Carl Panzram

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Carl Panzram

Carl Panzram (born June 28, 1891 in Minnesota , † September 5, 1930 in Leavenworth Federal Prison , Kansas ) was an American serial killer .

Life

Childhood and youth

Carl Panzram was born the son of Prussian immigrants on a farm in Polk County, according to other sources in neighboring Marshall County (Minnesota). Together with his siblings, five brothers and one sister, he had to work on the farm at a young age and hardly received the necessary attention from his parents. Even his brothers often beat him. In 1898, the father suddenly left the family and never returned. Without the “breadwinner” in the family and despite hard work, the Panzram family soon lived below the poverty line.

Panzram committed his first crime in 1902 when he was just 11 years old. He broke into a neighboring house and stole a handgun . When his brothers saw the theft and found him with the gun, they almost beat him to death. The act also had legal consequences when Panzram was arrested for it and, on October 11, 1903, was admitted to the Minnesota State Training School at Red Wing , an institution for juvenile offenders that housed up to 300 boys between the ages of 10 and 20 . On the day of his arrival at school, Panzram is said to have been sexually abused by a prison director in his office, if his later statements are to be believed.

In the months that followed, Panzram learned to read on the one hand, which he could hardly be able to do on the family farm, but on the other hand had to experience the merciless severity of teachers and school principals. He also learned to lie and told the teachers what they wanted to hear. If Panzram or one of his classmates resisted the orders, they were beaten with wooden slats and other objects or, in some cases, abused. He was secretly contemplating revenge, which found its outlet on the night of July 7, 1905, when he started a fire in a shed attached to the school. While Panzram was laughing in his bed, much of the school building burned down. Nobody was injured while putting out the fire; However, no one could determine the arsonist either.

In the fall of 1905, Panzram was discharged from school and returned home to the farm. Since one of his brothers had drowned, Carl had to help his mother, who was in bad health. He also began to attend classes in a school from January 1906. Here he almost committed his first murder. When his teacher hit him with a wooden slat after an argument, Panzram organized a gun and entered his school with the intention of killing his teacher. But the gun fell out of his pants on the class floor in front of the teacher, so that the assassination attempt failed. Panzram was expelled from school. Two weeks after the attempted murder, in early February 1906, the 14-year-old Panzram said goodbye to home and began his long journey.

First offenses

Panzram's first destination was Montana . He traveled through the Midwest as a “ stowaway ” in a cattle wagon and kept afloat financially by stealing. In the first phase of his escape, he is said to have been sexually abused by a group of homeless men, too.

In the summer of 1906 Panzram was in Butte arrested (Montana) for burglary and sentenced to imprisonment of one year in the Montana State Reform School in Miles City ( Custer County sentenced). Since the 14-year-old was already physically very similar to an adult, he soon enjoyed the reputation of a criminal among the young inmates and the guards. It was here that Panzram committed his first documented homicide when he knocked down a guard who had repeatedly beaten him with a wooden slat. As a punishment, he had to spend some time in solitary confinement.

In 1907 Panzram managed to escape Miles City with another inmate, Jimmie Benson. With Benson as an accomplice, he broke into an arms warehouse in Terry , a small town in Prairie County , and captured some weapons. In the coming weeks Panzram and Benson left a trail of destruction along the American-Canadian border, as they broke into shops several times and razed buildings, especially churches, with fire. In Fargo ( North Dakota ), the two parted, not realizing that they would meet again in a few years. To shake off the police who suspected Panzram behind him, he returned to Montana in 1907 and, although still a minor, enlisted in the United States Army in Helena .

He was then transferred to Fort William Henry Harrison in Lewis and Clark County in December 1907 , where he was used as an infantryman . But the army with its discipline was not the right thing for Panzram, as he often attracted attention through insubordination and disregarded orders. In April 1908, after only four months in the army, he broke into a quartermaster's quarters and stole around $ 90 worth of clothing. He then attempted desertion to commit, but was caught by the police and jailed. On April 20, 1908, there was a brief trial in a military court in which Panzram was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. The then Secretary of War and future US President William Howard Taft signed Panzram's judgment .

