The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (63 page)

To all intents and purposes, Morgan was a respectable individual, although some who knew him described him as a womanizer and petty criminal. His occupation as a truck driver gave him the opportunity to travel to different places on legitimate business. His usual routine was to leave his home on Sunday and return at the end of the week. He was leading a double-life as a family man in Poole and an itinerant philanderer.

Morgan was tried for murder at Worcester Crown Court in October 1996. He denied harming Celine Figard although he
admitted that they had sexual intercourse which he claimed was consensual. The prosecution had a case in which the victim was seen leaving Chieveley in Morgan’s white Mercedes truck on the last day she was known to be alive. He had raped and strangled her and then concealed her body in his vehicle, driving about his normal business before parking outside his home where he spent Christmas. When the festive holiday ended, he drove up to Worcester where he dumped the body.

Mr Justice Latham told Morgan he considered him a dangerous man. The jury brought in a unanimous guilty verdict and the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment. The police said they were also looking at two unsolved murders of women whose bodies had been found close to motorways in the Midlands.

Small Change

A Canadian former soldier adopted an unusual criminal scheme that could hardly be described as a money-maker. Herbert McAuliffe set out with the single-minded aim of counterfeiting his national currency, choosing the Canadian half-dollar coin as the object of his forger’s skill.

Having served in the Canadian armed services during the Second World War and achieving non-commissioned rank, McAuliffe also acquired workshop skills that might have been useful to him in a legitimate civilian occupation. He chose instead to use his talents in another direction and, following his dishonourable discharge from the army on charges of theft, he prepared for a career in crime. Perhaps in anticipation of trouble ahead, he equipped himself with a Thompson submachine gun and several automatic pistols.

Settling in Windsor, Ontario, he rented garage premises as a workshop, telling the owner that he was working on weapons research for the government. In order to fulfil his counterfeiting plans, McAuliffe needed some precision machinery such as lathes and die presses. His answer to the problem of raising funds was to rob a few filling stations and grocery outlets. By these means, he funded his research into the process of making fifty-cent pieces that would pass as genuine currency. Learning the art of the counterfeiter more or less from scratch, he perfected a method of using base metal die-stamped and finished with silver electro-plating. Thus, he became the first person successfully to forge Canadian half-dollar coins.

In order to test his coins, he took a supply across the US border to a gambling joint in Detroit, which accepted Canadian currency. The McAuliffe half-dollars were accepted with no problems. Emboldened by this success, he determined to make more coins but began to realize that his operating costs were too high – in fact, it cost him forty cents to make each fifty-cent coin.

His answer to this dilemma was to acquire funds to buy new counterfeiting machinery by robbing a bank. He selected a branch of the Imperial Bank of Canada in the small town of Langton, Ontario. Having stolen a car and armed himself with his Thompson sub-machine gun, he walked into the bank and in classic gangster style told the counter clerk, “This is a stick-up.”

While customers recoiled in horror he ordered the clerk to open the vault and scooped over $20,000 into a holdall. He then ordered the customers to move into the vault so that he could make his getaway. His mistake, as it turned out, was not securing the vault door.

No sooner had McAuliffe made his getaway than two bank customers were in hot pursuit. He stopped his car brandishing his Tommy gun and directed bursts of fire at his pursuers, killing both of them outright. If he had a plan, he now abandoned it, leaving the stolen car and proceeds of his robbery behind. The bank robber and now murderer fled into the countryside where he became the target of a large manhunt.

After three days on the run, McAuliffe was discovered holed up in a farm building. He was put on trial for murder at Simcoe and, in due course, was convicted of double murder, for which he received a death sentence. This was carried out on 19 December 1950. What drove him to counterfeiting remained a mystery, especially as the rewards were so small but, in the end, it was his bungled bank robbery that sealed his fate.

Budapest To Vienna Express

Sylvestre Matushka was a Hungarian businessman in Budapest after the First World War. He had served in the army during the war and, on release, developed a number of business interests including a delicatessen. He also dabbled in the post-war black market and, in 1927, was charged with fraud and acquitted.

