The Axeman

The Axeman was a serial killer in New Orleans, Louisiana. His killings started around May 1918 and ended around October 1919, but press reports say there were similar murders around 1911. He was known for his famous method of operation by either using an axe or straight razor which he would find in his victims home and use murder them. Before entering his victim’s home, he would smash the back door. The Axeman had many victims, majority being Italian Americans.

The Axeman was also known for his famous letter which he had used to scare his victim’s into playing jazz on Tuesday night. He also dares them to not play jazz as they would face the consequence of having the axe smashed into their head. A probable cause of the murders was to promote jazz music because the Axeman stated in his famous letter he wouldn’t punish those who played jazz.

Joseph Maggio was attacked on May 22, 1918 while in bed with his wife, Catherine, in their home. The killer broke into their home and killed them by using a straight razor to cut the victims throat. As the Axeman was leaving he smashed an axe into the couple’s head perhaps trying to hide the real cause of death. The wife of Maggio, Catherine, was found by her husband brothers; Jake and Andrew Maggio. Her head covered in blood and almost dismantled from her body. Her husbands throat was also slit too but not as bad as hers.

On June 27, 1918, Louis Besumer, a German spy and his mistress Harriet Lowe were attacked early in the morning, maybe minutes before 7 AM. Besumer was smashed above his right temple by a hatchet, resulting in a skull fracture. Lowe was slashed over the left ear which later resulted in partially paralyzing her face. John Zanca was making a routine delivery around 7AM when he discovered the couple covered in their blood, bleeding from their heads. The victims were still unconscious when the police arrived on the scene. On August 5, 1918, Lowe had passed away two days after doctors tried to repair her face. Just before her death Lowe told authorities Luis Besumer was her attacker. Besumer had to serve nine months in prison because he was charged with murder but was later released on May 1, 1919 after the jury took ten minutes to carefully analyze the situation.

He had at least a dozen victims or more but there was never any arrest made. The Axeman last known killing was on the night of October 27, 1919. Mike Pepitone was smashed in the head and found covered in his own blood by his wife. She was awakened by a loud noise and saw a man fleeing the scene Mrs. Pepitone was unable to describe the killer. This was the last known killing by the Axeman. The Axeman was never caught.

The Zodiac Killer

In the late 60s and early 70s, an unknown attacker, called “Zodiac,” terrorized the San Francisco area, by attacking couples in specific areas. The Zodiac Killer is believed to be responsible for at least five killings between 1968 and 1969.  Following his attacks, he would send letters with details about his killings to the local newspaper to be published.  

The first victim is believed to be a college student in Riverside, California, Cheri Jo Bates, who was murdered on October 30, 1996 outside her school’s library.  Police recovered a male watch at the crime scene and reports of a white male driving an old car was seen in the area.  Months later, letters were sent to the newspaper, police and the victim’s father with the message “Bates had to die there will be more.”

Similar attacks on young couples in Valejo on July 4^th 1969 and December 20, 1968 were assumed to be that of the Zodiac Killer.  On December 20, he shot a couple on a date while they were parked at a lover’s lane killing both of them.  On July 4^th, another couple was attacked but only one survived, Mike Mageau.  After each killing, the killer wrote letters with part of a coded message to three different newspapers demanding that they print the codes otherwise he will kill again.  However, this time his coded messages included a symbol—a circle with two intersecting lines running through it.

His coded message was later decipher by a high school teacher from Salina.  Using codes, the killer revealed that he like killing people because it is so much fun and that “all the people he killed would be his slaves in the afterlife.”    By August, the killer began to call himself "Zodiac" in a letter to San Francisco Examiner. On September 27, 1969, the killer struck again, choosing another young couple in a remote area.   This time the killer did not shoot his victims; he repeatedly stabbed them.  Bryan Hartnell survived the attack, but his girlfriend Cecelia Shepard died two days later. A message was left on Hartnell's car door, which included the dates of the two earlier murders.

The survivors was able to provide the police with enough information to construct a sketch of the killer as a heavyset, white male in his late twenties or thirties with short brown hair and thick-rimmed glasses. During the attacks, he wore a large hood, like those worn by executioners.  His next attack deviated from his pattern.  On October 11^th, 1969, he shot a taxi driver and about two days later he wrote a letter taking credit for the murder while threatening to attack a school bus and killing schoolchildren.

