MURDER
Yanire awoke at 8am and her father lifted her from her crib. She began to cry and he started to shake her. He hit his wife on the back then turned his psychotic rage on their child, saying ‘I know what I have to do. I have to kill her.’ Screaming ‘God doesn’t exist! The universe doesn’t exist! Humanity doesn’t exist!’ he proceeded to kick and punch the daughter whom he adored, after which he repeatedly battered her head into the floor. He also screamed ‘I just want to sleep, it’s the only thing I want to do.’ Continuing the attack, he shouted ‘She doesn’t die, she doesn’t die.’ Ligla tried to protect Yanire, but her husband continued his attack.
Hearing screams coming from the apartment, concerned neighbours alerted the police. They arrived to find Ligla in a state of shock and Alberto cradling his severely-injured daughter who was covered in blood. Arrested, he called the police by the name of the owner of Swiss Re then chanted the word ‘Big Ben’ for 10 minutes.
Yanire was rushed to hospital with a fractured skull but died two days later from brain damage on 5 June 2007. Ligla was so distraught at her daughter’s death and her husband’s breakdown that she was hospitalised for some time. Meanwhile, Izaga was sent to a mental hospital where he remained mentally ill. He told psychiatrists that he, his wife and daughter were all possessed by the devil. They agreed that he’d suffered an acute mental illness with rapid onset.
At the Old Bailey in January 2008, his wife stood by him, explaining ‘Alberto was simply not himself. He loved us. It is impossible to believe this has happened.’ Judge Richard Hone told the unfortunate man that ‘No sentence I can impose on you can be greater than the one you will impose on yourself. This is a truly agonising case.’ He was found not guilty of murder due to insanity and sent to a mental hospital from which he will be released when he finally recovers. His wife visits him every day and has begged him not to give up on life.
JOHN HOGAN
Depression ran in Hogan’s family – both of his brothers had committed suicide. But he was a devoted father, whose wife Natasha would later claim that he was obsessed by the children, that he put them before anyone else.
In 2005, he set up his own tiling business in Bradley Stoke, near Bristol, and was working incredibly long hours. The couple were seeing little of each other and the marriage became increasingly unstable. Neighbours later said that, on two occasions, John physically threw Natasha out of the house late at night and they heard her crying in the garden, begging to be let back in.
Understandably, she began to consider divorce and started to secretly research this on the internet. In the hope of improving their relationship, the couple agreed to book a holiday to Crete – but, a week before they were due to leave, John found out that Natasha was thinking of leaving him. He was both shocked and enraged.
The couple went to Crete as planned but the relationship remained volatile and, on the fourth day, Natasha said that she might go and stay with her mother when they returned to Britain. John began to shout at her, saying what was the point of the holiday if she was already planning to leave. He said that she wouldn’t get the house in a divorce settlement but that, if she did, he would burn it to the ground. That night, he told the receptionist that the family were leaving on the next available flight. Storming up to their room, he started to pack their suitcases. Noticing that they were so badly packed that they wouldn’t close, Natasha began to unpack them again.
John continued to shout at her with a crazed look in his eyes and Natasha begged him to stop for the sake of the children who were both in the room. Liam, age six, couldn’t stop crying as, like all children, he was devastated by parental arguments.
Suddenly everything went quiet and, when Natasha looked round, all three were gone and she could hear a woman at ground level who was screaming. Realising that John must have jumped over the balcony with the children, a drop of 50 feet; she phoned reception and told them to get an ambulance then raced downstairs. She could see Mia, age two, being lifted up: the toddler was looking around and seemed relatively unharmed. (She had suffered a broken arm but would make a full recovery.) Liam, in contrast, was lying in a heap and it was obvious that his legs were broken. He stopped breathing and his mother began to give him artificial resuscitation, aided by a medic. But he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Hogan was knocked unconscious by the fall, but revived, sustaining a broken arm, broken leg and chest injuries. Filled with remorse, he again tried to commit suicide in custody. In August 2006, Natasha was granted a divorce.
On 21 January 2008, his trial started in Greece. He denied planning to kill his children and the court was told that he’d suffered an ‘earthquake of a psychosis’. The judge concluded that Hogan had been so deranged by the failure of his marriage that he was not responsible for his murderous actions. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and admitted to a Greek psychiatric facility.
In March 2008, a Bristol inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing and police handed over their files to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide if he should stand trial if he returned to the UK. In September of that same year, he issued a statement about the seconds when he’d grabbed his children and jumped, saying ‘these 5 to 10 seconds of insanity were not John Hogan.’
Natasha (who had by now remarried and moved to Australia with her surviving child) urged the CPS to prosecute, telling them that justice had not been done. But, in late September 2008, they said that there was no case to answer as no new evidence had come forward.
In November of that year, two High Court judges granted a full judicial review after Hogan’s barrister argued that the UK coroner, when returning the verdict of ‘unlawful killing’, had failed to take Hogan’s state of mind into account.
