He was handsome, charming and wealthy. Henry Howard Holmes owned a large hotel in Chicago in the 1880s and was thus able to provide unmarried women with a decent future. Many women came to Chicago in those years, hoping to find work at the World’s Fair, which was opening its doors there. Holmes gave them a roof over their heads and, after only a few days, proposed marriage to many of them. Even earlier, he persuaded them to take out insurance in his favour. The women who listened to him sealed their fate.
H.H. Holmes was a con man and multiple murderer, and his hotel was a hotel of horrors with many hidden passageways and torture chambers, underground rooms and execution chambers. As soon as he got hold of the insurance policy in his favour, he locked the unfortunate woman in a room and gassed her or simply left her to starve to death. Some of his victims were drugged, dragged into one of his secret rooms and hanged. He dumped the corpses down a chute so that they fell straight into the cellar, where he cut them up and dissolved them in acid or burned them in the furnace.
“He was a psychopath without any compassion,” noted psychologist and professor David Canter, who has worked extensively on the case. H.H. Holmes was actually Herman Webster Mudgett, born in 1860 in New Hampshire, USA, into a simple family. He wanted to study medicine, but there was no money in the house, so he would dig up corpses at night and sell them secretly to the university’s anatomy department. He later staged his own death, changed his identity and married several women at the same time. He made a considerable fortune from fraud and murder and used it to build a hotel in Chicago called The Castle before the World’s Fair opened in 1893. Holmes is considered the first serial killer in America, and is said to have murdered nearly 200 people, although he only confessed to 27 murders in a newspaper interview. He was hanged on 7 May 1896.
“Serial killers kill pragmatically, emotionlessly and in cold blood, and their actions are characterised by boundless egotism.” Holmes, too, knew no shame, no doubts, and even killed children out of a murderous urge. His case is still being studied in America today, trying to find out how serial killers work, because after all, they live among us and may be our neighbours, acquaintances or friends.
Houses of horror also play a dark role in such and similar acts. Holmes’s hotel was one such place, with its torture chambers and dungeon-like cutting chambers, where he, like other criminals, acted out his fantasies by killing his victims slowly. The Amityville House, built in 1927 in the Dutch neo-colonial style, has also been called a place of horror by newspapers in America. One morning on 13 November 1974, Ronald DeFeo was running through the sleepy village of Amityville on Long Island, calling for help: “My father and mother have been shot!”
When the police arrived at the house, they found six bodies; Ronald’s parents and his four sisters, shot from behind at point-blank range. DeFeo accused his former friend, Tony Mazzeo, a convicted professional killer, of the murder. But when Mazzeo proved his alibi, DeFeo confessed to the crime himself. He claimed to have heard unidentified voices ordering him to kill his family. The jury did not believe him and sentenced him to twenty-five years in prison.
The case continues to attract attention today. The noise of the first shots should have awakened the rest of the family, but no one defended themselves and tried to flee. Was DeFeo really alone at the time? The incident was followed up in 1975. The new owners fled the house because it was supposedly haunted. The occupants heard strange voices and noises. Doors were opened at night, things were moving. Today, the owners are mainly disturbed by tourists from all over America who come to see the house. DeFeo’s motive is still unclear. Did he kill for drugs or for his inheritance? Did he want to get rid of his hated father?
By professional standards, DeFeo is not a serial killer, but a multiple killer. Serial killers are defined by the FBI as “three or more independent events occurring in different locations and characterised by the emotional coldness of the perpetrator between each act.”
What does it mean in different places? This definition raises more questions than it answers and is based on the misconception that serial killers are exclusively sexual killers. Sexual acts in the true sense of the word are rarely their primary motive, but rather power and total control over the victim. The motives of serial killers can be greed, revenge, delusional perceptions. They also include professional killers who kill for pay. However, a true demarcation is not always possible, and it is therefore sometimes possible to observe a mixture of different forms of crime. The perpetrators do not follow a textbook. This is also demonstrated by the following example.
