BELLE GUNNESS

(1859-1930)

BELLE GUNNESS

(1859-1930)

A woman alone in the world has to find a way to take care of herself. In the late 19^th century, a woman named Belle Gunness found a foolproof way to support herself by marrying well and killing often.

Bell Gunness was born Brynhild Paulschatter in 1859 in Norway and immigrated to America in 1881. There are conflicting stories of Belle’s childhood. One source said she was raised in poverty and had to take jobs farming to raise the money for the trip to the US. Another said her father, Peter Paulsen was a traveling conjurer and magician and that Belle danced the high wire. But we do know that suspicious deaths and fires soon followed her arrival. At six feet and 200 pounds, Belle had no trouble attracting a husband.

Within three years, Belle was married to Albert Sorenson. The two ran a candy store in Chicago and had two children; both infants died and now are feared to have been two of Belle’s first little victims. One thing that Belle made sure of was that her husbands had plenty of life insurance…a girl has to protect herself against the fickle fates. Not only did she make sure there was insurance on her husband but her home and store, too. Both of these conveniently burned down, and Belle and Albert collected the insurance and bought a new home. But Belle was not much of a sharer and her husband fell ill and died. The curious thing was that he happened to die on the day two different life insurance policies overlapped…she collected double. Smart girl.  She used the insurance money to buy a farm.

More suspicious deaths followed. She next married Peter Gunness, a widower with an infant daughter. This child died soon after the nuptials; like I said, she doesn’t share well.  After this death, Peter sent his other child, Swanheld, to stay with relatives, thus probably saving her life.

Peter was a butcher, and one day a meat grinder fell off a shelf and killed him. Think about that. The meat grinder falling off a shelf is certainly not that suspicious, but the fact that Peter was under the shelf, to me, is. Taking a nap, perhaps?

The real story is more like what Gunness’s daughter was heard to tell her schoolmates, “My mama killed my Papa. She hit him with a meat cleaver and he died. Don’t tell a soul.” Now that I believe.

Next, let’s meet Mads Sorenson, Belle’s next husband.  With this husband, Belle had four children, Caroline, Axel, Myrtle, and Lucy, along with a foster child, Jennie Olsen.  I guess at this point, Belle didn’t mind sharing the attention with children. But maybe, not. Caroline and Axel died of acute colitis whose symptoms match those of strychnine poison. Mads fell ill and died soon after. The first doctor said it was poison, but the family doctor said heart failure. And that assessment stood.  

Belle’s next idea was to post in lovelorn columns in the newspapers to bring wealthy men to the farm. When they arrived, she would tell them she needed money to pay off the mortgage on the farm. The men would then get this money for her and would never be seen again. As you can see from the photos here, Belle was not an extremely attractive woman, but she must have had some appeal or these men would not have been so easily swayed to pay the mortgage of a woman they barely knew. The following is a list of some of the men who responded to Belle’s ad and who were never seen or heard from again, but it is certainly not a complete list:

·         John Moo

·         Henry Gyrholdt

·         Olaf Sverherus

·         B. Budsbury

·         Olaf Lindblom

·         Andrew Hegelein

In 1908, Andrew Hegelein’s family became suspicious when they heard nothing from Harold. Their inquiries got the authorities to come to the farm to investigate. This began the excavation of the property and the uncovering of the many murders of Belle Gunness.

                At some point, the farmhouse itself burned down and four skeletons were found. When all was said and done, 40 men and children’s remains were found including those of the foster child Jennie and Belle’s children Lucy, 9; Myrtle, 11; and Phillip Gunness, 5. It is believed that Belle killed these men and children, dismembered them and fed them to the pigs.

Belle disappeared. Maybe. There was a headless female found in the fire and a set of metal bridgework that could be identified as Belle’s, making the police believe that Belle had been caught in her own fire. But here’s the problem with that conclusion. This was Belle’s house. Of course, you would expect to find her bridgework there, but not always in her mouth.  Belle seems like a woman who might save her teeth for a special occasion, like the arrival of a new man from the lovelorn ad. So, it is possible that although the bridge was hers; the headless body was not.