In May 2009, the High Court quashed an inquest verdict of unlawful killing and he was cleared of murdering Liam.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LASHING OUT
Children are particularly at risk from fathers who beat their wives and from those with a criminal record for violence. Men who abuse their pets are also more likely to abuse their families. Sometimes neighbours manage to flag up the abuse before it reaches homicidal proportions – 7,000 abused youngsters were helped in Britain in 2008 because concerned neighbours contacted the National Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children to report their fears.
WILLIAM JENNINGS
Most physically-abusive fathers who murder are caught comparatively quickly, either because the child’s battered body is found or because a witness to the cruelty – often the child’s mother or a sibling – comes forward. But William Jennings got away with homicide for 26 years.
In December 1962, 24-year-old Jennings was looking after his three-year-old son Stephen and two of Stephen’s preschool siblings whilst his wife, Eileen, took their new baby to the local clinic. But, when Stephen wet the bed, his father punched or kicked him, fracturing his ribs and quickly causing his death.
Jennings took his son’s corpse, wrapped in a sack, to a railway embankment about three-quarters of a mile from his home in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, and buried it under a pile of stones. To his relief, heavy snow quickly covered the burial site. When Eileen returned from the clinic, he told her that Stephen had been playing outside and had disappeared. He repeated this story to the police. A huge search was mounted but it was hampered by the snow-covered ground, which took two months to thaw, and searchers failed to uncover the child’s body. Later, a wall partially collapsed over the makeshift burial site. William Jennings told everyone that the boy must have been taken by travellers, though many suspected that he’d played a part in his young son’s disappearance as he was known to be mercurial.
Eventually his marriage failed and he moved to Wolverhampton and remarried. Chillingly, for a man who now knew that he couldn’t control his temper, he fathered another two children. He must have thought that his homicidal attack would never come to light. Then, on 7 April 1988, a Jack Russell terrier unearthed a small
human skull on the embankment. Its owner, who ironically had taken part in the original search for the missing boy, immediately fetched the police. A search revealed the rest of the child’s skeleton and forensics established that these were the remains of Stephen Jennings and that he had died as a result of a severe beating which had fractured his ribs.
Arrested, his father soon admitted the murder, explaining that he’d knocked the three-year-old through the banister as a punishment for soiling himself and that Stephen had fallen down the stairs. He said that the child had lived for a few minutes, that he’d performed the kiss of life. But an expert at his trial said that the three-year-old had died immediately because his injuries were so severe.
At Leeds Crown Court on 23 May 1988, Jennings pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was given life imprisonment. A subsequent appeal failed.
A CONFUSED RATIONALE
Hard-hitting fathers like William Jennings deliberately hurt their children in the belief that they are instilling character, though repeated violence actually has the opposite effect, making children likely to soil themselves, have nightmares and become either intolerably clingy or excessively withdrawn. But, in a few cases, the father is a sadist who deliberately tortures – and sometimes sexually assaults – his progeny.
ANDREW RANDALL
Jessica Randall was born in 2005, and for the first seven weeks of her life, her sadistic 33-year-old father Andrew tortured and sexually abused her. She was seen by 30 health workers in her native Kettering, none of whom took the decision to remove the baby from his care. When Jessica was 54 days old, her father battered her to death, her injuries including broken ribs and a fractured skull. He was jailed for life at Northampton Crown Court in March 2007.
PATRICK BOURGEOIS
Patrick Bourgeois and Michelle DuMond had a son together whom they called PJ (short for Patrick junior) but the relationship swiftly deteriorated and Patrick left the area and took PJ to live with him, moving the toddler from Lewistown, Pennsylvania to Columbus, Ohio. He made the move with his girlfriend, mother-of-two Tracy Lynn Bratton who left her children behind with relatives.
PJ was a quiet and friendly child but he suffered hugely at his father’s hands, being frequently beaten and bitten. Tracy also bit the little boy. They didn’t leave water by PJ’s bedside, so if he woke up feeling thirsty he would drink from the toilet bowl. As a punishment for this, the couple sometimes tied him up overnight.
On 27 February 1996, shortly after returning from a visit to his mother, the three-year-old refused to eat the eggs that he’d been given for his evening meal. Enraged, Patrick and Tracy dragged him around the kitchen by his ears, leaving them bruised and swollen. Patrick also bit him in the side, leaving strong teeth indentations in the boy’s flesh, and hit him about the head. Thereafter, they tied his wrists behind his back and bound his legs tightly together and put him to bed, lying on his back.
PJ had suffered such severe head trauma that his brain started to bleed. The blood ran down his throat and, as he was heavily bound, he couldn’t roll onto his side or stomach. Blood would later be found in his lungs, airway, stomach and bowels.
BITE MARKS
The following day, the emergency services received a call that a little boy was having difficulty breathing. But when they arrived at the trailer, no one answered their increasingly desperate knocks. They could hear a couple arguing – and, when Tracy and Patrick eventually opened the door, they could see that the floor had been very recently washed.
