Chilling True Crime Stories - Volume 4

Dylan Frost

© Copyright 2022 Dylan Frost

Other books by Dylan Frost:

Shocking Celebrity Deaths and Murders

Britain's Strangest True Crime Cases

To get a free ebook visit https://dylanfrosttruecrime.blogspot.com

Contents

Queen of Slaughtering Places
Death of a Pop Star - The Murder of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez
John Cannan - The Man Who Killed Suzy Lamplugh?
The Ballad of Judy Buenoano
The Longest Serving Prisoner in Britain
The Oakland County Child Killer
Lizzie Halliday
Hybristophilia
Terror in Hollywood - The Bizarre Death of Vic Morrow
The Texas Killing Fields
Double Trouble
The Hamburg Rubble Murderer
The Łódź Gay Murderer
La Mujer Verdugo
Bayou Strangler
The Secret Life of Bill Cosby
Karla Faye Tucker
The Student Nurse Massacre
Cannibal of the Ruhr
The Long Island Killer
Charles Edmund Cullen
The Ypsilanti Ripper
Tsutomu Miyazaki
The Curious Case of Kieran Kelly
Canyon Lake Killer
John Bodkin Adams - The Original Harold Shipman?
The Black Panther
Nannie Doss
The Dark Celebrity of Ted Bundy
Marie Alexandrine Becker
Levi Bellfield
The B1 Butcher
Spring-Heeled Jack - The Victorian Demon of London
Murderabilia

QUEEN OF SLAUGHTERING PLACES

The Queen of Slaughtering Places (a play on The Queen of Watering Places) is a reference to Brighton in relation to what became known as The Brighton trunk murders. These murders took place in 1934 - the first of which occurring on June the 7th. It all began when a man at Brighton train station noticed a trunk lying around that was apparently unclaimed. When staff investigated the trunk they detected a very foul odour coming from the case and (fearing the worst) decided to call the police. When the police opened the trunk they found the torso of a woman inside. The legs and feet of this murdered woman were then found in another suitcase at Charing Cross Station. Neither the head nor the hands were ever found though and so - sadly - the unfortunate woman in question could never be identified.

In the media the victim became known as The Girl with the Pretty Feet because the police noted that she had the feet of a dancer. Who she actually was though was destined to remain an enduring and baffling mystery. The police estimated that the murder had taken place about three weeks before the remains were found (which would explain the stench). There was evidence that the murderer had some butchery skills because the limbs had been hacked away (which would require a degree of strength and knowledge) and the body parts packed neatly with brown paper bags and string. The pathologist did not believe though that the person responsible had any surgical skills. He evidently felt the dissection of the body was rather crude and not done by a trained medical professional.

The victim was judged to be in her twenties. Tragically, the police deduced that she was pregnant at the time of her murder. Chief Inspector Donaldson, who led the investigation, believed that an abortionist named Massiah was the chief suspect. Massiah was a dodgy and dubious character indeed and given that the victim was pregnant this all seemed to indicate he could possibly be involved. Massiah was put under surveillance by the police but he was not charged with anything in the end. He later moved to London where his abortion clinic (if one could call it a clinic) soon claimed the life of a woman. Massiah evaded prosecution for this though (he was only removed from the General Medical Register in 1952 - and that was only because he had failed to resubmit his details) and later moved to the West Indies.

It could be that the lack of any medical knowledge apparent in the dissection of the body made the police reluctant to think that Massiah was involved. A more obvious and salient factor was that there was apparently no clear evidence that the victim had undergone any abortion procedure at all. The initial theory concerning Massiah was that a botched abortion had gone wrong and he had disposed of the woman's remains to cover his tracks and hide her death. There was simply no evidence for this theory though. In fact, the evidence suggested Massiah was innocent.

One curious mystery though in this case was that one of the legs of the victim was found to have some olive oil on it. At the time surgeons used olive oil in hospitals to stop profuse bleeding but olive oil was not really used by the general public at all. It was only decades later that olive oil became a staple item of British kitchen cupboards and supermarkets. The olive oil clue never yielded any great breakthrough though. The presence of olive oil did not necessarily indicate that a doctor was involved in this murder because at the time the public could - if they so wished - obtain olive oil in chemists.

A more retrospective suspect in this case is a man named George Shotton. Shotton was posthumously named as the murderer of his wife Mamie Stuart at the inquest into her death in 1961. Stuart's disappearance and death became known as The Chorus Girl Murder. Her body was found dismembered and dissected - which fitted the MO of the killer in the Brighton trunk murder. Shotton was a bigamist with a violent temper. He was not a very nice man at all. Shotton was released from prison in 1922 - so would have been on the outside when the Brighton trunk murders took place.

Shotton's movements and places of residence indicate that he spent most of his time after prison flitting between London and the south coast around the time the trunk murders took place. This would (vaguely) put him in the right ballpark area when it comes to people who might potentially have murdered the suitcase victim. Given that he dismembered his own wife too one can see how you might plausibly build a case for George Shotton being involved in the trunk murder. At the very least you could say that he was an interesting potential possible suspect to throw into the hat. It has never been proven that Shotton was involved in the Brighton murder but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to connect him to the case.

In the course of their investigation into the Brighton trunk murder the police obviously scanned through the list of current missing persons (specifically women) to see if this might shed light on who the mysterious suitcase victim might be. This would, bizarrely, lead to the discovery of another (though seemingly unrelated) trunk murder. The victim in this fresh case was identified as 42 year-old Violette Kaye - who was a prostitute in London. The police learned that Kaye had gone missing after an argument with the man she lived with. This was a 26 year-old nightclub bouncer named Toni Mancini. Mancini was obviously now a person the police were very interested in speaking too.

Mancini had told Kaye's relatives she had gone to Paris. They even received a note from her alleging to be in Paris but it was established that this letter was actually posted in Brighton. There was obviously some dodgy charade going on and you didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to suspect that Toni Mancini was probably behind it all. Mancini had killed Kaye and put her body in a trunk. He then used this trunk to prop up a coffee table in his lodgings. You can probably imagine how foul the smell must have been in the end. Visitors to Mancini's lodgings soon began to complain that the place stank to high heaven.

Mancini had then tried to fool Kaye's relatives into think she was alive and well and living in Paris by forging letters. Kaye was apparently a prostitute AND a dancer of some sort. Maybe her family never knew she was a prostitute and simply thought she was a dancer. This might be why Mancini had chosen Paris as her fictional location. Paris probably had more dancing jobs than anywhere in the world in the 1930s. Mancini was questioned by the police over Kaye's disappearance and so decided to flee. He was arrested in south London and in the meantime the police searched his lodgings and found the body of Violette Kaye in the trunk. This was the second trunk murder the police had stumbled upon in no time at all.

Kaye was judged to have been killed by a violent blow to the head - most likely from a hammer. The blow was so ferocious it drove a piece of bone into her brain. Mancini told the police that he found Violette dead on her bed and that one of her clients (lest we forget she was a prostitute whom men visited on a daily basis) must have killed her. Mancini said he was worried he might be wrongly suspected of the crime and that was why he had fled. His defence was weak to say the least. You'd have got long odds against him avoiding prison at this stage in the investigation.

