Today’s Barbarous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Back in the old days—when public executions were a major form of popular entertainment—putting a serial killer to death was quite a production. When the fifteenth-century cut-throat Sawney Beane was finally brought to justice, he and all the other male members of his cannibal clan had their hands and legs chopped off. Then the women were tossed into three blazing bonfires after being forced to watch their men bleed to death. All this, or course, took place before a large crowd of eager spectators.
A century or so later, in the late-sixteenth century, a German serial killer named Peter Stubbe committed such unspeakable deeds that he was regarded as a literal werewolf. (Among his other atrocities, Stubbe murdered his own son, then cracked open the boy’s skull and devoured his brain.) When Stubbe was finally arrested, authorities meted out a punishment commensurate with his crimes. After being tortured on the rack, he was broken on the wheel. The red-hot pincers were used to tear out chunks of his flesh, his arms and legs were crushed with an axe head, then his head was cut off and his body incinerated.
The execution of Peter Stubbe
As everyone knows, of course, we live in a much less barbarous age. Nowadays, even a creature like John Wayne Gacy ends up being treated like a beloved, ailing pet—put to sleep by lethal injection. Still there have been exceptions. Unsurprisingly, one regime of modern times. Between 1928 and 1943, a German laundry deliveryman named Bruno Ludke murdered as many as eighty women. Nazi officials repeatedly bungled the investigation, but when the finally caught up with Ludke, they reacted with characteristic brutality. Bypassing the usual channels, they shipped him off to a “research hospital” in Vienna, where he was used as a human guinea pig. Only when the Nazi torture doctors were done with him was Ludke executed by lethal injection.
Bruno Ludke
Of course, when you’re dealing with serial killers it is not always clear that putting them to death is a form of punishment. Some of these maniacs actually look forward to the experience. Ludke’s countryman Peter Kurten—the so-called “Monster of Duesseldorf”—couldn’t wait to be beheaded; the sound of his own gushing blood, he claimed, would be a source of ultimate pleasure. The American child-killer Albert Fish seemed to feel the same way. Fish was not only a sadistic killer but also a world-class masochist, who enjoyed shoving sewing needles into his groin (among other extravagant forms of self-abuse). When Fish was given the death sentence for the savage murder of a twelve-year-old girl, the newspapers quoted him as saying, “What a thrill it will be to die in the electric chair! It will be the supreme thrill—the only one I haven’t tried!”
Fun Guy Albert Fish
Culled from: The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
Professional Criminal Du Jour!
1886 Professional Criminals of America by Inspector Thomas Byrnes is a collection of information, mug shots, and bios of America’s most infamous petty criminals from that time. I find the descriptions of the criminals most amusing and thought I’d share the occasional bio. Here’s today’s crook – criminal #3!
GEORGE CARSON, alias HEYWOOD.
BANK SNEAK.
DESCRIPTION:
Thirty-one years old in 1886. Born in United States. Clerk. Can read and write. Married. Medium build. Height, 5 feet 5 1/2 inches. Weight, 155 pounds. Hair, brown. Eyes, hazel. Complexion, florid. Dot of India ink on right hand. Blonde color mustache.
RECORD.
CARSON is a very clever bank sneak, an associate of Rufe Minor (1), Horace Hovan (25), Johnny Carroll (192), Cruise Cummisky, and other first-class men. He was arrested at Petersburg, Va., on March 23, 1878, in company of Rufe Minor, Horace Hovan, alias Little Horace, and Charlotte Dougherty (Horace’s wife), charged with the larceny of $200,000 in bonds and securities from the office of James H. Young, No. 49 Nassau Street, New York City. They were all brought to New York, and subsequently discharged.
Carson was arrested in New York City on November 15, 1880, for robbing the Middletown Bank of Connecticut, on July 27, 1880, or $8,500 in money and $56,000 in bonds. Johnny Jourdan, Horace Hovan and Rufe Minor were also arrested for this robbery. Carson was tried in Connecticut, proved an alibi, and the jury failed to agree, and he was discharged on April 26, 1881. He then traveled around the country with Charley Cummisky, alias Cruise, and was picked up in several cities, but was never convicted. He was again arrested in Brooklyn, N. Y., on August 2, 1883, with Billy Flynn (now in jail in Europe), and committed to the penitentiary for vagrancy. He was discharged on a writ by the Supreme Court on September 11, 1883. Carson and Flynn were seen in the vicinity of Raymond Street Jail on the night of July 31, 1883, when Big Jim Burns, the Brooklyn Post-office robber, escaped. This celebrated criminal has been concerned in several other large robberies, and has been arrested in almost every city in the United States and Canada. He is now at liberty, but may be looked for at any moment. Carson’s picture is a very good one, taken in 1885.
No wonder this guy is smiling so smugly. He was the Trump of his day. There’s a website that provides additional post-1886 information on the criminals if you want to read his additional crimes, for which he served some (but quite minimal) time: https://criminalsrevised.org/george-carson-3/
Garretdom!
Killed With a Beer Bottle.
SCRANTON, Pa., Sept. 10.—During a drunken row in a park near this city last night, Patrick McAndrews, aged twenty-five years, was killed by being struck on the back of the head with an empty beer bottle. Martin Millet, who was with McAndrews, was seriously injured. Early this morning, Patrick Norton and Peter Martin, while on board a train, told the engineer that they had done something, for which, if they were caught, they would be sent to the penitentiary for life. The engineer informed the authorities of what had been told him, and Norton and Martin have been arrested.
Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook