The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes

by Odell, Robin

  The jury returned a majority verdict of guilty. The judge spoke about Perry’s chilling and ruthless efficiency and the fact that he had not shown the slightest remorse at what he had done. The self-taught anatomist was sentenced to life imprisonment.

  Secret Burial

  While working as an airline official at Manchester airport in the UK in 1959, Peter Reyn-Bardt met thirty-two-year-old Malika Maria de Fernandez and within three days they had married. Their wedding photograph showed a happy, smiling couple, but for Reyn-Bardt, it was a marriage of convenience. He was a homosexual and he believed that being married would give him credibility with his employer.

  Friction soon intruded on the marital scene and the couple decided to lead separate lives. Reyn-Bardt moved to a cottage near Wilmslow, Cheshire, where he lived with his homosexual partner. In the space of nine months he and Malika married, argued and split-up.

  In October 1960, Malika turned up at the cottage demanding money. In his statements to the police, Reyn-Bardt claimed that she came at him, clawing at his face, after he refused her demands. He remembered grabbing her around the neck and shaking her. Then she was lying dead at his feet. He said the attack was not premeditated. “Something just boiled over inside me,” he said. He could not remember how he killed her.

  Faced with the dead body of his wife, Reyn-Bardt decided on dismemberment. He used an axe to sever the head and limbs and attempted to burn them in his garden. When this failed, he buried the remains.

  Then, twenty-two years later, came the discovery of a human skull in the peat bog close to Reyn-Bardt’s cottage. An excavator driver digging out peat for a commercial contractor unearthed the skull about 300 yards from the property. The fact that the skull was that of a female aged around thirty fitted Malika. Questioned by the police in June 1983, Reyn-Bardt admitted killing her.

  He was sent for trial at Chester Crown Court in December 1983. Reyn-Bardt pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder. His defence was that he had struggled with his wife after she attacked him but he could not recall what happened afterwards. The supreme irony of the case was provided by testimony from a professor at Oxford University’s department of archaeology. He said that the age of the human skull had been carbon dated to around the year 410 AD.

  The jury brought in a majority verdict of guilty and Reyn-Bardt was sentenced to life imprisonment. Among the mysteries concerning Malika was that her remains have not been found and her origins were not clear either. On her marriage certificate she was described as a portrait painter and her father’s name was recorded as Benjamin Mendoza de Fernandez. Attempts to locate him proved fruitless.

  “Piggy Palace”

  The Downtown-Eastside district of Vancouver in Canada was a rundown area and home to drug addicts, pimps and prostitutes. A third of the population of the area fell into one or other of these categories, and the rate of HIV infection was the highest in North America. Initially, when young women began disappearing without trace in Vancouver in 1983, the police were reluctant to accept that a serial killer was at large. They believed they were dealing with a transient population and when one of their number suggested that the statistical concentration of missing people indicated something more sinister, he was not taken seriously. But, eventually, after a period of twenty years, when more than sixty women had gone missing and bowing to pressure from missing women’s families and the media, an investigation team was assembled.

  The investigative trail led to a farm at Port Coquitlam, twenty miles east of the city, run by the Pickton brothers, and to the stabbing of a prostitute. Robert Pickton was charged with this offence but the case was dropped.

  Slowly, a pattern emerged at what life down on the farm was like. Pickton ran a late night drinking den in a barn, which he called Piggy Palace. Female drug addicts and prostitutes were among the clientele. A notice on the farm gate warned off intruders – “This property protected by a pit bull with AIDS”.

  Police began to receive calls from the public about activities at the farm and in 2002 Robert Pickton was arrested in connection with an enquiry about weapons. A search of the premises turned up some interesting artefacts in the freezer: two human heads and assorted severed hands and feet. This discovery led to a two-year investigation by forensic teams who searched through 370,000 cubic metres of mud and farm waste looking for human remains. They also took over 200,000 DNA samples. Traces of thirty women were found on the seven-hectare farm.

