The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers Read online

  In the end, Lucas’s life would be spared. The state of Texas’s leniency came from the most unlikely source. Then-governor George W. Bush, who allowed one hundred fifty-two people to be executed during his term, used his power to commute a death sentence only once—and that was for Lucas in 1998. He based his decision on the findings of the State Board of Pardons and Parole, which indicated Lucas might have been in Florida at the time one of his supposed victims—a female hitchhiker whose corpse was clad in nothing but a pair of orange socks—was killed. But Lucas’s unexpected reprieve did not extend his life for very long. In 2001, three years after eluding a lethal injection, he died in prison of a heart attack.

  Lucas’s nine other murder convictions were never challenged. His prosecutor did not go along with the more extravagant estimates of Lucas’s body count, but still maintained that he had killed anywhere between three and a dozen people. Whatever the actual total, the horrific nature of Lucas’s life and crimes was summed up in one of his own statements: “Killing someone is just like walking outdoors. If I wanted a victim, I’d just go and get one.”

  Viewers interested in subjecting themselves to a singularly disturbing cinematic experience should rush right out and rent Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, John McNaughton’s brilliant (if harrowing) fictionalization of the Lucas-Toole story.

  “Sex is one of my downfalls. I get sex any way I can get it. If I have to force somebody to do it, I do. . . . I rape them; I’ve done that, I’ve killed animals to have sex with them, and I’ve had sex while they’re alive.”

  HENRY LEE LUCAS

  LUSTMORD

  For unexplained reasons, possibly having to do with their national character, Germans have a knack for coining colorful, descriptive words for nasty human behavior. The same folks who came up with the term schadenfreude (meaning “to take pleasure in another person’s misfortune”) also invented the word lustmord: to kill for joy, for the sheer, sexy fun of it.

  Lustmord, in short, is really another, catchier name for sexual homicide. The classic lust murderer doesn’t just kill his victims (usually women). He derives intense erotic pleasure from maiming and mutilating their bodies—gutting or beheading them, cutting out their vulvas, slicing off their breasts. “The presumption of a murder out of lust is always given when injuries of the genitals are found,” writes Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing in his classic study, Psychopathia Sexualis, “and still more, when the body has been opened or parts (intestines, genitals) torn out.”

  Not only did the Germans invent the term lustmord, they pioneered its actual practice—at least according to one crime expert, Colin Wilson, who maintains that the earliest documented lust murderer in history was a sixteenth-century German named Nicklaus Stüller. Among his other atrocities, Stüller killed and cut open the bellies of three pregnant women, one of whom was carrying twins.

  In our own century, Germany has continued its tradition of producing some of the worlds most appalling lust murderers. During the years between the two world wars, no fewer than four of these monsters were at large in Germany: Fritz Haarmann, the “Vampire of Hanover,” responsible for the slaughter of as many as fifty young men; Georg Grossmann, the “Berlin Butcher,” charged with murdering and cannibalizing fourteen young women; Karl Denke, the “Mass Murderer of Münsterberg,” another cannibal who butchered at least thirty people and stored their pickled flesh in the basement of his inn; and Peter Kürten, the “Monster of Düsseldorf,” who murdered, raped, and mutilated a minimum of thirty-five victims, mostly women and children.

  For a scholarly discussion of lust murder as a major theme in German art and literature during the years between the wars, readers are referred to Maria Tartar’s book, Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

  LYCANTHROPY

  Serial murder has always existed, but the terminology used to describe this most heinous of crimes has changed over the centuries. Four hundred years ago, killers roamed the European countryside, slaughtering their victims with a bestial ferocity. But back then, they weren’t known as “sociopaths” or “homicidal maniacs” or “lust murderers.” They were known as “lycanthropes,” a term that derives from two Greek words—lykos (meaning “wolf”) and anthropos (meaning “man”). In short, these maniacs were thought to be literal wolfmen or werewolves.

  Some of these psychos were so deranged that they themselves might have actually believed they were supernatural monsters. The peasants they preyed on certainly did. So did the authorities, who openly believed in lycanthropy and regarded it as one of the most pressing social problems of the day.

  In old-time movies like the 1941 classic The Wolf Man, lycanthropy is depicted as a terrible curse. Lon Chaney Jr. doesn’t enjoy turning into a werewolf, but whenever the moon is full, he begins to sprout hair, claws, and fangs whether he likes it or not. Sixteenth-century people had a different view of things. Werewolves were regarded as malevolent men who had deliberately entered into a bargain with the devil. They wanted to turn into monsters.

  In the late 1500s, a French hermit named Gilles Garnier was rumored to have cut just such a demonic deal. In exchange, he received a black-magic ointment that allowed him to turn into a ravenous, man-eating wolf. At roughly the same time, a German named Peter Stübbe supposedly peddled his soul for an enchanted belt that endowed him with lycanthropic powers.

