A Book for You to Read

Johnny Calzone · 01:14 AM

"Panzram: A Journal of Murder"

I guess I would describe it as the autobiography of Carl Panzram with some added commentary by the authors Thomas Gaddis and James Long.

Carl Panzram was, among other things, a serial killer. He was born on June 28th, 1891 and was executed by hanging on September 5th, 1930. He was one of those people who seemingly never had a chance.

He was born on a farm into a poor family. His father left them when he was seven and he and his siblings had to work the farm when they weren't in school. He was sent to a reform school at age 12 for stealing some food from a neighbors house. There he was beaten and sexually abused by the staff and fellow students.

He ran away from home at age 15, started riding the "rails", and there his life of crime and killing began. He was in and out of prison for the next 23 years where he was regularly beaten and tortured. During his final stay in prison, he was befriended by a guard named Henry Lesser, and Panzram started corresponding with him. The letters he sent to Lesser form the autobiographical portion of the book.

Here's a short blurb from the introduction:

"Of course, putting Panzram in the same category as Fish and Gein-or, for that matter, Bundy Gacy, Lucas, Berkowitz or Dahmer"- doesn't seem quite right. Though the body count he tallied outnumbers those of most serial killers, Panzram seems cut from a different psychopathic cloth. The picture emerges in these pages is not of a squalid little creature in the grip of a qrotesque sexual compulsion, but a one-man apocalypse-an implacable human engine of destruction and retribution, bent on wreaking havoc on a contemptible world."

Here is a snippet of Panzram's writing:

"In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have comitted thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least, I have commited sodomy on more than 1000 male human beings. For all those things, I am not the least bit sorry. I have no conscience so that does not worry me. I don't believe in man, God, nor the Devil. I hate the whole damn human race, including myself."

(Panzram was a rapist, but he only raped men.)

This was written about his stay in a United States Military Prison where he was strapped to a 50 pound ball and broke rocks with a sledge hammer.

"At this time in my life I was about 20 years old, 6 foot tall and weighed about 190 pounds of concentrated hell-fired, man-inspired meaness. I was as strong as two or three average men. I had to be to be able to stand some of the punishments and labor that I went thru durin my three years in the USMP."

This is a portion of a letter he wrote to an anti-capital punishment group that was trying to get his execution stayed:

"One thing I'm going to tell you before I stop this letter, and that is this: 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 would sure put you out of your misery, just the same as I have done with numbers of other people. I have no desire to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who reforme me, and I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill 'em. My motto is: 'Rob 'em all, rape 'em all, kill 'em all.'"

Here is the assessment of a psychiatrist who read the manuscript in 1968:

"No one can read Panzram's manuscript in its entirety without an emotional thrill. On the one hand, there was a terrific hate, bitterness and incredible sadistic cruelty of the man; on the other hand, his clear evaluation of himself, his wistful faith and affection for one federal official.... It was an incongruous picture of stark reality which produced an effect comparable to that of gazing into the interior of a human body torn open in some horrible accident, with all the vital organs laid bare, the person retaining consciousness with a superhuman ability to endure pain so that he could calmly discuss the accident and his approaching death"

Hk · 07-23-2006, 01:08 AM

tl/dr

djstoop_id · 07-23-2006, 01:09 AM

Eidolon · 07-23-2006, 01:14 AM

Were you talking about something on paper, or that long ass post of yours?

Either way, fuck books. Too many words, not enough

Johnny Calzone · 07-23-2006, 01:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eidolon

Were you talking about something on paper, or that long ass post of yours?

Either way, fuck books. Too many words, not enough

Well, I don't believe you don't read books, because that line was too clever. But I usually don't read long posts either, so I understand the sentiment and figured that this one was going to be ignored by most people

Still, maybe someone will get hooked by the first few lines and read the rest. Most of it is quotes from the book itself. The artist Joe Coleman did one of his comic book treatments of the story that sums up Panzram pretty well. If you Google Panzram plus Coleman, it might be out on the net some where. That's how I first learned about the book.