Look up serial in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Serial, anything in the form of a series, can refer to:

Media[link]

• Serial, a type of periodical publication
• Serial (film), short subjects originally shown in theaters in conjunction with feature films, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s
• Serial (radio and television), series of radio and television programs that rely on a continuing plot that unfolds in a sequential episode-by-episode fashion
• Serial (literature), serialised fiction in print
• Webserial, serialised written fiction on the Internet
• Serialism, in music
• Serial art, in which uniform elements or objects were assembled in accordance with strict modular principles
• The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County, a novel by Cyra McFadden
• Serial (1980 film), based on McFadden's novel, starring Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld

Technology[link]

• Serial cable, a type of computer cable
• Serial communications, computer communication technologies that use a single stream of data
• Serial number, a unique number identifying a specific example of a particular product
• Serial port, a personal computer interface for transferring data streams between devices
• Serial Peripheral Interface Bus (SPI), a simple data link standard designed by Motorola
• Serialization, the process of converting a data structure into a linear form that can be stored or transmitted

Mathematics[link]

• Serial relation, a relation such that every element has a successor

Culture[link]

• Serial killer, people who, for psychological reasons, murder victims who are generally unknown to them beforehand in at least three different situations

See also[link]

• Cereal (a homophone)
• Series (disambiguation)
• Serial comma

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Colin Ireland (16 March 1954 – 21 February 2012) was a British serial killer known as the "Gay Slayer" because he killed gay men.

While living in Southend, he started frequenting The Coleherne pub, a gay pub in west London. It was known as a place where men cruised for sexual partners and wore colour coded handkerchiefs that indicated their preferred role. Ireland sought men who liked the passive role and sadomasochism, so he could readily restrain them as they initially believed it was a sexual game.

Ireland said he was heterosexual — he had been married — and that he pretended to be gay only to befriend potential victims. It is unknown whether Ireland's murders were sexually motivated. Ireland was highly organised. He carried a full murder kit of rope and handcuffs and a full change of clothes to each murder. After killing the victim he cleaned the flat of any forensic evidence linking him to the scene and stayed in the flat until morning in order to avoid arousing suspicion from leaving in the middle of the night.

He was jailed for life for the murders in December 1993 and remained imprisoned until his death in February 2012, at the age of 57.

The victims[link]

Peter Walker[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Walker, a 45-year-old choreographer, took Ireland back to his flat in Battersea. There he was bound, and ultimately suffocated by a plastic bag being placed over his head.

Ireland placed two teddy bears in a 69 position on the body. Ireland left Walker's dogs locked in another room. The day after the murder, having heard no news reports of the crime, he called Samaritans and a journalist from The Sun newspaper, advising them of the dogs, and that he had murdered their master.

Christopher Dunn[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Dunn was a 37-year-old librarian who lived in Wealdstone. Dunn's death was initially believed to be an accident that occurred during an erotic game. In addition, because he lived in a different area from Walker, a different set of investigators worked on the case. For these reasons the death was not linked to Walker's.

Perry Bradley III[link]

Ireland met a 35-year-old^[1] businessman, named Perry Bradley III, at the Coleherne pub. Bradley lived in Kensington and was the son of Texas Democratic Party fundraiser Perry Bradley Jr.^[2]

The two men returned to Bradley's flat, where Ireland suggested that he tie Bradley up. Bradley expressed his displeasure at the idea of sado-masochism. In order to get Bradley to comply, Ireland told Bradley that he was unable to perform sexually without elements of bondage. Bradley hesitantly cooperated and was soon trussed up on his own bed, face down, with a noose around his neck.

After Ireland had secured Bradley, he demanded money from him and demanded his PIN under the threat of torture. Ireland assured Bradley that he was merely a thief and would leave after stealing Bradley's money. After Bradley gave Ireland his PIN, which Ireland later used to steal £200, along with £100 in cash stolen from Bradley's flat, Ireland told Bradley that he should go to sleep, as he wouldn't be leaving his flat for hours. Bradley eventually did fall asleep and Ireland momentarily thought of leaving Bradley unharmed. Ireland then realized that Bradley could identify him, and he used the noose, which he had earlier attached around Bradley's neck, to strangle him. Before leaving Bradley's flat, he placed a doll on top of the dead man's body.

Bradley was described in police reports as heterosexual. This was not true and perhaps done to protect his family. This contributed to the failure by investigators to link the different murders.^{[peacock term]}

Andrew Collier[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Ireland, angered that he had received no publicity even after three murders, killed again within three days. At the pub he met and courted 33-year-old Andrew Collier, a housing warden, and the pair went to Collier's home in Dalston. After entering the flat there was a disturbance outside and both men went to the window to investigate. Ireland gripped a horizontal metal bar that ran across the window. He later forgot to wipe the bar for prints during his usual cleanup phase. The police found this fingerprint.

Once he had tied up his victim on the bed, Ireland again demanded his victim's bank details. This time his victim refused to comply. Ireland killed Collier's cat in Collier's presence whilst he was restrained on the bed. Ireland then strangled Collier with a noose. He put a condom on Collier's penis and placed the dead cat's mouth over it, and placed the cat's tail into Collier's mouth.

Ireland had become angered at discovering Collier was HIV positive while rummaging through his personal effects looking for bank details. A suspected reason for his killing of the cat was that after Ireland killed Walker and had left this previous victim's dogs locked in a separate room, he later called anonymously to advise parties to the fact that these dogs were being or had been locked up. As a result the media called the killer an animal lover. He strangled the cat to demonstrate that the "animal lover" assumption had been wrong.

