The World's Most Bizarre Murders

by James Marrison

  These disturbing findings were borne out two years later when a second, similar case surfaced in Germany, this time in Berlin. In October 2004, 41-year-old musician Ralf Meyer walked into a police station in Berlin and announced, ‘I have killed a man. Help me, there’s a man in my fridge.’

  When police entered Meyer’s house, they found that he had indeed killed and then dismembered 33-year-old music teacher Joe Ritzkowsky.

  Like Armin Meiwes and Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, the two had met via an internet chartroom. After a masochistic sex session, Meyer had stabbed Ritzkowsky in the neck with a screwdriver and then spent the rest of the night dismembering his victim. He ripped out the lungs, which he fed to his cat, and sliced off the man’s penis, which he prepared with spices and popped into the fridge. He then hacked off the arms and limbs and left them by the side of the torso on the bed.

  When Meyer had finished dismembering the body, he wrapped the internal organs in clingfilm and then carefully placed them in the fridge too. Detectives believed that Meyer had planned to eat his victim as a continuation of his violent, sado-masochistic murder binge, but had resisted the temptation to do so.

  Meiwes claimed that Brandes had been a willing victim and that therefore no murder had been carried out. His lawyers argued for a conviction on the charge of ‘killing on demand’. The prosecution though wanted him to be charged with murder for ‘sexual pleasure’ and also for the crime of ‘disturbing the peace of the dead’, due to the fact that he hacked up and ate parts of the body. In the end Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and was handed down a sentence of eight-and-a-half years. However, the German Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in 2006 that the sentence was too lenient and Meiwes should be retried for murder. He was convicted for murder and sentenced to life in prison.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  HOW TO SPOT A NATURAL BORN KILLER

  Is a killer’s real nature written all over his face?

  Today, we still associate evil with a certain type of person – just look at all those ugly-looking villains out there in movies. So, while common sense tells us that a killer can look like anyone else, we still somehow expect them to look like murderers. Unfortunately for us, they very rarely do. The reality is that killers almost always look and act (in public, at least) just like you or I. Take Ted Bundy, for instance – he murdered an estimated 37 women and wasn’t a bad-looking guy at all. Then there was ‘Cross-Country Killer’ Glen Rogers, a real lady’s man suspected of murdering at least 70 women (including OJ Simpson’s wife).

  But imagine if you could actually identify a killer just by looking at his face. It may seem incredible to us today, but, from the 16th century up until the 1950s, hordes of scientists and scholars were convinced that there could well be a way to discover a killer in a crowd and stop him before he ever committed a crime. They visited jails and lunatic asylums, photographed thousands of prisoners, carried out endless autopsies on dead convicts and made extensive studies of every single part of the human body. Then, in order to back up their research, they examined some of the most celebrated killers of their time.

  Once published, their discoveries were eagerly lapped up by the public. The idea that you really could spot a killer just by looking at him was incredibly seductive. If he could be identified at birth, so much the better. You could just wipe him off the face of the earth.

  Problem solved.

  THE MURDER ORGAN

  The first scientists to equate physical characteristics with inborn depravity were the phrenologists. Swiss physician Franz-Joseph Gall (1758–1828) claimed that there were some 26 ‘organs’ on the surface of the brain that could be identified by examining the skull, including the so-called ‘murder organ’.

  Phrenology is considered a bit of a joke today, but it represented an unprecedented attempt to provide a scientific explanation for murder. Dr Nicole Rafter, who runs a graduate course in Biological Theories of Crime at the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, explained to me that phrenologists ‘could even explain the behaviour of criminals whom we today would call serial killers and psychopaths’. Although phrenology was largely discredited by the 1850s, it resurfaced in dramatic fashion when phrenologist Dr Edgar Beall was asked to examine murderess Ruth Snyder and report his findings to the jury in one of the most sensational court cases of the early 20th century.

