The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (31 page)

Jeffrey Dahmer was known to be a calm, articulate man working in a chocolate factory in Milwaukee. In reality, he was a murdering, cannibalistic sociopath. In 1989 he was arrested for molesting children, and in 1991 he was arrested for the murder of thirteen men and sentenced to 957 years in prison.

A MURDERING MADAME

Patty Cannon was a large woman, said to be equal to a man when it came down to a fight. In the early 1800s she was known for kidnapping free black people and selling them as slaves. When Cannon was in her sixties, one of her tenants discovered a grave by accident when his plow horse sank into a hollow. He unearthed a blue chest, which he opened to find not a secret stash of cash but the corpse of a slave trader Cannon had killed years before for a large sum he had been carrying. The
tenant went to the authorities, who, after many years of turning a blind eye to Cannon's depraved dealings, were forced to arrest her. The investigation of Cannon's property led to the discovery of several other bodies, some of which were children. Cannon's victims never received justice; rather than stand trial, Cannon poisoned herself in 1829 while in prison.

PEOPLE EATER PACKER

Alfred Packer was the first man ever to be convicted for cannibalism under Colorado state law. In 1874 Packer and five other miners split from their party to seek silver in the San Juan Mountains. Sixty-five days later, Alfred Packer strolled back into town—alone. He also brandished a large cash roll as well as a gun that had belonged to one of the other miners. Packer was quickly jailed, only to escape. It didn't take long to locate the bodies of his former companions and confirm that Packer had killed and eaten the five miners. It took nine years to catch him, and another three to convict and sentence him to forty
years in prison. Today he is gone but not forgotten: the University of Colorado at Boulder sports a memorial grill named after him, and one of the grill's most popular entrées is called the Packerburger.

FLORIDA'S FEMALE SERIAL KILLER

Aileen Wuornos had a textbook serial-killer child-hood. Her father died in prison, and her fifteen-year-old mother abandoned her to her grandparents when she was an infant. Wuornos had a baby herself at the age of fourteen; when her grandmother passed away and her hard-drinking grandfather started beating her and her brother, she left home, taking to the road and supporting herself as a prostitute. Wuornos collected arrests for crimes such as driving drunk, assault, and passing bad checks, and she was known under a variety of different aliases.

Her rough-and-tumble life was briefly brightened when she met Tyria Moore, a hotel maid, at a gay bar in Daytona, Florida. The couple moved in together, and Wuornos supported them by turning tricks. Things started to fall apart in the late 1980s, when Moore's alcohol addiction got the best of her and Wuornos met Richard Mallory, a trash-talking ex-con man who
picked her up off the highway. According to Wuornos, she was sitting in Mallory's car listening to him rant about women and rape and killing, and she “snapped,” pulling out the .22-caliber gun she kept in her purse and shooting him three times. His body was found, decomposing, days later off the side of the highway.

After that incident, the bodies of several more men began cropping up around the same area. Meanwhile, Wuornos started bringing home extravagant trinkets, and Moore pretended not to wonder why her partner could suddenly pay the rent again.

The jig was finally up in June 1990, when Wuornos and Moore were found driving the car of a man who went missing days earlier. Florida police chased the women for several days and finally apprehended Wuornos in a bar. She was convicted of six counts of murder and sentenced to die, which she did, by lethal injection, in 2002.

“The consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor.” —SIR WALTER SCOTT

DOCTOR DEATH

Not all doctors put their patients' health at the top of their list of priorities. Dr. Harold Shipman was one such physician—a British general practitioner who is said to have killed up to 250 of his patients in the 1990s. A friendly, well-liked doctor, Shipman had an easy way with his patients and had been practicing for many years. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until a colleague, asked to cosign many of his cremation orders, noticed that his patients were dying in droves. She alerted the police, who, after some initial bungling, focused in on the death of Kathleen Grundy, an older woman who was found dead at her home in 1998. According to her will, Grundy had left all of her money—the sizable sum of more than 350,000 pounds—to Shipman, ignoring her children and grandchildren entirely. Police exhumed Grundy's body and found traces of diamorphine, or heroin, in her system. According to her family and friends, Grundy had never used a drug in her life.

Police seized Shipman's medical records and honed in on fifteen similar cases for investigation. A pattern emerged—Shipman would administer a lethal dose of heroin, sign the death certificate, and then alter the
medical records to indicate the patient was in poor health. In some cases, he would manipulate his victims into leaving him money. The doctor was brought to trial and sentenced to fifteen consecutive life sentences for the fifteen murders, though it was estimated that he took part in as many as 250 deaths.

BLACK WIDOWS