Mancini was tried in Lewes Assizes. The case appeared on the surface to be pretty open and shut but the expected formality of this trial didn't go according to plan for the prosecution. This was in no small way thanks to Mancini's shrewd QC Norman Birkett. Birkett cast enough doubt on the case to make a conviction surprisingly difficult. It was an impressive display from a legal point of view because Birkett didn't seem to have that much to work with but still managed to tie the prosecution up in knots.

Birkett pointed out that Kaye had traces of morphine in her system when she was discovered. He suggested that she was a drug addict who, in her addled and confused state, fell down the stairs and banged her head. Birkett proposed that the injured Kaye had then managed to crawl back to her bed - where she finally perished. That theory took a lot of swallowing (especially the second part) but it actually seemed to work. After five days Mancini was found not guilty. It wasn't that the jury felt it was impossible for him to have killed Kaye but merely that they didn't think the prosecution had mounted a convincing enough case to prove that this happened.

In 1976, when he was at death's door, Toni Mancini told the News of the World that he HAD killed Violette Kaye after a violent argument. Mancini said that he had thrown a hammer at her and it hit her in the head. Despite his tabloid confession he was not convicted or retried though. There were stories that he might be prosecuted for perjury (he'd obviously lied through his teeth at the original trial) but nothing came of this in the end. All in all, it was a pretty bizarre coda to what was already a pretty bizarre set of murders. Despite the strange fact that the police had encountered two trunk murders in no time at all, Mancini was felt to have nothing to do with the first murder. It was pure coincidence that through investigating one trunk murder the police had quickly stumbled into another! Truth really can be stranger than fiction sometimes.

Believe it or not, these two cases were not the first trunk murders to be connected to Brighton. On the 13th August 1831, a fisherman had found the limbless and headless body of a young woman on a footpath leading from Preston Manor. The woman and her unborn baby had been stuffed into a trunk. The murderer may have assumed that by removing the head that the victim would not be identified but he was wrong in this assumption. The diminutive nature of the torso allowed the police (with help from the locals) to deduce that this was Celia Holloway - a local woman who was only 4'3 tall. Celia was married to a man named John Holloway. John Holloway suspiciously fled when Celia's body was found but he was soon picked up the police and quickly confessed to the murder.

John Holloway was a bigamist, thief, scoundrel, and murderer. He'd taken up with a woman named Ann Kennett and left Celia destitute - despite the fact she was pregnant. He'd been in prison before and a previous child with Celia had been stillborn. John Holloway was a drunk who was known to knock Celia around. He'd been ordered to pay Celia two shillings a week by a court so she could look after herself and the baby she was expecting but John Holloway had no intention of doing this. He decided instead to murder her to save himself the money. Under the pretext of a reconciliation, he lured Celia to his lodgings and strangled her with rope. His mistress Ann Kennett almost certainly conspired in the murder. It is said that Holloway had second thoughts about the murder at one point but Kennett made sure he went through with it.

After the murder John Holloway burned Celia's clothes and hung her body up in a cupboard just to make sure she was dead. Then he cut up Celia's body and packed it in a trunk. With the use of a wheelbarrow he then disposed of the body in a place that was called Lover's Lane. In this particular case that name was darkly ironic. Celia's family had never never liked John Holloway and always thought she should have nothing to do with him. It's a great shame she didn't take their advice. Celia is said to have loved John Holloway and was blind to the danger he posed. She is once said to have remarked though that if she was ever murdered it would almost certainly be John Holloway who committed the crime. In this prediction she proved to be tragically accurate.

John Holloway pled not-guilty in court but he didn't have a leg to stand on and his case was pretty hopeless. He was found guilty and hanged at Horsham on December the 21st 1831. His body was put on public display to deter anyone else who might have any thoughts about murdering their wives and sticking them in a trunk. As for Ann Kennett, she was acquitted and set free. Though there seems to be little doubt that she was an accomplice, John Holloway's evidence concerning her was so contradictory and inconsistent that it was deemed impossible to establish what exactly her role in this tragic affair had actually been. As for Celia, well, at least there was some dignity to her final resting place. Celia's other body parts were eventually discovered and she was buried in the churchyard of St John’s at Preston. A plaque in her memory was then placed on the wall.

DEATH OF A POP STAR - THE MURDER OF SELENA QUINTANILLA-PEREZ

Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was a Texas born Latino singer who became a huge star in the 1990s. She was hugely popular and famous for her impressive vocal range. She won numerous awards, had great commercial success, and signed with a major label. Selena was known as the queen of Tejano. Fate was intervene in tragic fashion though thanks to Yolanda Saldívar. Yolanda Saldívar was a former nurse who became obsessed with Selena after attending one of her concerts. Saldívar began badgering Selena's father (who was obviously someone with great influence over his daughter's career and business empire) with requests for permission to start a Selena fan club in San Antonio. Permission for this was eventually granted and Yolanda Saldívar turned the regional fan club into a great success, attracting thousands of members.

As a reward for her efforts, Yolanda Saldívar was taken into the Selena business empire and became her local agent. Saldívar was then put in charge of the chain of fashion boutiques Selena had opened. Though no one knew it at the time it was a huge and eventually tragic mistake to allow Yolanda Saldívar to become part of team Selena. Yolanda Saldívar even moved house to be closer to Selena. Trouble was brewing though because there were soon rumblings of discontent from others in Selena's entourage about Yolanda Saldívar. They simply didn't like Saldívar and they didn't trust her either. This sixth sense turned to be completely on the mark. Yolanda Saldívar, to put it mildly, was bad news and seriously unhinged.

It soon transpired that Yolanda Saldívar had a habit of firing staff members she didn't like in the Selena boutiques - which began to have an effect on sales. Saldívar had grown to enjoy the power she now had and was throwing her weight around at every opportunity. More and more members of Selena's inner circle grew to dislike Yolanda Saldívar and wanted to get rid of her. Selena's father was among those who wanted to give Saldívar the boot in the end. Selena stood by Yolanda Saldívar out of loyalty but matters came to a head when it was discovered that Saldívar had embezzled thousands of dollars from the boutiques and fan club.

Yolanda Saldívar is said to have stolen about $60,000 through her duties as boutique manager and boss of the Selena fan club. The crimes became apparent when people started writing in and complaining that they had sent their money to join the Selena fan club but received nothing in return. Unknown to Selena and her family, Yolanda Saldívar had previous when it came to dodgy and criminal deeds. In 1984 she had stolen $9000 from a doctor she worked as a book-keeper for. Saldívar had settled the case out of court and obviously managed to keep this hidden when she was employed by Selena.

On March 31, 1995, in Corpus Christi, Texas, Selena arranged to meet Saldívar at a motel and confronted her with the financial fraud charges. Selana demanded to see financial documents - whereupon Yolanda Saldívar produced a handgun and pointed it at Selena. The terrified Selena tried to flee but was shot in the back. The bullet severed an artery and exited through Selena's chest. Saldívar then chased the injured Selena down a corridor shouting abuse as she waved the gun around. Motel staff arrived on the scene and Selena, who was seriously injured and covered in blood, managed to give them Saldívar's name and room number before she passed out.

