The Ingrid Pitt Book of Murder, Torture and Depravity E-Book

Ingrid Pitt

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

Seitenzahl: 417

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Ingrid Pitt turns her attention to murder--real, gross, hideous, and depraved. From Caligula to Ivan the Terrible, Josef Mengele to modern serial killers, the actions and motives of the world's worst killers are dissected and analyzed with Pitt's razor-sharp wit and insight.

Leseprobe

THE INGRID PITT BOOK OF

MURDER

TORTURE & DEPRAVITY

Contents

Introduction

1.  Countess Erzebet Bathory

2.  Neville Heath

3.  Peter Kürten – The Monster of Düsseldorf

4.  Belle Gunness

5.  Edward Gein

6.  Dr Geza de Kaplany

7.  Marcel Andre Henri Felix Petiot

8.  SS Captain Josef Mengele

9.  Drs Teet Haerm and Lars Thomas

10.  John Christie

11.  Edmund Kemper

12.  Ivan the Terrible

13.  Comte Gilles de Rais

14.  John Williams

15.  Alexander ‘Sawney’ Bean

16.  Legal Murder

17.  Caligula

18.  Major Otto Dickmann

19.  Andrei Chikatilo

20.  Tomas de Torquemada

21.  Alexander Pearce

22.  The Pierrepoints

THE INGRID PITT BOOK OF MURDER, TORTURE AND DEPRAVITY

Introduction

Murder’s easy! It requires no ingenious business plan, no bank account, no partners, no education and no particular skills. It doesn’t even need physical strength. Nor a plan. It is a fact that the majority of murders are committed within the family unit. Usually in a fit of violent pique. The drip, drip, drip of marital discord, jealous rivalry between siblings, greed, the desperation of a single parent unable to cope or something as casual as a hasty word can light the fuse that results in a bloody reaction. Although this is not excusable, it is understandable. The murderers, torturers and depraved sadists who follow had three things in common. They knew what they were doing, enjoyed it and were happy to repeat the experience whenever the mood took them.

Not all who committed the ultimate crime were considered law breakers. Some had the comfort of being the law maker, the law giver. Caligula was told by his grandmother, Antonia, right from the start, that when she had carved her bloody course through those closer to the throne, he would be the ultimate power in the land. Caligula might have turned out to be a liberal Caesar if he hadn’t suffered a personality-changing illness. But then everyone can ‘if’ their life; the only thing that matters in the end is what is remembered. Caligula is remembered as an insane monster. Thomas de Torquemada is another who thought he had the right to torture and murder. A divine as well as a secular right. He had the blessing of the Pope to imprison and torture anybody who crossed his path and the strong arm of the rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, to order death in the most hideous manner his febrile brain could conjure up. Until Tomas arrived on the scene, the Inquisition had been a tribunal that the insecure Catholic church could use to discipline waverers among the congregation and clergy. His handbook for Inquisitors, issued with the full approval of Pope Sixtus in 1482, covered the treatment of anyone coming within the scope of the retribution arm of the church. It makes grim reading.

There are others that were paid by the authorities to do their dirty work for them. The position of Public Executioner was a job that drew many suspect characters to it. Jack Ketch became the nickname for a hangman or bungled execution. He, like many others in the trade, finished up on the gallows of his apprentice. The job tended to go to members of a family in succession. The Pierrepoints were not only the most recent but the last family to knot the noose in the UK. Between them, Harry, Tom and Albert did away with around 1000 poor souls trusted to their fearful gallows. In spite of the well of experience they brought to the job, not all their executions were conducted with swift efficiency. Albert had the highest tally with a score well in the 600s. He was even brought in when the American Master Sergeant signed to hang the Nazi war criminals at Nüremberg fell down on the job. The work load was immense but, it is alleged, Pierrepoint still had time to dally with Irma Grese – The Beautiful Blonde Beast of Belsen.

Maybe Alexander Pearce had little choice when he slew and ate his companions. It was a dog eat dog situation and Alex had the last yelp. Nazi Major Otto Dickmann was an intelligent man. Bit of a bon vivant. But he stood by and watched his men burn down the little French village of Oradour-sur-Glane on a warm summer’s day without a flicker of remorse. Nobody escaped from the church and barn where the troopers had imprisoned them. The gutted village stands to this day as a memorial to the mindless violence he unleashed. Greed spurred Marcel Petiot into building a killing house in Paris at the height of German occupation. There he lured Jews and others on the Gestapo extermination list with promises of salvation. So many listened to his promises that his efficient abattoir broke down and the smell of decomposing bodies brought about his exposure.

