Houses of Death (True Crime) Read online

  Contents

  Introduction

  Countess Erzsébet Báthory

  Castle Csejthe, Slovakia

  Eastern State Penitentiary

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

  The Bloody Benders

  Bender Family Log Cabin, Kansas, USA

  Sing Sing

  Ossining, New York, USA

  Lizzie Borden

  92 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts, USA

  H H Holmes

  The Murder Castle, Chicago, USA

  Newgate Prison

  City of London, England

  Lemp Mansion

  3322 DeMenil Place, St Louis, Missouri, USA

  Bangkwang Central Prison

  Nonthaburi Province, Thailand

  Collingwood Manor Massacre

  1740 Collingwood Manor House, Detroit, USA

  John Bodkin Adams

  Trinity Trees Surgery, Eastbourne, England

  Washington State Penitentiary

  Washington State, USA

  Nazi Death Camps

  Germany, Poland, Austria

  Bugsy Siegel

  810 Linden Drive, Beverly Hills, California, USA

  Pentonville Prison

  Caledonian Road, North London, England

  John Reginald Christie

  10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London, England

  Ed Gein

  Gein's Farm, Plainfield, Wisconsin, USA

  Holloway Prison

  London Borough of Islington, England

  Alcatraz

  San Francisco Bay, USA

  The Manson Family

  10050 Cielo Drive, Los Angeles, USA

  Jonestown

  Northwestern Guyana, South America

  The Curse of Pearl Bryan

  44 Licking Pike, Wilder, Kentucky, USA

  Wonderland Murders

  8673 Wonderland, Los Angeles, USA

  Waverly Hills Sanatorium

  Louisville, Kentucky, USA

  Gambino Mafia Family

  The Gemini Lounge, Brooklyn, USA

  Fred & Rose West

  25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, England

  Menendez Brothers

  722 Elm Drive, Beverly Hills, USA

  Jeffrey Dahmer

  213 Oxford Apartments, Milwaukee, USA

  David Koresh

  Mount Carmel, Waco, Texas, USA

  The Tent Jail

  Tent City Jail, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

  Thomas Hamilton

  Dunblane Primary School, Dunblane, Scotland

  Gianni Versace

  Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, Florida, USA

  Heaven’s Gate

  18241 Colina Norta, San Diego, USA

  Luke Woodham

  Pearl High School, Mississippi, USA

  Gary Heidnik

  3520 North Marshall Street, Pennsylvania, USA

  Columbine Massacre

  Columbine High School, Jefferson County, Colorado, USA

  Ian Huntley

  5 College Close, Soham, Cambridgeshire, England

  Virginia Tech Massacre

  Virginia Tech University, Virginia, USA

  Introduction

  Many of them are no longer there, demolished following the horrific incidents that took place within their walls, as if to expunge them forever. Others have changed their names, often at the request of their occupants, tired of the ghoulish tours and bored with uninvited visitors popping flashbulbs and asking the same old questions. Then there are the houses that are reluctant to let go of their secrets; where the victims and perpetrators of the horrific crimes they hosted still live out the horror that befell them, and can be seen walking the corridors at night or heard screaming endlessly as they relive their terror, again and again. These are the sites of unspeakable, unforgivable and often incomprehensible acts. They are the Houses of Death.

  There is no common theme to any of these buildings, although a few of them certainly look the part. The Waverly Hills Sanitorium, for instance, seated on a hill in Louisville, Kentucky, can send a shiver down the spine just from looking at photographs of it. These days its gloomy look is enhanced by dark, dilapidated corridors, rusted pipes and flaking walls. Its sheer size renders it terrifying, but its blood-soaked, death-laden history ensures that this is not a place you would like to visit. Many do, however, seeking ghostly thrills, eager to prove the existence of another world, or simply to be scared out of their wits.

  Other buildings in this book were the locations of crimes and atrocities that are almost beyond comprehension. The extermination camps of Nazi Germany were witness to a kind of mass hysteria that resulted in the horrific deaths of millions of Jews, gypsies and other minorities. Perhaps the fact that some of these killing factories, such as Auschwitz, have been allowed to remain as they were, will allow them to serve as a warning to future generations of the horrors that man is sometimes capable of in the service of an ideology.

  Of course, from time to time, individuals also commit hideous atrocities that are way beyond the understanding of any sane and rational person. How can we explain the obscene acts perpetrated by Ed Gein on his farm at Plainfield, Wisconsin in the northern United States? A loner, who was fixated by his mother, thrown into a hellish world of peeled human skin and the use of body parts as household items following her death. Of all killers, Gein is one of the hardest to understand. It is a dubious honour he shares with men such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nielsen, men who have traversed the boundaries of humanity.

  Houses of Death can be ordinary places, too. Dahmer’s apartment was just an apartment, although there was always that strange lingering smell about the place. Inside, of course, like Gein’s farm and Nielsen’s flat, it was a charnel house, but from the outside, there was little evidence of the horror being lived out within. 10 Rillington Place, the venue for John Reginald Christie’s macabre, murderous sexual fulfillment, was an unassuming terrace house in the Notting Hill area of north London – in the days before it became the sought-after area to live for film stars and politicians. The house is long gone, replaced by an elevated section of the A40 dual carriageway, but, back then, the innocent passerby would have known little about the obscenities being perpetrated behind that ordinary door.

