World's Worst Crimes: An A-Z of Evil Deeds

by Greig, Charlotte

  Elizabeth’s grisly entourage was taken into custody and then tortured to obtain confessions. At the subsequent trial for the murder of the eighty victims who were actually found dead at the castle, her old nurse, Ilona Joo, and one of the Countess’s procurers of young girls were sentenced to be burned at the stake after having their fingers torn out; many of the rest were beheaded. The Countess, who as an aristocrat could not be arrested or executed, was given a separate hearing in her absence at which she was accused of murdering more than 600 women and children. She was then bricked up in a room in her castle, with holes left for ventilation and food. Still relatively young and youthful, she was never seen alive again. She is presumed to have died – since the food was from then on left uneaten – four years later, on 21 August 1614.

  Born Under a Bad Sign

  Everything was against Aileen Wuornos, right from the beginning. Her father deserted her mother before she was born; and her mother ran off from Rochester, Michigan, not long afterwards, leaving her and her elder brother in charge of her grandparents, both of whom were drunks. Her grandfather beat both his wife and them; allowed no friends in the house; and wouldn’t even let them open the curtains. Malnourished and unable to concentrate in school, the children took to lighting fires with firelighters for amusement, and at the age of six, Aileen’s face was badly burned, scarred for life. By the time she reached puberty, she was already putting out to boys for food and drink, uppers, anything she could get. At thirteen she was raped by a friend of her grandparents. At fourteen, she was pregnant – and the child, she said, could have been anybody’s: the rapist’s, her grandfather’s, even her brother’s. The baby, a son, was put up for adoption almost immediately after birth.

  Then, when her grandmother died of cancer in 1971, she and her brother were thrown out of their grandfather’s house and became wards of court. She dropped out of school and took up prostitution, while her brother robbed stores to feed an increasing drugs habit. Soon after her grandfather committed suicide in 1976, her brother died of throat cancer. He was only 21, a year older than she.

  As if all this wasn’t enough, even her own genes seemed to be against her. For, quite apart from the cancers, the drinking and the suicide, the father she never met turned out to be a paranoid schizophrenic and a convicted paedophile. After spending time in mental hospitals for sodomising children as young as ten, he hanged himself in a prison cell.

  She had a couple of chances to go straight, it’s true. She was picked up while hitch-hiking by an older man, who became besotted with her and married her; and she also got $10,000 from a life-insurance policy her brother had taken out. But the husband she abused and beat; and she used the insurance money to buy a fancy car, which she promptly crashed. So she was soon back on the road as a hitchhiking hooker, hanging out with bikers, and getting regularly arrested: for cheque forgery, breaches of the peace, car-theft, gun-theft and holding up a convenience store. For the latter, she did a year in jail, and when she came out, she tried to commit suicide.

  Then, though, in 1986, Aileen, by now known as Lee, met twenty-two-year-old Tyria ‘Ty’ Moore in a Daytona Beach gay bar; and she turned out to be the love of her life – all the love that she’d never had. They rented an apartment together; they worked at motels and bars while Aileen turned tricks on the side. Her looks, though, weren’t getting any better – and at some point Aileen decided that Ty shouldn’t have to work any more: She, after all, was Ty’s ‘husband.’ That’s when she started to kill.

  Beginning at the end of 1989, there was a string of deaths that soon had police baffled. All were men; some were found naked; and they’d all been killed by the same small-calibre gun. They included a trucker, a rodeo worker, a heavy-machine-operator, even a child-abuse investigator. And a sixty-year-old missionary had disappeared.

  There was only one clue to the killer’s identity. The missionary’s car was involved in an accident and two women seen walking away. The police released sketches to the press; and Ty and Lee were identified. Lee had also pawned the possessions of many of her victims, and she’d left her finger- or thumb-prints – as per Florida law – on the pawn-shop receipts. It was only a matter of time.

