Otto Steven Wilson, age 31, shipyard cook, met Mrs Virginia Lee Griffin who lived at 1934 East 17th St LA Cali in a Skid Row Beer Parlor at 326 South Hill St. They went to a hotel at 4th and Main St with the idea of prostitution. He hit her stabbed her and cut her up. Photo of Mrs Griffin, 25, on the left.
Using the same idea he took Mrs. Lillian Johnson, age 38, of Compton Calif, to a hotel at 340 South Hill St. He choked her to death & carved her up with a razor blade. Wilson was arrested by Patrolman Harold E. Donlan in a Beer Parlor on South Hill St, only a few doors from the hotel where Wilsons second victim was found then arrested he was trying to date up another woman. La Calif 11/15/44. Sentenced to death in the San Quentin gas chamber 7/5/45. Died 9/20/46.
The First Murder:
Mrs. Eva Dunn, a chambermaid, entered a hotel room to tidy up and screamed in horror at the shocking sight which greeted her. The hacked lifeless body of Mrs Virgie Griffin, 25, was found in a blood-spattered room at the Barclay Hotel at 103 West Fourth St, early in the afternoon on Nov 16, 1944. Mrs. Dunn observed the nude body sprawled in a pool of blood on the floor of the bathroom. Mrs. Dunn had immediately summoned police, who arrived shortly after the call. Cops had stared down in stunned disbelief at the body of the victim, slashed and ripped almost beyond description.
The body had been monstrously cut completely open from throat to pelvis, almost in an mockery of an autopsy. The right shoulder had been hacked through, the left leg nearly severed at the hip and twisted behind her, the other was chopped down to the bone at the hip and knee at an attempt of disarticulation. Further grisly trauma to the body revealed that she had been disemboweled and her breasts cruelly sliced off. Inside a corner of a large clothes closet were the slashed chunks of her flesh which had been cut away from her body, the jagged pieces first hidden from sight by its closed door. The rest of her body was a mass of deep cuts and slashes. Her eyes were tightly clenched in a fixed grimace of pain.
There was significant hacking to the genital region, leaving the pelvic area completely unrecognizable, it appeared that her sex organs had been viciously carved out. The victim was so badly mutilated it was impossible to tell if she had been raped, vaginally or anally, before or after the mutilation. Although during a lust murder such as this, the perpetrator will often substitute a knife for the penis. Female genital removal is done mainly by killers who have impotence problems, so unable to have normal sex, they ruin the organ that they themselves are not able to enjoy.
Beside her body, with the long blade leaning against her side, lay a twelve inch butcher knife with a sharp nine-inch blade. The long carving knife was found beside her body, amid a ring of cigarette butts, tossed in a haphazard pile, indicating the killer had sat on the floor beside her and idly smoked for quite some time all the while contemplating his butchery. Also found was a bottle of whiskey, a package of cigarettes, and a number of blood-stained razor blades.
Inside the modest hotel room was the neatly-tailored chartreuse suit and matching topcoat of expensive make belonging to Mrs. Griffin. They had been precisely folded and neatly hung on a chair standing against the wall. Apparently arranged carefully so they would not be wrinkled when she put them back on. A pair of her galoshes sat on the floor and her handbag was present but undisturbed, ruling out robbery as a motive. Although the bed was mussed, there was no blood on it, leading police to believe that the woman was slugged into unconsciousness, dragged into the bathroom and ghoulishly dismembered there behind a closed door.
Hardened detectives investigating the murder, were horrified at the brutality of the crime and claimed that it was the worst crime they had seen in two decades. One officer became visibly sickened at the unbelievable carnage.
A clerk at the hotel had said that the man from the room had telephoned at 8:30pm on Tuesday night to ask the time, said he was going out, and left shortly afterward. The maid, Mrs. Eva Dunn, reported that the man had left around 10:30 am on Wednesday and before he took off, he nonchalantly chatted about the weather and told me "he was in a room down the hall and asked me not to disturb his wife because she is very tired. Then he gave me a dollar."
We know that the killer was in possession of her body from at least 8:30pm until 10:30am the next morning, utilizing the time to enact his carnage. The police originally suspected that she had died no earlier than 6am on that Wednesday morning, but coroner's physicians during the autopsy said Mrs. Griffin died about about 4am.
The Second Murder:
As detectives were investigating Mrs. Griffin's appalling death scene, they didn't realize at that very moment that the sadistic killer was at work in another hotel room only a few blocks away. They were about to be shocked when not long after, when police were called to another scene. The slayer had committed a similar atrocity upon a second woman, this time at the Joyce Hotel at 310 1/2 South Hill St.
John Singleton, clerk of the hotel, registered a "husband and wife" in the room at 1:25pm, and said that the man appeared to be sober, "but the girl seemed to be under the influence of liquor of drugs and the man apologized for her condition." Singleton also stated that the couple had no luggage in tow and the woman left orders to be called at 3:30pm. When 3.30 came around and she failed to respond to the call, Singleton said went up to the room, knocked on the door and waited. Ten minutes later, when the woman still didn't respond, he thought perhaps she was a heavy sleeper and simply didn't hear the knocking, and he opened the door to give her the wake up call in person.
He was unfortunately greeted with a gruesome scene. Her savagely attacked body was found strangled to death, and on her back sprawled upon the bed, with her feet spread wide apart. Her eyes were open and staring upwards, her mouth bloody. Though not as mutilated as the previous victim, she was nude, except for her dress which was cut open to reveal her chest and abdomen, her shoes and stockings, which had been rolled loosely down to her ankles. A single extensive crimson gash ran from her throat to her abdomen. She had been viciously cut up by a very sharp razor blade, leaving her left breast sawn off and huge pieces of her body ruthlessly gouged out. From examining the death photos, it appears her genitalia seems to have been carefully cut out and removed and she may have bite marks on her right breast, the nipple of which was either sliced off or bitten off.. A single, blue double edged razor blade was found in the room, tossed aside on the floor. Two photos of her death scene are on page 136, the two photos on the far left. I was able to determine this was her based on a newspaper photo from 1944.
A thorough examination of fingerprints identified the second victim as Mrs. Johnson, alias Betty Crosby. Employees and residents at the hotel were questioned. Mrs Josephine Racine, occupant of an adjoining room, said she sat all afternoon within a foot of a flimsy connecting door and heard no sound from the murder room.