  In 1927, Snyder had persuaded her weak-willed lover, Judd Gray, to bash her husband’s head in with a sash weight while he was asleep. As Gray turned chicken, she grabbed the weight and finished the job herself. By the time Beall was called to testify, the evidence against the two was already overwhelming, but the phrenologist’s report made sure that their fate was well and truly sealed. Snyder, concluded Beall, had all ‘the character of a shallow-brained pleasure seeker’ and the jury agreed, condemning the star-crossed lovers to squirm in the chair at Sing Sing. Incidentally, photographer Thomas Howard from The Daily News took a photograph of Snyder as she died in the chair. It made the front page of the paper and was so popular that 75,000 extra copies had to be printed immediately. The murder case also inspired, arguably, two of the best film noirs ever made: Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Knocks Twice.

  CRIMINAL MAN

  Soon after the conception of phrenology, scientists started looking elsewhere on the body for signs of inborn evil – particularly the face. The most famous figure in this field was Italian anthropologist and father of criminology Cesare Lombroso, whose Criminal Man (1876) was a bestseller in its day, going through five editions and expanding from just 200 pages in its first edition to 3,000 in its fifth.

  Lombroso would devote 50 years of his life attempting to body-map the evilness in man’s soul. He argued that criminals were remnants of man’s more murderous past and labelled them ‘atavistic’. The atavists, he argued, were throwbacks to the Stone Age and he defined them as ‘murderer savages living in the midst of a flourishing European civilisation’. They were less evolved than the rest of us, according to Lombroso, and as such retained various animalistic ‘stigmata’. Thus, rodent-like people were stealthy, while ape-like people were crafty and not to be trusted at all.

  As Lombroso’s fame grew, he appeared as an expert witness in countless trials. Rebecca B Fleming wrote an award-winning study of Lombroso (Scanty Goatees and Palmer Tattoos: Cesare Lombroso’s Influence and Popular Opinion) and discovered that in 1908 the French courts, unable to decide if a woman accused of murdering her children was guilty, sent a photo of the accused killer to Lombroso. He immediately declared that she was guilty just by looking at the picture. She had, he claimed, a round small skull, a flat forehead and a virile expression on her face – all bad signs of innate inborn depravity. She was convicted on the basis of the photo alone, although all the evidence pointed to the fact that the children had died of natural causes. On another occasion, Lombroso was asked to decide which of two brothers had murdered their stepmother. Lombroso picked one, claiming that he was ‘the most perfect type of born criminal’, and the man was promptly convicted.

  In order to support his findings, Lombroso examined some of the most famous murderers of his time, including a vampire-type killer called Vincent Verzeni. Verzeni strangled two women to death in 1871, wallowed in their internal organs, drank the blood of one of his victims and carried the intestines around in his pocket to touch and sniff on the way back to his mother’s house. He also took part of a thigh so that he could roast it when he got home (but then hid it because he thought his mother might find it). Verzeni, Lombroso claimed, was a perfect example of ‘primitive humanity’.

  BODY TYPE

  The process of body-mapping evil continued in the 1920s with the work of Ernst Kretchmer, who worked in a mental asylum. Noticing that the different varieties of schizophrenics appeared to have different body shapes – for example, paranoids were slight and slim, manic-depressives larger and fatter – Kretchmer launched a series of studies and published his findings in 1921.

  Perhaps the
widest and most ambitious study to find a correlation between body shape and crime was undertaken by Earnest Hooton, a Harvard anthropologist, in 1927. Determined to prove that Lombroso’s theory was fundamentally sound, Hooton undertook the massive task of studying 14,000 criminals over 12 years in ten states. At the end of this mammoth exercise, he declared that there was ‘a well nigh incredible relationship of body build to nature of offence’.

  Dr Hooton became so convinced of the importance of his findings that, during the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fair in Pittsburgh in 1938, he outlined a plan to cleanse the human race of evil: ‘What we must avoid is a progressive deterioration of mankind as a result of the reckless and copious breeding of protected inferiors,’ he proclaimed. ‘We have not the knowledge to breed supermen, but we can limit the reproduction of criminals and mental defectives. Let us cease to delude ourselves that education, religion or other measures of social amelioration can transform base metal into gold. Public enemies must be destroyed – not reformed.’

