Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
Murder always presents
murderers with a difficult dilemma: how to dispose of their victims'
bodies. Serial killers have devised some fairly bizarre ways to get
rid of their victims' remains. Unfortunately, for them, their methods
have seldom been completely successful.
10 Rain Barrel
After Prohibition, former
bootlegger Joe Ball set himself up in a bar in Elmendorf, Texas. The
hot spot became known as much for its pool of alligators as for its
alcoholic beverages. Like the roosters who fought to the death in the
occasional cockfights Ball hosted, the alligators provided
entertainment for his customers, as Ball fed them live cats and dogs
to supplement their typical meals of raw meat.
The Alligator Man himself, Joe Ball
The bar was a place for
Ball to meet lovely young ladies as well. In 1934, a waitress,
Minnie Gotthardt, caught Ball's eye. Also known as Big Minnie, she
helped Ball run his bar. At the same time, though, Ball was keeping
company with Dolores “Buddy” Goodwin. Soon thereafter, he began
seeing Hazel “Schatzie” Brown as well. He married each of them,
in succession, Minnie first, then Hazel, followed b
y
Buddy. First, Big Minnie disappeared. Then, Schatzie vanished.
Finally, Buddy was nowhere to be found.
After marrying Buddy, Ball
told her he'd killed Big Minnie during a trip to the beach. However,
after Buddy was located, living in San Diego, California, where she'd
fled after Ball had threatened to kill her if she spoke to the
police, Buddy referred authorities to the bar's handyman, Clifford
Wheeler, who admitted Ball had shot Schatzie in the head in a
“secluded area” near Ingleside, Texas, and forced Wheeler to cut
up her body. Ball had stored Schatzie's body parts in a rain barrel
behind his sister's barn until they could be buried. Wheeler also
told police Ball had killed Minnie after she'd become pregnant,
burying her corpse in a shallow grave. By fleeing to California,
Buddy alone had escaped death at Ball's hands. (LINK 1)
9 Anatomist Laboratory
After moving to Edinburgh,
Scotland, from Northern Ireland, in 1827, William Burke and William
Hare became partners, robbing graves to supply an anatomist
laboratory with fresh cadavers for dissection. Hare's wife, Margaret,
operated a rooming house, and the two men became friends after Burke
moved in. The rooming house also provided the partners their first
corpse. The tenant, the men told Dr. Robert Knox, the anatomist to
whom they sold his cadaver, had died of natural causes.
Other tenants also ended
up on Dr. Knox's dissecting table, but the city's streets also
yielded murder victims. Burke and Hare invited potential victims to
the rooming house, plied them with whiskey, and murdered them.
Seventeen died at their hands. Most were strangers, but the duo also
killed three women they knew. Their most horrific murder was that of
a 12-year-old boy whose grandmother Burke and Hare also killed,
allegedly after breaking her back.
As the partners in crime
became rich, they also became greedy. Their recklessness in letting
the body of Mary Docherty lie beneath a bed in the rooming house
until tenants discovered it finally ended the men's criminal careers.
Although Hare was granted immunity by testifying against Burke, the
latter, sentenced to death, was hanged before “a crowd of tens of
thousands.” Dr. Knox was not prosecuted, but, his reputation
ruined, his career “collapsed.” (LINK 2)
8 Cupboards and
Floorboards
John Reginald Halliday
Christie was a quiet, balding, middle-age former bureaucrat who wore
glasses and a plain suit and tie, but, from 1943-1953, he raped and
murdered at least eight women, strangling or gassing them. As a
trophy, he kept a patch of each victim's pubic hair. One of his
victims was his wife Ethel, whose bank account he depleted and whose
jewelry he sold to help make ends meet.
John Reginald Halliday Christie
A necrophiliac, Christie
stored his victims' corpses under the floorboards of his apartment's
living room, in an alcove hidden behind a kitchen cupboard, and in a
wash house. When he ran out of money, Christie vacated his apartment
after illegally subletting it to a couple who were subsequently
evicted. A tenant, allowed to use Christie's kitchen while the
apartment was vacant, found remains of Christie's victim and notified
the police. After a 10-day manhunt, Christie was captured. After he
confessed and was found guilty, he was hanged in 1953. (LINK 3)
7 Apartment Refrigerator
and Freezers and Drum
Starting in 1978, Jeffrey
Dahmer began luring young gay men to his apartment in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, where he drugged and strangled them. When one of his
intended victims, Tracy Edwards, escaped, fleeing in handcuffs,
police intercepted him, and Edwards told them Dahmer had threatened
to kill him. Police escorted Edwards back to Dahmer's apartment,
where they spied Polaroid photographs of cut-up bodies.
Jeffrey Dahmer
After arresting Dahmer,
authorities searched his apartment, finding decapitated human heads
in his refrigerator and freezer, a pair of skulls atop his computer,
and human body parts disintegrating in a 57-gallon drum of chemicals.
Evidence suggested Dahmer had eaten some of the victims. Found guilty
of numerous charges, including murder, Dahmer received 15 life
sentences. Another prison inmate killed him. (LINK 4)
6 Cement Floor and Hearth
After his arrival in
Rainhill, England, Frederick Bailey Deeming purchased Dinham Villa.
