The Voices of Serial Killers
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 - GARY RAY BOWLES—GAY AND YOU ARE DEAD!
John Hardy Roberts
David Jarman
Milton Bradley
Albert “Alcie” Morris
Alverston Carter
Walter Jamelle “Jay” Hinton
CHAPTER 2 - ROBIN GECHT—THE MASTERMIND OF THE CHICAGO RIPPER CREW
Linda Sutton
Lorraine Borowski
Shui Mak
Angel York
Sandra Delaware
Carol Pappas and Rose Beck
Beverly Washington
CHAPTER 3 - WAYNE ADAM FORD—ROOM ZERO
Sonoma County Jane 194-97 Doe
Tina Renee Gibbs
Lanette Deyon White
Patricia Anne Tamez
Valerie Rondi—one that got away
CHAPTER 4 - ROBERT “BOBBY” JOE LONG—THE BABY-FACED KILLER
Artis Wick
Ngeun Thi Long
Michelle Denise Simms
Elizabeth B. Loudenback
Vicky Elliott
Chanel Devon Williams
Karen Beth Drinsfriend
Kimberly Kyle Hoops
Lisa McVey
Virginia Lee Johnson
Kim Marie Swann
CHAPTER 5 - DAVID ALAN GORE AND FREDERICK L. WATERFIELD JR.—FLORIDA REDNECKS
Lynn Elliott and Regan Martin
Diane Smalley
Anjelica Hommell
The Lings
Judith Daley
Angelica LaVallae and Barbara Byer
CHAPTER 6 - CHARLES “CHUCK” LANNIS MOSES—A REAL-LIFE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES
CHAPTER 7 - MICHAEL TYRONE “BIG MIKE” CRUMP—ORAL FOR $20, THEN INSTANT DEATH
Areba Smith
Lavinia Palmore Clark
CHAPTER 8 - JOHN EDWARD “J.R.” ROBINSON—SLAVE MASTER
Paula Godfrey
Lisa Stasi
Catherine Clampitt
Beverly Jean Bonner
Sheila Dale and Debbie Faith
Izabela Lewicka
Suzette Trouten
Other Ulysses Press Books
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Copyright Page
INTRODUCTION
I HAVE BEEN INTERVIEWING AND CORRESPONDING with serial killers for more than 20 years. This exceedingly strange occupation started with a 12-part series of TV documentaries, for which I was researcher and interviewer. British publisher John Blake persuaded me to develop the televised material into a pair of books, which Ulysses Press in Berkeley, California, later consolidated into Serial Killers: Up Close and Personal (2007).
I am pleased to report that these previous books became international bestsellers, translated into many languages, and are still popular today on both sides of the Atlantic. They are now required reading for students at the Behavioral Science Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
In all of these books, the concept was to tell stories in the killers’ own words as much as possible, for while their vile crimes may be well-known, thanks to lurid reports broadcast throughout the world by the news media, it is only through their own perceptions that we may hope to understand the motives of such monsters in human guise. And so it was through interrogations, court transcripts, personal correspondence, and face-to-face interviews that such notorious fiends as “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy, “Monster” Aileen Wuornos, and “Amityville Horror” Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. became parts of my life—before they were executed by various state departments of corrections.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that I had interviewed more serial killers than any other journalist on the planet.
Month after month, year in, year out, I receive e-mail from students and professionals interested in criminology. Many of their questions are about serial killers, particularly, “In your opinion, Christopher, what makes them tick?” Honestly, if I knew the empirical answer to that question, I would also be clever enough to be able to get fingerprints from running water. But I don’t, and I can’t.
Of course, there are legions of psychiatrists and psychologists who do claim to be able to answer this question. Unfortunately, most of these “experts” have never met a serial killer in the flesh, let alone spent years corresponding with such a person. Those who think they know what makes a serial killer tick in reality do not. I do not. And of course, you, dear reader, could never conceive of committing such terrible acts on a fellow human being, so you cannot know either. The only ones who do know are the killers themselves—sometimes.
