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By Simon Read

Sphere: Related Content

by Simon Read

Sphere: Related Content

By Simon Read

Recap: In February 1942, a killer ran amok on the streets of London. The killing spree began on the night of February 9, when Evelyn Hamilton was found strangled in a surface air-raid shelter. By the night of February 13, two other women--both prostitutes-- had been found murdered. Assigned to the case was Detective Superintendent Ted Greeno and Chief Superintendent Frederick Cherrill, head of Scotland Yard's revolutionary fingerprint division. On the evening of February 13, Cherrill had just left the apartment of Margaret Lowe, a prostitute found strangled and mutilated in her bed. No sooner had he returned to Scotland Yard, than Greeno called with news of another body.

Doris Jouannet was a part-time prostitute and the wife of a hotel manager. Mr. Jouannet spent nights at the hotel but went home every evening for dinner. The night before, he dined with his wife as usual. She accompanied him to Paddington Station and saw him off to work. He returned home on February 13 at 7 p.m. and was surprised to find the milk bottles had not been taken in. When he entered the apartment, he found the bedroom door locked and got no answer when he knocked. Alarmed, he went for the police. Officers broke down the door and discovered the bloody mess within. When Mr. Jouannet tried to enter the room, an officer had to restrain him. “Don’t go in there, sir,” the officer said.

Cherrill and Greeno were on the scene within the hour. One look at the body was enough to inform both investigators that the “strangling ripper” had struck again. A scarf was wrapped in a tight knot around the woman’s neck. The victim was wearing a dressing gown, which had been ripped open. Its torn remnants were scattered across the bed. The body, police noted, had been “savagely slashed.” There was no indication of a struggle. Fingerprints were lifted from a kitchen cupboard and the bedroom mirror. An examination later that evening, however, revealed the prints were those of the victim. The following morning, Saturday, Feb. 14, Scotland Yard mobilized all its resources in its effort “to run the murderer to ground.” Every available office and detective was put on the Ripper Taskforce. Its efforts were accompanied by newspaper boys on street corners, wearing sandwich boards declaring, “West End Search For Mad Killer!”

Police, however, were about to get a break in the case — and it was the result of something that occurred two nights prior. On the evening of February 12, within hours of Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Jouannet losing their lives, a young woman was having drinks with a debonair serviceman in a pub near Piccadilly Circus. He was dressed in the dark blue uniform of a Royal Air Force cadet. He spoke in the manner of one raised in the aristocracy and looked dashing with wisps of blond hair protruding from under his uniform cap. He was quick with a laugh and generous with the flattery, which he laid on pretty thick. At one point in the conversation, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of paper money. He began to seductively flip through it note by note and ruined the genial tone of the conversation by propositioning the woman. Incensed, the woman refused and abruptly left the table.

She stepped into the blacked-out street and began to make her way through Piccadilly Circus. From behind, she heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. The RAF cadet caught up with her, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into a doorway. He put down the case in which he carried his gasmask — a piece of equipment all Londoners were required to carry in the event of a gas attack. “You must let me kiss you goodnight,” he said, before grabbing her by the throat and choking her unconscious. A blackout warden making his nightly rounds nearby heard the sounds of a scuffle and went to investigate. The sound of his approach scared the RAF cadet away and saved the woman’s life.

When the warden reached the scene, he found the woman sprawled unconscious on the ground. He knelt beside her just as she began to regain her senses. As he helped her up, she managed to cough out her story. The warden gently took the shaken woman by the arm and escorted her to a nearby police station, where the woman repeated her tale. Officers were immediately dispatched to the scene. They found the woman’s purse lying on the ground, and, nearby, the respirator case belonging to her assailant.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, the young cadet — driven by an insatiable bloodlust — had targeted yet another woman. She was standing on a street corner, waiting for some business. He paid the woman five pounds for what she had to offer. Together, they went to the her apartment on Southwick Street, Paddington, only a block or two removed from where the body of Doris Jouannet still lay undiscovered. They walked up the stairs to the woman’s small flat. Once inside, she drew the blackout curtains and lit a small electric lamp, which promptly flew out a spark and went dead. In the sudden darkness, he lunged at her and tightly seized her by the throat. As he choked her with one hand, he tried to take off his clothes with the other. The woman, however, fought ferociously, broke free of her attacker’s grip and began to scream. Her piercing cries woke the other tenants in the building. Startled, the young man fled the scene but, in his rush, left the belt to his uniform in the apartment. As he was running out the door, he threw another five-pound note at her.