               Let’s now take a look at another player at Belle’s ranch, hired hand, RayLampshere. With Belle assumed dead in the fire, on May 22, 1908, Ray was arrested for the arson and the murders. It turns out he is the one who knew all of Belle’s crimes, and now that he was being charged with them, he was willing to talk. He claimed she was not one of the victims of the fire. She had planned it all. She went to Chicago and found a housekeeper and brought her back to the farm. This woman was the headless corpse found in the fire. The interesting thing was that this woman was nowhere near six feet, as Belle was, but she was identified as Belle anyway. Belle, in the meantime, had cleared out all the bank accounts, set fire to the house and farm and moved on.

                In 2007, forensic anthropologist Stephen Hawrocki and some of his grad students started to investigate the alleged death of Belle Gunness. The first step was having the body exhumed from Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, that had been assumed was Belle’s. What was found was that the alleged Belle’s bones were intermingled with those of the children. It had always been believed that the children were buried separately. So, they next exhumed what was in the graves of Lucy, Myrtle, and Phillip.  All this digging of bones never gave any real results.

                Many sightings of Belle went on for years, but the most promising was a woman named Edith Carlson, who seemed to resemble Belle. But she died in Los Angeles as she awaited trial for murder.

                So, ended the story of Belle Gunness, who spent most of her adult life wreaking havoc in the lives of all who crossed her path.

               

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Marybeth Tinning

In 1971, Marybeth’s eight-day-old baby, Jennifer, died of spinal meningitis which began a journey of death for the following eight babies born to Marybeth. When her first child died, Marybeth was the object of great pity. Who is a sadder sight than a mother who has lost her child?

 After Marybeth lost Jennifer, she collected herself and focused on her two remaining children. But less than a month later, Marybeth returned to the hospital; this time with her son Joseph Jr. Marybeth said he had had a seizure. He was released to the loving arms of his mother, but just a few hours later, she returned to the hospital with a lifeless Joseph Jr., claiming she found him dead in his crib. A few weeks later, it was her daughter Barbara’s turn to be taken to the hospital with convulsions. She died the next day, making Marybeth childless.

Marybeth continued to have more children. A month after he was born, her son Timothy died of seizures, just like his brother Joseph Jr. He was followed by Nathan, Mary Frances, Jonathan, and her adopted child, Michael. Why did no one see a pattern here and stop her?

Her ninth child, Tami Lynn, was born in August 1985. She was no luckier than her prior

siblings. But after her death, the authorities became suspicious. I guess nine deaths was her limit. When she was questioned, Marybeth immediately confessed to suffocating Timothy, Nathan, and Tami Lynn. One must wonder if the lives of innocent children could have been saved if Marybeth had been questioned earlier.

Because of lack of evidence, Marybeth was only tried for Tami Lynn’s death, receiving 20 years to life. All her requests for parole have been denied.

Dee Dee Blancharde

This story is a little different. In this one, the victim survived to her teens, and she found a way to get out of the hell that is Munchausen by Proxy…she killed her mother.

Just like the other mothers we have been exploring, Dee Dee loved the attention she received as the mother of a very sick child. She convinced the world and her daughter Gypsy Rose that she was fatally ill by feeding Gypsy seizure medication, shaving her tiny head, and confining the growing child to a wheelchair for years, so that Gypsy would appear ill.

Rod Blanchard, Daisy’s father says the abuse started as an infant when Dee Dee told him that their daughter needed a breathing machine and was probably not going to live until she was 18. He didn’t really ask for any details and divorced Dee Dee in 1991. In many ways, he just abandoned her to her mother’s whims.

Dee Dee shaved her daughter’s head to convince people that she had cancer and forced a doctor to give her daughter a painful feeding tube. The insertion of a feeding tube seems to also be a staple of the Munchausen mother. My issues are the lack of testing on the part of the medical community. How does a mother “insist” on a feeding tube and just get it.  She even lied to her daughter about how old she was. An aging victim is not what the people what to see and Gypsy was Dee Dee’s cash cow, and it would not do to have her grow up.

