A Fever in the Heart and Other True Cases

  A relative of this man who had been addicted to sadomasochism tried to explain what might have caused Larry Hendricks’s lifestyle. He knew that Hendricks was gay and said his marriage had lasted only two months. Hendricks had served in Vietnam, but not as a combatant—he was a courier for the military police.

  As a child, Hendricks had been very gentle and had never shown the least sign of sadism. When he was seven or eight, he had suffered severe head injuries after being struck with a chunk of concrete. He had had to have brain surgery, and the relative thought this might have caused some of his later deviant behavior.

  Larry Hendricks had had a peculiar childhood, dysfunctional in every sense of the word. His mother had dressed Larry in baby clothes until he was well past six. If her baby did not grow older, perhaps she thought that she too would remain young.

  When Hendricks was ten, his parents separated and later divorced. Larry had hated his father, blaming him for the divorce. In later years, he was able to forgive his father, but, apparently, the traumas of his youth had scarred him. Hendricks was an extremely small man. His gun collection, his macho clothes, all the sadistic gear he secreted in his fantasy world might have been part of his almost psychotic obsession to be a big man.

  In an ironic twist, Private Niels Honegger was awarded a $2,500 reward collected by a gay tavern association and “leather” motorcycle clubs in the San Francisco area for information leading to the arrest of the killer of Tom Gloster. A spokesman for a San Francisco gay group said,

  “We intend to pay Private Honegger the $2,500 for acting as judge, jury, and executioner. We admire his courage and stamina.”

  Honegger, on leave, had no comment.

  A $1,000 reward collected for information leading to the killer of Richard Niemeier was not sent to Honegger but went instead to establish a memorial reward fund to be used in future killings involving homosexuals.

  The backlash to the program that let prisoner-patients free to wander was sharp and biting. At least three King County Superior Court judges and local probation and parole officers said that their primary concern with any sex offender program is security.

  Superior Court Judge Barbara Durham (now a Washington State Supreme Court Judge) said, “The potential for danger is so great that security has to be the first concern and treatment second. However, I have a feeling that the program is too amateurish-anyone who gets too difficult is bounced out. In California, there is a sexual psychopath unit separate from the hospital that has fantastic security. It has the highest rate of success in the country.”

  The laissez-faire program at Western State did not survive the scandals, and its policies tightened up. Two decades later, sadistic sexual predators are housed in a new prison where they have no freedom to roam Washington or any other state. They have no parole dates and some may never get out of prison.

  Private Niels Honegger never considered himself a hero. He is a victim like all the others—albeit a victim who survived. What he endured in his fight for life is a memory that no young man should have to carry. And he does carry that nightmare for the rest of his days.

  THE END

  ***

  MIRROR IMAGES

  Everything is cyclical—even the death penalty. In most states capital punishment is on the ballots every decade or so. It often takes horrendous crimes to wake up a complacent public. On November 2, 1976, only one referendum passed overwhelmingly in the Washington State elections. Voters, outraged and sickened by a wave of brutal murders, voted to restore the death penalty by a margin of two-to-one, and the governor of Washington signed the death penalty into law in June 1977. It was the backlash of a public surfeited with stories of coddled offenders—particularly sexual psychopaths—who had been paroled, furloughed, and work-released until they could virtually come and go at will. Many ex-convicts reverted to type when they found no walls around them and no eyes watching. Too many innocents died. It seemed that the inmates were running the asylum.

  While some argued for mercy for convicted killers, particularly since Washington executions harkened back to the days of the Old West and murderers would be hanged, one mother of a teenage murder victim faced television cameras and said quietly: “Has anyone thought that the deaths our children died were easy … or pleasant to think about?”

  And so for the next two decades murderers feared the gallows in Washington State. Hanging is not an easy death, not something that the average man on the street cares to contemplate for very long. In the end, Washington hung only two killers: Charles Rodman Campbell and Westly Alan Dodd.* Although both were sexual offenders who had tortured their victims, the public nonetheless blanched at the details of their last moments. There will be no more hangings in Washington State. In the future, executions will be administered by lethal injection.