With the Yard pooling all its resources, details of these two attacks reached Greeno and Cherrill on February 14. It was startling news. If this was the man they were looking for, then, in a period of 48 hours, he had murdered and mutilated two women and tried to kill two more. Greeno took possession of the gasmask and the belt. On the inner lining of the gasmask was an RAF service number: 525987. Reviewing military equipment records, Greeno established the mask belonged to one Gordon Frederick Cummins, 28, stationed with other cadets at St. John’s Wood in North London. On Sunday, Feb. 15, Greeno drove to the RAF billet to interview the suspect.

The man he came face-to-face with was a jaunty individual who seemed perpetually amused by the whole episode. Cummins had an answer for every question Greeno asked. Cummins said he was out on the night of the murders, but that he was with a fellow cadet and both were back in their bunks by curfew. The billet passbook, signed by cadets as they entered and left, seemed to back Cummins alibi that he was in bed before the murders even happened. And what of the gasmask? Well, Cummins said, people are always taking one another’s mask. Greeno thanked Cummins for his time and left, convinced the young man was the “strangling ripper.” Back at police headquarters, the detective launched an investigation into Cummins’ background.

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Amidst the smoldering ruins of a bomb-ravaged capital and the chaos wrought upon a city at war, a killer hunted his prey. It was in the dark — after London descended into the nightly oblivion of its wartime blackout — that he did his thing. He was the 1940s equivalent of Jack the Ripper, though his career lacked the notoriety of his Victorian predecessor. Events on the world stage and the daily destruction in London deprived him of the attention lavished upon the Whitechapel killer. But on the back pages of Britain’s newspapers, some reporters took notice and christened him “The Blackout Ripper.”

Over the course of five days in 1942, he struck four times. His victims — all women — were sexually assaulted and mutilated with a sharp instrument. In his bloody wake, he left few clues and offered nothing to suggest a motive for such barbarity. His first victim, Evelyn Hamilton, was found strangled to death in an air raid shelter between Baker Street and the Edgeware Road on the morning of February 9. Hamilton, “a woman of irreproachable character,” had been gagged and choked with her own silk scarf. In the musty light of the shelter, investigators could make out the ugly purple of heavy bruising on the poor woman’s neck. Police on the scene determined a left-handed individual made them — and those were the only clues the killer was kind enough to leave.

Assigned to capture the murderer was Chief Superintendent Frederick Cherrill, head of Scotland Yard’s revolutionary fingerprint division. Taking charge of the case, Cherrill noted, “There was no inkling of the orgy of murder that was to follow.” The “ghoulish slayer’s” murder spree would now unfold with a lightening-speed ferocity that would leave seasoned investigators stunned. On the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 10, Cherrill arrived at the Yard and was greeted in his office by a ringing phone. In an apartment on Wardour Street, a body had been found.

The victim was Mrs. Evelyn Oatley — also known as Nita Ward. The apartment in which she was found was a squalid affair. There was a bed, table and little else. The woman’s stockings hung from a rail at the head of the bed. On the bed itself was the victim, brutalized — in Cherrill’s words — “in a sadistic attack of the most horrible and revolting nature.” A blood-stained pair of curling tongs and tin opener, which had been used with zealous abandon on the victim, were on the floor by the bed. Standing over Oatley’s body, Cherrill “realized the enormity of the crime.” In the gruesome tradition of Jack the Ripper, the killer had savaged Evelyn Oatley’s body by tearing it to shreds. The woman’s handbag lay beside the bed, its contents scattered across the floor. There was lipstick and other beauty accoutrements. What grabbed Cherrill’s attention, however, was a compact mirror. On the glass was a bloody thumbprint. Judging from its position, Cherrill determined the owner of the print was left handed.

The superintendent now turned his attention to the grizzly tools of death. Several “faint impressions” left by bloody fingers were visible on the tarnished handle of the tin opener. Again, a brief inspection of the prints led Cherrill to believe they were those of a left-handed individual and “were not in such a position that they could have come there by the innocent use of this utensil.” Examining the mutilated form on the bed, Cherrill theorized the killer began choking Oatley and — in the frenzied throes of his bloodlust — grabbed the tin opener off the nearby table and went to work.

Unlike the prints left on the neck of Evelyn Hamilton, the bloody evidence left in Oatley’s apartment now gave Scotland Yard a solid lead to follow. If the prints matched any the Yard already had on file, it would only take “a matter of minutes” to set in motion a nation-wide manhunt for the culprit. A canvas of the apartment building turned up one neighbor who said she’d heard Oatley’s voice and that of a man’s coming from Oatley’s flat at about midnight. Although the voices were audible, the words were not. There was never any sound of commotion, and a shadowy figure was seen leaving the flat shortly thereafter.