This seemed to be a turning point in his life. He moved to Vienna where he began to buy explosives and made several attempts to derail trains. On 1 January 1931, he tried unsuccessfully to derail the Vienna-Passau express and, later in the year, succeeded in overturning several carriages of the Vienna-Berlin express, injuring sixteen people.

He finally made his mark on 12 September 1932 when he set off an explosion that derailed the Budapest-Vienna express as it crossed a viaduct at Bia-Torbagy. In the chaos that followed, Matuschka smeared himself with blood and lay down among the victims. Twenty-two people lost their lives that day.

Following this tragic incident, Matushka sued Hungarian Railways for compensation because of alleged injuries. In the course of their enquiries, investigators found that he had not been a passenger on the train. Suspecting a fraudulent claim, investigators visited Matuschka at his home where they found detailed maps of rail networks in Holland, France and Italy.

When questioned, Matuschka said he had begun attacking trains when the railway authorities failed to implement a safety procedure he had invented. His real reasons were more deep-seated, as it transpired later in court. He was put on trial in June 1932 in Vienna.

Matuschka mounted an insanity defence based on a childhood incident at a fairground when a hypnotist put the idea of crashes in his mind. His antics in court seemed designed to support his insanity plea as he wept, ranted and trembled by turns. The prosecutor argued that Matuschka’s motive lay in a sadistic impulse. The jury could not agree a verdict and a second trial was called for.

At the second hearing, incriminating evidence was brought out concerning the rail maps found in Matuschka’s home which
had been annotated in red ink, apparently planning future disasters. His response was to exploit his insanity defence by offering prayers and then claiming he had been instructed to kill by a spirit voice. This availed him nothing and the jury found him guilty. On 20 November 1934, he was sentenced to death. There seems some doubt over whether he was hanged or had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

Butcher’s Boy

Penelope Mitchell married young to escape from an unhappy home. She and her husband, Alan, seemed a contented couple with two children and a home in Paarl, in South Africa’s winegrowing region. But underneath the serene exterior lurked unfulfilled passions in so far as Alan Mitchell, approaching middle age, had lost interest in sex, to the frustration of his wife.

In 1981, tragedy struck the Mitchell household when Alan was murdered, practically on his own doorstep. Penelope heard the car door slam when Alan returned home and left the car on the driveway. When he did not enter the house she went out to investigate and found him lying on the path with a grievous head wound. He died in hospital from what doctors concluded was an injury inflicted with an axe.

He appeared to have been struck down by someone lying in wait who disappeared immediately after the blow was struck, taking the murder weapon with him. The strength and height needed to inflict the wound suggested that the assailant was a man. Robbery did not appear to be the motive and Alan Mitchell had no known enemies.

When detectives began to delve more closely into the Mitchells’ domestic life, they found that Penelope had a reputation as a hypnotist. She held regular sessions in her home which, to all intents and purposes, were light-hearted affairs.

When the police received an anonymous tip-off suggesting they made enquiries of the local butcher, the investigation took a different turn. The butcher proved to be both elderly
and small in stature and not likely to be the axe murderer. His delivery boy, though, was a vigorous and strong young man. Noel Hatting was invited to answer a few questions.

The delivery boy admitted that he had been having sex with Penelope Mitchell at times when her husband and children were away. He claimed that she had seduced him. This explained why none of the neighbours had reported seeing any strangers in the vicinity. Noel Hatting was a familiar figure doing his delivery rounds.

He had baulked when Penelope suggested murdering her husband to clear the way for their otherwise furtive lovemaking. Hatting maintained that on the day Alan Mitchell was killed, he had been hypnotized by Penelope and found himself standing outside the house holding a hatchet with Alan lying wounded on the ground. He said Penelope told him he had killed her husband while he claimed to have no memory of the event.

