The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes

by Odell, Robin

  Pathological examination determined that the remains were those of a female in the age range of thirty to forty. The police checked all the missing persons lists for the United Kingdom and used the broad description of the dismembered woman in a process of elimination. The police made an appeal on press and television for anyone with information about a missing neighbour or acquaintance to come forward.

  On 26 March, a thirty-five-year-old man, James Keenan, reported that his wife, Elizabeth, was missing from their home in Lanark. She had been gone about six days following a domestic argument, leaving their baby to be looked after by her mother. The report had the sound of a fairly commonplace domestic upset and no immediate action was proposed.

  As part of the ongoing process of eliminating women from the missing persons register, detectives asked Keenan if he would give them a pair of his wife’s shoes. When the shoes were tried on the amputated limbs, they were found to fit perfectly. At the end of April, in a copse about a mile from the Keenan’s home, a headless torso wrapped in a blanket was discovered by passers-by. A check on fingerprints and an abdominal scar proved that these were the remains of Elizabeth Keenan.

  Keenan’s house was searched and investigations found evidence in the bathroom of an intensive clean up. Traces of blood were found in the bath waste outlet. Keenan, nicknamed “Tarzan” by his workmates on account of his bodybuilding, was arrested and charged with murder.

  Keenan admitted killing his wife with an axe following a quarrel and described how he cut up her body with a hacksaw and wrapped it in pieces of blanket. He put the parcelled-up segments of the body in the boot of his car and drove his child to his mother-in-law’s house for her to look after, then drove around distributing his parcels. He led police to a wooded area near Carnwath where he had left the head of his murdered wife. James Keenan was tried at the High Court in Edinburgh on 3 June 1969 where he pleaded guilty to murder. He said that after he killed his wife he drank a bottle of whisky and the next thing he remembered was seeing her cut up in the bath. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

  Kelly’s Head

  The notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly became a cult figure after his execution in 1880. Unlike many criminals of this era, he had not been transported to Australia from England, although his father had. Kelly senior was transported to the penal settlement at Van Diemen’s Land (modern Tasmania) in 1842. He worked on convict gangs for seven years before being released. His years of servitude brought a hatred of law and order which was inherited by his son, Ned.

  The Kelly gang were notorious for their exploits, roaming at will and using their knowledge to hide when trouble loomed and to protect their friends. They had virtual free reign because the police were spread so thinly; in the northeast of New South Wales, an area of over 10,000 square miles, there were fifty officers.

  It was in this sprawling territory, known as Kelly country, that Ned Kelly shot and killed Constable Thomas Lonigan. This was the crime committed at Stringybank Creek in October 1878 for which Kelly would eventually have to answer. During the next two years there was a spate of bank robberies and other escapades. But, on 27 June 1880, Kelly and three of his gang were located at Glenrowan. The police called for backup and the rebels were surrounded by fifty armed officers. Wearing improvised armour consisting of pieces of scrap iron and cooking pots, Kelly tried to shoot his way to freedom.

  In the fire-fight that followed, all of Kelly’s followers were killed and he was taken prisoner. In due course, Ned Kelly was tried at Melbourne for the murder of PC Lonigan. He was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. The judge, in passing sentence, used the customary words, “And may the Lord have mercy on your soul” to which Ned Kelly reputedly replied, “Yes, I will see you there.” Kelly was hanged on 1 November 1880 and Mr Justice Barry died two weeks later.

  Kelly became a figure of legend and folklore, featuring in films and books. After he was executed, his head was removed from his corpse and his skull was subsequently displayed in an anatomical museum before ending up in the prison museum at Melbourne. There the gruesome relic remained until 1978 when it was stolen. In 1999, a man living in Western Australia admitted stealing the skull from the museum. He said that as “an angry young man” he could not understand how someone’s skull could end up in public custody. He reportedly believes that Ned Kelly’s home at Beveridge in Victoria should be restored. He refused to say where the missing skull was but said he wanted it to be buried near Kelly’s home.

