The weekly serial killer profile thread

[Igosplut]

VERY GOOD High Life Man....Your gettin in to the spirit of the thing!!

Sick fuckin world we live in innit??

On that note the completion of our story............

Insurance Scam

The biggest scheme brewed in Holmes' mind long before the Castle swindles fizzled and proved to be his downfall. He convinced Ben Pitezel to take a $10,000 life insurance policy with Fidelity Mutual Life of Philadelphia and fake his own death. A corpse with a badly disfigured face would be Ben's double. Holmes assured Ben he would find a corpse to match his physical characteristics. "With my connections the corpse will be no trouble", he told Ben.

The plan was for Ben to go into hiding and not tell his family anything. Ben could not just disappear without saying something to his wife Carrie, so he went against Holmes' instructions. He told her about the scheme. Carrie, distraught that something could go wrong, begged her husband to reconsider. He did not. He told his older daughter Nessie not to believe anything she read in the newspaper about him. Ben Pitezel left Chicago and never returned.

Meanwhile, Holmes' creditors got wind of the arson at the Castle. They banded together, got an attorney, and threatened Holmes with criminal charges. November 22, according to witnesses, was the last time anyone saw Holmes in public, although, he did make a few clandestine visits to his wife and daughter.

On January 9, 1894 Homes married Georgiana Yoke in Denver. She became Mrs. Henry Mansfield Howard. From Denver, they moved to Ft. Worth, Texas and met Ben. Holmes told his new wife he had business to take care of in Ft. Worth. Again he changed his identity. The couple became Mr. and Mrs. H.M.Pratt. He, as Pratt, along with his assistant Ben formulated schemes to bilk wealthy Texas businessmen from money, property and business.

His psychopathic arrogance made him reckless in decisions. Instead of skipping town like any other embezzler, Holmes stayed in Ft. Worth. They stole a freight of horses and shipped them to Chicago. Texans did not take horse theft lightly. The crime was found out and the law latched onto their trail.

They worked their way across the country to New York, Philadelphia, Memphis, Denver, and St. Louis. Continued carelessness and greed landed Holmes in jail for the first time. He tried to defraud the Merrill Drug Company using a scam like the one in Chicago. The drug company found out and had him arrested. Georgiana, bemoaning the indignity of his husband's arrest, eventually bailed him out.

Marion Hedgepeth (UPI)

During his stay in jail, Holmes met Marion Hedgepeth, a very bad man, according to the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Marion was a celebrity criminal. Perhaps that was why Holmes felt comfortable. Comfortable enough to let his guard down and reveal his swindle. Marion gave Holmes the name of a lawyer, for a promise of $500. The lawyer would help him in the insurance scheme involving Ben. Now everything was in place for the insurance fraud.

Ben went on to Philadelphia, opened a phony patent office, rented the room in the back, and waited for the plan to unfold.

Holmes' stay in prison was short. He met with Jeptha Howe, the lawyer to whom Hedgepeth referred Holmes. Howe would take care of the details of the insurance fraud. Holmes returned to his wife Georgiana and they left for Philadelphia for business. Georgiana had been feeling poorly for a few days and was distressed Holmes could not wait until she felt better. "It's a great opportunity...I'll make $10,000 dollars for you", he said. His wife agreed and off they went on another journey.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia, he set up an appointment, and then cancelled it when he did not like the meeting place. Ben was disappointed. Holmes asked Ben if they could meet at his room. Ben agreed. It was the last agreement Ben would ever make to his trusted employer.

The next night, Holmes watched Ben from the shadows drink himself into oblivion at a local tavern. He followed his drunken friend back to his room, checking his pocket for the tools of his murderous plan and waited for the right moment. When Ben opened his door after several tries, Holmes jumped from the shadows, chloroformed his colleague, gently allowing the body to slip to the floor. Working quickly, he took a vial of chemicals from his pocket, poured it on Ben's face. A small explosion ensued, obliterating Ben's features. He arranged the body so that the face would get the full glare of the sun, thus ensuring quick decomposition. Holmes medical training came in handy once more.

Ben had missed an appointment with one of his potential inventors. The man had come by the shop a few times and felt concern for it was always closed. Finally, he pushed the door of the shop and it opened. He called out for Ben several times. Cautiously, he went toward the back of the store and reached the stairs to the upper rooms. He noticed a foul odor. Up, up he went until he arrived at the top floor. He opened the door slightly, saw a body on the floor, shot down the stairs, and ran four blocks to the police station.

Holmes lost no time at all. He returned to Georgiana at the rented rooms, told her the deal had gone through, and they should make $10,000.

Next morning, they boarded a train for Indianapolis and spent a short time in the city. He checked newspapers to see if Ben's death was discovered. A few days after arriving, he saw the notice. Holmes was delighted his scheme was working. He said good-bye to his wife and headed back to St. Louis.

Carrie Pitezel bordered on hysteria when she read the story about Ben's death in Philadelphia. Her daughter Dessie tried to calm her down by reminding her what her father said -- not to believe what was in the newspapers. Holmes's arrival at that moment could not have been timed better. Finding Carrie in a state of collapse, he pulled her into a private room, and chided her for believing Ben's death notice.