Singleton, a former member of the Los Angeles police force said he had seen her before, saying "I recognized the woman as a former customer of mine when I owned a liquor store on East Fifth Street, and she hung around the cocktail bars in the neighborhood." He said he "didn't hear a sound from the room and I was within 30 feet of it all the time. Then the man came out about 2:30pm, stood around near the desk for awhile and talked in a friendly manner. He said his was was hungry and that he was going down to get some sandwiches for her. As he went down the stairs, he called back to me that Mrs. Watson would take a nap and that I should call her at 3:30 if she hadn't awakened."
The lack of screaming or any sounds of a struggle led the police to believe that the woman was subdued soon after entering the bedroom. The heartless killer had knocked the woman out with a harsh blow or blows to her chin, possibly while they were in an intimate embrace. As a result, several of her teeth were knocked out and her lips and lower face were bruised and swollen. He then proceeded to strangle her to death and brutally raped her deceased body, before methodically setting about slicing her up. In total, he spent about an hour with her body, which had lain cold for another hour in the bed until it was discovered by Singleton.
Killer Identified:
Strangely enough, the killer registered his room as "Mr and Mrs OS Wilson, "Shelbyville, Ind" at the first hotel, but gave the name "Mr and Mrs OS Watson", and the name of a fictitious town, "Studeville, Ind." at the second. Detectives chatted with employees from both hotels in an attempt to find the identity of the killer. The employees had said that the killer was casual, calm and self possessed each time he spoke with them, had worn the same brown sports coat, polo shirt and tan slacks at each hotel. Each clerk had described him as about six feet tall, stocky, and with wavy dark brown hair. He was good looking, they said. Chief of Detectives Bruce Clark called in all available detectives, and furnishing them with a description of the suspect as given by employees at the two hotels, and the man hunt was on.
The Killer is Captured:
Hearing the all-point bulletin and description of the wanted man, alert Patrolman Harold E Donlan remembered seeing such a man around padding around his beat at Third and Hill Strs. Picturing the man's visage in his mind, Donlan sauntered into the Red Front Bar at 326 South Hill St, only a few doors from where Crosby's body laid, and his eagle eyes quickly spotted his man who happened to be chatting up another young woman. He said, "I stood behind Wilson for some time observing his actions. I noticed he had numerous cuts on his hands." The officer noticed that Wilson's fingers were gashed and that his knuckles were bruised. "I decided he fit the description close enough" and tapped Wilson on the shoulder. "What do you want? Is there something I can do for you?" Wilson said while calmly putting down his wine glass." I told him he was under arrest for robbery," Donlan said. "What does this mean? Why are you arresting me? I've been here all afternoon. Ask this young lady - she can tell you!" Wilson cried. The woman quickly spoke up in her defense, "I never saw this man until a few minutes ago. He came over and sat himself down. He said to say that he had been with me if anyone came along to question us, and that if I did so later on he would take me out and show me a good time."
As the officer was questioning the woman, Wilson made a break for the door, but the officer grabbed him in a judo hold and snapped the cuffs on his wrist. Donlan continued, "I shook him down for a weapon and found a box of matches from the Barclay hotel. He told me to throw them away that they were empty. But they convinced me that I had the right man."
At Police Headquarters:
The usual tests were made for blood. As crime technicians continued their work testing his clothing for bloodstains and a chemical was dropped on his hands and clothes to bring out the stains more, sharply Wilson broke- and revealed that, having once worked as a pharmacist, he remembered his chemistry. "That's it." he announced with finality. "Yeah, I know all about that stuff. "I can explain this whole process," he said leisurely. "My experience with the navy in pharmacy, you know. You'll find that when you mix those particles with a certain amount of water that the hemoglobin of the blood can be determined and compared."
Police had said that fingerprints on a bottle of liquor found in the first room matched up with Wilson's fingerprints and tallied with those in the two hotel rooms. They said the suspect had a long series of arrests against him in the Los Angeles area including on charges of attempted rape.
A few minutes later, witnesses brought to the station had identified as Otto Steven Wilson as the companion of the slain women. Fred O'Bryant, bellboy at the Barclay and John Singleton, the clerk at the Joyce, both confirmed he was the man who signed their hotel registers and was the one in company of the women.
Confession:
Police were ready to take him back to both crime scenes, but Wilson got nervous, somewhat scared and ashamed to view the victims of his dreadful deeds. Drawing Det. Lt. RF McGarry aside, Wilson said "You look like a good guy. Can I talk to you for a minute? I don't want to go into any details but I admit everything. Don't take me back to the rooms (where the bodies were found) and I'll confess."
McGarry took him outside headquarters to give him some level of privacy. Sitting in the police car in which he was to have ridden to the crime scenes, Wilson, police said, casually unfolded his story in a calm, monotone voice. Wilson said he'd gone out looking for "love" and then, inexplicably, there were the two women all bloody and ripped by his knife and razor. He went on saying that he was happily drinking a glass of wine at the bar and the next thing he knew, a cop was putting a judo hold on him as he was having a good time.
Wilson was brought back into headquarters and taken into an interrogation room. Hidden microphones were turned on and hooked up to two wax disks to record the confession. The four detectives who listened in were shocked by the casual and unconcerned manner in which he made the confession.
As Wilson started to recount the minutes of his eventful week, he said he had been employed as a fry cook at the California Shipbuilding Co.'s commissary at Terminal Island. He said he been living at the barracks at the plant. He said he left his job around November 12, 1944, right after a theft had occurred at the plant. Coincidentally, he had been an original suspect in the theft but local police were unable to locate him at the time. Now he readily admitted that he was the one who stole the $79.25 from the safe of the commissary-dormitory.
Shortly before noon on November 14, he walked into a hardware store representing himself as a cook to a salesman and purchased a knife with about a nine inch blade. Wilson said that he had gone looking for love along Skid Row which was notorious for its cheap hotels and its even cheaper prostitutes. At 1pm the same day, at an unidentified bar on Main Street, he said met a woman he did not know, who appeared to him to be partially intoxicated. They got to talking and asked her if she wanted to have a few drinks back at his hotel room and fool around. She told him her horoscope for the day had said that "Wednesday" was her "lucky day". Perhaps she did feel lucky in that moment. Lonely and perhaps feeling fortunate to easily earn more money for booze, they agreed to a price of $5. She accompanied him back to his hotel room at the Barclay, where he signed the register as "Mr and Mrs OS Wilson, Shelbyville, Indiana." Soon after they reached his room, she began to disrobe, while he left and purchased a fifth of whiskey to continue the party.
