I, Albert Peabody: Confessions of a Serial Killer

By Jerry P. Schellhammer

Albert has been fascinated with death since he was a young boy watching a mouse attempt to eat peanut butter beneath a mousetrap, he admits to his psychiatrist. The psychiatrist at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington is trying to reveal his deepest darkest secrets detailing his father. But Dr Schwartz also has secrets to hide. Albert calls him “Herr Doctor.”

Over the course of 30 years Albert details his 10 murders to Herr Doctor. He also rooms with another man who likes young girls in a most peculiar way.

All of this leads to a climatic conclusion with a very substantial twist at the end that makes everyone wonder, who really is crazy around here?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781647509316

Jerry P. Schellhammer

This is Jerry's second published book project, who is well on his way to becoming a dynamic and ongoing author. Jerry was born in San Francisco, California, in 1958. His family moved to Washington State in 1960 and has remained there since. He graduated from Washington State University in 1987, majoring in English with a writing emphasis. A nearly devastating stroke convinced him to pursue his ultimate dream. He now has several self-published books and short stories under his belt.

Book preview

I, Albert Peabody

Confessions of a

Serial Killer

Jerry P. Schellhammer

Austin Macauley Publishers

I, Albert Peabody

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgment

About the Author

This is Jerry’s second published book project, who is well on his way to becoming a dynamic and ongoing author. Jerry was born in San Francisco, California, in 1958. His family moved to Washington State in 1960 and has remained there since. He graduated from Washington State University in 1987, majoring in English with a writing emphasis. A nearly devastating stroke convinced him to pursue his ultimate dream. He now has several self-published books and short stories under his belt.

Dedication

First and foremost, my beta reader who has believed that this book will get me somewhere. Then, of course, my wife, Stephanie, and her son who I took liberties in copying his quirky behavior. And finally, my parents, teachers and college professors who had the patience to teach me.

Copyright Information ©

Jerry P. Schellhammer 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Schellhammer, Jerry P.

I, Albert Peabody

ISBN 9781647507237 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781647509484 (Audiobook)

ISBN 9781647509309 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781647509316 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903162

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street,33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

I want to thank my beta readers and editor for their time and effort at making this piece possible.

It wasn’t my fault. Those girls always seduced me, and later, the women and a couple of men. It all started in Korea, of course, when my commanding officer ordered me to go kill chickens. I was only following his orders as I went to the local village, rounded up the hens and chicks, and killed each one with my bare hands.

Later, when I was taken prisoner and spent the better part of a year in a POW camp where I was always singled out did I learn that those hens and chicks were to blame; it had to be their fault. I did nothing wrong. They were just foul after all. They too seduced me into doing these things—begging me to strangle them, cackling and squawking at me with their foreign tongues, then the screams.

In 1955, when they released me. I ended up here in Spokane and tried to figure out where I was in the greater scheme of things. My high school sweetheart, Lillian Parker, found me one day and we fell in love. I found work as a janitor at the old American Legion building. We married and she gave birth to a pretty daughter we named Miranda. Lillian was a tall and slender woman with blond hair and a precocious smile. I always fell for her smile. Miranda seemed destined to look just like her.

But she got sick. It was late spring 1959. She had a medical problem and I couldn’t pretend to understand, and we took her to the doctor. He told me she had to have an operation of her heart. But she died anyway. I blamed him; he had to pay.

I never been inside a Packard before, I heard her tell me with a coy smile that told me what kind of girl she was going to be later in life—a chick. She had soft, curly, brown hair, chestnut-colored I believe it was, and soft brown eyes. She wore a standard dress for 1959; a pinafore I think they called it. I saw her budding breasts beginning and realized she was soon approaching her womanhood time. I remembered the Indian summer afternoon as though it was yesterday, a sunny and warm September day.

Her voice sounded so seductive, and she smelled so sweet, like cinnamon. I invited her inside. Her father, the doctor who killed my Miranda, lived at a large Victorian mansion in Browne’s Addition. She was walking home from a school by Coeur d’Alene Park when I called out to her.

