Serial Killers

Henri Desire Landru

Bold and with a long red beard, Landru was an unlikely Bluebeard but he had something about him that attracted women.

When he failed as a businessman (he was a building contractor, bicycle manufacturer and furnisher remover) and as a petty crook (he spent seven terms in jail 12 years for trifling offences such as the theft of a bicycle) he decided to capitalise on his other talent – seducing women.

In 1909, Landru began to romance elderly widows, holding out the promise of marriage, but when he had access to their bank accounts, he took their money and disappeared.

When he became tired of fraud, having duped hundreds of lonely women (one, Madame Izoret, he took for 15,000 francs), he turned his hand to murder.

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Angel Makers of Nagyrev

Ninety-six km (60 ml) southeast of Budapest stands a little known farming village called Nagyrev. It is near Tiszakurt and in the early part of the last century these two remote places were haunted by a band of serial killers.

Over a period of 15 years, they murdered around 300 people.

The killing began during the First World War. With no hospital in Nagyrev, a midwife and abortionist, Mrs Julius Fazekas, met the medical need of the village people, helped by her friend Susanna Olah.

Most men in the village were away fighting but there was a prisoner of war camp nearby and many of local women became involved with the prisoners. Numerous women took two or more lovers from the camp.

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Amy Archer Gilligan

In 1901, Amy and James Archer opened Sister Amy’s Nursing Home for the Elderly at Newington, Connecticut.

Their chosen clientele was the wealthy and the Archers gained a reputation for the quality of their care, despite neither having any medical qualification.

In 1907 they moved to larger premises in Windsor and opened the Archer Home for the Elderly and Infirm. In 1910 James Archer died and his widow carried on running the home alone until 1913 when she married Michael W. Gilligan, a wealthy widower.

He died not long afterwards. Then strange happenings began at the home – inhabitants began dying despite being healthy.

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Belle Gunness

Belle Gunness was born in Selbu, near Trondheim, Norway as Brynhild Paulsdatter Storseth on 11 November 1859. Her early life remains a mystery as she told many varying stories of her origins.

In 1883, she arrived in America and the following year married Max Sorensen, a fellow Norwegian. They opened a sweetshop in Chicago but it was not a success and was razed in a mysterious fire a year later.

Using the insurance money, they moved to Austin, Illinois, where they started a family. In 1898, their house burned down and they received another insurance payout and bought a farm.

Her situation changed on July 30, 1900 when her husband died and Belle sold the farm for $100. She collected $8,500 in insurance money but her husband family thought that Belle had murdered him.

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Herman Billick

In 1904, Herman Billick met a fellow expatriate Bohemian by the name of Martin Vzral.

Vzral had worked in the milk trade and built up a considerable fortune of around $6,000. He also had a nice home on West 19th Street in Chicago that he shared with his wife and seven children.

Billick’s real name was Vajicek but he had changed it to the more pronounceable Billick. He had arrived in Chicago from Cleveland, Ohio and was everything that Vzral was not – scheming, cheating and lazy.

His business was different – he was a magician and had cards printed the Great Billick – Cardreader and Seer”. He also sold love potions to his neighbours.

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Amelia Dyer

In 1895 Amelia Dyer, a 57-year-old ex member of the Salvation Army, set herself up in Reading as childminder or what the Victorians called a baby farmer.

She placed advertisements in local newspapers offering her services.

In March the body of a child was found floating in the Thames, a ligature around the neck. The body had been wrapped in paper bearing an address in Reading – Amelia Dyer’s address but when the police went to the house it was empty.

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Joseph Vacher

Joseph Vacher was born on November 16, 1869, the last of 15 children of an illiterate farmer. He was educated at a strict Catholic school.

He was conscripted into the army and, when he promoted, he tried to cut his own throat.

In 1893, he fell in love with a young serving wench named Louise. The love was unreciprocated, despite his best efforts, so he shot her four times.

She survived and, in his desperation, Vacher tried to commit suicide but he, too, lived and he succeeded only in paralyzing one side of his face.

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H. H. Holmes

He was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire of 16 May 1960 as Herman Webster Mudgett, the man who became known as Dr Henry Howard Holmes was a serial killer with a tally of between 27 and over 100 victims.

At Alton, New Hampshire on 8 July 1878 he married Clara A. Lovering. He was married bigamously on 28 January 1887 to Myrta Z. Belknap by whom he had a daughter, Lucy.

Three years earlier he had graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School where he had stolen corpses, insured them, disfigured them and claimed the insurance.

He turned to forging, horse theft and swindling as well as his “legitimate” business as a pharmacist in Chicago.

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Johann Otto Hoch

Johann Otto Hoch was born in 1855 (some sources say 1862) as John Schmidt in Horweiler, Germany. He moved to the United States in the early 1880s and began adopting a series of aliases as he worked in meatpacking plants in Chicago.

He married Christine Ramb and had three children by her. He deserted them in 1887.

Eight years later he married Maria Steimbucher who died four months later. He sold her property for $4,000.

In November of the same year he married Mary Rankin and left her the next day, taking her money with him.

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Thomas Neill Cream

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Thomas Neill Cream emigrated to Canada when he was four years old. Moving to America, he qualified as a doctor.

In 1881 he was jailed for life in Chicago after having been convicted of killing Daniel Stott, his mistress’s husband, with strychnine. Stott’s gravestone inscription reads, “Daniel Stott Died June 12, 1881 Aged 61 Years Poisoned By His Wife & Cream”.

Life on that occasion meant ten years and, on his release, Cream moved to London and into Lambeth Palace Road. At night, Cream would accost prostitutes and offer them his pills, which he said would improve their complexions.

In fact, they were laced with strychnine and Cream returned to his home fantasizing about their death agonies.

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