page 6
When by the end of the summer of 1895 it became clear that Hermann Madget was a cruel, heartless killer of children, this discovery involuntarily prompted a more careful study of his "Castle". Still, it was a place where, until November 1893, Mudget spent a lot of time and where traces of about half a dozen women were lost. The initial inspection, carried out during the liquidation of the shops in the "Castle" in December 1894, did not reveal anything particularly suspicious, but then a meticulous police search was not carried out. However, already at the time on the third, empty after the fire, floor of the building, three rooms without windows were found, upholstered from the inside with sheet iron. The purpose of the strange rooms remained unclear, but their discovery did not arouse any suspicion. In the end, it was believed that the rooms were used as a warehouse for linen and household items, and the metal upholstery was carried out in order to protect the premises from rats. Most importantly, the basement under the building, closed by a powerful iron door, was not examined at that time, the keys to which Majet did not leave his manager.
But in the summer of 1895 the police got their hands on the cellar. The first thing that the policemen who entered the dungeon noted was that the basement turned out to be quite deep - 2.8 m from the ground - and much larger than the foundation of the building. Hermann Majet expanded the basement area significantly, choosing land under the sidewalk and 63rd Street driveway.
A garbage chute led to the basement, starting on the second floor. Only garbage, most likely, was not transported with its help. In the basement, literally under the opening of the garbage chute in the ceiling, there was ... a dissecting table. Nearby was a bag with a set of surgical instruments, on which traces of blood were preserved. And under the table was a large box in which human bones lay in bulk. The anatomists who dismantled the box believed that it contained the bones of at least four women.
There was no doubt that the garbage chute was used to drop corpses from the second floor, which immediately fell on the dissecting table. Obviously, Hermann Majet thought about the ergonomic aspects of his activity and sensibly reasoned that it was more convenient to throw the corpse directly on the table than first on the ground, and then lift it up from the ground. Obviously, the dismemberment of the bodies of the dead was carried out on the dissecting table for the convenience of the subsequent destruction of the remains - this was the initial version of the police. However, after a while they realized that the dismemberment of the bodies was carried out not at all for these purposes, but for the manufacture of human skeletons, which Hermann Majet traded with might and main and, moreover, completely legally. But this will be discussed below.
In the middle of the basement were three containers sunk into the earthen floor. The largest, which was a real pool, was filled with sulfuric acid, the other two (ordinary copper baths) were filled with quicklime. Majet, who knew chemistry well, did not make the mistake that so greatly prevented another serial killer, John Hague, who also used acid to dissolve the bodies of his victims half a century later (an essay about this killer can be read on our website in the "Serial Killers" section). Unlike the poorly educated Haig, the owner of the "Castle" was well aware that in order to avoid the release of dangerous sulfur-containing gases in large quantities when dissolved in acid, the human body must be dehydrated as much as possible. To do this, Majet first placed the corpses in quicklime baths, and then transferred them to a container of acid.
Quicklime in the process of interacting with the human body (which, as you know, consists of almost 90% of water) absorbed water from the body, resulting in the process of its quenching. Hydrated lime was found in Majet's basement in large quantities: a separate room adjoining the basement was filled with it. Apparently, Majet scooped lime out of the baths with a bucket and simply dumped it in this room. Examining the lime on the floor, the police found the imprint of a small bare foot that belonged to a girl or a child. It is impossible to say how its owner ended up in a room with slaked lime, one can only assume with certainty that this man did not come out of Majet's cellar alive.
In addition to the dissecting table and the acid pool, another device for the destruction of corpses was found in the basement. It was a real cremation oven, equipped with a roll-out tray and gas supply. Of course, the police were interested in the device of this rather complex device from an engineering point of view, placed in a room of limited volume and with clearly insufficient ventilation. It turned out that a narrow exhaust passage lined with refractory bricks was equipped from the furnace; where this passage led was not possible to determine due to its narrowness. To find out all the design features of the underground crematorium, Chicago firefighters began to lay a tunnel along the exhaust manhole and after a few meters they ran into a brick wall. When the masonry was broken, it turned out that it was a rather large room, which had no other opening, except for the one leading from the furnace. Inside was a thick black oily liquid that filled the room to a height of about 15 cm from the floor; This liquid gave off a terrible smell.
It was obvious that the discovered room served as a kind of condenser tank for hot gas escaping from the furnace. The black liquid on the floor was what was left of the bodies burned (and not completely burned) in the underground crematorium. The work of firefighters to study the furnace was fraught with great difficulties: from a hole in the wall of the condenser room, fetid fumes went into the basement, making it impossible for people to stay there. To quickly get rid of the harmful gas, one of the plumbers threw a lit rag into the resulting hole, which caused an explosion. Some firefighters were gassed and injured by the shock wave of the explosion, and Chicago Fire Chief James Kenyon passed out in the basement. He was raised to the surface and did not come to his senses for more than two hours. It is noteworthy that the resourceful plumber himself was not injured.