He said "That first gal - well she propositioned me, and said she'd play for five bucks. So we went to a hotel room. I went out and bought a quart of whiskey and returned to the room and we had a few drinks." After they had been in the room and had had a few drinks from a bottle of whiskey he purchased, she demanded more money from him. "Then she asked me for some money, she decided she wanted $20 or nothing doing." Either he pay up or she was leaving, she said, but he didn't want to spend that much on the quick company of a woman. She may have started complaining or laughing at him, perhaps even calling him names. Something clicked in his head and in a murderous rage, he clasped his hands around her throat and squeezed until she stopped breathing. He claimed that the choking took place during an argument following a demand by the woman for $20 after reaching the room.
"So you found love," Capt. Thad Brown nodded, "Okay. So why'd you go to work with a knife and razor...the terrible way you did? What kind of payment was that?" Wilson made a gesture with his hands, the fingertips of which were still stained with the blood of his victims. "Cussedness," he said with a shrug, "Pure cussedness, I guess that was all it was." Cussedness is a word we don't hear much of today, but at the time it meant "perverse, malignant wickedness." He might have lied when asked about rape, as he claimed to have had no sexual experience with her, and due to the state of her corpse, none could be proven definitely.
"So you got mad," Detective Lt. Lloyd Hurst put in. Wilson said he didn't know why he killed the attractive Virgie, but explained "Although we had an argument over money, somehow, I got sore. I socked her on the jaw and I got mad. I strangled her to death shortly after we arrived in the hotel room. I was carting around a long bladed knife I'd been using where I worked down on Terminal Island, I just pulled it out and cut her up. Then I had the crazy idea that if I cut up the body and dismembered it I could dispose of it. So I began carving her up."
"You sure did," Lt Robert B. McGarry observed with a wry smile. "An autopsy surgeon couldn't have done better...or worse." His original plan was to cut up the body of his victim into smaller parts so as to carry it out of the hotel in package form to make it look less suspicious.
"Then what?," one of the detectives queried. "I sat up all Tuesday night drinking whiskey. At first, I was going to dismember the body and get rid of it, but I found that I couldn't do it, I couldn't cut her up enough," Wilson claimed. He had only severed one leg nearly completely from the body, but the plan was then abandoned because of the difficulty and time consuming effort of its accomplishment. Determined to at least hide the corpse, he said, "I wanted to dispose of the body. So early in the morning I pushed the body in a closet." Before leaving the room, Wilson said he had attempted to strap the butcher knife to his body with adhesive tape,but, was without success. Physical evidence of his confession was found in the room, including the bloodied knife, an empty whiskey bottle, and some wrapping paper.
As Wilson was leaving the hotel at about 10:30am to 11am on the morning of November 15, he met the hotel chamber maid, Eva Dunn, in the hall, handed her $1.00 tip and told her not to go into the room as his wife was tired and he wanted her to rest. At the hotel office he tried to rent the room for another night but was unable to do so. He joked with the clerk, and in his words, "drifted out of the hotel and went to the movie."
Wilson told the hotel operator that his "wife" was drunk and he wanted a room for two or three hours in order to sober her up. A room was issued to them and Wilson signed the register, as "Mr. and Mrs. O. S. Watson." When she and Wilson entered the hotel, they left a call for 3:30pm.
When police asked if there was any sort of quarreling as with the first murder, Wilson said, "There was no argument. We didn't have any trouble at all. This second woman, she was sitting on the bed. She didn't want any money, and I guess that made me mad, too. But for some reason - just pure cussedness, I guess - I just hit her with my fist. It was easy. I knocked her out and then choked her to death. So I gave her the works with a razor, I cut her up for cussedness. I carved her up with a razor blade. I washed and left." He said he proceeded with this second victim in much the same manner as the first except that because he used a razor blade instead of a knife, the body was not so badly mutilated as the first and there was no way he would be able to dismember her. "Yeah; we know," Lt. Hurst said dryly. "Tell us more."
With a tightness in his voice, and still trying to figure out a motive, Det. Brown asked, "So it was just cussedness all around?" The ripper stared down at his blue black pants and blood spattered shoes. "Yeah; that's about what it amounts to."
He further explained that about an hour after he had entered the hotel, he went to the desk and asked for the room overnight. Upon refusal of his request he stated that he was going down to get his wife some sandwiches. After completing his second murder, he stepped down the street to a local bar only three blocks from the hotel. This is where he was found and arrested by Patrolman Donlan. As the arresting officer searched Wilson, and found a match folder bearing the name of "Barclay Hotel., the scene of the first murder, as a result, Wilson unsuccessfully tried to have the officer throw away the match cover. Later at the police station, defendant threw the match cover under a chair. Wilson left the hotel shortly before 3pm and when no one answered his requested call to the room at 3:30pm, employees went there to find out why, and found Mrs Johnson's slashed and bloody body.
About Wilson:
Described as a tall, six foot, skinny man who looked like he could stand a square meal, Wilson sat slumped in a chair with the homicide bureau at City Hall. Under his brown t-shirt there didn't appear to be much meat on his ribs. He had a washed out, sallow complexion and thick lips crowned with a mousy, light mustache. He had a dark brown hair, which he had carefully combed into a pompadour, giving him a slight debonair appearance. But there was also something about him that suggested he was the typical "wino". The police noticed the glazed expression in his faded eyes, the occasional twitching. He wasn't drunk while making his confession, but admitted he had been drinking whiskey and wine earlier in the day and claimed he was spending the money he stole from his job on a weeklong bender of alcohol and debauchery.
He tried to give some background on his life saying, "In 1930, I joined the navy and got along fine, making a rating as a pharmacists' mate. In 1937, I was at Brooklyn navy yard when I married Cornelia Elizabeth Lowenbauch. He stated that he served at various East Coast stations until he was transferred cross country in 1939. He continued saying, "we came to San Diego in 1939 - and during that time my sexual perversion grew stronger and stronger and my wife rebelled and told the naval authorities in 1941. The navy discharged me on a medical survey and my wife left me. I felt pretty awful about it - but I couldn't help being what I am."
Since he was kicked out of the navy and separated from his wife, he had been left to survive on his own. He said he did not know of his wife's current whereabouts. He said he stayed in San Diego for the next six months, wandering, sleeping in cheap rooming houses, and working menial jobs. He then drifted over to Pasadena and worked in a café. Unsatisfied, he decided to try his luck in Los Angeles, again living in the skid row area and working low paying jobs in cafes as dishwasher, janitor, waiter or busboy. He said he had been frequently living in cheap East Fifth Street hotels. He said he stayed in California except for the one time he had spent two weeks at a café job in Las Vegas during the winter of 1943. He said his latest job had been at a café in Terminal Island, Calif. as a fry cook. Whether he was fired or quit these job stints was not revealed. He said that while he was separated from his wife, he was lonely and continued the practice of cruelly abnormal relations with a large number of women he picked up along skid row.
