December 10, 1945.
Police enter an apartment at 3941 North Pine Grove Avenue in Chicago.
They discover the body of a woman lying over a bathtub.
A bread knife is stuck in her neck.
In the living room, there’s a message on the wall, scribbled in lipstick.
“For heAVens SaKe catch me
BeFore I Kill more I cannot control mySelF”
This wasn’t the first time the killer had struck.
In June of that same year, cops walked into an apartment at 4108 North Kenmore Avenue
in Chicago.
There they found the body of 43-year old Josephine Ross.
There’d been no forced entry.
It seems the killer had let himself in through the backdoor in the early hours of the morning.
The woman had been killed while sleeping.
Her jugular vein had been cut right through.
The killer had then carried her body to the bathroom, where he had proceeded to clean
it in the bathtub.
The cops found it still filled with water, now a shade of crimson.
Bloodied towels floated on the surface.
The killer had then taken her back to her bed.
He’d bandaged her injuries as if he felt sorry for her.
A skirt was placed over her head, and a stocking hid the wounds to her throat.
The killer had spent close to two hours in the apartment after the murder.
He cleaned traces of his fingerprints, which suggests he was “forensically aware” – a
term investigators would use years later.
His next victim was found with that haunting message scrawled on the wall.
She was thirty-one year old Frances Brown.
When she was discovered half-hanging into the bathtub, cops again found bloodstained
towels nearby.
To hide her wounds, the killer had this time put pajamas over her head.
Only when they lifted them up, they saw the bread knife firmly planted in her neck.
This victim had also been shot, once in the arm and once in the side of the head.
The killer had taken his time with the clean-up job, carefully wiping the body down with soap
and water.
He’d also used tape to cover her wounds.
Perhaps in his twisted mind, he thought he was fixing her.
Or, perhaps, different personalities inhabited this crazed man’s brain: a savage, heartless
killer, who after the fact turned into a repentant criminal.
What astounded the police is how this killer had gotten into her apartment.
He’d performed quite a dangerous stunt by jumping from a fire escape high up down to
her narrow window ledge.
He could quite easily have fallen to his death.
Cops knew now they were looking for someone who was not your everyday criminal.
And that message.
It sent shivers down the investigators’ spines.
Did this maniac really want to be stopped?
Could he not suppress the urge to kill?
He’d been meticulous in cleaning up the apartment, but he’d left a clue.
On the doorjamb that he’d touched with his bloodied hand, he’d left a fingerprint.
January 6, 1946.
A girl named Suzanne Degnan was abducted from an apartment at 5943 North Kenmore Avenue.
The police discovered that the perpetrator had used a ladder to get to her bedroom window.
In the bedroom was a ransom letter, scribbled on an old piece of oil-stained paper.
Like the cops had seen before, the capital letters were all over the place.
What would also become a matter of importance was the fact there were spelling mistakes.
The note said: “Get $20,000 Reddy & wAITe foR WoRd.
Do NoT NoTify FBI or Police.
Bills IN 5’s & 10’s.
BuRN This FoR heR SAfTY.”
The next day some patrol cops were looking for the missing girl when they came upon something
strange-looking in a sewer basin.
They had to scrunch up their eyes.
What they thought they saw was a large doll’s head.
The yellow hair of the doll was lying in the dirty sewer water.
It wasn’t a doll.
It was the severed head of Suzanne.
More police searched the nearby area, places just a stone’s throw away from where she’d
been abducted.
In no time at all, they found one of her legs in another sewer.
Soon after, they discovered another leg.
Her torso was found later in a storm basin.
It took the police a month to find her arms.
Again, what was strange was that this killer had gone to great lengths to wipe all the
blood from the body parts.
Cops assumed that the body had been dismembered close to where the parts were found, in a
laundry room.
Close to that room, police found a bit of wire that had been used to make a noose.
Still connected to it were strands of the victim’s hair.
The murders had all happened in close proximity, or close enough.
The modus operandi was the same in the first two murders and similar in the third.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the killings, but still, police had to act
with caution when joining the dots.
For instance, if the killer was the same guy, how come he’d abducted one victim and killed
her later?
Why had he changed?
Then the police saw some other dots forming on the bloody horizon.
They discovered that a 19-year woman had been shot in the arm as an assailant tried to get
to her through her bedroom window.
The location of the crime was close to where the murders had taken place.
Just days after that, a very nimble and acrobatic man had climbed up on the roof of an apartment
and dropped through a skylight like Spiderman might have done, if he were inclined to criminality.
That girl was named Evelyn Peterson, and she lived to tell the tale.
The assailant had hit her over the head, and after tying her with a lamp cord, he rifled
through the things in her apartment.
But this time, he decided not to kill the victim.
He just left her there.
She was later discovered by her sister, who’d gone to her apartment for lunch.
Just as the sister entered the apartment block, she saw a young man.
She remembered his face because he was quite a handsome fella, possibly in his late teens.
She was locked out of her and her sister’s apartment, so the guy told her he’d try
and help her get in.
Her sister at this point was still unconscious.
That teenage boy banged and banged on the apartment door.
After a few minutes, Evelyn answered.