It should be recalled that at that time there were no gas masks. Therefore, before letting people into the basement again, it was necessary to carry out a long airing; in addition, in order to change the direction of air circulation in the basement, pits had to be punched from the surface into the condenser room.
In addition to the stove in the wall, there was another stove installed right in the middle of the basement. With its design, it resembled the well-known potbelly stove. If the whole human body could be immersed in the crematorium, then only fragments of a dismembered body could be placed in the furnace, located in the center of the basement. Despite the obvious inconvenience in handling, this furnace was widely used by Majet: human bones were found in the unextracted ashes, and some of them apparently belonged to children. Majet did not take the ashes from this furnace far: right there in the earthen floor a hole was dug filled with ashes, mixed with human bones and unburned details of clothing (buttons, metal fittings of women's corsets, parts of bone combs, etc.). The police doctor who sifted the ashes counted 17 ribs, a pelvic bone, a collarbone, a fragment of the spine, etc.
And finally, in a series of gloomy elements of the basement equipment, the attention of the police was attracted by three strange machines, reminiscent of the torture machines of the Middle Ages. The purpose of one of these machines was obvious: it resembled an "English" rack (actually invented in France), designed to simultaneously stretch a person's arms and legs in opposite directions. The victim was suspended in a horizontal frame and his limbs were stretched through the gate system until the tendons in the joints were torn (the prototype of the "English" rack, the so-called "ladder", can be seen on our website). Why Majet installed such strange and sinister machines in her basement at that moment was not clear; the defendant himself in the summer and autumn of 1895 refused to give explanations on issues related to his activities in the "Castle".
The study of the premises in the house of Hermann Majet was not limited to the inspection of the basement. The rooms in the elevated part of the building were examined more carefully.
When examining Mudget's private quarters - a bedroom, two offices and a bathroom on the second floor overlooking 63rd Street - a tiny secret room was discovered, measuring just over three square meters. A staircase led into this room, laid in the thickness of the wall and starting in the bathroom. The entrance to this staircase was camouflaged in such a way that even being nearby it was impossible to understand that it was a door. Most likely, the small secret room was considered by the owner as a kind of refuge in case he had to wait out the invasion of uninvited guests into his territory. In addition, from one office there was an exit to the street, and from the other - a direct passage to the basement. The owner of the apartment was clearly concerned about the issue of ensuring personal safety and worried in advance in case of a possible escape from his pursuers. He drew upon himself another element of ensuring the safety of the owner of the house - a hidden alarm system. Hermann Majet installed an electric bell into his apartment, which rang every time the door leading to the stairs was opened. No one could get to the second floor without the knowledge of the owner.
On the second floor there was the storage room already mentioned above, which was a huge bank safe walled up in the thickness of the building. But besides this room (frankly, rather strange in such a place), another suspicious room was found on the second floor: upholstered in thick sheet metal, without windows and doors, with walls lined with asbestos tiles. The walls bore traces of soot, which indicated that there was an open fire in this place.
The police, of course, were interested in his origins. It turned out that a gas pipe was brought into the room, which ended in a simple cut without a vent. The gas supply to this room was regulated from an adjacent room. For what it was done, what exactly was burned in the asbestos lined room, one could only guess.
However, the terrible finds on the second floor of the "Castle" were not limited to this. A more thorough study of gas communications revealed that in six rooms the valves on the gas pipes were sham and did not prevent the flow of candle gas into the room. The actual faucets were installed in one of Mudget's two offices. Why the owner and designer of the building embarked on such tricks one could only guess; but there was no doubt that his intent was criminal.
An analysis of the evidence found in the "Castle" by Hermann Majet suggested that people were massacred in the building. The owner, in order to get rid of the corpses, used both the dissecting table and the crematorium furnace in the basement wall, and the acid pool, and the second furnace in the center. The basement contained bones belonging to at least 8 skeletons, but it is clear that a significant number of people were killed without leaving traces. The "castle" turned into a real factory of death, where murders and destruction of bodies were put on stream; otherwise, Majet simply did not need such a variety of equipment to destroy the remains.
But where did the perpetrator find his victims?
Current page: 11 (total book has 22 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 15 pages]
Quicklime
When, in April 1908, the Indiana police dug up the yard of the farm owned by Belle Gunness, more than a dozen corpses were found - a gruesome evidence of years of acquisitive crime. These were mostly the corpses of the husbands of the farm owner (see the article “Black Widows”). Most of them are already heavily decomposed. Gunness, a cold-blooded and practical woman, came up with a way to speed up the process of decomposition. She cut each corpse into six pieces and covered them with quicklime, a very caustic substance that corrodes organic matter. If the search in her yard had taken place later, the bodies would no longer be identified.
