The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey Into the Minds of Sexual Predators (31 page)

One of the earliest and most complex cases for which Roy Hazelwood provided the police a linkage analysis was that of a Swiss serial killer.

While in Europe together on a business vacation with their wives in the late 1980s, Hazelwood and Roger Depue accepted an invitation to visit Aarau, a small town about ten miles west of Zurich.

Their host in Aarau was a local police commander named Leon Borer, who took the opportunity to inquire if his guests would be curious to look over some unsolved cases in his files.

If the American agents liked, while they were consulting the criminal records, Commander Borer’s officers were happy to drive Frau Hazelwood and Frau Depue on escorted motor tours of the breathtaking Swiss countryside.

Everyone immediately agreed to the idea.

Among the unsolved cases that Roy and Roger Depue reviewed for Borer in Aarau that summer was a series of child murders, mostly strangulations, which had begun in 1980. After poring over the files, Hazelwood and Depue visited various of the crime scenes, spoke to a number of the children’s parents, and sketched a brief profile of the homicidal pedophile for Borer.

No progress was made toward cracking the case until August 1989, when Roy learned that a suspect named Werner Ferrari had been arrested in connection with the recent murder of a little girl in Hagendorf, close to Aarau. Ferrari, forty-two, confessed both to his homicide and to the killings of three boys, dating back to 1983.

Like Harvey Glatman three decades earlier, Werner Ferrari seemed to appear out of nowhere. Also like Glatman, Ferrari was more than just a lucky, or determined, deviant criminal. He seemed to have the same innate grasp of the successful MO: Be careful, move around, don’t be seen, and don’t leave any physical evidence.

Ferrari had staggered the intervals between his crimes, known and suspected, from between three weeks and twenty-two months. He also cannily avoided committing them one after another in a geographic cluster, so as to alarm the local populace and thus place greater pressure on the police to stop him. He finally was caught and charged with murder in August 1989 after an uncharacteristic, perhaps subconsciously intentional, lapse: Werner Ferrari left a live witness who identified him to the police.

Besides the four murders to which he confessed, investigators suspected Ferrari in six other child abductions and homicides, for which he denied any culpability.

Three of these victims (two girls, one boy) were never found, and there were no witnesses or hard physical evidence to link Ferrari to any of the three open cases where bodies were recovered. With his confessions, there was no question that Ferrari would be locked up for life. But lacking hard evidence
one way or the other in their open cases, the Swiss police were loath to close them simply on their suspicion that Werner Ferrari was responsible.

That is when Commander Borer thought again of the FBI.

On the chance the Swiss authorities had missed or overlooked behavioral evidence of value either to themselves or to the courts, Borer asked Roy to return to Aarau to conduct a linkage analysis.

Hazelwood flew to Switzerland on a Friday in early May, and was driven straight to Aarau, where Borer showed his FBI guest to his assigned room at the local police dormitory.

Ordinarily, Roy’s routine when traveling on business is fixed and unvarying. He checks into upmarket chain hotels with big, quiet accommodations and hunkers down, leaving his room only as required. For sustenance, he relies nearly exclusively on room-service steaks (well done), American cheese sandwiches (white bread, maybe a little butter), and the odd bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup, none other.

“Do you know what’s important about American cheese sandwiches on white bread?” he asks. “Wherever you go, they are
exactly
the same. I like that.”

Together with the spaghetti
ajo e ojo
he first tried at the suggestion of the Mafia hood in Binghamton, plus fast-food cheeseburgers and French fries, these dishes more or less constitute Hazelwood’s preferred diet in its entirety.

“It’s embarrassing to order dinner with him,” says Dr. Dietz.

In Aarau, Hazelwood took a deep breath as he inspected his spartan quarters, a small dorm room for one with no telephone and no television.

“Well, at least there won’t be any distractions,” Roy thought and went looking for a McDonald’s.