At first, she ignored me, but I persisted, and she relented, and she walked to my 1941 Packard, which I bought from my GI Bill after my discharge. It was a beautiful and vibrant black with shiny chrome bumpers and hubcaps with the signature Packard name on each cap. I washed that car every weekend after long and arduous days at work.

Her eyes took everything in, the knobs, the leather seats, the white steering wheel, and the chrome finish on the radio and dash. I bet she even admired the carpeted floorboards.

Come on in, I invited her. It was then she made up her mind and it was then I pictured her like those chickens my captain ordered me to kill in Korea. I carried a knotted rope I possessed then inside my pants that I made up a couple years before. I believe it is called a gordian knot, though I honestly don’t know a thing about knots and figured the knot was more than likely just a half-hitch.

I never been inside a Packard before, she told me, still admiring the interior and how it felt on her bare thighs. She wore white cotton socks that ended at her calf and black patent leather shoes, shiny and glossy like the finish on my car. My daddy is a doctor. Someday, I’ll marry one too. What is your name, sir?

I thought a moment. Should I tell her my name? I suppose it couldn’t hurt. After all, I had no plans to keep her alive to tell the authorities who I was. Albert Peabody, I replied.

That’s an odd name, she stated as she ran her fingers over the window glass, the doorknobs, and the chrome Packard logo on the glove box. Can you take me for a ride? I’d like to go somewhere.

Have you ever been to the creek? I was referring to Latah Creek just a way down from here. I knew of a secluded spot I could take her to. I could dump her body there and no one would know. I would be home by supper, and no one would be the wiser.

I go there all the time. Daddy likes to fly fish for trout down there.

Well, that’s out of the question. I guess I’ll have to bury her in my backyard. I’ll kill her by the creek. Then I’ll go home, eat supper. Then after Lillian has gone to bed, I will bury her in my backyard. My excitement for what was about to happen was reaching a fever pitch. I started the car with trembling fingers and we drove to the creek.

Lillian’s face and voice haunted me to this day about what I did to that girl. I was always doing the same thing, and Lillian would appear by that girl’s grave. I never got her name. I always assumed I got the right girl. That’s not her, Albert! She always nagged at me with a shrill cry. But I knew she was. She had to be. The papers stated it was her that was missing and never found. The doctor went bankrupt, hiring private investigators to scour the Inland Northwest for his daughter. But they never found her.

His wife left him, and he never gave up looking for her. He went mad and died in a nursing home for the destitute. But that never stopped my wife from invading my private inner soul and chastised me for burying the wrong girl in our backyard.

Is that how most dreams are? A fear or some other psychotic state of mind that causes us to second-guess our true motives when we carry them out? I often wonder that, Herr Doctor. I also question your motives as I saw you for the first time when I arrived here at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a few miles outside Spokane where I once lived. You appeared right at home among the other lunatics who walked about in an aimless and seemingly mindless morose. I was certain, Herr Doctor, that they were under the influence of powerful narcotics to keep them docile and willing.

That was something I expected when I arrived here. I also expected you or one of your nurses to drug me into a state of mindless blather, drooling on myself and staring vacantly at the opposite wall. Perhaps, Herr Doctor, you too have secrets yet to be revealed.

I saw Dr. Schwartz later that day. I sat on a sofa as he looked at a file that I assumed was mine, reading notes, with black-framed glasses. I began my tale before he was ready.

I’ve always been fascinated by death. When I was a child, I often laid traps for mice; just to see the expression—the initial shock of instant death. My curious mind just wanted to know, so I watched it unfold.

Albert?

Yes, Herr Doctor?

You are going out of focus here.

I’m sorry, but you are mistaken. It is after all part of the story I wish to tell you.

I asked if you had any issues concerning your mother. He wore black-framed glasses. I could see the lines that separated bi-focal and regular lens. He wore a starched lab coat and striped tie. I looked at him from the couch I sat on. It was an office at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake where