Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Lesbian Vampires and Satanic Cults

  Name: Tracey Wigginton, Kim Jervis, Lisa Ptaschinski, TraceyWaugh

  Nationality: Australian

  Number of victims: 1

  Favoured method of killing: stabbing

  On the night of Friday 20 October 1989, four women met at the Club Lewmors, a lesbian dive, where they sipped champagne. Wigginton and Jervis were carrying knives – but Wigginton bragged that she would kill with her bare hands if she had to. Around 11.30 p.m., they left the club and began cruising the streets in Wigginton’s green Holden sedan looking for a likely victim. On River Terrace, they spotted 47-year-old Edward Baldock, clinging drunkenly to a lamp-post. He had been out for a few beers and a game of darts with his mates in the Caledonia Club and was now slowly making his way home to his wife of 25 years. The women stopped and asked him if he wanted a lift home. He thought it was his lucky night, accepted and climbed in the back with Wigginton. They held hands. Wigginton instructed Ptaschinski to drive down to Orleigh Park, which was near Baldock’s home. Ptaschinski parked under a fig tree near the deserted South Brisbane Sailing Club. Wigginton asked Baldock whether he wanted a good time. He was all for it. They got out of the car and walked down to the river bank, where they both undressed. A few minutes later Wigginton returned to the car, complaining that Baldock was too strong. Ptaschinski said she would help and Jervis handed her her knife. The two lesbian lovers walked back down to the river where Baldock sat, naked except for his socks. Wigginton urged Ptaschinski to creep up on him and stab him, but she did not have the nerve. She could not kill a poor old drunk. Instead, she collapsed in the sand in front of him and began to gabble. Wigginton had no such qualms. She stabbed Baldock repeatedly in the neck and throat until his head was nearly severed, then she drank his blood. She returned to the car satisfied and the elated women drove back to Jervis’s flat, convinced that they had committed the perfect murder. It was only when they arrived at the macabre apartment that Wigginton realised that she had lost her bank card. She had dropped it while she was undressing.

  Panicked, the women drove back to Orleigh Park and scoured the area, but they could not find the card. They decided that Wigginton must have lost it elsewhere. On the way back to Jervis’s flat, they were stopped for a routine check by a patrol car and Ptaschinski was breathalysed. The breath test was negative, but she had come out without her driving licence and the police took down the details of the car.

  The next morning, Baldock’s naked body was discovered by two women out on an early morning walk. They called the police. Within minutes of their arrival, detectives found Wigginton’s bank card in Baldock’s shoe. They quickly discovered that the green Holden that had been stopped by a patrol car in the area was also registered to a Tracey Wigginton and put two and two together. At this point, they assumed that Wigginton was Baldock’s mistress and she had murdered him in an argument over money.

  In the morning, the loss of Wigginton’s bank card began to worry the four women more and more. If the card was found and any of them were questioned, they decided to say that they had been out fooling about in that area earlier the day before and that that’s when Wigginton must have lost the card. However, the story had one major flaw. It did not take into account that they had been stopped in that same area by a patrol car that night.

  Acting on the theory that Wigginton was Baldock’s aggrieved mistress, the police picked her up. But under questioning, she began to change her story from the one that they had agreed upon. She began to elaborate on it, mentioning that they had seen a suspicious-looking couple in the park. Later, she said that she had gone to the park in the evening and had fallen over a dead body in the dark, but had been too frightened to report it.

  Ptaschinski’s nerve had gone the night before. With Wigginton in custody, it went again. She could not stand the waiting. She left the flat and began walking about in a confused state. As she wandered about aimlessly, the guilt gradually ate into her. She turned herself in at a nearby police station. Jervis and Waugh were arrested the next day.

  Under relentless questioning, Tracey Wigginton admitted that she was a ‘vampire’. She was sent for detailed psychological examination. The doctors discovered that Tracey had been abandoned by her father and mother when she was a baby and was brought up by her grandparents George and Avril Wigginton. George was a profligate womaniser and Avril took out her hatred of her unfaithful husband on the children in her care. She beat Tracey mercilessly and poisoned her mind against men. Tracey turned to her genial grandfather for affection, but claimed that he had demanded sex with her after she had turned eight. At Catholic school, she became a lesbian and was known for her strange and evil behaviour. When she left school in 1982, she began calling herself Bobby and she went round to beat her grandmother up. She had a sado-masochistic relationship with a woman called Jamie who beat her with a strap and demanded total submission. She later underwent a lesbian ‘wedding’ performed by a member of the Hare Krishna sect and became a bouncer at a gay night club.