Dr Harold Shipman’s practice near the industrial city of Manchester was open six days a week and the waiting room was always full. The popular doctor always made time for his patients, listening to their problems and giving them advice. They all regarded him as a fellow citizen in whom they could have complete confidence. Dr Shipman was a father of four and a member of the school board, and he also ran the nearby ambulance station. No one had any idea that he had killed more than a hundred people in the 28 years between 1970 and 1998. How could they have had any idea, because people do die.
Then “Dr Death”, as he was later called, made a mistake. His patient, Kathleen Grundy, was already 81 years old, but her death surprised her relatives because she had always been lively and healthy. The surprise was even greater when her daughter learned that the old woman had left her entire estate to Dr Shipman. Kathleen Grundy had made a will years before, leaving her entire estate to her daughter.
The daughter informed the police, who soon found out that the new will was forged. Dr Shipman had written it on his victim’s typewriter and forged the signature. The body was exhumed and an autopsy concluded that Kathleen had died of a morphine overdose. Several other corpses of the doctor’s patients were exhumed and it turned out that the “kindly doctor” had given them all the lethal injection.
Shipman remained silent and his motive was unclear. He had no need for money, and the forged will was an exception that proved fatal. He neither tortured his victims nor “relieved” them of their pain, because they were not seriously ill. Perhaps he imagined himself to be omnipotent.
Serial killing of patients – perpetrated by doctors or nurses – is not an unknown phenomenon, although it was very rare decades ago. Dealing with patients at the mercy of doctors on a daily basis is sometimes too much for doctors and nurses to bear. They therefore project their own professional problems onto patients, convinced that if they murder the patient, they can solve the problem. This is the reverse logic of serial killers and their behaviour cannot be judged by normal criteria.
Shipman has never repented. In letters he wrote from prison to a friendly couple, he mocked the victims’ relatives. He certainly showed signs of self-pity. In 2004, he hanged himself in his cell. He left behind many questions. Where did his murderous passion come from? Could it have been inherited?
Manson’s killer “family”
To find out what drove him to murder, the forensic medicine department in Gottingen put Fritz Haarmann’s head in formalin after his beheading in 1925. Between 1918 and 1924, the “Hannover Vampire” killed at least 24 young men by biting their necks. He sold their clothes, but it has never been proven that he tried to sell their canned meat.
The examination of Haarmann’s skull has not yielded any specific results, but other serial killers have shown brain abnormalities. They are thought to function differently from those of other people. While it is possible to observe these phenomena, it is difficult to draw conclusions from them, so great caution must be exercised when assessing human behaviour in such extreme cases.
Charles Manson was also driven to his actions by madness. In the mid-1960s, intoxicated by LSD and other drugs, the “flower children” dreamt of a better world. But Manson’s slogan of “love and peace instead of war” turned into its opposite. A failed musician, repeatedly punished for theft, credit card forgery and pimping, he was convinced that he would be the one to save the world.
When he was paroled from prison in 1967 at the age of 32, he had already spent 20 years of his life in prisons and correctional institutions. He lived in San Francisco as a street musician and founded the hippie commune The Family. He claimed to be Jesus and Satan in one person and to rule the world. He believed that the Beatles were the “angels of the apocalypse” and that they had sent him a special secret message in one of their songs. He could not say what it was, but it certainly did not bode well and meant death for at least nine people.
He tortured a drug dealer who supplied the Family with drugs and with whom he had a falling out for two days, ripped off his ear and then ordered a sect member to kill him. A few days later, he sent four members of his group to the villa of the film director Roman Polanski, who was not in the house at the time. They dismembered his pregnant wife Sharon Tate, her unborn child, her four friends and a bystander with several gunshots and knife wounds. The walls of the villa were smeared with the blood of the victims.
The next day, Manson’s followers killed a couple and a member of the Family, whom Manson thought had betrayed them to the police. Although Manson himself did not commit the murders, the sect leader found himself in the dock. He became a star of the “underground” movement, his trial a media spectacle, and the judge complained that it was like a circus show. He was found guilty and faced the death penalty, but in 1972 California abolished the death penalty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Today, he is 81 years old and still receives marriage proposals, numerous gifts and letters in prison.
