by Ian Brady
Prison guards rule in a climate of collective fear, without which they shrivel. Panzram contemptuously tossed the crowbar aside like a matchstick and stood there waiting empty-handed.
The guards opened the gate and parted before him as he strolled majestically into the block, selected and entered an empty cell and banged the door shut. Prometheus self-bound, the fiery rage contained. Victory in defeat.
In Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, the pivotal factor is, in my opinion, the Great Contempt or, more precisely, the Great Self-Contempt. Once a man has achieved, in a praiseworthy sense, contempt for himself, he simultaneously achieves contempt for all man-made laws and moralities, and becomes truly free to do as he wills. Plunging into the very depths, he consequently rises above all. Panzram was in the grip of that exhilarating psychic experience.
Panzram stoically waited for the prison guards to enter in force and club him to death, but to his probable astonishment no one came. Indeed, when the guards finally opened the cell door it was to escort him politely to much better accommodation next to another famous prisoner, Robert Stroud, who had also killed a taunting guard. Stroud was later to become known to the world as ‘The Bird Man of Alcatraz,’ portrayed with great dignity by Burt Lancaster in the film of the same title.
Panzram, writing from this more humane accommodation, made a significant comment which should be of some interest to prison reformers.
‘If, in the beginning I had been treated as I am now, then there wouldn’t have been quite so many people in this world that have been robbed, raped and killed.’
Lesser was to reply that he was lobbying for support to gain a reprieve for Panzram, but Panzram would have none of that nonsense.
‘Wake up, kid. The real truth of the matter is that I haven’t the least desire to reform. It took me thirty-six years to be like I am now; then how do you figure that I could, if I wanted to, change from black to white in the twinkling of an eye?’
An example that even some of the worst of criminals can still retain integrity. And, conversely, we know that some of the most respectable of men cannot, and it’s certainly a luxury no successful modern politician can afford.
It is dangerous to be virtuous in a corrupt century.
— Marquis de Sade
Panzram thoroughly enjoyed the falls of the high and mighty, as I do. He commented upon a particular case in a letter to Lesser, involving the warden of Deer Lodge Prison, who also happened to be the local mayor:
‘He wound up his career by blowing out his own brains because he was due for a bit of his own cells for charges of stealing the state funds and a host of other crimes.’
Lesser continued to try to help Panzram, commissioning an eminent psychiatrist to interview him to see if he was certifiably insane. In the patronising manner most psychiatrists adopt towards prisoners, the psychiatrist, a man named Menninger, foolishly suggested to Panzram that he did not believe he was capable of hurting anyone who had not done him personal harm or injury.
Panzram, in lieu of a spoken reply, lunged at Menninger, only the length of his chains preventing him from getting his hands round the man’s neck and strangling him right there and then. Menninger beat a hasty retreat.
The Sanity Commission eventually certified Panzram as insane, but the federal authorities still put him on trial in Topeka, Kansas, for a medically unqualified jury to decide whether he was insane or not — just as, as already recounted, an English judge did in the case of Peter Sutcliffe. Such grotesque decisions are made for political reasons, and not from any sense of justice.
Upon the judge’s directions the jury naturally found Panzram guilty — they being simple props used to endorse a political manoeuvre for votes, an appearance of fairness and impartiality.
Panzram cynically laughed when the judge sentenced him to death, and told his defence lawyer not to appeal against the sentence. Panzram was not a man who would ask for mercy from anyone, especially the legal authorities.
However, a legal snag arose of its own accord.
At that particular period, the death penalty was forbidden by law in Kansas. The absurdity and hypocrisy of all this legal and political conniving enraged Panzram. He was eager for death and, probably to show his contempt for the authorities haggling over him, made several attempts to commit suicide. When a delegation of do-gooders was allowed to speak to him from outside the cell bars, attempting to persuade him to sign a petition to the state governor asking for clemency, Panzram shook the bars furiously and spat red rage at them, longing to wring their necks for interfering in what he regarded as his personal affairs. In his eyes they presented an affront to his dignity and the will to die.
He then wrote a lengthy letter to President Hoover, informing him he wanted no mercy or reprieve.
The official reported descriptions of how Panzram walked to his execution were, unintentionally, a fitting tribute to the resentful and vengeful philosophy which had guided his whole existence.
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
— William Blake (1757–1827)
As the first frosty approach of fall withered the leaves, Panzram, at approximately 6 a.m., on 5th September, 1930, strolled jauntily along the corridor between the escorting guards singing an obscene limerick, probably composed by him lovingly for his final farewell appearance.
Unfortunately, none of the spectators had the presence of mind or enterprise to note down the words of the composition for posterity, as Panzram would no doubt have wished.
As he approached the scaffold his twinkling dark eyes fell on an assembly of clergy waiting to add piety to the occasion. He turned to the warden and roared, ‘Get those Bible-backed cocksuckers out of here! Now let’s get going. What are we hanging around for?!’
