Criminal Masterminds
Page 24
Ned Kelly was the only one to leave the confines of the Glenrowan Inn. He boldly walked through the front door into a hail of bullets and kept on walking straight towards the barrage, firing his guns all the while. Slugs ricocheted off his helmet, saving him from immediate death, but he was brought down by a number of shots aimed at his lower legs, which were unprotected. The other three gang members, Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, all died inside the building. Joe Byrne was shot in the upper leg and died from loss of blood. The other two men took poison rather than be killed by the police. Unfortunately, a number of the hostages were fatally wounded by crossfire.
Ned, the only gang member to survive, was duly indicted for his crimes and treated for his injuries. Some four months later he was well enough to stand trial. By that time, his story had generated a certain level of empathy. Some 32,000 people had signed a petition against his receiving the death penalty, which was prompted by the notion that he was a political activist and voice of the Australian underclass.
Unfortunately for Kelly, the presiding judge, Sir Redmond Barry, was himself a Catholic Irishman who had become a British colonial judge when he emigrated to Australia. He did not share the sentiments of the petitioners as he was a leading player in the government of Victoria, which had been created in 1855 – coincidentally the very year of Kelly’s birth. To him, Kelly was nothing but an ill-educated thug from the wrong side of the tracks, whom he had seen progress from one crime to the next in an inevitable march towards execution.
When Sir Redmond sentenced Kelly to death by hanging he commented: ‘May God have mercy on your soul’. Kelly, who saw Redmond as a traitor to the Irish and so his natural enemy, retorted: ‘I will go further than that and say; I will see you there when I go’. As it turned out, Redmond had been suffering from a carbuncle, or multiple boil, on his neck. Only twelve days following Kelly’s execution Redmond died from pneumonia brought on by a bacterial infection.
There is some contention about Ned Kelly’s last words on November 11, 1880, before he went for the drop, because he mumbled under his breath, having been prompted to say something at the last minute. It was reported that he said: ‘Ah well, I suppose it has come to this. Such is life.’ or perhaps just the last sentence: ‘Such is life.’ Whatever it was exactly, it was dismissive and indicative of a man who couldn’t see that his fate had actually been in his own hands rather than those of others.
To that extent, it seems that Judge Barry was correct in his assessment of Kelly. To blame society for the outcome of his life was, to him, typical of those with deviant minds. To the judge, if you really did want to make your mark on society you got yourself educated and promoted yourself to a position of influence, which is exactly what he had done himself. That is why views on Ned Kelly are so disparate to this day.
Those able to achieve success themselves by orthodox routes tend to have the conservative view that he embarked on a criminal career because he was fundamentally a lowlife. Those who believe that social disadvantage has prevented them from progressing tend to have the sympathetic view that he was making the best of a bad situation. He certainly seems to have been more intelligent than your typical criminal mind, but whether he was a ‘criminal mastermind’ is a matter for debate.
He did end up walking to the gallows, having left a trail of death in his wake and ultimately got himself caught. But then again, he did also show that he had a burgeoning social conscience and surprised people by his ingenuity and courage. There is something inside most people that likes to see individuals rebelling against authority, simply because it gives them a chance to live vicariously in a world otherwise rather ordered and predictable. Perhaps that is why Ned Kelly holds a certain appeal as a cultural icon, because he held two fingers up to law and order but, at the same time, demonstrated that we wouldn’t really be better off without them.
Charles Manson
Charles Manson, one of the modern world’s most dangerous criminal masterminds, was born on November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati General Hospital, Ohio. Manson was the illegitimate child to a sixteen-year-old prostitute and alcoholic mother, Kathleen Maddox. Maddox was overwhelmed by the new responsibility of motherhood and often left her baby in the care of her family. After committing strong-arm robbery, Kathleen Maddox was sentenced to five years in prison, and Charles was left in the loving care of his devoutly religious aunt and uncle in West Virginia.
Charles Manson’s lifetime of disregard for the law started from a very young age. Throughout his childhood, Charles dreamed of a life with his mother and, on the one occasion he managed to find her, she rejected him. Because of his mother’s apparent disinterest in him, Manson became disillusioned with society. Before the age of twenty he had been in and out of detention centres and boys homes. Unable to settle into the cold, unfamiliar surroundings, he often escaped. After a while Manson adjusted to being institutionalised and relished the attention that he got. By 1954, Manson had become a model inmate and was paroled.
In January 1955, while living in Virginia, Manson married seventeen-year-old Rosalie Jean Willis. The couple decided to move to California and start a new life. In order to effect the relocation, Manson stole a car and they headed west. On arriving in California, he was arrested and charged with grand theft auto. Soon after Manson’s arrest, Rosalie gave birth to their son, Charles Manson Jr and, shortly afterwards decided to leave Charles for another man. Manson served two years for the grand theft auto conviction and was paroled again. It was not long before the prison-hardened Manson offended again, only next time it would be a federal offence and carry a more severe punishment.
