by Ian Brady
Graham, bright enough to recognise the game was up, under questioning flamboyantly boasted that he had intended to swallow the lethal dose of thallium he carried to escape imprisonment. But that is unlikely, considering the agonizing, lingering form of death he knew it inflicted. Had he really intended to commit suicide if apprehended, he would have taken the trouble to obtain potassium cyanide, which kills within ten seconds.
Searching his house, the police found a notebook with, appropriately, the warning insignia of poison, a skull and crossbones, drawn on the front cover.
In the style of a diary, Graham had written accounts of his poisoning exploits, naming not only his past victims (some of whom did not die) but also his scheduled ones. He lamely claimed that the notebook was the outline of an intended novel.
Graham’s morbid preoccupation with death reflected to some extent the nagging self-analysis which critically obsesses and drives many serial killers and lesser criminals: Am I a unique individual or simply a common insect? Do I possess the courage to act autonomously, against man and god?
Faith versus free will.
The serial killer unfortunately perceives that the only real way to distance himself from the banality and senility of the herd is to exercise free will of the most extreme kind — by killing others. Subconsciously, he began to regard others as little more than insignificant ciphers. Not unlike a general who, on the eve of a crucial battle, calmly calculates that the sacrifice of tens of thousands of his own men is quite acceptable.
The serial killer, essentially conceiving life as meaningless and death as nothingness, is consequently not afraid to die or kill in a final vainglorious attempt to introduce some degree of design.
In 1972, at court in St Albans, Graham Young, dressed in his habitual black, pleaded not guilty to all charges and then dexterously bested the crown prosecutor in verbal duels from the witness box.
Had his loyalties been Churchillian, Graham would have regarded this courtroom triumph as his ‘finest hour.’ However, as a fervent admirer of Nazism, he probably likened himself more to Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, routing the Allied prosecutors and dominating the proceedings at the Nuremberg Trials.
Inevitably, Graham was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He served fifteen years in horrendous conditions of incarceration before dying mysteriously in the crumbling red brick hospital of Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. Possibly as some speculated, he commended ‘the poisoned chalice’ to his own lips, in a final gesture of triumphant contempt.
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.
— Macbeth, Shakespeare
It was difficult not to empathise with Graham Young.
If his excellent intellect had not been tragically flawed at such an early age by emotional and environmental factors which led to psychosis, I am sure that, having disciplined his mind properly, he would have risen to prominence in a more healthy profession than the one he chose.
However, fate knows no distance. We all like to appear what we are not, be something we are yet to be. Some fellow said all aristocrats want to die.
Graham’s one compulsive ambition was to become ‘the greatest poisoner of all time.’ An aspiration bound to fail in competition with so many more romantic, historical figures as the Borgias and several of the more notorious Caesars.
Yet in many ways Graham was at least possessed by the same insane drive for god-like absolutism that possessed those tyrants — an insatiable thirst for supreme power, of life and death over all they surveyed.
There is no question that, in microcosmic terms, he enjoyed and savoured above all that false sense of omnipotence given when dispensing death almost in the same manner as the Caesars with a whimsical flick of the thumb, investing himself with the aesthetic powers of divinity.
He viewed his destiny in Wagnerian terms and would sit in his miserable, almost bare cell as though it were the Berlin Bunker, listening rapturously to Götterdämmerung, a doomed figure with his grandiose dreams in ruins.
When depressed, or in the throes of a schizophrenic fugue, he had the dejected stoop of Hitler in the final days. An air of general abandonment, hair prematurely grey, features jaundiced and drawn, his frame physically shaking, wrecked by the daily high dosages of prescribed drugs.
Graham, like Hitler, unable to bear fools gladly, occasionally flew into violent, maniacal rages which further depleted his reserves of nervous energy and kept him thin and gaunt. In physical appearance he actually more resembled another Nazi leader, Dr Josef Goebbels, the diminutive, fiery Minister of Propaganda.
Envisaging his own death to be imminent during these psychotic episodes, he would repeatedly write his final testament and intone a solemn, ominous warning to all within hearing: ‘I shall return.’
The only pieces of popular music he liked were the double album War of the Worlds, based on the novel by H.G. Wells and narrated by Richard Burton, about the Martians invading Earth, and, incongruously, the 1950s single ‘Hit the Road Jack.’
Like many psychotics, in periods of lucidity his fantasies were not always maladjustive. He was still capable of creative thought and methodical, strategic planning. Significantly, he relaxed daily in his cell by reading the obituary columns in The Times newspaper; deaths of the high and mighty greatly lifted his spirits and tickled his morbid sense of humour. ‘Better to be a live dog than a dead lion.’
Graham was greatly impressed by the sentiment expressed in a passage from a play I quoted to him by heart, and asked me to write it down for him. The play was Death’s Jest Book, by Thomas Lovell Beddoes, an English nineteenth-century scholar, poet and playwright who descended to insanity and committed suicide.
The look of the world’s a lie, a face made up
O’er graves and fiery depths; and nothing’s true
But what is horrible. If man could see
The perils and diseases that he elbows
Each day he walks a mile; which catch at him,
Which fall behind and graze him as he passes;
Then would he know that life’s a single pilgrim,
Fighting unarmed amongst a thousand soldiers.