Ireland left the next morning with £70; he also left a clue for the police by putting a condom in Collier's mouth, just as he had done to Walker, creating an obvious link between the two murders.^{[peacock term]}

Emanuel Spiteri[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Ireland's fifth victim (he had read that serial killers needed at least five victims to qualify as such) was Emanuel Spiteri, aged 41, a chef whom Ireland had met in the same pub as his previous victims. The two men went to Spiteri's flat in Hither Green, and again Spiteri was persuaded to be cuffed and bound on his bed. Once more, Ireland demanded his bank PIN number but did not obtain it. He again used a noose to kill his victim.

After carrying out his post-murder ritual of cleaning and clearing the scene, Ireland set fire to the flat and left. He rang the police later to tell them to look for a body at the scene of a fire and added that he would probably not kill again.

The connection[link]

There are suggestions that police homophobia delayed the linking of all the murders and that they were initially not handled well^[3] but police eventually connected all five killings. The crimes were widely publicised through the mainstream media and it quickly became known in the gay community and the wider community that a serial killer who specifically targeted gay men was operating.

Investigations revealed that Spiteri had left the pub and travelled home with his killer by train, and a security video successfully captured the two of them on the railway platform at Charing Cross station. Ireland recognised himself and decided to tell police he was the man with Spiteri but not the killer — he claimed to have left Spiteri in the flat with another man. However, police had also found the fingerprints in Collier's flat, which matched those of Ireland.

Convictions and imprisonment[link]

He was charged with the murders of Collier and Spiteri, and confessed to the other three while awaiting trial in prison. He told police that he had no vendetta against gay men, but picked on them because they were the easiest targets. Ireland pretended to be gay in order to lure his victims.^[4] He had robbed those he killed to finance his killings because he was unemployed at the time, and he needed funds to travel to and from London when hunting for victims.

After the first murder, Ireland phoned The Samaritans and The Sun, telling them what he had done. Ireland said he wanted to become famous for being a serial killer. After killing three more men, and the pet cat of one of them, he phoned police, asking why they had not linked the four murders.^[4]

When his case came to the Old Bailey on 20 December 1993, Ireland admitted all charges and was given life sentences for each. The judge, Justice Sachs, said he was "exceptionally frightening and dangerous", adding: "To take one human life is an outrage; to take five is carnage."

On 22 December 2006, Ireland was one of 35 life sentence prisoners whose names appeared on the Home Office's list of prisoners who had been issued with whole life tariffs and were unlikely ever to be released.^[5]

Death[link]

Ireland died on 21 February 2012, at Wakefield Prison. A spokeswoman for Her Majesty's Prison Service said: "He is presumed to have died from natural causes; a post-mortem will follow."^[6]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Murder UK - Colin Ireland

• Crime Library article on Colin Ireland

Kenneth Allen McDuff (March 21, 1946 – November 17, 1998) was an American serial killer suspected of at least 14 murders. He had previously been on death row from 1968 to 1972.

Early life and background[link]

Kenneth Allen McDuff was born at 201 Linden Street in the central Texas town of Rosebud (Falls County), one of four children born to John and Addie McDuff. His father worked as a farmer and mason.

McDuff's mother, Addie, was known around their small town as "The pistol packin' momma" due to her propensity toward violence and habit of carrying a firearm. She has been characterized as domineering by Christopher Berry-Dee, who authored a short biography of Kenneth McDuff as part of his book Talking with Serial Killers.

McDuff was known to fire at living creatures with a .22 rifle as a young boy as well as to get into fights with boys older than he was. This led to his acquiring a fearsome reputation in Rosebud, and it was not long before he became known to the local Sheriff, Larry Pamplin.

Earlier criminal activities[link]

His criminal record began two years before his first murder conviction. In 1964 McDuff was convicted of 12 counts of burglary and attempted burglary in three Texas counties: Bell, Milam, and Falls. He was sentenced to 12 four-year prison terms, to be served concurrently; however, he was paroled in December 1965.

He was briefly returned to prison after violating his parole by becoming involved in a fight, but he was once again released.

While he was not convicted of any murders at this time, his accomplice in the 1966 triple murder, Roy Dale Green, said that McDuff bragged openly about his criminal record and claimed to have raped and killed two young women.

Broomstick murders[link]

On August 6, 1966, McDuff and new friend Roy Dale Green, whom he had met around a month earlier through a mutual acquaintance by the name of Richard Boyd, spent the day pouring concrete for John McDuff, Kenneth's father.

At approximately 5 p.m., once they had completed their work, McDuff and Green decided to drive to Fort Worth in McDuff's new Dodge Coronet. They bought a six-pack of beer from a 7-11 store and visited a mutual friend, Edith Turner, at around 7 p.m. before buying a hamburger.

Their soon-to-be victims had spent the evening at a drive-in movie, and at 10 p.m. were parked on a baseball field in Everman, Texas, in Tarrant County. The trio consisted of Robert Brand (aged 18), his girlfriend Edna Louise Sullivan (aged 16) and Brand's 16-year-old cousin Mark Dunman.

Green, in a statement he gave to the police when he turned himself in on August 8, stated that he and McDuff parked around 150 yards away from their victims' car. McDuff took his revolver with him. Once they arrived at the vehicle, he ordered the occupants into the trunk of their car.