So, throughout this book, in their own words, the killers will tell you, either consciously or subconsciously, exactly what made them what they are. We might be able to conclude that what these monsters think and say today must be more or less the same as what they thought when committing their crimes.
This book stands out from my other works on the subject in that, for only the third time in my career, I advocate for the innocence of a wrongly convicted man: Frederick L. Waterfield. I will allow you to form your own conclusions about Fred, balancing his story and the hard facts presented in his favor against correspondence from his diabolical cousin, the sadistic, self-confessed cannibal aptly named David Alan Gore. In these pages, Gore admits for the first time how he strung up several of his victims “like deer and cut ’em, raped ’em, then gutted them” while they were still alive. Then he framed Fred, who is presently serving life in a California penitentiary.
Another chapter in this book concerns a very unusual predator indeed. Dubbed by the media “The Remorseful Serial Killer,” Wayne Adam Ford’s life story is, as he would say, as tragic as the suffering he caused to the prostitutes he killed and butchered. Yet he walked into a police station carrying a severed woman’s breast in his pocket and gave himself up. For the first time, Wayne confesses all from death row.
The religious, morally salted butter Robert Joe Long eats wouldn’t melt in his mouth, or so he would have the world believe. But this book lays bare the sexually perverted mind of Bobby Long today. His shocking correspondence reveals the true nature of a deviant serial murderer who killed eight women—and allowed one kidnapped woman to go free, an action that predictably led to his arrest and current residency on Florida’s death row.
Gary Ray Bowles is a hustler and serial killer of six homosexuals. Candid, often smiling impudently, Bowles tells his life story from the cradle to his grim Florida penitentiary cell just a short walk from his place of expected execution.
Serial killers, both men and women (along with a few of confused gender), represent social monstrosities of the most terrifying variety. We may view them as some kind of beastly, homicidal objets d’art, but to those who fall afoul of them in lonely places far from the prying eye, they are human predators, often cannibals in a figurative and even a literal sense, uniquely subversive to society’s carefully constructed behavioral tenets.
They frighten us because they are part us—part monster, yet humanoid in form. They are without the social conscience that, for many, defines humanity. They are morally dead. But they capture public attention because they terrify the neighborhoods in which they troll and prey on victims. They elicit a sort of through-the-peephole curiosity, their behavior so gruesome that the media and motion picture industries feed off their crimes with the same gluttonous ferocity as vultures feeding from carrion—our beloved dead. These murderers personify the human capacity for evil, for they are the stuff of our worst Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface fears. Stories like theirs put butts on seats in movie theaters around the world.
This book gets up close and personal, very close indeed. Nightmares, anyone?
CHAPTER 1
GARY RAY BOWLES—GAY AND YOU ARE DEAD!
I had sex with thousands of men for money, probably at least 50 women for money, and I probably had sex with at least 100 women on my own. I had a lot of fun, but I also ended up spending over half of my life in prison.
—GARY RAY BOWLES, IN A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
Mere words cannot even begin to depict the brutal murders committed by Gary Bowles. The killer wasn’t just cooking on gas; he was cooking on avgas injected with nitro. The crime scenes were blood baths.
—the author, after viewing many of the crime scene photographs
GARY BOWLES WAS BORN JANUARY 25, 1962, in Clifton Gorge Hospital, West Virginia. He was the second son of a miner, William “Bill” Franklin Bowles, whose wife was 16-year-old Frances Carole Price. Bill died of black lung disease on July 22, 1961, while Gary was still in his mother’s womb. Gary’s older brother, William Franklin Jr., had come into this world on February 2, 1960.
