Houses of Death (True Crime)

by Gordon Kerr

  A power struggle with Lois Roden’s son, George, ensued, which Roden won, temporarily, evicting Howell and some followers from Mount Carmel. Around this time, Howell made a pilgrimage to Israel, claiming that while there he had a vision that he was the modern-day Cyrus (messiah). He also proclaimed to his followers that he was the ‘Son of God’. Further to this, he proclaimed that he would, from that point on, be permitted to indulge in polygamy. He began to sleep with many of the women in his group, even girls as young as 12 years of age.

  In an effort to prove his status, George Roden challenged Howell to a contest to see which of them could raise the dead, digging up a corpse to do so. As their disputes escalated, Howell and some followers attacked Mount Carmel, and disaster was only avoided with the intervention of the police, who found Howell and his men firing at Roden. They were acquitted of attempted murder.

  In 1988, however, Roden was convicted of the murder of a man who argued with him that Howell was the Messiah and Howell took over Mount Carmel, assuming leadership of the Branch Davidians.

  In 1990, Howell began styling himself ‘David Koresh’ because he wanted to establish a link as the true heir to King David and ‘Koresh’ meant ‘death’ or ‘Cyrus’ – meaning messiah. He provided strict guidelines as to how cult members were to live their days, making amendments to the rules as and when he pleased and delivering long, rambling sermons relentlessly, night or day. The rules, of course, did not apply to him. He was permitted food that they were not, he could sleep until noon if he so desired, and he was allowed to drink alcohol, strictly forbidden to Branch Davidians.

  Koresh continued to select whichever female took his fancy and fathered numerous children with the women in the Mount Carmel compound. One woman later testified that she was sexually molested by Koresh at the age of ten and Koresh then read her passages from the Bible. He gave long, rambling sermons that explained sexual matters and practices and girls were groomed to believe that marriage and relationships with him were a natural thing and, in fact, desirable. One girl, eventually released during the later siege, was reportedly distraught on realizing she would never be one of Koresh’s wives.

  It was later learned that Koresh taught the children in the compound to call their natural parents ‘dogs’, while he was ‘father’. Meanwhile, children, not Koresh’s were called ‘bastards’. He ensured that normal familial relationships were eradicated and all were taught to depend on him and God. It was not long before he was proclaiming that he was God.

  The children were also taught about weapons and gun-use, and were severely disciplined for the most trivial breach of the rules with isolation, food deprivation and serious beatings. There was a ‘whipping room’ in the basement where children could be beaten out of earshot of the adults in the compound.

  By 1992, martyrdom had entered the Davidian lexicon, and Koresh was actively engaged in preparing his followers for martyrdom for the Branch Davidian cause. He was also stockpiling food and an arsenal of weapons and ammunition for use against the enemy, the defectors, dissidents and, above all, government agents that he described as the ‘Babylonians’.

  By 1993, however, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and firearms had been alerted to the activities of the Branch Davidians. They had been selling guns and ammunition and, although what they were engaging in was not illegal, they were also said to be selling rapid-fire automatic weapons – which was. When a parcel being delivered to them fell apart, the delivery man found grenade casings inside and reported them to the authorities.

  On 28 February 1993, more than 70 BATF agents moved in. They had been watching Mount Carmel for some time and had even infiltrated the compound with some undercover operatives. The raid was a disaster. As a Blackhawk helicopter from the local national guard hovered above, gunfire broke out, in which four BATF agents and five Branch Davidians were killed. Koresh and 16 more agents were wounded.

  It would be the beginning of an intense 51-day stand-off that was followed daily by television viewers around the world. The FBI were brought in to manage things and they began to broadcast loud noise at the inhabitants of the compound – Tibetan Buddhist chants, bagpipes, seagulls crying, helicopters, dentist drills, sirens, dying rabbits, a train, and songs by Alice Cooper and Nancy Sinatra. Koresh would respond to attempts at negotiation with a reading from the Bible and the stalemate would continue. Nonetheless, he began to release children.

