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Authors: Robert Graysmith
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GORILLA
“ AMERICA had never seen anything like Earle Leonard Nelson before or since,” wrote Jay Robert Nash of the Gorilla Man’s true identity. “There have been killers who were just as methodical and who carried out their brutal murders with just as much religious fervor—but none had the transcontinental intensity. . . . He was a killer apart, a killer’s killer, a mass murderer who worked coast to coast with a Bible in his hand.”
The era of the sex crime that followed World War I may have begun with the Gorilla Man, who terrorized the North American continent for years.
IN Winnipeg on June 9, 1927, Earle Nelson encountered fourteen-year-old Lola Gowan on the front steps of 133 Smith Street selling artificial flowers her crippled sister made to support her family, who lived on University Street across from the Vaughn Street jail. He wanted to buy some, but she would have to come to his room so he could get his money. Once inside, he wrapped a cloth around her neck, strangled her, and repeatedly violated her. Stuffing her corpse under his bed, he went to sleep.
In the morning he packed Lola’s belongings and headed down Portage Avenue to find new lodgings. On Riverton Avenue he spotted a “Room for Rent” sign in a window. He told landlady Emily Patterson he didn’t have any money but would do repair work in exchange. He was seen fixing the Pattersons’ screen door. That evening Emily’s husband, William, returned home. “Where is your mother, children?” he asked. “Oh, Daddy, she’s been gone all day,” the two boys cried.
Emily hadn’t been seen since that morning. After a search of the neighborhood, William reported her missing, then put the kids to bed. As it approached midnight, he grew more worried. He trudged to their bedroom and, sobbing, dropped to his knees at the foot of their bed. For almost an hour he prayed for Emily’s safe return. “Please direct me to where she is,” he begged. When he opened his eyes he saw little pink fingertips peeking out from under the bed. Reaching beneath, he felt an ice-cold hand. While he had been praying for Emily’s return, she had been only inches away—naked, throat crushed, and raped after death. Her wedding ring was missing. The strangler had taken it along with the family Bible, $70, and William’s brown whipcord suit. As was Earle Nelson’s custom he left behind his own clothes.
His discards provided enough clues to send the police on a canvas of local boardinghouses that ended at Katherine and August Hill’s. “I haven’t taken in any suspicious lodgers lately,” said Mrs. Hill. “In fact we’ve had no new lodgers since Mr. Woodcots last Wednesday. He’s rather on the short side, dark, with blue eyes and a simian mouth and jaw.”
The detectives raced upstairs to his room. As soon as they entered they smelled a sickening smell. As a detective bent to retrieve an artificial flower, he saw the body of the missing flower girl, mutilated beyond recognition. “Good God, man!” he shouted.
“To think that that fiend lay sleeping in that room all night with that poor dead girl under his bed!” August said as he shielded his sobbing wife. So horribly treated was Lola’s body that Chief of Detectives George Smith permanently sealed the record.
Nelson used $10 of the stolen money to buy a fountain pen, corduroy trousers, and a plaid shirt at Sam Waldman’s secondhand shop on Main Street. He left behind Patterson’s clothes, then got a massage, shave, and haircut at the Central Barber Shop next door. Nick Taylor grew suspicious as he cut Nelson’s hair. It was encrusted with blood from deep nail scratches on his scalp where Emily had fought back. Nelson caught a ride with Hugh Elder into Regina, Saskatchewan, two hundred miles west. He engaged a room from landlady Mary Rowe on June 12 under the name Harry Harcout. The next morning, he saw an accurate description of himself in the paper and bought new
“ AMERICA had never seen anything like Earle Leonard Nelson before or since,” wrote Jay Robert Nash of the Gorilla Man’s true identity. “There have been killers who were just as methodical and who carried out their brutal murders with just as much religious fervor—but none had the transcontinental intensity. . . . He was a killer apart, a killer’s killer, a mass murderer who worked coast to coast with a Bible in his hand.”
The era of the sex crime that followed World War I may have begun with the Gorilla Man, who terrorized the North American continent for years.
IN Winnipeg on June 9, 1927, Earle Nelson encountered fourteen-year-old Lola Gowan on the front steps of 133 Smith Street selling artificial flowers her crippled sister made to support her family, who lived on University Street across from the Vaughn Street jail. He wanted to buy some, but she would have to come to his room so he could get his money. Once inside, he wrapped a cloth around her neck, strangled her, and repeatedly violated her. Stuffing her corpse under his bed, he went to sleep.
In the morning he packed Lola’s belongings and headed down Portage Avenue to find new lodgings. On Riverton Avenue he spotted a “Room for Rent” sign in a window. He told landlady Emily Patterson he didn’t have any money but would do repair work in exchange. He was seen fixing the Pattersons’ screen door. That evening Emily’s husband, William, returned home. “Where is your mother, children?” he asked. “Oh, Daddy, she’s been gone all day,” the two boys cried.
Emily hadn’t been seen since that morning. After a search of the neighborhood, William reported her missing, then put the kids to bed. As it approached midnight, he grew more worried. He trudged to their bedroom and, sobbing, dropped to his knees at the foot of their bed. For almost an hour he prayed for Emily’s safe return. “Please direct me to where she is,” he begged. When he opened his eyes he saw little pink fingertips peeking out from under the bed. Reaching beneath, he felt an ice-cold hand. While he had been praying for Emily’s return, she had been only inches away—naked, throat crushed, and raped after death. Her wedding ring was missing. The strangler had taken it along with the family Bible, $70, and William’s brown whipcord suit. As was Earle Nelson’s custom he left behind his own clothes.
His discards provided enough clues to send the police on a canvas of local boardinghouses that ended at Katherine and August Hill’s. “I haven’t taken in any suspicious lodgers lately,” said Mrs. Hill. “In fact we’ve had no new lodgers since Mr. Woodcots last Wednesday. He’s rather on the short side, dark, with blue eyes and a simian mouth and jaw.”
The detectives raced upstairs to his room. As soon as they entered they smelled a sickening smell. As a detective bent to retrieve an artificial flower, he saw the body of the missing flower girl, mutilated beyond recognition. “Good God, man!” he shouted.
“To think that that fiend lay sleeping in that room all night with that poor dead girl under his bed!” August said as he shielded his sobbing wife. So horribly treated was Lola’s body that Chief of Detectives George Smith permanently sealed the record.
Nelson used $10 of the stolen money to buy a fountain pen, corduroy trousers, and a plaid shirt at Sam Waldman’s secondhand shop on Main Street. He left behind Patterson’s clothes, then got a massage, shave, and haircut at the Central Barber Shop next door. Nick Taylor grew suspicious as he cut Nelson’s hair. It was encrusted with blood from deep nail scratches on his scalp where Emily had fought back. Nelson caught a ride with Hugh Elder into Regina, Saskatchewan, two hundred miles west. He engaged a room from landlady Mary Rowe on June 12 under the name Harry Harcout. The next morning, he saw an accurate description of himself in the paper and bought new
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