Though an ambulance only took two minutes to arrive it was already too late because Selena had lost so much blood. Selena collapsed and died in hospital shortly afterwards of blood loss and cardiac arrest. She was only 23 years-old. The doctors said that if the bullet had entered Selena's body a tiniest fraction to either side she probably would have survived. Tragically though the single bullet went in at a crucial spot and caused too much damage.

Yolanda Saldívar tried to get in her car and drive away after the shooting but after a nine hour stand-off she was captured by police officers and FBI agents. Saldívar sat in the car for hours threatening to shoot herself. Yolanda Saldívar's legal team tried to claim the murder of Selena had been an accident but this didn't stand up to much scrutiny in court. The prosecution pointed out that Yolanda Saldívar was a trained nurse yet made no attempt whatsoever to offer medical assistance to the wounded Selena - thus confirming that the murder was intentional.

The fact that Saldívar was witnessed chasing Selena down a corridor with a gun also obviously made a mockery of her ridiculous claim that the shooting had been an accident. Saldívar claimed that she had pulled the gun out to shoot herself but Selena had tried to stop her and in the resulting struggle she had accidentally shot the singer. This ludicrous defence didn't fly very far in court. When the police searched Saldívar's home they found it was a rather creepy shrine to Selena.

It appears that Saldívar saw her friendship and influence with Selena about to come to an end and couldn't face up to this. Unfathomably, this resulted in Saldívar shooting her hero. Saldívar was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in thirty years. She will be eligible for parole in 2025. Though she has maintained her innocence (she would say that wouldn't she?) and launched several appeals the case was pretty open and shut and no one believed her fanciful claims that shot Selena by accident.

The murder of Selena was a great shock to her fans and the music industry. It felt as if a great career had been tragically cut short just as it was taking off. Thousands of fans attended Selena's public viewing and mass. She was buried at the Seaside Memorial Cemetery in Corpus Christi, TX on April 3, 1995. Selena's family created a foundation and museum in memory and she also recieved a posthumous Hollywood Star. After her passing, Selena was praised for being a great role model for the Mexican-American community. Trivia - the singer and actress Selena Gomez was named after Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. Selena Gomez has visited the grave of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez and said the late singer was a great inspiration.

JOHN CANNAN - THE MAN WHO KILLED SUZY LAMPLUGH?

John Cannan was born in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, in 1954. Cannan is sort of like the closest thing to a British version of Ted Bundy in that he was reasonably attractive and charming but in a very cheesy sort of way. He was also, like Bundy, seriously disturbed and someone who just couldn't stop attacking women. In 1987, John Cannan, using a fake name, actually shot a profile video for a video dating agency. He comes across as a mixture of Lovejoy and Alan Partridge in the video. Thankfully, the video dating agency thought there was something creepy about him and decided not to show his video to any clients. That was in hindsight a very wise decision. The last thing in the world any poor unsuspecting woman needed was to be set up on a date with John Cannan. You can actually watch the dating agency video Cannan shot on YouTube if you search for it.

Cannan went to a private school but it was clear from an early age that he was destined for a dark future. At the age of fourteen he was convicted of a sex attack in a telephone box. In 1978 he got married and had a child but he neglected his family to the point where they barely saw him. He was too busy going out drinking and looking for women. In 1980, Cannan took up with a woman named Sharon Major but when she said she was going to leave him he assaulted and raped her in a violent attack. Around this time Cannan robbed a petrol station and a clothes shop. The shop was run by a woman named Jean Bradord that Cannan had met. He tied up Jean and raped her daughter in front of her.

With all this mayhem and misery he was inflicting, Cannan came into the orbit of the police and ended up with an eight year prison sentence for his crimes. John Cannan was released from prison in 1986. It didn't take him any time at all to go back to his old ways. In fact, once Cannan got out of prison he was worse than ever. Only weeks after he was released from prison, Cannan raped a woman at knifefepoint in Berkshire. Cannan had a ruse where he would pretend to be a wealthy businessman as a means to get women to trust him. Cannan's next act was to try and abduct a Bristol woman named Julia Holman at gunpoint in a car park but she thankfully managed to escape and flee from the scene.

In October 1987, a woman named Shirley Banks vanished in Bristol. She was later found murdered in the Quantock Hills. That same month, John Cannan was arrested in Leamington Spa after trying to rob a clothes shop. When the police searched Cannan's property they found a car tax disc belonging to Shirley Banks. Cannan's own car was found to contain a replica handgun and some rope. Not only that but the police found Shirley's Mini Cooper car at the block of flats where Canna lived. He had painted the car a different colour in an attempt to disguise its true origin. The fingerprints of Shirley Banks were also found in Cannan's flat. He had obviously killed her.
In 1980, John Cannan was sentenced to life in prison for murder. He was also convicted of numerous robberies, rapes, and assaults. The police did not believe that Cannan was guilty of just one murderer. They were pretty convinced that he was probably a serial killer with other victims on his slate. The police strongly suspected (and still do) that Cannan killed Suzy Lamplugh. Suzy Lamplugh was an estate agent who was reported missing in July 1986 (aged 25) in Fulham. Cannan was released from prison just before Suzy went missing. The prison he was released from was only three miles from where Suzy vanished.

There was all manner of circumstantial evidence in the Suzy Lamplugh case which pointed to Cannan. This included the fact that eyewitnesses descriptions of a man seen with Suzy before her disappearance matched Cannan. When Suzy vanished her last appointment as an estate agent had been to show a house to a man named Mr Kipper. It just so happened that 'kipper' was Cannan's nickname in prison. There were several other possible connections like this which led the police to believe that Cannan had killed her.

However, although the police spoke to Cannan several times in relation to Suzy Lamplugh they have never charged him with anything. The police position on John Cannan seems to be that they think he killed Suzy Lamplugh but they don't have enough evidence yet to prove it beyond doubt. Searches for Suzy's body continue to take place. The area around Cannan's mother's house was even dug up at one point but drew a blank.

Cannan is also suspected of the murder of Sandra Court in 1986. Sandra vanished after a night out in Bournemouth. She was found strangled. The police later found out that a parking ticket revealed John Cannan had been in Bournemouth the day Sandra Court disappeared. When they questioned Cannan about the case he lied and said he had never been to Bournemouth. An anonymous letter was sent to the local police after Sandra died expressing regret and saying it was an accident. The handwriting in the letter was suspiciously similar to John Cannan's own handwriting. It seems highly likely that John Cannan is a triple murderer or worse. He still (naturally) maintains his innocence though.

THE BALLAD OF JUDY BEUNOANO

Judy Buenoano was born Judias Welty in Quanah, Texas in 1943. Judy Buenoano was known as The Black Widow. She poisoned her husband, drowned her son, and tried to kill her lover with a bomb! Judy, as is so often the case with killers and serial murderers, had a fairly lousy childhood. She was put up for adoption and suffered abuse from both her stepmother and stepfather. At the tender age of fourteen she got a short prison sentence for attacking her step-parents. Judy Buenoano was obviously someone who could only be pushed so far.

