The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases

by Marlowe, John

  Although Hennard considered Jernigan and her sister to be on the opposite side of ‘the abundance of evil women’, she was not spared his threatening phone calls. The sisters’ mother was also on the receiving end of his abuse. Both approached police with their concerns, fearing that he would one day explode into violence.

  Though disconcerting, none of these communications would have been particularly newsworthy, had it not been for a ten-minute incident which took place on 16 October 1991, the day after Hennard’s 35th birthday. That day, he left his Belton home and drove 25 kilometres to Killeen, the largest city in Bell County. At about 40 minutes after noon, he drove his blue Ford Ranger pick-up into the parking lot of Luby’s Cafeteria, a chain restaurant situated on the interstate highway. Hennard gunned the engine and rammed the truck through the restaurant’s plate glass window, striking an elderly male diner.

  The assumption was that there had been a terrible accident, and several members of the lunchtime crowd rushed to help. He then emerged from the cab with his Glock and Ruger.

  ‘This is what Bell County has done to me!’ he yelled, and began to shoot.

  The first person to die was the man he had struck with his pick-up; Hennard shot him in the head. He was methodical in his killing, making certain that each was dead or mortally wounded before moving on to the next victim.

  At one point he paused and spoke to a woman with a 4-year-old girl, saying ‘Get the baby and get out of here, lady, right now.’ He then returned to firing, shooting the woman’s mother. Witnesses later said that he appeared to focus on shooting women.

  There were some patrons who managed to escape. One man hurled himself through one of the restaurant’s plate glass windows, creating an opening through which others followed. Those who could not escape sought to hide themselves behind overturned tables.

  Police arrived at the bloody scene ten minutes into the slaughter. They exchanged fire and hit the gunman four times. Hennard sought refuge in one of the restaurant washrooms, where he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

  It was then the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States: 14 women and nine men lay dead; one other victim was mortally wounded. Another 20 people had been injured, some by glass as they’d tried to escape through the broken window.

  The first paramedics to enter later reported discovering people playing dead, despite the fact that the shooting had ceased minutes earlier. One Luby’s employee had to be treated for hypothermia after spending over two hours hiding in the restaurant freezer, unaware that the gunman was dead. Another hid for nearly 24 hours in a commercial dishwasher before being discovered.

  After the shooting, Luby’s Cafeteria was closed for five months. It never regained the popularity it had once enjoyed. In 2000, the restaurant shut its doors for good.

  Two days after the shooting, a proposed ban on semi-automatic assault weapons that had been before the United States Congress failed. However, the Texas shootings did have a lasting legacy; one that was markedly different than that of the Montreal Massacre, which had taken place less than two years earlier. As students at the Ecole Polytechnique pushed for tighter gun control laws north of the border, a survivor of the Killeen shooting was crossing the United States campaigning in support of concealed handgun laws. Suzanna Hupp had been eating at Luby’s when Hennard began his shooting spree. Although she managed to escape, both her parents, who had been at the table with her, were killed without mercy.

  She had left her handgun in her truck as Texas state law then forbade the carrying of a concealed weapon. Hupp argued that she would have had an opportunity to stop the killing if she’d been permitted to carry the handgun in her handbag. Today she is credited with having helped to bring about the state’s current concealed weapons law.

  In 1998, she became the first woman to be awarded a lifetime membership of the National Rifle Association.

  THOMAS HAMILTON

  Though 43, Thomas Hamilton had never had any adult friends. He preferred to spend his time with young boys. He displayed all the signs of paedophilia, yet no reliable evidence has ever been produced that he sexually abused anyone.

  Hamilton was born Thomas Watt on 10 May 1952 in Glasgow. Shortly thereafter, his parents separated and in 1955 were divorced. Just before his fourth birthday, he was adopted by his maternal grandparents, who changed his name to Thomas Watt Hamilton. He grew up believing that his birth mother was his sister. It wasn’t until 1985, when Hamilton was in his 30s, that the woman he thought was his sister finally moved out of the parental home. Two years later, Hamilton and his adoptive parents moved into the house in which he would live for the rest of his life. By the end of 1992, Hamilton’s adoptive mother had died, while his adoptive father had moved into an old people’s home. At the age of 40, he was for the first time living away apart from his adoptive parents.

  Hamilton had participated in boy scouts as a child, an interest that continued into adulthood. In 1973, he was appointed assistant scout leader to a troop in Stirling. Although he had passed the various checks made into his suitability, it wasn’t long before complaints were being made about his leadership. The most serious of these concerned two occasions when boys were forced to sleep in a van overnight in his company. Confronted with the first complaint, Hamilton explained that the intended accommodation had been double-booked. When the situation repeated itself, an investigation was undertaken which revealed that there had been no booking on either occasion. As a result, he was removed from his position and, ultimately, his name was added to a blacklist.

  In the years that followed, he made several attempts to return to scouting. In February 1977, Hamilton requested that a committee of inquiry be formed to address a complaint that he had been victimized. The request was denied. The following year, he failed in an attempt to bypass the blacklist by offering his services in another district.