The scene in the Marr household in London’s Whitechapel when the Bow Street Runners arrived was so sickening that the phlegmatic officers found it hard to cope. The murderer, John Williams, would have got away with it if he hadn’t gone on to repeat his hideous crime only a week or so later – and in the same area. A man who no amount of blood and gore would have inconvenienced was Marshal of France Gilles de Rais, one time bosom buddy of the Maid of Orleans, Jeanne d’Arc. He threw orgies for his friends, neighbours and visiting Ecclesiastes that were the talk of medieval France. Boys were his thing and he is said to have used them, suitably fitted with a spigot and suspended above the dining table, to obtain his favourite tipple, warm blood. Everything was fine until he ran out of money. Then he really found out who among his depraved drinking pals were his real friends.

Among these educated and powerful men, the Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean appears a pathetic creature. He was ill-educated and under the thumb of a domineering wife. If they had never met, he would probably have spent his life ploughing other people’s fields and spawning another generation of farm labourers. His children, all 50 odd of them, counting the in-bred grandchildren, were innocent. They murdered and ate as many travellers who crossed their path as their parents but they, at least, were cut off from the mores and laws of society from birth. In the end, they suffered the same hideous fate as their culpable elders.

The man who spawned a flood of feature films, Ed Gein, from a backwoods dirt farm in Wisconsin, had a mother fixation. When she died, he was on the loose. He wanted to dominate the women that paid scant notice of him as he went about his everyday life. The State Agricultural plan, which paid him not to work his farm, must also share the blame. As the old saying goes: the Devil makes work for idle hands. And Ed’s hands worked overtime slaughtering, skinning and preserving the interesting body parts of his victims. Another murderer, from the neighbouring State of Indiana, Belle Gunness, an ex-Carnie performer, just wanted stability. That meant money. So she applied a business-like approach and advertised for a husband. The line of men beating a path to her door, pockets bulging with dollars, either says something about the stupidity of men or the power of advertising. None of them escaped Belle’s bloody axe and burial in the pig pen. Did she get away with it? That is the basis for an on-going argument.

George Neville Heath was an ex-Air Force officer. He was drummed out of everything from the cubs to the Royal Air Force but it didn’t dent his self-confidence, especially where women were concerned. Women were easily taken in by his blonde good looks and charming manner. Along the way he slept with one too many good time girls and caught a dose of syphilis. His penchant for a little rough foreplay turned to murder and his self-confidence put him in the frame for a dawn meeting with Albert Pierrepoint. Jealousy was Dr Geza de Kaplann’s driving force. He couldn’t take the attention his beautiful Hungarian wife attracted so he decided to disfigure her so that nobody else fancied her. He well deserved the soubriquet of Doctor Acid.

These are just a few of the monsters that are examined in my book of Murder, Torture and Depravity. How do they measure up on the yard stick of that old sweetie from Hungary, Countess Erzebet Bathory, who is credited with murdering, torturing and generally acting in a decidedly depraved manner with over 650 virgins? Very favourably. So let’s start with her.

THE INGRID PITT BOOK OF MURDER, TORTURE AND DEPRAVITY

1

Countess Erzebet Bathory

Countess Bathory’s position in the hierarchy of horror is confused by the fact that she, along with Vlad Tepes and Gilles de Rais, is credited as being one of the progenitors of the Vampire myth. None of them passes the basic test for a vampire of being dead and reanimated. Their reputation as seminal vampires rests entirely on their penchant for groping around in the blood of their victims. Not one of them was actually seen or accused of sucking the blood straight from the vein. This may have been an oversight on the part of the chronicler or something that hadn’t occurred to the trio of blood bandits. Vlad’s only claim to vampire-hood was made by Bram Stoker using the Prince of Transylvania’s family name for the anti-hero of his book, Dracula. A brilliant connection if you are hoping that nobody is going to be bothered by the truth. de Rais’ hook into the legend of the vampire is even more tenuous. He was just a pervert who liked torturing and disembowelling young boys.

