Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

  Although Chase was a fiendish killer, he was also a classic example of a breakdown in the system. It is blatantly obvious that he should never have been allowed to live back in society on his own with his history of strange behaviour, and because of this society had to suffer.

  Vampiroids

  Vampiroids are people who believe they are vampires. Despite the high proportion of relatively harmless vampiroids that exist, there are those that portray psychotic behaviour and will go to great extremes to carry out their beliefs. One such person was Rodrick Justin Ferrell, who was the leader of a gang of teenagers from Murray, Kentucky, known as the ‘Vampire Clan’. In 1998 Ferrell pleaded guilty to the killing of a couple from Eustis, Florida, and became the youngest person in the USA on Death Row. Ferrell believed he was a 500-year-old vampire named ‘Vesago’, and was eventually diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.

  DANIEL AND MANUELA RUDA

  Two other people who took their beliefs to the extreme were Daniel and Manuela Ruda. German-born Manuela claimed to have been drawn to Satanism when she visited Britain for the first time. She had already shocked her parents with her punk haircuts and outrageous clothes, and at the age of sixteen she ran away from home. Manuela got a part-time job working as a chambermaid in a hotel in the Scottish Highlands. She was fascinated by the cemetery close to the hotel and also the dark, gloomy weather which she said suited her moods. When the hotel shut during the winter, Manuela lived for a while with a sixty-two-year-old man called Tom Leppard in a cave-like dwelling on the Isle of Skye. Tom had had his entire body tattooed like a leopard.

  Tired with her life in Scotland, Manuela headed for London and worked in a gothic club in Islington. It was here that she was introduced to Satanism for the first time. She worshipped the Devil, attended ‘bite parties’ where people would drink each other’s blood, and slept on graves. On one occasion a few of her friends dug a grave and Manuela slept in it just to see what it felt like to be dead.

  When Manuela returned to Germany she went to drastic measures to change her appearance. She had her two canine teeth removed and replaced with animal fangs. She had her head partly shaved and her scalp tattooed with an upside-down crucifix and a target. Manuela signed her soul over to Satan on the night of Halloween in 1999 and made contact with other vampiroids via the Internet. They would meet up in graveyards after dark and she said it was quite normal to ‘have a chat and drink some blood’. Manuela’s neck was full of scars where her vampire friends had reciprocated the favour and it is believed that the practice is being pursued by several thousand other young Germans.

  Soon Manuela started to dream of offering up a real blood sacrifice to the Devil and this led her into deeper, more sinister vampire cults.

  Manuela met Daniel Ruda through a heavy metal rock magazine, Metal-Hammer. He had placed a lonely hearts advertisement saying:

  Raven-black vampire seeks Princess of Darkness who hates everybody and everything.

  Manuela was enchanted by Daniel as soon as they met and the couple had much in common. Daniel, another school dropout, had just lost his job as a used car salesman and they spent their nights digging up graves. Daniel had a dream featuring the satanic digits ‘666’, which told him to carry out certain rituals including marrying Manuela. The couple were married on the sixth day of the sixth month, 2001, and just one month later, again on the sixth, they decided to look for a human sacrifice.

  The victim they chose was a thirty-three-year-old friend of Daniel’s by the name of Frank Hackert. The couple invited Hackert to a party and Daniel picked him up from his home and took him back to their flat. The place was dark and filled with candles, skulls, handcuffs and pieces of stone ransacked from old graves and former concentration camps. They chatted and played music, and then Daniel’s expression changed and he turned and hit Hackert on the head with a hammer. Manuela became excited and shouted to her husband, ‘Stab him in the heart!’ As they stabbed him in a frenzy, Manuela later told the police that she saw the light in the flat flicker as Hackert died. They were both in a state of euphoria after the murder and finished off the evening by drinking their victim’s blood from a bowl. Then the couple carved an occult star on Hackert’s stomach and had sex in an oak coffin which Manuela often used as a bed.

  The murder method appears to have been modelled on the album cover of a band named Cannibal Corpse. The album is called Hammer-Smashed Face and features a heavily mutilated face.

  After the murder Manuela and Daniel Ruda went on the run. Manuela’s mother became suspicious when she had heard nothing from her daughter and decided to contact the police. She accompanied them to the Rudas’ flat in Witten, in western Germany. When they arrived, the shutters were closed and the lights were not working. In the dim light, however, the police could see that the walls were spattered with blood. In the bathroom was a poster of hanged women, while skulls, scalpels stained with blood, vampire teeth and coloured contact lenses littered the other rooms. On the floor in the living room was a great deal of blood, and the body of Hackert was found lying next to the oak coffin. He had been stabbed sixty-six times and his face and arms had been viciously savaged with a machete. There was a scalpel lodged in his stomach, next to a pentagram that had been cut into his skin. Lying close to the body was a blood-stained list containing the names of fifteen people, whom the police believed were the couple’s intended victims.

  The police were appalled by the ferocity of the attack and started a major manhunt in the hope of stopping the couple before they killed again. The Rudas were eventually apprehended when they were spotted at a petrol station in the eastern town of Jena. They were taken in for questioning and were quite willing to confess to killing, but denied that either of them were murderers.