It is this infinite invisible
Which we must learn to know, and yet to scorn,
And, from scorn of that, regard the world
As from the edge of a far star.
On a second occasion, I quoted the complete opening, defining soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Richard the Third, watching to see whether he marked the parallel of homicidal will and ambitious intent extant between that royal murderer and himself. He did not, so I pointed out the similarity to him. He rocked with delighted laughter and again asked me to copy the passage down for him.
It was clear, that Graham, in his bouts of deep melancholia, repressed a great deal and had developed an acute anxiety neurosis.
Highly aware that his peers were shrewdly suspicious of him and in constant fear of being poisoned, he nevertheless genuinely yearned for their approval and trust. Failure to achieve this emotional goal compounded his frustration and anxiety.
Once the repugnant deed is done, and the treacherous character revealed, it is of course far too late to seek the approval and love of those you once contemptuously treated as inferiors, your enemies or your victims. This is a ubiquitous dilemma, but is perhaps more poignant in the captured criminal, who has forever lost the opportunity to attempt a fresh beginning.
Surprisingly, Graham had never read Machiavelli’s The Prince, but I believe he would have agreed with a maxim in it by natural inclination: ‘It is safer to be feared than loved.’ But perhaps he would not have fully appreciated the antithesis. Having engendered fear, he unreasonably wanted to be loved as well.
Graham was genuinely asexual, finding even discussion of sexual matters not only uninteresting but also distinctly distasteful. It was not an affectation; relatives confirmed that he had always possessed a natural attitude of b
oredom in regard to sex. Power and death were his aphrodisiacs and raisons d’être.
His celibacy, in a sexually permissive society, probably exerted a subconscious influence, channelling untapped energies into an alternative course of satisfaction that would prove fatal to others. It might be sardonically argued that Graham Young, partly from lack of a misspent youth, virtuously entered the annals of English criminal history.
A final scientific note: Graham’s relatively unambitious and modest use of the metallic poison thallium was improved upon during the Gulf War by the American forces, who bombarded and poisoned the enemy with thallium-tipped shells.
Had Graham lived to see it, this would have brought a cynical smile to his thin pale lips and a mischievous sparkle to his dark eyes.
There was in him a vital scorn of all:
As if the worst had fall
In which could befall,
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurl’d . . .
— ‘Childe Harold,’ Lord Byron
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dean Corll
The next greatest misfortune to losing a battle is to gain such a victory as this.
The Duke of Wellington (1769–1852)
We now return to the Lone Star State of Texas (where Henry Lee Lucas met his particular nemesis) to yet another prolific serial killer, who received surprisingly little notoriety compared to others, such as Lucas and John Wayne Gacy, whose case bears some striking similarities and surprising coincidences with that of Dean Arnold Corll.
Those who knew him called Dean Arnold Corll ‘The Candy Man.’ In Houston he owned an extremely profitable candy shop, with a small factory at the back that manufactured the product, and was liberal in handing out samples of his wares to the local children, with whom he was naturally popular.
Corll was generally regarded by his close neighbours as a pleasant, successful businessman and a credit to the neighbourhood. But on the morning of 8 August 1973, a garbled phone call to Pasadena police headquarters was to alter that misconception dramatically.
The distraught call was from a seventeen-year-old youth named Elmer Wayne Henley. When police cars screeched to the given address, 2020 Lamar Drive, there were three teenagers sitting dejectedly on the front steps of the house. One youth was the aforementioned Henley, another was sixteen-year-old Timothy Kerley, and the other was a fifteen-year-old girl named Rhonda Williams.
Henley gestured to the door of the house behind him, and casually stated, ‘The body’s in there.’
When the police entered the house they discovered the naked body of Dean Corll lying in a lake of blood in the hallway with no less than six .22 calibre bullet holes in him. Somebody had taken no chances.
Elmer Wayne Henley, suddenly more animated than he had at first appeared, anxiously confessed to the police that Corll had tried to kill him and that he had shot him in self-defence. Piece by piece the story was repeated and embellished in more detail by Henley.
Apparently, it emerged, Corll had invited Henley to a drugs- and glue-sniffing orgy of some sort, requesting Henley to bring a boy along with him. But when Henley arrived with a handsome sixteen-year-old, Timothy Kerley, who was accompanied by the teenage girl, Rhonda Williams, Corll had become agitated, annoyed and threatening towards Henley over the presence of the girl. Corll only liked young boys.
Henley, eyes downcast, hesitantly and with understandable reluctance explained to the police that the original arrangement had been for Corll and Henley to rape and kill Timothy Kerley. Therefore Corll’s anger had stemmed from the fact that the unexpected presence of the girl threatened the plan and disrupted the whole criminal scenario. Had Corll but known it would also lead indirectly to his own violent death.
When the police searched the apartment they discovered a ‘torture room,’ the floors and walls covered with sheets of plastic, and the main item of furniture being a blood-stained wooden board, approximately seven feet square, with handcuffs and strong cords attached to each of its four corners. By the side of the board lay a large vibrator, a tin of Vaseline, a sharp sheath knife, some four-feet canes and a leather whip.