Not one to let the grass grow under her feet, Frances,1 an alcoholic, quickly moved 50 miles west to the village of Rupert (pop. 940). Here, she fell in with one William “Bill” Otto Fields, who, according to her, “was a fine-looking man, with a good physique–six feet tall and weighing around 210 pounds.” The couple then moved to Kankakee, Illinois, where they married and raised the boys. Frances had two more children, Pamela and David. Up until he was the age of six, Gary and his brother believed that Bill Fields was their true father—until they paid a visit to their dying grandmother, who told them, “. . . boys, he ain’t!”
Gary Bowles, in a letter to the author, September 16, 2009, wrote:After our return home things got bad. My Mom worked nights at the Ford Motor Company, and my Dad worked days. After work he would drink and the kids got no help from him. When I got into trouble he would beat me with a belt, a leather strap, fists, and we had a willow tree and he would use a whip like a branch from that.
When I was about eight years old I played a lot of sports. In the Little League Baseball, I was a catcher, pitcher and shortstop. I was really good, and I wanted to be a baseball player. I was and still am a big Chicago Cubs fan. I also played football with all the kids from my neighborhood.
We lived in a three-bedroom house, and most of the houses in the neighborhood were all the same type, about 450 houses altogether in the same area.
I didn’t have a normal family life. We never ate together, and there was no one to help us kids with our homework. I was not very good at school, the Martin Luther King Jr. High, and my best grade completed was sixth grade. By the age of nine I was drinking and smoking pot.
Although Mrs. Bowles would later claim that her sons had a good upbringing, she testified in court that “Bill often beat [her] boys with his belt or fists. He would even throw them against the wall when the notion took him. The boys had bruises and welts all over them.” She added that when she had tried to intervene, Bill took his temper out on her. “Bill seemed to enjoy it [the beatings],” she told the court at Gary’s trial for murder. “He only stopped when he got tired.” With tears in her eyes, Frances concluded with what was the understatement of the trial: “Bill was a bit uncontrollable, I think.”
When Gary was about ten, Frances divorced Bill, who split, taking his own kids, Pamela and David, with him.
The nomadic Frances next turned up in Joliet, Illinois, where she met and married Chester “Chet” Hodges in 1974. In doing so, she jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
Gary Bowles in a letter to the author:I was not even allowed to go to the wedding. Chet drank a lot and so did my Mom. I was forced to live in the basement, and by 13 years old I was kicked out of the house and was living in the garage. There was no heat, and I had had enough.
By no stretch of the imagination could Chet be considered a model husband or a loving stepfather. This was no neighborly guy, and he didn’t do church or Sunday barbecue. During most days he wandered around wearing only white underwear and black socks. His most treasured possession was the TV remote, which lived on the right arm of his beer-stained armchair. To him the vacuum cleaner was an alien object, not to be touched by him—ever!
Chet was an alcoholic, a borderline schizophrenic, a slob, and a bully who was known to fly into violent, alcohol-induced rages. He used his family as punching bags, hospitalizing Frances on three occasions. Gary and his older brother Frank suffered similar brutal treatment from Chet and also needed medical attention. “Chet would drink from sunup until he went to bed,” Frances told the court. “Then, if there was the slightest disturbance in the home, he’d get up and beat the shit outta the kids.”
To escape this less than desirable situation, Gary started hiding in the family’s garage. In fact, Chet forced him to live in in the garage throughout an entire winter. The boy began drinking, smoking pot, and sniffing glue. Gary says that he was sexually molested at the age of nine by a man, although there is no other evidence to support this claim. By the time he was 12, he was, by his own admission, uncontrollable.
Despite counseling, Gary’s teachers were unable do anything with him, and Gary dropped out of school during the eighth grade. Meanwhile, Chet’s violence against mother and sons continued unabated and, it would be correct to to say that the lads grew to hate Chet with a passion. The boys were ticking mental time bombs, growing taller and physically stronger as each month passed; their minds were like pressure cookers building up a head of steam. Then Gary’s brother Frank left home.
