Again, even if it were true that Andreas and Viktoria had an incestuous relationship that produced Josef, it does not seem like a motive to murder the entire family.
And how would Andreas have beaten and hacked himself to death with a mattock?
The dead ends concerning familial suspects led investigators to believe that the motive was robbery and the perpetrator, or perpetrators, were actually motivated by financial reasons. But the police quickly dropped this theory when they discovered that a sizable sum of money, which would have been easily found by burglars, was still in the house. In another strange twist to an already bizarre case, it was also learned that the killer, or killers, had fed the cattle, used the fireplace, and ate the family’s food.
All of this led the investigators to conclude that the killer, or killers, who were familiar with a mattock, were probably farmers.
Due to a lack of leads, the Hinterkaifeck murders quickly turned cold and unfortunately, due to the German economy’s collapse because of hyperinflation, the case eventually fell out of the headlines and receded to the back of the minds of most Germans.
But not everyone has forgotten about the victims of Hinterkaifeck.
The Aftermath and New Revelations
In order to prevent the farm from becoming a ghastly pilgrimage site, Hinterkaifeck was demolished in 1923, which actually turned up the mattock that was used to murder the Grubers and their maid. The victims, without their heads, were given a proper burial and most of the surrounding community moved on from the horrid events of March 31, 1922.
In the years after 1923, the Hinterkaifeck murders had to take a back seat to major geo-political events that involved Germany. First World War II, then the partition of Germany into West and East Germany, followed by the Cold War, all meant that the nation’s resources were spent on things other than trying to solve the Hinterkaifeck cold case murders.
But recently, thanks in part to advances in forensic technology and techniques, as well as Germany’s reunification and stabilization, efforts have been made to solve the Hinterkaifeck murders. In particular, a group of police academy students did a case study of the murders and came to some conclusions.
The academy students argued that the Hinterkaifeck murders went cold largely due to crude forensic techniques at the time. Their report stated that all the potential suspects are now dead and that they established a prime suspect, but could not name the person publicly due to German law.
The Hinterkaifeck murders have also seen a resurgence of popularity among the general public worldwide.
Dozens of websites, often conspiratorial in tone, litter the Internet and two German language films titled Hinterkaifeck have been produced. Several books and articles, both academic and popular, have also been published that deal with the Hinterkaifeck murders and the question of who, or what, killed the Grubers and their maid.
Since the name of the suspect will not be made public anytime soon, it only stands to reason that the number of theories concerning what happened at the Hinterkaifeck farm will continue to multiply.
Chapter 5: The Murder of Kelly Anne Bates
Manchester, England, is an industrial city in the northwest of the country that is known for its tough, gritty inhabitants. The city is connected to the ocean by a thirty-six mile canal, which has created an interesting blend of blue-collar and cosmopolitan culture. Dock workers and professionals come together in Manchester to make one of England’s largest and most important cities prosperous.
Manchester has rightfully earned its reputation as a hard-working, blue-collar city, but it has also acquired the dubious distinction of being one of the country’s most violent locales.
Gang warfare has plagued the city for decades, which culminated in a sharp spike in gun-related crimes during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The gun violence grabbed headlines in a country where gun ownership is severely restricted and gun crime is extremely rare. Although most of the victims of Manchester’s gun violence in the late 1990s were criminals and gang members, the number of occurrences and the sometimes brazen shootings alarmed Brits from Scotland to Southampton.
While the Manchester gang wars were heating up in 1996, another truly terrible crime was taking place on the other end of the city where people felt safe. A young girl was murdered after being put through an excruciating month of torture.
Once the details of sixteen-year-old Kelly Bate’s murder were revealed, the United Kingdom was horrified and few in Manchester, no matter what neighborhood they lived in, would ever feel safe again.
James Patterson
In 1996, James Patterson was a middle aged man, who by all accounts was stable and had his life together. He was always gainfully employed and refrained from using drugs or alcohol. Patterson was also known to be impeccably groomed at all times and anyone who visited his home noticed how clean and neat it was.
But it was all just a façade that covered Patterson’s true nature.
Underneath Patterson’s well-crafted persona lurked a true predator who preyed upon the vulnerabilities and insecurities of girls and young women.
James Patterson’s first known victim was his wife of ten years. According to reports and interviews compiled after Patterson was arrested for murder, he continually abused his wife, both psychologically and physically, until she could not stand it any longer and divorced him in 1980.
But the divorce was not a setback for Patterson; it allowed him to pursue his twisted carnal desires.
Patterson immediately began pursuing teenage girls and young women. The details of this period of his life are a bit murky, but it is known that he began a long-term relationship with a twenty-year-old woman in the early 1980s, which was beset with constant abuse. Patterson routinely dished out beatings to his younger girlfriend when he did not get things his way and once attempted to drown the woman in a bathtub.
The attempted drowning would be a pattern that the demented Patterson would repeat again and again, fatally with Kelly Bates.