With Green following in McDuff's car, McDuff drove the victims' Ford along a highway and then onto a field. Here he ordered Edna Sullivan out of the trunk of the Ford and instructed Green to put her into the trunk of his Dodge Coronet. At this point, according to Green's statement, McDuff said he would have to "knock 'em off"; he proceeded to fire six shots into the trunk of the Ford in spite of Dunman and Brand's pleas not to.

McDuff then instructed Green to wipe the fingerprints off the Ford. They then drove to another location where first McDuff and then Green, allegedly under duress, raped Sullivan. After he and Green had repeatedly raped Sullivan, McDuff asked Green for something to strangle her with. Green gave him his belt. However, in the end McDuff opted to use a 3-foot-long (0.91 m) piece of broomstick from his car. He choked Sullivan, then he and Green dumped her body in some bushes.

They purchased some Coca-Cola from a Hillsboro gas station before driving to Green's house to spend the night. The following day, McDuff buried his revolver beside Green's garage and their mutual acquaintance Richard Boyd allowed McDuff to wash his car at his house.

The next day Green confessed to Boyd's parents, who told Green's mother, who convinced him to hand himself in.

McDuff received three death sentences and Green received a 25-year prison sentence. However, McDuff's death sentences were commuted to a life sentence. At that time, a life sentence in Texas meant serving a minimum of 10 years in prison before being paroled.

Ultimately Green served 13 years before being paroled. While incarcerated, McDuff was twice sent to the electric chair, but both times received last minute stays of execution.

Post-release crimes[link]

As a result of overcrowding in Texas prisons,^[1] McDuff was paroled on 11 October 1989 to Milam County, Texas.

Allegedly McDuff's mother bribed the parole board into releasing him, but his release was also part of a wider series of events. As a result of serious overcrowding in Texas prisons, Governor Bill Clements ordered the Texas parole board to release 750 low risk offenders every week. Even after 60,000 'low-risk' inmates had been paroled, the prison system was still overcrowded.

The Texas parole board began releasing inmates hastily. McDuff was one of 20 former death row inmates and 127 murderers to be paroled.

After being released, he got a job at a gas station making $4 an hour and took a class at Texas State Technical College in Waco.^[2]

Within three days of his release, he began killing again. He killed 31-year-old Sarafia Parker, whose body was discovered on October 14, 1989, in Temple, a town about 48 miles from Waco. However, he was soon returned to prison on a parole violation for making death threats to a black youth in Rosebud.

Addie McDuff paid $1,500 to two Huntsville attorneys, plus an additional $700 for expenses, to two Huntsville attorneys in return for them 'evaluating' her son's prospect of release. On December 18, 1990, McDuff was again released from prison.

On October 10, 1991, McDuff picked up a prostitute and drug addict named Brenda Thompson in Waco. He tied her up, but his vehicle was stopped at Waco Police Department checkpoint. McDuff stopped approximately 50 ft in before the checkpoint. This led to one policeman walking toward McDuff's vehicle. On seeing the police officer, Thompson repeatedly kicked at the windshield of McDuff's truck, cracking it several times. McDuff accelerated very quickly and drove at the officers. According to a statement filed by the officers later, three of them had to jump to avoid being hit.

The policemen gave chase, but it was nighttime and McDuff eluded them by turning off his lights and traveling the wrong way down one-way streets. Ultimately he parked his truck in a wooded area near US 84. He inflicted a torturous death upon Thompson. Her body was not discovered until 1998.

Five days later, on October 15, 1991, McDuff and a 17-year-old prostitute named Regenia DeAnne Moore were witnessed having an argument at a Waco motel. Shortly thereafter, the pair drove in McDuff's pickup truck to a remote area beside Highway 6, near Waco. McDuff tied her arms and legs with stockings before killing her. She had been missing from home for seven years by the time her body was discovered on September 29, 1993.

He killed again on December 29, 1991. His victim was Colleen Reed, a Louisiana native. He and an accomplice, Alva Hank Worley, drove to an Austin carwash where Reed was. McDuff kidnapped her in plain sight of eyewitnesses, and he and Worley drove her away. Worley admitted in an April 1992 interview with the Bell County Sheriff's Dept. that he had raped Reed, but stated that he did not participate in her murder.

His next victim was Valencia Joshua, a prostitute and fellow student at Texas State Technical College in Waco. Crucially she was last seen alive knocking on McDuff's door. While a student, McDuff had taken up drug dealing, selling crack cocaine, LSD, methamphetamine and marijuana to fellow students to supplement his student grant.

McDuff strangled Joshua on February 24, 1992. Her body was discovered on March 15 at a golf course near their college.

McDuff's next victim was Melissa Northrup, a 22-year-old store clerk at a Waco Quik-pak. She was pregnant at the time of her death on March 1. He had also taken $250 from the cash register. During the investigation into Northrup's disappearance (her body was found by a fisherman on April 26, 1992) a college friend of McDuff's told police officers that McDuff, who was already a suspect due to having been seen in the vicinity of the Quik-pak at the time of Northrup's disappearance, had attempted to enlist his help in robbing the store.

A major problem for investigators was that McDuff's post-release victims were spread out across several Texas counties. This made a single coordinated investigation into him difficult. However, the police had learned that McDuff was peddling drugs and had an illegal firearm, both federal offenses. Consequently on March 6, 1992, a local State Attorney issued a warrant for McDuff's arrest.