Gary was just 13. One night, Chet, chemically imbalanced as was the norm, started beating on Gary once again. This time, however, Gary retaliated. He caught Chet with his back turned, and pummeled him with a brick:I messed him up pretty bad, and I might of even killed him, but my Mom stopped me. The cops came, and he went to the hospital. I told my mom that was it. It was either him or me. I will never forget her words: “Don’t make me choose.” So I put my stuff in a bag, and I left home with a broken heart. She never reported me missing, and I didn’t see her again until I was 19 years old.
According to Gary, this was the breaking point for him, and his first night away from home was spent in the back of U-Haul van. Then he bussed down to Los Angeles, where a former school friend’s father found him a job as a handyman.
At 14, despite being two years below the legal age for employment, Gary worked a two-week-on, two-week-off rotation. His first paycheck was just over $700. He proudly sent his mother a copy of the check, but she never replied. However, his stay in California didn’t last, and soon the teenager was en route to the Big Easy:On my way to New Orleans, I learned about hustling. A guy offered me $20 to suck my dick, and I let him. He also gave me some pot and told me all about the hustling game. I learned right away what I had in my pants could make me a lot of money. I would only let guys suck me off, and I even met women who would pay for sex. It was crazy, but I did that for two years, and then I went to Tampa, Florida.
Baby-faced Gary Bowles was a dark-haired, handsome lad with a good physique. He much preferred to date women, but to survive on the streets he used his looks and streetwise ability to the maximum. He sold his body to homosexuals in return for cash—sticking to oral, never anal, and he’s adamant this was the case. Nevertheless, he didn’t earn enough to afford digs of his own, so he remained homeless most of the time until early adulthood. Yet, occasionally he did move in with girls, and he did have several heterosexual relationships.
At age 20, in Tampa, Florida, Gary Bowles moved in with a couple of two-star hookers, both sporting more tattoos than a fairground worker. The trio lived together under the same roof for about eight weeks. He says he had three-way sex with them and also screwed married women when their husbands were away. “We partied a lot, did drugs and booze,” he says. Then, on Friday, June 4, 1982, it is alleged that he brutally attacked one of the hookers, Lesley Blease, who, according to him, had “a mouth like a five-dollar who
re.”
According to a verifiable medical report, Lesley suffered severe attempted-strangulation bruising around her throat. One of her breasts was bitten. Her face was battered black and blue, so much so that her eyes were swollen shut for more than a week. At some stage during the assault, she claimed, Bowles rammed an empty beer bottle into her vagina and rectum, causing internal lacerations. To testify to the ferocity of the attack, law enforcement officers found “significant quantities of blood at the residence. The blood spatters on the walls reached as high as five feet above the bed . . . she looked as if she had been dropped off the Sears fuckin’ Tower,” recalled a cop.
However, there is the account Gary Bowles gave to the author to consider. In a contradictory statement, he said: One of the girls [Lesley] got beat up one night. I found her and called the police. Three days later I was charged with the crime. The girl, Lesley Blease, said in court I didn’t do it, but I had a 75-year-old Public Defender, and he said I would get 15 years if I didn’t take a deal. I would never beat a woman, and I got screwed by the system even though she said I didn’t do it.
For this alleged offense, Gary Bowles received a six-year sentence: three in jail and three on parole. “All in all, I served five and one half years for a crime I didn’t do, so I am a bit pissed about this,” said Gary.
To further confuse matters, the Florida Department of Corrections detainee records show that Bowles was released from prison on Wednesday, December 28, 1983, having served 18 months in all. The same records also show that, for an unspecified offense and violating the terms of his parole, he was back behind bars on November 18, 1987. He was released three years later on April 3, 1990. Then, on Saturday, August 4, 1990, he got himself into another jam by committing grand theft—he stole a car. Still very much at large, on Wednesday, February 17, 1991, he committed unarmed robbery in Volusia County, Florida. This crime was basically a handbag snatch during which our master criminal pushed a woman to the ground. In fact, he had known this woman for several months, and on the night of the robbery they had been drinking together before Gary decided to steal her money.