"He's hiding out...you must play along...this is what Ben wants...he is not dead."

After a while, she believed his smooth talking manner and calmed down. Holmes was worried Carrie would crack. Also, she and the baby had been terribly ill for several days. He knew that in this state she might blow the whole scheme. He convinced her to let him take Alice, even though she was only 15 years old. Dessie, the oldest, had to stay to take care of the baby while her mother was ill. Alice would be needed to identify the body in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Holmes and Alice went to the insurance company. Carrie Pitezel gave the "power of attorney" to Holmes. The problem with the insurance company was that Ben had used a ficticious name. So, they needed a more positive identification.

Days had passed since Ben's death. He was already buried. An order for exhumation was filed to allow the positive identification. Fidelity insurance agents felt something suspicious, but chose not to pursue it at that time. According to the police report, the death was an accident. What alerted the agents had to do with the fact that Ben made his payment two days before he died by wiring it into the office last minute. Alice looked so impoverished and pitiful when she arrived at the office, the agents didn't have the heart to pursue an investigation.

The coroner had laid out the exhumed body of Ben Pitezel, covering his badly disfigured face. Alice frightened and nervous clutched Holmes for moral support. "Any distinguishing marks", asked the coroner of Alice.

"My father had a scar on his knee", Alice said, the coroner pulled back the cover to expose his knees, "and a mole on his neck." Both times she nodded yes. "That's my papa...I can tell by his hands", she cried.

Holmes lifted the covering on Ben's face, "Yes, that is Ben Pitezel, who has worked for me."

When the identification was over, Holmes took Alice to Indianapolis leaving her there while he returned to St. Louis.

Punishment

Now it was Carrie's turn to finish the scheme. She accompanied Holmes to Jeptha Howe, the lawyer he got from his cellmate Marion Hedgepeth. After the paper work was signed at the insurance company, Holmes told Carrie there would be a lawyer's fee, and money Ben owed him on an investment in Texas. In the end, Carrie walked away with $500 dollars out of Ben's $10,000 insurance policy.

He also convinced Carrie to let him take Howard and Nellie to join Alice in Indianapolis so they could stay at a wealthy lady's home. Carrie returned to Galva, Illinois at her family's home and waited for Ben to contact her.

The insurance company received a letter from Marion Hedgepeth outlining the insurance fraud. Did Holmes merely forget to pay Marion? We'll never know, but it caused his ultimate downfall. Although Marion told the insurance company that Holmes had substituted a cadaver, the agents were convinced it was the real Ben Pitezel. They hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to investigate. The Pinkertons gathered a great amount of information about Holmes' past schemes from Chicago to Texas. They decided to follow Holmes from city to city as he dragged the three children along in a sojourn that was made to confuse anyone trying to follow him.

Finally, in Boston with the help of 20-year police veteran Frank Geyer, they were able to arrest Holmes. They intercepted a letter with Holmes' code sent to Carrie asking her to remove a bottle of expensive chemicals from the basement to the attic. Unbeknownst to Carrie, the bottle was filled with nitroglycerin. Holmes made arrangements on a steam ship to Europe. The Pinkertons had to move fast. Frank Geyer aided the Pinkertons in surrounding the Adams House, and arrested Holmes for "conspiracy to commit fraud". At the same time, Carrie Pitezel was picked up and brought to Philadelphia for her part in the conspiracy. Little did they know that Holmes was a serial killer.

Overnight Holmes became a notorious celebrity. News of his numerous swindles, horse thefts, and frauds gave people a sense of admiration for the sheer genius of his plots. By the time Carrie had arrived in Philadelphia, she was ready to confess to anything. Believing her husband alive and part of the elaborate scheme, Carrie kept faithful to Holmes' story. She verified that this was fraud not murder concerning her husband. When she had to identify the body of her husband Carrie, she turned on Holmes, screaming about the whereabouts of her children -- Howard, Nellie, and Alice. Holmes claimed the children were with a rich lady in England. Suspicious, Frank Geyer retraced Holmes' journey, traveling from city to city, from East Coast to Midwest, and even Canada. Dauntlessly, he pursed his gut feeling that Holmes had killed the children. Back at headquarters, police gave the real story about Holmes to his young naive wife -- Holmes, as bigamist, as swindler, as killer. Georgiana, realizing the police were telling the truth, cooperated as much as she could.


Alice and Howard Pietzel (Mildred Kerr)

Herman W. Mudgett, alias H. H. Holmes was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. In the end, he thought his facial features had changed to that of a demon. His lawyer asked him how many people he killed. Holmes told him 133. Even in prison, he made money selling his story to William Randolph Hearst Corporation for $10,000.