In April 1992 the police made a major breakthrough. Bell County Sheriff's Department investigators had brought in Alva Hank Worley for questioning, on the basis that he was a known acquaintance of McDuff. Worley admitted to his involvement in the kidnapping of Colleen Reed. He was held in a Travis County jail while the police continued their search for McDuff.

McDuff had moved to Kansas City, where he was working at a refuse collection company and living under the assumed name of Richard Fowler. On May 1, 1992, a coworker of his named Gary Smithee watched an American television program entitled America's Most Wanted. Smithee noticed how similar McDuff, who was featured on the program, was to his new coworker. After discussing the matter with another coworker, Smithee telephoned the Kansas City Police.

The Kansas City Police searched Fowler's name and found he had been arrested, and fingerprinted, for soliciting prostitutes. Comparing the fingerprints taken from Fowler to those from McDuff showed they were the same.

On May 4, 1992, a surveillance team of six officers arrested McDuff as he drove to a landfill south of Kansas City.

Trial and execution[link]

McDuff was indicted on one count of capital murder for the death of Melissa Northrup in McLennan County, Texas, on June 26, 1992. He was found guilty. In Texas, juries determine whether or not an individual convicted of capital murder receives life imprisonment or the death penalty.

On February 18, 1993, the jury, in a special punishment hearing, opted to sentence him to death. His case was automatically taken to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which affirmed the sentence on April 28, 1997.

McDuff filed a writ of certiorari to the US Supreme Court, but this was rejected on January 12, 1998. A state writ of habeas corpus was also rejected on April 15, 1998.

On April 29, 1998, the original court of sentencing in McLennan County set the execution date as October 21, 1998. However, on July 8, McDuff filed a federal writ of habeas corpus. This had the effect of delaying his execution as his case was considered again.

Finally, on October 15, 1998, the Western District Court denied habeas corpus relief and rescheduled the execution date for November 17, 1998. He filed a Notice of Appeal on October 23, but on October 26 his request for a certificate of appealability was denied by the Western District Court, and he was duly executed on November 17. He gave up Colleen Reed's burial location a couple of weeks before his execution.

McDuff is buried in the Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery, also known as "Peckerwood Hill," in Huntsville, Texas. Prisoners buried there are those whose family choose not to claim their remains. His headstone contains his name, date of execution, 11-17-98, as well as a "X" meaning he was executed by the State of Texas, and the number 999055, his death row number. His final meal according to death row chef Brian Price was a hamburger fashioned to resemble his request of a steak.

See also[link]

• List of individuals executed in Texas
• Capital punishment in the United States

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Bad Boy from Rosebud by Gary M. Lavergne
• No Remorse by Bob Stewart
• Talking With Serial Killers (2003), C. Berry-Dee, John Blake Publishing, London

External links[link]

• The Many Faces of Kenneth Allen McDuff. Gary M. Lavergne. Retrieved on 2012-01-
• U.S. Executions Since 1976
• Kenneth McDuff at Find a Grave

Ottis Toole
Toole's 1983 mugshot
Background information
Birth name	Ottis Elwood Toole
Born	(1947-03-05)March 5, 1947 Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.
Died	September 15, 1996(1996-09-15) (aged 49)
Cause of death	Liver failure
Sentence	Death, commuted to life in prison
Killings
Number of victims	at least three
Country	United States
State(s)	Florida and Texas
Date apprehended	April 1983

Ottis Elwood Toole (March 5, 1947 – September 15, 1996) was an American serial killer, arsonist, necrophiliac, and cannibal. He was an accomplice of convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. The pair confessed to hundreds of murders and missing persons cases throughout the United States over several decades, knowing details only the perpetrators would know and taking authorities to the crime scenes and burial sites of their victims. Both are alleged to have targeted victims of all ages, races, and genders and to have killed by shooting, stabbing, strangling, and bludgeoning. The pair had no apparent pattern. When the crime wave began is unclear; it ended in 1983 when Toole was arrested on an arson charge and Lucas, a few months later, on a weapons charge. The two confessed to hundreds of murders, though they recanted when they were sentenced to death. Once their sentences were commuted they began admitting to even more murders eventually exceeding 600.

Early life[link]

Toole was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. Toole's mother was a religious fanatic; Toole later claimed that she abused him, including dressing him in girl's clothing and calling him Susan.^[1] As a young child, Toole was a victim of sexual assault and incest at the hands of many close relatives and acquaintances, including his older sister and next door neighbor. He claimed that his maternal grandmother was a satanist, who exposed him to various Satanic practices and rituals in his youth, including self-mutilation and graverobbing, and dubbed him "Devil's Child". Toole claimed this abuse began when he came out about being gay. ^[1]

He was often designated as suffering from mild mental retardation, with an I.Q. of 75.^[1] It is believed, however, that his IQ was probably higher and that he had received such low scores due to suffering from various learning disabilities (including dyslexia and ADHD) and being illiterate. He also suffered from epilepsy, which resulted in frequent grand mal seizures. Throughout his childhood, he ran away from home often and often slept in abandoned houses. He was a serial arsonist from a young age and was sexually aroused by fire.^[1]

In the documentary Death Diploma, Toole claimed he was forced to have sex with a friend of his father's when he was five years old. He felt he knew he was homosexual when he was 10, and claimed to have had a homosexual relationship with a neighbor boy when he was 12. Toole dropped out of school in the ninth grade and began visiting gay bars. He also claimed to have been a male prostitute as a teenager, and became obsessed with gay porn.^[1] Toole claimed to have committed his first murder at the age of 14, when after being propositioned for sex by a traveling salesman, Toole ran over the salesman with his own car.^[1] Toole was first arrested at the age of 17 in August 1964 for loitering.