Military prisoners, regardless of which state they came from, served their sentences in the United States Military Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. In a cattle wagon and with little water and food, Panzram was sent with a group of other inmates on the 1,000 mile route. In early May 1908 the train arrived in Leavenworth, where Panzram again did not reveal his real age of 17 and made himself older. Therefore, like his fellow prisoners, he had to do hard physical labor in a quarry. He wore 24 hours a day, a 50 pounds (about 23 kg) iron ball on the leg. There was absolute silence during the work, which was to be done 10 hours a day, seven days a week. If a prisoner spoke, they would be beaten and then put in solitary confinement. This also happened to Carl Panzram more than once. As in the Minnesota juvenile detention center, he set fire to a workshop one night, causing $ 100,000 in damage. Although Panzram often thought of escape, it was impossible at Leavenworth, as the walls were 40 feet (12 meters) high and had a foundation of 20 feet (6 meters).

Panzram was released from Leavenworth in 1910 because of good leadership.

Panzram's actions

After Panzram's release from Leavenworth, his life can only be reconstructed fragmentarily over a period of almost a year. What is certain is that he traveled by train as a "stowaway" through all southwestern US states. To keep himself afloat financially, he broke into apartment buildings and stole everything he could get hold of. He also set fire to fields and blooming fields, especially in summer, and thus destroyed the livelihoods of numerous farmers. In order to confuse the police, he repeatedly assumed different identities. That's why not Carl Panzram, but a certain Jeff Baldwin was arrested for burglary in Rusk , Texas . But Panzram was able to escape from the poorly secured district court of Cherokee County after just a few days . He also managed to escape from prison in Fresno ( California ), where he should have served a sentence of six months in the summer of 1911 under the pseudonym Jefferson Davis for stealing a bicycle. After only 30 days he was able to escape and fled north. When he encountered a group of other stowaways in a freight wagon, he forced them to hand over their valuables at gunpoint, raped one of them and threw the group off the moving train to certain death.

Although Panzram was certainly able to escape successfully from other prisons, only his escapes from The Dalles ( Oregon ) and Harrison ( Idaho ) are documented. In the spring of 1913 he was arrested for serious robbery in Chinook , Montana , and sentenced on April 27, 1913 to a year imprisonment in Deer Lodge prison. It was here that Panzram met Jimmie Benson again, the young man with whom he had fled the Miles City juvenile detention center seven years earlier. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for bank robbery. Although the two planned to break out together, it did not materialize because Benson had recently been moved to another prison. Panzram single-handedly undertook a successful breakout on November 13, 1913. But barely a week later, under the name of Jeff Rhodes , he committed another break- in in Three Forks, Montana, during which he was arrested and sent back to Deer Lodge. As a result of his escape and his renewed break-in, Panzram's prison sentence was extended by another year. Panzram had no choice but to serve his sentence to the last day, after which he was released on March 30, 1915.

The great escape

Panzram continued his raid along the Columbia River for the next two months, reaching Oregon in the early summer of 1915 . Here he broke into a house in Astoria on the night of June 1, 1915 and stole clothing and other items valued at just US $ 20 ($ 524 adjusted for inflation based on today's value). Later, when he tried to sell a stolen watch in order to get some money, he was arrested again. After a deal with the district attorney in which Panzram pleaded guilty of robbery, he was sentenced to seven years in prison in Salem prison. Under the false name Jefferson Baldwin , he began his sentence on June 24, 1915.

The Oregon State Penitentiary was considered one of the most feared and toughest prisons in the US Northwest. The director, a former sheriff named Harry Minto, treated the prisoners with severe severity. If any of them spoke the wrong word, they would be beaten, often whipped, put in solitary confinement or hung from a beam with their hands on their backs for days. Panzram, too, had to feel this severity on his own body when, on January 1, 1916, he had to hang on the same beam for 10 hours a day for two days in a row for refusing to give orders. When the guards discovered a latte at Panzram on February 27, 1916, which Panzram could have misused as a weapon, Panzram was put in solitary confinement for three weeks with bread and water. When Panzram set fire to three buildings in the prison complex in revenge, solitary confinement was extended to 61 days. In the spring of 1917 he helped his fellow inmate Otto Hooker escape from prison. When Hooker murdered prison director Harry Minto in Albany in September 1917, prison conditions were tightened.

After several failed attempts to escape, Panzram managed to escape on September 18, 1917. After a few days, he was spotted on the street in Linn County by a prison guard and arrested after a brief firefight. Panzram was brought back to Salem and, after being beaten almost to death, put in solitary confinement. Surprisingly, however, a few months later, on May 12, 1918, Panzram managed to escape again.