  Koresh repeatedly won time by claiming that he wanted to observe Passover or that he wanted to complete his writing of a manuscript about the meaning of the Seven Seals. Eventually, however, as April passed, new secretary of state, Janet Reno, gave her approval for a raid to bring the siege to a close. They would use CS gas, deployed by a couple of combat engineering vehicles to force the cult members to leave the compound. Shortly before dawn, on Monday, 19 April, they moved in.

  The Branch Davidians immediately opened fire, but were unable to make an impression on the vehicles that punched holes in the walls and pumped in the gas. As this work continued, shortly before noon, flames could be seen inside the buildings. They spread fast and were accompanied by several loud explosions and gunfire.

  It was feared that the Branch Davidians had decided on a mass suicide – which it was, more or less. Only nine emerged alive. When investigators moved in, they found 80 bodies, 23 of them children under 17 – 14 were later discovered to have been fathered by Koresh.

  Rumours that Koresh had escaped through an underground tunnel complex proved to be false, when his body was later identified from dental records. He had been shot in the head.

  The Tent Jail

  Tent City Jail, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

  Tent City Jail, in Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the most brutal prisons in the US, and its sheriff is one of the nation's toughest lawmen. In the eyes of Joe Arpaio, prison is all about punishment, and he makes sure that punishment is exactly what his inmates get.

  Joe Arpaio is known as ‘America’s toughest sheriff’. Denounced by civil liberties organizations, he claims to have the ambition of making Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix the most populated jail in the US. He can certainly lay claim to making it one of the most brutal. His prison philosophy holds that prisoners should be treated as harshly as is legally possible. For him, prison is not about rehabilitation; it is simply about punishment.

  In 1993, the jails in the county were filled to overflowing and Arpaio was reluctant to free prisoners to ease conditions. So, he obtained a number of surplus military tents and erected them outside the jail. The project was inexpensive – all he needed was cement for bases for the tents, some secure fencing and electricity to run the heating, cooling and security lights. He was saving the taxpayer a fortune; a new jail would have cost around $70 million (£35 million). His tents Jail now has a capacity of 2,000 inmates.

  Arpaio has made savings in other ways. Coffee was taken off the prison menu, saving $150,000 (£75,000) a year. Serving surplus, outdated, green bologna sandwiches saved on food bills by another $500,000 (£250,000). The removal of salt and pepper from dining hall tables saved the taxpayer $20,000 (£10,000) a year. Food costs for inmates are now 30 cents (15 pence) a day; the prison’s guard dogs get food worth $1.10 (55 pence) a day.

  Smoking is forbidden, pornographic magazines, a staple of any prison, are banned and inmates are not allowed weightlifting equipment. Only G-rated (family-viewing) films are available to watch and the cable TV system only shows educational material such as Animal Planet, the Disney Channel and the Weather Channel.

  Arpaio has also reintroduced chain gangs for both men and women prisoners. Inmates work eight hours a day, six days a week, building fire breaks, clearing up rubbish and burying people in the county cemetery. Their free labour puts thousands of dollars back into the state economy.

  The chain gang is not the only retro feature Arpaio has introduced. Inmates wear the striped clothing that convicts used to wear and, bizarrely, pink underwear. He had noticed that the normal white underwear, which w
as labelled with Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, was being smuggled out of the prison and sold. So, he had it all dyed pink, believing men would never wear underwear of that colour. To his consternation, however, orders for it came flooding in, but he decided to take advantage by turning it into a commercial operation, raising funds for the work of his office. He has since introduced pink handcuffs, and, realizing the calming effect pink has on violent inmates, has had sheets, socks, towels and other items dyed pink.

  One of the worst things about the prison, however, is the stifling Arizona heat. Temperatures can reach a 38°C (100°F). Arpaio, of course, has no sympathy. ‘It’s 120°F in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your mouths,’ he says in his characteristically unsympathetic way. Still, he is not all bad – he allows them to strip down to their pink underwear when it gets too hot.