For most of her life, Gypsy never went out of the house unless she was in her wheelchair, even though she knew she could walk. She did it in the confines of her home all the time.  Allowing anyone to see her walking would bring down her mother’s carefully crafted con.

In 2011, Gypsy had her first taste of freedom when she escaped to track down an older man she had met at a sci-fi convention. But her mother tracked her down in Arkansas and dragged her home saying, “"If you ever try to do that again, I'm going to smash your fingers with a hammer."

            Gypsy’s access to the outside world was limited to the internet; how could that go wrong? In a Christian dating site, Gypsy met Nicholas Godejohn, and soon he was her “boyfriend.” This relationship and how Gypsy managed it showed that she had learned her lessons in manipulation well from her mother. Nicholas had his own issues with mental health and the police.

Nicholas claimed to have multiple personalities and insisted Gypsy create multiple personalities for herself to match his. There was Kitty the little girl, and Ruby, the evil vixen. She would send him photos of her in various costumes for each persona. This allowed Gypsy to explore her sexuality and start to develop feelings more suited to her actual age, not the little girl she was forced to play.

            Soon, Gypsy wants her adult life to be more than just a fantasy, but she knew that nothing could happen unless her mother was gone. So, the conversation with Nicholas eventually got around to how they could kill her mother.

            The plot took wings and eventually, Nicholas was at Dee Dee’s house and Gypsy was hiding in the bathroom hearing her mother scream, “Help me! Help me!”

            They fled the scene and eventually ended up at Nicholas’ parent's house in Wisconsin. Both are arrested. Nicholas has yet to go to trial, but Dee Dee resides now in what she calls a better place.

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Munchhausen by Proxy : Part 1

Lisa Hayden-Johnson

Lisa’s son was born prematurely, so he needed feeding tubes and constant medical attention. His mother Lisa loved the attention she got as the mother of an ill child. This is one of the aspects of Munchausen by Proxy, a condition where the parent, usually the mother, makes a child sick to gain attention and often monetary gain. The greatest fear of these mothers is that their child will get well.

When Lisa’s son began to get better, she decided to try convincing everyone that her child was still deathly ill. She went on television and told everyone that her son had severe food allergies; therefore, he was unable to eat and had to have a feeding tube inserted. To convince people her son had diabetes, she would put glucose in his urine. She said he also had cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis which confined him to a wheelchair. She was so convincing that she not only had her son convinced he was sick, but she also had the doctor’s convinced, which lead to 325 operations and invasive medical procedures. She also claimed her son was sensitive to sunlight, so she made him wear sunglasses and a hat to school. The hat was always in bright colors because she wanted him to be able to be readily seen and rescued in case anything happened at school. It wouldn’t do to have the source of all her attention and money to get truly injured in any way and taken to a hospital where she would not be in control of how her son was looked at.

This is where I get confused with any story of Munchausen by Proxy story. How were these women able to convince medical professionals that their child had cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis? Don’t these conditions require tests to help with such a diagnosis?

The attention Lisa received was wide-spread. From donations, she got a new car, cash, and a free cruise. She was also able to receive disability payments for her son, which was probably not her main motivation, but it allowed her to not have to work and to be able to monitor who her son encountered. It would not do to have someone get too close to him and become suspicious.

After much lobbying by his mother, her son received a Children of Courage award and met both Tony Blair and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. Her son was considered “the sickest child in Britain.” For a sick kid, her son got around. When she was finally caught, the police found a video tape of that free cruise. In it, the boy was seen running around the pool and eating all regular food. It’s amazing what the sea air can do.

Soon her very carefully crafted con came tumbling down when, in 2007, a pediatrician became suspicious of the fact that there did not seem to be a clear diagnosis, so he examined all the boy’s medical files. He demanded further tests on her son. To postpone these tests, on the day they were to be performed, Lisa claimed she had been sexually assaulted. While speaking to the police about the assault, she eventually confessed to the entire scheme.Her plan backfired. 