  James Ruzicka and Carl Harp were convicted killers of the 1970s—and rapists too—several times over, but they never faced the hangman’s noose. Both their crimes and convictions occurred in time to get them in under the wire. Since the death penalty cannot be invoked retroactively, they were home safe. In the preceding case—that of Larry Hendricks—justice was done without the help of the authorities.

  The fact that Ruzicka and Harp should in all likelihood have been executed is not why I chose their stories for this book. Rather, they are remarkable in the way that their formative years were almost mirror images of one another. Their eventual destinies were bleakly similar. When they met, they recognized the commonalities that bound them together. At one point, they actually used the same pseudonym: “Troy Asin.” These men were basically loners who shared their bizarre fantasies for a time.

  When “Troy Asin” was cut in two, however, and James Ruzicka and Carl Harp parted, each of them continued his personal rampage of rape and murder. Neither should have ever been released to prey once more upon society. Each of them had the capacity to be as charming as any Don Juan and as harmless-appearing as a lost puppy. Behind their masks, they were full of betrayal and black purpose.

  Their story is one of the strangest I have ever encountered.

  ***

  Carl Lowell Harp was born in Vancouver, Washington, on March 8, 1949; James Edward Ruzicka was born almost exactly a year later on March 24, 1950, in Port Angeles, Washington. Were one to set out to find early case histories that would almost guarantee that the subjects were headed for trouble, Harp and Ruzicka would make “ideal” focal points.

  There is an awful fascination in reading such case histories, akin to watching an out-of-control train barreling down the tracks. We can see what is going to happen, but there is no way in the world to stop it.

  Public records describe Carl Harp’s father as “a young, emotionally unstable carnival roustabout,” his mother was only sixteen years old. By the time Carl was a year old, his parents were divorced. His mother remarried at least once and then moved on to a half-dozen common-law relationships. The child, Carl, could not count on any permanent father figure. When he was not committed to one or another mental institution, Carl’s natural father had to live with his parents, his mental illness forcing him to be dependent.

  Carl trailed after his mother, a small, thin boy with blue eyes and blond hair that would later turn brown. He and his mother lived on welfare in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington. In time, his mother descended into alcoholism, and Carl lived in such terrible conditions that authorities moved in and took him from her custody. He was placed first with a maternal uncle and aunt.

  Carl Harp left a home where promiscuity and drinking were the norm and was suddenly plunged into one that was as staid as a church picnic. His uncle’s affiliation with the Salvation Army barred booze, sex, swearing, and rowdiness of any kind. Carl would recall later that he was mistreated and punished severely. He was expected to attend religious services, and when he balked, his uncle forced him to go.

  Not surprisingly, Carl Harp didn’t last long in his uncle’s house. He moved on to liv
e with one of his former stepfathers. There, he finally found someone to love and connect with—his half sister. She was an epileptic and he was very protective of her. But by the time he was twelve Carl was a handful. He had committed uncountable curfew violations, petty thefts, burglaries, and even one car theft.

  When Carl Harp was about fourteen, he was hit in the head while playing basketball. Another player struck him so hard with his elbow that Harp’s temple bone was actually fractured. After that, his behavior changed markedly; he suffered excruciating headaches and blackouts. During one blackout, Carl choked his beloved half sister and almost killed her before someone pulled him off. Later, he would have no memory of the incident.

  When he was fifteen, he was admitted to the Napa State Hospital in California in June of 1964, for a ninety-day observation. When the three months were up, he was voluntarily committed to the hospital. His diagnosis at that time was that of a “borderline psychotic,” and the staff psychiatrists’ impression was that he suffered from “schizophrenic reaction-chronic undifferentiated type.” It was an ominous diagnosis.

  All in all, Carl was considered amenable to treatment during the ten months he spent at Napa State. Although he did walk away one night, he returned the next morning. He was released on April 15, 1965.