Here, he murdered his first wife and their four children, burying
their bodies under the kitchen floor. Two months later, calling
himself Albert Williams, he wed a local woman, Emily Mather, whom he
murdered in Melbourne, Australia, and buried under a bedroom
hearthstone, which he covered in cement. When the bodies were
discovered, Demming, tried and convicted, was hanged on May 23, 1892,
in Melbourne. (LINK 5)
5 Cellar Brine Vats
In December 1924, Karl
Denke, a farmer-turned butcher, lived in Ziębice, Germany, where,
befriending beggars, he let them stay overnight. He made his living
selling such leather articles as suspenders, belts, and shoelaces. He
also sold pickled boneless pork. He was arrested after a bloody
vagrant told police Denke had attacked him. Defending his actions,
Denke told police the man had attempted to rob him. Detained in a
cell, Denke hanged himself with a noose he'd fashioned from a
handkerchief.
Karl Denke
Searching Denke's
apartment, police found his “leather” wares were, in reality,
made of human skin, and the pickled “pork” he'd sold was actually
human flesh obtained from as many as 40 victims. Police also found
documents and names of former prison inmates and hospital patients
who might have been Denke's past victims or his intended future
victims. In response to Denke's atrocities, Tadeusz Wolski, the
town's mayor, noting that other serial killers had proved good for
cities' tourism, asked how he and the upstanding citizens of Ziębice
might best “exploit our cannibal.” (LINK 6)
4 Crawl Space
John Wayne Gacy and a self-portrait of his alter ego, Pogo the Clown
John Wayne Gacy
chloroformed or otherwise incapacitated young gay men, burying their
remains in the crawl space beneath his house in Des Plains, Illinois.
After confessing to the murders in 1978, Gacy drew a detailed map of
the crawl space's burial sites.
The house smelled of
decay, investigators said, and the stench intensified with every
five-gallon bucket of soil they removed as the crawl space was
excavated. In all, 27 bodies were found buried beneath the house.
Another corpse was unearthed beneath a work shed behind the house,
and five other bodies had been thrown into the Des Plains River.
Remains of one of Gacy's victims in the crawl space of his home
Photographs of the crawl
space burial sites provide horrific images of the dead. A skeleton
lies prone in a narrow, shallow grave. Other sites revealed victim's
hair or teeth. Eight of the bodies couldn't be identified and were
taken to the North Texas University Forensic sciences laboratory for
DNA analysis. Gacy was executed in 1994, after 14 years on death row.
(LINK 7)
3 Sulfuric Acid Barrel
John George Haigh, the
“Acid-Bath Murderer,” dissolved his victims' bodies in a
40-gallon drum of sulfuric acid. He struck his first victim, real
estate investor William McSwain, in the head and slit his throat.
After drinking McSwain's blood, Haigh placed his victim's body in the
drum. By morning, the corpse had been reduced to “acidic sludge.”
Realizing he had an excellent way of eliminating the evidence of his
crimes, Haigh was emboldened and committed four additional murders,
disposing of their remains in the same manner.
John George Haigh, the
“Acid-Bath Murderer”
The disappearance of his
last victim, socialite Olive Durand-Deacon, led police to Haigh, who
confessed to all five murders. His method for eliminating the
evidence of his crimes wasn't as complete as Haigh seemed to think.
Investigators found “bones, dentures, 28 lbs. of body fat and Rose
Henderson’s left foot” in the rented workshop in which the
Acid-Bath Murderer disposed of his victims' remains. Sentenced to
hang, Haigh was executed in August 1949. (LINK 8)
2 Villa Stove
Henri Landru
Married and the father of
four children, Henri Landru preyed on lonely women whose husbands
were fighting World War I or, in some cases, had become casualties of
the conflict. After bilking them of their savings and valuables, he
murdered at least 11 of them. He lived in a villa in Vernouillet,
France, where he disposed of the women's bodies in an iron stove. For
the most part, the stove did a good job of incinerating the evidence
of his crimes, although police, investigating the disappearance of
one of his victims, whose sister was able to provide a description of
Landru and his address, “found hundreds of human bone fragments,
teeth, hairpins, and dress hooks” in the villa. Tried and
convicted, Landru met his end on the guillotine on February 25, 1922.
(LINK 9)
1 Toilet
Dennis Nilsen
Between 1978 and 1983,
Dennis Nilsen, necrophiliac and serial killer, murdered a dozen young
men in his Cranley Gardens, North London, upstairs apartment. Before,
when he'd lived in Cricklewood, he'd had access to a garden in which
to burn his victims' remains. Now, he had no garden. His solution?
Dismember their corpses and flush the body parts down his toilet.
This method worked fine until the drains clogged. When Dyno-Rod, an
emergency drainage and plumbing company, dispatched a repairman,
Nilsen's secret was uncovered. Searching his apartment, police found
body parts hidden behind cupboards, under floorboards, and in
furniture items. In 1983, convicted of six counts of murder and two
counts of attempted murder, Nilsen was sentenced to life in prison.
(LINK 10)
LINK 1:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/two-barmaids-five-alligators-and-the-butcher-of-elmendorf/
LINK 2:
http://www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/scottish-fact-of-the-week-burke-hare-1-3165443
LINK 4:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cannibal-and-serial-killer-jeffrey-dahmer-is-caught
LINK 6:
http://www.denke.org/gazetae.htm
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