  The trial was overseen by Judge Arno Kersting-Tombroke, who opened the case by saying that the couple had committed a ‘terrible crime’ by murdering their friend Frank Hackert. When Daniel took the stand he defended himself by saying that he was not a murderer because ‘I got the order to sacrifice a human for Satan.’

  Manuela gave the same story to the court: ‘It was not murder. It was the execution of an order. Satan ordered us to. It simply had to be. We wanted to make sure that the victim suffered well.’

  The case was sensationalised by the German media, with the couple playing up to the part of vampires. They appeared in court wearing black, posing for the photographers and constantly making rude gestures to the packed public gallery. Neither Daniel nor Manuela showed any sign of remorse for their crime and provoked hatred from the public by rolling their eyes when something controversial was being said.

  As the sentence was passed at Bochum Court near Düsseldorf on January 31, 2002, the pair laughed audibly and cast mocking glances at the victim’s distressed mother. Daniel, who was twenty-six years old, was sentenced to fifteen years and Manuela to thirteen years, both to be held in secure mental institutions.

  They were both diagnosed as suffering from severe personality disorders and although the media portrayed them as ‘monsters’, in reality they were nothing but deeply disturbed individuals.

  matthew hardman

  Matthew Hardman was only seventeen years old, but he was totally obsessed with immortality. The tiny community of Llanfairpwll, on the Isle of Anglesey, was sickened when they heard about the murder of ninety-year-old Mabel Leyshon on November 25, 2001. When the police arrived at Mabel’s home they had to face one of the most callous and brutal murder scenes they had ever witnessed.

  Mabel, who had been sitting in her favourite chair watching television, had died from multiple stab wounds. As if the sight of this frail, helpless old woman wasn’t bad enough, what the killer had done following her death, made it even harder for the police to stomach. The assailant had then moved Mabel’s body to another chair, placed two pokers in a cross formation at her feet, removed her heart and placed it in a saucepan, wrapped in newspaper. He then drained the blood from Mabel’s leg into the saucepan and drank it.

/>   After forensic scientists had studied the scene of the crime the police managed to retrace the killer’s steps and discovered that he had removed a slate from the back garden and thrown it through a window on the ground floor. The intruder had left clear footprints on the broken glass and patio outside the window, and the forensic team were able to build up an impression of the shoes worn by the attacker. As they built up details of the crime it soon became apparent from the lip marks left on the saucepan, that they were dealing with vampirism.

  Due to the severity of the crime the police put out an appeal on BBC’s Crimewatch programme in December 2001. After the show, the phone lines were flooded with over 200 calls giving details of a suspect who had carried out an attack on a German student. This information led the police to the home of Matthew Hardman. Hardman was quite willing to give a swab of his saliva and, after searching the house, the police found a pair of Levi shoes which matched the footprints found at the scene of the crime. The police had expected the suspect to be much older, but on the basis of the evidence found, the young teenager was arrested in January 2002.

  Hardman was officially charged with murder when the DNA samples matched those taken from Mabel’s house. It soon became obvious that Hardman was obsessed with vampires and how to become one and frequently read magazines on the subject. Matthew Hardman was found guilty of murder at Mold Crown Court in August 2002 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

  PART SEVEN: Child Fiends

  Mary Bell

  Mary Bell, at eleven years old, was the youngest female killer in the United Kingdom. She was born in 1957 into the economically depressed area of Scotswood, Newcastle. Mary’s mother, Betty, was single, which was unusual for the period, and she also displayed signs of mental depression. In fact Mary’s brief childhood could be described as a nightmare of abandonment, sexual abuse and drug overdoses. Betty used prostitution as a way to earn money and was deeply distressed when she learned she was pregnant. As soon as Mary was born, Betty would leave her with friends and relatives, but despite her family’s pleas to let them adopt Mary, Betty always returned to pick up her child and torment her even further. Possibly the greatest tragedy of Mary’s childhood was her mother’s use of her daughter during her prostitution. She would use her as a lure and ultimately a sexual victim of abuse. This bizarre and impressionable time in Mary’s life would certainly help explain her irrational behaviour towards other children.

  Mary was left to play unsupervised on an old industrial area littered with construction materials, old cars and pieces of dangerous debris. Mary had a close friend by the name of Norma Bell, who ironically shared the same surname, but was not related. In July 1968, the Scotswood estate went into panic as a three-year-old boy by the name of Brian Howe had gone missing. He usually stayed close to home, but when teatime arrived and Brian couldn’t be found, his older sister, Pat, raised the alarm.

  When the police started to search the area, Mary and Norma offered to help them and show the officers where they normally played. Knowing exactly where the tiny body lay, Mary was keen that the searchers shouldn’t get too close and veered them away from the large concrete blocks. Pat was worried because a few weeks earlier another young boy, Martin Brown, had been found dead inside an abandoned house.

