The Mutilator

By Paul B Kidd

Australia's chamber of horrors, featuring Sydney's notorious fiend, 'The Mutilator" and four other bizarre, signature serial killers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Five Mile Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781743004494

Paul B Kidd

Paul B. Kidd is a Sydney Radiio 2UE broadcaster and a recognised authority on Australian serial killers and criminals sentenced to life imprisonment. Author of thirteen books on Australian true crime and fishing.

Book preview

THE MUTILATOR

and Australia’s Other Signature Serial Killers

Paul B. Kidd

Contents

Introduction

1 The History of Signature Serial Killers Around the World

2 The Schoolgirl Strangler

Arnold KARL Sodeman

3 The Night Caller

Eric Edgar Cooke

4 The Granny Killer

John Wayne Glover

5 The Ordinary Monster

Peter Norris Dupas

6 The Mutilator

William MacDonald

IMAGE SECTION

RESEARCH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEDICATION

For my son Ben who took the pictures the first time we ever met the Mutilator at Long Bay jail and who joined me on the many subsequent visits to Cessnock to take photos and was invaluable help with the research. Thanks mate.

And for my friend, the late Joe Morris, legendary crime reporter who broke ‘The Case of the Walking Corpse’. They don’t make ’em like you any more, Joe. This one’s for you.

Introduction

by Paul B. Kidd

Thirteen years ago I was granted by NSW Corrective Services access to the mind of a serial killer, intending to write a book about him. I was then, and still am to this day, the only journalist to have ever been granted unlimited access to a living serial killer in Australia. The serial killer was William MacDonald, better known as the Mutilator, and I spent a year, on and off, working with him in jail, probing deep into his mind to try and discover why he committed his terrible crimes. MacDonald is in jail to this day and will never be released.

Given the unique opportunity of the project, I didn’t leave any stone unturned. My years of research stretched from Liverpool, England, where MacDonald — then known as Alan Ginsburg — was born into a wealthy Jewish family and grew up, to his prison cell in Cessnock Prison many years later. I uncovered startling facts about the case from once restricted Supreme Court Archive files, the Mutilator himself and from interviews with the legendary journalist Joe Morris who brought about the undoing of the Mutilator in the bizarre circumstances that became known worldwide as ‘The Case of the Walking Corpse’.

The murderous adventures of William MacDonald was first published in 2002 as The Knick-Knack Man. And now, for the many readers who may have missed out on this unique story the first time around, it is republished here as The Mutilator. It is true Australian crime just too extraordinary to miss.

And seeing as the Mutilator was the classic signature serial killer in that he left his mark on his victims so that police knew from one victim to the next that it was the same person, I’ve included here the stories of Australia’s other signature serial killers as well.

And given that signature serial killers are the best remembered throughout time, I’ve put together the history of signature serial killers around the world in a chapter that will tell you from the beginning everything you ever needed to know about the rarest form of serial killers in the world.

All of these stories you will find blood-curdling in the extreme. But that was the nature of the beasts police were dealing with — psychopaths who enjoyed what they did and left their handiwork for all to see as if it were their work of art. Some even taunted police daring them to catch them before they struck again. Not all of them were caught. Interestingly, there were no women signature serial killers.

The only thing that is certain about signature serial killers is that it will happen again somewhere in the world sooner or later. Let’s hope that from what investigators have learned already from the beasts in this book, they can identify the next Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam or Mutilator before many more innocent victims are murdered to satisfy their bizarre fantasies.

So hang on for the most bizarre crime story in Australia’s history—straight from the killer’s mouth as he told it to me.

Paul B. Kidd

Sydney, 2011

The History of Signature Serial Killers Around the World

‘Signature’, or ‘calling card’, serial killers are not only the rarest individual serial killers in the world — they are also the most infamous. These are the psychopaths that legends are made of — even when they are not captured. In fact, the granddaddy of them all, Jack the Ripper, is still at large. So is Zodiac.

The reason for the signature serial killer’s notoriety is simple. It is because they leave their victims on display with their signature there for all to see. Their murderous rampages are a ‘work in progress’ until they are caught — unlike the less ‘entertaining’ killers, who conceal their victims and the hunt begins once the bodies turn up weeks, months or years later.

The killers’ signatures vary. It can be the repetitive manner of the murders. It might be similar specific injuries, or even a cryptic note telling where the next murder will take place. It could simply be the randomness of the murders — when it is virtually impossible that there would be two identical killers out there. Or it could be any one of the many unique murder signatures that you will read about in this book.

