by Ray Black
MISSING MISTRESSES
Murder was not his only crime. By the time he was hacking up hotel guests the doctor was already a bigamist, having now married one Myrta Belknap in Minneapolis. Unaware of his first wife or indeed his predilection for preying on the city’s women, she raised his family in the up-scale suburb of Wilmette, while Holmes began a series of affairs with a number of other ladies.
Employed as his secretary at the drugstore, the doctor soon took a shine to Mrs Julia Conner. Falling for his considerable charm, she left her husband and moved into the hotel with her eight-year-old child. However, when Holmes became smitten with fresh-faced southern belle, Minnie Williams, he swiftly bumped off Conner and her young daughter and installed Minnie as mistress of the castle.
In June 1893, with no notion of what horrors lay hidden inside her home, Minnie invited her younger sister Anna to join them. By July she was never seen nor heard of again. Six months later H. H. Holmes married a third time, bringing to a close his relationship with Minnie. By the spring she went the way of her sister, undoubtedly murdered by the far-from-good doctor.
HOLMES’ HOODWINK
After the World’s Fair, Holmes’ past crimes began to catch up with him. The creditors he had persistently failed to pay were in pursuit, forcing him to flee the Windy City. Heading south to Fort Worth, Texas, he engaged in further criminal practices, winding up in in a St Louis jail for horse theft. While behind bars he spoke of a new plan, an insurance scam that would net him $10,000 if successful. Promising his cell-mate, Marion Hedgepeth, $500 in exchange for the name of a disreputable lawyer he could trust, the convict suggested Colonel Jeptha Howe.
Also in on the scam was Benjamin Pitzel. He had agreed to fake his own death so his wife Carrie might collect on the insurance policy. While Holmes searched for a suitable cadaver to play him, Pitzel set up shop as inventor B. F. Perry at 1316 Callowhill Street, Philadelphia and waited to hear from his partner in crime.
Unfortunately for Pitzel, he failed to see the double-cross. Holmes had no intention of finding a body. Instead he killed Pitzel at the address, binding his hands and feet and burning him alive in a pool of Benzine. Following the discovery of the frazzled corpse on 4 September 1894, the police declared the death an accident, and two weeks later Holmes – accompanied by Jeptha Howe – identified the body and collected the $10,000 on behalf of Mrs Pitzel.
THE TELLTALE TWIST
Returning to St Louis with the money, it appeared Holmes’ swindle had succeeded. After telling Carrie her husband was lying low in South America (while in reality he was lying six feet under), Holmes set off across the country with three of the widow’s five children in tow. At every town and city he passed through he left a web of lies and deceit in his wake, cheating the innocent out of their fortunes.
That autumn, Holmes’ pathological desire to hustle all those around him, would bring about his downfall. Still languishing in a St Louis jail, Marion Hedgepeth had not been paid his $500 finder’s fee. Now his former cell-mate turned informant, telling police of Holmes’ insurance swindle. Soon the Pinkerton Detective Agency was on the case, assigned to track him down. They caught up with him in Boston on 17 November 1894.
Struggling through an endless series of lies, investi-gators slowly discovered the man in custody was guilty of more than just insurance fraud. Later the bodies of the three Pitzel children were discovered. Nellie and Alice had been stuffed inside a large trunk and gassed, their bodies buried side by side in a shallow grave in Toronto. Howard Pitzel’s charred bones were found in a stove at a house in Indianapolis.
Next came the shocking truth behind the castle in Chicago. Numerous skulls and other gruesome remains were seized from the cellar inciting Holmes to confess to killing twenty-seven people.
Despite this disturbing revelation, Holmes was charged with the Pitzel murders only. Found guilty, he was sentenced to death and on 7 May 1896 was hanged at Moyamensing Prison. According to his instructions, Holmes was buried in concrete at the Holy Cross Cemetery, citing fears that his body would be exhumed and dissected like so many of his victims.
Javed Iqbal
Pakistan’s most prolific serial killer shocked a nation when he openly confessed to the sexual abuse, murder and mutilation of one-hundred children in a disturbing act of vengeance.