Groggy, bleary-eyed and shaking, after several hours of constant grilling by police, he finally signed a formal confession to the killings of Mrs. Virginia Lee Griffin and Mrs Lillian Johnson. He denied that he acted under neurotic delusions or hallucinations and stated that at no time was he so drunk that he did not know what he was doing.
Couldn't Help Himself:
Later that night, he nervously paced a solitary jail cell, afraid to be alone with his thoughts, began to beg childishly for someone to talk to. It was the first time he had been alone since his arrest. He no longer possessed the affable, calm poise that he had earlier when he was confessing the monstrous details of his crime. He sorrowfully claimed to officers that the glaring stares and angrily muttered comments of other prisoners during the night had "disturbed" him. I imagine he was mercilessly taunted by the other prisoners who told him he was going to get the death penalty for the murders in California. His wretched acts against women ensured he was "gonna get gassed." Scared to die and desperate for some sort of reprieve, Wilson had hopelessly asked officers several times, if they thought he would "have any luck with an insanity plea." In mounting despair, must have decided this was the only way to save himself.
As though to offer an excuse for his wicked acts, he said he would like to make an explanatory addition to the documentary story of what homicide detectives called the most fiendish crime in the city's history. He wrote at the bottom of his confession statement that "I would like to add that I have always been emotionally unstable and that with my sexual complex - I went completely insane and could not possibly control myself. That is all." This directly contradicted his asserted claim to police earlier that had not acted "under neurotic delusions or hallucinations."
Wilson then underwent a four hour inquisition by Dr J. Paul De River, police psychiatrist. The questions and answers were surreptitiously captured using hidden microphones again and recorded on wax sound discs by forensic chemist Ray Pinker and assistants in the police crime laboratory in Central Jail. Feeling a perceived sense of shame and paranoia, Wilson looked around the room, and in a hoarse whisper, he said "I want to tell you something about myself - in confidence." Wilson explained that he hacked the women to pieces to satisfy a perverted sex desire. He told the doctor that he killed Mrs. Griffin and Mrs. Johnson "for pure cussedness."
He admitted to the doctor that he had always been obsessed with a sexual complex which started years ago when, as a small boy, his mother died and he was placed in an orphanage, the Knightstown Indiana Sailors ' and Soldiers ' Orphans ' Home. "I was just an ordinary kid in Shelbyville, Indiana, where I lived until I was 14. Then my parents died and I went to an orphan asylum and graduated from high school there." Because of his lack of motherly attention, psychiatrists said he developed an inferiority feeling and compensated for it by a mental complex demanding powder and ego superiority over women and the desire to inflict pain upon them. "It just built up until I couldn't control it," he said.
Wilson made frequent references to a "kill lust" which came over him as he slew Mrs. Griffin. "The next day I went to a chiller-diller movie and the craving to kill another woman seized me. So I went out and got one in a bar." In regards to the young, attractive brunette lady he was chatting with at the bar when he was arrested, he confessed he was definitely making advances toward a third victim and Wilson honestly said, "I don't know what I would have done to that girl. I guess I belong in an institution." The detectives had said they would question the woman, whose name they never publicly disclosed.
Hearing the chilling admittances from Wilson during his examination, Dr. De River, said, had left him unsure, but said that "Wilson is a sadist, a sex maniac, a combination of the two, or some other type of psychotic or neurotic personality." He described Wilson as having been an introverted, shy child, who built up an unconscious hatred of women through feelings of feminine neglect when his mother died and he was placed in an orphanage. "He has an urge to kill and destroy women. He may be considered a sexual psychopath and degenerate. His hatred of womankind has unquestionably been built up for years, and increased by alcoholic stimulation. If he hadn't been apprehended, there is no telling how many other victims of his lust and passion there might have been."
Using his professional knowledge combined with what Wilson revealed to him, he was finally able to complete his diagnosis, in which he confidently stated that "Today Wilson is a sadistic lust murderer, a sexual psychopath with a desire to kill which he is at times unable to control. Only due to the excellent work of the police department in promptly apprehending this man has the community been saved from other murders of this nature."
Afterwards, Wilson was returned to his cell and held incommunicado until his appearance before the grand jury. He was under constant guard so that he did not harm himself or try to escape.
Were there other attacks by Wilson?
As detectives, scarcely able to mask their aversion for the murder-suspect, perfected their evidence for grand jury consideration, requests poured in from authorities over the country asking for check-outs on Wilson's movements at the time of similar mutilation murders in their cities. These included the fiendish slayings in Texas, St Louis, Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Bernardino and San Diego.
Los Angeles police received a request from Tulsa, OK authorities to question Wilson concerning his whereabouts on Jan 14, 1943, when Mrs Luzila Stewart and her daughter, Mrs Georgia Green, were slain in a manner similar to the crimes in Los Angeles, in which they were left beaten and mutilated. At the time, this was one of the most fiendish of Tulsa's unsolved crimes. Wilson denied he was implicated in the mutilation murders of a Tulsa Oklahoma woman and her daughter, saying "I wouldn't lie to you, what's the point?" He declared that he had not been out of California since 1941 except for a two weeks café job in Las Vegas during the winter of 1943.
He also denied the brutal slaying on Oct 3, 1943 in Los Angeles of Mrs. Hattie Brady, 75, who was found raped and disfigured in an alley in the same area as where Mrs. Griffin and Betty Crosby were found slain. He also denied the strangulation of Loretta Robinson, 23, who was burned and mutilated in a Los Angeles skid row hotel on August 5. 1943. Maintained, after more than twenty-four hours of questioning, that he had no knowledge of the violent slayings of four other women.
On Jan 5, 1942, Wilson's wife signed a divorce decree a vinculo matrimonii, this notice was published in a Baltimore, Maryland newspaper, probably where she was stationed as a navy nurse.
