Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time

by Nigel Cawthorne

  In fact, Starkweather did have something of a change of heart in prison. His murderous rampage seemed to have quenched his hatred. A gentler side took over. One of his prison guards said: ‘If somebody had just paid attention to Charlie, bragged on his drawing and writing, all of this might not have happened.’

  At the parole board Starkweather spoke of his remorse and his new-found Christian faith. It did no good. The execution was scheduled for 22 May 1959. He wrote to his father, talking of repentance and his hopes of staying alive. The execution was delayed by a federal judge, then rescheduled for 25 June.

  When the prison guards came for him, he asked: ‘What’s your hurry?’ Then, in a new shirt and jeans, he swaggered ahead of them to the electric chair with his hands in his pockets. Outside, gangs of teenagers cruised the streets, playing rock ’n’ roll on their car radios. Fifteen years later the Starkweather story was retold in the 1974 cult film Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Cissy Spacek. The story then formed the basis of Oliver Stone’s controversial 1994 film Natural Born Killers, starring Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis.

  Chapter 2

  The Boston Strangler

  Name: Albert DeSalvo

  Nationality: American

  Number of victims: 13 killed

  Favoured method of killing: strangulation – he always tied the ligature in a bow on the victim’s body

  Born: 1931

  Reign of terror: 1962–64

  Final note: he was never caught or formally identified

  No one was ever prosecuted for the murders committed by the Boston Strangler, who terrorised the women of New England between 1962 and 1964. However, the Boston Police Department named the main suspect who they believed had brutally murdered 13 young women. His name was Albert DeSalvo.

  DeSalvo was the son of a vicious drunk. When he was 11, DeSalvo watched his father knock his mother’s teeth out then bend her fingers back until they snapped. This was nothing unusual in the DeSalvo household.

  When they were just children, Albert and his two sisters were sold to a farmer in Maine for nine dollars, but later escaped. After he got back home, his father taught him how to shoplift, taking him to the store and showing him what to take. His father would also bring prostitutes back to the apartment and make the children watch while he had sex with them.

  Soon the young DeSalvo developed a lively interest in sex, making many early conquests among the neighbourhood girls, as well as earning a healthy living from the local gay community who would pay him for his services. In the army, DeSalvo continued his sexual adventuring, until he met Irmgaard, the daughter of a respectable Catholic family in Frankfurt. They married and returned to the US in 1954, where DeSalvo was dishonourably discharged from the army for sexually molesting a nine-year-old girl. Criminal charges were not brought because the girl’s mother feared the publicity.

  DeSalvo pursued a career in breaking and entering, but at home he was the perfect family man. However, his sexual appetite was more than his wife could cope with. He demanded sex five or six times a day. This annoyed Irmgaard and finally repelled her. So DeSalvo found an outlet as the ‘Measuring Man’.

  He began hanging around the student areas of Boston, looking for apartments shared by young women. He would knock on the door with a clipboard, saying that he was the representative of a modelling agency, and ask whether he could take their measurements. Sometimes his charm succeeded in seducing the women – sometimes they would seduce him. Other times he would just take their measurements, clothed or naked, and promise that a female representative would call later. He never assaulted any of the girls. The only complaints were that no one came on a follow-up visit.

  About that time, DeSalvo was caught housebreaking and sent to jail for two years. The experience left him frustrated. When he was released he started a new career, breaking into houses throughout New England and tying up and raping women. At that time, he was known as the ‘Green Man’ because he wore a green shirt and trousers. The police in Connecticut and Massachusetts put the number of his assault in the hundreds. DeSalvo himself claimed more than a thousand – bragging that he had tied up and raped six women in one morning.

  DeSalvo confined his activities to Boston and added murder to his repertoire, killing 55-year-old Anna Slesers in her apartment on 14 June 1962. DeSalvo had left her body in an obscene pose, with the cord he had used to strangle her tied in a bow around her neck. This was to become his trademark.

