Bestial

by Harold Schechter

  Precisely how he diverted her attention is unknown, though he had, of course, a good deal of practice in such deadly ruses. It seems likely that, as he had with Mrs. H. C. Murray, he tricked her into glancing at the ceiling. There were a dozen ways he could have done it. “Look at that big waterstain right over the bed,” he might have said, gesturing upwards. “That plaster’s about to go.”

  Mrs. Myers, caught unawares, would have reflexively obeyed, tilting her head towards the spot he was pointing to, exposing her throat. It would have taken only a few seconds for her to realize that there was no loose plaster about to fall onto the bed—but that was all the time he needed.

  In that instant, he was upon her.

  Mrs. Myers’ older son, Robert, who had just turned twenty-three, was away at school, majoring in political science at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. His younger brother, Lawrence, however, still lived at home. It was Lawrence who notified the police after his mother had been missing for twelve hours.

  Two officers named Chase and Miller responded to the call. They found Mrs. Myers in the upstairs room. Lawrence himself had looked into the room while searching the house for his mother. But he had failed to see her body—unsurprisingly, since it was shoved beneath the single bed and concealed by the low-hanging quilt.

  The forty-eight-year-old widow had been strangled to death with her tea apron. It had been savagely twisted around her neck, five times in all, and secured with two square knots. Some splotches of blood that had leaked from her ears (a common occurrence in strangulation cases) had been covered by the throw rug in the center of the room. There was also a thin trail of blood on the floor. The killer had obviously garrotted Mrs. Myers in the middle of the room, then hidden her body beneath the bed.

  Whether he had raped her as well wasn’t immediately clear. Though her skirt was hiked above her knees, police believed that the garment might have become disarranged when the killer dragged her body feetfirst across the room.

  Unaccountably, there were still a few people in the Pacific Northwest who refused to accept that the recent rash of landlady deaths was the work of a single, elusive killer. In Seattle, close friends of Florence Monks continued to maintain that she had been slain for her jewelry by someone who knew her. Coroner Willis Corson, too, remained stubbornly attached to his theory, that the widow’s weakened heart had given out when she was assaulted in the course of the robbery.

  In Portland, however, the universal consensus, even among those officials who had formerly been most skeptical of the “strangler” theory, was that the same phantom killer had just claimed another victim. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of the four Portland women were too similar to ignore. And indeed, on the day that Mrs. Myers’ death was blazoned on the front page of the Morning Oregonian, the paper ran a comparative chart showing the glaring similarities among the four murder cases: Mrs. Beata Withers, thirty-five-year-old landlady, her body found jammed inside a trunk; Mrs. Virginia Grant, fifty-nine-year-old landlady, her body found stuffed behind the furnace; Mrs. Mabel Fluke, thirty-seven-year-old landlady, her body found hidden in the attic; and now, Mrs. Florence Myers, forty-eight-year-old landlady, her body found stuffed beneath a bed.

  In the latest case, as in each of the others, a few items belonging to the victim had been taken by the killer, who had made off with Mrs. Myers’ diamond engagement ring, her wristwatch, and a total of $8.50 from her purse. It was the opinion of Chief Thatcher, however, that robbery was not the motive in the crimes, since some of the items stolen from the victims (Beata Withers’ hat, for instance, and Mabel Fluke’s coat) were of no intrinsic worth. Evidently, as Thatcher told reporters at a Wednesday morning news conference, the killer had taken the items “more as curios or souvenirs than for their value.”

  Exactly why a homicidal maniac would be interested in such paltry mementoes was something of a puzzle to the police, though it wouldn’t be at all surprising to their counterparts today who know that it is common for a serial killer to remove “trophies” from a murder scene: fetishistic objects associated with the victim (anything from a driver’s license to a body part) that help the killer relive his crime in fantasy.

  In each of the three previous cases, the Portland police had been strikingly slipshod in their procedures, traipsing around the crime scene, mishandling evidence. Detective Tackaberry’s impromptu experiment of having his man climb into and out of Beata Withers’ “death trunk,” thereby obliterating any hope of recovering fingerprints, was typical.