A KILLER’S CONFESSION
Lying along the river Ravi, Lahore is home to over eight million Pakistanis. The country’s second largest city, and one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world, this ancient metropolis harbours nearly five thousand children living rough on its streets. Many of them runaways escaping abusive parents, they are forced to turn to crime to survive, risking further violence to themselves. At the tail end of the last century these street children would become the easy prey to a most brutal killer.
On 2 December 1999, a letter arrived at Lahore’s main police station. Signed by its author Javed Iqbal, it disclosed the sexual abuse and murder of one-hundred young boys between the ages of six and sixteen. In some detail Iqbal admitted to asphyxiating the century of victims with cyanide, dismembering their corpses and dissolving their remains in vats of hydrochloric acid. An identical letter had also been sent to a local Lahore newspaper and so in a flash police officers and journalists alike flocked to the home of this self-confessed killer.
DISPLAY OF DEATH
As the press waited for news, police inside undertook the search of the three-storey house located deep in the heart of the city’s slum area. What they found corroborated the killer’s claims. Blood-spattered walls and a blood-soaked floor led the investigators to a collection of photographs showing the dead wrapped in plastic. Further in they discovered two blue vats of acid with the liquefied remains of three bodies. All items had been left out in the open with neatly-written notes attached. It was clear this man wanted his handiwork confirmed.
Among this deliberate display of death, authorities found a diary giving even more information on the murders committed within. A ledger listing names, ages and dates of their demise revealed the killings had occurred over a five month period between 20 June and 13 November 1999. Iqbal had even calculated the cost of exterminating each child: 120 rupees.
MANHUNT
Included in the confession Javed Iqbal had stated he planned to commit suicide after the murders by drowning himself in the Ravi River. Police now descended upon its banks to the north of the city, dragging the waters for the corpse of a killer. The nets caught nothing of relevance. This led to what is believed to be the largest manhunt in Pakistan’s history. In a bid to locate the whereabouts of Iqbal, police offered a reward of one million rupees for any information leading to his arrest. On 6 December, four days after the letter’s arrival, detectives arrested two teenagers in Sohawa, some two hundred kilometres north of Lahore. In custody fifteen-year-old Muhammad Sabir confessed to assisting Iqbal in the rape and murder of some twenty-five children.
At the city’s Crime Investigation Agency, a number of people were held under suspicion of involvement in the brutal slaughter of these street urchins. Among these was Ishaq Billa, accused of selling Javed Iqbal the vats of acid used to turn the dismembered remains into mush. On 7th December, the day after his arrest, he fell to his death from the agency’s second storey window. It was deemed a suicide.
Meanwhile, as the hunt for Javed Iqbal continued, the parents of the missing children poured over the collection of ragged clothes and grisly photographs seized by police. By the end of the first week the identities of sixty-nine victims had been confirmed. Sadly, being in such an advanced state of deterior-ation, none of the bodies could be returned to the distraught families.
With each passing day that Javed Iqbal remained free, the people of Lahore became more frustrated. Protesters took to the streets, clashing with police, demanding they locate this abominable child killer in their midst. On 30 December, almost a month after his letter dropped into the laps of the police, the most wanted man in Pakistan came out of hiding
.
Walking into the Lahore offices of Urdu news-paper The Daily Jang, Javed Iqbal surrendered, fearing for his life, believing the police were out for blood and wanted to kill him. He was subsequently arrested and gave a full and frank confession to all one-hundred murders. He also clarified his motives for this most heinous series of crimes.
MOTIVE FOR MURDER
The forty-three-year-old chemical engineer was well-known to police. He had been held on charges of child molestation and sodomy on three separate occasions in the past ten years. Each time he avoided a conviction. However, according to Iqbal, events during his time in police custody proved to be the catalyst for killing these children.
