Carl Panzram, Serial Killer May Have Never Heard Of.

For nearly three decades before Carl Panzram was executed in 1930, he committed violent crimes without hesitation, and even after his arrest, he terrorized his fellow inmates, he told the warden that he would kill the first man who bothered him, as they hauled him off, and that is exactly what he did.

Carl's Early Life

Carl's sadistic behavior is believed to be linked to his trouble upbringing, full of severe abuse and neglect.

He was born on June 28th, 1891, to East Prussian immigrants. His father wasn't around for very long, abandoning their family when Carl was just a young boy. At age 12, Carl committed his first burglary, he stole a cake, apples, and a revolver from a home nearby his, this first theft ended him getting him sent to the Minnesota State Training School, it was here that he was subjected to school staff beating him, raping him, and torturing him. After being released from this school, he ran away from home.

He would then move from place to place by hopping train cars, and it was during one of these rides that he was attacked and raped by a group of "hobos." This incident left Carl shocked, he said that it left him a sadder, sicker, but somehow wiser boy, a boy who would soon start to viciously rape others after suffering from his own traumatic events.

He continued to hop train cars, committing arson, and robbing innocent people that he would encounter during his travels. And his thefts ended up getting him in trouble again in 1908.

He was sent to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Forth Leavenworth in Kansas. "I was a pretty rotten egg before I went there, but when I left there, all the good that may have been in me had been kicked and beaten out of me," Carl commented about his time at the correctional facility.

When he was released, he returned to his bad habits, becoming more and more violent with each crime. He assaulted and raped many of his robbery victims, he was even caught and sentenced on numerous occasions for a wide range of crimes.

Carl's Violent Crimes

It was in 1915 when Carl was sentenced to seven years and sent to Oregon State Penitentiary for theft. His life at the facility was tough, the guards took an almost immediate dislike to Carl, possible because he refused to cooperate with authorities, so they set out to make his life a living hell. They would beat him, hang him from rafters, and even placed him in solitary confinement for no real reason, this forced Carl to eat nothing but cockroaches while locked away in solitary.

Carl helped Otto Hooker escape from the facility, this took place during Carl's first year of imprisonment. While Otto was on the run, he killed the penitentiary's warden, this made Carl an accessory to the crime, this would become his first known involvement in a murder.

In 1917, Carl escaped, but was quickly caught and returned to prison, but successfully escaped in 1918, and just a few years later, he would embark on his horrific murder spree on the East Coast.

In 1920, he managed to steal enough money to buy a yacht, this was thanks to a successful burglary of former President William Howard Taft's home. And this same year, he begun to lure American soldiers in New York onto his yacht, where he would then rape, murder, and dispose of their bodies into the Atlantic Ocean. He claims to have murdered 10 men using this method.

Eventually, his boat sank, so he decided to stow away on a ship and head to Africa. He landed in Angola, where he would rape and kill a young boy. "His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him and he will never be any deader," Carl wrote about the horrific murder he had committed.

He was left unsatisfied with just one murder during his time in Angola, he craved more. And just a few days later, he managed to murder six local guides who were taking him on a crocodile hunting expedition, he said that the crocodiles later devoured their bodies.

A year later, he grew tired of living in Angola, so he decided to move on, he decided his next stop was Lisbon, but it turned out that police were already looking for him in Portugal, they were now aware of his murders in Africa. Feeling as if he was trapped, he decided to head back to America.

Once back home in America, he continued his spree of rapes and murders of men and boys. He was stronger than his victims, so he could overpower most of them. However, he was still an unskilled thief and in 1928 he was once again arrested for robbery and sent off to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. He ended up confessing to the murder of two young boys as well, this ended up getting him sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Carl had a hatred for prisons, especially the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, so he attempted to escape, but was unsuccessful. He was caught by guards who beat him until he was unconscious. A year following his attempted escape, he killed the laundry foreman by beating him with an iron bar; this was the crime that got Carl Panzram sentenced to death, which was a dream come true for the serial killer.

"I look forward to a seat in the electric chair or dance at the end of a rope just like some folks do for their wedding night," Carl had said. And when human rights activists attempted to interfere and stop his execution, he publicly wished that he could kill them all.

Carl ended up making a friend whilst on death row, a guard named Henry Lesser who felt sorry for the man, after he gave him a dollar to purchase cigarettes the two became friends. Henry started to provide Carl with writing materials, he encouraged him to write out his life story before he was executed, so Carl did just that; he spared no details of his murders. Henry eventually took his writings and published it in Panzram: A Journal of Murder. The graphic content of the book was too much for many readers to stomach.

Carl only had a year to write his story before he was executed by hanging on September 5th, 1930 at 39 years old. "Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard, I could kill a dozen men while you're screwing around!" Were his last words before his hanging.