Charlie Chop-off

Last updated
Charlie Chop-off
Charlie Chop-off.png
One of several composite sketches released by the NYPD of Charlie Chop-off
Other namesThe Mad Barber
The Pied Piper of Manhattan
Conviction(s) Never convicted
Criminal penaltyNever sentenced
Details
Victims4 (+1 survived)
Span of crimes
March 9, 1972 –August 17, 1973
CountryUnited States
State(s) New York
Date apprehended
Unapprehended

Charlie Chop-off is the pseudonym given to an unidentified American serial killer known to have killed three black children and one Puerto Rican child in Manhattan between 1972 and 1973. The assailant is also known to have attempted to murder one other child.

Contents

All the victims of Charlie Chop-off were male, and all but one of the attacks involved genital mutilation or attempted genital mutilation of the victims. [1]

While the case is still considered an open one, Ernesto "Erno" Soto was held as a suspect and confessed to one of the murders, but was considered unfit for trial in December 1976 and returned to a mental institution. [2] [3]

Murders

On March 9, 1972, eight-year-old Douglas Owens was found dead, stabbed 38 times. His penis had been cut but not severed from his body. [4] On April 20, another black youth was repeatedly stabbed; his genitals were severed from his body, although he survived his injuries. On October 23, nine-year-old Wendell Hubbard was stabbed to death on the roof of an East Harlem tenement block. His penis had also been severed from his body. [5]

On March 6, 1973, a nine-year-old Puerto Rican child named Luis Ortiz was stabbed 38 times and likewise mutilated. Finally, on August 17, 1973, eight-year-old Steven Cropper was repeatedly slashed with a razor on the roof of a tenement block. [4] He bled to death from an injury to his arm, although his penis was left intact. [2]

Erno Soto

After the botched abduction of a Puerto Rican boy on May 15, 1974, Ernesto Soto, [3] 33, was arrested by the police while "babbling a religious slogan." He had been an intermittent patient at the Manhattan State Hospital since 1968 and was described as an unemployed former drug addict. [6] Soto confessed to the 1973 slaying of Cropper. His only surviving victim did say that Soto looked like his attacker but refused to positively identify him. Manhattan State Hospital officials stated that Soto was in their custody at the time of the murder but also later confirmed that he might have escaped confinement, as it had happened before. [2]

Despite a lack of evidence, investigators still believe that he is a likely suspect, citing the fact that the murders ceased after his arrest and that an anonymous source placed him as a potential culprit on the first killing. However, due to his acute mental instability, he is unlikely to stand trial. [7]

In 1993, Soto's lawyers requested for him to be released from Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center and placed in a "non-secure hospital," despite continued violent behavior and Soto claiming he still felt the need to "sacrifice someone to God." [8]

"Miguel Rivera"

In 1975, Barbara Gelb published On the Track of Murder and used Miguel Rivera as a pseudonym for Soto. Since then, numerous authors, such as Peter Vronsky or Lane and Gregg, have erroneously cited the name as being that of the killer. [2] [9] [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serial killer</span> Murderer of multiple people

A serial killer is a person who murders three or more people, with the killings taking place over a significant period of time in separate events. Their psychological gratification is the motivation for the killings, and many serial murders involve sexual contact with the victims at different points during the murder process. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill-seeking, attention seeking, and financial gain, and killings may be executed as such. The victims tend to have things in common, such as demographic profile, appearance, gender, or race. As a group, serial killers suffer from a variety of personality disorders. Most are often not adjudicated as insane under the law. Although a serial killer is a distinct classification that differs from that of a mass murderer, spree killer, or contract killer, there are overlaps between them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmund Kemper</span> American serial killer (born 1948)

Edmund Emil Kemper III is an American serial killer convicted of murdering seven women and one girl, between May 1972 and April 1973. Years earlier, at the age of 15, Kemper had murdered his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer", as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California. Most of his murders included necrophilia, decapitation, and dismemberment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manhattan Psychiatric Center</span> Hospital in New York, United States

The Manhattan Psychiatric Center is a New York-state run psychiatric hospital on Wards Island in New York City. As of 2009, it was licensed for 509 beds, but holds only around 200 patients. The current building is 17 stories tall. The building strongly resembles the main building of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. It is adjacent to Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, a specialized facility for patients with criminal convictions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joel Rifkin</span> American serial killer (born 1959)

Joel David Rifkin is an American serial killer, who was sentenced to 203 years in prison for the murders of nine women between 1989 and 1993, though it is believed he killed as many as 17 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Brudos</span> American serial killer (1939–2006)

Jerome Henry "Jerry" Brudos was an American serial killer and necrophile known as the Lust Killer and the Shoe Fetish Slayer who committed the kidnap, rape, and murder of four young women between 1968 and 1969 in Salem, Oregon. He is also known to have attempted to abduct two other young women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Woodcock</span> Canadian serial killer and child rapist (1939–2010)

