Nightmares

According to some experts, 1 in 25 Americans is a sociopath who has no conscience. These are people who could cut your throat from ear to ear because they don't like your haircut and then go out for dinner and dancing before drifting off to a good night's sleep. The good news is that the vast majority of these sociopaths aren't inclined to be violent. In fact, many of them have even gone on to enjoy long, successful careers.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case—particularly when a child who already has those inclinations also endures horrific abuse or a serious mental illness. When you put together an inability to feel guilt with a perverse desire to inflict physical suffering, you have a lethal killing machine that is all the more dangerous because he often looks just like everyone else. Remember what neighbors and friends always seem to say about serial killers and mass murderers: He might have been a little strange, but he was quiet and kept to himself. I never thought he'd do anything like this.

That's probably just what the victims of these killers thought as they wandered into the grasp of these butchers like flies caught in the web of a cold, remorseless spider. The killers you're about to read about don't necessarily have the highest body counts, but their bizarre and sadistic behavior makes them stand out even in the ranks of America's worst murderers.

(Note: What you're about to read is genuinely disturbing and not for the faint of heart. Please don't say that I didn't warn you).

CASE LIST

Aileen Wuornos

Al Capone

Anthrax Murders

Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys

Arthur Shawcross the Genesee River Killer

Bonnie and Clyde

Boston Strangler

Charles Carl Roberts

Charles Chitat Ng

Charles Manson

Charles Panzram aka Carl Panzram

Charles Ray Hatcher

Charles Whitman: The Texas Tower Sniper

Charlie Starkweather: Teenage Spree Killer

D.C. Sniper Attacks of 2002

David Berkowitz (Son of Sam)

Dennis Rader: The BTK Killer

Dr. Jack Kevorkian aka Dr. Death

Ed Gein

Edmund Kemper: The Co-ed Killer

Elizabeth Short: The Black Dahlia

Gary Gilmore

Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer

H.H. Holmes

Henry Lee Lucas

Jeffrey Dahmer

Jim Jones

John Wayne Gacy: Killer Clown

JonBenet Ramsey

Kenneth Bianchi: The Hillside Strangler

Kristen Gilbert

Mark Chapman: The killing of John Lennon

Martha Moxley

Menendez Brothers

OJ Simpson

Randy Steven Kraft

Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker

Richard Speck

Ted Bundy

Ted Kaczynski The Unibomber

The Assassination of John F Kennedy

The Assassination of Malcolm ‘X’

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy

The Caylee Anthony Case

The Columbine Massacre

The Lindbergh Kidnapping

The Waco Siege

The Zodiac Killer

Timothy McVeigh

William George Bonin The Freeway Killer

Aileen Wuornos

Her year-long killing spree left seven men dead. But was she a cold-blooded killer or a tragic victim of violence and abuse fighting back? Was she born a killer, or made one?

Aileen Carol Pittman was born in Rochester, Michigan, on 29th February 1956; the product of a troubled marriage between Leo Dale Pittman, a psychopathic child molester, and Diane Wuornos, a feckless teen mother quite incapable of the responsibilities of motherhood. Diane abandoned Wuornos and her elder brother, Keith, to the care of her parents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos, before she was 4 years old, and they adopted the pair and raised them as their own.

Having been saved from one appalling domestic situation, the Wuornos children found themselves in another one less from ideal, if Wuornos’ accounts of her childhood are to be believed: her adoptive parents (in reality her biological grandparents) kept their true status a secret, and Lauri Wuornos was an abusive parent, both physically and sexually, while his wife Britta was an abusive alcoholic. The children only discovered their true identities when Wuornos was about 12, which served only to worsen an already unstable domestic situation.

Wuornos claims that sexual contact with both Lauri Wuornos, and her brother, Keith, occurred from a very early age, although there is no firm corroborative evidence for this. But her sexual precocity, from whatever source, is certain: Wuornos fell pregnant, aged 14, claiming that Keith was the father, and she was sent to a home for unwed mothers.  On 23rd March 1971 she gave birth to a baby boy, who was given up for immediate adoption.

