The Dark Strangler: Serial Killer Earle Leonard Nelson (Crimes Canada: True Crimes That Shocked the Nation Book 9) Read online

  Modern Seattle and nearby Tacoma are known for their serial killers—Theodore Robert Bundy, "Green River Killer" Gary Ridgway, James Edward Ruzicka, Morris Frampton, James Dwight Canady, Harvey Carignan—but Nelson was the first to make headlines. On Tuesday, November 23, 1926, he inquired about a room to let in the home of Florence Fithian Monks, then strangled her and raped her still-warm corpse.

  From Seattle, Earle fled back to Portland, Oregon, a southbound trip of 173 miles. His first lodging in the City of Roses, with Sophia Yates and two other female boarders on Third Avenue, produced no carnage. Perhaps it was the spirit of Thanksgiving, on November 25, which Earle—posing as "Adrian Harris"—spent with Yates and her other lodgers, impressing them as polite, well-spoken and intelligent, although too much of a religious zealot for their taste. He paid for holiday dinner and dispensed stolen jewelry as gifts, but changed his tone when Yates and boarder Emily Crawford began to quarrel over whose free trinkets were the nicest. As the argument escalated, "Harris" snapped, "I'm going to beat it. You two will have the police up next." Fleeing the house, he hopped into his car and roared away, leaving with two days' rent still owed to him.

  Four days later, on Monday the 29th, Earle surfaced in Oregon City, seat of Clackamas County, located at the southern limits of Portland's metropolitan area. Established in 1829 by the Hudson's Bay Company, fifteen years later it became the first incorporated U.S. city west of the Rocky Mountains. There, at the boarding house owned by Blanche Meyers, he found the proprietress eating lunch with a gentleman caller. Posing as a lumberjack in search of work, Nelson persuaded Meyers to leave her meal and guest, giving him a tour of her home. He paid four dollars down to hold a vacant room until he found a job, and Meyers went back to lunch, pleased with the deal. Later that day, boarders found her strangled, raped, and shoved under the bed in Nelson's room. Before departing from the murder house, Earle helped himself to Blanche's diamond engagement ring and stole $8.50 from her purse, thereby making a tidy profit from his crime. America's West Coast had grown too hot, even for lucky Earle. Disposing of his latest car by means unknown, he started eastward, thumbing rides and switching off at times to ride the rails.

  Blanche Myers

  Chapter 6

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  Council Bluffs, Iowa, was the perfect destination for a drifter traveling by train, without the benefit of paying any fares along the way, ranked as America's fifth largest railway hub when Earle Nelson hit town. Named for an 1804 meeting between leaders of the Otoe tribe and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Council Bluffs was occupied by Chief Sauganash and his Potawatomi band in 1838, and then—officially called Kanesville—welcomed its first wagon train of westward-bound settlers six years later. A Mormon influx between 1846 and 1848 resulted in construction of the Kanesville Tabernacle, but nothing suggests that Earle was drawn to Council Bluffs by his brief fling with Mormonism during World War I.

  The church—and Council Bluff's police, assigned to guard a growing population of some forty thousand souls—had no idea that the "Gorilla Murderer" was in their midst as Christmas 1926 drew near. Nelson had spent three weeks traversing the 1,660 miles from Portland, Oregon, and he was eager for another kill.

  On Thursday, December 23, Earle claimed his first Midwestern victim. Elizabeth Beard, forty-nine-year-old wife of John Beard, offered rooms to rent in her home, and she died as so many had before her, strangled and raped in her own house before rigor mortis set in.

  Over the next four days, Earle traveled 182 miles south from Council Bluffs to Kansas City, Missouri, emerging in a metropolis as steeped in Prohibition-era crime as Philadelphia or any other city in the country. K.C.'s first mafiosi—Joseph "Joe Church" DiGiovanni and brother Peter "Sugarhouse Pete" DiGiovanni—had arrived in 1912, staking their claim to various rackets common in Sicilian neighborhoods nationwide. Prohibition's liquid gold rush fattened both underworld and political coffers in Kansas City, nicknamed "Tom's Town" for the near-total control exercised by Thomas Joseph "T. J." Pendergast, powerful chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Party, whose political protégés included future U.S. President Harry Truman. Working hand in hand with corrupt police, courts, contractors, and Mafia boss John Lazia, Pendergast helmed one of the nation's most pervasive political machines until his 1939 imprisonment for tax evasion.

