Carl Panzram, The American Serial Killer With Chilling Final Words
Bettmann/Getty ImagesCarl Panzram’s mug shot in Washington, D.C.
Carl Panzram is known as one of the most sadistic American serial killers.
Before the end of his life in 1930, Panzram murdered at least 21 people and confessed to more than 100 acts of sodomy. He also committed countless burglaries and thefts, and he felt zero remorse for his actions.
To use his own words: “For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry.”
Criminologists often cited Panzram’s troubled childhood as the reason for his sadistic behavior. Born in 1891 to immigrant parents, Panzram was abandoned by his father at a young age, and by the time he was 12, he already had his first burglary under his belt.
The theft landed him in the Minnesota State Training School, where he was beaten, raped, and tortured by school staff. After he was released in his teenage years, he ran away from home and lived a nomadic lifestyle.
During this time, Panzram was reportedly gang-raped by a group of hobos. After this incident, he continued his pattern of stealing and setting fires, and he was soon caught again for his crimes.
In 1915, Panzram was imprisoned again for theft. During the first year of his imprisonment at Oregon State Penitentiary, he helped a fellow inmate, Otto Hooker, escape — and in the chaos, Panzram became an accomplice to Hooker’s murder of the penitentiary’s warden.
Oregon/Wikimedia CommonsA mug shot of Carl Panzram taken in 1915.
In 1917, Panzram followed Hooker’s lead and escaped from the penitentiary, but he was caught and returned. Panzram learned from his failed escape attempt, however, and successfully broke out the following year.
Two years after his prison escape, Panzram bought a boat and began making his name as one of the most gruesome American serial killers. He started off by luring drunk American soldiers onto his boat, where he would rape them, kill them, and then dump their bodies into the ocean.
His boat eventually sank, and Panzram decided to move to Africa. Shortly after he arrived in Angola, he raped and killed a young boy. He later described the incident in gruesome detail, saying, “His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him and he will never be any deader.”
He then murdered six local guides who were taking him on a crocodile hunting expedition. Panzram savagely fed their corpses to the reptiles.
Panzram eventually grew restless in Africa and decided to move to Lisbon, Portugal, but he hit a snag when he found out that authorities were looking for him. He fled back to America, hoping to escape capture there.
He continued his pattern of raping and murdering young men upon returning to America — but he also continued to get arrested.
He confessed to the murder of two boys and was sentenced to 25 years. He tried to break out of prison again, but was caught. A year after his unsuccessful escape attempt, Panzram was sentenced to death for killing the laundry foreman, who was found beaten to death with an iron bar.
Somehow, Panzram managed to make a friend while incarcerated. A guard named Henry Lesser felt sorry for him and published Panzram’s detailed writings on his murders, Panzram: A Journal of Murder, in 1970.
The last words of one of the most disturbing American serial killers were eerily fitting. Before his hanging in 1930, Panzram said: “Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill a dozen men while you’re screwing around!”