Other killers also used quicklime to destroy evidence. Dr. G. G. Holmes kept a barrel of quicklime in the dungeons of his Chicago "castle of horrors." Fifty years later, Marcel Pétier, who killed dozens of people who sought refuge during the occupation of Paris by the Nazis, used quicklime to destroy the corpses buried in his backyard (another, more effective method of disposing of corpses - cremation - Pétier turned later) . John Wayne Gacy periodically poured lime into the basement of his house to kill the fetid smell of rotting bodies.
In the mid-1980s, sixty-year-old Dorothea Puente rented out a room in her San Francisco country house to wealthy elderly clients who, shortly after their arrival, began to disappear without a trace. The police, suspecting something, launched an investigation. A search in the garden behind Puente's house resulted in the discovery of seven decapitated bodies. Although the killer, trying to destroy the traces of the crime, covered the corpses with quicklime, they did not decompose. Dorothea Puente was let down by his ignorance of chemical reactions. As long as the lime is mixed with water, it acts like a preservative, not speeding up, but slowing down the decomposition process. Pathologists easily discovered that the victims died from significant doses of poison. The landlady was sent to prison for life imprisonment.
Necrophilia
To each his own. For example, I love corpses.
Henry Blot
In the classic work on mental disorders, Sexual Psychopathy, Richard von Krafft-Ebing calls necrophilia the most monstrous of all perversions. Since the term "necrophilia" (the Greek word for "love of the dead") refers to sexual exercise with corpses, this is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that this repulsive addiction is very common among the most notorious criminals - serial killers.
Many famous psychopaths, from Earl Leonard Nelson to Ted Bundy, have periodically indulged in this vicious practice with the corpses of their victims. However, some experts in the field of criminal psychology distinguish between this type of behavior (the desire to gain complete and final power over the victim) and the behavior of a “real necrophile” - such a person is so attracted to death that he gets the greatest sexual pleasure from sexual intercourse with a corpse. Although this type of necrophilia is much less common among serial killers, some such cases should be told.
Jeffrey Dahmer's love games with corpses began as a child: he collected animals crushed by cars on the road and dismembered them. With age, this hobby turned into a disgusting passion. Dahmer subsequently told psychiatrists that he usually ripped open the stomachs of the victim he killed and masturbated using the insides for this. In addition, he admitted that he had performed anal sex with corpses. His British "colleague" Dennis Nielsen was also a necrophile, although he treated his victims more gently: he put the corpse to bed, cuddled up to him and masturbated.
The most disgusting of all American necrophiles was Ed Gein. As befits a true necrophile, Gein had absolutely no interest in living women. He found sex partners in rural cemeteries, regularly plundering graves for twelve years. It might seem that necrophiles are less dangerous than serial killers, because the victims they hunt are already dead. And yet it is far from harmless. When the surrounding cemeteries ran out of women's corpses, Gein began to hunt for a living woman he liked and turned her into a dead one.
“I took off her bra and panties and had sex with her. It has long been a part of my life - sexual intercourse with the dead, ”this is how Henry Lee Lucas spoke of his reaction to the death of his beloved, whom he had just stabbed to death during a quarrel.
Nelson Earl Leonard
Earl Leonard Nelson (a.k.a. Gorilla Man) was the first US sexual serial killer of the 20th century. In February 1926, his bloody odyssey across the country began - he crossed it from end to end and reached Canada - lasting a year and a half.
Orphaned in infancy (his father and mother died of syphilis), Nelson was brought up by relatives. He was a withdrawn, sullen child with strange habits: for example, going to school in a neat, freshly laundered suit, he constantly returned in dirty rags, as if exchanging clothes with some tramp. After a severe head injury (collided on a bicycle with a funicular cabin), the boy became even more uncontrollable and strange.
As a teenager, he had already acquired the habit of walking around the bars and brothels of San Francisco. In addition, he traded in pickpocketing. In 1915 (shortly after he turned eighteen) Nelson was arrested for robbery and sentenced to two years in San Quentin. When he was released, America was just entering the First World War. Nelson enlisted in the Navy, but soon ended up in a psychiatric hospital, because he refused to obey orders and only lay on his bed and spoke all sorts of nonsense about the "great beast of the apocalypse." He spent the entire war within the walls of the clinic.
Released in 1919, 22-year-old Nelson married a 60-year-old spinster and made her life hell. Shortly after his wife left him, he attacked a twenty-year-old girl and again found himself in a lunatic asylum. Once again released in 1925, Nelson took up serial killings.
