Talking with Serial Killers Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title page

  Talking with Serial Killers

  Acknowledgements

  HARVEY LOUIS CARIGNAN

  ARTHUR JOHN SHAWCROSS

  JOHN MARTIN SCRIPPS

  MICHAEL BRUCE ROSS

  RONALD JOSEPH ‘BUTCH’ DeFEO JR.

  AILEEN CAROL WUORNOS

  KENNETH ALLEN McDUFF

  DOUGLAS DANIEL CLARK & CAROL MARY BUNDY

  HENRY LEE LUCAS

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Talking with Serial Killers

  CHRISTOPHER BERRY-DEE

  Lest we not forget the suffering these beasts of humanity

  cause, this book is dedicated In Memoriam to:

  Leanna Williams (died 23 August 1994)

  Now on Death Row, Ellis Unit, Texas, Santiago Margarito Rangel Varelas (#999159) is a revolting human monster even when viewed alongside the rebarbative exploits of other killers of our children. His victim was Leanna Williams, his two-year-old stepdaughter. Varelas had been married to Leanna’s mother for less than four months when the child died. But during that short time he had carried out an unrelenting barrage of violence and sexual abuse on the infant; the violence alone would have been enough to kill a healthy adult, and this started almost immediately after the wedding.

  Leanna died of multiple brain haemorrhages after repeated kicks to the head. Most of her ribs were broken and she had been sodomised. Varelas told police that the child had fallen inside their home at 4415 2nd Street in Bacliff, Texas. However, it is even almost as repugnant and difficult to believe that Leanna’s mother told sickened investigators that she was unaware of what was going on, especially since Varelas was also indicted on charges of indecency involving Leanna’s sisters aged five and nine.

  Acknowledgements

  As Professor Elliott Leyton, the world’s most widely consulted expert on serial killing, and former FBI Special Agent, Robert Ressler, the world’s most renowned offender profiler, both agree, that unless you are a police officer or a psychiatrist, both of whom have unique access to the penal system, it is almost impossible to gain access to interview a single serial murderer, let alone two such creatures. I have interviewed, at length, over thirty.

  Apart from the financial outlay, which may cost many thousands of dollars, only for the offender to change his or her mind at the last minute as you arrive at the prison gate, one has to build up a relationship with a killer over many years of correspondence before they begin to trust you. But, this is only a fraction of the work involved.

  Even to begin to understand the subject under study, one has to research their history back to birth. Meet with their parents, relations, friends, schoolteachers, work colleagues, the victim’s next-of-kin, the police, attorneys, judges, psychiatrists and psychologists, even the correctional staff who are charged with their welfare while in custody, often on Death Row. Then, like the razor wire that forms an impenetrable barrier around the prisons, one has to negotiate a way through the red tape that wraps up our killers. Without the permission of the Department of Corrections, you go nowhere. Only when each of the above has been ‘tick-boxed’ do you get to meet them – the most dangerous human predators on Earth.

  As Sondra London says in her excellent book Knockin’ on Joe, ‘Getting involved with these people is a dangerous matter, because when you concentrate deeply on any personality for an extended time, you find yourself drawn into their world … And while you are in their cages studying them, they are studying you.’

  I have often had cause to contemplate the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’

  Non-fiction is not possible without a collective effort by many people, and the study of violent crime on a first-hand basis can be, at once, rewarding, exciting and distressing. But at the end of the road, the time comes to reflect on that journey and to remember all those individuals and organisations who, in their various capacities, helped to make this book possible and, hopefully, worthwhile.

  Many of their names already appear in the main text. Others do not, but they were equally important in the development, research and writing of Talking with Evil.

  I would particularly like to thank, where appropriate, the victims’ next-of-kin. The killers featured in this book have taken their revenge on society and there is no adequate measure for the agony they have wrought. Death is tangible, grief less so. Yet, despite the tragic losses of loved ones, those left behind have shown compassion for the killers of their children. Without their help, without their anguish, without their indelible pain, this book could not have struck the emotional balance it is hoped it has achieved.

