The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (the mammoth book of ...)
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The Amnesty International report also cited nine cases of violence against native women, including the murder of Helen Betty Osborne, a 19-year-old Cree student from northern Manitoba who dreamed of becoming a teacher but was abducted from the street of The Pas, Manitoba by four men, raped and killed on the night of 12 November 1971. Her naked body was found later by the police.
It took more than 15 years to bring one of the four men to justice. The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission conducted an investigation into the length of time involved in resolving the case and concluded that the most significant factor was racism. The Commission found that police had long been aware of white men sexually preying on native women and girls in the town of The Pas but “did not feel that the practice necessitated any particular vigilance.”
A formal apology from the Manitoba government was issued by Manitoba’s Minister of Justice in 2000 and a scholarship was created in Osborne’s name for aboriginal women.
But at least the case of Helen Osborne was resolved. Many more have not been—like that of 16-year-old Deena Lynn Braem of Quesnel, BC. She was last seen alive at around 4 a.m. on 25 September 1999, just two days before her 17th birthday. She was later reported as missing and the police immediately suspected foul play.
On 10 December 1999, human remains were found near Pinnacles Park, just west of Quesnel. A post mortem identified the body as that of Deena Braem. She had been murdered.
On Friday, 24 September, she had attended Correlieu Secondary in Quesnel, where she was just beginning her final year. She lived in Bouchie Lake, some six miles to the west of Quesnel, but her parents had given her permission to stay the weekend with a friend in the city to celebrate her birthday. Together they went to an outdoor party in the Quesnel area. It was well part midnight when they left. Deena had been drinking alcohol, but according to friends was not drunk. They got a lift back to Quesnel and were dropped off at a residence on English Avenue at around 2.30. But then, at Deena’s urging, they went out again.
Deena had decided she wanted to go home to her Mom and Dad instead of staying in town with friends. The two girls walked the short distance to the intersection of North Fraser Drive and Edkins Street, then up North Fraser Drive to Fuller, while they tried to hitch a ride. It was cold and Deena’s girlfriend went home, leaving Deena to hitchhike alone. Witnesses saw two males in their teens or early twenties in North Fraser Drive around that time and the case remains unsolved. But then in Quesnel there are a remarkable number of unsolved cases.
On 26 November 2004, the family of Barbara Anne Lanes, aged 57, reported her missing. She had not been seen for a week. The sightings were investigated but none were confirmed, and police have no clues about where she is or how she disappeared. Laurie Joseph Blanchard was last seen in Quesnel on 2 July 1972, when he was preparing to move to New Brunswick. His body was found on 13 August 1972. He had been murdered. Mary Agnes Thomas disappeared under suspicious circumstances near Quesnel on or about 10 September 1971. Her body has never been recovered. Herman Alec disappeared under suspicious circumstances near the Nazko Indian Reserve on 14 October 1977. His body has never been found. Santokh Kaur Johal disappeared under suspicious circumstances near Quesnel on or about 1 April 1978. Her body has never been recovered. Janice Ellisabeth Hackh disappeared under suspicious circumstances near Quesnel on or about 24 August 1979. Her body has never been found. Wayne Albert Taylor disappeared under suspicious circumstances near Quesnel in or around January 1976. His body has never been recovered. Mary Jane Jimmie was found murdered on the banks of the nearby Fraser River on or about 26 June 1987. Duncan Harris was found on a sidewalk in Quesnel on 6 July 1988, apparently the victim of an assault. He later died in hospital from these injuries. William Henry Terrico was found murdered in his home on 12 December 1989. Brian Mirl Chaffee was reported missing on 22 September 1990. He was last seen at his home on 18 September 1990. His body was found on 24 September 1990. Dale Melvin Johnson disappeared under suspicious circumstances on August 15, 1996. His body has never been recovered. Not bad for a city of around 10,000 people.
Thirty-one-year-old Melanie Dawn Brown, another First-Nations woman, was found deceased in a basement suite located in the 400 block of Olgivie Street in Prince George at around 4 p.m. on 8 December 2004. A post mortem confirmed that she had been murdered. Police have not released the exact cause of death. She is considered a candidate for a Highway 16 killing.