It was while serving a ten-year sentence at McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington State for attempting to cash a forged treasury cheque that Manson became very interested in music, specifically the guitar. It was also during this term in prison that Manson developed his warped philosophy. Surrounded by convicts, there was no one to tell Manson that his ideas were bordered on the insane. Manson’s interest in guitar was satiated by the expert tutelage of Alvin Karpis, a hardened bank robber of the 1930s. Karpis took Manson under his wing and taught him how to play the guitar, as he felt some responsibility to show Manson some much needed affection. Karpis was aware of Manson’s troubled and unfortunate past and was sure that he would never put the time into learning how to play the guitar. Manson surprised Karpis by becoming quite proficient with the instrument and even showing interest in becoming a musician and performing in Las Vegas, where Karpis had connections and still had influence. Karpis might have been able to help Manson with his new dream had Manson not been transferred to a California prison in 1967. Manson was released that year having only served seven years out of the ten-year sentence.
In March of 1967, at the age of thirty-two, Manson was released from prison despite announcing his wishes to remain incarcerated. The authorities should have obeyed his wishes, as his crimes escalated at this time to the crimes that he is most noted for orchestrating and committing. It was his belief that he could not adjust to life in the real world as, at that point in his life, he had been in prison for more than half of his years. The skills that he had developed in prison, including an aptitude for the power of positive thinking would serve him well in the new world in which he found himself. This new world of Flower Power and the young ruling the streets, suited Manson perfectly and he blended in with this new breed.
Not long after his release from prison, and while living in San Francisco, Manson began attracting the interest of a group of young people. His strange, twenty-five ‘devotees’ and as many as sixty other ‘associates’ which became known collectively as the ‘Manson Family’. Manson and his new family took up residence in an abandoned film-set owned by a blind man called George Spahn. Manson presided over the breaking and rebuilding of the families personal identities. He used several methods, including drugs and sex to maintain control. Manson made use of LSD to control the family, although he was not using the drugs himself because he felt he needed
to maintain control of his own faculties. Meanwhile, he used sex to control the female members of the family and used the ‘sale’ of sex from the women in the family that he considered most enticing to buy the loyalty and support of his male disciples. The group that Manson surrounded himself with consisted of mostly young women who were quite willing to give up their comfortable, middle-class lives to follow Manson on his strange quest, which only he ultimately knew the full meaning of.
One day, while the Manson family was in Los Angeles, Dennis Wilson, a member of the popular music band, The Beach Boys, picked up two female members of the Manson Family and took them to his home. It was only a short while later that Manson and the rest of the family moved in with Wilson. Manson’s plan was to use Wilson to get his music recorded. Manson is bitter to this day that his music was never widely distributed or appreciated. Soon fascination with the Beatles, coupled with his growing philosophy for rebellion against society, generated a new objective.
Manson’s new plan, dubbed ‘Helter Skelter’ named after the Beatles song, predicted a race war between blacks and whites where the blacks would eventually win. Manson believed that even if the blacks won the war, they would be unable to sustain supremacy and would eventually have to rely on the whites who had survived ‘Helter Skelter’. Later in 1968, the family spent time in a remote area of Death Valley, California, called Barker Ranch. Later that year the family moved back to the Los Angeles area. Shortly after the Manson Family moved back to Los Angeles, Manson told his followers that he believed that he had killed an Afro-American man who he thought was a member of ‘The Black Panthers’, a political and civil rights activist party. Anticipating an angry reprisal from the party forced Manson into laying low for much of mid-1969.
On August 9, 1969, Manson ordered a small team from his group to infiltrate the home of famous film producer Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate, one of the most photographed women of the 1960s. Manson was ordering nothing short of a slaughter when he sent a team that consisted of Manson Family members Charles ‘Tex’ Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins and Linda Kasabian to invade and kill the occupants of the house. In a flurry of violence, the inhabitants of the home were brutally murdered by stabbing, gunshots and bludgeoning. Among the dead were Jay Sebring, founder of Sebring International and a noted hairstylist, Abigail Folger, the wealthy coffee heiress, Wojciech Frykowski, a polish writer, Steven Parent, an eighteen-year-old friend of the caretaker at the home, Sharon Tate and her unborn child. The gang left the scene of carnage with the word ‘Pig’ written in blood on the door.
As if he had embarked on a Holy War, Charles Manson decided to carry out even further attacks the following evening. Manson and family members Watson, Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten invaded the home of Leno and Rosemary Labianca at 3301 Waverly Drive in Los Angeles. Manson entered the property first and tied up the occupants. He then assured the Labiancas they would be robbed but left unhurt, and then proceeded to tell the team waiting outside to enter the property and kill them. The murders were as brutal as those at the home of the Tates’ the night before. The word ‘War’ was carved in Mr Labianca’s stomach and he had a carving knife jammed in his neck. Mrs Labianca had been brutally stabbed multiple times in the back. The walls were scrawled with the words ‘death to pigs’ and ‘Rise’ written in the victims’ blood. On the door the word ‘helter skelter’ was also written in blood. At the time the police investigation did not link the murder of the Tates and Labiancas, and believed that the murder of the Labiancas was a ‘copycat’ crime. The word ‘Rise’ made the police think the crime was ritual-related. Although Manson was not present for these crimes, the command he held over his followers coerced them into committing these acts of disgusting, inhumane violence. Without Manson’s hypnotic suggestions, these crimes may not have not occurred.
