Category Archives: Ghastly!

Today’s Intentional Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

A case of suicide by automobile:

A twenty-four-year-old man died in an auto crash. A few hours before the incident he had revealed in a conversation with a young woman at a bar that he was intoxicated and despondent. He recounted his recent loss of job, a pending marital separation, and ongoing doctor’s care for a “serious illness.” Before leaving the bar, he stated that he was going to “roll his car” and that she should come to “watch him die.” She left the establishment in her auto shortly before he did, and then he passed her at a high rate of speed. Other witnesses saw him driving his car recklessly. He ran into an embankment and the auto rolled over several times, finally resting on the ejected victim. His fatal injuries were blunt impacts to head and trunk. The blood alcohol concentration was 230 mg/dL.

This case is unique because an account of the imminent suicidal intent and method had just been related to a female drinking companion by the suicide immediately before the fatal act. Without this woman’s testimony, the case might have been called an accidental death, especially in view of his high blood alcohol level.

Culled from: Car Crash Culture by Mikita Brottman

Crime Scene Du Jour!

No caption. The position of the young victim’s coattail suggests that his pocket was picked after he fell. The location is a saloon, as can be seen from the brass rail and the spittoon at his feet. The official-looking document by his right arm is an announcement of the first annual ball of the McKinley Lodge No. 43 of the Knights of Pythias in Brooklyn, to be held November 3, 1917, admission 25 cents, and the other papers are additional copies of the same flier. Since the man was black, he was not invited, but probably was hired to post them.

Culled from: Evidence by Luc Sante

Garretdom: Fiendish Woman Du Jour!

Here’s another in the series of newspaper articles entitled, “A Fiendish Woman.”  This one is from the September 24, 1877 issue of the Alexandria Gazette.

A FIENDISH WOMAN.—Kate Shaw, and Ellen Bernard, who occupy a floor at 312 North Fourth street, Williamsburgh, quarreled on Thursday night, when the former was worsted and threatened revenge. Yesterday she enticed Tommy, Mrs. Bernard’s five year old son, to her room, and made him pick up a red-hot poker, and, by clenching his hands, forced him to hold it for several minutes. Pieces of the palms of both his hands were burned out, and other pieces that clung to his hands were terribly charred and blistered. Justice Elliott sent Mrs. Shaw to jail in default of bonds.—N. Y. News.

Isn’t it interesting how these fiendish women got back at one another by attacking the other’s children?  Very fiendish, indeed!

Today’s Hysterical Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The homes along the 12000 block of Presilla Road would be impressive anywhere. Tastefully ornate iron gates guard the long asphalt driveways leading to spectacularly large homes that cling to the side of the Santa Rosa Valley in Camarillo, California. Doctor Xavier Caro, a renowned expert in rheumatology with a successful practice in nearby Northridge, lived in his five-bedroom, four-bathroom mansion on eight acres with his wife Socorro, who was known to everyone as Cora. They lived there with their children, eleven-year-old Xavier Jr., eight-year-old Michael, five-year-old Christopher, and Gabriel, their one-year-old. The University of California, Los Angeles, graduate bought the home in 1993 and it was said to be worth over five-million dollars in 2000. Xavier and Cora married in 1986 and enjoyed the success that enabled them to live in luxury.

Cora worked as the office manager at Dr. Caro’s medical complex for fifteen years, but in 1998 Cora got sticky fingers. She began siphoning money from the business and giving it to her parents, Greg and Juanita Leon. The Leons, who lived in nearby Granada Hills, were a fixture at the house on Presilla Road, and even had their own room at the estate. The couple acted the role of grandparents, with Juanita watching the kids and Greg, a retired bricklayer, puttering around the complex.

When the doctor discovered his wife had embezzled over a hundred thousand dollars from his practice, he fired her from her position, just as he would any employee. She no longer had access to the company’s funds. It is not like she needed the job. Needless to say, the marriage was wobbly, and that was compounded by Cora’s alcohol consumption and a brief affair the handsome doctor had with a colleague. The two worked on their relationship and seemed to be doing much better.

On November 22, 1999, the Caro family had a light dinner and settled in for a quiet evening at home. Xavier Jr., now twelve, made a sarcastic comment about his parents having an extra Margarita, which angered the doctor. Anyone who has ever been around preteen children knows that there are few stages of life that are so difficult for both the child and everyone else within a thirty-foot radius. For punishment, Xavier took away his son’s computer games, which angered Cora, and the couple started bickering. Xavier decided it would be more constructive to head over to his practice to catch up on paperwork, and let Cora cool down.

While at the office, Cora telephoned him three different times, crying so hysterically he could not understand her. He told her he would be home shortly. He left his office around 10:30 p.m., the surveillance cameras at his building’s parking lot dutifully recording his departure in his Mercedes-Benz. When he arrived at his spectacular home he found Cora on the floor of their bedroom. He called police and while talking to the dispatcher discovered a bullet wound on the right side of Cora’s head, and her .38 caliber revolver underneath her body. Panicking, he ran to his son’s bedrooms, only to find Xavier Jr. and Michael in their beds, both shot once in the head. Five-year-old Christopher must have woken up when he heard the gunshots, as it took two bullets to the head to kill him. Cartoon sheets and superhero-themed pillows were soaked in blood and brain tissue. Xavier got back on the telephone to the emergency dispatcher and mournfully cried that his children were all shot, except for the infant Gabriel. For some reason, Cora did not have the nerve to kill her baby.

Cora’s attempt at suicide was bungled. The bullet did not pierce her skull, it instead zipped around under her scalp, leaving her bloody but not seriously injured. A blood test revealed Cora had twice the legal amount of alcohol to be considered intoxicated in the state of California. Also in her blood was Prozac, an anti-depressant prescribed to her. Police arrested Cora and charged her with three counts of first degree murder.