Nineteen-year-old Corrine Cunningham of the Katzie Reserve near Pitt Meadows, outside Vancouver, disappeared at 3 p.m. on 24 November 2005 after she left “New Transitions” in the Pitt Meadows Industrial Park. She had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old and a tendency to befriend older men. Her new black BMX bicycle was also missing.
Seventy-one-year-old Helena Jack, a member of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, was murdered on 29 July 2004 in the garage beside her cabin in Burns Lake, which is in the 600-block of Highway 16. Police believe a man named Vincent Sam followed her into the garage on the night of the assault. Sam was arrested in August 2004, shortly after Burns Lake Fire and Rescue discovered the severely beaten body of Helena Jack in a burnt-out garage beside a cabin on the 600-block of highway 16. Evidence found in the garage directed the police search to a local motel room. They believe their suspect tried to wash his body of evidence linking him to the crime, before returning to his residence later that night. But investigators found DNA in the motel room that matched DNA found at the crime scene. It belonged to Vincent Sam. Sam was charged with Helena Jack’s murder on 4 September 2004. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Belinda Ann Cameron—aka Belinda Ann Engen—disappeared in early May 2005, from Esquimalt near Victoria. She was a schizophrenic and needed daily medication to keep the condition in check. She was also a drug user thought to be involved in the sex trade. Foul play is suspected. She could have been the victim of Robert Pickton, like Victoria resident Nancy Creek, if he had not already been in custody.
Another possible victim of a second Low Track slayer is 24-year-old Doras Gail Shorson, who was last seen on 2 April 2005 when she left the family home on Larner Road, Surrey. She was a drug-user who worked in the sex trade in Surrey or Vancouver. And 14-year-old Lorna Ulmer-Billy was last seen home in the 15100 block of 86 Avenue in Surrey, BC, at around 9 p.m. on 7 January 2005 when her stepfather looked in to check she was still asleep. It was thought that she left home early the next morning to meet some friends. However, she has run away before to Squamish and Vancouver.
Twenty-year-old Rene Gunning has been missing since 19 February 2005 when she left Edmonton for her home in Fort St John in the company of another female from Dawson Creek. The pair were thought to be hitch-hiking.
Seventeen-year-old Lisa Paul disappeared from her home on 4 August 2005. Lisa was known to frequent the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Twenty-nine-year-old Charlene Kerr was found dead in a pool of blood in the Gastown Hotel in 1990. She was a prostitute and drug user.
Fourteen-year-old Tawyna Megan Lisk called a friend on 18 July 2004 and said that she was going to Calgary, Alberta. It is thought she planned to hitch-hike.
Sarah Strachan, aged 16, was last seen on 7 February 2004 from Coquitlam, just a few miles from Pickton’s pig farm. Also missing is her Caucasian friend Leah Nestegarde, aged 14.
Then there is the case of 39-year-old Ada Brown of Prince George who died three weeks after suffering a serious head injury during a beating. Her family said that she sought medical attention on three different occasions following the beating and was turned away.
“When she died, and we went to the funeral home, my sister and I didn’t recognize her,” said sister Terri Brown. “It was obvious she had been badly beaten several times yet the authorities had ruled she died of ‘natural causes’.”
Chelsea Acorn, aged 14, disappeared from Abbottsford, BC, late in the afternoon of 10 June 2005. It is believed that Chelsea has run away and could be in the Surrey area 25 miles away.
Costa Rica’s Psychopath
A serial killer known as El Psicópata—“The Psychopath”—has been stalking Costa Rica. Between 1986 and 1996 he has killed at least 19 people, though the police say that number could exceed 31, but then there are other killers at large in the small Central America state.
The Psychopath preys on young couples in the secluded wooded area to the south of the capital San José. He always attacks at night. It is thought that he is a hunter who plans his attacks, waiting and watching until a couple arrive. He usually waits until the couples start making love before shooting them with a 45-calibre weapon, thought to be an M3 machine gun, then mutilates the breasts and sexual organs of his female victims with a US Army knife. It is believed that he follows his potential victims for several days before killing them, leaving no tracks.