Started in San Francisco, then moved north along the Pacific coast to Seattle, then turned east. At first, the press called him the "black strangler", but later the nickname Gorilla Man was firmly entrenched in him. So he was nicknamed not so much because of his appearance (by the way, quite ordinary), but because of the wild, bestial cruelty of crimes. For the most part, his victims were middle-aged women and elderly ladies who wanted to rent a room through an ad in the newspaper ... Nelson, who knew how to be very charming if he wanted to, came to the unsuspecting mistress of the house and asked to show him the room. Once alone with the victim, he threw off the mask of charm ... And then his true "face" was revealed.
As a rule, the killer strangled the woman, had sexual intercourse with the corpse, after which he hid the body in some kind of shelter - wherever he could. He stuffed one corpse into a chest in the attic, and put a few more in the ovens in the cellars. His latest victim came to light when the husband of the victim knelt down for evening prayer and saw his wife's body under the bed.
Fleeing from police officers from various cities following his trail, Nelson headed for Canada. And there his deadly path was cut short. After killing two more women, he traveled to Manitoba, where he was captured. However, he soon managed to escape from prison. The hunt began for the fugitive, and twelve hours later he was behind bars again, this time securely.
A few months later, Earl Leonard Nelson was sent to the gallows. His last words are: "I forgive those who have harmed me."
Unsolved serial killers
Serial killers are the most feared of all criminals, and not only because of the severity of the atrocities. Despite the insane nature of their crimes, they are not crazy at all. In contrast, the typical serial killer has an above-average IQ, is extremely cunning, and skillfully wears the guise of an ordinary person. Apparently, this is why serial killers remain uncaught for a long time, and some managed to completely elude justice.
The classic example of this kind is, of course, the legendary Jack the Ripper. Many years later, the criminal, who accounted for sixty-six victims, the so-called "Green River" (drowned several people in the Green River in Washington state), disappeared without a trace. Still undiscovered serial killers include the "New Orleans Ax Murderer" (see article "The Ax Murders" and Zodiac.
Why do some serial killers go uncaught? It can be assumed that they simply decide to stop before they are captured. However, this is unlikely. After all, maniac killers get used to death, like alcoholics to alcohol, and it is highly doubtful that any of them would want to give up this deadly game of their own free will. It's more likely that the serial killer is somehow forced to stop. A maniac may be behind bars on another charge or end up in a psychiatric clinic. Or (like any other mortal) he can suddenly leave this world (it is possible that of his own free will).
Suicide is explained, for example, by the disappearance of Jack the Stripper, a serial killer of prostitutes who terrorized London in the mid-1960s. Although officially the case of this maniac remains unsolved, many believe that the killer was a certain guard who committed suicide by committing the last murder (see the article "Rippers"). In the case of the mysterious "Toledo Killer", another, also plausible, explanation was put forward. In 1925-1926, this maniac from Toledo (Ohio) raped and killed several women. In the heat of chasing the criminal, the police arrested all the "mentally handicapped" they could get to and sent them to psychiatric hospitals. Since the killings had stopped as a result of this massive roundup, it was decided that the police, among others, had managed to capture the perpetrator of serial crimes.
However, some cases are still unclear. A maniac from Ohio - the so-called "Cleveland Tearbreaker" (aka "the mad butcher of Kingsbury Run") - dealt with a dozen people in four years, chopping their bodies to pieces and scattering parts of the bodies of their victims throughout the city. Despite the efforts of the law enforcement officers (led by the famous Eliot Ness, a former "untouchable" who at that time was the head of the Cleveland Public Safety Service), the "mad butcher" eluded justice. However, in the spring of 1938, his atrocities suddenly stopped. To this day, it is unknown who it was. Many fell under suspicion - from a mentally unstable medical student to an immigrant from Bohemia. Perhaps the most frightening version was put forward by a Cleveland detective: he suggested that the killings had stopped because the perpetrator moved to California, where he received the nickname Black Dahlia. But even there he could not be caught.
Nielsen Dennis
Nielsen - the "British Jeffrey Dahmer" who killed fifteen young people - does not fit into the standard notion of a serial killer. As a child, he had no inclination to torture animals. Even bird hunting disgusted him. As an adult, Nielsen helped desperate people find work by participating in the activities of the British Labor Registration Commission. And even his murders were an expression not of psychopathic rage, but of a kind of love. According to writer Brian Masters, Nielsen "killed for the sake of fellowship".
From a young age, Nielsen's sexuality bore pronounced features of necrophilia. As a teenager, he liked to lie down in front of a mirror and masturbate, imagining that the reflection was a corpse. In the course of a brief love affair with an 18-year-old British Army private, Nielsen made an amateur film with him, asking his partner to pretend to be dead.
