Charles Ray Hatcher

Charles Ray Hatcher (born July 16, 1929 in Mound City , Missouri , † December 7, 1984 in Jefferson City , Missouri) was an American serial killer . He confessed to murdering 16 people between 1969 and 1982. Its victims were mainly children and adolescents.

childhood

Charles Ray Hatcher was born in Mound City , Missouri , 34 miles north of Saint Joseph in 1929 , the youngest of four boys. His father was a convicted convict and addicted to alcohol. At school he was bullied by his classmates and as a result he used violence against them himself. In the spring of 1935, the family's life changed suddenly. Five-year-old Charles and his brothers fly a kite using a copper cable from an old Ford Model T. Elder Arthur held the end of it in his hand when the kite touched a high-voltage power line and was dead on the spot. His parents' marriage soon fell apart and his mother married several times in a short period of time. Ten years after the accident in 1945, he moved to Saint Joseph with his mother and her third husband, where he got his first job at a bowling alley. But he did not manage to do the same job for a long time and changed it several times over the years.

First offenses

In 1947, he committed his first known crime when he stole a truck from his employer. He was released and given a two-year suspended sentence. After he was convicted of car theft again a year later , he went to the Missouri State Penitentiary for two years , from which he was released on June 8, 1949, after just over a year. He was returned to custody a few months later for forging a $ 10 check at a gas station in Maryville , Missouri . He fled the institution on March 18, 1951, but was arrested shortly afterwards for an attempted theft and was given two years additional prison term. He was released on July 14, 1954. A short time later he was sentenced again to four years imprisonment in a Ray County prison for car theft , but since he attempted to escape before the trial, he received a further two years' sentence. On March 18, 1959, Hatcher was released.

Just one month after his release, he again committed a criminal offense when he tried to kidnap the 16-year-old newspaper delivery man Steven Pellham in Saint Joseph and threatened him with a butcher's knife. Pellham refused to be intimidated and reported the incident, and Hatcher was stopped and arrested by police in a stolen vehicle. This time he was sentenced to five years in prison at the Missouri State Penitentiary. While waiting to be transferred to it, he tried unsuccessfully to escape from Buchanan County Jail. Upon arriving at the Missouri State Penitentiary, he boasted that he was the most notorious criminal in northwest Missouri since Jesse James . While in detention, he took a job in the prison kitchen.

Series of murders

Charles Ray Hatcher committed what is believed to be his first murder on July 2, 1961, while he was still an inmate at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Fellow inmate Jerry Tharrington, 26, was found raped and stabbed to death on the floor of the loading ramp leading to the prison kitchen, and Hatcher was the only missing employee at the time. He was sent to solitary confinement, but no charges were brought against him for lack of evidence. During this time he wrote a message demanding psychiatric treatment. The psychologist, however, sensed a ruse behind Hatcher's behavior to prevent further solitary confinement and to seek early release. He was denied treatment but left solitary confinement. He was released on August 24, 1963 after serving three quarters of the sentence. After his release, Hatcher started one of the most notorious series of murders in US criminal history. It is not known when he committed his first murder in freedom, as he disappeared from the scene for six years.

On August 27, 1969, he murdered 12-year-old William Freeman in Antioch , who was traveling on his bicycle. Hatcher spoke to the boy, lured him into his vehicle, and drove him to a stream, where he strangled the boy. Hatcher was later to say that Freeman was his sixth or seventh victim.

Just two days later, only 6-year-old Gilbert Martinez was reported missing in San Francisco . His playmate, with whom he was out on the road that day, reported to the police that Martinez went with a man who promised him ice cream. Shortly after his disappearance, little Gilbert was discovered by a man who was taking his dog for a walk. An attacker was in the process of sexually abusing and beating him. The rushed police took into custody the man who pretended to be Albert Ralph Price but carried papers with the name Hobart Prater. The FBI only later identified Price as Charles Ray Hatcher. As Albert Price, he was charged with assault, attempted rape, and kidnapping.

In order to determine his culpability, a psychological report was requested, in the course of which he said he had heard voices, and he also faked delusions and attempted suicide in order to avoid imprisonment. In December 1970 he was sent back and forth between the court and hospitals several times. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with passive-aggressive behavior, with paraphilia and pedophilia . Hospital workers said that Hatcher was playing or exaggerating his mental disorders . Two other psychiatrists examined Hatcher in January 1971. The first concluded that he was mad and recommended intensive treatment in a hospital. The second also declared him unable to answer in court and sent him back to the hospital.