Prosecutor Andrew Macfarlane said, 'The defendant organized, orchestrated and ensured a regime of medical, physiological and psychological mistreatment, amounting to 24-hour-a-day torture that touched on every aspect of his young vulnerable life.” Lisa received 39 months in prison and her son went to live with his father and is said to be a happy and healthy little boy. This is another aspect of Munchausen; when the children are not with their mothers, they seem to miraculously recover, as if nothing was wrong with them in the first place.

Kathy Bush

           

Jennifer Bush’s life was hell right from the beginning, with 40 medical procedures and 200 hospitalizations before the age of eight. Because of her weak immune system, she had to have her appendix, gallbladder, and small intestine removed.  Like Lisa Hayden-Johnson’s son, Jennifer Bush’s mother made sure anyone who would listen knew how sick her child was and how poor the family was because of it. The perks of all of this were many.

            Jennifer became a poster child for health reform and met Hilary Rodham Clinton at the White House; she even testified before Congress about these reforms. The nurses who tended Jennifer were confused by the letters written to the Clintons since Jennifer never went to school and her writing was on the kindergarten level.

            Kathy told the media that her family was penniless and wrote to the White House that sometimes they had to decide between medicine for Jennifer and food for the family. The family would also have financial problems because their health insurance dropped them when Jennifer began to have medical issues.

            The problem with this image of the destitute family was that at home there was a new Mustang and motorcycle in the driveway and the family was taking vacations at expensive resorts. It seems the cash she solicited was not going to either food or medicine.

            Meanwhile, nurses were beginning to talk. Often Jennifer seemed to be getting better until her mother arrived and drew the curtain to be alone with her daughter. Nurses often heard Jennifer saying “no, no” when alone with her mother. One nurse even saw Kathy squirting liquid into her daughter’s mouth. Jennifer's numerous baffling infections were "consistent with someone smearing fecal matter" into her feeding line and urinary catheter.

            Finally, in 1996, a nurse filed a complaint, and Kathy Bush was charged with fraudulently soliciting money and assault. Jennifer was transferred to another hospital and within a short time, she was eating and had her feeding tube removed. She was put into foster care and her health improved dramatically.

            In 1999, Kathy was convicted of aggravated child abuse. She served three years of a five-year sentence. She was also forbidden from having contact with her daughter.

            When Jennifer was 18, she petitioned the court to lift the ban on her seeing her mother. Jennifer now says she believes that her mother did not harm her at all.

In a written statement to the Sun Sentinel in early 2015, Jennifer wrote:

The 10 years I spent in foster care were traumatic, and I had some devastating things happen to me. [ . . . ] Today, I can proudly say we have flourished despite the devastating separation. The bond I had with my brothers, prior to being removed from my family, is something that never changed. My relationship with them helped carry me through my years in foster care. My parents and I have picked up from where we left off, and have a very close and loving relationship.

Lacy Spears

Garnet Spears spent his first five years on this earth suffering from numerous digestive issues. They were so severe that finally a feeding tube was inserted into his little body. His mother, Lacy Spears, was a former nursing student who used social media to document Garnet’s journey through doctor visits and hospital stays. Often, Munchausen by Proxy mothers have some medical knowledge. Like what often happens, the people in the social media rallied around her and Garnet.

In January 2014, Garnet was again admitted to the hospital; this time his sodium levels were sky high. At this point, the hospital became suspicious and called the police and Child Protective Services. As this little boy was in tremendous pain and slowly dying, his mother was not holding his hand and trying to soothe him; she was on Facebook and her own blog updating people on the boy’s condition and receiving the sympathy of her readers. There were videos that showed that Garnet was screaming in pain before the machines were finally turned off. On the 22^nd of January, Garnet was declared brain dead and his mother had the life support turned off.

The police searched Lacy and Garnet’s home and found sea salt and two feeding bags that

tested positive for sodium. Lucy was arrested and charged with manslaughter and second-degree murder. It is said she called a neighbor and asked her to get rid of the feeding bags, which had 69 packages of salt in it.  