Perhaps Patterson thought that a twenty-year-old woman was too old and difficult for him to control, so the next two known long-term relationships he had were with teenage girls who were young enough to be his daughters.
During the late 1980s, Patterson was involved with a fifteen-year-old girl and like his previous relationships, it ended in violence and abuse. In particular, Patterson beat the girl and also tried to drown her in a kitchen sink. The girl survived and Patterson was never prosecuted for the assault, which left him able to search for his next victim.
While Patterson was victimizing girls and young women during the 1980s, he was somehow able to avoid prosecution, which is perhaps the most tragic aspect of this case. James Patterson committed numerous felonies, including statutory rape and aggravated assault, before he ultimately murdered Kelly Bates, but unfortunately none of his victims were willing to come forward before 1996.
James Patterson was a true predator—he knew how to select his victims.
With his predatory craft perfected, Patterson trolled the streets of Manchester until he found his next victim, fourteen-year-old Kelly Bates.
Kelly Bates
To those who knew her, Kelly Bates was a typical teenage British girl. The cute brunette was described by her parents, Margarete and Thomas, as warm, affectionate, and intelligent. She normally enjoyed spending time with her family and friends from school, but in 1993 things began to change around the Bates home.
According to her parents, Kelly always had a bit of a rebellious streak, but she began to openly defy them and it was also apparent to them that she was hiding something.
Kelly had met a new boyfriend and unfortunately for the Bates family it was one of Manchester’s worse predators, James Patterson. Although Patterson treated Kelly well in the initial stages of their relationship and did not abuse her, the fourteen-year-old knew that the extreme age difference—Patterson was forty-six when they met—would be difficult if not impossible for her parents to accept.
At first, the two met in different places around Manchester until the relationship became sexual and then they mainly met at Patterson’s home. Once Patterson felt that he had the girl in his clutches, he invited her to move into his home.
The Bates family was in a precarious situation. If they put their feet down or went to the police, they risked alienating their daughter and perhaps losing her to the mean streets of Manchester. Because of this, they decided to let Kelly make her own decision.
Kelly’s decision proved to be fatal.
Kelly attempted to keep up the appearance that she was in a normal relationship with Patterson, but like Patterson’s persona, it was all just a façade. Kelly’s parents noticed bruises on their daughter occasionally, which they asked her about, but received no answer. Kelly’s parents continued to worry about her, but were relieved when she moved back in with them.
Perhaps it was just a phase that Kelly needed to go through. They gave her space and everything worked out, they thought.
But by 1996, Patterson had perfected his predatory skills and he was able to convince Kelly to move back in with him in the beginning of that year. Kelly could not have known that the decision would lead to her death.
Attempts by the Bates family to contact Kelly by phone went unanswered. The turn of events upset Kelly’s parents and their worry was heightened when they received an unsigned wedding anniversary card in March 1996. The card itself was not strange. Kelly was thoughtful and usually remembered important dates on the family calendar, but the fact that it was unsigned, coupled with the answered calls, raised red flags in the minds of Margaret and Thomas Bates.
Little did they know that when they received the anniversary card, their daughter was enduring unspeakable acts of cruelty.
The Torment Begins
Although Patterson was fairly forthcoming after he was arrested for Kelly’s murder, he never told authorities some key details about the crime, such as if he planned the crime and if he did plan her murder, when he actually decided to go through with it. The attempted drowning incidents of his prior girlfriends certainly point toward a violent and a potentially homicidal personality, but the elaborate torture sessions that he put Kelly Bates through seemed to be a new wrinkle on the predator’s method of operation.
When the Manchester police discovered Kelly Bates’ body in Patterson’s home in April 1996, they were horrified at the extent of the teenager’s injuries.
The people of Manchester, who were accustomed to reading about crime and gang violence in their city, were especially disturbed when they learned about the details of Kelly’s murder, namely the length of time she was tortured before she died.
For a while, Manchester’s gang violence would take a back seat in the press to the torture and murder of Kelly Bates.
And the details of Kelly’s murder were truly revolting. Based on a combination of Patterson’s confession and the autopsy of Kelly’s body, it was revealed that she was tortured for about a month before she succumbed to her injuries. While Kelly was being tortured, Patterson carried on his daily life, working and shopping, and apparently torturing the poor teen in his free time.
Patterson tied his helpless quarry by her hair or with ligatures to radiators and bedposts throughout the house. Then he proceeded to inflict some of the most inhuman acts upon Kelly.
The autopsy revealed the Kelly suffered over 150 different injures during her month of hell. She was stabbed several times with multiple utensils. She suffered a broken arm and there were several burn marks on her, which were later determined to be from a hot iron. Kelly was also scalded with boiling water on her buttocks and left leg.
As bad as those injures were and as difficult it is for a normal person to imagine a human inflicting them on another human, or even an animal for that matter, the worst of her wounds were the result of several different mutilations.