Her hands were still partly tied, and her face was covered in blood.
The teen held her in his arms and asked her if she was ok.
She wasn’t of course, so he guided her back into the apartment where he said he’d help
clean her up.
The guy then went downstairs and told the superintendent to go and help the girl.
He said she’d been beaten up pretty bad.
The kid then just took off, not even leaving his name.
Police found the girl in a state of shock.
She was still trembling, only half-conscious.
On looking at the skylight where the intruder had entered, they made another grizzly discovery.
The perpetrator had for some reason taken a dump right before he’d swooped down into
the room.
It was also reported that another young woman was just sitting in her room when she was
attacked.
This time someone shot at her through the kitchen window.
She was injured in the arm, but it was only a graze.
The perpetrator subsequently fled.
All these attacks were similar, and all happened close to each other.
Surely there had to be a connection.
This became a huge case in the US media.
The term split personality wasn’t part of most cops’ vocabulary back then, but it
seemed that there was a possibility that one man had committed all the crimes but perhaps
that man was somehow mentally divided.
He killed, and he cleaned, as if trying to recuperate his morality after a monstrous
outburst.
It was reminiscent of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
There was also a hint of Jack the Ripper in the case.
The coroner told reporters that the killer had formidable surgical skills.
He said the murderer was “a man who worked in a profession that required the study of
anatomy or one with a background in dissection...not even the average doctor could be as skillful.”
The newspaper the Madera Tribune wrote that one of the “Greatest Manhunts” was now
taking place.
The paper said the number one suspect was a 65-year old janitor who worked at the apartment
where the body had been dismembered.
That couldn’t have been more wrong.
The paper wrote that residents had come out in support of him and said he was a “good-natured
grandfather” who’d never do such a thing.
The manhunt continued.
Then things got crazy a few months later.
A caretaker of another apartment was being especially careful since there had been a
bunch of burglaries at his apartment.
Every night he prowled around the place, making sure no one got inside who didn’t have a
key.
On the night of June 26, 1947, the caretaker came across a suspicious-looking young man.
When he approached the man, a gun was pulled, but the man soon fled.
He was spotted not too far away by police, but when approached this time, the guy tried
to shoot.
Lucky for the cops, the gun didn’t work correctly, and soon they had the guy down
on the floor.
That wasn’t easy.
This guy, no older than a teenager, was certainly a nimble fella and he was also strong.
Just as soon as the cops thought they had him secured to the floor, the athletic teen
somehow slipped out of their grip and got hold of one of the cop’s guns.
Another cop then jumped on and managed to stop the kid from firing the gun, but again,
the kid fought like a lion.
One of the cops took drastic measures, picking up a heavy clay flowerpot and smashing it
over the teen’s head.
It should have knocked him out cold.
It didn’t even seem to bother him, so the cop smashed another three flowerpots on his
head.
Only now was the teen subdued.
Who was this kid who had the strength of two men and the acrobatic ability to match anyone
who worked in the circus?
His name was William Heirens, and he was just 17-years old.
When he wasn’t taking on policemen in the street he was a student at the University
of Chicago where his impressive intelligence had got him on to a special learning program
for talented students.
He was popular, too, especially with the girls.
Young Bill was quite the looker, and he had the mouth to match his facial fortunes.
But it turned out that Bill had a checkered past.
In his early teens, he committed scores of burglaries, but he never sold the stuff he
stole.
He just kept all the things, so when cops went to his apartment when he was 13, they
found a stash that looked like a veritable Aladdin’s cave.
If he’d sold the items, in today’s cash he’d have gotten about $60,000.
His crimes weren’t about money.
Bill was sent to school for wayward boys after that.
Even though he stole again and again, just for the fun of it, he became an exceptional
student.
So, when his former teachers and schoolmates found out he’d been arrested at 17 for fighting
with cops, they couldn’t believe it.
He was a good kid, smart as a whip.
He got one with everyone.
When that first murder was committed, Bill was studying, but he also had a job as a laborer
for the Chicago railroad.
On the day the murder happened, he hadn’t turned up for work.
When the second murder was committed, he was already at Chicago University.
There, girls flirted with him constantly.
He was also a member of many clubs, ominously, the gun club.
When police took this guy in, they didn’t immediately think he was behind any of the
murders.
What they had in their interrogation room was just a good-looking kid who had no doubt
done a bit of wrestling in his time.
But then they searched his dorm room...Now he had a lot of explaining to do.
They found jewelry, guns, watches, and other items worth a considerable amount of money.
They even found photos of well-known Nazi leaders.
On top of that, they discovered war bonds that were worth over $20,000 in today’s
cash.
Police were given another shock when Bill told them he’d take them to a locker he
kept at the Howard Street El station.
There they found more war bonds worth over $100,000 in today’s money.
And this was a kid that on the outside looked poor.
Bill then told them about more of his stashes, and in the end, police found items and bonds
worth over $1.1 million in today’s money.
He hadn’t spent any of it.
As serial killer historian Peter Vronsky points out in his book, American Serial Killers,
the burglaries were “purely pathological.”