  After the ‘marriage’ broke up, she asked the club’s owner, a man named John O’Hara, to help her have a baby. They had sex in front of six close friends. Tracey fell pregnant, but later miscarried. She began a stormy relationship with a woman named Donna Staib and although they lived together, they were both enormously promiscuous with other women. Around that time, Tracey dyed her hair ‘midnight blue’ and had her body tattooed with mystical signs. She and Staib shared a taste for horror videos. The night before Baldock’s murder they had watched a sequence of a man being shot in the forehead and his skull exploding over and over again in slow motion.

  The police feared that Wigginton’s warped upbringing might be used in an insanity plea. But 24-year-old Wigginton took responsibility for her acts and was aware of their consequences. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

  The other three women pleaded not guilty. They claimed that they had not thought that Wigginton was serious when she talked of killing and drinking people’s blood and that they had been forced to go along with her because of her overbearing personality. Under cross-examination though, Ptaschinski admitted that she had been fascinated by the ‘thrilling and chilling plan to murder a man to drink his blood’. In court, the three women claimed that Wigginton had occult powers. They said that she claimed to be the Devil’s wife and practised mind control. They also insisted that the cross around Kim Jervis’s neck had been broken by Wigginton’s diabolical power, and she could disappear leaving only the eyes of a cat.

  Ptaschinski, 24, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life. Jervis, 23, got 18 years for manslaughter. Only Waugh, 23, walked free from the court. Although she was the brightest of the four women and stayed in the background, the jury decided that she was completely under the evil sway of Tracey Wigginton.

  Name: Rodney Dale

  Number of victims: 1 killed, 7 injured

  Favoured method of killing: shooting

  Nickname: Satan’s laughing hitman

  Rodney Dale, a 26-year-old Australian carved the satanic number ‘666’ on the palms of his hands before he went on his rampage.

  On the afternoon of 17 April 1990, he shot eight people – one of whom died – in just thirty minutes in the Burleigh Heads district of Australia’s Gold Coast. And the ‘666’ in the palm of his hands earned him the sobriquet ‘Satan’s laughing hitman’ in the Australian press.

  With no warning at all, Dale went out on the balcony of his flat overlooking Tweed Street which was packed with Saturday afternoon shoppers at around 4 p.m. He was wearing a balaclava and carrying a rifle and a pump-action shotgun, and he started shooting.

  By the time the first police car arrived, one woman was lying badly wounded on the nearby Gold Coast Highway and the gunman was out on the road shooting randomly at anything that moved. A bridal party happened to be driving through the area at the time. A bridesmaid was hit in the leg and the driver of the bride’s car was hit in the right
hand, left arm and shoulder. But he managed to drive his passenger out of the area before he was rushed to hospital. The wedding went ahead, but the shooting, it is said, did put something of a damper on the proceedings.

  Seven more police cars and five ambulances rushed to the area. But another six women were wounded before 38-year-old Sergeant Bob Baker from Burleigh Police Station took decisive action. He pulled his Magnum pistol and walked straight across the road at the crazed gunman.

  ‘Police! Put your gun down,’ he shouted.

  In response, Dale turned his gun on the courageous policeman and started firing. What followed was something out of a western. The gunman loosed off bullet after bullet, but none found their mark. Sergeant Baker stood his ground and responded in kind. His fourth shot hit the gunman in the arm. He dropped his gun and surrendered.

  In Dale’s flat was a note for his girlfriend saying he was ‘going out hunting’. Neighbours described him as friendly, nice and happy. There were rumours that he was involved with a satanic cult. He never explained why ‘666’ – the number of the Beast – was carved in his palms.