Panzram becomes a serial killer

John O'Leary , as Panzram was now called, settled in New Haven in the US state of Connecticut from the summer of 1920 . He broke into several homes again, including a house on Whitney Avenue in August 1920 . A handgun fell into his hands with the name William H. Taft engraved on it. Panzram had just entered the house of former US President William Howard Taft , the man who had sent him to Leavenworth in 1907 as Secretary of War at the time. Taft now taught as a professor at Yale University .

Panzram's "Revier" was now the US east coast, especially the New York borough of Manhattan , where he also hunted prey and in this way got clothes, jewelry, money and weapons. With the looted money he bought a yacht , the Akista , with which he was traveling along the East River and Long Island Sound between New York State and Connecticut and robbed houseboats and yachts. On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he also noticed the many homeless and often unemployed sailors, some of whom he invited to join the Akista . If they had worked for Panzram and were waiting for payment, the latter made them compliant with alcohol, raped them and finally murdered them. He let the corpses disappear either in the river or in the Atlantic with a stone on their necks . An exact number of Panzrams victims can no longer be given today; in later interrogations he stated that in the summer of 1920 he only murdered three men. On one of these tours, in late August 1920, he nearly died when the Akista hit a rock and sank . Two sailors who would otherwise have killed Panzram a short time later, like Panzram, were able to save themselves ashore on the coast of New Jersey .

In the fall of 1920, Panzram was arrested for burglary in Bridgeport , Connecticut , and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. After a few months, in the spring of 1921, he routinely managed to escape from prison.

Panzram, who was looking for adventure, then found work at the Sinclair Oil Company , a company that drilled for oil in Angola , among other places . Panzram therefore went on board a ship with the destination Africa in the early summer of 1921 . Shortly after arriving in the city of Luanda, he raped and killed an African boy of about 11 years. Panzram then settled in a fishing village in the Angolan province of Benguela . Although the authorities accused him of murdering the boy, they could not prove it to him. With money he was able to persuade six local men to accompany him on a crocodile hunt. Little did they know that Panzram would murder them in cold blood in the seclusion of the jungle and throw them to the crocodiles to eat. He also raped and killed other men and boys along the Congo River ; some of them were barely eleven years old. After a few months in Africa, he had earned so much money through robbery that he returned to the United States via the Canary Islands and Portugal in the summer of 1922. Panzram now knew how easy it was to kill people and wanted to put this knowledge into practice in his home country.

In New York, Panzram renewed his captaincy license and shortly afterwards stole a yacht that brought him to Massachusetts via Rhode Island . In Salem on the afternoon of July 18, 1922, he met one of the few victims whose name is known today, 12-year-old George Henry McMahon. A friend sent him to a shop to get milk. Panzram claims to have grabbed the defenseless child by the arm and raped him several times over a period of three hours. Then he smashed its skull with a stone. Although shortly afterwards two Salem residents passed the scene and noticed the stranger, Panzram was able to escape unmolested. George McMahon's body was not discovered until three days later, on July 21, 1922. The murder, however, could not be resolved for six years.

In the spring of 1923, Panzram bought an apartment in Westchester County (New York) under the name John O'Leary . He took a job as a night watchman at a company on Yonkers Avenue , where he met 15-year-old George Walosin, who was an unskilled worker at the plant. He gained the boy's trust and convinced him that anal intercourse was good for him. It so happened that Panzram first sexually abused Walosin on June 25, 1923 on his yacht, but left him alive. Panzram's plan was that Walosin should also abuse and kill men. The youth was given a lesson on the evening of June 27, 1923 when Panzram murdered a young man in Walosin's presence. The next day, June 28, 1923, Walosin was supposed to single-handedly kill a person, which the boy felt unable to do. Rather, he went to the police in Poughkeepsie and accused Panzram of sexually abusing him. Walosin also revealed the murder of the unknown man to investigators. After an intensive, brief investigation, the handcuffs clicked for Panzram on the morning of June 29, 1923 in Nyack . An attempt to escape from Yonkers prison on the night of July 2, 1923 by Panzram and a cellmate named Fred Dederoff was thwarted by the guards at the last moment. Panzram was assigned a criminal defense attorney named Cashin, whom Panzram pleaded to be released on bail. As a reward, he offered Cashin the yacht, which he claims was worth about $ 10,000. As hoped, Panzram was released from prison after a few days and left immediately. When Cashin tried to register the yacht in his name, it turned out that it had been stolen, and it was confiscated. Panzram had betrayed his own lawyer.

