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Friday, July 1, 2011

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Erszebet Bathory

By popular demand, we are going to tell you some more about Erszebet Bathory, the Blood Countess, in tonight's serial killer bedtime story.

A Sixteenth Century Hungarian Countess, Erszebet enjoyed bathing in blood. This deviant fawn of royalty believed that regular blood baths would halt the aging process. Estimates of the number of girls that were slaughtered for her 10 years of beauty treatments vary from 40 to as much as 600.

The bloody Countess, the widow of a celebrated Hungarian war hero and descendent of the legendary despot Vlad the Impaler, led a life immersed in black magic and sadism. She once had the mouth of a servant sewn shut for being too noisy. In January 1611, after countless rumors about her behavior, a group led by Count Thurzo - Erzsebet's cousin - entered her Castle Csejthe and uncovered a blood-letting in progress.

In order to protect the family name, at the Count's insistence, Erzsebet was never actually "charged" with any crime, although he did have her put under "house arrest." In fact, her royal highness was literally sealed into her tower by masons. The consulate agreed largely because the government had a huge debt it would have had to pay off should they charge her.

Two of her accomplices in her orgies of horror had their fingers removed before being thrown on the fire. Another - the only male - was beheaded then thrown on the fire. The countess died on August 21, 1614, three years after she was sealed in her bedroom. Perhaps her elixir of youth had been working all along.

Sweet dreams, and may you forever remain Crazy 4 Crazies.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Carl Panzram

Tonight's serial killer bedtime story is about Carl Panzram.

Not from the "Mister Nice Guy" file. The most unrepentant killer of them all. Carl started his criminal career by getting arrested at age eight for drunk and disorderly behavior. It was downhill ever since. His killing spree spanned two continents. While in Africa he hired eight blacks to help him hunt crocodiles. Instead, he killed his hired hands, sodomized their corpses and fed them to the hungry reptiles. He boasted of committing thousands of robberies, larcenies, arsons and having sodomized a thousand men.

Panzram had received a 20-year prison sentence for burglaries and was sent to a federal prison at Fort Leavenworth Prison, Kansas, in 1928. There, he began to write his memoirs of sodomy and murder, and he beat a prison laundry room worker to death. Panzram quickly confessed to the killing, asked to be hanged and got his wish. When an anti-death penalty group tried to save him, he was quoted as saying, "I wish you all had one neck, and I had my hands on it." On September 5, 1930, Panzram got his death wish. Mean to the very end, while on the scaffold Panzram snapped at his executioner, "Hurry it up, you bastard. I could hang a dozen men while you're fooling around."

In his book Panzram blamed the prison system and society for turning him into a monster. He wrote that he was "not the least bit sorry" for the murders, rapes and robberies he committed during his lifetime. In 1970, his memoirs were published and later became the basis of a movie, Killer: A Journal of Murder.

Sweet dreams, and may you forever remain Crazy 4 Crazies.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Thierry Paulin & Jean-Thierry Mathurin

Tonight's serial killer bedtime story is one of collaboration between Thierry Paulin & Jean-Thierry Mathurin.

Known as the "Old Ladies Killer" and the "Monster of Montmartre" these two men terrorized elderly Parisian ladies in the district of Montmarte from 1984 to 1987. Paulin, a native of Guyana, was a black transvestite drug addict with dyed platinum blonde hair. His boy-toy, Mathurin -- a waiter from the Caribbean island of Martinique -- was eventually charged as an accomplice in nine of the 21 sadistic slayings committed by the transvestite killer.

The first victim was Anna Barbier-Ponthus, 83. She was found bound, gagged and beaten to death on October 5, 1984. On October 9, 1984, firefighters discovered the body of Suzanne Foucault, 89, bound and with a plastic bag wrapped over her head. On November 5, Iona Seigaresco, 71, was found bound with electrical cord and beaten to death in her flat on Boulevard de Clichy.

Confirming police suspicion that a serial killer was praying on older women in the Montmarte district, on November 7 Alice Benaïm, 84, was found dead in her apartment. The next day, Marie Choy, 80, was found dead next door. She was bound with steel wire and was forced to drink caustic soda before being beaten to death. The day after Maria Mico-Diaz, 75, was found bound, gagged and was nearly hacked in two with 60 stab wounds.

The similarities of all cases were quickly determined by police. All victims were old women ranging from 60 to 95, living alone in Montmarte. In all cases, they were attacked at the moment they opened their door on their way back from the market. Inside their apartments, the women were tortured, bound with electrical cord, gagged and beaten, strangled, stabbed or smothered to death. The apartment was then ransacked in search of money and other valuables.