Police had learned Wilson had been identified through photographs at Fresno as the man who in 1942 slugged and sexually assaulted a 15 year old Minneapolis girl, now in California with her serviceman-husband. Wilson was questioned to account for his whereabouts March 26, 1942, when Mrs. Lee Davidson, said she was struck on the head by a man who entered her home and whose appearance, she declared was identical with Wilson's. First glimpsing Wilson's photo in the paper, she told Det Sgt SG Vind of Fresno that the attack in 1942 sent her to a Minneapolis hospital with a skull fracture and concussion of the brain. Sgt Vind sais that he also learned by checking with Minneapolis, that a series of other assaults on women occurred there about the same time. After some checking, police expressed doubt that Wilson had ever left southern California after being discharged from the navy in 1941. According to the killer's statement, he was working in a café on Colorado Street in downtown Pasadena, on or about the time Mrs. Lee Davidson says she was attacked in Minneapolis.
He was arrested at a downtown hotel in Los Angeles on March 25, 1943, on suspicion of rape after a woman, Celeste Krueger of Second Street, complained that Wilson grabbed her by the throat as she was ascending stairs to her hotel room. Her screams caused him to flee. Coincidentally, the hotel was only a block from where Mrs. Johnson's body had been found a year later. When he was subsequently captured, six days later, he pleaded guilty and the charge was reduced to simple battery for which he was sentenced to 90 days in jail, 30 of which were suspended. He was released when the woman refused to press charges.
On March 14, 1944, he was arrested on suspicion of burglary and turned over to county authorities. On March 31, 1944, he began a nine month sentence and was released on good behavior in October of 1944. His record also showed that he was held for four days early October 1944 as a suspected room prowler, later released because of insufficient evidence.
He was also questioned for a possible connection to an unsolved murder of Georgette Bauerdorf, a 20 year old heiress from New York, then living on Fountain Ave in Los Angeles. She was strangled, and her body left floating in her water-filled bathtub. He was ruled out of the Bauerdorf slaying as detectives pointed out the differenced in the crimes, especially the fact that Miss Bauerdorf was not slashed or cut. They said Wilson had denied he was implicated. "I don't know anything about it. I'm making a clear breast of everything," he told police detective Lieutenant RF McGarry, "I never killed those other women." He then "dummied up" and refused to talk, his chief concern was still whether he could escape the lethal gas chamber by pleading insanity.
Police records show that Wilson could not have committed the October 11 Bauerdorf murder as he was in jail on suspicion of burglary following his arrest four days earlier, police said.
Det Lt. Harry Hansen said that Wilson had not been connected with any other crimes so far as present knowledge of his whereabouts was concerned. They had learned that he had reported to the sheriff's parole officer only four days before Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Griffin were brutally killed at his hands.
Background on the Victims:
The two women who Wilson confessed to murdering were pictured by friends and neighbors as having lived in two distinctly different environments.
Mrs. Griffin:
Mrs. Virginia "Virgie" Lee Griffin, the first victim, lived in a quiet and apparently happy home with her husband, Homer L. Griffin, 26., truck driver for the Western Truck Lines, at 1934 E. 70th St. When Lts. H. L. Hansen and RF McGarry entered the Griffin apartment, the first object to meet their eyes was a note written on a memo pad and propped up on a writing desk. It was from Griffin and addressed to his wife and read: "Lee, (his wife's middle name), I had to go out. Went to Phoenix, Ariz, Will see you when I get back if you're still here. Homer." The two room apartment was in some disarray with the bed unmade and clothes folded and placed upon chairs. Drawers and closets were filled with clothes of good quality. The comfortable two room furnished apartment is one of three remodeled from a one story dwelling. There was nothing to indicate that Mrs. Griffin had not expected to return. No bags were packed and the dresser was filled with her lingerie.
Mrs. Betty Wilkins, a neighbor who resided in another of the small apartments, said the Griffins had moved in nine months ago. "they were a fine couple and seemed to get along fine, she said. "They were quiet and I never heard any parties going on there. Apparently they had few visitors. They seemed just a normal young couple who got along very well with each other." Check stubs found by police indicated Griffin earned from $70 to $80 a week as a truck driver and crane operator. Mr. Griffin, visited the Homicide Bureau upon learning of his wife's death. While his wife was consorting with her murder, Griffin was driving home from Blythe. He said he returned from a Phoenix trip on Tues the 14th but did not go home until the next day, when he was told what had happened. "We had been married for eight years. I loved her very much and worked hard to give her nice things. She drank considerably and sometimes would stay away from home - because she said she was lonesome when I was off on a trip."
Detectives quoted Griffin as saying he had pleaded with his wife for two years to give up drinking. "I pleased with her to stop drinking - but I never knew she was doing anything...like that." He burst into weeping at one point, recovering to clench his fists and exclaim: "If you just leave me with that guy for about five minutes - I'll save the State a lot of money and trouble!" Mr. Griffin viewed his wife's remains at the morgue for official identification.
On the same day of Wilson's inquest for the murders, Mrs. Griffin was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park after funeral services for her were conducted in the Little Church of the Flowers by Rev. Earl O'Dell of the Pentecostal Church. Born in Oklahoma in 1918, she had lived in California for three years. In addition to her husband Homer, she left a foster mother, two sisters and three brothers.
Mrs. Johnson:
Lillian Johnson was born in Strawberry Point, Iowa on 10 Aug 1896 as Betty Bea Adams, to Henry E Adams and Clara J (Tobias) Adams. She was 48 when she died. She was the wife of Ralph Charles Johnson, 40, merchant seaman. According to police records, also being known under various aliases as Betty Bea Adams, Lillian B Olson, Betty Crosby (starting in Jan 1939), Lillian Smith and Bonnie Parker as well as Lillian Johnson. Files revealed she had a long police record, 72 arrests and 20 convictions on charges ranging from Oakland, Salinas, San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Salem Oregon, and in Sacramento. Most of them involved check charges, intoxication, soliciting, there was one sanity allegation and a few vagrancy charge and was known to police as a habitue of skid row bars. This explained why she had used so many aliases. Mr. Johnson was shipped out to the Pacific from San Francisco a week before the murders.
During the past few years, Mrs. Johnson had divided her time between Los Angeles, Sacramento and the Compton trailer home of David Hasen, 74, uncle of her first husband, at 111 North Mona St. Mrs. Johnson was pictured by Hasen as having lived a hard and precarious existence over the past few years. She had been a waitress when she worked, he said. "I met her about four years ago in Sacramento," said Hasen. "She was a waitress there and when I got to talking to her I discovered she had been married to my nephew, a boy I had never seen, named Olson. Then I moved here to Compton and she stayed with me off and on. Her present husband is a merchant seaman and he sailed out of San Francisco a week ago. She was down here to visit me just yesterday afternoon and seemed all broken up about it." About two months prior to her murder, Mrs. Johnson had moved to a room at 114 West 14th Street, Los Angeles, Hasen said. He had seen her several times since then.