  This time was different. Reflecting their new (if belated) conviction that something dire was afoot in their city, the investigators exercised a thoroughgoing professionalism. The small, second-floor bedroom where Blanche Myers’ body had been found was immediately sealed off and protected. No one was permitted to touch anything in the room until the coroner arrived and fingerprint expert Harold A. Anderson had completed his work. Even the cigarette butts found in an ashtray were collected for analysis.

  This diligence had an immediate payoff: Anderson was able to discover and photograph three perfect fingerprints on the iron headboard of the bed. By Tuesday evening, the police were busily checking the prints against the thousands in their files.

  In the meantime, Portland Chief of Detectives John T. Moore issued a public warning to all Portland landladies. “Do not show your houses or rooms for rent while alone,” Moore declared. “If necessary, call a policeman to accompany you. Crimes such as these should be prevented and could be prevented if women would be more careful. I do not wish to unduly alarm the people of Portland. But there is no denying that the situation is grave.”

  By Wednesday morning, Captain Moore was in touch with his counterparts in San Francisco and Seattle. There was no longer any doubt in the minds of these three lawmen that they were hunting for the same homicidal maniac. “I am confident that the man operating in Portland is the same slayer who murdered the women here,” declared Captain Duncan Matheson of the San Francisco police bureau. Speaking to newsmen in Seattle, Captain Charles Tenant concurred, “You don’t have to be much of a sleuth to know that the murders are the work of the same man.”

  While Moore, Tenant, and Matheson conferred by phone, coordinating their investigations, the entire Portland detective squad launched into what the newspapers described as “a manhunt unrivaled in Pacific Coast police annals.” Alexander Muir, the last person to see the victim alive, came forward at once. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a particularly valuable witness, since he had not caught so much as a glimpse of the suspect. He did, however, provide one potentially useful lead, recalling something Mrs. Myers had mentioned—that the stranger had initially come by her house on the previous Saturday to inquire about the room.

  Pursuing this lead, detectives discovered that one of Mrs. Myers’ oldest friends—a Seattle resident named Nellie Stengl, who taught at a school for the deaf and dumb—had visited the victim on Saturday. They immediately sought out and interviewed Miss Stengl at her home. Much to their disappointment, however, Miss Stengl had not seen the suspect, having apparently departed before he arrived.

  With his entire city in a panic, Mayor Baker of Portland announced that he would furnish $100 of his own money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the “Dark Strangler.” His offer was quickly matched by three others, from Portland Post No. 1 of the American Legion, a dairy farmer named Charles Eckleman, and Mrs. Myers’ brother, John A. Lawrence. On the following day, the reward fund ballooned to $1,300, when the city council pledged $1,000 to the fund (prompting Mayor Baker to withdraw his own personal offer).

  While Mrs. Myers’ older child, Robert, made the mournful journey home from college to attend her funeral, her younger son, Lawrence, made an eerie disclosure. His mother, he told reporters on Wednesday afternoon, had apparently experienced a strange premonition of her death. Just one month earner, she had handed him a sealed envelope, instructing him to open it “in case of an accident.”

  Inside, as L
awrence had just discovered, were a brief obituary notice, handwritten by his mother, and a request that she be buried in a vault at the Portland cemetery in “an inexpensive coffin.”

  That Mrs. Myers, for whatever odd reason, had been mulling over the possibility of her own untimely death was confirmation by deputy coroner Ben Guldransen, who, as it happened, was a friend of the victim. About a year before her murder, Guldransen revealed, he and Mrs. Myers had been talking about his work. “Well, Ben,” Mrs. Myers had said in all apparent seriousness. “If you ever find me lying dead, please don’t take my body up to the morgue. I want it to go to the Holman & Lutz undertaking parlors.”

  At the time, Guldransen had made light of her concern, wondering why a vigorous, youthful woman would even entertain such morbid thoughts. Now, remembering her wishes, he made sure to comply.

  21

  †

  Russell Gordon

  I never spoke to a nicer mannered fellow.