Rather than go back to her adopted family (who she clearly despised), Judy chose to go to reform school when her criminal sentence had ended. She left at the age of sixteen and got a job as a nursing assistant in Roswell. She became a mother soon after to a son named Michael Schultz. In 1962 she married an air force officer named James Goodyear and had two more children. She also had a business venture in the form of the Conway Acres Child Care Center in Orlando. James Goodyear died in 1971 of a mysterious illness and Judy cashed in his three life insurance policies. No, nothing suspicious about that at all! She then engineered a house fire to get more insurance money.

Soon after, Judy got a new boyfriend named Bobby Joe Morris. The couple moved to Colerado in 1972 but not before another suspicious house fire occurred. In 1978, Bobby Joe Morris died of a mysterious illness and Judy collected a generous life insurance payout. Judy changed her name to Buenoano (Judy had gone by a battery of various names in the past) around this time and moved back to Pensacola. Judy's son Michael Buenoano had joined the army by this time but he then suffered from very poor health. Michael suffered from paraplegia and wore leg braces. There were signs that suggested someone might be poisoning him.

In 1980, Michael went on a canoe trip with Judy and his brother James. After the canoe got into trouble he was left to fend for himself and ended up drowning because his leg braces were essentially like weights and made him sink. Judy told the authorities it had all been a complete accident and promptly collected Michael's military insurance payout. Judi now opened a beauty salon in Gulf Breeze and began dating a businessman named John Gentry II. By now though, the authorities were starting to become more than a little suspicious of Judy Buenoano. They found it rather odd that Michael had had three life insurance policies taken out on him shortly before he died. They also found evidence that signatures on these policies might have been forged.

Judy Buenoano had told John Gentry a pack of lies about her past. She claimed to be a nurse from Florida. Judy also insisted that they take out life insurance policies on one another. Another thing that Judy insisted on was that that Gentry should should improve his health by taking some special vitamin tablets she recommended. When these tablets made him feel ill she said he should increase the dose. It was pretty obvious in hindsight that these special tablets of Judy were not vitamin pills at all.

In 1983, Judy upped the ante from poisoning and strange canoeing accidents when she put a bomb in Gentry's car! The police found out that Judy had been going around telling friends that Gentry had a terminal illness and would be dead soon. After a complicated investigation they managed to link Judy to the bomb in Gentry's car. The bodies of Michael Goodyear, James Goodyear, and Bobby Joe Morris were all exhumed and found to contain arsenic. In 1984, Buenoano was convicted for the murder of Michael and the attempted murder of Gentry. In 1985 she was convicted of the murder of James Goodyear. Judy Buenoano went to the electric chair in 1998. For her last meal, she chose asparagus, strawberries, broccoli, tomatoes, and hot tea.

THE LONGEST SERVING PRISONER IN BRITAIN

John Straffen was born in Hampshire in 1930 and spent some of his childhood in India because his father was in the British Army. He was of extremely low intelligence and didn't get on very well at school. Straffen was sent to a special school for those with learning difficulties. Straffen eventually secured a job in a factory but most of his time was taken up with petty theft. He was a compulsive thief and was eventually arrested for burglary. There was also a worrying incident where Straffen threatened to kill a thirteen year-old girl. This happened when he was about seventeen.

Straffen was someone who plainly wasn't fit or (most saliently) safe to be left to his own devices in society. Straffen was sent to Hortham Colony in Bristol. This was described as a training facility for offenders who had obvious learning difficulties. Straffen's behaviour there wildly fluctuated. At times he was well behaved and made progress but then he would go AWOL or steal something and go right back to square one. Straffen was eventually released from the facility on licence and put in the care of his mother. He picked up some menial work and was watched by the authorities - though, tragically, not closely enough in the end.

In July 1951, Straffen murdered five-year-old Brenda Goddard in Bath. Brenda was picking flowers when Straffen encountered her. He strangled Brenda and then hit her with a rock. After the murder, Straffen went to the cinema. The film he went to watch was a crime noir thriller called Shockproof. The police and authorities thought Straffen might be a potential suspect in this case so they put together a picture of his movements around the time of the death. After this they seemed to rule him out of the list of suspects. It could be the fact that because Straffen went to the cinema straight after the murder this (unwittingly - Straffen was no Einstein) gave him an alibi.

In August, Straffen killed again when he murdered nine year-old Cicely Batstone. Cicely was strangled. Straffen had persuaded the child to get on a bus with him. Some people saw him on the bus with Cicely but obviously presumed that he was an older brother looking after her. The many eyewitness accounts of them together though did enable the police to build a good picture of what the suspect looked like and this description was obviously a match for a certain John Straffen. Straffen confessed to the murder. When he was asked why he had murdered Cicely he said that he had simply wanted to give the police something to do.

John Straffen was deemed unfit to stand trial and sent to Broadmoor. In April, 1952, Straffen escaped from Broadmoor by jumping over the wall after climbing on a shed roof. His escape had tragic consequences because he eventually stumbled across a five year-old girl named Linda Bowyer who was out riding her bike. Straffen strangled the child and then managed to blag a cup of tea and a ride to a bus stop after knocking on the door of a nearby house. There was a huge search for Straffen and he was captured that same day. The damage had already been done though. Linda's body was found the next morning. She had been the third victim of the awful John Straffen.

Straffen's escape was very embarrassing for Broadmoor because of the ease with which he had hopped over the wall. People who lived in the area around Broadmoor were obviously none too thrilled to learn that lunatic killers like John Straffen could escape so easily. As a consequence of the escape the security at the institution was improved and a system of warning sirens was put in place. Unlike his previous murders, Straffen was actually put on trial this time. He pleaded not guilty. Straffen's case was pretty hopeless and he was found guilty (the jury took less than an hour) and sentenced to death.

However the Home Secretary intervened and Straffen was reprieved - his sentence reduced to life in prison. Straffen went back to Broadmoor and served in various other prisons over the years. Though Straffen was recommended for parole by the authorities, in the end the (then) Home Secretary Michael Howard put him on a list of people who should never be released. Straffen's solicitors did their best to cast doubt on his conviction because they believed he wasn't fit to stand trial and even went to the European Court of Human Rights to argue for his release but it didn't come to anything in the end. Straffen eventually became the longest serving prisoner in Britain. He died at Frankland Prison in County Durham in 2007. He was 77 years old and had been in prison for 55 years.

THE OAKLAND COUNTY CHILD KILLER

The Oakland County Child Killer was the name given to a killer who murdered at least four children in Oakland County, Michigan, United States, between 1976 and 1977. The victims were both male and female and aged from ten to twelve. The first victim was Mark Stebbins. This child was found dead four days after he vanished. He was dumped in some wood on a parking lot. The victim had been sexually abused and strangled. There was ample evidence of rope marks on the body - which obviously suggested the child had been bound with rope. Twelve year-old Jill Robinson was the next victim - although the circumstances of this murder seemed puzzlingly different from those of the first. Robinson vanished after going out for a ride on her bike. Her body was found the next day not very far from the police station. There was no sexual abuse in this case and she had been shot in the face with a shotgun.