Much information on Toole between 1966–1973 is unclear, but it is believed that he began drifting around the Southwestern United States and that he supported himself by prostitution and panhandling. While living in Nebraska, Toole was one of the prime suspects in the 1974 murder of 24-year-old Patricia Webb. Shortly after, he left Nebraska and briefly settled in Boulder, Colorado. One month later, he became a prime suspect in the murder of 31-year-old Ellen Holman, who was murdered on October 14, 1974. With many accusations against him, Toole left Boulder and headed back to Jacksonville.

In early 1975, Toole had returned to Jacksonville after drifting and hitch-hiking through the American South. On January 14, 1976, he married a woman 25 years his senior. She left him in just three days, after discovering her husband's homosexuality. Toole said during an interview his marriage was a tactic meant to conceal his true sexuality. ^[1]

Murders and imprisonment[link]

In 1976, Toole met Henry Lee Lucas at a Jacksonville soup kitchen,^[1] and they soon developed a sexual relationship.^[2] Toole later claimed to have accompanied Lucas in 108 murders, sometimes at the behest of a cult called "The Hands of Death". Lucas later recanted his confessions, saying he made such statements only to improve his living conditions in jail.

In April 1983 Toole was arrested on an arson charge in Jacksonville Florida. Two months later in June his accomplice Henry Lee Lucas was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm. It was then Lucas began boasting about the murderous rampage orchestrated by the two. At first, Toole had denied involvement but later began backing up Lucas's confessions.

On October 21, 1983 he confessed to the 1981 murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh.^[3] A few weeks after Toole made the confession, however, police investigating the case announced that they had lost Toole's impounded car and machete. John Walsh, Adam's father, continued to maintain that he believed Toole to be guilty.^[4] On December 16, 2008, Hollywood, Florida police announced Toole as the murderer, and the Adam Walsh case was closed. The police did not reveal any new physical evidence and pointed out that they still had no DNA evidence.^[5][6] Toole confessed that on that same day he ambushed and killed 46-year-old Joana Holter in her home while she was attending to groceries with the same machete he used to decapitate Adam Walsh.

On January 12, 1982, Toole barricaded 64-year-old George Sonnenberg in his own home and set the house alight, killing him. In April 1984, Toole was convicted and sentenced to death in Jacksonville, Florida for Sonnenberg's murder. Later that year, Toole was found guilty of the February 1983 strangulation murder of 19-year-old Silvia Rogers, a Tallahassee, Florida, resident, and received a second death sentence; on appeal, however, both sentences were commuted to life in prison.

Experts at his trial had testified that Toole suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. While serving his sentence, Toole briefly stayed in the cell adjacent to serial killer Ted Bundy in Florida's Raiford Prison.^[3] After incarceration, Toole pleaded guilty to four more Jacksonville murders in 1991 and received four more life sentences.

In 1984, Toole confessed to two unsolved Northwest Florida slayings, including one of the I-10 murders. During an interview, he admitted to killing 18-year-old David Schallart, a hitchhiker he picked up east of Pensacola, Florida. Schallart's body, bearing five gunshot wounds in the left side of the head, was found on February 6, 1980, approximately 125 feet off I-10's eastbound lane, five miles east of Chipley, Florida. The second confession involved the death of 20-year-old Ada Johnson. Toole confessed that he shot her in the head on a road outside of Fort Walton Beach, Florida after kidnapping her at gunpoint at a Tallahassee nightclub.^[7]

On September 15, 1996, at the age of 49, Ottis Toole died in his prison cell from liver failure.^[8] He was buried in a prison cemetery, as no one claimed his body.

Murder of Adam Walsh[link]

Twenty-seven years after the murder of Adam Walsh in 1981, authorities officially named Toole as the likely killer.^[5][9]

Toole claimed to have picked Adam up in a Sears mall parking lot. Toole said he offered him candy and toys and that Adam came willingly. Adam soon wanted to go home and began crying. Toole said he then punched him in the face. Adam started crying more, and, according to Toole, he began to "wallop" Adam, knocking him out. Toole eventually pulled over in a rural area and decapitated Adam with a machete. He drove around for several days with Adam's head, forgot about it, and, once rediscovering it, tossed it into a nearby canal. Police somehow lost his impounded car and machete, hindering their ability to proceed with the investigation.

Hollywood, Florida Police Chief Chadwick Wagner said Ottis Toole had been the prime suspect all along, but went on to admit that although Toole's case was weak, he could have been charged during the original investigation.^[9] Wagner acknowledged that many mistakes were made by the department and apologized to the Walsh family. Public critics of the indictment argue that lack of new (public) evidence, and the inability of the defendant to defend himself of the allegations, leaves no definitive claim to his guilt. To this Wagner has stated, "If you're looking for that magic wand, that one piece of evidence, it's not there." However, by reexamining previously uncorrelated evidence, police and the Walsh family are satisfied with the new report and existing evidence that points only to Ottis Toole.