  There have been a number of high-profile cases highlighting the more extreme side of sheriff Arpaio’s regime. Scott Norberg died in custody after being shot a number of times with a stun-gun. The medical examiner found he had died of ‘positional asphyxia’, but Arpaio and his men were cleared of blame. Norberg’s parents sued and settled for $8.25 million (£4.125 million) after it was found the sheriff’s office had destroyed important evidence.

  Brian Crenshaw was beaten into a coma by Arpaio’s guards. After he died in the local hospital, Arpaio said, ‘the man fell off a bunk.’

  Richard Post, a paraplegic inmate, was pushed so hard into a restraint chair by guards that his neck was broken. The incident was captured on video and the guards laugh and joke on film as Post is injured.

  The Irish government refused to extradite Patrick Colleany, a Roman Catholic priest accused of molesting an alter boy in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1978. Stating that, ‘it was the duty of any Irish court to see that no citizen was handed over to such a regime’. They described Arpaio as a man who ‘appeared to take a chillingly sadistic pleasure in his role as incarcerator’ and before gloated over the inhumane treatment he dishes out to his inmates.’

  In May 2007, Arpaio asked the Los Angeles authorities to transfer Paris Hilton, incarcerated for driving offences, to Maricopa to serve her sentence. His request was ‘respectfully declined’.

  Thomas Hamilton

  Dunblane Primary School, Dunblane, Scotland

  The massacre committed by Thomas Hamilton at Dunblane Primary School on 13 March 1996, shocked and horrified the British public. How could somebody walk, unchallenged, into a school, carrying no less than four guns, and begin firing indiscriminately at innocent children and teachers inside? The scale of the tragedy beggared belief, as did the feelings of anger, grief and loss shared by us all.

  Thomas Watt Hamilton had been experiencing some problems. There had been complaints to the police about the youth clubs he ran and his suspect behaviour towards some of the young boys who attended them. He had been known to take photographs of boys, semi-naked, without the consent of their parents. He blamed the rumours about him for the failure, in 1993, of the shop he had owned and had struggled against what he described as persecution by the police and the Boy Scout movement as, in recent months, he had attempted to set up another boys’ club. He complained to his local MP and even wrote to the Queen.

  Around 8.15am on 13 March 1996, Hamilton stopped scraping the ice off the windscreen of his white van outside his house in Kent Road, Stirling, to have a conversation with a passing neighbour. The neighbour reported later that there was nothing untoward about the conversation, just the customary grumbles about the icy weather.

  A little later, he got in the van and drove off in the direction of the town of Dunblane, about 10km (6 miles) to the north of Stirling. He arrived at his destination, Dunblane Primary School in Doune Road, at around 9.30am, parking beside a telegraph pole in one of the school’s car parks. Climbing out of the van, he took a pair of pliers and cut the telephone wires at the foot of the pole. These did not connect the school to the telephone network, however. They were, instead, linked to nearby houses.

  Hamilton set off across the car park, carrying two 9mm Browning HP pistols and two Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers. He had 743 cartridges and was about to use 109 of them. Entering the school through a door on its west side, to avoid being seen, he made his way towards the gym.

  Dunblane was a large school, with 640 pupils, and this made morning assemblies for the entire school impossible. Therefore, they were held in rotation, one each morning for a different year group. So, on this day, all primary one, two and three classes, the youngest classes in the school, had attended assembly from 9.10am until 9.30am.

  Primary 1/13 was due to have a PE session after assembly and had, consequently, changed in readiness prior to going into the assembly hall. It was a class of 28 children, taught by 47-year-old Gwen Mayor. 25 of the children were five years old and the remaining three were six years old. A PE teacher, Eileen Harrild, was already in the gym with supervisory assistant, Mary Blake, when the class arrived and while the adults had a discussion about the lesson, the children were asked to wait in the centre of the hall.

  As they were talking, Eileen Harrild heard a noise behind her and turned round to see what it was. What she was hearing were probably the random shots Thomas Hamilton was firing into the stage in the assembly hall and the girls’ toilet, which was located just outside the gym. As she watched the door, he entered the gym. He was dressed in a dark jacket, black corduroy trousers and a woollen hat. He was wearing ear protectors and in his hand, to her horror, she saw a gun.