The bloody prints were lifted and taken back to the Yard for comparison with prints on record. Over the next two days, investigators tracked down the husband of Evelyn Hamilton. He was living up north in the seaside resort town of Blackpool. He told police he and his wife had separated amicably sometime ago and had not seen each other since. Police also ran a parallel investigation into the life of Evelyn Oatley, which revealed she had a promising and burgeoning career on the London stage when war broke out. But as hostilities intensified, theater roles became few and far between, forcing Oatley into a line of work far removed from the thespian arts.

At the end of those two days, the Yard had struck out trying to find a matching print on file. With two bodies discovered in two days, police had no leads and no solid clues. They weren’t even sure if the two crimes were related. It would be less than a week before the killer struck again. Word of the two killings, meanwhile, was slowly making its way through the ranks of the working girls who trolled the Soho and Picadilly area. From that substratum of society, news of the killings was working its way into more respectable, everyday circles.

The nightly wail of London’s air raid sirens brought people out of the relative safety of their homes and propelled them to seek cover in the city’s underground or one its numerous surface shelters. Now, as women scurried in the darkness from the oncoming menace arrowing toward the city in the night skies, they cast nervous glances over their shoulders and wondered who might be sharing the cramped confines of the shelter with them. On the morning of Friday, Feb. 13, the papers carried the first reports of the killings. In the grand tradition of tabloid ink, reporters were quick to slap a morbid name on the shadowy figure: The Blackout Ripper. Upping its efforts, the Yard dispatched policewomen in plain clothes to walk the streets, hoping to lure the killer out of the shadows.

Also assigned to the case by this point was Detective Superintendent Ted Greeno of Scotland Yard’s legendary “Flying Squad.” He wasted no time hitting the streets and scouring London’s bleak underside, approaching informants for information and questioning streetwalkers. In South London, he went into a pub to meet one of his street connections. The meeting was fruitless. Adding insult to injury, Greeno left the pub only to discover his car had been stolen. But what mirth could be derived from the situation was not long lasting. On the evening of February 13, the third body was discovered.

Margaret Lowe was a Soho prostitute who turned tricks out of her small apartment on Gosfield Street off Tottenham Court Road. On the night of February 13, her daughter visited the apartment. When her knock on the front door went unanswered, she grew concerned and went to a neighbor’s flat. The neighbor immediately called the Tottenham Court police station. The policeman who answered the phone was Inspector Robert Higgins. From his beat he knew Margaret Lowe and responded to the address. With Lowe’s anxious daughter watching, Higgins jimmied the door to Lowe’s apartment and entered the premises. Once in the apartment, Higgins discovered the body in “all its stark and vivid horror.”

Cherrill and Greeno were called to the scene. A bed was pushed lengthwise against the wall. There was a table, a rug and “a chair or two,” and that was the extent of the apartment’s furnishings. At the foot of the bed were the women’s skirt, jumper and coat. It appeared they had been dumped there in some hurry. Initially, the body had been obscured from view. There was a black eiderdown on the bed, and beneath this was a “sinister hump.” When it was pulled away, the atrocity was discovered. The victim was a “handsome and finely built woman” known locally as Pearl. Her ample physique had given the killer plenty to work with. She had been strangled and mutilated in a fashion far more brutal than Evelyn Oatley.

A silk stocking had been tied around Lowe’s neck, and her abdomen had been obliterated in a startling act of barbarity. A cursory examination of the bedroom revealed the “small armory of weapons” used to rob Margaret Lowe of her life. Among them was a glass candlestick holder. Fingerprints were quickly found at the holder’s base. While Cherrill studied the room’s contents and Greeno made notes of the crime scene, famed — and controversial — pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury examined the body. From the extent of rigor mortis and body temperature, Spilsbury concluded the woman had been murdered early the previous evening.

Cherrill, meanwhile, had moved his study of the premises into the kitchen. On the counter, he found an empty bottle of stout. This, too, had fingerprints on it. The killer, it seemed, was not overly concerned with leaving in his wake evidence that could potentially prove damning should he be captured. Cherrill bagged the bottle, went back into the bedroom and bagged the candlestick holder. He would run these prints against the Yard’s records, though he harbored no illusions of a breakthrough. He also decided to hold off on comparing the prints with those found at the other crime scenes. Although they may have been left by the same person, they may have all been left by different fingers.

Bidding farewell to Greeno and Spilsbury, Cherrill left the gruesome scene and returned to his office to book the evidence. The pace of the killings was starting to take its toll, and Cherrill was feeling the pressure. He was tired and the first signs of panic amongst the public were slowly becoming evident. It was 10:30 p.m. when Cherrill began filling out the evening’s paperwork. He had been at Margaret Lowe’s apartment for four hours. Meanwhile, back at the crime scene, a police messenger pulled up on his motorcycle with a message for Greeno. The news was not good.

