Carl Panzram

Carl Panzram's criminal career started at an early age. When Carl was 8 years old, he was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. 3 years later at the age of 11, a string of burglaries landed him in reform school. During his stint there he torched a building. It was at this reform school that Carl first learned true sadism as he was tied, naked to a wooden block and beaten regularly. He left the institution at the age of 13, filled with knowledge that would last him a lifetime - "how to steal, lie, hate, burn and kill."

Carl returned home to a chilly welcome. His mother was grieving over the drowning of her favorite son, and Carl was sent off to a Lutheran boarding school where students would taunt him about coming from reform school and he would kick their ass. The preacher corrected his bad behavior with a beating. Little Carl promptly pulled out a Colt .45, and bid farewell to the preacher. Carl ran away, and while hitching a ride in a boxcar was gang raped by 4 bums, "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." Carl learnt yet another valuable lesson, "I had learnt that a rectum could be used for other purposes than crepitating."

Carl got as far as Butte, Montana, where he was picked up for petty larceny and sent to another reform school. Once again brutalized, Carl fought back, knocking out a former prizefighter with a piece of lumber. This time he was reformed in a new way. The process included not only a beating, but also forced circumcision. Carl eventually escaped from the Montana State Reform School, and for a couple of years drifted from town to town aimlessly robbing and burning churches.

At the age of 16, Carl joined the army. However, he ended up serving 3 years in a military prison for theft. Oddly, Secretary of War William Howard Taft, with whom he was fated to cross paths with again later in life, approved his sentence. While serving the 3-year sentence, Carl had his leg shackled to a 50-pound iron ball for the first 6 months.

Upon release from the military prison, Carl drifted through Kansas, Missouri and Illinois. He worked odd jobs as a railroad guard, strike breaker, and once even traveled with the carnival. Between these odd jobs, petty crimes became a way of life for Carl. One time he came upon a large fire in Houston, and began looting houses while they burned.

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."

In addition, in 1911, Carl decided to give military life another try, this time enlisting in the Foreign Legion of the Mexican Army. This did not last long though, 1 month after joining, Carl deserted and rode his horse to the death on the way to the border. In 1915, using the name Jefferson Baldwin, Carl was arrested in Oregon for stealing some jewelry, a watch, and $130 in cash. While awaiting sentencing for highway robbery, assault, and sodomy in Dalles, Oregon, Carl learnt how to blow up safes from a conman named Cal Jordan. Carl knew exactly how to apply the knowledge, he promptly blew up the prison and escaped. Then he came back to break his partner out and was caught. "The thanks I got from old Cal was that he thought I was in love with him, and he tried to mount me. But I wasn't broke to ride and he was, so I rode him."

Carl copped a plea in return for a dismissal of the other charges. However, the state reneged on their side of the deal and gave him a maximum sentence. This pissed Carl off! He, "tore loose all the radiators and steam pipes, smashed all the electric wiring, took the cook stove, all the dishes, all the food, all the blankets, mattresses and clothing, all the furniture, benches, tables, chairs, books and everything that was loose or could be torn loose or that would burn. Then I piled it all up and set fire to it."

This incident got Carl 7 years in the state pen under the regime of the infamous Warden Harry Minto. Though prison reform movements had long since succeeded in banning beating and fire-hosing prisoners, Oregon had somehow managed to ignore all of the standards for the civilized treatment of prisoners. Carl eventually masterminded an escape involving a prisoner named Otto Hooker. However, during the jailbreak, Warden Minto was shot dead by Otto, who got away. When John Minto came to take the place of his slain brother Harry as the new warden, he took a personal interest in reforming Carl Panzram. Carl was stripped, chained, and fire-hosed. "At the end, I was out and hanging by my arms. When I came to, I was near blind, all swelled up, black and blue all over the front of my body, my privates as big as those of a jackass. Many a man has paid for what those men did to me that Sunday morning. Maybe that hose did wash a lot of dirt off the outside of me, but it also washed a hell of a lot of dirt inside me too." The injuries sustained by Carl were so severe, Warden Minto was fired.