Within months of Wuornos returning to the family home, her grandmother died of liver failure, a result of heavy drinking (although years later Wuornos’ biological mother claimed that Wuornos had killed her.) Her husband Lauri insisted that Wuornos and Keith be removed from his house, and they were made wards of the court for a short time, before Wuornos ran away and began a life of hitchhiking, prostitution and crime that supported her over the next four years.

In May 1974 she was jailed in Jefferson County for disorderly conduct, drunk driving and firing a weapon from a vehicle. Two years later, in Michigan, she was arrested for assault and disturbing the peace, after attacking a bartender.

Hitchhiking across America, Wuornos arrived in Florida and was presented with a potentially life-changing piece of luck: she met wealthy yacht club president, 69-year old Lewis Fell, who fell in love with her, and they were married in 1976.  Wuornos soon reverted to type, however, and began fighting in bars, and was sent to jail for assault as a result. Fell was horrified; a brawling bride had no place in his high-society lifestyle, and he had the marriage annulled after a few months.

Thereafter Wuornos’ life resumed its steady downward spiral: her brother Keith died of throat cancer in the same year as her marriage and divorce from Fell, and she blew his $10,000 life insurance cheque on a luxury car that she wrecked shortly after. Her destructive streak continued and, over the next ten years, she drifted aimlessly, still working as a prostitute, and committing various crimes that ranged from forgery and theft, to armed robbery and assault.

In 1986, Aileen met 24-year-old Tyria Moore at a Daytona gay bar. The couple began a volatile and intense relationship that lasted for four years, and Moore was drawn into Wuornos’ cycle of vandalism, violence and harassment.

The Crimes

Wuornos’ first known victim was an electronics shop owner, 51-year-old Richard Mallory from Clearwater, Florida, who picked up Wuornos on 30th November 1989. She claims that he tried to rape her, and that she killed him in self-defence (he was later discovered to have a criminal record for rape, although it was not raised at her trial.) She shot him three times with a .22 pistol, dumped his body in a wood beside Interstate 95 in Volusia County, Florida and stole his Cadillac. His car was discovered abandoned outside Daytona a few days later, and two young men discovered his naked body on 13th December 1989. During the investigation of Mallory’s life and death, police discovered a pattern of alcohol and sex binges, extending back over a number of years, and made little headway in the search for his killer.

It was six months before the next victim was discovered, 43-year old David Spears, a heavy machinery operator from Sarasota. His naked body was found on 1st June 1990 in Citrus County, 40 miles north of Tampa, Florida, and he had been shot six times with a .22 pistol. It took police another week to effect identification, via dental records, and they discovered that he had been missing since 19th May, and that his truck had been found some days later, abandoned on Interstate 75.

By the time Spears had been identified, another naked victim had been found, this time thirty miles south of Pasco County, near the Interstate 75, on 6th June 1990. The body was so badly decomposed that police were unable to progress their identification immediately, but the fact that the corpse was naked, and riddled with nine .22 calibre bullets, led to it being tentatively linked to the two previous victims. The victim was later identified as 40-year old rodeo worker, Charles Carskaddon.

The police received their first real break on 4th July 1990, when Wuornos and Moore crashed their car near Orange Springs, Florida, whilst in the midst of a heated argument. They left the crash scene, but were described to the police by a witness later, when the vehicle was found to belong to a missing 65-year old retired merchant seaman called Peter Siems. He had last been seen on 7th June 1990, and the interior of the vehicle, when examined, exhibited signs of a struggle, and yielded a number of finger- and palm prints. The description of the two women, and the crime MO, was circulated throughout Florida and nationwide.

Wuornos’ next victim was 50-year old delivery driver Eugene Burress, whose employer raised the alarm when he failed to complete his delivery route on 30th July 1990. His delivery truck was found abandoned the next day, and a picnicking family discovered his body, on 4th August 1990, in the Ocala National Forest. He had been shot twice with a .22-calibre pistol.

A month later, 56-year-old Dick Humphreys, a former police chief and Department of Health employee from Sumterville, was reported missing by his wife, on 11th September 1990. His body was found the next evening in Marion County. He had been shot seven times with a .22 pistol.

