17 Hungry Like the Wolf
Youthful Sex Killers
The teenage sex killer – like his adult contemporaries – has made a lethal connection between sexual pleasure and fatal levels of violence. He’s often highly sadistic and may enjoy picquerism (cutting and stabbing), inflicting most of the wounds on the pubis or breasts or, in the case of a homosexual killer, on the penis and the scrotum. Lust and rage have become so interlinked in his damaged psyche that he seeks to destroy the parts of the body which arouse him most.
As most of the following case studies show, the teenage lust murderer usually fits into the category of the disorganised killer. That is, the crime is often committed on impulse so he doesn’t bring a weapon with him, instead making use of bindings and implements available at the scene.
Such disorganised killers tend to leave the body at the crime scene. In some cases, this is the teenage lust killers bedroom or workplace, making discovery virtually inevitable. In contrast, an organised killer often takes the body to another place and disposes of it carefully.
Disorganised offenders often turn to religion after the crime, something that the organised offender (who has a higher IQ and is able to maintain relationships) avoids.
The following double murder, which took place in 1944, shows that teenage sex killings are not a new phenomena. The case is also interesting because the fourteen-year-old killer was executed within weeks of being found guilty and was the youngest American electrocuted by the state in the twentieth century.
George Stinney
George Stinney lived in an agricultural region of South Carolina with his family. The fourteen-year-old could neither read nor write and appears to have been of limited intelligence. He was slender and just over five foot tall. George was black but his victims would both be white. (Black males who rape and kill white women are the most likely to be executed by the state.)
On 24th March 1944 he was walking along the railroad track when he saw Betty Binnicker, age eleven, and her eight-year-old friend, Mary Thames, looking for wild flowers. The girls knew George so had no reason to fear him. They were presumably unperturbed when he followed them into the woods.
But George wanted to have sex with eleven-year-old Betty – and determined he’d have to get Mary out of the way. Picking up a heavy metal railroad spike, he battered the younger girl over the head, fracturing her skull in several places. She collapsed on the ground, bleeding profusely. She had only minutes left to live.
George now turned his lust-filled rage on Betty as she turned to flee, battering the railroad spike into her head at least seven times. Two of the blows actually produced holes in her skull, whilst others produced similar fractures to those endured by her younger friend. Betty also collapsed, seriously injured. The baby-faced killer remained unperturbed. It’s unknown if at this stage George sexually assaulted either girl. Sexually-sadistic killers often spontaneously ejaculate during the violence – and after this their lust may be temporarily spent.
George now threw the bodies into a ditch that had filled up with water and went on his way. Residents would later say that his demeanour was entirely normal, so he may have been too dim-witted to understand the enormity of his actions or else may have been a remorseless psychopath. Though the crime has been well documented, this author could find little about the youth’s childhood except that he lived with his parents and sister and that the latter continued to protest his innocence. In a photograph taken in jail he looks considerably younger than his fourteen years.
Early the next day the girls’ submerged bodies were found and autopsied. George had been seen in the area and within an hour had confessed to the crimes. He initially said that the girls had attacked him and that he’d battered them in self-defence but soon changed his story to admit that there was a sexual motive to the assaults.
Less than three months after being found guilty, a weeping George entered the Death Chamber clutching his Bible. There the double killer – now aged fourteen years and five months – died in the electric chair.
Twenty years earlier in Britain, a white teenager called Harold Jones had also killed two white girls – but this case had a very different result.
Harold Jones
Harold Jones gained notoriety as a teenage sex killer because he escaped justice only to immediately kill again. He lived in Wales with his father, who was an unemployed miner, and with his mother and younger sister. The family were poor so he had to share his bed with an adult male lodger. Harold himself had a job, working in a grocery store.
With his blonde hair, robust complexion and strong body he looked healthy and his visible hobbies of reading and harmonica-playing were laudable. He was also a hard worker – but dark passions were brewing beneath his pleasant facade. Whenever he went egg-collecting with his young friends, he’d pull the wings off the baby birds.
He may have been suffering from ongoing sexual frustration as presumably it was difficult to masturbate at night when sharing a bed with an adult lodger. But none of the crime writers of the day appear to have considered this.
On 5th February 1921 Harold was working in the shop when an eight-year-old girl called Freda came in to buy grain. The fourteen-year-old said that they kept it in the shed so Freda followed him there – but once he’d closed the door, he pounced.
Little Freda screamed and he grabbed her shawl and stuffed it into her mouth. He tied her arms and legs with string, rendering her helpless. Then he pushed her juvenile underclothes aside.
Only now did Harold realise the difference between fantasy and reality – for raping an eight-year-old child is physically very difficult. He attempted to penetrate her again and again but failed. At some stage he may have digitally entered her as grain from the shed floor was found in her vagina and in her clothes.
Possibly overcome by frustration, he hit her on the head – but the blow didn’t kill her. Exhaustion and shock was the reason that the coroner would give for her untimely death.