  I also thank the many Departments of Corrections for allowing unrestricted access to their penal systems and the offenders who were interviewed. Numerous law enforcement officers, attorneys and judges who have honourably discharged their professional duties, not only in bringing the offenders to justice, but in assisting, where they could, in the detailed research for this book. And, strange as this may seem, thanks are also due to the serial killers and mass murderers who allowed me into their dark worlds, for if society is to learn anything about how these beasts tick, we must, however abhorrent it may seem, listen to their words, their truths and lies.

  As always, I am indebted to my close friend, Robin Odell. A superb writer and editor in any event, Robin knows this subject better than most. He has taken much of my raw manuscript, and polished it into the completed work sitting before you now.

  For their personal support, perhaps now is the moment to thank a few of those who were patient enough to listen to my thoughts on serial homicide for months on end. Therefore, I extend much gratitude to my father and mother, Patrick and May. Great friends, Jackie Clay, Graham Williams, David ‘Elvis’ Murphy, Ace Francis, Bob Noyce, Phil Simpson, Barbara Pearman, and Tony Brown, who kept my spirits up when they were low. My television producer, Frazer Ashford, and my staff at The New Criminologist. Colleagues, Elliott Leyton (Professor of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, who will be as critical as always and is bound to argue the toss about XYY chromosome disorder; and David Canter (Professor of Applied Psychology). Also thanks to Adam Parfitt and John Blake of Blake Publishing, who were brave enough to publish this book.

  Finally, a very special thanks with much love to my special PJ, because it did work out all right for you in the end, and I will always miss your company, and Alyona Minenok from Novosibirsk, Russia. The late night talks with you helped me immensely.

  Christopher Berry-Dee

  Director “Criminology Research Centre”

  Southsea 2003

  HARVEY

  LOUIS

  CARIGNAN

  USA

  ‘The guy’s the fuckin’ Devil. They should have fried him years ago, period, an’ they would have queued up to pull the switch. When he was dead, they should have driven a stake through his heart and buried him, digging him up a week later to ram another stake in, just to make sure he was fuckin’ dead.’

  RUSSELL J KRUGER

  CHIEF INVESTIGATOR, MINNEAPOLIS PD

  It was 24 September 1974 and early morning in Minneapolis. The sun was up and patrolmen Robert Nelson and Robert Thompson were cruising along 1841 E 38th Street when they spotted the 1968 black-over-pea-green Chevrolet Caprice. It was parked across the road from a diner. Thompson made a slow circuit of the block, while his partner checked the police bulletin details issued the day before.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Nelson. ‘That looks like the car. All we gotta do is find the driver. He’s a bi
g guy and, according to this, he’s built like a gorilla.’

  The two officers peered through the Caprice’s window and scrutinised the interior. Sure enough, there was the red plaid car rug, pornographic magazines, and a bible. By the gearshift, they noticed several packs of Marlborough cigarettes; all items that had been detailed by a previous rape victim of the man the police were searching for.

  While Nelson telephoned his precinct, requesting assistance, Thompson wandered into the diner, asking the owner if he knew who had been driving the car.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ came the suspicious reply. ‘He just saw you guys and high-tailed it out back.’

  Minutes later, Harvey Louis Carignan was stopped, briefly questioned then arrested. He was taken downtown, read his Miranda Rights, and booked on charges of homicide and rape.

  With up to 50 kills, one of America’s most vicious serial murderers would never use his hammer again.

  * * *

  ‘Even now, it sometimes seems my childhood was short, only a few days long. There is nothing about it I cling to and nothing to look fondly backwards toward. From where I sat then, and sit now, it was, and is, truly a pit of despair.’

  CARIGNAN, IN A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR, 14 APRIL 1993

  Born on the wrong side of the tracks at Fargo, North Dakota, on 18 May 1927, like so many serial killers, Harvey was an illegitimate child who never knew his genetic father. His 20-year-old mother, Mary, was ill-equipped to care for her sickly boy who failed to thrive and, in 1930, during the lowest point of the Great Depression, she started farming him out to anyone who would look after him. Thereafter, the youngster was moved from pillar to post, and school to school, unable to form family roots or enjoy a solid education.

