VIA . ilt. nha
Carl Nitram - a tattooed, giant of a man with cold gray eyes
stowed away on a ship bound for Angola around tom to work as a
merchant Seaman. Mer arriving in white Bay, he hired a local
guides for a expedition, But Pararam had other prey on
his mind, As their canoe mended its way down the river, he shot each crew
member dead before feeding their corpses to the hungry crocodiles lurking
below.
That was just one of many crimes, including it murders and more than
1. aoo rapes of young boys and men, Pararam admitted to committing.
Unlike charming and cunning serial killers Ted Bandy or Rodney Meals.
Pararam remained brutally honest. “For all of these things, I am not the
least bit sorry," he seemed in his autobiography. penned from his prison
cell, "I hate the whole damned human race including myself,"
But could he really be that bad? Yes, at least according to experts who have
studied him and found that the roots of his evil could be traced back to his
childhood. Born in 1891 to a poor farming family in Minue sot. -1. Pararam' s
father abandoned his family when he was about 8 years old. Soon after.
Pararam landed in a reform school called Red Wing for a string of
burglaries. Red Wing schooled Yantram in sadism. punishing him with
beatings and tapes. which led him to a realization: "The was is this
shithole. and I' m going to go through the world and wreak havoc in it.” said
Harold Scheduler, a writer specializing in serial killers.
Huny it up, you Hoosier bastard!" he sneered at the
executioner. "I could kill to men while ' re fooling
around?"
After graduating, he spent years sleeping on freight trains. During one ride
in a Esra t. he was gang raped by transients - leaving him "a sadder, sicker
but wiser boy.“ Pam wrote. In 1915. he traveled through Idaho.
California and other states along the Columbia Rive r, burning and
burglarizing buildings and raping countless young men and bays Around
the saute time, Putnam was sentenced to seven years at the Clingon State
Penitentiary for burglary. To punish his unholiness. the wardens hung him
from the rafters for hours, turned a hose on him, and kept him in solitary
confinement for weeks, leaving him to feed on cockroaches.
Not long after escaping in 19, 13. Pararam committed his first murders. in
New York, he hired sailors to work on a yacht bought with his robbery
bounty, lulled them to sleep with alcohol and shot them dead - all to of
them, Soon after, he set sail for Angola. raping and killing a young boy
before the ' mg expedition, About a year later, he hid aboard a
ship, only to find that the police there were on the lookout
for him, aware of his crimes in Mora So, soon after. he stowed away on a
ship to the us.
In 1928, Pararam was arrested for a series of burglaries and jailed in
Washington, DC. After I warden found out that he had tried to escape. the
guards handcuffed and suspended him from a beam, beating him
unconscious. Feeling sorry for Pararam. prison guard Henry
Lesser handed him a dollar to buy food and cigarettes. ‘No one had ever
been kind to him in his life." said ]ohn Rogowski. who directed the sore
doctrine n dary Cad The Spirit offa taed and Vengeance. raver
time, the two became friends. Each day. Lesser slipped him a pencil and a
few sheets of paper. convincing him to write his life story.
was sentenced to " years at United States Penitentiary,
Leavenworth in Kansas. The re. he catched laundry foreman Robert
Whilte' s skull with an iron bar. landing a spot on death row and refusing
human rights groups" efforts to spare him from the gallows, after years of
abuse, "it was his form of suicide," said. Batmam got the death he
craved in September toga. "H wry it up, you Hoosier bastard!" he seemed at
the ween tionex - "rage personified," as he referred to himself, until the
end. "I could kill to men while you' re fooling around."
Lesser kept Rantrant' s; writings, but publishers weren' t comfortable with
the graphic manuscript until two. when it was published as At// er: A
Mann! of. Murdere, "The guy was really quite an amazing writer," said he
Coleman. who painted the cover art for the book, and who was "struck by
the intelligence and the things [] could have been capable of.''
Beyond helping better understand the minds of killers like
Futuram, said the autobiography serves as a lesson - one that
still holds relevance amid recent reports of inmate abuse at Rhee rs Island
and other prisons. "He tries to teach our future generations not to create
more monsters like him," he said, adding that 1' eniram, "above anybody
else. should be listened to."
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