It’s no secret that some of these killers love reading about themselves in the newspapers in the days following their latest triumph. In many of the cases of signature serial killers who have been apprehended, investigators have found a collection of newspaper articles they have kept about their achievements.

And they are proud of their work. While standing in a nearby club and listening to the ambulance wailing in the distance soon after he had bashed another little old lady to death in the streets of Mosman in suburban Sydney in broad daylight, John ‘the Granny Killer’ Glover, commented to those around him; ‘Gee, I hope there hasn’t been another little old lady killed’, as he was putting the contents of his latest victim’s handbag through the pokies.

It’s also not hard to arrive at the conclusion that signature serial killers want to get caught. By leaving their victims where the police can find them they also leave a multitude of clues such as DNA, fingerprints and shoeprints for detectives to track them down.

Unlike Australia’s most notorious serial killer, Ivan Milat, ‘the Backpacker Killer’ who concealed his victims deep in the Belanglo State Forest south of Sydney, and would have gone on killing as long as his victims never turned up, signature serial killers almost always have a death wish and, in the majority of cases, were only allowed to go on killing because of the ineptitude of the police or the lack of scientific resources to track them down at the time.

It would be fair comment to say that most of the cases in this book would have been solved within days had the offences taken place last week.

When it comes to never letting the truth get in the way of a good story, fictional signature serial killer movies are by far and away the most successful of the genre with plots far beyond the pale of reality. But then again, in the world of signature murder, there are no guidelines to speak of.

For example, in Manhunter and its subsequent remake Red Dragon, the killer’s signature was that he murdered entire families in the full moon. In Sea of Love, detective Al Pacino found his victims shot dead in bed to the repetitive tune of the 1959 Phil Phillips 45 rpm classic ‘The Sea of Love’, which would have been enough to kill them anyway. There was no mistaking Buffalo Bill’s signature in Silence of the Lambs — he cut triangular pieces of skin from his victims’ bodies for a dress he was making. And the calculating killer in Se7en murdered to Chaucer’s ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ from Canterbury Tales. But fictional movies are exactly that — even though a vast majority of signature serial killer movies are ‘loosely’ based somewhere along the line on a slither of truth.

Signature serial killers are very rare. Famous murderers who weren’t signature serial killers but were among the worst serial killers the world has ever known were the infamous necrophiliac John Christie of 10 Rillington Place; John Wayne Gacy who murdered 33 boys and buried them under his house; Fred and Rose West who buried their numerous victims in the backyard; Jeffrey Dahmer who kept his 18 victims in his apartment and ate them; and Myra Hindley and Ian Brady who buried their young victims in the English moors.

But you won’t read about any of them here. This is about the killers who wanted us to know what they were up to without us really knowing them at all.

And in the beginning there was Jack the Ripper…

No other signature serial killer in history has inspired so much interest through the years as Jack the Ripper. The knowledge that his identity still hasn’t been conclusively proven adds a sinister twist to the frightening tale — the fact that such a deplorable man could apparently get away with his evil deeds under the nose of the law without having to face justice from society. Jack the Ripper was the original signature serial killer in the modern era.

But what is sometimes forgotten is the brutality and outright viciousness with which the mysterious Jack attacked his five female victims — using a strong, sharp knife with an inch-width and at least six inches long — before the file was officially closed in 1892, proving that acts of shocking cruelty and horrendous depravity are by no means a modern invention.

From one terrible murder to the next there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that it was the work of the same deranged killer. Jack’s grisly calling card was disembowelment.

Jack the Ripper’s first victim was 42-year-old Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols, the daughter of a locksmith and former wife of printer’s machinist William Nichols. The pair had five children, but had broken up years earlier as a result of Polly’s drinking. At the time of her death, the tired, destitute, but well-liked alcoholic, was making a meagre living for pennies as a prostitute.

Polly’s butchered body was found shortly before 4a.m. on Friday, 31 August 1888 in Buck’s Row in the respectable London neighbourhood of Whitechapel. It was a typically wet and cold morning when a man named Charles Cross noticed what he thought was a tarpaulin on the ground in front of a stable yard. When he got closer, though, he saw that the dark shape was a female body, with her dress lifted up almost to the waist. Believing the woman to either be drunk or the victim of an assault, he enlisted another passer-by to help. Together they adjusted her skirt and went in search of a policeman. Neither noticed the blood or excessive wounding Polly had suffered.

