Just two hours after the murder, the duo were seen kissing and laughing in a nearby restaurant. They also went to a cocaine dealer’s apartment where they had sex and later attended a party where they boasted of the killings, the boyfriend telling appalled guests that he had gutted his girlfriend’s family ‘like fish’. The killers were arrested the next day. In jail, the two swapped gushing love letters and the boyfriend proposed. His still-smitten girlfriend accepted.
It took the jury just less than four hours to convict the minor of three counts of first-degree murder, making her the youngest person ever to be convicted of murder in Canada. She is now serving four years in custody in a mental institution, which will be followed by four-and-a-half years under close community supervision, where she will be given a new identity.
The case received an unexpected twist after it was revealed that the girl’s boyfriend seems to have genuinely believed that he was a 300-year-old werewolf and was in the habit of drinking his own blood. He also called himself ‘Lycan’. Both had posted their own profiles on ultra-gothic websites Nexopia and Vampirefreaks.com; in one of the many profiles that he posted online, he claimed that he believed in ‘Blood, Destruction, Guts, and Gore & Greed’. He also posted some gruesome (in more sense than one) poetry online. In one poem he said that he was going to kill his girlfriend’s parents and slit their throats because of their ‘insulince’ (sic). His girlfriend, meanwhile, who claimed online that she was 15, also posted a picture of herself holding a handgun.
In fact, as teenagers spend more and more time communicating with their peers via the internet, the web has become a rich new source of information for investigators in ‘bad seed’ murder cases. At the same time, teenage MySpace accounts and blogs often provide a chilling insight into the mind of an adolescent killer. This is especially true of blogs in which teenagers often post their most intimate thoughts to a worldwide audience of complete strangers.
This was perfectly exemplified recently by the story of a Japanese schoolgirl who admitted to trying to kill her own mother on her online blog. The teenager had apparently become obsessed with the famous English poisoner Graham Young. For those of you who might not be acquainted with the case, Young attempted to wipe out his whole family by giving them increasing doses of thallium (a potent rat poison) in their tea when he was just 14 years old. He succeeded in killing his stepmother before being caught and was sent to Broadmoor. After his release, he killed two of his co-workers. The Japanese schoolgirl followed Young’s earlier exploits more or less to the letter and managed to put her mother in a coma by lacing her food with rat poison, all the while calmly noting down the results on her online blog.
DEADLY CYBER CRUSHES
Strange as it may seem, due to the increasing popularity of social networking websites, nowadays a deadly teenage crush does not have to involve a real teenager at all. Take the recent case of Lori Drew, who posed online as a 16-year-old boy so that she could find out what a teenage girl was saying about her daughter.
Drew’s daughter and Megan Meier had once been friends but had fallen out, as teenage girls have a tendency to do. Lori Drew created a fake profile of a boy she called Josh Evans and contacted Meier through MySpace. Josh, according to his online profile, had just moved to Michigan from Florida, was being home-schooled and played the drums and the guitar. Along with the profile, the middle-aged mother also posted a picture of a good-looking 16-year-old boy. Then, when Megan Meier had become sufficiently drawn in by the non-existent but apparently smitten 16-year-old, Josh suddenly turned nasty. He began to insult her and abruptly broke off their friendship. After an hour-long argument in which both continued to trade insults and abuse, the distraught 13-year-old, who was on anti-depressant drugs, went to her room and hanged herself with her own belt.
Drew was indicted by a Los Angeles Federal Grand Jury on one count of conspiracy and three counts of ‘accessing protected computers without authorisation to obtain information to inflict emotional distress’. She is now awaiting trial.
The murder of Brian Barrett at the hands of factory worker Thomas Montgomery represents another cyber crush that ended in tragedy. In 2005, husband and father of two Thomas Montgomery posed on an internet chat room as a bullet-scarred 18-year-old marine. Tommy, as he called himself, was looking for romance and had just got back from a tour in Iraq; it wasn’t long before the handsome marine had struck up a relationship with ‘TalHotBlondbig50’, a 17-year-old long-legged blonde from West Virginia whose real name was Jessie. Romance bloomed.
