Friday 24 February 2012

Lizzie Borden


Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden, circa 1889
BornLizzie Andrew Borden
July 19, 1860
Fall River, Massachusetts, United States
DiedJune 1, 1927 (aged 66)
Fall River, Massachusetts, United States
Resting placeOak Grove Cemetery
NationalityAmerican
Known forMurder trial defendant
Net worth
~$1,000,000 (1927)[1]
($25 million today)
ParentsAndrew Jackson Borden (1822–1892)
Sarah Anthony Morse (1823–1863), mother
Abby Durfee Gray (1828–1892), stepmother
RelativesEmma Lenora Borden (1851–1927), sister
Alice Esther Borden (1856–1858), sister
John Vinnicum Morse, uncle
Lizzie Andrew Borden[] (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was a woman in New England who was tried for killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet on August 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. The murders, subsequent trial, and ensuing trial by media became a cause célèbre. Although Lizzie Borden was acquitted, no one else was ever arrested or tried and she has remained a notorious figure in American folklore. Dispute over the identity of the killer or killers continues to this day.

The body of Andrew Borden
On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden had gone into Fall River to do his usual rounds at the bank and post office. He returned home at about 10:45 a.m.; Lizzie Borden claimed that she found his body about 30 minutes later.
During the murder trial, the Bordens' twenty-six-year-old maid, Bridget Sullivan, testified that she was lying down in her room on the third floor of the house shortly after 11:00 a.m. when she heard Lizzie call to her, saying someone had killed her father; his body was found slumped on a couch in the downstairs sitting room. Andrew Borden's face was turned to the right-hand side, apparently at ease, as if he was asleep.
Shortly thereafter, while Lizzie was being tended by neighbors and the family doctors, Sullivan discovered the body of Abby Borden in the guest bedroom located upstairs. Both Andrew and Abby Borden had been killed by crushing blows to their skulls from a hatchet. Andrew Borden's left eyeball was cleanly split in two.


Motive and methods

The upstairs floor of the house was divided. The front was occupied by the Borden sisters, Lizzie and Emma while the rear was occupied by Andrew and Abby. Meals were seldom eaten together. Andrew was known by family, friends, and business associates as tight-fisted and generally rejected modern conveniences. Though far from poor, the family still threw their excrement buckets (slops) onto the backyard. The two daughters, well past marriage age, gladly entered the modern outside world whenever they visited friends.
Conflict had increased between the two daughters and their father about his decision to divide the valuable properties among relatives before his death. Relatives of their stepmother had been given a house, and the two sisters demanded and received a rental property. They later sold this property to their father for cash. John Morse, brother to the deceased Sarah Borden, had come to visit on the week of the murders. His visit was to facilitate transfer of Swansea farm property, which had been the summer home for the Borden family. Shortly before the murders, a major argument had occurred which resulted in both sisters leaving home on extended "vacations".
Furthermore, it was well known that Lizzie and her stepmother had had a falling out years before the murder. Her entire life Lizzie had called Abby Borden by the common matronly moniker “Mother” but according to her sister in the trial documents, about five or six years before the untimely demise of the two parents she had taken to calling her “Mrs. Borden” instead.[7]
The Borden house, where the murders took place.
The guest room where Abby Borden was murdered.
The barn behind the home did not see much use after Andrew sold the horse. Lizzie had some pigeons in cages on the second floor that she fed and watered. She arrived one day to find the pigeons lying on the ground with their heads chopped off. Andrew said he killed them with an axe because the birds were attracting young boys in the neighborhood to the barn, and he felt they might get hurt or start a fire.
Lizzie had attempted to purchase prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) from local druggist Eli Bence, but Bence refused. Lizzie claimed she planned to use it to clean a seal skin cloak; the defense argued that this incident was not admissible evidence.
Shortly before the murders, the entire household became violently ill. As Mr. Borden was not a popular man in Fall River, Abby feared they were being intentionally poisoned. The family doctor, however, diagnosed their illness as food poisoning. Andrew Borden had purchased cheap mutton for the family to eat, and they left it on the stove for days, used for multiple meals. The family believed the milk was being tainted by someone; after the murders, the milk was tested but nothing was found that could be connected to their illness. Both murder victims had their stomachs removed in an autopsy performed in the Borden dining room on the day of their deaths. The stomachs, with their contents, were packaged and sent to Harvard Medical School to be examined for toxins; nothing was found.

Thursday 19 January 2012

Joachim Kroll

Birth name Joachim Georg Kroll
Also known as The Ruhr Cannibal (Ruhrkannibale)
The Ruhr Hunter (Ruhrjäger)
The Duisburg Man-Eater (Duisburger Menschenfresser)
Uncle Joachim (Onkel Joachim)
Born 17 April 1933
Hindenburg O.S, Oberschlesien, Nazi Germany
Died 1 July 1991 (aged 58)
Rheinbach, Germany
Cause of death Heart attack
Conviction Murder
Sentence Life imprisonment
Killings
Number of victims: Murders: 14
confessed 14
Attempted: 1
Sexual assaults: unknown
Span of killings 8 February 1955–3 July 1976
Country Germany
State(s) North Rhine-Westphalia
Date apprehended 3 July 1976
Joachim Georg Kroll (17 April 1933 - 1 July 1991) was a German serial killer and cannibal. He was known as the Ruhr Cannibal (Ruhrkannibale), Ruhr Hunter (Ruhrjäger) and the Duisburg Man-Eater (Duisburger Menschenfresser). He was convicted of eight murders but confessed to a total of 13.