Panzram had successfully disrupted the organized, sham dignity of the authorities and turned their absurd threads of morality into an hilariously farcical and embarrassing charade. The last man to feel the cutting edge of Panzram’s tongue was the hangman. When this public servant solicitously asked Panzram if he had any last words or requests, Panzram swung on him.
‘Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you’re fooling around!’
I laugh with delight even now at Panzram’s magnificent final performance on Earth, full of such tremendous insolence and spirit. Those were Panzram’s final words, his contemptuous goodbye to a world he loathed having to breathe in. The lever was pulled, the trapdoor opened. With that fall the world became a duller place. A great spirit had flown. A star had been extinguished. The air seemed subdued.
The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them; he has lived for a long time who has lived little. Whether you have lived enough depends not on the number of your years but on your will.
— Montaigne
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Hillside Stranglers
My soul, do not seek immortal life, but exhaust the real of the possible.
Pindar (518–438 B.C.)
In the previous chapter on Dean Corll, I alluded briefly to the psychiatric mechanism known as folie à deux, by which, in a close relationship, a mental illness or abnormal pattern of behaviour in a dominant individual is simultaneously contracted by a second subordinate individual. The two individuals become, as it were, two minds with but a single psyche.
Pragmatically, leaving aside the abnormal or criminal element in this process, it could reasonably be argued that folie à deux occurs in most normal love affairs, where two individuals unconsciously begin to share and combine their tastes and beliefs and gradually behave as one entity, an almost telepathic communion of minds taking place between them.
Logical extension therefore indicates that criminality, like any other form of behaviour, is a learning process which can occur through: (a) a close relationship with a person whose drives and motivations are not considered by others to be the norm; (b) the aptitude of an individual to analyse, reject or
accept the definitions of another as to what is lawful or unlawful, their ultimate conclusions depending largely upon personal experience and observation as to who benefits most by this or that law — a rudimentary methodology of moral relativism which, unfortunately, most people are not fully conscious of and, therefore, fail to extend and develop into an active philosophy.
Just as it is my already expressed opinion that an individual can only be corrupted if the seeds of corruption are already within and predisposed to flower, it is also my contention that most people have no real natural respect for laws made by the arbitrary for their own benefit, and only refrain from ignoring or breaking said laws from fear of penalty, not fear of the ‘crime’ itself.
Lack of will and power are weaknesses, not virtues, no matter how much one tries to rationalise.
If one accepts that hypothesis, the folie à deux principle, or intellectual/emotional form of persuasion and conversion, can only convince if the person subjected to it is already fertile soil in which such proposals will readily take root. In short, the criminal desires, of one sort or another, are already there in every individual, simply lying dormant and awaiting the catalyst, the person who can teach the fastest and most pragmatic method of safely achieving those desires, whether by legal or illegal means.
It is human nature that, if caught, the pupil will blame the master for his criminal conduct. But, should the criminal enterprises succeed, I can assure you, from wide personal experience, the pupil’s zeal and devotion to criminal activities can outdo that of the master like that of a convert.
Nothing succeeds like success. It is also axiomatic that the quickest way to gain a confidence is to give one. In which case, the pupil having integrated the master’s knowledge into personal innate reserves, it is possible that role reversal can occur, the surpassed master, consciously or subconsciously, becoming the apt pupil/victim of folie à deux. Therefore, the determinants of criminal behaviour can be demonstrated to be a fluctuating compound of both internal and external multi-motivations and multi-attributes. We should perhaps rather more fully comprehend and treasure our ‘flaws’ or ‘criminal’ aspirations, as their often effortless practice and tenacious durability possibly argue them to be the most natural and genuinely hereditary or predatory qualities a person possesses. Enlightened or pragmatic atavism, as it were.
Many writers fear more being understood than misunderstood; I am not one.
The members of an Eastern monastic order literally walk through the secular world with eyes tightly closed so as not to see the wickedness that abounds there, thus, theoretically, remaining pure in mind and spirit. How much more illuminating were they to keep their eyes and minds widely open, appreciating and guarding against the guileful ways of the world.
The wise are less easily fooled than the innocent. The longer one delays confronting an unpleasant reality the more unpleasant it becomes. Basically you must know how to construct defences but also when to shift into attack mode.
When they see an advantage but do not advance on it, they are weary.
— The Art of War, Sun Tzu
On 17 October 1977, as the usual tail-to-tail columns of morning traffic made sluggish progress along the freeways into the working heart of Los Angeles, drivers either baking in the heat or choking on the blue smog of exhaust fumes, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department received a call reporting a woman’s body having been found near the expansive slopes of Forest Lawn Cemetery, final gateway to the stars.
The body of the black girl was nude, sprawled as though doing a spot of risqué sunbathing.
From preliminary on-the-spot rectal temperature of the body, the forensic scientists estimated she had probably been murdered the evening before.
A winding swath of flattened grass, from the road at the top of the slope to where she rested, indicated the body had probably been transported to the location by vehicle and then rolled down from the road to its final resting place. Untrampled grass in the immediate vicinity of the body confirmed this.