For the next four days, investigator after investigator sat down with Hazelwood to brief him, through interpreters, on each of the ten cases.

The first victim, twelve-year-old Ruth Steinmann, lived in
Wurenlos, a northeast suburb of Zurich. The slightly built brown-haired child was last seen climbing aboard her bicycle at school late in the afternoon on Friday, May 16, 1980. When Ruth did not come home, her parents went in search of her in a woods near where they lived. As they called for their daughter, both father and mother observed a jacketed young male walking toward them from the woods. When he saw the Steinmanns, he turned away, jumped on a moped, and sped off.

Not far away, Ruth’s father found his little girl.

She was lying nude in the forest, on her back, under a discarded section of floor covering. Her clothes were scattered around her.

One of her socks had been stuffed down Ruth’s throat, causing her death by asphyxiation. The other sock was on her foot. There was a human bite mark on her left breast, and scratches on her thigh and right knee.

There were, however, no defensive wounds, and no evidence that the child had been bound. Nothing of value had been stolen, either.

Crime scene investigators retrieved a freshly broken branch nearby, and believed that the killer had inserted the limb in Ruth’s vagina. He apparently had not done so violently. The girl had sustained some internal injury, including laceration to her bladder. But no seminal fluid was present, and her reproductive organs were intact and uninjured.

At the time of Ruth Steinmann’s murder, Werner Ferrari lived about three miles from where she was found, a prima facie reason for suspecting he might have committed the homicide. He owned a jacket matching the description of the one the girl’s parents saw the young man wearing that day. Ferrari also owned a moped identical to the one the Steinmanns described to police. He also had no alibi for his whereabouts on that Friday afternoon.

A week after the murder, Ferrari broke up with his girlfriend and moved.

The second suspected victim, eight-year-old Rebecca Bieri, lived in Niederbipp, about forty miles west of Zürich. Rebecca disappeared on her way home from school on Saturday, March 20, 1982, approximately twenty-two months after the Steinmann homicide. Bieri also was slight and had brown hair.

Her skeletonized remains were recovered in August 1982, in a wooded area. One of her stockings was found around her neck. Although neither the cause nor the manner of her death could be established to a certainty, Rebecca Bieri was believed to have been strangled with her stocking.

About a month after her disappearance, Werner Ferrari changed residences.

Loredana Mancini was a seven-year-old, also short and slight with brown hair. She lived in Rumlang, just north of Zürich. Mancini vanished late April 18, 1983, after walking
out her front door to go shopping nearby. Her skeleton was discovered about twelve miles away, in a foxhole in the woods.

Ferrari was familiar with the area where Mancini’s remains were found.

The fourth case was also the earliest of the murders to which Ferrari later confessed. Like Loredana Mancini, ten-year-old Benjamin Egli of Regensberg, just west of Rumlang, had gone shopping unescorted late on a Thursday afternoon.

Ferrari told police that he’d lured the boy off the street with promises they’d play together with toys at his house. Once he had the child in his car, Ferrari drove Benjamin to a woods, where he killed him.

The boy was found, fully clothed, with no evidence that he’d been bound, beaten, or sexually assaulted. Cause of death was strangulation by ligature, which must have been done carefully, since Benjamin’s hyoid bone was unharmed.

Ferrari said he murdered Egli after hearing people nearby. He said he feared being discovered with the youth.

He changed residences two weeks after the homicide.

Seven months later, on Mother’s Day, Saturday, May 12, 1984, eight-year-old Peter Roth of Mogelsberg, about thirty miles east of Zürich, vanished on his way home from school. No trace of the boy was ever found.

Daniel Suter was suspected victim number six. A blond seven-year-old, just over three feet tall, Daniel visited a fair in Rumlang with his parents on Saturday night, September 7, 1985.

Ferrari later confessed that he found the boy alone at the fair and lured Daniel into his car. Witnesses told a slightly different story of seeing a child answering Daniel’s description being forcibly abducted from the fairground.