Countess Bathory’s problem is that she has been left in a sort of horror limbo. Overqualified as a ghoul, she is usually shuffled into the wrong nomenclature and gets a vampire label. This has not been helped by the Hammer film, Countess Dracula. It is the connection to Bram Stoker and his eponymous hero that is the trouble. The Countess could possibly have had some distant claim to the family of Dracul if she hadn’t already claimed the Nadasdy name by marriage. The storyline goes that Erzebet is a headstrong young maiden of a royally connected family who marries an older man and goes off the rails when the Count fails to perform his marital duties and prefers swanning off to places foreign for a bit of pillage and murder with the odd act of rape for afters. Erzebet develops a liking for disciplining servants that gets a little out of hand. Her come-uppance is being walled up in the cellar of her castle where she dies of starvation shortly after.

Naturally this isn’t colourful enough for a full-length feature film with the Hammer logo riding on it, so a more erotic plot was hatched. The old girl isn’t too happy spending good servant-baiting time trying to iron out the wrinkles that the years insisted on etching into her previously marbled features. In a vicious tussle with one of her unfortunate employees she cuts the poor girl’s face and blood spurts out and splashes on to the Countess. She’s not too happy with that until she looks in the mirror and sees that where the blood splattered her cheek it has become miraculously peach-like. Quick as a flash she realises that all she has to do to remain the juvenile lead forever is to apply the bloodied bodies of virgin servants to her wrinkled skin. This she does until the locality is running seriously short of suitable maidens and her nurse introduces the blood of a local lady of the tavern into her bubble bath. This is not efficacious and Erzebet is severely pissed off. Into the household comes Ilona, the Countess’s pulchritudinous daughter who is, at least so it is assumed, a virgin, in spite of a decidedly suspect cohabitation in a very basic hovel in the forest with a wood-chopper. The Countess is about to marry the love of her old age, handsome and somewhat soppy young cavalry officer, Imre Toth, when her old age revisits her with a vengeance. Toth doesn’t mind the idea of a mother figure but blanches at the idea of a grandmother figure in his bed. The Countess goes potty and tries to liberate a little virgin blood from her daughter to recapture her youth. Her youth, Toth, in a daze, manages to stand between mother and daughter and catches a knife in the ribs to be going on with. Then various members of Erzebet’s extended family jump on her and sling her in a cellar. The appellation ‘Countess Dracula’ comes from a woman whose husband has just been crushed when he carelessly fell under the wheels of the Countess’s carriage as she is speeding back to the castle for Sunday lunch. In wild-eyed desperation the newly created widow damns Bathory and upstages Stoker by dramatically screaming after the speeding carriage the immortal words – Countess Dracula.

This is the generally accepted film version. The truth is more horrific but a generally accepted depiction of real-life ghoulish goings-on in a medieval castle in the forests of Romania. Where the Countess was born is a matter of little importance, although it is usually accepted that it was Bratislava in the Slovak Republic in 1560. At that time national boundaries were as amorphous as a jellyfish in a whirlpool. Her family were rich and connected to King Stephen of Poland and the Prince of Transylvania. Childhood was a round of property owned by the Bathory family and visited as often as possible to make sure that shifty neighbours weren’t shifting the boundary posts. Servants were considered more expendable than cattle and of far less value than a horse. And sex wasn’t something furtive and done out of sight of the family. By the time she was a pretty 13, she was taking her pick of the lustier servants. It might have put a smile on the face of a gardener when she enticed him into the potting shed but it soon faded when she had him dragged out and beaten. Her marriage to the ageing Boyar, Count Ferenz Nadasdy, at the tempting age of 15 was about par for that distant course but didn’t fulfil Erzebet’s dreams of romantic love. She was intelligent, forceful and well educated. She knew what was what and knew she wasn’t getting it. Nadasdy, now that the boring nuptials were out of the way, his teenage bride had a dumpling in the pot and his family was bound to the powerful Bathory family, bid a fond farewell and left for conquests new. To while away the hours between serf savaging and dinner, Erzebet took over the running of the estate. This was not looked on as a suitable occupation for a young bride and produced a considerable humph factor among her male relatives, especially a cousin. Count George Thurzo. Sitting in his draughty room, he worked himself into a state of belief that assumed that the fortune of his young cousin should, by right of testes, be his. The Countess did not think much of her seedy cousin and left him to fend for himself. This meant that he went off to his other cousin, the King, and spent a few years whispering into the royal ear-trumpet the iniquities of their wealthy cousin. Erzebet was exactly that – a wealthy cousin – with powerful allies within her family group. Too powerful for a monarch beset with dynastic problems and the disconcerting knowledge that the marauding Turks would love the opportunity to leap in, swords akimbo, if he were foolish enough to take his eye off the orb for a few seconds to take on the Bathory/Nadasdy combined. Especially as his only ally was likely to be the wimpish Thurzo. So the King listened and nodded and Thurzo whined and whimpered and the Countess grew older and more powerful.

