THE GHOULISH DR. CREAM

Speculation abounds that infamous serial killer Dr. Neill Creame was inspired by reading Robert Louis Stevenson's DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. His brutal poisoning of "red light" women has also led to the belief that he too a cue from Jack the Ripper, although it is more likely that he had already cultivated the propensity for his murderous deeds in his twisted mind.

Cream was eventually caught, convicted and sent to the gallows. It is said that his last words before the noose snapped his spine were "I'm Jack the --". However, his dying statement wasn't true, and history discounts his claim as he was in prison during the Ripper murders.

This story. "Goulish [sic] Dr. Cream" (spelled correctly on the contents page) from the men's adventure magazine BLUEBOOK (October 1962) recounts his deadly career. At first I thought that the photo of Sheldon Lewis from the silent version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE was merely exploitative (as well as the photo from Hammer's HANDS OF THE RIPPER) until I learned of the connections.

An added bonus on one of the pages shown here is a gag panel from the good-girl cartoonist Bill Wenzel.

THE WEREWOLF OF WISTERIA

"Grace sat on my lap and kissed me.

I made up my mind to eat her".

- Albert Fish in confession letter to the victim's mother

There was something seriously wrong with Albert Fish. Murderer, pedophile, paraphiliac, cannibal, sadist and masochist all wrapped up into one disturbed and depraved mind, Fish stands out as one of the sickest serial killers in history. He also has the dubious distinction of having more sobriquets than most other serial killers (Brooklyn Vampire, Gray Man, et al.). Included among them was "The Werewolf of Wisteria", so-named because of the killing and devouring of his victim, 12 year-old Grace Budd. That he was allowed to take Grace away from his mother to a "party" after just meeting him was extraordinary, but he was entirely convincing in his request with his "grandfatherly" demeanor. Where he took her instead was an abandoned and dilapidated house called Wisteria Cottage, where he performed his heinous deed.

While he was in custody, Fish was diagnosed with an “abnormal” and “psychopathic” personality, as well as a mental disorder named "religious psychosis", which manifested as auditory hallucinations where he believed God told him to hurt children. This explains some of the reason he felt no remorse for his actions (see the full text of the letter he wrote to Grace Budd's mother below).

Among his long list of aberrations was a condition called piquerism, the sadistic practice of inflicting pain on others with sharp implements such as needles. Fish inverted this condition and performed the technique on himself by inserting needles into his groin area. When X-rayed, doctors saw no less than 29 needles near his testicles, some having been there so long that they had begun to rust.

Other details of the hideous story behind this monster's crimes has been discussed here before (see below). Following is yet another article of the story that still fascinates and repels readers at the same time, even today, decades later.

More about Albert Fish HERE.

More True Crime posts HERE.

"LITTLE GIRLS HAVE MORE FLAVOR"

Violent crimes in and of themselves are horrible enough, but violent -- and depraved -- crimes against children are unimaginable to the rational person. In 1938, just such a crime occurred, but it wouldn't be until years later that the case was solved.

When the elderly man named Albert Fish was finally apprehended, the gruesome murder and dismemberment of 12 year-old Grace Budd was only the beginning; along with committing other acts of cannibalism, he confessed to over 100 more abductions, mostly of poor, young black boys who he forced into a myriad of perverse sexual acts, then beat them.

Fish came from a family where many members were psychotic, insane or otherwise mentally imbalanced. He became intrigued with cannibalism after hearing from a seaman that in China, children were killed and eaten during times of famine. The young Grace Budd had been killed at an abandoned house and Fish began to dismember her a little at a time, consuming her remains piece by piece. This act had been repeated with other victims, as he developed a taste for human meat, which he described as like veal or chicken, "only better".

Ironically, Dr. Frederic Wertham, the child psychiatrist who would later write Seduction of the Innocent, the infamous book that would lead to the Comics Code Authority, acted in Fish's defense at the trial. He declared Fish insane saying that "he was suffering from paranoid psychosis", and that "he plays with humans as a child plays with flies." He added that Fish was a sadomasochist and addicted to no less than 19 other sexual perversions, including the discovery of 29 needles inserted in the flesh around his testicles.

The heinousness of his crimes overshadowed any consideration for a medical incarceration and he was handed the death penalty. Fish was strapped into "Old Sparky" on January 16, 1936, and, in a bit of poetic justice, his own flesh was fried.

THE SHADOW OVER CIELO DRIVE

Not all anniversaries should be celebrated. Fifty years ago today our world changed. Woodstock was a week away and everything felt groovy. Then, on the night of August 8, a little man with big plans sent a group from his coven of tripped out followers, so stoned that they'd do anything for the manipulative ex-con, to commit murder. "Do something witchy", he is known to have said, and so they did, but the result was more of the devil than witchy.

