The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes Read Online Free PDF Page A

took to the skies in a light aircraft to drop his airmail parcels over the Essex mudflats. Others have used car transport and rail services to deliver unwanted body parts to distant places using suitcases and trunks.
    Trunk murderers occupy a special place in the pantheon of odious criminals. Prominent among this band of luggage specialists was Winnie Ruth Judd, who in 1931, accompanied the dismembered remains of her two victims packed in trunks on a train journey from Phoenix to Los Angeles. Trunk murderers, and those who delay too long in deciding on their disposal option, face the inevitable consequences of decomposition and its accompanying stench.
    A popular disposal method is to dump parcels of remains in water. This offers the temporary satisfaction of putting grisly remains out of sight and out of mind, but water has the uncanny knack of delivering up the dead, as Donald Hume discovered. In 1927 James McKay dumped his murdered mother’s body parts in the River Clyde but they came back to haunt him.
    Even destruction by fire or acid is not foolproof and, as many killers have discovered, the human frame is remarkably resilient. Teeth, in particular, possess amazing powers of indestructibility. John Perry in 1990 went to great lengths to destroy his wife’s remains, including her skull, but there were enough teeth left to provide identification.
    What to do with the head of the victim is a problem that has taxed the ingenuity of many murderers. Fred Thorn went to the trouble of encasing his victim’s head in plaster of Paris while Dr Herman Schmitz kept his trophy in a jar of preservative.
    Heads and skulls have exerted a special fascination for murderers when dealing with their victims and also for the enforcers of law and order when dealing with murderers. Ned Kelly’s skull became the object of controversy when it was stolen in 1990. The Australian authorities were so concerned about the possible desecration of the body after Thomas Griffin was executed in 1868, that his head was removed before burial. The ploy did not succeed and the head ended up as a trophy.
    The tragic fate of Fanny Adams in 1867 and the two fingers shown to the authorities in Vienna in 1926 by Dr Herman Schmitz are among the infamous references to body parts.
    Sweet Fanny Adams
    “Sweet Fanny Adams” was the name given by British sailors in the Royal Navy to canned meat that formed part of their rations. This was a coarse reference to a young girl who had been murdered in a field in Hampshire on a warm summer’s day in 1867.
    Eight-year-old Fanny Adams, together with her sister and a friend, left their homes in Alton to play in the nearby fields. Their favourite spot was Flood Meadow, which bordered the River Wey and was shallow enough for paddling.
    At about 5.00 p.m. on 24 August, Fanny’s two companions returned to their homes without her. They explained that they had seen William Baker who worked as clerk to a local solicitor and he spoke to them. He offered Fanny a halfpenny to go with him and he had given money to the other girls who, left to their own devices, continued playing by the river until it was time to go home.
    Fanny’s mother and a neighbour immediately set out to look for the eight-year-old. Early in their search, they encountered William Baker. They asked him about Fanny and, while he admitted giving money to her friends, said he knew nothing about her. Reassured by their conversation, Mrs Adams returned home, assuming her daughter had gone off to play on her own and would soon return.
    When Fanny had not returned home by 7.00 p.m. a proper search was organized and her body was soon discovered in a hop field. The child had been brutally attacked and mutilated. Her head was severed from the body, the eyes and one ear were missing and the abdomen disembowelled. The remains were strewn about on the ground.
    As the last person known to have seen the dead girl, William Baker immediately came under suspicion. The