Later in 1969, when a few members of the Manson family were incarcerated yet again for car theft, one of the family members bragged to another inmate that they had been involved in the Tate and Labianca murders. This information was later given to the police, and the events that Manson thought he had so skilfully orchestrated started to unravel before him.
In December 1969, after a lengthy investigation, Charles Manson and members of the family were arrested at their hide out at Barker Ranch and charged with the Tate and Labianca murders. Manson wanted to serve as his own attorney but the court denied him the right. Linda Kasabian, who had been the getaway car driver for the invaders on the nights of the murders, volunteered to testify against the family in exchange for immunity. The family was banned from the court room after repeated disruptions and mocking the proceedings. In July 1970, Manson and the other three women on trial for the murders carved X’s in their foreheads to signify their exclusion from society. The ‘X’ carving remains on Manson’s forehead to this day but now resembles a swastika. In an unexpected flurry of violence, Manson lunged at the judge as if to attack, but he did not reach him.
On November 16, 1970, the trial ended. On January 25, 1971, the four family members – Charles Manson, Leslie Van Houten, Pat Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins – were found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and murder in the first degree. They were sentenced to die in the gas chamber. Watson was tried in a separate trial and found guilty of the same crimes and sentenced to death. In 1972, the Supreme Court temporarily ruled against the death penalty and their sentences were reduced to life imprisonment.
Charles Manson went back to prison, the one place in the world where he had always fitted in. It had been his home for a good deal of his life and most likely will serve as his home for the rest of his days. Manson is currently an inmate at Corcoran State Prison in California. It is well over one-quarter of a century after these brutal crimes and he remains unremorseful. His psychological state is a precarious one. On most of the occasions Manson has been interviewed, he has been verbally abusive and very unpleasant to the interviewer, going as far as to threaten to beat the interviewer to death with a book that was on the table in front of him. He said, ‘I would do it as easily as you would walk to the drug store’. Manson blames society for the way that he has behaved and remains adamant that he never controlled the members of the Manson family and that he had nothing to do with their actions. Manson is due to be considered for parole again in 2007.
I never broke nobody’s will. I never told anybody to do anything other than what they wanted to do … I said you do what’s best for you … what you do is up to you … it has nothing to do with me.
Charles Manson
PART SIX: Terrorists
Abu Nidal
During the 1980s, Abu Nidal headed one of the longest-running terrorist campaigns against the Western world in general, and Israeli interests in particular. A veteran Palestinian freedom fighter, over his career Abu Nidal’s operations became more and more violent, until he and his organization were acting more or less as a mercenary force rather than as pro-Arab political campaigners. Throughout the mid-1980s, the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) was regarded as the most dangerous terrorist group in the world, and it mounted major terrorist attacks in over twenty countries, killing a total of around 300 people and injuring many more.
However, despite his many crimes, from masterminding assassinations of leading political figures to hijacking aeroplanes, for many years Abu Nidal remained at large. For a long time, he was able to gain protection from the authorities by making cunning alliances with rogue Arab states, such as Iraq, Libya and Syria, who were also highly critical of the West, and moved his training camps to these countries to continue his campaign of destruction. However, in the end he even alienated these governments, and one by one they expelled him from their soil, until he literally had nowhere to run. His demise came in 2002, when he was shot dead in mysterious circumstances at his home in a suburb of Baghdad. At the time of his death he was facing a charge of treason from the Iraqi government, and is thought to have been suffering from leukaemia.
‘Father of struggle’
His father Khalil had thirteen wives and twenty-four children. Sabri was the son of his second wife, but this woman had very low status in the family, since she had been a maid when she joined them, and had only been sixteen years old when Khalil married her. The family disapproved of the marriage, and thus Sabri was treated badly by his many brothers and sisters. The situation took a turn for the worse when Sabri was seven: his father died, and the family threw his mother out of the house. Sabri was sent to a strict Muslim school and was shunned by the rest of the family, thus finding himself alone in the world at a young age. Many commentators have suggested that these experiences gave him a paranoid, and later, psychopathic personality, so that he was unable to trust anyone throughout his life.
As a young man, he became a teacher and joined the Ba’ath party during the 1950s. In the late sixties, he joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), aiming to fight to reclaim the land and position that his family had lost in the war. Adopting the nom de guerre Abu Nidal, meaning ‘father of struggle’, he aligned himself with the radical wing of the PLO, headed by Yasser Arafat. However, his co-existence with Arafat in the party did not last long. In 1974, he split with the organization, regarding them as too conservative in their programme of reform. The PLO were fighting to create a Palestinian state step by step, first setting up a national authority in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, Nidal saw this as a timid response to the situation, and recommended all-out warfare with Israel instead.