Mrs. Johnson was cremated.
Inquest:
The jury took the case for a hearing on Nov 21, 1944. The inquest was attended by an overflow crowd.
District Attorney Fred N. Howser asked the Grand Jury to take immediate action on the double-murder as next order of business. The autopsy report of more than 700 words - described by coroner's aides as the longest autopsy report in Los Angeles inquest history - was ready at the inquest. It pictured the knife and razor-blade mutilation of the two victims. The coroner's surgeon found that Mrs. Griffin's death was the cause of multiple stab wounds through the neck and thorax, instead of by choking as Wilson claimed. An autopsy performed on Mrs Johnson had confirmed she had died by strangulation as Wilson correctly confessed. Chemical analysis showed Mrs. Griffin's body contained 0.2 of 1% alcohol and Mrs. Johnson's 0.35 of 1%. This, officials said, indicated advanced intoxication.Throughout the inquiry, Wilson sat by a window, his gaze still mostly fixed on the floor. Two sheriff's deputies stood by Wilson to prevent any possible escape attempts through the open window. Wilson declined to take the stand in his defense. Wilson exhibited fear of the huge crowd thronging the courtroom and the corridors. Scores of curious outside the ground-floor inquest room peered through the open window at Wilson, feeling like an exotic zoo exhibit, scowled and angrily asked the crowd, "What am I - a wild animal!"
Police played the discs that contained the morbid recordings of Wilson's eerie confession. Gasps were audibly heard. Unbeknownst until that moment, the public had not been aware that Wilson had devoured parts of his victims in a cannibalistic revelry. This proved to be too much for the spectating crowd inside and out was in an uproar, shouting insulting words at him and demanding he be held accountable for his heinous acts.
During the inquest, the jury was shown two photos of the callously mutilated bodies. They heard the casual admittance by the killer in his own voice. They learned the details of the autopsy findings and saw the horror inflicted on the victims. After careful deliberation, their verdict was read and Wilson was indicted on two counts of first degree murder.
A petrified Wilson told the six sheriff's deputies who were guarding him, "stand between me and all those people" to protect him from the hostile crowd. The Deputies had to clear the corridor before taking the suspect back to jail.
At the end of the trial, the two autopsy photos of the bodies, given to jurors before they returned their verdict, were missing. At a police request, one embarrassed juror pulled one out of his pocket. The other was retrieved from the pocket of a juror who was searched. One juror confessed sheepishly that "I wanted to give them further examination later on."
Not a Monster?
A day after the inquest, Wilson was bitterly resentful of the terms the press had used in describing him as a "Monster", "Jack the Ripper", "Vampire Killer", "Butcher", and other horror terms. He was annoyed at what the crowd had shouted at him. He complained to the press, "Is that a fair way to treat a man? I don't want you people to say nothin about - about that. I don't know what happened. I don't know what caused me to do it. I don't want to talk about it." He said he just wanted to go back to his cell and be "let alone." He said, "I'm not trying to duck anything; I just don't want to talk any more. I can't talk about it. I don't remember. It's all vague and confused."Trying to show some sort of proof of his innocence, he showed a letter he had received from a sister he said he had not seen for 18 years. "In it she explains a lot of stuff about my background. It answers all the questions you've been asking me," Wilson volunteered. Frances had wrote him a sympathetic letter which he shared with newspaper men:
"Honey, I'm not writing this to you but to the little boy I saw so long ago. The little boy with such splendid ideas, the little boy who hoped to rise above the filth and sordidness into which he was born. Honey, that little boy has committed no crime. No, honey, it was the father and mother rotting in the torments of hell that committed the crime. A drunken father and a thing we called mother, letting five little babies shift for themselves. Hungry and cold, wandering the streets all hours of the night. Finally one ending up n prison, then the other one going. Yes, honey, that was the heritage left us. Five little dirty kids growing up, going out in the world, trying so desperately to overcome our heritage. But you, honey, you took the hardest slap of all. You struggled so hard to get to the top only to find you couldn't go over the top. You couldn't even stay at the top because of things that happened while you were still a baby. That was a cruel blow, honey. Heritage is something you have to fight all your life, but honey, in a weak moment you forgot to fight. But, honey, we here do not think of you as committing a crime. We only pour our love out to you and pray. There isn't much more to say except I'd give anything in this world if I could take your place."
Pleads Innocent:
Dec 1, 1944, Wilson plead innocent and innocent by reason of insanity to charges that he killed and mutilated the two women on Nov 15. Three alienists were appointed to determine the foundation of his insanity plea. Trial was set for Jan 8, 1945. An alienist on Jan 30, reported that Wilson was sane, after examining the 31 year old waiter. "He is cruel and without shame, honor or remorse," said the report of Dr. Charles E. Sisson, one of three court-appointed alienists, to the district attorney's office. He also reported that Wilson admitted pleasure in vampirism. His assigned Public Defender William Neeley appeared meanwhile before Superior Judge William R. McKay and asked a continuance of Wilson's trial until Feb 20 to permit further study of the accused's background.
On Feb 20, 1945, Wilson plead insanity and his trial was set for June 18, 1945 before Superior Judge Edward R. Brand. Wilson's two pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity were entered before Superior Judge William R. McKay. Wilson appeared in court with Deputy Public Defender William B. Neeley.
May 8, 1945, Wilson was denied a motion for a new trial by the state supreme court. Wilson, who was on death row at San Quentin, asked for a new trial on the grounds that lower courts should have found him not guilty by reason of insanity.
June 18, 1945, Wilson pleaded innocent by reason of insanity as he faced trial for the murders. Public defender Neeley said he based his sole hope for acquittal on the contention Wilson was insane when he slashed the women to death. District Attorney Herbert V. Walker disclosed that three state alienists had adjudged Wilson to be legally sane.
June 20, 1945, Wilson was described as "a pyschopathic personality" who "daydreamed constantly of choking a woman and cutting her up, consuming her, and drinking her blood," said Dr. Glyn Meyers, a psychiatrist, revealed that Wilson had confessed these ideas to him. Meyers went on to say that Wilson, had "for years carried on in life with a growing fantasy in mind that separated him from all other people." Dr Meyers said on numerous occasions, Wilson admitted that he would finger a knife concealed in his pocket and murderously stare at women on the street. Strangely, Wilson had smiled happily when Dr. Meyers said that the defendant "told me that he wanted to be sent to the gas chamber." Perhaps this was a ruse to make the court think he must be insane if he actually wanted to die in the gas chamber, as opposed to a sane person who would be fighting against it. It was revealed that Wilson's estranged wife, the navy nurse, had told naval authorities that Wilson "on several occasions cut her with a knife", a court deposition revealed. Despite several days of testimonies heard in court, the jury found Wilson sane at the time of the murders and the death penalty was upheld.