Ten year-old Kristine Mihelich was the next to go missing. She vanished after running an errand at the store. Her body was found nearly three weeks later on a rural road. She had been smothered. Eleven year-old Timothy King was the next victim shortly after the last. He was out running an errand to the pharmacy when he vanished. His body was found in a shallow ditch and he had been sexually assaulted and smothered. As these murders piled-up there were a number of child abduction attempts in the area but the police believed these were separate incidents and not connected to The Oakland County Child Killer.

There were other murders of children and young people in the area during the time the killer. Sixteen year-old Cynthia Cadieux was battered to death in 1976 and fourteen year-old Jane Allan was found dead in a river this same year. The Oakland County Child Killer is strongly suspected of having played a part in these two additional murders. The 1979 disappearance of twelve year-old Kimberly Alice King is also generally believed to have been connected to The Oakland County Child Killer. An eyewitness later claimed to have seen Alice King being abducted by two men.

Despite the allocation of considerable police resources and a special investigation team being assigned to this case no breakthrough transpired and the killer was not identified. The only compensation was the fact that the police investigations into these murders and child abusers in the area did lead to them smashing a child porn ring. The suspect in the Oakland child murders was deemed to be someone who drove a lot in his work and seemed trustworthy to children. In 1979 the authorities received a letter from a man who called himself Allen. Allen claimed he was a slave of the Oakland killer and that the killer was a Vietnam veteran who murdered children as revenge for being sent to the Vietnam War. When an attempt was made to meet up with Allen to discuss his claims though, Allen simply failed to turn up and was never heard from again.

Archibald Edward Sloan, a child abuser who lived in the area, was suspected of being the killer by the police but forensic evidence did not match him to the crimes. Another suspect is Ted Lamborgine. Lamborgine was a mechanic who the police discovered was part of the child porn ring they uncovered while working on this case. Ted Lamborgine pleaded guilty to fifteen sex-related counts involving young boys but he did not confess to the Oakland child murders - nor was he charged with them. Lamborgine went to great lengths while in custody to avoid taking a lie detector test about the Oakland murders and one could certainly construe this as suspicious. The family of victim Mark Stebbins believed that Lamborgine was the killer and even filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him.

The family of Kimberly Alice King were suspicious of another suspect - Chris Busch. Busch had child porn offences and was known to the police. He shot himself in 1979 and was found to have a ligature and photos of children in his home. In 2005, a man who did not wish to be identified and called himself Jeff, contacted the authorities and eventually claimed that the Oakland murders were part of Wiccan human sacrifice rituals. This claim was eventually dismissed. Despite the presence of a couple of very strong suspects the identity of The Oakland County Child Killer has yet to be established with any degree of certainty. The police continue to explore leads in this case though and still haven't given up hope that one day they will finally solve this mystery once and for all.

LIZZIE HALLIDAY

Lizzie Halliday was born Eliza Margaret McNally in County Antrim, Ireland. There is some debate as to the year in which she was born but it is usually cited as 1859. When she was a little girl her family moved from Ireland to the United States. Lizzie lived in New York at first and eventually got married a number of times. Her husbands usually died or left her. It is often reported that she tried to poison her fourth husband with arsenic and so had to flee before she could be questioned. Lizzie made her way to Vermont and got married yet again but the marriage didn't last very long. Lizzie vanished only weeks after the marriage.

She had by now made her way to Philadelphia - where it is believed Lizzie had some Irish friends who were able to offer her a bed for a few nights and some financial assistance. Lizzie decided to open up a shop in the city and then set fire to it for the insurance money. This scam evidently did not fool the authorities and Lizzie was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud. After her release, Lizzie was employed as a housekeeper in New York by Paul Halliday, a seventy-year-old farmer and widower. Despite the fact that she was decades older than Halliday, Lizzie married him.

The decision to marry Lizzie turned out to be a disaster for Paul Halliday. First she burned down his barn - killing her husband's son John in the process. This wasn't even the first time she had set fire to the barn. Lizzie had done this before. The death of John was clearly no accident as Lizzie is said to have disliked him. After a spell in an asylum, she returned to Paul Halliday and killed him. Lizzie is said to have mutilated his body afterwards. After Paul Halliday went missing a number of neighbours became suspicious of Lizzie and contacted the police. A search of the farm was undertaken and the bodies of two women were found in the barn. They had both been shot. The women were Margaret and Sarah McQuillan. Both of these women were people Lizzie knew from New York.

Soon after, the butchered body of Paul Halliday was found in the floorboards of the house. Lizzie had been racking up an escalating body count before her grisly deeds were discovered. This case was a sensation in the newspapers at the time and many wondered if Lizzie had bumped off some of her (many) previous husbands too. For this reason the victim count of Lizzie Halliday is sometimes put at six rather than four. The true figure is impossible to verify though. Five seems a reasonable guess.

Because of the ruthless barbarity of her crimes there was even speculation that Lizzie might be Jack the Ripper. "Do they think I am an Elephant?" said Lizzie when asked if she was Jack the Ripper. "That was done by a man." Lizzie was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair. However this death sentence was commuted to life in a mental institution after a medical commission declared her insane. In 1906, Lizzie Halliday killed a nurse at a hospital for criminally insane by stabbing the nurse to death with a pair of scissors. Lizzie Halliday died in 1918. She was one of the craziest and most dangerous female serial killers in history.

HYBRISTOPHILIA

Ted Bundy was said to recieve 200 letters a day from female 'groupies' while he was awaiting his last trials. Believe it or not, Bundy was even rumoured to have started a relationship with one of his lawyers. As unbelievable as it sounds, even the goofy looking Arthur Shawcross seemed to attract female fans in prison. The term for this strange phenomenon is hybristophilia. Hybristophilia is sometimes referred to as Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. 'Hybristophiliacs,' wrote Owlcation, 'are people who are sexually aroused and attracted to people who have committed cruel, gruesome crimes such as murder and rape. It occurs more often in women than in men. There are two categories of hybristophiliacs: The first is Passive Hybristophilia. Every year, notorious criminals receive romantic and sexual fan mail from admirers. These letter-writing groupies (known as SKGs -- serial killer groupies) have no desire in taking part of criminal activity, yet are attracted to men behind bars.

'These women are usually delusional and will try to find excuses for what the criminal did. They will develop relationships with a criminal and feel that they are special -- that even though their lover may have killed numerous people, he would never harm her. They usually feel that they can change their lover and have rescue fantasies. Passive hybristophiliacs tend to put themselves in positions to be seduced, manipulated, and lied to by the people they fall for. Aggressive hybristophiliacs are complete opposites. They are willing to help out their lovers with their criminal agenda by luring victims, hiding bodies, covering crimes, or even committing crimes. They are attracted to their lover’s because of their violent actions and want to receive love, yet are unable to understand that their lover’s are psychopaths who are manipulating them. Both passive and aggressive hybristophiliacs tend to end up in abusive or unhealthy relationships.'