The four-month-long trial started on August 23, 2001, in Ventura County Superior Court, almost twenty months after the murders. Cora’s defense was completely implausible. Her attorneys originally tried to place the murders on the doctor, a theory easily destroyed by Deputy District Attorney Jim Ellison, who established a timeline with phone records and surveillance photos from the doctor’s office and parking garage. Xavier’s hands and clothing had no trace of gunpowder. The prosecution also provided witnesses who described seeing Cora’s violent side on multiple occasions, once giving her husband a black eye. Another witness told the court on one occasion Cora told her she wanted to commit suicide.

Socorro took the stand and blamed Xavier for the murders and that he was framing her for the crimes. Cora cried during her testimony, and twice was removed by the court because of her sobbing. After twenty-four minutes of testimony, Cora was dismissed from the witness chair. her attorney’s changed her plea to “Innocent by Reason of Insanity”.

Cora Caro

The jurors deliberated for five days before reaching a guilty verdict. A judge later sentenced her to death for her crimes and she is currently sitting on death row in San Quentin State Prison.

Doctor Xavier Caro and his surviving son, Gabriel, moved to a new house where they have attempted to return to as much of a normal life as they possibly could.

Culled from: California’s Deadliest Women by my friend David Kulczyk

Malady Du Jour!

The Dr. Ikkaku Ochi Collection is a fascinating cluster of medical photographs from the late 19th and early 20th century that had been collected by Dr. Ikkaku Ochi in Japan and were found in a box many years later.  There was no detailed information available for most of the photos, but the images are compelling because they show composed portraits of people suffering through intense pain caused by conditions that in most cases would be resolved through treatment today. There’s a sense of overwhelming sadness that comes through in these pictures, but also dignity and strength.

Garretdom: Fiendish Woman Du Jour!

Here’s another in the series of newspaper articles entitled, “A Fiendish Woman.”  This one is from the May 10, 1877 issue of The Brooklyn Daily Times.

A Fiendish Woman.

How She Revenged Herself Upon Her Hostess.

Yesterday afternoon Mrs. Robinson, of 150 Canton street, was arrested by Officer James Dreeland on a charge of having committed a most atrocious crime. The accused Lad called at the residence of Mrs. Lamey, of 60 State street, with whom she was on friendly terms, and had in some manner become offended with that lady. An altercation ensued between them, and Mrs. Lamey finally attempted to eject her visitor. At the first demonstration in this direction Mrs. Robinson’s rage became ungovernable. She seized a kettle filled with boiling water, and grasping Edward Lamey, a thirteen year old son of Mrs. Lamey, by the hair, poured the scalding liquid down his back. The unfortunate lad was carried screaming to the Long Island College Hospital, and Mrs. Robinson, as already stated, was arrested. It is thought that the boy is dangerously injured.

Today’s Unknown Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect, making the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol illegal in the United States. With America’s most popular vice outlawed almost overnight, organized crime stepped in to quench the nation’s thirst. Crime rates reached epic proportions during the thirteen years of Prohibition, and mobsters raked in millions in untaxed income. With alcohol no longer regulated by the government, money, resulting from illegal sales, poured in like wine, and mobsters murdered each other for control of valuable turf on which to hustle their hootch. Criminal outfits often hijacked macks transporting illegal booze, frequently injuring or murdering the drivers. Mobsters wanted by the law frequently hid out in small cities to wait for things to cool off. In some towns, the local chief of police took a payoff to allow wanted criminals to hide unmolested.

Santa Rosa lowlife Terry Fitts was very familiar with San Francisco’s notorious Howard Street Gang. One of the first things that the recently released con did when he was paroled from prison was to look up his Howard Street buddies. Fitts had no intentions of giving up his criminal ways.

Fitts and his criminal buddies, “Spanish” Charley Valento and George Boyd, were wanted by San Francisco police for the gang rape of a young woman in Valento’s Howard Street hovel. Needing a place to lay low, Fitts thought that Sant Rosa would be the ideal place to hide out from the law.

Evidently, the gangsters weren’t flush with cash, because on December 10, 1920, they stopped at Pete Guidotti’s home in Santa Rosa, where the hoodlums tried to borrow money from Guidotti. Guidotti refused to give them any cash, but his wife gave the starving men some soup. Nobody in Guidotti’s home on Seventh Street knew that there was a squad of police from Santa Rosa and San Francisco surrounding the house. Police officers had been searching all over the seedy parts of Santa Rosa for the men and now they had the criminals cornered.

Detective Lester Dohrman and Sergeant Miles Jackson of the San Francisco police department burst through the front door, along with Sonoma County sheriff Jim Petray, but George Boyd grabbed Fitts’s gun from a table and fired all of its bullets at the charging policemen. Sergeant Jackson and Sheriff Petry died where they fell, but not before Jackson was able to put a bullet into Boyd. Detective Dohrman died a few hours later.

The gangsters bolted for the back door, but they were stopped by the dragnet. The seriously wounded Boyd was taken to the Sonoma County jail, along with Valento and Fitts.

Hordes of angry people congregated nightly at the jail calling for the hoodlums’ heads. Finally on the fifth night, hindered by no effort on the part of the guards to stop them, the mob broke into the jail and grabbed the terrified prisoners. They were drive to Rural Cemetery on Franklin Avenue and strung up, in their long underwear, from a locust tree near a cannonball-ringed veterans’ monument. An inquest produced a verdict of “death by person unknown.”