Herman Webster Mudgett - H.H. Holmes (Illinois State Historical Society)

Fearful of grave robbers, he left explicit instructions for his burial. Ironically, a man did offer a large sum of money for his body. A grave ten feet deep, eight feet long, and five feet wide was dug. In the coffin, Holmes' face was covered with a cloth, and cement poured over every part of his body. Thirteen men dragged the coffin to the grave. The weight of the coffin caused it to fall into the grave upside down. Instead of facing the heavens, he faced hell.

And there we have. I love a happy ending, dont you??
Remember, we love requests here, so keep 'em coming..

And did you think I'd forget the quote of the week??? Not a chance..

"I had gotten out of bed and I was in the kitchen making coffee. Evidently, I had done some cooking the night before. There was some meat on the stove in a frying pan. I think it was human flesh. I had gone to the bathroom and found her in my bathtub, and part of her buttocks was missing. The feet were gone, the hand, the arm. I found them in the refrigerator."
EDDIE COLE

[Elitest]

The family that slays together....

Fred and Rose West
It came out of the blue.

24 February 1994 was a non-descript Thursday afternoon. In the newsroom of the local evening newspaper, the Gloucester Citizen, reporters were sitting around trying to come up with story ideas.

Someone from the paper's circulation department came up to the newsroom to pass on a tit-bit of information.

One of the newspaper boys had reported seeing policemen digging up the back garden of a house in a side street not far from the city centre. The journalists swung into action.



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They discovered that the house in question was number 25 Cromwell Street and looking it up in the electoral register they found the householders recorded as Frederick and Rosemary West.

The names meant nothing.

But someone looked the names up in the paper's conscientiously well-kept cuttings library. In a small brown envelope a reporter found a single cutting from a copy of the Citizen dated the previous summer.

It referred to the delight of a Gloucester couple - Frederick and Rosemary West - who had been cleared of sexually assaulting a young girl after the key witness declined to give evidence. Alarm bells rang in the Citizen newsroom.

Asked why they were digging up the Wests' garden, Gloucestershire Police would only say they were investigating the disappearance of their 16-year-old daughter. A Citizen reporter dashed to the city's register office and found a birth certificate belonging to a Heather West, born in 1971.

Bingo.

Gloucestershire Police confirmed the name but at the time nobody - including the police - realised the dig would trigger one of the biggest police inquiries Britain had ever seen. Heather had disappeared in May 1987, shortly after leaving school, but had not been reported missing by her parents. They claimed she had left home to go and work at a holiday camp in Devon. But an in-joke began to develop among the West children. They would mutter about Heather being "buried under the patio" at 25 Cromwell Street.

In the summer of 1993 - when the allegations of sexual impropriety were made against the Wests - their six youngest children were taken into council care.

Under the patio?
Reports of Heather being "under the patio" reached the ears of Detective Constable Hazel Savage, a veteran Gloucester police officer who had dealings with Fred West going back to the late 1960s. She decided to follow it up.

Det Con Savage discovered that Heather's national insurance number had never been used - indicating that she had never worked or claimed benefit since her disappearance. She had simply vanished into thin air.

Other inquiries strengthened Det Con Savage's belief that foul play was involved and in February 1994 she finally persuaded her superiors to obtain a search warrant and dig up the Wests' back garden.



The Wests' eldest son, 20-year-old Stephen, was at home - it was his day off - when the police knocked on the door with the search warrant.


In his book, Stephen West - who had been convinced by his father that his older sister was living in the Midlands - recalls: "I told one of the detectives that they were going to end up making fools of themselves and he just replied 'That's up to us'.
"I wanted to know the reasons why they thought Heather was buried there but they wouldn't tell me." Stephen and his mother tried frantically to contact his father, who was working on a building about 20 minutes' drive from Gloucester.

They finally got hold of him at 1.50pm and he said he was on his way home, but he did not arrive until 5.40pm.

It has never been explained what Fred West did during those four hours. He himself claimed he pulled over and passed out and blamed fumes from the painting he had been doing.

But several authors and criminologists have speculated that he may have spent the time disposing of incriminating evidence - including grisly souvenirs from the bodies of his victims - or even visiting an as-yet-undiscovered burial ground somewhere in south Gloucestershire.

We will never know.

A pact?
As police officers toiled in their back garden Fred and Rose West stayed up most of that night discussing what to do.

Geoffrey Wansell, whose book An Evil Love was written after he obtained exclusive access to 150 hours of Fred West's tapes and other documents, believes they cooked up a "pact". He says: "Frederick West would have told her that he would 'sort it out' with the police the following day, and that she 'had nothing to worry about' as he 'would take all the blame'."

Mr Wansell says of the pact: "Though he would renege on it during his bleakest hours in prison, it was to bind him to her for the rest of his life."

On 25 February Fred West was taken into Gloucester police station for questioning. He immediately admitted having killed Heather but told Det Con Savage: "The thing I'd like to stress is that Rose knew nothing at all."

Later that day the police diggers made a discovery which would catapult the inquiry from one of purely local interest, to one which would ultimately draw reporters and film crews from all over the world ...

They unearthed human remains in the garden but Professor Bernard Knight, the eminent pathologist who had been called on to assist the police, pointed out there was a third leg bone. It was clear there was more than one body buried in the garden of 25 Cromwell Street.