Nielsen spent eleven years in military service, from time to time moonlighting as a butcher (later, the skills of this craft were useful to him in committing terrible deeds).
After leaving the army in 1972, he worked for a year with the London Police. Then he began his career as a civil servant in the employment center. For some time he was quite happy in an affair with another homosexual partner, but then this relationship broke up, and the unsociable Nielsen found himself desperately lonely. He had to invent bizarre autoerotic rituals. With the help of powder and makeup, he gave his body the appearance of a shot corpse and masturbated in front of a mirror.
In early January 1978, Nielsen committed his first murder. Picking up a teenage boy from a pub, Nielsen brought him to his home in Cricklewood. Feeling extremely lonely, he did not want to part with the young man. While the teenager was sleeping, Nielsen strangled him with a tie, and then drowned him again, lowering the victim's head into a bucket of water. After that, Nielsen undressed the corpse, gently washed it in the bath and laid it in his bed. He kept the body in the apartment for several days, in every possible way caressing, bathing, masturbating on it. When the corpse began to visibly decompose, Nielsen hid it under the floorboards.
Over the next three years, this monstrous ritual was repeated in Nielsen's Cricklewood apartment eleven more times. The killer solved the problem with the corpses in different ways. At first, he stacked them in and around the house, tucking them into a kitchen cabinet, under the floorboards, or in a shed in the garden. But in the end, he had to dismember the rotting bodies and burn them, building a fire in the backyard. Nielsen threw old car tires into the fire so that the stench of burning rubber would override the smell of burning meat.
In 1981, Dennis moved to another apartment, where he killed three more young people. He cut the corpses into pieces and flushed them down the toilet. (To remove the meat from the skulls, he boiled the heads in a large soup pot.) However, it was this method of disposing of the corpse that betrayed him. When the toilets throughout the house became clogged, the residents called a plumber, who discovered that human bones and pieces of rotten meat were stuck in the pipes.
In the apartment of the maniac killer, the police found a monstrous collection of human remains: heads, arms and legs, body parts, bones and entrails. Nielsen, who voluntarily confessed to fifteen murders, was tried in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison. At the trial, the criminal declared in despair:
“I wanted to stop, but I couldn't. I had no other happiness in my life."
Bed-wetting
See article "Triad".
O
Objects of fetishism
See Trophies article.
grave robbery
See the article "Necrophilia".
Definition of the term "serial murder"
Like many other specific terms (for example, "cynicism"), the term "serial murder" is very difficult to give a precise definition. Part of the problem is that the definition given by the police differs from the generally accepted one. According to some experts, a serial killer is someone who commits this kind of crime at regular intervals. This point of view has the right to exist. For example, if Ted Bundy were caught after killing one or two people, he would not become a world-famous killer, but would remain just a deranged person capable of committing the most perverse acts of violence. Therefore, it is hardly possible to consider any criminal a serial killer, as long as he has one or two victims on his account.
After how many victims can a criminal be called a serial killer? It's hard to define. The most famous serial killers - Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer and others - were found guilty of two dozen murders. However, most experts seem to list a criminal as a serial killer if he kills at least three people (in unrelated situations).
Between the crimes committed by serial killers, certain periods of "emotional rest" must follow. These interruptions, which can last from a few hours to many years, are what distinguishes serial killers from mass murderers - obsessed types who, in a fit of insane fit of rage, can massacre an entire group of people at the same time. Thus, the FBI defines serial murders as “three or more separate cases with periods of emotional rest between the crimes committed; while the killer operates in various places.
However, this is not all. Forensic professionals are sure to consider another key element. Before naming it, it is worth mentioning the question discussed by experts: are there female serial killers? No doubt there are many women whose crimes are quite consistent with the very meaning of the term, that is, those who committed not one, but several separate murders over certain periods of time. For example, there are so-called "black widows" who kill their husbands one by one. There are also killer nurses who, over the years, easily dispose of difficult patients. There are murderous housekeepers - they periodically change jobs, sending entire families to the next world. And yet, the crimes of these femme fatales lack what makes the atrocities of Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy so unbearably nightmarish - disgusting sexual sadism. According to many experts, a real serial murder is usually accompanied by severe violence and mutilation inflicted on the victim. From this perspective, serial murder can be seen as sexual murder.
In short, "serial killing" includes both the broadest (any offender, male or female, one who kills after certain periods) characteristics, as well as very specific ones (three or more unrelated murders separated by periods of "emotional rest"). and accompanied by sadistic sexual abuse). Most people have this idea of the phenomenon of "serial killer".
Weapon
Cinematic serial killers are true "masters of death", constantly looking for new, original ways to create violence. In their bloody hands, any thing becomes an instrument of murder - from a sickle to a rifle.
