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The Case of the Walking Corpse

At the time, it was Australia’s crime of the century. Over a nine-month period in Sydney in the early 1960s, the hideously mutilated bodies of three men were found in very public places. Their deranged serial killer, dubbed ‘the Mutilator’, had stabbed his victims dozens of times in the back, chest, neck and face.

The killer had also left his unique signature on his victims: each had had his penis and testicles sliced off.

William ‘the Mutilator’ MacDonald, who has spent more than 40 years behind bars for the murders, explains his actions.

 

MacDonald: I was insane at the time that I committed the murders, but I am sane now. I was diagnosed as schizophrenic when I was younger. That meant that I had split personalities.

When I read about each murder in the paper, although I knew that I had committed it, I still couldn’t believe that it was me I was reading about. It was as if I was in a dream. But it was the demon that lived inside me that did the murders, not me. Thankfully, he’s gone now.

 

It’s hard to imagine that the spindly, stooped, Dickensian little old man with the softly spoken Liverpool accent, white fairy floss hair and maestro’s goatee was once Australia’s most feared serial killer.

Behind a veil of terror, the likes of which Australia had never seen before, the Mutilator slaughtered as he pleased until he was caught in a web of circumstances that is still world famous as ‘the Case of the Walking Corpse’. It is a story that is stranger than fiction.

The Mutilator was born William Ginsberg in Liverpool, England, in 1924, the middle of three children. ‘My parents were in the furniture business and reasonably well off, and we were given a good education,’ he says. ‘But I always knew that I was different. I didn’t make friends easily. In fact I have never had a friend in my life and I was always a loner.’

In 1943, at the age of 19, he joined the army and was transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers, where he was raped in an air-raid shelter by a corporal who threatened him with death if he told anyone.

‘It was an experience that affected my life forever,’ he says. ‘I believe that [he names the corporal] raping me was what set me on a life of homosexuality. I had never had sex with anyone until then.’

As he grew older, Ginsberg became an active homosexual, openly soliciting men in public toilets. His obvious homosexuality made life difficult in those conservative times and he moved from job to job as the taunts and ridicule became too much for him to cope with. He was also starting to worry about his sanity. He was hearing strange voices in his head.

‘After I came out of the army in 1947, psychiatrists diagnosed me as schizophrenic,’ he says. ‘Then my brother had me committed to a mental asylum in Scotland that was straight out of the dark ages. The cells were crammed full of raving lunatics and it was freezing cold. They gave me shock treatment every day. After six months my mother got me out, thank God.’

Disillusioned and convinced that his surroundings were to blame for his failing mental condition, in 1949 Ginsberg changed his name to William MacDonald and immigrated to Canada to start a new life. He moved again in 1955, to Australia. Shortly after his arrival in Adelaide, MacDonald was placed on a two-year good behaviour bond after he was found guilty of indecent assault when he touched a detective on the penis in a public toilet. Things were not going well.

 

MacDonald: Trying to escape public ridicule, I moved from state to state, but I was taunted everywhere I went for being a ‘poofter’. And as the anger and rage built up, all I could think about was somehow getting revenge on the corporal who had raped me and started me on a life of misery.

Also, by now the voices in my head were urging me to kill my tormentors. What with my diagnosed schizophrenia and the building paranoia, something inside me was about to give … and it did.

 

MacDonald’s career as a murderer (but not yet as the Mutilator) started in Brisbane in 1960, when he strangled 55-year-old unemployed bricklayer Amos Hurst. Hurst had had a long drinking session, and MacDonald went back to Hurst’s lodgings with him.

‘I had no intentions of killing him when we first went to his room,’ MacDonald claims. ‘But the urge to kill him suddenly came over me and I squeezed tightly around his neck with both hands. He was so drunk that I doubt he had any idea of what was happening to him.’

When Amos Hurst belched blood all over MacDonald’s hands as he was being strangled, MacDonald punched him in the face, and Hurst fell to the floor, dead. MacDonald then undressed Hurst and put him into bed. He washed the blood from his arms and returned to his lodgings in South Brisbane.

Five days later Amos Hurst’s name appeared in the obituaries; it said he had died of a heart attack. MacDonald breathed easy, and the demon that lived inside him realised it could commit murder and get away with it.

Moving to Sydney in January 1961, MacDonald found accommodation in East Sydney and took a job as a letter-sorter; he used the name Alan Edward Brennan.

Before long the voices in MacDonald’s head were back, urging him to kill again. On the night of 4 June 1961, his career as the Mutilator began, when he struck up a conversation with 41-year-old unemployed blacksmith Alfred Reginald Greenfield in Green Park, in inner-city Darlinghurst.