  Later that night, at 11.10 p.m., when Mary and Norma were both back at home, the Newcastle police uncovered the body of Brian Howe. It was found sandwiched between large concrete blocks and the corpse was covered with grass and purple weeds. He had been strangled and close by lay a pair of broken scissors hidden by the long grass. On his thighs were puncture wounds, his genitals had been partially skinned and clumps of his hair had been cut away. The killer had left a trademark by carving the letter ‘M’ on his stomach with a razor blade.

  The police had a nagging suspicion that Brian’s murder had been carried out by an adolescent and they started interviewing all the children from the estate between the ages of three and fifteen. Gradually the police focused their attention on Mary and Norma, both of whom seemed vague about their movements on the day of Brian’s death. Mary suddenly started remembering details that she had not reported earlier, such as seeing another boy playing with Brian on the afternoon he died. However, when the police checked this information, the boy Mary had named had been at the airport on that afternoon. Mary also revealed that she knew about the scissors, a piece of evidence that had been kept strictly confidential, and it soon became evident that either Mary, Norma, or indeed both the girls had been there when Brian died.

  Adding to their already bizarre behaviour, the two girls broke into the local nursery school the day after Brian’s murder. They trashed the place and then left handwritten notes saying:

  I murder SO THAT I may come back.

  Fuch off, we murder, watch out Fanny and Faggot.

  You are mice Y Becurse we murdered Martain Go Brown you Bete Look out there are Murders about by Fanny and auld Faggot you Screws.

  We did murder Martain Brown Fuckof you Bastard.

  Mary and Norma, having first denied the break-in, eventually owned up. Norma also admitted, after days of questioning, that her friend had strangled Brian in her presence. She told the police that Mary had ignored her pleas to stop hurting the boy, so she ran away. The next time she saw Mary she was alone with Brian’s dog.

  adult court

  Mary and Norma Bell stood trial in an adult court. There was no dock so that the children could stay close to their legal teams and their parents. Norma was acquitted of the murder of both boys, while Mary was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. As the verdict was read out, Mary broke down and cried, but Mr Justice Cusack described her as dangerous and that she was ‘a very grave risk to other children if she is not closely watched’.

  Because Britain was unaccustomed to putting girls as young as Mary under lock and key, it became a major issue where this eleven-year-old should be placed. The authorities knew that prison was out of the question and that mental hospitals were not really equipped to take someone of such a young age. She was considered to be far too dangerous to be placed in a regular institution for troubled children and Mary eventually ended up in an all-boys facility.

  Mary served her time in Red Bank, an approved school in Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire. It was adapted to take Mary although there were fears that there would be a lot of disruption when she reached puberty. She stayed at Red Bank until November 1973 and formed a great respect for one member of staff named James Dixon, a former navy man who was known for his strong moral influence. For the first time in her life, it appears that Mary actually had someone she could look up to, giving her the father figure she never had.

  Problems surfaced after Mary was moved to a less secure unit in 1977. She escaped and during her brief time on the run she met up with two young men. She lost her virginity and the man whom she had slept with later sold his story to the newspapers, claiming that she had only escaped from jail so that she could get pregnant.

  Mary was released on licence in May 1980 and given a new identity so that she could start a new life away from the prying eyes of the press. For a while she moved back in with her mother, but met a young man and became pregnant. There was much concern over whether a woman who had already murdered two children should be allowed to become a mother herself, but she fought for the right to keep the baby which was born in 1984. The authorities felt that as she had not received adequate psychiatric treatment, Mary could not make the transition from a child killer to a loving mother. Mary herself claimed that she had found a new moral consciousness and felt deep regret for her crimes committed at a very troubled time in her life. Eventually Mary was allowed to keep the child, but it was technically made a ward of court until 1992.

  Mary eventually learned to love and settled in a small town in a steady relationship. However, her probation officer had to inform the local authorities of her whereabouts and the villagers soon marched through the streets chanting ‘Murderer Out
!’

  Mary’s case raised fresh controversy when her book Cries Unheard was published in 1998. When the authorities learned that she was to be paid for her contribution to the book, they tried to block the payment as it is illegal in Britain to profit from crime. The publication also caused considerable grief to Mary’s daughter, who discovered her mother’s true identity on April 30, 1998, when her home on the South Coast was besieged by reporters. Up until that time she was totally unaware of her mother’s previous life.

  In 2003 the High Court made the decision that Mary and her daughter would be granted lifelong anonymity to try and protect them from vigilantes. After years of being hounded it appears that they will now be allowed to vanish and try to lead normal lives.

  Willie Bosket

  By the age of fifteen, Willie Bosket claimed he had committed at least 2,000 crimes, including 200 armed robberies and twenty-five stabbings. Following two murders on the subways of New York City, Bosket was incarcerated for a term of five years, but because the violent boy grew into an even more violent young man, he gained the reputation of being one of New York’s most dangerous inmates, and he seemed destined to spend the rest of his life behind bars. He was kept in virtual solitary confinement as he continually attacked the guards and staff, seemingly unable to control his inbred violence. What turned Bosket into this animal can only be a subject of conjecture, but his troubled childhood led to pent-up anger which he seemed unable to control.