But the nightmare wasn't over yet. The following night, Manson sent his murderous minions out once again, and this time he came along for the ride. The Leno and Rosemary LaBianca residence in Los Feliz had been "creepy-crawled" a few months before by some of Charlie's girls. They had partied at a house just a couple of doors down. Manson is thought to have chosen this house to enact a copy cat murder in the style of Gary Hinman, so that the incarcerated Bobby Beausoleil, convicted for his murder, would be sprung. It didn't work. Sadly, it did not matter for the LaBianca's, as they were found dead by their son, tied up and stabbed nearly 50 times.

The murders sent shock waves through the community and eventually, the world for its heinous nature. Four months later Manson was picked up at Barker Ranch in Death Valley, originally a suspect in local vandalism. The arresting officers did not know exactly who they had nabbed. Ironically, they found the little man with big plans hiding in the cabinet of a bathroom vanity.

The original house on 10050 Cielo Drive has been since torn down and the site is barely recognizable now. Maybe that's for the best. The face of horror may be obliterated, but the memory will not. "Cielo" means "Heaven", but the people in this house suffered the worst kind of Hell. The LaBianca house on Waverly Drive has just recently been sold.

Manson is (finally) dead, Susan Atkins, who admitted stabbing Tate, but "didn't know why", died in prison in 2009 from brain cancer (a fitting end -- go out on drugs). Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Charles "Tex" Watson are all still behind bars, and will hopefully remain so, forever polluting our air with their breath. Vincent Bugliosi, who as Los Angeles' Deputy District Attorney prosecuted Manson and his accomplices, died in 2015.

It's hard to say how time will treat these dreadful deeds. The story still fascinates. Director Quentin Tarantino has recently released his film recounting the events at the time, and judging by the other recent news stories, it's likely that these tragic events will be remembered as true crime legend.

[SOURCE: PEOPLE MAGAZINE TRUE CRIME CULTS, December 2018.]

Tourists descend on Charles Manson murder scene after Tarantino flick
By Jon Levine August 3, 2019

The scene of the Manson murders has found new life as a tourist attraction.

With the release of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” a new generation of gawkers has swarmed Cielo Drive, where the notorious Manson killings took place, according to a new report from TMZ.

In 1969, followers of Manson descended on the West LA home, killing five. Among the dead was pregnant actress Sharon Tate and coffee heiress Abigail Folger.

The original home was demolished in 1994. A new residence was later built on the same site with a different address.

While most Cielo Drive residents today aren’t keen to discuss the murders, one man, David Oman, says he has been set upon by unsettled spirits — including the ghost of Sharon Tate — ever since moving in down the block.

“First couple of months I was in the house, there were things I would put on a table, come back a couple of hours later to find that they weren’t there anymore,” he said during a 2013 interview published to his YouTube channel. “And then we would find them in another part of the house I had not been in.”

[SOURCE: NY POST.]


Sharon Tate gal pal slams Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood’
By Christopher Cameron August 1, 2019

Quentin Tarantino is enjoying the best opening weekend of his career on the 50th anniversary of Hollywood’s most brutal murders. His ninth film “Once Upon a Time in . . . Hollywood” raked in $41 million in its first weekend.

But for those who lived through the 1969 Manson Family murders — which claimed the lives of actress Sharon Tate, her unborn child and four others — the all-star film is insult on top of injury, says Ava Roosevelt, a friend of Sharon Tate’s.

“I felt angry. I felt very angry,” says Roosevelt, 71, after seeing the film, which intertwines the tale of fictional washed up actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) with the Manson attacks in typical gory and irreverent Tarantino style.

“Tarantino has abused the memory of my friends,” Roosevelt says. “After the film, my boyfriend asked me how I was doing. I said, ‘Let’s not talk.’ I didn’t really sleep last night.”

Roosevelt — the widow of the late William Roosevelt, grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt — was just a teenager in Warsaw when she first met the director Roman Polanski. She attended his wedding to the actress Sharon Tate in London in January 1968, and when she moved to Los Angeles at the age of 21 to pursue a career as a model, she was brought into the inner circle of the Hollywood stars.

“Sharon and Roman, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger, and Jay Sebring, we were like family,” says Roosevelt of her friends who were murdered (she dated Sebring for a time). “I never lived at 10050 Cielo Drive [the Polanski residence where the murders occurred] but I was there constantly. Roman was away in London and we thought, ‘What if Sharon has the baby sooner than anticipated!’ We need to be with her.”