On the contrary, real serial killers are much more conservative in their choice of weapons, and most often they act “manually” - strangling, stabbing, beating with a stick. While most killers in America use firearms, serial killers like to kill the old fashioned way, which gives them a lot more satisfaction. True sadistic pleasure is to slowly plunge the knife into the body of the victim.
Of course, there are exceptions. For example, Ed Gein killed people with a headshot. And David Berkovich, a serial killer who terrorized New York City in the late 1970s, before he began sending letters signed “Son of Sam”, was called a “.44 killer” because of his preference for this weapon.
Postcards, comics and collectibles
A few years ago, Eclipse Enterprises began producing sets of playing cards with colorful portraits of the most notorious serial killers (along with other notorious criminals). As expected, the public was outraged. The guardians of morality said it was immoral. As a result, in one of the districts of New York - Nassau County on Long Island - it was forbidden to sell these cards to minors.
Of course, these well-meaning people did not realize that many American children were attracted and intrigued by all sorts of things related to violence and obscenity. Moreover, this is not a new phenomenon.
Back in the 1940s, postcards were issued with portraits of famous gangsters. The post-war generation fondly remembers the famous series of chewing gum wrappers, which depicted Civil War scenes of soldiers stabbing each other with bayonets and blasted limbs flying into the air. Everyone knows the classic children's postcards - the legendary "Martian Wars": they clearly show human bodies cut in half by alien laser weapons.
Unlike similar examples of kitsch, the set of cards from Eclipse is undoubtedly made with taste: only large portraits are beautifully depicted on them - that's all. Take my word for it: from the point of view of morality, a deck of cards with tramp children is much worse.
Why do small children (mostly boys) get so excited about vulgar commodities of all sorts—rubber vomit and sticky worms? This question should be asked of child psychologists (although we suspect that their hectic focus on the development of children's games is not the least to explain the formation of such tastes). And let me be certain that a three-by-five-inch portrait of Jeffrey Dahmer cannot "push children to crime and impair their moral development," as some believe.
A federal magistrate agreed with our point of view and ruled that the ban on the sale of these cards in Nassau County was unconstitutional. However, by that time the issue had lost its relevance: Eclipse Enterprises had already ceased to produce them.
Luckily for collectors, two other companies have continued to release serial killer postcard sets. Shell-Town Publications distributed three series of killer postcards: Blood Fantasies I, II, and III. All selection, commentary, and illustration work was done by Michael X. Price, horror connoisseur and film critic at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Mather Productions offered two more sets for collections - "52 famous killers" and "Postcards for a cold-blooded killer." Like the Eclipse and Shell-Town series, these postcards do not feature naturalistic bloody murder scenes. They are skillfully depicted with expressive portraits of characters with a brief biography on the back.
Postcards are not the only controversial collectible. A few years ago, relatives of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims sued Bone Yard Press of Champagne in Illinois for publishing a comic book album about him. The same company released comics about Richard Speck and Ed Gein. But perhaps the most impressive comic about a serial killer is From Hell. The illustrations for it were created by Eddie Campbell, and the text was created by Alan Moore, one of the largest experts in this field. This comic book, the eight-part saga of Jack the Ripper, is published by Kitchen Sink Press of Northampton (Massachusetts); it can be found in many specialized stores.
The most comprehensive collection of information for collections of serial killers is the "Blood Catalog" produced by Fox Entertainment Enterprises. This is truly an invaluable guide for horror lovers.
The lord of the underworld himself would not have wished for a wider range of diabolical items to decorate his underworld. Whether you're looking for a confectionery bowl made from a real human skull, or realistically severed hands made from hand-painted latex, or cute Charles Manson T-shirts to wear to your next dinner party, check out this catalogue.
Quicklime
When, in April 1908, the Indiana police dug up the yard of the farm owned by Belle Gunness, more than a dozen corpses were found - a gruesome evidence of years of acquisitive crime. These were mostly the corpses of the husbands of the farm owner (see the article “Black Widows”). Most of them are already heavily decomposed. Gunness, a cold-blooded and practical woman, came up with a way to speed up the process of decomposition. She cut each corpse into six pieces and covered them with quicklime, a very caustic substance that corrodes organic matter. If the search in her yard had taken place later, the bodies would no longer be identified.
Other killers also used quicklime to destroy evidence. Dr. G. G. Holmes kept a barrel of quicklime in the dungeons of his Chicago "castle of horrors." Fifty years later, Marcel Pétier, who killed dozens of people who sought refuge during the occupation of Paris by the Nazis, used quicklime to destroy the corpses buried in his backyard (another, more effective method of disposing of corpses - cremation - Pétier turned later) . John Wayne Gacy periodically poured lime into the basement of his house to kill the fetid smell of rotting bodies.
