Harvey Glatman

Harvey Glatman

Colorado State Penitentiary mugshot
Born Harvey Murray Glatman
December 10, 1927
The Bronx, New York
Died September 18, 1959(1959-09-18) (aged 31)
San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California
Cause of death Gas chamber
Other names The Glamour Girl Slayer
The Lonely-Hearts Killer
Criminal penalty Death
Conviction(s) Kidnapping
Murder
Robbery
Killings
Victims 3 Known + 1 suspected
Span of killings
 August 1, 1957–July 13, 1958
Country United States
State(s) California
Date apprehended
 October 31, 1958

Harvey Murray Glatman (December 10, 1927 – September 18, 1959) was an American serial killer active during the late 1950s. He was known in the media as "The Lonely Hearts Killer" and "The Glamour Girl Slayer". He would use several pseudonyms, posing as a professional photographer to lure his victims with the promise of a modelling career.

Early life

Born in the Bronx to a Jewish family and raised in Colorado, Glatman exhibited antisocial behavior and sadomasochistic sexual tendencies from an early age. At the age of 12, his parents noticed he had a red, swollen neck. He described being in the bathtub, placing a rope around his neck, running it through the tub drain, and pulling it tight against his neck, "achieving some kind of sexual pleasure from this act." His mother took him to the family physician and was told he "would grow out of it."[1]

Murders

Glatman moved to Los Angeles, California in 1957 and started trolling around modeling agencies looking for potential victims. He would contact them with offers of work for pulp fiction magazines, take them back to his apartment, tie them up and sexually assault them, taking pictures all the while. He would then strangle them and dump the bodies in the desert. His two known model victims were Judith Dull and Ruth Mercado. A third victim, Shirley Ann Bridgeford, was met through a Lonely Hearts ad in the newspaper.

Glatman is also a suspect in the slaying of "Boulder Jane Doe", a victim whose corpse was discovered by hikers near Boulder, Colorado in 1954.[2] Her identity remained a mystery for 55 years. In October 2009, the Sheriff’s Office was notified by Dr. Terry Melton, of Mitotyping Technologies in State College, Pennsylvania, that her lab had made a match between "Jane Doe's" DNA profile and that of a woman who thought the unidentified murder victim might be her long-lost sister.[3] The positive identification of "Boulder Jane Doe" was an 18-year-old woman from Phoenix, Arizona, named Dorothy Gay Howard.[4][5][6][7]

Media

Parts of Glatman's career were fictionalized by Jack Webb in 1966 for the two-hour television movie Dragnet, starring his character Sgt. Joe Friday. The film convinced NBC executives to relaunch Dragnet as a TV series in 1967 for a four-year run, although the movie itself was not aired until 1969.[8] Some of the dialogue was reportedly drawn from Glatman's own statements to police, for example:

Suspect: "The reason I killed those girls was 'cause they asked me to. (pause) They did; all of them."
Sgt. Friday: "They asked you to."
Suspect: "Sure. They said they'd rather be dead than be with me."

LAPD Captain Pierce Brooks, who was involved in Glatman's arrest and interrogation, served as a technical advisor for the film.[9]

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Glatman,%20Harvey.pdf
  2. ↑ "BOULDER JANE DOE (Someone's Daughter: In Search of Justice for Jane Doe)". Silvia Pettem. Retrieved 2014-08-20.
  3. ↑ "News & Media". Bouldercounty.org. Retrieved 2014-08-20.
  4. ↑ Archived November 7, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  5. ↑ "Mystery solved: Boulder sheriff IDs 'Jane Doe' as Dorothy Gay Howard - Boulder Daily Camera". Dailycamera.com. Retrieved 2014-08-20.
  6. ↑ Los Angeles Times, 29 October 2009
  7. ↑ Dorothy Gay Howard at Find a grave
  8. ↑ Hayde, MJ. My Name's Friday: The Unauthorized But True Story of Dragnet and the Films of Jack Webb. Cumberland House (2001), pp. 178-9. ISBN 1581821905
  9. ↑ Hayde (2001), p. 177.
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