  Chapter 16

  Jeffrey Dahmer

  Name: Jeffrey Dahmer

  Nationality: American

  Number of victims: 17 killed

  Motive: necrophilia and cannibalism

  Favoured method of killing: drugging, strangulation, dismemberment

  Reign of terror: 1978–91

  Sentence: 957 years

  Like Dennis Nilsen, Milwaukee mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer kept the corpses of his victims around his home. But he wanted to possess them even more completely. So he ate their flesh because that way they would be a part of him and stay with him forever.

  Dahmer began his murderous career in Ohio in 1978 at the age of 18. At that time, his parents were going through an acrimonious divorce. Dahmer’s father had already left and his mother was away on a vacation. Dahmer was alone in the house and feeling very neglected. So he went out looking for company. He picked up a hitch-hiker, a 19-year-old white youth named Stephen Hicks who had spent the day at a rock concert. They got on well and Dahmer took Hicks back to his parents’ house. They had a few beers and talked about their lives. Then Hicks said that he had to go. Dahmer begged him to stay, but Hicks was insistent. So Dahmer made him stay. He picked up a heavy dumbbell, beat him around the head and strangled him.

  Dahmer dragged Hicks’ body into the crawlspace under the house and dismembered it with a hunting knife. He had had plenty of practice – his childhood hobby had been dissecting animals. He wrapped Hicks’ body parts in plastic bags and stashed them there. But the stench of rotting flesh soon permeated the house. That night, Dahmer took the remains and buried them in a nearby wood. But soon he became afraid that local children would discover the grave, so he dug up the body parts, stripped the flesh and pulverised the bones with a sledgehammer. Then he scattered the pieces around his garden and the neighbouring property. It was ten years before Dahmer killed again.

  In 1986, Dahmer, then aged 26, was sentenced to a year’s probation for exposing himself and masturbating publicly in front of two 12-year-old boys. He claimed he was urinating and promised the judge that it would not happen again.

  Before his probation ended Dahmer moved to Milwaukee to live with his grandmother. He was a loner. He would hang out in gay bars. If he did strike up a conversation with another customer, he would slip drugs into their drink. Often they would end up in a coma. Dahmer made no attempt to rape them or kill them, he was simply experimenting. But when the owner of the Club Bar ended up unconscious in hospital, Dahmer was barred.

  Six days after the end of his probation, he picked up 24-year-old Stephen Tuomi in a gay club. They went to the Ambassador Hotel to have sex. When Dahmer awoke, he found Tuomi dead with blood around his mouth and bruising around his neck.

  Dahmer had been drunk the night before and realised that he must have strangled Tuomi. Now he was alone in a hotel room with a corpse and any minute the porter would be checking whether the room had been vacated. He rushed out and bought a large suitcase. He stuffed Tuomi’s body into it and took a taxi back to his grandmother’s house. The taxi-driver even helped him drag the heavy case inside. Dahmer then cut up the body and put the bits into plastic bags which he put out for the rubbish collectors. He performed this task so well that he left no traces at all. When the police called around to ask him about the disappearance of Tuomi, there was no sign of a body and Dahmer found that he had got away with his second murder.

  Sex, companionship and death were now inextricably linked in Dahmer’s mind. Four months later, he picked up a young male prostitute. They went back to Dahmer’s grandmother’s house to have sex in the basement. Dahmer gave the boy a drink laced with a powerful sedative. When the young man was unconscious, he strangled him. He dismembered the corpse, stripped off the flesh, pulverised the bones and scattered the pieces.

  Two months later, Dahmer met a 22-year-old homosexual who was broke. Dahmer offered him money to perform in a video. He had oral sex with Dahmer, in his grandmother’s basement. When it was over, Dahmer offered him a drink, drugged him, strangled him and disposed of the corpse.

  Dahmer’s grandmother began to complain of the smell that persisted even after the rubbish had been collected. She then found a patch of blood in the garage. Dahmer said that he had been skinning animals out there. She accepted this excuse, but made it clear that she wanted him to move out.

  Dahmer found himself a small apartment in a run-down, predominantly black area. On his first night there, he lured Keison Sinthasomphone, a 13-year-old Laotian boy back to the flat and drugged him. The boy somehow managed to escape. Dahmer was arrested and charged with sexual assault and enticing a minor for immoral purposes. He spent a week in jail, then was released on bail.