Austrian Jack Unterweger is also a media star. Released from prison in 1990, he was sent there in 1974 after the murder of a woman, while a second murder could not be proved. In prison he began to write and his books made him famous as the “prison poet ” . Well-known writers such as Günter Grass and Elfriede Jelinek stood up for him and demanded his early release from prison.
Unterweger has become a child prodigy of resocialisation. As soon as he was released from prison, he was invited to talk to the cameras as an “expert” on the complex murders of prostitutes. No one suspected that he was speaking from his own experience. In fact, he had gone on the hunt for prostitutes several times while at large. He himself was the son of one of them, and he strangled his victims with their underwear.
As with Manson, his trial was a media spectacle. His arrogant performance drew both outrage and approval. Despite his claims of innocence, he was found guilty of nine counts of murder and failed to prove two other murders. But before the verdict became final, he hanged himself in his cell.
His “work” has added a piece to the mosaic of understanding serial killers. They tend to target people who are physically weaker than they are, usually women, but also children and the elderly, whose sudden disappearance does not attract much attention.
Women kill differently
But Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute, also considered herself a victim. She never met her father, a sex offender, and her under-age mother left her upbringing to her grandparents; her grandmother was an alcoholic, her grandfather a bully. Aileen was abused as a child by her father and brother. Her grandfather forced her out of the home when she was raped by one of his friends as a 14-year-old girl and became pregnant. She then turned to prostitution and burglary to survive.
She lived like this for twenty years, until her anger at the world came out in full force. She had had enough of the greed and brutality of the pimps of these strange demands of the parties and she struck back. In just one year she shot seven men. First she shot a pimp in November 1989 and then other men she met. She vented all her anger at her miserable life in these murders. She shot at them as if possessed, until she fired the last bullet from her weapon. She told the court: “I feel like a hero, because I have done something good by getting these pigs out of the world.”
She was sentenced to death in 1992 and executed by lethal injection in Florida ten years later. “I killed in cold blood and would do it again. I would kill others because I hate people.” As a serial killer, Aileen is completely atypical. When women are murdered, they usually resort to different methods of execution than men. A well-known crime reporter confessed: “In the 174 cases I have been involved in, not once has the killer used a revolver.”
Women’s favourite remedies are poison or abandonment. Only in rare cases do they strangle their victims or attack them with a knife. Women’s motives are also different from men’s. The same criminal investigator continued: “While men generally kill to control and destroy their victims in one way or another, women kill because they do not want to be controlled.” Women often find themselves in distress and that is when they kill. Most often in their immediate environment, often within the family circle. They are overwhelmed by the circumstances and use murder to get rid of their violent partner. Murder of their own child is also common.
The murder of a child is particularly shocking. The heinous crimes of Belgian Marc Dutroux have caused outrage and disgust around the world. The former prostitute was first accused of rape in 1983, but was acquitted. A year later, he was suspected of murder, a case that was never solved. It was not until 1986 that he and his girlfriend Michelle Martin were arrested. The couple kidnapped five girls and young women, imprisoned them, abused them and filmed them for a paedophile ring.
After three years, Dutroux was released early from prison. He became involved in drug trafficking, theft and violence, and built a small prison in the basement of his house. In June 1995, he imprisoned two eight-year-old girls and kidnapped two other minors. He abused all four victims and filmed them doing so. When he was arrested in 1995 for theft, the two older girls were already dead. The police searched the house but did not find the younger girls. While Dutroux was in prison, his partner starved them both to death. When he was released from prison, Dutroux buried the bodies in his garden.
In 1996, he abducted two girls again, but was observed by a witness and arrested. The trial turned into a scandal and the investigation dragged on forever. During that time, an incredible 27 witnesses died, all of them willing to testify, and a prosecutor committed suicide. In 1998, Dutroux managed to escape from prison, which led to the resignation of a minister and two police chiefs.
In the end, he was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment after six years in prison. Where the tentacles of this morbid case reached, presumably into the highest circles of government, has never been known. “Anything is possible and we have to think of everything”, the newspapers proclaimed.
