Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker

Los Angeles in 1985 was a city in fear, as a deadly killer struck at random. Young or old, male or female, all were prey to the Night Stalker

The date was 17 March 1985. Just before midnight, Maria Hernandez drove her car into the garage of the apartment in the suburb of Rosemead, Los Angeles, she shared with Dayle Okazaki. As she left the garage she heard a sound behind her and, turning saw a man dressed in black pointing a gun at her. “Don’t shoot,” she begged him, raising her hand; he fired, but the bullet was deflected by the car keys that she was holding. As she was thrown backwards to the ground by the impact, her attacker kicked her savagely and stepped over her body into the apartment’s rear entrance.

Shocked and shaking, Maria dragged herself to her feet and staggered towards the front of the building. There was the sound of a second shot, and she found herself confronted again by the gunman as he ran from the apartment. “Please don’t shoot me again,” she begged, and he vanished into the night. In the kitchen of the apartment, Dayle Okazaki lay dead, a bullet through her head.

Maria was able to give the police a description of the killer; he was thin, with dark curly hair, staring eyes and a mouthful of rotten teeth. And on the floor of the garage, detectives found a dark blue baseball cap with the logo of the well-known heave metal band AC/DC.

At the time, the attack on Dayle and Maria was thought to have been a burglary which had gone wrong, but as similar attacks began to occur with greater frequency, police realised that there was a serial killer on the loose.

Random killers

There is nothing more terrifying than mindless murder, for it comes without warning, it is almost impossible to take adequate precautions. In 1984 no less than five random killers had been at large in Los Angeles, and the reaction of most people was to ignore their existence and to console themselves with the thought that, among the city’s millions, they were unlikely to be picked for slaughter. Yet every few days another name was added to the list of unsuspecting victims.

In the summer of 1985 the LA police believed that they were to close to identifying one of the serial killers, thought to be responsible for 14 deaths, as well as rape, child abuse, brutal assault and robbery. They had evidence to link many of these previous crimes, and hoped to keep their investigation under wraps; but then the prowler struck twice within three days they were forced to make a public announcement. The newspapers were quick to dib the killer the ‘Night Stalker’ and, as terrified citizens locked their doors and dozed uneasily in their beds, the hunt was on.

For several weeks, the police had been cautious about announcing a manhunt. But after an attack on Christopher and Virginia Peterson on 6 August 1985, they began to have second thoughts. The events of the night 8 August, and the resulting press and public outcry, forced their hand. On that night, the Night Stalker shot Elya Abowath, a 35-year old Asian, in his San Gabriel Valley home, savagely beat and raped his wife Sakina, and tied up the elder of the two children, three-year-old Armez.

A long tail of terror

Privately, the police had been seeking the Night Stalker for two months. In June Detective Sergeant Frank Salerno of the LA County Sheriff’s Department had come to the conclusion that at least six killings during the previous three months were the work of the same man. There were matching descriptions from two survivors’, matching bullets recovered in the cases where the victims had been shot, and significant similarities between traces of fingerprints found at different sites. Salerno persuaded his superiors to put him in charge of a task force to track down the killer, and at the same time the LA Police Department appointed a squad to work closely with the County Sheriff’s Department.

The first killing in the series was thought to have been that of Dayle Okazaki earlier that year. Police had not at that time connected the attack with an earlier one in June 1984, when elderly Jennie Vincow was raped and murdered.

On the same night as the Okazaki killing, in nearby Monterey Park, the prowler killed law student Tsai Lian Yu, dragging her from her car and shooting her several times. Bullets showed that the same small calibre gun had been used in both incidents. Three days later, he abducted a young girl from her Eagle Rock home, sexually abused her, and then, surprisingly, let her go.

However, only a week passed before pizza-parlour owner Vincent Zazzara was shot in his home close to the San Gabriel freeway, and his wife Maxine was also shit and then repeatedly stabbed.

For six weeks there were no more related murders in the Los Angeles suburbs, subsequent evidence suggests that this coincided with one of the killer’s trips north to the home of an unsuspecting friend, Donna Myers, in San Pablo, near San Francisco, which he was in the habit of doing once a month to get his stained clothes laundered.

Then, on 14 May, William Doi was shot in the head in his home in Monterey Park. While the Night Stalker savagely beat his wife Lillie and demanded to know where the valuables were kept, Doi managed to stagger to the telephone and dial an emergency number before he expired. Lillie survived.

Two weeks later, on 30 May, Carol Kyle was woken from a deep slumber in her Burbank home by a torch shining into her eyes. She opened them to see a gun pointing at her, and hear a man’s voice ordering her out of the bed. She was forced into the adjoining bedroom, where her terrified 12-year old son was handcuffed and shut in a cupboard.

Lucky escape

Carol offered the intruder her diamond and gold necklace, which he took before raping her. Courageously she told him, “You must have had a very unhappy life to have done this to me”, and, amazingly, this saved her life. The Night Stalker told her: “I don’t know why I’m letting you live. I’ve killed people before. You don’t believe me, but I have.” Carol was later able to give police a detailed description, which tallied with those already recorded.

It was not that the city and county authorities, persuaded by Sergeant Salerno, first put together an investigating team that by August would be more than 200 strong, and began to build up a profile of the killer. A month later, the killer went on a fortnight’s rampage. On 27 June, Patty Elaine Higgins was found with her throat slashed in her home in Arcadia. On 2 July, elderly Mary Louise Cannon was killed in the same manner, also in Arcadia. In the same suburb, three days later, 16-year old Whitney Bennett was beaten to death in her home in Monterey Park. That same night 63-year old nurse Sophie Dickman was raped and robbed in her home, also in Monterey Park.