Fred West began a damage limitation exercise.

He agreed to go back to the garden and point out exactly where he had buried the two other girls - Shirley Robinson and Alison Chambers - who had vanished in the late 1970s. But he kept quiet about the six other bodies buried beneath the cellar and bathroom of 25 Cromwell Street.

It seems that his main motive for this silence was not that he feared becoming tagged a serial killer but he was appalled at the idea that his beloved house would be torn apart by the police. The key to unlocking the true horror of that house was a middle-aged Gloucestershire housewife who found herself projected into the centre of a worldwide media circus.

Janet Leach was a volunteer "appropriate adult" whose job it was to befriend and assist people - usually juveniles or the mentally sub-normal - who were taken into police custody. But she soon found herself becoming a confidante to a serial killer. Mrs Leach said the police had not been able to get West to admit there were other bodies but she was able to get him to reveal the truth.

"Are there any more bodies?" she asked.

West admitted there were and he went on to sketch a map of the cellar and bathroom, showing six more bodies.

But he was unable to identify many of his victims.

Unknown victims
One he described as "Scar Hand", because she had a burn on her hand, another he referred to as "Tulip" because he thought she was Dutch - in fact she was Swiss. Later West admitted he had buried another victim - an eight-year-old girl born to his first wife but fathered by another man - at another house in Gloucester.

He also confessed to having dumped two other bodies in fields near his childhood home at Much Marcle, on the Herefordshire-Gloucestershire border. They were his first wife, Rena, and a former lover, Ann McFall, both of whom hailed from Scotland. West's victims were a mixture of hitch-hikers, lodgers and teenage runaways who had been either lured to 25 Cromwell Street or abducted.

One of these was Lucy Partington, a 21-year-old university student from a respectable middle-class family. Her cousin was the novelist Martin Amis. She was picked up as she waited for a bus on the outskirts of Cheltenham one night in December 1973. It is almost certain she would not have accepted a lift from Fred West on his own. She only accepted a lift because of the presence of his wife, Rose.


Detectives were convinced from the start that Rose West was involved in the murders. But she denied everything and feigned shock at her husband's confessions.

She was bailed to a police safe house in Cheltenham - where she lived with Stephen and her eldest daughter Mae - but remained under suspicion. The house was bugged by police but she never said anything which implicated herself. On 18 April 1994 she was finally charged with a sex offence - the murder charges would come later - and taken into custody.

House of Horrors
Throughout the spring and summer of 1994 the world's media flocked to Gloucester to feast on the revelations coming out daily from what became known as the "House of Horrors". Hugh Worsnip, a veteran journalist and columnist on the Gloucester Citizen, said: "It had a tremendous impact on the city.
"The world's attention was turned to an obscure street in Gloucester.
"American and Japanese film crews were in the city and I was doing interviews for TV and radio stations all over the world."
He said the revelations about what had been happening at 25 Cromwell Street came as a terrible blow to Gloucester's civic pride: "It was regarded by many people in Gloucester as a sleight on the town."

Mr Worsnip, who began working on the Citizen in the 1960s, said the fact that a serial killer had been operating in the city for 20 years came as a huge shock to everyone, journalists included. But he said that - with the exception of Lucy Partington - West had deliberately chosen people whose disappearance would not be unduly noticed.
"They were the type of people who were drifting in society and were not easily traceable," he said.

But the case was about to take a turn for the worse ...

On New Year's Day 1995, just as the media hubbub was beginning to die down, Fred West hanged himself in Birmingham's Winson Green prison, where he was awaiting his trial on twelve murder charges. His death spawned a new raft of gruesome revelations but the full truth could not be published until Rose West had faced justice.

High drama in court
In October 1995 she was tried at Winchester Crown Court for ten murders - those of Rena Costello and Ann McFall pre-dated her appearance on the scene and must have been committed by Fred alone. It was one of the most sensational trials of the 20th century.

Every day witnesses appeared in court with stories to tell which were shocking, gruesome and - as far as Rose West was concerned - absolutely damning. There were to be many moments of high drama during the trial.

One of these moments of drama was when Fred West's eldest daughter, Anne-Marie, fixed her stepmother with a glare across the packed court before describing how her parents had together embarked on a campaign of sexual abuse when she was aged eight.

The second day of Anne-Marie's evidence was delayed for several hours after it became clear she had taken an overdose of pills during the night.

The trial was delayed for several days after Mrs Leach - under enormous stress - fell ill during her testimony.

Another witness, Caroline Raine, a former beauty queen, told the court of the night in 1972 when Fred and Rose abducted and sexually assaulted her as she hitch-hiked across Gloucestershire.

Her evidence was key. Prosecutor Brian Leveson, QC, suggested to the jury it was a blueprint for how the Wests were to pick up their victims. Caroline Raine was allowed to live - and the Wests were later prosecuted and fined over the incident. Clearly they made up their minds that future victims would not be allowed to live to tell their tales.

Guilty
By the end of the trial the jurors had been convinced of Rose West's guilt.