The phone on Cherrill’s desk rang. It was Greeno: “Will you come at once to Sussex Gardens, Paddington? Another woman has been found murdered.” As Cherrill later noted: “It only needs a message like this to snap one out of any sense of weariness.”

To be continued next month . . .

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An American deserter—and the young Englishwoman he seduced in a café with tales of Chicago gangsters and Hollywood glitz—would perpetrate the most infamous wartime crime spree in Britain. Their six-day rampage culminated in the murder of a London cabbie and was immortalized in the press as “The Cleft Chin Murder,” so christened after the victim’s distinguishing characteristic. Criminal history would remember their violent rampage under the colorful names “Chicago Joe and the Showgirl” and the “Inky Fingers Murder.”

Twenty-two-year-old Karl Hulten was a private who went AWOL from his duties with the 501st Airborne Division. Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Jones was a one-time dancer at the Blue Lagoon behind Regent Street. After making initial acquaintance in a coffee shop near Hampstead tube station on October 3, 1944, the two embarked on a violent escapade of thievery and bodily harm in Hulter’s stolen two-ton American Army truck. Within hours of meeting one another, the two had used Hulten’s truck to kill a young girl, running her off the road as she rode her bicycle. Hulten leapt from the vehicle’s cab and stole the victim’s purse. The next day, the two offered a woman a ride. Once they had her in the truck, they beat her with an iron bar and dumped her body in a river. The shooting murder of Cabbie George Heath was the climax of their adventure. After hailing Heath’s cab, they directed him to a lonely stretch of road, where Hulten shot Heath in the head. They took the cabbie’s money and spent it at a local racetrack. Wild in the streets of London, the young couple imagined that Hulten was a Chicago gangster and that Jones was his moll.

They were eventually captured driving Heath’s cab after the GI tried to rob a woman of her fur coat outside a London hotel. The U.S. Army permitted the British government to prosecute Hulten for murder, for which he received the death sentence. He was hanged at London’s Pentonville Prison on March 8, 1945. Jones—who was also convicted—was saved from the gallows by a last-minute reprieve and eventually set free in 1954. Although the sordid episode was quite unspectacular, the age of the criminals involved and the young couple’s American mafia fantasy captivated the British press and public. But the deadly shenanigans of Chicago Joe were far from uncommon. Numerous American and British servicemen would face tough Anglo justice. The war years would see Scotland Yard work many crimes involving the British and American militaries.

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Formed in the wake of the First World War, Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad was tasked with tackling London’s increasingly violent breed of criminal. The squad’s detectives patrolled London in cars once used by the Royal Flying Corps—hence the squad’s name. The use of such vehicles changed the face of crime fighting and introduced the London public to the spectacle of high-speed chases, some of which concluded in spectacular fashion, with getaway cars somersaulting in the streets or being rammed off the roads by determined lawmen.

One man assigned to the squad was Detective Chief Inspector Edward Greeno, who would later find fame on Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad. It was while on the Flying Squad that Greeno was summoned by an underworld contact to Lingfield racecourse. In whispered tones, the informant told the detective he would find a brothel on Dover Street catering to a clientele from Britain’s upper social and political circles. Greeno fed this information to his superiors and was quickly summoned by the assistant police commissioner, who ordered Greeno to get on the case. His assignment: watch the establishment and find out who was making use of its services. One had to step carefully in a matter such as this, the assistant commissioner said. One wrong move and a government sex scandal would ensue.

Before anything could be done, police had to learn more. The Yard sent an undercover detective posing as a customer into the brothel. He was to gather information on the place, but had been instructed in no uncertain terms to keep his hands—and other parts of his anatomy—to himself. Word came back that a six-foot Jamaican woman named Carmen Rosena, who enjoyed wearing thigh-high boots and nothing else, ran the place. And, yes, members of Parliament were indeed availing themselves to the forbidden pleasures within. The time came for Greeno—a man who firmly believed that all lawbreakers should be treated the same regardless of social standing—to act. But considering the war clouds gathering over Europe, Greeno planned his raid to spare His Majesty’s Government maximum embarrassment.

At 8:40 on the evening in question—when he assumed most members of Parliament were having dinner with their wives or sipping drinks at the social clubs—Greeno, posing as a taxi driver, knocked on the front door of the Dover Street brothel. A woman answered to whom Greeno apologized, saying he must have the wrong address. The woman accepted Greeno’s apology and began to shut the door, but was stopped from doing so when Greeno wedged his foot between the door and the doorjamb. Police entered the premises and rounded up the girls, who offered a wide bevy of excuses. Fortunately for the government, there were no members of Parliament enjoying the establishment’s services at the time. To further prevent a government scandal, the ensuing court proceeding—dubbed “The Vault of Vice Trial”—was closed to the public. In the end, hard-up government ministers were forced to seek relief elsewhere. For the Flying Squad—whose detectives were trained in high-speed driving and primarily concerned with taking down armed robbers—the case was a rarity.