So no one had any idea that John Wayne Gacy, a prominent construction entrepreneur, was a perverted serial killer. He supported the Democrats politically and performed as a clown at street events and in hospitals, giving courage to children with cancer. In 1978, he was also publicly praised as a great philanthropist by America’s First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
A man of love, he was appreciated everywhere. But neighbours had long complained about the unbearable stench emanating from his house. It was the stench of the decomposing bodies of his victims buried under the house. It was only when a 15-year-old boy disappeared in December 1978 and the haunted people started shouting and screaming about why the police were doing nothing, that the police came to their senses. The missing boy had applied for a job with Gacy.
They searched his house and found handcuffs and torture devices. Gacy was arrested and later confessed to luring 33 young men to his house and killing them. Some of them he had also tied up, raped and tortured. Two managed to escape, but the police did not believe their stories. Gacy had previously been convicted of sexual abuse and his first wife divorced him as a result.
Many of the killers have a long list with the police, and some have spoken publicly or covertly about their actions. But the police either ignore this or do not understand the meaning of their statements. For many, the thought that horrors we know only from the movies could be happening in our immediate vicinity is unthinkable. Jürgen Bartsch, the four-time child murderer who killed children in the 1960s, confessed his first murder in church. But the priest was convinced that he had to keep quiet about what had been confided to him in confession. Three more children had to die as a result.
Not all serial killers are ever caught by the police, not only because evidence is ignored, but also because it is sometimes difficult to find a link between the many murders. Serial killers also behave inconspicuously, making sure that their outer glamour hides their inner self, often starting a family and living an outwardly solid family life. They try to remain as inconspicuous as possible and strive for social integration into society.
They are generally accepted as equals by their social environment. While the right social environment has a calming effect on them, offenders still live in two worlds. When a crisis erupts, such as a divorce, they retreat into their perverse fantasies, and the impulses that drive them to murder intensify. Cary murdered only two victims before his divorce, and at least thirteen after that. He was executed in 1994.
See your mirror image
The Russian teacher Andrei Chikatilo also had a deep inner crisis when his demon possessed him. The father of two was already 42 years old when he began to suffer from impotence. Two days before Christmas in 1978, he was beaten by his pupils for sexually harassing one of them. After the beating, he took refuge in a small hut he owned.
On the way there, he met nine-year-old Lena, lured her into a hut and tried to rape her, but failed. In a rage, he stabbed her and had an orgasm. This was the start of a horrific series of murders. In the 52 murders that followed – most of which he found among children and prostitutes – he became increasingly bloodthirsty. He gouged out their eyes, cut out their hearts, ate their genitals and cut out their tongues. He was nicknamed the “Killer of Rostov”. Three years elapsed between the first and second murders, and then the intervals became shorter and shorter. In 1984 alone, he killed 15 people.
Such a development is typical of serial killers. The horrors are usually triggered by a decisive event, at which the perpetrators discover their true inclinations. Often it is the slaughter of an animal that excites them. This gives rise to fantasies that culminate in the desire to kill, and one day they succumb to this desire. Initially, the perpetrator is shocked at the thought, realising that this is not normal and fearing that he will be found out.
At first, he just thinks about the act for a while, thus engaging his imagination. But then his fantasy is no longer enough to give him sexual satisfaction. Thinking like this completely exhausts him, and the drive to kill grows stronger and stronger. The first time he is not caught, his restraint is lowered. At the latest, after the second unpunished murder, he becomes very confident and the murder begins to intoxicate him.
Before they started killing, all serial killers felt like pariahs and scum. Emotional poverty, passivity, egoistic tendencies and a sense of inferiority are just some of their typical characteristics. As the number of murders increases, they acquire a new identity. Cary said: “There is no man in the world who loves me and who will always stand by me. So I take what no one is willing to give me.” The roots of feelings of inferiority can often be traced back to the perpetrator’s rejected childhood. Many of them were abused or neglected as children.
The desire for love was the reason why Martha Beck became a murderer. As an overweight girl, she was subjected to ridicule all her life. Through advertisements, she met the con-man and murderer Raymond Fernandez, and completely fell for him. She did everything to win his heart – even murder. Together, they sought out lonely women through advertisements and then robbed and murdered them. The media called them the Lonely Hearts Killers. Fernandez shot one of the women in front of her two-year-old daughter. When the little girl started to cry, Martha drowned her in the sink. She told the court: “I killed in the name of love.”