During her 2-week trial, the prosecutor said that her treatment of her son was “nothing short of torture.” The defense blamed the hospital for the sodium poisoning. She was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years. The judge said she suffered from Munchausen’s by proxy and made her son sick just to bask in the attention the mother of a sick child gets.

Blanca Montano

It is February 2011 when Blanca Montano rushed her two children to the hospital. It was determined that they both had E. coli. Luckily her son was able to be treated and released, but her 5-month-old daughter was not so lucky.

She was transferred to intensive care but continued to get one infection after another. The medical staff was confused as to the cause of these rare and unusual infections. They began to suspect that Blanca was tampering with her daughter’s IV, introducing things like fecal matter. As the doctors were trying to treat the infections, Blanca was insisting on a bone marrow biopsy.  

Cameras were mounted in the child’s room and caught Blanca playing with the IV and covering the camera. The hospital felt they had enough evidence and brought in the police. Blanca was arrested and charged with one count of child abuse and forbidden to visit her daughter. The child slowing recovered and was released.Are you seeing a pattern here?

During her trial, the prosecutors said she had done this to gain attention and get back the affection of the children’s father.  Nurses testified that syringes had been found in Blanca’s purse and that she said she was surprised people hadn’t called CPS before. Blanca was found guilty and sentenced to 13 years in prison. She continues to maintain she is innocent.

The Mother-in-Law from Hell: The story of "Ma" Duncan

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW FROM HELL; “MA” DUNCAN

This is the story of Frank Duncan and his mother Elizabeth and how their “incestuous” relationship ended in the murder of Frank’s pregnant wife, Olga.

Elizabeth Duncan, herself, is an interesting woman. Depending on who you believe, she had from 11 to 15 husbands and 2 to 4 children, her favorite being Frank. It seems she would con younger men into marrying her by telling them she needed to be married to collect a sizable inheritance, and she would split it with them. Once they were married, she would fleece them and then leave, going on to the next man.

 Elizabeth tried to kill herself because Frank had decided to strike out on his own and get his own apartment. During Elizabeth’s confinement, Frank met Olga, one of his mother’s nurses. Olga and Frank dated in secret because every time Frank would mention dating his mother would try to kill herself. After she left the hospital, she would call Olga, threatening her and telling her she would never marry Frank.

When Olga got pregnant, Frank was forced to own up and marry her. To say the least, his mother was livid. She went so far as to hire a young man to pose as Frank and illegally had the marriage annulled. The young man certainly could have passed for Frank, but Olga as Franks young wife? The judge must have been blind or had recently come into a sum of money. She was also planning to have her son kidnapped and held hostage until he agreed to divorce his wife. None of this worked to get the pair to divorce.

To appease his mother, Frank moved out of his and his wife’s house and back in with ‘Mother.” This did not make the pregnant bride very happy.

Olga disappeared in November 1958 when she was 30 years old and 7 months pregnant. Two men who had been hired by Elizabeth came to the door and said that Frank was drunk in their back seat. When Olga came to get Frank, the pair hit her over the head and drove her to a remote location. There they tried first to strangle her. They would have shot her but the gun broke when they hit her in the head with it. They continued with their ineptitude when they realized they didn’t have any shovels to dig a grave for Olga; they ended up doing it with their hands. They didn’t bother to check to see if Olga was dead before they buried her. She ended up being buried alive.

Her body was eventually found when two men confessed that Ma Duncan had hired them to kill the girl. Olga was beaten, strangled, and then buried while she was still alive.

Police began to suspect Ma Duncan when then found out about the illegal annulment. At her trial, the nature of Frank and his mother’s relationship was called into question and it was hinted but never proven that it was an incestuous one. It did not take long for Ma Duncan to be found guilty and sentenced to death. Frank, who was a lawyer, worked tirelessly to

have the sentence changed, but Ma Duncan was executed on August 8, 1962.

