Remember the story of “Jack the Ripper,” whose frightful crimes terrorized the city of London more than fifty years ago?
For a few horrible hours, Los Angeles citizens believed they had a Jack the Ripper in their city. Perhaps we should say, an unbelievably few hours—since the first crime was discovered at 2 P.M. on November 15, 1944, the second at 3 P.M. and, at 5:30 P.M. of the same day, the suspect had been taken into custody. By 7:30 he had decided to talk.
Thanks to the quick thinking of Patrolman Harold Donlan of the city police, Los Angeles citizens drew a long breath of relief that night. One young woman in particular must have been greatly relieved when headlines announced that Otto Steven Wilson was in jail—but, more of that story later.
The “Downtown” of most American cities is a strange mixture of expensive hotels and cheap flop-houses, good theatres and burlesque joints, fashionable cocktail lounges and low saloons, magnificent department stores and dingy resale shops; with a sprinkling of overnight missions, cab-stands and flower stalls.
In Los Angeles, the “downtown” boils down to Skid Row, where Otto Steven Wilson was, to use his words, “looking for love.”
It was early afternoon on November 15th when the first body was discovered in a hotel room by a horrified chambermaid. That word “horrified” is my entry for the prize understatement of the year—because the victim, Virginia Lee Griffin, 25-year-old wife of a Los Angeles truck driver, had been literally hacked to death.
What Detective Lieutenant Harry Hansen found stuffed in the closet of that hotel room was not a pretty picture. Let’s not go into details.
The ink couldn’t have been dry on his report before the second victim was discovered, again by a horrified chambermaid. This time the victim was Mrs. Lillian Johnson, 38, whose hideously mutilated body was found in another hotel room only a few blocks from the scene of the first crime.
Before nightfall the biggest manhunt in Los Angeles history was underway, centering on Skid Row bars.
Otto Steven Wilson, “The Romeo with the butcher knife,” was also concentrating his attention on Skid Row bars. He was still looking for love in a big city jungle of saloons, cheap hotels, second-hand stores and second-hand lives. He’d met a girl and was buying her a drink when Patrolman Donlan happened in.
Patrolman Donlan is the kind of cop you yell for when there is a burglar in the house—and who prompts you to tell your small children, “If you ever get lost, look for a policeman.” He’d been a member of the homicide squad. Three years before the murders, he’d asked to be returned to street duty. The reason? I’ll tell you later.
While other members of the police force combed the city, Patrolman Donlan did his duty and covered his beat near 3rd and Hill Streets, but he was looking for “Jack the Ripper.” He told his story later:
“I heard the description and remembered I had seen a guy that looked like that. So I looked into a few of the bars and in one of them, I saw him. Then I walked over and slapped the handcuffs on him.”
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s what we pay taxes for!
High-powered detectives on the homicide squad chorused “Impossible!” But—there was the prisoner, and a few hours later he confessed. An ordinary beat policeman had captured him and brought him in.
No one can say, for sure, what might have happened to that third young woman for whom Wilson was buying a drink when Patrolman Donlan spotted him. But newspaper reports of his questioning, and the story of his confession must have made her thank her lucky stars for Donlan.
“I’d just drop into a bar, look around, spot a woman sitting alone, start a conversation, buy her a couple of drinks, and the first thing I knew we’d be alone in a hotel room,” Wilson explained.
He was calm and deliberate as he spoke, seeming to think his statement that he was “looking for love” explained everything.
“So you found love. Why did you go to work with a knife?” asked Captain Thad Brown of the homicide squad.
“Cussedness, that’s all.”
Wilson enlarged on that “cussedness.” He stated: “That first girl—she asked me for money when we got to the hotel room. That made me mad—plenty mad—I pulled out my knife and started cutting her up. Then I drifted out of the joint. I cracked jokes with the clerk. Then I went to a movie and afterwards I picked up this second frail.”
How about the second woman?
“Well, she didn’t want any money, and I guess that made me mad too. So I gave her the works with a razor.”
Later, it was discovered he’d spent almost twenty hours alone with the slashed body of his first victim. When he’d finally gone out to his movie, he’d chosen a horror picture—“The Walking Dead.”
Groggy and shaking, he signed a formal confession on November 16th. In it, he enlarged on his earlier statements.
“I choked the first woman to death shortly after we arrived in the hotel room. I went out and bought a knife and a quart of whiskey and returned to the room. Then I cut her.
“The second woman I knocked out, then I choked her to death. I carved her up with a razor blade.”
After that, he went out to a Skid Row bar and picked up the young woman who was there when Patrolman Donlan found him, hunched over a glass of wine. She’s the young woman who must have drawn a long sigh of relief when she read that “The Werewolf of Skid Row” was safely behind bars.
Signing his confessions, Otto Wilson added, in his own handwriting: “I have always been emotionally unstable. I went completely insane and could not possibly control myself.”
What’s the life story of this man who went “looking for love” with murder in his mind? Dr. Paul de River, police psychiatrist, probed into his past and found a tragic story.
Otto Steven Wilson was born in Shelbyville, Indiana, in 1910. Placed in an orphanage as a young child, he was the only one of a family of seven children not adopted by a private family. He possessed a better than average mentality, and graduated from the orphanage high school with honors.
At the age of twenty, he joined the Navy, and served at stations on the east coast. In 1937 he married, and two years later he was transferred to San Diego. It was there that his mistreatment of his wife caused her to consult with naval authorities, with the result that in 1941 he was discharged for psychoneurosis.
He was working as a shipyards cook at the time of his crimes. And he’d been in trouble with the law before. In March, 1943, he had been arrested on suspicion of attack; the charge was reduced to battery and he served thirty days of a ninety day sentence. In October, 1944, he was held for investigation as a suspected room prowler.
And with that background, society let him roam the streets of Los Angeles, until the urge to kill became uncontrollable.
Dr. de River said, of Otto Steven Wilson—“He … has an urge to kill and destroy women. He may be considered a sexual psychopath and degenerate. His hatred of womankind has unquestionably been built up for years, and increased by alcoholic stimulation. If he hadn’t been apprehended, there is no telling how many other victims of his lust and passion there might have been.”
Otto Steven Wilson was placed on trial June 18, 1945. His plea—“Not guilty by reason of insanity.” Part of the testimony was to the effect that his mother’s act in placing him in an orphanage when he was a young child was the basis of his hatred of all women. But on June 28th a jury of eight men and four women, out five hours, found him sane.
He was sentenced to the gas chamber.
Otto Steven Wilson’s story is a tragic one. Tragic, because it might have been prevented—years ago—by the combination of a child psychologist and an understanding, warm-hearted foster mother. Tragic, because it may happen again—and again—and again until the world solves the problem of orphaned or unwanted children.
Until that times comes, let’s just be grateful for cops like Patrolman Harold Donlan.
And now, the reason Patrolman Donlan gave for asking to be taken from the homicide squad and returned to street duty: He didn’t like to look at dead bodies.