by Cina, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J. ; Cina, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J.
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insurance policy. When this scheme didn’t pan out, Holmes killed both Pitezel and his three children and tried to claim the insurance money. Holmes was arrested when the police discovered this scam. The local authorities called the Chicago Police who then spent a month in the Murder Castle documenting the efficient methods Holmes had devised for killing his victims and disposing of the corpses.
The number of Holmes’ victims has been conservatively estimated between 30 and 100, though his total may have been as high as 230. The verified number of confirmed kills is 27. Police investigators stated that some of the bodies in the basement were so badly dismembered and decomposed that it was difficult to tell how many people made up his putrescent stew.
He was put on trial for homicide and eventually confessed to 27 murders (in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto) as well as six attempted murders. Initially he proclaimed his innocence, later he pretended he was possessed by Satan (perhaps accurately so). On May 7, 1896, Dr. Holmes was hanged in Philadelphia.
Newspapers reported that the evening prior to his execution, Holmes retired at his usual hour, fell asleep easily and awoke refreshed. “I never slept better in my life,”
he told his cell guard. He ordered and consumed a large breakfast an hour before he was hanged. Until the moment of his death on the scaffold, Holmes remained calm and amiable, showing no signs of fear, anxiety or depression. According to the New York Times coverage of the execution, Holmes said to the executioner:
“Take your time, old man.” Unfortunately, for the doctor, his neck did not break when his body dropped as it is supposed to in a judicial execution. Instead he died slowly, twitching over 10 minutes before being pronounced dead a quarter of an hour after the trap was sprung. One of his last requests was to be buried in cement so that no one could ever dig him back up. Who would?
The Starvation “Doctor”
Linda Burfield Hazzard (1867–1938), known as the “Starvation Doctor,” killed many of her patients in the 1920s by subjecting them to her patented therapy regimen designed to cure them of a variety of illnesses. Although she was technically an osteopathic nurse with little medical experience, Hazzard called herself a doctor because she had been granted a license to practice medicine due to a loophole in Washington state law. Hazzard was reported to have harshly admonished reporters that did not call her “doctor” by stating: “I have told you time and time again, it is Dr. Hazzard. Mrs.
Hazzard is my mother-in-law.” Sounds like a big chip on her shoulder.
In her book “Fasting for the Cure of Disease” Hazzard claimed that most ailments could be cured by her innovative three-prong treatment approach. First and most important was fasting – allowing the digestive system to “rest” and be
“cleansed,” while removing “impurities” from the body. Fasting, she maintained, could cure any disease. The real source of all disease was “impure blood”
brought on by “impaired digestion.” She stated emphatically “overeating is the vice of the whole human race” and convinced many readers that an empty stomach 34
4 America’s Contribution to Medical Mayhem
was the key to good health. Although Hazzard rightly recognized the importance of preventive medicine, a healthy diet, and the fact that people who are depressed or ill have a poor appetite, she drew the unreasonable conclusion that sick people needed minimal food and that a starvation diet could eradicate disease. In addition to fasting, her regimen included daily painful enemas that went on for hours and involved up to 12 quarts of water. The third part of her “therapy” was a violent massage that consisted of having “Dr.” Hazzard slam her fists forcefully against the patients’ foreheads and backs. The treatment plan was very structured.
Patients were put up in Seattle hotels or in cabins on Dr. Hazzard’s Olalla property for periods of weeks to months and placed on a diet consisting of small amounts of tomato and asparagus soup and an occasional teaspoon of orange juice. It is no wonder that her patients rapidly lost weight; it is amazing that more didn’t die.
She appears to have killed her first patient in 1902 around the time her divorce from her first husband became final. A coroner determined death was caused by starvation and he tried to have her prosecuted for medical malpractice but failed; it is difficult to sue someone for medical neglect or malpractice if they are not really a doctor. In 1904, she married again to a rather ill-reputed gentleman who apparently “had forgotten” that he was already married resulting in a 2-year prison sentence for bigamy. In 1906, the couple moved to Olalla, a small town close to Seattle. Many locals were enticed by her medical theories and became her patients. Her sanitarium “Wilderness Heights” was nicknamed “Starvation Heights” by the locals who sometimes came across wasted escapees staggering down the road looking for food. Hazzard and her husband also had developed the profitable habit of appropriating their patients’ assets through fraud, forgery, outright theft, and forcing them to sign wills naming them as beneficiaries.