During that time Tate became a sort of mentor to Roosevelt, styling her ahead of photo shoots and helping pick out clothes.

“She was so patient putting on my false lashes and mascara,” Roosevelt says. “She didn’t like the dress I was wearing and she gave me this beautiful blue midi-dress. I still have it today.”

But unlike the real Tate, who was “a brilliant and strong actress who took her image very seriously,” Roosevelt believes that Tarantino went out of his way to demean the memory of her friend.

“Sharon Tate as portrayed by Margot Robbie is a mere sex symbol and a ditz,” Roosevelt says. “Would [Tate] ever go to see her own movie to see the reaction of the audience? [a scene from the film]. Never in a million years. She would have never gone to the Playboy mansion and danced around. And what is with the snoring in the movie? Sharon Tate was snoring. The Italian wife of Rick Dalton was snoring. Is it to belittle the women?”

Bruce Lee's daughter upset about his depiction in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'
In Roosevelt’s view, “every female character is portrayed as sluts.” She says that those “who support the #MeToo movement should not support this movie.”

“Despite a nearly $100 million budget, Tarantino failed to capture the era I lived in,” Roosevelt says.

She says Sebring “was a shy, almost unassuming person,” in contrast to his depiction as a “braggadocios, self-centered hair-dresser-of-the-moment.”

“I spent a lot of time at his house, which used to be owned by the actress Jean Harlow,” Roosevelt says. “He was kind, shy and loving. The film is an insult to the memory of my friend.”

Roosevelt, whose new book is “The Racing Heart,” says that it’s important for her to preserve her friends’ reputations because she very nearly died with them. On the night of Aug. 8, 1969, after stopping by the home of singer John Phillips, she began to drive her secondhand Rolls-Royce up to Cielo Drive when she realized her gas tank was nearly empty, forcing her to turn back from Bel Air.

“I spoke to Sharon that afternoon,” she says. “She said, ‘Please come and join us for dinner.’ I’ve managed to live the last 50 years, because my gas gauge showed empty. I sometimes feel very guilty that I am still alive.”

[SOURCE: NY POST.]

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MOST PROLIFIC U.S. SERIAL KILLER?

This chilling story grabbed off the news wire tells of a convicted serial killer's confessions that may end up leading to the most victims ever recorded by a single person. Amassing more victims than Gary Ridgway, the notorious Green River Killer, Samuel Little may have strangled over 90 women since the 1970's.

Confessed serial killer Samuel Little linked to more than 60 deaths, Texas prosecutor says
Samuel Little may be the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.

June 8, 2019, 12:03 AM PDT
By Associated Press
DALLAS — A Texas prosecutor said Friday that investigators have linked more than 60 killings in at least 14 states to a 79-year-old California inmate who may be the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.

Ector County District Attorney Bobby Bland said Samuel Little continues to cooperate with investigators from around the country who interrogate him in prison about cold case killings dating back to the 1970s. Among those who spoke to him were investigators from Ohio, where Little grew up and where he's suspected of killing at least five women.

Little was convicted of killing three Los Angeles-area women and pleaded guilty to killing a Texas woman, and he's serving life sentences in California. Little, who lived a nomadic lifestyle, claims to have killed 93 women as he crisscrossed the country over the years.

Bland said Little is in failing health and has exhausted his appeals, leading him to be forthcoming with investigators.

"At this point in his life I think he's determined to make sure that his victims are found," he said.

During Little's 2014 trial in Los Angeles, prosecutors said he was likely responsible for at least 40 killings since 1980. Authorities at the time were looking for possible links to deaths in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Texas.

But Little was not forthcoming with information at the time and Bland credits Texas Ranger James Holland with gaining Little's trust and eventually eliciting a series of confessions.

Holland traveled to California last year to speak with Little about cold cases in Texas. That led Little to be extradited to Texas and his guilty plea in December in the 1994 strangulation death of Denise Christie Brothers in the West Texas city of Odessa. But Holland's conversations with Little have continued, even after Little was returned to California to serve his sentences, and it was Holland who determined that he was responsible for 93 deaths, said Bland, who received an update from Holland this week.

Information provided to Holland was relayed to law enforcement agencies in several states, leading to a revolving door of investigators who traveled to California to corroborate decades-old deaths.

Among them were investigators from Ohio, where prosecutors on Friday announced charges against Little in the 1981 killing of a Cincinnati woman and where he was charged last week in the deaths of two women in Cleveland. He previously was charged in a second Cincinnati killing and confessed to another one in Cleveland, though investigators are still trying to identify the victim in that case.