Terror reigned in the Los Angeles suburbs. Fearful citizens began to buy guns, form vigilante groups and bolt their doors and windows at night. But some were unlucky.  On 20 July, the Night Stalker shot Max Kneiding and his wife Lela in Glendale. Then he went on to Sun Valley, where he shot Chainarong Khovananth in his bed, before beating and raping his wife Somkid, forcing her to swear by Satan that she would not cry out. Then he beat and violated their eight-year old son before escaping with $30,000 in cash and jewellery.

Description of the Stalker

Then on the night of 5/6 August came the attack on the Petersons. Both were seriously injured, but survived to give good descriptions of their assailant. It was this attack, plus the murder of Elyas Abowath three days later, which was to blow the case wide open. The next day the sketches of the killer’s face and his description were on the television and in all the newspapers.

About this time Ramirez made one of his regular trips north to San Francisco and called on Donna Myers. She was looking at one of the sketches of the Night Stalker. “Do you think that could be me?” he asked her. She said, no, she didn’t think he had the guts. He laughed and said nothing.

On the night of 17 August he broke into the Lake Merced home of Peter Pan and his wife Barbara, and shot them both through the head. Police found small calibre bullets that matched those found at two murder sites in Los Angeles.

A week later, back in Los Angeles, the Night Stalker broke into the home of William Carns in Mission Viejo, 50 miles south of the city. He shot him three times through the head (Carns survived, but suffered permanent brain damage) and raped his fiancée Inez Erikson twice, saying: “You know who I am, don’t you? I’m the one they’re writing about in the newspapers and on TV.” Giggling, he ordered her to say: “I love Satan.” Then he left, but she was able to see through her tears that he drove away in a battered orange Toyota.

The Toyota had also been spotted in Mission Viejo earlier in the day. A keen eyed teenager, James Romero III, had noticed it driving past his home three times. He noted the number and informed the County Sheriff’s department. Two days later, police found the car abandoned in a parking lot in the LA suburb of Rampart. It was immediately taken away for examination.

Using a new technique, laser scanning, detectives found a satisfactory fingerprint, and a photo was at once sent to the State computer in Sacramento. Only a few days before, the new computer had been updated with all the prints on file of persons who had been born after 1 January 1960.

Within minutes it had identified the print: it belonged to a petty thief and known drug user from El Paso, Richard Ramirez, born 28 February 1960, twice convicted in Los Angeles for car theft. Within hours’ police photographs and a description of him were on the front pages of every newspaper in California. Immediately, two central LA policemen realised, too late, that they had stopped and cautioned the Night Stalker for a minor traffic violation only hours before the Toyota was found.

Back in town

At 8.15 am on 31 August, Ramirez descended from a Greyhound bus at the Los Angeles depot. He had been to Phoenix, Arizona, to buy cocaine. He was dressed, as usual, in all black: black trousers and a Jack Daniels T-shirt. In the two days he had been out of California he had seen none of the local newspapers, and he strolled casually out of the bus station, past unwitting security guards, and took a local bus to east Los Angeles.

At 8.30 he entered Tito’s Liquor Store on Towne Avenue to buy a can of Pepsi and a packet of doughnuts. As he walked to the till, he looked down at the front page of a local Spanish language paper, La Opinion, and saw his own picture staring up at him. He raced out of the store as customers began to shout, and kept running for nearly two miles. As he paused, fighting for breath, he heard more shouts, and the siren wail of an approaching police car.

On Perry Street he beat a house door, crying “Ayudame!” (Help me), but the occupier, Bonnie Navarro, slammed the door in his face. On Indiana Avenue he tried to pull a woman from her car; as passers-by ran to her aid, he jumped over a fence, and came face to face with Luis Munoz cooking at his barbecue. Munoz struck him with the barbecue tongs, and Ramirez fled over the fence to another backyard.

The chase

There he found Faustino Pinon working on the transmission of his Mustang. As he tried to climb into the car’s driving seat, Pinon seized him in a headlock, and the car lurched backwards and forwards as the two men struggled. Ramirez broke free and ran off down the driveway on to Hubbard Street, followed by Pinon.

Angelina de la Torres was just getting into her gold Granada when she saw a tall, skinny man lurching towards her, screaming, “Te voy a matar!” (I’m going to kill you!). Crying out, she hit at him with the car door, and her husband Manuel, hearing her screams, picked up a steel rod and ran to her aid. From the other side of the street, Jose Burgoin and his two sons, Jamie and Julio, came running and, pursued by five men, Ramirez fled again. Within a few yards Manuel de la Torres caught up with him and struck him two or three times with the steel rod. Ramirez fell to the ground, the Burgoins jumped on top of him and a police patrol car screeched to a halt beside them.

Night Stalker arrested

“Save me, please! Thank God you came! Save me before they kill me!” gasped Ramirez, and the reign of the Night Stalker had come to an end.

When the Night Stalker was arrested, the police feared that the Hispanic community of east Los Angeles wold lynch him. While he was held in a cell at Hollenbeck police station, a crowd of more than 600 gathered outside, shouting, “Hang him!”, and the streets were packed as a police motorcade took him to the county jail. There he boasted to Deputy Sheriff Jim Ellis: “I love to kill people. I love watching them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wriggle and squirm all over the place, and then stop. Or I would cut them with a bread knife and watch their faces turn real white. I love all that blood. I told one lady one time to give me all her money. She said no. So I cut her and pulled her eyes out.”