  Even as the morticians at Holman & Lutz were readying Blanche Myers’ body for burial, a major break was occurring in the murder investigation. Indeed, it was the most significant turn in the “Dark Strangler” case since Mrs. H. C. Murray—the pregnant California woman who had survived a terrifying encounter with the killer—provided police with the first detailed account of his insidious m.o.

  Two elderly widows—Mrs. Edna Gaylord, proprietress of a ramshackle rooming house on Third Street in Portland, and her longtime tenant, Mrs. Sophie Yates—revealed that, during the four days preceding the most recent slaying, they had been sharing their living quarters with the strangler.

  According to the two women, who told their story to the police on Wednesday afternoon, December 1, a man calling himself Adrian Harris had shown up at the boardinghouse exactly one week earlier, at around 10:00 A.M. on the day before Thanksgiving. They described him as a short but stocky fellow in his late twenties, with a swarthy complexion, dark hair, and “piercing black eyes.” In one hand, he clutched a shiny, new suitcase of a clearly inexpensive make. Though somewhat shabbily dressed, he comported himself like a “perfect gentleman,” doffing his brown cap as he stood on the threshold and introduced himself. He was a carpenter, he explained, who would be working in Portland for an indefinite period of time. Mrs. Gaylord noticed that he spoke with a slight lisp, his thick lips “bulging” slightly when he talked.

  When the landlady confirmed that she had a room available on the second floor, he took it sight unseen, paying her a week’s rent in advance—$2 in silver coins. Mrs. Gaylord led him up to his room and left him there to get some rest. He had been travelling all night, he explained, and felt “dog-tired.”

  Later that day, he appeared in the parlor, where Mrs. Gaylord and her tenant were chatting companionably by the fireplace. Settling into a chair, he pulled out a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and joined in the conversation. Before long, the talk turned to the women’s Thanksgiving Day plans. Somewhat sheepishly, the landlady confessed that she was not in a financial position to make much of a fuss, but that she would do her best to put together a nice meal, which Mr. Harris was welcome to share.

  Harris conversed easily with the two women, telling them a bit about his background as he puffed on his “coffin nail” (as the abstemious Mrs. Gaylord thought of cigarettes). He was Danish by birth, he explained, his parents having emigrated from Copenhagen when he was five years old. He had been married for a brief time, but his wife couldn’t stop flirting with other men, so Harris had divorced her about a year ago. Mrs. Gaylord and Mrs. Yates made commiserating noises as the young man provided several shocking examples of his ex-wife’s shameless behavior.

  Since the breakup of his marriage, he had been moving around a good deal, making his living building bunkhouses in logging camps. Having managed to salt away a tidy sum—$1,200, which he had just deposited in a local bank—he now intended to start his own construction business, putting up and selling small houses in Portland.

  After fifteen minutes or so, the well-spoken young man—whose only fault, as far as the landlady could see, was his fondness for smoking—excused himself and returned to his room. Not long afterwards, he reappeared in the parlor, dressed in his slightly oversized brown coat and floppy cap.

  “I will be back in a short while,” he said. “I have some errands to run.” Then he turned and headed for the front door.

  When he showed up at the house again an hour or so later, he was clutching several overstuffed grocery bags. Carrying them into the kitchen, he set them onto the counter. The two women came bustling after him, exclaiming with surprise.

  “Here,” he said, as he beamed with an almost childlike pleasure. “Tomorrow we will have a real holiday feast.” Then, so excitedly that he reminded Mrs. Gaylord of a little boy unwrapping his birthday gifts, he began emptying the bags, which were packed with Thanksgiving provisions.

  When Mrs. Gaylord protested at his extravagance—“But Mr. Harris, there’s so much food!”—the burly young man admitted that he had “gone whole hog,” spending no less than fourteen dollars.

  The women had a happy time the following day, filling their bellies to the point of discomfort while the young man regaled them with amazing tales of occult, theosophical, and Spiritualistic phenomena, drawn from a seemingly inexhaustible fund of arcane knowledge. He was evidently a deeply religious individual, whose speech was laden with references to Scripture.

