by Cina, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J. ; Cina, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J.
45
The police investigation resulted in the discovery of a common denominator in these crimes. All of the victims were elderly patients with lung disease who had received chest x-rays at a local health clinic. The police identified 72 possible future victims who had been seen at the clinic and developed “Operation Medbrat”
(“Medical Brother”), a sting involving 700 police officers. They finally arrested Petrov when he visited one of those patients on January17, 2000. Initially, Petrov confessed to the murders but a few months later he recanted his confession and fiercely denied the accusations. He claimed that he had been coerced into falsely admitting the charges by the intense psychological pressure he had endured while in custody. He even wrote a protest letter to the television channel NTV (no, not MTV) from his jail cell complaining that a series of documentaries about him portraying him as a killer were “libelous.” The media claimed that Dr. Petrov loved his fame (or infamy) and dubbed him Dr. Killer or Dr. Death (the Russians aren’t very creative). In 2002, he was convicted of 12 murders and sentenced to life in prison.
Jean Claude Romand, a Frenchman who impersonated a doctor, killed his entire family in 1993 out of fear that his elaborate charade would be revealed. He was born in 1954 in Lons-le-Saunier, once an old Roman salt city, about a 4 hour drive from Paris. Located in the heart of the Jura vineyards, it is a picturesque and historic city with a population of about 18,000. Romand’s father was a forest ranger and his mother a very fragile woman who had to be gingerly treated in order not to become upset and ill. Romand was an only child, calm with no apparent problems, and a very good student. In many ways, he was a model child – except that he was an introvert who only confided in his dog. He did well in high school and earned his baccalaureate degree. His final thesis was, ironically, an exploration of the concept
“What is Truth?”
In 1971, he enlisted in Agronomic University preparatory classes in Lyon, but dropped out after one semester. He told his parents that he had to stop taking the classes for health reasons. Afterwards he enrolled as a medical student and passed the exams at the end of the first year but did not take the exams required to finish the second year. Between 1975 and 1986, Romand re-enlisted himself no less than 12 times in the second year of medical school, later on stating that he himself “was surprised that this was possible.” This practice ended when a new chief of medicine discovered his scam and asked for an explanation from the “ghost student.” After this inquisition he no longer haunted the campus. Having failed to finish medical school Romand brazenly pretended that he had graduated as a doctor, and succeeded in fooling everyone he knew for years. His family and friends genuinely believed that he was a successful medical professional and researcher in the World Health Organization. In search of sympathy and as an additional cover, Romand also pretended that he suffered from lymphoma (a type of cancer) and complained periodically of severe pain. To make his lies more credible, Romand spent his time visiting the local World Health Organization offices as a visitor and gathering all the free information documents he could find to prove that that he worked there. Romand occasionally told his family that he had to leave his (imaginary) local office for classified work trips but only traveled to Geneva’s Cointrin International Airport where he spent a couple of days in a hotel room.
46
5 International Men of Mystery: Other Medical Murderers
He spent these mini-vacations studying medical journals and travel guides pertaining to the country he had supposedly visited. Upon return from these fictitious trips, Romand showered his wife with expensive gifts. Romand derived his income from a number of sources including money he and his wife had made by selling an apartment, his wife’s salary, his parents’ bank accounts, and money given to him by various relatives who believed he was investing in hedge funds and foreign ventures on their behalf. He succeeded in bilking them out of more than 2.5 million francs. His luck seemed to have run out, however, when his father-in-law asked for a partial return of his invested funds. To Romand’s good fortune, however, his father-in-law experienced a fatal fall on the steps of his home and the request was forgotten. It could never be proven whether Romand played a role in this death.
By January 1993 Romand greatly feared that his family was about to discover the truth of his deception from a debt collector. One afternoon, “Dr.” Romand went to his villa a few miles from Geneva and suggested to his wife and kids that they watch a taped movie entitled “The Three Little Pigs.” While they were viewing the movie, Romand shot all three dead and killed his dog as well. That evening he went to have dinner with his parents. After the meal, Romand told his father that there was an apparent leak in an upper room and when the father bent down to check the pipes, Romand shot him with a .22 caliber long rifle in the back. He then called his mother upstairs and shot her too. Before being shot the mother had the time to ask
“Jean Claude what happened to you?” Soon after Romand also made an attempt to kill an ex-lover by spraying tear gas in her face and shocking her with a Taser™
(a disabling electrical control device discharging 50,000 V) in the stomach. When she screamed and struggled, he released her and drove her home, apologizing for trying to harm her. He then returned to his home and set it on fire after taking an overdose of barbiturates, likely intending to incinerate himself with his family.
Local fire fighters, who were alerted by road cleaners at 4 o’clock in the morning, rescued him. Romand’s trial began in June 1996 and he was sentenced to life imprisonment several weeks later. A subdued and contrite defendant, the 42-year-old Romand asked for forgiveness for his crimes both from the victims and the paltry remainder of his living family. He also apologized for living a lie.