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By Simon Read

In 1936, Chief Superintendent Frederick Cherrill, head of Scotland Yard’s revolutionary fingerprint department, was called upon to help investigate the murder of Walter Dinivan. A wealthy retiree, Dinivan had been found murdered in his granddaughter’s home in Bournemouth. Such force had been used to bash the man’s head in that pieces of his skull were found embedded in his brain. His face revealed a bloody and shattered mess, and marks on his neck suggested someone had tried to strangle him.

There were no signs of struggle in the room where Dinivan had died, but a beer glass rested on its side on a nearby table. The glass was sent to Cherrill, who was able to lift a thumbprint from it. In the meantime, the investigation—headed by the Yard’s Detective Chief Inspector Burt—moved forward. Found at the scene and removed as evidence were a woman’s curling iron and a paper bag. Inquiries in town soon revealed that a man named Joseph Williams had been seen flashing a lot of cash the day after the murder. Witnesses found such behavior unusual because Williams—a one-time soldier who served in India and fought for the Empire—had been poverty-stricken. When Burt paid a visit to Williams’ house, he found the man living in disgusting squalor. Truculent by nature, Williams told the Yard man, when attempting to question him, to go to hell.

When police checked with Williams a short time later, he agreed to let them look around his house. During the search, Burt’s partner found a pile of paper bags—similar to the one found at the crime scene—and removed several as evidence. Burt, meanwhile, asked Williams if he could take a look at his wallet. Williams said yes. It was stuffed near-to-bursting with paper money, the result, Williams said, of a fortunate pick at the local racetrack. Burt promptly confiscated the cash, despite Williams’ violent protests. The detectives left and took the evidence back to the Yard. An examination of the bags under ultra-violet light showed them to have a texture identical to the one found at the crime scene. Detectives traced the money taken from Williams to the bank where Dinivan cashed his retirement checks each week. The odd piece of the puzzle was the woman’s curling iron found near the body. Burt believed it had been placed at the scene to fool police into thinking the killer was female.

Burt’s hunch bore out. Detectives tracked down Williams’ ex-wife, who told them when she lived with Williams years before she used a curling iron just like the one found at Dinivan’s place. Convinced he had a suspect, Burt returned to Williams’ squalid home to confront him with the evidence. Williams insisted he was innocent. Burt asked Williams to prove it by letting police take his fingerprints. Williams acquiesced, and the prints were immediately rushed to Cherrill for examination. It took less than an hour for Cherrill to match one of the prints to that found on the glass recovered at the crime scene. Investigators promptly arrested Williams, and the case went to trial.

In October 1939, despite all the evidence presented by the prosecution—including Cherrill’s testimony regarding the fingerprint match—a jury found Williams not guilty. The verdict staggered Scotland Yard and was partly attributed to Williams’ incessant cries of innocence during the trial, which was heavily covered by the media. But following Williams’ death in 1951, the News of the World ran a story in which it revealed that Williams—on the night of his acquittal—admitted to a reporter he had indeed killed Dinivan.

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The Berkley imprint of Penguin has just released the true crime book FALSE PROPHET by Claire Booth, a former newspaper reporter I know. The book tells the story of Glenn and Justin Helzer, two brothers who dubbed themselves the "Children of Thunder" and murdered five people in a bizarre quest to secure the Second Coming of Christ. The killings took place in the San Francisco Bay Area in the summer of 2000. The book is available on Amazon and in bookstores.

In 2004, I covered the trials of Glenn and Justin. Below is the story I wrote in August of that year when a jury recommended Justin be put to death. Another jury recommended the same for Glenn four months later. Both brothers are now on California's death row in San Quentin State Prison.

Jurors say Helzer deserves death

Emotional panel recommends three death sentences, two life terms in murders of five during 2000

By Simon Read
Oakland Tribune/August 4, 2004 


Martinez -- An emotionally distraught jury decided Tuesday that convicted murderer Justin Helzer should be put to death for a killing spree that left five people dead in the summer of 2000.

Jurors wept and put their arms around one another as a court clerk read the verdict to a packed courtroom. Three recommendations for death were leveled against Helzer, 32, for the slaying of a retired Concord couple and the daughter of blues guitarist Elvin Bishop.

For his complicity in the murders of two other people, Helzer received two life sentences without the possibility of parole. It took the 10-women, two-men jury two days to decide Helzer's fate.

