Dr. Katherine Ramsland - The Sex Beast

The Sex Beast

by Dr. Katherine Ramsland

Copyright

The Sex Beast

Copyright 2013 by Katherine Ramsland

Foreword copyright 2013 by Marilyn J. Bardsley

Cover design to the electronic edition copyright 2013 by DarkHorse Multimedia, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Electronic edition published 2013 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

ISBN ePub edition: 9780795335761

Contents

Books dont tell the whole story of the man called the Sex Beast. At most, serial killer encyclopedias provide brief summaries of his crimes. Frequently, these summaries contain glaring mistakes and omissions about his crimes and his life, as well as erroneous items, which are corrected in this eBook for the first time. The Sex Beast was quite intelligent, educated, and gifted musically, playing several instruments professionally. Quite unique as a serial killer, he was an intellectual, well-versed in the works of Sartre, Camus, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche.

He embraced Sartres belief that the choices one makes define his or her identity. Unfortunately, the ideas that he borrowed from Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky convinced him that murder is acceptable for an extraordinary person who can define his or her own moral values. He saw himself as such a person and suggested to a friend that he wanted to experience the killing of a human being. In retrospect, one can deduce that his views on rape, torture, and murder were similar to his views on killing, because those were the experiences by which the Sex Beast defined himself.

In the end, however, he had much more reprehensible motivations.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland has graduate degrees in forensic and clinical psychology, criminal justice, and philosophy. She teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. Ramsland has worked with prominent criminalists, coroners, detectives, and FBI profilers. She speaks internationally about forensic psychology and serial murder, and has appeared on numerous documentaries. Her education and career provide her with just the right credentials to tell the whole story of the Sex Beast. Ramsland has researched and accurately written about his crimes, his life as a musician, and his behavior later as a prisoner. To better understand the mind of the Sex Beast, she places him contextually in the intellectual, moral, and philosophical crosscurrents of the post-World War II era.

Killers had a way of shocking people during the 1950s. They appeared suddenly, from out of nowhere, to assault men, women, and children who tried to lead upright lives. Some made deviant sexual demands, and one in particular believed he had every right to take what he wanted. When his ugly deeds were finally pieced together, he acquired a moniker, the Sex Beast. Few could fathom the disturbed mind of this intelligent, articulate artist, and no one could predict the twists this strange case took.

James Beach and John Scott drove along a back road in Spotsylvania, Virginia, near the wooded Civil War battlefield. They headed to Cherry Hill Hatchery Road, toward an area where a sawmill had once been operational but was now abandoned.

They hoped to gather a load of sawdust to place on the roses in Beachs garden. It had rained recently, which wasnt the best thing for sawdust, but theyd already made plans for that fourth day of March, so they decided to just go. Once there, they found it tough going. They bounced through potholes and lost traction several times before they finally slid into a mud patch. They were stuck.

It was 1959, decades before cell phones were invented, and it was too cold to wait around until someone they knew realized theyd been gone too long.

Muddy road

Photo by Simon Carey

They got out and looked around. It wasnt likely that anyone would be coming along. Theyd have to get this car out on their own. At first, one of them pushed while the other tried to steer back onto the road. All that effort got them was spinning wheels and a lot of flying mud.

Lets get some brush, said Scott. We can place it under the tires for traction.

They walked away from the road, their shoes squishing in the muck. Finally, they spotted an area where the underbrush appeared to be dry.

Good enough, Beach said. Lets get as much as we can carry.

They leaned down to grab some weeds and pull them out.

It smells back here, Scott said.

Probably just rotting leaves.

Beach leaned down to rip out a handful of dried grass, but stopped. Hed felt something odd, like fabric over a hard object. He looked closer. It was a leg.

Come here! he shouted to Scott. They stood together and looked into a shallow ditch.

My God!

They could see it now. The stiff, decomposing corpse of a man lay in this ditch, under leaves, branches, and sawdust. His hands were bound in front of him with what appeared to be a necktie. Hed been here a while.

Lets get the police!

They grabbed the weeds theyd gathered and ran back to their car. Adrenaline pumping, they shoved the debris under the tires and worked hard to get out of the rut. What theyd just seen spooked them. They were both sweating. That man, they knew, hadnt just fallen and died. Hed been bound. Someone had murdered him and dumped him there!

Finally, the car was free. They drove as fast as they dared, aware they could still go off this muddy road, until they were able to find a phone.

As soon as the report came in, the officer in charge believed he knew whose body it might be. Theyd been searching for a missing man and his family since theyd all disappeared one night over a month ago, in that same general area.

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On a frigid January night, Carroll and Mildred Jackson drove home on Route 609 with their two children. Mildred held her infant daughter Janet in her lap, while five-year-old Susan sat in the back seat. Theyd been to Richmond, Virginia, that Sunday in the brand-new year of 1959, visiting friends before stopping at Mildreds parents home on the way back. It was 9:40 p.m. when they left the Hills home in Buckner.

The visit with family had been full of cheer as they celebrated Carrolls new job at a local bank. Hed be leaving the feed store where hed worked for several years. After a long day on the road, they knew it was time to tuck their children in and go to bed. Theyd be at their own home soon. Their little bungalow in Apple Grove was just 15 miles away. They could have taken a dark dirt road but chose instead to drive on the two-lane paved highway. On a Sunday night, there wouldnt be much traffic.

But Carroll failed to show up for work in Louisa that Monday morning, January 12. No one answered the phone at the Jacksons home. Concerned relatives drove over, but found no sign that anyone had been there. Several drove around, looking for Carroll and Mildred.

That evening, H. M. Ballard and his wife spotted a new Chevrolet sedan parked along the road nearly eight miles from the Jackson home. Lots of hunters parked at the edge of the woods, but this car looked distinctly like Carrolls. The Ballards mentioned their discovery to the Hills, who drove straight to the car to have a look.