It seemed like an open-and-shut case, but it took two years to bring it to the preliminary hearing, and another two years before Ramirez was found guilty. The State was determined to secure a conviction and prepared its case with care, but Ramirez denied his earlier confession and took six months to enter a plea of ‘not guilty’. (Nevertheless he sported a satanic symbol on the palm of his left hand during one preliminary hearing, shouted “Hail Satan!”, and, back in his cell, told a fellow prisoner, “I’ve killed 20 people, man. I love all that blood.”) Then he constantly changed his mind about whom he wanted to represent him; and when two attorneys were eventually appointed, they had no cooperation from their client. They had so little time to prepare their case that the prosecution was concerned that any conviction might get reversed on appeal.

Eventually, in January 1989, after more than 1,500 prospective jurors had been interviewed, the trial opened. After three and a half years in prison, Ramirez was a very different figure from the Night Stalker so vividly described by his victims: his hair was groomed, his teeth had been capped, and he wore a smart, grey pinstripe suit. He refused to testify in his own defence and his attorneys worked hard to convince the jury that this was a case of SODDI, “Some other dude did it.”

Twice the jury had to be reconvened: once, after 13 days of deliberation, when one of their number was found to be asleep and two days later when another was found murdered in her apartment. But finally, on 20 September 1989, Ramirez was found guilty of 13 murders and 30 other felonies. In a plea of mitigation, his attorney argued that he was a man possessed by the devil and a helpless victim of his own sexuality, and should not be sentenced to death. “Life imprisonment without parole means he will never see Disneyland again.” he said.

But Judge Tynan imposed the death penalty. Then he asked if Ramirez had anything to say. “I have a lot to say.” Replied the Night Stalker, “but now is not the time or place. I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath. But what the hell? … I don’t believe in the hypocritical moralistic dogmas of this so-called civilised society. You maggots make me sick. Hypocrites one and all! … You don’t understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil.”

Led from the court in chains, he made the sign of the devil’s horns with the fingers of his left hand, and told reporters: “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. I’ll see you in Disneyland.” To date, he languished on death row in San Quentin jail.

Night Stalker Murder Victims

Dayle Okazaki, 17 March 1985

Dayle Okazaki, a 35-year old Hawaiian-born traffic manager, was for a long time thought by police to have been the first of the Night Stalker’s slayings. She shared a house in Rosemead, Los Angeles, with Maria Hernandez. Dayle was killed by a single shot though the head. What the police did not know was that Richard Ramirez had been active for at least nine months before this attack. His first killing had been in June 1984, with the brutal rape and murder of 79-year old Jennie Vincow.

Vincent and Maxine Zazzara, 27 March 1985

The horrific killing of Vincent and Maxine Zazzara, whose bodies were found by their son Peter, alerted police to the fact that they had a vicious serial killer on their hands. Vincent, a 64-year old retired businessman and owner of a pizza restaurant, was shot in his study, while Maxine, a successful lawyer who had just celebrated her 44^th birthday, was killed in the bedroom. Her body had been stripped and repeatedly slashed with a knife, and the killer had gouged out her eyes. After his arrest Richard Ramirez boasted to a Deputy: “I love all that blood. I told one lady one time to give me all her money. She said no, so I cut her and pulled her eyes out.”

William Doi, 14 May 1985

William Doi and his wife Lillie were woken in their Monterey Park home by an intruder. William was shot in the head, while 63-year old Lillie was handcuffed to the bed, beaten and raped. Police discovered an Avia shoe print in the flowerbed outside the house, which matched a print found at the Zazzara attack. A witness also reported seeing a tall, thin, dark-haired man in the area at the time of the crime.

Joyce Nelson, 7 July 1985

Joyce Lucille Nelson, a youthful looking 61-year old grandmother, lived in the Night Stalker’s favourite killing ground of Monterey Park. On the night of 7 July 1985 an intruder broke into her home, battered her about the head with a blunt instrument and strangled her. Witnesses reported seeing a man matching the description of the Night Stalker in the area, and police again discovered an Avia shoe print, matching those found after some of the previous attacks.

Max and Lela Kneiding, 20 July 1985

Maxson ‘Max’ Kneiding and his wife Lela were killed in their beds. Max, a gentle man with a heart condition who owned three gas stations in Glendale, was killed instantly by a .22-calibre bullet. Police were later to match this with bullets used in many of the previous attacks. Lela was also shot, and she was subjected to a frenzied knife attack: stabbed repeatedly and her throat was slashed so deeply that her head was almost severed. Obviously not satisfied with his night’s work, the Night Stalker then went and burgled another house in nearby Sun Valley. There he killed 35-year old Chainarong Khovananth, raped his wife Somkid and sexually assaulted their eight-year-old son.

Elyas Abowath, 8 August 1985

Elyas Abowath was shot and killed on the night of 8 August 1985. His 28-year old wife Sakina was beaten and raped. As happened with Somkid Khovananth in the second attack on 20 July, Sakina was forced to swear by Satan that she would not scream. Her description of the attacker matched those given by previous Night Stalker victims, and forensic examinations of the bullets established that they were fired by the same .22 pistol that had been used in the earlier killings.

Evil Mind: In the service of Satan

The first signs of a new devil-worshipping movement in California were noted in 1966. Taking advantage of the liberal state laws on religion, a former carnival performer, Szandor Anton LaVey, publicly established his First Church of Satan in San Francisco. LaVey had been accused by many of being simply an opportunist publicity-seeker, cynically exploiting the growing interest on occult matters and taking advantage of those in search of prurient sensations, but his activities were to have many tragic consequences.