Carl was eventually placed in a work release program. Sort of like a half way house of the times. On one occasion, Carl got drunk, overstayed his leave while rejoicing in the arms of a pretty nurse, and hopped a freight train. After shooting the sheriff of a small farming town, he was captured and brought back to prison in chains.

In 1917, Panzram finally escaped from the Oregon state pen for the last time, calmly walking off while three other escapees were shot and killed.

Carl spent the next couple of years travelling. He went to South America, Europe, and even spent some a time in prison in Glasgow. He eventually made his way back to the United States. With proceeds from a heist, he bought a ship and lured 10 sailors aboard with the promise of free bootleg liquor. After the seamen drank themselves into a stupor, Carl raped them, shot each one in the head and dumped them over board. "I figured it would be a good plan to hire a few sailors to work on my yacht, get them drunk, commit sodomy on them, rob them and then kill them."

He then sailed around for a while robbing other ships at will. 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 11 or 12 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. Then I went to town, bought a ticket on the Belgian steamer to Lobito Bay down the coast. There I hired a canoe and six niggers and went out hunting in the bay and backwaters. I was looking for crocodiles. I found them, plenty. They were hungry. I fed them. I shot all six of those niggers and dumped 'em in. The crocs done the rest. I stole their canoe and went back to town."

In July at Salem, Massachusetts, Carl murdered 12-year-old Henry McMahon by beating his brains out with a rock. In 1923, Carl met a guy who said he wanted to buy his boat, however, instead he pulled a pistol on Carl wanting to rob him of his money, "I was suspicious of his actions and was ready for him, and I shot him twice with the same pistol I had stolen from the Police Commissioner's yacht at New Haven a short time before. After I killed him I tied a big hunk of lead around him with a rope and threw him and his gun overboard. He is there yet so far as I know."

A few days later Carl claimed to have went to New Haven where he killed another boy. "I committed a little more sodomy on him also and then tied his belt around his neck and strangled him, picked him up when he was dead and threw his body over behind some bushes." The identity of this victim has never been established.

Carl continued travelling, and killing until he was arrested for a string of burglaries in 1920, while in Larchmont, New York. Carl had unknowingly broken into the home of William Howard Taft, the man who sentenced him to 3 years in the military prison, and stole $40,000 worth of jewelry, a pistol, and some Liberty Bonds. Carl had committed at least 20 murders by now, all unknown to the police. Carl was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the burglary charges. Shortly after, Carl attempted to escape and fell 30 feet onto the concrete. He ended up breaking both of his ankles. Neither of the breaks were ever set and the bones eventually healed themselves, leaving Carl with a permanent limp.

Upon release, Carl was again arrested for robbery in Washington and sent back to prison. Upon being found sawing the bars in his cell, Carl was tied by a rope to a post 18 inches around, and 9 feet high, so that only his toes could touch the floor. Virtually crucified, he was suspended in that agonizing position all night. Bellowing curses at his mother for bringing him into this world, Carl swore to kill her and everything human. By dawn of the next night of torture, the hate-crazed prisoner was openly boasting of murders in Boston, New Haven and Philadelphia. Carl Panzram confessed to 21 murders, countless felonies and more than 1000 acts of sodomy, "For all these things," he trumpeted, "I am not the least bit sorry."

In June of 1929, Carl stated "I'll kill the first man that bothers me." A man of his word Carl smashed in the skull of laundry foreman Robert Warnke.

At his trial in 1930, Carl told the judge that he did not need a lawyer, and that he wanted to plead guilty and let the state prove its case unhindered. he was found guilty and sentenced to hang on September 5, 1930. Carl was pleased, and admonished the Society for the Abolishment of Capital Punishment for trying to save his life, "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."

The best friend Carl Panzram ever had was a prison guard, Henry Lesser, who eventually wrote out Panzam's life story. "I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others - Might makes right."

Carl Panzram's execution went as scheduled on September 5, 1930. Striding briskly and willfully up to a gibbet specially constructed to hoist his powerful 210lbs. Carl spotted 2 priests, "Are there any Bible-backed cock-suckers in here?" he roared, and the clergymen fled aghast.

Carl Panzram went to the grave with a bitter 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."