A few months later, the couple was sending each other letters in the post. To whet her hot young marine’s appetite, Jessie sent him photos of herself in a bikini lounging by the pool and posted him a G-string. The affair quickly became so intense that the couple were spending almost every waking hour online chatting to each other. Even though they had never actually met, after only eight months the marine proposed – an offer that his blue-eyed blonde sweetheart immediately accepted.
But when Montgomery’s wife stumbled upon an email between the two and learned of her husband’s cyber romance, she immediately wrote to Jessie, telling her the truth. Along with the letter she included a picture of her pot-bellied, balding husband, along with his two children.
Jessie had been so drawn into the romance, though, that she wasn’t sure who to believe at first, so she went online and managed to track down a co-worker of Montgomery’s, a 22-year-old called Brian Barrett. Barrett was only too willing to confirm that her marine fiancé was not a marine at all but his middle-aged work colleague.
It wasn’t long before Jessie had struck up a new online romance, though this time with the much more suitable Barrett. That made Montgomery mad. Not only had he been outed as a cyber predator stalking teenage girls, the love of his life was now flirting online with a co-worker.
Insults began to fly as Barrett and Jessie continued their cyber romance and Montgomery was left out in the cold. To make matters worse, Barrett would often brag about his new 17-year-old girlfriend to his colleagues at work. At the same time, however, Jessie seemed unable to completely break off her relationship with Montgomery and continued to keep in contact – only adding to Montgomery’s sense of miserable frustration.
Matters reached a head on 15 September 2006. Montgomery waited for Barrett to finish his shift at the factory. As Barrett was sitting in his pick-up truck in the car park, Montgomery shot him with a .30-calibre rifle three times, at close range, killing him instantly.
It turned out, however, that Montgomery’s so-called lover was as different from her online profile as he had been from his. When police went to find Jessie to interview her, they discovered that Jessie was not a 17-year-old blue-eyed blonde at all… but a frumpy, middle-aged housewife who had been sending Montgomery pictures of her teenage daughter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DIG TWO GRAVES: TERRIBLE REVENGE
‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’ (Confucius)
Payback can be a very nasty affair, as the following tale of crazed revenge proves. From the enraged psychologist who murdered his own patient to the henpecked husband who slaughtered his entire family, revenge is without exception a very bloody business that leaves only further misery in its wake. ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’, according to an old saying; these killings suggest that it is a dish probably best not served at all.
UNHAPPY FAMILY: RONALD SHANABARGER
Perhaps the most harrowing revenge plot of all time was devised by Ronald Shanabarger. In 1998, Shanabarger got his wife pregnant so that he would one day be able to kill their baby and get some payback on her. The reason? In October 1996, Shanabarger’s wife had refused to cut short a cruise and attend his father’s funeral. According to the murder charge affidavit: ‘He married her, got her pregnant, allowed time for her to bond with the child and then took its life.’
Once the pair were married, they had a son, whom they named Tyler. Seven months later, Shanabarger sprang his trap
. On the evening of 20 June 1999, Amy Shanabarger came back from the local supermarket where she worked and found Tyler lying dead in his cot. The child was taken to the Indiana University Medical Center where an autopsy was performed and the pathologist ruled that Tyler had been a victim of sudden infant death syndrome. On the night of Tyler’s funeral, however, Ronald Shanabarger confessed to his wife that he had killed their only son.
As she later testified in court, ‘He said, “I killed Tyler.” I said, “How?” And he said, “With Saran wrap.”’ After he had killed his son, Shanabarger told his wife, he had gone into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich. All the same it didn’t take Shanabarger long to realise the enormity of what he had just done.
