Evil Psychopaths, page 1
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Contents
Introduction
PART ONE: PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS IN HISTORY
Emperor Nero
Charles VI of France
Vlad the Impaler
The Borgias
Countess Erzsébet Bathory
Ivan the Tenible
Peter Stubbe
PART TWO: 19th CENTURY PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS
John Lynch: the Berrima Axe Murderer
Jack the Ripper
Dr Thomas Neil Cream.
H. H. Holmes
PART THREE: 20th CENTURY BRITISH PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS
John Reginald Christie
John George Haigh: the Acid-Bath Murderer
Dennis Nilsen
Peter Sutcliffe: the Yorkshire Ripper
Patrick Mackay
PART FOUR: 20th CENTURY AMERICAN PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS
Baby Face Nelson
Ed Gein
Harvey Glatman
Albert DeSalvo: the Boston Strangler
John Wayne Gacy
Gary M. Heidnik.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Ted Bundy
Ed Kemper: the Co-ed Killer
Richard Speck
Richard Ramirez – the Night Stalker
PART FIVE: 20th CENTURY EUROPEAN PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS
Bela Kiss
Henri Landru
Peter Kürten
Adolf Hitler
Joseph Stalin
Andrei Chikatilo: Citizen X
PART SIX: PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD
Idi Amin
Pol Pot
Ivan Milat: the Backpacker Murders
Javed Iqbal
PART SEVEN: PSYCHOPATHIC CHILD KILLERS
Gilles de Rais
Albert Fish
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley: the Moors Murderers
Arthur Gary Bishop
Robert Black
Michel Foumiret
PART EIGHT: PSYCHOPATHIC WOMEN KILLERS
Belle Gunness
Mary Ann Cotton
Nannie Doss
Velma Barfield
Aileen Carol Wuornos
Ma Barker
Introduction
They are different to the rest of us. While we do our level best to maintain the checks and balances that keep us civilised, there are some amongst us who do not, or cannot, have the ability to set loose the monster within with devastating and often shocking consequences. They are narcissistic, ruthless, emotionally cold, cruel, vicious, self-seeking, easily bored men and women who are totally uninhibited in the methods by which they achieve their goals. But at the same time, they can be charm itself, capable, very often, of manipulating people into doing or believing things they would never dream of. What other explanation could there be for the mass hysteria created by Adolf Hitler before and during World War II, when an entire nation took part in horrific acts of cruelty and mass murder? Pol Pot’s depraved regime in Cambodia in the 1970s, when hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were killed, provides another example of an entire country being manipulated into carrying out unspeakable acts. Or how do you explain Myra Hindley’s chilling compliance with whatever her lover Ian Brady demanded of her – graduating from posing for pornographic photographs to helping him to find children on whom he could work out his depraved fantasies? Gilles de Rais, a powerful man in 15th century France, seems to have had little trouble in recruiting a whole team of accomplices who helped him to find innocent children to be the victims of his cruel games.
The psychopath often does not kill for financial gain or improvement. He or she does it simply because it provides psychological gratification, or, as notorious serial killer and psychopath Ted Bundy put it shortly before his execution: ‘I’m the most cold-blooded sonofabitch you’ll ever meet … I just liked to kill, I wanted to kill.’ Dr Thomas Neil Cream did not even have to be present when his victims succumbed to the potions and pills he doled out to them. The simple knowledge that they were going to die was enough for him.
Others try to explain their acts away by citing voices in their heads, as in the case of John Lynch, the Berrima Axe-murderer, or attempt to justify their acts as some kind of moral crusade. The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, claimed to be ‘cleaning up the streets’ by killing thirteen prostitutes, while John Wayne Gacy, killer of thirty-three boys and men in the 1970s, described his victims as ‘worthless little queers and punks’. There is little doubt that the legendary Jack the Ripper was also on some kind of moral crusade, cleaning up the squalid streets of 19th century Whitechapel in London’s East End. John Reginald Christie, the murderous strangler of 10 Rillington Place seemed to be on a mission to exorcise his hatred for women, a mission he shared with the famous Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, the rapist, sodomiser and gruesome serial killer of women, whose victims died smelling his foul breath, gained from eating an excess of junk food during the neglect of his childhood.
Of course, some do gain from their acts. John George Haigh, the ‘Acid Bath Murderer’ killed people for their bank accounts or property before giving them a hot bath, but his behaviour was that of a psychopath who belived he was invincible, somehow above the law. Unfortunately for him, he was just not quite insane enough to escape the gallows. Velma Barfield, Nannie Doss and Mary Ann Cotton, the famous women serial poisoners killed in the main to benefit from insurance policies, but there is no denying that they also killed for themselves, because their victims stood in the way of their happiness, something that is unwise around a psychopath.
