually, attention came to focus on one man, an illiterate farm labourer named Pietro Pacciani. The 68-year-old had had much experience with the law, beginning in 1951 when he murdered a travelling salesman whom he had caught sleeping with his fiancée. Not only had Pacciani stabbed the man 19 times, he had raped his corpse. The farm labourer had received a sentence of 13 years in prison for the crime. Following his release, Pacciani had married and raised a family. He was, however, anything but a good father. Between 1987 and 1991 the patriarch of the family was imprisoned for molesting his two daughters and beating his wife.

  Among the 100,000 people questioned by the police were sources that alleged that Pacciani was a member of a cult that employed female body parts in conducting black masses.

  On 17 January 1993, nearly a quarter-century after the initial murders attributed to the Monster of Florence, Pacciani was arrested. He was charged with all the murders, save the 1968 double-homicide of Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco, for which Stefano Mele had been found guilty. Beginning on 1 November 1994, the trial was a media sensation. Facing a prosecution which had little evidence, Pacciani maintained his innocence. When pronounced guilty and sentenced to 14 terms of life in prison, he left the court proclaiming that he was ‘as innocent as Christ on the cross’.

  While they didn’t believe Pacciani’s assertion of innocence, early in the convicted man’s incarceration investigators came to believe that he had not acted alone. Pacciani, they believed, was the leader of a gang of murderers.

  A little way into the second year of Pacciani’s sentence, on 13 February 1996, an appeals court overturned the verdict due to lack of evidence. The farm labourer was once again a free man. The same could not be said for two of his friends, Giancarlo Lotti and Mario Vanni, who had just hours earlier been arrested for their participation in the murders.

  On 12 December, armed with new evidence against Pacciani, prosecutors convinced the Italian supreme court to order a retrial. Things did not look good for the farm labourer. On 21 May 1997, his friends Lotti and Vanni were convicted of participating in five of the Monster’s double-homicides – Lotti received a 25-year sentence, while Vanni was sent away for life.

  But Pacciani never again appeared in court. On 21 May 1997, the 73-year-old was discovered lying dead on the floor of his home. Although his trousers were around his ankles and his shirt around his neck, the police concluded that he had suffered a heart attack. An autopsy indicated that death had come from a combination of drugs that appeared designed to exacerbate a variety of health ailments. Pacciani’s death is now considered a murder.

  The investigation of the eight murders associated with the Monster of Florence did not end with the death of Pacciani. In early September 2001, evidence was gathered linking the activities to a Satanic sect composed of wealthy and powerful Tuscan families. One theory is that Pacciani did the bidding of the sect. If so, this may provide some explanation as to why an illiterate farm labourer had two houses and a £50,000 bank balance at the time of his death. On 1 June 2006, a retired pharmacist in San Casciano received a notification letter from Florentine prosecutors, in which they alleged that he gave the orders for Pacciani, Lotti and Vanni to carry out the murders. But he has never been formally charged and remains a free man.

  Images

  Elizabeth Báthory fully shared her husband’s torture-loving cruelty and sadistic impulses.

  Sketch of Dr Knox, the physician who did not ask too many questions about where his corpses were coming from.

  William Burke, who was executed in 1829, and William Hare: medical science was hungry for corpses and the two ‘bodysnatchers�
� found a wicked way of supplying these as well as turning a nice little profit for themselves.

  Mary Ann Cotton buried three husbands, a prospective sister-in-law, a ‘paramour’, her mother and no fewer than 12 children.

  More interested in books than business, Thomas Cream became a doctor.

  ‘The French Ripper’: Joseph Vacher murdered and mutilated 11 people and put this aberration down to the fact that he was bitten by a rabid dog at the age of 8. His twin brother choked to death when he was one month old.

  Herman Webster Mudgett, aka H. H. Holmes, was a notorious insurance murderer who killed up to 27 people, many of them at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. He was executed in 1895.

  Béla Kiss marched off with the army, but did he move on to the Foreign Legion?

  Henri Landru preyed on recently widowed women who came into his second-hand furniture shop hoping to sell their furnishings in order to supplement the modest pensions they had been left by their departed husbands.

  Dark Strangler, Jack the Strangler or Gorilla Man: whatever you called him, Earle Nelson was fated to hang for his evil crimes

  Police pictures of Fritz Haarmann: he was coddled by his mother and disliked by his father.

  Peter Kürten in police custody. He was classified by Professor Karl Berg as a ‘narcissistic psychopath’ and he never showed any remorse at all over the crimes he had committed.

  Carl Panzram was gang-raped and went on to forcibly sodomize more than a thousand boys and men.

  Harvey Glatman was an unusual child, alternately giggling and crying for no apparent reason.

  Albert DeSalvo: DeSalvo’s father once attempted to sell Albert and his four young sisters to a farmer for nine dollars.

  Mugshots of Richard Speck released by the Dallas County Sheriff Department in 1961.

  Ed Kemper was once asked what he thought when he saw a young girl in the street, and replied, ‘One side of me says I’d like to talk to her and date her. The other side of me says I wonder how her head would look on a stick...’

  Jerry Brudos strangled Jan Whitney in his house – then he left her body hanging from the ceiling.

  Pietro Pacciani, a 68-year-old, illiterate farm labourer, got 13 years in prison for murdering a travelling salesman who had slept with his fiancée.

  John Wayne Gacy was a pillar of the community, organizing themed block parties and entertaining as Pogo the Clown, but his sexual transgressions began to take on more and more sinister forms.

  Handsome and articulate, Ted Bundy appeared to be a generous young man, but few got a glimpse behind the mask he wore each day – and those that did often regretted it. Starting with petty crime, Bundy worked his way up to murder.

