The Devil's Dozen Read Free

brought the police in time to grab Grossman, who was about to dismember a dead girl. Carroll Edward Cole was similarly caught, but he claimed that his victim, whose apartment he was in, had “just dropped dead.” He got away with this for a time, but eventually he confessed.
    In addition, killers like John Wayne Gacy, Joe Ball, and Billy Glaze turned up in several investigations of missing people, which then led to evidence implicating them, while family killers such as Mary Cotton and Mary Beth Tinning stood out as survivors who were always nearby when a family member died. Interestingly, Marie Noe was simply considered the “unluckiest mother alive” when, one after another, ten of her children died young, but years later she was charged with eight murders and she finally confessed.
    On rare occasions, an intended victim gets away and brings back the cops. Serial killers done in by escapees include Robert Berdella, Jeffrey Dahmer, Robert Hansen, Gary Heidnik, and Jurgen Bartsch. Harvey Glatman lost out when the police happened by while he was with a victim seeking help, while a surviving victim boldly followed Ronald Frank Cooper to his home. Thomas Rath’s victim had the presence of mind to memorize his attacker’s license-plate number, while a victim attacked Paul Stephani so badly he had to call for an ambulance. Andonis Daglis’s victim managed to persuade him that she was not his type.
    If a victim doesn’t turn on a potential killer, an accomplice might. Some serial killers have depended on accomplices for assistance, but when the going got tough or the accomplice acquired a conscience, the party was over. Danny Ranes learned this when his teenage buddy took police to the bodies of their victims. Catherine Wood, the former lover and “Murder Game” partner of Gwendolyn Graham, reported their terrible deeds against the elderly, and Karla Homolka made a deal for a short sentence in exchange for information about the involvement of her husband, Paul Bernardo, in a succession of rapes and murders in Canada. But she took part in the crimes as well, as did her kid sister.
    A select few have turned themselves in. Mack Ray Edwards walked to the front desk of a police station, gave them his gun, and confessed, while Wayne Adam Ford handed over a severed breast he carried in a plastic bag in his pocket. Michael Copeland and Ed Kemper both called the police themselves, and Elmer Wayne Henley turned in three—including a man he had just killed in self-defense. He led the police to twenty-seven bodies. In one of the strangest cases, Javed Iqbal pledged to kill one hundred street children in revenge, after which he would turn himself in. He did so, then killed himself.
    Sometimes the killer commits an unrelated offense and thereby gets captured. A famous example of this is Ted Bundy, whose erratic driving in a stolen Volkswagen Beetle led to his arrest, but Robert Joseph Zani went one better by crashing a car in which he was carrying his tenth victim. Joel Rifkin was stopped for driving without a license plate, and a decomposing corpse was discovered in his car. Likewise, a highway-patrol officer pulled over Randy Kraft for suspected drunk driving and noticed a dead man sitting next to him.
    Other arrests that turned up serial killers were for assault, homosexual solicitation, child molesting, shoplifting, kidnapping, fraud, auto theft, loitering, rape, robbery, and burglary. David Berkowitz was done in by a parking violation and Juan Martin Cantu by marijuana. Henry Lee Lucas was arrested in Texas for an illegal weapons charge, although he was suspected in two disappearances. He proceeded to confess to hundreds of murders in two dozen states (although he recanted most of these). While Jack Owen Spillman tried to escape detection by shaving his body hair and using surgical gowns, the police caught him on suspicion of burglary in an unrelated incident.
    Police always hope that publishing a photo in the newspaper will help