The demented Patterson mutilated Kelly’s ears, eyebrows, nose, lips, and genitals. For some reason, he particularly focused on the girl’s eyes, removing them from the sockets while she was still alive!
Kelly was also deprived of water for most of her captivity; but she did not die of dehydration or shock from her injuries. Kelly Bates showed an incredible will to live, enduring through a lack of water and torture sessions that lasted for hours at a time. Ultimately, though, it appears Patterson never intended to let his girlfriend live—he drowned her in the bathtub and then turned himself in to the police.
The pathologist who examined Kelly’s body was shocked at the level of abuse she suffered.
“In my career, I have examined almost 600 victims of homicide,” said Home Office pathologist William Lawler. “But I have never come across injuries so extensive.”
After he killed Kelly, Patterson calmly walked into the nearest police station and confessed to the crime, at least in his own psychopathic way.
The Arrest and Trial of James Patterson
When James Patterson turned himself in to the Manchester police he told one officer: “I know I’m going ways. I know there is no point. I’m going to get found out anyway.”
Patterson was correct that his arrest was more than likely inevitable, but like a true psychopath he tried to deflect and mitigate his responsibility.
He first told officers that Kelly drowned in the bathtub, which apparently sounded like a good alibi to Patterson since that is where he left her body and she did in fact die from drowning. Once the authorities arrived at his home, they only needed to make a cursory inspection to learn that there was much more to the case than a simple bathtub drowning.
A preliminary search revealed visible blood in every room and a subsequent inspection with Luminol showed even more blood was spilled in cracks and crevices throughout the home. Clearly something horrendous had happened at James Patterson’s home.
When confronted with the forensic evidence, Patterson changed his story and claimed that she provoked him and he only acted in self-defense.
Obviously, no jury in the world would buy any defense that Patterson could conjure up when confronted with the mountain of forensic evidence that clearly showed him to be a sadistic maniac. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to a minimum of twenty years in prison.
The judge who sentenced Patterson to prison perhaps best summed up the case and the type of person he is.
“This has been a terrible case; a catalogue of depravity by one human being upon another,” said the judge. “You are a highly dangerous person. You are an abuser of women and I intend, so far as it is in my power, that you will abuse no more.”
With that sentence, the streets of Manchester got a little safer.
Chapter 6: The Assassination of William Stewart
When one thinks of the world’s most dangerous occupations, journalist is usually not at the top of any list. But the reality is that journalism can be a very dangerous profession, especially for foreign correspondents sent to cover riots and war zones in Third World countries.
Journalists were regularly targeted for death by the drug cartels in Colombia during the 1980s and more recently many journalists have been singled out by Islamic extremist groups.
The 2002 beheading murder of American-Israeli journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan by an al-Qaeda cell, which was filmed and broadcast to the world, was a stark reminder that reporters often take their lives into their own hands in search of a byline.
The top journalists in the world know that their job can be dangerous, but most are willing to take the risks out of love for their profession and the potential to gain fame with a big story.
American William Stewart was one such journalist. Stewart traveled the world during the 1960s and ‘70s to get the scoop on some of the most violent situations in the most lawless places. His desire to practice journalism in the face of danger ultimately led to his death on the streets of Managua, Nicaragua, in 1979.
Turbulent Central America
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Today, Central America is a place of poverty and gang violence, but during the 1970s and ‘80s the violence was driven by politics.
Beginning in the late 1960s, the tiny Central American nations, which were largely ignored by the rest of the world before that time, became a new battleground in the ongoing proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The U.S. sponsored anti-communist regimes that were often corrupt and repressive in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, while the Soviets funded leftist groups throughout the region that were usually just as violent. The situation in Nicaragua was especially volatile.
When Stewart was killed in 1979, the government of Nicaragua had been under the control of the Somoza family for over sixty years. The Somoza family came to power in 1912 and although only three of Nicaragua’s presidents were actually from the family—Anatasio Somoza Debayle was the last Somoza to be president when the regime was overthrown in 1979—the family was always the power behind the office.
The Somoza regime was known for being particularly corrupt and repressive, even among other Latin American dictatorships, which were known for their lack of human rights. The Somozas reveled in nepotism and excessive amounts of graft and if anyone dared to speak against them, they were quickly jailed or simply “disappeared.” The Somozas gave favors to American companies and the U.S. government, which turned a blind eye to the regime’s corruption because it stood as a bulwark against communism in the Western Hemisphere.
Despite the Somoza government’s repressive tactics, or some would argue because of them, opposition grew in the 1960s until it was full scale rebellion in the 1970s.
At the vanguard of the anti-Somoza rebellion was an organization known as the Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN), often abbreviated as the “Sandinistas.” The Sandinistas formed in the 1960s as a left-wing political response to the Somoza regime, but as the Somozas became more repressive, the Sandinistas evolved into a guerrilla army by the late 1970s. The Sandinistas were not just a run-of-the-mill guerrilla outfit; they were funded and trained by the Soviet Union and Cuba, so they were a formidable foe.
True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology) Page 4