As Lord Acton wrote to the Bishop, ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. And this was Erzebet’s problem. With no one to stop her, she moved rapidly into the absolute corruption phase without the spectre of going to jail and not collecting 200 smackers to stop her. Seducing gardeners and whipping recalcitrant servants had become a chore. She needed something extra to stimulate her juices. Then she met Anna Darvulia. Anna was a nurse with an eye to an opportunity when it bit her. In intimate chats between deep massage and colonic irrigation she learned a lot about her employer. Enough to suggest some interesting variations on flogging and pinching. It started quite slowly. A forgetful servant was sat on white hot coals to help her future memory. Maids who didn’t warm the bed before the Countess retired were stripped, doused with water and made to stand out in the courtyard until they died or bits of their anatomy froze off. Erzebet hadn’t enjoyed herself so much since she had a coachman castrated for breaking a wheel and causing her head to come into sharp contact with the side of the coach. She urged Anna to think up more turns to stave off the monotony of daily life in the castle. The Nurse duly obliged with ear clipping, breast squashing, nose slitting and various excruciatingly painful attacks on the genital organs. These were carried out by the servants and Anna while Erzebet looked on and encouraged. Voyeurism wasn’t as exciting as the real thing and it wasn’t long before the Countess herself was practising some of the subtleties of torture under the watchful eye of the resourceful Nurse. Up until this time it had all been fairly restrained and not much different from what was practised in other households before the age of Tuppaware and TV. Then Count Ferenz went an orgy too far and croaked. Liberated from any restraint, Erzebet now became the leader rather than the acolyte in Nurse Darvulia’s little soirees. Wisely, she had left the male members of her staff out of her fests and used them as willing allies in her chastisement and correction of ungrateful female staff. She was glad she had because the work of debauchery was heavy and not fitting for the daughter of nobility. While Anna scoured the countryside for suitable women, in the virgin category, the men were instructed in building the apparatus of torture. Very popular at this time was the Iron Maiden. A coffin-like arrangement very much like the sarcophagus of a Pharaoh. With one unpleasant extra. The interior was fitted out with long, sharp spikes. The Countess liked the basic concept but failed to see how it would benefit her. Once the hinged door was closed the victim was out of sight. Out of sight meant she might as well go to bed, and the exciting potential of her cellar made it very difficult to sleep. The thought of missing so much excitement gave her a headache and made her ratty. Nurse Anna couldn’t have that. ‘How about building an open cage and...’ Erzebet loved the idea and set her workman on to building a metal box about five feet tall and four feet square. Into the sides were welded sharp spikes like those used in the Iron Maiden. This was going to be the grand finale to which everything would build. As the venerable Beaton was later to say, ‘First catch your bunny’. No problem. Anna produced a pink young female for the approval of her mistress. Approval was granted with a courtly nod of the head. Seized by the men the hapless woman was stripped and laid on a table. With immaculate precision Erzebet then performed the overture. Ear-clipping, eyelid snipping, nose slitting, eyeball gouging, breast cutting, red hot poker up the vagina or anus and anything else that came to mind. She had to be careful. Sometimes after she had exhausted herself preparing for the finale, the ungrateful recipient of her attention would inconveniently die and she would have to start from the beginning again. But practice made perfect and before long she was able to judge to a snip what any of her performers could take and still provide an entertaining grand finale.

Countess Dracula showers in the blood of virgins.

The girl was helped into the spiked cage, making sure that she needn’t carelessly impale herself on any of the spikes, and the cage lifted aloft. A comfortable chair was then placed under the cage and the Countess helped to her seat. When she was settled the men were given the nod. From a conveniently placed brazier they took burning embers and thrust them at the caged woman. In her attempt to get away from the fire she impaled herself on the sharp spikes. Before long the blood was cascading down on the Countess. She moaned and writhed around in orgasmic fever until the blood ceased to flow. She would then courteously thank those present for the spectacle and repair to her chamber. In the cellar the servants cleaned up and prepared whatever delight Anna thought up for the next day. As far as the Countess was concerned everything was right with the world. Cousin Thurzo was still moping around trying to figure out how he could get his hands on her loot, even helping out in the cellar on occasions, but he couldn’t find anything untoward that would make the King step in and restore to him what he was sure was rightfully his. Then Anna Darvulia inconveniently caught a bug and died. The Countess was disconsolate. Who would look after her now? Who would provide the ingredients for her entertainment and sexual delight now? She need not have worried. Anna had a part-time assistant, a local farmer’s wife called Erzsi Majorosne. She hadn’t Anna’s delicacy and sophistication but she knew the ropes and was willing to learn. While Anna had been alive, the local supplies of woman eligible to take part in the performances of the Countess had been stretched to the limit. Darvulia had always been careful to use only women that had been bonded to the Countess. Brought willingly to the castle by their starving mothers and sold into bondage for a few coppers. The ignorance of farmer’s wife Majorosne now became fatally apparent. Pushed for time she came across a couple of girls ripe for the sport. They weren’t bonded servants and their clothes and accents did suggest that they might not be good serf material but Majorosne had already been promised a lead part in the proceedings if things didn’t work out so she was in no mood to be fussy. The girls put on a noble performance. The Countess thanked Majorosne and the future seemed set to fair.

