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Charles " Carl" Panzram (June 28, 1891 – September 5, 1930) was an American serial killer, spree killer, , Rape, child molester, , Robbery, Theft and Burglary. In prison confessions and in his autobiography, Panzram confessed to having murdered twenty-one boys and men, only five of which could be corroborated; he is suspected of having killed more than a hundred boys and men in the United States alone, and several more in Portuguese Angola.
Panzram also confessed to having committed more than a thousand acts of rape against males of all ages. After a lifetime of crime, during which he served many prison terms and escaped from many prisons, Panzram was executed by hanging in 1930 for the murder of a prison employee at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
Panzram and his six siblings were made to work on the family farm from a young age until truancy laws came into effect. Panzram's parents, angry about having their children sent to school during the day, forced them to work in the fields throughout the night instead; Panzram later reported he would receive just two hours of sleep before he would have to get up for school. Punishments in the household ranged from being bound by chains to being starved.
Panzram later reflected on his early childhood with the sentiment that he was not liked by other children; by the age of five he claimed that he was a liar and theft, and recalled that he became meaner the older he grew. Panzram's father abandoned the family when he was seven years old. Around the same time, Panzram developed an infection in the mastoid process of his temporal bone, which forced him to undergo surgery, which was performed at home and only worsened the infection, so he was later taken to the hospital for further surgery. It is unknown whether he suffered brain damage as a result of the incident. Eventually, four of his five older brothers left as well; one of them (his older Stepbrother Louis Price) Drowning in May 1905 while working as a lumberjack.
In October 1903, Panzram's mother sent him to the Minnesota State Training School, purportedly a reform school; Panzram later wrote in his autobiography, however, that he was repeatedly beaten, and by staff members, in a workshop the children dubbed "the paint shop" due to leaving the room "painted" with bruises and blood. Panzram hated the school so much that he decided to arson, and did so successfully and without detection on July 7, 1905. Some accounts claim Panzram killed a 12 year old boy here. In January 1906, Panzram was from Red Wing Training School, where he had been detained after stealing money from his mother's pocketbook. By his early teens Panzram exhibited alcoholism and had a lengthy criminal rap sheet, mostly for burglary and robbery offenses. At age 14, a couple of weeks after his parole and two weeks after attempting to kill a Lutheranism cleric with a revolver, Panzram ran away from home to live on the streets. He often freighthopping, and later recalled having been by a group of homeless men on one of these occasions.
Later in 1907, after getting drunk in a saloon in Helena, Montana, Panzram enlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to the 6th Infantry at Fort William Henry Harrison. Refusing to take orders from officers and being generally insubordinate, he was convicted of larceny for stealing $88.24 worth of supplies and served a prison sentence in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, between 20 April 1908 and August 1910, with U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft officially approving Panzram's sentence. Panzram later claimed that while he had been a "rotten Yegg" before imprisonment at the military penitentiary, "any shred of goodness left in him was smashed out" during his time at Fort Leavenworth.
After his release and dishonorable discharge, Panzram resumed his criminal activities. Stealing items that ranged from bicycles to , he was caught and imprisoned multiple times. He served prison sentences both under his own name and various pseudonym in: Fresno, California; Rusk, Texas; The Dalles, Oregon; Harrison, Idaho; Butte, Montana; Montana State Prison; Oregon State Penitentiary; Bridgeport, Connecticut (as "John O'Leary"); Sing Sing, New York; Clinton Correctional Facility, New York; Washington, D.C., and Leavenworth, Kansas. While incarcerated, Panzram frequently attacked guards and refused to follow their orders. The guards retaliated, subjecting him to beatings and other punishments. In his autobiography, Panzram wrote that he was "rage personified" and that he would often rape men whom he had robbed. He was noted for his large stature and great physical strength—due to years of hard labor at Leavenworth and other prisons—which aided him in overpowering most men; he also engaged in vandalism and arson. By his own admission, one of the few times Panzram did not engage in criminal activities was when he was employed as a strikebreaker against labor union employees. The last thing that he had stolen before he was caught was a radio.
