On June 28, 1891, Carl Panzram was born in Minnesota to East Prussian immigrant parents. His father left at a tender age, and by the time Carl was 12, he had committed his first burglary in which he stole cake, apples, and a revolver from a nearby home in the area.
After his first theft, he was taken to the Minnesota State Training School, where the school staff beat, tortured and raped him. He was released in his teens, and soon after this, he ran away from home.
He started moving aimlessly by hopping on train cars. During one of his rides in a train wagon, he was gang-raped by a group of hobos. This shook Carl, and when he eventually spoke about it, he said that it made him “a sadder, sicker, but wiser boy” no one would have thought that this boy would soon viciously start raping people.
The experience didn’t stop him from hopping train cars, robbing innocent people and burning down buildings. In 1908, he was convicted of stealing and taken to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Carl talks about his experience at the facility, saying, “I was a pretty rotten egg before I went there, but when I left there, all the good that may have been in me had been kicked and beaten out of me.”
After his release, Carl became a much more violent criminal. He assaulted and raped numerous of his robbery victims. He kept having run-ins with the authorities as he was arrested for various crimes on numerous occasions.
In 1915, Carl was sentenced to Oregon State Penitentiary for seven years after being caught stealing. His time here was tough as the guards immediately disliked him and did everything to make him stay hell. They beat him, hung him from rafters, and placed him in solitary confinement. While Carl was in solitary confinement, most of what he ate was cockroaches.
In his first year at the penitentiary, he helped an inmate escape. While on the run, this inmate killed the warden. This became Carl’s first involvement with murder as he was automatically an accessory to the crime for the role he played in the inmate’s escape.
Carl attempted to escape in 1917, but he was caught, and he tried again successfully in 1918. In 1920, Carl stole enough money to buy a yacht as a result of successfully robbing the home of former President William Howard Taft.
He named the yacht Akiska, and this birthed a new round of terror. He began luring American soldiers to his boat, where he raped and killed them, then dumped their bodies in the Atlantic Ocean.
When the boat sank, he left for Africa. He stayed in Angola, and one time during his stay, he raped a young boy and killed him. When Carl spoke about the incident, he said, “His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him, and he will never be any deader.”
Carl in Angola also killed six local guides who were to take him on a crocodile hunting expedition and fed their bodies to the crocodiles. After a while, he returned to America.
He didn’t stop raping and killing men and boys without a trace, but he didn’t stop stealing, and if there’s anything we know, it’s that Carl made a lousy thief. In 1928, he was arrested and taken to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. In this penitentiary, he confessed to killing two boys and was sentenced to 25 years.
In prison, he beat the laundryman to death with an iron bar, and as a result, he was sentenced to death. This verdict made him very excited, as he had once said, “I look forward to a seat in the electric chair or dancing at the end of a rope just like some folks do for their wedding night.”
Carl Panzram made friends with Henry Lesser while on death row. Lesser encouraged Carl to write about his life, and he did so without leaving any details. Lesser eventually published it after his death.
On September 5, 1930, at 39, Carl Panzram was hanged. His famous last words were, “Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill a dozen men while you’re screwing around!”