“Spanish” Charley Valento, Terry Fitts, and George Boyd swing in the cold, dark Santa Rosa night on December 10, 1920

It was believed that a mob of over two hundred masked men carrying weapons had overwhelmed the guards and made off with the unlucky gangsters, although rumor had it that San Francisco policemen actually lynched the prisoners. Some thought the lynching was committed by collaboration between local police departments and the seedy proprietors of Santa Rosa’s speakeasies and houses of prostitution. Killing policemen is bad for illegal businesses, and getting rid of some of their own might have helped those shady businessmen make amends with the Santa Rosa and Sonoma County police departments.

However, sixty-five years later, a man came forth claiming he’d been the youngest member of the lynch mob. He said that a former World War I pilot from nearby Healdsburg led the mob with military precision and that they had drilled for three days before the actual lynching. When the mob reached the jail, they were given the keys to the jail cells by obliging guards. The mob, which numbered thirty men in all, was supposedly made up of friends of Sheriff Petray.

So many sightseers stopped by the lynching tree, carving off pieces of bark for souvenirs, that the city of Santa Rosa cut the tree down.

Santa Rosa crime scene investigators inspect the location of the lynching.

Culled from: California Justice by my friend David Kulczyk

Dissection Photo Du Jour!

School unknown, ca. 1900. The students in the photograph are wearing street clothes, with a protective oilskin or rubber apron. A skull, traditionally a centerpiece memento mori, was added to the scene.

Culled from: Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine: 1880-1930

Garretdom: Fiendish Woman Du Jour!

Here’s another in the series of newspaper articles entitled, “A Fiendish Woman.” This one comes from the November 30, 1876 issue of The San Francisco Examiner.

A FIENDISH WOMAN. 

A Little Boy Thrown Out of a Third Story Window.

Yesterday afternoon, about 3 o’clock, a woman named Mary Reinhardt was arrested for throwing a little boy six years old out of a third-story window in a house on Broadway street, near Kearny. The little fellow, whose name is John Drouillet, accompanied by his elder brother, entered the house for the purpose of selling some ducks, and was called into the room by the woman, who was drunk. She remarked to the little boy, “What a pretty boy!” and immediately tossed him out of the window. He fell a distance of thirty feet and struck on his head and shoulder on a hard floor in an open cellar-way. He was picked up and conveyed to an adjacent drug store, where he was found to have received a terrible wound on the forehead, above the right eye. The wound was dressed, after which the boy was conveyed to his residence, No. 21 Valparaiso street. The woman was arrested a short time afterward, but no charge has yet been entered, owing to the fact that the boy is in a critical condition.

Follow-up from the January 31, 1877 issue of The San Francisco Examiner:

Conviction of the “Galloping Cow.” 

The Municipal Court was occupied all day Monday in the trial of Mary Reinhart, known as “Galloping Cow,” on a charge of assault to murder. On the afternoon of the 29th of November last, a little boy, 6 years of age, named John Drouillet, accompanied his brother, who wished to sell some ducks, into the woman’s house. As usual, she was drunk, and after talking a moment about the proposed sale of ducks, she picked the little fellow up in her arms, caressed him, and after remarking, “What a pretty boy!” deliberately threw him out of the second-story window. He fell thirty feet, receiving terrible injuries, but appeared in the Court-room yesterday during the trial. The defense set up a plea of insanity produced by continuous drink, but the jury brought in a verdict of guilty.

Today’s Negligent Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In England, during the 1604 and 1665 plague epidemics, persons believed to be profiting from the disease incurred much hatred and distrust, and doctors as well as keepers of the sick were accused of killing people or deliberately burying them alive. In the 1665 epidemic, a butcher in Newgate Market thought to be dead was not taken away from his room, because of the negligence of the corpse bearers. He returned to life during the night, came downstairs, and complained to a little girl that he felt cold. Another story tells of a poor simpleton piper who had passed out in the street after having had too much to drink in a public house. When the corpse cart came by to pick up a corpse from the house next door, the men threw the piper’s lifeless body onto the cart as well, believing him to be yet another plague corpse. One version of the tale has the piper making his resurrection known by playing his instrument! Daniel Defoe spoke to the man who drove the cart, however, and found out the truth. The unconscious piper, buried under a heap of corpses, had suddenly shouted, “Hey! Where am I?,” when the cart was unloaded at the Mount Mill plague pit. The men were frightened, believing that he was a ghost, but one of them said, “Why, you are in the dead-cart, and we are going to bury you!” The simple piper replied, “But I ain’t dead though, am I?” which made them laugh. The poet William Austin spoke for many when he wrote,

Wisely they leave graves open for the dead
‘Cause some too early are brought to bed.

One out of trance return’d, after much strike,
Among a heap of dead, exclaims for life.
One finding himself as some maid hard lace’t,
Or as a watch for pocket , straightly case’t,
Equaly terrif’d with pain and fear,
Complains to those can neither speak nor hear.

Culled from: Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson

Suicide Du Jour!

One of my favorite books is Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective’s Scrapbook.  It is exactly what it says it is: a bizarre and oft-disturbing scrapbook collected over the years by Los Angeles area police detective Jack Huddleston, whose career spanned from 1921 to the early 1950’s. Here’s a famous entry:

PAUL BERN JEAN HARLOW. HUSBAND.
SUICIDE. “GUN”?

Wikipedia tells the story:

Paul Bern (born Paul Levy; December 3, 1889 – September 5, 1932) was a German-born American film director, screenwriter and producer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), where he became the assistant to producer Irving Thalberg. He helped launch the career of Jean Harlow, whom he married in July 1932; two months later, he was found dead of a gunshot wound, leaving what appeared to be a suicide note. Various alternative theories of his death have been proposed. MGM writer and film producer Samuel Marx believed that he was killed by his ex-common-law wife Dorothy Millette, who jumped to her death from a ferry two days afterward.