  A Lot Of Work!

  In July 1927 in the US, parcels wrapped in brown paper began appearing in the Brooklyn area of New York. The first was spotted by a policeman patrolling in Battery Park, a second was found in a churchyard and a third near a theatre. The contents of the parcels included dismembered portions of a human body.

  Several more parcels were discovered in various parts of the city and the combined parts constituted two female bodies, minus their heads. The only available clue was the brown wrapping paper which originated from the Brooklyn branch of Atlantic and Pacific grocery stores.

  The police checked missing persons registers and began to focus on the disappearance of a Mrs Bennett who had last been seen entering a boarding house in Prospect Place, Brooklyn. Officers called and asked to speak to Sarah Brownell who ran the establishment. They were admitted to the house by one of the tenants, thirty-eight-year-old Ludwig Lee, a Norwegian who described himself as an odd-job man.

  Questioned about Miss Brownell’s whereabouts, Lee said, after some hesitation, that she had gone to stay with relatives. During this interview, one of the detectives with a keen nose, picked up the unmistakably cloying smell of decomposition which seemed to pervade the air around Lee. A search of the basement revealed various human body parts and the head of Mrs Bennett. Leaning against the furnace was a large axe which had evidently been cleaned recently.

  When other boarders at Prospect Park were interviewed, detectives became acquainted with Christian Jensen who worked as a clerk at Atlantic and Pacific grocery stores. He told them that he had given a quantity of wrapping paper to Lee who wanted it to wrap up gifts to be sent to Norway. Jensen identified his handwriting which appeared on one of the body part parcels.

  Doctors pieced together the remains of Mrs Bennett and Miss Brownell on the table in the kitchen of the boarding house. Confronted with their macabre reconstruction, Lee vigorously denied killing the women. The discovery in his room of Sarah Brownwell’s savings book showing deposits of $4,000 told a different story. In a final piece of theatre, the police brought Lee and Jensen together. The store clerk confirmed that he had provided Lee with wrapping paper. At this point, Lee broke down and confessed to murdering the two women.

  He said Mrs Bennett had come down to the basement looking for Miss Brownell and caught him in the process of disposing of her body. He killed Mrs Bennett to conceal the first murder. “There was nothing to do but chop them into little pieces . . .” he said, adding with reference to his parcel deliveries, “it was a lot of work – doing all that running around.” New York’s self-confessed parcel murderer was convicted in 1928 and went to his death in the electric chair.

  The Sausage Maker

  Adolf Luetgert emigrated to the US from Germany and set up a business in Chicago. He brought with him the skills he had learned in making sausages and his products were sought after. He was a man of considerable size, weighing around 109 kg (240 lb). The forty-nine-year-old also had a big sexual appetite, keeping several mistresses and installing a bed at his factory just in case the opportunity for coupling should arise.

  Not surprisingly Luetgert’s wife, Louisa, became fed up with his ill-disguised antics; she was also worried by the declining state of their business. For his part, Luetgert was tired of his wife and wanted her out of the way so that he would be free to entertain his lovers.

  Louisa disappeared on 1 May 1897 and, when her absence was noted, Luetgert told friends that he would hire private detectives to find her. Eventual
ly, Louisa’s family reported her as a missing person and the police started to take an interest.

  Several searches were made of Luetgert’s sausage-making factory and investigators began to take a close look at some of the equipment, including the numerous steam vats. The vats were systematically drained and in one of them police found pieces of bone, some teeth and two gold rings, one of which was engraved with the initials L.L.

  Confronted with these discoveries, Luetgert tried to explain away the bone fragments as being of animal origin. He found it difficult to account for his wife’s wedding ring, however, particularly as it was known that because her finger joints were swollen she was unable to remove her rings.

  Luetgert was charged with murder and sent for trial. One of his employees testified that he had bought a large quantity of potash and given instructions that it was to be crushed and put in one of the steam vats. Luetgert was seen late one evening tending the vat and next morning his workers cleaned up a sticky sludge that had run out on to the floor.