The frantic Parisian police -- overwhelmed by public outcries and a terrified citizenry -- went into overdrive and arrested 60 junkies and assorted perverts hoping to crack the case. At the time Paulin and Mathurin left Paris and went to Toulosse where they hung out in gay clubs, did tons of coke and ended up separating after a fight.

Back in Paris Paulin severely beat his drug dealer who tried to cheat him. The man called the cops and got Paulin arrested and sentenced to 16 months in jail. Even though authorities had latent prints of Paulin from several crime scenes, they were not able link him to the string of deaths terrifying Montmarte.

In 1987 he was freed for good behavior and was back on the streets drug dealing. In a pre Dennis Rodman fashion statement, he started wearing earrings and dyed his hair platinum blonde. Never one to slack, by November he started killing old ladies again at his usual breakneck pace. The weekend of his 24th birthday he killed three old ladies. Another grandmother he left for dead was able to give the cops a description of her assailant.

Obviously, a black man with platinum blonde hair and earrings was not hard to find. On December 1 a cop recognized him on the street and arrested him. Once in custody Paulin panicked and fingered his old pal Jean-Thierry Mathurin as an accomplice.

While in jail at Fleury-Mérogis. Paulin felt like a star. He collected every newspaper clipping about him and proudly showed them off to other inmates. Paulin knew he had AIDS since 1985. On March 10, 1989, his health took a turn to the worse. He died the night of April 16 of AIDS related complications. His trial was never concluded so he was never found guilty of the crimes he committed. However, there is no doubt in the minds of French authorities that he was the "Monster of Montmartre."

Sweet dreams, and may you forever remain Crazy 4 Crazies.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Norman Afzal Simons

Since strangling is much in vogue these days, thanks to the widely publicized exploits of the Satin Strangler, tonight's serial killer bedtime story is about Norman Afzal Simons.

Norm is believed to be South Africa's "Station Strangler." He is presently serving a 25-year sentence for the 1994 murder of 10-year-old Elroy van Rooyen.

Since 1986 South African authorities had been stumped by the growing body count of young boys of mixed race appearing dead around Cape Town. At one point they asked for help from the Interpol and the FBI. Robert Ressler, the retired FBI expert who coined the term serial killer was called in to develop a psychological profile of the killer. With Ressler's profile in hand and the sharp work of South Africa's leading profiler, Dr. Micki Pistorious, authorities were able to nab their suspect. Police think Simons, a very well-educated man who speaks seven languages, is the "Station Strangler," South Africa's most notorious serial killer. I an eight-year murder spree, the "Strangler" is believed to have killed 21 boys and a young man, all of mixed-race.

His moniker comes from having found many of his victims in train stations. Most were later found in shallow graves around Cape Town after being sodomized and strangled. One body was found with a note that read: "One more, many more in store." Elroy, his final victim, was last seen boarding a train with Simons at Cape Town's Strand train station. His body was found 10 days later with his hands tied behind his back. According to police, Simons claimed his brother, who was murdered in 1991, was living inside him. He also started hearing voices after his brother sodomized him that ordered him to kill.

Sweet dreams, and may you forever remain Crazy 4 Crazies.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Earl Nelson

Earl Nelson is the star of tonight's serial killer bedtime story.

This Bible quoting drifter killed mostly landladies of boarding houses. After killing them he stuffed them under his bed before going to sleep. Dubbed the "Dark Strangler" and later "Gorilla Murderer" for his large, powerful hands. He is known to have committed twenty-two murders and was suspected of at least three more. He was captured and hanged in Canada on January 13, 1928. As he stood with the noose on his neck he told spectators "I stand innocent before God and man. I forgive those who have wronged me and ask forgiveness of those I have injured. God have mercy!"

Sweet dreams, and may you forever remain Crazy 4 Crazies.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Arnfinn Nesset

Sit back, sip a warm mug of hot chocolate, and enjoy this serial killer bedtime story about Arnfinn Nesset to bring in the new year.

The deadliest Norwegian of the Archives. A balding, mild mannered nursing home administrator, Arnfinn is believed to have slaughtered up to 138 patients over a 20-year nursing career. In 1977 Arnfinn became the director of the Orkdal Valley Nursing Home. As he took his post, an unusual number of patients started dying.

No one suspected anything until 1981 when an employee noticed the purchase of a large amount of curacit, a derivative of the poisonous curare used as a muscle relaxant.