Two months after marrying Harlow, on September 5, 1932, Bern was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in their home on Easton Drive in Beverly Hills, California. The coroner ruled Bern’s death a suicide.

Police discovered a note at the scene that read as follows:

“Dearest Dear,
Unfortuately [sic] this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation, I Love you.
Paul
You understand that last night was only a comedy”

Authorities viewed this as a suicide note signed by Bern.   To the police, and before a grand jury, Harlow’s only statement was that she “knew nothing.”  She was made an executor of her husband’s estate by Judge May Darlington Lahey. She never publicly spoke on the matter, and later died of renal failure (caused by a childhood bout of scarlet fever) in June 1937 at the age of 26.

Garretdom: Fiendish Woman Du Jour!

Here’s another in the series of newspaper articles entitled, “A Fiendish Woman.”  This one comes from the November 7, 1873 issue of The Chicago Evening Mail.

A FIENDISH WOMAN.

She Assassinated the Wife of Her Paramour—An Atrocious Crime.

From the Detroit Free Press, Nov. 4.

On Tuesday last a man named Lyman Arnold, a business man at Avoka, Steuben County, N.Y., left the town without informing his wife or friends of his departure, and before night it was discovered that he had forged notes and checks to the amount of $900, and obtained the cash on them. He was the husband of a very estimable woman, his second wife, and is the father of four or five children. From some words he let drop the day before it was thought that he had started for Detroit, and a telegraph was sent here. The Chief of Police gave the case to Detective Bishop, and the detective began working it up. After sending the telegram, the route taken by Arnold was more exactly ascertained, and Deputy Sheriff E. B. Higgins, of Avoka, started on the trail. He was fortunate to find the forger at Niagara Falls, just as he was preparing to come West, and he took him back to Avoka, arriving there Thursday to find that a cold-blooded and fiendish murder had been committed during his absence. Living in the village was a young woman named Emeline Tower, who had once worked for Arnold as a domestic. There was talk that the two were more intimate than they should have been, and the village gossip had created unpleasantness in Arnold’s family, so that Miss Tower did not visit the house, and was not on speaking terms with Mrs. Arnold. There was, however, no suspicion of a separation between man and wife, or of the horrible crime to grow out of the scandal. Arnold was supposed to be an honest man, and there were those who took his side and defended him.

Wednesday night about midnight Mrs. Arnold, who was sleeping alone, was aroused by having a bullet sent into her head, which passed out of her mouth. She had been sleeping soundly, and the first intimation of danger was the bullet in her face. As she sprang up the person in the room fired two more shots, both taking effect in Mrs. Arnold’s body, and both producing fatal wounds. There was no light in the room, but in the darkness Mrs. Arnold heard the rustle of a dress and discovered a female figure. As soon as the wife fell back dying this figure fled. It was some time before any of the children came down stairs, they having been chloroformed, as was afterward ascertained. They aroused the neighbors at once, and the dying woman made her statement about the female figure, though at the time it was thought she was out of her mind and was speaking at random. It was found that the person who committed the deed had effected entrance by climbing up on the summer kitchen and then raising one of the chamber windows of the house. Miss Tower knew of this route, but no one else outside of the family. Thursday morning, after the murder had become known throughout the village, and after she had discussed the affair in common with others, Miss Tower took the cars for Detroit. This circumstance in connection with the hint dropped by Arnold that he was coming this way, led to the belief that the two were connected with the murder, and were going off together. Another telegram arrived asking that the woman be watched. She arrived here Saturday morning, and registered herself at the Cass House under the name of Mrs. Hunt. The same morning a trunk belonging to Arnold arrived by express, marked “Mrs. L. Hunt, Cass Hotel, Detroit,” indicating that the pair had arranged their plans together, and were to meet here.

Arnold, of course, did not reach here, being under arrest. The woman waited until Saturday, and then, perhaps thinking that he had been captured, she took the train to Dexter, and from there drove out to her uncle’s, seven miles north, in the Township of Lindon. Bishop had kept track of her movements, and, when Sheriff Higgins arrived here Saturday night, the detective was ready to go with him. Sunday they went to Dexter, and then, procuring a carriage, drove to Lindon, reaching the house where Miss Tower was stopping two hours after the family had retired. She was called up and arrested, but was the least excited of the three, bearing herself coolly, and not even exhibiting any curiosity to know the charge against her. In her trunk was found a revolver with three empty chambers, and the ball brought along by the Sheriff from the scene of the murder was an exact fit for the weapon. Further than this, she had a bottle partly filled with chloroform. On her way into the city she was informed of the murder and the arrest of Arnold, but she had few questions to ask, no excuses to offer for her conduct, and up to yesterday noon, when she started for New York, she had not shed a tear.

The woman is 26 years of age, of medium height, and quite handsome. One to look at her or to study her face would never dream that she had the heart of a fiend. The Sheriff is positive that she is the midnight stranger who did the shooting.

The Saturday night previous to the murder, when Arnold was at home, someone entered the house, chloroformed the family, and went out without creating an alarm or removing anything. It is now thought that he and Miss Tower had planned the murder for that night, but that after entering the house her courage failed her, or Arnold asked for further delay. He had been getting ready for flight two weeks previous, and had his notes and checks forged, presented and paid so quickly and quietly that there was no time for detection. He intended to start for Detroit Tuesday, but he missed the train and then had to alter his course for fear that he would be pursued and arrested for his forgeries. There was nothing to have prevented the pair from eloping together and journeying wheresoever they desired, and this fact makes the murder stand out in a more brutal and bloodthirsty light.

The wife had been very patient under the scandal, clinging to her husband in spite of all.