Shortly after his son’s funeral, Shanabarger turned himself in to police at the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, where he confessed to his crime and begged police officers to shoot him where he stood. Shanabarger was handed down a life sentence in May 2002. Since then he has tried to appeal his sentence, an appeal that was summarily rejected in May 2006 by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
PORNOGRAPHY AND PAYBACK: LI YIJIANG
When student Li Yijiang was gang raped in Beijing in December 2002, he sought out a terrible revenge on the six men who had assaulted him. The 25-year-old had made initial contact with the men through a homosexual, pornographic website and all concerned had agreed to meet at a local disco. There the six men got Li Yijiang drunk and took turns raping him. Almost immediately after his ordeal was over, Li Yijiang began plotting his revenge. Within six months he had managed to lure each one of his attackers away individually to isolated spots, where he murdered them and then cut off their genitals.
When it was discovered that the six murders had all been subscribers to the same pornographic internet site, police managed to track down Li Yijiang, who was arrested in August 2003. He promptly confessed to the six murders, for which he showed not the slightest trace of remorse.
The fact that the murders stemmed from an internet porn site was yet another justification for the Chinese government’s recent crackdown on internet pornography and adult cinemas countrywide, especially near universities and schools. Apparently, Li Yijiang had been an excellent student until he had become addicted to pornography, or at least so his defence team had argued. But there was to be no mercy for Li Yijiang, or the ‘Penis Slasher’ as he had quickly but briefly become known the world over. Shortly after being found guilty, he was executed by firing squad.
REVENGE OF A DYING MAN: MICHAEL LUPO
When ex-army commando-turned-Chelsea fashion boutique owner Michael Lupo learned that he had AIDS in March 1986, he decided to wreak revenge on the entire gay community, whom he blamed for his impending death. His first victim was 37-year-old James Burns, a railway worker he met in a gay bar. Lupo, who boasted that he had slept with at least 4,000 men during his lifetime, bit off his victim’s tongue, strangled him to death, smeared the corpse with excrement and then mutilated the body with a razor.
He continued his quest for vengeance in the course of a two-month murder spree, strangling to death a homeless man, a waiter and a hospital worker, all of whom he picked up in gay bars. Lupo (or the ‘Wolf Man’ as he preferred to call himself) was finally brought to justice when one of his victims managed to escape after being very nearly strangled to death in a car park.
This victim was later instrumental in Lupo’s capture. Soon after agreeing to help police track down the killer, he spotted Lupo in a gay bar in Brixton; Lupo was apparently scouring for his next potential victim. When arrested and taken in for questioning, the 33-year-old Lupo immediately admitted the killings and a further two attempted murders and was sentenced to life terms by the Old Bailey. He spent the last seven years of his life on a hospital ward in prison before finally succumbing to an AIDS-related illness in February 1995.
DOING HUMANITY A FAVOUR? MARIO POGGI
In 1986, a serial killer called Angel Diaz Balbin was arrested and charged with the murder of over 20 prostitutes in Peru’s capital city, Lima. Balbin, it was suspected, had raped and then dismembered his victims, dumping the remains in trash cans all over the city. His final capture was, of course, a huge relief to the citizens of Lima, who had been living under the shadow of the serial killer for several months, but to begin with Balbin refused to confess. In fact, he steadfastly refused to say a single word to police at all.
Unsure if Balbin was faking some kind of psychological disorder, police requested the help of famed psychologist Dr Mario Poggi to try to get Balbin to talk and hopefully get a confession. As well as being a psychologist, Poggi had been a child prodigy, was a famous eccentric and had gained national fame as a pundit and outspoken TV personality; he also sported trademark dyed-green hair. To add to his CV, Poggi spoke five languages fluently, had studied in eminent universities all over Europe; he was also a notorious womaniser, hypnotist, sculptor, writer, journalist and even ventriloquist.
Eager as always for the media spotlight, as soon as he was asked to participate in the case, Poggi went to the magazine with the largest circulation in Peru and offered them an exclusive interview. Three days later, the story made the front page of the magazine, which ran a picture of Poggi examining the patient, while inside there was a three-page spread describing how the doctor had attempted to hypnotise his patient and get him to confess to his hideous crimes. Balbin, though, much to Poggi’s annoyance, hadn’t said a single word.
