Mass Murderers

April 2, 2012

Sadamichi Hirasawa

Sadamichi Hirasawa poisoned 16 people for the equivalent of a few hundred pounds in cash. Or did he?

by Robert Walsh

Just before closing time at the Teigin Bank in the suburbs of Tokyo, on January 26th, 1948, a nondescript and middle-aged man walked in through the front entrance. He was later identified, possibly incorrectly, as artist Sadamichi Hirasawa, but claimed to be Dr. Jiro Yamaguchi and had a business card to prove it. He left less than an hour later, but what happened between his arrival and departure was to shock the whole Japanese nation and reverberate through the Japanese courts for decades to come.

The man identifying himself as Dr.Yamaguch arrived wearing an armband bearing the label “Metropolitan Office, City Hall of Tokyo,” carrying a medical bag over his shoulder. He explained that dysentery had broken out in the area and that he had been sent to vaccinate the bank’s staff. Tokyo having been very heavily bombed during the later stages of World War II meant that dysentery (and other diseases) could still pose serious public health problems and, the Japanese being a people usually deferential to and respectful of authority figures, the bank staff both believed and obeyed him implicity. None of them suspected, even slightly, that Dr. Yamaguchi wasn’t who he claimed to be.

Most of them would pay for this trust with their lives.

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.

Aug. 22, 2011

Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad

During a three-week reign of terror in October of 2002, the D.C. snipers gunned down 13 innocent people at random around the Washington, D.C. Beltway. Only three survived.

by Mark Pulham

Montgomery County, Maryland, is just north of Washington, D.C., one of the most affluent counties in the United States, and an ideal place to live. With an average homicide rate in the county of only 25 per year, Montgomery County was safe, and not the sort of place where a drive-by shooting would occur. Yet, in October, 2002, that was about to change.

It had been barely a year since the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, and those who lived in and around Washington, D.C. were still nervous about future terrorist action.

On Wednesday, October 2, 2002, around 5:20 p.m., someone took a shot at a Michael’s Craft store in Aspen Hill, Maryland. The rifle bullet drilled a hole through the window, leaving minimal damage, but no one was hurt.

Just over an hour later, another shooting occurred, this time at the Glenmont Shopping Center at the junction of Randolph Road and Georgia Avenue. James Martin, a 55-year-old programs analyst for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was doing some grocery shopping at the Shoppers Food Warehouse, buying food for his church’s youth group, before he headed home to his wife and 11-year- old son.

July 26, 2011

Charles Whitman 

Charles Whitman’s killing rampage from the Tower at the University of Texas on August 1, 1966 led to the creation of S.W.A.T. teams in every major city across the United States.  During the 90-minute siege, the former Marine sharpshooter gunned down almost 50 innocent people – 17 of whom, including an 8-month old fetus, would die from their wounds. 

by Mark Pulham

In the 1950’s, American television seemed to embrace the idea of the perfect family, in one form or another. There was “Father Knows Best” with a wise father and his common sense wife raising their three children, two girls and a boy “; there was “Leave It To Beaver” and “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” both similar, but with two boys; “The Donna Reed Show” with a girl and a boy as children; and even “My Three Sons,” where the father is widowed.

But no matter what the configuration, they all had one thing in common:  all portrayed the popular image of what a typical “all-American” family should be like, a template for everyone watching. The Whitman family would have fit right in.

The Whitman’s were a typical upper-middle-class American family.  C. A. Whitman was a self made man, a plumber who through hard work and a determination to succeed built his own successful sewage plumbing business. He was also an upstanding citizen in the community, a prominent civic leader, and at one time, he was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce.

He had a perfect family, with a loving wife, Margaret, whom he married in their home town of Savannah, Georgia, and they had three sons, Charles Jr., Patrick, and John. They all lived happily on South L Street in Lake Worth, Florida.

July 11, 2011

New Orleans Howard Johnson Hotel Jan. 7, 1973

Mark Essex’s killing rampage in downtown New Orleans on New Year’s Eve of 1972 represented a viral black rage in the age of “Black Power.”

by Denise Noe

New Year’s Eve 1972: The horror begins

Mark Essex

Filled with rage and racist hatred against whites, Mark James “Jimmy” Robert Essex had sworn revenge for both personal and historical wrongs. Residing in New Orleans at the time his determination to exact vengeance reached a boiling point, he chose New Year’s Eve 1972 as his moment.

On that day, Essex parked his car close to the New Orleans Police Department. He hid in a parking lot across from central lock-up. He aimed his Ruger .44 Magnum carbine and shot two men, both of them in the police force. Cadet Alfred Harrell, 19, died from his injuries. Lt. Horace Perez survived.

Ironically, in view of the racist purpose that Essex had stated in writing was the reason for his crimes, Harrell was black. Perhaps Essex viewed the young police cadet as a sell-out to the white system. It is also possible that this one murder was simply a mistake because Essex saw the blue uniform and failed to note the skin color.

If it was a mistake, Essex did not make another. All of the rest of his victims were people of fair skin, either white or, like Perez, Hispanic.

As police began to chase Essex, he set off diversionary firecrackers, jumped a chain link fence and raced across highway I-10.

December 12, 2004

Charles Manson

Thirty-five years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, it's time to demystify the would-be messiah that Vincent Bugliosi portrayed in the best-selling true-crime book of all time, Helter Skelter. The real Charles Manson was a semi-literate, petty criminal – car thief, check forger, pimp, drug dealer – so insecure about his ability to cope in the real world that on the day of the parole that plunged him into infamy he begged prison officials not to release him.

by Denise Noe

Charles Manson is the most famous common criminal in the world, his name a synonym for evil. Thirty-five years after the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders, he continues to be regarded as one of the most devilish cult figures in U.S. history, the possessor of a charisma and sexual magnetism so extraordinary that he ruled a "Family" of fanatically devoted followers willing to kill at his command. This is the Charles Manson that prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, popularized in the best-selling true-crime book of all time, Helter Skelter.

Manson was an unlikely candidate for the role of the would-be messiah that Bugliosi sold first to Manson's jury and then to a feckless national media enthralled by the cult-tinged horror of the Tate-LaBianca murders. At the time of the murders, Manson was a destitute parolee living a hand-to-mouth existence at Spahn Ranch, a place that had once served as a movie set for cowboy flicks and was then functioning as a dude ranch. He and 15 to 20 other drifters with whom he associated had been allowed to live on the premises by its 80-year-old owner, George Spahn, in exchange for helping out with chores like shoveling horse manure, and sexual favors freely provided by some of the young women. The group habitually ate food that its females cadged from dumpsters. A combination of panhandling, petty thievery, and drug dealing also helped them survive and support their primary pastimes: smoking marijuana and dropping acid, making music, and idly conversing.