Ferrari said that as they drove away together he tried to touch Daniel. The boy recoiled and tried to escape. That is when Ferrari strangled him with a curtain cord ligature—he
emphasized that he did not want to touch Daniel’s neck with his hands—and then bound the dead child neck-to-ankles with the cord.

He dumped Daniel Suter’s body in a cornfield less than a mile from where he killed him, and drove away with a keepsake, a toy ball belonging to Daniel.

Significantly, Ferrari had once been institutionalized in a juvenile home less than a half mile from where he disposed of Suter.

The boy’s body was recovered where Ferrari had dumped him. Daniel was fully dressed save for his jacket, a shoe, and one sock, which were missing. Cause of death was ligature strangulation.

There was no evidence of sexual assault, although Daniel’s pants were unzipped. He had not been beaten, and apparently had not struggled with Ferrari to any extent. The Suter boy suffered no defensive wounds.

Ferrari changed addresses within two months of the slaying.

Exactly three weeks later, on Saturday, September 28, 1985, Sarah Oberson, aged six, disappeared at midday on her way home from school. Sarah, who was small for her age, lived about 120 miles southwest of Zurich in a little town not far from the French border. There were no witnesses, and she was never found.

On Mother’s Day, Saturday, May 3, 1986, in Wetzikon, about twenty-five miles southeast of Zurich, nine-year-old Edith Trittenbass vanished on her way to school. The small, slender child was never found.

Another seventeen months passed before it was Christian Widmer’s turn.

Widmer vanished some time after 7:00 p.m. on Saturday night, October 17,1987, in the town of Riniken, northwest of Zürich. Christian was last seen inside a Riniken gymnasium, where the ten-year-old was attending a Boy Scout fair. He was reported missing at midnight.

Ferrari in his confession to this killing said he was in the neighborhood because a girlfriend lived behind the gym.

He said he met Christian in a hallway and invited the boy to a comic book kiosk. From there, the two went to a café for a sandwich and a Coke. Ferrari then walked the Widmer boy into a nearby woods, he said.

He insisted that all he wished to do with Christian was to lay his head on the boy’s body.

But Christian resisted Ferrari’s advances. Angered, the killer first tried to throttle the boy with his bare hands, he told police, but Christian began to cry. So Ferrari used his belt to strangle the youngster from behind.

He also inserted a stick in the dead boy’s rectum, he said, because he was angry.

Christian Widmer was neither bound nor beaten, nor did he show any defensive wounds when found. No seminal fluids were found, and his hyoid bone was undamaged.

Ferrari quit his job and broke off with his girlfriend within two months of murdering Widmer.

His final known victim in the series was Fabienne Imhof.

On August 26, 1989, a Saturday, nine-year-old Fabienne and an eight-year-old girlfriend attended a fair with Fabienne’s parents in Hagendorf, about halfway between Zurich and Niederbipp, where Rebecca Bieri was killed more than seven years earlier.

The girls became separated from Fabienne’s parents. While in search of them, Fabienne and her friend encountered Werner Ferrari.

He told the girls he knew where the adults were to be found, and offered to accompany Fabienne back to them, leaving her friend behind.

Ferrari led Imhof into a woods, where she began to cry, he later told police. After slapping Fabienne, he began to strangle her, but became frightened. He then pushed her face into the ground, and continued strangling her from behind.

Ferrari removed the child’s panties and took them away
with him, along with some of the little girl’s candy. As was true with the earlier cases, there was no indication that he beat the child or penetrated her with his penis. He did insert a stick into her vagina. Her hyoid bone was not damaged.

Ferrari later told the police he intended to quit his job following the crime. He also maintained that his motive was not sexual. All he wished to do was gain warmth from Fabienne’s body, he said.

After sorting and analyzing the pertinent details of the ten cases, Hazelwood turned his attention to Werner Ferrari’s personal history.