Penelope had a different version of events. She claimed that Hatting made the running and that she had tried to end their affair. She alleged that he threatened to inform her husband about their relationship. On the day of the murder, she went out to welcome her returning husband and found Noel Hatting, bloody axe in hand, standing over his stricken body.

When thieves and lovers fall out, there are always two different stories. Their trial jury believed they had acted in concert and both knew what they were doing. It was made clear that someone acting under hypnosis would not commit an act that they instinctively found abhorrent. The implication was that Noel Hatting fully understood what he was doing and that Penelope had provided the murder weapon. The trial jury in January 1982 convicted them of murder and they were sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

“. . . I Can’t Pull Away”

Adele Kohr, a young nurse driving home to East Islip on Long Island, New York State, on 20 July 1970, was bothered by a car which was tailgaiting her. Sensing danger, she drove faster to pull ahead of the following vehicle but she could not dislodge
the driver. When he drew alongside, she realized she was in trouble.

With great presence of mind, Adele pulled a notebook from her bag and, while driving with one hand on the steering wheel, scribbled a note with her free hand. “A man in a car pulled alongside me . . . he wants me to stop . . . he is following me in the same lane and I can’t pull away . . . doing sixty-five . . .” She described the driver as a hippy type wearing a beard, glasses and a blue shirt. She even noted the model, colour and part registration number of his car.

When she was less than a mile from home, the driver succeeded in forcing her off the road. He blocked her possible escape route by backing up in front of her car. As he approached, she made one last scribbled entry in the pad beside her noting that he was wearing dark-coloured trousers.

Adele’s car was found abandoned by the roadside with the engine still running and the headlights on. Her notebook lay on the passenger’s seat. Her body was found next day some twenty miles away. She had been beaten, raped and strangled; in a final brutal act, her killer had driven over her body.

Crime scene investigators realized that the notes made by the murdered woman provided the likely key to the identity of her killer. Using her brief description of the car that pursued her, they made a short list of car owners and began the process of elimination.

Enquiries led to the female owner of a green Pontiac Tempest who lived in Islip and, through her, to Robert Meyer, her husband. He broadly corresponded to the description Adele had written down of a bearded individual wearing glasses. Meyer did not demur at being taken to police headquarters for questioning, and before he reached the interview room, admitted that he was sick and needed help.

Detectives discovered that Meyer had previous convictions for attacks on women, including the kidnapping, robbing and raping of a young woman a few weeks previously. Meyer was sent for trial and pleaded a defence of temporary insanity. He was judged guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty-five years to life imprisonment.

Adele Kohr’s quick thinking under pressure failed to save her life but it did help to bring her killer to justice.

“. . . I Think You Will Find My Wife Dead”

The difference between suicidal and homicidal strangulation stood between a death sentence and life imprisonment.

In the early hours of 21 November 1931, Peter Queen, a Glasgow bookmaker, appeared at a police station in the city and said to the duty officer, “Go to 539 Dumbarton Road, I think you will find my wife dead.” Twenty-one-year-old Chrissie Gall, his common-law wife, was found lying in bed with a ligature made from a clothesline around her neck. She was dead from strangulation.

An immediate source of controversy was what exactly Queen told the police. He claimed to have said, “Don’t think I killed her.” The police version of what he was alleged to have said was, “I think I have killed her.” Within hours of the discovery of the body, Queen was charged with murder.

Peter Queen was the son of a bookmaker in a family of six children. His father hired Chrissie Gall as a nursemaid. She and Queen fell for each other, but the young woman’s addiction to alcohol was a burden. He tried to break her of the habit and they moved in together, living as man and wife.

Chrissie was disturbed by her unmarried status, which she referred to as “living in sin” and was upset about deceiving her family. She increasingly found solace in drink and threatened several times to commit suicide. At the beginning of November, visitors to their house noticed that the coat peg behind the kitchen door was broken. Curious, they asked Queen about it and he said that Chrissie had tried to hang herself.