  The methods of transformation might have differed, but the killings committed by these two maniacs were remarkably similar and equally stomach churning—far more gruesome than the make-believe horrors in any wolfman movie. Both Garnier and Stübbe were lust murderers and cannibals who preyed primarily on children. In two months, Gamier attacked and tore apart four little victims, using his bare hands and teeth. During a much longer period, Stübbe ravaged at least fifteen victims—including his own son. After ripping out the boy’s throat, Stübbe allegedly cracked open his skull and devoured his brains.

  Modern-day psychiatry has given us concepts like “antisocial personality disorder” to replace the medieval notion of lycanthropy. Even in the twentieth century, however, a killer occasionally came along whose crimes were so appalling that they seemed like the work of a supernatural monster. Back in the late 1920s, for example, the cannibal-killer Albert Fish lured a twelve-year-old girl to an abandoned house known as Wisteria Cottage, then killed her, cut her to pieces, and removed several pounds of her flesh, which he turned into a stew. When this crime was discovered, tabloid writers wracked their brains to come up with sensational names for its perpetrator.

  Among other lurid labels, they called him the “Werewolf of Wisteria.”

  “Look down on me, you will see a fool. Look up at me, you will see your lord. Look straight at me, you will see yourself.”

  CHARLES MANSON

  Charles Manson

  Manson is unique among homicidal maniacs. The killings that brought him lasting notoriety—the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, the most shocking crimes of the 1960s—were actually committed by others; he himself never fired a pistol or wielded a knife. But that’s precisely the source of his dark fascination—the Svengali-like power he exerted over his slavish followers, who were prepared to do his most blood-crazed bidding. Though Manson was little more than a clever con artist with a knack for occult babble, he made himself into an evil messiah, a malevolent guru, an embodiment of the darkest impulses of an era that began by preaching peace, love, and flower power and ended up awash in the satanic fantasy of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and “Sympathy for the Devil.”

  Charles Manson trading card from Bloody Visions

  (© & ™ 1995 M. H. Price and Shel-Tone Publications. All rights reserved.)

  The illegitimate son of a dissolute mother who reportedly once tried to swap him for a pitcher of beer, Manson endured a nightmarish childhood of abandonment and abuse. His adolescence was essentially a continuous cycle of petty crime, arrest, incarceration, and escape. (“Truth is,” Manson once said in a rare moment
of insight, “I ain’t never been anything but a half-assed thief who didn’t know how to steal without getting caught.”) At eighteen, he sodomized a fellow inmate at knifepoint, a deed that earned him a stint in a federal reformatory. Paroled in 1954, he spent the next dozen years in and out of various prisons for crimes ranging from check forgery to pimping. By the time he was released in 1967—against his own objections—the thirty-three-year-old Manson had spent the bulk of his life behind bars.

  He emerged during the heady days of the so-called Summer of Love, when the counterculture was at its euphoric peak. In San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district—the hotbed of hippiedom—Manson discovered psychedelic drugs, free love, and Aquarian Age occultism. Before long, his sinister charisma had attracted a “family” of drifters and dropouts.

  Living with his followers on a dusty ranch outside LA, Manson developed a bizarre apocalyptic theory, partly inspired by—of all things—the Beatles’ White Album, one of the most benign and whimsical rock and roll albums ever recorded. In particular, he interpreted the song “Helter Skelter” (which referred to an amusement-park kiddie ride) as a prophecy about an impending race war, during which blacks would rise up and exterminate all white people, except for Manson and his chosen few, who would eventually rule the world. To instigate the war, Manson sent his followers on a deranged mission, ordering them to slay some prominent white people in a way that would implicate black revolutionaries. On the night of August 9, 1969, five of Manson’s “family” members broke into the home of film director Roman Polanski and savagely butchered his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, along with four other people. Before leaving, they used the victims’ blood to scrawl incendiary graffiti on the walls. The following night, Manson himself led a party of his “creepy crawlers” to the home of a couple named LaBianca, who were similarly slaughtered and mutilated.

  The killings set off a panic in Los Angeles and sent shock waves throughout the nation. Ultimately, Manson was arrested when one of his female followers—in jail on an unrelated charge—boasted of the murders to a cell mate.

  Manson turned his 1970 trial into a circus (see Courtroom Theatrics), but the jury was not amused. He and four of his followers were slated for the gas chamber, but their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1972, when the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty.

  “Wow, what a trip!”

  Manson “family” member Susan Atkins, after licking Sharon Tate’s blood off her hands

  MARRIAGE

  That some of the most notorious serial killers in history have been husbands and fathers is a striking testament to the grotesquely divided personalities of these psychopaths—their ability to lead outwardly “normal” lives while secretly engaged in the most depraved activities imaginable. The roster of homicidal family men includes Albert Fish, John Wayne Gacy, Albert DeSalvo, and Andrei Chikatilo. It comes as no surprise to learn that their marriages weren’t exactly made in heaven.

  Though DeSalvo’s wife never divorced him, his unslakable sex drive (reputedly, he insisted on lovemaking as often as six times a day) turned her life into an unremitting ordeal. Other women haven’t displayed Mrs. DeSalvo’s tolerance. After being driven to distraction by his incessant sexual demands, Earle Leonard Nelson’s sixty-year-old wife finally kicked him out of the house (at which point he began venting his libido by raping and strangling elderly landladies from coast to coast).