In response to the naming of his son's alleged murderer, John Walsh stated, "We can now move forward knowing positively who killed our beautiful little boy."^[10]

The decision was finally reached once Toole's niece told John Walsh that her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison that he had murdered and decapitated Adam Walsh.^[4]

Film depiction[link]

A character based on Toole was portrayed by Tom Towles in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Notes[link]

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Tagged since October 2007. It appears to contradict itself. Tagged since April 2012. Its neutrality is disputed. Tagged since January 2008.

Hotchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj (born April 6, 1944), better known as Charles Sobhraj, is a serial killer of Indian and Vietnamese origin, who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Nicknamed "the Serpent" and "the Bikini killer" for his skill at deception and evasion, he allegedly committed at least 12 murders. He was convicted and jailed in India from 1976 to 1997, but managed to live a life of leisure even in prison. After his release, he retired as a celebrity in Paris; he unexpectedly returned to Nepal, where he was arrested, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment on August 12, 2004. The Supreme Court of Nepal has finally convicted him and ordered the life imprisonment, this decision was made on 30 July 2010.^[1]

While Sobhraj is widely believed to be a psychopath, his motives for killing differed from those of most serial killers. Sobhraj was not driven to murder by deep-seated, violent impulses, but as a means to sustain his lifestyle of adventure. That, as well as his cunning and cultured personality, made him a celebrity long before his release from prison. Sobhraj enjoyed the attention, charging large amounts of money for interviews and film rights; he has been the subject of four books and three documentaries. His search for attention and his overconfidence in his own intelligence are believed responsible for his return to a country where authorities were still eager to arrest him.

Early years[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2010)

Sobhraj was born as Gurmukh Sobhraj to an unwed Vietnamese mother and an Indian father in Saigon. The father soon deserted the family. Stateless at first,^[2] he was adopted by his mother's new boyfriend, a French army lieutenant stationed in Indochina. However, he was neglected in favour of the couple's later children. Sobhraj continued to move back and forth between France and Indochina with the family, not feeling at home in either place. As a teenager he developed personality problems and turned to petty crime.

Sobhraj received his first jail sentence (for burglary) in 1963, serving at Poissy prison near Paris^[3] However, not only did he weather the harsh conditions of jail, he managed to manipulate the prison official into granting him special favours like being allowed to keep books in his cell, etc. At around the same time he met and endeared himself to Felix d'Escogne, a wealthy young man and prison volunteer.^[4]

After being paroled, Sobhraj moved in with d'Escogne and shared his time between moving in the high society of Paris and the criminal underworld. He soon started accumulating riches through a series of scams and burglaries. During this time, he met and began a relationship with Chantal Compagnon who was from a conservative Parisian family. On the night he proposed to her, Sobhraj was arrested for evading police while driving a stolen car. He was sentenced back to prison time in Poissy for eight months. Chantal remained supportive during his prison time. Sobhraj and Chantal were married upon his release.

Soon after, facing mounting suspicions by French authorities, he and a now pregnant Chantal left France for Asia to escape arrest. After travelling through Eastern Europe on fake documents and robbing people who befriended them, they arrived in Bombay in 1970. Here Chantal gave birth to a baby girl. While in Bombay, the couple made a good impression on the expatriate community there. In the meantime, Sobhraj resumed his criminal lifestyle by running a car theft and smuggling operation. The profits from this operation of which were used towards his growing gambling addiction.

In 1970, Sobhraj was arrested and imprisoned after an unsuccessful armed robbery attempt on a jewellery store in Hotel Ashoka. Sobhraj did manage to escape with Chantal's help and faking illness, but they were re-captured shortly afterwards. He borrowed money for bail from his father in Saigon and soon after fled to Kabul in Afghanistan.

In Kabul, the couple continued robbing tourists on the "hippie trail" only to be arrested once again. But Sobhraj escaped, the same way he had in India, feigning illness and drugging the hospital guard. This time Sobhraj fled to Iran leaving his family behind. Chantal, although still loyal to him, wishing to leave their criminal past behind, returned to France and vowed never to see him again.

Sobhraj spent the next two years on the run, using as many as 10 stolen passports and visiting several countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He was joined in Istanbul by André, his younger brother. Sobhraj and André quickly became partners in many crimes in both Turkey and Greece. Both were eventually arrested in Athens. After an identity-switch plan gone wrong, Sobhraj escaped in his usual manner, but his brother was left behind. André was turned over to the Turkish police by Greek authorities. He had to serve an 18-year sentence.

Murders[link]

On the run again, Sobhraj financed his lifestyle by posing as a mysterious drug dealer to impress tourists and defrauding them when they let their guard down. In Thailand, he met Marie-Andrée Leclerc from Lévis, Quebec, one of many tourists looking for adventure in the East. Subjugated by Sobhraj's personality, Leclerc quickly became his most devoted follower, turning a blind eye to his crimes and his philandering with local women.

Sobhraj started gathering followers by helping them out of difficult situations, indebting them to him while he actually was the very cause of their misery. In one case, he helped two former French policemen, named Yannick and Jacques, to recover their passports that he himself had stolen; in another, he provided shelter and comfort to another Frenchman named Dominique Rennelleau, whose apparent dysentery illness was actually the results of poisoning by Sobhraj. He was also joined by a young Indian named Ajay Chowdhury, a fellow criminal who became his lieutenant.^[5][6] Sobhraj wanted to start a criminal "family" of sorts, in the style of Charles Manson's.

