Christmas Slay Ride: Most Mysterious and Horrific Christmas Day Murders (6 page)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this book of murders that occurred during the Christmas season. While certainly not in the Christmas Spirit, horrible deaths have occurred and unfortunate, will occur again during this time.  These dreadful thrillers, though they happened long ago,
still provoke
shock
,
compassion
, and
horror
instead of the love that is Christmas.

Here is an excerpt of my book Faceless: Five Gruesome Unsolved Murders: Most Mysterious and Headless Unsolved Murders of All Time.

We find cold cases fascinating because they have all the ingredients of a nail-biting murder mystery. Except there’s no ending. And what’s a book without an ending except an endless source of frustration and speculation?

It’s even worse when the victim is unidentified. “Unknown” man/woman/ child murders send a chill through us and can even cause a little sadness. How could a person be so alone in the world that absolutely no one came forward to give them a name and a burial, even when their photo was posted everywhere in newspapers and online?

With some unknown victims, there was a gruesome reason why no one knew them. They had been decapitated, which robbed them of their identities as well as their heads. In the days before DNA matching, it was nearly impossible to identify them unless they had fingerprints on file and/or distinguishing physical characteristics such as a birthmark or tattoo. As these stories will prove, even the latter didn’t always guarantee results if the person was a transient or alienated from his or her family.

This volume examines five instances of a single or serial killing involving victims who were beheaded by their killers:

●
   
The Thames Torso Murders:  Known as the
“Thames Mysteries"
or
"Embankment Murders,"
this series of gruesome killings was overshadowed by the terror surrounding Jack the Ripper’s crimes. 

●
   
The August 8, 1886 discovery of a decomposing male torso outside Wallingford, Connecticut. The victim was never identified, and a woman who claimed that she knew the whole story behind the murder committed suicide.

●
   
The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run: Between 1935 and 1938, a still-unidentified serial killer murdered and dismembered at least twelve victims in Cleveland, Ohio. All but three remain unidentified. Eliot Ness, the man who was partly responsible for taking down Al Capone, headed the investigations.

●
   
Beth Doe:  On December 20, 1976, a young boy made a gruesome discovery on the banks of the Lehigh River in White Haven, Pennsylvania. The dismembered and mutilated remains of a young, white woman and her unborn child had been stuffed into three suitcases and thrown from a bridge along Interstate 80 over the Lehigh River.

●
   
The
February 28, 1983 discovery of the headless body of a little girl between the ages of 8 and 11, decomposing in an abandoned home on the north side of St. Louis, MO. Her head was never found. Despite heavy publicity, nobody identified her
.

In some cases, the heads were later retrieved, but the victims remained unidentified, despite widespread publicity and frustrating false leads. Two of the cases above – Beth Doe and the St. Louis girl – have been revisited using modern forensic techniques that create a composite of who they might have been, but conclusive identification continues to elude investigators.

What do these cases have in common, besides the fact that they are cold and involve headless, unidentified victims? Somebody got away with murder. For now. However, one day at least one of these cases may have their final chapters written.

While Jack the Ripper terrorized the crooked streets and filthy lanes of London’s poverty-stricken East End in the fall of 1888, another series of unrelated murders was taking place. Known as the “Thames Mysteries” or the “Embankment Murders,” these crimes were overshadowed by the bloody and sensational Ripper crimes. They may have been the work of one man (or woman), or they may have been unrelated. All they definitely had in common were mutilated victims with missing heads.

The first one appeared on May 11, 1887, in Rainham, a village located in the Thames River Valley. Edward Hughes, a lighterman, responsible for transferring goods from moored ships to the quayside or riverside factories, saw a bundle bobbing in the water and retrieved it. It was wrapped in coarse canvas sacking and secured with a cord. Some of the sacking had come undone, allowing Hughes to see that the package contained human remains.

The police were quickly summoned. They unwrapped the gruesome bundle and found the lower half of a woman’s naked torso. The head and limbs were missing and the internal organs had been violently ripped out.

While the Thames police searched for the missing body parts, Dr. Edward Galloway examined the torso in a poorly lit shed next to Rainham’s Phoenix Hotel. He observed that the trunk had been separated from the upper body with a fine, sharp saw, and the thighs had been cleanly removed from the pelvis sockets.