On May 24, 1971, Hatcher pleaded insanity at the trial . He was then examined in other hospitals and determined to be unsuitable for the process. He escaped from the hospital on June 2 and was arrested for alleged car theft in Colusa , California a week later, impersonating Richard Lee Grady. He was returned to California State Hospital . In April 1972 his treatment was declared unsuccessful and he was identified as a danger to those around him. In August he was transferred to San Quentin State Prison , where he was to be tried three years after the attempted murder. He underwent two final exams, both of which declared him fit for the trial. In December 1972 he was tried and found guilty of the kidnapping and molestation of Gilbert Martinez. In January 1973 he was transferred to California State Hospital as a "mentally disturbed offender" . On March 28, 1973, he attempted an outbreak and was brought back to court by doctors who believed he was still a threat to society. In April he was transferred to a Medium Security prison in Vacaville , California.

In August 1975, he applied for parole . The guards reported that Hatcher was extremely well behaved, and the California Parole Board agreed and set his release date to December 25, 1978. However, due to a change in law, he was 1 1/2 years earlier on May 20 1977, released from prison in an Open Asylum in San Francisco . One probation requirement was that Hatcher should report to the Home Care Services Center at 9 p.m. each day and take nine medications. He broke this rule for the first time just five days after his release. His whereabouts were unknown for a year afterwards.

On May 26, 1978, four-year-old Eric Christgen disappeared from downtown Saint Joseph. His body was later found on the Missouri River , sexually assaulted and suffocated. Melvin Reynolds, who was 25 years old at the time, was wrongly convicted of this murder. After hours of interrogation, he collapsed under the pressure and confessed to the crime. It was only after Hatcher's confession that he had committed this murder that he was released. On September 4, 1978, he was arrested in Omaha , Nebraska , using the name Richard Clark for sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy. For this offense, he was admitted to the Douglas County Mental Hospital in Omaha, from which he was released in January 1979. As early as May 1979, he was accused of attempted murder of a 7-year-old, but this could not be proven. Still, he was sent to a facility for three weeks, to which he returned a few months later after being sexually abused again.

In the months that followed, Hatcher continued to show signs of extreme violence. He sexually assaulted a 17-year-old teenager in Nebraska and was involved in a knife fight in Des Moines , Iowa . For each of these incidents he was only placed in different psychiatric clinics for a short time.

On June 20, 1981, he murdered 34-year-old James L. Churchill on the banks of the Mississippi River in Rock Island , Illinois . Before that he had drunk heavily with the later victim and he got a growing desire to kill Churchill. He stabbed him a good 10 times before he died.

On July 16, 1981, on his 52nd birthday in Bettendorf , Iowa, he was arrested again under the name Richard Clark for attempted kidnapping of an 11-year-old boy. The charges were later dropped, but he was admitted to a mental hospital for 49 days. Afterwards, several kidnapping attempts failed, but he was always able to escape in time.

End of the series of murders, arrest and death

On July 29, 1982, 11-year-old Michelle Steele was abducted in Saint Joseph on her way back from the dentist to her parents' home. When her mother came home later and her daughter was not there, she reported Michelle to the police as missing. During the search, her own uncle discovered the girl's lifeless body. The site was only a mile from the place where Eric Christgen was found four years earlier. On the same day he appeared at St. Joseph State Hospital under the name Richard Clark and claimed to hear voices. He was arrested under this name on August 3, as the evidence against him as the perpetrator was growing. While waiting for trial, Hatcher confessed to 16 murders, including those of Christgen, Churchill, and Steele. He also led the police to the buried remains of James L. Churchill in military compound near Davenport , Iowa . During the investigation, a list of over a dozen aliases that Hatcher used during his criminal career was also revealed.

In October 1983 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Eric Christgen, with no possibility of converting this to suspended sentence in the next 50 years. At the trial for the murder of Michelle Steele a year later, Hatcher called for the death penalty for himself, but when the verdict was pronounced on December 3, 1984, the jury opted for life imprisonment at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City , Missouri , where he was already served previous sentences. Four days later, Charles Ray Hatcher ended his own life when he hanged himself in his cell.

literature

• Amber Keen, George Lewis, Kara Stone, Andrew Lucas: Charles Ray Hatcher . Radford University , 2005.
• Brian Lane, Wilfried Gregg: The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Berkley Books, ISBN 0-425-15213-8 .
• Jack Rosewood: Charles Ray Hatcher: The True Story of Crazy Charlie's Killing Spree: Historical Serial Killers and Murderers. Wiq Media, 2015.
• RJ Parker: Serial killers abridged. RJ Parker Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4947-7216-1 .

Web links

• Charles Ray Hatcher on murderpedia.org. In: murderpedia.org. Retrieved February 9, 2019 .