Dressed in a dark blue suit, Helzer sat motionless and stared out the courtroom window. Behind him, his mother, Carma, seemed to struggle for breath as the verdicts were read. Her daughter -- and Helzer's younger sister -- Heather, 30, placed an arm around her mother's shoulders.

In contrast to the Helzers, one man in the gallery let out an enthusiastic "Yes!" as the first death penalty verdict was read.

Of the 60 chairs in the seating gallery, 55 were occupied by family members, media and curious members of the public. Seven bailiffs stood guard over the proceedings and the standing-room-only crowd.

After the five verdicts were read, defense attorney Dan Cook asked that the jurors be polled regarding their verdicts. One juror, crying with her head on her knees, was so overcome with emotion she could barely answer.

Judge Mary Ann O'Malley told everyone to "take a deep breath," then -- her voice cracking with emotion -- she thanked the jurors for their time and service.

"I'm in awe of you -- I'm in awe of how you've gone through these months," the judge said. "It's been an absolute privilege to have you in my courtroom. You'll never have an experience like this again, I hope."

On June 16, the jury found Helzer guilty on multiple counts of first-degree murder in the killings of Ivan Stineman, 85, and his wife, Annette, 78, both of Concord; Selina Bishop, 22, of Woodacre; her mother, Jennifer Villarin, 45, of Novato; and Villarin's companion, James Gamble, 54, of Laytonville.

Tuesday's decision was delivered four years to the day that Gamble and Villarin were shot to death in a Woodacre apartment while they slept.

Outside the courtroom, the victims' families hurried past waiting camera crews without a comment. Later, the Stinemans' oldest daughter, Nancy Hall, 56, of Concord, said the jury's verdict offered some measure of relief.

"This is a long road and I think justice was done for my parents and Selina," she said. "Today was a good day for some of us. We have to go through this."

Hall said that while she may never feel a complete sense of closure over her parents' deaths, she hopes to learn why the crimes happened.

"This is like a journey," Hall said. "I think as we go through this, we will understand more. We will get understanding, and maybe we'll be happy."

'So many tragedies'

Under state law, a death sentence is automatically appealed, defense attorney Cook said outside the courthouse, adding he was "obviously disappointed" in the jury's decision.

"There are so many tragedies in this case," he said. "Now, there is one more."

As of January, there were 637 inmates on California's death row, said Margot Bach, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Corrections. As with the state's other condemned inmates, Helzer will be given the choice of death by lethal injection or death in the gas chamber.

"If he doesn't chose one, the default is lethal injection," Bach said.

It will take at least 10 years for Helzer's appeal to wind its way through the court system, Bach said.

"He'll be (on death row) for at least 10 years," Bach said. "The average time is well more than that."

Deputy District Attorney Harold Jewett on Tuesday said the jury's verdict sends a clear message.

"This verdict was a choice for life -- but not Justin's life, he made his own bed," Jewett said. "This jury sent a message on just how precious life is -- on the value we the people place on an individual life and the lives he took."

'Still work to do'

Jewett called the case "difficult on many levels," saying it was emotionally and tragically complex.

"The jury was dedicated . . . and did everything good and right." he said. "This was a true measure of justice today -- but there is still work to do."

After the verdict, Olga Land, Jennifer Villarin's younger sister and Selina Bishop's aunt, said she wanted to go home and hug her children.

"I put this all in God's hands a long time ago," said Land, 42, of Felton, near Santa Cruz. "It was his decision and it's in his hands now."

While she believed "justice was done," Land said she would never feel closure.

"We're never going to get them back," she said. "This is not some sort of trade. Nobody wins."

It was the defense's position that Helzer -- who pleaded innocent by reason of insanity -- was under the control of his domineering and charismatic brother, Glenn Helzer, 34, a man Justin Helzer believed was a prophet of God.

Cook argued that Justin Helzer was deluded and incapable of discerning right from wrong when he undertook his crime spree on the week of July 30 to Aug. 3, 2000.

'Nothing usual'

"There is nothing usual about this case," Cook said on Tuesday. "The thing is everyone agreed that Justin believed what he was doing was a good thing. That's why I'm so troubled by the (verdict)."

During the sanity phase of Helzer's trial, Cook called a number of mental health experts who said Helzer suffered from "shared delusional disorder," a condition he "caught" from his older brother.

The jury didn't buy it. On July 15, jurors found Helzer to be legally sane, making him eligible for the death penalty.

Court records said Glenn Helzer sought to extort $100,000 from the Stinemans to fund a number of proposed business ventures. The plan went dreadfully wrong and five people wound up dead.

