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

by Greig, Charlotte

  The finger of suspicion began to point to Dr Sheppard, and as the investigation dug deeper it emerged that both Sam and Marilyn Sheppard had had affairs. The whiff of scandal brought the local media baying for the doctor’s blood. While the inexperienced local investigators dragged their feet and tried to cover up the fact that they had contaminated the crime scene in their carelessness, the local press demanded that their prime suspect be arrested. Before the week was out the press were setting the agenda and the subsequent trial seemed to be a mere formality.

  For reasons best known to himself, Dr Gerber let it be known that the murder weapon was a surgical instrument. And it was this more than any other single piece of evidence which sealed Sheppard’s fate.

  It later transpired that the murder weapon had not been found and that the coroner had made his assumption based on a suspicious ‘shape’ impressed in the pillow next to the body.

  One thing that might explain Dr Gerber’s stubborn refusal to face the facts was that he considered Dr Sheppard to be a thorn in his side. There was said to be personal animosity and distrust between the two medical men. Dr Sheppard was known to disapprove of the coroner’s approach to forensic investigation and so bruised pride may have been a factor in Gerber’s overlooking, and perhaps even suppressing, significant clues. It is known, for example, that evidence of forced entry at the doors to the basement was never presented in court. Furthermore, there were blood spots on the basement steps which had presumably dripped from the weapon as there were no indications the assailant had been injured.

  Dr Gerber presented these blood spots as evidence of Dr Sheppard’s guilt. At that time there was no available method of determining whose blood had been found, only whether it was animal or human. But Dr Sam’s performance on the witness stand gave his defence counsel cause for concern. He recollected the horrific events with an almost academic detachment. When questioned about the events leading to the discovery of his wife’s battered body, he remarked, ‘I initiated an attempt to gather enough senses to navigate the stairs.’

  Hardly the kind of tone one would expect of a bereaved husband.

  Dr Sam’s poor performance, together with Dr Gerber’s testimony, helped to secure a conviction and a life sentence. However, the forensic evidence suggested that Sheppard might have been telling the truth. Although Marilyn had been repeatedly beaten until her face was unrecognizable the assailant had not used sufficient force to kill her. She had, in fact, drowned in her own blood. Dr Sheppard was a strong well-built man who could easily have killed someone with a single blow using a blunt weapon. Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that he would have bludgeoned his wife to death while their son slept in the next room, no matter how enraged he might have been. More revealing was the blood splatter on the wall and bedroom door to the left of the body which indicated spray from a weapon wielded by a left-handed assailant. Dr Sheppard was right-handed.

  With such significant discrepancies a second trial was inevitable. At the retrial in 1964 the defence made much of Dr Gerber’s failure to find the murder weapon, casting doubt on his assertion that it had been a surgical instrument. Greater attention was paid to the significance of the blood splatter and the ‘flying blood’ spray found on the inside of Dr Sheppard’s watch strap, intimating that he had not been wearing it during the frenzied attack, but that it might have been in the possession of an intruder, as Sheppard had insisted.

  It was suggested that the blood trail in the basement had been left by a casual labourer named Richard Eberling who had worked for the Sheppards and who was later incarcerated for killing several women. He was known to wear a wig to cover his thinning hair which might account for the bushy-haired figure Dr Sheppard claimed to have seen. Eberling even confessed, but his confession was dismissed due to his mental instability.

  With more than sufficient reasonable doubt Dr Sheppard was acquitted the second time round, but ten years in prison had taken their toll. Sam Sheppard left court a broken man. He was unfit to practise medicine, and died only four years later.

  However, his son continued to campaign to clear his father’s name and in 1997 he filed a $2 million lawsuit against the state of Ohio supported by DNA evidence proving that the stains on the basement stairs were not his father’s blood.

  It appears that Eberling, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had become obsessed with Marilyn and must have killed her when she refused his advances. Dr Gerber, however, would not entertain the idea that he might have helped to convict the wrong man and there are those who even now still harbour doubts as to Dr Sam’s innocence.

  The Freedom Riders

  Edgar Ray Killen, known as Preacher Killen, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi, who in 1964 organized the killing of three civil rights campaigners. Killen managed to get away with murder, until 41 years later he was to pay for the crime he had committed in the name of white supremacy.

  Terrible Acts Of Violence

  Killen was born in 1925, and grew up to become a sawmill operator. His other activities included working for the church as a part-time Baptist minister, and for the Ku Klux Klan as a klavern organizer, recruiting others to the cause. At this period, in the early 1960s, the Ku Klux Klan was a powerful force in Mississippi, encouraging a culture of extreme racism among ordinary white citizens. Terrible acts of violence against black people were committed on an almost daily basis in some areas; lynch mobs and firebombings of black churches were a common occurrence. These attacks very often went unpunished in the courts, since the influence of the Ku Klux Klan extended into the higher echelons of the judiciary, the police and the military.

  By the 1960s, the situation in Mississippi had become the focus of a national campaign among students at colleges across America. In what became known as the ‘freedom summer’ of 1964, dozens of young civil rights campaigners, both black and white, came down by bus, train, and plane from college campuses to the South, intending to challenge the ‘Jim Crow’ laws operating there. Among them were two young white men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York, and a young black man, James Chaney from Mississippi.

