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 293SERIAL 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.274-275_Harvey_Glatman.indd 275 02/12/2016 15:04