Most criminals choose a life of crime because they see an easy way to enrich their lives
financially or they are forced into criminal activity due to the poor choices that they
made.
There are some criminals, however, that seem to thrive off the misfortune of their victims.
5.
Jake Bird
45-year-old Jake Bird never stayed in the same place for very long, since he worked
as a gandy dancer, a phrase used to describe the individuals who laid and maintained railroad
tracks in the 1940s.
He couldn’t remember his birth town, only that it was in Louisiana and he had a long
list of criminal convictions that included attempted murder and burglary.
On the 30th of October, 1947, officers Andrew Sabutis and Evan Davies from Tacoma Police
Department were sent out to 1007 S 21st Street after receiving reports of screaming coming
from inside the house.
As they walked up to the property, a barefoot man emerged running from the backdoor.
That man was Jake Bird.
In his bid to escape, he crashed through a picket fence and the officers immediately
set off after him.
He managed to scale a number of backyard fences, only to be thwarted by a wall that was too
high to climb.
When he realized that he was cornered, he pulled out a jackknife and attacked the officers,
cutting Davies on the hand and stabbing Sabutis in the shoulder.
Sabutis, however, had a background in boxing and managed to bring Bird down with a left
hook and a kick to the groin.
Bird was then transported to Tacoma General Hospital where he was treated for head and
face injuries.
When police returned to the house where the screams were heard, they found that Bertha
Kludt and her daughter had been killed with an axe which was still present at the scene.
When they checked Bird’s criminal history, they found that he had spent 15 years behind
bars at this point and at his interrogation, Bird admitted to the crime.
He stated that he thought it would be an easy burglary but brought the axe along as a bluff
after he found it in a nearby shed.
He had stolen $1.50 from Bertha’s purse and made his way to the kitchen when he realized
that she was standing behind him.
He claimed to have told her that he only wanted money and shoes, but she attacked him, forcing
him to defend himself with the axe.
He also claimed self defense for attacking Davies and Sabutis.
At his trial, he pleaded not guilty, but ended up receiving a death sentence.
At his sentencing, Bird declared: “All you guys who had anything to do with this case
are going to die before I do”.
A year later, 5 people connected to his case passed away from heart attacks and his declaration
came to be known as the Jake Bird Hex.
4.
Cordelia Botkin
Cordelia Botkin was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1854.
When she was 18 years old, she married Welcome Botkin and they would go on to have a son
named Beverly.
They lived together in Stockton, California where Welcome worked as a Stockbroker.
As time went on, the couple became estranged and Cordelia started an affair with John Preston
who was married to Mary Pennington-Dunning, the daughter of Congressman John Brown.
Although Cordelia was getting on in age and had a frumpy appearance, she thought very
highly of herself, often boasting that she had been photographed over 100 times.
After 3 years, Mary found out about the affair and left John to move back to Dover.
John rented a room at the same hotel as Cordelia and on one occasion, mentioned to her that
his wife loved chocolate.
When he was called away to the Spanish-American War, he informed Cordelia that he would not
be coming home to her, but rather to Mary.
She pleaded with him to reconsider, but his mind was made up, leaving Cordelia in a state
of melancholy and delirium.
On the 31st July, 1898, Cordelia went to the Market Street Candy Store where she bought
a box of chocolates, asking the clerk to pack them in a plain box with room for a present.
She then went to a novelty store where she bought a handkerchief bearing inscription
“The City of Paris”.
Ensuring that the package could not be traced back to her, she laced the chocolates with
cyanide and sent it to Mary.
Mary and her sister, Ida Dean, became violently ill and would eventually pass away from ingesting
the poisoned chocolates.
Mary’s father launched an investigation into his daughters’ deaths when he realized
that the handwriting on the package matched that of taunting letters that had been sent
to Mary.
John returned to Dover upon hearing the news and immediately recognized Cordelia’s handwriting.
She was arrested in Stockton while visiting her estranged husband and clerks from the
shops that she had visited when buying the candy and handkerchief testified against her.
She was found guilty of 2 counts of murder and given a life sentence.
3.
Henri Landru
Henri Landru was born in Paris in 1869 and received his education from monks at a catholic
school on the Île Saint-Louis.
He also served as an altar boy at the neighboring church that his family attended.
He would go on to marry Marie-Catherine, who worked as a laundress.
Henri, however, would struggle to hold down a job, working at times as a plumber’s accountant,
a furniture salesman and as assistant to a toymaker.
Catherine would describe him as the perfect husband, though she did admit that he was
a bit of a “skirt-chaser”.
But Henri had ambitions to become an inventor.
In 1898, he designed a motorbike which he called the Landru.
He then deceptively gained investments which he kept to himself, rather than using it to
build a factory as promised.