  Carl Harp completed the ninth grade at Castro Valley High School and entered Mount Whitney High in Visalia. He didn’t finish high school, however. Indeed, it would be years later before he got his GED degree while in prison. Despite his unstable genetic heritage, Carl Harp was intelligent and quite artistic. He drew strange but intricate pen-and-ink pictures and wrote poems.

  In January 1966, Harp was arrested for car theft and burglary and committed to the Preston School of Industry in Ione, California, where he stayed for a little over a year.

  Two states away, there was another teenager whose life history had been almost a mirror image of Carl Harp’s.

  James Edward Ruzicka was born 228 miles from Carl Harp’s birthplace. Ruzicka’s mother, Myrtle, would type a summary of the births of her children for authorities one day, a sad little list of tragedy upon tragedy. She had been only seventeen when she had her first child. Thereafter, she gave birth every year—save one—until she had borne ten babies. She knew the precise details of each pregnancy and delivery. She wrote:

  1. John Ruzicka, born 5/16/48—deceased 5/16/48. Cause of death was placenta came first and also a 5-½ month pregnancy.

  2. Stanley Edward Ruzicka, Jr., born 3/2/49—deceased 3/17/49. Seven-month pregnancy and child born with pancriest [sic] which caused death.

  3. James Edward Ruzicka, born 3124/50…

  James Ruzicka was the first of his mother’s children to survive and she was amazed when he lived a week, two weeks, a month—and then continued to thrive. However, Myrtle’s next child—her fourth—was born with a congenital heart defect on November 19, 1951; Linda Marie died in July 1957, three days after surgery to correct a flawed pulmonary artery.

  Myrtle’s fifth child was born on October 20,1952. He was healthy enough, but she noted that he was in prison by the time he was in his early twenties. “On the honor farm,” she added, almost proudly. The list continued:

  6. Basil Arthur, born 9/4/53—deceased January 1954. The doctor and the autopsy diagnosed it as a combination of drowning and strangulation. A curd of milk lodged in his throat during the night, forcing the fluid down into his lungs. The doctor said he did not have a chance to utter a whisper or cry.

  7. Wayne Allen, born 7/27/54.

  8. Myrtle Elaine, born 8/7/55.

  9. Christine Louise, born 10120/56—deceased 10/27/56. Cause of death was pancriest [sic].

  10. Morris Lee, born 7/16/58.

  Myrtle Ruzicka had lost five of her ten children to premature death, a series of losses almost unheard of in the 1950s in America.

  Who can say if her troubles with her son James caused her more pain than the deaths of five of his siblings. Myrtle was a woman who did her best to gloss over problems … “In all honesty,” she wrote, “my children got along better than some families.”

  Perhaps. Just as Carl Harp’s father disappeared from his life through divorce when he was a year old, Myrtle Ruzicka recalled that she divorced Jimmy’s father when the child was one. Stanley Ruzicka was a longshoreman, and he continued to visit until Myrtle remarried. When he stopped coming, Jimmy was bereft. He complained to his mother that his daddy didn’t love him. Although she tried to explain that he did, Jimmy said that wasn’t true. If his father loved him, he would take him to his house or come and see him.

  It is questionable if Ruzicka was, indeed, Jimmy’s father. He would one day completely disown him in a letter to Jim’s parole officer, suggesting a chronology that supported his argument. “James Ruzicka is not my son. I gave him my name only. Was married to his mother at one time. He was born thirteen months after she left me. Know nothing of his childhood days. You’ll have to get in touch with his mother.”

  One thing was certain. Jimmy Ruzicka never had much in the way of paternal approval. Myrtle’s second husband, Sam, used him as his whipping boy when he wanted to get back at Myrtle about something. He would either ignore him or spank him or slap him. Since Jimmy was the only child who survived Myrtle’s first marriage and all the others were Sam’s children, he resented the boy. Jimmy Ruzicka tried to make his stepfather love him, even after he’d been beaten. “As soon as he quit crying,” Myrtle wrote, “Jimmy would crawl up on the easy chair or daveno and put his arms around his neck and say, ‘Daddy, I love you.”’ But Sam really didn’t care for his stepson. He told him he was stupid and that he didn’t know “a damn thing.”

