Ahmad Suradji
Ahmad Suradji was a sorcerer from a village near Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra in Indonesia. Women of all ages, as well as young girls, went to him to seek advice for marital and other problems, and he would cast spells and administer potions to assist them. However, in 1997 it transpired that, far from helping his credulous clientele, he had actually been murdering many of these innocent women. In all, he admitted to killing forty-two women and girls over a period of eleven years, murdering them in a strange ritual that involved burying them up to the waist in the ground before strangling them with a cable and drinking their saliva.
Father’s ghost
Little is known about Suradji’s early life, but he went by a number of different names, including Nasib Kelewang and Datuk Maringgi. Originally a cattle breeder, he developed an interest in sorcery, and eventually came to establish a reputation as a powerful witch doctor, earning a good living from doing so. He was helped in this enterprise by his three wives, all of whom were sisters. After his arrest, he told police that the murders started when he had a dream in which his father’s ghost told him to kill seventy women and drink their saliva. His father’s ghost had told him that, in this way, he would become a mystic healer, and would be able to help many people with his supernatural powers.
On May 2, 1997, the authorities arrested Suradji after three bodies were discovered in a remote sugar cane plantation near his home in the village of Aman Damai, Deli Serdang, about eighteen kilometres west of Medan. What was particularly bizarre about the discovery was that the bodies had been buried with their heads all pointing the same way – towards the house of Ahmad Suradji. Suradji, at that time aged forty-eight, was brought in for questioning, but initially denied that he had been involved in the murders. However, he eventually confessed and, when questioned further, added an additional thirteen murders to his previous list of crimes.
Horrified by this discovery, the police and authorities went on to search Suradji’s house and found further evidence there to incriminate him. Hidden away in the house, they found property belonging to at least twenty-five missing women. Further interrogation revealed that over a longer period of about eleven years, Suradji had murdered a total of forty-two women, all of them customers who had come to him for help. It appeared that his three wives had helped him in this hideous activity. They claimed that they were frightened and embarrassed to let the local community know what was really going on, and so had covered up for his brutal crimes, but there was also some evidence that they had willingly assisted him to lure and murder his victims. Because of this, the oldest of the three wives, Tumini, was arrested to be tried as his accomplice.
Local witch doctor
As Suradji’s horrifying story of cold-blooded murder unfolded, police learned that the witch doctor had been revered by women in the local community for his supposed extraordinary powers as a shaman, and that he had been a trusted confidant to many of them, discussing their medical, sexual and spiritual problems, and administering spells and potions that he said would help them. The women believed him to be able to help them in many ways, including making their husbands faithful. They also thought that his spells could bring them riches and good health, and that he could also cast evil spells on their enemies. In addition, women flocked to him because they thought he could help them become more sexually attractive. Many of these women were prostitutes, and even those who were not tended to visit him in secret, embarrassed to tell their family and friends about going to him for advice. In this way, he preyed on the gullibility and vanity of his female clients, and was able to continue his ghoulish trade for many years without being discovered.
By the time he was arrested, Suradji was on his way to becoming a rich man, by local standards at least. He had been supplementing his meagre income as a cattle breeder with large fees for his sorcery practice and was now seen as something of a local benefactor and pillar of the community. The reality was a little different. When the women came to him, he charged each of them between $200 and $400, talking to them sympathetically about their problems and casting spells to rid them of their ills. He would then demand that a ritual should take place outside in the sugar cane plantation. His victims, all female and ranging in age from eleven to thirty, followed him, believing that this was part of the treatment. However, once there, the gruesome death rites began.
Buried waist-high in the ground
First, he would bury the women up to their waists in the ground, telling them that this was part of a magic ritual that would help them solve their problem. Of course, the real reason was to stop them running away when he performed the next step in the ritual. When the women were in the ground, he would take out an electrical cable and strangle them to death. Unable to run away, the terrified women would struggle to stay alive, but there was no hope. All of them met a terrible end, strangled to death by a madman in a field. However, once they were dead, the bizarre ritual continued. Suradji would drink their saliva, pull their bodies out of the holes in the ground, and take all their clothes off. Then he would proceed to rebury the naked corpses with their heads pointing towards his home, apparently thinking that this would give him extra magic powers.
At the time of his arrest, he was hoping to complete his tally of seventy women, as his father’s ghost had commanded him, and in this way, to reinforce his reputation as a mystic healer or ‘dukun’. Fortunately, police intercepted him by the time he had reached a total of forty-two, otherwise the death toll might have been a great deal higher.
Strangely, although many women in the local area were reported missing, no one ever accused Suradji. He was thought to be a kind and helpful man, who was known to be willing to help villagers who had fallen ill, and who often made donations to charitable causes. Even though around eighty local families had repeatedly been to the police to report their female relatives missing, for many years Suradji was not brought in for questioning.