  Clifford Olson was born on New Year’s Day, 1940. He was jailed at the age of 14, the first of 83 convictions, ranging from parole violation to armed robbery, before his killing spree began.

  Green River killer Gary Ridgway cries in court as he listens to testimony from relatives of his victims. Devoted husband Ridgway avoided the death penalty by agreeing to help police find the bodies of those who were still missing.

  Aileen Wuornos had a disturbing upbringing. At the age of four, she was abandoned by her mother and brought up by grandparents. She says she was abused by her grandfather and suffered regular beatings.

  Andrei Chikatilo’s behaviour in court was peculiar and disruptive, veering from exaggerated yawning to singing and talking gibberish. Twice he dropped his trousers and exposed himelf to those surrounding his iron cage.

  Jack Unterweger occupied a strange position where as a ‘resocialized’ ex-con and best-selling author he was in a position to duplicitously comment in the media on crimes he had actually committed.

  A mugshot from 1982, when Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for indecent exposure at the Wisconsin State Fair.

  Andrew Cunanan ended up in San Francisco and soon showed he wasn’t about to play the shrinking violet.

  All the signs were there that Thomas Hamilton was a serious potential danger to children, yet nothing was ever done about it.

  Eric Harris was cited as ‘a very bright individual likely to succeed in life’ after an anger management course.

  Dylan Klebold attended his high school prom with a date only three days before the shooting spree.

  THE RISE OF THE SERIAL KILLER

  As the 20th century entered its final decades, the incidence of serial murder dramatically increased, particularly in the United States. In 1984, President Reagan described the perpetrators as ‘repeat killers’ and the FBI made the startling announcement that there were approximately 35 such murderers active in the country at any given time. Before Reagan’s administration left office, a new term, ‘serial killers’, was in common usage.

  JOHN WAYNE GACY

  John Wayne Gacy devoted a great deal of time and effort to the betterment of his community. He served on the board of the Catholic Inter-Club Council and was commanding captain of the Chicago Civil Defense. In his immediate neigbourhood, he organized elaborate, themed block parties, at which he would entertain as Pogo the Clown. Active within the Democratic Party, he once had his photograph taken with future-First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Gacy hoped that one day he would make a name for himself by running for political office – but as Christmas 1978 approached, he became famous for entirely different reasons.

  Born in Chicago to Irish parents on St Patrick’s Day 1942, Gacy was the first son in the family. While growing up on the city’s north side, he was bullied by his father, the man after whom he had been named, who would accuse him of being a sissy. Despite this, Gacy junior looked up to his father with something amounting to hero-worship. He seemed entirely capable of turning a blind eye to the old man’s alcoholism and violent outbursts.

  Among John Gacy Sr’s many complaints was that his namesake was a sickly child. At 11 the young Gacy was hit on the head with a swing. For the next five years, he suffered from recurring blackouts. The condition was left undiagnosed until the age of 16 when a blood clot was discovered on his brain. It was later dissolved with the use of medication. The following year, Gacy was hospitalized with a heart ailment, the cause of which was never determined. Though he never once suffered a heart attack, Gacy complained about the pain for the rest of his life.

  Conscientious and hard-working, as a boy Gacy held several after-school jobs. Although he wasn’t a particularly bad student, he moved from high school to high school before dropping out in his senior year. After graduation, he left home for Las Vegas, where he was certain well-paying jobs awaited. Gacy ended up as a janitor in a funeral home, saving desperately for a return ticket to Chicago. This bitter lesson taught him the value of education. Upon his return, Gacy enrolled in a business college. He soon learned he had a talent for sales and before long was manager of a men’s clothing store in Springfield, Illinois. Although his health again began to suffer, he became active in a number of civic organizations, including the Jaycees (Junior Chamber of Commerce), who named him ‘Man of the Year’.

  In September 1964, he married a co-worker, Marlynn Myers. The couple relocated to Waterloo, Iowa, nearly 500 kilometres west of Chicago, where Gacy managed three Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants owned by his new father-in-law. The couple had two children. For a time, it seemed that Gacy was well on his way to establishing himself as one of the pillars of the community. However, rumours began to circulate that he was making sexual advances to his young employees.

  In May 1968 he was arrested after he’d raped one of his workers, a 16-year-old named Mark Miller. The teenager claimed that while visiting the Gacy home a year earlier, he had been tied up and forcibly sodomized. Gacy maintained that members of the Jaycees were framing him and that the sexual encounter had been consensual.

  As he waited for his case to come to trial, he hired a man named Dwight Anderson to beat up Miller. The victim was taken to a wooded area and sprayed with mace, but managed to escape after breaking Anderson’s nose. Miller later identified his ass
ailant who, in turn, revealed that he had been provided with $310 to perform the beating. In the end, Gacy pleaded guilty and was handed a ten-year sentence.

  While he was behind bars, Gacy’s wife divorced him – he never saw her or his children again. Equally damaging, his father died, fully aware of the crime of which his son had been convicted.

  Gacy was a model inmate, and on 18 June 1970 managed to obtain parole after having served only 18 months. He returned to Chicago and lived with his mother. With her help, in 1971 he bought a bungalow in Norwood Park Township, just outside Chicago, and quickly set out to establish himself in the community. By autumn, Gacy was no longer under parole. He had made many friends in the neighbourhood, none of whom were aware of his criminal record. Christmas was spent with a local family whom he had invited to share in the festivities. It may have appeared that Gacy had been reformed – and yet less than two months into the New Year he was charged with disorderly conduct after having forced a boy at a bus terminal into sexual acts. The case was dismissed when the accuser failed to show at the court proceedings.