Apparently, her patients got what they paid for – many were “cleaned out” in more ways than one.
Hazzard’s next victim was Daisey Maud Haglund who died in 1908 after a 50-day fast under Hazzard’s care leaving behind a 3 year-old son. Other victims soon followed – one more in 1908, two in 1909 and one in 1910. When civil engineer Earl Edward Erdman took the cure in 1911 and died of starvation 3 weeks later, the Seattle Daily Times headline read “Woman ‘M.D’ Kills Another Patient.”
Nevertheless, patients kept on coming including professionals, newspaper owners and other very wealthy individuals, some of whom died after a fasting for close to 2 months. Authorities tried to step in when Lewis Ellsworth Rader, a former legislator and publisher of a magazine called Sound Views began wasting away. Although health inspectors tried to convince him to leave he chose to remain under Hazzard’s care. She moved him to a secret location where the 5-foot 11-inch tall man died weighing less than a hundred pounds. The authorities could not intervene since Hazzard was now licensed to practice medicine and her patients were not just willing but often enthusiastic participants in their deadly therapy. Hazzard had many loyal followers and a commanding personality that deterred some of her patients from leaving once they started her program.
The Starvation “Doctor”
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Although death by starvation was not uncommon in Dr. Hazzard’s practice, one death under her care breaks the mold. In 1909, 26 year-old Eugene Stanley Wakelin’s decomposing body was found on her property. This son of a British lord had died as a result of a gunshot wound to his head in what appeared to be a tragic suicide. Coincidentally, Linda Hazzard had power of attorney over the young man’s estate. The British vice-consul in Tacoma speculated that the young man had been shot by the Hazzards who were angered to learn that, despite his nobility, he wasn’t rich. It would seem that fasting cannot cure a bullet to the brain.
Pressure mounted on the Kitsap County authorities to prosecute Hazzard for her homicidal treatment of her patients. When county officials said they couldn’t afford to finance a lengthy investigation, Dorothea Williamson offered to pay for the prosecution. Dorothea had strong motivation to put the starvationist out of business.
Dorothea and her sister Claire were wealthy English women who had read Hazzard’s book and flew to United States to try out this new health fad. Little did they know that Dr. Hazzard’s cure was potentially fatal. After religiously following the treatment plan for 2 months, they had lost so much weight that they were too weak to escape. Claire died but Dorothea was rescued by her childhood nanny who had flown in from Australia when she heard of Claire’s demise. When she was found, Dorothea was delirious and reduced to skin and bones. In August 1911, Linda Hazzard was arrested for the murder by starvation of Claire Williamson. The Tacoma Daily News headline read; “Officials Expect to Expose Starvation Atrocities: Dr. Hazzard Depicted as Fiend.”
When she was tried for homicide in January 1912 the prosecutor called
her “a financial starvationist” and accused her of intentionally starving her patients to death for monetary gain. Dr. Hazzard retorted that she was being persecuted because she was a successful woman and that traditional doctors, jealous of her success, conspired to oppose her natural cure. In spite of supportive testimony from her staff and some of her loyal patients, the jury convicted her of manslaughter for the killing by starvation of Claire Williamson. Dorothea’s testimony was particularly damning. Not one to sit around idly, Hazzard killed two or three more patients while awaiting sentencing. She eventually served 2 years in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla prior to being pardoned by the Governor after agreeing to leave the United States and move to New Zealand. There she published another book and opened a very successful office as a “physician, dietitian, and osteopath.”