Today’s Vicious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

William Bonin committed his first criminal offenses at age ten. He was in and out of detention homes throughout his formative years. His father was a drunken gambler with a vicious temper and his mother dominated him. It was later conjectured that these homelife factors contributed to Bonin’s development, particularly his many acts of perversions and murders.

Jailed for several sex offenses, Bonin later became a truck driver, and with accomplices like Vernon Butts, he molested and killed by his own estimate at least 21 teenage boys in the Los Angeles area between 1978 and 1980. Butts later testified against the brutal Bonin, saying that the killer had a hypnotic hold on him and that “after the first one [murder] I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Vernon Butts

Bonin used his truck to cruise the freeways in Los Angeles and Orange counties, picking up young boys, sexually molesting them, torturing them, then strangling them to death before dumping their bodies on the on-off ramps of Los Angeles freeways. He was thus dubbed “The Freeway Strangler.”

William Bonin

When Butts dropped out of sight, Bonin enlisted other accomplices and one of these, a seventeen-year-old drifter Bonin had picked up in Hollywood, informed police. Bonin was arrested and tried, being convicted of fourteen counts of murder. Butts testified against him, saying that he participated in five of the sadistic killings. Butts hanged himself in his cell. Bonin was sentenced to death on March 12, 1982.

Some of the victims of Bonin

Culled from: Bloodletters and Badmen by Jay Robert Nash

This article does not do justice to the depravity of Bonin’s murders, so here are a couple examples from Wikipedia:

On August 4, 1979, Bonin drove from Silverado Canyon to Westminster with Butts. He soon suggested that they rape and murder a teenage hitchhiker. Butts was amenable to this suggestion, and they soon encountered 17-year-old boy Mark Shelton near Beach Boulevard. Bonin allegedly had sex with him, and Butts sexually assaulted him. Bonin drove into Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County, where Bonin parked the vehicle and raped him. Bonin and Butts physically assaulted him until he lost consciousness. He was violated with objects such as a stick, causing him to enter a fatal state of shock. His body was discarded beside a gravel road in Cajon Pass.

On August 27, 1979, Bonin and Butts abducted 15-year-old Hollywood resident Donald Hyden on Santa Monica Boulevard. Butts was driving the van. Bonin offered him sex. When Butts made an accidental wrong turn, Hyden became frantic, causing Bonin to beat, bind, torture, and sodomize him.  Bonin then strangled him to death.  Butts performed oral sex on his corpse before the pair dumped his body at a construction site near the Ventura Freeway. It was discovered hours later.  A coroner theorized that he had been impaled by a large object, evidenced by rectal damage.

And here’s an account of his execution:

On February 23, 1996, near midnight before the following day, Bonin (age 49) was executed by lethal injection inside the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison. He had been on death row for fourteen years, and was the first person ever executed by lethal injection in California.  Governor Pete Wilson, who had rejected a submitted plea for clemency from Bonin’s attorneys three days before the execution, called Bonin the “poster boy for capital punishment”.

In his final interview, with a local radio station less than 24 hours before the execution, Bonin said that he had “made peace” with his impending death, and that his only major regret in life was not pursuing his teenage passion of bowling long enough to turn professional.  He also said that he thought the death penalty is wrong. He denied responsibility for his actions, saying that he had no control over them.

Crime Scene Photo Du Jour!

PHYSICIAN KILLED IN HIS OFFICE (circa 1934)

A physician lies dead in his office, a victim of a robbery. A policeman’s hat lies near the body. One of the dangers of running a medical practice is the threat of robbery and murder by drug addicts. Prior to the passage of rigorous federal laws regulating narcotics, most physicians’ offices contained large amounts of narcotic medications. The drugs were also sent as samples, a practice that is now prohibited by federal laws. Until recently, stealing prescription blanks was a common way to obtain drugs. Since 2006, New York State began issuing bar coded, numbered prescription blanks to physicians, so even time of issuance can be estimated fore each prescription.

Culled from: Deadly Intent: Crime and Punishment Photographs from the Burns Archive

Garretdom: A Fiendish Old Woman!

Here’s another Fiendish Woman, this time an OLD one!

A FIENDISH OLD WOMAN.—The Edgefield Advertiser says that on the 15th instant, Rachel Stallsworth, an aged negro woman living on the plantation of Major Lemuel Corley, murdered her great grand child, only four days old, by taking it from the bed of the mother, and deliberately breaking its neck. An inquest was held upon the body of the child, and a verdict rendered accordingly. The old murderess has been arrested and lodged in jail. The vile and unnatural atrocity of this murder is enough to make the blood run cold.

Culled from the Friday, November 24, 1871 issue of The Daily Phoenix, Columbia, South Carolina

Follow-up from The Charleston Daily News, May 6, 1872:

Rachel Stallsworth, who was convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hung in July next, which sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life in the Penitentiary, has had the sentence still further commuted to imprisonment for life in the county jail of Edgefield County, on account of her advanced age and feeble health, which will not allow her removal.

And another follow-up from the July 25, 1872 Charleston Daily Courier:

The Governor has pardoned Rachel Stallsworth, an old woman who is now on the verge of the grave. She was convicted of murder, and sentenced by Judge Melton to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life in the county jail, May 2, 1872.

Apparently, it pays to be old and infirm when you commit murders!

Fiendishness Count:
Sulfuric Acid – 1
Molten Lead – 1
Razor – 1
Broken Neck – 1

Today’s Systematic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On September 30, 1888, Jack the Ripper struck again—twice. In a narrow court of Berner Street he slashed the throat of Elizabeth “Long Liz” Stride. Apparently in fear of being caught in the act, he fled without butchering her.

Berner Street as it looked at the time of Elizabeth Stride’s murder.