To this date, the Zodiac killer has not been found.  While there are speculations about who the Zodiac Killer might be, DNA testing has failed to link any suspects to the killings. In 2007, producers working on a movie about the Zodiac Killer found letters in police custody that has not been tested for DNA. Police hopes that these letters will shed some new leads and information about the identity of the Zodiac Killer.  

Brother Bishop

            Gary Heidnik also known as Brother Bishop and was born during 1943 on November 22, in Eastlake, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Michael and Ellen Heidnik. Gary Heidnik mom was an alcoholic. She left when he was about two years old. While his father was a torturous man who mistreated him. He said that when he would wet the bed, his father would take the sheets and hang it where the neighbors could see it. Heidnik claims his father emotionally abused him. He was also picked on by other students and bullied at times.

            Heidnik started to develop psychological issues around 1962 after he joined the army. He was later released around 1963, because of his suicidal attempts: for example he tried eating a light bulb. Because of his issue he was in and out of mental hospitals about 21 times. Heidnik’s girlfriend in 1978 had a sister who was a mentally challenged black woman. Her behavior was as if she was a baby even though she was 34 years old. She lived in a mental institution when the girlfriend and Heidnik got permission to take her out for some time but failed in bringing her back. He later would rape and sodomized the girlfriends’ sister. This was his first arrest only serving 4 years for his crime.

            After his release he married a mail ordered bride who would later have a son for him, but she would soon leave Heidnik. He used to force her to watch him have sex with prostitutes. Gary Heidnik later came up with a crazy idea of having a baby factory. This led him to abduct, incarcerate and impregnate 6 women.

            His victims were African American woman. His first victim was Josefina Rivera, age 25 and was kidnapped on November 25, 1986. She was leaving the house after a fight with her boyfriend, when Heidnik pick her up in a silver and white Cadillac Coupe De Ville. She was a part-time prostitute. After having sex in the house of Heidnik, he then forced her into the basement where he chained her to a pipe leaving her half naked. His second victim Sandra Lindsay, age 24 and was kidnapped on December 3, 1986. He would later kidnap 4 more women to make his slave. All the women were brutally beaten rape and torture on a daily basis. He even became worse because he wanted to develop new way to torture the women. This made Heidnik use shock therapy and he would also shove screwdrivers into their ears to make them go deaf, so they wouldn’t hear him when he was coming. Sandra murdered in February 1987, because she couldn’t withstand his torture. Heidnik would later dismember the body which he uses to feed his dog.  He kept some parts frozen but the head of Sandra was in a pot boiling.

            Josefina somehow manages to sneak out; escaping from the mud pit Heidnik was keeping her in and ran to her boyfriend house, telling him everything that had happened. They call the police who at first didn’t believe they story but still checked it out. They were in disbelief of their eyes what they found.

            On July 6, 1999, Heidnik was executed by lethal injection at SCI Rockview. He was found guilty on 18 counts including two counts of first degree murder. After his execution, no one came forward to claim his body.

Carl Panzram, The Man Who Blamed Prison..

Carl Panzram, one of America's most ferocious, unrepentant serial killers was born in Minnesota in 1891. He began his life long crimes at the age of eight. By the time he was at age eleven, his family sent him off to a reform school as part of a bargain on a burglary charge. After being sodomized repeatedly and physically tortured during his two years at the juvenile home, his emotional problems grew much worse. As a teenager, he enjoyed setting fires and he would fantisize about committing murder. After he raped and murdered a 12 year at age 31, he joyfully recalled the killing: "His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him. I am not sorry. My conscious doesn't bother me. I sleep sound and have sweet dreams." Panzram hated everyone, including himself. "I was so full of hate that there was no room in me for such feelings as love, pity, kindness or honor or decency," he said, "my only regret is that I wasn't born dead or not at all."  He spent most of his life in jail, where he was totured with medevil time punishements (brutal torture). Once he was out of prision he started his killing spree again,  raping, killing, and burning his way across the country in a mission of destruction that was unlike anything law enforcement had ever seen before. At that moment in time, Panzram was unstoppable. He claimed it was prison he hated the most, it was prison that made him into a monster. Of all things, Panzram despised prisons. Panzram was caught at last, and he had no regreat or remorse for his actions. He hated all human beings, and on the day of his execution, he skipped up the steps joyfully, spit in the executioners face, and said " Hurry up you bastard, I could kill ten men while you're fooling around!"
                                       

Aileen Wuornos, CrazyKilla!