  In 1926, K.C.'s police were too busy protecting bootleggers, brothels, and gambling dens to worry much about a lone "Gorilla Murderer" on the run across country. They took notice two days after Christmas, when Earle Nelson killed and raped twenty-three-year-old Bonnie Pace in their city, but they had no idea where to find him.

  One day later—on Tuesday, December 28—Earle repeated his performance, complete with necrophiliac rape, on twenty-eight-year-old landlady Germania Harpin, still in Kansas City. For good measure, he also strangled her eight-month-old daughter, though without a second posthumous rape. That double murder drove detectives and reporters to a frenzy, but the motivation came too late.

  Nelson had already moved on.

  Officially, Earle took a four-month respite before murdering again, but at least two sources online credit him with three more slayings carried out before the end of 1926. One anonymous Internet blog contends: "There is some reason to suppose that he was also responsible for a triple murder committed in Newark, New Jersey, in 1926. Rose Valentine, Margaret Stanton and Laura Tidor were all landladies, all raped and strangled, and in two cases the body had been pushed under a bed." Another says of Newark's undated killings: "The victims included Rose Valentine and Margaret Stanton, both strangled, along with Laura Tidor, shot to death when she attempted to defend them from their killer."

  If true, that marks the only time Nelson was known to use a firearm in his crimes, but paucity of details makes definitive assignment of blame in those cases impossible. If all three victims were slain together, it also marks the only time that Earle claimed more than two victims at once—and in the documented case, involving Germania Harpin and her daughter, the second victim was a helpless infant.

  For the record, police lost track of Earle until Wednesday, April 27, 1927. On that date, back in Philadelphia, he reverted to his normal pattern of targeting older women, with the murder and posthumous rape of sixty-year-old Mary McConnell. This time, homicide detectives recognized his signature, but they had no more luck arresting him than in October and November 1925.

  Once more, Earle dropped from view, this time for four weeks and five days. On Monday, May 27, he broke cover in Buffalo, New York, 375 miles northwest of Philadelphia on Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. His New York victim of choice was thirty-five-year-old Jennie Randolph, who—like her predecessors—had advertised rooms to rent in her home. The pattern was identical, with strangulation, necrophilia, and an attempt to hide the body at the scene. Police knew the "Gorilla Murderer" had visited their city, but he fled before they organized their search.

  Two days later—on Wednesday, May 29—Earle tipped his hand in Detroit, Michigan, 272 miles west of Buffalo at the opposite end of Lake Erie. For the second time he claimed two victims underneath one roof: landlady Minnie May, age fifty-three, and one of her lodgers, sixty-four-year-old Maureen Atworthy (called "Antwerp" in one account). Detroit police—as corrupt as any in America during the 1920s—had received the bulletins on Earle, but once again, as they began to mobilize, he left their jurisdiction for another hunting ground.

  Residents of Chicago, Illinois—283 miles west of Detroit, on Lake Michigan—had supped their fill of homicides by June 1927. Over the past three years, Alphonse "Scarface" Capone had fought a bloody war with his bootlegging rivals, chiefly the North Side Gang led, in turn, by Dean O'Banion (murdered in November 1924), Earle "Hymie" Weiss (killed with two companions in October 1926), and George "Bugs" Moran. Most Chicago police served whichever outfit paid the most on any given day, and generally turned a blind eye while the Windy City's murder rate skyrocketed, logging hundreds of gangland murder
s in the Prohibition era.

  No one paid authorities to overlook Earle Nelson, but his own clandestine tactics did the trick nearly as well. On Friday, June 3, he approached twenty-seven-year-old Mary Sietsema, inquiring about a room she offered for rent in her home. When Mary's husband Martin returned from work that evening, he found her strangled with an electric cord, clothing torn and disarranged, raped after she was slain. As usual, Earle helped himself to clothes before he left, including a sweater, brown sandals, and a blue suit of Martin's.