The ‘dukun’ of Indonesia
When Suradji and his wife Tumini were charged with the murders and brought to trial, they denied that they had committed the crimes, claiming that they had only made their initial confessions because they had been tortured by police. However, the jury did not believe them, and on April 27, 1998, Suradji was convicted of murder. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. Once in jail, on death row, he admitted to his crimes and became a devout Muslim, praying for God to forgive him for the terrible murders he had committed. According to one source, Justice Affairs Officer Lukas Tarigan, Suradji developed a reputation in prison as a tolerant, kind man – just as he had before his conviction, when he was living in the little village of Aman Damai.
The case of Ahmad Suradji is unusual, involving as it does a ‘dukun’, or sorcerer, from Indonesia, where instances of serial killing are relatively rare compared to the West. However, the dukun have long been associated with strange rituals involving death: for example, some of them go to cemeteries to summon up the spirits of the dead. Many Indonesians believe that the dukun, who are also known as ‘pawing’ or ‘bomoh’ (meaning shaman), are advised by the wise spirits of the dead, and will go to them for advice about health or romantic problems. The dukun are believed to be able to find out the reasons for bad luck or bad health, and as well as healing ills, are also thought to be able to cause possession by bad spirits, leading to ill health and bad luck. The dukun works by performing incantations and rituals, and also by administering potions. Most of their practices are extremely ancient, and the origins of them are in many cases difficult to trace. Nevertheless, the dukun continue to hold sway in modern Indonesian society, not just in the countryside but even in large cities, where they continue to offer their services in many shopping centres. Many people accept that there is always a risk in consulting a sorcerer, but tend to be unwilling to criticise the dukun, for fear of bringing bad luck on themselves and their families – in Suradji’s case, with horrifying results.
Peter Manuel
Peter M
anuel was a serial killer who terrified the people of Scotland with a series of vicious murders in the 1950s. When he was finally arrested and convicted, his callous, arrogant attitude shocked the British nation, for he went to his death without showing any remorse whatsoever. Today, he is remembered as one of the last people to be hanged in Scotland before the death penalty was banned.
Bludgeoned to death
Manuel was born on March 1, 1927, in New York. His parents were Scottish, and when he was five years old the family moved to the city of Coventry in England. Growing up in Coventry, young Peter showed signs of becoming a criminal, and was constantly in trouble with the authorities. At the age of twelve, he was arrested for burglary and was sent to reform school. For the next few years he was in and out of reform school, and became known to the authorities as a juvenile delinquent, as young offenders were called then. At sixteen, he was charged with rape and received a jail sentence. In 1953, the family moved to Glasgow, Scotland and when Manuel got out of jail, he joined them there. Birkenshaw, the area where the family lived, was in the rough east end of Glasgow and afforded many opportunities for Manuel to continue his antisocial behaviour. He was jailed for rape several times before beginning a killing spree that lasted for five years until his capture in 1958; by which time people were beginning to lock their doors day and night in the belief that a complete madman was on the loose and would attack them at any moment.
His first unfortunate victim was Anna Knielands, a seventeen-year-old girl that he bludgeoned to death with a length of iron. Her body was found on a golf course in East Kilbride. In 1956 he was pulled in by police for questioning over the murder, but he managed to convince them that he was innocent and was released without charge. Two years later, when brought into police custody on another charge, he confessed to this murder.
No motive
His next victims were forty-five-year-old Marion Watt, her sister Margaret Brown, aged forty-one, and Watt’s sixteen-year-old daughter Vivienne, who were all found shot at point blank range in their home at High Burnside, Glasgow. At the time, Watt’s husband, William, a baker who owned a chain of shops, was away on a fishing trip. Suspicion fell on Manuel and he was taken in to the police station for questioning, but once again he managed to persuade the police that he was innocent. Despite the fact that Manuel had been in the area at the time, and had been out on bail for a burglary at a local colliery, the police were unable to find concrete evidence that he was the culprit.
Two weeks after the incident, Manuel was convicted of the colliery burglary and received a jail sentence of eighteen months. In a pattern that was to become familiar, the murders ceased while he was in jail and started again when he was released. By December 1957, Manuel was at large again, and this time went to Newcastle-upon-Tyne where he shot dead a taxi driver named Sydney Dunn. He then returned to Scotland, where the senseless killings continued, instilling terror into the local population. What puzzled police, and the media, was that unlike most serial killers there appeared to be no pattern to his murders and no motive for his crimes. In most cases, he appeared to shoot or beat to death people who were simply in his way, as if he was killing just for the pleasure of it.