  The concept that body type could be an indicator of criminality was taken up yet again in the 1940s, this time by American psychologist Dr William Sheldon. Sheldon spent 30 years taking photographs of prison inmates and categorising them into three distinct body types. ‘Endomorphs’ were fat and round, liked luxury and were lazy. ‘Ectomorphs’ were frail, gangly and thin, and were introverted, cunning and stealthy, while ‘mesomorphs’ were large, strong, tough, active, dynamic and extremely assertive in their dealings with others. Through his hundreds of visits to prisons all over the United States, Sheldon concluded that criminals were predominantly mesomorphic.

  Although criminology may have moved on since those days, criminal physiognomy has never actually been discredited. Dr Candland, Professor of Psychology and Animal Behaviour at Bucknell University, explained to me that ‘few ideas in social science are truly discarded or found to be invalid: rather, they fade out, often enough to return again under a different guise. Criminal physiognomy is not disproved, for no one has tried seriously.’

  In fact, a handful of recent studies have persisted with a search for the link between physical looks and a propensity to commit crime. So, if you’ve got your doubts about a certain someone, here are a few things to watch out for. You never know, it might just save your life.

  HAIR

  The hair of criminals tends to mimic the hair of the opposite sex, argued Lombroso, while Hooton argued that red-brown hair was a common trait among born criminals. Thin hair or baldness, though, was regarded as absent among criminals, as was white or grey hair. Murderers had dark hair. Swindlers had curly hair. Arsonists had ash-blond hair. Burglars and second-degree murderers had golden hair and robbers sported long, wavy hair.

  FACIAL AND BODY HAIR

  Facial hair was significant too. It was believed that bushy eyebrows were a bad sign, as were eyebrows that met across the bridge of the nose. Another bad trait was a soft down on the forehead and a scanty beard – a sure sign of a pickpocket – while prostitutes, Lombroso discovered, generally tended to be hairy.

  THE SKULL

  Phrenologists believed that a slight protuberance above the ears was the sign of the ‘murder organ’. This was also known as the organ of ‘Murder to Destructiveness’, suggesting an inborn propensity not only to kill, but also to ‘pinch, scratch, bite, cut, break, pierce, devastate’. It was said to be larger in men than in women.

  THE FACE

  According to Lombroso, the protrusion of forehead and jaw was 45% greater in criminals than in non-criminals. Look out for people with asymmetrical faces and also those with projecting cheekbones and a predominance of wrinkles. According to Hooton, those individuals with compressed facial features and narrow jaws were best avoided. Helpfully, James Bruce Thomson, resident surgeon for a Scottish prison in the late 19th century, wrote in The Hereditary Nature of Crime that a criminal is ‘marked by a singular stupid and insensate look’.

  NOSE

  A high nasal bridge was a very bad sign for Hooton. According to Lombroso, in thieves the nose was often twisted, upturned or flattened, while in murderers it was aquiline ‘like the beak of a bird of prey’.

  MOUTH

  Fleshy lips, but a thin upper lip and ‘a depression in the jaw where the canine muscle is to be found. This muscle is commonly found in the dog where it serves, when contorted, to draw back the lip leaving the canines exposed.’ (Lombroso)

  CHEEKS

  ‘Folds in the flesh of the cheek which recall the pouches of certain species of mammals’ – this was a sign for murderers (Lombroso).

  TEETH

  Strong canine teeth are often present in murderers, as are enormously developed middle incisors, and tread lightly around those with a double row of teeth. Criminals had sharp teeth like predatory animals and gigantic canines. Lombroso noticed also that the middle incisors were often absent, ‘a peculiarity which recalls the incisors of rodents’.

  EARS

  Handle-shaped ears were another bad sign – ‘Ears of unusual size, or occasionally very small, or standing out from the head as do those of the chimpanzee’. This too was a sure sign of a natural born killer (Lombroso).

  EYES

  Eye defects and peculiarities such as the asymmetry of the iris were bad signs, as were large eye sockets. The eyes often show a ‘hard expression’ and ‘shift glance’ and are hooded by oblique eyelids. According to Havelock Ellis, in The Criminal (1890), ‘The eyes of assassins resemble those of the feline animals at the moment of ambush or struggle.’