After his release in 1910 he drifted to Denver Colorado, Hutchison N.Y, and Sedalia, N.Y., earning a living from various odd jobs, although his violent temper continued to lead him into constant quarrels with those around him, making it difficult for him to stay in one place for long. It was only when he finally arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, that he was accepted into a job that seemed to suit his hot-tempered nature, where he was employed as a strikebreaker who was required to beat up union members. His success made such an impression on his superiors that they decided to send him later to the town of Cairo Illinois, with letters of recommendation warmly praising his efficiency. However within days of his arrival, his behavior angered local residents and a group of strikers trapped him in an alley and beat him until he lost consciousness, before he was taken by the police, then jail. His employer arranged for his release, but Panzerm tired of the job and made his way to Mexico. During his journeys he was arrested in Jacksonville, Texas and forced to work two months at hard labor before he managed to escape. After escaping, he boarded a train in the Palestine area that took him to Houston, where all passengers were forced to get off due to a huge fire that had broken out in the city. Panzram used the opportunity to pretend to want to help, but instead robbed the homes of the townspeople under cover of the flames, gaining enough wealth to continue his journey to El Paso, from where he crossed the border to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Panzram admitted years later that once, when hiding in a bordello, his wallet was stolen, and he was infected with gonorrhea. He became paranoid, claiming that the law was always on his trail but could never catch him. In 1913, going by the alias "Jack Allen", he was arrested in The Dalles, Oregon for highway robbery, assault and sodomy, breaking out of jail after two months. He was arrested again in Harrison, Idaho under the alias "Jeff Davis", but escaped from county jail. On April 7, 1913 under the alias "Jeff Davis," Panzram was arrested in Malta, Montana: "A fellow giving his name as Jeff Davis was arrested Monday morning for disorderly conduct and placed in the county jail. During the day information came from Chinook that he was wanted there for breaking into a dentist's office and stealing a lady's fur lined coat and a tube of gold. A Chinook officer came after Jeff Tuesday. The coat in question was sold in Malta for $5.00 and by the way it looks like the party bought $5.00 worth of experience instead of coat." The enterprise. [volume,(Harlem Montana) April 10, 1913, Image 8] In Chinook, Montana by the alias "Jefferson Davis", he was sentenced to one year in prison for burglary, to be served at the Montana State Prison.
On April 27, 1913, Panzram, under his "Jefferson Davis" alias, was admitted to the Montana State Prison at Deer Lodge, Montana with an occupation listed as "waiter and teamster". He met Jimmie Benson and planned an escape; however, Benson was transferred. Panzram escaped on November 13, 1913. "Jeff Davis who was arrested here some time ago for robbing a dentist office in Chinook and sent up to the pen has made good his get-a-way from that institution. He was a trusty and working on road work." The enterprise. [volume,(Harlem Montana) November 27, 1913, Image 2] Within a week, he was arrested for burglary in Three Forks, giving his name as "Jeff Rhoades". He was incarcerated at Deer Lodge for an additional year. By his own account he committed sodomy while imprisoned. Panzram was released on March 3, 1915, with a new suit of clothing, $5.00 and a ticket to the next town six miles away. He rode the rails through Washington State, Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota via the Columbia River. On June 1, he burglarized a house in Astoria, Oregon, where he was soon arrested while attempting to sell some of the stolen items.
Under the name "Jeff Baldwin", Panzram was sentenced to seven years in prison, to be served at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, where he was taken on June 24, 1915. Fifty-year-old prison warden Harry Minto believed in harsh treatment of inmates, including beatings and isolation, among other disciplinary measures. Panzram stated that he swore he "would never do that seven years and I defied the warden and all his officers to make me." Later that year, Panzram helped fellow inmate Otto Hooker escape. While attempting to evade recapture, Hooker killed Minto September 27, 1915. This event marked Panzram's first known involvement in a murder, as an accessory before the fact.(Hooker was mortally wounded.) In his prison record, which noted his two aliases, "Jefferson Davis" and "Jeff Rhodes", Panzram falsely gave his age as 30, and his place of birth as Alabama. His only truthful statement was when he stated his occupation as "thief".
Panzram was disciplined several times while at Salem, including sixty-one days in solitary confinement, before escaping on September 18, 1917. A reward of $50.00 was offered for his recapture. After two shootouts, in which he attempted to shoot Chief Deputy Sheriff Joseph Frum, Panzram was recaptured and returned to the prison. On May 12, 1918, he escaped again by sawing through the bars of his cell, The Tacoma times. [volume], May 13, 1918, Image 1 "Oregon's Prize Bad Man Breaks Jail catching a freight train heading east. He began going by the name "John O'Leary" and shaved off his mustache to change his appearance. Panzram would never return to the Pacific Northwest.Now twenty-seven years old and with a bounty on his head in many countries, he first attempted to enlist in the United States Army at Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, but deserted after a few days, finding odd jobs in Sparrows Point, Maryland. A few days later he continued his journey towards Baltimore, where he met a young boy who helped him rob a hotel in Frederick, MD, allegedly ending up in New York City, where he joined various labor unions that helped him obtain a seaman's identification card, sailing on the steamship James S. Whitney to Panama. There, he tried to steal a small boat with the help of a drunken sailor; they killed everyone on board and the sailor was arrested. Still free, Panzram travelled to Peru to work in a copper mine. Then, he boarded the SS Homa, which sailed to Port Arthur, Texas, and from there to Glasgow, Scotland. Upon docking, Panzram attempted to rob the ship, but was captured and briefly imprisoned in Berlin. After his release, he continued on to Southampton and London, crossing the English Channel to France, visiting Le Havre and Paris. When his money ran out, he joined the crew of a ship sailing to Hamburg, Germany, and stayed in several other ports before returning to the United States.