From 1947 to 1949, Martha Beck and Fernandez murdered 20 women. This trial was also a media spectacle, showing the public their unusual love life in detail. In 1951, they both died in the electric chair.
Serial killers strike fear into our hearts, but they also fascinate us in their own way, because they go beyond all reasonable limits. That is why many of us may wonder how much of a serial killer they may be. When Charles Manson was asked what he thought people saw in him, he gave a disturbing answer: “A mirror image of myself.”
Serial killers are always arrested by the police in the end. They keep killing until they make a mistake and their career is over. But the most famous serial killer of all time made no mistakes and was never caught by the police. Even today, forensic experts argue about who it could be and conspiracy theories abound. More than a hundred people have been suspected, yet suspicions have proved to be unjustified or insufficiently justified. Jack the Ripper was a man who did not let himself be caught.
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Jack the Ripper
In 1888, Jack the Ripper murdered prostitutes, mainly in the poor areas of London around Whitechapel. He cut their necks and removed their internal abdominal organs. This is why the police were convinced that he knew anatomy and surgery. The police could not link all eleven of the brutal murders that had taken place in Whitechapel up to 1891 to the murders that had taken place in 1888. Therefore, only five of them were attributed to Jack the Ripper, those that took place between 31 August and 9 November 1888.
These murders were never investigated and the legends surrounding them were a combination of historical research, folklore and pseudo-police work. Whitechapel was a desperately overcrowded neighbourhood in those days. Robbery, violence, alcohol addiction and endemic poverty forced many girls into prostitution. Whitechapel had 62 brothels and 1200 prostitutes.
On 31 August, at around 3am, the first victim was found with his throat slit, his abdomen open and his internal organs removed. On 8 September at 6 a.m., a second victim was found, on 30 September a third, and a little later at 2 a.m., another with his face dismembered and organs removed, and on 9 November a fifth with his chest open and his heart removed. The police found no evidence to suggest that the killer had sexual intercourse with the victims, but psychologists argued that the penetration of the victims with a knife and the position and disfigurement of the bodies in highly humiliating sexual positions suggested that the killer had taken sexual pleasure in doing so.
London newspapers began to receive hundreds of letters, and all the writers confessed to the murders as their own. Everyone was trying to get a piece of the glory, but only one signed his name Jack the Ripper. Was he the killer? Or was he just an ingenious journalist who invented this pseudonym and wanted to increase the newspaper’s circulation? That name gave the killer his own distinctive character. He became a myth, a film star, a serial hero, the embodiment of horror and pure evil.
For many, Jack the Ripper has become the epitome of our fears of the stranger lurking in the dark of night. The media, of course, has done much to spread this fear throughout London. A group of volunteers from London’s West End even set up a Citizens’ Safety Committee to patrol the streets looking for suspicious persons, as the citizens were not happy with the slow pace of the police. The committee sent a petition to the government, asking it to increase the reward for information about Jack the Ripper, and hired private detectives to interview witnesses independently of the police.
The police archives of the time provide a sufficiently detailed insight into the research procedures of the Victorian era. A large team of investigators visited virtually every house in Whitechapel, making enquiries and gathering information. They conducted 2000 personal interviews and detained eighty people. Butchers, cattle butchers and surgeons were suspicious just because of their profession. The police visited 76 butchers and butchers and searched for their former employees going back six months. The London docks were also suspicious, as this was where the ships bringing livestock to the island for slaughter docked.
Some were convinced that Jack the Ripper lived and worked in Whitechapel, others claimed that he was a very educated upper-class man who came to Whitechapel occasionally. All these theories were based on the cultural and social perceptions of the time, which were permeated by a fear of medical science, a distrust of modern science in general and a belief that the rich were exploiting the poor.
In general, anyone could be Jack the Ripper. So was the suspected syphilitic heir to the throne, Prince Albert Victor, who was a regular visitor to London’s brothels for women and men – but was not in London on two of the four murderous nights. The Prince was the son of the later King Edward VII of England. He was also a little mentally retarded and is thought to have committed the murders as his mental state deteriorated.