It was then that Sobhraj and Chowdhury committed their first (known) murders in 1975. Most of the victims had spent some time with the "clan" before their deaths and were, according to some investigators, potential recruits who had threatened to expose Sobhraj. The first victim was a young woman from Seattle, Teresa Knowlton, who was found burnt like many of Sobhraj's other victims. Soon thereafter, a young American Jennie Bollivar, was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand, wearing a flowered bikini. It was only months later that the autopsy and forensic evidence revealed the drowning to be murder.

The next victim was a young, nomadic Sephardic Jew named Vitali Hakim, whose burned body was found on the road to the Pattaya resort where Sobhraj and his clan were staying.

Dutch students Henk Bintanja, 29, and his fiancée Cornelia Hemker, 25, were invited to Thailand after meeting Sobhraj in Hong Kong. Just as he had done to Dominique, Sobhraj poisoned them, and then nurtured them back to health to gain their obedience. As they recovered, Sobhraj was visited by his previous victim Hakim's French girlfriend, Charmayne Carrou, coming to investigate her boyfriend's disappearance. Fearing exposure, Sobhraj and Chowdhury quickly hustled the couple out; their bodies were found strangled and burned on December 16, 1975. Soon after, Carrou was found drowned in circumstances similar to Jennie's, and wearing a similar-styled swimsuit. Although the murders of both women were not connected by investigations at the time, they would later earn Sobhraj the nickname of "the bikini killer."

On December 18, the day the bodies of Bintanja and Hemker were identified, Sobhraj and Leclerc entered Nepal using the couple's passports. There they met and, on December 21–22, murdered Canadian Laurent Ormond Carrière, 26, and Californian Connie Bronzich, 29. (The two victims were incorrectly identified in some sources as Laddie DuParr and Annabella Tremont.) Sobhraj and Leclerc then returned to Thailand, once again using their latest victims' passports before their bodies could be identified.

Upon his return to Thailand, Sobhraj discovered that his three French companions had started to suspect him, found documents belonging to the murder victims, and fled to Paris after notifying local authorities.

Sobhraj then went to Calcutta, where he murdered Israeli scholar Avoni Jacob for his passport, and used it to move to Singapore with Leclerc and Chowdhury, then to India and - rather boldly - back to Bangkok in March 1976. There they were interrogated by Thai policemen in connection with the murders, but easily let off the hook because authorities feared that the negative publicity accompanying a murder trial would harm the country's tourist trade.

Not so easily silenced, however, was Dutch embassy diplomat Herman Knippenberg, who was investigating the murder of the two Dutch backpackers, and suspected Sobhraj even though he did not know his real name. Knippenberg started to build a case against him, partly with the help of Sobhraj's neighbour. Given police permission to conduct his own search of Sobhraj's apartment (a full month after the suspect had left the country), Knippenberg found a great deal of evidence, such as victims' documents and poison-laced medicines. He would from then on accumulate evidence against Sobhraj for decades, despite the lack of cooperation by law enforcement.

The trio's next stop was in Malaysia, where Chowdhury was sent on a gem-stealing errand, and disappeared after giving the jewels to Sobhraj. No trace of him was ever found, and it is widely believed that Sobhraj murdered his former accomplice before leaving with Leclerc to sell the jewels in Geneva.^[5] However, some sources say that Chowdhury was spotted in Germany much later and the hunt for him is still on.^[6]

Soon back in Asia, Sobhraj started rebuilding his clan, starting in Bombay with two lost Western women named Barbara Sheryl Smith and Mary Ellen Eather. His next victim was Frenchman Jean-Luc Solomon, who succumbed to the poison intended to incapacitate him during a robbery.

In July 1976 in New Delhi, Sobhraj and the three women tricked a tour group of post-graduate French students into accepting them as guides. He then drugged them with pills which he pretended were anti-dysentery medicine. However, when the drugs started acting too quickly and the students started dropping unconscious where they stood, three of them quickly realized what was happening and overcame Sobhraj, leading to his capture by police. During interrogation, Barbara and Mary Ellen quickly cracked and confessed everything. Sobhraj was charged with the murder of Solomon, and all four were sent to Tihar prison outside New Delhi while awaiting formal trial.

Prison time[link]

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Conditions inside the notorious prison were unbearable; Barbara and Mary Ellen attempted suicide during the two years before their trial. Sobhraj, however, had entered with precious gems concealed in his body and was experienced in bribing captors and living comfortably in jail.

Sobhraj turned his trial into a show, hiring and firing lawyers at whim, bringing in his recently-paroled and still-loyal brother André to help, and eventually going on a hunger strike. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison instead of the expected death penalty. Leclerc was found guilty of the drugging of the French students, then later paroled and returned to Canada when she developed ovarian cancer. She was still claiming her innocence, and reportedly still loyal to Sobhraj, when she died at home in April 1984.

Sobhraj's systematic bribery of prison guards at Tihar reached outrageous levels. He led a life of luxury inside the jail, with TV, and gourmet food, having befriended both the guards and the prisoners. He would walk in and out of jail whenever he wanted.^{[citation needed]} Revelling in his notoriety, he gave interviews to Western authors and journalists, such as Oz magazine's Richard Neville in the late 1970s, and Alan Dawson in 1984. He freely talked about his murders, while never actually admitting to them, and pretended that his actions were in retaliation against Western imperialism in Asia.

He also needed to find a way to prolong his sentence, since the 20-year Thai arrest warrant against him would still be valid on his intending to his deportation and almost certain execution. So in March 1986, on his tenth year in prison, he threw a big party for his prisoner and guard friends and, having drugged them with sleeping pills, walked out of the jail.