In the mid-1980s, sixty-year-old Dorothea Puente rented out a room in her San Francisco country house to wealthy elderly clients who, shortly after their arrival, began to disappear without a trace. The police, suspecting something, launched an investigation. A search in the garden behind Puente's house resulted in the discovery of seven decapitated bodies. Although the killer, trying to destroy the traces of the crime, covered the corpses with quicklime, they did not decompose. Dorothea Puente was let down by his ignorance of chemical reactions. As long as the lime is mixed with water, it acts like a preservative, not speeding up, but slowing down the decomposition process. Pathologists easily discovered that the victims died from significant doses of poison. The landlady was sent to prison for life imprisonment.
Quarantine infections are characterized by extreme contagiousness and high susceptibility. Therefore, the autopsy of those who died from quarantine infections has its own peculiarities and must be subject to special rules. During the autopsy of such dead, the dissector has two tasks:
to prevent the spread of infection during the autopsy;
not get infected.
To avoid infection quarantine infection, the dissector puts on a special anti-plague suit that covers the face, arms, body and legs. Such a suit should be in every hospital where autopsies are performed. If there is no suit, then the dissector puts on two closed gowns, an apron, sleeves made of plastic or oilcloth, a hat, glasses, two pairs of rubber gloves, covers his face with a mask of 2-3 layers of gauze. Rubber boots or galoshes must be worn on the feet. After opening, all clothing is destroyed, and the dissector takes a shower. The dissector does not leave the source of infection until the end of the epidemic, since quarantine rules apply to it.
An autopsy of a person who died from a quarantine infection can be performed in a hospital, if it is located in the focus of the epidemic, or in the field. The autopsy is carried out in a special sectional room. If there is no such hall, then they use a common sectional room, previously shutting off the sewers to avoid the spread of infection through sewage. At the same time, a container is placed under the drain of the sectional table, where water, blood, secretions, pieces of tissue flow. Water should be consumed as little as possible. The internal organs are not removed from the corpse, opening the chest and abdominal cavity, the organs are opened in the same cavities. After the autopsy is completed, all organs in the corpse are covered with quicklime and poured with a disinfectant liquid such as Lysol. After that, the corpse is wrapped in several layers of sheets soaked in lysol, or placed in a coffin, pouring quicklime into it. From above, the corpse is also covered with lime and the lid is clogged. If the doctor is forced to perform an autopsy outside the hospital, it is necessary to find some kind of bright room.
It is possible to perform an autopsy in the open air, but at the same time it is necessary to take into account the wind rose and be located on the leeward side, fencing off an impromptu sectional table with sheets or a tarp. The opening procedure is the same. After the autopsy is completed, the corpse is covered with quicklime and wrapped in sheets soaked in lysol. The grave is dug with a depth of at least 3 m, a layer of quicklime is poured, a layer of earth is poured on it, and so on up to three layers. Liquid and pieces of tissue are poured into the grave after opening, and then the corpse is lowered, it is also covered with three layers of earth mixed with quicklime. After the autopsy, the clothes of those who open them are burned indoors so that the infection does not spread with smoke. The staff is thoroughly washed in the shower.
"At the beginning of the 19th century. Travelers in the Roman Campania usually described its landscapes as follows: a deserted malarial plain with occasional ruins, few cattle, sometimes a picturesque robber is found.
Hobsbawm. "Age of Revolutions"
Carmine Crocco was born in 1830 in the town of Rionero, which was then in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His father was a servant of the noble masters of Santangelo. It so happened that Crocco from childhood did not love the "better people." His brother was beaten by Don Vincenzo for killing a dog that ate Crocco's chickens. Crocco's pregnant mother tried to protect her son, but the don hit her too, resulting in a miscarriage. After this story, Crocco's father was accused of trying to kill Don Vincenzo, and although his guilt was not proven, Francesco Crocco was sent to prison.
Carmine Crocco moved to Apulia, where in 1845 he was able to save the life of a wealthy citizen who was drowning in a fast river. For this feat, he received 50 ducats of reward, which allowed him to return home. At the same time, the relatives of the man he saved, lobbied for the release of his father, Francesco Crocco, from prison. In 1848, Crocco was forced to enter the Sicilian army, but soon deserted from there after the murder of a colleague.
While Crocco was away, his sister, the beautiful Rosina, was raped by a certain nobleman, Don Peppino. When news of this disgrace reached Crocco, he went to meet Don Peppino. After a long emotional conversation in the Italian spirit, Crocco stabbed the offender and fled into the forest. There he gathered a gang of dashing fellows and began to trade in blackmail and robberies. In October 1855, he was arrested, but in December 1859 he managed to escape. The forest again became the home and refuge of Crocco.
If the matter were limited to these passions, the biographies of Crocco would be of interest only to lovers of adventurous stories. But then history intervened in his fate. The time has come for the Risorgemento - the unification of Italy.
Contrary to bourgeois myths, the unification of Italy, like the unification of Germany, came from above, and the term "iron and blood" here would be even more appropriate. The actions of the "Thousand" Garibaldi in Sicily resembled the "exploits" of the "iron-sided" Cromwell in Ireland. The liquidation of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was perceived by many as Piedmont's aggression to the south. The bourgeoisie of the North of Italy, interested in turning the South into its own inner colony, ruthlessly crushed all resistance. So in 1861, a death camp was established at Fort Fenestrelle, where 24,000 prisoners were imprisoned, mainly from Naples and Sicily. Most of them died of hunger and cold. The dead were thrown into ditches and covered with quicklime.
A curious episode in Crocco's career was his participation in the campaign of "Thousands" of Garibaldi. The latter generously distributed the most incredible promises, which were forgotten after the victory. Among them, there was an amnesty for all who join the "Red Shirts". Crocco joined the troops of Garibaldi, participated in the campaign against Naples, and even distinguished himself in the battle of Volturna. True, for his courage, not a reward was waiting for him, but an arrest for previous deeds. The new regime has demonstrated its perfidy.
Meanwhile, the people of southern Italy were indignant. The capitalist order turned out to be even worse than the former feudal laws. Tax oppression grew, communal lands were privatized, people died of hunger or were forced to emigrate.
The impetus for the uprising was the law on universal conscription, which did not exist under the Bourbons. Soon, the number of deserters hiding from the draft reached 25 thousand people. These people became the core of the resistance. Piedmont sent 120 thousand soldiers to suppress the popular movement
In conclusion, Crocco did not stay long. With the help of influential friends, he was able to go free. In the wild, the robber gathered an army of 2000 fellows, and began a war against the Piedmontese under the banner of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and King Francis II.
In ten days, the bandits of the robber captured vast areas of the province of Wiltura. The people welcomed Crocco as a liberator and supplied his troops. In the territories he controlled, the power of King Francis II was formally restored.
On April 7, 1861, Crocco captured Lagopesole, and the next day, Ripasandida, where he defeated the local National Guard garrison. On April 10, his troops entered Venosa. A significant part of Campania and Apui fell into the hands of the rebels.
The atrocities of the Piedmontese invaders against the "brothers from the south" only increased the number of "robbers" - brigantos. Soldiers from the north slaughtered entire villages, massively raped women, looted. The liberal regime forbade newspapers from publishing reports from the south without prior military censorship. Even members of the Italian Parliament could visit the south only with the permission of the military.
Impressed by his Crocco, the Bourbon government in exile sent the Spanish general (Catalan) José Borges to help Crocco to train and discipline the rebel bands. Borges and Crocco were then to capture Potenza, the main stronghold of the Italian government forces in the south. It should be noted that Crocco did not trust Borges, but agreed to a temporary collaboration.
At first, the attack on Potenza developed successfully. Many small villages were taken, new volunteers joined the rebel detachments. But Crocco and Borges could not take Potenza. Moreover, soon, they were forced to retreat under the onslaught of the Italian army.
Retreating to Moicchio, Crocco broke off his alliance with Borges, not wanting to serve under the command of foreigners. Frustrated, Borges went to Rome to inform King Francis II of the situation, but along the way he was captured by Piedmontese soldiers and killed.
Without the support of the Bourbons, Crocco found himself in a desperate situation. The Italian authorities offered him to surrender, but the robber chose to continue his vendetta against the Piedmontese soldiers.
It is not known how much longer this struggle would have continued, if not for the betrayal of Giuseppe Caruso, one of the lieutenants of the leader of the brigantos. A traitor gave the Italian authorities the location of Crocco's secret hideout. Detachments of the royal army under the command of General Palvicini caught the brigantos by surprise. Many robbers were killed, others were captured and shot. Crocco himself managed to escape. Hoping for salvation, he fled to the Papal States, hoping for the patronage of Pope Pius IX, who had previously helped the opposition in the south.
But Crocco was again betrayed. The robber was arrested at Veroli and taken to Rome. Then the papal administration extradited him to the Italian government. In 1872, the court sentenced Carmine Crocco to death, which was replaced by life imprisonment. In the prison, Crocco wrote his memoirs: "How I became a robber." But he never got free. On June 18, 1905, Carmine Crocco died in Portferreiro prison.
By the way, the Italian actor and director Michele Placido, well-known in the former USSR, claims that he is a descendant of Carmine Crocco in the male line.