Suspicion has also fallen on Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland. He is said to have confessed his bloody deeds in anagrams of his texts, but no other evidence was found against him. Some writers have favoured the painter Walter Sickert – he bought furniture and paintings from the estates of famous artists to investigate for possible bloodstains, to the disgust of art dealers and collectors. Sickert painted many of the poor of Whitechapel in his paintings. The police also found paintings in his possession that were identifiable as events in Whitechapel. However, these events were no secret, as the newspapers were full of similar drawings.
In fact, at that time there was no professional group that was not associated with Jack the Ripper. Doctor, priest, lawyer, journalist, they were all suspect. Even a woman was thought to be Jack the Ripper. Even a few years ago, the newspapers reported that 126-year-old traces of sperm had been found. A silk scarf, supposedly belonging to one of the victims, was found with traces of blood and sperm on it. DNA comparison with the descendants of someone the police already suspected might be the perpetrator revealed that they belonged to Polish émigré Aaron Kosminski, a mentally ill hairdresser who had been seen with one of the victims. “He cuts hair and throats too”, the newspapers joked at the time.
It was later discovered that the DNA test had been misinterpreted. This genetic trait in traces of blood occurs in almost 90% of Europeans. This left the origin of the trace jokingly unexplained, Kosminski was rehabilitated and Jack the Ripper remains an unknown person.
Freemasonic involvement?
Others saw the key to revealing Jack the Ripper’s identity in the way his murders were staged, in which Jack the Ripper was supposed to run a bloody show and play with the state and the authorities. All of this was said to point to the involvement of the Freemasons. The investigation was extended in all directions, but all leads led to nothing. An inscription that a policeman saw written on a wall on the night of the double murder played an important role in the investigation. Someone had allegedly written in white chalk Juwes are people who are not blamed for no reason.
Underneath this inscription, on the floor, was part of the bloody apron worn by one of the victims that night. The head of the police investigation ordered the sign to be removed that night. But why? Perhaps to prevent anti-Semitic riots, as he himself stated. Juwes, of course, meant Jews. Did he thereby destroy the clues that might have led to the perpetrator? Was he merely obeying the orders of his superiors? And why was the word Juwes spelt wrong?
Today, all of this can be answered. For some, it is decisive proof that Freemasons are behind all these murders. The word Juwes is not meant to refer to Jews at all, but to the three big J’s: Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum. This, according to the Freemasons, is the name of the three people who were accused of murdering Hiram Abif, the architect of Solomon’s Temple and the first Freemason.
King Solomon avenged his murder and had the three Js executed. They all had their throats slit, the first was dismembered, the entrails of the second were thrown into the fire, and the heart of the third was cut out. This method of execution was also meant to mock the mythology of the Freemasons. However, the erasure of the inscription can only mean that the murderer’s pursuers were themselves Freemasons, who were familiar with these myths and legends and wanted to prevent the public from associating the murders with Freemasons.
But in the 19th century, anyone who made a difference in London was probably a Freemason, including Sir Charles Warren, London’s Chief of Police. Warren was also a keen archaeologist and researched Masonic history, leading an expedition to Jerusalem to uncover the remains of Solomon’s Temple. Some are therefore convinced that Jack the Ripper was a psychopath in the service of and under the protection of the Victorian state. So their thought brother in high circles, whom they did not want to throw at the mercy of the justice system. All of this was to be an establishment conspiracy and a huge scandal that was not just the fault of an individual, but that the whole upper echelon of English society bore a large part of the blame. In such circumstances, the poor, the prostitutes and the outcasts from society had no chance of survival.
However, a closer look at the English Masonic fraternity reveals James Maybrick, a wealthy cotton merchant. The father of the family was a drug addict, particularly arsenic, which was not unusual in English society at the time, provided, of course, that it was taken in small quantities for physical and mental pleasure.
So James Maybrick was a rich drug addict who the police already suspected might be Jack the Ripper. He died in May 1889 of arsenic poisoning. His wife Florence was accused of the murder. Florence was presumed innocent, but was not convicted and released until a retrial 17 years later. The timing of James Maybrick’s death coincides with the end of the Jack the Ripper murders. Therefore, he could have been Jack the Ripper and had to die for it. But it was not his wife who murdered him, but his own brother Michael Maybrick.