The Stinemans -- who Glenn Helzer met through his job as a stockbroker at a Concord firm -- were abducted from their Concord home on Frayne Lane on July 30, 2000. Between then and Aug. 2, 2000, they were held captive in a home rented by the Helzers on Saddlewood Court in Concord.

There, the Stinemans were forced to sign over checks totaling $100,000 before they were killed and dismembered in the bathroom.

Wild plan: Utopian paradise

It was all part of a wild plan hatched by the Helzers and their roommate, 29-year-old Dawn Godman.

To avoid the death penalty, Godman pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the brothers. Under state law, she must serve at least 35 years and nine months in jail before she is eligible for parole.

The defendants' plan, dubbed "Children of Thunder," called for the creation of a Utopian paradise on earth and the hastening of Christ's return. To ensure the plot's success, anyone deemed a threat to its ultimate success was killed, the prosecution argued.

Selina Bishop, Glenn Helzer's girlfriend, was murdered on Aug. 2, 2000, to prevent her from testifying if the plot were exposed.

Like the Stinemans, her body was dismembered and decapitated. The body parts were thrown into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where they were discovered shortly thereafter.

Glenn Helzer was the trigger man in the shooting deaths of Villarin and Gamble on Aug. 3, 2000, while they house-sat Bishop's apartment, the defense said. Godman drove the getaway car.

Glenn Helzer killed Villarin because he feared she knew too much about him. Gamble was killed just because he happened to be there at the time. Helzer has since pleaded guilty to 18 felony counts against him. They include five counts of capital murder that make him eligible for the death penalty.

Jury selection in Glenn Helzer's trial is scheduled to get under way on Oct. 4.

Society 'doesn't understand'

On Tuesday, Gamble's mother, Frances Nelson, 76, of Yountville, said though she had lost one son, Carma Helzer was losing both of hers. After the verdict was read, Nelson hugged Helzer's mother and expressed her condolences.

Outside the family's Pacheco home, Helzer's sister, Heather, spoke briefly.

"I believe the fact that we even got to the penalty phase in the trial shows that our society doesn't understand mental illness," she said. "It doesn't understand a person's ability to control it or not control it."

Justin Helzer will be back in court on Sept. 24, when a date will be set for formal sentencing by Judge O'Malley.

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By Simon Read

In August 1842, Scotland Yard established its Detective Branch. In those early days of homicide investigation, detectives responding a scene were forced to handle evidence with their bare hands. Clues found near a body — whether it be a bloody knife, a torn piece of clothing or human hair — were collected by finger and wrapped in a piece of paper or deposited in an envelope for safe keeping. Forensic science being what it was back in those days, there was no way of knowing how the handling of such evidence compromised its quality. Such methods continued until 1924, when the Yard introduced its Murder Bag in the wake of a particularly gruesome killing.

The crime scene was a seaside bungalow in Eastbourne. What detectives found in the four-bedroom home following a phoned-in tip was horrific even by the most brutal standards. Before detectives even entered the house, they could smell something foul drifting from it on the breeze. Aside from the bedrooms, there was a sitting room, a kitchen and a scullery. The violence that had occurred within the house left no room untouched. A thick trail of blood ran from the sitting room. It crossed the hallway and passed through a bedroom into the scullery, where boiled human remains were found in a saucepan and a tub. Detectives discovered a blood-smeared saw in one bedroom, while fragments of torched bone littered the fireplaces in the sitting and dining rooms. Blood on the lid of a biscuit tin found in the kitchen drew the attention of one detective. Opening it revealed a heart and other internal organs crammed inside. In another room, investigators came across a large trunk from which the awful stench that permeated the place seemed to originate. Prying open the lid, detectives found a woman’s dismembered body.

Famed pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury responded to the scene to help search for missing body parts. When he entered the bungalow, Spilsbury was horrified to find one detective using his bare hands to scoop up mounds of rotting flesh and deposit them in a bucket. Spilsbury gave the detective a quick dissertation on the health hazards associated with such an activity and asked the policeman why he wasn’t wearing rubber gloves. The detective gave Spilsbury a puzzled look and told him he never wore rubber gloves. Since the Murder Squad’s creation seventeen years prior, this was how things had been done. Spilsbury made a note to bring this up with the proper authorities back at the Yard. He then began his own crime-scene examination. Over the course of the day, Spilsbury and detectives retrieved more than 1,000 pieces of bone fragments in the bungalow’s fireplaces. The stench of decomposing flesh in the residence was so strong that Spilsbury set his workstation up outside. The woman’s body had to be pieced back together like a jigsaw puzzle. An autopsy eventually revealed that the victim — later identified as 34-year-old Emily Kaye — was three months pregnant when she was hacked to death. Spilsbury would later admit that the barbarity of the crime and the condition of the victim made the Kaye murder one his most disturbing cases.