  There was one final betrayal. Ty, to save herself, went to the Florida police; and then, via a taped call to Aileen, persuaded her to confess. She did, but she said that her victims had beaten and raped her. She wasn’t believed. She was condemned to death, even though her defence presented her as terminally damaged, with a personality disorder.

  Almost immediately, her story was told in a made-for-TV movie. Feminist writers defended her; an Aileen Wuornos Defence Group was set up. However, in 1999, she admitted that the claims about beatings and rape had been entirely made up. But she also said that the police had delayed five months before arresting her, because they were negotiating a movie deal with Hollywood producers desperate for the real-life story of a female serial killer. In his 2003 documentary The Selling of a Serial Killer, Nick Broomfield claims that there was a meeting to discuss rights to the police investigation a month before she was arrested.

  On Death Row, Wuornos seems to have had a religious conversion. She said:

  ‘I believe I am totally saved and forgiven by Jesus Christ’

  — and added that there were angels waiting for her on the other side. She was executed in late 2002.

  The Boston Stranglings

  Albert DeSalvo was oversexed, everyone agreed. His lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, wrote that he was,

  ‘without doubt, the victim of one of the most crushing sexual drives that psychiatric science has ever encountered.’

  His wife said he demanded sex up to a dozen times a day. If it hadn’t been for this monumental sexual appetite of his, everything might have gone well for Boston handyman DeSalvo. For he was, to all appearances, a clean-living individual.

  But the need for sex kept getting him into trouble. In Germany, it was the officers’ wives. And in Boston, after he’d been honourably discharged and had moved back home, it was all the gullible pretty women who wanted to be models.

  In 1958, Albert DeSalvo began to be known in police circles as the ‘Measuring Man.’ Posing as a talent scout for a modelling agency, he had started smooth-talking women into having their measurements taken. He would touch them, whenever and wherever he could. Then he’d leave, saying that the agency would soon be in touch.

  He was finally caught in March 1960, when he was convicted as a burglar. The police thought that the ‘Measuring Man’ act was a device for entering apartments and houses he intended to rob later.

  When he got out of prison, after serving an eleven-month term, DeSalvos’ wife, as her own form of punishment, denied him all sexual contact. So DeSalvo was forced to take on a new identity, this time that of the ‘Green Man’. The ‘Green Man’ got his name from the green trousers he liked to wear when talking his way or breaking into women’s houses. He’d strip some of his victims at knifepoint and then kiss them all over; others he would tie up and rape. He boasted of having ‘had’ six women in a single morning.

  In 1962, another and yet more sinister character appeared on the scene, one that was to terrorize Boston for eighteen months: The Boston Strangler. In June of that year, the naked body of a middle-aged woman was found in her apartment, clubbed, raped and strangled. Her legs had been spreadeagled and the cord from her housecoat had been wound round her neck, then tied beneath her chin in a bow. The necktie, the bow and the spreadeagling were all to become, as the months dragged on, horrifyingly familiar.

  Two weeks later, the Strangler struck twice. Both victims were women in their sixties. Two more were murdered in August 1962, one 75, one 67. Then, in December, he struck once more – and from then on no woman in Boston felt safe, for she was only 25. Sophie Clark was strangled and raped, and her body carried all the marks of the Strangler.

  The killings went on, with increasing violence, until January 1964. There was no particular pattern, apart from the spreadeagling, the bo
w, the ligature. The youngest victim was 19, the oldest 69. As the number of dead mounted up, panic increasingly gripped the city. But Albert DeSalvo was never even interviewed.

  Then, the killings stopped. After January 1964 the Strangler seemed to disappear – even though the ‘Green Man’ was still at work. For that autumn a young married student gave a description of the ‘Green Man’ that tallied with that of the ‘Measuring Man,’ and DeSalvo was arrested. DeSalvo was sent to Bridgewater mental hospital for routine observation.

