The World's Worst Murders

What type of killers exists in the world we live in today?

In The Worlds Worst Murders by Alva Press, different stories contain varying methods and characters involved in killings. For example, the story the Sadistic Romeo Neville Heath the killer Neville George Clevely Heath, a suave and charming man who roamed the streets of London went on a sadistic streak. In the summer of 1946, his perversion turned him into a lady killer. In May 1946, Heath took advantage of the masochistic tendencies of 32 year old Ocelot Margie. Margie was looking for “men to satisfy her craving for bondage and flagellation.” (Press 54) After this brief meeting between Heath and Ocelot, Heath phoned Ocelot and arranged for another meeting on June 20th. At 6:00 PM the next day, a chambermaid entered Room 4 at the Pembridge Court Hotel where both had selected to meet and discovered a most gruesome scene. “The two single beds were bloodied and disordered. And in one of them lay the lifeless body of Ocelot Margie. She was naked, her ankles bound tightly together with a handkerchief. Her face and chin were bruised, as if someone had used intense force to hold her mouth closed. There were 17 criss-cross slash marks on her face, front and back. Her breasts had been badly bitten. And she had been bleeding profusely from the vagina.” (Press 54) This lady killer used his charm and wit to take advantage of many women, not only Ocelot Margie and kill them with his aggressive and violent manners.

On the other hand, The Heartless Husband Johann Hoch, the story of Johann Otto Hoch who had at least 24 wives in 15 years used another method to kill his victims. Born to the name Johann Schmidt in 1862, Hoch emigrated from Germany at 25 leaving his wife and three children behind. In April 1895, he married a woman from Wheeling, West Virginia using the name Jacob Huff and three months killed her. Unlike Neville Heath who used his charm and good looks to lure women in, Hoch used the desire of marriage. This can be seen when the “diabolical ‘Bluebeard’ even proposed to his sister-in-law over the deathbed of his wife, who was dying from a massive dose of arsenic.”(Press 60) Also we can see that Heath wanted to kill for his own perverted pleasures while Hoch on the other hand wanted to pilfer money from the dead “wives” he killed. Also, Hoch used arsenic to kill his victims which was discovered when the sister of one of his ex-wives had the body exhumed and medical examiners found enough arsenic to kill a dozen women. While Hoch used arsenic to kill his victims, Neville Heath used masochism to murder his women. As the New York Times says, "was hanged in the county jail at 1:34 o'clock this afternoon for poisoning his wife, Marie Welcker Hoch. His last utterance carried the assertion that he was innocent of the crime" and as the novel states, Hoch's last words were "you see, boys, I don't look like a monster, now do I?"(Press 61)