The Crime Book

274

THEY’D RATHER

BE DEAD THAN BE

WITH ME

HARVEY GLATMAN, 1957–58

L

ocked in a toolbox in the

apartment of Harvey

Glatman was a collection of

photographs. Some of the pictures

showed women with their hands

bound behind their backs, eyes

wide with terror. Others showed

the same women dead, their bodies

set in particular poses.

The photographs were the

personal signature of one of the

most terrifying serial killers of

the 1950s. They ultimately led to

his conviction.

Teenage rapist

Raised in Colorado, Harvey

Glatman was a skinny loner with

buck teeth. As a child, he began

to exhibit antisocial behaviour and

bizarre sexual tendencies. In his

teens, he started to break into

women’s apartments, where he tied

them up and raped them, and then

took pictures as mementoes.

In 1945, Glatman was caught

breaking into a house and was

charged with burglary. While on

bail, he raped a woman, and served

eight months in prison as a result.

Following his release, Glatman

moved to Albany, New York, where

he was soon convicted of a series

of muggings. He was imprisoned

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

Los Angeles, California, US

THEME

Trophy killers

BEFORE

1950s Wisconsin farmer Ed

Gein, inspiration for Robert

Bloch’s novel and subsequent

Hitchcock movie Psycho, made

everyday items such as bowls

out of his victims’ body parts.

AFTER

1969 Police arrest serial killer

and shoe fetishist Jerome

Brudos in Oregon. He is later

sentenced to life in prison for

murdering three women.

1996 In the Ukraine, police

capture Anatoly Onoprienko,

responsible for killing 52

people. Onoprienko, who

targets isolated properties and

then murders everyone inside,

keeps the underwear of his

victims – both male and

female – as souvenirs.

Photographs the models

in positions of his

own choosing after

strangling them

to death

Keeps all of the

photos to relive

each stage of

the crime

Photographs the same

models as he binds and

assaults them

Photographs models

posing in bondage

positions

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275

Los Angeles police officers question

Glatman following his arrest for his

assault on Lorraine Vigil near Santa

Ana, Orange County. Glatman readily

confessed all his crimes.

See also: Jack the Ripper 266–73 ■ Ian Brady and Myra Hindley 284–85 ■ Jeffrey Dahmer 293

SERIAL KILLERS

and diagnosed as a psychopath.

However, Glatman was also a

model prisoner, and he was granted

parole in 1951. For the next seven

years, he worked as a television

repairman in Denver, Colorado.

Photographic bait

In 1957, Glatman moved to Los

Angeles. Using pseudonyms, he

posed as a photographer to attract

pretty young women with the

promise of a modelling career.

He trawled modelling agencies

for victims and lured the women

to hotel rooms, where he paid

them to pose in bondage positions

for pictures he claimed were for

publication in detective magazines.

Two of those models, Judith Dull

and Ruth Mercado, were bound and

sexually assaulted by Glatman as

he photographed them. He then

strangled them, photographed their

bodies, and dumped them in the

desert. A third victim, Shirley Ann

Bridgeford, met Glatman through

a classified advertisement.

On 27 October 1958, a motorcycle

cop came across Glatman

attempting to abduct a woman

named Lorraine Vigil. The officer

saw a car pulled over at the side

of the road. Inside the car, a man

was aiming a pistol at a woman’s

head and attempting to tie her up.

The officer quickly intervened and

arrested Glatman.

Conviction and sentence

Knowing that investigators would

soon find the incriminating

photographs of his victims in his

apartment, Glatman confessed to

the three murders and eventually

led police to the toolbox containing

the images. He was found guilty

of two counts of first-degree

murder and sentenced to death.

On 18 September 1959, Glatman

was executed in the gas chamber

at San Quentin State Prison.

Psychiatric study of Glatman’s

desire to collect souvenirs of his

victims changed how serial killings

are investigated in America – the

FBI’s Violent Crime Apprehension

Program was founded to look

for serial patterns in violent crime.

Glatman’s obsessions largely

explained the serial nature of his

offences, and he was indeed later

classified as a “serial killer”. ■

Souvenir killers

Many serial killers keep

mementoes of their murders.

Often they are trophies, used

to revisit the pleasure derived

from the murder. Psychiatrists

say the act is a twisted

deviation of the impulse that

motivates collectors of mundane

items, such as baseball cards,

coins, or stamps.

Some of the most notorious

killers have collected souvenirs.

In Victorian times, Jack the

Ripper was alleged to keep

human remains of his victims.

A number of serial killers have,

like Glatman, photographed

their victims’ final moments.

In a bizarre twist to this

strange urge to record such

gruesome crimes, there is also a

market for “murderabilia”: items

related to murderers. These

might be the clothes worn by

murderers when they committed

their crimes, weapons that were

used, or postcards or letters sent

from jail. The online company

eBay banned the sale of

murderabilia in 2001, although

buyers and sellers are still active

on other e-commerce sites.

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