Harvey Murray Glatman
(December 10, 1927 – September 18, 1959) was an American
serial killer active
during the late 1950s. He was known in the media as "The
Lonely Hearts Killer".
Early life
Born in
the
Bronx
to a Jewish family and raised in Colorado
, Glatman
exhibited antisocial behavior and
sadomasochistic sexual tendencies
from an early age. He was an amateurish
burglar and
sex
offender as a teenager, breaking into women's apartments, where
he tied them up,
molested them and took
pictures as souvenirs. He was caught in one such act in 1945 and
charged with attempted burglary. Less than a month later, while
still out on
bail awaiting trial, he
kidnapped another woman and molested her before
letting her go. She went to the police, and Glatman went to
prison for eight months.
Once out
of prison, Glatman moved to Albany, New York
, where he was eventually arrested in 1946 for a
series of mugging. He served time at
the New York State Reception Center at Elmira NY and then in the
Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where prison
psychiatrists diagnosed him as a
psychopath. He was nevertheless a model prisoner
and was paroled in 1951. He returned to Denver in 1951 and lived
there until 1957. He worked as a TV repairman and also hired young
women to pose for him in bondage situations. He claimed that his
photos would be published on the covers of detective magazines, but
none ever were. (See the Harvey Glatman Timeline
http://www.silviapettem.com/JANE%20DOE%20articles/GlatmanTimeline.html
for accurate information on Glatman's years in Colorado.)
Murders
Glatman
moved to Los Angeles,
California
in 1957 and started trolling around modeling agencies looking for potential
victims. He would contact them with offers of work for
pulp fiction magazines, take them back
to his apartment, tie them up and
sexually assault them, taking pictures all
the while. He would then strangle them and bury them in a nearby
desert plot.
Glatman is
also a suspect in the slaying of "Boulder Jane Doe", a victim whose
corpse was discovered by hikers near Boulder, Colorado
in 1954. Her identity remained a mystery for
55 years. However in October 2009 that all changed. The Sheriff’s
Office was notified by Dr. Terry Melton, president and CEO of
Mitotyping Technologies, LLC, of State College, Pennsylvania, that
her lab had made a match between “Jane Doe’s” DNA profile and that
of a woman who thought the unidentified murder victim might be her
long-lost sister. The positive identification of "Boulder Jane Doe"
was an 18 year old woman from Phoenix, Arizona named Dorothy Gay
Howard.
Arrest and death
Glatman was arrested in 1958, caught in the act of kidnapping what
would have been his fourth murder victim. He confessed to the other
three murders when police discovered a toolbox containing pictures
of the victims which he had taken.
He was found guilty of first degree murder and executed in the gas
chamber of San Quentin State Prison
on September 18, 1959.
Media
Parts of Glatman's career were fictionalized by
Jack Webb in a 1966 TV-movie called 'Dragnet'
(usually called 'Dragnet 1966' to distinguish it from the 1954
theatrical release of that name). It convinced TV executives to
relaunch the '
Dragnet' TV show in
1967 for a four year run. 'Dragnet 1966', however, was not aired
until 1969. It is notable for dialogue based on Glatman's own
statements to police, including this:
Criminal: The reason I killed those girls was 'cause they asked me
to. (pause) They did; all of them.
Officer: They asked you to.
Criminal: Sure. They said they'd rather be dead than be with
me.
Capt. Pierce Brooks, LAPD, who helped trick Glatman into revealing
where his toolbox was, served as a technical advisor for the
film.
See also
References
- Boulder Jane Doe
-
http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Glatman,%20Harvey.pdf
-
http://www.bouldercounty.org/newsroom/templates/bocosheriff.aspx?articleid=1880&zoneid=2
- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_discovering_jane_doe
- http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_13658937
- Los Angeles Times, 29 October
2009
news.yahoo.com
www.silviapettem.com
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