She was found guilty on all ten counts by unanimous decision and was jailed for life. The home secretary has since told her that she will never be allowed out.


In October 1996, Gloucester City Council finally demolished 25 Cromwell Street.

There were calls for a memorial garden to be built on the spot but there were fears it would be turned into a ghoulish shrine. Today the spot where nine bodies were found is simply a landscaped footpath leading to the city centre.

But the legacy of the House of Horrors continues to take its toll.

Fred West's brother John hanged himself as he waited to find out if a jury would find him guilty of raping Anne-Marie. She herself has struggled to come to terms with the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father and stepmother.

In November 1999 she was rescued after throwing herself into the water from a bridge near Gloucester in an apparent suicide bid. In January 2002 Stephen West attempted suicide at his home in Bussage, near Stroud after his girlfriend left him.

In a chilling echo of the death of his father and uncle, Stephen tried to hang himself but he survived when the rope snapped.

Eight years after police found the first body there continues to be speculation that Fred West claimed more victims and buried them somewhere in Gloucestershire.

Mrs Leach said Fred had admitted killing Mary Bastholm, a 15-year-old who went missing in Gloucester in 1968. She said: "Fred said that there were two other bodies in shallow graves in the woods but there was no way they would ever be found.
"He said there were 20 other bodies spread around and he would give the police one a year."

If he was telling the truth, he has taken his secrets to the grave and Rose West is showing no signs of wanting to reveal any more about the murders as she serves her life sentences for ten murders at the high-security Durham Prison.



The victims
1967 - Ann McFall (Scottish nanny and Fred's lover. Was eight months pregnant with his child). Body found in "letterbox field" near Much Marcle
1970 - Rena Costello (Fred's first wife, also Scottish). Body found in "fingerpost field" near Much Marcle.
1972 - Charmaine West, 8 (Rena's eldest child). Body found beneath 25 Midland Road, Gloucester
1973 - Linda Gough, 21 (seamstress from Gloucester). Body found beneath 25 Cromwell Street
1973 - Lucy Partington, 21 (university student, from Gotherington, near Cheltenham). Body found beneath 25 Cromwell Street.
1974 - Carol Cooper,15 (schoolgirl from Worcester). Body found beneath 25 Cromwell Street
1975 - Juanita Mott, 19 (from Newent, Glos) Body found beneath 25 Cromwell Street
1975 - Shirley Hubbard, 15 (schoolgirl from Worcester). Body found beneath 25 Cromwell St
1977 - Therese Siegenthaler, 21 (Swiss hitchhiker). Body found beneath 25 Cromwell St
1977 - Alison Chambers, 17 (originally from Swansea). Body found in garden of 25 Cromwell St
1978 - Shirley Robinson, 18 (lodger and Fred's lover. Heavily pregnant). Body found in garden of 25 Cromwell St.
1987 - Heather West, 16 (Fred and Rose's eldest daughter). Body found in garden of 25 Cromwell St.


This profile of Fred and Rose West was written by BBC News Online's Chris Summers.

[Igosplut]

OK kiddies, did ya think I'd forget ya????? No no no, we're back for another installment..

This weeks special is a Mexican-machete wielding badass known as.....

Juan Corona
BORN : 1934

DIED :

VICTIMS : 25 confirmed (most likely more)


Juan Corona was born in Mexico in 1934. His life there is somewhat of a mystery, but what we do know started when he moved to the U.S. in the 50's as a migrant worker. From here he turned himself into a successful labor contractor in Yuba County, California. And there were few signs of what really went on in Corona's head.

In 1970 a young Mexican man was viciously attacked with a machete (he was nearly scalped) in Corona's gay brothers cafe. The man accused Corona's brother, Natividad Corona, of the crime and filed a law suit, seeking $250,000, against him. Natividad fled the country not long after this and the case was forgotten. The crime wasn't linked to Juan, why would it?

On May 19, 1971, a farmer who had hired Corona to arrange labor for his farm found a large, grave shaped, hole between two tree's. He asked the nearest worker about it but he just shrugged it off, not knowing or caring it seemed. Well this farmer was a nosy bastard and really wanted to know what the hell was going on, so he returned to the hole later that night only to find that it had been filled in. And this bastard was a real nosy cunt. He called police and had them check it out. After a bit of digging they found themselves a nice fresh corpse. It was Kenneth Whitacre, a known bum. His head had been ripped apart with a cleaver or machete. They also found some gay porn buried with him, leading police to file the case as a sex crime.

Police were not that worried about the crime and never suspected what was to happen next.

Four days later on a nearby farm some workers discovered another body. It was Charles Fleming, a known drifter. As police searched the new burial site another corpse was found. Then another. Then another. Then another. I could go on but I'm sure you get the picture. After nine full days of excavation police called the search off. It was June 4. They had 25 corpses. And all had been killed since February. Now if that ain't prolific Im DLR....

