Schechter Harold - Bestial : the savage trail of a true American monster

Matthew Worth Pinkerton, Murder in All Ages (1898)

It was not claimed that Durrant was insane, yet that there was something morally defective in his make-up is apparent. Cases like his do not, most happily, often occur, but their occurrence is frequent enough to show that man is joined to the beasts of the field by his body, and may become something worse than a beast of prey, when he flings aside conscience, love of humanity and God, and resolves, no matter at the expense of what crimes, to gratify his bestial tendencies.

To all outward appearances, Theodore Durrant (Theo to his friends) was a fine, upstanding specimen of young American manhood. A bright and personable twenty-three-year-old who still lived at home with his parents, he spent his weekdays pursuing his M.D. at San Franciscos Cooper Medical College. When he wasnt engaged hi his studies, he could generally be found at the Emanuel Baptist Church on Bartlett Street, where he served as assistant superintendent of the Sunday School, church librarian, and secretary of the Young Peoples Society. His sense of civic duty seemed as strong as his Christian devotion. In addition to his other activities, he was a member of the California militia signal corps.

He was good-looking to boot: tall, trim, and athletic, with an erect carriage and fine, almost feminine, featureshigh cheekbones, full mouth, big, blue eyes. True, some of his acquaintances found the cast of those eyes slightly disconcerting. In certain lights, they seemed pale to the point of glassiness, fishlike (in the words of one contemporary).

Still, Theodore Durrant cut a handsome, even dashing, figure. Women tended to find him deeply attractive. To a striking degree, he had a good deal in common with another clean-favored psychopath, born fifty years later, with whom he shared a name: Theodore Bundy.

To be sure, even before Durrants monstrous nature was revealed to the world, a few of his intimates had caught glimpses of his dark side. To one companion, he bragged of his visits to the brothels of Carson City. To another, he described the time when he and three acquaintances, a trio of hard-drinking railroad workers, had assaulted an Indian woman.

Still, his friends werent especially troubled by these confessions. Even a paragon like Theo needed to sow his wild oats. And the rape victim, after all, had only been a squaw.

Among the respectable young women who were irresistibly drawn to Theo Durrant was an eighteen-year-old named Blanche Lament. A student at the Powell Street Normal School, where she was training for a career as a teacher, Lamonta striking blonde with an eye-catching figurewas a relative newcomer to San Francisco, having arrived from Montana in 1894. She had moved into the home of her elderly aunt, a widow named Noble. Sometime shortly after settling into her new life, Blanche Lamont met and became enamored of the charming young medical student, Theo Durrant.

On the afternoon of April 3, 1895, following a full day in the classroom, Blanche emerged from the Powell Street school to find Durrant waiting for her on the sidewalk. Witnesses saw the couple board a trolley, then disembark in the neighborhood of the Emanuel Baptist Church. An elderly woman who lived directly across from the red, wooden church observed the handsome young pair enter the building at precisely 4:00 P.M.

It was the last time Blanche Lamont was seen alive.

When her niece failed to return home that evening, Mrs. Noble contacted the police. The next day, having learned of Blanches friendship with Durrant, several officers showed up at his home to question him. Durrants response to the girls disappearance was slightly peculiarhe seemed notably indifferent, casually suggesting that she might have been shanghaied by a gang of white slavers.

Still, the officers had no reason to suspect the estimable young man. The newspapers ran a few stories on the case, while the police fruitlessly pursued their investigation. Theo Durrant made a personal visit to Mrs. Noble to offer his own singular brand of reassurance. There was no doubt in his mind, he declared, that Blanche was still alive, though probably imprisoned in a house of prostitution. He would do everything in his power, he vowed, to rescue the poor girl from bondage.

In the meantime, Durrant turned his attentions to another lady friend. She was a petite, twenty-one-year-old brunette named Minnie Williams, who had come to know and love Theo through their shared involvement in the church.

On Good Friday, April 12,1895nine days after Blanche Lamonts disappearanceMinnie Williams left her boardinghouse at around 7:00 P.M., informing the landlady that she was going off to attend a meeting of the Young Peoples Society at the home of its supervisor, Dr. Vogel. She never made it to the gathering. Not far from the Emanuel Baptist Church, she met Theo Durrant. Escorting her to the darkened building, he unlocked the front door with his personal key and led her to the seclusion of the library.

Later that evening, at around 9:30 P.M., Theo showed up by himself at Dr. Vogels house. The young mans normally pallid complexion was even whiter than usual, his hair was dishevelled, his brow beaded with sweat. Explaining that he had been stricken with a sudden bout of dyspepsia, Durrant hurried to the bathroom. When he emerged a while later, he appeared completely recovered.

The rest of the evening passed so pleasantly that Theo was sorry to see it end. Still, it had been a tiring day and he needed some sleepparticularly since he was scheduled to leave town early the next morning on an outing with the signal corps. They were heading for Mount Diablo, fifty miles from the city.

Durrant and his fellow volunteers had already reached their destination when several middle-aged ladies arrived at the Emanuel Baptist Church the following day, April 13, 1895, to decorate it for Easter. After completing their task, they repaired to the church library and immediately spotted a reddish-brown trail that led to a closed-off storage room. One of the women pulled open the door, let out a shriek, and faulted. Others ran into the street, crying for the police.

The sight that had sent them screaming from the church was Minnie Williams mutilated corpse, sprawled on the floor of the storage room.

The young woman had been subjected to a monstrous assault. The condition of her body was vividly described in a contemporary account.

Her clothing was torn and disheveled. She had been gagged, and that in a manner indicative of a fiend rather than a man. A portion of her underclothing had been thrust down her throat with a stick, her tongue being terribly lacerated by the operation. A cut across her wrist had severed both arteries and tendons. She had been stabbed in each breast, and directly over her heart was a deep cut in which a portion of a broken knife remained. This was an ordinary silver table-knife, one of those used in the church at entertainments where refreshments were served. It was round at the end, and so dull that great force must have been used to inflict the fearful wounds; indeed, it appeared that the cold-blooded wretch had deliberately unfastened his victims dress that the knife might penetrate her flesh. The little room was covered with blood.

Later, after examining the young womans remains, the coroner concluded that Minnie Williams had been raped after death.

This time suspicion fell immediately on Theo Durrant. That suspicion was confirmed when, searching Durrants bedroom, investigators discovered Minnie Williams purse stuffed inside the pocket of the suit jacket he had worn to Dr. Vogels gathering the evening before.

By Sunday morning, the San Francisco Chronicle was openly naming Durrant as the killer, not only of Minnie Williams but of Blanche Lament as welleven though there was no definitive proof that the latter had been murdered.