by Odell, Robin
Brinkley now appeared at the house in Fulham with the intention of taking possession under the terms of the late Mrs Blume’s will. He produced her will to prove his right of ownership and moved in at the expense of her granddaughter who was dispossessed.
Thinking he had achieved his aims, Brinkley began selling off some of the contents of the house but was in for a shock when Mrs Blume’s relatives contested the will. He was told that the two witnesses to the document would be required to swear on oath that they were both present when the testator signed.
This development provided Brinkley with a dilemma. Realizing that the witnesses would be questioned, he decided to eliminate them. He began with Mr Parker, an accountant’s clerk, who was already beginning to smell a rat. After a couple of visits involving the pouring of drinks and attempts on Brinkley’s part to adulterate them when Parker was out of the room, he resorted to another ruse.
This involved the purchase of a dog that Parker had for sale. Brinkley called at Parker’s lodgings on 20 April 1907 to discuss terms. When he arrived, he produced a bottle of stout and vigorously proclaimed the health-giving qualities of the drink. At this point, Parker’s landlord, Mr Beck, called at the house but made himself scarce when he realized the two men were discussing business.
Parker and Brinkley went out into the yard to look at the dog, leaving the bottle of stout on the table. Meanwhile, Mr Beck returned, accompanied by his wife and daughter. Persuaded by Brinkley’s advocacy of the drink they decided to sample it. Within minutes, Mr and Mrs Beck were struck down with convulsions and died soon afterwards. Their daughter was taken ill but recovered later in hospital.
Brinkley was quickly arrested after Parker told the police what had happened. The dregs of liquid remaining in the bottled stout were analysed and found to contain prussic acid. Mrs Blume’s body was later exhumed but no traces of poison were found. Brinkley protested his innocence and attempted to put up an alibi but it quickly unravelled on questioning.
Asked about his possession of prussic acid, strychnine, arsenic and chloroform, Brinkley said they were used for electrical and photographic experiments. His trial at Lewes Assizes for the murder of Mr and Mrs Beck was notable for the fact that they were not his intended victims. The jury had little difficulty in returning a guilty verdict and Brinkley was sentenced to death by Mr Justice Bigham and was executed at Wandsworth Prison on 13 August 1907.
Poison Pie
Thirty-five-year-old Michael Barber worked in a factory warehouse at Westcliff-on-Sea in the UK. He was married to Susan and they had three children. While he liked the quiet life, his wife preferred to be socially active. The marriage got into difficulties when Susan proved unfaithful. Returning from a fishing trip, Michael surprised Susan in bed with a neighbour. There were harsh words and a few blows exchanged.
Early in June 1981, Michael became unwell with severe headaches and was off work. When he experienced cramps and nausea, his doctor treated him for an infection. His health continued to go downhill and after he had breathing problems, he was admitted to hospital at Southend. When his kidneys began to fail, he was transferred to Hammersmith Hospital where doctors began to suspect that he had been poisoned.
Michael Barber died on 27 June from cardiac arrest and kidney failure. On the same day, Susan’s neighbour moved in with her. Michael’s body was duly cremated but not before tissue samples had been taken. After a long delay, laboratory test results showed that he had been poisoned with paraquat, a powerful herbicide.
Police enquiries led to the arrest of Susan Barber and her twenty-five-year-old paramour, Richard Collins. They denied any involvement in Michael’s death but, slowly, a picture began to emerge of a failing marriage and an unfaithful wife. Neighbours provided colourful testimony of Susan’s lustful ambitions, which included making dates by radio using “Nympho” as her call sign. Probing questioning resulted in a confession.
Susan Barber said she had found a supply of paraquat in the garden shed. She mixed some of it with Michael’s dinner of steak and kidney pie. When this had no immediate effect, she repeated the procedure, reducing Michael to a state where his organs started to fail.