  As news of the grim discoveries reached the press, fears were expressed locally that human remains might have found their way into food products via Pickton’s pig feed. It later transpired that he put body parts through a wood chipper.

  Robert Pickton, who liked to be called Willy, was a regular user of prostitutes, many of whom had a $500-a-day drug habit. He associated with Hell’s Angels and was thought by many to be weird. Apart from his parties at Piggy Palace, he kept a low profile. He was charged with the murders of twenty-seven women and sent for trial on six counts based on the identification of human remains found at his barn.

  Initially, he pleaded not guilty but then claimed he had killed forty-nine women. He allegedly told a fellow remand prisoner, “I was going to do one more and make it an even fifty.” The evidence against him was unchallengeable but the jury at British Colombia’s Supreme Court took ten days to reach their verdict in December 2007. They found fifty-eight-year-old Pickton guilty of six murders and he received an automatic life sentence. He still faces charges over twenty other deaths and police investigations into forty other missing women continue.

  Two Fingers!

  In Austria, Vienna’s Police Commissioner Weitzel was startled to find he had been sent the well-manicured, surgically removed digit from a woman’s right hand. This surprise package, received on April Fools’ Day in 1926, was followed some days later by another finger, complete with a gold ring.

  Inspection of the surface of the ring indicated it had been etched with what investigators believed might have been the type of acid used to remove tattoos. Microscopic examination of the finger confirmed this theory with the discovery of faint tattoo marks in the form of a snake.

  While detectives visited tattoo parlours in the city to find a source for the snake design, enquiries took an unexpected turn when the headless body of a woman, minus two fingers from the right hand, was found in swampy ground. A footprint left in soft soil near the body suggested the involvement of a heavily built man and the surgical skill evident in the removal of the fingers led detectives to think their quarry was a surgeon.

  By a process of elimination, they came up with the name of Dr Herman Schmitz. He fitted the weight criteria and his medical background was highly relevant. The doctor had suffered a decline in his practice following charges of malpractice. Despite being exonerated of any wrongdoing, the stigma remained.

  Enquiries revealed that Dr Schmitz was married with two children and that he also had a mistress, all of whom were fit and well. Further scrutiny of his background showed that his mistress frequented a particular dress shop where her purchases were charged to the doctor’s account. Significantly, his previous mistress, Anna Stein, had enjoyed the same privilege and she was now missing.

  Attention immediately switched to the woman’s body, minus its head and two fingers, which lay in the mortuary. Next came a search of Dr Schmitz’s consulting rooms where officers found the head of Anna Stein immersed in preservative. The outcome of tests on the body was that she had been poisoned with cyanide.

  It was presumed that the doctor had killed her to make way for his new lover. He then hit on the idea of literally giving two fingers to the police to taunt them and perhaps to get his own back for what he saw as the injustice of being prosecuted for malpractice. Unfortunately for him, his taunt came at a price because he had failed to remove all traces of the identifying tattoo.

  While in custody, Dr Schmitz made a bid for freedom and, in the course of his escape, fell from the top of a building. He made a dying confessi
on of murder and Vienna’s police museum acquired a new exhibit in the form of two fingers.

  A Secret No More

  A man out walking his dog in Norwich in the UK on a summers’ day in 1851 was surprised when the animal rooted out a piece of flesh which turned out to be a human hand. The discovery was reported to the police and there was great public curiosity at the prospect of finding more human remains.

  Search parties aided by dogs scoured the countryside and in the days following the initial discovery, a foot, pelvis, several vertebrae and sundry gobbets of flesh were retrieved. Doctors examining the remains believed they were of a woman aged between sixteen and twenty-six.

  Posters were printed seeking information, especially about any missing women. Meanwhile searches continued in a radius of two to three miles from the centre of Norwich and further discoveries were made. Another foot and hand turned up, together with some intestines and pieces of flesh, all in different locations.

  Curiously, there was no coroner’s inquest and interest waned as other events captured the public imagination. The unidentified remains were preserved in spirit and after several months, were emptied into a hole dug in the basement of Norwich Guildhall and covered with lime.