In 1969 he published The Satanic Bible, a plausible mixture of rituals taken from a variety of sources. In his black-painted home close to Golden Gate Park he held black masses and invited the press to witness them. The symbol of the cult was an inverted pentagram, on which the head of a horned goat was superimposed.

Church of Satan

LaVey was a consummate showman, cheerfully willing to admit in private conversation that his Church of Satan did little more than offer his followers the opportunity to release their sexual hang-ups, but unhappily there were others who lacked this ironic detachment. Within only a few years the cult of Satanism had been taken up by psychopathic movements who were used to it as justification for perversion and murder.

Charles Manson Family

Perhaps the most infamous example is the Charles Manson Family, but there were others: The Circe Order of Dog Blood, the Four Pi Movement, and, most sinister of all, the Process Church of Final Judgement. Serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole claimed to have been hired by a satanic cult to kidnap children and deliver them for ritual sacrifice, and a book The Ultimate Evil, Maury Terry, 1987 accused the Process Church of being the influence behind a vast number of serial killings.

Whether Ramirez had any affiliation with a satanic cult, or was no more than a self deceiving lonely psychopath, it is interesting to compare the dates of his killings with the ‘satanic ceremonies’ described in Profiling Violent Crimes by Ronald M. Holmes 1989:

The Night Beast: a three-week ceremony beginning at the third full moon of the year (mid March). “The male is always sacrificed first … the eyes are also removed … the procedure is repeated for the chosen woman, and again for the closing night’s ceremony.”

The May Day Rite: “There is both human and animal sacrifices, a high priest and a woman.”

The Passover: occurs every six months, in February and August. “There will be two human sacrifices, a high priest and his wife or ‘Bride of Lucifer’.”

Biography: Making of the Devil

Born in El Paso, on the border between Texas and Mexico, on 28 February 1960, Richard Ramirez was the youngest of seven children. They were a typical poor Mexican immigrant family, living in a small, white stucco house under the shadow of an expressway. Richard was brought up strictly in the Catholic faith, but by the age of nine he was already a loner, a haunter of video arcades and a glue sniffer.

Troublemaker

From glue he soon graduated to marijuana, hanging out with a few kids who regularly stole to pay for their dope, breaking into houses in the richer parts of El Paso. He was a truant for most of his time at Jefferson High School, finally dropping out at the age of 17. As one of his teachers said: “He didn’t give a damn about anything. He hit the dope pretty hard and was heavily into rock ‘n’ roll.

Brush with the law

Richard Ramirez’s first brush with the law came on 7 December 1977 when he was arrested on suspicion of possessing marijuana; but, although he was also carrying a ski mask and a toy pistol, no charges were made. He was arrested on three further occasions, but it was only on the third, in 1982, that he was convicted, earning a 50-day suspended sentence and a $115 fine.

On parole

He was put on three year’s parole and shortly afterwards left town to follow a woman friend, Mrs Donna Myers, 18-years older than himself, north to San Francisco. For a short time, he remained in the Golden Gate City, sometimes staying in Mrs Myers’ house, sometimes sleeping rough. He lived, said Mrs Myers, on hamburgers, Pepsi and cupcakes, and never brushed his teeth; and he stole cars, usually Toyotas or Datsun’s, whenever he needed one.

Drug addiction

Early in 1983 Ramirez moved south to Log Angeles, where he began to inject cocaine and express an interest in Satanism. He boasted of stealing video recorders, microwave ovens and jewellery to pay for his growing drug addiction. Within a short time, he was arrested for stealing a car and jailed for five months. Later he was convicted again on a car theft charge and spent 36 days in jail. Very soon after his release, he committed the first of his murders.

Bank Raid Murder

It seemed like a typical armed raid on a suburban bank. But with one needless blast of a shotgun, the criminal turned a robbery into brutal murder.

The morning of 10 November 1975 was cold and overcast when 20-year old bank clerk Angela Wooliscroft left her home in Chessington, Surrey, and headed for work. She was in high spirits. An outstanding hockey player, she was due to fly off to Jersey the next day to play for Barclays Bank in a tournament. But tragedy was about to strike.

As she parked her Ford Cortina near the branch where she worked in Upper Ham Road, Richmond, her eventual killer was also setting out for work. For 37-year old villain Michael Hart, ‘work’ meant crime in this case of armed robbery.

Hart, who lived in Basingstoke, Hampshire, was a desperate man. With a long record of violent crime behind him, Hart was already on bail, despite strong police objections, for a jewel robbery.

He also knew detectives in Hampshire were looking into nearly 50 other robberies and burglaries they suspected him of doing. Worse, detectives in Paris were trying to get him extradited to France to face charges of the attempted murder of a policeman in an amazing shoot-out near the Charles de Gaulle airport two months earlier.

After a row over an unpaid fare, Hart had attacked a taxi driver with a knife, seriously wounding him. When five gendarmes had tried to arrest him, he had snatched a pistol from one and opened fire. All the shots missed.

Escaped arrest

Despite a huge search and all-ports watch, he had still managed to get away. But the French knew exactly who they wanted and had contacted Interpol to have their suspect tracked down in Britain.

Hart was expecting to go to jail for a long stretch. He wanted to ensure that if he did he had a large cash reserve stashed away for when he came out. He had ‘cased; a number of banks in London and the Home Counties and had eventually settled on Barclay’s Richmond branch as an ideal target.

Disguised with a dark wig and brown make-up in the hope of being mistaken for an Asian, Hart pulled up outside the bank in a stolen Austin just before 12.30 p.m.

