Chilling True Crime Stories - Volume 4 E-Book

Dylan Frost

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 235

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Thirty-four eclectic and spine chilling stories from the world of true crime. Serial killers, cannibals, necrophiles, celebrities with the darkest secrets, medical killers, mysterious killers who were never captured, movie production deaths, poisoners, spree killers, supernatural Victorian monsters, and many more darkly fascinating chapters in the annuals of crime. All this and more awaits in Chilling True Crime Stories - Volume 4.

Leseprobe

Chilling True Crime Stories - Volume 4

Dylan Frost© Copyright 2022 Dylan Frost

Other books by Dylan Frost: Shocking Celebrity Deaths and MurdersBritain's Strangest True Crime CasesTo get a free ebook visit https://dylanfrosttruecrime.blogspot.com

ContentsQueen of Slaughtering PlacesDeath of a Pop Star - The Murder of Selena Quintanilla-PérezJohn Cannan - The Man Who Killed Suzy Lamplugh?The Ballad of Judy BuenoanoThe Longest Serving Prisoner in BritainThe Oakland County Child KillerLizzie HallidayHybristophiliaTerror in Hollywood - The Bizarre Death of Vic MorrowThe Texas Killing FieldsDouble TroubleThe Hamburg Rubble MurdererThe Łódź Gay MurdererLa Mujer VerdugoBayou StranglerThe Secret Life of Bill CosbyKarla Faye TuckerThe Student Nurse MassacreCannibal of the RuhrThe Long Island KillerCharles Edmund CullenThe Ypsilanti RipperTsutomu Miyazaki The Curious Case of Kieran KellyCanyon Lake KillerJohn Bodkin Adams - The Original Harold Shipman?The Black PantherNannie DossThe Dark Celebrity of Ted BundyMarie Alexandrine Becker Levi BellfieldThe B1 ButcherSpring-Heeled Jack - The Victorian Demon of LondonMurderabiliaQUEEN OF SLAUGHTERING PLACESThe 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-PEREZSelena 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 BEUNOANOJudy 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 BRITAINJohn 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.