Germany contributed Dr. Gard Wenzinger to our Wall of Ignominy. In June 1997 this 53-year-old German doctor was arrested in Brazil for torturing and killing 13 women in Germany and four others in Brazil. Wenzinger unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself after learning that German police had found a videotape showing him cutting a woman into small pieces. When Brazil’s Supreme Court approved his extradition to Germany, Wenzinger hanged himself. Considering the size of Germany, it is surprising that more murderers have not made it on to these pages so far. They will make up for it later.
Witch Doctors
In some regions of the African continent witch doctors are treated as both healers and spiritual guides. Though not doctors in the traditional sense, these revered figures still have the power over life and death in some cultures. It is likely that their Witch Doctors
47
powers of healing are due to a combination of placebo effect and actual medicinal properties of certain herbal remedies. As in any other part of the world, this power to heal is invariable associated with the power to kill.
Many people in Southern Africa, particularly in South Africa’s villages, firmly believe in the existence of a Zulu water spirit by the name of Tokoloshe. Time magazine reported that in the backcountry natives’ bicycles are built with a small extra seat in the back should Tokoloshe want a ride. Tokoloshe is usually invisible but can materialize at any time, mostly to witch doctors and especially to children with whom he likes to play but occasionally hurts. He is alternatively described as a small teddy bear-like beast with very sharp teeth or a small furry dwarf. When he manifests himself as a human, he enjoys milk and sexual intercourse with women.
This little rascal is said to have a penis so long that it has to be slung over its shoulder! Both men and women are afraid that he may hide under their bed and rape them at night (sounds like a legitimate fear given the anatomy described above) so they place their beds on stacks of bricks to thwart his attacks. Sometimes the spirit can be summoned by a witch doctor and requested to possess men to murder the witch doctor’s foes. While the South African government tries to respect traditional beliefs under the aegis of cultural diversity it is somewhat stumped when faced with homicides in which the murderers sincerely claim that t
hey were compelled by Tokoloshe to commit the crime. In sporadic cases the South African Courts have recognized the beliefs of the accused and sentenced them to only a few years of prison, instead of a life sentence or execution.
The courts were much sterner in a case where a serial killer posed as a healer.
A burly Zulu named Elifasi Msomi came to be known as South Africa’s Axe Killer.
He was a young witch doctor who was not doing very well at his trade so he went to another witch doctor for advice. While there he found Tokoloshe masquerading as the man’s son. “You will go with this son of mine,” said the elder doctor “and get me the blood of 15 people … First I want the blood of a girl.” For the next 18 months, Tokoloshe and Msomi wandered throughout South Africa’s Natal province looking for a suitable victim. At last they found a girl whose blood was to Tokoloshe’s liking. Msomi killed her and collected some of her blood in a bottle as instructed. Msomi was captured and put in jail but soon afterward, thanks to Tokoloshe it was believed, he escaped and his bloody hunt went unabated sowing terror in Zulu villages. During the following months, 14 more people were killed by Msomi’s knives, clubs and axes until one day Tokoloshe announced: “You have rendered good service; now we will wash in the river and part.” Later arrested for petty theft, Msomi was identified as the killer wanted for 15 of South Africa’s most horrific murders. He readily admitted his crimes and even helped the police to find the skull of one of his victims. The first night in jail, he slept soundly stirring only to make room on his bed of rags for some unseen being. “It’s a friend,” he smiled to his jailers, “just a friend.”
At his trial Msomi claimed that Tokoloshe jumped on his shoulder and ordered the killings to fulfill the wishes of the elderly witch doctor. However, two leading psychologists testified that Msomi was very intelligent and derived sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on others (a classic sexual sadist). In January 1956, Msomi was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death by hanging in 48
5 International Men of Mystery: Other Medical Murderers
Pretoria. Nine local Zulu chieftains, who were afraid that Tokoloshe might save Msomi, asked and were granted permission to stand by and watch when Msomi was hanged. After the execution, Zulu Chief Manzo Iwandla breathed relaxedly and reportedly said, “I am satisfied. Tokoloshe did not save him.” The dead body of
“Dr.” Msomi was put on display in a small village to reassure the restless natives that he would never escape again.
Witchcraft murders continue to happen on the African continent. In November 2007, a “witch doctor”, Sipho Kumalo, killed a baby claiming that it was Tokoloshe.
He force-fed the infant wax mixed with herbs prior to beating it to death. In 2008, the President of Tanzania publicly condemned the alarming increase in the number of murdered African albinos. It turns out that witch doctors believe their organs have magical powers. Sounds like bad medicine.
Chapter 6
To Catch a Killer: Investigating
Serial Murders
The darkest souls are not those which choose to live within
the hell of the abyss, but those who choose to break free
from the abyss and move silently among us.
– Dr. Samuel Loomis at the beginning
of the movie “Halloween”
Just because you kill 10, 50, or 1,000 people doesn’t make you a serial killer. There is a big difference on several levels between serial killers and individuals who kill a lot of people. Murderers of multiple people are classified in three major groups: 1. Spree killers or rampage killers are individuals who kill multiple victims over a short period of time (hours or days) in an outburst of rage, either at random or targeting specific groups or individuals. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics defines spree killings as “killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders.” There are no reported cases of spree killings by physicians.