‘The demon had come prepared for this murder,’ MacDonald says. ‘That morning he made me buy a razor-sharp long-bladed knife and I knew what I had to do with it. I told Greenfield that I had more drink in my bag and that we should walk to the nearby Domain Baths and drink it.’

By day, the Domain Baths, right on Sydney Harbour, was a popular public swimming spot. But by night, with its many alcoves giving protection from the bitter winter chill for those who had nowhere better to go, the Domain’s environs were the haunt of derelicts. It was the perfect spot for MacDonald.

 

MacDonald: The need to kill Alfred Greenfield was overwhelming. The more we chatted, the more he reminded me of the corporal who had put his dick in my backside and sentenced me to a life of living hell.

When Greenfield fell asleep on the grass I put on a plastic raincoat I had brought with me to protect my clothes from any spraying blood, removed the knife from its sheath and knelt over him.

I lifted the knife over his head and plunged it deeply into his neck and face as hard as I could. I must have severed the arteries in his neck, as blood was spraying everywhere. I kept stabbing him until I was exhausted.

 

With Alfred Greenfield dead at his feet, MacDonald removed his victim’s trousers and underpants, lifted the testicles and penis and sliced them off at the base of the scrotum, then flung them into the harbour – where they would be found the following day by police divers.

‘In my mind at the time, just killing the corporal wasn’t enough,’ says MacDonald as he remembers the mutilation. ‘I had to get rid of his offending parts so he couldn’t ruin any other young people’s lives as he had ruined mine.’

He then wrapped his knife in his raincoat, put it in his bag and walked home, stopping along the way only to wash his face and hands under a tap.

Alfred Greenfield was found the following morning. He had been stabbed 56 times in the upper body. The only explanation the police could think of for the mutilations to his crotch was an unbalanced lover or a jealous husband.

Given Greenfield’s social situation, neither seemed likely and after every possible avenue was explored and the papers had had a field day, the crime quickly faded out of sight, becoming yet another unsolved – though a little over the top – Sydney murder.

Six months later, the overwhelming urge to kill came over the Mutilator again. ‘After the murder and mutilation of Alfred Greenfield the demon seemed to be satisfied,’ MacDonald says. ‘But unfortunately it wasn’t for long.’

On the morning of 21 November 1961, MacDonald purchased a razor-sharp knife with a 15-centimetre blade. That night he lured 41-year-old unemployed coalminer Ernest William Cobbin to Moore Park in east Sydney. They sat in the public toilets and drank. Cobbin made no comment when MacDonald took a raincoat out of his bag and put it on.

 

MacDonald: Ernest Cobbin was sitting on the toilet seat when the first blow from my knife struck him in the throat, severing his jugular vein. I had brought the knife up in a sweeping motion and it had the desired effect. Ernest Cobbin’s blood sprayed everywhere, all over my arms, face and raincoat.

He was severely wounded and most likely in shock, and he instinctively lifted his arm to defend himself but I kept stabbing, repeatedly wounding him on the arms, neck, face and chest. Even when he fell stone dead from the toilet seat, I kept on stabbing him.

 

The Mutilator then pulled Ernest Cobbin’s pants and underpants down to his knees, lifted his penis and testicles and, in an upward motion, sliced them off with his knife and put them in a plastic bag he had brought.

 

MacDonald: When I had finished what the demon had made me do, I took off my raincoat, wrapped the knife and the plastic bag in it, put them in my bag and walked out of the toilet. The following day I wrapped the plastic bag, the knife and a brick in newspaper, tied them with string and threw them from the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

 

Ernest Cobbin’s body was discovered only minutes after he had been murdered. He had been stabbed about the neck, face and upper body 52 times. His throat was slashed. The toilet cubicle was awash with blood.

Blazing headlines and news bulletins warned Sydneysiders of the dangers of going out alone. A madman was on the loose. Police staked out public toilets and known derelict haunts. Undercover police disguised as vagrants mixed with the down-and-outs in the many wine bars and hotels that catered for that type of clientele. Sydney was at the mercy of the maniacal Mutilator. MacDonald watched and listened.

 

MacDonald: After I murdered Ernest Cobbin, my rage subsided and I went about my life as usual. I read every newspaper story about the Mutilator’s exploits but had great difficulty in understanding that I was reading about myself. It was as if another person was doing these dreadful things and I was merely an onlooker. I have to admit that it frightened me.

I joined in with my workmates in discussions about the Mutilator and listened to their theories of what type of person he may be. I secretly got upset when they referred to the mystery murderer as a queer and a sexual deviant. I knew differently.

For a time, I even thought that my workmates suspected me of being the Mutilator, but it was only my own paranoia. The thought of giving myself up to police also crossed my mind, but the demon that was controlling my body was enjoying the killing too much to allow me to do anything as silly as that.