David Michael Krueger, best known by his birth name Peter Woodcock, was a Canadian serial killer, child rapist and diagnosed psychopath. He gained notoriety for the murders of three young children in Toronto in the late 1950s, as well as for a murder in 1991 on his first day of unsupervised release from the psychiatric institution in which he had been incarcerated for his earlier crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Henry Gaskins</span> American serial killer (1933–1991)

Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins Jr. was an American serial killer and rapist from South Carolina who stabbed, shot, drowned, and poisoned more than a dozen people. Before his convictions for murder, Gaskins had a long history of criminal activities resulting in prison sentences for assault, burglary, and statutory rape. His last arrest was for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, 13-year-old Kim Gehlken, who had gone missing in September 1975. During their search for the missing girl, police discovered eight bodies buried in shallow graves near Gaskins' home in Prospect, South Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Cottingham</span> American serial killer (born 1946)

Richard Francis Cottingham is an American serial killer who was convicted in New York State of six murders committed between 1972 and 1980 and convicted in New Jersey of twelve murders committed between 1967 and 1978. He was nicknamed by media as the Torso Killer and the Times Square Ripper, since some of the murders he was convicted of included mutilation.

William MacDonald was an English serial killer responsible for the murders of five people in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales between 1961 and 1962.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Ray Hatcher</span> American serial killer

Charles Ray Hatcher was an American serial killer. He was convicted in Missouri of one murder, has been linked to four others in Illinois and California, and confessed to having murdered a total of 16 people between 1969 and 1982.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alphabet murders</span> Unsolved serial murders

The Alphabet murders are an unsolved series of child murders which occurred between 1971 and 1973 in Rochester, New York.

James Clifford Carson and Susan Barnes Carson are American serial killers convicted for three murders between 1981 and 1983 in Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Carpenter</span> American serial killer on death row

David Joseph Carpenter, known as The Trailside Killer, is an American serial killer and serial rapist known for stalking and murdering a variety of individuals on hiking trails in state parks near San Francisco, California. He attacked at least ten individuals and was convicted in seven murders and was confirmed to be the killer in an eighth murder; Carpenter is also suspected in two additional killings. Two victims, Steven Haertle and Lois Rinna, mother of television personality Lisa Rinna, survived. Carpenter used a .38 caliber handgun in all but one of the killings. A .44 caliber handgun was used in the killing of Edda Kane on Mount Tamalpais.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doodler</span> 1970s serial killer in San Francisco

The Doodler is an unidentified serial killer believed responsible for between six and sixteen murders and three assaults of men in San Francisco, California, United States, between January 1974 and September 1975. The nickname was given due to the perpetrator's habit of sketching his victims prior to stabbing them to death. The perpetrator met his victims at gay nightclubs, bars and restaurants.

Ludwig Tessnow was a German serial killer known as the Monster of Rügen and the Mad Carpenter of Rügen, who murdered four prepubescent children in two separate attacks in 1898 and 1901.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Rogers (serial killer)</span> American serial killer (born 1950)

Richard Westall Rogers Jr., known as The Last Call Killer, is an American serial killer. After being acquitted for the murder of a college student in Maine, he moved to New Jersey, where he murdered and dismembered two gay and bisexual men in 1992 and 1993. His modus operandi consisted of luring the men from piano bars in Manhattan, murdering and dismembering them at an unknown location, and dumping their bodies in garbage bags along highways in New Jersey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waldo Grant</span> American serial killer (1946–2023)

Waldo Grant was an American serial killer who murdered four young men in New York City between September 1973 and December 1976. In January 1977, he confessed to the killings after being questioned by city police. He was sentenced to life in prison the following year and died in 2023.

References

  1. ↑ The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers ISBN   978-0-747-23731-0 pp. 320–321
  2. 1 2 3 4 Newton, Michael (2000). The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York: Checkmark Books. ISBN   0-8160-3978-X.
  3. 1 2 "A 'monster' may win freedom". January 29, 1993. Retrieved August 23, 2024– via newspapers.com.
  4. 1 2 The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers ISBN   978-0-747-23731-0 p. 320
  5. ↑ "Link Hinted in Harlem and East Side Slayings". The New York Times. August 20, 1973. Retrieved September 3, 2018.
  6. ↑ "Slaying Suspect Is Tied to Deaths Of 3 More Boys". New York Daily News . June 27, 1974. Retrieved March 31, 2024– via newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers ISBN   978-0-747-23731-0 p. 321
  8. ↑ "The nightmare is back". New York Daily News . February 2, 1993. Retrieved August 22, 2024– via newspapers.com.
  9. ↑ Vronsky, Pete (2004). Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters. New York: Berkley. ISBN   0-425-19640-2.
  10. ↑ Ramsland, Katherine. "The Mysterious Charlie Chop-off". TruTV Crime Library. Archived from the original on June 5, 2008.

Cited works and further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.