  At the start of their visit, the three friends set out to see the ruins of Mount Zion Church, a black church that had recently been firebombed. Unbeknown to them, their movements were being carefully tracked by Cecil Price, Deputy Sheriff of Neshoba County. On their return journey, the sheriff had the three men picked up for speeding, and held in the county jail.

  Beaten And Shot Dead

  Next, Sheriff Price contacted Killen, whom he knew to be the organizer of the Ku Klux Klan Neshoba Chapter, and told him that he was holding three civil rights campaigners in jail. He also said that he would be letting them out that evening. Killen then rounded up a large mob of bloodthirsty rednecks and told them of his plan to meet the campaigners on a country road as they left jail, and attack them. The mob, armed with rifles and other weapons, set out that evening, and caught up with the three young college students as they walked down the deserted road. In a frenzied attack, they brutally beat the three friends and then shot them dead. Killen and his men later buried the bodies in an earthen dam.

  Sheriff Price’s plan had worked; yet ironically, the brutal murder of these young idealists, who wanted nothing more than peace and justice for all Americans, had the opposite effect to what the Southern racists intended. All over the country, people were so appalled at what had been allowed to happen in Mississippi that the civil rights campaign grew stronger than ever, and it was not long before a series of important civil rights laws were set in motion.

  For many people, one of the most shocking aspects of the freedom riders’ case was that, far from pursuing the perpetrators of the crime, the state of Mississippi initially allowed the murderers to go free. There appeared to be no attempt to arrest, charge and convict the culprits. Instead, the police and the judiciary closed ranks, blocking all attempts to have the killers brought to justice. In the end, the FBI, acting under the orders of President Lyndon Joh
nson, had to intervene to see that justice was done. Killen was arrested for the murders, along with eighteen others suspected of having joined the posse he had organized at Sheriff Price’s request.

  In 1967, the trial finally took place. By the end of it, most of the all-white jury were convinced that Killen was guilty and wanted to convict him. But there remained one member who felt unable, on principle, to convict a preacher. She held out against a decision to convict, so the jury was hung and could not reach a unanimous verdict. The prosecution decided against a retrial, even though it was clear that a conviction could probably have been gained next time, and once again Killen walked free. In an outcome that angered many civil rights campaigners, the men who had been found guilty of the murders received short prison sentences of no more than six years apiece.

  Open Racism

  For the next forty-seven years, Killen continued to live in Mississippi, openly declaring his racist views. However, in 1999, an interview with Sam Bowers, a prominent leader of the Ku Klux Klan, was published, throwing new light on the case. On 6 January 2005, aged 79, Killen was indicted for the 1964 murders.

  Killen’s trial was initially delayed because he had injured himself while chopping wood, breaking both of his legs. It finally took place in June 2005, and this time the jury were a mixed group of three black and nine white members. Killen attended court in a wheelchair, but this won him no sympathy, and he was duly convicted of manslaughter. The fact that he was not convicted of murder reflected his role as the organizer of the mob, rather than as the murderer himself.

  The judge awarded Killen the maximum prison sentence he could: twenty years for each manslaughter, amounting to sixty years in total. It was obvious, of course, that Killen would die well before serving his term; however, the long sentence he received was a symbol of the authorities’ commitment to civil rights, after years of neglecting their duty in this area.

  It had taken decades for Killen to be brought to justice, but in the end, he was put behind bars. As eighty-three-year-old Carolyn Goodman, mother of Andrew Goodman, commented from her home in New York when she heard the news:

  ‘I just knew that somehow this would happen – it’s something that had to be.’

  The Godfather’s Life of Crime

  The final arrest of John Gotti marked the end of an era in organized crime. He was the last of the old-style Mafia bosses to become a household name. Gotti was the product of a media age in which fascination with the Mafia was at an all-time high, and the media was desperate to find a real life counterpart to the godfathers of popular films. They came up with John Gotti, a well-dressed capo with a nice repertoire of one-liners.

  Gotti was born on 27 October 1940. He was the fifth of eleven children born to John Gotti Sr and his wife, Fannie. At the time of John’s birth, the family lived in the poverty-stricken South Bronx. By the time he was ten, they managed to move to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, and then, a year or so later, to another Brooklyn neighbourhood, East New York.

  The Fulton-Rockaway Boys

  Growing up, Gotti was drawn to the criminal lifestyle he saw around him. By the time he was twelve, he was running errands for local mobsters, forming a gang with his brothers Peter and Richard.

  John soon quit going to school and concentrated on getting into trouble instead. When he was fourteen, he crushed his toes while attempting to steal a cement mixer and spent several months in hospital, before being released with a limp he would have for the rest of his life.

  Aged sixteen, Gotti became a member of a Brooklyn street gang called the Fulton-Rockaway Boys, who prided themselves on being serious criminals. They stole cars and fenced stolen goods. Other members of the gang included two associates who would stay with Gotti through most of his career, Angelo Ruggiero and Wilfred ‘Willie Boy’ Johnson. Between 1957 and 1961, Gotti was arrested five times, but managed to avoid prison each time. In 1960, when he was twenty, Gotti met Victoria Di Giorgio. They had their first child, Angela, a year later, and got married the following year. The couple remained together until Gotti died, and had five children, but the marriage proved to be a stormy one.