 

As the months went by, the urge to kill again became overwhelming. On 31 March 1962, MacDonald purchased a sheath knife and packed it in his bag with his raincoat and a plastic bag.

At 10 that evening MacDonald struck up a conversation with 41-year-old war pensioner Frank Gladstone McLean. McLean was drunk, so when MacDonald suggested that they turn into Bourke Lane near Taylor Square, in busy inner Sydney, and have a drink, he agreed.

 

MacDonald: As we rounded the unlit corner, I plunged the knife up into McLean’s throat. McLean was a tall, thin man, well over 6 ft (183 centimetres), and there was no doubt he could have made mincemeat of me had he not been so drunk.

When he felt the knife sink deep into this throat he started to resist. I stabbed him again, and as he fell about trying to protect himself I punched him in the face, forcing him off balance. As he fell to the ground I was on him, stabbing him repeatedly about the head, neck, throat, face and chest until he was dead.

My raincoat was dripping with Frank McLean’s blood. I dragged his body a few yards further into the lane, lowered his trousers and sliced off his genitals and put them in the plastic bag I had brought with me.

For the first time I was frightened that I would be caught in the act. I had committed the murder only a few yards from busy Bourke Street. I heard voices and a baby crying as people walked past the entrance to the laneway.

The Mutilator peeked around the laneway. Satisfied that no one had seen him, he wrapped his knife and the plastic bag in the raincoat, put it all in his bag and strolled down Bourke Street. Next morning he threw the plastic bag and the knife into Sydney Harbour.

 

Frank McLean’s body was discovered within minutes of his murder by a young couple who believed that the crying of their baby in a pram may have warned the murderer of their approach. Within minutes there were 30 detectives at the murder scene, but again the Mutilator had disappeared – it was as if he was invisible.

The news of the third Mutilator murder, especially so close to a busy thoroughfare and within striking distance of a young family, sent a shock wave through Sydney. Doors and windows were bolted. The now almost deserted streets were patrolled day and night by police.

The reward for information leading to the arrest of the Mutilator was increased to £5000, a staggering amount for those times. The largest task force in Australia’s history questioned mental patients, sex offenders and doctors, and followed up the hundreds of hoax calls. Sydney slept very uneasily.

With his demons temporarily satisfied, MacDonald left his job and bought a small mixed business in Burwood, an inner-western suburb of Sydney, where he made sandwiches, sold smallgoods and ran a dry cleaning agency. He was still using his assumed name of Alan Edward Brennan.

One night early in November 1962, the demon decided that it was time to murder and mutilate again. MacDonald went to a wine saloon in the heart of downtown Sydney, where he met 42-year-old James Hackett, a petty thief and derelict who had only been out of jail for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, this was to be his last night.

 

MacDonald: I took Hackett back to my new residence and continued drinking until he passed out on the floor. I used a long-bladed knife from my delicatessen to stab him, and on the first plunge the blade went straight through his neck. But instead of dying he woke up and shielded the next blow with his arm and diverted the knife into my other hand, cutting it badly.

With blood pouring from the wound in my hand, I unleashed another assault on Hackett. I brought the knife down with both hands and plunged it through his heart, killing him instantly. The floor was awash with blood but I couldn’t control the rage and attacked Hackett’s body with the knife until I had to stop for breath.

I sat in the pools of blood beside the body, puffing and panting. There was blood everywhere. It was splattered all over the walls and it had collected in big puddles on the floor.

 

The Mutilator bandaged his hand with a dirty dishcloth and set about removing Hackett’s genitals. But the knife was now blunt and bent because of the ferocity of the attack. Too exhausted to go down to the shop to get another one, the Mutilator sat covered from head to foot in blood, cutting away at Hackett’s scrotum with the damaged blade.

He stabbed the penis a few times and made some cuts around the testicles before finally giving up. He fell asleep where he sat.

 

MacDonald: In the morning I woke to find myself covered in blood lying next to the man I had murdered. The pools of blood had soaked through the floorboards and threatened to drip onto the counters of the shop below.

I had a bath and went to the hospital, where they stitched my hand. I said I had cut myself in the shop. It took me the best part of the day to clean up the mess. The huge pools of blood on the linoleum couldn’t be scrubbed out and I had to tear it up and throw it out. I also removed all of Hackett’s bloodied clothing, leaving only the socks.

Then I dragged Hackett underneath my shop. Every few hours I went back and dragged him further into the foundations of the building, until he was in a remote corner and almost impossible to see. I left the bloodied clothing beside the corpse.

 

Paranoid and afraid, MacDonald locked up his shop and caught a train to Brisbane, where he changed his appearance.

