Mark Pulham

May 7, 2012

Fritz Harrmann

Over a six-year period, Fritz Haarmann sodomized and murdered up to 50 young men and boys in Hanover, Germany, by clamping his teeth on their throats and biting through their windpipes.  He then drank their blood. 

by Mark Pulham

The Great War was over. After more than four years of hostilities, Germany had been defeated, and there was a hefty price to pay. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, ordered that Germany, which was forced to take the entire blame for the war, would also have to repay the entire costs of the war. The total amount was a staggering 132 billion marks, the equivalent today of $442 billion. It was an amount that Germany would not finish paying until 2010.

The result for the people of Germany was disastrous. Money became worthless, and by the 1920’s inflation had gone through the roof. In 1923, hyperinflation caused the price of a loaf of bread to skyrocket from 250 marks in January to 1,500,000 marks in September.

The wealthy suddenly found that their fortunes had vanished almost overnight. People couldn’t provide for their families, and food shortages became normal. Life for the people of Germany had become an enormous struggle, and the black marketers saw an opportunity to profit from the misery.

With the horrors of war still fresh in the minds of the population, could there be anything that made life any worse?

For the people of Hannover, the answer came in 1924.

March 5, 2012

Book Review by Mark Pulham

For many of us, the death of one of our children is inconceivable. Most of us would agree that there is nothing worse. It is an unimaginable tragedy, something that we cannot picture getting over. But, as anyone who has lost a loved one knows, a healing process begins. A funeral is held, a time for grieving passes, and if time does not exactly heal old wounds, it does dull their pain.

But, as John Leake’s new book Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery shows, there is something worse for a parent. What if your child was missing? The grieving process cannot begin and the passing of time does not lessen the pain. Instead, there is uncertainty, the parent remains in limbo, and they cannot move past.

Cold a Long Time presents the story of Duncan MacPherson, a professional ice hockey player from Saskatoon, who had played for the Saskatoon Blades and the Springfield Indians. He dreamed of joining the NHL, but it was not to be. At 23 years old, he had numerous injuries, and he was not quite as fast as some of the others, and when his contract expired, he was released. But showing grace and maturity during an interview, he didn’t express anger or bitterness, just acknowledged that it wasn’t meant to be.

Duncan MacPherson

Duncan was offered a job as coach for the Dundee Tigers Hockey team in Dundee, Scotland. Although the owner of the team was a little shady, Duncan accepted. Before he joined the team, Duncan decided to take some time for himself and visit some friends in Europe.

On August 7, 1989, Duncan was in Nuremburg where he borrowed a friend’s car, intending to be back by August 11 to catch his flight to Scotland. He told his parents, Lynda and Bob, that he would call them from Scotland on August 14.

That call never came. Days passed with no word from Duncan, and when the phone did finally ring, it wasn’t their son, but one of his friends telling them that he never made it to Scotland. The last anyone saw of him was on August 9, when he went snowboarding at a popular ski resort on the Stubai Glacier near Innsbruck, Austria.

And so the nightmare began for Lynda and Bob MacPherson, a nightmare that would span 20 years. What had happened to their son? The question itself is a simple one, but as with many simple questions, the answer was complex. Was he dead? Did he have amnesia? If he was dead, then how did he die? And where was the body? Was there another explanation?

Feb. 20, 2012

John Reginald Halliday Christie

Serial Killer Reg Christie pinned one of his eight murders on the witless Timothy Evans before he was discovered to be the “Monster of 10 Rillington Place.”  Evans’s execution by hanging – and his posthumous pardon – helped lead to the abolishment of the death penalty in Great Britain. 

by Mark Pulham

When most people think of Notting Hill, there are a few things that first come to mind. One could be the Notting Hill carnival, a colorful event held every year by the West Indian community and, after Rio, the second largest street carnival in the world. Or it may be Portobello Road, home to the worlds largest Antiques Market, held every Saturday, and also the home to the Portobello Film Festival, where over 700 films have had their premiers.

It could be that the first thought is of the 1999 Julia Roberts film, “Notting Hill.”

But for some, those with longer, darker memories, the thought may be of 10 Rillington Place.

What took place in this house, and the subsequent events, make up a tale of tragedy, horror, and disgust.

Once an area known for pig farms and pottery works, Notting Hill, in the northern part of Kensington, began to be developed in the early to mid 1800’s, and became a fashionable area with its own artistic community. Large houses were built in the hope that they would entice the wealthy from Belgravia and Mayfair, but the plan didn’t work, and instead, it drew the upper middle classes, who liked the idea of Belgravia style houses at the lower Notting Hill prices.

