The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (62 page)

Sentenced To Life And Death

Twenty-nine-year-old Harrison Graham lived in a two-room apartment on the third floor of a house in Philadelphia in the US. His home was known as the “shooting gallery” on account of the drug addicts who regularly used the premises. It was well known to the police who made frequent visits.

On 9 August 1987, Graham was evicted from his apartment following complaints from neighbours about the smell. The occupant of the premises on the floor below was disturbed when blood began dripping through the ceiling.

A week later, Graham surrendered to the police and what they discovered almost defied description. In a filthy, stench-ridden room they found six bodies in varying states of decomposition. Some had been reduced to skeletons. A seventh body had been dismembered. The door of the room in which the corpses were stored had been nailed shut.

The bodies were those of female drug users who had been strangled. That some of the bodies had been reduced to skeletons indicated they had been in the house a considerable time. When he was questioned by the police, Graham confessed to killing the seven women.

Graham stood trial on seven counts of first-degree murder in February 1988. He appeared in the Common Pleas Court at Philadelphia, presided over by Judge Robert A. Latrone, sitting without a jury. The prosecution case was that Graham lured women to his apartment with the promise of drugs and strangled them during sex. He disposed of the corpses on an out-of-sight, out-of-mind basis by throwing them into his back room and nailing the door shut.

Graham’s defence team argued that he did not go out targeting women to kill – they came to him. He was described as a “dumb, passive conduit”, used by women who wanted access to drugs in his “shooting gallery”. The fact that he lived in an apartment surrounded by decomposing corpses indicated a mentally and emotionally disturbed individual. The defence ran a “not guilty by reason of insanity” strategy. Reference was made to his traumatic childhood and mental impairment.

Graham sat through the trial showing little animation apart from playing with his finger puppets, small brown monkeys. The judge rejected the insanity defence and ruled that the defendant was guilty of first-degree murder. When it came to determining the penalty for his crimes, the judge explained at length that he had the right to request a jury to decide. Graham’s only response was to ask the judge if he could have his “Monster Cookie” puppet back?

The defence argued against the death penalty, saying that Graham’s life should be spared to allow scientists to study his behaviour and personality. Judge Latrone’s sentence was unusual. He ruled that Graham should serve seven life sentences and six death penalties. This was a legal strategem which would ensure the convicted serial killer would remain in prison with no prospect of release. Thus, Graham was sentenced both to life and death in one judgment.

Searching For The Perfect Sex Slave

Gerald Armand Gallego was so reviled on account of his crimes that he was moved from prison in California, which was soft on the death penalty at the time, and taken across the border to neighbouring Nevada where it was believed he would get his “just deserts”.

Gerald Gallego had a pedigree of violence. His father was executed in 1955 in Mississippi at the age of twenty-eight for murdering a prison guard. Gerald showed criminal tendencies at an early age and developed an insatiable sexual appetite. He committed his first offence at the age of thirteen, he was married at eighteen and had an incestuous relationship with his daughter. By the time he reached thirty-two, he had been married seven times.

In 1978, he bigamously married twenty-one-year-old Charlene Williams. She admired his macho personality and went along with his stated desire to find “the perfect sex slave”. She helped him in his quest, luring young women into his clutches, which involved keeping them captive in the back of their van so that Gallego could rape them while Charlene kept watch in the cab.

Between 24 June 1979 and 17 July 1980, the Gallegos abducted six women in the Sacramento area. After being beaten and raped, the victims were driven to remote spots where they were shot dead and their bodies dumped. Some of the bodies were later discovered near Lovelock, a small town in Nevada.

On 2 November 1980, a young couple leaving a restaurant in Sacramento were accosted by the marauding Gallegos. Charlene ordered them at gunpoint into the van where Gallego was waiting. Craig Miller and Beth Sowers, both in their twenties, had been at a dance and a friend saw them with Charlene and thought the situation looked suspicious. He informed the police about the incident and officers interviewed Charlene at her parents’ home, receiving evasive answers.