Angels of Nagyrev

I have a hard time getting my friends to decide which movie to see on any given Saturday night, but in at town called Nagyrev in Hungary between 1914-1929, three hundred people were poisoned and an entire town kept who the killers were a secret for 15 years.

Julia (Zsuzsanna)Fazekas was a greedy midwife who was always looking for ways to make money. So in addition to her duties as a midwife, she also provided help to women who did not want to be pregnant by performing abortions.

When a rival midwife set up shop in what Fazekas saw as her territory, she set out to get rid of her. First, she seduced the rival’s brother (how that helped, I’m not sure) and soon the rival was found dead. Very convenient. The rival’s brother felt that Fazekas was to blame and came after her. Fazekas organized the town’s women to threaten the brother. He didn’t care and came after the midwife with a gun; he shot her, but missed. He was sent to prison…problem solved.

Fazekas was probably the only person who saw WWI as a good thing. First, the men in town all enlisted to fight in the war. This was a good thing since at that time marriages were arranged and women had nothing to say about who they married. If the husband proved to be unsatisfactory, there was no chance for divorce…divorce was illegal. So, the men going to war was advantageous for two reasons, the women were free to do as they pleased, and, since it was a war, there was a chance the husband might not return at all… truly a win-win situation.

The town became a prisoner of war camp, very much to the liking of the women in town. Here were men who were basically at the women’s beck and call for sex, but didn’t have any say over what the women did. This was heaven.

The problem came when the war was over and the husbands returned and the prisoners were released. The husbands expected life to return to normal, with them back in control of their homes and wives. The women were distressed but instead of just accepting it, they turned to the woman who had helped them before… the local midwife, Julia Fazekas.

Fazekas saw this as her next great opportunity. The killing of her rival had been easy and got Fazekas thinking that might be a profitable business…. providing the means to women who had husbands and other family members who needed killing. She advertised (word of mouth) and set prices based on how wealthy the client was. The poison of choice was arsenic. The effects were at first the inability to swallow, then vomiting, and finally convulsions and death. Arsenic was easy to get; Mrs. Fazekas simply boiled down fly paper and skimmed off the residue. She had only two rules; she would not sell to unmarried women or men.

In 1916, the first of these transactions occurred. A wealthy man in town got sick and his wife wanted to make sure he didn’t recover. She bought poison from Fazekas and her problem was solved. She even hid the vial the poison came in in the coffin.

Soon, women saw this as a way to get rid of all unwanted relatives, not just unwanted husbands. Before long, demanding parents, nosy aunts, and meddlesome children were dying at alarming rates. Quickly, the town was being called “the murder district.”

If you are wondering how they were able to get away with this, this is how. Fazekas’ cousin was the person in charge of filing the death certificates. He made sure the cause of death was appropriate which allowed the women to get away with this for so long.

The men in the town began to get suspicious, but instead of going to the authorities, they tried to guarantee their own safety by being better husbands., figuring if the wife was happy, she wouldn’t resort to such tactics to get rid of him.

From 1918 to 1924, business was booming, but so were the suspicions.  In 1924, a local doctor became suspicious. One of his wealthier patients came down with bronchitis and died. The doctor claimed he had not been that sick. But his suspicions were not enough to bring the women’s enterprise down.

In 1929, an anonymous letter was received by the police claiming Fazekas was helping people to kill. There was no proof, and the anonymous writer was found and sent to prison for slander. Mrs. Fazekas was like Teflon®; nothing stuck to her.

Mrs. Takucs, one of the “angels,” dismayed the group by killing both her parents, two brothers, a sister-in-law and an aunt, which was contrary to the wishes of the group that only men were to be killed.

The local minister was also suspicious. He said that “healthy and robust men” were dying suddenly, and the doctors could give no plausible reason why. Remember, these doctors had wives, too, so they were reluctant to rock the boat. The reverend called on Mrs. Fazekas and had some tea. The next day he fell ill and decided to not pursue the matter. It looked like these women were going to get away with these murders and get to continue on with them.