Some are, however, beyond the pale. How can you account for the sick acts and behaviour of men such as Dennis Nilsen, Robert Black, Ian Brady, John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein or Patrick Mackay? These are men whose actions place them outside of society with little chance of finding their way back in. For them, killing was an act to be enjoyed, to take pleasure from and to do again and again until they were stopped. Other lives did not matter. For Dennis Nilsen, for instance, killing was all about him and his terrible loneliness. He never at any moment stopped to consider the life he had snuffed out. Neither did Patrick Mackay, very often killing and staying for a while in the house of the person he had killed, listening to the radio or watching television.
Ultimately, their pleasure and gratification is all that matters. Peter Kurten, the ‘Vampire of Dusseldorf’, as he was known, loved killing and gained sexual gratification from it, achieving orgasm when he poured petrol over one of his numerous victims and set it on fire. Patrick Mackay talked about the erotic nature of a wound he had inflicted on a priest who was dying in front of him. He also spoke about how euphoric he felt after killing, a feeling that would remain with him for several days.
How did they become monsters? Of course, some were just born that way, but it is interesting how many of the killers in this book were born to a life of abuse, anger and neglect. Peter Kurten’s father would rape the mother of his thirteen children in front of them; he would also rape his daughters. The stepfather of Aileen Wuornos became a psychopathic child molestor who would eventually hang himself in prison. Velma Barfield was beaten by a drunken disciplinarian of a father. Richard Speck had an abusive stepfather and Ed Gein lived in a rigidly disciplined religious household where his mother did not allow him or his brother to cultivate friendships and spent afternoons reading the Bible to them. All of these negative experiences were stored away by these men and women, either to be copied when they got older or to be avenged.
Evil Psychopaths examines the excesses to which some people’s demons will drive them and examines the lives of psychopaths, their motivations, their methods and the journeys their lives took to the fatal moment when they found that they enjoyed no greater pleasure than taking another life.
PART ONE: Psychopathic Killers in History
Emperor Nero
He was quite simply a megalomaniac from a long line of psychopaths.
His grandfather led the way. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus had been savage and cruel. The gladiatorial contests he organised were so bloody and vicious that the Emperor Augustus had to ask him to tone things down a little. His father, Gnaeus, once rode his horse over a small child on the Appian Way, the road connecting Rome with southeast Italy, just for fun. He was also reported to have gouged out a man’s eyes for criticising him and killed another man for not drinking as much as he had been ordered to. Gnaeus lived a debauched life, he was a serial adulterer and enjoyed an incestuous relationship with his sister, Domitia Lepida. He was known to defraud bankers and when he oc
Nero’s mother, Agrippina, great granddaughter of Emperor Augustus, also came from a troubled background. Born during the reign of the tyrannical Emperor Tiberius, she witnessed her two brothers starved to death by order of Tiberius. To make matters worse, not only did she have her first sexual experience at the age of twelve, but it was with her surviving brother, the future emperor, Caligula. In 39, Agrippina and her sister, Julia Livilla were discovered to be involved in a plot to murder Caligula and replace him with their late sister Drusilla’s widower, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Lepidus was executed and the two women were sent into exile on the Pontine Islands where they had to dive for sponges to earn a living. Nero’s first few years, therefore, were spent in relative poverty. Meanwhile Gnaeus died when Nero was three, thus escaping trial for treason, incest and adultery.
Following the assassination of Caligula in 41 CE, Agrippina was recalled to Rome by the new emperor, Claudius, who was her uncle. She married a rich and influential Roman, Passienus Crispus, who divorced his wife, Messalina, for her and when he died not long after – probably as a result of poison administered by his wife – she became a very wealthy widow.
A few years later, she added position to wealth when she became the wife of the Emperor Claudius whose third wife, Messalina, had been executed for plotting to kill him. Agrippina used her influence to persuade her husband to adopt her young son, Nero, as his heir, over his own son with Messalina, Britannicus. Nero also came under the influence of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the stoic philosopher who had been appointed his tutor. Her next step in the fulfilment of her ambitions was to have the fiancé of Claudius’s daughter Octavia falsely accused of having committed incest with his sister. This allowed Agrippina to engineer the marriage of Nero to his half-sister.
The only obstacle that remained in Nero’s way was Claudius himself and he had begun to talk once more of his son Britannicus being restored as heir to the throne. Agrippina dealt with this threat in the same way as she had dealt her second husband. She had Claudius poisoned in 54 CE. The following year, Britannicus died in suspicious circumstances at a dinner.