In the meantime, the body of Craig Miller was found in nearby Eldorado County with three gunshot wounds to the head. By now, Charlene had fled but detectives realized they were looking for both her and Gerald Gallego. They caught up with the pair in Omaha, Nebraska, and a few days later the body of Beth Sowers was discovered. She was found in a field with three gunshot wounds in the back of her head.

While Gallego proved to be an unco-operative prisoner, Charlene endulged in plea-bargaining and made a complete confession to their crimes. Her story was that she was Gallego’s sex slave and felt compelled to find new slaves for him. The couple were returned to California to face trial where, in return for her testimony, Charlene was sentenced to sixteen years in prison. Gerald Gallego was sentenced to death for the murders of Miller and Sowers.

The fact that there had been no execution in California for seventeen years upset the citizens of Lovelock, Nevada, where some of Gallego’s victims had been killed. In a deal between state officials, Gallego was removed from San Quentin and transferred across the border to Nevada.

When it became known that Lovelock could not afford to stage the trial, the public responded by contributing money. Thousands of citizens throughout the USA sent donations to the town clerk to ensure that Gallego would be tried in a state that supported the death penalty. A note attached to one offering said simply, “Hang the bastard by his toes”.

Charlene and Gerald Gallego were tried at Lovelock for two murders. She received two prison sentences of sixteen years to run concurrently and he received a second death sentence. He was scheduled to die by lethal injection but, in 1977, a higher court decided Gallego was entitled to a new sentencing hearing due to an irregularity in earlier proceedings. Charlene was released in 1977 while he remained on Death Row awaiting the outcome of various appeals.

Red Light Killer

Poughkeepsie, a normally quiet college town in New York State, was terrorized by a serial killer in the late 1990s. The victims were mostly drawn from the red light district where they worked as prostitutes or frequented drug-dealing premises.

In October 1996 a thirty-year-old woman was reported missing and, in the ensuing months, seven other women disappeared. No bodies were discovered and there was no evidence of any crimes having been committed. There were though, common factors linking the missing women. First, there was the sex trade connection and the women were mostly in their twenties; second, all were of short, slim build, white with brown hair. Another consideration was that they lived independently and had few links with their families.

The police suspected a serial killer was at work and as the number of disappearances mounted, so tensions rose in Poughkeepsie and citizens became fearful. Investigators scrutinized offender files and they started to focus on a local man who had been charged with assault on a prostitute.

Francois Kendall, aged twenty-seven, worked as a hall monitor at a community school. His personal habits left something to be desired and the children called him “stinky”. Kendall was co-operative with investigators and was willing to admit them to his home. He lived in a two-storey house with his parents and a sister. Officers found nothing incriminating, possibly being deterred by the state of the property, which was strewn with litter and distinguished by an offensive smell.

No action was taken until Kendall’s name came up again in an assault complaint from a woman who said she had gone to his house and been abused. She talked her way out of a threatening situation and reported it to the police.

Kendall’s home was searched and, braving the appalling smell, officers solved the mystery of what had happened to the missing women of Poughkeepsie. The remains of eight bodies were found in the house in various stages of decomposition. Some had been dismembered and put into plastic boxes or trash bags. Others had been stored in the attic and in the crawl space under the house.

Kendall had begun picking up women in downtown Poughkeepsie since 1996 and taking them home. Over a period of nearly two years, he took prostitutes back to his house and had sex with them in the garage. Some escaped his worst predations but others were strangled and dismembered
with saws. The house was filthy, littered with discarded clothing, personal effects, old newspapers and used condoms. Neighbours thought the stench arising from Kendall’s home was simply due to the filthy living conditions. No one suspected the real horrors to be found there.

Medical teams pieced together the human remains recovered from the house and made identification of the victims by means of tattoos and dental records. In due course, Kendall was charged with the murders of eight women and sent for trial. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Six-Six-Six

Ambulance personnel called to a crime scene in Scotland found sixteen-year-old Luke Mitchell calmly sitting beside the mutilated body of his girlfriend.

