serial killer true crime library * serial killer news * list of serial killers * serial murder * female serial killers * crime scene investigation * tueur en serie * omicidi seriali *

MENARIK Carl

1889

...

1914

: ...

...

Verdict/Urteil:

A native of Vienna, born October 2, 1889, Menarik immigrated to New York in 1914, obtaining a job at the German Odd Fellows Home, in Yonkers, during July of that year. Using the name "Frederick Mors," Menarik worked for six months at the home, arousing no suspicions as he went about his duties. Patients came and went throughout his tenure, several leaving in a hearse, but they were old and no one gave a second thought to their demise before the early days of February 1915. On the afternoon of February 2, "Mors" presented himself at the district attorney's office, dressed in a corduroy hunting outfit, complete with knee-pants and a feathered alpine cap. Approaching the desk sergeant, Menarik confessed to the murders of eight "superannuated octogenarians," killed in order to "make room for more inmates" at the home. A phone call confirmed the eight deaths - all listed as natural - and Menarik was taken into custody. In jail, Menarik's story underwent a sudden shift. The homicides had not been his idea, he now proclaimed, but rather had been ordered by officials at the home, who described the elderly victims as "a lot of trouble and no good anyhow." On February 5, the home's superintendent and three more employees were clapped into jail as material witnesses, with the Odd Fellows lodge refusing to muster their bail. Although authorities refused to order exhumation of remains, investigation seemed to bear out Carl Menarik's tale of inmates killed with chloroform and arsenic. Menarik had warned patient Elizabeth Houser of her impending death a day in advance, and a mortician recalled red markings - similar to chloroform burns on the face of alleged victim Henry Horn. A teenage inmate of the home informed police about an errand she had run on January 4, delivering a bottle of chloroform from employee Max Ring - jailed as a material witness - to "Mors," in the room occupied by patient Ferdinand Scholz. Scholz had died the same day, and other inmates suspected "Mors" of sabotaging the painter's scaffold that dropped Jacob Groh to his death on December 14. The list went on, but prosecution was deferred in favor of a psychiatric test. Described as "not well mentally," Menarik was committed to Poughkeepsie's Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane. His employer and co-workers were released, the case dismissed with a host of questions still unanswered. On May 10, 1916 - a week before his scheduled deportation to Austria - Menarik escaped from the hospital in Poughkeepsie and disappeared. He was never recaptured, but authorities took the loss in stride, announcing that the fugitive was "not considered dangerous."