  Over the next month he raped and strangled five women, including 85-year-old Mary Mullen, even though he said she reminded him of his grandmother, and 65-year-old nurse Helen Blake. Within two days he killed 75-year-old Ida Irga and 67-year-old Jane Sullivan. By this time, the Boston police force had realised that they had a serious maniac on their hands and had begun questioning all known sexual deviants. But DeSalvo was overlooked because he only had a record for burglary and housebreaking. The only official record of his sexual deviancy was in his army file.

  DeSalvo cooled off for a bit and took a long autumn break. But by his eighth wedding anniversary on 5 December, his mind was so overheated with violent sexual images that he thought it was going to explode. He saw an attractive girl going into an apartment block. He followed her and knocked on her door. Using his usual ploy, he pretended to be a maintenance man sent by the landlord to check the pipes. She did not let him in. So he tried the next apartment. The door was opened by a tall, attractive, 25-year-old black woman named Sophie Clark. DeSalvo reverted to his Measuring Man routine. He remarked on her stunningly curvaceous body and, when she turned her back, he attacked her. Once he had subdued her, he stripped her and raped her. Then he strangled her. He left her naked body, like the others, propped up with the legs spread and the ligature he had used to strangle her tied in a bow under her chin.

  Three days later, DeSalvo went back to one of the women he had previously visited as the Measuring Man, 23-year-old secretary Patricia Bissette. She invited him in for a cup of coffee and when she turned her back he grabbed her round the throat and raped her, then strangled her with her own stockings.

  DeSalvo’s next victim escaped. She fought back so violently, biting, scratching and screaming that the Strangler fled. This seems to have been something of a turning-point in DeSalvo’s career. But she was so distraught after the attack that the description she gave was next to useless.

  From then on the Boston Strangler’s attacks became even more violent. On 9 March 1963, he gained access to 69-year-old Mary Brown’s apartment by saying he had come to fix the stove. He carried with him a piece of lead pipe which he used to beat her head in. He raped her after he had killed her, then stabbed her in the breasts with a fork which he left sticking in her flesh. He maintained his modus operandi by strangling her, but this time the victim was already dead.

  Two months later, DeSalvo took a day off work. He drove out to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he spotted a pretty girl, 23-year-old student Beverley Samans, on University Road. He followed her to her apartment. Once inside he tied her to the bedposts, stripped her, blindfolded her, gagged her and raped her repeatedly. Then he strangled her with her own stockings. But this time, it was not enough. Before he left the apartment, he pulled his penknife from his pocket and started stabbing her naked body. Once he started he could not stop. He stabbed and stabbed her. Blood flew everywhere. There were 22 savage wounds in her body. Once the frenzy subsided, he calmly wiped his fingerprints from the knife, dropped it in the sink and went home.

  DeSalvo killed again on 8 September, raping and strangling 58-year-old Evelyn Corbin with her own nylons, which he then left tied in a bow around her ankle. The city was in panic. The killer seemed to come and go at will. With no description of the man and no clues, the police were powerless. In desperation they brought in Dutch psychic Peter Hurkos, but he failed to identify the Strangler.

  While America – and Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts particularly – was in mourning following the assassination of the preside
nt, he struck again. He raped and strangled 23-year-old dress designer Joan Gaff in her own apartment, leaving her black leotard tied in a bow around her neck

  DeSalvo admitted later that he did not know why he had killed Joan Gaff. ‘I wasn’t even excited,’ he said. After he left her apartment, he went home, played with his kids and watched the report of Joan Gaff’s murder on TV. Then he sat down and had dinner, without thinking of her again.

  On 4 January 1964, the Boston Strangler struck for the last time. He gained access to the flat of 19-year-old Mary Sullivan, tied her up at knifepoint and raped her. This time he strangled her with his hands. Her body was found propped up on her bed, her buttocks on the pillow and her back against the headboard. Her head rested on her right shoulder, her eyes closed and viscose liquid was dripping from her mouth down her right breast. Her breasts and her sexual organs were exposed and there was a broom handle protruding from her vagina. More semen stains were found on her blanket. Between her toes he placed a card he found in the apartment which read ‘Happy New Year’.