Covering the barrels of a sawn-off shotgun with a raincoat, he walked straight into the bank and up to Angel’s counter. He thrust the gun barrels against her protective screen and growled at the terrified clerk to hand over the cash.

Fighting her fear, and too far away to reach a hidden alarm button, Angela did what she was told. She took a bundle of notes and placed them in the tray in front of her. It was the last thing she ever did.

As Hart scooped up the money, about £2,000, there was a deafening explosion as he let fly with the gun. At such close range even the toughened glass was no defence. It shattered, and Angela was hit in the face and throat.

As she slumped to the floor, fatally wounded, Hart ran from the bank. And, as colleagues and ambulance crews fought in vain to stop Angela from bleeding to death from a severed artery in her throat, Hart was calmly driving his stolen getaway car back to the multi-storey car park in Kingston-upon-Thames from where he had taken it.

Transferring to his own car to drive home, he made a detour to the Thames near Hampton Court, where he threw the gun in the river.

A post-mortem performed by Keith Mant, Professor of Forensic Medicine at London’s Guy’s Hospital, told the horrific story of what actually killed Angela. The gun blast had punched through the triple glass safety screen and, at such close range, the bulk of the shot had not even started to spread before tearing a wound an inch in diameter in her throat, rupturing the left carotid artery.

Hunt for the killer

Detectives assigned to the hunt for Angela’s killer were sure the shooting was the work of a professional villain, not a one off amateur, and started checking scores of robbery suspects in London and the Home Counties.

It was nearly two weeks before they started to scrutinise Hart. Thirteen days after the shooting, an alarm went off following a break-in at Jackson’s Garage in Basingstoke at two in the morning.

As two constables answering the 999 alert sped towards the garage in their Rover patrol car they saw a blue Ford Consul, with its lights off, roar away from the forecourt and flash past in the opposite direction.

Flinging their car into a 180-degree turn, constables Ian McIlwraith and Steven Mycock gave chase at speeds topping 100 mph. After several miles the Ford screeched out of control and crashed. The driver ran off across the darkened fields. He escaped, but both pursuing policemen recognised Michael Hart, a well known local criminal.

It was the contents of the car that made Hart a very wanted man indeed. A .22 French-made Hendaye automatic pistol with 72 rounds of ammunition topped the list, closely followed by stolen jewellery, several stolen driving licences and some disguises.

The pistol had been stolen in a burglary at a gun dealer’s business in Reading. A Webley revolver, an 80-year old Reilly shotgun and some boxes of number seven Eley trap-shooting cartridges had also been taken.

Important discovery

Within hours, detectives had a warrant to search Hart’s house in St Peters Road, Basingstoke. Hart had already fled, but his wife Maureen was at home when the CID called. The detectives were quickly rewarded for their efforts. Hidden under the stairs, with a hoard of miscellaneous stolen goods, were 19 shotgun cartridges from the batch stolen in Reading.

Chief Superintendent Sewell already had a hunch that Hart was a wanted gunman. But there was one big problem. Forensic tests had proved that Angela had been killed with a number seven game shot.

The shells at Hart’s home were loaded with much harder, entirely different trap shot used by clay pigeon enthusiasts. At least, according to the label they were. Could there have been a mistake at the factory?

Sewell took out a penknife and opened one of the cartridges. As he removed the wadding, bird shot, identical to that used to kill Angela, pattered across his desk at Scotland Yard. The lab took only two hours to confirm Sewell’s hunch.

How could it have happened? The detective went to the factory where the shotgun cartridge had been made. Yes, there had been a million-to-one mistake. A computer error meant that a batch of game cartridges had been wrongly labelled as trap shells.

Cartridge clue

The pellets were the clue that would be Hart’s undoing. Sewell immediately issued a force-wide order: “Find Hart, bring him to me.”

But where was he? The detectives knew he hadn’t gone far. Hart, desperate for cash, had been trying to collect some ‘straight’ money he had actually earned honestly by doing painting and decorating jobs for a London garage chain. On 20 January 1977 Hart paid a visit in person to the garage company’s offices in Hounslow, west London, to get his money.

The staff, already briefed by police that Hart was dangerous and wanted, delayed him long enough for police to arrive. He went without a struggle to Richmond police station.

His fist interview ended ay 6.25 p.m. and he was returned to the cells. At 7.30 he was found hear to death after attempting to hang himself from the cell door with his trouser belt. Although his breathing had stopped his life was saved.

Now Sewell and his team were more convinced than ever that they had their man. But, after four more days of interviews, Hart still vehemently denied being the killer.

Unexpected confession

Then, totally unexpectedly, Hart confessed. At 6.20 on the evening of 26 January Hart, who had his wife and brother-in-law with him in the interview room, suddenly gripped his wife’s hand and said to detectives: “It was me, I shot the bank girl.” But he insisted the shooting was an accident. He told Chief Superintendent Sewell: “I went to the bank and had the gun under my coat. I told her to give me the money. She was ages and ages. I banged on the glass with the gun and told her to hurry up. The money dropped into the tray. It was then the gun went off.”

As detectives eagerly took down his every word, Hart explained how he had driven to Kingston in his own Wolseley car. At the multi-storey car park he had selected a maroon-coloured Austin A40 to steal to use as a getaway car.

After the shooting he had driven back to the car park and put back the Austin in the spot he had taken it from. He had then driven back to Basingstoke in his own car. It had broken down on the A3, and while all hell was breaking loose following the murder in Richmond, he had casually sat in his car waiting for the RAC to turn up to fix his motor.