That night Harold dumped the body a few yards from the shop then asked his friends to help him lock up the shed. He clearly wanted them to see that the building didn’t contain Freda’s body. He knew that the police would soon be asking questions as he was the last person to see her alive.
And indeed the police soon arrested him – but the nation thought that they were just using the teenager as a scapegoat because they couldn’t find the real murderer. The defence argued that Harold had left the shed door unlocked and that the killer had brought Freda there. In less than two hours the jury returned with a Not Guilty verdict and Harold was free to go home. It was a fateful ruling that would lead to another child’s death.
A fortnight later, Harold started chatting to one of his sister’s friends, an eleven-year-old girl called Florrie. He lured her into his house, knowing that his parents and their lodger were going to be out for several hours. Locking the door, he immediately struck her on the head with a metal boiler lid, knocking her out. Then he tore at her knickers and tried, in vain, to penetrate her. During these attempts he ejaculated on his own clothes.
But Harold’s blood lust wasn’t spent. He fetched a knife and carried the unconscious child to the sink. There he cut her throat and left her there for a quarter of an hour whilst the blood drained from her. When she was dead he wrapped an old shirt around her head to avoid any blood stains smearing the walls or ceiling. Then he tied a rope around her body, went up into the attic and pulled her corpse up after him.
Whilst Harold was washing the blood from his body, Florrie’s mother called to ask where she was. Harold chatted to her quite amicably, saying that she’d been at his house but had left.
Several witnesses had seen Harold talking to Florrie so the following morning the police arrived at the Jones’s house. The child’s corpse was found in the attic and Harold confessed that he’d given in to the urge to kill again.
It’s likely that Harold was a teenage psychopath. He lied easily in court when questioned about Freda’s d
eath – and he was totally calm when talking to people within moments of both murders. Psychopaths don’t learn from experience, which would explain Harold killing an eleven-year-old within a fortnight of being found Not Guilty for the murder of an eight-year-old child.
Harold Jones falls into the disorganised category – his crimes were impulsive and opportunistic and he left the bodies in his workplace and in his home.
He spent more than twenty years in prison then was released to serve in the Second World War. Incredibly, thereafter he returned for a visit to his home town. Again, this is the act of a psychopath, indifferent to the hurt that his presence might cause the victim’s relatives. Locals were amazed to see him drinking in the local pub, a man without a care. He remained in the area for the rest of his life and ultimately died in hospital in his seventies.
Ironically, after Harold’s first murder he could have enjoyed consensual relations with girls. Several had written to him after his trial declaring that they loved him, just as women do with adult male serial killers today. But Harold became aroused through totally controlling a girl – so an active, willing partner simply didn’t have the same appeal.
Psychopathy
Relatively little was known about psychopaths in Harold Jones day – so his smiling and unperturbed demeanour after eight-year-old Freda’s death was originally taken as proof of his innocence.
Nowadays we know that psychopaths simply don’t get nervous as they have very low levels of emotional arousal. They don’t learn from experience, which explains how Harold could commit a second sex killing within days of being released from jail after the first. And psychopaths don’t fear punishment, so Harold was equally blasé when the police found Florrie’s blood-drained corpse in his parent’s attic.
Harold Jones’ two sex murders were highly opportunistic. The girls came to him whilst he was alone – and trusted him enough to follow him – so they died. He had the superficial charm that is the hallmark of the psychopath but also had the homicidal psychopath’s obsession with control, need for sensation and lack of shame.
Socially inept killers
More usually, disturbed teenagers commit lust murders because they don’t believe that they can have a consensual relationship with a girl. They’ll desire a female from afar but know that they lack the social skills to impress her. As a result, more and more anger gets mixed up in the lust. They feel stupid and clumsy when they think of approaching a pretty young female – but they perversely blame her for making them feel bad.
George Stinney probably fits into this category as do several of the other lust murderers whose case studies appear later in this chapter. In other instances, there are multiple motives, with the anger and lust mixed up with the need for excitement and monetary greed.
Multiple motives
Adult burglars often go on to commit rape or sex murders and occasionally this is also true of teenage burglars. These are crimes of both wrong-thinking and opportunity. Sometimes the burglar will find women’s lingerie and be aroused by it so he’ll wait until she gets home and will attack. In other instances, he’ll think that the house is empty – then find a woman ill in bed or in the shower. Already sexually excited through the act of entering her home, he moves on to a sexual assault. Kenny Houseknecht fits into this category.
Kenny Houseknecht
Kenny Houseknecht is a good example of social ineptitude stemming from insufficient nurturing, mixed up with a robbery that went wrong. At age fourteen, Kenny was a six foot tall and heavily built American schoolboy living in New Jersey. He had a history of bedwetting and was very stressed. He turned to a neighbour for parenting but the man instead introduced him to burglary and drugs.
Kenny owed a friend fifty dollars and the friend kept asking for it. Kenny said he’d steal it from a neighbour’s house – the Andersons – as they left lots of money lying around.