Crimes

He began killing in 1955, after his mother died. Around 1960, Kroll went to Duisburg and found work as a toilet attendant for Mannesmann. Afterwards he worked for Thyssen Industries and went to 24 Friesen street, Laar, a district of Duisburg. At that time he resumed killing people.

List of victims

  • 8 February 1955 - Irmgard Strehl, 19, raped and stabbed to death. Her disemboweled body was found in a barn in Lüdinghausen.
  • 16 June 1959 - Klara Frieda Tesmer, 24, murdered in the meadows of the Rhine, near Rheinhausen. A mechanic, Heinrich Ott, was arrested for the crime. He hung himself in jail.
  • 26 July 1959 - Manuela Knodt, 16, raped and strangled in the City Park of Essen. Slices of flesh were carved from her buttocks and thighs.
  • 1962 - Barbara Bruder, 12, abducted in Burscheid. Her body was never found.
  • 23 April 1962 - Petra Giese, 13, raped and strangled in Dinslaken-Bruckhausen. Vinzenz Kuehn is arrested and convicted.
  • 4 June 1962 - Monika Tafel, 12, killed in Walsum, slices of flesh carved from her buttocks. Walter Quicker is arrested for the crime. He is released but is driven by neighbors to suicide in October.
  • 22 August 1965 - Hermann Schmitz and his girlfriend Marion Veen were attacked as they sat in a car in a lover's lane in Duisburg-Großenbaum. Hermann - Kroll's only male victim - was killed, but Marion escaped.
  • 13 September 1966 - Ursula Rohling, strangled in Foersterbusch Park near Marl. Her boyfriend Adolf Schickel committed suicide after being falsely accused of the crime.
  • 22 December 1966 - Ilona Harke, aged 5, raped and drowned in a ditch in Wuppertal.
  • 12 July 1969 - Maria Hettgen, 61, raped and strangled at Hückeswagen.
  • 21 May 1970 - Jutta Rahn, 13, strangled walking home from a train station. Peter Schay was arrested and eventually released. He confessed to the crime in 1976 after being hounded by his neighbors.
  • 1976 - Karin Toepfer, 10, raped and strangled in Voerde.
  • 3 July 1976 - Marion Ketter, 4. Parts of her body were in the process of being simmered when Kroll was arrested.

Method

Kroll was very particular about where he killed, only killing in the same place on a few occasions years apart. This, and the fact that there were a number of other killers operating in the area at the time, helped him to evade capture. Kroll would surprise his victims and strangle them quickly. Afterward he would strip the body and have intercourse with it, often masturbating over it again. He would then mutilate and cut off pieces to be eaten later. Upon returning home, he would have intercourse again with a rubber sex doll he had for this purpose.

Capture

On 3 July 1976, Kroll was arrested for kidnapping and killing a four-year-old girl named Marion Kettner. As police went from home to home, a neighbor approached a policeman and told him that the waste-pipe in his apartment building had blocked up, and when he had asked his neighbor, Kroll, whether he knew what had been blocking the pipe, Kroll had simply replied; "Guts". Upon this report, the police went up to Kroll's apartment and found the body of the Kettner girl cut up: some parts were in the fridge, a small hand was cooking in a pan of boiling water and the entrails were found stuck in the waste-pipe.
Kroll was immediately arrested.

Trial and death

He admitted killing Marion Kettner and gave details of 14 other murders and one attempted murder over the previous two decades.
Kroll said that he often sliced portions of flesh from his victims to cook and eat them, claiming that he did this to save on his grocery bills. In custody, he believed that he was going to get a simple operation to cure him of his homicidal urges and would then be released from prison. Instead he was charged with eight murders and one attempted murder. In April 1982, after a 151-day trial, he was convicted on all counts and was given nine life sentences.
He died of a heart attack in 1991 in the prison of Rheinbach.

Friday 13 January 2012

Ed Gein (Killings between 1947 and 1957)



Known as history’s most inspirational killer, his character became a central element in many films, including Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Psycho and the character of Buffalo Bill  in The Silence of the Lambs, among others.
Modus Operandi
Gein was a serial killer who skinned his victims, exhumed corpses, and decorated his home with parts of his victims’ bodies. Human skin was used to make dust bins, furniture, and even clothes.
Background
Gein was born in 1906 as the younger of two boys. He had a weak alcoholic father and a domineering mother who was deeply religious. He was said to be very attached to her. She taught them about immorality and the evils of women and sex and discouraged their sexual desires. He turned into an effeminate and shy boy.
His father died as a result of his alcoholism and later his brother Henry, who used to criticize his mother about Gein’s unhealthy attachment to her, died in a mysterious fire. The younger boy was later suspected.
Fantasies
With nobody to control him after his mother passed away, Gein became obsessed with sexual fantasies and female anatomy. Fascinated by the human experiments performed in Nazi camps, he started robbing graves to perform experiments of his own, including exhuming his own mother’s body. The experiments became gruesome and cannibalistic. He had the desire to turn himself into a woman and would create breasts out of human skin and drape them over himself. He believed that for a sex change, he would need fresh bodies and thus started his killing spree, which was said to be because of his love-hate relationship with his mother.
House of Horrors
When police finally caught up with him, they found a variety of gruesome sights — hanging corpses with their throats and heads missing, bowls made of skulls, pieces of jewelry made of human skin, hanging lips, skin upholstery for chairs, and masks made of facial skin and vulva (including his mother’s) that were painted silver. The most shocking discovery was perhaps his mother’s heart, which was found in a pan on the stove.
Killings and Sentence
Police counted 15 women as his victims. Gein told the police that he never had sex with any of the dead women as “they smelled too bad.” His fascination with women was because of the power they held over men. Gein was admitted to Waupan State Hospital and died of cancer at the age of 78.