  Later that year, a woman reported being sexually assaulted by a man using the Measuring Man routine, but otherwise all the activity of the Boston Strangler stopped. This coincided with the arrest of DeSalvo for housebreaking. Held on bail, DeSalvo’s behaviour became disturbed and he was transferred to the mental hospital at Bridgewater, where he was diagnosed as schizophrenic.

  Although they had him in custody, the police still had no idea that DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. But in Bridgewater, another inmate, in for killing a petrol pump attendant and also a suspect in the Boston Strangler case himself, listened to DeSalvo’s manic ramblings and began to put two and two together. He got his lawyer to interview DeSalvo.

  In these taped interviews, DeSalvo revealed facts about the murders – the position of the bodies, the nature of the ligature and the wounds inflicted – that the police had not revealed. He also admitted to two murders that had not already been attributed to the Boston Strangler.

  DeSalvo was a mental patient, so he was not prosecuted for the rapes and murders he confessed to. But there was no doubt that he was, indeed, the Boston Strangler. DeSalvo was transferred to Walpole State Prison. He was found dead in his cell in 1973, stabbed through the heart.

  Chapter 3

  Australian Spree Killers

  Name: Eric Edgar Cooke

  Nationality: Australian

  Number of victims: 2 injured, 7 killed

  Favoured method of killing: shooting

  Executed: 26 October 1964

  In 1963, on a summer Saturday night in a comfortable Perth suburb, a gunman started picking off people, seemingly at random. Nicholas August, a poultry dealer and a married man, was out with Ocean beach barmaid Rowena Reeves. They were sharing a drink in the car around 2 a.m. on 27 January when Rowena saw a man. Thinking he was a peeping Tom, August told him to ‘bugger off’. The silent figure did not move, so August threw an empty bottle at him.

  ‘Look out,’ screamed Rowena to her companion. ‘He’s got a gun.’

  The man raised a rifle and took careful aim at August’s head. At the last moment, Rowena pushed August’s head down and the bullet nicked his neck. It bled profusely. Rowena yelled at him to start the car and run the gunman down. August sped off, with bullets singing past them. By the time he reached the hospital, Rowena was unconscious. The bullet emerging from his neck had lodged in Rowena’s forearm. Both August and Rowena survived the incident.

  Just over an hour later and a couple of miles away, 54-year-old George Walmsley was shot when he opened his front door after hearing the doorbell. The bullet hit him in the forehead and he was dead by the time his wife and daughter, woken by the shot, got downstairs.

  Around the corner at Mrs Allen’s boarding house, John Sturkey, a 19-year-old agricultural student from the University of Western Australia, was sleeping on the verandah. At around 4 a.m. fellow student Scott McWilliam was awoken by Mrs Allen’s niece Pauline. ‘There’s something wrong with John,’ she said. McWilliam went out on to the veranda. A strange noise was coming from Sturkey’s throat. McWilliam raised Sturkey’s head. There was a bullet hole between his eyes.

  Next morning Brian Weir, who lived nearby in Broome Street, did not show up for training at the Surf Life Saving Club. One of the crew went round to get him out of bed. Brian was found with a bullet wound in his forehead and serious brain damage. He would die from his wounds three years later.

  The police had little to go on and the press offered a £1,000 reward for the capture of the ‘Maniac Slayer’ (Australia didn’t their currency to the Australian dollar until 1966). Local homeowners slept with loaded guns next to their beds. Nothing happened for three weeks. Then the killer struck again.

  Joy Noble was up early making breakfast one Saturday morning when she glanced out of the kitchen window of her West Perth home. Outside she saw the naked body of a young woman spread-eagled on the back lawn. At first she thought it was her daughter and she ran through the house shouting: ‘Carline.’ In fact, it was the body of Constance Lucy Madrill, a 24-year-old social worker who lived in nearby Thomas Street. She had been raped, strangled and dumped on the Nobles’ lawn. The attack had taken place in the girl’s own apartment, while her flatmate, Jennifer Hurse, slept. No one could explain why the attacker had dragged her all the way to the Nobles’ lawn, then abandoned her. An Aborigine had probably done it, the police concluded – even though there were no records of Aborigines in Western Australia attacking white girls. And it certainly had nothing to do with the shootings three weeks before, the police said.