  Very early in his formative years, Harvey developed a facial twitch and suffered from bed-wetting until he was 13 years old. He also suffered Saint Vitus’ Dance – or childhood chorea – a disease which manifests itself with uncontrollable spasmodic jerking movements.

  At the age of 12, he was sent to a reform school at Mandan, North Dakota, where, according to his FBI ‘Rap Sheet’, he remained for seven years. During this time, he alleges that he was constantly bullied and sexually abused by a female teacher. In a letter dated 12 June 1993, he writes:

  ‘… I had a teacher who used to sit at my desk and we would write dirty notes back and forth. I was either 13 or 14 at the time – and just show me a 14-year-old boy anywhere who wouldn’t willingly and happily sit in a schoolroom and exchange porno notes with his teacher. I never got to lay a hand on her without getting slapped, but she would keep me after school and make me stand before her while she masturbated and called me names and told me what she was going to make me do – none of her threats she ever kept, damn it! The bitch wouldn’t even let me masturbate with her! I took my penis out and she beat the living shit out of me! She had enormously large breasts. She was truly a cruel woman …’

  Harvey Carignan stayed at the Mandan reform school throughout his teenage years, then in 1948, at the age of 21, he joined the US Army, who welcomed him with open arms. Harvey was no longer the weedy little runt who, allegedly, had suffered mental and sexual abuse since the age of four. The high-carbohydrate and well-balanced diet at Mandan had helped him grow into a strapping, well-nourished and immensely powerful young man.

  Carignan began his murderous career in 1949 when, during the early evening of Sunday 31 July, he killed 57-year-old Laura Showalter following an attempted rape in a small park at Anchorage, Alaska. Death came swiftly after he smashed her head, causing terrible brain injuries. The victim’s face had been virtually destroyed from chin to forehead, bone and tissue crushed to a pulp under a battering from his massive fists.

  ‘This killer was so strong,’ said a police officer, ‘with one punch he blasted a hole through her skull like a rocket slamming into a tank.’

  On Friday, 16 September 1949, Carignan attempted to rape a young woman called Dorcas Callen who managed to escape his assault. The soldier, who was clearly drunk, although it was only 11.00 am, had confronted her near a tavern in Anchorage Street. When the man asked Dorcas to take a ride with him, she refused and turned away.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouted, ‘I think I know you … maybe.’

  ‘Please go away,’ Dorcas pleaded. ‘You don’t know me.’

  She was now very scared. She knew that a woman had been bludgeoned to death in the neighbourhood only weeks before. But the big soldier confronting her was angered by her refusal, and she could not get away from him. Before she could move, the man grabbed her and began to drag her away from the street. They fell into a ditch beside the road, and he was all over her, tearing at her clothes, his hands touching her breasts, and between her legs. In moments he could rape her.

  Dorcas fought frantically to find a handhold in the soft dirt walls of the ditch. He was very strong, almost inhumanly strong. Screaming, she managed to clamber out of the ditch and ran across the street to the tavern where she phoned the police.

  In hospital, she relived the terror of the attack in detail through a bloody mask of bruised and bloodied facial skin. ‘He turned into something from Hell. His fury came out of nowhere, like he was suddenly switched on with evil,’ she said through swollen lips.

  It was her description of her attacker that led to the arrest of Carignan later the same day. He stood trial for the first-degree murder of Laura Showalter in 1950 in the District Court for the Territory of Alaska, Third Division, Justice George W Folta presiding. The prosecution held as their ace card, a confession to murder given to Marshal Herring. Harvey Carignan was found guilty and sentenced to hang. At the subsequent appeal in the Supreme Court of the United States, Justices Reed, Douglas, Black and Frankfurter agreed that Harvey Carignan’s conviction had come about because of a breach of the McNabb Rule. This held that confessions should be excluded if obtained during an illegal detention due to failure to carry a prisoner promptly before a committing magistrate. Because this rule had been violated, the Justices ruled Carignan’s confession as inadmissible. Thus Harvey escaped the hangman’s noose but forfeited his freedom with a 15-year sentence. Prisoner #22072 was transferred from the Seward Jail in Alaska to the US Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington State.