Death Sentence:
On July 14, 1945, he was taken to San Quentin prison to sit on its death row along with seventeen other condemned men. The night before he was transferred to the prison, he wrote a lamenting letter, a snippet of its contents revealed by prison officials who had to read all incoming and outgoing prisoner mail. Wilson likely feeling remorse only because he got caught, wrote in misery, "tomorrow I take my last ride. I sure wish I'd been good!"
October 10, 1945, Wilson was one of two of the 15 men on death row at San Quentin declined to take part in a hunger strike, probably hoping to make himself look good for his upcoming appeal.
No 22, 1945, transcripts in the automatic appeal from the death penalty against Wilson, had been filed with the State Supreme Court by the county clerk.
May 7, 1946, his good behavior ruse had not worked in his favor, as the California Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence. The high court pointed out that 4 of the 6 psychiatrists consulted had adjudged him sane and that the lower court had properly convicted him.
"The background of the defendant, as related by him to the psychiatrists who examined him, is as follows:
Defendant was born in Shelbyville, Indiana, in 1910. He has three or four sisters and two brothers living and he believes them to be responsible people. His father died when he was five years of age and defendant was then placed in an orphanage. He saw his mother, who had remarried, on only a couple of occasions thereafter, and she died when he was about 12 or 13 years of age. Defendant attended grammar and high school at the orphanage and was graduated at the age of 19. He enlisted in the United States Navy in August, 1930, and advanced to the rank of pharmacist's mate, second class, and was discharged on January 9, 1941. At about 24 or 25 years of age, he began to drink alcoholic beverages but claimed that he did not often drink to excess up to a year or so prior to the time here involved.
Defendant did not mix well with people and as a child and as an adult was alone much of the time. As a youth he did a great deal of daydreaming which later changed to fantasies of more adult character. Both in childhood and later his daydreaming was about girls, women, and anatomical characteristics of the body. In recent years certain fantasies of cruelty entered into his daydreams, such as choking a woman, cutting her up, eating parts of her body, and drinking her blood. He claimed that such fantasies were so strong that there was a considerable force to them toward putting them into effect, and he thought seriously of doing so, but always refrained because of a certain control of himself by reason of the consequences.
Defendant had no contacts with girls while in the orphanage but his outside contacts and those in later life left him with the impression that girls did not consider and treat him the same as other men and, because of this feeling, he developed a certain bitterness toward them which accentuated his sadistic tendencies."
In 1937, he married a Navy nurse and they separated about three years later when she turned him in to the naval hospital for mental observation. The circumstance which led to her action was his hitting her on the chin and pulling a butcher knife out of his robe, causing her to make her escape through a bathroom window. She charged: "(1) that her husband is a homosexual; (2) that he was "sexcrazed, insane on the subject, and has suggested that she assist in the sadistic mutilation of a girl by cutting off her breasts and clitoris'; (3) that he has been drinking constantly and to excess; (4) that his actions had been threatening toward her; (5) that he has threatened suicide; (6) that he has been mentally confused on at least two occasions, often moody, depressed, restless, irritable, with definite personality change in the past year."
The statement of the examining neuropsychiatrist at the naval hospital was that there was no obvious psychosis but that the question of sexual psychopathy, homosexuality, and perversion with express sadistic tendencies of a criminal nature was so serious in its implication that prolonged observation and study were necessary. He was discharged on January 9, 1941, as a "C.P.S. Sexual Psychopath. Not recommended for reenlistment." His wife secured a divorce in 1942.
After discharge from the Navy, defendant worked in restaurants and as a laborer. He worked at no one place for more than two months. His previous criminal record consists of a conviction of battery (charge changed from attempted rape) and a conviction of second degree burglary, for which he served short jail terms. He has also been arrested two or three times for intoxication. He was on parole at the time he committed the offenses herein considered. Defendant indulged in homosexual practices and had sexual relations with a number of different women over a period of years. He is afflicted with syphilis which was first detected in 1942, but it is not of such an advanced stage as to affect him mentally.
At the trial seven psychiatrists testified upon the issue of defendant's sanity. They based their conclusions upon the facts and circumstances surrounding the killings, the historical background of defendant (both of which were related to the respective doctors by defendant and counsel on both sides substantially as set out above), certain physical and neurological tests and their conversation with and observation of defendant. Three psychiatrists produced by the defense testified that in their opinion defendant was legally insane when he committed the offenses. On the other hand, the remaining four psychiatrists, two of whom testified that they were appointed by the court, gave as their conclusion that he was a sexual psychopath but was at all times legally sane in the sense that he knew the difference between right and wrong and the nature and consequences of the acts committed by him.
It thus appears that but two questions were presented for determination in the trial court with respect to each count: (1) the question of the degree of the alleged murder to which defendant had entered his plea of guilty and (2) the question of defendant's sanity under his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
[1] With respect to the question of the degree of the crimes, the evidence concerning the activities of defendant during the two-day period, including the making of the hotel arrangements, the purchase of the knife, the commission of both offenses in much the same manner, and the making of obvious efforts to delay discovery of the crimes, shows a purposeful, calculating mind, acting with deliberation and premeditation and with a consciousness of guilt, and is sufficient to support the court's fixation of the degree of the murders as first degree. [2] With respect to the question of the sanity of the defendant, the evidence was conflicting but there was abundant evidence given by four of the psychiatrists to support the jury's finding that defendant was sane at the time of the commission of the offenses. The jury impliedly found, upon sufficient evidence and under full and fair instructions, that defendant knew the difference between right and wrong and knew the nature and consequences of the acts committed by him. [3] Under these circumstances, defendant is responsible in the eyes of the law for such acts, regardless of any perversion of his moral senses and regardless of his sadistic tendencies. (People v. French, 12 Cal.2d 720 [87 P.2d 1014]; People v. Walter, 7 Cal.2d 438 [60 P.2d 990]; People v. Troche, 206 Cal. 35 [273 P. 767].)
The judgments and order denying the motion for a new trial are affirmed."
