Thomas Neill Cream
Thomas Neill Cream (born May 27, 1850 in Glasgow , Scotland , † November 16, 1892 in London ) was a Scottish serial killer who committed his deeds in England and the United States . Cream is considered one of the first serial killers in modern legal history.
Life
He was born in Glasgow, the first of 8 children. His parents were William and Mary Cream. In 1854 the family migrated to Anse-au-Foulon (Wolfe's Cove), Quebec . The family owned a Cream Lumber Mill sawmill there .
Cream received his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1876 . Between 1876 and 1892 he probably poisoned eight people, for which he mostly used strychnine .
In August 1879, in London , Ontario , Kate Gardener, who was having an affair with Cream, was found pregnant and dead behind his office. She was poisoned with chloroform . Accused of murder and extortion, Cream fled to the United States . In Chicago, Cream set up a practice where he also performed illegal abortions. When Mary Anne Faulkner died in August 1880, he was suspected, but no action was taken against him in the absence of evidence. Another patient died in December 1880 and Cream tried to blackmail the pharmacist who had prepared the medication. On July 14, 1881, Daniel Stott died of strychnine poisoning in Boone County , Illinois after Cream treated him.
All three deaths would have been classified as natural deaths, but Cream wrote to the investigating officer that the pharmacist who refused to be blackmailed was the culprit for Daniel Stott's death. The officer then had Cream and Julia Stott arrested, who turned out to be Cream's lover and who had received the poison from Cream to dispose of her husband. Julia Stott volunteered as a key witness and Cream was sentenced to life imprisonment. He started his sentence at the Joliet Correctional Center .
In 1891 Cream was pardoned by Governor Joseph W. Fifer after his brother sought pardon for him and allegedly paid bribes to officials. In the same year Cream returned to Great Britain with the money he had inherited from his father in 1887 and continued to murder there.
His first victim in London is the 19-year-old prostitute Ellen Donworth, who collapsed in the street on October 13, 1891, convulsed. She had previously said that a man with silver eyes had given her a white powder. A week later, 29-year-old prostitute Matilda Clover died, mistakenly mistaken for her death as a result of her alcoholism. On April 12, 1892, 18-year-old Emma Shrivell and 20-year-old Alice Marsh were found dead.
The police realized that it was a serial killer when Cream wrote an anonymous letter to the police accusing two other doctors of these four murders. By doing this, the police realized that Matilda Clover's death was a murder case and that the anonymous letter writer would most likely be the culprit. Cream was arrested on June 3, 1892 after a police officer recalled seeing him leaving Emma Shrivell and Alice Marsh's home just before the bodies were found.
On November 16, 1892, Cream was hanged in Newgate Prison . Cream was buried in an anonymous grave.
literature
- Peter & Julia Murakami: Lexicon of Serial Killers . 10th edition. Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-548-35935-9 , p. 56-58 .
Web links
- DR. THOMAS NEIL CREAM. In: murderuk.com. Retrieved March 14, 2013 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J. Cina: When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How . Springer Science & Business Media, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4419-1371-5 ( google.de [accessed July 7, 2020]).
- ^ Heermann, Christian : Der Würger von Notting Hill - Great London Criminal Cases , Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin, 1983, p. 115.
- ^ John Laurence: A history of capital punishment: with special reference to capital punishment in Great Britain . S. Low, Marston & Co., 1932, p. 125.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cream, Thomas Neill |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Scottish serial killer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 27, 1850 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Glasgow , Scotland, United Kingdom |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 16, 1892 |
| Place of death | London , England, UK |