Another two months passed before the discovery of Wuornos’ seventh victim, a 60-year-old truck driver from Merrit Island called Walter Antonio, whose naked body was discovered in Dixie County on 19th November 1990. He had been dead less than 24 hours, shot three times in the back and once in the head, also with a .22 firearm.

Recognising the similarities in all the cases, the police released the photo-fit identities of the Siems car accident women to the media, which received statewide coverage throughout Florida, due to the potential of a female serial killer being at large.

By mid-December 1990 the police had a number of useful leads, which led to the identification of Tyria Moore, as well as three other names: Lee Blahovec, Lori Grody and Cammie Marsh Green, which all matched the description of the second photo-fit. When Wuornos used the Cammie Marsh Greene identity, to pawn a camera belonging to Richard Mallory, she was required to provide fingerprint identification, in accordance with Florida law. She also used the Greene ID to pawn a set of tools that matched a description of those missing from David Spear’s truck. An analysis of these fingerprints linked Greene to Grody, and also matched the prints lifted from Siem’s stolen car. The information was passed to the National Crime Information Center, and the three aliases were linked to Aileen Wuornos. By 5 January 1991 the police finally had a focus for their investigative efforts.

The Arrest

A mammoth manhunt was initiated, and Wuornos was tracked down to Port Orange, Florida, where local forces had to be called off from arresting her immediately, so that the task force could track her movements and see whether she made contact with Moore, their other suspect.

The next afternoon, 9th January 1991, Wuornos was arrested at the Last Resort bar, where she was advised that she was wanted in relation to minor outstanding charges against Lori Grody. The press were not informed of the arrest, and no mention was made of the murder charges at that stage. The following day Tyria Moore was traced to her sister’s home in Pittston, Pennsylvania, where she revealed to the police that Wuornos had admitted the murder of Mallory to her, on the day it had happened, but Moore had deliberately avoided discussing any other suspicious incidents with her, fearing for her own safety. 

Moore made a deal to help the police build a case against Wuornos, and the two conducted a series of recorded telephone conversations over the next few days, during which Moore pleaded with Wuornos to confess, to spare Moore from prosecution as an accomplice.  Wuornos was initially cautious on the phone, but faced with the prospect that Moore would also be prosecuted, she confessed to six of the murders on 16th January 1991, claiming that they had all been acts of self-defence, and that Moore had had no involvement in any of them.

Given the media attention surrounding the case, and the relative rarity of female serial killers, Wuornos was a national celebrity overnight. Within two weeks of her arrest, Wuornos had sold the film rights to her life story, and expected to become rich, not realising that Florida law specifically forbade profiting from criminal enterprise in this way. Even investigators and lawyers involved in the case, not forbidden by this restriction, were hiring their own media lawyers to negotiate their own book and film deals.

During January 2001, a 44-year-old rancher’s wife and born-again Christian, Arlene Pralle, contacted Wuornos via letter. She informed Wuornos that God had instructed her to do so, giving her home number and asking that Wuornos contact her. This marked the beginning of a bizarre friendship, which saw Pralle defending Wuornos’ self-defence plea, through a flurry of media interviews, for most of 1991, and culminated in Pralle’s legal adoption of Wuornos on 22nd November 1991: again on God’s instruction, according to Pralle.

The Trial

Wuornos’ defence team were keen for her to plead guilty on six of the murder charges (all but Peter Siems, whose body was never recovered and whose murder she continued to deny, despite the evidence which conclusively linked her with his stolen car) in exchange for six consecutive life sentences, but the prosecution were keen to seek the death penalty, and decided to try Wuornos, initially, for the murder of Richard Mallory, as they felt the case against her was strongest.

Wuornos’ trial for the murder of Richard Mallory opened before Judge Uriel Blount on 14th January 1992. By virtue of the ‘Williams Rule’ in Florida Law, which enables the prosecution to introduce evidence from other cases if they demonstrate a criminal pattern, jurors were made aware of the other murders in which Wuornos was suspected. Unsurprisingly, they were not convinced by the self-defense motive she claimed, and Wuornos did herself no favours when she testified in her own defense, against the advice of her legal counsel, when she was forced to take the Fifth Amendment (which prevents self-incrimination) repeatedly.