  It was at Bridgewater that the controversy that still surrounds DeSalvo began. A fellow prisoner called George Nassar, who’d been arrested for murder, claimed that DeSalvo told him details of the crimes of the Boston Strangler. Nassar told his lawyer, F. Lee Bailey. In a deal engineered by Bailey, DeSalvo stood trial only for the ‘Green Man’ offences. He was sentenced to life imprisonment; and is said to have confessed in detail to the Boston Strangler’s crimes in 1965.

  Even so there remain some doubts. For DeSalvo as the ‘Measuring Man’ and the ‘Green Man’ invariably chose younger women. Witnesses who’d actually seen the Strangler failed to identify him. So could the Boston Strangler have really been George Nassar, who’d somehow fed DeSalvo details of the crimes in Bridgewater and then persuaded him to confess? We shall never know. For DeSalvo was stabbed to death in Walpole State Prison in 1975. The inmate who knifed him through the heart was never identified.

  Alberto DeSalvo became known as the Measuring Man.

  The Jackal Strikes

  Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, was once one of the most feared terrorists in the world. During his career of crime, which spanned the 1970s and 1980s, he committed a horrifying series of brutal terrorist attacks across Europe. Most disturbingly, as his trail of carnage increased, he seemed to show that he was no longer fighting for a cause, but was simply enjoying the violence and revelling in his notoriety. He was eventually handed over to the French authorities and imprisoned for life. Today, several cases are still pending against him, and he has yet to be tried for the majority of the crimes he committed.

  Sanchez was born in 1949 in Caracas, Venezuela, the son of a millionaire Marxist lawyer who named his three sons Vladimir, Ilich and Lenin. The young Ilich travelled around the world, picking up skills as a linguist on the way. He later used these as a cover for his activities, posing as a language teacher. As he grew up, he also became involved in youth communist activities. In 1966 his parents divorced, and he moved to London with his mother and brothers.

  A Bullet In The Head

  Sanchez went on to study in the Soviet Union, at the Patrice Lumumba University there, where he came into contact with the Communist Party. His interest was in the problems of the Middle East and, at the beginning of the 1970s, he was sent to Amman, Jordan, to train as a guerrilla fighter for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). At this time, he began to use his nickname ‘Carlos’. ‘The Jackal’ was added later, when a copy of the spy thriller The Day of the Jackal was found at one of his hide-outs.

  After his spell in the Middle East, he returned to London. There, possibly under orders from the PFLP, he performed his first terrorist act. He shot and wounded British businessman Edward Seiff, head of the chain store Marks and Spencer and a major figure in Jewish life. Carlos called on Seiff’s house and forced his way in with a gun; it was only by sheer luck that the bullet he put into Seiff’s head did not kill the man. During this time, Carlos bombed an Israeli bank, the Hapoalim Bank, in London.

  Bomb Attacks

  Carlos then went on to make a series of bomb attacks in France. He bombed the premises of newspaper buildings accused of being pro-Israeli, often making warning calls and arranging for the bombs to be detonated at night, ‘to limit casualties’, as he said. However, his subsequent attacks in France showed different patterns, and some caused a great deal of damage. In 1982, one person was killed and sixty-three were injured when a car bomb exploded in the centre of Paris.

  His most notorious attack was in 1975, at an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting in Vienna, when he led a team of terrorists who seized over sixty hostages and killed three people. Carlos and his men stormed the meeting, and then demanded that a statement they had written be read out and transmitted by radio all over the Middle East. The terrorists left with their hostages, including ministers from eleven OPEC states. After negotiations with the Austrian government, the hostages were released and the terrorists granted asylum.

  From this point, it became clear that Carlos was enjoying his notoriety. The Palestinian groups that had supported him now withdrew their backing. However, Carlos continued to mount terrorist attacks across Europe. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured in these attacks.