  When the two women queried him more closely about his beliefs, Harris replied that he had recently been to some Holy Roller meetings and had attended a service at the spectacular Angelus Temple of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, the golden-haired revivalist whose name had been continuously in the headlines for almost half a year. (The previous June—following a mysterious, month-long disappearance—a bruised and blistered Sister Aimee had suddenly appeared in Arizona, claiming that she had been kidnapped and held captive in Mexico. As investigators delved into her story, however, it became increasingly evident that the self-described “World’s Most Pulchritudinous Evangelist” had actually absconded for a prolonged romantic interlude with one of her married employees.)

  Altogether, the young man remained at the boarding-house for four and a half days. For the most part, he stayed shut up in his room, emerging only at dusk, when he would briefly leave the house to buy the daily Oregonian. At one point, he came down with what seemed to be a touch of the flu and spent much of the following day seated by the fireplace, a blanket draped around his shoulders.

  At around 10:00 A.M. on Monday, November 29 (the day of Blanche Myers’ murder), he appeared in the front hallway, suitcase in hand. He was leaving for Vancouver, Washington, he declared. Since he had paid a full week’s rent in advance, this sudden departure, less than five days after his arrival, struck the women as peculiar. It seemed doubly surprising in light of his earlier statements, that he planned to settle in Portland and go into the construction business.

  It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that Mrs. Gaylord realized with a shock just who the young man was. She was seated in the parlor, reading the newspaper account of Blanche Myers’ murder. When she came upon the description of the “Dark Strangler” suspect, she let out such a startled cry that Mrs. Yates came hurrying in from the kitchen to see what was wrong.

  Mrs. Gaylord did not own a telephone. Throwing on her overcoat, she hurried to a neighbor’s house and called police headquarters.

  Under ordinary circumstances, the police wouldn’t have attached any undue weight to her story. After all, they had been inundated with similar reports ever since Mrs. Myers’ death—breathless accounts from dozens of lone, local women who had found themselves confronted (often in the secrecy of their bedrooms) by dark, menacing strangers. In this case, however, there was a compelling cause to take the testimony of Mrs. Gaylord and Mrs. Yates seriously.

  For reasons explicable only to himself, the man who called himself Adrian Harris had decided to bestow an extravagant gift on the two women. He had done it on the day af
ter Thanksgiving. Descending from his bedroom in mid-morning, he had summoned them to the parlor and presented each of the astonished women with several costly pieces of jewelry.

  He had given the landlady a triple-strand choker of pearls and a white-gold necklace along with several smaller items, including a gold pin and a silver-mounted fountain pen. Mrs. Yates received a diamond bracelet with matching earrings, plus a gold perfume bottle and a jeweled brooch.

  Though the women had demurred, the young man was insistent. According to Mrs. Gaylord’s account, Harris had said that he “had no use” for the jewelry and wanted to share it with them because they “had so little.”

  Less than fifteen minutes after receiving Mrs. Gaylord’s call, two detectives, James Mulligan and Bernard LáSalle, arrived at her home to examine the jewelry. The moment they laid eyes on it, they exchanged an excited look. Like every other police agency in the Pacific Northwest, the Portland department had received a detailed bulletin from Seattle, describing the valuables that had been stolen by the slayer of Mrs. Florence Monks.

  Even at a glance, Mulligan and LaSalle could see that the jewelry which “Adrian Harris” had lavished on the two elderly widows appeared to be a precise match.

  By Wednesday evening, the confiscated loot was on its way to police headquarters in Seattle, where the three most striking pieces—the white-gold necklace, triple-strand string of pearls, and diamond bracelet—were arranged on a black velvet jeweler’s tray and photographed. The picture appeared on the front page of the following day’s Seattle Times, along with an article explaining that the “gems were thought to be the ones stolen from slain Seattle widow, Mrs. Florence Fithian Monks.” Any of her acquaintances who recognized the jewelry were urged to contact the police without delay.