He
was sentenced to Death Row for the murder, where he befriended a
jailer, Henry Lesser, who listened intently to Panzram's story (and
would later publish it).
Even
when human rights organisations tried to have his life spared,
Panzram would retort:
"I
prefer to die that way, and if I have a soul and if that soul should
burn in Hell for a million years, still I prefer that to a
lingering, agonizing death in some prison dungeon or a padded cell
in a mad house... The only thanks you or 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... I have no desire to reform
myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me, and
I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill'em.".
Finally
he got his wish and was due to be hanged on September 5, 1930.
Bitter
to the end, Panzram went to his maker with a curse on his lips:
"Hurry up you Hoosier bastard", he snarled at the
executioner preparing the noose. "I could hang a dozen men
while you're fooling around"...
CARL
PANZRAM
During
his final prison stretch in the late 1920's, Carl Panzram confessed
to twenty-one murders,
"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 100 male human
beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry".
Panzram
was born on June 28, 1891 to Prussian migrant parents in Minnesota.
Carl Panzram was a person always in trouble. Police knew his name
from quite early, when he was eight he was convicted of drunk &
disorderly conduct behaviour. Then again three years later, when a
string of burglaries landed him in reform school, he retaliated by
burning the place down.
He
would leave the institution at age thirteen, filled with the
knowledge that would last him a lifetime -- "how to steal, lie,
hate, burn and kill"....
He
went home to his mother, who was grieicng over the drowning death of
her favourite son, so Panzram moved on again. He ran away to pursue
a transient life. In a boxcar he was gang raped by four hobos.
"I cried, I begged and pleaded for mercy, pity and sympathy,
but nothing I could say or do could sway them from their purpose. I
left that box a sadder, sicker but wiser boy...". The bums
seemed to have taught Carl another valuable lesson: "I had
learned that a rectum could be used for other purposes than
crepitating".
He
also joined the army for a short stint, he was drunk when he enlistd
which may accoutn for his un-army like behaviour which culminated in
a court-martial and three years at Leavenworth.
In
1911 Carl was traveling with an Indian when they attacked a
railroader, robbed him of $35.00, bound his arms and legs, and
stuffed a sock in his mouth. "I figured that as I had such a
good chance as that, I would commit a little sodomy on him... He is
still there, unless the buzzards and coyotes have finished the last
of him long ago."
At
one point during his trips Carl killed a young boy. This is how he
explained it in his own words: "I sat down to think things over
a bit. While I was sitting there, a little kid about eleven or
twelve years old came bumming around. He was looking for something.
He found it too. I took him out to a gravel pit about one quarter
mile away. I left him there, but first committed sodomy on him and
then killed him. His brains were coming out of his ears when I left
him, and he will never be any deader.", "
He
embarked on a career of spectacular brutality. Traveling around the
world -- South America, Europe, Africa and US -- leaving a wake of
corpses in his stead.
With
proceeds from one of his many robberies Panzram bought a yacht,
named the John O'Leary a name he would adopt himself, and lured ten
sailors aboard with the promise of free bootleg liquor. However this
was not meant to be, after the sailors drank themselves into
oblivion, Panzram drugged the men, raped them, slit their throats
and dumped them overboard.
Later,
in West Africa, he hired eight native guides to help him hunt
crocodiles. Instead, he killed his hired hands, sodomized their
corpses and fed them to the hungry reptiles "for sport."
When
he returned to the United States in 1928, Panzram was arrested for a
string of burglaries. He was sentenced to 20 years. There, he vowed
he'd "kill the first man that crosses me". Robert Warnke ,
a civilian laundry man was in the wrong place at the wrong time,
Panzram took and iron bar and smashed the man's skull in.
He
was sentenced to Death Row for the murder, where he befriended a
jailer, Henry Lesser, who listened intently to Panzram's story (and
would later publish it).
Even
when human rights organisations tried to have his life spared,
Panzram would retort:
"I
prefer to die that way, and if I have a soul and if that soul should
burn in Hell for a million years, still I prefer that to a
lingering, agonizing death in some prison dungeon or a padded cell
in a mad house... The only thanks you or 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... I have no desire to reform
myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me, and
I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill'em.".
Finally
he got his wish and was due to be hanged on September 5, 1930.
Bitter
to the end, Panzram went to his maker with a curse on his lips:
"Hurry up you Hoosier bastard", he snarled at the
executioner preparing the noose. "I could hang a dozen men
while you're fooling around"...