  Time went by and the remains of the woman lay out of sight and out of mind. Then, eighteen years later, out of the blue, came a confession to murder. On 1 January 1869, a man appeared at Walworth Police Station in London and declared, “I have a charge to make against myself.” Asked to explain himself, he said that he had murdered his first wife at Norwich, adding, “I have kept the secret for years and can keep it no longer.” He identified himself as William Sheward.

  Sheward was put in a cell overnight and questioned the following morning. He stated that he cut his wife’s throat with a razor on 15 June 1851 and then cut up the body. He was charged with murder and remanded pending enquiries in Norwich. Many of those involved in the original investigation had since died. Relatives of Martha Sheward provided a description of her, with particular reference to her golden hair. The man who had found a piece of skin back in 1851 remarked on the golden colour of the hair attached to it. Direct comparison with the remains mouldering in the earth under the Guildhall proved impossible; all that was left were a few bones.

  Sheward was sent for trial at Norfolk Assizes where he appeared in March 1869. After hearing the evidence the judge advised the jury that they needed to answer three questions: was Martha Sheward dead? was she murdered? were the remains hers? All the answers appeared to have been affirmative when the jury returned its guilty verdict. The judge pronounced sentence of death and Sheward was taken to the City Gaol.

  While awaiting execution, he made a confession. He said he and Martha had “a slight altercation” over money. “Then I ran the razor into her throat.” He continued by giving a detailed account of which body parts he disposed of on which days. He had put his wife’s head in a saucepan and boiled it before breaking it up for disposal.

  Execution was set for 20 April when fifty-seven-year-old Sheward, badly crippled with rheumatism, shuffled to the gallows. The hangman did his work while 2,000 people waited outside the prison gates. His confession was published and The Times described it as a “shocking and disgusting narrative . . .”.

  Out Of The Deep

  Visitors to the Coogee Beach aquarium in Australia admired a tiger shark and its graceful movement in the water when the creature experienced what might be described as a stomach upset. Out of the shark’s mouth came a human arm which, on closer inspection, was seen to bear a tattoo of a pair of boxers squaring up to each other. This exotic discovery in April 1935 sparked off one of Australia’s most enduring murder mysteries.

  With the evidence of the tattoo and by taking fingerprints from the severed arm, investigators were able to identify its owner as James Smith, a forty-year-old ex-boxer. Smith was employed at the Sydney boatbuilding yard operated by Reg Holmes and had been missing for two weeks.

  Smith had spent a holiday in a rented cottage at Cronulla with Patrick Brady who was known to the police as a forger. The police had stumbled on an intricate web of underworld dealings. Brady was questioned and denied killing Smith but implicated Reg Holmes in criminal activities.

  While Brady was in custody, there was an incident in Sydney harbour involving Holmes. His speedboat was stopped after a chase and when police boarded it they found Holmes lying injured with a bullet wound to the head that turned out to be superficial. He claimed that he had been trying to get away from a gunman who was attempting to kill him. Holmes admitted knowing Brady and accused him of killing Smith and disposing of his body.

  Brady was charged with Smith’s murder and while he was in custody, Reg Holmes was shot dead in his car. Telling his wife he was meeting a friend, Holmes left his home on the evening of 11 June saying he would be home before 9.30 p.m. A witness living at Miller’s Point saw a man leaning into Holmes’ car and then heard three shots. The man walked away and was never identified.

  The fatal shooting of Reg Holmes occurred on the eve of the Coroner’s inquest into the Shark Arm affair at which he was due to appear as a witness. Medical evidence featured prominently at the inquest and doctors stated that the arm had been severed with a sharp knife, although not as part of any surgical operation. Another expert was confident that the arm had been removed from a dead body by the shark. Brady’s lawyer argued that an arm did not by itself constitute a body and contended that there was no conclusive proof that Smith was in fact dead.