  Myrtle remembers Jimmy as “kind, affectionate, and good-hearted … a hard worker, friendly and outgoing to everyone—including strangers.”

  The Ruzicka family barely made it financially; Myrtle was the sole support of her five children much of the time, working as a clerk for $1.25 an hour. “We had necessities,” she explained, “and that was it. No Saturday matinees, ice cream or candy money. No weekly allowance or bikes or trikes like the other playmates.”

  Of necessity, she was away from the family home much of the time. Jimmy had been especially close to his sister Linda and was inconsolable when she died at the age of five. “He was only seven or eight,” Myrtle recalled, “and he would comment that she was an angel in Heaven with God, and he picked the brightest star a couple of times and said, ‘There’s Linda.’”

  Although James Ruzicka’s mother remembered his good qualities, she was also aware that something was wrong with him. He had chronic tonsillitis from the age of one to age three when his tonsils were removed. When he was two, he had convulsions and had to be hospitalized. A year or so later, he had convulsions again and there was no definitive diagnosis as to their cause. “He was rigid and completely out,” his mother said. Jimmy Ruzicka was delirious for three days with chicken pox. He had weak eyes and wore thick, magnifying glasses from the time he was about five.

  As late as 1972, when he was in his early twenties, he fell to the floor, turned blue, and stopped breathing. His brother had to smack him hard in the back to get him breathing. (This latter attack could have been a drug reaction, however.)

  But it was not his physical problems that alarmed his mother the most. Rather, it was his premature and obsessive interest in sex play. He molested his younger brother and even his sister, Linda, when he himself was only six or seven. Myrtle thought perhaps it was her fault; she had taken hormones during her pregnancy for James to ensure that she would carry him to term. She wondered if they were responsible for his unhealthy interest in sex.

  She took him to a series of doctors. They all found him very restless, but they disagreed on what was wrong with him. One doctor told her Jimmy had brain damage; another found no brain dysfunction.

  James Ruzicka was a hyperactive child, and probably would have been diagnosed today as having ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder). He could not sit still
to watch television and had to be doing something all the time. Sometimes his activities were constructive. (He could make tepees of gunnysacks and sticks when he was four or five and amuse his younger siblings.) Sometimes they were not.

  “As Jim got older,” his mother wrote, “he masturbated in his sister’s slips and panties from the dirty laundry hamper. On different occasions, he asked his sister to let him look at her genitals … At the age of nineteen or twenty, he tried to get his sister, Myrtle, to have sex with him. When she told me, he became almost wild—denying it, screaming, yelling, and accusing me of calling him a liar. His eyes were odd and the look on his face, I must admit, scared me, even though I didn’t let on.”

  As an adult, James Ruzicka recalled a home life that was not nearly as idyllic as his mother remembered. He described a constant marathon of divorce, remarriage, divorce, ad nauseam. “There were always fights … it was all one big turmoil.”

  He said his weak eyes were discovered early and he had glasses before he was five. He remembered that he ran into a tree limb and knocked them off a few days after getting them and that he lost them. He recalls that his mother beat him severely for that.

  When James Ruzicka was nine, he stole bicycles to ride. When he was finished with them, he either hid them or destroyed them. Later, he began to shoplift. Sex—aberrant sex—had become a part of his life at an age when most young boys were only concerned with baseball and marbles.

  Besides his sexual interest in his own half sisters, he had also begun molesting little girls his own age when he was ten. During that period, he experimented with having sexual relations with animals.

  James Ruzicka was thirteen when he went “into the system” for stealing and was sent to the Washington State juvenile center at Fort Worden in Port Townsend. He spent his time there trying to run away—and learning about marijuana. Before he was eighteen, James Ruzicka would try LSD, mescaline, cocaine, heroin, speed, and alcohol. On one authorized home visit, he became so violently angry with his brother over a minor incident that he choked him hard enough to leave fiery red marks on his throat. His mother had him returned to Fort Worden.