Kaye’s killer — Patrick Mahon, a married man who had an affair with Kaye and panicked when he learned she was pregnant — rendezvoused with the hangman for his deeds. In the wake of the case, Spilsbury met with Detective Superintendent William Brown — chief of the Murder Squad — and shared with him his concerns regarding detectives handling human remains with their naked hands. Brown and Spilsbury’s consultation resulted in the Murder Bag, a kit that was to be carried by all detectives responding to a homicide. In the bag were rubber gloves, tweezers, containers for evidence, a magnifying glass, swabs and other items useful for the collection of evidence. Over the years, the Murder Bag’s contents would evolve with the advancement of investigative techniques and forensic methods.

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By Simon Read

What follows is an extract from my first book, ON THE HOUSE. I've always enjoyed this tale . . . it's violent and somewhat gross!

The age of Prohibition spawned a new breed of criminal. In cities like New York and Chicago, they drew lines of battle and waged war for control of the metropolitans’ illegal liquor trades. New York City’s five boroughs fell under the violent jurisdiction of men with names like Dutch and Little Frenchy. The Bronx — as well as Harlem — was the eminent domain of Arthur Simon Flegenheim, better known as Dutch Schultz. Through killing and intimidation, Schultz — a man of notoriously ill disposition — ascended the underworld’s ranks, achieving for himself the status of “Beer Baron of the Bronx.” It was in the Bronx where Schultz was born and raised. One can argue he had ties to the alcohol trade from the very beginning: His father, who abandoned the family when Schultz was 14, was the owner of a New York saloon.

Recently released from a one-year stint in prison for burglary, Schultz was 18 years old when America went “dry” in 1920. It was not long before he saw in Prohibition an opportunity to make a quick buck. He began working the ranks of various bootlegging operations. He broke legs, busted chops and inflicted harm of a more permanent sort for some of the heavier characters in the liquor-smuggling business, including Jack “Legs” Diamond and Arnold Rothstein. It was not until 1928, however, that Schultz took his first major step toward becoming “Beer Baron.” It was that year that Joey Noe, a friend of Schultz and the son of a beer pipe cleaner, opened his own speakeasy — the Hub Social Club — in a Bronx tenement at 543 Brook Ave. and took Schultz on as his junior partner.

A lot of people were thirsty. Consequently, business was swell. From their Brook Avenue address and the profits garnered therein, Noe and Schultz sewed the seeds of a burgeoning empire. It was not long before they were scouting new locales and opening other speakeasies throughout the Bronx. Courtesy of their connection with a New Jersey brewer named Frank Dunn and a couple of beat-up trucks, Noe and Schultz branched out further, taking it upon themselves to supply beer to their competitors. For the speakeasy owner who maintained he was happy with the supplier he had, ample reason to switch was soon provided. It came wearing a flashy suit with, perhaps, a gun holstered under an arm and knuckles that had dislodged many a tooth. Sometimes it brandished a baseball bat.

Smashing up a joint may have been a last resort, but there were times when even that failed to force a proprietor to see the error of this ways. When that occurred — as a Bronx speakeasy owner named Joe Rock discovered — more drastic measures were employed. Rock was a partner with his brother, John. One night, Noe and Schultz dispatched a couple of goons who paid a visit to the Rock establishment and sampled some of the home brew. It was not, they determined, a satisfactory concoction. Voicing as much, the goons implied it would be wise for the Brothers Rock to secure their beer from a supplier of higher quality. John quickly got the message. Joe, made of tougher stuff, told them to piss off. This they did, only to return a while later in a collectively violent mood. They ransacked the Rock establishment, busting barrels, smashing glasses and breaking bottles. When they were done, they dragged a bloodied and beaten Joe from the premises. He was taken to a remote location and hung by this thumbs from a meat hook. According to legend, he was blindfolded with a handkerchief smeared with muck collected from a gonorrheal discharge. The unfortunate episode left Joe blind and sent a clear message to other speakeasy owners.

Though lucrative, the Noe-Schultz partnership was not long lasting. It ended in a frenzy of gunfire on the morning of October 16, 1928, outside the Chateau Madrid on West 54th Street, near Sixth Avenue. The target was Joe Noe. The gunmen, rivals of the Noe-Schultz collaborative, blazed away from the confines of a blue Caddy. Noe hit the pavement with slugs in his spine, chest and left hand, but not before squeezing off a few rounds of his own. He died five days later at the Bellevue Hospital prison, leaving Schultz in sole command of a liquor empire that had now spread from the Bronx to Manhattan’s lower west-side. It was an empire Schultz would rule with an iron fist . . .

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