Young Elizabeth in life… 

… Elizabeth Stride in death.

Fifteen minutes later in Mitre Square, he encountered Catherine Eddowes and cut her to pieces. A letter from Jack to detective Abberline boasted of the “double event.”

The body of Catherine Eddowes was discovered close to the fence seen at the centre of this image 

An illustration of Catherine Eddowes in life…

… and Catherine Eddowes following her autopsy

Terrified East Enders directed their mounting frustration and fury at Commissioner Warren, demanding his resignation. It was, said the Star, “War on Warren.” But dismay over Warren’s conduct was not limited to the public and the press. It was shared by Abberline and others within the police who felt that the police commissioner was as much a hindrance as a help, citing his interference with the investigation of the Eddowes murder when he’d ordered the obliteration of a clue.  Chalked onto a wall nearby was:

The Juwes are not the
men that will be blamed
for nothing.

Convinced that it was a message from the killer, the police pleaded with Warren that it be preserved until first light of day so that it could be photographed. Concerned that passersby might interpret the message as an accusation against Jews, and fearing a mob action against Jews, Warren had the words erased.

In the midst of the drumbeat for his scalp, Warren defended himself and the police, and in an article for Murray’s Magazine criticized the organization of the Metropolitan Police in which the head of the Criminal Investigation Department was not subject to his control as commissioner. This division of authority, he argued, made efficient police work impossible. Infuriated by the article, Home Secretary Sir Charles Matthews called Warren in for a tongue-lashing. Warren offered to resign. Matthews accepted.

The next morning, the police and the rest of London reeled with disgust at the discovery of the Ripper’s newest victim. Her name was Mary Kelly. Another prostitute, she was spied through the window of her room by the landlord, come to collect rent. What he saw sickened him and sent him hurrying to find the police. Her death differed from the others in that she was slaughtered inside a dwelling, very near the previous killings, all of which had been committed outdoors with the possibility of the killer being seen and caught. But behind the locked door of 26 Dorset Street of Miller’s Court, unworried and unhurried, Jack the Ripper labored for at least two hours in systematic destruction of Mary Kelly’s body—cutting, slicing, hacking, arranging, displaying.

13 Miller’s Court. The murder of Mary Jane Kelly occurred within this single room on 9 November 1888.

An illustration of Mary Kelly in life.

… and the body of Mary Jane Kelly as discovered in Miller’s Court

Although Abberline and the others could not know it at the time, it was Jack’s last horror: November 17, 1888. He’d held London in terror for seventy-nine days.  But who was he?  No one knows.

Culled from: Bloody Business: An Anecdotal History of Scotland Yard by H. Paul Jeffers

Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!

Together in Death – circa 1854 – half-plate daguerreotype – 6″ x 5″

A woman and her newborn infant. In the nineteenth century, a difficult birth, such as breech, could often lead to death for both the mother and the child.

Culled from: Beyond the Dark Veil: Post-Mortem and Mourning Photography

Garretdom (Olde News)

So today’s clipping is entitled “A Fiendish Woman” but the type on the copy that I have is so darkened, I can’t read the article.  But I thought, what a fantastic title!!  “A Fiendish Woman.”  So I thought I’d do a series of newspaper articles entitled “A Fiendish Woman”.  And there are many!  Let’s see what variety of fiendishness we can encounter!

First up…

A FIENDISH WOMAN

Throws Vitrol [sic] in the Face of a Bride.

AUGUSTA, Ga., Sept. 16.—A sentence of six months in the County Chain Gang was passed yesterday upon Mrs. Fannie E. Denham, a widow of Terreon, for disfiguring the face of Mrs. Frank Hughes by an application of vitriol. Frank Hughes had been an admirer of Mrs. Denham, and when he married a farmer’s daughter she sought revenge.

Mrs. Denham rode up to the Hughes home on horseback and engaged the bride in conversation, and then she threw vitrol [sic] in her face, blinding her and leaving her disfigured. The trial attracted much attention, and the court room was constantly filled.

“Vitriol” is the old word for sulfuric acid.  

Culled from the September 20, 1893 issue of The Fresno Expositor

Today’s Corrosive Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The swallowing of corrosive poisons—acids, alkalis and metallic salts—causes a particularly unpleasant kind of death. These agents erode and destroy the tissues with which they come into contact. Death from corrosive poisoning is commonly the result of suicide or accident. The ready availability of compounds such as metal polishes, bleaches, toilet cleansers and disinfectants make them convenient agents for suicide. The widespread industrial use of corrosive materials, also increases the dangers of accidents.

The destructive nature of the mineral acids has led to their criminal use in disfigurement and in the disposal of bodies.

When a corrosive is swallowed the tissues in contact with it are in some measure destroyed: the victim feels a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, and there is intense stomach pain: this is followed by vomiting of shreds of blood-stained material, accompanied by intense thirst. Choking is common, and the air passages will probably be congested, especially if the poison is volatile, such as ammonia or fuming acid.

There will be signs of corrosion around the mouth and lips—grey or brownish stains. Consciousness is usually of color as respiration breaks down, and death usually follows within a few hours of a fatal dose, and results from a combination of shock, extensive tissue damage and respiratory failure. Post-mortem examination will show the destruction of those tissues affected by the corrosive. The extent and coloration of damage will identify the agent used if that is in doubt.

Hydrochloric Acid and Sulfuric Acid –> Grey/black
Nitric Acid –> Red/brown
Caustic alkalis –> Grey/white
Cresols –> Brown
Mercury Chloride –> Blue/white

Some corrosive agents have a double effect—attacking the tissues directly and also acting on the central nervous system: such poisons are carbolic acid and oxalic acid. Carbolic acid in its pure form is phenol, and is used as a component in many branded disinfectants. These agents have a corrosive action which is partly modified by their anesthetic effect—vomiting is therefore uncommon. But they also have a depressant action, and death usually results within about three hours from respiratory or cardiac failure; a fatal dose may be as low as 4 ml. but recoveries have been recorded from much higher doses. Phenol may also be absorbed through the skin.