Before they could return, though, Constable John Neil came across the body while on his regular patrol. With his lantern he immediately saw that blood was flowing out of a neck that had been slashed from one ear to the other, while her eyes were wide and stared blankly with the long, cold glare of death. He called out to another officer who went to get a doctor and ambulance. In the meantime, Neil canvassed the immediate area, but nobody had heard a sound.

When Dr Rees Llewellyn arrived, he noted that the body was still warm, and estimated that the woman had been dead less than 30 minutes. The two knife wounds to the neck had been fatal, slicing open the windpipe and oesophagus. The corpse was then taken to the mortuary, where it was stripped to show that the victim’s abdomen had been mutilated, with long, deep and aggressive knife wounds. Dr Llewellyn made a note that there was bruising on the lower jaw.

It didn’t take long for word of the grisly find to spread, and police soon knew Polly’s name. Her father and husband came and identified her the next day.

Inspector Frederick George Abberline, a 25-year veteran of the police force, was placed in charge of the investigation, but it was soon clear that Polly’s killer had left behind no clues. There were no witnesses, and no sign of a weapon. The best lead at the time pointed towards three men employed to slaughter horses nearby, but they had been working at the time so had a confirmed alibi.

The Ripper struck again just over a week later. His second victim was a 47-year-old homeless alcoholic and prostitute named Annie Chapman. Annie was last seen shortly after 2a.m. on Friday, 7 September 1888. She was partially drunk and looking for a client to earn money to pay for a bed for the night. Her body was discovered shortly after 6a.m. in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, by the resident John Davis. Davis reported that the woman’s skirt was lifted up to her hips, but said that he had heard nothing suspicious during the night.

Police surgeon Dr George Bagster Phillips was bought in to investigate. He told a later inquest that Annie’s face had been swollen and her small intestines and other organs had been lifted out and were laying on the ground near her right shoulder, though they were still attached to her body. Again, this victim’s throat had been cut deeply, right around the neck. It is believed that Annie was strangled until she was unconscious before the Ripper slashed her throat. After she had died, he mutilated her abdomen, and removed the upper part of her vagina and two-thirds of her bladder. Those body parts were never found. Because of the surgical precision of the cuts involved in this process, it was reasoned that the killer — as in the murder of Polly Nichols — was familiar with anatomy.

Strangely, though, the murderer had removed several items from Annie’s pockets and arranged them at her feet — these included a piece of cloth and two combs. A leather apron was also found in the yard, and an envelope containing two pills rested near her head. The date of the London postmark on the envelope was 23 August, and it showed the words Sussex Regiment on the back, and the front had handwriting on it — the letter ‘M’, and below that the letters ‘Sp’.

The Ripper then stepped up his efforts, with another victim found on the ground of Dutfield’s Yard, Whitechapel, five weeks later on 30 September. With nothing on the body to identify her, it took some time for police to come up with a name, though it was eventually determined that she was Elizabeth Stride, a well-liked woman who got by cleaning rooms and doing sewing work. She was also known to get drunk fairly often, and may have been an occasional prostitute. When her body was found there was a red rose on her jacket, though she had not been wearing one when she left her residence earlier that evening. Stride had also been seen at around 12.30a.m. on the morning of her death, talking to a man with dark hair and a moustache. According to the witness, Constable William Smith, who had been patrolling the area, the man in question had a dark complexion and stood around five feet seven inches (170 centimetres) tall. He carried a large parcel in his hands, and was wearing a black cutaway coat, with a white collar and tie, as well as a dark hat.

Another witness, Israel Schwartz, saw a man talking to Stride at 12.45a.m. The man threw Stride to the ground before calling out to another man at the other side of the road lighting a pipe. The second man then started to follow Schwartz, who ran away.

Other witnesses then came forward. William Marshall had seen Stride at around 11.45p.m. talking to a well-spoken man wearing a cap. James Brown also saw Stride talking to a man on the night of her murder. This sighting was at 12.45a.m., and Stride told the man in the long dark overcoat, ‘Not tonight, some other night.’