Then the families of the young ladies of breeding began to get anxious at their no-show around the baronial hearth. Thurzo got to hear about it and quickly counted his fingers and came up with the answer that his dear cousin had, at last, overstepped the boundaries of polite behaviour. A new king was now in power, King Mathias. Since his early days in court Thurzo had learned a lot about brown-nosing and this time he approached his sovereign more circumspectly. Mathias was susceptible to flattery and accepted that he was too bright a ruler to have his powerful noble families rampaging around the country playing games with each other. Count Thurzo suggested that the crown of Mathias would shine more brightly with the Bathory lands in the hands of a member of the noble family who was totally loyal to the King. The King agreed – with provisos. Thurzo had to have a case that would stand up in open court. How he put the case together was not something to attract Regal consideration. Thurzo assured his liege lord that there would be no whitewash in the woods, leaped aboard his trusty steed and made tracks for Cachtice Castle where Countess Bathory had now established her household.

The Countess was hard put to be civil to her irritatingly servile cousin but had no fear that he could harm her in any way. A bad mistake. By bribery and threats he got the truth from the castle servants. He promised Erzsi Majorosne amnesty if she confessed and told him everything. Erzsi realised that she had made a bit of a bloomer. Even if she managed to fob Thurzo off, it would probably be reported back to her Mistress by somebody currying favour. Erzsi Majorosne had no illusions about what would happen then. Seeing Majorosne metaphorically spilling her guts, the men were eager not to be left behind. Thurzo promised them that if they put the knife in they could plead that they were forced to do what the Countess bid. They would be given the chance to tell how they had begged and pleaded with her to stop her cruel practices but she had taken no notice. Once the evidence was garnered Thurzo triumphantly spread it out before King Mathias. The King still wasn’t exactly pleased to be put on the spot. If the powerful despotic Lady pulled in a few favours, he could still see himself as the Aunt Sally that a coalition of feral barons might find it advantageous to knock down. He was lucky. Countess Bathory had never been a one to tread lightly and win friends. What’s more, since she had become interested in the fatiguing business of disciplining her bonded servants full time, she had little appetite for the social round. Thurzo rode back to Cachtice at the head of a troop of the Kings men and arrested his cousin for the kidnap, torture and murder of various spinsters of the parish. It was a fair cop. But Thurzo’s interest in what went on in the privacy of his cousin’s castle was only a means to a coup. Many of Erzebet’s family were in high places. Some had even converted to Catholicism. Others had proven less than supportive of the ruling Habsburgs. Thurzo persuaded Mathias that, given the power, he could act as whipperin and get the wayward lords back in the kennel. The king believed he was the man for the job and made him Palatine of Hungary. A sort of High Sheriff with knobs on. Thurzo was lucky. It was 1610 and the world of the forests and mountains was in turmoil. Boyars, who would have leaped to the defence of Lord Nadasdy’s widow a few years earlier, were too busy watching their own back to spare a glance in her direction. She was summoned to a court in Vasvar-Szombathely to explain the death of the daughter of one of her ladies in waiting. The Lady herself accompanied the Countess and swore on oath that her child had been the victim of disease and had not died from the predations of her employer. Her plea was allowed and Erzebet returned to the cold comforts of her nearest castle. But the very fact that she had been submitted to the indignity of appearing in court gave warning of her unaccustomed vulnerability. Thurzo was quick to urge others to test the Lady of Cachtice. He had chosen his moment and once the defences of her power had been breached – and seen to be breached – there were plenty of witnesses coming forward to point the finger. Thurzo the Palatine was a fury of activity. He could see the rich Bathory lands dropping into his hands like ripe bananas. He didn’t hang about. Countess Bathory was brought to court again and the evidence trotted out. But the old girl wasn’t finished yet. She orchestrated a series of bluffs that were feasible enough to have the King and Court wondering if they could really come out ahead if they bucked the defendant’s extended family. The hearing just sort of fizzled out and the Countess moved back into her castle at Nemetkeresztur. Fear of the reprisals that failure could visit upon him spurred cousin Thurzo into immediate action. He out-pimpled the Scarlet Pimpernel by being here, there and everywhere in a rabid attempt to raise support and not be seen as a sitting target. Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, anywhere there was a witness to be bought or a discontent suborned. Soon he felt secure enough to take another pot-shot at the old lady and claim what was his. Now he had evidence that in her depravity Erzebet had slaughtered, for her own amusement, between 600 and 650 virgins. A risible claim. In a township of little more than 4000 earthy souls with little more to do on a steamy summer’s night than cool off in the surrounding forests. Where was anyone going to line up 650 virgins? The figure was not seriously challenged and the trial went ahead. One by one Countess Bathory’s servants and accomplices took the stand and put the boot in. They were all careful to ascribe the part they had played in the orgies as being a direct result of dire threats of what would happen to them if they didn’t cooperate. Some of it might have even been true. They were well aware of what the old ogre was capable of doing, they were actually doing it to others, on her direct orders. In the end it made little difference. Once they had told their story they were detained and sentenced to death. It was a fate even the King was too scared to place on the head of Countess Bathory. In a fine example of fence-building, he made pacts with her sons and daughters, aunts and uncles. The Bloody Countess would be spared, her lands, at least those not held by the fiercer members of her family, would come under the administration of Palatine Thurzo and the Lady herself would be placed under house arrest under the authority of the aforesaid Palatine. What Countess Bathory thought about all of this is not recorded. It is obvious that she knew that sooner or later she was going to get it in the neck. Long before any effort was made to marginalise her and seize her lands, she made sure that some of her prize possessions had been farmed out to her children. Thurzo made a half-hearted attempt to get some of them back but their father, the fearsome Count Ferenz Nadasdy hadn’t been called the ‘Black Bey’ for nothing. The children he had sired had a heady cocktail of savage blood in their veins and weren’t in the mood to lose land as well as mother.