On 27th January 1992 the jury took less than two hours to find her guilty of first-degree murder, and they unanimously recommended the death penalty, in spite of defence claims that she was mentally ill, and a victim of her tragic upbringing. On 31st January 1992 Judge Blount sentenced Aileen Wuornos to death by electrocution.

Two months later, on 31st March 1992, Wuornos pleaded guilty to the murders of Troy Burress, Dick Humphreys and David Spears, and received three further death sentences on 15th May 1992.

In June 1992, Wuornos also pleaded guilty to the murder of Charles Carskaddon, and added another death sentence to her total in November 1992.

In February 1993 she admitted the murder of Walter Antonio and added her sixth, and final, death sentences. She was never tried for the murder of Peter Siems.

The Aftermath

When it was discovered that her first victim, Richard Mallory, had served a 10-year prison sentence for sexual violence, there was speculation that Wuornos would be offered a retrial, on the basis that the jury might have viewed her self-defence motive more sympathetically, had this been known at the time, but no new trial was ever forthcoming.

Wuornos was consistently in favour of execution as soon as possible, and was eventually granted permission to fire her appeal lawyers, by the Florida Supreme Court in April 2001, in order that her execution could proceed. In her supporting correspondence to the Supreme Court, she claimed that: I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again, and psychiatrists who examined her accepted that she was fully aware of the impact of her decision to progress her execution. Given the political pressure against the death penalty, at the time, in the wake of a number of false convictions, she might well have languished in prison indefinitely, had she not ‘volunteered’ for execution in the manner in which she did.

Her final media interview was with British reporter Nick Broomfield, days before her execution. He was convinced that she had lost her mind completely. 

Her initial sentence of execution, handed down by Judge Blount, was by electrocution. Despite this, Wuornos was given the choice of method, and she chose death by lethal injection, preferring this to the electric chair.

On 9 October 2002, the date of her execution, she declined her right to a final meal of her choice. Her final words were reported to have been: I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mother-ship and all. I'll be back.

The sentence was carried out at 9:47 a.m., and she became only the tenth woman in the United States to be executed, since capital punishment had been reinstated in 1976. Her remains were cremated, and her ashes were buried in her hometown of Rochester, Michigan. In 2003 actress Charlize Theron won the Best Actress Academy award for her portrayal of Wuornos in the film ‘Monster’.

Al Capone

The biggest gangster of all, he made many people offers they couldn't refuse. Illegal booze and other rackets were his stock-in-trade; tax evasion was what nailed him in the end.

Many New York gangsters in the early twentieth century came from impoverished backgrounds, but this was not the case for the legendary Al Capone. Far from being a poor immigrant from Italy who turned to crime to make a living, Capone was from a respectable, professional family. His father, Gabriele, was one of thousands of Italians who arrived in New York in 1894. He was thirty years old, educated and from Naples, where he had earned a living as a barber. His wife Teresina (Teresa) was pregnant and already bringing up two sons, two-year-old son Vincenzo and infant son Raffaele. The family moved to a poor Brooklyn tenement where Alphonse Capone was born on 17 January 1899.

The young Capone’s home was far from salubrious. He lived in a squalid tenement, little more than a slum, near the Navy Yard. It was a tough place given over to the vices sought by sailor characters that frequented the surrounding bars. The family however was a regular, law abiding, albeit noisy Italian-American clan and there were few indications that the young Al Capone would venture into a world of crime and become public enemy number one.

Certainly the family’s move to a more ethnically mixed area of the city exposed the young Capone to wider cultural influences, no doubt equipping him with the means to run a notorious criminal empire. But it was Capone’s schooling, both inadequate and brutal at a Catholic institution beset with violence that marred the impressionable young man. Despite having been a promising student, he was expelled at fourteen for hitting a female teacher and never went back.

It was then that Capone met the gangster Johnny Torrio which would prove the greatest influence on the would-be gangland boss. Torrio taught Capone the importance of maintaining a respectable front, while running a racketeering business. The slightly built Torrio represented a new dawn in criminal enterprise, transforming a violently crude culture into a corporate empire. But when he left for Chicago it was a criminal of a completely different breed who would first employ Capone as an eighteen-year-old bartender and bouncer.