Fourteen-year-old Jodi Jones lay dead in woods near Roan’s Dyke at Dalkeith, Midlothian. She had been bludgeoned, strangled and mutilated with cuts to her breast and abdomen. Mitchell, who said he had found the body while out walking with his dog, busied himself with his mobile phone while the ambulance crew went about their routines.

Mitchell’s indifference raised eyebrows among investigators and this hardened into suspicion as they learned more about the teenager. He came from a broken home and lived in a state bordering on squalor, not washing himself or his clothes regularly. He was interested in the occult and fascinated by knives and drugs. When questioned, he was defiant and showed no guilt over his girlfriend’s death.

There was no evidence of sexual assault and no DNA evidence to provide a link between the victim and Mitchell, who by now was the main suspect. Information filtered through from his school about his fractious behaviour, defying teachers and exerting an unhealthy influence over other pupils. It also emerged that he had threatened a fellow pupil with a knife. His fascination with violence and satanism was well known.

Detectives questioning Mitchell found themselves up against a cunning and unemotional individual. A knife pouch found in Mitchell’s possession bore the initials of the dead girl, JJ and the legend 666, the supposed mark of the “Great Beast”. The teenager was a fan of American goth rocker Marilyn Manson who had an obsession with the notorious Black Dahlia murder case in California in 1947 (
see page 329
). The Black Dahlia, whose real name was Elizabeth Short, had been killed and mutilated in a way that had echoes in the death of Jodi Jones.

When it became known that Mitchell was planning on taking another girlfriend on holiday, the scenario in which he had a confrontation with Jodi became apparent. On 21 November 2003, police investigators reported to the prosecutor fiscal that Luke Mitchell was their prime suspect. The teenager was arrested in April 2004 and charged with murder.

He was tried at Edinburgh High Court in January 2005. The case against Mitchell was that he had a violent confrontation with Jodi Jones over his admission that he had another girlfriend. With no DNA evidence or murder weapon, the prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence. Reference was made to Mitchell’s interest in the occult and satanism. In his summing-up, the judge, Lord Nimmo-Smith, said the resemblance between the injuries inflicted on Jodi Jones and those shown in Marilyn Manson’s painting of the Black Dahlia could not be ignored. “I think,” he said, “that you carried an image of the paintings in your memory when you killed Jodi.”

Mitchell showed no emotion when the judge sentenced him to imprisonment for at least twenty years. In August 2009 doubts were expressed about the circumstantial nature of the evidence used to convict Mitchell and, in particular, questions regarding new DNA evidence.

Opportune Killer

A long-distance truck driver raped and strangled a nineteen-year-old French girl who asked him for a lift. He kept her body hidden in his cab while he travelled around the UK making deliveries and celebrating Christmas.

Celine Figard, an accountancy student, was making her way to Fordingbridge in the New Forest where she planned to spend the Christmas holiday. On 19 December 1995, she had travelled from Kent and reached the Chieveley service area on the M4 near Newbury. She was seen talking to the driver of a white Mercedes truck and enquiring about a possible lift to Salisbury.

When the young woman failed to turn up at Fordingbridge as expected, she was reported missing. The police mounted an intensive search for the driver of the white truck. They contacted road haulage contractors and began interviewing the owners of over 7,000 white Mercedes vehicles.

Celine’s body was found on 29 December by a motorist who stopped at a lay-by on the A449 near Worcester. Her naked body had been dumped in the undergrowth. The search for the missing woman became a murder hunt and the breakthrough came when officers interviewed thirty-seven-year-old Stuart Morgan.

Morgan drove a white Mercedes truck and lived with his wife and son in Poole, Dorset. He denied being at the Chieveley service area and refused to give a DNA sample. Examination of his mobile phone records indicated that he had been at Chieveley on the day Celine Figard disappeared. Morgan was arrested in February 1996 and a driver picked him out on an identity parade. Once his truck was examined and his home searched, his denials collapsed. His DNA matched that found in his truck cab and the contents of his victim’s rucksack were found hidden in his garden. The garage contained the blood-soaked mattress that he had removed from his vehicle.