Claiming he suffered severe beatings at the hands of the police, breaking his back, crushing his head and leaving him impotent, Iqbal felt victimized. And when Pakistani authorities later dismissed allegations he had been assaulted by two servant boys, the complainant vowed revenge. He would murder exactly one-hundred children as punishment for his misery and pain. Thanks to his successful steel recasting business, Javed had the funds to put his evil plan of retribution into effect. Acquiring the necessary supplies to cut up and eliminate the corpses, he paid his accomplices to lure the street children to his apartment. Promises of a decent meal and a place to sleep was enough to bring a steady stream of the homeless and the hungry to his lair.
Javed Iqbal and three accomplices appeared in court in January 2000 for their pre-trial indictment. Once again he made clear his guilt, confessing to all one-hundred murders, proclaiming he was ‘the nation’s culprit’ and deserved to be punished. However, the following month, Iqbal changed his tune, pleading not guilty to all charges.
Declaring it a mere publicity stunt, Iqbal claimed none of the children had been slain; he had just wanted to bring the plight of the runaway and orphaned children of Lahore to the public’s attention. Unfazed by such an appalling about-face, on 17 February 2000 the court formally indicted all four Pakistanis on charges of kidnap, sodomy and murder.
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
The next day, the trial of Javed Iqbal began in earnest. Parents of the missing children in attendance listened to his professions of innocence. His statements to the police had been made under duress, he said. Yet with a glut of physical evidence, ranging from the detailed diary to the acid-filled vats containing human carcasses, and over one-hundred witnesses testifying against him, Iqbal was eventually found guilty of every single murder.
On 16 March, Judge Allah Baksh Ranjha handed down the sentences. Accomplices Muhammad Sabir and a thirteen-year-old named Nadeem were given 63 and 253 years in jail respectively. The third accessory Shahzad Sajid was not so lucky. He, along with Javed Iqbal, received the death penalty.
Focusing on the serial killer with one-hundred souls to his name, the Judge declared he would swing by the neck before the parents whose children he murdered. He then wished for his corpse to suffer the same fate as his victims; to be cut up into one-hundred pieces and dissolved in acid. The press erroneously reported this call for an equal repayment for the crimes as his actual sentence, which had Islamic ideologists up in arms. A week later, amid the religious furore, Iqbal appealed his verdict.
CONSPIRACY?
After seven months incarceration within Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail, the next chapter in the saga began. On the morning of 25 October 2001, Javed Iqbal was found dead in his cell. Conflicting reports as to cause of death varied from poisoning to hanging; either way police called it suicide. Faisal Najib Chaudhry, Iqbal’s lawyer, believed otherwise. The timing of the death was a little suspicious. The apparent suicide had come just four days after the High Court had agreed to hear his appeal against the death penalty. An autopsy soon discovered he had been brutally beaten prior to his death leading many, including Chaudhry, to believe Javed Iqbal was murdered.
Following his death, it came to light that twenty-six of the supposed century of victims were in fact alive and well and living in Lahore. At the time of writing, the case has yet to be re-opened.
Joachim Kroll
Prowling the Ruhr region of North-West Germany for over twenty years, the Duisburg man-eater developed a taste for human flesh, luring little girls into secluded areas before carving out a take-away meal from their strangled corpses.
SEXUAL SLAUGHTER
Joachim Georg Kroll was born amidst a rising evil. The construction of Dachau, the Reichstag fire and the birth of the Gestapo, all part of the Nazi’s quest for absolute power in Germany, were taking place when this infamous cannibal killer entered the world on 17 April 1933. Raised by a large mining family in Hindenburg, Upper Silesia, little Jocky was a fragile child. Along with his constitution his bladder was also weak, often wetting the bed throughout his youth.
Very little else is known about his upbringing. Far from a bright child, he only managed five years of primary school (psychiatrists at his trial would score his IQ at just seventy-six) and, with his father away fighting, he was soon put to work on the local farms to bring money to the table. It was during these times the boy would realize he had an abnormal sexual predilection, becoming sexually aroused by the slaughter of pigs.