Frankie Yale was originally from Calabria. He built his turf not through astute diplomacy like the ‘gentleman’ Torrio, but on sheer brutality. Yale opened up a bar, the Harvard Inn, on Coney Island and gave the softly spoken Capone his first job and introduced him to violent crime.

It was whilst doing his bar job that Capone received his famous facial scars after gangster Frank Gallucio took exception to a lascivious remark Al made to his sister. Gallucio pulled a knife on the enraged Capone.

Later, Al was forced to apologise to the aggrieved man. The incident was to teach him not only to restrain his temper but also, as boss Yale impressed upon him, how to run a loan sharking, pimping and ‘protection’ business with brutal force.  

Despite a brief hiatus when Capone married middle-class Irish girl Mae Coughlin and settled down as a bookkeeper, he was soon to return to working for his old boss Johnny Torrio in Chicago. The unexpected death of Capone’s father was a turning point. It is believed that the sudden freedom from parental influence was the reason that he stopped trying to maintain a law abiding, respectable lifestyle.

In 1920 Chicago arrived in Chicago, a corrupt, wealthy city known for its sexual promiscuity and gaming.

When the local big shot Big Jim Colosimo was assassinated in his own nightclub, Torrio stepped into his shoes, overseeing the vast empire he had helped to build up. The act of Prohibition simply added to the fortunes gained from whorehouses and gambling dens.

As Capone’s reputation grew he still insisted on being unarmed as a mark of his status. But he never went anywhere without at least two bodyguards. He was even sandwiched between bodyguards when travelling by car. He also preferred to travel under cover of night, risking travel by day only when absolutely necessary.

With his business acumen, Al became Torrio's partner and took over as manager of the Four Deuces - Torrio's headquarters in Chicago’s Levee area. The Four Deuces served as a speakeasy, gambling joint and whorehouse under one roof.

The Crimes

A crackdown on racketeering in Chicago meant that Capone’s first mobster job was to move operations to Cicero. With the assistance of his brothers Frank (Salvatore) and Ralph, Capone infiltrated the government and police departments. Between them they took leading positions within Cicero city government in addition to running brothels, gambling clubs and racetracks. Capone kidnapped opponents’ election workers and threatened voters with violence. He eventually won office in Cicero but not before his brother Frank had been killed in a shoot out with Chicago’s police force.

Capone had prided himself on keeping his temper under wraps but when friend and fellow hood Jack Guzik was assaulted by a small time thug, Capone tracked the assailant down and shot him dead in a bar. Due to lack of witnesses, Capone got away with murder, but the publicity surrounding the case gave him a notoriety that he had never had before.

After the attempted assassination of Capone’s friend and mentor Johnny Torrio the frail man left his legacy of nightclubs, whorehouses, gambling dens, breweries and speakeasies to Capone. Capone’s new found status saw him moving his headquarters to the luxurious Metropole Hotel as part of his personal crusade to become more visible and to court celebrity. This included fraternising with the press and being seen at places like the opera. 

Capone was different from many gangsters who avoided publicity. Always smartly dressed, quiet and with political nous, he set out to be viewed as a respectable businessman and pillar of the community.

Capone’s next mission involved bootlegged whiskey. With the help of his old friend Frankie Yale in New York, Al set out to smuggle huge quantities into Chicago. The events would lead to what became known as The Adonis Club Massacre where Capone had Yale’s enemies brutally attacked during a Christmas party.

Capone’s bootlegging whiskey trail from Chicago to New York was making him rich, but an incident involving Billy McSwiggin, known as the hanging prosecutor, was to prove a major setback for the unassailable gangster.

McSwiggin was mistakenly shot and killed by Capone’s henchmen during a shoot out between rivals outside a bar. Capone was blamed but once again due to lack of evidence he escaped arrest. However, the murder was followed by a big outcry against gangster violence and public sentiment went against Capone.

High profile investigations against Capone failed. The police therefore took their frustrations out by constantly raiding his whorehouses and gambling dens. Capone went into hiding for three months during the summer. But eventually he took a huge risk and gave himself up to the Chicago police. It proved to be the right decision as the authorities did not have enough evidence to charge him. Capone was a once again a free man having made a mockery of the police and justice system.