He was also a Freemason and much more. He was considered one of the most popular singers and composers of his time. He wrote such successful songs as The Holy City, eao one of the most famous religious songs in English, which was a huge success with a million copies sold. A year before the Jack the Ripper murders began, he even wrote a memorable song called Everybody Loves Jack.
A few facts should point to the fact that Michael, and not his brother, was the serial killer. He was an artist and travelled extensively throughout the country. Therefore, he could have written some of the letters that came to the police from various parts of England. The police announced at the time that Jack the Ripper had drowned in the Thames after his last murder. It is not known how they came to this conclusion, but it is likely that Michael Maybrick continued to murder and dismember bodies.
He is believed to have 16 murders on his conscience. Among them was the unexplained murder of an eight-year-old boy, Cilla, in Bradford. Maybrick and his art group were in the town at the time. He was a latent homosexual, a woman-hater, a psychopath and an enemy of all authority and power. He diverted suspicion away from himself by turning it on his brother, poisoning him and putting his wife, whom he hated, behind bars.
Then, at the height of his fame, he allegedly disappeared, having been warned by the police that it was better to back off. He also resigned from all his offices – including those of the Masonic Lodge. He later married his mistress and disappeared to the Isle of Wight, where he died of a heart attack in 1913. The singer and composer’s tombstone bears a quote from John’s Revelation: “There shall be no more death”.
Safely stowed away for life
Serial killers were, are and will be among us. They do not belong in ordinary prisons. But what to do with them? Many countries have already abolished the death penalty, some states still have it, others have abolished it. However, almost every state has a prison that is supposed to be stricter than the other prisons in the country. Perhaps that is where they belong?
One of these prisons is in the Central American country of San Salvador, which has the highest murder rate in the world in relation to its population. There is total isolation, torture and even cannibalism. Penas Ciudad Barrios is designed for 800 inmates, but it is crammed with 2 600 prisoners. There are 70 prisoners living in cells of 20.
Beijing No 1 State Prison, which was built for 1,000 of the worst convicts, is also always full. Visits are forbidden, torture is the order of the day. Every night, prisoners stand guard in pairs to prevent anyone committing suicide. But this is only the official explanation. In reality, the cells are so full that there is not a bed for everyone. Otherwise, sleep is out of the question, as the cells are lit day and night. Work is supposed to be the plan here, but the country is making good money out of it, exporting toys, jewellery and even car parts.
Despite the poor conditions, serial killers have no place here, as China is the country with the most executions in the world. As many as 10 000 convicts are executed every year by a shot to the nape of the neck, and no doubt a serial killer would quickly find himself among them.
But in a forest in the middle of the endless Russian taiga sit Russia’s worst criminals; contract killers, terrorists and serial killers. There are only 260 inmates in the Black Eagle camp, but they have some 800 lives on their conscience. That is why they have been driven into this icy calm. During the winter, which lasts for more than seven months, temperatures regularly fall below minus 40 degrees Celsius. At that time, the snow cover is three metres thick and the cold Arctic wind penetrates through every crevice. In summer, billions of mosquitoes are an even bigger nuisance.
It’s not worth escaping, as there’s not a soul to be seen eight hours’ drive away. Most prisoners curse the day Russia abolished the death penalty 20 years ago. For life in such conditions is no life at all. Every morning the warden reads out to them what crime they have committed. Those who are sentenced to life imprisonment spend all day in their cells, but are not allowed to sleep. They are only allowed to spend an hour a day in a small courtyard. But it is usually so cold that they often give up even that. Only the toughest, the mentally strongest survive in such conditions.
But all this is nothing compared to the ADX Florence Supermax in Colorado, one of the most isolated places on the planet. With its ochre-coloured façade, the prison looks rather peaceful, but even on the edges of the road leading past the prison, you can see a sign warning you not to take passengers with you, and for good reason. This prison is home to some of America’s most dangerous criminals, including Islamic terrorists.