He explained that Little's victims often were suffocated or strangled, in many cases leaving few physical marks and leading investigators to determine the women died of overdoses or of natural causes.

"There's still been no false information given," Bland said. "Nothing has been proven to be false."

Gary Ridgway, the so-called Green River Killer, pleaded guilty to killing 49 women and girls, making him the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history in terms of confirmed victims, though he said he killed 71.

[SOURCE: Associated Press.]

FATHER WAS A SERIAL KILLER

I found the L.A.P.D. Detective's business card fastened by a clothespin to my mailbox when I got home from work that Friday night. Living the beach life in Venice, I liked to party and have fun, but I wasn't a criminal. I thought to myself: "What the hell have I done that the L.A.P.D. -- and a detective, no less -- wanted to talk to me about?" I would have to wait until Monday to make the call, so I had the rest of the weekend to assuage my guilty conscience.

Well, Saturday and Sunday came and went and on Monday, I made the phone call before going in to work. Turned out that the detective was a straight-forward guy with an easy voice and he didn't want to talk about me after all. What he wanted to know is, if I knew "so-and-so". I said yes, I worked with him (I was the assistant manager of a certain retail store out in the San Fernando Valley), but he hadn't shown up to work for a number of days and hadn't called in. He just sort of disappeared.

He went on to ask me about this young man's performance at work. I replied that he was nice enough and got along alright with customers, but seemed to be a little nervous all the time. My impression of him was that he was a bit of a drifter. Since I was responsible to count the day's till, I also added that we had been short on a regular basis since he started.

I finally asked: "What's this regarding?" The detective didn't offer a lot in reply, but he said that "so-and-so" had been found deceased off one of the Freeways that crisscrossed Los Angeles. He asked if there was anything else I could tell him about this person, and I said, "No, there wasn't." He thanked me and hung up. I was left stunned.

I slowly started to put two and two together and realized that by the detective's description, I had just learned that a person that I had worked with just a few days before had not only become a murder victim, but the victim of a serial killer.

It was during this time (1979) that William George Bonin, a.k.a. the Freeway Killer was at large and killing off boys and young men at a fast clip. He was finally arrested, charged and eventually confessed to the killings. In 1996, he was the first inmate to be executed by lethal injection in the State of California.

My story pales in comparison to the one told below by Kerri Rawson. Not only was her father a serial killer, but he was Dennis Rader, the notorious human monster called the BTK Killer. She tells her story in the February 4, 2019 issue of PEOPLE magazine. 

JOHN WAYNE GACY, KILLER CLOWN (PART 2)

The arrest and trial
The case against John Wayne Gacy unfolded in the days, weeks and months following the disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest on Dec. 11, 1978. People in Chicago and across the country came to view the case -- and Gacy's house -- with a morbid fascination. Here is how it happened.

When Robert Piest’s mother arrives to pick up her son after his shift at a Des Plaines pharmacy around 9 p.m. Dec. 11, 1978, the 15-year-old Maine West student asks her to wait a few minutes while he sees a man about a summer construction job.

He is never seen alive again.

His mother files a missing person report at 11:30 that night.

The next day, Des Plaines police learn it was John Wayne Gacy whom Piest wanted to speak to about a job. Gacy is asked to come to the station for questioning. At 11 p.m., Gacy calls Des Plaines police Lt. Joe Kozenczak. "You still want to talk to me?" Gacy asks.

Gacy arrives at the station at 3:20 a.m. Dec. 13 but doesn't connect with the lieutenant.

Excavating Gacy's basement graveyard.

He returns to the station later that day and gives a brief statement. Kozenczak asks Gacy for the keys to his house, showing him a search warrant. Gacy protests but surrenders his keys.

Inside the house, authorities find a receipt the Piest family later says is connected with their son.

By Dec. 14, Gacy is placed under around-the-clock surveillance. On Dec. 19, Gacy invites two police officers into his house for breakfast. Both smell the odor of death.

Two days later, Gacy is seen handing a package containing marijuana to a gas station clerk. He is followed and arrested. Police are told Gacy has already admitted to his lawyer that he committed "maybe 30" murders.

Bodies of Gacy's victims at the morgue.

Police accuse Gacy of holding Piest against his will and threaten to tear up the floor of Gacy's house. Later, a search of the home reveals the first bodies.

In a rambling verbal statement lasting several hours, Gacy on Dec. 22 tells police he has killed 32 young men and boys after having sexual relations with them.