Ironically, Capone took on the role of peacemaker, appealing to the other gangsters to tone down their violence. He even managed to broker an amnesty between rival gangsters and for two months the killing and violence ceased.

But Chicago was firmly in the grip of gangsters and Capone appeared beyond the reach of the law. Somewhat ironically it was the pen pushers from the tax office who were to pose the greatest threat to the gangsters’ bootlegging empires. In May 1927, the Supreme Court ruled that a bootlegger had to pay income tax on his illegal bootlegging business. With such a ruling it wasn’t long before the small Special Intelligence Unit of the IRS under Elmer Irey was able to go after Al Capone.

Capone left for Miami with his wife and children and bought Palm Island estate, a property that he immediately started to renovate expensively. This gave Elmer Irey his chance to document Capone's income and spending.

But Capone was clever. Every transaction he made was on a cash basis. The only exception was the tangible assets of the Palm Island estate, which was evidence of a major source of income.

Meanwhile, internal infighting between rival gangsters escalated into street violence and frequent hijackings of Capone’s whiskey transports became a big problem.

Another thorn in the side for Capone was Frank Yale. Once a powerful associate, he was now seen as the main instigator of disruptions to Capone’s whiskey business. One Sunday afternoon, Yale met his end with the first use of a ‘Tommy gun’ against him.

Capone also had to deal with rival gangster Bugs Moran and his North Siders gang. They had been a threat for years. Moran had even once tried to kill Capone’s colleague and friend Jack McGurn. The decision by Capone and McGurn to avail themselves of Moran was to lead to one of the most infamous gangland massacres in history – The St Valentine’s Day Massacre.

On Thursday, 14 February 1929 at 10.30am Bugs Moran and his gang were lured by a bootlegger into a garage to buy whiskey. McGurn's men would be waiting for them, dressed in stolen police uniforms; the idea being that they would stage a fake raid. McGurn, like Capone, made sure he was far away and checked into a hotel with his girlfriend.

When McGurn’s men thought they saw Bugs Moran, they got into their police uniforms and drove over to the garage in a stolen police car. The bootleggers, caught in the act, lined up against the wall. McGurn’s men took the bootleggers' guns and opened fire with two machine guns. All the men except Frank Gusenberg were killed outright in cold blood.

The plan appeared to go brilliantly except for one major detail; Bugs Moran was not among the dead. Moran had seen the police car and took off, not wanting to be caught up in the raid.

Even though Al Capone was conveniently in Florida, the police and the newspapers knew who had staged the massacre. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre became a national media event immortalising Capone as the most ruthless, feared, smartest and elegant of gangland bosses.

Even while powerful forces were amassing against him, Capone indulged in one last bloody act of revenge – the killing of two Sicilian colleagues who he believed had betrayed him. Capone invited his victims to a sumptuous banquet where he brutally pulverised them with a baseball bat. Capone had observed the old tradition of wining and dining traitors before executing them.

The Arrest

Capone’s activities attracted the attention of President Herbert Hoover who in March 1929, asked Andrew Mellon, his Secretary of the Treasury, Have you got this fellow Capone yet? I want that man in jail. Mellon set out to get the necessary evidence both to prove income tax evasion and to amass enough evidence to prosecute Capone successfully for Prohibition violations.

Eliot Ness, a dynamic young agent with the US Prohibition Bureau, was charged with gathering the evidence of Prohibition violations. He assembled a team of daring young men and made extensive use of wire tapping technology. While there was doubt that Capone could be successfully prosecuted for Prohibition violations in Chicago, the government was certain it could get Capone on tax evasion.

In May 1929, Capone went to a ‘gangsters’ conference in Atlantic City. Afterwards he saw a movie in Philadelphia. When leaving the cinema he was arrested and imprisoned for carrying a concealed weapon. Capone was soon incarcerated in the Eastern Penitentiary where he stayed until 16 March 1930. He was later released from jail for good behaviour, but was put on the America’s ‘Most Wanted’ list which publicly humiliated the mobster who so desperately wanted to be regarded as a worthy man of the people.

Elmer Irey