  Police scoured the neighborhood in vain, while reporters aired Nelson's description, but in vain. He had begun to feel oppressive heat in the Midwest, and this time did not opt for a return to the West Coast. He had a new escape plan fresh in mind.

  The "Gorilla Murderer" was on his way to Canada.

  Chapter 7

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  In theory, Nelson's flight to Canada afforded him escape from justice in the States, lacking an extradition treaty that would send him back for trial. Of course, to utilize that legal loophole, Earle required a certain self-control that he did not possess. After so many victims, he had turned into a murder junkie, hopelessly addicted to the "kick" of homicide and necrophilia. He could no more restrain himself from strangling women and defiling them in death than he could hold his breath until the crack of Judgment Day.

  And while his urges drove him on, that day was drawing near.

  Earle did disrupt his normal pattern in a sense, when he spared Winnipeg landlady Katherine Hill on June 8, 1927, killing young passerby Lola Cowan instead and concealing Cowan in Hill's home. Perhaps that murder failed to satisfy him, since he almost instantly rebounded, slaying Emily Patterson in his now-recognized style. Those murders ruined any hope Earle might have had for hiding out in Canada long-term. His first escape, from the Killarney jail, only delayed the fate that had been waiting for him since October 1925, when he slew Olla McCoy in the City of Brotherly Love.

  Three levels of courts serve Manitoba. The Provincial Court holds primary criminal jurisdiction, plus limited concurrent jurisdiction with the higher Court of Queen's Bench in matters of family law originating outside the capital. More than 95 percent of Manitoba's criminal cases are tried in the Provincial Court, where judges preside over intake (first appearance) courts, screening (resolution) courts, preliminary inquiries (to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to order an accused to stand trial), and various types of trial courts. The Provincial Court also hears all of Manitoba's juvenile cases. The Court of Queen’s Bench (General Division) is the highest trial court in Manitoba, dealing with civil and criminal matters, as well as appeals from decisions by masters, small claims hearing officers, and the Provincial Court on summary convictions. The Court of Appeal is Manitoba's senior and final court, consisting of a Chief Justice and ten lesser judges. It normally sits in panels comprised of three judges which constitutes a quorum, but occasionally, on matters of great importance, will sit with a panel of five judges.

  Actions by the Manitoba Prosecution Service's Crown Attorney normally proceed through stages familiar from other jurisdictions throughout North America, beginning with investigation and continuing from there to laying of a charge by the police; the Crown Attorney's formal decision to prosecute, based on public interest and likelihood of conviction; a defendant's mandatory answer to the charge in court; preliminary inquiries disclosing the prosecution's case to defense attorneys; trial; a verdict; sentencing; and any appeals of said verdict.

  In Nelson's case, there was no other charge but murder, yet it still remained for Manitoba's Crown Attorney to decide how many murders would be tried in Winnipeg. Two were on the table, but the Crown decided that its strongest case involved the death of Earle's second Canadian victim, Emily Patterson. No witness had observed him with the younger Lola Cowan, and while no one in the province doubted Earle's responsibility for her slaying as well, even the slightest risk of an acquittal was enough to tip the balance.

  And besides, the government could only execute Earle once.

  Meanwhile, if Canada should somehow fail to put him down for good, a host of other jurisdictions got in line. Between his second Manitoba arrest and the start of his trial, more than forty witnesses viewed Earle in photographs and in police lineups, placing him at or near the scene of murders, linking Nelson to his victims and their stolen property. A knife found in Earle's possession, its blade discolored by what seemed to be electric burns, linked him to the death of Mary Sietsema in Chicago, strangled with a sliced electric cord. Detectives from as far away as Portland, San Francisco, Kansas City, and Philadelphia arrived in Winnipeg to question Nelson, and while he finally admitted his identity, he generally balked at giving any details of his crimes. Nor were the lulls between his killings ever properly explained. That raised the prospect of more victims in the States, but evidence was lacking as indictments started piling up in Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa.