Notably, one of the stolen items found was the book, “Psychopathia Sexualis” a treatise
on sexual deviance.
But murder, dismemberment, that was a whole different ball game.
Still, fingerprints found at the murder scenes matched those of Bill.
The crimes had also taken place close to where he lived.
Then witnesses came forward and gave positive IDs.
Vronsky writes in his book: “But Heirens wasn’t talking.
He just lay strapped in his bed, staring blankly into space.
Frustrated, Chicago police allegedly roughed up the teen, slamming his bandaged head into
a wall in the hope that would help his memory.
It didn’t.”
Now things get even stranger if you thought they weren’t already strange enough.
Police tortured him.
They gave him truth serum.
Quite unbelievably, they gave him a spinal tap without an anesthetic.
This was Middle Ages stuff, and Bill didn’t have a lawyer present during any of the interrogations.
The police were desperate to get their man due to the public outcry, but as we now know,
this pressure can lead cops to do things that usually only criminals are capable of.
Nonetheless, it was shown that Bill misspelled words the same as some words had been misspelled
in that ransom letter.
He had the loot from many burglaries close to the murders.
Those Nazi photos had been stolen down the street from where the girl had been abducted.
He also fit the witness’s description of the killer.
It all seemed to point to his guilt.
At one point, he made a deal with the prosecutor to plead guilty if the death penalty wasn’t
imposed, then later, Bill changed his mind.
He confessed and changed his mind on a number of occasions.
Meanwhile, his mother said, “He’s still our son, and we'll stand by him.”
He still got life in prison, but he always said he was innocent and had been subjected
to police torture.
Once when asked how much pain the murdered girl felt, he replied, “I can't tell you
if she suffered.
I didn't kill her.
Tell Mr. Degnan to please look after his other daughter, because whoever killed Suzanne is
still out there.”
Was he telling the truth?
Well, over the years, he had a huge number of supporters that all called for his release.
They said he was a victim of a police conspiracy.
They said Bill was nothing more than a burglar, fitted up for a crime when police found themselves
cornered by immense public pressure.
Human rights advocates later said his guilt or innocence is not the only major factor
in this case.
A miscarriage of justice took place when the police tortured the teenager.
A petition said there had been prosecutorial misconduct, prejudice during the trial, junk
science used, a terrible defense counsel, and more.
He might have killed those people, but in a world that espouses an ethical justice system,
he would never have gone to prison.
Even in the 2000s, when Bill was an elderly man behind prison walls, people still fought
for his release.
Vronsky, who’s investigated the case as much as anyone, says one thing pointing to
his guilt is the fact he knew things only the murderer could have known, such as the
use of a certain hunting knife to chop up the girl.
Vronsky writes that Bill was almost definitely a psychopath, which perhaps was the result
of a severe head injury when he was a kid.
This seemed to change his behavior.
After he was first imprisoned, doctors noted that this kid was inarguably abnormal.
They said he had a very unusual tolerance for pain.
Doctors shoved pins into his feet and under his nails, and he felt nothing at all.
He didn’t even flinch.
This might explain his high-wire jumps and his uncanny ability to fight through flowerpot
bashings.
He may also have lost the ability to sympathize, to feel pain mentally.
Bill told the psychiatrists that since childhood, he’d been obsessed with stealing.
He was turned on sexually by wearing women’s underwear.
He said he had a collection of stolen underwear in his grandma’s attic.
When the police went to look, they found out he was telling the truth.
There were 40 pairs in total, mostly bright pink and blue.
Perhaps at times, Bill changed into a different person, and that’s why he cleaned down the
bodies.
It might be why he didn’t always kill his victims and why he wrote that message on the
wall.
Notably, he told doctors his favorite movie was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In some of his confessions, he admitted to having blackouts and then coming around throwing
body parts into the sewer.
He said that happened after he dismembered the girl.
That’s why he threw a ransom note through the window after.
He felt bad.
He wanted the parents to think their daughter was still alive.
To give them “hope.”
He also once said he’d had an accomplice, a man named George Murman.
But police could find no such man.
It’s likely he didn’t exist.
George was Bill’s father’s name.
Murman could have stood for murder man.
Maybe George was Mr. Hyde, and Bill was Dr. Jekyll.
Vronsky wrote that since the age of nine Bill was a “spinning wheel of paraphilic transgressive
actions.”
In laymen’s terms, that means he did things society deems as wrong, and there was usually
a sexual element to his deeds.
If he didn’t commit those murders, he was certainly a man on the edge and very likely
a complete psychopath.
Vronsky thinks he probably did commit those murders.
Still, terrible police work and a cruel and corrupt justice system didn’t do the job
it’s paid by the public to do.
For that reason, we just can’t be sure of his guilt.
There is also pretty strong evidence that another man could have committed the murders.
He was Richard Russell Thomas.
He died in prison in 1974, and strangely, all records of his interrogation about the
Chicago murders died with him.
On February 26, 2012, William Heirens died in prison from complications of his diabetes.
He was 83, and one of the longest-serving prisoners in US history.
Now you need to watch “Why This Generation Will Have More Serial Killers Than Ever.”
Or, have a look at...