Shobhraj was quickly tracked down and caught in O'Coquero Restaurant, Goa by Inspector Madhukar Zende of the Mumbai police and had his prison term prolonged by 10 years, just as he had hoped. On February 17, 1997, 52-year old Sobhraj was released, with most warrants, evidence and even witnesses against him long lost. Without any country to deport him to, Indian authorities let him return to France.

Celebrity and re-capture[link]

Sobhraj retired to a comfortable life in suburban Paris. He hired a publicity agent and charged large sums of money for interviews and photographs. He is said to have charged over $15 million (according to Advocate. Bishwa Lal Shrestha who is Ex. Inspector and investigated the case, framed the charge sheet and registered the case in court) for the rights to a movie based on his life.^[7]

On September 17, 2003 Sobhraj was unexpectedly spotted in a street of Kathmandu by a journalist. The journalist quickly reported this to the Nepalese authorities who arrested him two days later in the casino of the Yak and Yeti hotel. Sobhraj's motives for returning to Nepal remain unknown. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Kathmandu district court on August 20, 2004 for the 1975 murders of Bronzich and Carrière. Most of the photocopy evidence used against him in this case was drawn from that painstakingly gathered by Knippenberg (the Dutch embassy investigator) and Interpol.

Sobhraj appealed against the conviction claiming that he was sentenced without trial. His lawyer also announced that Chantal, Sobhraj's wife in France, was filing a case before the European Court of Human Rights against the French government, for refusing to provide him with any assistance.

Sobhraj's conviction was confirmed by the Patan Court of Appeals in 2005.

Current status[link]

In late 2007, news media reported that Sobhraj's lawyer had appealed to the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for intervention with Nepal.^[8] In 2008, Sobhraj announced his engagement to a woman Nihita Biswas from Nepal (who had recently participated in the reality show Big Boss 5).^[9] On 7 July 2008, issuing a press release through his fiancée Nihita, he claimed that he was never convicted of murder by any court and asked the media not to refer to him as a serial killer.^[10] Later, it was claimed that he married his fiancée on October 9, 2008, on the occasion of Bada Dashami, a Nepalese festival, in a much famed, but not publicised, wedding that took place in the jail itself.^[11] On the following day, Nepalese jail authorities dismissed the claim of his marriage. They said that Nihita and her family had been allowed to conduct a tika ceremony, along with the relatives of hundreds of other prisoners. They further claimed that it was not a wedding but part of the ongoing Dashain festival, when elders put the vermilion mark on the foreheads of those younger to them to signify their blessings.^[12]

In July 2010, the Supreme Court of Nepal postponed the verdict on an appeal filed by Sobhraj against a district court's verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Sobhraj had appealed against the district court's verdict in 2006, calling it unfair and accusing the judges of racism while handing out the sentence.

On July 30, 2010 the Nepalese Supreme Court upheld the verdict issued by the district court in Kathmandu of a 20-year life term for the murder of US citizen Connie Jo Bronzich and another year plus a Rs 2,000 fine for using a fake passport to travel. The seizure of all his properties was also ordered by the court. His mother-in-law/lawyer Shakuntala Thapa and his 'wife', Nihita, expressed that they were dissatisfied with the verdict and Thapa claimed that Sobhraj had been "denied" justice and "judiciary is corrupt".^[13] They were charged and sent to judicial custody^[14] for contempt of court against these remarks.

Sobhraj currently has another case pending against him in the Bhaktapur district court for the murder of Laurent Armand Carrière, a Canadian-born tourist.

Bibliography[link]

• Julie Clarke & Richard Neville (1980). The Life and Serious Crimes of Charles Sobhraj. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 0-330-27001-X. 
• Thomas Thompson (1979). Serpentine. Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-0749-6. 
• Julie Clarke & Richard Neville (1989). Shadow of the Cobra. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-14-012937-3. 
• Farrukh Dhondy (2009). The Bikini Murders. Harper Collins India. 

In popular culture[link]

• Bollywood movie Jailbreak (2013) to be directed by Prawaal Raman and produced by Kumar Mangat is said to be based on his Prison break from Tihar Jail, New Delhi^[15]
• The made for TV movie Shadow of the Cobra (1989) is based on Sobhraj^[16]
• On the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, the character of Nicole Wallace, portrayed by Olivia d'Abo, is loosely based on Marie-Andrée Leclerc. In the episode "Slither" (which was originally to be titled "Serpentine"), Michael York appears as Bernard Fremont, Wallace's mentor and former partner-in-crime, who is clearly based on Sobhraj
• The punk band Bikini Kill references Sobhraj's nickname.
• The video game series Dragon Quest references the nickname Bikini Killer with the spell "Bikill" which appears in almost every title in the series. The coded/modified nature of this reference indicates a certain underground phenomenon/awareness of Sobhraj's story and legacy. The spell makes a character's attacking ability much more vigorous, similar to the spell "Berserk" later incorporated in Final Fantasy games.

See also[link]

• Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders

External links[link]

• Sobhraj’s Past Revives via his wife Nihita - Big Boss 5
• SC upholds Sobhraj conviction
• Cop who investigated 1975 murders settles score as lawyer
• Inspector who foiled Sobhraj
• Return of the Serpent
• All about Charles Sobraj, by Mark Gribben on Crime Library
• Asia's most infamous serial killer gets life...
• Shadow of the Cobra on IMDb
• [2]
• [3]