Talking with Serial Killers Read online

  On 15 October 1972, Carignan raped and killed a teenager called Laura Brock, near Mount Vernon, Washington State.

  * * *

  A ‘wanted’ ad placed in the Seattle Times on 1 May 1973 provided the first link in a chain of gruesome events. Help was required at a local gas station and the notice caught the eye of 15-year-old Kathy Sue Miller. She wasn’t looking for a job for herself, but for her boyfriend, Mark Walker. Next morning, however, when she rang the contact number advertised, Kathy was intrigued when the man who answered said he was looking for girls. She gave him her address and telephone number and agreed to meet him after school. They arranged that he would pick her up in his car outside the Sears Building in Seattle, then drive her over to the gas station to fill out a job application form.

  Kathy’s mother was worried. She did not like the fact that her daughter had given her number to a stranger and she felt uneasy about the way the interview had been arranged. In particular, she disliked the thought of Kathy getting into a car with someone she had never met before. Running through her mind was a recent news article about Laura Brock, who had been raped and murdered while hitchhiking.

  ‘I mean it, Kathy,’ Mary warned her daughter. ‘Don’t even think about meeting him.’

  Impatiently, Kathy promised not to and left for her classes, a stack of schoolbooks under her arm.

  Mother and daughter shared the same bus that morning and Kathy got off first near Roosevelt High School. Mary watched through the grimy window as her beautiful daughter hurried away, turning once with a smile to wave back.

  That afternoon, Kathy disobeyed her mother’s orders, and met Carignan as arranged. He had been waiting with growing impatience and his heart skipped a beat when he saw a tall, strong, athletic girl walking in his direction. Her blonde hair was darkened to a burnished butterscotch colour and fell to the middle of her back in thick waves. Kathy had green eyes, and just the faintest suggestion of freckles sprinkling over her fair skin. She stopped opposite Carignan’s car to cross the road, and he watched as the young woman, wearing a blue-and-white jumper, a navy-blue blouse and blue-tinged nylons waved in his direction.

  Carignan leant across the front passenger seat and pushed the door open. However, Kathy walked to his side of the car and spoke to him through the window. Her first sight of Carignan was somewhat unedifying. He was an unattractive man with a peculiarly domed forehead. He had a receding chin and a deep scar over one eye. In fact, Carignan looked years older than his true age of 46, with his skin deeply lined, and bags and wrinkles beneath his eyes. His usual expression was a glowering frown, and to smile, he had to make a concentrated effort. But, this time, he turned on all the charm at his disposal.

  ‘Hi! You must be Kathy,’ he asked, with a broad smile beaming across his face.

  Kathy noticed the dimple on his chin, then smiled back. ‘Sure, that’s me.’

  Motioning her to get into the car, he said, ‘We need to fill in the application forms and they are back at my office, just hop in. I’ll drop you off home when we’ve finished.’

  Kathy felt uncomfortable. ‘My mom isn’t too happy about this,’ she explained, and Harvey moved up a gear.

  ‘Can’t say that I blame her. I’ve got children of my own. Married, too. Nice house, lovely woman. Yep, we can’t blame your mom for being careful.’

  Kathy was almost convinced by the man’s reassurance. ‘You sure this is OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Absolutely. Tell ya what, I’ll even introduce myself to your mom when I drop you off. Everything will be fine then.’

  Kathy Sue Miller was never seen alive again. Carignan, whose violent record was known to the police, was questioned at length and his movements watched for 24 hours a day, but there was insufficient evidence to charge him with abduction, let alone murder. Then, on Sunday, 3 June, two 16-year-old boys driving their motorbikes through Tulalip Reservation, just north of Everett, found Kathy’s body. It was wrapped in black plastic and was naked. It had decayed so badly it was initially impossible even to tell its gender. When the autopsy was carried out, it was found that the teeth matched Kathy’s dental records. From the damage to the skull, it was clear that death had resulted from a severe battering.

  Even with the discovery of the body, ‘Harv’ the Hammer’ still managed to escape the clutches of the police. He moved first to Colorado and later to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he murdered Eileen Hunley on 4 August 1974. Her body was found on 18 September in Sherburne County. In response to the murder, Carignan commented, ‘She was my common-law wife an’ I thought she was seeing a black man so I stopped her in the street … I ran her head into a lamp pole, and stamped her face on to a drain cover until she was dead. Then I tried to feed her to some pigs.’

  * * *

  A string of sexual assaults on hitch-hikers in the states of Colorado and Minnesota in the latter part of 1974 bore Carignan’s stamp. They were mostly carried out by a large man broadly matching his description wielding a hammer as his assault weapon. At least seven died and the remainder were scarred mentally and physically for life.

  On 8 September 1974, a female hitch-hiker was picked up by Carignan, driven to a rural area near Mora, and was sexually assaulted. She was then beaten about the head with a hammer and sexually assaulted with the hammer handle. The victim was left in a field to die, but survived. She was subsequently able to give a description of the assailant and the vehicle he was driving.