  Three wives abandoned Angelo Buono—one of the “Hillside Stranglers”—in rapid succession because of his brutal sex habits (one wife alleged that Buono sodomized her in front of the children). After putting up with his “peculiarities” for almost twenty years—such as his tendency to stroll around the house naked while screaming, “I am Christ!”—Fish’s first wife, Anna, finally ran off with a young lover. Fish proceeded to woo and wed a string of desperate widows, each of whom dumped him the moment she discovered his fondness for such nuptial pastimes as flagellation and coprophagy.

  Gacy’s first wife filed for divorce on the day he was sentenced to prison on sodomy charges. His second marriage likewise fell apart after it became clear that Gacy’s preferred form of sex involved young male pickups. His wife had no idea, of course, that the crawl space beneath their suburban home contained the corpses of several dozen of these victims. She herself escaped unscathed. The wife of British sex slayer John Reginald Christie wasn’t as lucky. She ended up as one of his victims, her body stashed beneath the dining room floorboards of their London flat (see Homebodies).

  By contrast, some serial killers actually manage to remain contentedly married to women who never suspect that their husbands are anything other than ordinary, if slightly eccentric, individuals. This was true of Peter Kürten, one of the most appalling lust murderers of the twentieth century, whose devoted wife had no inkling that her husband was the infamous “Monster of Düsseldorf.”

  Even more unbelievable are those cases in which the wives are not only aware of their husbands’ depravities but also actively participate in them. Gerald Gallego’s seventh wife, Charlene, helped lure young female victims into his clutches by promising them free marijuana. And the British sex slayer Rosemary West allegedly helped her husband, Fred, torture and murder ten people—including their own sixteen-year-old daughter (see Killer Couples).

  MASK OF SANITY

  The Mask of Sanity is the title of a classic 1976 study of the psychopathic personality by psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley. The phrase itself refers to the psychopath’s most chilling characteristic: his ability to appear perfectly ordinary, to conceal his cold-blooded nature beneath a normal facade.

  Not all psychopaths are criminals. Some are highly successful people. After all, they are masters of manipulation. They can make you believe that they are the most caring, sensitive, charming people in the world. But it’s all a show. Under the surface, they’re hollow to the core—complete egocentrics who care about nothing except their own greedy desires.

  The serial killer is the most frightening of all psychopaths. The most basic human emotions—empathy, conscience, remorse—are completely missing from his emotional makeup. Behind his “mask of sanity,” he is utterly evil. And yet, he’s so good at dissembling that it’s almost impossible to see his true, monstrous face.

  Not, at any rate, until it’s too late.

  For more on this phenomenon, see Jekyll/Hyde.

  Psychopathic Checklist

  Is someone you know—a neighbor, relative, or possibly your spouse—a criminal psychopath? Are you one yourself? Dr. Robert Hare—a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and author of Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (1999)—has devised a twenty-item checklist identifying the main characteristics of the psychopathic personality. See how many you or your loved ones possess!

  1. Glib and superficial charm—the tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick, and verbally facile. A psychopath never gets tongue-tied.

  2. Grandiose self-worth—a grossly inflated view of one’s abilities and self-worth. Psychopaths are arrogant people who believe they are superior human beings.

  3. Need for stimulation or proneness to boredom—an excessive need for novel, thrilling, and exciting stimulation; taking chances and doing things that are risky.

  4. Pathological lying—can be moderate or high.

  5. Conning and manipulativeness—the use of deceit and deception to con, cheat, or defraud others for personal gain.

  6. Lack of remorse or guilt—a lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims.

  7. Shallow affect—emotional poverty or a limited range or depth of feelings.

  8. Callousness and lack of empathy—a lack of feeling toward people in general; cold, contemptuous, inconsiderate, and tactless.

  9. Parasitic lifestyle—an intentional, manipulative, selfish, and exploitative financial dependence on others.

  10. Poor behavioral controls—expressions of irr
itability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse.

  11. Promiscuous sexual behavior—a variety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of sexual partners.

  12. Early behavioral problems—a variety of behaviors prior to age thirteen, including lying, theft, cheating, vandalism, bullying, sexual activity, fire-setting, glue-sniffing, alcohol use, and running away from home.

  13. Lack of realistic long-term goals—an inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals.

  14. Impulsivity—the occurrence of behaviors that are unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation.

  15. Irresponsibility—repeated failure to fulfill or honor obligations and commitments.

  16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions—as reflected in low conscientiousness, an absence of dutifulness, denial of responsibility, and an effort to manipulate others through this denial.

  17. Many short-term marital relationships—a lack of commitment to a long-term relationship.

  18. Juvenile delinquency—behavior problems between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.

  19. Revocation of conditional release—a revocation of probation or other conditional releases due to technical violations.

  20. Criminal versatility—a diversity of types of criminal offenses; taking great pride in getting away with crimes.