After being released, he traveled to Philadelphia, where he was involved in a shootout with police and was arrested again. After being convicted of aggravated assault and inciting a riot, Panzram faced a heavy prison sentence, but managed to be released on bail, fleeing to Norfolk, Virginia. He caught a ship to southern Africa and landed in Luanda, the capital of colonial Portuguese Angola. By late 1921, Panzram was foreman of an oil rig in Angola, which he later burned down out of what he said was "spitefulness." Shortly after, he decided to seek out a virgin girl. Panzram paid a resident Angola family 80 (US$8) and, in exchange, was given a 12-year-old girl, whom he raped in his shack that night. He returned the girl to her family demanding his money back on suspicion of the girl not being an actual virgin. The family then gave Panzram an 8-year-old girl, whom he also raped in his shack, but who was eventually taken back to the family because he suspected that she too was not a virgin. Then he raped a local boy who worked as a waiter, arousing the anger of the locals and was forced to flee through the rainforest back to the city. Panzram sought the help of the American consul in Luanda, but they flatly refused to help him after hearing from his employer about the many troubles he had caused during his short stay there. Learning that he had been fired from his job, Panzram found his superior and beat him. He then claimed that he raped and killed an Angolan boy estimated to be eleven or twelve years old. In his confession to this murder, he wrote: "I sat down to think things over a bit. While I was sitting there, a little kid about eleven or twelve years old came bumming around. He was looking for something. He found it too. I took him out to a gravel pit about one-quarter mile away. I left him there, but first committed sodomy on him and then killed him. His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him, and he will never be any deader. Then I went to town, bought a ticket on the Belgian steamer to Lobito Bay down the coast. There I hired a canoe and six niggers and went out hunting in the bay and backwaters. I was looking for crocodiles. I found them, plenty. They were hungry. I fed them. I shot all six of those niggers and dumped 'em in. The crocks done the rest. I stole their canoe and went back to town" (he'd used a Luger pistol for these murders). In the following days, Panzram was forced to stand guard after a Spanish prostitute he had robbed sent the local police after him. The American consul having opened an official investigation against him, he had no choice but to make his way north along the west coast until he crossed the border into the Belgian Congo. When he reached the Congo River, he hired a rowboat and a team of oarsmen who took him to the port of Banana, from where he boarded a French ship that sailed to Boma and Matadi.
Impoverished and destitute, Panzram boarded the American ship, West Nuno, a month later, which took him to Secunda, on the Gold Coast. There he robbed several farmers, and purchased a sailing ticket on the SS Petuni, which made its way to the port city of Las Palmas, Canary Islands; American consul did not recognize him, and agreed to help him find a ship sailing to Lisbon, Portugal. The American consul in Lisbon, however, had heard personally about Panzram's exploits in Africa during a visit by a Sinclair Oil Corporation executive, and Panzram was forced to flee aboard an English freighter sailing to Bristol, England, before boarding an American ship that took him back to New York, where his travels around the world ended.
After his return to the U.S., he thought of becoming a professional hit man using the pistol he obtained in the Congo. In 1922, he had the gun fitted with a silencer by the Maxim Silent Firearms Co. in Hartford, Connecticut. But when he test fired it later, he found that the weapon still made a great deal of noise, much to his disappointment. "If that heavy calibered pistol and the silencer had only worked as I thought it would, I would have gone into the murder business on a wholesale scale," he wrote years later Panzram asserted he raped and killed two small boys, beating one to death with a rock on July 18, 1922, in Salem, Massachusetts, Death Certificate Record and strangling the other later that year near New Haven. After his murder spree in Salem, Panzram worked as a night watchman in Yonkers, New York, north of Manhattan, at the Abeeco Mill factory. In Providence, Rhode Island, he stole a yawl and sailed to New Haven, seeking victims to rob and rape, and boats to steal. In June 1923 he stole two yachts: in Larchmont New York he stole the yacht of Dr. Charles Paine. The boat was found a short time later off the coast of New Rochelle; Panzram had lost rudder control and smashed the craft onto the rocks. In New Rochelle, New York, Panzram stole a yacht belonging to the local police chief. He picked up a 15-year-old boy named George Walosin and promised him a job on the boat, but instead sodomized him.