Police brought Arnfinn, the man in charge of purchasing the curacit, in for questioning. First he claimed he bought the drug to kill a pack of wild dogs around the nursing home. Then, inexplicably, he started confessing to killing 27 patients. At one point he exclaimed "I've killed so many I'm unable to remember them all." In 1983 the lethal administrator was convicted of 22 murders. He was handed a 21-year sentence, the maximum allowed by Norwegian law. Last we heard from him, Arfinn changed his name, became a born-again Christian, and back on the streets.

Sweet dreams, and may you forever remain Crazy 4 Crazies.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Serial Killer Bedtime Stories: Ted Bundy

Tonight's bedtime story is about the Picasso of the serial killer community, Ted Bundy.

The Picasso of the serial killing community. Ted was handsome, charming, intelligent, self-assured, with a brilliant future, and deadlier than a rattlesnake. Using his good looks, he was able to invisibly abduct and kill his victims and continue with his seemingly charmed life. From early 1974 to early 1978, the stranger called "Ted" stalked young women on college campuses, at shopping malls, in apartment buildings and grade schools in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Colorado and finally Florida.

This law student and Young Republican liked to wear an arm sling to appear vulnerable and get women to help him with his groceries. Once he lured his victims to the door of his car he would bludgeon them and take them away to privately enjoy their death. He favored killing pretty, dark-haired cheerleader types. He would attack his prey with blunt objects and was fond of raping and biting them. The bite marks on one of his victims were used as evidence against him at his trial in Florida.

As a teen, Bundy was shy and sensitive. At a Seattle crisis center, he counseled the depressed, the alcoholic, and the suicidal. He graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Washington in 1972, designed a program for dealing with habitual criminals and wrote a pamphlet on rape for the King County crime commission.

Although no one knows for sure how many women Bundy killed, his first victim is believed to be Mary Adams, 18, whose battered body was found in her Seattle bedroom on January 4, 1974. In the next year and a half, police investigated several disappearances and killings of women in the West, some of them since linked to Bundy.

He was arrested in August 1975 and convicted in March 1976 of kidnapping Carol DaRonch in Utah. That fall, he was charged with killing a Michigan nurse in Aspen, Colorado. On December 30, 1977, after a previous failed attempt, Ted escaped from the Denver court house through a window while awaiting trial. He relocated to Tallahassee, Florida, near Florida State University where he perpetrated his blood-soaked "Guernica" of crime. In January 15, 1978, he set forth on a night of butchery and killed two girls, Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, and wounded two others, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, in and around the Chi Omega sorority house in Tallahassee.

Two weeks later, on February 9, he stole a van and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach who she abducted outside her school in Lake City, Florida, for which, eventually, he was fried. Poor Kimberly's body was found in a pig trough next to a plaid jacket that was not Ted's. She was buried in a cemetery near a Purina plant under a heart-shaped tombstone with her picture on it. Two weeks later, on February 15, Ted was arrested after he was spotted by David Lee, a Pensacola policeman, in the stolen VW van.

Ted defended himself in trials in Utah, Colorado and Florida as the police tried to put together a trail of dead girls leading to him. During his various trials, a very self-possessed Ted Bundy defended himself garnishing praise and a legion of female admirers. After 11 years of trials and appeals, then-Florida Gov. Bob Martinez signed the final death warrant against Bundy on Jan. 17, 1989. Ted Bundy was electrocuted on January 24, 1989 at Florida State Prison.

On the night before his execution, Bundy talked of suicide, recalled Bill Hagmaier, chief of the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes. "We had some discussions about morality and the taking of another life and his concerns about trying to explain to God about his actions," Hagmaier added. For his last meal he had steak, eggs, hash browns and coffee.

On September 20. 1999, Ted Bundy's mom held a news conference to say her son didn't commit his first murder at age 14; but the mother 8-year-old Ann Marie Burr of Tacoma believes he did. "I resent the fact that everybody in Tacoma thinks just because he lived in Tacoma he did that one too, way back when he was 14," said his mother Louise Bundy. However, Burrs and several investigators believe young Bundy stole Ann Burr from her bed on Aug. 31, 1961, and killed her.

Bundy denied involvement in Ann's death up until his execution in Florida in 1989. In 1986, he wrote to the Burrs, saying, "I do not know what happened to your daughter Ann Marie. I had nothing to do with her disappearance. "You said she disappeared Aug. 31, 1961. At the time I was a normal 14-year-old boy. I did not wander the streets late at night. I did not steal cars. I had absolutely no desire to harm anyone. I was just an average kid."

Sweet dreams, and may you forever remain Crazy 4 Crazies.