On 19th April 1988 he sneaked into the house after the adult Andersons had left. He’d just grabbed a piggy bank when twelve-year-old Kim Anderson confronted him in the hallway. She’d probably just left the shower as she had a towel around her breasts.
He’d later say that she grabbed the knife, but that’s very unlikely. What’s known is that they struggled in the hall then she probably raced into the bedroom to phone for help and was pursued by him. They landed on the bed for there was blood all over the bedspread and on the carpet. He hit her with the telephone, causing heavy bruising but she remained conscious. By now he was on top of her.
As she tried to fight him off, he stabbed her in the hands nineteen times. He received cuts to his own hands during the struggle but continued to stab her, moving his knife to her chest so that the blade punctured her lungs.
By now Kim was unable to fight back, but the fourteen-year-old flipped her over onto her stomach and continued to stab her, reigning blows on her back. He also stabbed her in the head, and the tip of the knife snapped off and remained embedded in her skull.
At some stage during or after the assault, Kenny ejaculated, for a pair of women’s panties with his semen on them were found in Kim’s garden. It’s not unusual for such sex killers to take away a trophy and he may have dropped it in his rush to flee the house.
Kenny then went to school and had the nurse bandage the cuts on his hands. Several people noticed that he was acting jumpy and an acquaintance told the police that Kenny had planned to rob the Andersons’ house that day.
Meanwhile, Kenny went home and wrote a naive letter to Kim’s family, suggesting the killer was someone else who would try to pin it on Kenny. He also drew a naked woman, a large vagina and a couple having anal sex.
Police searched his home and found the incriminatory letter in his bedroom. They duly arrested him. As he was only fourteen, the police asked one of his relatives to sit in on the interview. At this stage he was still technically innocent – yet the first thing the relative did was slap his face.
Social workers at the trial testified to his unnurtured childhood which included abuse and abandonment but psychiatrists said he was sane at the time of the killing. In July 1991 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Tony Craven
Sometimes it’s impossible to know if the teenage sex offender is solely attracted to children (that is, a paedophile) or if he only vents his lust on a child because he believes that an adult woman will spurn him. One British killer whose motivation is indeterminate is Tony Craven. He was a very immature seventeen-year-old who only looked thirteen and was mercilessly teased by his more worldly workmates about his virginity.
That said, Tony fits the pattern of a young paedophile. He spurned other young adults in order to spend all of his time with children. And he immersed himself in their games and in their favourite pastime of riding their bikes. Local parents approved of the well mannered and cleancut youth though it’s unclear if he formally babysat for any of their children – 48% of paedophiles find their victims through babysitting work.
By August 1991 Tony Craven was determined to lose his virginity. He lured a seven-year-old girl called Angela Flaherty into the woods near their Huddersfield homes where he persuaded her to take off some of her clothes. When she hesitated he took the rest of her garments off and stared at her immature body. He then raped her and told her not to tell.
But the badly injured little girl couldn’t stop crying and he panicked and semi-strangled her then beat her to death with a rock, causing a brain haemorrhage. Thereafter he tried to ‘help’ the police solve the fatal crime. He was eventually arrested and tried to commit suicide three times before being sentenced to life imprisonment by Leeds Crown Court. He will become eligible for parole in 2009.
Mother-son incest
Because most teenage sex offenders – and adult sex offenders – who are caught are male, there’s an erroneous belief that women don’t commit sex crimes. In truth, they do but their victims are less likely to report them. Even if they do report them, they are much less likely to be believed.
J
ohnny Garrett (profiled in chapter thirteen) wasn’t believed when he said that his mother had initiated sex with him – and we can’t know for sure that she did, given that Johnny had increasingly lost touch with reality. But we do know that he’d been forced to have sex with his grandfather and that his grandmother – his mother’s mother – encouraged this. Clearly the older woman had no incest taboos to overcome.
In the book Female Sexual Abuse: The Ultimate Taboo twelve men told of being sexually abused throughout their childhood by women. (The other cases featured are those where girls were sexually abused by women.) The offenders were mothers, stepmothers and aunts – but therapists have also heard of boys being abused by female teachers, babysitters and nuns. The phenomena is more commonplace than lay people imagine – after a television debate about women who abuse, the TV station received over a thousand phone calls in a single day.
Of 127 people who talked to a counsellor about being abused by a woman, 42% had been abused by their mothers. The abuse had often begun before the child was five years old. The mothers were often abuse victims themselves and some were mentally ill.
Johnny Garrett was abused with his grandmother’s aid in the sixties and seventies – but this crime still isn’t believed by many today. Only three percent of convicted sex offenders are female – but some field workers estimate that the true figure may be closer to ten percent. When children grow up and admit they’d been molested by a female relative they are often told by therapists that they must be confused, that the abuse has been committed by a man.
There is also confusion about what these women do to their victims given that they don’t have a penis. In truth, the abuse is varied. Female sex offenders have made their victims perform oral sex on them or have had full intercourse with them. Other offenders abuse more covertly, perhaps rocking themselves against the child’s body until reaching orgasm.
Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers Page 21