Most of the killings have been committed in a wooded area south of the Florencio Freeway that runs from San José out to Cartago. The area stretching south to Desamparados is now called the “triangle of death” by the locals. The killings often occur near a brook or river, also giving the perpetrator the nickname “The Psychopath of the Rivers”.
To start with, the killer also exhibited a unique pattern to his murders. After the murder of two couples, he then murdered a single women. But, in that case, he did not mutilate the bodies, though it was thought that he carried out acts of necrophilia. His attacks occurred every other month, on a full moon. However, the pattern has now become less clear. The authorities now think that killer began with a murder known as Alajuelita Massacre—the murder of seven women and girls on 6 June 1986 in the town of Alajuelita, which lies within the triangle of death. His last known attack was on 26 October 1996 when he found Ileana Alvarez and Mauricio Cordero parked in their Nissan Sentra. He forced them to get out of the car and walk 500 yards before he shot them. However, the police now think he may also be responsible for the disappearance of 12 other young people in 1996.
Several psychological profiles of the killer have been drawn up. One sees him as a “Rambo” type—a deranged former military or police official. Another theory is that he was a Nicaraguan guerrilla, or a Costa Rican who had gone to fight in the civil war there. Other theories say he could be the son of a wealthy politician or a landowner. Police believe the killer is probably in his thirties or forties, and could be highly intelligent.
On 26 June 1998, the Judicial Investigative Organization of Costa Rica announced they had arrested a serial killer who operated in the triangle of death. The killer was a 52-year-old construction worker, the father of 11 children whose favourite hobby is hunting. He sexually abuses his victims, then kills them with hunting rifles, and buries them under concrete. However, there seems to be no connection between this new unnamed killer and the Psychopath.
There is also another serial killer at large in Costa Rica known as El Descuartizador—“The Quarterer”. He specializes in killing drug addicts—usually defenceless youths and women. He then cuts up their bodies and then scatters the pieces. It is not known how many he has killed as his victims are usually estranged from their families and on the fringes of society.
At one time these various killings were thought to be the work of one man—the San José Ripper. He first struck on 20 April 1989, when the bodies of Edwin Mata Madrigal and Marta Navarro Carpio were found in a river. Then at 11.15 a.m. on 13 November 1989 human remains were discovered in a drain in San José. Police dogs located the body parts of two corpses, though their heads and hands were not found and only one of their feet was recovered. The victims, a man and a woman, were thought to be aged between 18 and 25.
Pieces of another two corpses of a similar age were collected between December 2000 and February 2001. This time the women had a bite mark made by the teeth of a man on her right breast, while the man had a piece of wood shoved up his anus. The corpses were badly mutilated and, again, the heads, hands and feet were missing.
Again they were in various waterways and had been tattooed. Both these cases exhibited the MOs of both the Psychopath and the Quarterer. The police believe that the San José Ripper may be toying with them.
England—Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper has never been caught, or even, convincingly identified—so, technically, he is still at large. Whoever he was, he killed five women for certain in a ten-week period from 31 August to 9 November 1888, though he may have been responsible for the deaths of four more. All five had their throats slashed and were disembowelled and mutilated. The killer paid special attention to the destruction of the breasts and female sexual organs. Interestingly, if you plot the five murders on a map, they mark out the points of a pentagram, the five-pointed occult star.
The murders all took place in the Whitechapel area of London’s East End, which was well known for vice at the time. In 1888, there were 62 brothels and 233 boarding houses catering to prostitutes and their clients in the narrow lanes there. Pox-ridden, middle-aged, alcoholic prostitutes hung around in alleyways and doorways, offering their sexual favours standing up. Usually they would simply bend down and hoist up their skirts so their client could enter them from the rear. This made it particularly easy for Jack the Ripper to pull a knife and despatch his victim before she realized what was happening.