Eventually, though, there were more letters and more investigations, including exhumation of the bodies. Arsenic was found, including the vials that some women had tucked away in the coffins, assuming they would never see the light of day again.

Mrs. Ladislaus Szabo poisoned her uncle, but he survived and called the police . When arrested, Mrs. Szabo pointed the figure at a Mrs. Bukenoveski who had used the poison to kill her mother. Mrs. Bukenoveski was the one who pointed her finger at Mrs. Fazekas.

When it looked like Fazekas was going to be arrested, she took her own poison.

Six people were found guilty and sent to death while 7 others got life and 7 others served 5-15 years.

The authorities chalked this up to the promiscuous sex the women engaged in during the war while others understood that it was brought on by the extreme poverty and lack of medical supervision. 

Does Long Island Have a Serial Killer?

The saga of the Long Island serial killer begins in May 2010 with the story of Shannon Gilbert, a Craigslist escort who went to Oak Beach with her driver Michael Pak to party with Joseph Brewer and was never seen alive again. At some point during the visit, Shannon made a 23 minute 911 call where she sounded hysterical and screamed “they’re trying to kill me.” According to her driver, she became unhinged and ran from the house, knocking on neighbors’ doors and asking for help. When she received no offers, she was last seen running off toward the water.

On December 10, 2010, skeletal remains were found. All assumed they would be Gilbert’s but no. They were the remains of another Craigslist escort, Melissa Barthelemy, who had gone missing in July of 2009. The search continued for Gilbert and three additional remains were found at that time: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman, all escorts bt none were Gilbert.

Shannon was found a year later on December 13, 2011 along with six other bodies, taking the total found to 10: four on Ocean Parkway, one in Nassau County, a skull in Tobay Beach (matching legs had been found on Fire Island in1996), and a mother and child. The DNA of the mother was matched with a torso found in Nassau County in 1997. At this point the term “serial killer” was being used by both the police and the media.

The autopsy on Shannon proved to be inconclusive since all that was recovered was bones which led to two theories: one was that she was killed by the “Long Island Serial Killer” and the other was that she had wandered into the thick brush, got lost and confused, and ended up drowning.

Shannon’s family, though, was sure it was murder and honed in on one suspect, Dr. Peter Hackett, a local physician. Shannon’s mother claimed Hackett called her and said that he ran a home for wayward women and took Gilbert in the morning she disappeared. This call echoed the one that Melissa Barthelemy’s sister Amanda claimed to have received from a person who claimed he was holding her sister.  Dr. Hackett said this wasn’t true, but the phone records disagreed. Gilbert’s family sued him in 2012, claiming he encountered Gilbert as she ran off knocking on doors and gave her drugs, which killed her.

A litany of amateur sleuths was also convinced that Hackett was the Long Island Killer. It was alleged that he was fired by Suffolk County for misusing his work cell phone and claiming to be at work when he was not. He also was said to have embellished his role in the investigation of the crash of Flight 800. None of this makes him a killer, a bad employee, maybe, but not a killer.

Crime Watch Daily (newsmagazine) followed Hackett from a deposition and claimed he faked a heart attack, clutching his chest and falling to the ground. Since this alleged event, he has moved to Florida… wouldn’t you?

My feelings on the “Long Island Serial Killer” are that it is not a serial killer. What the recovery of these remains, often long after the death, proves is that this area of the Long Island shore is a perfect area for hiding bodies.  Finding so many bodies discarded in the same place would naturally lead one to think this was the work of one person, but perhaps not. Let’s look at the situation. That area is the perfect place to hide a body due to its thick thorny brambles. Also, most the victims were escorts, a common killer’s victims.

It would be nice to think there was only one person out there killing women, but not all these victims fit a nice neat profile. Not all were escort; one was a child. Some were found whole, others in pieces scattered all over the Island. We don’t want to think that the number of killers is high, but in the research for my book Who Killed Starr Faithfull and othermurderous tales of Long Island, I found that Long Island has many and varied killers both in the past and future and to think we are looking for just one killer is shor tsided and could be deadly.

 What do you think?