Fiendish Killers Read online

  Brought to justice

  Eventually, something took place to shed some light on what was happening. One night, the Bean clan ambushed a married couple returning from a day out at the fair. The man was armed with a sword and pistol and proved himself to be a skilled fighter, holding off the clan for a short while, even though he was only one against many. His wife was not so lucky – the raiders pulled her off her horse and proceeded to disembowel her in front of her husband’s eyes, allegedly drinking her blood and ripping her limbs apart with their teeth. It was only a matter of time before the husband met the same fate, but luckily for him, a party of travellers who had also been to the fair were riding along a short way behind and they now came into view. The Bean clan took to their heels, but when the fairgoers came nearer, they saw the bloody work that the bestial murderers had done, and the surviving husband gave them a blow-by-blow account of what had happened. The Bean clan were revealed at last for the gruesome cannibals they were.

  News of the dreadful crime made its way to the Scottish court, and it was not long before King James VI himself resolved to put an end to the clan’s reign of terror. Assembling an army of 400 soldiers, together with a team of bloodhounds, he rode up to the cave where the Bean family lived. The soldiers poured into the cave, surprising the inmates, and found a hideous scene there. The clan were crouching like animals among piles of human remains, some of them still chewing on the severed, bloody arms and limbs of their victims. It was later estimated that the Beans had murdered and consumed over 1,000 victims, possibly more, during the twenty-five years or so that they had lived there.

  The soldiers rounded up all the members of the Bean clan and took them to the Tolbooth Jail in Edinburgh. From there, they were sent on to jails in Leith and Glasgow. So outraged were the public by the story of the murders, that the authorities did not bother to give the Bean family a trial, but decided to execute them in the most cruel ways possible. The men were hung, drawn and quartered; this meant that their hands and feet were cut off while they were still alive, so that they bled slowly to death. The women and children were forced to watch them die, and then burned alive themselves. Thus, the clan met their end as violently as they had lived.

  The ‘Hairy Tree’

  There is also a story about one of Sawney Bean’s daughters, who is said to have escaped from the cave and set up home in the town of Girvan, hiding her true identity from the local populace and living as an ordinary citizen for some years. However, when the family were captured, her history was made public, and she was pursued by a lynch mob. They hanged her from the branches of a tree that she had planted, known as the ‘Hairy Tree’. This tree was apparently situated in Dalrymple Street, and according to local superstition, the corpse of the daughter could be heard swinging from it on windy nights for many years after the hanging.

  Fact or fiction?

  Today, many historians believe that, although there may be some truth to the legend of Sawney Bean, in all probability the story has been much exaggerated. They point out that although the Newgate Calendar cites the story, there are no other accounts of him in any other historical records of the period. Also, it has been pointed out that if the entire Bean family had lived only by murdering and eating human beings for twenty-five years, they would have consumed far more than 1,000 people, and would in fact have decimated the population of the area. There is also some dispute as to the date of Sawney Bean’s reign of terror; some broadsheets reported it as having taken place during the reign of James VI, while others allege that it was centuries before. Whatever the truth, in all likelihood the story was exaggerated, since the broadsheets – like our own newspapers today – constantly sensationalised events to entertain their readers.

  Because the Sawney Bean story first appeared in British chapbooks, which were like the tabloids of today, some believe that it was made up by English political propagandists in the wake of the Jacobite rebellions, so as to discredit the Scots. However, it has also been argued that as the chapbooks also contained horrifying stories about English criminals, this is unlikely. What does seem to be the case is that, from earliest times, there was a great deal of poverty and lawlessness in the remote rural areas of Scotland, so that many travellers were robbed, murdered and possibly even cannibalised as they passed through, by outlaws such as Sawney Bean and his family.

  Alferd Packer

  Alferd Packer was an American cannibal who was accused of murdering and eating five companions on a trip into the Colorado rocky mountains. He swore that he had only eaten the flesh of men who had already died so as to survive, but he did admit to killing one of them in self-defence. There was a great deal of controversy at the time as to Packer’s innocence or otherwise, and nobody really knew what actually happened on the expedition, as he was the only witness.

  Mining for gold

  Packer was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on November 21, 1842. He became apprenticed to a cobbler, but when the Civil War broke out, he enlisted in the army. At the age of nineteen, he headed out west and joined the US infantry in Winona, Minnesota, but was later discharged due to epilepsy. He later returned to the army as a soldier in the Iowa Cavalry, and some believe he was a scout for General Custer, but once again his illness forced him out.

  Little more is known of his activities until in 1873, at the age of thirty-one, he joined a group of twenty prospectors who set out from Bingham Canyon, Utah, into the mountains of Colorado to look for gold. The expedition did not go well: the party got lost in bad weather, and soon ran out of food. The members of the group arrived in an Indian camp, where most of them decided to stay put till spring, but five of them pressed on – they were Shannon Wilson Bell, Israel Swan, James Humphrey, Frank ‘Reddy’ Miller, and George ‘California’ Noon.