Family killing
His next victim, in 1957, was a seventeen-year-old girl named Isabelle Cooke, who set off from her home in Mount Vernon, a district of Glasgow, to attend a dance at a local school, Uddingston Grammar. Her family were alerted when she failed to return, and later her body was found buried in a field nearby. A year later, Manuel struck again. This time the victims were a family – forty-five-year-old Peter Smart, his wife Doris, and their son, ten-year-old Michael, whom he shot at point blank range in their home in Uddingston on New Year’s Day 1958. It was impossible to understand what had led Manuel to pick on this innocent family, but one fact was beginning to become clear: that a violent, remorseless murderer was on the loose, who apparently killed at random. The local population were, understandably, terrified and pressure began to build to find the killer and put him behind bars as soon as possible.
After shooting the Smart family, Manuel had stolen a number of new banknotes from their home and used them to buy drinks at a local bar. It was this that led to his downfall. A sharp-eyed bartender became suspicious when Manuel produced the wad of notes and alerted the police, who managed to trace the notes back to Peter Smart’s possession. It emerged that the serial numbers of the banknotes matched those paid to Smart before the New Year holiday. The police now had some firm evidence linking Manuel to the murders, and accordingly he was arrested and questioned. Eventually, he was charged with seven murders, although it was believed that he had committed as many as fifteen in all.
Black cloud of terror
Arrogant as ever, Manuel decided to conduct his own defence, adopting a plea of insanity. However, the jury refused to believe that he was insane, and after a highly publicised trial, he was convicted of all seven of the murders. He received the death penalty, and on July 11, 1958, he was hanged at Barlinnie prison in Glasgow. He was thirty-one years old. He was the second to last person to be hanged at the prison, and the third last to be hanged in the whole of Scotland. It was said that when his body swung from the gallows, the whole of the Scottish nation breathed a sigh of relief and a black cloud of terror was lifted from the land.
The case of Peter Manuel continues to fascinate commentators, since it is still somewhat of a mystery as to why he killed in such a random fashion. Even in the rough world of Glasgow during the 1950s, where gangland violence was common, Manuel was an unusually callous and psychopathic individual. He did not kill for all the usual motives – lust, revenge, or greed – and his victims, most commonly, had no connection with him, so there was no reason for him to kill them. Moreover, each time he was brought in for questioning, the police were taken aback by his audacity and found it hard to believe that he should display such indifference as to the fate of his victims. For example, after murdering Isabella Cooke, he took authorities to the place where he had buried the girl and said: ‘This is the place. In fact, I think I’m standing on her now.’
In the same way, when he shot the Smart family dead, he appeared to show no remorse for his crime. In fact, he went back to the house several times after the event, even helping himself to the food that was in the house after the Christmas and New Year festivities. Strangely, he fed the family cat once its owners were dead, and began to drive around in Peter Smart’s car, even giving a police officer a lift to work. On that occasion, he casually told the police officer, who was working on the Isabella Cooke case, that the police were looking in the wrong place.
Sheer bravura
On several other occasions, Manuel managed to hoodwink police by a display of sheer bravura. For example, in the Watt case, Manuel’s calm, cool demeanour when taken in for questioning convinced police that he was not to blame and, instead, William Watt, Marion’s husband, was brought into custody and spent two months in jail on suspicion of committing the crimes. Fortunately, he was released once the true culprit, Manuel, was known.
Writing about the case after the event, the trial judge Lord Cameron commented: ‘I saw no sign indicative to a layman of any illness or abnormality beyond callousness, selfishness and treachery in high degree, but I did form the impression that he was even then laying the foundation of a suggestion that he might in the end of the day be presented not as a criminal but as one in need of medical care.’
So calculating was Manuel that even in his initial interviews with police, he took care to show that, should he be found guilty, he could rely on an insanity plea to get him off the hook. However, his plan failed and eventually he was hanged as a common murderer. According to witnesses, his last words before he met his death were: ‘Turn up the radio and I’ll go quietly.’
John Wayne Gacy
Even by comparison with his fellow serial killers, John Wayne Gacy, ‘the killer clown’, has become something of an icon of pure evil. This is partly to do with the way he dressed up a
s a clown to entertain children at parties near his suburban Chicago home – what more sinister notion is there than that beneath the clown’s make-up lies a sex killer? And partly it is because of the sheer enormity of his crime – thirty-three young men raped and murdered, almost all of them buried beneath his suburban house.
John Wayne Gacy came into this world on March 17, 1942, St Patrick’s Day, the second of three children born to Elaine Robinson Gacy and John Wayne Gacy Sr. He grew up in a middle-class district of northern Chicago and was raised as a Catholic. His childhood was for the most part uneventful. Look a little closer, though, and there were troubles. John Gacy Sr was a misanthropic man who frequently took his anger out on his son through physical beatings and verbal abuse. John Gacy Jr, in turn, became very close to his mother. Aged eleven, he sustained a nasty accident when he was struck on the head by a swing. It caused him to have regular blackouts during his teens. During his teenage years he also complained of heart problems, though this seems likely to be just a symptom of a lifelong tendency to hypochondria – thus whenever he was under pressure he would claim to be on the brink of a heart attack.
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