A few weeks later, on the night of August 26, 1923, Panzram broke into a railway depot in the community of Larchmont , where he stole valuables and money from passengers' suitcases. But he was caught red-handed by a night watchman named Richard Grube and immediately arrested. The next day, John O'Leary , as Panzram was called, was given bail of $ 5,000 and then sent to Westchester County Jail. On the drive to jail, Panzram stated that he was an inmate who had escaped from Oregon; he should also have served a 17-year prison term for the murder of a police officer. He also bragged about what he had done. The New York authorities contacted their Oregon counterparts, who confirmed Panzram's information on August 29, 1923. Panzram was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years and came in October 1923 in the prison in Dannemora ( Clinton County ), about 10 miles from the Canadian border. Here, too, Panzram put plans to destroy into practice by setting fire to a building in the prison complex and attempting to murder a law enforcement officer. In a failed escape attempt, Panzram injured himself so badly that his broken hip had to be treated in an operation. Panzram spent the last two years and four months of his sentence in solitary confinement after sexually abusing a fellow inmate. In July 1928, after five years, Panzram was released.

The process

After dozens burglaries and at least one murder in Baltimore ( Maryland ) reached Panzram the federal capital Washington, DC Again, he was arrested for a burglary and jailed repeatedly. It was here that Panzram met the 26-year-old Jewish law enforcement officer Henry Lesser, who asked Panzram what crimes he had committed. In the coming weeks Panzram Lesser revealed his whole life story, which he also noted. A kind of friendship developed between the men, as Lesser provided Panzram with cigarettes and food and Panzram provided the young man with a story that lasted 20,000 words. Panzram not only made confessions in numerous murder cases, but also openly criticized the US judicial system, which had turned him into a criminal at the beginning of his life.

On October 29, 1928 Panzram was the murder of the 14-year-old Alexander Uszacke of Philadelphia ( Pennsylvania ) accused, whom he also confessed. The murder of 12-year-old George McMahon in 1922 and the renewed escape from prison in Oregon could now also be proven. In the fall of 1928 there was a brief trial in Washington, which resulted in a guilty verdict on November 12, 1928. Panzram was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for murder and an additional 10 years for burglary. Panzram left the courthouse with a grin on his face.

Panzram's death

On February 1, 1929, Panzram arrived again in Leavenworth, where he had already served a prison sentence almost two decades earlier. Since he didn't want to work with the other prisoners in the quarry, he asked for a job that he could be alone. Panzram's request was approved and he joined the prison laundry. Here he was placed under the law enforcement officer Robert Warnke, but with Panzram he got into an argument almost every day because this prisoner, especially Panzram, warned the prisoners about minor violations of the regulations and reported them to the guards. Panzram also spent several days in solitary confinement by order of Warnke. It so happened that on June 20, 1929, Panzram knocked Warnke down with an iron bar without saying a word. Warnke died on the spot due to a fractured skull.

Panzram was tried on April 14, 1930. After only 45 minutes of deliberation, the jury reached its verdict - death by hanging . On death row , Panzram also met one of Kansas' most famous inmates, Robert Stroud , who later became known beyond US borders as the Birdman of Alcatraz .

Panzram spent the last months of his life communicating in writing with Henry Lesser in Washington. In this way Lesser completed his later biography of Panzram.

On the morning of September 5, 1930, shortly before 6:00 a.m., Panzram climbed the 12 steps of the gallows to receive his sentence. His last words were:

“Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill ten men while you're fooling around! "

“Yes, hurry up, you backwoods bastard! I could kill ten men while you dawdle! "

- Carl Panzram : quote. after Panzram: A Journal of Murder (1970).

Panzram was pronounced dead by prison doctor Justin Fuller at 6:18 a.m. Since Panzram had no relatives, his body was buried in Leavenworth Prison Cemetery.

Carl Panzram's exact number of victims can only be estimated today. 22 people who Panzram murdered on his long journey are confirmed.

literature

Movie

Sources and further reading

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas E. Gaddis and James O. Long (1970): Killer: A Journal of Murder . Macmillan, New York.
personal data
SURNAME Panzram, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Polk County , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH 5th September 1930
Place of death Leavenworth Federal Prison , Kansas