  On 14 September 1974, Carignan picked up a woman called Roxanne Wesley, who was having car problems in a south Minneapolis parking lot. On the pretext that he was going to drive her to get help, he took her instead to a rural area in Carver County, sexually assaulted her several times, including forcing a hammer handle into her vagina, and also beat her about the head with the hammer and left her in a field to die. This victim also survived and was able to crawl to a road for help. She was also able to give a description of her assailant and his vehicle, including other distinguishing features of the car’s contents.

  Two teenage female hitch-hikers reported on 19 September 1974 that they had been picked up by a man and driven into the country where he threatened to rape and kill them. One of the girls was struck in the mouth by Carignan, breaking a front tooth. Both were eventually able to escape by jumping out of his car when he stopped at a road junction. Again, their descriptions of the man and the vehicle, matched the descriptions given by the previous victims.

  The next day, Minneapolis Police received a complaint from two other teenagers who said they had been approached by a man who offered them $25 each to assist him in picking up a car in northern Minnesota and driving it back to Minneapolis for him. The two girls said that they were driven to a rural wooded area where the man asked one of them to follow him into the woods, presumably to get the other vehicle he had talked about. He took a petrol can and a screwdriver with him. A short time later, the girl who remained in the car heard screams so she ran to a nearby house to call the Sheriff. Subsequently, the other girl was found unconscious with severe head wounds as a result of hammer blows to the head. Their description of the attacker matched Carignan in every respect.

  On 21 September, another report of a similar assault in which the victim survived was received and, a few days later, Carignan was arrested.

  * * *

  What follows is part of a charge relating to five counts regarding offences committed on a 13-year-old girl. The name has been deleted to protect the victim’s identity, and the document has been supplied courtesy of the Minneapolis and Hennepin County Prosecutors. It has not been published before.

  Aggravated Assault. Aggravated Sodomy. Indecent Liberties.

  Sodomy upon or with a child. Aggravated Sodomy.

  ‘The said ------------------, was hitch-hiking in Minneapolis when the defendant, driving a truck-camper, stopped, picked her up, engaged her in conversation as to where she was going, stated that he would take her to her destination directly, forced her to commit oral sodomy upon him with th
e threat of hitting her with a hammer which he picked up from a compartment between the seats of his truck, compelled her to remove her clothing by threatening to “put a hammer through your head”, attempted to shove the handle of the hammer up into her vagina, struck her several times in the area of her buttocks with the hammer when she resisted the advances of the defendant, again compelled her to commit oral sodomy on him, drove to a corn field where he compelled her to lie on her stomach where he attempted to have intercourse with her through the rectum, then, for the third time, again compelled her to commit oral sodomy on him. That the defendant then permitted the victim to dress and drove her to home of a friend situated at 5644 Lakeland Avenue, Crystal, Hennepin County, [Minnesota], where he allowed the victim to get out of the truck-camper; that in addition to the foregoing, the defendant told the victim that his first name was “Paul” and that his last name was “Harvey”.’

  In separate trials conducted in 1975 and 1976, Carignan was convicted of just two of the murders and a number of other offences. He was given prison sentences amounting to 100 years plus life. In truth, he may serve only 40 years.

  * * *

  ‘I know where your house is. I know you have a young,

  pretty, dark-haired wife and two kids.

  You have a silver Mercedes car. But I will make sure nothing

  an’ no one hurts you or your family as I have friends in your

  country who look after me.’

  HARVEY CARIGNAN’S CHILLING WELCOME WHEN THE AUTHOR, CHRISTOPHER BERRY-DEE, VISITED HIM IN PRISON.

  Harvey Louis Carignan, known variously as ‘Harv the Hammer’, or ‘The Want-ad Killer’, currently resides behind the grim walls of the Minnesota Correctional Facility, Stillwater, which is on the Minnesota–Wisconsin border. An industrial prison, it is now the state’s largest, close-security, level five institution for adult felons, and the population is currently around 1,320.

  For five years, I corresponded with Harvey, and finally interviewed him during a ‘full-contact visit’ in March 1995. This was the first and only interview granted by ‘The Hammer’ since he was arrested for multiple rape and homicide on 24 September 1974.

  Because individuals like Harvey have traversed such extremes, their souls have become liked locked rooms hiding mysterious secrets. It therefore takes a certain sensibility to draw them out. For each case, I take an in-depth approach, spending an enormous amount of time getting to know the unique qualities of each individual, rather than depersonalising them with generalities based on their crimes. While I develop an empathy for my subject, I always take care not actually to sympathise to the extent that their dramas start playing in the theatre of my own mind. It is a constant balancing act between identification and analysis.

  To learn from a person, you must put yourself in their place, follow their train of thought and feel their emotions; however, while you follow the often dysfunctional thinking of your subject to some extent, you never become like them. You remain yourself. You may draw close for a while, close enough to get a sense of these often foreign ideas and emotions, but you must always pull back to restore the integrity of your own moral and mental boundaries.