In the late 1980’s, redevelopment of the area brought back its affluence and it is now one of London’s most desirable areas to live, and one of the most expensive.

But sandwiched between these two periods of wealth and prosperity, were decades of neglect and decay. At the beginning of the 20^th century, the middle classes stopped having servants and the large houses were sold off to property developers who split the houses into multiple dwellings, with each floor making up a separate flat, and each flat rented out as cheap lodgings.

Rapidly, the area went downhill and became, as one put it, “a massive slum, full of multi-occupied houses, crawling with rats and rubbish.”

Rillington Place was a typical street in the area. Number 10 was a narrow, dreary, and depressing house at the end of a narrow, dreary, and depressing cul-de-sac. Built probably around 1869, it was a grimy and cramped house that had been, like many others, split into three flats, one on each floor.

At the beginning of 1948, only two of the flats were occupied. In the ground floor flat lived the Christies, Reg and Ethel. Their flat consisted of a front living room, a back bedroom, and a kitchen, which included a pantry or cupboard. A passageway led from the front door of the house through to the back door, splitting the Christie’s kitchen from their other rooms.

On the next floor was the home of Charles Kitchener, a man in his 60s who was suffering from failing eyesight. His flat was almost identical to the one below, but without the passageway.

The top floor flat was smaller than the others, having only a kitchen and a bedsitting room.

Outside, there was a small wash-house with a sink and a boiler, where the occupants could do small amounts of laundry. Also outside was the only lavatory, which everyone had to use. Access to both of these was through the passageway that separated the Christie’s kitchen from the rest of their flat.

Beyond the wash-house and lavatory, behind a fence, was what only the delusional would call a garden. It was a dirt wasteland less than 20 feet square that only the hardiest of plant life could survive.

Dec. 19, 2011

Bridego Bridge just after the robbery

In August of 1963, 15 men pulled off “The Great Train Robbery,” at Sears Crossing in Buckinghamshire in southeast England, netting the equivalent of $68.5 million in today’s dollars.  Of the £2,631,684 stolen, less than £400,000 was ever recovered.

The mastermind, known as “the Ulsterman,” would never be identified.  One of the robbers, Ronnie Biggs, became an international celebrity after escaping from prison.   

by Mark Pulham

The train didn’t seem to be anything special. It had a single diesel locomotive at the front, pulling a number of coaches, 12 in all, through the night, heading for its final destination, Euston Station in London. The only difference was that the coaches didn’t have windows. This was the overnight mail train from Scotland to London.

The train, known as the “Up Special” made the same journey every night, and had been doing so for 125 years. There had never been any major incidents.

But all that was about to change.

In 1963, there were many events which would be considered significant or noteworthy. In the United States, the year began with George Wallace taking over as the governor of Alabama after a landslide victory the previous November. In his inaugural speech he spoke the line for which he will always be remembered, “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Later on in the year, he would stand in the doorway of the University of Alabama to stop the enrollment of black students, only stepping aside when confronted by federal marshals, the deputy attorney general, and the Alabama National Guard.

The end of the year came with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

In between those two events, Alcatraz closed as a penitentiary, the first James Bond film, Dr. No, had its North American premiere, and Martin Luther King gave his 17-minute “I Have A Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In Great Britain, it was the swinging sixties. Heavy snow dominated the beginning of the year, with snow remaining on the ground in many places right into April. It was the worst winter in 16 years. The end of the year would see the police in Ashton-under-Lyne begin a fruitless search for a missing 12-year-old boy named John Kilbride.

Kim Philby, a high ranking member of British Intelligence, would turn out to be a double agent spying for the Russians. He would disappear and resurface later in Moscow. It was an embarrassment for the Conservative Government. One of Philby’s fellow double agents, Guy Burgess would die later in the year.

In Gorton, Manchester, 16-year-old Pauline Reade went missing, the first victim of the Moors Murderers, Brady and Hindley.

Harold Wilson became the leader of the Labour Party after the sudden death of Hugh Gaitskill; The Beatles released their first album “Please, Please Me” which went to number one and sparked Beatlemania. The album would remain at the top for 30 weeks until finally being toppled by their second album.

Following the Philby spy humiliation, the Conservative Government was hit by a second scandal, when 48-year-old John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, resigned after admitting that he had been having a “secret” affair with a 21-year-old woman named Christine Keeler, a call girl. The problem was that Profumo wasn’t the only one having an affair with Keeler. Also sharing her bed was Yevgeny Ivanov, a senior naval attaché, and spy, at the Soviet Embassy in London. When Keeler was interviewed, she used the term “nuclear payload,” a term not used by the general public at the time. It was clear that John Profumo liked to talk in bed. The Profumo Affair would eventually bring down the Government.