They also found piles of pornographic books and magazines. But the most shocking find of all was a collection of Polaroid photographs of naked boys being sexually abused and tortured. Almost immediately the police recognised the faces of boys who had long since been reported as having mysteriously gone missing in Houston, Dallas and other parts of the state.
Next they discovered a long, coffin-like wooden box with a padlock attached. Airholes had been drilled at the top. Inside they found traces of blood. A similar box was found in the back of a van with covered windows outside the house. Chains and other bondage equipment had been welded to the sides and roof of the vehicle; a bloodstained carpet covered the floor.
The police now turned their attention more vigorously to the three dejected teenagers, concentrating on Elmer Wayne Henley, who had first confessed on the telephone to having killed Corll.
Henley reiterated that Dean Corll had exploded with insane anger when Henley and Timothy Kerley had arrived with Rhonda Williams for the glue-sniffing session. But then Corll’s mood had suddenly altered — this probably marked the point when he reached an innovative decision to go ahead with the original plan and add the intrusive girl to the list of victims, and the glue-sniffing commenced. It continued until all were unconscious — all, that is, except Corll.
When the three teenagers slowly swam back to consciousness, they found themselves all securely trussed up hand and foot with handcuffs and ropes. They could see Corll was busy in the bedroom setting up a large plywood board. But only Henley, his intended accomplice, knew the dreadful significance of the contraption and began frantically struggling to get free.
As Corll went about his business, fastidiously arranging all the implements he was about to use ready at hand, he casually explained to the three bound victims that he intended to torture and kill all of them. He obviously enjoyed the fearful anticipation reflected in their eyes.
Henley was now slick with sweat and becoming desperate. He began to plead and flirt with Corll in a last-ditch effort to capitalise upon their past complicity and save himself. Consequently, having already participated eagerly in previous tortures, rapes and murders with Corll, it was not difficult for him to persuade Corll that he wanted to take part in the rape and murder of Timothy Kerley and Rhonda Williams.
Henley said he would rape Rhonda while Corll raped Timothy Kerley. Corll eventually agreed, probably rather relieved that he was no longer faced with the logistical problem of having to dispose of three bodies by himself. He released Henley from his bonds.
Corll stripped himself and carried both Timothy Kerley and Rhonda Williams into the bedroom. He gagged and stripped Timothy Kerley, cutting his clothes off with the sheath knife, and bound him onto the torture board. He then handed the sheath knife to Henley, telling him to strip Rhonda Williams, and began applying Vaseline to the squirming Timothy Kerley.
While Corll raped Timothy Kerley, Henley began to strip Rhonda Williams, but in reality his mind was on other things. He was highly aware that, despite their previous close relationship, Corll had been ready to kill him as casually as anyone else and that only his glib tongue had saved him from death. Instinct also warned him that Corll, having betrayed his readiness to kill him, would now always regard him as a potential danger. Corll would never forgive Henley for knowing that he (Corll) had been prepared to murder him.
Henley, shaken by his narrow escape from the grave, would also have realised that, after he helped Corll dispose of the bodies of Timothy Kerley and Rhonda Williams, there would be nothing to stop Corll from eradicating all threatening dangers by killing him and tossing him into the grave beside them.
In the often paranoid realm of self-survival in a criminal context, there are few apprehensions more psychically potent than expectation of betrayal, especially by someone trusted and co
nfided in. Even in the best of circumstances, the conviction of having attributed discretionary power to those who have consequently done us ill compounds the degree of resentment and craving for retribution, whereas from an enemy we would accept the injury as natural for being anticipated.
So much more is the sense of injury when, as in this case, the dominant partner has become to expect loyalty not only as a right but also a duty. Corll’s sudden intention to kill Henley reflected that he had detected incipient treachery or weakness.
Under such psychological pressure, Henley must have sighed with relief when he saw Corll’s .22 pistol lying on a table within easy reach in the bedroom. By killing Corll, Henley would not only be saving himself from the present danger of being murdered but also from the possibility that Corll, if ever apprehended by the police, might reveal that Henley had been a more than willing accomplice in multiple rapes and murders. Henley grabbed the pistol and pointed it at Corll, who was so completely immersed in the rape of Timothy Kerley that he did not immediately notice the threat.
According to Henley, he ordered Corll to stop raping Timothy Kerley. Why should Henley have done that, when he had not only witnessed but participated in such scenes many times before? The most logical explanation is that he had already decided to kill Corll, to protect himself from present and future dangers and, at the same time, was obliquely conditioning Timothy Kerley and Rhonda Williams to testify that he had killed Corll mainly to save them rather than himself.
Corll, in amazement, withdrew from Timothy Kerley and ran at Henley.
Henley’s first shot hit Corll in the head. As Corll, mortally wounded from the small calibre bullet, staggered about blindly, Henley pumped the next five bullets into his back. Corll eventually slumped to the floor in the hallway dead.
Henley then released Timothy Kerley and Rhonda Williams from their handcuffs and bonds. As the two teenagers put the remnants of their slashed clothes back on, Henley telephoned the Pasadena police headquarters.