  But Dahmer could not contain his compulsion to kill. While out on bail, he picked up handsome 26-year-old black bisexual Anthony Sears. Fearing that the police were watching his apartment, he took Sears back to his grandmother’s basement. They had sex, then Dahmer drugged him and dismembered his body. He disposed of Sears’ corpse in the rubbish, but kept the skull as a souvenir.

  Back in court, the District Attorney pushed for five years’ imprisonment for his assault on Keison Sinthasomphone. Dahmer’s attorney argued that the attack was a one-off offence. His client was a homosexual and a heavy drinker, and needed psychiatric help, not punishment. Dahmer got five years on probation and a year on a correction programme.

  It did not help. Dahmer was now set in his murderous ways. He picked up a young black stranger in a club and offered him money to pose for nude photographs. Back in Dahmer’s flat, the youth accepted a drink. It was drugged. Once he was unconsciousness, Dahmer strangled him, stripped him and performed oral sex with the corpse. Then he dismembered the corpse, again keeping the skull, which he painted grey.

  He picked up another homosexual known as ‘the Sheikh’ and did the same to him – only this time he had oral sex before he drugged and strangled his victim.

  The next victim, a 15-year-old Hispanic, was luckier. Dahmer offered him $200 to pose nude. He undressed but Dahmer neglected to drug him before attacking him with a rubber mallet. Dahmer tried to strangle him, but he fought back. Eventually Dahmer calmed down. The boy promised not to inform the police and Dahmer let him go, even calling a taxi for him.

  Next day, when he went to hospital for treatment, the boy broke his promise and spoke to the police. But he begged them not to let his foster parents find out that he was a homosexual and the police dropped the matter altogether.

  The next time Dahmer picked up a victim, a few weeks later, he craved more than the usual sex, murder and grisly dismemberment. He decided to keep the skeleton and bleach it with acid. He dissolved most of the flesh in the acid, but kept the biceps intact in the fridge.

  When neighbours began to complain of the smell of putrefying flesh coming from Dahmer’s flat, Dahmer apologised. He said that the fridge was b
roken and he was waiting to get it fixed.

  Dahmer’s next victim, 23-year-old David Thomas, was not gay. He had a girlfriend and a three-year-old daughter, but accepted Dahmer’s offer to come back to his apartment for money. After drugging him, Dahmer realised that he did not really fancy his latest pick-up anyway. But fearing that Thomas might make trouble when he woke up, he killed him. This time he took more pleasure in the dismemberment, photographing it step by step.

  He also photographed the dismemberments of Curtis Straughter and Errol Lindsey, holding onto their skulls as trophies.

  Thirty-one-year old deaf mute, Tony Hughes, accepted $50 to pose nude. But by this time, Dahmer had become so blasé about the whole procedure that he kept Hughes’ body in his bedroom for several days before he cut it up.

  Dahmer’s next victim was Keison Sinthasomphone’s older brother, 14-year-old Konerak. Again things went badly wrong. Dahmer drugged the boy, stripped him and raped him but then, instead of strangling him, Dahmer went out to buy some beer. On his way back to the apartment, Dahmer saw Konerak out on the street. He was naked, bleeding and talking to two black girls. When Dahmer grabbed him, the girls hung on to him. One of them had called the police and two patrol cars arrived.

  The police wanted to know what all the trouble was about Dahmer said that he and Konerak had had a lover’s tiff. He managed to convince them that 14-year-old Konerak was really 19 and, back at his apartment, he showed them Polaroids of Konerak in his underwear which seemed to back up his story that they were lovers. The police did not realise that the pictures had been taken earlier that day, while Konerak was drugged.

  Throughout all this Konerak sat passively on the sofa, thinking his ordeal was over. In fact, it had only just begun. The police accepted Dahmer’s story and left. Konerak was strangled immediately and then dismembered. When Dahmer picked up 23-year-old Jeremiah Weinberger in a gay club, Weinberger asked his former roommate whether he should go with Dahmer. The roommate said: ‘Sure, he looks OK.’