The Gorilla Man Strangler Case

The hitchhiker seemed harmless. He was dressed in a blue suit and a colorful sweater, accessorized with a grey cap and tan shoes. He carried nothing. It was the morning of June 8, 1927, when the Chandler family picked up the well-dressed man in Minnesota and dropped him at the Canadian border. They had unwittingly transported notorious serial killer, “The Gorilla Man,” who had strangled more than twenty women from one end of the United States to the other. He would later murder Emily Patterson and 14-year-old Lola Cowan in Winnipeg. His identity was unknown. Written by Alvin A. J. Esau, The Gorilla Man Strangler Case: Serial Killer Earle Nelson is a detailed historical account of the Canadian manhunt, capture, and identification of Earle Leonard Nelson, an escapee from a California mental institution. Drawing on archival sources, it’s the first reliable biography of Nelson, who was hung in Manitoba on January 13, 1928. This case study also deals with various political and professional issues that arose in the pretrial, trial, and post-trial periods and spotlights the clash between Nelson’s court-appointed defence attorney James Stitt, and psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Mathers, along with the chilling role of Canada’s so called official hangman “Arthur Ellis” – all information that has never been published before. Esau also raises various enduring issues about the social construction of serial killers, debates about capital punishment, psychopathy, the scope of the insanity defence, the effect of pretrial publicity, and the trial as public entertainment.

Many decades before Ted Bundy roamed the country there was serial killer Earle Nelson. During the 1920s, this geographically mobile killer went from city to city. His modus operandi involved getting into a house by pretending to be a person looking for a room to rent or inspecting a house that was for sale, and then strangling the landlady, often followed by having sex with the dead body. Robbery was frequently a secondary motive. After Nelson was captured in Canada in 1927, it was commonly reported that he had killed 21 women and a baby during the 1926-27 period. But were these the only cases linked to him? The author examines an additional nine unsolved murders of landladies, two of which have never been dealt with in previous literature. Based on decades of archival research, the author examines all 31 murders, relying on primary sources when available and a wide variety of secondary sources. For each murder, the book provides biographical sketches of the victim, outlines the police investigation and the various suspects, and covers any subsequent attempts to link Nelson to the crime by identification evidence of witnesses or by fingerprints.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 A black block amongst the florals, Freakshow was not a handsome man. His hands were as big as the landlady’s head. He was not a prideful man, and he seemed so bashful to talk about himself that she almost felt bad for prying. #2 The Bible salesman was not working hard to convince her. He was simply presenting his case. He had the look of an ape, but he was a man of the law who had come to court her and ask for her permission to sell his Bibles on her property. #3 The landlady was surprised to find that the Bible salesman was a good man. He was not a flirtatious man, nor did he ever flirt with the ladies who lived at the boarding house. #4 The man was a holy man, and he had no interest in the pleasures of the flesh. He was well-mannered to a fault. He set aside his case and squatted down at the side of the bed, looking underneath it as though worried that he might find the bogeyman.

Nicknamed at the time "The Gorilla Man" for the savagery of his rape and necrophiliac murders, Earle Nelson is one of history's early "pioneer serial killers" committing more than twenty horrific murders. Nelson targeted landladies mostly whom he met through 'room to let' classified advertisements. He carried a well-worn Bible for appearance to reassure his female victims before brutally strangling them, raping their corpses, and making a cursory attempt to hide the bodies. In 1926, following the murder of Laura Beal, the newspaper reporters began calling him "the Dark Strangler." Also dubbed the "Original American Monster" Nelson killed women, not only in multiple US cities, but eventually he crossed the border into Canada where he killed several women before authorities finally arrested, convicted and executed him. In an era before the term "serial killer" had been coined, Nelson was a true serial killer as we today define them.

People and Place demonstrates the fascinating ways in which personality and locale interact to shape the law, and how location influences legal cultural history. The essays, by a diverse array of scholars - including legal theorists, historians, and criminologists - examine law through the framework of history. They look at the lives of judges and lawyers, rape victims, prostitutes, religious sect leaders, and common criminals to explore how individuals or small groups have been able to make a difference in how law has been understood, applied, and interpreted. The essays allow readers to explore law's various meanings across communities and time and to develop a more profound awareness of the complexity of human society. Accessible to academics, students, and general readers interested in the formation of law within a social context, this collection offers a compelling perspective on the subtle relationship of people, place, and the law.

From Confederation to the partial abolition of the death penalty a century later, defendants convicted of sexually motivated killings and sexually violent homicides in Canada were more likely than any other condemned criminals to be executed for their crimes. Despite the emergence of psychiatric expertise in criminal trials, moral disgust and anger proved more potent in courtrooms, the public mind, and the hearts of the bureaucrats and politicians responsible for determining the outcome of capital cases. Wherever death has been set as the ultimate criminal penalty, the poor, minority groups, and stigmatized peoples have been more likely to be accused, convicted, and executed. Although the vast majority of convicted sex killers were white, Canada’s racist notions of "the Indian mind" meant that Indigenous defendants faced the presumption of guilt. Black defendants were also subjected to discriminatory treatment, including near lynchings. In debates about capital punishment, abolitionists expressed concern that prejudices and poverty created the prospect of wrongful convictions. Unique in the ways it reveals the emotional drivers of capital punishment in delivering inequitable outcomes, The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History provides a thorough overview of sex murder and the death penalty in Canada. It serves as an essential history and a richly documented cautionary tale for the present.

During the 1920s, in more than a dozen cities, over four years, and across two continents, women were being butchered. Eyewitneses claim the perpetrator was a hulking Bible-carrying brute who lumbered on all fours, and laughed maniacally with each new slaughter. The crimes haunted San Francisco Police Captain Charles Dullea, the last honest cop in one of the most notoriously corrupt departments in the country. But nothing could have prepared Dullea for where the case- and the truth-would take him.

FROM SOCIAL OUTCAST TO NECROPHILE AND MURDERER -- HIS APPALLING CRIMES STUNNED AN ERA. San Francisco, the 1920s. In an age when nightmares were relegated to the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and distant tales of the Whitechapel murders, a real-life monster terrorized America. His acts of butchery have proved him one of history's fiercest madmen. As an infant, Earle Leonard Nelson possessed the power to unsettle his elders. As a child he was unnaturally obsessed with the Bible; before he reached puberty, he had an insatiable, aberrant sex drive. By his teens, even Earle's own family had reason to fear him. But no one in the bone-chilling winter of 1926 could have predicted that his degeneracy would erupt in a sixteen-month frenzy of savage rape, barbaric murder, and unimaginable defilement -- deeds that would become the hallmarks of one of the most notorious fiends of the twentieth century, whose blood-lust would not be equaled until the likes of Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer. Drawing on the "gruesome, awesome, compelling reporting" (Ann Rule) that is his trademark, Harold Schechter takes a dark journey into the mind of an unrepentant sadist -- and brilliantly lays bare the myth of innocence that shrouded a bygone era.