The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases (4 page)

A particularly gruesome story asserts that Kate and John Jr were not sister and brother; rather that they were lovers. According to this version of the Bender legend, the two had many babies together, each of which they disposed of with a hammer to the head. These killings presumably gave the couple practice for future dealings with those travelling the Osage Trail. It has been said that they fled first by train, then by horse into either Texas or Mexico, where John Jr died of a haemorrhage.

In his 1913 book
The Benders of Kansas,
Minnesota defence attorney John Towner James maintains that in 1889 Ma and Kate were captured in Michigan and brought to Kansas. According to James, the two women were to be tried for York’s murder, but were let go when the trial date was postponed from February 1890 to May 1890. The story here is that the county didn’t want the expense of lodging the prisoners for three extra months.

As would be expected of a story in which imagination has replaced fact, the land once occupied by the Benders is said to be haunted by the ghosts of their victims.

THE SERVANT GIRL ANNIHILATOR

The American writer O. Henry is perhaps best remembered today for
The Gift of the Magi,
a Christmas tale featuring Jim and Della, a young couple with no money. As the holiday approaches, Della sells her long tresses to a wigmaker so that she might buy a platinum chain for Jim’s watch. Meanwhile, Jim sells his watch and uses the money he receives to buy a set of jewelled combs for Della’s hair. The moral is difficult to miss: material possessions, whether bejewelled or made from platinum, are of little value when compared to love. It is a heart-warming, sentimental story, typical of the author’s work. How odd, then, that this very same man has the distinction of having provided a nickname for one of the first American serial killers, the Servant Girl Annihilator.

O. Henry’s epithet, provided to friends working at the
Austin Daily Statesman,
was one of several used to describe the murderer who terrorized Texas between 1884 and 1885. Another name was the Austin Axe Murderer. Neither was entirely apt, but both continue to be used to this day for a killer who was never caught.

The Servant Girl Annihilator began his bloody work on the cold New Year’s Eve of 1884. His first victim, a 25-year-old live-in ‘negro servant’ named Mollie Smith, was found next to the outhouse of the home in which she was employed. Wearing only a nightdress, she had been raped and bludgeoned to death. The murder weapon, an axe covered in Mollie’s blood, was discovered inside the outhouse. No one in the house proper had heard anything. Indeed, all had appeared peaceful until Walter Spencer, Smith’s common-law husband, had awoken from his usual night’s sleep in great pain. He discovered a deep cut across his face. The bedroom he and Mollie shared was in bloody disarray and his ‘wife’ was gone. Spencer’s cries for help awoke the rest of the house.

In the early morning hours, the local marshal led a pack of bloodhounds through the snow-covered streets of Austin. It was a horrible way to usher in the New Year.

Though Austin was then a small city – fewer than 25,000 lived within its limits – murder was not entirely unknown there. Still, the savagery displayed in Mollie Smith’s death was big news indeed. Suspicion settled quickly on Smith’s former lover, a black man named William Brooks. An all-white coroner’s jury ignored Brooks’ alibi and witnesses, concluding that he was probably guilty of the crime. Eventually, the ex-boyfriend was released due to lack of evidence.

Five months later, on 6 May, another black woman, Eliza Shelley, was murdered. A 30-year-old cook, Shelley lived with her three children in a cabin on the property of her employer, L. B. Johnson. It was Johnson’s wife who, hearing Shelley’s screams, sent her niece to check on the children. The girl found the family cook lying dead on the cabin floor, her skull very nearly split in two. Shelley’s nightgown was raised, exposing most of her body. Bloody footprints of a barefooted man trailed from the awful scene.

This time, there had been a witness. The victim’s 8-year-old son spoke of seeing a man enter the cabin. This unknown figure pushed the boy away and threw a blanket over him. Falling asleep, he’d seen nothing further, and had even slept through his mother’s screams. Upon waking the next morning, he was blissfully unaware of her fate.

False leads

Again, the authorities cast around for suspects. A mentally handicapped 19-year-old was arrested, seemingly for no other reason than that he had no shoes. When his feet were measured and shown to be of a different size to those of the killer, he was released. An acquaintance of the Shelleys was also held, for no other reason than that the two had been seen arguing.