Forty-five-year-old Emma Elizabeth Smith was possibly the first victim of the Ripper. On the night of 3 April 1888, she solicited a well-dressed gentleman. Later that night, she collapsed in the arms of a constable, saying that she had been attacked by four men. They had cut off her ear and shoved a foreign object up her vagina. She died a few hours later.
Then on 7 August 1888, Martha Tabram was stabbed to death. There were 39 frenzied wounds on her body, mainly around the breasts and sexual organs. Both Smith and Tabram, like the Ripper’s later victims, had their backs turned when they were attacked.
The first of the women known for certain to have been killed by the Ripper was 42-year-old Polly Nichols. Her body was found in Buck’s Row at 3.15 a.m. on 31 August 1888. She did not cry out. The attack took place under the window of a sleeping woman who did not wake. The body revealed that she fought for her life, but was overcome by her attacker. Her throat had been slashed twice, so deeply that she had almost been decapitated. There were deep wounds around her vagina, but no organs had been removed. Pathologists examining the corpse concluded that the killer had some medical knowledge. Polly had almost certainly turned her back on her killer for an assignation there on the street. While she was turned away from him, he pulled out a knife, put it to her throat and pushed her forward on to it as he slashed her. This explained the depth of the wound and would have meant that all the blood would have sprayed forward and not over the assailant, leaving him clean to make his escape unnoticed.
The police realized that they had a maniac on their hands. Detectives were sent out into the East End, searching for men who mistreated prostitutes. The name “Leather Apron” came up several times in the investigation. A shoemaker called Pizer was picked up. He used a leather apron and sharp knives in his trade, but his family swore that he was at home on the three occasions women had been attacked.
On 8 September 1888, 47-year-old Annie Chapman was bragging in the pubs of Whitechapel that the killer would meet his match if he ever came near her. She was wrong. Later, she was seen talking to a “gentleman” in the street. They seemed to strike up a bargain and went off arm-in-arm. Half-an-hour later, she was found dead in an alleyway. Her head was only connected to her body by a strand of flesh. Her intestines were found thrown over her right shoulder, the flesh from her lower abdomen over her left. Her kidneys and ovaries had been removed. The
killer had taken them with him. He had also left a piece of leather near the corpse. The police realized that this was all too convenient. The killer was obviously an avid reader of the newspapers and had read of the arrest of Pizer. He also left a blood-soaked envelope with the crest of the Sussex Regiment on it. It had been reported that Martha Tabram had been seen in the company of a soldier shortly before her death and the newspapers said that her wounds could have been caused by a bayonet or army knife.
Three weeks after the death of Annie Chapman, the Central News Agency received a letter that gloated over the murder and the false clues. It regretted that the letter was not written in the victim’s blood, but it had gone “thick like glue” and promised to send the ear of the next victim. The letter was signed “Jack the Ripper”. On 30 September 1888, the Central News Agency received another letter from the Ripper, apologizing that he had not enclosed an ear—but promised that he was going to do a “double”.
At 1 a.m. that night, 45-year-old “Long Liz” Stride, a Swedish prostitute whose real name was Elizabeth Gustaafsdotter, was found in a pool of blood with her throat slashed. The delivery man who discovered her body heard the attacker escaping over the cobblestones. Around the same time, 43-year-old prostitute Catherine Eddowes was being thrown out of Bishopsgate Police Station where she had been held for creating a drunken disturbance. As she walked towards Houndsditch she met Jack the Ripper. He cut her throat, slashed her face and cut at her ear, though it was left still attached. He removed her intestines and threw them over her shoulder. The left kidney was missing altogether.
The murder of two women in one night sent London into a panic. Queen Victoria demanded action, but the police seemed powerless. East-End resident George Lusk set up the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee to patrol the streets. Two weeks later, Mr Lusk received a small package through the post. It contained half of Catherine Eddowes’ kidney. The other half had been fried and eaten, according to the accompanying note which was again signed “Jack the Ripper”. Queen Victoria concluded that the Ripper must be a foreigner. No Englishman would behave in such a beastly way, she said. A cabinet meeting was called to discuss the matter. They ordered checks on all the ships tied up in the London docks. This proved to be a huge waste of police manpower.