Of the 25 victims police had been able to identify 21. Most were migrant workers, but some had been drifters and there were also a few bums. Most had been attacked with a machete or knife. All had been stabbed to death, a deep puncture to the chest followed by two slashes across the back of the head in the shape of a cross. All had been buried face up, arms stretched above their head and their shirts pulled up over theirs faces. Some had their pants pulled down and had signs of recent homosexual activity. The killer had some fun before or after they were dead.

None of the corpses had been reported as missing by family and if the bodies hadn't been discovered it would seem plausible that the killer would have gotten away with it all. But he had made four mistakes.
The first was to leave a grave open long enough to be seen by a nosy landowner.
The second was much more stupid. He had buried a receipt with his name on it with one victim, Melford Sample. The name on the receipt was "Juan V. Corona."
The third mistake was burying two bank deposit slips with the same name on them with another victim.
And the forth was being seen with a victim.

Police picked Corona up on murder charges. The case against him was based almost completely on the receipts found on Melford Sample's body and purely circumstantial evidence. Unfortunately for Juan when police search his home they found a Machete, a pistol, two butcher knives and a ledger that contained the names of seven victims. Corona's lawyers tried to argue this and also tried to lay the blame on his brother, a known violent offender with homosexual tendencies. The only problem with this argument was that Natividad was not even in the country at the time of the murders. Corona's lawyers only called one witness during the trial, and also failed to mention that Corona was diagnosed as schizophrenic in 1956, thereby ruling out any chance of an insanity defence. Despite his hopeless defense it still took the Jury 45 hours to convict Corona of the 25 murders (a record for the U.S. at that time) and a month later he was sentenced to life in prison.

While in prison Corona was linked with a few more murders but nothing even came of it. And then in 1978 an appeals court upheld an appeal by Corona citing that his legal team was incompetent and that he would receive a new trial. Unfortunately for Juan he was attacked in prison while awaiting the new trial. He has never regained sight in one of his eyes. He was then put through an extensive psychiatric observation period, further delaying his retrial.

It never made a difference though. In 1982 Corona was again found guilty of 25 murders. He went back to prison to serve out a new life sentence.

In 1978 Corona was reported to have told a Mexican consulate who was visiting the prison that he was guilty. This is the only reported time of him admitting the crime. The exact quote went - "Yes, I did it, but I'm a sick man and can't be judged by the standards of other men"

Betcha never drink a Corona beer again without having some evel thoughts, Huh??

and..of course the quote of the week.........

If I gave a shit about the parents I wouldn't have killed the kid."
Clifford Olson

[Igosplut]

No requests this week??Things are gettin slow..........

OK, with all the fuss about gay marriages in the news this weeks installment is about a man that did his best to prevent them.......

INTRODUCING

Juan Chavez

"You don't understand, I want to get these men before they get me.
They're spreading AIDS." As Elvis would say, Hummmmmm......

BORN : 1966

DIED : not yet

VICTIMS : 5

[i]This one is a pretty rare case, a serial killer that operated during the 80's but was not convicted until 1999. I guess you could say he was pretty unlucky to get caught after 10 years of inactivity, even if that was forced upon him. So let me begin this story with his arrest, and the events leading up to it.

As with so many serial killers Juan had a pretty shitty childhood. His parent shot through when he was very young which meant Juan and his half brother had been left in their grandmother care as young children. After the woman hit Chavez with a pipe one too many times, the two became runaways in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Eventually the boys crossed the border (illegally) into Texas and then moved on to California.

Chavez went on to marry and have two children. He worked a series of low-level jobs, from dishwasher to steam-iron operator, in Los Angeles and committed a string of petty crimes to add to the pitiful income the lower classes are expected to live on in the USA.

But the interesting bit doesn't happen until 1994. Juan Chavez was sitting in Folsom State Prison for a botched kidnapping when police, who were investigating an old string of murders involving gay men in Los Angeles, finally matched a fingerprint on one of the victims car to a prisoner in Washington state. When they contacted the inmate he said he got the car from Chavez.

Once police had Chavez's name they quickly turned all attention to him as the main suspect in the unsolved murders. They matched a photo taken at an ATM, where a different victims credit card was used, to Chavez's half brother. On Dec. 14, they interviewed Juan Chavez in prison. Being a pretty family orientated guy, Juan was worried about his brother being implicated in the murders so he confessed to five murders the following day.

According to one officer who testified at Chavez's trial he said, "I thank God you guys found out about this, because you know what, that way I can clear my mind. My conscience has been bothering me for a long time."

So what did he do?

According to Chavez, men looking to have sex offered him money in Echo, Elysian, LaFayette and MacArthur parks, even though he did not dress or act like a prostitute. Obviously the fact that men kept offering him money for sex eventually got him down (and angry) so he started killing them. He never really explained why he was in well-known gay pickup spots at such regularity, but I guess that's beside the point.

His first known victim, according to police, was Alfred Rowswell, 46, who was found strangled in his LaFayette Park apartment in July 1986. Rowswell's car was found later that year in Utah, but fingerprints on the windows initially proved inconclusive.