Aileen Wuornos, convicted murder spoke these final words before being executed by lethal injection in October 2002:
"I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back like Independence Day, with Jesus June 6. Like the movie, big mother ship and all, I'll be back."

Aileen Wuornous (February 29 1956 - October 9, 2002) was born in Michigan was abandoned by her parents a still a very young age. She and her brother were raised by their grandmother after her father, a child molester and a psychopath, hanged himself in prison and her mother abandoned them just a few years later. By the time she was in her teens she was working as a prostitute and robbing people to support herself. It's always their upbringing isn't it?

After Wuornos got pregnant at age 14 by her own brother, she kept the baby and after giving birth she gave the baby up for adoption and left home to hitchhike across America working as a prostitute.Pretty soon after, she fell in love with a young waitress naemd Tyria Moore and they stayed together as a couple for four years.Together, their incomes were barely enough to survive on and Alieen knew she had to stop robbing her Johns, shoot them, and make ends meet. 

The corpse of first victim Richard Mallory was found on December 1989 in the woods near Daytona Beach; he was shot three times. Six months later, another man was found shot six times with what officials say was the same gun. Before the body could be identified, the third victim was found. Four other men were also found shot by November.

Police received multiple calls identifying the killers as Wuornos and Moore, and detectives arrested both women in January 1991. Many say is was Moore who called officials, but it was never a fully proven fact. Wuornos confessed to six of the killings, all allegedly performed in self-defense. She claimed the men tried raping her and she had no choice but to protect herself. After a lengthy trial, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. While on death row, Wuornos started to read the bible, created drawings, helped others with their appeals, and began writing about her life in a journal. October 9, 2002, her life was ended by lethal injection.  She earned an inaccurate label by the press of being the first female American Serial killer. Female serial killers have been around since men serial killers. Many females are not caught because they use different tactics and have different reasons for their killings.
                          

Ed Gein

Ed Gein, a while male, born on August 27, 1906 in La Crosse WI, is knows as one of Americas most evil serial killers. His father George, mother Augusta, and brother lived together on their 160-acre farm a few miles outside Plainfield, Wisconsin. His father George was an alcoholic and his mother Augusta was a demanding strict woman who always spoke to her sons about avoiding sin and per-marital sex.

In the early 1940's George died as a result of his abuse for alcohol, and just four years later, Henry died while fighting a fire. Ed was now fully responsible for the well being and care of his mother. For two years he served her demands until her death in 1945.


Once Ed had the house to himself, he boarded and sealed up every room in the family farn house, except his room and the kitchen. He stayed alone, quite oftey sexually fanticizing about the female body. He also found great pleasure in reading about what use to happen in the Nazi camps and filling his mind with images of sex and dismemberment.


Ed soon met his first friend, Gus, a loner just like him. Gein told Gus of experiments he wanted to perform but he needed bodies; so together, for over 10 years, the two began robbing graves for only female bodies. They also removed Gain's mother from her grave, and their gruesome actions towards the bodies included necrophilia and cannibalism. These obsessive fantasies of Gein led him towards the desire to turn himself into a woman. He smade a complete body sized female jumpsuit out of the skin of the bodies, and he would drape it over himself. He even made a female mask!


Soon Ed was tired of dealing with dead bodies and decided to start hunting down females of a certain size (the size of his mother.) He got away with a few murders, but not long after, police investigation led towards the farm house and Gein was finally arrested. After being held in court, Ed was pronounced guilty but criminally insane, and sent off to a mental hospital where he later died from heart failure in  1984 at the age of seventy seven.

Spelling Bee

Martin Van Buren's Spelling Bee

Instead of our usual Journalism class, Mr. Mulligan decided to take us to our schools spelling bee in the autotorium. As I suspected, it was mostly english and writing teachers who brought their students to watch. We sat together as a class and  saw a line of chairs with students sitting on the stage. There were students I expected to see up there, and there were some I didn't. The spelling bee was opened to everyone who wanted to join. As the words started being spelt, I found myself trying to spell them in my head along with the spellers. I found that I knew quite a few of them, and that made me wish I had joined; athough I doubt i'd have the guts to. Before I knew it, the spellers were narrowed down to two. Either none of them being able to spell the word, or one of them spelt a word and couldn't spell the final. By that time the period was almost over and I was already feeling restless. I'm not sure who won the spelling bee because we had to leave, but congradulations to who ever won!