In other news, Pope John XXIII died, and in the Soviet Union Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

And in the middle of it all, in August, 15 men, plus a few accomplices, would commit a crime so audacious that it would go down in history as one of the greatest robberies of all time, one that all others would be compared to: The Great Train Robbery.

Nov. 21, 2011

Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman

During the last quarter of the Twentieth century, Dr. Harold Shipman killed his patients and got away with it.  In the process, he became the most prolific serial killer not just in Great Britain but in the Western World.  It eventually became known that he had murdered 215 patients and that he was probably responsible for killing another 69, bringing his ghastly total to 284 victims.  He may have actually murdered many more. 

by Mark Pulham

It could have been a scene from a horror movie. Men were standing in the shadows, gathered around an open grave as a heavy rain lashed down. Some light showed what they were doing. Night staff at a local nursing home watched as a coffin was raised from the black hole in the ground and taken away.

The exhumation was the first ever carried out by Greater Manchester Police, though it would not be the last.

Kathleen Grundy was 81-years-old when she had died five weeks earlier, on June 24, 1998. Though in general a woman of that age suddenly dying would not be considered unusual, for the people of Hyde it was quite a shock.

Kathleen was a fit and active woman who worked two and a half days a week at an Age Concern shop, handling their banking, and on three days of the week, she volunteered at Werneth House, a social center for pensioners, where she helped with the lunches.

For this former Lady Mayor of Hyde to have suddenly died was unthinkable.

Sept. 27, 2011

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley

Myra Hindley was, for the British public, evil personified, and was the most hated woman in Britain from the time of her arrest in 1965 until the day she died in 2002 for murdering children with her boyfriend and burying them on the Moors.

by Mark Pulham

At around 8:40 on the morning of Thursday, October 7, 1965, Bob Talbot knocked on the back door of 16 Wardle Brook Avenue. He wore a long white coat and carried a basket of bread under his arm. A woman opened the door and looked at him. He wasn’t the usual bread delivery man, and she told him he’d got the wrong house. The woman was tall and square-jawed, with honey-platinum hair and thick black eyebrows. Talbot would have put her age as around 35-years-old, but he would have been wrong, she had only turned 23 a few months before.

Talbot dropped the pretence. “I’m a police officer.” he said, as he stepped through the door, “Is the man of the house in?”  The newly promoted Superintendent Bob Talbot followed the woman through the kitchen and into the living room, as behind him, his Detective Sergeant Jock Carr slipped into the kitchen through the back door.

In the living room was a bed, and a man was lying on it, writing a letter. He looked up as they entered. It was a neat and tidy room, with a couple of dogs and a budgie. It was not the superintendent’s idea of what a crime scene looked like. He looked at the man and said that he believed that a murder had been committed there.

It had started less than three hours before, when a frantic call had come into Hyde Police Station. It was just after 6 a.m. when the young police constable picked up the telephone and heard the called say, “Is this Hyde Police Station?” The caller was stammering with nervousness, but told the constable his name was David Smith. He said he was speaking from Hattersley, his broad Manchester accent causing him to drop the ‘H’. There’s been a murder, Smith told him, and that he was phoning from the call box on Hattersley Road West.

Sept. 5, 2011

Anders Behring Breivik

During a 90-minute rampage at a youth camp not far from Oslo, 32-year-old Anders Breivik – an anti-Islamist – shot to death 69 people.  Earlier that afternoon he set off an ANFO bomb in the capital’s Government Quarter that killed eight people and injured hundreds of others.  When police arrived at the camp, the coward who had laughed as he gunned down defenseless children, dropped his weapons and raised his arms in surrender.

by Mark Pulham

All of the Nobel Prizes except one are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden.  The Peace Prize is reserved for Oslo, an honor that has made the capital of Norway a symbol of peace the world over since the award was first handed out in 1901.   

In the October, 2007, edition of the Readers Digest, an article appeared that listed the cities of the world that were the greenest and the most liveable. Coming in at number two, just behind Stockholm, was Oslo.

Surrounded by the blue Oslo fjord and the green hills and forests, the city is compact, easy to get around, with parks, even in the city center, never more than a block or two away.

Renowned for its efforts to promote world peace, Oslo would be the last place anyone would associate with terrorism.  In fact, in the 40 years between 1970 and 2010 there have been only 15 terrorist attacks in the entire country, leaving only 13 people injured, and just one person dead. Compare that figure to that of the United States, where, according to The National Consortium For The Study Of Terrorism And Responses To Terrorism (START) in the same 40 years, there has been almost 2,400 terrorist attacks. Almost 3,000 died in the 9/11 attacks alone.