The murderer struck again 17 days later. The victim, Irene Cross, was yet another black female servant. This time, it seemed, there had been no axe; it appeared that she had been stabbed in the head. One arm was almost severed from the rest of her body. In this case, the authorities arrested no one.

In August, the murderer entered the cottage of Rebecca Ramey, just one block south of where Eliza Shelley had been murdered three months earlier. Approaching her bed, he knocked her out, and then abducted her daughter Mary. The 11-year-old was taken outside, raped and murdered. Again, there was no axe; the girl was stabbed through both ears with an iron rod. When she regained consciousness, Rebecca Ramey, a black servant of a man named Valentine Weed, remembered nothing of use.

The following month, the killer gained entrance to a servants’ cabin behind the house of Major W. D. Dunham by climbing through a window. Stories about the night in question are varied and confused, but all agree that the first to be attacked was a man named Orange Washington, whose skull was caved in by a blow from an axe. Washington’s common-law wife, Gracie Vance, was dragged out of the cabin and raped outside. Her friend, a visiting servant named Lucinda Boddy, received an axe blow to her head and was also raped.

The assaults ended when Major Dunham realized the noises were something much more than a domestic dispute, as he’d initially thought. Gun in hand, the major rushed outside, and the murderer fled. Gracie’s body was found in the stables; her head had been beaten in with a brick. In one hand she clutched a gold watch, presumably torn from the killer during the struggle. Also present was an unidentified horse, saddled and tied. Both appeared to be excellent clues as to the identity of the assailant, and yet they proved to be of no use.

After detectives were brought in from Houston to assist in the investigation, two black men, Oliver Townsend and Dock Woods, were arrested. The evidence used against the two was less than compelling: a comment someone had overheard in which Townsend had told Woods he wanted to kill Gracie Vance.

In attempting to extract a confession from another suspect, a private detective agency resorted to torture and was discredited. Grasping at straws, the marshal arrested Walter Spencer, the husband of Mollie Smith. His trial, based on the most improbable of theories, took just three days and resulted in an acquittal.

There can be little doubt that in the midst of all this horror, some residents of Austin took comfort in the knowledge that all the Annihilator’s victims had been black and were either servants or their close relatives. All this changed on Christmas Eve when a middle-class white man, Moses Hancock, awoke to find that his wife, Sue, was missing. He soon found her lying behind their house. An axe had been used to split open her head, and a thin rod had been pushed into her brain. She had also been raped.

That same night, the body of another white woman, Eula Phillips, was found pinned under lumber in the alleyway of one of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. Her husband was found unconscious, having been hit on the back of the head with an axe.

The next day, hundreds of Austin residents left their Christmas festivities to attend an emergency meeting. A variety of initiatives – from increased lighting to early closure of taverns – were undertaken in the hopes of preventing further attacks. While the effect these moves had can be debated, the fact remains that the Servant Girl Annihilator never struck again.

Among the great mysteries surrounding the Annihilator is his change in victim type. What might have caused him to switch from poor, black female servants to comfortably-off white women? In 1885, some thought the answer obvious: Sue Hancock and Eula Phillips weren’t victims of the Annihilator, but had been killed by their own husbands. Though it would appear unlikely that two men who did not know one another would think up the same idea and act on it during the same night, both were tried for the deaths of their wives. While Hancock was declared innocent, Phillips was found guilty of murder in the second degree. The verdict was later overturned by the Texas Court of Appeals for lack of evidence.

JACK THE RIPPER

His crimes have been investigated more than those of any other murderer. A whole field of study, Ripperology, is devoted to puzzling out his identity. And yet, 12 decades after his last murder, Jack the Ripper remains an elusive and mysterious figure.

Even the number and names of the victims have been the subject of considerable debate, though the majority of Ripperologists believe there to have been five victims, the first being Mary Ann Nichols. A 43-year-old alcoholic, she had much in common with the victims who would follow in her wake. Nichols was estranged from her husband, and struggled to support herself through a variety of means. Indeed, at least four of the five women had been pushed further into poverty through the disintegration of their respective marriages. Nichols had been employed in workhouses, had worked as a domestic and had, on at least one occasion, resorted to stealing. She also tried to make ends meet as a prostitute, an occupation which, it seems, made her a target of the Ripper. Her body was discovered by two workmen in the early hours of 31 August 1888 on a back street not far from the London Hospital. Nichols had had her throat cut. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the stomach and her abdomen had been cut open.