Explaining in greater detail, he said that he had used a yellow raincoat he found in the Austin to cover up the gun as he walked into the bank, and had also worn a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles he had found in the car to complete his disguise.

Accidental shooting

Hart told detectives: “I used the dark wig and face make-up in the hope that people would think the job had been done by a Pakistani.” He admitted that he had cocked both barrels of the near antique weapon before going into the bank, but still insisted the shooting was an accident.

He said: “I did not mean to use it. I knew I had hit the girl because she screamed. I just hoped she was only wounded. I only found out she was dead when I heard about it on the TV.”

The next day he took detectives to a garden where he had buried the sawn-off gun barrels. There was a fired cartridge in the right barrel and a live one in the left. Sure enough, the shells were part of the wrongly labelled batch stolen from the Reading gun shop. Police frogmen found the rest of the gun in the Thames near Hampton Court when Hart showed them the spot where he had thrown it in.

About this time Sewell’s squad tracked down and brought in a 19-year old woman friend of Hart, Sharon Stacey. The detectives were encouraged by her willingness to talk.

Stacey said that she had driven Hart to Kingston on the fateful day of Angela’s murder. Tired of waiting to collect him, Sharon told the detectives that she had taken the train to get back to Basingstoke. At least, there was a witness to Hart’s involvement. But just as detectives were congratulating themselves on this apparently major break, she changed her mind, retracting her statement. She told police: “I was in a state and wold have said anything. It was all lies.”

Aware that Hart, too, might change his mind and retract his confession, Chief Superintendent Sewell wanted to get the forensic evidence in the bag as fast as possible.

Firearms specialist Brian Arnold assembled the gun, and his findings soon gave the lie to Hart’s claim that it had gone off accidentally. After making several successful test firings of the old-fashioned hammer gun, Arnold carried out the pressure tests on the triggers.

He found that the one that had fired the deadly blast that took Angela’s life needed six-and-a-half pounds of pressure. The unfired trigger needed only three-and-a-half pounds pull. The gun expert tried various ways to make the gun go off accidentally, but found the only way was to clam the but on the ground so hard that pieces chipped off.

Glass fragments

The weapon had yet more secrets. More vital forensic evidence came from the unfired gun barrel in the shape of more than 1,000 microscopic fragments of glass from the screen that was designed to protect Angela.

The woman who owned the Austin used as a getaway car was traced. She told how she thought something odd had happened when she returned to the car and noticed it mad been moved. An old raincoat, the one used by Hart to hide the gun, was missing. The same coat was dropped by the gunman at the bank.

The car also provided more damning scientific evidence to link Hart with the case. In it were scores more, tiny glass shards from the bank screen which had been transferred to the vehicle via the gunman’s clothing. Hart’s Hampshire neighbours also reported seeing him burning things in his back garden shortly after the murder was reported. When police scientists sifted though his bonfire site they found the charred remains of the brown wig he had worn as a disguise.

On mystery has never been cleared up. Why did Michael Hart pull the trigger? One possibility seems to be that Angela, a strong-minded girl, might have infuriated Hart by being slow to hand over the money. Other officers who worked on the case believe Hart though the shot would not penetrate the ‘bulletproof’ screen.

Guilty of murder

The trial opened at the Old Bailey on 3 November 1977, just a week short of a year since the murder. Despite the huge weight of forensic evidence against him, Hart refused to admit he had shot Angela in cold blood.

He did plead guilty to six counts of criminal deception and asked for another 39 cases to be taken into consideration.

The jury thought differently, however, and found Hart guilty of murder by a majority of 11 to 1. The judge, the Right Honourable Justice Melford Stevenson, gave him life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he should serve at least 25 years.

Written in Blood

Bloodstains can be used to build up a surprisingly detailed picture of the dramatic events of a violent crime. The blood can be analysed to positively identify the person from whom it came, weather a victim or assailant.

Although the human body holds about 10 pints of blood, in its proper place is hardly noticeable. But violent crime often involves the spilling of blood. At this point, the make-up and physical properties of this curious fluid become of overwhelming interest to forensic scientists.

Researching into its constitution how now gone so far that pathologists believe they are close to being able to describe an individual, his lifestyle, age, physical appearance, even his identity, from the analysis of a single drop of blood. And in a case of violent death the presence or absence of blood at the scene can be a clear indication of how the victim died.

Many murderers have attempted to conceal the cause of death by stabbing of slashing the victim’s body after death, but this trick cam immediately be recognised. However deep or vicious the wound, blood will only ooze from a dead body. When a living person is attacked with a sharp or blunt instrument, however, blood splashes are almost certainly to be found around the immediate area.

Blood spattering

When an artery is cut, the blood will spurt some distance, whereas a cut vein, although it produces a large volume of blood, will only flood the immediate vicinity. However, blood spattering is common at the scene of any attack, caused either as it falls naturally from the body or as it is thrown off by movement of the victim or the assailant’s weapon. A single blow to the head, for instance, is unlikely to produce spattering, but any subsequent blows will throw off blood droplets from the wound; and repeated slashing with a sharp knife will have a similar effect.

Blood spots have often been the key piece of evidence in a case. On 3 July 1954, Dr Sam Sheppard fell asleep in front of the TV in his house on the shores of Lake Erie near Cleveland, Ohio. Some time later, he told police, he was awakened by the screams of his wife, Marilyn. He ran to the bedroom, but was hit on the head from behind.

Groggily, he saw a “shaggy haired man” run from the house and gave chase, but was this time knocked unconscious. When he came to and staggered back to the house, he discovered his wife dead on the bed in a pool of blood.