The people of Florence, a nearby town, are not happy about this, but they are not giving up on the prison, which provides 30% of their jobs. Four hundred prisoners live in the world’s most secure prison. If you added up their sentences of life imprisonment, you would come to 500. Around 20 per cent of the prisoners have murdered a fellow inmate in another prison. You could say that the prisoners are buried alive here.
For Thomas Silverstein, that moment when he leaves his little cell for an hour once a day is the most beautiful moment of his life. As soon as he steps into the concrete courtyard, surrounded by steel slabs and a high wall, he eagerly inhales the fresh air and starts running mindlessly to and fro, as if he were an animal in a zoo cage. It is his only free glimpse of life in the otherwise monotonous greyness of a prisoner’s day.
But an hour passes quickly and he finds himself back in his cell. He is surrounded by complete silence, sometimes broken only by the dripping of water in the sink. That’s 12,400 days for him. That’s 408 months or 34 years. That is how long he has been in solitary confinement. He had been in solitary confinement in other dungeons before that, until he was transferred to ADX in the Rocky Mountains, a two-hour drive from Denver. In his soundproof cell, no sounds of outside life reach him. “My head is always in a fog and I don’t even remember some of the words anymore,” he whispers. He is isolated, without any contact with people. A bunk bed, a table, a backless chair, as if for toileting and washing. There is nothing else in his cell. His food is pushed through a small opening in the steel door.
“Apart from the occasional haircut, physical examinations and medical check-ups, the only contact I’ve had with people for decades is when my hands are tied and I’m taken to the yard.”
Why is he being punished so severely? In 1983, as a 31-year-old prisoner, he killed a prison guard, even though his hands and feet were locked. There is no death penalty for such cases, so the Federal Bureau of Prisons decided to give him the harshest punishment – total isolation and make his life a living hell.
But Thomas Silverstein is no isolated case. There are about 400 more such prisoners in ADX. In the whole of the United States, there are around 450,000 prisoners in solitary confinement. That is more than the population of the city of Miami. As many as 40 US states have prisons that are inspired by the standard in place at ADX Florence. Nevertheless, in America they are reluctant to talk about solitary confinement, only about Special Housing Units.
US Senator John McCain, who spent two years in a North Vietnamese prison as a prisoner of war in total isolation, told us what it feels like to live in total isolation. “Isolation is terrifying. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more than any other kind of abuse.” Other prisoners share the same sentiment: “There is nothing alive here, not even a small blade of grass, and it slowly kills you.” America’s greatest criminals meet in this prison. There is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, and Zacarias Moussaaoui, a participant in the attack on the New York Twin Towers.
A day in prison is horrifyingly monotonous. The lights come on at 5am and go out at 10pm. But one dim, dim bulb continues to glow all day and all night. All the furniture in the cell is made of steel and concrete and bolted to the floor. The shower runs on a time clock to prevent flooding in the cell. Anyone who wants to avoid total isolation has to take part in a ‘step down’ programme and, if successful, can get a black and white TV set and, after a while, possibly start walking around a bigger yard. But this programme can take up to five years.
Any offence here is severely punished. That’s when a special unit with tear gas, batons and other coercive means enters the cell. But this is not the worst thing for the prisoners. “I simply cannot sleep. I’ve been lying here all night, for ten years, and I’m awake. There is simply no way out of this cell. It is clear to anyone who has sat in ADX Florence that being human is not a birthright.”
It is not only prisoners who complain about the living conditions at ADX Florence. Amnesty International and the United Nations have also criticised conditions in US prisons, citing Article 8 of the US Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Prisoners develop feelings of fear, depression, high blood pressure, paranoia, delusions and psychosis. Nevertheless, the isolation of prisoners in American prisons has long since become routine.
ADX Florence is also a high-security prison and the only one directly managed by the US government, making it an exception to the decentralised system of imprisonment. Many prisons in America are also run by private companies. The American system of imprisonment thus operates primarily as a means of retribution and does not have the purpose of rehabilitating offenders. What happens to someone who has spent decades in solitary confinement with no contact with the outside world and is then released is of no interest to anyone.
“If I get out, I will be almost 75 years old. I have no intention of rejoining society. I just want revenge. There is nothing else for me to do,” says the prisoner, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