In his earliest confession, he says he buried the bodies of 27 victims on his property, most of them in the crawl space. Five other bodies, including that of Piest, Gacy says were thrown into the Des Plaines River.

Gacy is arrested and charged with Piest's murder.

Officials removing bodies from the Gacy home.

In the following 17 days, bodies are found and some remains are identified. On Jan. 8, 1979, Gacy is charged with seven murders, and on April 23, a grand jury indicts him for 26 more. At the time, the total of 33 murders is the largest number charged to one person in the U.S. The state says it will seek the death penalty.

Piest's body is identified April 9, 1979.

The trial begins in February 1980, and after five weeks of testimony from psychiatrists, police, neighbors, acquaintances and family members of the victims, a jury takes less than two hours March 13 to convict Gacy of killing 33 young men.

The next day, parents and relatives of Gacy's victims break into applause as it is announced that he has been sentenced to die. Judge Louis Garippo sets an execution date of June 2, 1980, but that date is immediately stayed while the case is appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Appeals to the state Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court fail, and at 12:58 a.m. May 10, 1994, Gacy is put to death by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet.

His last meal includes fried chicken and butterfly shrimp.

Gacy's house is demolished. Did they salt the earth?

Quiet returns to Summerdale Avenue
Following Gacy’s arrest, detectives and prosecutors learned that he had been on law enforcement’s radar prior to 1978, including a case two years earlier when he was a suspect in the disappearance of a 9-year-old boy. Gacy’s case, as highlighted by a cascade of news articles and books, embarrassed law enforcement by exposing the lack of a safety net for vulnerable young people.

In the years since Gacy and other high-profile serial murder cases like that of 6-year-old Adam Walsh and a string of child killings in Atlanta, authorities have erected a system of public and private partnerships, along with implementing missing persons computer databases that can analyze patterns and reveal previous police complaints against a suspect. Also, private organizations such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington assemble computerized information on missing people to safeguard against sex traffickers as well as sexual predators.

"The police ended up looking kind of foolish,” in the wake of the Gacy case, a University of Louisville criminologist told the Tribune in 1994 after Gacy’s execution. The criminologist, Robert C. Crouse, called Gacy “the No. 1 event” that changed how police departments operate.

After Dart took office, he ordered a review of cold cases. He said he was astounded to learn just how poorly missing persons cases were investigated by police of that era, saying he believed communication would have been similar to today.

Aerial view of the house being demolished.

“I couldn’t have been more naive if I wanted to (be),” Dart said. “You want to talk about a fragmented, broken system, where it’s amazing any missing person was found. … If people only could transport back to that time, they’d find out that missing persons throughout the country was a train wreck. It was lucky if a department was writing the name down.”

Elected officials began passing laws creating sex offender registries, and schools across the country added curriculum teaching youngsters about stranger danger and instructing them to speak out. Even Hollywood got into the act, blanketing 1980s and ’90s television with public service announcements during family sitcoms and after-school programming.

The dramatic five-week trial led to years of headlines, numerous books and a television movie starring Brian Dennehy as Gacy. The term “crawl space” entered the American lexicon, meaning any dark secret in a quiet place, as DJ Steve Dahl’s parody song, “Another Kid in the Crawl,” earned chuckles from area teens and rebukes from families of survivors. Gacy may have also helped popularize the “killer clown” archetype, though author Stephen King’s 1986 best-seller “It” likely didn’t help matters.

Today, with airliners crisscrossing the skies above, Norwood Park Township, with its small bungalows and two-flat buildings, resembles other neighborhoods at the edges of the city, popular with municipal workers and ethnic whites. In the aftermath of the gruesome discovery on Gacy’s property, his neighbors had difficulty reconciling the friendly, gentle neighbor with the killer.

“Gacy had everybody fooled, and people don’t like it — they don’t like that they were friends with an evildoer,” Moran said.

But over the years, as old neighbors moved away or died, quiet returned to Summerdale Avenue.

One neighbor, whose family moved to the block three years ago from Canada, said she had no idea about Gacy’s connection until a friend told her that she might live across the street from the infamous house.

“I still don’t know which house it is,” the woman said outside her home.

Moran said he hopes society and law enforcement have learned lessons from Gacy, though both must remain vigilant. “I’d like to believe that it would not take 33 victims in six years in one geographic area again … that we would be on top of it more.”

His boss, Dart, added that technology and social media have removed much of the anonymity that allowed serial killers like Gacy to operate in the shadows.

“I don’t think the magnitude could ever occur again like this,” he said. “I just don’t see a scenario where it would happen.”

Today a new dwelling sits atop the Gacy killing field.