  Cigarettes And Stockings

  Following his marriage, Gotti briefly tried his hand at legitimate employment, working for a trucking company before opting instead for a full-time life of crime. He served a brief jail sentence in 1963 when he was caught with Salvatore Ruggiero, Angelo’s younger brother, in a stolen car. This was followed by another short jail sentence in 1966, this time for robbery. That same year, Gotti joined a Mafia gang operating out of a club in Queens. This gang was part of the Gambino family, controlled by Carlo Gambino and his underboss, Aniello Dellacroce.

  Gotti’s particular role in the organization was as a hijacker, specializing in stealing loads from John F. Kennedy airport. Several more arrests followed as Gotti was caught with truckloads of women’s clothing and cigarettes. Eventually, he spent three years in the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg for hijacking. When he was released in January 1972, he immediately returned to the Bergin gang. Soon he became the effective capo of the crew, with the approval of Dellacroce. Times were changing and, despite the Mafia’s previous policy of having nothing to do with selling drugs, it was becoming increasingly clear that there was big money to be made in this area.

  Gotti’s next step up the ladder came as the result of a spate of kidnappings that broke out among Mafiosi during the early 1970s. In one incident, Carlo Gambino’s nephew was kidnapped and murdered. A known kidnapper, James McBratney, was suspected. Gotti was one of three men who gunned McBratney down in a Staten Island diner soon afterwards.

  Shoot-Out At The Steakhouse

  Gotti was identified by witnesses, but the charge was bargained down to manslaughter and he served only two years of it. While Gotti was in prison, Carlo Gambino died, leaving another mobster named Paul Castellano in his place, while Dellacroce remained as the underboss.

  Gotti became increasingly disenchanted with the leadership of the remote Castellano. He agitated for Dellacroce to be given the job instead, but Dellacroce, who was by now suffering from cancer, counselled Gotti to have patience. Meanwhile, in 1980, personal tragedy struck the Gotti family. A neighbour, John Favara, accidently ran over and killed the Gottis’ twelve-year-old son, Frank. Four months later, following a series of death threats, Favara was abducted by four men and never seen again, though rumours as to his fate abounded.

  FBI surveillance of the Gambino family intensified during the 1980s, and tensions between rival leaders increased as a result. In 1985, Dellacroce finally died of cancer. Gotti was hoping to be made the new underboss by Castellano. When it became clear that Castallano intended to promote Thomas Bilotti instead, Gotti decided it was time to act. He assembled a team of hit men and, on 16 December 1985, Paul Castellano was assassinated as he left Sparks steakhouse in Manhattan. Afterwards, Gotti moved quickly to take his position at the head of the Gambino family.

  The Teflon Don

  Following this sensational murder, reminiscent of the old days of Mafia feuds, Gotti became a kind of alternative celebrity. Time and again the FBI would arrest Gotti on one charge or another, and time and again he would appear in court in an immaculately tailored suit and beat the rap. During this period, he acquired a series of nicknames. First he was called ‘The Dapper Don’ in honour of his sharp suits, then ‘The Teflon Don’ in recognition of the FBI’s seeming inability to lay a glove on him despite near-constant surveillance. Gotti became well known for conducting meetings while walking down the street or playing recordings of white noise to prevent any bugs from working. However, by now the FBI were locked in a battle they could not be seen to lose. In 1992, they once again brought racketeering charges against Gotti under the RICO legislation, and this time they found a weak point.

  Gotti’s underboss was a notoriously brutal mobster named Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano, a man believed to be responsible for at least nineteen murders. So desperate were the FBI to convict Gotti that they offered G
ravano, a known killer, a virtual free pass in return for testifying against his boss. To secure the deal, they played Gravano tapes of Gotti making disparaging remarks about him. A livid Gravano agreed to testify against his boss, making him one of the highest-ranking mobsters ever to turn informer.

  The Don Goes Down

  Gravano’s testimony was sufficient to see Gotti finally put behind bars. He was convicted on 2 April 1992 for fourteen counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, loan sharking, racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling and tax evasion.

  To punish this highly public criminal even more, he was sent to the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, where he was kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day until his death from cancer on 10 June 2002.

  Meanwhile, Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano remains within the safety of the witness protection programme to this day.

  Grave Crimes

  William Burke and William Hare will always remain linked, like Laurel and Hardy or pirates and the Caribbean. Alone, living in Edinburgh in the late-1820s, they were nothing: just a labourer and the keeper of a disreputable boarding house. But together they were Burke and Hare, the most famous body-snatchers of them all – even though they ended up differently. For Hare, who turned King’s Evidence and was a witness at Burke’s trial, died later in London, after living under an assumed name; and Burke went the way of their joint victims. After he was hanged, his body was dissected at a public lecture by the Professor of Surgery at Edinburgh University, and his skeleton can still be seen today in the University’s Anatomical Museum.