So Countess Erzebet Bathory-Nadasdy started a luxurious house arrest in one of her castles that had meant so much to her, Castle Cachtice. Her incarceration was not to last long. She died, probably of boredom, in 1614.

The death of the Countess was not the end of the affair. At first there was a fairly united effort to bury her misdeeds along with the body. For 100 years she was a non-person. Even factions that had an interest in destroying the Bathory name didn’t take advantage of many of the opportunities on offer. Then everybody wanted to get on the roller-coaster. As the 18th Century opened so did the Bathory file. Many cast doubt on her guilt, claiming that it was all a big fit-up by her enemies. Others claimed that the figure for those she tortured to death was much lower than the vaunted 650. Fifty maybe – and lower class – so what did it matter? Others ventured the figure much higher, suggesting a probable 1000 or more. Even the Brothers Grimm got into the act with an arithmetical baker’s dozen. Opinions change about her psychological make-up. At the time that she was working her murderous magic she was just seen as an old biddy with time on her hands looking for a little X-certificate entertainment who ran foul of the law. Later it was put down to brain fever. Then it became an unfortunate side effect of a menopausal despot with bloodlust. Freudians opined, naturally, that it was all down to sexual abuse in her childhood. As her early life is a dark valley to researchers, it is a good place to look for the reasons she set out to become the world’s, alleged, foremost female serial killer. The fanciful story that she washed daily in the blood of the virgins that she kept in serried ranks in the cellar, like vats of good wine, for her daily ablutions is a little hard to take and begs a whole load of questions. The fact that they had to be virgins adds a twist of piquancy to the story but what could be the difference between the blood of a virgin and some old hooker who plied her trade down at the docks for a Fisherman’s Friend and a finger of shag? I guess nobody will know the true story of what happened in darkest Europe 400 years ago but in the meantime, the legend grows and multiplies and books and films are made that suit the age and the pocket of the financiers. It is left to us to imagine what the Countess herself thought about the way she was treated and whether, if guilty, she had any remorse about the lives she had terminated so mercilessly.