  The Killer Playboy

  During this time, Carlos was harboured by radical Arab regimes in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. He was protected by the governments of these countries from the agencies that were trying to hunt him down: the CIA, Interpol and French intelligence. As his career continued, it became clear that he was now also acting as a mercenary for these regimes, carrying out attacks at their behest for money. He is thought to have amassed a fortune through this work, and acquired a reputation as a playboy who enjoyed the high life.

  In 1982, he and a terrorist group attacked a nuclear reactor in France, but the attempt failed. Two members of the group were arrested, including Carlos’ wife Magdalena Kopp, who was connected to the Bader-Meinhof gang in Germany. Carlos wrote to the police asking them to release the pair, and then went on to launch a series of bombings, including one on a passenger train in France, killing five people and injuring dozens more. Despite this attempt to intimidate the authorities, the terrorists were convicted, and Kopp was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. Once she had served her term, she was set free to rejoin Carlos.

  Brought To Justice

  By now it was becoming clear that the Soviet bloc countries were not supporting Carlos’ activities any longer. He was also being kept at arm’s length by the radical Arab countries. Eventually, Carlos found a home in Syria, but even here he was allowed to remain only on condition that he stop his terrorist activities.

  When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, it was rumoured that Saddam Hussein was going to approach Carlos to make terrorist strikes on the United States. Syria expelled Carlos, and he went underground, taking shelter in various Middle Eastern countries. He found his way to the Sudan, which had become a focus for terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. However, his playboy way of life did not sit at all well with the religious fundamentalism of the Islamic sheikh who offered him protection. The sheikh arranged for him to be handed over to the French authorities.

  The arrest took place in Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, in 1994. Carlos was immediately transferred to mainland France and, after three years of solitary confinement, was tried for three murders – from among the scores that he had committed.

  Carlos was sentenced to life imprisonment. In May 2007, Carlos was told he faced a new trial, appearing before anti-terrorism judge Jean-louis Bruguiere on charges concerning ‘killings and destruction of property using explosive substances’ in France in 1982 and 1983’. The trial began on 7 November 2011 and, five weeks later, Carlos was convicted and once more sentenced to life in prison.

  A Case Without a Corpse

  Forensic science is not simply a matter of running trace evidence through high-tech apparatus and printing out the perpetrator’s ID after the database has produced a match. Even the most sophisticated equipment can only analyze the evidence. It takes a tenacious, imaginative and highly motivated CSI to gather all the elements, interpret the evidence and make a case. The following account is a good example of the lengths that forensic scientists must now go to and the attention to detail they need to secure a conviction.

  Just before Christmas 1986, the police received a call from Keith Mayo, a private investigator, who said he was concerned that
his client, flight attendant Helle Crafts, had gone missing from her home in Connecticut. When questioned, her husband Richard claimed that she had stormed out after an argument and that he had no idea of her whereabouts. Neither had her colleagues, but without a body there was nothing much the police could do except conduct a routine missing persons enquiry. Until, that is, a snowplough driver remembered seeing a man fitting Richard Crafts’ description operating a wood chipping machine by a river at 3.30am in the midst of a blizzard. The inference was clear. Crafts had dismembered his wife’s body and shredded it into compost. If he had tipped the contents into the river the current would have distributed the remains across the state and no amount of circumstantial evidence would be enough to convict him.

  Fortunately the coroner in charge of the case, Henry C. Lee, possessed local knowledge and told the police precisely which spot on the river to search as body parts had been washed up there in earlier cases. Sure enough, they pulled a chain saw from the water and were able to match it to the chipper and the truck that Crafts had rented. But even this proved only that Craft had discarded a rented saw in a river. It did not prove conclusively that he had mulched his wife’s remains.

  A Gruesome Task

  So for nearly a month investigators scoured the location where Craft had been seen using the shredder during the snow storm and brought back a small mountain of wood chippings and human tissue to Lee’s laboratory. There the team sifted through the debris, putting plant material to one side and human hair, tooth fragments and tissue in another.