Charged with murder

The local coroner, Dr Samuel Gerber, arrived with the police and quickly established that Marilyn had died from 35 blows to the head. Sheppard was charged with her murder and Gerber testified against him at the trial. Sheppard was naked to the waist when the police arrived and there was no sign of the T-shirt he had been wearing earlier in the evening. A canvas bag containing his blood-spattered wristwatch, his fraternity ring and his keys was discovered hidden under some bushes. He was found guilty.

Successful appeal

Sheppard continued to protest his innocence and, after 12 years of imprisonment, he succeeded in obtaining a re-trial. His attorney, F. Lee Bailey, showed the court photographs of the blood covered face of the watch, and then pointed out that there were also blood spots inside the wrist band. If Sheppard had been wearing the watch when he battered his wife, Bailey argued, these spots would not be there: they must have got there after it had been snatched from his wrist by his attacker. “The prosecution’s case,” Bailey concluded, “is 10 pounds of hogwash in a five-pound bag,” and Sheppard was acquitted. The murder has remained unsolved.

The pattern formed by the flying droplets of blood can indicate the position of the victim at the moment of the attack. If a blood droplet hits a nearby surface at right angles, it will form a circular spot, with splashed, spikey edges if it strikes with any force. If it hits at an angle, it will form a tapering mark, the sharper end pointing in the direction of travel. There is also likely to be a separate spot in front of the main mark, so that it looks like an exclamation mark.

Car ‘accident’

Sometimes, it is the absence of bloodstains or the presence of the wrong sort of stain that will enable forensic biologists to catch a criminal.

On 29 July 1950 the body of 43-year old Catherine McCluskey was found in the middle of the road in southern Glasgow; she had apparently been knocked down by a lorry, and a long smear of blood suggested that she had been dragged some distance by the vehicle. But the examining pathologist, Professor Andrew Alison, could find no leg injuries, which would almost certainly have occurred if she had been knocked over, and concluded that she had been run over as she lay on the ground.

Boyfriend questioned

A local policeman, James Robertson, was known to have been McCluskey’s boyfriend On being questioned, he admitted having accidentally knocked her down with his car. He then tried to drag her from beneath it, but said that her clothing had been caught under the car, and that he had to drive backwards and forwards to release her body.

A cosh was found in Robertson’s possession, but there was insufficient blood on it to give a conclusive test. However, there was no sign of blood on his trousers, as would have been expected if he had tried to drag her body from under the car. He was tried, convicted of murder, and hanged, all because there was no blood on his trousers.

Freshly spilt blood is bright red, but it soon darkens, and dried or old bloodstains are similar to those produced by jams, fruit juices, chocolate, many dyer, rust and even snuff. It is important, therefore, to make quite sure that blood is present.

The stain must be scraped off with filter paper, or extracted with distilled water or saline solution. Several quick chemical tests exist for detecting blood, and there are other, more complicated components. Rapid identification of a stain can save a certain amount of embarrassment.

Bloodstained jacket?

One morning in June 1978, the landlord of the Drovers Inn, near Henley, discovered his pet goat chewing on an old sports coat. He was horrified to discover that it had a large hole in the left breast, surrounded by what looked like powder burns and a great deal of blood. He naturally called the police.

By midday a major murder hunt was on for a shotgun victim. Policemen with dogs combed the surrounding area, frogmen investigated the local pond, and every police station and hospital in south east England was alerted.

In the meantime, the jacket had been sent to the nearest laboratory of the Forensic Science Service, and by the end of the say the embarrassed police had called off their search. The scientists reported that the hole in the coat had been burnt by acid, probably from a car battery, which had reacted with the dyes in the fabric to produce black and red-brown stains. It seems most likely that some car owner had been working on his engine, had leant across the battery and, on discovering the acid burns, had subsequently thrown the jackey away in disgust.

Fresh liquid blood can be examined microscopically to identify the blood cells, but this cannot be done once it had dried. Many suspects in murder cases have claimed that the bloodstains on their clothes had been caused while killing chickens, skinning rabbits or butchering meat. A whole range of anti-sera specific to particular animals had now been developed; these produce an interaction with the sample extracted from the bloodstain, and so enable the source of the blood to be identified.

Whose blood?

But there are many occasions when it still had to be established whose blood it is. The body of the victim may have been removed from the scene or, in the case of multiple mutilation, it may be necessary to match fragmented remains. The blood may also be that of the murderer.

The discovery that blood can be divided into four principal groups, O, A, B or AB, is now nearly a century old and it had been of great value in the identification of individuals. More recently, a wide range of other characteristic blood factors had been discovered. In addition, nearly 80 percent of people secrete water-soluble substances, related to their specific blood group, in sweat, saliva, semen and other body fluids. Blood typing had now become a major tool in the solving of serious crimes.

On the night of 23 October 1983, after the wedding of their elder daughter, the Laitner family were savagely attacked in their home in a fashionable suburb of Sheffield. Basil Laitner, a solicitor, his wife Avril, a doctor and their son Richard were butchered within minutes of one another by a madman armed with an eight-inch Bowie knife. The youngest daughter was dragged from her bed, past the bloody body of her father, and violently attacked in the marquee on the lawn where the wedding had been celebrated.

There was blood everywhere, but some of that on the daughter’s bed was not hers, nor that of any of the murdered family. At the forensic science laboratory in Wetherby, Alfred Faragher carried out a series of blood-typing tests, and realised that only one in 50,000 of the population had the particular characteristics that he found. He remembered that he had recently received an identical sample for analysis.