 

MacDonald: Every day I bought the Sydney papers, expecting to read of the murder of Hackett and how police were looking for a man named Brennan in connection with the Mutilator murders. But as the days turned into weeks and months, there was no mention of any body. In the end curiosity got the better of me, and about six months later I returned to Sydney.

I hadn’t been back long when I bumped into an old workmate, John McCarthy, as I was walking down Pitt Street. He acted as if he had just seen a ghost.

‘Alan Brennan?’ McCarthy asked, astonished. ‘It can’t be. But you’re dead.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘They found your body underneath your shop. I went to your funeral. But if you are alive, whose body is in your grave?’

Then it dawned on me why there was no publicity about Hackett’s death. He had been buried in the missing Alan Brennan’s place. As far as everyone was concerned, I was dead and buried. But now I had been seen. I realised that this could be the beginning of the end. I fled immediately and caught the first train to Melbourne.

 

What MacDonald had no way of knowing was that about a month after he had fled to Brisbane, his neighbours alerted police to a vile smell coming from the rear of his shop. Examination revealed an unidentifiable corpse in an advanced state of decomposition. After a shoddy coronial inquest in which police gave misleading evidence simply in order to get the inquest over with quickly, Hackett was laid to rest in MacDonald’s (Brennan’s) place. His old workmates saw the funeral notice for Alan Brennan, pitched in for a wreath and attended the service.

After he bumped into MacDonald, McCarthy went to the police and told them that he had just spoken to a dead man. They told him to go home and sleep it off.

Then McCarthy told the story to crime reporter Joe Morris, and The Daily Mirror ran the story as ‘The Case of the Walking Corpse’. Embarrassed police were forced to exhume the corpse. They identified it as Hackett through fingerprints and discovered the stab wounds and the mutilation to what was left of his penis and testicles.

Through the most extraordinary quirk of fate, the search for the Mutilator was on. Every newspaper in the country ran the headline, along with incredibly accurate identikit drawings of MacDonald.

 

MacDonald: I took a job on the railways in Victoria, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they would come and get me. When I went to pick up my pay after three days, detectives arrested me and extradited me to Sydney. I was enormously relieved that it was over. I confessed to everything.

 

At his trial at the Sydney Supreme Court in September 1963, MacDonald pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity. As he explained his crimes in intricate detail to a hushed gallery, a juror fainted and had to be excused from the proceedings.

William MacDonald was found guilty of four counts of murder and found to be sane at the time of his crimes. He was sentenced to prison for life without the possibility of parole and his papers were marked: ‘likely to offend again’.

Shortly after his incarceration MacDonald bashed another prisoner almost to death with a slops bucket in Long Bay Gaol; he was then declared insane by a panel of doctors. MacDonald spent the next 16 years at the Morisset Psychiatric Centre for the criminally insane on the NSW central coast.

In 1980 MacDonald was found sane enough to be released back into mainstream prison society, where he is known as Knick-knack. ‘It was in Goulburn Gaol that I got the name Knick-knack,’ MacDonald says. ‘The cons reckoned that after I stabbed my victims to death I ‘nicked their knackers’. Knick-knack. It has stuck ever since.’

MacDonald spent many years in Cessnock prison, about a two-hour drive north of Sydney. He became the prison celebrity there when 60 Minutes did a segment on him because he was the second longest-serving prisoner in the Australian penal system. (The longest-serving prisoner at the time was Lennie Lawson, who featured in the same segment. Lawson had been in jail since 1961 for the murder of two schoolgirls. MacDonald was disgusted at being on TV with a child killer. Lawson died in 2003, leaving MacDonald as the nation’s longest serving prisoner (for a sentence served in one stretch)).

MacDonald is an articulate little man who loves animals, classical music and reading. He is a loner who shuns those who might want to befriend him; he keeps strictly to himself. His years in prison haven’t tarnished his education or manners. He is perfectly lucid and appears to be as sane as the next bloke. These days he is in minimum security Parklea prison in Sydney’s western suburbs.

In 2002 MacDonald gained more celebrity when he became the subject of the The Knick-knack Man, a book about his life and crimes.

His treasured possession is his Walkman CD player and radio on which he plays classical CDs or listens to an FM classical music station. He has a $4 a week rented TV in his cell and he spends the $12.50 a week he gets from the government on Milo, milk and biscuits.

MacDonald has spent so much time locked up that he is ‘institutionalised’, convinced that freedom would kill him. And on a day-trip out of Cessnock Prison to nearby Newcastle, he didn’t like what he saw. Without a hint of irony, the serial killer who once had Sydney in a shut-down says: ‘It’s terrible out there. And from what I see on the TV and read in the newspapers, people aren’t even safe in their own homes.’

That is something he will never have to worry about. William ‘the Mutilator’ MacDonald will die in jail.