Jack Rosewood - True Crime Boxed Set True Crime by Evil Killers by jack rosewood and Dwayne Walker Boxed set book 1 to 4

Arnold Sodeman wasnt necessarily born to kill, but his early childhood suggested that trouble was likely brewing.

Born in 1899 in Victoria, Australia, to Karl and Violet Sodeman, he a brutal, abusive man who ended his days in Mont Park Mental Hospital, she a woman who suffered regular bouts of amnesia, Sodemans genetic history was awash in mental illness.

His older male family members were equally troubled. His grandfather, Ernest Wilhelm Sodeman, died in Kew Mental Hospital, while his grandfathers brother died in a German asylum.

Too, his great-grandfather and great-grandfathers brother also suffered from mental illness, suggesting a long genetic history of problems.

Given his background and his childhood living conditions, Sodemans future was quite bleak. He tried to escape, and at age 16, enlisted in the Australian Army. He was discovered, however, before he was able to begin training camp, and returned home.

Two years later, he was sent to a reformatory prison for larceny at age 18, and after his release, was charged with armed robbery as well as wounding the station manager at Surrey Hills railway station in Victory, which netted him three more years in prison, this time doing hard labor.

I had a pistol and shot him, Sodeman later told police when recounting the story. He was badly wounded. I had been drinking that afternoon. I got three years and the indeterminate.

Although he escaped at some point during his term, he was subsequently captured, and another 12 months of hard labor was added to his sentence.

After his release, he settled down in Melbourne, and later in Gippsland, a large rural region of southern Australia that includes a section that borders the Indian Ocean. There he worked various laboring jobs until he married Bernice Pope. The two had a daughter, Joan, who was born in 1928. The marriage was considered happy by family and friends, despite bouts of depression and drunkenness on the part of Sodeman.

But given his family history of questionable brain function, combined with alcoholism and a severe brain injury suffered when he fell from a horse, it comes as no surprise to contemporary members of the psychiatry field that Sodeman eventually rejected his near-idyllic married life and turned to crime, this time escalating well past his previous criminal activity.

Chapter 2: Mena Griffiths - The first victim

On Nov. 9, 1930, after spending much of the day drinking at the Orrong Hotel in Armadale, a suburb of Melbourne, Sodeman who later told police I got properly filled up while at the hotel - abducted 12-year-old school girl Mena Griffiths when she was playing with two of her sisters and another friend from school at the nearby Fawkner Park playground.

He had been watching the children play while drinking at the bar, and apparently choose the girl who would become his first victim from his seat at the bar.

In order to isolate Griffiths, he gave her sisters and friend money and sent them to a nearby shop to buy candy, telling Griffiths that he had a different errand for her to run.

When they asked Mena where she was going, she said on a message, and she and Sodeman left the park.

By the time Menas young companions returned to the playground, there was no sign of either her or the man who had given them the money for candy.

Sodeman told police after he and Griffiths left the park, he gave her money for food when she complained of being hungry, and she went into a shop and bought herself some fish and chips.

Then, Menas hunger satiated, they boarded a bus for Ormond. There, they walked along the street for a while, and when they passed a house that Sodeman noticed was empty, he took her inside through an open back door.

As soon as we got in I seized her by the throat. I then let her go and she fell on the ground, he told police. Looking down on her my memory came back and I said, my God, she's dead. I've killed her. I stood there wondering what I could do and I must have remembered or read of something being about tying people up.

So I stripped her, bound her and gagged her with her own clothing, and dragged her into the bathroom and left her, Sodeman told police.

He then returned home to his wife and daughter.

Two days later, her body was discovered in an abandoned building. She had been stripped, bounded and gagged with her own clothing, sexually assaulted and strangled to death.

(Sodeman later denied having raped the girl If I had sexual intercourse with her, I have no recollection of it, he said - but police reported evidence of a sexual assault. She was, however, the only victim of sexual assault on Sodemans victim list.)