The precise nature of the cuts suggested medical experience, if not expertise, and Dr. Galloway initially wondered if the remains had come from a hospital dissection room. Concluding from their general appearance that they had not, he told the police that the woman had been between 27 and 29 years old, dead for around two weeks, and likely a murder victim.

Several pieces from the same body showed up in different areas of London during the ensuing months. On Sunday, June 5, 1887 a pierman found a parcel containing a human thigh floating near Temple Pier. It was sent to Dr. Galloway, who confirmed that it belonged to the Rainham torso.

Later that same Sunday, the mutilated chest and thorax of a woman appeared off Battersea, on the south bank of the Thames, and on June 30, the arms and legs turned up in different parts of Regent’s Canal. The head was never found, but enough had been retrieved to partially reassemble the body.

Doctors (including Police Surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond, who would examine some of the Ripper victims) stated that in their opinion, whoever had dissected the body showed a degree of medical expertise, but did not think that these mutilations had been done for medical purposes. Because they were unable to give an exact cause of death, the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “Found Dead.”

Senior police officers may have recalled a similar incident that had taken place in June 1874, when a dismembered female corpse was pulled from the Thames at Putney. The torso, which was headless and missing all its limbs save one leg, was brought to Fulham Union Workhouse.

After examining the remains, Dr. E.C. Barnes stated that the body had been cut apart at the spinal column and decomposed in lime before being dumped into the river. Stymied by the limited evidence, the jury returned an open verdict.

The Rainham victim was never identified, although people occasionally came forward to try. A Mrs. Cross, who lived in Rainham, said that her 28-year-old daughter had been missing since May 20. A Mrs. Carter of Vauxhall Street, Lambeth, was also missing, and a man from North London wondered if the remains might be those of his wife. None of these women, however, were conclusively identified as the torso victim, and the case gradually faded from the headlines as newer horrors took place.

The second Thames Torso victim was discovered on September 11, 1888, while the hunt for Jack the Ripper was in full swing. Two middle-aged prostitutes, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols and Annie Chapman, had been found in Whitechapel, East London on August 31 and September 8 respectively, their throats cut and abdomens torn open, creating a city-wide manhunt for a serial killer who has never been conclusively identified.

A porter was working at Ward’s Deal Wharf when he noticed several men staring over the Embankment at something lying in the river mud, entangled in some floating timber. The porter retrieved the white object, which turned out to be a woman’s arm, and turned it over to the police.

The newspapers wondered if the arm belonged to an as yet undiscovered victim of Jack the Ripper. The
Echo
speculated that whoever she was, she may have been “killed by the same unseen hand that committed the dastardly crimes in Whitechapel,” and that “the arm had eventually been brought from the East End to Pimlico, in order to throw the police off the scent.”

The other arm was found on September 28. A 14-year-old boy was walking to work along Lambeth Road when he saw a parcel wedged in the railings of the gate outside a school for the blind. Pulling it out, he opened it and found a decomposed human arm.

Dr. Charles Hebbert, who examined the limb, stated,
“I thought the arm was cut off by a person who, while he was not necessarily an anatomist, certainly knew what he was doing – who knew where the joints were and cut them pretty regularly.”

The victim’s torso, minus the head, was discovered on October 2 at, ironically, the construction site for the New Scotland Yard building. A carpenter had noticed an odd-looking parcel in a large vault where the workmen kept their tools on October 1, but did not investigate until he saw that it was still in place a day later. Joined by two laborers, he removed the old cloth wrapped around the bundle and found a woman’s torso.

Dubbed the “Whitehall Mystery” by the press, the dismemberment also appeared to have been perpetrated by someone with medical knowledge. Drs. Bond and Hebbert, who examined the torso, concluded that the woman had been around 24 or 25 years old, fair-skinned and dark-haired, and around 5’8” tall. A close inspection revealed no wounds that could have caused death. Although the inside of the heart showed no irregularities, Dr. Bond thought that she had died from severe blood loss.

There was considerable discussion in the press over how the murderer could have brought the wrapped torso to the construction site without being seen. The woman had been “well-nourished,” as the doctors had put it, in life, and the torso alone weighed over 50 lbs. As the
Daily Telegraph
stated, “The difficulty and danger which the wretch must have encountered in bearing the body to the portion of the buildings where it was hidden increase the horror and mystery surrounding the whole proceeding.”