On June 27, on the river near Kingston, New York, Panzram claimed to have picked a man up but, believing the man was going to attempt to rob him, used a .38 caliber pistol from the stolen yacht to kill the John Doe victim, throwing the body into the river. On June 28, Panzram and Walosin docked at Poughkeepsie. Panzram stole $1,000 worth of fishing nets. At Newburgh, Walosin, having witnessed the murder the day before, jumped overboard and swam to shore. He reported to police in Yonkers that he had been sexual assault by Panzram. An alert went out for "Captain John O'Leary". On June 29, "O'Leary" was arrested in Nyack.
On July 9, Panzram tried to escape from jail. He later conned his lawyer by giving him ownership of a stolen boat in return for bail money. He then bail jumping, and the boat was confiscated by government agents. On August 24, he found work aboard the USS Grant, a troopship bound for China, but was discharged before it left after getting drunk and getting into a fight with the soldiers. On August 26, "O'Leary" was arrested in Larchmont, New York, after breaking into a train depot. Three days later, on August 29, "O'Leary" was cleared as a suspect in the stabbing death of Dorothy Kaufman of Greenburgh, committed a month prior.
He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for the break-in. While in county jail, under his alias of "O'Leary" he confessed to the alias "Jeff Baldwin", and that he was wanted in Oregon for the murder of Minto (Oregon authorities reported he was still wanted to serve 14 years of his sentence there). As there was a offer of $500.00 for his capture he tried to claim the reward on himself for himself!. After first being imprisoned in Sing Sing Prison, in October, Panzram was imprisoned at Clinton Prison in Dannemora as Inmate #75182. While there he tried to escape but ended up with an injured spine and broken ankles; he also claimed to have struck a guard who survived but was seriously injured. He was discharged in July 1928. After his last arrest in 1928, he also claimed to have committed a murder while burglarizing homes between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. and doing a 1928 murder in Philadelphia.
In light of his extensive criminal record, Panzram was sentenced to 25-years-to-life at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, identified as inmate #31614,In 1938, Karl Menninger wrote Man Against Himself, including writing about Panzram using the pen name of "John Smith", with Panzram Prison Number # 31614.(nearly the same place he'd been 18 years before.) He warned the warden: "I'll kill the first man that bothers me". Because he was considered too psychotic, he was assigned to work alone in the prison laundry room, where the foreman, Robert Warnke, was known to bully and harass other prisoners under him. Warnke picked on the wrong man, antagonizing Panzram, despite his repeated warnings to back off. On June 20, 1929, Panzram beat Warnke to death with an iron bar. He was convicted and sentenced to death. He refused to allow any appeals of his sentence. In response to offers from death penalty opponents and human rights activists to intervene, he wrote: "The only thanks you and your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it."
While on death row, Panzram was befriended by an officer named Henry Philip Lesser, who would give him money to buy cigarettes. Social Security Death Index: Henry Lesser, born November 8, 1902, died October 27, 1983, SSN issued from District of Columbia, last residence and benefit to Los Angeles, California. California Death Index: Henry Philip Lesser born November 8, 1902, Massachusetts, died October 27, 1983, Los Angeles County. Panzram was so astonished by this act of kindness that after Lesser provided him with writing materials, Panzram wrote a detailed summary of his crimes and his Nihilism while awaiting execution. Panzram explicitly denied having any remorse for any of his actions and began his journal with the statement: "In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry. I have no conscience so that does not worry me. I don’t believe in Man, God nor devil. I hate the whole damed human race including myself....I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform other people who try to reform me. and I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill em. My motto is, Rob em all, Rape em all and Kill em all. I am very truly yours signed Cooper John II Carl Panzram "
Murder spree
In 1920, Panzram committed a robbery in Newport, Rhode Island. After a successful robbery of a jewelry store in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he left with about $1,500 in his pockets and returned to Hamburg; destitute of all his fortune two weeks later, he returned to the United States penniless on the same ship he had arrived on. A few days later he sailed to New Haven on the Manchuria. On September 16, 1920, he burglarized the Taft Mansion in New Haven, Connecticut, a residence of William Howard Taft, former U.S. President. Panzram specifically targeted the mansion out of an animus he had been holding against Taft since his incarceration at Fort Leavenworth. He stole a large amount of jewelry and bonds, as well as Taft's Colt M1911 .45 caliber handgun. New Britain herald. [microfilm reel], September 17, 1920, Image 1 "Rob Taft's Home"; a nearby home of Graham F Thompson was also burglarized with $1,300 of Jewelry was stolen