  During his interview with the author, Carignan stated, ‘Laura Showalter … Dorcas Callen? Those names mean nothin’ to me.’

  * * *

  Carignan was transferred to US Prison Alcatraz, California, on 13 September 1951, where he spent the next nine years. On 2 April 1960, at the age of 32, he was paroled. Except for his few years in the Army, he had not been at liberty since he was a child of 11.

  After landing at San Francisco’s waterfront jetty wearing a cheap prison-issue suit, with his bag of belongings at his feet, he watched as the small prison launch chugged its way back across the bay to ‘The Rock’, as Alacatraz is universally known, then he boarded a train for Duluth, Minnesota. There he moved in with one of his three half-brothers but, on 4 August 1960, just four months after his release, he was arrested for third-degree burglary and assault with intent to commit rape.

  Fortunately for Carignan, the rape charge was dropped through lack of evidence. If the rape charge had been proven, he would have returned to prison, never to be released again. However, as a parole violator, he was sentenced to 2,086 days in the Federal Prison at Leavenworth, Kansas.

  Carignan was back in the community in 1964, and moved swiftly to Seattle, where, on 2 March, he registered as a parole convict C-5073. On 22 November that year, he was arrested by the Sheriff of King County for traffic vagrancy and second-degree burglary.

  20 April 1965 saw him in the dock once again when he was sentenced to 15 years in the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla, one of the tri-state cities comprising of Richland and Kennewick, on the south-east border of Washington and Oregon.

  Now locked up in one of the oldest and most notorious prisons in the United States, Carignan applied his mind to making up for his earlier lack of educati
on. He obtained a high school diploma, took many college courses in sociology and psychology, and submitted papers on sexual psychopathy, the paranoid personality, and the well-adjusted individual. He read constantly, gained top marks, and studied journalism – all of which impressed his tutors. But there was a darker side that surfaced when he was alone. When talking with his fellow inmates, Harvey fantasised about nubile, young girls and he had a fixation about young flesh. He has often stated, and maintains even today, that young girls have to be his ultimate choice, which for a man now aged 74, is a very unhealthy desire indeed.

  * * *

  Middle-aged, and an ex-convict with unappealing physical characteristics, Harvey’s chances of dating a teenager following his release from prison were remote, so he met and married Sheila Moran, a divorcee with three children. She had her own house in Ballard, the Scandinavian district of Seattle, where they made a home together. Coming from a decent upbringing, Sheila was soon left under no illusions about the personality of her new husband who hung around with a bunch of villains. He was always out until the late hours, tearing around in his car at breakneck speeds. Then, following Carignan’s vicious assault on her aged uncle, she decided to pack up her things and take her children. She would simply run away. For his part, Harvey decided to kill her, and waited in vain for an entire night with a hammer clutched in his hand, but, fortunately, Sheila did not return home.

  Harvey married again on 14 April 1972. Alice Johnson, a somewhat dim-witted, plain woman in her 30s fell for him, and this naïve and gullible cleaning woman with few friends thought she’d met a hard-working, decent man. Alice had been married before and had a son, Billy, aged 11, and a pretty daughter, Georgia, aged 14, whom Harvey was soon lusting after.

  By this time, Carignan had managed to lease a Sav-Mor gas station from the Time Oil Company, and it came to Alice’s attention that he always had a string of young girls working the pumps. But no sooner had one started, she left, to be replaced by another girl just as young and pretty. While this behaviour aroused her suspicions, gossip led her to the confirmation that her husband was totally obsessed by teenage girls. He would approach any girl he saw, with obscene suggestions and remarks, and when Alice confronted him with reprimands, he screamed and shouted at her, beat her son, and skulked away throwing lurid glances at Georgia, which made his stepdaughter feel decidedly uncomfortable. Not surprisingly, the marriage collapsed soon afterwards.