Russell Johnson

 VICTIMS: 6

One of the most alarming cases in Canada's criminal history, Johnson literally got away with murder four times.

In the 1970s, the cities of London and Guelph in the province of Ontario, were hosts to four cases of women found dead in their homes with no suspicion of foul play. What transpired to be four undetected murders took place over a ten-month period, and in each case the victim apparently died peacefully in her sleep.

The first of the four was twenty-year-old student Mary Hicks, found dead in bed in London on 19 October 1973; she was in a natural sleeping position and there were no obvious marks of violence on her body. A pillow partly covering her face was not considered suspicious. As there was no sign of forced entry into her apartment, Miss Hicks' death was attributed to suffocation caused by a reaction to a prescription drug.

One month later, Alice Ralston, forty-two years old, was found dead in bed in her Guelph apartment; again there was no visible sign of violence. Miss Ralston was known to have suffered from hardening of the arteries, and this was thought to have caused her untimely death. On 4 March 1974, Eleanor Hartwick died at her home in London and, as in the case of Alice Ralston, her death was put down to a reaction to prescription drugs. It was not until August that the last of the deaths was reported, this time of forty-nine-year-old Doris Brown. On this occasion a pathologist found minor abrasions and some blood in her throat and rectum, but the police were not called in to investigate, and death was certified as from pulmonary edema.

Then a killing occurred about which there could be no doubt. On 31 December, Diane Beitz was found strangled with her own brassiere in her apartment in Guelph. She had been sexually assaulted after death. In April 1977, Louella Jeanne George was strangled and robbed of some jewellery and underwear which were later found dumped in a garbage can a few blocks away.

Finally, twenty-two- year-old Donna Veldboom was found strangled in her apartment just a short distance from the previous murder site. This time the victim had been slashed in the chest with a knife.

When police investigating the killing of Donna Veldboom compared a list of tenants of the apartment block with details of sexual deviants on record, the name Russell Johnson emerged. Johnson had also once lived in the building where Louelia George had been strangled. Further inquiries established a number of non-fatal sexual assaults on women by Johnson, both before and after he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital diagnosed as a compulsive sex attacker.

At his trial in February 1978, Johnson was charged with the Beitz, George and Veldboom murders, and found not guilty by reason of insanity; he was committed to the maximum-security wing of the Ontario Mental Health Centre.

Following the trial, police authorities published a complete dossier on the crimes admitted by Johnson, including the four 'natural' deaths.

This bio was taken from "The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers," by Brian Lane and Wilfred Gregg.
 

MY OPINION

I think this case fascinates me because Russell could so easily have gotten away with it. All he had to do was stop. I guess killing was just too addictive to kick, or maybe he just wanted some attention. Infamy can be fun I suppose. Anyway, I don’t really know a great deal about Russell Johnson so I can't really decide if he was a 'good' killer, or just average, but I reckon anyone able to make four sexual murders look like accidental deaths is well worth at least one thumbs up.