Using Taft's stolen money, Panzram bought a small sailing yacht, the Akista, and embarked on an eight-year-long murder spree which spanned several countries and involved multiple victims. Sailing south to New York City, at City Island, Bronx, for three months Panzram lured sailors away from port bars onto the yacht, making them drunk, raping them, murdering with Taft's stolen pistol, then dumping their bodies near Execution Rocks Light in Long Island Sound. Panzram later claimed to have killed ten men in this manner.Possible Confirmation? On August 20, 1920, the body of a unknown man was found in New York Bay off Staten Island The sailor murders ended only after Akista ran aground and sank near Atlantic City, New Jersey, during which his last two potential victims escaped to parts unknown. On October 26, Panzram was arrested in Stamford, Connecticut, for burglary and possession of a loaded handgun (a .44 revolver) In 1921, he served six months in jail in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Final capture
On August 30, 1928, Panzram was arrested in Baltimore for a Washington, D.C., burglary for stealing a radio and jewelry from the home of a dentist on August 20. Three men were also arrested as accomplices and most of the jewelry was recovered. Panzram gave his correct name, although he lied by claiming his age as 41 and that he was from Nevada. During his interrogation, he confessed to killing three young boys earlier that month: one in Salem, one in Connecticut, and a 14-year-old newsboy, Alexander Uszacke, in Philadelphia in the summer of 1928. Alexander Luszock Find a grave memorial gives a death date of 26 July 1928(Panzram had forced the boy to assist him in stealing articles from a yacht in the Delaware river and after killing him, wrapped his body in a blanket together with pieces of a radio set). Panzram's confession to killing a boy at Pier 28 on League island near Philadelphia in August 1928 was confirmed. Boston police were unable to corroborate his other confession, the murder of a boy in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Syracuse Journal, October 6, 1928, Syracuse, New York Panzram later wrote that he had contemplated and other acts of mayhem, such as poisoning a city's water supply with arsenic, or scuttling a British warship in New York Harbor to provoke a war between the United States and Britain.At his last arrest, when he confessed to killing Henry McMahon and he was asked what the point was of killing a child, Panzram answered he hated the human race and that "I get a kick out of murdering people."
Execution
Panzram was Hanging on September 5, 1930. As officers attempted to place the customary black-hood over his head, he spat in the executioner's face. When asked for any last words, he responded: "Yes. Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard; I could kill a dozen men while you're screwing around!"
Legacy
Former prison guard Henry Lesser preserved Panzram's letters and autobiographical manuscript. He spent the next four decades trying to have this material published. In 1980, Lesser donated Panzram's materials to the San Diego State University, where they are housed as the "Carl Panzram papers" in Malcolm A. Love Library. Writers Thomas E. Gaddis and Joe Long co-wrote (1970). They had consulted with Lesser who let them draw from Panzram's manuscript for their work. In 2005, Fantagraphics Books published Joe Coleman's comic book Muzlers, Guzzlers, and Good Yeggs, which included a section dedicated to the life and times of Carl Panzram.
Films
The Yugoslav film Strangler vs. Strangler ( Davitelj protiv davitelja) (1984), about an ostensible serial killer, opens with a Panzram quote: "I wish you all had one neck and my hands were around it." The German horror film Schramm begins with a quote of Panzram: "Today I am dirty, but tomorrow I'll be just dirt." Filmmaker John Borowski released a documentary, (2012). Also, the 1995 film, , starred James Woods as Carl Panzram.
See also
Notes
Footnotes
External links
Categories: 1892 Births, 1930 Deaths, 20th-century American Memoirists, 20th-century Executions By The United States Federal Government, 20th-century Executions Of American People, American Arsonists, American Autobiographers, American Burglars, American Escapees, American Male Criminals, American Murderers Of Children, American People Convicted Of Assault, American People Convicted Of Burglary, American People Convicted Of Sodomy, American People Of Prussian Descent, American Rapists, American Robbers, American Torturers, Executed American Serial Killers, Escapees From Oregon Detention, Executed American Mass Murderers, Executed People From Minnesota, Inmates Of Sing Sing, Inmates Of United States Disciplinary Barracks, Lgbtq People From Minnesota, Nihilists, People From East Grand Forks, Minnesota, Rape Of Males, Serial Killers From Kansas, Serial Killers From Massachusetts, Serial Killers From New York, Violence Against Men In The United States, Writers From Minnesota
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