  Then there are the inexplicable tragedies of Jonestown and the Mount Carmel Ranch, settings for the last stands of two messianically deranged individuals, Jim Jones and David Koresh. The bizarre tale of the creation of the Jonestown community, in the middle of the jungle in northwest Guyana, would barely be credible if it was a work of fiction or a film. Incredibly, and tragically for more than 900 people who died there, it was reality of the worst possible kind and the shacks and structures that were witness to the terrible events of 18 November 1978 have now been re-claimed by the jungle; even locals did not want to live there. Mount Carmel, home to the Branch Davidian sect, on the other hand, was obliterated by fire and the scene was bulldozed not long after. The memory lives on, however, of an extraordinary 51-day stand-off, during which this group of buildings filled our TV screens.

  Often, it is no more than coincidence which turns an ordinary house into a crime scene – a building simply being the right place, at the right time. Sometimes, however, the very place seems to assume responsibility for the killings carried out inside it. The ruins of Countess Erzsébet Báthory’s Castle Csejthe glower down at the visitor, almost daring him or her to enter, and the suffering endured at Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary was caused, in many cases, by the building and its creators, the architects of an inhuman system of punishment and retribution.

  Countess Erzsébet Báthory

  Castle Csejthe, Slovakia

  Countess Erzé
bet Báthory was a truly evil woman, but her royal connections ensured her protection, even when the numerous hideous crimes she had committed were finally revealed. While her accomplices were tortured and executed, the countess was imprisoned in her castle home and simply left to die a natural, if not peaceful, death.

  Villages would wait in dread. In the dead of night, the carriage, drawn by powerful black stallions, would drive noisily past. Inside would be young girls, cowering in fear. They had every right to be afraid. They would enter the huge Castle Csejthe and never be seen again. People living nearby reported hearing horrific screams emanating from behind the castle walls. There was talk of witchcraft, orgies and vile practices.

  Nothing could be done about it, however. The beautiful denizen of the castle, Countess Erzsébet Báthory, was as well connected as they came. Her family included counts, princes, bishops and cardinals. She was a cousin of the prime minister, her uncle, Stephen, had been king of Poland and she had once been married to the warrior count known to Hungarians as the ‘Black Hero’ because of the courage he showed in battles against the hated Turks.

  Eventually, however, King Mathias II of Hungary decided that it was time to bring an end to the rumours that had been spreading about the countess. Either that, or bring an end to what was going on behind the forbidding walls of the castle. He sent a party to investigate, a party that included her cousin, the prime minister. They had to be careful, but, in all likelihood, on seeing her cousin’s colours, she would open the castle’s massive gates to them.

  The party was surprised to find the door of the castle open when they arrived, and they entered a great hall. Immediately, they found a young, partly clothed girl lying on the floor. She was unnaturally pale, as if the blood had been drained out of her body. She was dead, and another girl they found nearby was close to death. She, too, looked as if the blood had been sucked from her body, and the many piercings that peppered her body seemed to confirm that fact. Further on, a woman was found chained to a post. She had been whipped and her body was lacerated and burned. Like the others, her blood appeared to have been taken.

  In the dungeons, they discovered cells filled with women and children who had been beaten and abused. They released them and escorted them from the castle, before returning to continue their grim search.

  Countess Erzébet Báthory had married at fifteen. Count Ferencz Nádasdy, her husband, was a warrior and rarely at home, giving Erzsébet ample opportunity to indulge in unsavoury pastimes. That was not unusual in her family, though. Her aunt was reputed to be a witch, she had an uncle who was an alchemist and a devil-worshipper and her brother was a paedophile. Her nurse was said to be a practitioner of black magic and was reputed to have been involved in the sacrifice of children.

  As if that was not bad enough, her husband had a number of unsavoury habits, many of which he passed on to his young wife. He was partial to beating servant girls to within an inch of their lives or spreading honey on their naked bodies and tying them down in the open, leaving them to be bitten and stung by insects. When he was not doing that, he was freezing girls to death by pouring water over their naked bodies in the icy depths of winter and leaving them to die. His idea of a love token to his wife was a black magic spell from whichever land he was fighting in.

  While he was gone, she also took countless lovers, both male and female. However, the count died in 1604, leaving Erzébet a widow at 44, with four young children.

  She returned to her estates after a spell in Vienna, and it was at this point that pretty young women began to disappear from neighbouring villages. The girls were promised that they were going to be taken into service at the castle, but, once there, they were subjected to horrific treatment, locked up in cellars, beaten and tortured, often by Erzsébet, herself. Their bodies were then cut up with razors and burned.

  Erzébet was known to sew servants’ mouths shut or force them to eat pieces of their own flesh or burn their genitals. When she was ill and could not indulge in these horrors, she would attempt to bite those who approached her bed, like a wild animal.