  Frustrated in his attempts to again participate in scouting, Hamilton became increasingly involved in boys clubs. Beginning in the late 1970s, Hamilton organized and operated at least 15 different clubs, three of which, the Dunblane Boys Club, the Falkirk Boys Club and the Bishopbriggs Boys Club, he was active in at the time of his death.

  Hamilton’s clubs were aimed primarily at boys between the ages of 8 and 11. For the most part, activities consisted of gymnastics and games. Although he was on occasion assisted by others, including parents, more often than not Hamilton ran each club entirely on his own. He employed a title, ‘The Boys Clubs Sports Group Committee’, in order to create the impression that other adults were involved in the running of the clubs. In reality, there was no such body.

  When he became unemployed in 1985, the fees provided Hamilton with a small source of income. In most cases, the clubs began as extremely popular operations – some attracting approximately 70 boys – but would invariably start to decline. His ideas of discipline tended not to match those of the boys’ parents. The fitness regimes were strenuous and harsh, leading volunteers and parents to consider them militaristic. Some went so far as to suggest that Hamilton was taking pleasure in dominating the boys.

  It was noted that Hamilton showed an unusual interest in certain boys, appearing to have favourites. He received complaints from some parents regarding his insistence that the boys wore tight black swimming trunks during gymnastics. Once these were provided by Hamilton, the boys were obliged to change in the gymnasium, rather than the changing rooms.

  Also disconcerting was his habit of taking photographs of the boys as they posed in their trunks. In 1989, he added video to his collection of images. When confronted by parents, Hamilton would explain that the photographs and videos were taken for training and advertising purposes. Those parents who saw the videos couldn’t help but notice that the boys looked unhappy and uncomfortable. What’s more, Hamilton’s camerawork appeared to linger on certain parts of the boys’ bodies. Hamilton’s home contained hundreds of photographs of boys – many wearing black swimming trunks – hanging on the w
alls or in albums.

  Whenever a boy was pulled out of one of his clubs, Hamilton would respond by writing the parents long letters in which he would complain of the rumour and innuendo associated with his activities. He would often hand-deliver these intimidating letters at night.

  There were some parents, however, who supported Hamilton. When, in 1983, his leases at two high schools were cancelled when former issues with the scouts came to light, Hamilton obtained 30 letters of support from parents. The lease was subsequently reinstated.

  In addition to the boys clubs, Hamilton would run summer camps. These usually catered for boys of about 9 years of age who might be 12 or so in number. Exactly how many camps Hamilton ran is unknown. His claim that the July 1988 summer camp on Inchmoan Island on Loch Lomond was his 55th cannot be confirmed. Nevertheless, it was the first to be visited by the authorities. Acting on a complaint, two police officers inspected the camp on 20 July, to find the boys ill-nourished and inadequately dressed. As one of the constables was involved in scouting, Hamilton dismissed their findings as part of a conspiracy launched by the Scouts’ Association. After another of his summer camps, held in July 1991, was investigated, Hamilton replaced the programme with what he termed a ‘residential sports training course’, in which boys slept on the dining room floor of Dunblane High School. This, too, was investigated by the authorities.

  By 1995, the rumour and innuendo that Hamilton had complained about in letters to parents was putting an end to his clubs. Three had had to shut down due to declining enrolment, while a proposed new club was cancelled when only one boy attended. On 18 August, he circulated letters in Dunblane intended to counter what he described as false and misleading gossip which had been circulated by scout officials. He sought to break free from his reputation by opening up a new boys club some 40 kilometres away in Bishopbriggs.

  Complaints against Hamilton were now being made on a frequent basis. However, while his conduct was of great concern, it had not yet crossed the line into criminality.

  At shortly after eight on the morning of 13 March 1996, a neighbour saw Hamilton scraping ice off a white rental van outside his Stirling home. They shared what the neighbour would describe as a normal conversation. Some time later Hamilton drove the van 10 kilometres north to the town of Dunblane, arriving at about 9:30 at the car park of Dunblane Primary School. Parking beside a telegraph pole, he cut the wires. It is supposed that Hamilton thought they served the school, when in fact they were for adjoining houses. Beneath his jacket he wore four holsters which held two 9mm Browning semi-automatic pistols and two .357 Smith and Wesson revolvers. He was also wearing a woollen hat and ear protectors. Picking up a large camera bag, Hamilton walked across the car park and entered the school by a side door.

  It was a little more than half an hour into the school day when Hamilton entered the gymnasium. There he found two teachers, an assistant and a class of 28 pupils, ranging between 5 and 6 years of age. Hamilton walked forward a few steps, raised his pistol and began firing rapidly and indiscriminately. He hit the physical education teacher, Eileen Harrild, four times, including a shot to the left breast. The other teacher, 47-year-old Gwen Mayor, was killed instantly. The assistant, Mary Blake, was also shot, but managed to seek refuge with several children in a storage area, out of the line of direct fire.

  Hamilton remained in his position and continued to shoot, killing one child and injuring others. Still firing indiscriminately, he began to advance further into the gymnasium. He then walked over to a group of the injured and fired at point-blank range.

  Although he resumed the wholesale firing, some of Hamilton’s shots were more directed. He fired at one boy who was passing by the gymnasium, but missed. Another shot was taken through a window, and was probably directed at an adult who was walking across the playground. Again, he missed.

  He walked out of the gymnasium and fired four shots towards the school library, hitting a staff member, Grace Tweddle, in the head. He then sprayed the outside of a classroom hut, but hit no one.

  The teacher, Catherine Gordon, had instructed her pupils to get down on the floor just moments before the shots entered the classroom.

  Hamilton re-entered the gymnasium, again shooting haphazardly. He then dropped the pistol and drew a revolver. Placing the muzzle in his mouth, he pulled the trigger.

  It is estimated that Hamilton’s rampage lasted between three and four minutes and the damage that he caused during that time was absolutely appalling. On the floor of the gymnasium 15 children and their teacher, Gwen Mayor, lay dead. Hamilton had shot these 16 people 58 times. One more child, Mhairi Isabel MacBeath, would die on the way to hospital; 13 other people had received gunshots. All were taken to Stirling Royal Infirmary.

  As great as the carnage was, it could have been much, much worse. It wasn’t until 9:41, approximately one minute after Hamilton had killed himself, that police received an emergency call.

  The first officers arrived on the scene at 9:50. Hamilton was shown to have entered the school with 743 rounds of ammunition, of which he used 106.

  He used only one of the two 9mm Browning semi-automatic pistols. Both .357 Smith and Wesson revolvers remained in their holsters until Hamilton used one to commit suicide.

  ERIC HARRIS AND DYLAN KLEBOLD

  Together Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had many dreams. They wrote of elaborate plans for a major explosion on a par with the Oklahoma City bombing. Another scheme involved hijacking a plane at Denver International Airport, flying 2,600 kilometres, and crashing into a building in New York. Ultimately, they chose as their target a public building they knew better than any other: their own high school. Had everything gone according to plan, their rampage, known as the Columbine High School Massacre, would have been the worst school shooting in history.

  Eric David Harris was born on 9 April 1981 in Wichita, Kansas, the second son of a part-time caterer and a United States Air Force transport pilot. In July 1993, the family relocated to Littleton, Colorado. They lived in rented accommodation for three years, eventually buying a house in an upper middle-class neighbourhood close to Columbine High School.

  Dylan Bennet Klebold, a native of Colorado, was born in Lakewood on 11 September 1981, 20 years to the day before the events of 9/11. His mother was an employment counsellor and his father had a small, home-based real estate business.

  Harris and Klebold met as boys while attending middle school. They had much in common. In 1996, Harris set up a website devoted to Doom, a violent computer game in which players must kill demons and zombies to reach higher levels of play. Also posted on the site were jokes and brief entries concerning his parents, friends and school. It wasn’t long before Harris began to add instructions on how to make explosives, and records of the trouble he and Klebold were causing. The site had few visitors and attracted little attention until late 1997 when the parents of Harris’ former friend, Brooks Brown, discovered that it contained death threats aimed against their son. Further investigation by the sheriff’s office revealed other threats directed at the students and teachers of Columbine High School, where Harris and Klebold were students. Harris had posted remarks concerning his hatred of society and the desire he had to kill.

  A few months into the investigation of the website, in January 1998, Harris and Klebold were caught in the act of stealing computer equipment from a van. They attended a joint court hearing, where it was decided that they both needed psychiatric help. The pair avoided prosecution by participating in a programme that involved three months of counselling and community service. Although both expressed regret publicly, in his journal Harris wrote of his cleverness in deceiving the judge.

  Not long after the court hearing, Harris removed the section of his website in which he’d posted his thoughts and threats. However, as the date of the massacre drew near, he added a new section in which he kept a record of his gun collection and bomb-making activities. Also included was a ‘hit list’ of those he wished to target. The sheriff’s office
wrote a draft affidavit for a search warrant of the Harris house, but this was never filed.

  Exactly when Harris and Klebold began planning their massacre has been a matter of some debate. However, what can be said with certainty is that their actions were not the result of a whim. Over the course of several months, Harris and Klebold had built their bombs and gathered their ammunition. Well aware that they would be made famous by their actions, Harris left behind a collection of videos in which the two discuss their motivations. Harris recalled that as a member of a military family he had had to move from town to town, always having to start afresh. He also expressed resentment of his brother Byron, who was extremely popular and an accomplished athlete. Parents excepted, Klebold spoke about the grievances he had with his family, who he felt always treated him as their inferior.

  The pair relished the place they would stake in history through their actions. Hollywood, they were certain, would fight over the rights to their story. The two discussed who might make the better film – Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino?

  They were so dedicated to the documentation of their designs that they made a tape just prior to their departure for the high school. Klebold, the first to speak, announces, ‘It’s a half-hour before our Judgement Day.’ After saying goodbye to his parents, he adds, ‘I don’t like life very much... Just know I’m going to a much better place than here.’