Poggi was absolutely certain of Balbin’s guilt but was also sure that the killer would be released to a mental hospital, where he would be treated and perhaps released once again back into society. Certain that Balbin would kill if he ever got the chance, Poggi decided to take matters into his own hands. A few days after his interview with the magazine, Poggi requested that he be left alone with his patient, a request that was granted.
According to Poggi’s later confession, Balbin had been left handcuffed with his hands tied behind his back in his cell. On entering the cell, Poggi removed the killer’s clothes and his own in order to try to get the killer sexually aroused so that he would finally break and show him how he raped his victims before cutting them up and killing them. Yet the utterly impassive killer remained silent. In a rage, Poggi put the killer face down on the floor, removed his belt from his trousers and strangled him to death.
Appearing on national television as he was being taken away by police, Poggi was seen weeping uncontrollably and screaming, ‘I saved humanity! I finished the monster.’ Later, after his release from prison, Poggi said in an interview, ‘I had to eliminate him. He was a bad element in society. I had to do it. My sacrifice was not a crime. All of the world flattered me for it. The whole world wanted to shake my hand and say, “Well done.” I feel rewarded by society for what I have done. After all, what does it mean to sacrifice oneself? I gave everything to society, my diploma, my titles, my prestige… society has rewarded me for the loss of all these things, but I did it with a lot of love.’
Poggi recently claimed in an interview that he had not killed Balbin at all, that instead he had willingly taken a fall for the Peruvian police. According to this version of events, the police had lost their temper with the killer because he had refused to talk and so had kicked him to death in his cell; they then faked the autopsy to make it look like he had been strangled. Poggi claims that he had agreed to take the blame so that he would be able to study the psychology of prisoners in Peruvian jails after being told that he would only get a sentence of four months. In fact, he ended up serving five years. Poggi received a hero’s welcome on his release, appeared regularly on chat shows and wrote an autobiography called I’m the Only One Who Knows I’m a Jerk.
Although there is no real solid evidence either way, many journalists and law-enforcement officials in Peru hold firmly to the belief that Poggi might well have strangled the wrong man, as prostitutes continued to suddenly disappear off the streets of Peru long after Balbin’s arrest and vigilante-style murder.
THE MAD MA
RINE: STEPHEN SCHAPS
One revenge murder case is so bizarrely grotesque that it is often taken wrongly for an urban myth. In 1993, when serviceman Stephen Schaps found that his wife had been cheating on him with buddy and fellow soldier Sergeant Glover – and that, worse still, his wife was pregnant with his friend’s child – he went well and truly berserk. The furious GI hacked off his friend’s head with an army knife and promptly drove off to the hospital where his wife was scheduled to give birth. He then showed his wife her boyfriend’s head, which he took out of a bag.
Completely covered in blood, the marine told her, ‘Look, Diane – Glover’s here! He’ll sleep with you every night now. Only you won’t sleep – because all you’ll see is this!’
When doctors arrived at the scene, Schaps had laid the head on a nightstand so that the decapitated head was looking straight at his wife.
Just so there is absolutely no doubt that this did actually happen, here is the account according to court transcripts:
‘Placing the severed head into an athletic bag, appellant took it to the hospital where his wife had been admitted when it was feared she might be suffering a miscarriage (of a child by the deceased). To the horror of his wife and hospital personnel, appellant burst into her room, pulled the head out of the bag, deposited it on her bedside tray table, and physically forced her to look at it.’
One of the German doctors who rushed to the room described the killer as talking ‘logically’ about what he had just done while they waited for the police to arrive. The doctor recalled, ‘And the context of what he talked about to us was that he felt humiliated and betrayed by his wife. I remember that he told us that he found a list in her car with several names. And he repeated some times, all of this. And then he told us that he had learned how to disconnect a head from a human body.’
The World's Most Bizarre Murders Page 15