Eight days later, the Ripper claimed his second victim, a 47-year-old named Annie Chapman. Her body was found at about six in the morning. Like Nichols, Chapman’s throat had been slashed. Completely disembowelled, her intestines were thrown over one shoulder. Her uterus had been removed and was never found.

At approximately one o’clock on the morning of 30 September, the body of Elizabeth Stride, a 45-year-old Swedish immigrant, was found. She, too, had had her throat slit open. However, apart from an injury to her ear, Stride’s body bore none of the butchery suffered by the previous victims. It is generally believed that the Ripper was interrupted before he could proceed any further.

Presumably dissatisfied with having had to leave his work on Stride’s body unfinished, the Ripper struck again on the same evening. The second victim, 46-year-old Catherine Eddowes, had been picked up for public drunkenness the previous day by the Metropolitan Police. She was released at about the same time that Stride’s body was discovered. Eddowes was last seen alive at approximately 1:30, talking to an unidentified man. Just 15 minutes later, her body was discovered. Working with great speed, the Ripper had cut her throat, sliced open her abdomen, thrown her intestines over her shoulder and removed her uterus and left kidney. He had also mutilated her face.

Following a relatively long period of inactivity, the final murder took place on 9 November. It is tempting to say that Mary Kelly was quite different from the other victims. She was, for example, at least two decades younger than the others. However, very little is known about Kelly and, as a result, many fanciful stories have been created about her life. In death, she stands apart from the others in that she was not killed in a public place, but in her own home. This gave the Ripper a great deal more time than he’d had with his previous victims, and it showed. Kelly’s body was found naked, lying on her bed. The throat had been slashed and her face mutilated. The entire abdominal cavity had been emptied of its contents. Her breasts had been cut off – one had been placed under her head, the other by her right foot. Her liver was found between her feet. Some of the flesh removed from the abdomen and thighs had been placed on a table. Her heart was never found.

Though the number of victims claimed by Jack the Ripper pales when compared to those of Mary Ann Cotton, he has become a legend in a way she has not. While the butchery that accompanied his murders provides something of an explanation for this discrepancy, the role of the media cannot be ignored. Jack the Ripper killed at a time when inexpensive mass-circulation newspapers were in their ascendancy. News of the crimes spread rapidly through Great Britain and elsewhere. Some papers sought to exploit the crimes by reporting other murders as the work of Jack the Ripper. There is even a debate among Ripperologists as to the validity of the Jack the Ripper name, first used in a letter dated 25 September 1888, which was received by the Central News Agency. Some have argued that it was a hoax created to sell newspapers. Shortly after its publication, the Metropolitan Police were inundated with hundreds of letters bearing the epithet.

There were, of course, other factors which made the case of Jack the Ripper intriguing. His savagery appeared to escalate, reaching a crescendo with the murder of Mary Kelly. He appeared to have some education in surgery, most evident in his ability to eviscerate Catherine Eddowes in a matter of mere minutes. Above all, he was never caught, hence the speculation which continues to this day as to his identity.

Police officials at the time named six suspects as possibly being Jack the Ripper. The most interesting of these is Montague John Druitt. A barrister and assistant schoolmaster, Druitt committed suicide by drowning shortly after the murder of Mary Kelly. A coroner’s jury concluded that he had been of unsound mind. Much of the contemporary interest in Druitt rests on statements that investigators had ‘private information’ which led some to conclude that he was the murderer.

Among the most cited suspects is Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria. One theory has it that the prince suffered from syphilis and was driven insane by the disease, but this is countered by royal records which show him to have been away from London on the dates when each of the murders were committed. There are other theories which place the prince in a supporting role, most notably as the father of a child placed under the care of Mary Kelly. According to the most common version of this theory, Kelly was one of several women murdered by the physician Sir William Gull in an effort to suppress a scandal that would have jeopardized the future of the monarchy.