  While all this was circumstantial evidence, the sausage-maker’s mistresses used his trial to take their revenge. One of these ladies said he told her he hated his wife and “could take her and crush her”. Another of his mistresses told the court that he had given her a bloodstained knife for safe-keeping after Louisa disappeared.

  Luetgert consistently maintained his innocence but the jury at his trial in 1898 found him guilty and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died at Joliet State Penitentiary in 1911. Chicago’s appetite for sausages declined after Luetgert’s trial but it was by no means certain that Louisa became sausage meat. Her sad fate was to be boiled into sludge.

  Bunker Mentality

  Men towing a barge on the River Clyde in Scotland on 15 October 1927 spotted an odd-looking bundle on the bank. They retrieved it and on unwrapping it their curiosity was rewarded by the discovery of a collection of human remains. There was a head, two legs sawn off below the knee, an upper leg and an arm. The grisly remnants also included bits of clothing and a newspaper dated 9 October 1926.

  The body was quickly identified as Agnes Arbuckle whose home was in Main Street, Glasgow. The police lost no time in making a house call where they found the dead woman’s son, James M’Kay, sitting by the fire eating a meal. In answer to questions, he said, “She is dead – she died about ten days ago. I put part of her in the Clyde and the rest is in the bunker.”

  The bunker, which was in the main room of the house, contained coal, underneath which was buried the rest of Mrs Arbuckle’s dismembered remains. In the style of popular reporting, the discovery was referred to as “The Body in the Bunker”.

  Local enquiries elicited the information that M’Kay had sought help from a friend to move a large, heavy trunk from Mrs Arbuckle’s house to his lodgings. This occurred on 12 October and, the following day, M’Kay was observed returning to Main Street with the trunk. A neighbour gave a graphic description of his dishevelled appearance, dirty clothes and shoes and with his hair standing on end above his wild, staring eyes.

  A few months before she died, M’Kay had insured his mother’s life and when arrested he had writing materials on the kitchen table where he was attempting to forge a will and other documents. Mrs Arbuckle had been a thrifty person and had a nest egg in the bank amounting to eighty-three pounds, which she had not touched for fourteen years.

  M’Kay was tried for murder at Glasgow in December 1927. An insanity defence was put forward on his behalf but the jury found him guilty as charged and he was sentenced to death. So desperate was he to profit from his mother’s death that he removed her dentures and attempted to sell them. After he was sentenced to death for murdering her, he called out to his wife, “Cheer up!”

  The case made Scottish legal history by being referred to the High Court of Judiciary at Edinburgh. It was the first appeal of its kind under newly enacted legislation. The Court was asked to accept that while M’Kay had dismembered his mother’s body, it was not proved that he had murdered her. It was argued that he might have come home and found her already dead and, believing that he would be held responsible, decided to conceal the body.

  This was not an argument that carried much conviction and the prosecutor asked the court to consider the kind of man who would kill and dismember his own mother and then remove the dentures from her mouth and try to sell them. The Court dismissed the appeal and James M’Kay was hanged at Duke Street Prison, Glasgow on 24 January 1928.

  Body In The Boot

  Twenty-year-old Stephanie Skidmore lived in West Auckland, New Zealand, in a part of the city devoted to the sex trade. She lived with her boyfriend, Jason Menzies, and twenty-month-old baby. She was last seen alive on 12 May 1996 when she left home after a disagreement.

  Concerned about the loss of contact, Stephanie’s mother, who lived in the USA, made several repeated telephone calls to Auckland. She spoke to Menzies who explained that Stephanie had left him. He disagreed that he should report her disappearance to the authorities. The couple had frequent arguments and Stephanie had apparently gone off before.

  After further phone calls, Menzies agreed to report her as a missing person which he did on 11 June, nearly a month after she was last seen. The police concentrated their enquiries in the red light district where Stephanie had involvement with prostitution and nightclubs. They pieced together a picture of an erratic young woman with a history of running away from home. She had met Jason Menzies in 1993 and, from all accounts, the couple had a troubled relationship.

  Police enquiries established that money had been withdrawn from Stephanie’s bank account six days after she went missing. Only she could have done this unless someone else had access to her PIN number. Her friends were convinced that it was unlikely she would have abandoned her baby.

  On 27 June, Menzies appeared on nationwide television seeking information from the public in the search for Stephanie. By this time, police were beginning to take a keen interest in Menzies who had made a number of decisions about income support and other matters which suggested he did not expect Stephanie to return.

  Officers visited Menzies’ home. It seemed he liked cars and there were six vehicles parked at the rear of his flat. These were searched and in the boot of one of them was a bundle wrapped in an assortment of plastic sheeting and bedclothes tied up with cord. Once unravelled, the bundle was found to contain the decomposing body of Stephanie.

  Menzies was arrested and charged with murder. He was tried at the High Court in May 1997. The prosecution case was that he had strangled Stephanie in their flat. He claimed her death was an accident arising over an argument about who should make scrambled eggs. He said she was high on drugs and out of control. She attacked him with a knife and in the struggle that followed he throttled her.

  Once she was dead, he wrapped the body up and kept it in the flat for several days while he went about his normal affairs, including looking after the baby. He elicited the help of friends to move the body into the boot of the car where it was eventually found by the police.

  The prosecutor dismissed Menzies’s claims that he had acted in self-defence, saying that he lied to save his skin. The jury found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. His failure to dispose of the body had inevitably led to his certain downfall.

  The Sunday Roast

  Forty-seven-year-old John Perry, a factory worker from Wales in the UK, met his future wife on a holiday in the Philippines in June 1984. Arminda was half his age and had a young daughter. They joined Perry in Wales and Arminda, who changed her name to Annabelle, became his wife.

  Their marriage soon got into difficulty due chiefly to Annabelle’s promiscuous ways. She made herself available to other men, which infuriated Perry and arguments ensued. One of the problems was that he worked a nightshift, which enabled the marital bed to be used by Annabelle to entertain her men friends.

  In 1990, Annabelle asked for a divorce to which Perry responded by unsuccessfully trying to
have her deported. A settlement was agreed whereby Perry would pay her a lump sum and regular maintenance for her daughter. Payment was due in February 1991 and it was then that neighbours noticed Annabelle’s absence. Perry explained that she had gone to London to work as a prostitute.

  On 28 February, police called at Perry’s home to enquire about his missing wife. To the question, “What happened to your wife?”, he replied, “I’ve killed her.” This startling response was delivered against a background of activity in the kitchen which seemed to involve a great deal of roasted meat.

  Examination of the kitchen, apart from the smell, revealed a coating of grease on every surface, an oven coated with fat and piles of cooked flesh cut into small pieces. In the garage were plastic containers filled with portions of cooked flesh and other body parts. Little remained that could be identified and Perry explained that he had destroyed his wife’s skull. He had not entirely defeated the skills of forensic science, though, for enough remained of the jaws to confirm by dental identification that the remains were those of Mrs Perry.

  John Perry was tried for murder at Mold Crown Court in November 1998. When he gave evidence he related how his world collapsed when he realized his wife was having an affair. He described an argument when she threatened to cut her wrist with a kitchen knife. He struggled with her to gain possession of the knife – then everything went blank. He tried to revive her without success and then decided to dispose of her body. At first he thought of burial but he wanted to make sure her remains would never be found so he opted for dismemberment and rendered the remains. Asked why he cooked the body parts, he said he remembered from his school days that a human body was composed of seven-tenths water. He believed that by cooking the body he would reduce it to a condition that would make its disposal easier. He used a popular family medical guide containing diagrams of human anatomy to dismember her body. When questioned, he admitted cooking the remains and feeding some to the cat.