But the authorities soon had even more on their plate, as another victim turned up that same evening in a small yard known as Mitre Square less than half a kilometre away. Mitre Square, at the time, was a busy area during the day, with several warehouses and commercial premises. But as there were few houses there, it was quiet and dark at night. Regardless, though, Police Constable Edward Watkins regularly patrolled it on his nightly shift. He had been through there at 1.30a.m., and then again 45 minutes later. Even though there was no noise or sign of disturbance, Watkins noticed something lying in a corner. He used his lantern to see what it was and was shocked to see a female body on her back, with her skirt pulled up to her waist. He later reported that, ‘I saw her throat was cut and her bowels protruding. The stomach was ripped up. She was lying in a pool of blood.’

More police were called in and a search was organised in the general vicinity. Dr Frederick Gordon Brown arrived at the scene at 2.18a.m. and saw that the victim’s stomach had been ripped open and that her face had been horribly mutilated. The body was still warm, and he estimated the time of death as around 30 minutes earlier. The wounds Brown later recalled were shocking: ‘The abdomen had been laid open from the breast bone to the pubes,’ he started, before explaining that the intestines had been ‘detached to a large extent’ and that ‘about two feet of the colon was cut away’. In addition to this, the victim’s left kidney had been removed, her left renal artery attacked, and much of her womb taken out. There was a slice through her lower left eyelid, and the end of her nose had been cut off, as had an ear lobe.

Given the times Constable Watkins had checked on the yard, as well as another patrolman whose beat took him past the same spot just a few minutes earlier, it seemed the killer had murdered and cut up his victim in the space of about 15 minutes.

With police swarming the area, Constable Alfred Long found a blood-drenched apron outside a building on Goulston Street, Whitechapel at 2.55a.m. Above the bloody garment the words ‘The Juwes Are The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing’ were scrawled in white chalk. The apron turned out to be linked with the Mitre Square murder. As a result, it seemed logical to assume the killer had done the writing as well. Unfortunately, before the graffiti could be photographed for later analysis, police commissioner Sir Charles Warren order it be removed so as not to inflame anti-Jewish sentiment.

Police soon determined that the Mitre Square victim had been Catherine Eddowes. As with the other women the Ripper had murdered, Kate (as she was known to friends) had a problem with alcohol. She was a friendly woman who had three children and may well have turned to prostitution at times when she had been drinking heavily. A witness, Joseph Lawende, came forward to report that he had seen Kate talking to a man at nearby Church Passage at around 1.35a.m. He described the man as young and dressed in a deerstalker hat and dark jacket.

Police patrols in the Whitechapel area were stepped up and prostitutes mostly stayed off the job as fear swept the city. Sailors were questioned, as were butchers and men employed to slaughter animals. Nothing came of the investigation, though, and with the Ripper staying quiet for a month or so, things slowly started to return to normal. People started to return to Whitechapel, and as a result the prostitutes came back as well, eager to make some money.

One of these, attractive Irishwoman Mary Jane Kelly, was behind in her rent and down on her luck. She, too, was partial to alcohol and had been working in London since moving there when she was 21. Described as ‘tall and pretty’, Mary could be a handful when drunk, but was generally regarded as a nice person when sober.

The Friday of 9 November 1888 was a festive one in London — it was the Lord Mayor’s Show, and the ceremony planned to swear him in was an elaborate one. Mary had planned to be among the large crowd on hand to cheer, but her plans weren’t to be. Her landlord John McCarthy sent his assistant, Thomas Bowyer, to collect the overdue rent from Mary at her residence at 13 Miller Court that morning. What he saw shocked him enough to run back to McCarthy and summon the authorities. A police constable went around to the address and looked through a broken window. He later described what he saw as, ‘A sight which I shall never forget to my dying day.’ It was the Ripper’s most extreme work yet.

According to a police surgeon bought in to survey the scene, Dr Thomas Bond, Mary’s body lay naked on the bed, the skin of her thighs and abdomen removed. Her breasts had been cut off and her abdomen emptied of its contents. Her arms had been hacked into and her face mutilated until the pretty young woman was unrecognisable. Her neck was severed down to the bone. One of the missing breasts was found under her head, along with her uterus and kidney. The other breast was located next to her right foot. Her liver rested between her feet, her lungs and spleen lay on either side of her, and her abdomen and thighs sat on a nearby table.

Whitechapel was once again thrown into shock, and the police efforts went back into overdrive. Queen Victoria herself stated that she was displeased with the way the matter had been handled, and called for the streets to be lit at night and the state of the detectives department improved. But with few leads to go on, investigating officers were at their wit’s end as it was.