NEVILLE HEATH

2

Neville Heath

In 1946 the world was full of heroes. Ordinary men and women who had gone to war and found themselves in a position to perform an extraordinary act. It was also the time of the Black Market, bombed buildings and those same ordinary heroes trying to re-adjust to a world that no longer appreciated the qualities that had made them more than their component parts. In the main the returning servicemen shrugged and joined the ranks of the underpaid. For some the thought of returning to the dross of civilian life wasn’t possible. They had been taught to kill and to get what they wanted by force of arms. A cocktail that was hard to pour back in the shaker. Neville George Clevely Heath had been an officer if not quite a gentlemen in the Royal Air Force. He cut a dashing figure as a Squadron Leader until he was surprised while wearing a DFC without actually being handed this prestigious award by His Majesty. There had also been a bit of nastiness over a gambling debt and the Mess Sergeant put the boot in about items that had gone missing while Heath was duty officer. It was a blow to Heath. He liked being a part of the RAF and enjoyed the privileges that his rank brought him. The Battle of Britain was still fresh in the memory of those who had endured the nightly bombings only curtailed by the warrior efforts of the boys in blue, Churchill’s famous Few. Heath played up his part in the Battle for all he was worth. It was a time when wearing a uniform in public was still acceptable and Heath had added a couple of rings of rank to his sleeve and more decorations which he was sure that he was entitled to but had been denied him by jealous senior officers. As Group Captain Heath, top button on his tunic left meticulously undone to show his revered standing as ‘One of The Few’, his blonde wavy hair just a rakish half an inch longer than the norm, his heavily good-looking features and his cultured, lazy way of speaking set many a heart a flutter. Money was a problem but he had a string of elegant lady friends willing to help him over a sticky patch. Like Billy Bunter, he was always waiting for a postal order to arrive and bail him out. His only real problem was a ‘dose’ he had caught from one of the ladies who had given him more than the price of the hotel room. Heath found the whole idea of going to a VD Clinic and revealing to pretty nurses he had been furnished with a virulent case of pox an impossible embarrassment. Anyway, he was satisfied that the home cures he had first heard about in the forces had been efficacious. Most of the sores had gone completely and the others were drying up nicely.

His Group Captain guise was wearing thin. He wasn’t the only ex-officer wandering around in a rapidly fraying uniform trying to repeat the buzz that deferential treatment in restaurants and the salutes of ‘erks’ and ‘squaddies’ brought on. He wasn’t even the only ex-service man wearing rank and decorations that hadn’t been commissioned. But he was one of the few who persisted in maintaining a high profile. After a couple of close shaves with inquisitive military policemen he decided to cross over to another service and it was as Lt Colonel Heath that met Marjorie Gardner. Marjorie had recently joined the ranks of ‘peace-widows’, women that had married a gallant serviceman and waved him goodbye when he went off to fight the foe. The out-of-touch civilian that returned was not what she wanted and after a short period of doing her duty for the returning boys, she moved out. After all, she was a budding film-star and he was only another bewildered ex-serviceman in a cheap demob suit with a future that fell well short of her expectations. There were still a lot of ‘clubs’ in London. A legacy from the time when men on leave wanted a taste of the exotic and somewhere they could pull a bird without having to trawl the back streets or stand in line under Waterloo Bridge. When Lt Colonel Heath entered the Panama Club and stood by the bar looking around in his lazy, heavy-lidded manner, Marjorie knew that a new phase in her life was about to start. Heath was all she expected. A witty, cultured George Sanders-type who was obviously bowled over by her beauty and position as a film-star. A couple of hours later they booked in at the Pembridge Court Hotel. It didn’t take long for Marjorie to find out that her gentleman friend was anything but. Marjorie Gardner was into bondage before rubber suits and a visit to Anne Summers’ emporium was a prior requisite. And there was nothing Neville Heath liked more than a little heavy-handed flagellation – as long as he was wielding the whip. At first glance it looked like a union, if not exactly made in hell, at least just outside the portals. The party began quite amicably. Heath ripped off Marjorie’s clothes and she shredded his back with her carefully manicured nails. Excited, Heath quickly bound her arms and legs to the bedposts and started flicking her with his whip. As he became aroused the flicks became full blows. Marjorie’s gurgles of enjoyment changed to cries of pain. She begged her lover to stop. Heath replied by gagging her. Now he was so far gone that he could not control himself. He beat her until her body was a welter of blood. Then he fell on her and bit lumps of her flesh and tore chunks from her body. Thankfully, she lapsed into unconsciousness. Sated, Heath sat back and surveyed the room. It looked like a charnel house. Slowly, he got up, cut Marjorie’s hands free and felt her pulse. Unbelievably, it was still present. Heath was rapidly regaining control of his thought processes. He had to get away. He quickly washed himself down, carefully brushed his crisp blond hair, packed his bags and departed the scene. It was left to the maid to find Marjorie. She was dead. Not from the terrible wounds Heath had inflicted but suffocated by the gag in her mouth. It didn’t need Poirot to connect Heath with the murder. The police did not release a photograph of him to the newspapers but circulated it to Police Stations throughout the country.