Sulphuric acid—Oil of Vitriol—is one of the strongest corrosive poisons. It is used extensively in its most concentrated form for industrial purposes and also in laboratory work, but battery acid (30% sulphuric acid) is still sufficiently strong to cause corrosive poisoning. Sulphuric acid acts by extracting water from the tissues and, in the process, generates considerable heat. This has a charring and blackening effect. Perforation of the esophagus and stomach is likely to follow this.

Accidentally inhalation of sulphuric acid

Hydrochloric and nitric acids give off irritant fumes and therefore involve the respiratory system. Their destructive effects are less severe than those of sulphuric acid.

The principle alkaline corrosive poison is ammonia. It has an intensely irritating vapor and usually involves the air passages; it is commonly used in suicide and is frequently taken by accident. Many cleaning fluids contain ammonia in large proportions. The choking fumes of concentrated ammonia may cause cardiac failure, and they are particularly dangerous when inhaled, as they dissolve in the mucous membranes, thereby prolonging their action.

Culled from: Crimes and Punishment, the Illustrated Crime Encyclopedia #1

Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!

Baby Bundled in Paisley Quilt
Ambrtotype 1/6 Plate, Circa 1862

Culled from: Sleeping Beauty III

Garretdom!

A Madman’s Horrible Deed.

TROY, N. Y., Sept. 19.—Dexter P. Wager, a farmer at Cropseyville, this county, has for a week past manifested signs of insanity. Yesterday morning he drove his wife and mother-in-law from the house. When they returned it was found that Wager had cut from ear to ear the throat of his daughter, aged three years. After a struggle the madman was secured and committed to jail.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Today’s Ripped Open Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Marvin Lesley Schrader, 30, of Spokane, Washington, became Yellowstone’s first bison fatality on July 12, 1971, at Fountain Flats north of Old Faithful. Schrader, his wife, and three children spotted a solitary bull buffalo lying down in a meadow just east of Rush Lake that day. Schrader walked to within twenty feet of it to take its picture. The one-ton bison stood up, charged Schrader, and tossed him more than twelve feet. The animals’ horns ripped open the man’s upper right abdomen, and pierced his liver. With a large hole in his side, Schrader attempted unsuccessfully to rise onto one elbow, then lay on the ground groaning for a few minutes while his wife and children watched him die. Mrs. Bonnie Schrader admitted later that they had been too close to the bison. In the family’s possession was the park’s read “Danger” pamphlet that warned of wild animals.

Culled from: Death in Yellowstone

Civil War Injury Du Jour!

G. Porubsky, Co. B. 46th NY volunteer displaying excision of humerus. This photograph from Bontecou’s teaching album shows the drawn-in suspected path of the bullet. Bontecou’s operation of bone removal in the upper arm left the patient with a useless limb. Many were amputated in the antiseptic surgical era of the 1880s.

Culled from: Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou

Garretdom!

COULD NOT LEAVE ETHEL.

A Mother Drowns Her Little Daughter and Then Hangs Herself.

The Shocking Tragedy that Broke Up a Happy Home in Brooklyn and Drove a Fond Husband and Father Almost to the Verge of Insanity.

NEW YORK, Sept. 19.—A shocking domestic tragedy occurred yesterday at 438 Monroe street, Brooklyn, the residence of Wm. H. Hubbell, the Adjutant of the Forty-seventh Regiment, and for nearly twenty years an employee in the dry goods commission-house of Van Valkenburg & Co. in Worth street, near Church, in this city. Mr Hubbell, his wife Annie, aged thirty-six years, his seventeen-year-old crippled son George, and his seven-year-old daughter Ethel composed the little household. Mrs. Hubbell, although for some time in rather delicate health, attended to her own house-hold duties, and no servant was employed. According to the stories of relatives and neighbors Mr. Hubbell was a kind husband, and the relations between him and his wife had always been harmonious. Last night he was suffering from a shock which almost deprived him of his reason.

During his absence at business yesterday his wife sent her crippled son to his grandmother’s house in Greenpoint, summoned her daughter Ethel from play with some other children in front of the house, stripped her naked and drowned her in the bath tub, and then hanged herself from the bath room door.

Mr. Hubbell made the shocking discovery when he returned home about five o’clock. He was surprised on reaching the house to find all the windows closed and the blinds drawn down. This was unusual, as his wife and blue-eyed little daughter generally sat at the basement window every evening awaiting his return from business and greeted him with kisses. On ascending the stoop and opening the front door he found a note in the vestibule. The envelope bore his name and this significant warning: “Do not come in alone.”

The writing was in pencil, and he recognized it as his wife’s. He was much alarmed especially when he tried to open the inside door with his latch key and found it bolted. Tearing open the envelope and throwing it aside he read the contents of the note. It informed him that his wife had determined to end her life, and that she could not find it in her heart to leave Ethel behind her. She bade her husband a sad farewell and begged him to forgive her of the act, and to remember her kindly. With terrible apprehensions of what had taken place Mr. Hubbell burst open the door and after searching in vain for his wife and the children, rushed upstairs. In the little bath-room, between the front and back rooms, on the second floor he found his wife dead suspended by the neck from a hook on the back of the door, and with her face pressed against the door, and her feet almost touching the ground. Little Ethel had drowned face upward, in the bath-tub which was almost filled with water.