One promising lead came from labourer George Hutchinson, a friend of Mary’s who saw the prostitute at around 2a.m. She asked if he had any money to spare, but after being told no, she went on her way. Hutchinson then saw her stop to talk to a man who the authorities assume was the Ripper. The man carried a small parcel in his left hand, and placed his right arm around Mary’s shoulders as they spoke. As the pair walked past Hutchinson, the man in question hung his head down with his hat over his eyes. When Hutchinson stooped to see the man’s face he received a harsh glare for his troubles.

The pair then walked into another street and Hutchinson followed them and kept watch for a few minutes, until the man said something to Mary and she replied, ‘Alright my dear, come along. You will be comfortable.’ With that the man placed his arm on her shoulders again and kissed her. After that the pair walked off and Hutchinson lost their trail when they entered a courtyard. He waited three-quarters of an hour to see what had happened, but neither Mary nor the strange man returned.

The man Hutchinson described was about 35 years old and estimated to stand five feet six inches (168 centimetres) tall, with dark eyes and a slight moustache. He was surly looking and wore a long dark coat and dark felt hat. Several other witnesses came forward with reports of a similar-looking man on the same night as well as earlier in the week.

Still, before long the cold London winter set in and all the leads police had reached nothing but dead ends. The Ripper’s toll ended with five murders and, despite countless theories as to his identity, there were no more killings officially attributed to the man considered to be history’s most infamous serial killer.

The Vampire of DÜsseldorf:

Peter KÜrten

If ever in the history of serial multicide there was an example of how a tortured childhood can have an enormous influence on the life of a future signature serial killer, then it would have to be that in the case of Peter Kürten, or as he came to be known throughout the world, the Vampire of Düsseldorf.

Born on the 26 May 1883, Peter Kürten’s childhood was spent in a filthy one-room apartment in Düsseldorf with ten younger siblings. His father was a violent drunk, having come from a long family line of alcoholism and insanity. Mr Kürten spent most of his time in a drunken stupor assaulting his children and forcing sex upon their mother in front of them. Years later Mr Kürten was jailed for three years for committing incest with Peter’s 13-year-old sister.

At age nine, Kürten befriended a local dog catcher who lived in the same building, who showed him how to masturbate dogs to a climax and then torture them to death. That same year, while playing on the Rhine with a raft, Peter Kürten drowned a school friend. When another student dived in to rescue the drowning lad, Kürten also pushed him under the raft until he also drowned. Unable to prove anything, authorities could only assume that it was a terrible accident.

In his early teens Kürten spent his time at stables near the family home committing bestiality on sheep and goats. His greatest pleasure was having intercourse with a sheep while he stabbed it to death and the unfortunate animal drew its last breath as Kürten achieved his climax. At 16, Kürten had left home and was sent to prison for a short term for stealing. This was the first of 27 mainly short jail sentences in Düsseldorf prisons for petty crimes over the next 24 years. Released from prison in 1899, Kürten moved in with a 32-year-old debauched, masochistic prostitute where he turned his sexual cruelties — that he had as yet only inflicted on animals — onto a human being who couldn’t get enough of it. At 17 his education as a monster was complete. The beast had arrived.

In his years on and off in prison Peter Kürten taught himself to achieve orgasm by imagining brutally sexual acts. He became so absorbed with his fantasies of murder and butchery that he deliberately broke minor prison rules so that he could be sentenced to solitary confinement, even if it was only for a few days at a time. This proved to be the ideal environment to curl up naked in a cold corner and wander off into his world of sadistic daydreaming and have incredible climaxes.

Peter Kürten’s first murder victim was Christine Klein, a ten-year-old schoolgirl in Köln, just out of Düsseldorf, 25 May 1913, while he was burgling an apartment above an inn. Kürten had broken into the room on the first floor and saw the girl sound asleep on a thick feather bed. He didn’t need to kill her. She was no threat of capture to him. Kürten seized the child with both hands around her neck and throttled her into unconsciousness and sexually assaulted her. Then, with a sharp pocket knife he had brought with him for just such an occasion, he slowly cut the child’s throat from ear to ear, wallowing in the warm blood as it squirted all over him for the three or so minutes it took the child to die. Kürten locked the door behind him as he let himself out and went home and masturbated over the experience. The murder remained unsolved until Kürten’s confession many years later.

The next eight years Kürten spent in and out of prison for a variety of offences that ranged from burglary to assault but in 1921 it seems as though he put it all behind him when he married and apparently settled down in Altenburg to a normal and respectable life. For the first time in his life he found a permanent job, as a factory worker, and became an official