  The inquest proved to be a stormy affair with first the widow of James Smith giving testimony and then the statement previously given to the police by Reg Holmes. The question hanging in the air was how much of a body was legally required for it to be accepted as a body within the meaning of the Coroner’s Act? The outcome was that, at a special hearing, Mr Justice Halse Rogers decided that an identified part of a body and evidence that it came from a dead body were insufficient for a Coroner’s jurisdiction.

  Patrick Brady was committed for trial but, on the basis of the circumstantial evidence put to the court, the judge acquitted him. Brady, who had protested his innocence throughout the Shark Arm saga died in hospital on 11 August 1965. It was believed that both Holmes and Brady had been involved in murky underworld activities. Had he lived, Holmes would have been a star trial witness. Two men charged with his murder were subsequently acquitted.

  An international forensic expert who examined the Shark Arm believed that Smith’s body had been dismembered and put into a trunk for disposal at sea. The arm would not fit inside the trunk so it was roped to the outside, worked loose in the sea and was swallowed by a shark. The police believed that the elimination of Reg Holmes dispelled any hopes of solving the mystery.

  The Handless Corpse

  Amateur scuba divers in the UK discovered a naked man’s body in a quarry on 14 October 1979. The hands had been cut off at the wrists and the face mutilated to obscure the identity of the dead man. Initial thinking was that he had been executed in some kind of gangland killing or was possibly an IRA victim.

  Then, out of the blue, two women appeared at Leyland police station to tell an amazing story about a drugs syndicate operating in several countries and turning over millions of pounds. Julie Hue had been in Spain with a friend, Barbara Pilkington, when she was told that the syndicate had killed her boyfriend. Fearing for her own life, she returned to the UK.

  The handless corpse was the boyfriend, twenty-seven-year-old New Zealander Martin Johnstone, a member of the drug syndicate. Sometimes known as “Mr Asia”, Johnstone ran the syndicate’s operations in south-east Asia. Hue and Pilkington were afraid of Andrew Maker, who had worked with Johnstone.

  Maker had sidetracked Johnstone to work on a fictitious deal in Scotland and it was Maker who shot his business associate and mutilated his body before dumping it in the flooded quarry. Others were involved in supplying weights to make sure the body sank in the water and providing the murder weapon.

  As th
e investigation spread its net, the path led to Alexander Sinclair, known as “Mr Big”, a New Zealander with a criminal record. He and his associates criss-crossed the globe moving drugs and money about and keeping a tight rein on their operatives. Johnstone had, apparently, stepped over a few boundaries and Sinclair gave instructions that he was to be eliminated.

  In July 1981, the plotters were put on trial at Lancaster Castle. Eight men and one woman appeared in court in proceedings that lasted 121 days. Alexander Sinclair, who was believed to have made £25 million from drug-dealing denied murder. Andrew Maker pleaded guilty to murder and conspiracy. James Smith who helped dispose of the body, denied murder. Keith Kirby denied murder; Frederick Russell, who supplied the weapon, pleaded guilty; Leila Barclay, the syndicate’s banker, pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges; Errol Hincksman, Christopher Blackman and Sylvester Pidgeon denied drug conspiracy charges.

  The jury listened to detailed allegations of an international drug operation that ended in the sordid execution of one of the main players. After deliberating for thirty-eight hours, they found Sinclair, Maker, Smith and Kirby guilty of murder; Russell had already pleaded guilty. Three others were convicted on drug conspiracy charges.

  Sentenced to life imprisonment and wanted in Australia in connection with five murders, Sinclair was confined in Parkhurst Prison. His death in prison was reported in 1983. He was thirty-nine years old and most of his drug-dealing fortune remained intact.

  I.D. On A Plate

  Daryl Suckling was a caretaker at Wyrama Station, a remote community in New South Wales, Australia. In March 1988, he and his supposed niece were invited to dinner by neighbours. During the evening, Sophie Carnie, detached herself from Suckling and privately told her host that she was being held captive by him against her wishes. The dinner host discreetly informed the police and a bizarre story began to unravel.