Panzram: A Journal of Murder – Gaddis & Long

“Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you’re fooling around”. The last words of Carl Panzram, uttered to his executioner-to-be, are a chilling insight into one of history’s most prolific serial killers. However, even more disturbing are the memoirs that he penned in prison, and handed through the bars of his isolation cell to then newbie prison guard Henry Lesser (his only friend in the world, and “one of the very few people I do not wish to harm”).

His prison journal in its entirety, along with letters between him and Lesser, and context notes by Thomas E. Gaddis – best known for authoring Birdman of Alcatraz – and James O. Long – Pulitzer Prize nominated investigative journalist – come together in Panzram – A Journal of Murder, to draw an alarming picture of a man that, in the words of renowned psychiatrist Karl Menninger, “thought himself too evil to live.”

Panzram was born into an abjectly poor immigrant farming family in 1891. Things became even worse for him, his mother, his sister and his 5 brothers, when his father upped and left the family when Carl was about 8 years old. He began his life of crime at the age of 11. However, it seems more like a boys-being-boys caper than a crime. Looking for an escape from debilitating poverty, maternal neglect and constant fraternal physical abuse, young Carl made up his mind to run away from home (what kid hasn’t wanted to do that at one time or another?). Before leaving, he decided to break into the home of his rich neighbour who “had too much, and I had too little” and steal “everything that to my eyes had the most value.” Those words may conjure up pictures of Panzram emptying drawers looking for jewellery, ransacking the kitchen for silverware or rummaging under mattresses for secret cash stashes. But, no. The things of such immense value to him were “some apples, some cake, and a great big gun”. The latter because he “intended to be a cowboy and shoot Indians”. Panzram’s dream of hopping a freight train to the wild, wild west evaporated when he was caught, punished first by beatings from his brothers, and then, by being thrown into a so-called reform institute – Red Wing town’s Minnesota Training School. The school’s method of reform was strict Christian teachings, and brutal physical attacks when those teachings were not adhered to.

Gaddis famously said of Alcatraz, “the federal prison with a name like the blare of a trombone, is a black molar in the jawbone of the nation's prison system”. In Panzram’s time, it appears, the entire reformation system was as rotten – a godforsaken country where the only law of the land was Darwin’s. Sexual abuse was rampant, the guards subjected prisoners to unimaginable violence for little or no reason, and the wardens either encouraged it all, or looked the other way. When he finally left the horrors of the school behind in 1905, at the age of 14, Carl Panzram had decided what he wanted to be when he grew up. “I made up my mind that I would rob, burn, destroy and kill everywhere I went and everybody I could as long as I lived.”

In the short 39 years that he did live, Carl Panzram did all he could to achieve the goals he set out in that terrible mission statement. In between prison sentences and a stint in the military, he went on vicious sprees of robbery and arson (churches being his favourite target), larceny, child rape and murder. Though he is known as a ‘serial killer’, Panzram doesn’t exactly fit the stealthy, ritualistic, singularly-motivated mould that conventional serial killers do. (If, indeed, conventional is a word that can be used). He had no traditional MO, he was motivated by one of the basest human emotions – hate – and he had no particular “type” of victim. More rogue elephant than hunting tiger.

Was 11-year old Carl’s theft really a signpost to the monster Panzram inherently was? Or was it the beginning of a forked road, and did Red Wing begin the push down the path that turned him into one? Panzram – A Journal of Murder takes us down this slippery slope of the nature v/s nurture debate.

Henry Lesser spent 40 long years trying to get the world to hear Panzram’s words – or, read them. He believed they built a powerful case for reforming the reform system. In 1956, he got the attention of Gaddis, who could only write a summarised version – ‘The Man who Lived and Died for Hate’ – in Coronet, a national magazine. No publisher at the time was willing to touch the undiluted, sickening detail of Panzram’s saga in all the gory glory of his own words. Gaddis, too, felt Panzram’s story needed to be heard in more detail, and took up Lesser’s cause. The book finally saw the light of day as Killer – A Journal of Murder, in 1970. It was rechristened and republished in 2002.

The notes by Gaddis and Long eloquently put Panzram’s words into context and perspective. They elaborate on Carl Panzram’s biography, his family history, the horrendous state of the penal system and the socio-political atmosphere of America at the time. With a savvy combination of both, journalistic detail and authorial flair, they paint the bigger picture, and they provide more complex answers to the question of what makes a person break as badly as this.

Panzram himself, on the other hand, paints a picture as big (maybe bigger) but far more straightforward. Stripped of Gaddis' and Long’s commentary, Panzram’s words have a similar effect as the words of the child declaring the emperor has no clothes on – except, of course, they are far more ominous in their implications.

Biographies are usually more objective than autobiographies. In this combination of the two, it is fascinating to see that the autobiographer is the one far less interested in defending his actions, or painting himself in a better light. Panzram is as brutal in his honesty about himself as he was in his crimes, and his self-insight is crystal clear. While Lesser, Gaddis, Long and Menninger (who interviewed Panzram in prison) are searching and discussing what shaped Carl Panzram, their subject delivers his own sinister version of Popeye’s ‘I yam what I yam’. “I have been a human animal ever since I was born.” While he does lay a lot of the blame on the prison system, he admirably refuses to take any of it off himself. “I know why I am a criminal. Others may have different theories as to my life but I have no theory about it. I know the facts. If any man was a habitual criminal, I was one. In my life I have broken every law that was ever made by both man and God.”. As he was championing – and contributing to – the extinction of the entire human race (his ultimate terrifying goal; one he believed would make the world a better place) he never for a moment thought himself above it. “I hate the whole damned human race, including myself”. And, when death-penalty protestors were petitioning against his execution, he wrote: “I tell you now that the only thanks you or your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it. I have no desire whatsoever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me. And I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill ‘em.”

So, which is it? Was Carl Panzram born evil, or did circumstance brand him with a virtual 666 mark? As is often the case with a tale with two sides, the truth may be somewhere between those two sides. There were thousands of people in Panzram’s situation – people who went through the same family hardships and were wrangled through the same prison system – yet, there was only one Carl Panzram. On the other hand, one instance in one of his many periods of incarceration offers the tiniest glimpse of a different Carl Panzram – or, at least, the possibility of one. A new reformist warden dealt with the hardened criminal’s several escape attempts by offering him a day out of the prison, unsupervised, on the condition that he would return in the evening. Panzram writes that he had every intention of running, but he didn’t. He kept his word, and he returned. Why? It is one of the few things about his life he cannot explain, and is as baffled about it as we are. Were this anomaly and his genuine affection for Lesser signs of a flicker from the dead embers of his humanity? Panzram himself would probably scoff at the idea. His words are an unnerving reminder that pure evil is not some abstract theological concept, but a very real part of the human condition – he faced it, he was it. It may be nothing deeper than that, however many grey cells criminal psychologists and amateur crime buffs expend trying to find a reason for the darkness inside some human minds.

The irony is, the complexities explored in Gaddis’ & Long’s version of events are simpler to wrap your mind around. It is easier to digest the fact that something caused Carl Panzram. His own no-frills version, however, is a harder pill to swallow. I read this book the first time with the angles that the commentators provide, and a second time with just Panzram’s undiluted words. It’s a hard book to read once, let alone, twice. The journey into Carl Panzram’s mind is thrilling, yes, but it is also terrifying. If you have the stomach for it, however, I would recommend you do the same as I did. Just make sure you have a big tub of chocolate ice-cream in the freezer for after.