By 1920, she had made enough money to come back to Olalla and build another sanitarium. Since Washington had cancelled her medical license she called it “a School of Health.” The building included treatment rooms as well as a basement autopsy room. Hazzard continued to treat patients by starvation adding 12 or more victims to her death toll. The sanitarium burned down in 1935 and Dr. Hazzard died 3 years later. In the months preceding her death she hadn’t been feeling well and tried her own fasting cure. It didn’t help. Today, her books are still available in natural healing bookstores and some can be downloaded from the Internet. Some websites praise her as a medical visionary.
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4 America’s Contribution to Medical Mayhem
The Fugitive
In 1954, Dr. Sam Holmes Sheppard, an osteopathic physician in Bay Village, Ohio, was convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife, Marilyn, in a famous and controversial trial. Sheppard served almost a decade in the Ohio Penitentiary before his 1954
conviction was overturned and declared a miscarriage of justice. In 1966, he was acquitted in a new trial. In 2000, an attempt by his son, Sam Reese Sheppard, to have him declared innocent by finding the State of Ohio authorities guilty of
“wrongful imprisonment” was rejected by a jury. The saga of Sam Sheppard was so sensational that it was the subject of a number of books, several TV reality shows and a very successful movie. The identity of the real killer is still a matter of debate –
but it was likely not Sheppard.
This true-life horror story started on the eve of July 4, 1954. Dr. Sam Sheppard, a successful and reputable neurosurgeon and trauma physician, and his beloved wife and childhood sweetheart, Marilyn, were having their neighbors over for dinner. Thereafter the Sheppards watched a late movie, Strange Holidays, with their guests. Later, Sam fell asleep on a sofa while Marilyn went upstairs to sleep in their bedroom. Sometime after he fell asleep Sheppard awoke about 3–4 o’clock in the morning believing he had heard his wife calling his name. He ran upstairs and saw “a form with a light garment … grappling with something or someone.”
He heard moans or groans then suddenly he was struck from behind. When he regained his senses his wife was on the bed, face up, covered with blood with her legs apart. He checked her pulse and felt none. He ran to the next room and saw that Chip, their 7 year-old son, was still soundly asleep. He heard some noise and ran downstairs and out the door to the Lake Erie beach below his home. He then chased what he variously described as a “bushy-haired intruder,” a “biped” or a
“light-topped form” (no one-armed man mentioned) before he was hit and again rendered unconscious. When he woke up, he was shirtless and partly in the water.
He managed to struggle home and call a neighbor for help at 6:00 AM. The neighbors arrived promptly and called the police. The Coroner arrived at the scene at about 8:00 AM, examined the deceased and told the press that the victim had 35
wounds to head. This is very impressive since modern forensic pathologists in a well-lit autopsy suite can rarely be that precise even after examining the body for many hours. Further, it was apparent to him that the killer: “…rained blow after blow on her with savage fury.” He also said there appeared to be no evidence of a break-in. Neither a forensic pathologist nor a criminologist, Coroner Gerber was a general practitioner with a law degree but he fancied himself a forensic expert. Prior to his press conference, Gerber and the local chief of police had questioned Sheppard who was being treated by his brother, also a doctor, for bruises, chipped teeth, lacerations of his mouth, and neck injuries. Later, a reputable neurologist determined that Sheppard had suffered “serious damage to the spinal cord in the neck region” with a chip fracture of the cervical spine.
The police investigation of the scene revealed marked splattering of blood in the bedroom and some disarray in the house. The drawers of a cabinet were pulled out The Fugitive
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and Sheppard’s medical bag was lying on the ground with some of its contents spilled out but nothing was reported missing. Sheppard later claimed that it was possible that some morphine was missing from the bag. On the beach outside the house a green bag was found containing Sheppard’s watch smeared with blood. The local police felt that the case was well over their heads and asked the Cleveland police for help in the investigation. Two detectives from the Cleveland police force interrogated Dr. Sheppard at the hospital and, after the questioning, one of the detectives told Sheppard quite plainly, “I think you killed your wife.” Sheppard stuck to his initial statements both publicly and during many hours of questioning by the police. However, he was unable to explain how an intruder could enter his home undetected without evidence of a break-in. And how his 7 year-old son managed to sleep through his mother’s murder and his father’s struggle with the “bushy-haired intruder.” And why the family dog had not barked. And why the t-shirt he was wearing when his guests had left had disappeared. And how his bloodied watch ended up in a green bag on the beach. And why he survived his encounters with a vicious killer or killers with only relatively superficial wounds while his wife’s head was caved in. Clearly, his defense team faced a mountain of circumstantial evidence.