Neville Heath slaughters the luckless Doreen Marshall on the moonlit clifftops.

Heath was shocked by what had happened. He had always been happy with a degree of brutality in his love-making but he had always drawn back from inflicting any real injury. It was time to try to cover his tracks. He booked in at the Tollard Royal Hotel in Bournemouth as Captain Rupert Brooke. It suited him to connect himself to the romantic First World War poet who died on the Greek island of Skyros en route to the Dardanelles in 1915. ‘Stands the church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?’ and all that. Once settled in, he rang Yvonne Symonds, an ex-WREN he had met a few months earlier at the Overseas Club in London. She had been ill and was staying with her parents by the sea to recuperate. Yvonne was not the easy lay that the Captain was looking for. He wined and dined her but she still wouldn’t come across so he asked her to marry him. She was thrilled. The idea was to keep the engagement secret until Heath had been able to sort a few things out and receive the money owed him by the government and various other people who had borrowed from him. Yvonne was happy to lend him a small sum of money when he told her he had an appointment with the War Office to finalise the amount of pension due to him. He promised to repay her as soon as he came back from London. He also mentioned that while he was in the capital he had been asked to drop into Scotland Yard and have a word with the police. When Yvonne pushed him for more information he explained that a room he had been renting in London had been the scene for a particular horrendous murder and the police wanted some help in tracking down the murderer. He left the following morning but instead of taking the express to London he moved along the coast to Worthing where he sat and wrote a muddled letter to Chief Superintendent Barratt giving his version of what had happened in the Pembridge Hotel. He claimed that he had met Miss Gardner in the club but instead of taking her back to the hotel had loaned her his room. She had told him that she was being forced to meet a man that night and had promised Heath that she would be free by about 3am. If he came back after that, they could spend the rest of the night together. He had been happy to help out as he had promised to play cards at an illegal gaming house and was not using the room. When he returned he found Miss Gardner in the condition in which the police found her. He panicked, gathered up his clothes and beat it before he could get involved in the indelicate affair. In his haste he had inadvertently picked up the whip that had been used to beat the unfortunate woman. This he would forward so that they could check it for fingerprints. Barratt already knew that one of the pieces of evidence he had to find was a riding crop. A criss-cross pattern on the weals covering Marjorie’s body were typically those found on a leather riding crop. From the postmark on the letter he was able to make the brilliant deduction that the helpful Heath was on the south coast. Local stations were informed and inquiries intensified. The Superintendent was not surprised when a long, slim parcel did not arrive.

Whipping – Heath’s sadistic hallmark.

Group Captain Brooke called Yvonne Symonds and told her the whole nasty business at the Pembridge Hotel had now been cleared up to the satisfaction of Scotland Yard and she invited him down for Sunday lunch with her parents. Heath agreed. What he saw as his coup of putting the police off the scent made him feel invulnerable. How much of this was a psychological disorder and what effects tertiary syphilis had on his mental outlook are unknown. But he was acting like a man who should be leaping off tall building wearing his pants over his tights and yammering on about the American Way.

Lunchtime roast beef and the attention of the adoring Yvonne induced Heath to give the Symonds a graphic and egocentrically tailored account of the brutal murder and his meeting with the police. He cast himself as a latter day Sherlock Holmes pointing out to the stupid police clues that were obvious to a man of his intellect. His description of how something big and hard had been shoved up her wotsit, ‘a poker probably’ was enough to put his hosts off their apple pie and custard. He bid the shocked family goodbye and returned to his hotel. Just why he felt he had to relate the murder in all its gory details is hard to understand. Was it just bravado? The need to show someone how clever he was? Or was he really insane and living in some fantasy world where he saw his actions as reasonable and a suitable subject for conversation around the Sunday joint? A few weeks later the Symonds were to read a less graphic but painfully similar account of Marjorie Gardner’s last moments in the News of the World.