Richard Ramirez was said to get plenty of fan mail in prison from women when he was arrested. When he was in prison, Ramirez married magazine editor Doreen Lioy. Lioy had been sending him dozens of letters. Doreen Lioy described Ramirez (who, lest we forget, once plucked out a victim's eyes and put them in a jewelry case for the police to find) as funny and charming. If that's not hybristophilia then nothing is. "I think he’s a really great person. He’s my best friend; he’s my buddy," said Lioy. "I can’t help the way the world looks at him. They don’t know him the way I do. [People call me crazy] or stupid or lying, and I’m none of those things. I just believe in him completely. In my opinion, there was far more evidence to convict O.J. Simpson, and we all know how that turned out."

Ramirez died of secondary to B-cell lymphoma in 2013 at the age of 53. Doreen Lioy didn't seem to turn up to claim the body of Ramirez when he died in prison. Maybe she was in love with some other evil crazy incarcerated serial killer by this time. In 2009 it had been proven beyond doubt by DNA technology that Richard Ramirez killed a nine year old girl named Mei Leung in 1984. Even the deluded and gullible Doreen Lioy must have felt very stupid and very appalled and disgusted by this scientific cold case revelation. Lioy was not the only person to find Ramirez attractive. Cynthia Haden, one of the jurors at his trial, fell in love with Ramirez and defended him in interviews.

Carol Ann Boone moved to Florida to support Ted Bundy when he was put on trial and served as a character witness for him. She accepted his marriage proposal and had a child with him. "Let me put it this way, I don’t think that Ted belongs in jail," said Boone during the trials. "The things in Florida don’t concern me any more than the things out west do. I don’t think they have reason to charge Ted Bundy with murder in either Leon County or Columbia County." Boone was so devoted to Bundy she smuggled drugs into prison for him. There are even stories that she tried to help him escape. Carol Ann Boone always steadfastly insisted Bundy was innocent. However, Bundy later confessed to being a serial killer when he was on death row. He became confessional in an attempt to buy time and stall the electric chair. Carol Ann Boone, like Doreen Lioy, was exposed as a foolish and gullible woman.

"I can’t tell you how often I see this (hybristophilia) happen,” said Louis Schlesinger, PhD, professor of forensic psychology at the John Jay College Of Criminal Justice. “In nearly every penitentiary across the country you’ll find female employees, like lawyers, therapists, and guards, getting involved with inmates." Jeffrey Ian Ross, PhD, criminologist and professor at the University of Baltimore, said of hybristophilia - "Basically, it’s a sexual attraction to someone who’s committed some sort of outrageous and extraordinary crime. Most of these women only see these men for occasional visits in their prison, during which, the man is on his best behaviour. If he’s not, she may never come back again. They also don’t have to deal with any of the disappointments that can come up in day-to-day in relationships." In a warped way then, you might describe an incarcerated serial killer as the perfect boyfriend!

Henry Lee Lucas, Arthur Shawcross, and Randall Woodfield are among the killers who got married in prison. Even Jeffrey Dahmer is said to have got fan mail. After his death, Dennis Nilsen's spectacles were given to a woman named Andrea Kubinova in the Czech Republic. Kubinova was Nilsen's pen pal and visited him in prison. "He came across as a nice person," she said. "I know it’s odd in the context, but yeah he was." You might suggest that Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress and (briefly) wife, suffered from a form of hybristophilia. Afton Burton (aka Star) is the young woman who started contacting Charles Manson in prison and later became engaged to him. She was only 17 when she first contacted him. Burton described Manson as her idol and said she wanted to marry him. He kicked the bucket though before this could happen.

We see evidence of hybristophilia in some 'killer couples'. Myra Hindley was clearly in thrall to Ian Brady. Gerald and Charlene Gallego became known as the Love Slave Killers in Sacramento, California. This was an unlikely duo. Gerald Gallego was a known criminal who once molested a child but Charlene Gallego was from a good family and intelligent. Nonetheless, they married and he exerted great control over her. Gerald Gallego's fantasy to was have 'love slaves' and Charlene facilitated this by helping him to lure victims to their van.

In 1978 Gerald Gallego raped and murdered two teenage girls that Charlene had found. He would kill five more people in 1980 - including one man. Gerald and Charlene Gallego were thankfully captured in 1980. Charlene agreed to testify against Charlene Gallego as part of a plea bargain that would reduce her sentence. He was sentenced to death but died of natural causes in prison in 2002. Charlene Gallego was released in 1997. She said she had tried to save the victims and did not participate in the murders. Many believe though that she was released far too early.

It seems that hybristophilia clouds any sense of logic or taste. Women (and sometimes men) are fascinated by serial killers and even become overwhelmed by the desire to meet them and look after them. They rationalise this conduct by refusing to believe the killer is guilty or simply tell themselves they are doing a kind deed to someone who is lonely and an outcast in society. No matter how awful the killer is, you can guarantee that killer has received fan mail and that there are probably women out there who would be perfectly willing to meet them and, in some cases, even marry them. Afton Burton and Doreen Lioy are far from unique. It seems that, for as long as serial killers exist, there will always be people trying to contact them from the outside world.

TERROR IN HOLLYWOOD - THE BIZARRE DEATH OF VIC MORROW

The fantasy anthology series The Twilight Zone is one of the most famous and iconic shows in American television history. The show ended in 1964 and its creator Rod Serling sadly died far too young in 1975. In the early 1980s, Steven Spielberg (red hot at the time thanks to Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T.) decided to make a big screen anthology version of The Twilight Zone and hired Joe Dante and George Miller to direct segments. The other two segments would be directed by Spielberg and his friend John Landis. Thanks to films like Animal House and An American Werewolf in London, Landis was one of the hottest young directors in Hollywood. Spielberg and Landis were such good friends that Spielberg even made a cameo in The Blues Brothers for Landis.

The Twilight Zone movie was something of a vanity project for Landis and Spielberg and they couldn't wait to get started. They both loved The Twilight Zone and relished the chance to bring it to the big screen. Spielberg planned to direct a remake of The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street for the movie while Dante and Miller were also assigned classic TV episodes to update. Landis, eager to outdo the others, decided to come up with an original story called Time Out. The story was about a racist bigot who must experience persecution at the sharp end when he is sent back in time to Nazi Europe and Vietnam. Landis cast the actor Vic Morrow as the lead of his segment Time Out. Morrow, now in his fifties, was best known for the old TV show Combat! but his career was rather in the doldrums by 1982. Morrow naturally jumped at the unexpected chance to be in a big movie like The Twilight Zone and thought this could resurrect his career. Little did he know though that the movie would actually cost him his life in horrendous fashion.

The Twilight Zone film was completely overshadowed by a horrific helicopter accident on the set which killed Vic Morrow and two child extras (Renee Chen and My-ca Dinh Le) during the shooting of the John Landis contribution Time Out. Landis and his team had secretly paid the families of the child extras under the table and then used the children on a dangerous night shoot (this was all in violation of California's child labor laws). During a sequence set in war torn Vietnam, Vic Morrow was required to carry the two child extras across a wind machine lashed river as explosions went off around them and a helicopter loomed overhead. Morrow (who was no spring chicken) and the child extras should not have been doing this dangerous stunt.