  Six months passed uneventfully. Then on the thundery night of 10 August, Shirley McLeod, an 18-year-old science student at the University of Western Australia, was babysitting Carl and Wendy Dowds’ eight-month-old son, Mitchell. When the Dowdses returned from their party they found Shirley slumped on the sofa with a peaceful look on her face like she had just fallen asleep but in fact, she had been shot by a .22 rifle and was quite dead. Baby Mitchell was unharmed. There could be no doubt that this killing was linked with the murders in January.

  Perth experienced mass panic. The West Australian advised people to lock their doors at night – unheard of in Perth before that time. Babysitters were warned not to sit near windows, and there were proposals to close the old alleyways that ran down the back of people’s houses. The police began to fingerprint every male over the age of 12 in the city, at a rate of 8,000 a week.

  Then, on Saturday 17 August an elderly couple was out picking flowers in Mount Pleasant when they spotted a rifle hidden in some bushes. It was a Winchester .22. The police believed that it had not been discarded but hidden there so it could be used again. They staked out the area for two weeks before a truck driver named Eric Edgar Cooke turned up, looking for the gun.

  Cooke had been born in Perth in 1931 with a harelip and a cleft palate. Early operations improved his condition, but his speech remained blurred and indistinct and his appearance was mocked by others. From an early age he suffered severe headaches and blackouts. These were aggravated by a fall from a bicycle and a dive into shallow water at 14. Doctors suspected brain damage, but X-rays and an exploratory operation revealed nothing.

  At home as a teenager, his father had beaten him regularly. At 16 he spent three weeks in hospital after trying to protect his mother from one of his father’s onslaughts. He told the doctors he had been fighting with other boys.

  Expelled from several schools, Cooke had quit completely at the age of 14. He had taken a series of manual jobs, none of which lasted long, before being called up for National Service. In the army, he was taught how to handle a rifle.

  In November 1953 he married an 18-year-old immigrant from England called Sally. The couple had seven children – four boys and three girls. Their first child was born mentally handicapped and their eldest daughter, one of twins, was born without a right arm. Nevertheless it was a happy household. Cooke was a faithful husband and a loving father. Other child
ren from all over the neighbourhood came to play in the Cookes’ house.

  However, behind it all was what Sally Cooke described as her husband’s ‘restlessness’. She could not keep him at home. He constantly went out on sprees of petty thieving. He had burgled some 250 houses and spent three short terms in prison before the police picked him up as a murder suspect.

  At the police station Cooke claimed to have been at home on the night Shirley McLeod was killed. His wife said he was not. Then Cooke confessed.

  On the way home from bowling that day, he had started looking for somewhere to burgle. He found a house in Pearse Street with its back door open and went in. There was a couple sitting in the lounge, so Cooke crept into the bedroom to look for money. Instead he found a Winchester .22. He took it, and some cartridges, thinking he could probably sell it later.

  He said he remembered parking his car again on the way home, then – later – finding the rifle in his hand with a spent cartridge in the breach. It was only the next day, when he saw a report about the babysitter’s murder on the television, that he realised what he had done.

  The next day he was taken to the scene of Lucy Madrill’s murder and confessed to that killing as well. He said he had been robbing the girls’ flat when he had knocked over a framed photograph. Lucy had woken up and he had hit her. She tried to scream but he throttled her. He dragged her through into the next bedroom, strangled her with a lamp flex, then raped her. He had intended to hide the body.

  He dragged it outside and left it on the Nobles’ lawn while he looked for a car to steal. But he could not find one, so he stole a bicycle instead and rode home.

  Later he confessed to the spree on 27 January. He had shot five people that night because he ‘wanted to hurt somebody’, he said. Out on his usual Saturday night prowl, he had stolen a Lithgow single-shot .22 and a tan-coloured Holden sedan.