Carl Panzram

Charles "Carl" Panzram (June 28, 1891 – September 5, 1930) was an American serial killer, spree killer, mass murderer, rapist, child molester, arsonist, robber, thief and burglar. 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.

Early life

Carl Panzram was born on June 28, 1891, on a farm near East Grand Forks, Minnesota, the sixth of seven children born to East Prussian immigrants Johann "John" Gottlieb Panzram and Mathilda Elizabeth "Lizzie" Panzram (''née'' Bolduan).

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 thief, 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) drowned in May 1905 while working as a lumberjack.

Early criminal record

left, Minnesota Correctional Facility, Red Wing, where Panzram was incarcerated from 1903 to 1906
Panzram's run-ins with the law started in 1899, at age 8, when he was charged in juvenile court with being drunk and disorderly, and in 1903 at age 12, when he was arrested and jailed for being drunk and "incorrigible." Not long after this second arrest, Panzram stole cake, apples and a revolver from a neighbor's home.

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, tortured and raped 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 burn it down, 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 paroled 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 Lutheran cleric with a revolver, Panzram ran away from home to live on the streets. He often traveled via train cars, and later recalled having been gang raped by a group of homeless men on one of these occasions.

Crimes

Early crimes

In the summer of 1906, Panzram was arrested for burglary in Butte, Montana, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment at Montana State Reform School in Miles City. He later claimed that after a guard named Bushart punished him, he assaulted and critically injured the man with a wooden board; as punishment, Panzram had to spend some time in solitary confinement. The following year, Panzram and a fellow inmate/safecracker named James Benson escaped from Montana State Reform School and stole guns in Terry, Montana. In the coming weeks, Panzram and Benson not only robbed people and houses but also repeatedly broke into stores and burned down buildings, especially churches, in acts of arson in the towns of Glendive, Crane, and Sidney. In the following days, Panzeram was forced to stand guard after a Spanish prostitute he had robbed sent the local police after him, in addition to the American consul who had opened an official investigation against him, and with 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 managed to obtain some money by robbing several farmers, and purchased a sailing ticket on the SS Petuni, which made its way to the port city of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, where the American consul did not recognize him, and agreed to help him find a ship sailing to Lisbon, Portugal. The American consul in Lisbon, however, heard personally about Panzer's exploits in Africa during a visit by the Sinclair Oil Corporation executive, and the latter 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.

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After his return to the U.S., he thought of becoming a professional hit man using the pistol he used 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, 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 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. Panzram threw 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 sexually assaulted 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 skipped bail, and the boat was confiscated by government agents.On August 24 He then 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; regon 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 a 1928 murder in Philadelphia.

Final capture

On August 30, 1928, Panzram was arrested in Baltimore for a Washington, D.C., burglary – 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 (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. Panzram later wrote that he had contemplated mass murders 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 was the point of killing a child, Panzram answered he hated the human race and that "I get a kick out of murdering people."

In light of his extensive criminal record, Panzram was sentenced to 25-years-to-life at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, identified as inmate #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 soon antagonized Panzram, despite the latter repeatedly warning him 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. 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 nihilistic philosophy while awaiting execution. Panzram explicitly denied having any remorse for any of his actions and began his journal with the statement that: "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 "

Execution

Panzram was hanged 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 '' Killer: A Journal of Murder'' (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, '' Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance'' (2012). Also, the 1995 film, '' Killer: A Journal of Murder'', starred James Woods as Carl Panzram.

See also

* Capital punishment by the United States federal government
* List of people executed by the United States federal government
* List of serial killers in the United States
* List of serial killers by number of victims
* List of serial rapists
* Volunteer (capital punishment)

References

Notes

Footnotes

External links

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Mugshots of Carl Panzram in 1915 and 1928

{{DEFAULTSORT:Panzram, Carl
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 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 burglars
American rapists
American robbers
Executed American serial killers
Escapees from Oregon detention
People with antisocial personality disorder
Executed American mass murderers
Executed people from Minnesota
Inmates of Sing Sing
LGBTQ people from Minnesota
Nihilists
American torturers
Pedophilia
People convicted of murder by the United States federal government
People executed by the United States federal government by hanging
People from East Grand Forks, Minnesota
Rape of males
Serial killers from Kansas
Serial killers from Massachusetts
Serial killers from New York (state)

Violence against men in the United States
Writers from Minnesota
Inmates of United States Disciplinary Barracks