  Two months later, they had not arrived at their destination, and their relatives were becoming anxious about them. Accounts vary as to what happened next, but Packer is thought to have appeared at a saloon in the town of Saguache, saying that he had a leg injury and needed some whisky. Observers noticed that he had several wallets on his person. He said that he had become separated from the party, and did not know where they were. However, it was later discovered that there were strips of human flesh on the trail where he had been, and he was questioned once more as to what had happened to his companions.

  Human meat

  This time, he made a formal confession, saying the men had died of starvation and then been eaten by the others, who were crazed with hunger. Israel Swan, aged sixty-five, had died first, and all survivors had fed off his body. The next to go was James Humphrey, and Packer admitted that he had taken his wallet, which had over $100 in it. After that, Frank Miller, known as ‘the Butcher’, died in an accident searching for wood, and he was eaten too. That left George Noon, who was only eighteen, Shannon Bell and Packer himself. According to Packer, Bell shot Noon, and the two remaining survivors then ate him. Packer then alleged that Bell had attacked him, so he was forced to defend himself. He killed Bell and ate him, then managed to get to Saguache on his own.

  The authorities arrested Packer on suspicion of murder, and he was thrown into jail at Saguache. When the trail was inspected further, it became clear that the men had not died one by one. An artist named John A. Randolph discovered five sets of human remains beside the Gunnison River, at a place called Slumgullion Pass. Randolph made a detailed sketch of the bodies, which showed that parts of the thigh and breast had been cut out. Witnesses were brought to the scene, and the bodies were then buried in an area that became known as ‘Dead Man’s Gulch’.

  However, while this was happening, Packer managed to escape from jail, and for the next nine years went on the run, under the name of John Schwartze. Nothing is known of what he did during that time, but in March 1883, a member of the larger party who had stayed in the Indian camp, a man named Frenchy Cabizon, recognised him in a saloon and had him arrested. He was charged with the five murders and made a new confession. This time he said that
the men who had left the Indian camp had not taken enough food with them, and had run into a snowstorm, so that they had begun to starve. Some of them, like Bell, began to show signs of madness, and when Packer went on a scouting trip to find food, he returned to find Bell roasting a piece of meat on the fire. It turned out that Bell had killed all four of his companions, in a fit of madness, and was busy cooking a piece of Miller’s leg. Then Bell turned on Packer, who defended himself by grabbing the hatchet Bell was using and burying it in his head. He then tried to leave the camp, but was prevented from doing so by heavy snow, so he stayed where he was and began to eat the corpses. Eventually, when the snow began to thaw, he left, taking some pieces of meat with him to eat along the way.

  Packer’s new story did not convince the jury, and on Friday, April 13, 1883, he was convicted of murder. According to popular legend, the judge called Packer a ‘man-eating son of a bitch’ and said: ‘When you came to Hinsdale County, there were seven democrats. But you ate five of them, goddamn you. I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead.’

  Starvation and madness

  There was a great deal of controversy about the sentence, and two years later, Packer managed to get a retrial. This time he was convicted to forty years’ life imprisonment on a charge of manslaughter. Once in jail, he changed his story yet again, and a local newspaper printed the final version of events. He claimed that the party had run out of food and had been reduced to cooking and eating their moccasins, which were made out of hide. They wrapped their feet in blankets (this detail was borne out by the evidence of the corpses, whose feet were indeed wrapped in this way). Bell had begun to suffer delusions as the result of starvation, and everyone travelling with him had become terrified of him. The party camped by the Gunnison River, and in the morning, Packer went off to see if he could find help. When he came back, Bell attacked him and he shot him dead, only to realise what had happened after the deed was done. When he realised that Bell had been cooking and eating human meat, he was revolted and threw it away. He tried to cover the bodies of his comrades, and at this point his mind failed. In his madness, he said, he may have eaten human flesh, but he was so disturbed that he could not really remember what happened. Eventually, he wandered into town, dazed and confused by his terrible ordeal.

  This version of events did not fit with that of witnesses in the Saguache saloon, who claimed that he had sauntered in looking quite healthy and had shown no signs of madness whatsoever. Clearly, Packer was something of a fantasist, and every time he told the story, it had changed. However, there were those who sympathised with him, arguing that it was understandable that a starving man should eat (though not kill) his companions. To this day, it is still not clear exactly what happened, but the gruesome details of the Packer story made him a notorious figure for many years after the event.

  Regarding Packer’s name, it is thought that his real name was Alfred G. Packer. However, when he first signed up to the army, he wrote it as Alferd. In addition, this was the spelling that he had tattooed on his arm. (Some believe that the tattoo artist made a mistake, and that Packer subsequently adopted it as a joke.) Also, when invitations to his hanging (which never took place) were sent out, Alferd was the spelling used. It seems likely that even with the spelling of his name, Packer could not be honest, clear and straightforward, but constantly changed his story.