Although the world “murderer” was bandied around, there was no actual proof that the victim
had
been murdered, but rather just cut up. Lacking any evidence to return a verdict of murder against a person or persons unknown, the coroner’s jury for this case also returned a verdict of “Found Dead.”

Pieces of a third female body appeared on June 4, 1889. A waterside laborer was hanging around the docks in Horsleydown, on the south bank of the Thames, hoping to pick up a day’s work. When he saw some boys throwing stones at an object that had washed ashore, he went to see what it was and discovered a waterlogged parcel secured with stout cord. It contained the lower part of a female torso.

Dr. Thomas Bond, who had also examined the Whitehall torso, inspected the remains and said that the victim had been a young woman who had been heavily pregnant. Blood still seeped from the cuts, suggesting that she had died recently.

The police wondered if the torso belonged to the same victim whose thigh had been discovered earlier that day by three boys swimming in the river near Battersea Park. After examining the limb, Dr. Bond concluded that it came from the same body, as traces of sandy-colored pubic hair found near the upper portion matched that on the torso.

The London
Times
of June 5 reported that
"in the opinion of the doctors, the woman had been dead only 48 hours, and the body had been dissected somewhat roughly by a person who must have had some knowledge of the joints of the human body."

On June 6, the investigation took a dramatic turn when a gardener employed at Battersea Park found a parcel that was giving off an offensive odor. When he opened it, what he saw sent him running for a policeman. The package contained the upper torso of a woman, its chest cavity cut open straight down the middle.

More parts of the same body were found in or around the Thames during the next week. It is especially chilling that one of the gruesome jigsaw’s pieces appeared to have been thrown over the private railing to the Shelley Estate. Mary Shelley had written
Frankenstein
, a novel about a monster assembled from various body parts.

The doctors who examined the pieces agreed that some expertise was involved. At the inquest on June 17, it was stated that,
“the division of the parts showed skill and design: not, however, the anatomical skill of a surgeon, but the practical knowledge of a butcher or a knacker (a person who disposes of dead animals). There was a great similarity between the condition, as regarded cutting up, of the remains and that of those found at Rainham and at the new police building on the Thames Embankment.”

At the inquest on June 15, Dr. Bond provided his report, which stated that the deceased had been between 20 and 30 years old, fair-skinned, plump, and sandy-haired. Judging from the length of her thighs, she had been between 5’4” and 5’6” in height, and around eight months pregnant when she died. The doctor said that absence of the neck and stomach made it impossible for him to determine if her throat had been cut or if drugs had been administered prior to death.

Because the head, throat, lungs, and heart were never recovered, Bond and the other doctors were unable to provide a means of death. However, this time, the jury was confident in reaching a decision of “Willful murder against some person or persons unknown.”

A sensational break in the case occurred on June 26, when the victim was “positively” identified as Elizabeth Jackson, a prostitute well-known to police officers stationed in the Chelsea district. She had been missing since May 31, and no subsequent record could be found of her staying in any London lodging houses or infirmaries. Even her own father had expressed concern that the Thames victim may have been Elizabeth.

Jackson, like the victim, had been heavily pregnant. She had been living with a millstone grinder named John Fairclough, alias Smith. Fairclough was also a former soldier (and punished deserter) who had been known to “ill-treat” Elizabeth when he was drunk or if she had somehow incurred his displeasure. He was eventually located and provided a satisfactory account of his actions at the time Elizabeth disappeared, forcing the authorities to release him.

Elizabeth’s sister told the police that she had a wrist scar, the result of a childhood accident, and when a few layers of decomposed tissue were removed from one of the amputated arms, a similar scar was found.

On July 25, the Coroner, Mr. Braxton Hicks, stated that the wrist scar and other evidence, such as the advanced state of pregnancy, suggested that the dismembered corpse was indeed that of the unfortunate Elizabeth Jackson. He suggested to the jury that a verdict of willful murder by some person or persons unknown should be returned, and they complied.

The remains were ultimately buried under the name of Elizabeth Jackson, making this victim the only one to receive a name on her gravestone. The absence of a head, however, the ultimate method of identification, means that the case cannot be considered truly solved.