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

  And what was it that Carignan’s psychiatrist had told me? Yes, that was it: ‘You’ll get to interview Harvey, or something living inside his head. You’ll get to interview him, and Evil will get to interview you.’

  Harvey was called to the interview by his personal pager, and one’s first impression of this homicidal maniac is of a lumbering hulk of a man, standing well over 6ft tall. He weighs 18st and has an ape-like appearance. He has massive frame, a Neanderthal-like balding dome, and huge hands attached to over-long, gangly arms which hang from immensely powerful, sloping shoulders. Carignan has piercing blue eyes, and talks in a low, husky voice. At face value, his overall persona portrays a gentle, even understanding, giant of a man; however, we all know that such appearances can be deceptive. ‘The Hammer’ is, in fact, one of America’s most evil and notorious serial murderers, who even today, aged 74, can still do one-arm pull-ups for 15 minutes at a stretch without so much as a grimace.

  Five minutes dragged past agonisingly without either of us saying a word, while all the time his dangerous eyes stared into my face. It was as if some alien creature, an insidious force even, was gently probing into my mind using long, squirming tentacles of enquiring thought, exploring, touching, sensing with taste and smell. Then, a secret but twisted smile started to play around Harvey’s mouth. His lips, moistened by saliva, were slightly open, but otherwise his face was without expression.

  This stone-cold serial killer was insidiously fascinating to observe at such close quarters, for he is the wolf in sheep’s clothing, part-human, part-Antichrist and the stuff of our children’s worst nightmares. Then he spoke for the first time.

  ‘Ya, know, Chris, never did I commit a crime then commit another to keep it quiet. I committed murders to ensure that false accusations of rape would not occur.’

  The ice was broken, and my previous belief, that Harvey lives in a continual state of denial – a world where he admits some guilt, but not total responsibility for his brutal and heinous crimes – was confirmed.

  As the interview continued, when he did admit he raped and killed a young woman, it was, so he claimed, as the result of their provocation. He said that it was always the victim who brought up the subject of sex when he offered them a ride in his car.

  Nowhere can this better be illustrated than in his account of a lift he gave to a woman, a perfectly respectable 20-year-old nurse, whose car had broken down.

  The truth is that he offered to fix her car, but beforehand he explained that he needed to fetch his tools. He forced her into his car and drove her into the country where he brutally raped and attempted to kill her by smashing into her head with a wheel wrench.

  Carignan’s account is of course something different, for he argues that she got into his car of her own free will. His story contains a smattering of the truth and a bucketful of lies. It is at once disturbing and disgusting, yet offers a fascinating account from the mind of a homicidal sexual psychopath and fully-emerged serial killer who, it is believed, may have slaughtered up to 50 women. What follows is not for the faint-hearted:

  She got in and may have been somewhat nervous, but she did not seem afraid. During the ride we talked about another girl I used to see, one who had left because I had not given her $30 I had been giving her each and every week. It was not payment for anything, but a gift. The girl riding with me said she would never exchange sex for $30 – making it seem she believed the other woman had and that herself despised her for what the first woman had done. I tried to enlighten her thinking, but she was adamant in her statement that she would not have sex for $30 because those were in her words and not that she would not have sex for money, which was my thought at the time.

  It was then that I got the drift; that she thought I was offering her the same amount for sex and she was turning down the offer – but I am not saying she wanted money to have sex at all. The way the conversation went it could have been either, that she would not have sex for $30 or she would not have sex for any amount of money. It was no big deal to me at the time, so the conversation had no special meaning to me until much later when I tried to remember everything that was talked about and how it was said.

  When we got to my friend’s place where the tools were supposed to be, I stopped the car, turned around, and immediately drove away. My friend had told me if his pickup, a 1973 3/4 ton Chevrolet, was not in the yard, to not hang around because his sons did not like me. This was a surprise because I did not know his boys. I had never met any of them. [Carignan did not have any so-called friends.] Anyway, I drove away and stopped t
he car just before driving on to the main road. I put my arm around her and, although she hesitated, she did move over closer to me when I indicated with arm pressure that is what I wanted. It was not a pressure that forced her to move, not a hold that would have moved her had she declined. Instead, it was an indication of what I would like her to do, and she complied. I can remember my thoughts as plain as if it was yesterday: ‘She wants it!’ This is spite of the fact that I wondered why she had been so adamant in denying she would have sex for $30, which in mind could have been any amount at the time. I slid my arm behind her head, put a slight, almost gentle pressure on her neck, and she bent down – not because of the pressure but with her own strength – unbuttoned my pants, took out my penis, and stroked it while we kissed, until I indicated with the same kind of pressure that I wanted her to suck it. She did.

  When she finished, I told her, ‘Spit that damned stuff out’, when I saw her sitting there holding the semen in her mouth. She did – but I did hold on to her in case she wanted to jump out and run away. I was not satisfied that she was not going to say I had forced her to do what she had done. She looked at me, giving me a strange smile – like I was a fool for thinking she would run – closed the door, and I drove on.

  While we were starting out I told her, ‘I want to fuck you. I know a place we can go!’