  Occasionally, Earle appeared to tease his captors. While he normally maintained his innocence, telling one Manitoba newspaper, "Murder just isn't possible for a man of my high Christian ideals," he also told investigators—albeit inaccurately—that "I only do my lady killings on Saturday nights." Defense attorney James Herbert Stitt placed his marginal hopes on a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, hoping that the court, while painfully aware of Nelson's guilt in twenty-odd murders, would balk at sentencing a man to die if he could not control himself.

  The term "insanity," per se, is meaningless in psychiatry, where mental illnesses abound. Today, various jurisdictions recognize a wide range of defenses based on mental incapacity, but at the time of Nelson's trial—indeed, from 1843 until the 1950s—English-language courts adhered to the M'Naghten rule: namely, that if a defendant understood the nature and quality of his or her action and realized that it constituted a crime, they were guilty as charged. Two common hypothetical examples of "insanity" are those of a delusional offender who cuts a victim's throat believing he has sliced a loaf of bread, or one who severs a sleeping victim's head in the belief that it will be amusing to watch the victim search for it when he awakes. By definition, a defendant who knows his act is criminal and has the power to control his urge could not be judged insane.

  A similar acceptable defense was that of irresistible impulse, sometimes dubbed the "policeman at the elbow" test. Simply stated, if jurors found that a defendant would have committed his or her crime even with a policeman standing nearby and watching, ready to make an arrest, they were justified in deeming the subject insane.

  Earle's trial convened on Thursday, November 1, 1927, before Justice A. K. Dysart and a twelve-man jury in Courtroom Number One of the Manitoba Law Courts Building. Attorney Stitt pressed the insanity defense, but only found two witnesses who would support Earle's case. Lillian Fiban told the court most of Earle's strange life story, from loss of his parents and grandmother to his mood swings and eccentric habits: drenching meals in olive oil and gobbling from his plate like an animal; leaving home in one set of clothes and returning in another never seen by members of his family before; walking on his hands and lifting chairs with his teeth; lurking in basements; drifting endlessly from job to job when he found any work at all; religious ravings and obsessions; his ejection from the army and the navy—on and on.

  Ex-wife Mary Martin was the only other soul willing to speak in Earle's defense, and it is questionable whether her words to the court inevitably helped or hurt his case. Throughout most of the Western world, spousal privilege bars prosecutors from forcing a husband or wife to testify against the other, though neither one may do so willingly, without compulsion. Likewise, communications between husband and wife are broadly seen as privileged, on par with remarks made to lawyers, priests, or physicians—and that immunity survives death or divorce, as far as any summons or subpoena is concerned. Conversely, if a spouse does choose to testify and speaks supporting any past or present partner, jurors may be skeptical—and o
ften rightly so—of his or her sworn testimony. History is rife with bogus spousal alibis and conscious efforts to pervert the course of justice.

  Mary Martin, on the other hand, had few fond memories of Earle and no apparent reason to support his ultimate acquittal on a murder charge. While on the witness stand, she detailed her ordeal with Nelson through the six months of their marriage, seconding Aunt Lillian's reports of Earle going to "look for work" and vanishing for days on end, returning home in shabby clothes unlike those he had departed in, resembling nothing from the couple's closets. She related his horrific bouts of anger, migraine headaches and depression, offset on occasion by ascension to a manic phase of hyperactivity. Some of his actions were simply bizarre, like the time he had offered two dollars as down payment on a house he wished to buy, prompting the seller to reject him as deranged.

  The Crown's only rebuttal witness, as to sanity, was Dr. Alvin T. Mathers, a psychiatrist who concurred with old findings from Napa State Hospital, diagnosing Earle as a "constitutional psychopath." While recognized as mental illness, psychopathy—later termed sociopathy—is medically defined as a personality disorder, characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, with bold or disinhibited behavior. Psychopaths come in all shapes and sizes, from petty swindlers to greedy CEOs, sneak thieves to presidents and legislators, rogue police to tribal warlords, compulsive philanderers to serial rapists. In layman's terms, they lack what most societies define as "conscience," disregarding laws and social mores as it suits them personally. Only a minority resort to homicide, but those who do feel no more guilt than an exterminator killing pests.