Come the end of the war, as Joachim was approaching his teens, his family headed west, settling in North Rhine-Westphalia. Over the next ten years, with his father languishing in a Russian Gulag, he lived with his mother and six sisters in a cramped two-room apartment.
KROLL’S FIRST KILL
The start of Joachim Kroll’s killing began following the death of his mother on 21 January 1955. Whether it was an angry reaction to the loss of a loved one or simple relief at being free to act on the thoughts in his head, this short, moon-faced German began a series of some fourteen murders over a twenty-year period.
His first victim was runaway nineteen-year-old Irmgard Strehl. On 8 February 1955, less than three weeks after losing his mother, Kroll approached the blonde in the green coat, inviting her to walk with him in the woods outside the old town of Luedinghausen. When his attempts to kiss her met with disapproval, he dragged the teenager into an outhouse, raped then stabbed her to death, disembowelling her body with a long-bladed knife.
Five days later police discovered Irmgard’s body in the barn where he had left her. A thorough investigation followed but without a single witness nor piece of useful evidence, the case remained unsolved. Joachim Kroll had completed his first kill and better still had succeeded in evading detection.
TURNING SERIAL KILLER
Following his slaying of Miss Strehl, Kroll quickly sought another victim in the North Rhine-Westphalia area. The second to fall into his evil clutches was twelve-year-old Erika Schuleter, whom he raped then throttled to death in the town of Kirchhellen. Yet again the authorities were unable to point the finger and Joachim was free to plan his next attack.
Three years passed before he took his third life, securing the title of serial killer. In 1957 he moved to a small town near Duisburg, a heavy industrial city ravaged by nearly three hundred bombing raids during the war, taking a three-room apartment on Friesenstrasse. Over the years his neighbours saw him as a kindly man with a good sense of humour, unaware he spent the evenings practising his strangle holds on inflatable sex dolls.
Once he had grown accustomed to his surroundings, Kroll resumed his attacks. Singling out a perfect spot close to the Rheinbrucke in Rheinhausen, the killer made his move on a twenty-three-year-old young woman named Erika. His target proved too strong and he was forced to flee. Less than a month later he returned to the same place, this time with more resolve to satisfy his urges.
On 16 June 1959 Kroll turned serial killer with the murder of Klara Frieda Tesmer in a meadow near Rheinhausen. Forensics discovered the body had been raped post-mortem following strangulation. A large amount of ejaculate was also found on the victim, leading investigators to think this was the work of a gang rather than one man.
KROLL THE CANNIBAL
In the summer heat, Kroll was a helpless slave to his sadistic des
ires, now travelling further afield to seek out a potential victim. On 26 July, he raped and strangled Manuela Knodt in the City Park of Essen nearly fifteen miles east of home. Surrendering to even deeper desires, Joachim carved sizeable portions from her buttocks and thighs to take home. His modus operandi was evolving.
Yet again Kroll slipped through the net cast by police. By February the following year detectives believed they had Manuela’s killer in custody when twenty-three-year-old Horst Otto walked into a police station to confess. The fake served eight years. Perhaps fearing he was pushing his luck, Joachim refrained from any further attack for the next three years.
In 1962 the devil within him demanded to be heard once again, whereupon he took the lives of three more young girls. First was Barbara Bruder, a twelve-year-old stolen from the town of Burscheid, some twenty miles to the south. Her body was never recovered. Next he strangled Petra Giese with her own scarf after raping her in Dinslaken-Bruckhausen.
Once more he left signs of cannibalism, removing both buttocks, her left forearm and hand. He repeated this now strict routine on 4 June killing Monika Tafel in a cornfield in Walsum. Slices of flesh had been carved from her buttocks, no doubt removed for him to consume on his return home.
As in the death of Manuela Knodt, the latter two murders were pinned on the wrong man leaving Joachim free to kill again. Vinzenz Kuehn served six years for Petra’s murder while the town of Walsum blamed the death of little Monika on one Walter Quicker, a known paedophile living in the area. On 5 October, unable to take the town’s constant torments, Quicker committed suicide, hanging him-self in the nearby woods.