Ironically, Michael had brought the paraquat into their home at a time when he worked in landscape gardening. Paraquat is a highly effective herbicide which, if ingested, produces severe headaches and gastro-intestinal problems. In the secondary phase of poisoning, the liver and kidneys are affected and the lungs begin to fail.
Susan hardly played the role of a grieving widow, first bringing Collins into her life and then discarding him in favour of other men. In all this, Collins was believed to be her tool; he knew what was going on but had no part in the poisoning.
The pair were put on trial in November 1982. They pleaded not guilty to the charges of murder and conspiracy to murder. Susan’s account was that she had poisoned her husband only to incapacitate him so that she could escape with her children from an abusive marriage. The jury found her guilty of murder and she was given a sentence of life imprisonment. Collins was found guilty of conspiracy and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.
“Lie In Wait For The Victim”
The teenage daughter of a millionaire devised a murder plan aimed to make her wealthy. She committed some of her plans to paper, outlining how she would target an elderly, wealthy woman to kill and rob; it was meant to be a perfect murder.
Kemi Adeyoola’s murderous ambitions were nurtured while she was in a juvenile detention centre following a conviction for shoplifting.
Eighty-five-year-old Anne Mendel was found by her husband lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs in their home at Golders Green in north-west London. She had been stabbed fourteen times. The murder was committed in March 2005 a few months after Adeyoola’s thesis, “Prison and After: Making Life Count”, was found in her detention centre cell.
She set out her objective, which was to gain a minimum of three million pounds by killing an elderly woman who must be wealthy and defenceless. That person was Anne Mendel and Adeyoola’s DNA was found on her body.
Adeyoola went on trial for murder in June 2006 when the full extent of her plans was revealed in what amounted to a murder manual. She drew up lists of equipment needed, including semi-automatic guns, wigs and dark glasses. The modus operandi was also mapped out: “lie in wait for the victim, creep up on her, and cover her mouth with a gloved hand.” Once inside the house, her chilling mission was to use a butcher’s knife “to remove her head” and wrap it in cling film to contain the bleeding. The “job”, as she described it, was to be carried out by February 2005.
In court, Adeyoola said her handwritten notes were intended as a work of fiction to fulfil her ambition to be a writer. The young woman was the daughter of a successful property management businessman. Her parents were divorced and she had had a disturbed upbringing. She had a record for shoplifting and had worked as an escort, making £500 a night. Detectives found pornographic material, sex toys and stolen clothes when they searched her flat.
She pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder but the prosecution made convincing use of her “murder blueprint” and argued that the killing of Mrs Mendel was a rehearsal for her real aim which was to kill a really wealthy victim and gain the three million pounds she planned to gain. Adeyoola had attempted to set up a false alibi for the murder by eliciting help from a young accomplice. She admitted shoplifting from the age of fifteen and described it as a skill. The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge in his summing up dismissed the defence notion that her fractured family background was an explanation for her crime.
Judge Richard Hone described Adeyoola as “remorseless and cold-blooded”, adding, “I think you wanted to experience what it felt like to kill someone in cold-blood, possibly so that you could write about it . . .” The eighteen-year-old was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment.
“Pray For Me . . .”
Consumed with jealousy, a student made a diary entry referring t
o his girlfriend, writing, “Next time I suspect her of liking another man, I shall kill her quickly and without warning.” Three months later, he fulfilled that promise.
Mohammed Abdullah and Sonja Hoff were students at the University of California in Berkeley. Sonya, a vibrant young woman who had an active social life, was pursuing a course of Persian studies and Abdullah studied Islamic culture. They were drawn together and there was talk of marriage.
Mohammed Abdullah had changed his name from Joseph Howk, reflecting his conversion from Roman Catholicism to Islam. He had a high IQ but had been a difficult child, which led to psychiatric assessment and a diagnosis of a schizoid personality at the age of fifteen.
The two students met in 1959 at Berkeley but their attraction began to founder when Abdullah took exception to Sonja’s love of dancing and some of the clothes that she wore. But the main bone of contention was his jealous nature and suspicion that she was seeing other men.
They quarrelled and Abdullah’s demands became more insistent. He made a diary entry on 6 April 1960 in which he wrote, “Tonight I tried to kill myself but Sonja put herself between my knife and my throat.” He threatened to kill her if she saw another man.
Two weeks later, he threatened her directly and Sonja reported the incident to the police. He was ordered to leave the University. Sonja took a vacation job working for a while as a waitress in Berkeley. Then she chanced to meet Abdullah but declined his invitation to go with him to his apartment.
Two days later, on 13 July 1960, Abdullah obtained a .38 revolver and prepared some typewritten notes. He wrote, “In the name of God, beneficient and merciful, I have stolen a pistol to kill my beloved and myself” and ended, “Pray for me . . . I have done wrong, but forgive me . . .” Then he met Sonja and asked to talk with her. He told her he loved her before firing two shots into her head at close range, fatally wounding her. The next shot he fired into his own head.
Abdullah survived his bullet wound, although he lost the sight of an eye. His intention to kill Sonja was clear and when he came to trial for murder, he pleaded innocence by reason of insanity. He was tried with the man who had sold him the murder weapon in the knowledge that it was to be used to kill Sonja.
Abdullah was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. This was later commuted to life imprisonment. The man who provided the murder weapon was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Feral Thuggery
On an August evening in 2007 a group of teenagers gathered at the entrance to Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire, UK. They had been drinking cider and other alcoholic drinks.
At about midnight, twenty-year-old Sophie Lancaster and her boyfriend, Robert Maltby, aged twenty-one, both students, went into the park. Their appearance excited the teenagers because they were dressed as Goths and this seemed to be a stimulus for what happened next.
The young couple, who were simply enjoying each other’s company, were set upon in a violent, completely unprovoked attack by five teenagers. Maltby was thrown to the ground and the gang took running kicks at him until he was senseless. Sophie Lancaster attempted to protect her boyfriend, cradling him as he lay unconscious on the ground. She then became the target of a vicious sustained assault that left her bloodied and beaten. Witnesses later said that they kicked her head like a football.
Sophie Lancaster died two weeks later in hospital; Robert Maltby survived but with permanent injuries. Paramedics called to the scene were appalled at the injuries caused by this orgy of violence. The gang members responsible boasted to their friends, that they had “. . . done sommat good . . . you wanna see them – they’re a right mess!”
Five teenagers involved in the attack were arrested within two weeks. Questioned about the incident, each blamed the others. A fifteen-year-old, not named, denied murder while his four companions pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm.
Two of those involved in the attack who had not been identified because of their age were named by order of the judge at Preston Crown Court in April 2008. Brendan Harris, aged fifteen, denied murder, and Ryan Herbert, aged sixteen, who admitted it, were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Three other teenagers who pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent on Robert Maltby were also identified by the judge. Each received a prison sentence.
It was brought out in their trial that the youths had both been drinking heavily; Harris admitted to drinking two litres of cider. He also said he initiated the attack because he was drunk and showing off. Four teenage witnesses to the assault came forward to testify. It transpired that Harris and Herbert had attacked a sixteen-year-old boy four months earlier and had been given community service orders.
The court heard evidence of the animal-like ferocity of the attack, which the judge described as “feral thuggery”. Sophie Lancaster’s mother took a courageous view of the outcome of the trial and made a plea for tolerance in society.
Man In A Green Suit
A hospital worker walking his dogs in New York’s Central Park on 2 November 1942 let them off their leashes in an area that was being prepared for landscaping. The dogs led him to a patch of grass where, as he discovered, they were sniffing around the corpse of a young woman.
She was neatly dressed but there was no identification on her body and her bag was missing. While there were no immediate signs of injury, an autopsy showed that she had been strangled. Files at the Missing Persons Bureau were checked in the hope of establishing her identity but to no avail. Then, a report came in from a man whose daughter was missing after going out on a weekend date.