Obviously no one tried to pick Chavez up over the next few years as there were no new victims until 1989 when Chavez killed four men in two months: Ruben Panis, 57, of Los Angeles; Donald Leeman, 48, of Los Angeles; Michael Cates, 46, of West Hollywood; and Leo Hildebrand, 52, of Alhambra. I guess he must have inadvertently dressed in a slightly homosexual way, but this would definitly have been without Juan knowledge I'm sure.

Juan's M.O. was that when these men inadvertently thought he was a rent-boy (because he definitely wasn't) he would to persuade the men to take him to their apartments. He would then tie them up and strangle them. It was never planned and the robberies only took place as an afterthought. The men were strangled with whatever took Juan's fancy (other than the naked men, oops, they never did, 'cos he wasn't gay was he, wink-wink, nod-nod) and included exercise ropes, neckties and electrical cords.

Prosecutors at Juan's trial played up the robbery angle throughout the trial, but Juan came up with a new defence during that - "You don't understand, I want to get these men before they get me. They're spreading AIDS."

But this silly insanity attempt was never going to work for poor Juan, so he eventually pled guilty to five murders as a trial could have led to him facing the death penalty. He was sentenced to 5 life sentences without the possibility of parole.

His half brother was never charged with any crime, so at least something went right for Juan.[i]

And the quote of the week......

"He started messing with the christmas tree, telling me how nice the christmas tree was. So I shot him."
DAVID BULLOCK

[Bonzo]

The Possible Murder Of Junyore Grades
It was noon, Febuary 18, 2004. In a small Texas bedroom things are getting hot, on a brisk winter day. An undersexed Sargent, who shall remain nameless to avoid possible lawsuit, is welcoming his wife home from Iraq.
They stand there, groping, fondling, and caressing. As there passions grow, the Sargent throws his wife on the bed and quickly flips her legs up in the air, sending an untied sand brown boot hurdling through the air and landing on a computer keyboard.
Somewhere, in the rural state of WV, Junyore Grades's monitor goes blank. As he checks the patch cord, an electric pulse surges through his body, electrifying his senses and boiling his blood. A bright light emulates from Junyore Grade's computer tower, and through some strange accident of nature, pulls him through a time portal to the year 2031.
Will Junyore Grades ever see 2004 again?? Will the Army discharge him as AWOL, MIA, KIA, or ASS?? Will he ever get to hold his beloved Alley_Kat again? Will his overdue library book bankrupt him?
Tune in later when you can here Junyore say, "GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!" l

[Igosplut]

LMMFAO!! ...Thats fuckin funny JG..

You just gotta vote brother...

[Junyore Grades]

Originally posted by Bonzo
The Possible Murder Of Junyore Grades
It was noon, Febuary 18, 2004. In a small Texas bedroom things are getting hot, on a brisk winter day. An undersexed Sargent, who shall remain nameless to avoid possible lawsuit, is welcoming his wife home from Iraq.
They stand there, groping, fondling, and caressing. As there passions grow, the Sargent throws his wife on the bed and quickly flips her legs up in the air, sending an untied sand brown boot hurdling through the air and landing on a computer keyboard.
Somewhere, in the rural state of WV, Junyore Grades's monitor goes blank. As he checks the patch cord, an electric pulse surges through his body, electrifying his senses and boiling his blood. A bright light emulates from Junyore Grade's computer tower, and through some strange accident of nature, pulls him through a time portal to the year 2031.
Will Junyore Grades ever see 2004 again?? Will the Army discharge him as AWOL, MIA, KIA, or ASS?? Will he ever get to hold his beloved Alley_Kat again? Will his overdue library book bankrupt him?
Tune in later when you can here Junyore say, "GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!" l

Hmm, so that's what happend. He must've busted one this morning too, because I'm back!!
By the way, I'm sorry to report that there is still no Van Halen Reunion.

[Elitest]

JG you are so funny...and so cute

[Junyore Grades]

And pretty much house broken.

Hey Igo, hows about a good western shoot 'em up serial killer! Have ya' got any of those? You know, horse and buggies, cowboys/ indians, tumble weeds, slaughterd settlers, dead wagon masters, and such?

[Ally_Kat]

nice



If you ever had a reason to be afraid of clowns. This would be it.

Over the course of 3 years John Wayne Gacy, a part time children's party clown, would go on to sodomize, torture and murder over 30 young men, burying most of the bodies under the floor boards of his home.

Gacy would use a chloroform soaked rag to render his victims unconscious, then take them home and tie them up in his basement. He would then proceed to torture them sexually, using a varying range of dildos and sexual toys, eventually strangling them to death with a 2x4 while raping them.

kill count: 30+

[Junyore Grades]

Never trust a clown. Painted on smiles and you really can't tell how big there feet really are. Always traveling in groups of 12 or so, in a Volkswagon Bug.
Even the word "Dildo" scares me. I have a strict belief that my ass is an outie.
How could you strangle someone with a 2x4, and rape them? I can't even figure out the lagistics of that. Now that I've thought about it, I'd like to go scrub my brain out.