The methodology of psychological profiling was not yet fully appreciated at that period, otherwise the killing would have been tentatively evaluated as the work of an organised psychopath, the only psychotic factor being the lack of effort expended to conceal the body. An autopsy at police headquarters revealed significant aspects.
Semen from two men was found in the victim’s vagina and rectum, and showed that one of the men was a non-secretor, that is to say someone whose blood group could not be deduced from his sperm or saliva. The girl’s prints were on record, identifying her as Yolanda Washington, a convicted prostitute whose normal beat was Hollywood Boulevard. She had been strangled with a length of fibrous material, minute traces of which still adhered to her throat. Her profession altered the police’s perception of the physical evidence.
She might have (a) entertained two clients together and been killed by them; (b) entertained two separate clients in a short space of time, the second being her murderer; (c) after entertaining the two clients, either together or separately, she might subsequently have met a third who had not bothered to use her for sex (or had used a condom) and had simply strangled her. So whether there was one killer or a duo involved could not yet be properly deduced by the Los Angeles Police Department.
This indecisive situation soon changed.
In the early hours of November 1st, the naked body of another girl was discovered, this time casually discarded on the pavement in Alta Terrace Drive in La Crescenta. She had been strangled in the same way as Yolanda Washington. The autopsy revealed that the girl had undergone vaginal and anal intercourse prior to death. Again, one of the men was a non-secretor.
So now the police were certain they were dealing with a killing duo — a fact which, unfortunately, was deliberately withheld from the media and public for absurd tactical and strategic reasons. Hence the use of a singular title arose, attributing the murders to ‘The Hillside Strangler.’
However, this time there were marks on the wrists and ankles of the victim indicating restraints had been used. Second, traces of adhesive tape residue were found in the region of the mouth, and there were indications that a fibrous blindfold had been used, which possibly suggested that the killers had initially not planned to murder the victim.
All the organised signs again indicated the work of a psychopath. The additional use of restraints ostensibly evidenced lack of confidence or extreme caution, perhaps to prevent repetition of some dangerous incident which had occurred during the abduction and slaying of Yolanda Washington. But again, paradoxically, the dumping of the body in a public thoroughfare was a psychotic characteristic. This contradictory evidence could perhaps best be attributed to the fact that two minds were at work, or possibly that the more dominant of the two killers, the one who did the planning and made the decisions, had a secondary form of affective schizophrenia, with probable delusions of grandeur accounting for his callousness in publicly tossing bodies aside like litter. If that deduction were valid, this killer would most likely have a criminal record or a verifiable history of mental illness.
The prints of the second victim were not on file. But the investigating detective, Sergeant Frank Salerno, instinctively, rather than according to correct psychological profiling methods, did the right thing by having his squad show morgue portraits of the girl to residents in the area of the first victim’s beat on Hollywood Boulevard.
This resulted in her being speedily identified as Judy Miller, a young inexperienced part-time hooker. It was a promising sign, indicating that the killers were still confident and careless enough to continue operating in an area familiar to them.
In less than a week another girl was murdered and dumped naked in the vicinity of the Chevy Chase Golf Course. She too had been raped and strangled. When her face was flashed on television screens, she was quickly identified as twenty-year-old Lissa Kastin, a dancer and part-time waitress.
The body bore signs of restraints having been used on her wrists
and ankles. Obviously the killers were sticking to the cautious method which had evolved, thus leaving a helpful crime-scene signature.
Had the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department been applying psychological profiling techniques, the basic conclusions they should have been able to reach, founded upon the mature and successful planning the killers were adopting up until careless disposal of the corpses: (a) both killers were probably in their early thirties or forties (younger men do not usually have to buy sex or own experience of picking up prostitutes); (b) the dominant partner would most likely be the older of the two; (c) a strong bonding relationship of some sort existed between them, indicating that they were either neighbours, work colleagues or shared some other intimate attachment contributing to an abnormal degree of mutual trust; (d) one or both of them owned a presentable car to cruise for victims; (e) one of them, probably the dominant party, most likely had a criminal record or mental history involving crimes of violence, possibly of a non-affective schizophrenic nature; (f) being the eldest of the two, the most mature, the dominant partner had probably been married, divorced or separated — the latter distancing process possibly depriving him of a necessary psychosexual safety valve, and a means of cross-referencing or cross-validating his delusional pattern of thought and behaviour with someone he loved or trusted; (g) this spiritual/emotional lack could have eventually led him to compensate by seeking out a partner who would actively support and reinforce his violent delusions and sexual fantasies; (h) having killed twice (or possibly more) in a short space of time, confidence in the active partnership had increased and so therefore had the rate of homicides. This had further cemented the relationship and stimulated increasingly rampant psychic cravings which, by this stage, would have infected both parties, creating a destructive unity, a twin-headed, homicidal Hydra, or perhaps even a metaphysical third entity influencing their dual microcosm. A perfect example of folie à deux.