  From peasant girls, she shifted her attention to girls of noble families, confident that no one would try to stop her. She offered to teach social graces to them, but when they arrived at Castle Csejthe, she tortured and killed them, as she had done the peasant girls. This was a step too far and, like many psychopaths, she had mistakenly begun to think she was invincible. Following the murder of one young woman, whose death she had tried to make look like suicide, the king decided enough was enough.

  The investigating party found bones and human remains, as well as clothing belonging to the missing girls. There were bodies everywhere, their arms and eyes missing. Some had been burned or partially burned, and many had been buried in shallow graves around the castle. Dogs ran about with body-parts in their mouths.

  Erzébet did not attend her trial which began on 2 January, 1611. Countless witnesses testified, many of whom had suffered at her hands in Castle Csejthe. However, it was her accomplices who provided the most damning testimony. Ficzko, a dwarf who worked for Erzsébet, testified that he was uncertain how many women he helped to kill, but he did know that 37 girls had been murdered. A nurse, Ilona Joo, confessed to killing about 50. She described how she pushed red-hot pokers into victims’ mouths or up their noses. She described how her mistress had placed her fingers in the mouth of one girl and pulled hard until the sides split open. Victims were forced to indulge in deviant sexual practices and one was made to strip flesh off her own arm.

  The countess and her accomplices were convicted of 80 counts of murder, although it is thought that there may have been as many as 300 victims.

  While her accomplices were gruesomely tortured and killed – fingers pulled off, buried alive or beheaded – the countess was imprisoned for life, proclaiming her innocence throughout. She died in either 1613 or 1614.

  It was later claimed that she killed her victims and stole their blood in order to bathe in it. She believed it made her look younger.

  Eastern State Penitentiary

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

  Today, Eastern State Penitentiary lies empty, apart from thrill-seeking tourists accompanied by tour guides, and the occasional TV crew. But ESP was once home to some of America's most dangerous criminals - men and women whose already unstable minds were routinely pushed to the limit by the prison's brutal regime.

  In most prisons, solitary confinement was a punishment. In Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia, it was the norm.

  Eastern State was devised by Philadelphia’s Quakers, for whom the concept of penitence was very important. They considered the brutal regimes of correctional institutions up to that time to have been unsuccessful, and believed there was another way to deal with criminals. They invented the ‘Philadelphia System’ of imprisonment that encouraged solitary confinement as the means of rehabilitation, and put it into practice in Eastern State Penitentiary.

  The prison was designed by one of the city’s most successful architects, John Haviland, who created a building based on a ‘hub and spoke’ design, seven cell blocks radiating out from the central guard post. Its design allowed constant supervision from a central rotunda. It was considered so successful that it was borrowed by more than 300 penal institutions across the world. It opened its doors to 250 prisoners in 1829, but was only finally completed in 1836.

  A prisoner entering the prison was stripped of his clothing and given a medical. He was allocated a number and would not hear his name spoken for the duration of his imprisonment. He was given a pair of woollen trousers, a jacket with his number sewn on it, two handkerchiefs, two pairs of socks and a pair of shoes. A hood made of rough cloth was then put over his head and he was led to his cell. It was thought prisoners would find it harder to escape if they were unfamiliar with the route to the cells. Cell doors were so small that prisoners had to stoop to enter – it made it more difficult to attack the warders and also, according to the Quakers, reminded
them of the humility they should be feeling. In the cell, the only light came from a slit high up in the ceiling, known as ‘the eye of God’. It was designed to make feel as if they were being watched by the supreme being at all times.

  Cells were small and prisoners spent most of their day locked up. Unusually, for those days, when most houses lacked facilities, each cell had running water and a toilet and a basin. However, this was merely another means of ensuring that they would not meet and communicate with fellow prisoners. They were provided with a Bible, a table and a bunk and were locked in their cells 23 hours a day. The other hour was spent exercising in the exercise yard, surrounded by high walls, that were attached to each individual cell. Prisoners, desperate for human communication, threw notes, wrapped around stones, over the walls into their neighbour’s exercise yard. Or, they would tap gently on the pipes that ran through the prison or whisper through air vents.

  The most noticeable thing at Eastern State was the deadening silence, a silence that drove many inmates out of their minds. It had to be observed at all times. Guards even wore socks over their shoes to cut down noise, and inmates were not allowed to make a sound – no singing or whistling or even talking to themselves. If they breached this, the prison’s most important rule, they were severely punished.

  Punishment was mild in the beginning, in comparison to other prisons, but as time wore on, the prison authorities began to devise harsher penalties for rule-breakers.

  The ‘water bath’ involved being dipped into a bath of ice-cold water and then hung on a wall for the night. Often the water on the prisoner’s skin would form into a layer of ice by morning. The ‘mad chair’ was a particularly harsh punishment that had been adopted from the ‘treatment’ of the mentally ill in asylums. Ironically it often drove victims insane before they were released. Prisoners were strapped so tightly into a chair that they could not make even the slightest movement, sometimes being left for days. The limbs would become stiff and swollen as the circulation was cut off and would then turn a bluish-black colour.