  In his final trial, Packer’s forty-year sentence was upheld and he was imprisoned. In 1886 he was paroled and went to live in Deer Creek, Jefferson County. Legend has it that he became a vegetarian before he died at the age of sixty-five. In 1981, he was formally pardoned of his crimes. Today, the story of Alferd Packer has passed into folklore, and there is even a ballad written about him, that goes:

  In the Colorado Rockies

  Where the snow is deep and cold

  And a man afoot can starve to death

  Unless he’s brave and bold

  Oh Alfred Packer

  You’ll surely go to hell

  While all the others starved to death

  You dined a bit too well.

  Ed Gein

  Ed Gein has gone down in history as one of the most fiendish killers of all time. This is despite the fact that, unlike many of those remembered for their savagery as serial killers, he was only actually responsible for murdering two of the corpses that were found in his home when police raided it. What was shocking and horrifying about the case was that he was a bizarre necrophiliac, who liked to decorate his house with human body parts. Items such as severed heads made into bedposts in the bedroom, human skin used as lampshades and upholstery for chair seats, skulls fashioned into soup bowls, a necklace of human lips, a face mask made out of facial human skin, a belt made from human nipples and a waistcoat made up of a vagina and breasts stitched together, which he called a ‘mammary vest’. In addition to these atrocities, the police were said to have found a human heart bubbling on the stove.

  It was hard to believe that anyone could be so depraved as to fashion such ghoulish items from human remains, but the evidence was all around the house, for all to see. It appeared that his activities had been going on for years and that, because he was a recluse, nobody knew anything about it. No wonder Ed Gein became the inspiration for many horror stories and films, including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Buffalo Bill character in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs.

  The making of a psycho

  Ed Gein was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin on August 28, 1906, the second son of Augusta and George Gein, both natives of the area. His older brother was named Henry. George Gein was a violent alcoholic and was seldom able to hold down a job, but sometimes worked as a tanner and carpenter. His wife Augusta was an extremely religious woman who felt nothing but contempt for her husband but who never considered divorcing him, because of her religious beliefs. To earn the family an income, Augusta ran a small grocery store, in addition to bringing up the two children. Soon after Ed was born, Augusta purchased a small farm in the remote country outside Plainfield, and this became the family’s permanent residence.

  Augusta had moved to the farm to keep her children away from the rest of society, believing that the influence of others would corrupt her sons. She made sure that they never had other children home to play, and that they only left the house to go to school. As well as making sure they worked hard at their studies, Augusta made them do many chores around the farm. As a fanatically religious Lutheran, she drilled into young Ed and his older brother Henry that drink was evil, and that all women, other than herself, were sinful whores who would corrupt them and give them horrifying diseases. She taught them that the only justifiable sexual activity was for making babies. Each afternoon, the boys were subjected to long readings from the bible, the passages selected from the Old Testament, to show them how God’s wrath would descend on them if they sinned in any way, particularly following any sexual urges.

  Sexually confused loner

  Not surprisingly, Ed grew up with little confidence, and was bullied at school because of his girlish demeanour and the fact that he had a small growth over one eye. His behaviour was strange, and he would laugh at random, which further alienated his fellow pupils. However, although he was not popular at school, he did well at his studies. As he grew up, he began to become critical of his mother, especially when she caught him, as an adolescent, masturbating in the bath and poured scalding water over him. However, he remained working on the farm and grew up as an adult to be a sexually confused loner, with a liking for escapist books and magazines. His existence became extremely isolated and the only human beings he regularly came into contact with were family members. At this stage of his life, he appeared to be strange, yet harmless; it was only when the family members began to die that his behaviour changed.

  In 1940 George died, and his sons began to take on odd jobs in town to help make ends meet. Ed worked as a handyman and even as a babysitter, and townspeople found him likeable and trustworthy. Then, i
n 1944, Ed’s brother Henry died under what seemed, with the benefit of hindsight, to be suspicious circumstances. What apparently happened was that Ed and Henry were fighting a fire in the nearby marshes. Then the two got separated and when the fire cleared Henry was found dead. What was strange was that his body was lying in an unburnt area and that there was bruising to his head. The cause of death, though, was listed as asphyxiation.

  Grave-robbing sprees

  With George and Henry gone, Ed was left to keep the farm going with his mother Augusta. But little more than a year later, Augusta died as well. She died of a series of strokes on December 29, 1945, following an argument with a neighbour. Her son’s reaction was to nail her bedroom door shut, leaving the room inside just as it was the day she died. He then began to show signs of serious mental disturbance, and it was then that he took up grave robbing. He became fascinated with human anatomy. He was particularly interested in reading about the first sex change operation, undertaken by Christine Jorgensen, and even considered having a sex change himself. Then, together with another disturbed man named Gus, he started visiting graveyards and taking souvenirs – sometimes whole bodies, more often selected body parts. He would scour the obituary column of the local newspaper in order to learn of freshly buried female corpses and, later, at night, pay them a visit.