[Igosplut]

Originally posted by Junyore Grades


Hey Igo, hows about a good western shoot 'em up serial killer! Have ya' got any of those? You know, horse and buggies, cowboys/ indians, tumble weeds, slaughterd settlers, dead wagon masters, and such?

I'm a lookin JG.. Those things werent very well documented back then, probably because the people that would be documenting them were too worryed about becoming a victim....

I'll have sumthin tonight..

[Junyore Grades]

My grandfather loved Westerns, mostly because of his love for horses. Everytime a horse would fall, he would gasp and lose his breath. Westerns are one of my favorite types of movie, but sadly, there aren't too many of them made today.

[Sarge]

I gotta admit
Everytime I see that Gacy clown pic it scares the shit out of me

[Igosplut]

Welllll how could we not honor a request of THAT magnitude?????

(dont worry JG, I'm still looking for you) On a side note, This stuff is getting harder to find. Alot of dead links.Theres quite a few servers (Angelfire is one) That have dropped serial killer sites because they have deemed them "offensive". Censorship is everywhere today kids......



What a happy looking fellow. I bet he wouldn't harm a fly.

BORN : March, 1942

DIED : May, 1995

VICTIMS : 33

I'm sure that you all know what Gacy did, if not then here's a brief summary -

Gacy was a hypocondriac - in childhood he was hit in the head with a swing, and had a blood-clot on the brain, once this was removed he seemed to just invent any illness so people would pay attention. This little habit never seemed to leave him in later life. (He seemed to develop a heart problem anytime he was in danger)

He graduated business college and went on to marry into a wealthy family that owned a chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Waterloo, Iowa (he also had a son, also named John Wayne Gacy. You can bet your ass THAT names been changed..). John became a well known and liked member of the community, and his arrest in 1968, on a charge of attempting to coerce a male employee into homosexual acts came as a big suprise to everyone, especially his wife. Gacy didn't really want to go to trial so he paid for the young male to be beaten. All this did was cause more trouble and he had more charges laid against him. In the end Gacy pled guilty to sodomy and recieved 10 years in prison. Since he was such a model prisoner he was paroled in only eighteen months. Needless to say his wife divorced him while he was inside.

Gacy moved to Chicago where he set up as a building contractor. Once again he turned out to be a great success at his chosen profession. Gacy remarried and moved into a very upmarket neighborhood. He hosted large parties at his home for local dignitaries and neighbors. Gacy answered comments by his wife and others about the peculiar smell in the home by saying that there was a lot of dampness in the crawl space. In fact, he had employed teenagers in his business and had them dig trenches in the crawl space underneath his home. Gacy had been sexually torturing to death some of the young men who worked for him and others that he picked up in downtown Chicago. He became active in politics, working for the Democrats (he even had his picture taken with First Lady Rosalyn Carter, and a man named Ford). He also performed for sick children as 'Pogo or Patches the Clown'.



Gacy ran into trouble with the police again in February, 1971 when he was charged with the attempted rape of a young man. This charge was dropped as the victim never appeared in court at Gacy's hearing and the charges were dropped. On October 18, 1971, Gacy had his probation officially discharged.

Less than three months later Gacy killed for the first time. Gacy picked up the unidentified young man at a bus terminal and took him for a drive he would never return from. One of his favorite routines was to persuade them to participate in his "handcuff trick" in order to incapacitate them. He would then chloroform them and sodomize them. This was followed by his "rope trick" in which he would insert a rope around the victim’s neck, insert a stick in the loop, and twist it slowly like a tourniquet until the victim strangled to death. Gacy liked to read passages from the Bible while doing this.

Gacy went on killing young men almost at will for seven years, burying them in the crawlspace and covering them with lime under his house. Gacy made up a story about sewer problems as the smell from the crawl space began to get worse, and it seems everyone believed him
The beginning of the end came for Gacy's on December 12, 1978. He picked up Robert Piest at a pharmacy where Piest worked. Gacy fed him a line about a better job and Piest fell for it, accompanying Gacy back to his house. The next time anyone would see Piest he was a bloated corpse.

As Gacy was the last person seen with Piest police decided to check him out, and as he had previous arrests for shagging young men, he made a great suspect. The police went to interview Gacy at his house and with the stench of 28 corpse wafting up into the house it didn't take to long for them to realize what was under the house, but they had no way of getting down there to check. Once the police had decided Gacy was there man they basically hassled the poor bastard into screwing up (they busted him on a pot charge), and once they had the evidence they needed Gacy was arrested.



John made a full confession, admitting there were 28 bodies under his house and garage (he even drew 'em a map!) and that he had dumped another five in a local river (the crawl space was full...).

After arrest Gacy tried feigning insanity, pretending he had another personality, Jack, who did all the evil shit. Then, once Jack failed, he tried to say he was forced into a confession and, in fact, it was a conspiracy by three other people who did all the killing and then set him up. POOR BABY.



While in prison Gacy did hundreds of paintings that were bought by everyone from Hollywood stars to the average guy. It became something of a trend to own one.
Gacy was executed on May 10, 1994, by leathal injection.