The sample had come from a violent criminal named Arthur Hutchinson, who had escaped from custody on 28 September. Faragher was able to give the police the name of the suspect even before his fingerprints could be checked out, and within a short time Hutchinson was recaptured, tried, and found guilty of murder.

Since 1987 the use of DNA typing, the so-called ‘genetic fingerprint’, had gradually overtaken the use of blood grouping in criminal trials and civil proceedings that involve questions of inheritance or identity.

When there is no violence, or any question of identification, the blood is still an important element in determining the cause of death. Samples are taken in all cases where there is any doubt about how the person died, or if there is a suspicion of suicide or foul play.

“Blood will will”, runs the old saying. It may no longer have its original meaning, but today it is truer than ever.

The Teacup Poisoner

Poisoners are a rare breed. They generally make their cold, premeditated drawn-out attacks on friends and family. Graham Young was one such evil killer.

Poison, that favourite weapon of the Victorian murderer, is a comparative rarity nowadays. It accounts for less than three percent of all criminal homicides in the developed world. Modern science and the fact that the poisoner is usually closely related to his victims makes for ease of detection. There remains, however, the rare but real spectre of a motiveless, psychopathic poisoner with means and opportunity.

In the spring of 1971, 23-year old Graham Young applied for a job at Hadland Laboratories, manufacturers of photographic equipment, at Bovington, Hertfordshire. A neat, precisely spoken young man, he told the managing director, Godfrey Foster, that he had no worked since leaving school because of a nervous breakdown, but was now fully recovered. Foster was impressed and took Young on as an assistant store man.

Young’s immediate boss at Hadland was 60-year old Bob Egle, the head store man. By pure chance an outbreak of gastro-enteritis, so severe that it had become known as the ‘Bovington Bug’, had been sweeping the local community, and when Bob Egle fell ill a couple of months after Young’s arrival it seemed that he had caught it.

Unfortunately, the normally fit and active store man became much more sick than was characteristic of ‘The Bug’; he suffered pains in his chest and back, loss of balance and, eventually, wild delirium. He was taken to the intensive care unit at St Alban’s City Hospital, where he died on 19 July.

Godfrey Foster attended Bob Egle’s funeral, and took Graham Young with his as representative of Bob’s workmates. On the way they spoke of Egle’s disease, and Foster was impressed by Young’s seemingly wide knowledge of medical matters.

A nice cup of tea

Bob Egle’s replacement as head store man was 56-year old Fred Biggs. Towards the end of October, by what appeared to be appalling bad luck, Biggs, too, fell ill. After two days off work he struggled in on Saturday, 30 October, and his assistant Graham Young greeted him with a nice cup of tea. By Monday, Biggs was desperately sick with the same symptoms as Egle; he was taken to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, London, where he died on 19 November.

Throughout the winter, another Hadland employees suffered similar symptom’s. Two of them, Jethro Batt and David Tilson, were seriously ill. Fearing that the leakage of chemicals used at Hadland’s was responsible for the tragedies that had hit the formerly happy company, Godfrey called in a team of consultant toxicologists, headed by Dr Iain Anderson.

To reassure the staff, Dr Anderson held a meeting and invited questions. The first questioner was Graham Young, who wanted to know if the doctor didn’t think the symptoms of Egle, Biggs, Batt and Tilson bore all the signs of thallium poisoning?

Dr Anderson was intrigued. Thallium, a relative rare compound, was used at the factory in the manufacture of camera lenses, but its history as a homicide poison was sparse. On checking, Dr Anderson found that many of the victim’s symptoms, numbness in arms and legs, chest pains, loss of hair and delirium, could be equated with thallium poisoning. But how did this young store man know about it? With his suspicions aroused, Dr Anderson asked Scotland Yard’s to check the record of Graham Young. The Yard’s records shocked the John Hadland employees and even startled Dr Anderson.

In 1062, at the age of 14 Graham Young had been convicted of murdering his step-mother by poison and attempting to poison his father, sister and school friend. He had been committed to Broadmoor, the institution for the criminally insane, but had been pronounced cured in 1971 and released.

During his nine years in custody, Young had read every book on chemicals and medicine that the prison library could provide; no-one in authority seems to have noticed the connection between his crime and his ‘inside’ interest. In any case, when he came out and was hired by Hadland’s Young had no difficulty in spotting the potential of the laboratory’s supply of thallium.

Until he 1940s, thallium salts had a limited medical use as a treatment for ringworm and facial hair in women, but were abandoned because of the discomfort a dose of even two grains could cause.

Fatal dose

Twelve grains were the fatal dose, and Young had used slightly more than that to kill Bob Egle and Fred Biggs. He laced their tea with the poison over a period of time, and revelled in their increasing agony. Despite the fact that Egle had been cremated, an analysis of his ashes, which had been buried in an urn, showed a remaining nice milligrams of thallium, the residue of a huge dose.

Young was arrested, and police found a grim but meticulous diary detailing the doses of thallium he had given to each of his victims. The dapper assistant store man appeared to have been conducting a macabre experiment in death, measuring the time between dosage and first discomfort. Apart from Egle, Biggs, Batt and Tilson, Young had given the poison to at least four other people who had escaped relatively unscathed.

In June 1972 Graham Young was charged at St Alban’s Crown Court on two counts of murder, two of attempted murder and four of malicious poisoning, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Police had found and confiscated a packet of thallium, “My exit dose,” Young called it, in the lining of his jacket. He had told his warders at the trial that is he was convicted, he would “break his own neck” on the dock rail. In fact, Graham Young survived for another 18 years in Parkhurst Prison, dying there of a heart attack in August 1990.

End