Execution:
Sept 20, 1946, Wilson was executed in San Quentin prison's gas chamber for the murder of the two women. Wilson entered the lethal gas chamber at 10:04 am, cyanide pellets were dropped as Wilson sat calmly blindfolded and strapped in the chamber. He was pronounced dead 12 minutes later and 10:16am. Prison officials said he was calm, reconciled to his fate and "wanted to go." They stated Wilson slept only an hour, from 5:30am to 6:30am and took only a cup of coffee before he walked steadily from death row with Rev. Edward McAllister, Catholic chaplain, to the gas chamber. Relatives from Los Angeles claimed the body who had him buried at the Forest Hill Cemetery in Shelbyville, Indiana. His wife divorced him after the crimes.
Why?:
In retrospect, Wilson would have been termed an erotophonophiliac, in other words, a lust murderer. Erotophonophilia is the acting out of injurious behaviors by brutally and sadistically assailing the victim. These actions are undertaken to that the offender can achieve sexual satisfaction. Lust murderers are likely to repeat their crimes, making them serial in nature. If Wilson was not apprehended, he would definitely act out a third murder and continue until he was caught. Mutilation of body parts, especially the genitalia, represents a routine characteristic of this form of paraphilic deviance. The lust murderer harbors deep-seated, erotically charged fantasies in which his attacks and slayings sate, although incompletely and temporarily, the need for more sexual violence. These fantasies form a pattern which propels sexually compulsive acts of behavior. First, fantasy then in the form of conduct which results in assaults. Sexual arousal is involved in the fantasy and the offenders are increasingly motivated to act out the violet images in their minds. For these assailants, sexual enjoyment and erotic fulfillment depend on the amount of torture and mutilation they can inflict and upon their victims. The lust murder ultimately derives pleasure from sadistically killing others. They are motivated by a powerful and violet need for sexual satisfaction that can be sustained. Psychological or and or physical traumatic events occurring in the formative years of a person's life can function as triggering mechanisms, the increasingly violent fantasies can be fueled by such facilitators such as consuming alcohol, drugs or viewing pornography, especially in the realm of bdsm. We know that alcohol played a large part in the behavior of Wilson. He consumed it before and during the attacks.
Early childhood abuse, especially sexual abuse or molestation can form the spark for paraphilic behaviors, even producing revenge fantasies. Wilson had strong urges for this sort of behavior. The need to get revenge against the ones who hurt him the most, namely his mother. Each victim may have symbolically represented his mother in his mind. He also had the desire to consume his victim, whether it be her flesh or her blood. This is a paraphilia called anthrophagy, an intense desire to eat the flesh or body parts of another. Another paraphilia present in his behaviors was piquerism, which is the intense desire to stab, wound, or cut the flesh of another person. Often, these stab wounds or cuts are inflicted near the genitals or breasts in the act of lust killing. Another associated paraphilia is observed, necrosadism, which involves sexual contact with a dead body.
The offender is motivated by the need for ultimate sexual satisfaction, a good example of torture, either pre- or post- mortem, for the sole purpose of climax. The orgasm symbolizes the complete domination over the victim.
Wilson's attacks reveal many things about him. The first facet is his behavioral organization which has two elements: Affective or Cognitive which describes his aggression at the crime scene. His reveals more of the Cognitive trait. The second facet is Attachment, which has two elements: victim as vehicle and victim as object. These two elements describe the killer's personal and impersonal attachment to his victim and the importance that the victim's body has to the offender. His actions include mostly the Object, with some Vehicle traits.
Before the time of the murders, no one knew just how many "warning signs" Wilson had possessed that marked him at risk for becoming a killer. It is only after the murders occurred that we know his background and can recognize the red flags.
Marks can include:
- An abnormal mother-child bond - his sister claimed his mother was extremely neglectful and let her children go hungry, they weren't clothed properly, they were always dirty, she let them fend for themselves at a young age and let them wander streets all hours of the night, his mother remarried and he only saw her on a couple of occasions thereafter, she died when he was about age 12 or 13.
- An absent and/or abusive father - his sister claimed his father was a drunk, his father died when Wilson was 5 years old, as a result he was placed in an orphanage.
- Receiving physical and/or sexual abuse from a parent or family member - I would imagine the father was abusive when he was drunk. He may have had abuse in the orphanage or from a parent.
- Torturing and/or killing animals - we do not know if Wilson performed these acts
- Difficulties relating to peers and general antisocial behavior during adolescence - was shy and did not get along well with others. He said he had no contacts with girls while in the orphanage but his outside contacts and those in later life left him with the impression that girls did not consider and treat him the same as other men and, because of this feeling, he developed a certain bitterness toward them which accentuated his sadistic tendencies.
- Violet sexual fantasies involving specific others, usually women. - As a youth he did a great deal of daydreaming which later changed to fantasies of more adult character. Both in childhood and later his daydreaming was about girls, women, and anatomical characteristics of the body. In recent years certain fantasies of cruelty entered into his daydreams, such as choking a woman, cutting her up, eating parts of her body, and drinking her blood. He claimed that such fantasies were so strong that there was a considerable force to them toward putting them into effect, and he thought seriously of doing so, but always refrained because of a certain control of himself by reason of the consequences. His wife said that his "actions had been threatening toward her" and that he was "sexcrazed, insane on the subject, and has suggested that she assist in the sadistic mutilation of a girl by cutting off her breasts and clitoris"
- Sexual identity confusion - said he indulged in homosexual practices and had sexual relations with a number of different women over a period of years. His wife said "that her husband is a homosexual"
- Sociopathic/psychopathic patterns showing lack of guilt to remorse over actions - hit his wife on the chin and pulled a butcher knife out of his robe, causing her to make her escape through a bathroom window, casually confessed his murders. His previous criminal record consists of a conviction of battery (charge changed from attempted rape) and a conviction of second degree burglary, for which he served short jail terms. He has also been arrested two or three times for intoxication. He was on parole at the time he committed the offenses herein considered.
- Paranoid thinking that "someone is out to get me" - I do not have any evidence of this
- Domestic problems and/or getting fired from work - broken home, lived in orphanage, separated from siblings, never worked at a place for more than two months, he frequently changed jobs, was discharged from military, separated from wife
- Increasing social isolation. He did not mix well with people and as a child and as an adult was alone much of the time. His wife stated that he "has been mentally confused on at least two occasions, often moody, depressed, restless, irritable, with definite personality change in the past year." and that he "has been drinking constantly and to excess" and "he has threatened suicide."
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