As the helicopter hovered into the shot, Landis kept shouting for the helicopter to get lower. Tragedy struck when the rotor blade was hit by debris from one of the explosions and the pilot lost control. The chopper violently and suddenly flipped over into the river and landed right on top of Morrow and the child actors. The children were killed instantly and Vic Morrow was decapitated by the rotor blade. A member of the crew later found Morrow's head floating in the river. This was probably the most gruesome and upsetting accident in Hollywood history. It was made all the worse by the fact that two of the victims were innocent children.

The tragic accident swiftly ended the friendship between Twilight Zone's producer Steven Spielberg (who not present on the set that night and devastated and angry when he found out what had happened - it's a pity Spielberg wasn't on the set because there is no way he would have permitted Landis to be so reckless)) and John Landis and led to a ten year manslaughter case in the courts. To the surprise of most observers, Landis somehow managed to evade any serious charges for the accident - despite the fact that he had needlessly put his lead actor and two child extras at risk simply because of his determination to capture a great shot for his film. Two books were written about the Twilight Zone accident and they both painted John Landis as a bombastic, reckless, and dangerous egomaniac. According to the book Outrageous Conduct, Landis even used live ammunition on the set of Time Out because he wanted it to look more realistic when plants and trees were shot up during the Vietnam segment.

The power and influence of Steven Spielberg was evident in the way that he avoided any participation in the court case and investigation which followed. Spielberg's underlings were also elusive and unhelpful when it came to the accident investigation. It was left to John Landis to carry the can (and rightly so one might argue) but - all the same - it was fascinating to see how Spielberg was practically untouchable thanks to his powerful status in Hollywood. Joe Dante, who directed a segment in the movie, had to give a deposition for one of the civil cases but Spielberg - who was both a director AND producer on the film - did not. That didn't make any sense and illustrated how Spielberg was shielded from the fallout.

Bizarrely, the Twilight Zone film was not scrapped. Spielberg eventually adapted the whimsical and gentle Kick the Can so that he could complete his contribution to the film in a matter of days and then wash his hands of the whole tragic affair. The movie was eventually put out with little promotion. It is not, for understandable reasons, a picture that Spielberg or Landis ever want to discuss these days. The oddest thing about Twilight Zone: The Movie is that they left in the John Landis segment with Vic Morrow. This does make the movie a rather ghoulish experience now with the knowledge of what happened during the production.

The career of John Landis never quite recovered from the awful Twilight Zone tragedy. Despite the success he had directing Michael Jackson's famous Thriller horror music video, Landis found his status in Hollywood reduced thanks to the Twilight Zone affair and the poor reception of films like Into the Night and Spies Like Us. He never really managed to get back to the Hollywood top table again although he did have a solid box-office hit with the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America. By the 1990s though Landis was pretty washed up. He never fufilled his early potential. The fracture of his friendship and partnership with Spielberg diminished his status in Hollywood. When some Hollywood directors wrote a public letter of support to Landis after the accident, Spielberg was notably not among them. Brian De Palma also declined to support Landis and expressed the view that Landis had been highly irresponsible to use children in a night shoot that involved explosions and helicopters.

Vic Morrow was the father of Jennifer Jason Leigh - who later became a famous actress. Both of Morrow's daughters and the families of the child actors received undisclosed damages out of court as a result of the accident. It was scant consolation though for their losses. John Landis came off as arrogant and unsympathetic during the trial. He tried to pass the blame off to special effects people. The recklessness and arrogance of Landis had put Morrow and the children in danger in the first place and that is something that John Landis will always have to live with. The deaths of Vic Morrow and Renee Chen and My-ca Dinh Le remain among the most disturbing and tragic in Hollywood history.  

Helicopters have been responsible for a large number of deaths in Hollywood. A young stuntman was burned to death in a helicopter crash on the TV show Airwolf, the director Boris Sagal died after walking into a helicopter blade shooting the TV miniseries World War III (such is Hollywood that shooting resumed with a new director the next day!), and eight people died in a helicopter crash on the set of the Chuck Norris film Braddock: Missing in Action III. This is merely the tip of the iceberg. The advent of CGI has reduced the danger posed by helicopters on film sets though. If CGI had been around in 1982, Vic Morrow and Renee Chen and My-ca Dinh Le wouldn't have been killed because John Landis could have just digitally added a helicopter and explosions into the sequence in post-production.

Sadly, terrible accidents on movie sets have happened both before and after the awful Twilight Zone tragedy. Noah's Ark is a 1928 film directed by Michael Curtiz and written by Darryl F Zanuck. This is a prime example of how appearing in a big epic film in Old Hollywood could be a dangerous line of work at the best of times. Shooting the climax of this movie involved 600,000 gallons of water and tragedy soon abounded. Five extras drowned shooting the flood sequence and there were a number of serious injuries from extras being thrown around by the water. One extra had to have a limb amputated and there were broken bones all over the place. Other thirty ambulances were required on the set and the lead actress was left with a bout of pneumonia. Noah's Ark forced Hollywood to introduce new safety standards for film productions and spare a thought for the poor extras who were risking life and limb to bring these Hollywood epics to life.

In 2014, a film called Midnight Rider was shooting in Georgia. The film required a scene where William Hurt's character has a dream that he is in bed on some railroad tracks. Despite not securing permission, the director Randall Miller decided to shoot this scene on a real rural railway bridge. William Hurt had severe misgivings about the scene but was told it would be fine. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the scene was being shot, a real train suddenly appeared and thundered towards Hurt and the crew on the tracks. They all scrambled for safety but - tragically - camera assistant Sarah Jones was struck by the train and lost her life. Randall Miller later pleaded guilty to felony involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespass and spent a year in prison. One might argue that John Landis was lucky not to receive a similar fate.

THE TEXAS KILLING FIELDS

The Texas Killing Fields is a 25-acre patch of land situated a mile from Interstate Highway 45. Since 1971, the remains of thirty people have been found in this patch of land. The reputation of this spooky patch of land is such that those who live nearby tend to avoid it like the plague. Because most of the victims were female and many of them were children or teenagers it is naturally speculated that a serial killer (or maybe even more than one serial killer) has been using this area to dispose of victims they have killed. This area was a perfect place to kill or bury bodies because it was remote and quiet.

One of the reasons why the serial killer theory has credibility in this case is that a number of the female victims were found to look similar and have similar hairstyles. Serial killers will often have a 'type' when it comes to victims and target a specific type of person. The victims in the early seventies who were buried in this area were largely young teenage girls who had gone missing. This was, sadly, the type of victim very consistent with a serial killer. It was naturally difficult to establish a clear cause of death in all of the victims but there was some evidence that a few later victims had been shot. It is not believed that the same killer was responsible for all of these deaths but it seems highly plausible that one or perhaps even two serial killers were responsible for a great many.

From 1984, four woman were found buried in The Texas Killing Fields. They were all naked with their arms carefully folded. It seems rather obvious that one killer was responsible for these murders given the obvious similarities between them. Michael Lloyd Self was convicted of three of the Killing Fields murders in 1974 but there is evidence that a confession was beaten out of him by corrupt cops and that his conviction was not safe. Self died in prison in 2000 and there is a general perception that he was innocent of the charges against him.