He also made attempts at designing an automated children’s toy and a suburban railway line
west of Paris.
In 1904, he tried to defraud a bank, but was arrested when he fell over while trying to
escape.
While spending time in prison, a psychiatrist found that he was on the brink of insanity
but was still responsible for his own actions at that point.
During the next decade, he would be in and out of prison on several occasions and would
eventually be exiled to New Caledonia.
He escaped his exile and travelled to Chantilly with Jeanne Cuchet, a 39-year-old seamstress,
who hoped to marry him.
When she discovered his criminal past, she and her son Andre left him and were never
seen again.
Henri started posting messages in the Lonely Hearts section of a mass circulation daily,
which attracted the attention of 9 women; Thérèse Laborde-Line, 46, Marie-Angélique
Guillin, 52, Berthe Héon, 55, Anna Collomb, 44, Andrée Babelay, 19, Célestine Buisson,
47, Louise Jaume, 38, Anne-Marie Pascal, 37 and Marie-Thérèse Marchadier, 37.
Upon meeting each of the women, he would seduce them and after gaining access to their assets,
he would end their lives before burning their remains in his oven.
Since there were no bodies to be found, the women were presumed to be missing until the
sister of Celestine Buisson tracked him down and convinced police to arrest him.
Investigators would eventually find a journal in which he listed all of his victims and
he would be sentenced to death.
He was executed in February of 1922 and his head is still on display at the Museum of
Death in Hollywood.
2.
Juana Barraza
Born in Hidalgo, Mexico City, Juana Barraza was sold by her alcoholic mother for 3 beers
when she was just 13 years old.
She would have 4 children, though her oldest son died from injuries sustained during a
mugging.
She would eventually become a professional wrestler under the ring name La Dama del Silencio
(The Silent Lady).
In 2005, Mexican police named a serial killer that they were hunting as “The Little Old
Lady Killer”.
The killer’s modus operandi was to target women over the age of 70 who lived alone and
they would be found dead after being severely beaten and strangled.
The killer was profiled as having a brilliant mind and very careful not to get caught.
It was also suggested that the killer would gain the trust of the women before carrying
out their heinous act and it was suspected that it may be a man posing as a government
official who would offer the victims a chance to sign up for welfare programs.
At one point, it was thought that two serial killers may be working together and investigators
were thrown off course by the fact that three of the victims owned a copy of an 18th century
painting called “Boy in a Red Waistcoat”.
Witnesses described seeing a man dressed in women’s clothing attempting to gain entry
to one of the victims’ houses and so, police started an investigation into cross-dressing
men in the area.
But they made a major breakthrough in the case when a woman was detained after fleeing
from the house of Ana María de los Reyes Alfaro.
That woman was Juana Barraza and they found that she had used a stethoscope to strangle
some of her victims after posing as a social worker.
Fingerprint evidence would link her to 10 murders, though it is thought that her victim
count could be as high as 40.
At her trial, she admitted to only one murder, but on the 31st of March, 2008, she was found
guilty of 16 counts of murder and aggravated burglary, including 11 separate counts of
murder.
She was sentenced to 759 years behind bars running concurrently, but the maximum allowed
sentence under Mexican law is just 60 years.
1.
Jane Toppan
“Jolly” Jane Toppan grew up in a female asylum in Boston where many unwanted children
were left when abandoned.
She and her sister were two of over a hundred children left there before Jane was fostered
as an indentured servant to a widow called Ann Toppan.
When she turned 18, she was given $50 and freed of her duties but she chose to continue
working as a servant until Ann passed away and Ann’s daughter married.
She then attended Cambridge Hospital where she trained to become a nurse.
While working as a student nurse, she was well liked by her patients, often falsifying
their medical records to ensure a longer stay so that she could get to know them better.
She had a different view of her elderly patients, however, as she saw them as useless and not
worth keeping alive.
She would often dose her elderly patients with opium to see how they reacted and would
then increase the dosage, ultimately resulting in their deaths.
She would go on to poison them with various other drugs and would often nurse them back
to health, claiming that they were miraculous recoveries.
She started working as a private nurse for families in Boston where she would end the
lives of older family members before robbing them.
She even went as far as killing her landlords, friends and colleagues when their company
became tiresome.
When she made the error of using a metal-based poison on one victim, an investigation was
finally launched and she was caught.
When she was tried in 1902, she was found not guilty, but she confessed to her lawyer
that she had ended the lives of over 100 people and that she would sometimes get into bed
with her victims as they died.
She stated that her life goal was to kill more people than any other man or woman who
ever lived.
Another trial was immediately scheduled and she was found guilty.
She would spend the rest of her life confined to an asylum, as she had when she was a child.
Many people still consider Jane to be America’s first ever serial killer.