Today’s Wild Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
There was a theatrical element to the grisly practice of collecting body part trophies during war. In many cases, the circumstances surrounding their acquisition were mythologized. Most trophies were taken in the aftermath of battle. Heads, for example, were rarely hacked from freshly slaughtered soldiers in the heat of a fight, although sometimes it happened in a fit of fear or rage, when a ‘kid went crazy’ on the frontlines. Mack Morriss, who worked for the Army magazine The Yank, met a soldier on Guadalcanal in January 1943 who was ‘loaded down with Jap souvenirs’ and who said he had decapitated two wounded Japanese fighters. One was a Japanese officer, and when the American had reached down to steal his sword, the wounded man had grabbed him: ‘the kid went wild, partly, he said, because he’d had a buddy killed, and partly, I think, because he was scared to death. He broke loose, grabbed his knife and stabbed the Jap in the gut, chest, back, cut off the left cheek of his ass and then decapitated him.’ Morriss was not particularly shocked by the story — ‘Okay, so the kid went crazy and cut a couple of guys’ heads off. C’est la guerre’ — but he continued to think about it for days, and wondered whether he should give the soldier the benefit of the doubt about the nature of the attack.
American Soldiers with Japanese Skull – C’est la Guerre!
Culled from: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
Crime Scene Du Jour!
Homicide — “photo body John Rodgers
West 134th Street Where he was found dead Oct. 21, 1915”
Found Slain After Argument
“A few minutes after he had been heard in an argument with three men, John Rodgers, sixty years old, colored, janitor of No. 88 West One Hundred and Thirty-fourth Street, was foudn dead in the hall near the front door of that address, at 1 o’clock this morning. An ambulance surgeon said a fracture at the base of the skull had caused his death. The police think Rodgers was assaulted. Warren Ames of No. 20 West One Hundred and Thirty-Fourth Street was arrested.” – The Evening World, October 21, 1915
Culled from: Murder in the City: New York 1910-1920