The body in the mortuary was identified as twenty-three-year-old Louisa Almodovar. The young woman, who was married but separated from her husband, had been living with her parents. She had taken a telephone call arranging a date but did not say whom she was planning to meet.
Louisa’s husband was Terry Almodovar whom she had met at a dance and they married in 1942 after a whirlwind romance. They separated within a few months. One of the sources of friction between the couple was Terry’s love of dancing in an environment in which there were plenty of attractive partners.
Detectives learned that Terry had previously called at the home of his wife’s parents complaining that Louisa had attacked one of his dancing partners. He had been ordered out of the house. When Terry was questioned about the evening of the murder, he said that he had spent it at the Rhumba Palace Dance Hall, an alibi that would be corroborated by several of the girls he had danced with.
When he was searched, a pawn ticket was found in Terry’s pocket. This, he explained, was for a green suit, which happened to be the one he was wearing on the night in question. The suit was retrieved and tested for bloodstains, with negative results. Scratch marks on his arms looked suspicious but he gave an innocent explanation for them.
Despite the lack of firm evidence, Terry Almodovar was indicted with first-degree murder and appeared on trial in February 1943. He strongly protested his innocence and things seemed to be going in his favour until the green suit made an appearance. The prosecution had consulted scientific experts and their evidence turned the case on its head.
The green suit had been re-examined for forensic traces and the trouser turn-ups revealed the presence of grass seeds. Not just any old grass seeds but a rare variety that was known to grow only in Central Park. Botanists established that the seeds and other traces of vegetation on the trousers could only have come from one place – the spot where Louisa Almodovar was murdered.
The trial jury returned a guilty verdict and, on 9 March 1943, Terry Almodovar was sentenced to death. He reacted angrily and had to be restrained. It appeared that he had secretly met Louisa in Central Park intending to kill her to make way for a new woman in his life. His mistake, and the flaw in his plan for the perfect murder, was to pick a location with distinctive vegetation that ultimately unmasked his crime.
“. . . I Have No Regrets”
Pakistan’s worst serial killings aros
e as one man’s act of revenge against the police.
When Javed Iqbal complained to the police in Lahore that he had been mugged and robbed by two boys, he was furious because he believed his claim was not taken seriously. He resolved to take his revenge by killing 100 boys.
Iqbal recruited three accomplices to help him in his mission, two of whom were juveniles. Between June 1998 and December 1999, young boys were lured to his home with promises of food and money. Once under his control, the boys were systematically drugged, raped and strangled with a chain. The bodies were dismembered and put into a vat of acid. After they had been turned into sludge, their remains were poured into a sewer. Clothes and shoes were kept as trophies.
When he had reached his target of 100 victims, Iqbal wrote an anonymous letter to the police claiming that he had murdered runaway children at his home in Lahore. When police arrived to search his home they found evidence of his claim. His house was a virtual murder factory. Human body parts were recovered, together with piles of clothing belonging to his victims. He had also kept photographs of the boys he killed and the presence of an acid vat was a sinister reminder of their fate.
Iqbal was not at home and managed to avoid capture for a month, despite an intensive manhunt. Finally, he presented himself at the editorial office of a magazine and offered them a diary containing details of the abuse infliicted on his victims, which he said was revenge for the treatment he had received from the police in 1998. “I am Javed Iqbal,” he told astonished magazine staff, “killer of 100 children.”
Together with his accomplices, Iqbal appeared on trial in March 2000. Having admitted his crimes, he now withdrew his confession, which he said was intended to discredit the police. He pleaded not guilty, saying he had made up the story to put a spotlight on the problem of runaway children.
In his original confession, Iqbal said, “I am not ashamed of my actions and I am ready to die. I have no regrets.” He got his wish when Judge Allah Baksh sentenced him to death and described the method by which it should be carried out. He said that Iqbal and his co-accused, twenty-year-old Sajid, should be publicly executed in the presence of the victims’ relatives. They should be strangled with the same chain they had used to kill their child victims, after which their bodies should be dismembered and destroyed with acid.