Most spree killers are apprehended or killed by the police within a short time and others commit suicide. For example, Charles Joseph Whitman, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, killed 14 people and wounded 31 others as part of a shooting rampage from the observation deck of the University’s 32-story administrative building on August 1, 1966. He did this shortly after murdering his wife and mother. He was eventually shot and killed by Austin police.
An autopsy revealed a malignant brain tumor which might have precipitated the murderous rampage. Another tragic killing spree occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado. Twelve students and a teacher lost their lives in a nationally publicized bloodbath. Two alienated Columbine students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were the perpetrators. As is often the case, Harris and Klebold committed suicide after committing their crimes in what was likely a suicide pact. The Columbine event was unusual in that most killing sprees involve a single murderer. The more recent mass killing of 32 people at Virginia Tech University in 2007 also ended in the suicide of the assailant, Seung-Hui Cho. Doctors don’t tend to go on killing sprees.
2. Serial killers are different from spree killers in many ways, including the characteristic “cooling periods” between attacks when they act in an apparently J.A. Perper and S.J. Cina, When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How, 49
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1369-2_6, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
50
6 To Catch a Killer: Investigating Serial Murders
normal fashion (the so called “mask of sanity”). Their crimes may be horrible but they are done in privacy rendering detection difficult. Serial killers may hone their sadistic fantasies for decades and their crimes may span continents. Most of the high-profile physician killers fall into this category.
3. Mass murderers kill large numbers of people typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. Mass murders may be committed by individuals acting on their own or on the behalf of a government faction, sect, or other group. Many mass murders are associated with the genocide of people of a different race, philosophy, religion or ethnic origin. The terrorists of September 11, 2001, would be included in this category. Unfortunately, a number of physicians have assisted, either willingly or under duress, in mass murders. The role physicians played in Nazi concentration camps is a case in point.
The most dangerous serial murderers are obviously the ones who never get caught and are still out there today. Their patterns are so subtle that it may be virtually impossible to link a diverse group of victims over a large geographic area to a single assailant. The detection of physicians committing clinicide (intentional murder in the setting of providing care) is also very difficult but it can occasionally be discovered following unexplained increases in morbidity (patient illness) or mortality among a physician’s patients. Clinicide can also be detected by the substantiation of injurious, unnecessary, and potentially lethal medical procedures or treatment.
Autopsies, considered the “Gold Standard” for discovering homicidal injury, cannot identify every type of poison or chemical in every case and testing may be equivocal or inaccurate in some settings, such as following embalming or in the setting of advanced decomposition. Crafty medical serial murderers are likely those who use poisons or medications with lethal consequences on patients who are expected to die and whose deaths will not arouse suspicion. These killers likely will never come to trial.
Early identification of physician murderers, particularly serial killers, is difficult since many of them have the ability to completely conceal their true persona.
The best serial killers have a very pleasant personality and a flawless image of a
“nice guy” especially towards their families, patients, and fellow physicians.
This explains the adulation of some patients for some murderous doctors and their refusal to believe the charges against them despite insurmountable evidence to the contrary. When the practice patterns of these killers are viewed in the retrospecto-scope, many of these
perfect doctors display episodic, violent “explosions” that most often surface when they are frustrated. Of course, most physicians exhibit this behavior on occasion (consider the heart surgeon who is told that his OR is not ready for him) and the vast majority of these are not serial killers to the best of our knowledge. It is absolutely imperative to identify physicians who have gone bad.
Once they have killed a single patient, the genie is out of the bottle and they may murder again and again.
In recent decades, criminologists have become very interested in serial killers and their social and psychological characteristics. One of the most prevalent 6 To Catch a Killer: Investigating Serial Murders
51
classifications has been devised by Holmes. His typology classifies serial killers as being “disorganized”, “organized” or mixed-type offenders and as either “asocial”
or “nonsocial”. The labels “disorganized” and “organized” refer to the degree of personality dysfunction which correlates with the degree of chaos at the crime scene. “Asocial” and “nonsocial” refer to whether the person is a loner because of inborn psychopathology or by choice. The characteristics of “disorganized” serial killers would be atypical for most physicians and other highly educated or intelligent murderers.
Disorganized killers usually have a low or borderline IQ of 80–95, are socially inadequate (admittedly, this does not exclude some physicians), live alone, had no strong father figure, may have been subjected to familial emotional abuse, live or work near the crime scene, have minimal interest in the media, often drop-out from school, exhibit poor hygiene and housekeeping skills, keep a secret place at home, tend to be nocturnal, drive low-quality cars or trucks, and have no interest in police work. Disorganized serial killers attack in a blitz-like pattern, usually kill at one site, leave the body fairly intact at the scene, and leave a messy crime scene that usually contains significant evidence. As to post-crime behavior, disorganized murderers often have a need to return to the crime scene to relive memories, may contact the victim’s family to play “games”, and respond best to counseling interviews when captured. Ed Gein was a disorganized serial killer who skinned his victims and made articles of clothing and furniture from them. His crimes influenced the development of fictional characters such as Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Norman Bates, and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.