  BODY SHAPES

  Hooton divided body types into types of criminals. So, short-slender individuals were burglars. A short-medium frame suggested an arsonist. Short-heavy individuals were rapists. Tall-slender types were murderers in all degrees, while tall-heavy men with large chests and heads were cold-blooded first-degree murderers.

  TATTOOS

  Lombroso associated tattoos on the body with criminality, especially among women. They were, he argued, an emblem of a man ‘still living in a savage state’. A criminal’s ability to take the pain of getting a tattoo was also given as evidence that he or she was less sensitive to pain.

  BACK

  An enlarged coccyx that could be mistaken for a stump of a tail, especially if it has hairs on the end of it, meant that the individual was without any doubt a remorseless killer.

  HANDS

  Long hands were prevalent in pickpockets, whereas pointy or snubbed fingers were prevalent in criminals in general. Extra fingers or a diminished number of lines in the palms of one’s hands were further signs of innate evil.

  FEET

  Flat footed. Too many toes. Mobile big toes. Pointy, webby, stubby toes. All were regarded as signs of innate criminality. Prostitutes, according to Lombroso, possessed a very large big toe that was unusually separated from the other toes.

  CHEST

  A large chest was more prevalent in murderers – and watch out for an extra nipple, which was a sure sign that its possessor was a natural born murderer.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  CHAPTER ONE

  Abos, Alvaro. ‘El Petiso Orejudo: primer asesino serial argentino’. La Nacion, 15 January 2006.

  Cuneo, Carlos. Las Carceles. Centro Editor de America Latina, 1971.

  Cuneo, Carlos and Gonzales, Abel. La Delinquencia. CentroEditor de America Latina S.A., 1971.

  Gonzalez, Gustavo and Barcia, Jose. Testimonios y experiencias de un cronista porteno. Historia Press, 1979.

  Staff. ‘La saga del Petiso Orejudo’. Clarin, 31 August 2005.

  An excellent variety of primary sources are available online thanks to the work of Milton Javier Contreras, who wrote the definitive account of the case in his book Santos Godino El Petiso Orejudo, Dunken Press, 2000.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kamiyama, Masuo. ‘Paris “Cannibal” Sagawa Still hungers for Attention’. Mainichi Daily News, October 2007.

  Ramsland, Katherine. ‘The Cannibal Celebrity Issei Sagawa�
��. Crime Library. (www.crimelibrary.com)

  Ryall, Julian. ‘Taste in Women that Takes Some Swallowing’. Scotsman on Sunday, 18 July 2004.

  Sagawa, Issei. Into the Fog. Tokyo: Hanashi No Tokusyu, 1983.

  Schreiber, Mark. The Dark Side: Infamous Japanese Crimes and Criminal. Relié Publishing, 2000.

  Schreiber, Mark. ‘Japan’s own “Cannibal” tries his hand at comics’. Japan Today, 20 February 2001.

  Staff. ‘The real Hannibal Lecters’. BBC News, 16 February 2001.

  Whipple, Charles T. ‘The Silencing of the Lambs’. 4 March 2008. (www.charlest.whipple.net)

  Wright, Evan Alan. ‘Death of a Hostess’. Time Magazine, 7 May 2001.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Azevedo, Solange; Dantas, Edna. ‘Marcelo de Andrade – O sadismo tinha subido à minha cabeça’. Epoca Magazine, 22 September 2003.

  Casoy, Ilana. Serial Killers: Made in Brazil. Editora Arx, 2004.

  Mendoza, Antonio. Serial Killer Hit List Part II Marcelo de Andrade, Internet Crime Archives. (www.mayhem.net)

  Morrison, Helen. My Life Amongst The Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of The World’s Most Notorious Murderers. Harper Collins, 2004.

  Staff. ‘Brazil “serial killer” on trial’. BBC News America, 24 October 2006.

  Staff. ‘Mad Cow Disease In The U.S.? Don’t Panic, But One Version’s Already Here’. Newsweek, 8 April 1996.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Chacón, Daniel. ‘Mystery persists as sailor laid to rest’. The San Diego Union Tribune, 14 August 2005.