  A couple of steps into the gym, Hamilton opened fire, shooting indiscriminately. Eileen Harrild was immediately hit in both arms, her right hand and left breast. She staggered into a storage area abutting the gym and a number of terrified children scrambled in after her. Gwen Mayor was shot and fell to the floor, dead. Mary Blake was also hit but made it to the storage area, ushering a group of the children in front of her. In the store, shocked and frightened children cowered, blood pooling on the floor from their wounds. Meanwhile, in the gym, the other children screamed and sobbed.

  Hamilton fired 29 shots, killing one child and wounding a number of others. He walked up one side of the gym, firing at them. He then moved into the centre and, walking in a semi-circle, fired 16 bullets into a group of pupils who lay on the floor, trying to hide or already wounded. Callously, he approached them and began to fire at them from point-blank range.

  A pupil from another class, who was running an errand for his teacher, heard the commotion and looked into the gym. Spotting him, Hamilton opened fire. But the boy ran off, fortunately injured only by some broken glass.

  Hamilton walked to the southern end of the gym and fired another 24 bullets. He fired through a window, probably at an adult who was walking past outside and then opened the fire-escape door and let loose another four shots.

  Stepping through the door, he fired at the library cloakroom, wounding teacher Grace Tweddle in the head. He then turned his attention to a temporary classroom, firing nine shots into it. The teacher had already heard noises and had instructed her class to get onto the floor, a decision which saved their lives as bullets rammed into seats and desks.

  Hamilton returned to the gym and opened fire again. Then he suddenly drew a revolver from his pocket, placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He fell to the ground, dying.

  Fifteen children and their teacher, Gwen Mayor, lay dead around him. One other pupil would die later in hospital. The whole tragic episode had taken just four minutes.

  Gianni Versace

  Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, Florida, USA

  The Versace mansion on Ocean Drive has become the most photographed building in Florida. These days the Spanish style villa is an ultra-fashionable boutique hotel, and in its heyday the house was regularly frequented by celebrity guests such as Madonna, Jack Nicholson and Elton John. It was here, on 15 July 1997, that the internationally renowned fashion designer, Gianni Versace, was murdere
d by the rampant 'gay psycho serial killer' Andrew Cunanan.

  When Gianni Versace arrived in Miami Beach on 12 July 1997, the fifty-year-old fashion guru was exhausted. He had recently completed a European tour and wanted to rest for a while. But business had never been better. Profits from his companies were rolling in at around $900 million (£450 million) a year and his clothes were loved by film stars and royalty alike. So, now, as he always did when he came to Miami, he would relax in his favourite spots, gay bars like The Twist, the KGB Club or Liquid. In the mornings he would venture out, having divested himself of his host of retainers and bodyguards, and walk alone from his exuberantly fronted mansion on 11 Street to the News Café on Ocean Drive, where he would enjoy a coffee and slip out of his frenetic world for a while.

  What Versace failed to notice was the presence of a shadow on many of these walks.

  Andrew Cunanan had been looking for Versace in all the usual clubs and bars, and finally, he had caught up with him. It was not the first time he had seen him. A few years earlier, both had attended the same party. Versace, on arriving, cast his eye around the room, lighting on the handsome face of Cunanan. He was there with Eli Gould, one of the wealthy, older men who befriended and bedded the good-looking young man. Gould had introduced Cunanan to the world of movie stars and people of influence, and Cunanan loved it. Now, Gianni Versace was making a beeline for him and even seemed to recognize him. Actually, Versace was mistaken, but when he asked the young man where they had met, suggesting ‘Lago di Como?’ Cunanan coyly played along and said how nice it was of him to remember.

  Now, on the morning of 15 July 1997, he was once again close to the great man. As Versace pulled out the key to his ornate gate, Cunanan got closer still. He stepped up behind the fashion designer, put a pistol to his head and, hardly batting an eyelid, pumped two .40-calibre bullets into it.