Nero, the fifth and final emperor of the Julian dynasty gained power at the age of sixteen, the youngest emperor until that time. His reign began well. He had the advice of good men – Seneca and Sextus Afranius Burrus, a Praetorian prefect. After around five years in power, however, the habits of his family began to predominate. He began to indulge in debauchery, eating and drinking to excess and he took his servant, Acte, as mistress, arousing the jealousy of his mother, Agrippina who, some commentators have suggested, was involved in an incestuous relationship with her son. This irritated Nero and he banished his mother to a separate residence. However, it was not long before he became bored with Acte and, anyway, he had fallen in love with the ruthlessly ambitious Sabina Poppaea. Around this time, however, he began to take an interest in male companions, probably under the influence of Seneca. He cultivated a favourite, Doryphorus, possibly because he resembled his mother. It did not last long, however. Nero had him poisoned in 62 CE.
He also made several attempts to murder his mother, especially when she began to side with his wife Octavia in opposition to his new love and even began to support the claim of Britannicus to the throne of Rome. An attempt to poison her failed. Then, he arranged for the ceiling of her bedroom to collapse on top of her, but that also failed. He even went as far as having a collapsible boat built. However, following its collapse at sea, she managed to swim ashore. Eventually, he took the obvious option – he sent someone to beat her and stab her to death and dressed her death up as suicide. But in all honesty, no one missed her. The Roman Senate had never got on with her and Nero was glad to have removed her influence from his life.
He returned to his life of fun and games – staging chariot races and athletics at grand festivals. He put on musical contests at which he could compete, and, obviously win. The Senate was appalled. It was considered undignified to perform in public and for an emperor to do it was unthinkable. Nonetheless, Nero loved it, to the extent that no one was allowed to leave the auditorium while he was on stage accompanying himself on the lyre. Women are said to have given birth while he performed, so afraid were they to leave the auditorium and men sometimes feigned death in order to get out of his marathon performances.
In 62 CE, a new and pernicious adviser entered Nero’s circle. Following the death of Burrus from illness, two new men took office – Faenius Rufus and the cruel and licentious former lover of Agrippina, Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus. When Nero had come to power, he had stopped the hated treason courts that had blighted Rome for many years. Tigellinus re-introduced them. It all proved too much for the wise adviser, Seneca, who resigned as things began to deteriorate at court. That same year, Nero ordered the execution of his wife Octavia for adultery and life became a vile round of sport, music, orgies and murder. He married Sabina Poppaea but would later kick her to death one night after she complained about him coming home late from horse-racing.
The Great Fire of Rome on the night of 18 July in the year 64 CE was devastating for the city. Many Roman houses were made of wood, helping the fire to spread very quickly. It burned for six days and seven nights, destroying four of the fourteen Roman districts and seriously damaging another seven. Of course, the legend has grown that Nero ‘fiddled while Rome burned’, an impossible feat as the violin would not be invented until many centuries later. Some have said that he did climb onto the roof of his palace, however, to get the best view of the conflagration and that he sang a song, The Capture of Troy, as he watched. Others claim that he tried to control the fire and afterwards funded the re-building of large parts of the city from his own pocket. However, it does seem suspicious that after the fire he built his ‘Golden Palace’ on large parts of the city that had been decimated by it. He added pleasure gardens to it, a large artificial lake in the centre and a thirty metre-high statue of himself. If the fire had not destroyed such large parts of Rome, the palace could not have been constructed. The Roman people remained suspicious.
Nero had no doubts. He blamed it on the growing religious sect, the Christians, followers of the recently crucified Jesus of Nazareth. He punished them by crucifying them like their leader or by throwing them to wild animals in the circus. He horrifically used many of them to illuminate his garden at night, tying them to stakes and setting light to them.
There were forces moving against him, however. A plot known as the ‘Pisonian Conspiracy’ was uncovered. Seneca was amongst the nineteen executions and suicides that followed its discovery. Nero had people executed or invited to commit suicide purely on the basis that he disliked them or was suspicious of them. There were no trials.
Towards the end of the decade, he travelled to Greece to take part in the Olympic Games where he won, naturally – everyone was too frightened to defeat him at anything. He even won the chariot race although he tumbled from his chariot.
Meanwhile back in Rome the treason trials continued. Numerous generals, senators and nobles were put to death merely on suspicion that they were conspiring against the emperor. There was also a shortage of food and the people of Rome were becoming agitated. He was summoned back from Greece but it was too late. In March 68 CE, Gaius Julius Vindex, Governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, a vast swathe of modern-day central France, rescinded his oath of allegiance to the emperor and encouraged others, including seventy-one-year-old Galba, Governor of northern and eastern Spain, to do the same. Nero sent legions from the Rhine and they defeated Vindex at the Battle of Vesontio, following which Vindex committed suicide. Unfortunately for Nero, however, the troops sent from Germany also revolted, refusing any longer to acknowledge his leadership. In Africa, Lucius Clodius Mace followed suit but his defection was altogether more serious as he was able to cut off much of Rome’s food supply which came from North Africa. He informed the Senate that he was ready to replace Nero, if required.