Another suspect in this case was Edward Harold Bell. Bell owned a local surf shop and had known some of the victims. He was also a persistent child sex offender. Not only that but he owned a plot of land near where some of the victims were found. Bell became a fugitive in the end when he went on the run after killing a man (he was later convicted of this crime). Although Bell later confessed to several Texas Killing Fields murders from the early 1970s, the police evidently didn't believe him. They found no evidence connecting Bell to the murders in question so he was never charged with them.

William Lewis Reece has been convicted of some of the Killing Fields murders and was sentenced to death in 2021. However, the vast majority of the murders still remain a mystery. A man named Mark Stallings remains a suspect in at least some of the Killing Fields murders. Stalling has confessed to burying some victims there but hasn't been charged with anything at the time of writing. Stallings is already serving life in prison for kidnap.

A thirteen year-old girl named Krystal Baker was found buried in the Killing Fields in 1996. For this murder a man named Kevin Edison Smith was convicted. Other people have claimed responsibility for some of the bodies found in the Killing Fields but as of yet no more convictions have transpired. The local police were highly suspicious of a man named Robert Abel in relation to this case. Their interest in Abel began in the 1990s. Abel was a retired Nasa engineer who owned land near where many of the bodies were found.

The police heard stories that Abel was an odd character who was mean to his wife and animals. When they went to speak to Abel they found him suspicious. They were especially suspicious of the fact that Abel seemed very interested in the murders and asked lots of questions about the case. The police searched Abel's home and property several times but they were never able to prove that he killed anyone. The intense police interest was clearly a strain on Abel because he committed suicide in 2005. Was Robert Abel a serial killer? The truth is that we simply don't know. The killer or killers responsible for a great many deaths in The Texas Killing Fields are yet to be unmasked.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Leonard Lake and Charles Ng were a notorious serial killing duo who abducted, raped and tortured from 1983 to 1985. Lake was the boss of the duo and although Ng was much younger he was no less sadistic. These two evil men were both crazy. They had a military background and were into survivalist conspiracy theories. They might have killed 30 people although the verifiable figure is around eleven. They built a special bunker to keep their victims captive as sex slaves.

Lake was born in San Francisco in 1945. He was a fairly disturbed child by all accounts and sexually propositioned his sisters. He served in Vietnam and was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder. His marriage apparently collapsed because his wife found out he was making porno bondage movies in his spare time. Lake moved to Northern California and lived a hippie commune sort of life (obviously without the peace and love though in the end). He married a woman who had no qualms abut his porno bondage films. Quite the contrary. She was happy to star in them. Lake became increasingly obsessed though by the impending nuclear war he felt was sure to come. He began planning a bunker,

Charles Ng was born in Hong Kong in 1960. Ng came from a wealthy family and was sent to a boarding school in England. However, he was booted out of the school for stealing from other pupils. As a young man, NG moved to the United States to study and then enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Ng claims he got into the Marines with fake ID that said he was born in Indiana. Ng was eventually given a court-martial in the Marines for stealing weapons. He fled to Northern California where he eventually met a certain Leonard Lake. Lake tried to hide Ng but the authorities finally found him and he spent time in a military prison. When he was released, he went back to Leonard Lake.

The murders began in 1984. Lake had constructed a dungeon where they could rape and torture women. They would abduct people and take them there. Diaries kept by the men even admitted to the murder of babies. Their victims included their neighbor Lonnie Bond, his girlfriend Brenda O'Connor, their infant son Lonnie Jr, and Harvey and Deborah Dubs and their young son Sean. 45 pounds of crushed bone fragments were later found at the cabin site where the murders took place. Another harrowing aspect to the case was that the two men had videotaped themselves raping and torturing victims. On one of the tapes, Lake said he was inspired by the John Fowles book The Collector. The Collector is about a shy and meek man who becomes obsessed with a pretty art student. He kidnaps the student and keeps her prisoner in the cellar of his country cottage.

The disturbing activities of Lake and Ng thankfully did not last for long. Ng was caught trying to steal a vise in a store and by the time Lake arrived to sort things out, the cops were on the scene. The police really didn't like the look of Leonard Lake at all and found him suspicious - especially when he gave them a driving licence as ID that was patently fake. They decided to search the cabin of Lake - whereupon they found bone fragments, a torture dungeon, and all the videotapes.

After capture, Leonard Lake managed to commit suicide in prison by way of cyanide pills. Charles Ng was sentenced to death but remains on Death Row (because California hasn't staged any executions for a long time). Ng claimed in court that he never killed anyone and that it was Lake's doing. While he was clearly the subservient partner in this duo, it felt like a bit of a stretch to believe he had nothing to do with the murders and had no idea what was happening - especially as he eventually had to concede helping to hide bodies. Charles Ng can also clearly be seen and heard in the videotapes the two men shot. It's safe to say that that Ng will die behind bars.

THE HAMBURG RUBBLE MURDERER

In 1947, over the space of mere weeks, the bodies of four women were found hidden in rubble in Hamburg, Germany. The war had ended only two years previously and large parts of the city had been flattened by the heavy Allied bombing raids. As a consequence of this, in 1947 there were still extensive parts of Hamburg with derelict land, ruined buildings, and piles of nothing but rubble. The bodies found in the rubble had all been raped and strangled. One of the victims had her hands bound when she was found.

At this time Hamburg was part of the post-war British Zone of Occupation but the actual murder investigation fell to the German police. Over a thousand people were interviewed about the murders and many posters appealing for information were plastered around the city. Generous rewards for relevant information were issued by the police. Though the victims had clearly been murdered, the police found there were no major injuries or signs of a struggle. This led them to believe that the killer probably murdered them somewhere else and then transported the bodies to the rubble by car.

The youngest victim was estimated to be six years-old. The girl's body was hidden down a rubble strewn elevator shaft. The police, sadly, were not able to identify the victims. Because much of the city had been destroyed in the war, there were many homeless people at the time and it was difficult to establish who people actually were - especially if they had no ID on them. This was certainly the case with the rubble victims. What clothes the victims had on were taken around shops and market traders by the police in a forlorn hope of identifying the victims but this proved a dead end.

One eyewitness account of a possible suspect in this case said he was wearing dentures and described them but when the police tried to match these dentures with all the dentists in the city they again drew a blank. Around this time there had been a spate of murders of taxi drivers in Hamburg and the police wondered if the taxi murders and rubble deaths were somehow related. However, any link in these two sets of murders proved impossible to find. It appeared that these were simply two completely different cases that had no connective tissue whatsoever.

This killer was exceptionally active in that there was only a week between each murder. Serial killers will often have a 'cooling off' period after a murder in which they lay low for a while but certainly wasn't the case with this killer. There was evidence of a financial motive to the murders in that they had all been robbed but a sexual motivation is deemed the most likely MO when it comes to the Rubble Murderer. The main suspect THE LODZ GAY MURDERERLA MUJER VERDUGOBAYOU STRANGLERTHE SECRET LIFE OF BILL COSBYKARLA FAYE TUCKER THE STUDENT NURSE MASSACRECANNIBAL OF THE RUHRTHE LONG ISLAND KILLERCHARLES EDMUND CULLENTHE YIPSILANTI RIPPERTSUTOMU MIYAZAKITHE CURIOUS CASE OF KIERAN KELLY