PJ was lying lifeless on the floor with blood coming out of his nose and mouth. His 34lb body was a mass of bruises. His injuries were so bad that one of the paramedics who drove him to the hospital – a man who had seen more than his share of horror – went home that night in tears. An autopsy determined that the toddler had been battered and had choked to death on his own blood.
When interviewed by police, Patrick said that PJ had tried to bite him on the finger so he’d bitten him back. The police officer hid his shock that a grown man could bite a three-year-old boy as a punishment. He asked why PJ was bleeding, and Patrick said that he’d backhanded the boy during a little tiff. (PJ’s injuries showed that he’d been hit repeatedly about the head.)
Police searched the mobile home and found blood spatters on the bottom of the fridge and the foot of the cabinets, which the couple had overlooked when cleaning the three-year-old’s blood from the kitchen floor. Detectives asked why tape residue was found on PJ’s wrists and legs, and they admitted taping him before putting him to bed – the discarded tape was found in the couple’s rubbish bin. Tracy also admitted biting the boy. Both were sent to prison for involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to 7 to 25 years.
For the next five months, a jailed Patrick Bourgeois fought for the right to bury his son – the son he’d killed – in Columbus, Ohio. His mother protested that she wanted the body returned to Lewistown, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile the autopsied corpse remained in the mortuary. Eventually, Franklin County Court decided on his burial place.
NO JUSTICE
From jail, the couple continued to argue about who had done what to the unfortunate child. Yet, after a mere three years and two months (before she was even eligible for her first parole hearing) Tracy Bratton was released on the orders of Judge Nodine Miller who granted her what is known as ‘supershock probation’. Judge Miller said that the torture and tying-up of PJ had been ‘fraught with ignorance, immaturity and inexperience more than malevolence’ and said ‘Bratton is unlikely to commit another offence. The public does not need to be protected from Bratton.’ She added that Tracy Bratton’s children (age seven and nine) from a previous relationship were living with her relatives in Pennsylvania, but they were ill so it was best that Tracy regained custody. The public were appalled at the thought of this sadistic woman being in charge of other youngsters, or anyone vulnerable.
Not to be outdone, Patrick Bourgeois’s lawyers also petitioned for his early release, and, after serving a mere three years and ten months, he was set free. Ordering his release, Judge Nodine Miller said ‘These particular circumstances were so abhorrent, it is hard to conceive of such a replay in Bourgeois’ lifetime.’ (In other words, Patrick Bourgeois’s excessive cruelty towards his son earned him an early release.) The judge said that PJ had been ‘difficult’ and ‘misbehaving’ on the night he died, as if refusing to eat his dinner was a sufficient justification to beat him to death.
BILL BAGNESKI
Most violent fathers are removed from the home after killing one of their children, but Bill Bagneski has the dubious distinction of murdering two of his offspring in separate incidents.
A military man and a strict disciplinarian, 34-year-old Bill Bagneski was stationed at Hinesville, Georgia in August 1989, when he beat his nine-month-old daughter Amy about the face. A neighbour noted the baby’s injuries and insisted on driving them to the emergency room. As medics treated the infant’s injuries, he shouted at her to stop crying – abusive parents often imagine that childhood distress is an act to wind them up, that such displays of anguish are under a baby’s conscious control.
Unsurprisingly, doctors didn’t believe Bagneski’s story that the nine-month-old had jumped off of the settee and landed face down, so upon discharge from hospital, she was taken into foster care. Two months later she was returned to him and his wife Robyn but fortunately Robyn divorced him shortly afterwards and got custody of their child.
In 1997, Bagneski moved back to his native Green Bay, Wisconsin, and married again, this time to a woman called Kelly. Two years later the couple had a son, Joel. On 2 November 1999, she went to work leaving her husband asleep with the understanding that he would babysit when he awoke. He claimed that he slept through the alarm and woke up to find the baby dead, a death which was attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as there were no visible injuries.
In 2001, Kelly and Bill had a daughter to whom they gave the name Kelby, just one letter away from the moniker of her mother. Later that same
year, Bill was babysitting and phoned medics to say that the baby wasn’t breathing. Paramedics found her unconscious and rushed her to hospital where she died. Bagneski told the police that the infant had been difficult as per usual and had suddenly stopped breathing as she played in the lounge.
But a post-mortem showed that her death was due to swelling on the brain and retinal haemorrhages. The case was handed over to the FBI. Meanwhile, Kelly – who taught parenting classes at a local college – opted to become pregnant again, convinced that her husband was innocent. The day after the Bagneski’s second daughter was born, the authorities took her into care.
The FBI ruled that Kelby’s death had not been accidental and that, with hindsight, Joel’s death had also been as a result of abuse and Bill Bagneski was charged with two counts of first degree intentional homicide. Shortly before his trial, he pleaded no contest to reduced charges of first degree reckless homicide, and was sentenced to between 27 and 40 years. Incredibly, his second wife maintained that he would never knowingly harm their children and said that she’d stand by her man.
Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents Page 15