Sheppard’s credibility was further damaged when he lied about and later recanted allegations of affairs with a Los Angeles laboratory technician and one of his female patients and that there was no strain in his marriage or discussion of divorce. The Cleveland police recommended to the Bay Village police that they arrest Sheppard but the mayor and police chief hesitated for 25 days. Finally, under increasing pressure fanned by fiery press editorials and intense publicity, the Coroner scheduled an inquest and Sheppard was indicted for the murder of his wife. During the inquest the Coroner did not permit Sheppard’s attorney to advise him and close to the end of the proceedings evicted Sheppard’s lawyer from the proceedings entirely.
Sheppard’s trial started on October 18, 1954. The Coroner’s chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Lester Adelson, a legend in the field, testified for 2 days as to the victim’s injuries. Sheppard’s attorney got Adelson to admit he had made no analysis of the contents of victim’s stomach, did not take microscopic samples of the wounds, and did not try to determine if she had been raped. Although the first two errors were rather trivial, the last was inexcusable. Dr. Gerber was the star witness for the prosecution. He described in detail his examination of the scene, his questioning of Sheppard and what he called a lack of cooperation by the Sheppard family.
His most damning observation was his description of the bloody pillowcase from the murder bed which showed, in his expert opinion, the mark of a surgical instrument.
Gerber did not say what kind of surgical instrument it could have been and didn’t produce any surgical instrument which could have made the mark. The closest he came was in response to a question from the judge: “I meant that the impression could only have been made by a surgical instrument.” This is the type of hyperbole currently featured on popular television crime shows. The prosecution presented the case as a simple domestic homicide carried out by an unfaithful husband who clumsily tried to disguise the murder as a robbery and faked his own injuries.
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4 America’s Contribution to Medical Mayhem
The trial took place amidst a horde of reporters, particularly the local newspapers and the Cleveland Press, branding the defendant as a murderer before the trial began. Most of the courtroom was occupied by the media which was seated even inside the bar separating the parties from the public. The witnesses and the defendant had to fight their way outside the courtroom through a throng of pushing and shouting journalists. The judge made no significant attempt to isolate the jury from the prejudiced publicity nor did he sequester the jury prior to their deliberation. The pictures and names of the jurors had been disclosed in the newspapers before the trial and the jurors were permitted to communicate by telephone, freely and unchecked, with anyone they chose. The circus atmosphere of the Sheppard trial made the Anna Nicole Smith media frenzy in Fort Lauderdale look like the coverage of the grand opening of a new K-Mart.
Sheppard’s brother was the first witness when the defense began its case on December 2. He described his brother’s injuries as being severe and took exception to the testimony of the prosecution’s neurologist who tried to minimize them.
He also told of seeing a floating cigarette in an upstairs toilet which apparently was never recovered or preserved. This was potentially important evidence as Sheppard was not a smoker. The defense called 18 character witnesses for Sheppard and two witnesses who said that they had seen a bushy-haired man near the Sheppard home on the day of the crime. The jury was not convinced. On December 21, 1954, after a hundred hours of deliberation, Sheppard was found guilty of second-degree murder and he was immediately sentenced to life in prison. The conviction was a combined result of the imperfect status of the available forensic analytic tools (particularly DNA); failure to disclose exculpatory evidence; mistakes and unprofessional conduct by police investigators, the local Coroner, and the forensic pathologist that performed the autopsy; and bias of the sitting judge. The media, a lead player in any high profile event, had gleefully added plenty of oil to the “lynching”