The spectacle appalled him, and he rushed from the house to the residence of his brother-in-law on Quincy street, a few blocks distant. He sent a messenger for Mr. George C. Jaffreys, the family physician….

Everything indicated that both the murder and the suicide were deliberate. About noon Mrs. Hubbell kissed her son and told him to go to his grandmother’s house in Greenpoint and remain there until his father went for him. About one o’clock she called to Ethel, who was playing with some children on the opposite side of the street.

“Come in, Ethel, I want to give you a bath before you go to your grandmother’s.”

Ethel hurried across and entered the house with her mother, who was noticed a few minutes later by one of the neighbors closing the windows and pulling down the blinds in the front of the house. The children’s clothes and hoses were carefully laid at the foot of the bath tub, and the little one was evidently conscious until the last moment of her mother’s intention. Marks on her neck indicated that she had been forcibly held under the water until the mother was satisfied that she was dead. A flatiron was found in the bath-room, and it is supposed to have been used by the mother in keeping the body under the water. In taking her own life Mrs. Hubbell had tied one end of a piece of clothes line around the top binge of the door and fastened the other around her neck, adjusting a large knot under the left ear. She then twisted the slack of the rope around an iron hook several times until her feet were raised from the ground and thus strangled herself to death. Her face was much contorted. She wore a calico wrapper and slippers. She was a small woman of delicate appearances, and she could not have weighed more than ninety or ninety-five pounds. She had been in poor health for some time and frequently she suffered from fits of despondency, caused as it is supposed, through sympathy for her crippled son. She has never, however, threatened suicide, and the tragedy was a startling surprise to all her relatives and friends. She was married when she was eighteen years old, and until a few years ago was of a cheerful disposition. Dr. Jaffreys said last night:

“I have been Mr. Hubbell’s family physician for some time, and have known that Mrs. Hubbell’s health has been a cause of great anxiety to him. She suffered mentally as well as physically for several months, but there was nothing in her condition in either respect to excite any special claim. I have no doubt that she committed this act while she was suffering from emotional insanity. Her husband, I know, was kind an affectionate, and this morning while leaving the house his wife, he tells me, kissed him, and told him to come home as early as possible. Little Ethel was a bright, blue-eyed, brown-haired girl and was a great favorite with the children in the neighborhood.”

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Today’s Horrifying Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The most horrifying attacks  against “witches” in the 16th century German lands were made in the Catholic territories. Though the new Protestant magistrates also prosecuted for witchcraft, they did not keep up with the prince-bishops and archbishop-electors of the Catholic ecclesiastical lands, executing one witch to the Catholics’ three. At Trier between 1587 and 1593, for example, under the direction of the Jesuit demonologist Peter Binsfeld, 368 witches were burned from twenty-two villages, a hunt so devastating that two villages were left with only one woman apiece. The abbot of Fulda was responsible for the deaths of over 700 witches at the beginning of the seventeenth century. A particularly vicious outbreak occurred at Ellwangen, where 390 person were burned between 1611 and 1618. The Teutonic Knights ordered the deaths of 124 in just two years, 1628 to 1630. In the conventual land of Quedlinburg, 133 witches were executed on one day in 1589. At Eichstätt, 274 person were burned at the stake apparently in one year, 1629.

Peter Binsfeld, what a dick!

The first wave of German trials victimized mainly women of the poor or middling sort, midwives like Walpurga Hausmänin, but as the supply of poor women ran low, accusers turned to women and men of the establishment. The nine hundred person put to death by the prince-bishop of Würzburg, for example, included nineteen of his priests and his own nephew. The archbishop-elector of Cologne ordered the deaths of the wives of his chancellor and his secretary. And at Bamberg the bishop executed six hundred witches, including his own chancellor and the burgermeister. Most grotesque was the execution of forty-one young children at Würzburg, a custom that grew in Germany until most major trials included children as both victims and accusers. These later witch hunters turned to younger victims, to men, and to persons of their own class. This last apparently led to a slackening of the craze (as in Offenburg), as the elite, fearful for their own lives, used their clout to stop the madness.

Poor Walpurga’s execution

Culled from: Witchcraze

Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!

Boy Rests With Eyes Half Open
Daguerreotype 1/6 Plate, Circa 1848

Culled from: Sleeping Beauty III

Garretdom: Race Riot Edition!

FOUR-MILE-RUN’S TRAGEDY

An Irishman Killed in a Fight, and an Italian Fatally Wounded.

PITTSBURG, Pa., Sept. 19.—Four-Mile-Run, in the Fourteenth ward, was the scene of a bloody race riot at noon to-day, in which two of the participants received fatal injuries. The fight was the result of bad feeling existing among the Irish and Italian laborers who have their abode in that neighborhood. On Saturday night, while Joseph Vernard, an Italian, was on his way home, he was attacked by a gang of Irishmen. There were six in the assailing party, and it is said they were under the leadership of two brothers named Daly. Vernard was terribly beaten, but managed to escape to his home. No more trouble occurred until noon to-day, when a gang of twenty Irishmen called at Vernard’s house and demanded admittance. A number of Italian boarders were in the house at the time, and the doors were quickly barred. The assailants, however, battered the doors down and rushed into the house.

A free fight followed, in the progress of which “Paddy” Rocco, an Italian, had his skull crushed with a chair, and Patrick Constantine, an Irishman, was shot in the abdomen. The sight of the prostrate men seemed to frighten the others, and a general stampede took place, so that by the time the police arrived all had escaped. The wounded men were removed to a hospital, where Constantine died a few hours later. Rocco is still living , but his recovery is considered doubtful. Five of the Italians were arrested this afternoon, but the Irishmen are still at liberty. It is believed that the latter intended to drive the Italians from the neighborhood.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook