truecrime – The Archive of Evil

Kidnapped in Los Angeles, the murder of Marina Habe

December, 1968. Marina Habe, 17, was back home in Los Angeles for the holidays. She had spent Christmas with her mother Eloise and on the night of December 29th was now spending the night of December 29th with friends. Around 3:15 Marina left to drive to her mother’s West Hollywood home.

Marina Elizabeth Habe was born in 1951 to Hans Habe and Eloise Hardt. Her father, a Jewish-Hungarian writer, had fled Europe due to World War II. Hans and Eloise, an Hollywood actress, were married in 1948. They quickly realized the marriage was not a succes and divorced. Soon after that, Hans moved to Switzerland, leaving Marina in the care of her mother Eloise.

After graduating from high school Marina attended the University of Hawaii to work on an arts degree. Her dream was to become an actress like her mother.

The kidnapping

That night of December 29th in 1968, Eloise was awoken by sounds from a car engine. Marina’s car was parked in her drive way, but an unknown black car was right next to it. It looked like there were multiple people in the car. Eloise saw a young man in his 20’s running towards the unknown car yelling ‘Let’s GO!’. The vehicle sped away, leaving behind a confused Eloise. There was no sign of Marina.

Eloise called the police immediately. Marina’s father Hans Habe, a writer living in Switzerland at the time with his 6th wife, traveled to Los Angeles as quickly as he could. The police started an investigation, working with the assumption that Marina had been kidnapped from her mothers driveway. They examined Marina’s car and found that the hand brake had been pulled with a great deal of force, which led them to believe that someone else had been in her car. An extensive ground search and search by helicopter was started, but there was no sign of Marina. Eloise and Hans hoped there would be a request for ransom, but the kidnappers never contacted them.

Investigation

On January 1st, a couple walking down the famous Mulholland Drive noticed a purse lying in the bushes. Inside were Marina’s credit cards and some cash. The police concluded the motive for the kidnapping was not money or robbery, as the cash was still in Marina’s purse. Later that day, a man walking his dog around the same area found Marina’s body off the road. She had been placed in a ravine covered with foliage.

Marina’s body was fully clothed, but she was missing one shoe. It was found nearby. An old motorcycle frame was also found near her body. An autopsy found multiple knife wounds, one of which to her throat. Two different knives were used in the attack. The autopsy also showed bruising to her face and neck, but no defense wounds to the rest of her body. There was no evidence of sexual assault at the autopsy, the coroner’s report stated that she probably had consensual sex recently (most likely with one of the friends she spent her evening with). The coroner concluded that Marina had bled to death. The timing of her death is unknown, conflicting reports exist wether she was killed right after her kidnapping or that she was kept alive.

Marina was buried at Holy Cross cemetery in Los Angeles. The priest leading her funeral said: ‘We wonder about a society, the products of which can be… capable of such heinous crimes. There you have the perfect formula for bitterness, resentment, hatred, perhaps despair. This we must guard against. ‘

Marina’s parents Eloise and Hans at her funeral

The autopsy report led police to conclude that at least two people were involved in Marina’s murder. It was never determined if the motorcycle frame that was found near Marina’s body was related to her murder. There were some motorcycle gangs in California at the time, but there was no evidence that they had any involvement in Marina’s murder.

Involvement of the Manson Family?

A theory often connected to her murder is that the Manson Family was to blame. A former member of the Family has claimed that they knew Marina. There is no evidence however of any connection between Marina and the Manson Family. Charles Manson was at a New Years Eve party thrown by members of the band the Mamas and the Papas, so has a solid alibi for the evening of Marina’s kidnapping.

The Manson Family did run an illegal car and motorcycle shop where they sold stolen parts. Could this be a, albeit very small, connection to the motorcycle frame found in the ravine next to Marina’s body? When Mark Glen Wats, a supplier of stolen parts to the Manson Family, was murdered, his body was also dumped in a ravine next to Mulholland Drive, just like Marina. Coincidence or not?

Unsolved

In November 1969, 19 year old Reet Jurvetson was found murdered in a ravine of Mulholland Drive. She had also been stabbed and bled to death. Could she have been murdered by the same murderer as Marina? Or were they found in similar circumstances that were not related? Want to know more about Reet Jurvetson’s story? Her murder was covered on our instagram page, click here to read it.

The murder of Marina Habe was never solved. No suspects have ever been openly named by police. Eloise Hardt died in 2017 at the age of 99 without knowing who killed her daughter. Before she died she said this about her daughters death to CBC’s the fifth estate; ‘The more I dwell on it, the sicker I get. So I stay as far away from it as I can. But I sure as hell would like to know what happened to my daughter. I’m only staying alive so I can get some answers.’

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An Angel of Death: Dutch nurse Frans Hooijmaijers

The Good Samaritan. That’s what his colleagues called Frans Hooijmaijers. As a nurse, he would place statues of the Virgin Mary next to patients’ beds, light candles and pray for them, which earned him his biblical nickname. Frans claimed that he could accurately predict when patients would die, a gift he supposedly received from God. His predictions, however, had another source…

Frans Hooijmaijers was born in 1935 in Kerkrade in the Netherlands. He was overweight as a child and was born with a cleft lip, so he was often the target of bullies. After his father died when he was young, Frans had developed a strong bond with his mother, who favored him over his siblings. In 1960, Frans joined the order of Saint Joseph and settles into a monastery in the south of the Netherlands. Whilst he is in charge of the sick ward in the monastery, Frans realizes he wants to become a ‘real’ nurse and leaves the order to pursue this dream.

Frans started working at the Lückerheide Clinic in 1970. His main ward was the Nightingale, mostly inhabited by elderly patients with cognitive problems, like dementia. He was infamous among his coworkers due to his obsessive cleanliness, his devotion to Catholicism and his supposed gift of predicting the timing of death of the patients in his care.

Frans was head nurse of the Nightingale ward for 5 years. In those 5 years 325 people died on just that ward. Of these, 116 died in 1974-1975. In comparison, a total of 78 people died on the 5 wards where Frans did not work in the same time span. No one from the clinic raised concerns, even though it was rumored among coworkers that ‘ where Frans goes, death follows’. However, the family of one of the deceased did.

Mrs. Braams, 89, died in August of 1975 in unusual circumstances. Her concerned family filed a complaint about her untimely death to the hospital where she died. The investigation that followed led to Frans. He was arrested by police on the 14th of August, 1975. During a search of his home, investigators find jewelry of multiple deceased former patients. Frans seems to have given some of the possessions of his dead patients to his mother Maria. After a visit to her, police find that her second husband was admitted to a care home being partially blind and disabled. The cause of this? His lovely wife had added ratweed, which contains arsenic, to his toast, cabbage and soup. Her motive? It was suggested by the prosecution that the victim took too much attention away from Frans and Maria (or Frans himself?), felt her husband was getting in the way of their ‘special bond’. Maria was arrested and sentenced to 8 months (!) and psychiatric treatment. Her lawyer claimed in her defense that Maria knew that ratweed could kill animals, but never realised it was toxic to humans…

After investigating all 325 deaths during Frans’s time on the Nightingale, in 259 there were doubts about the exact cause of death. Frans admitted to police that he had injected 15 patients with an overdose of insulin and diazepam, leading to their deaths. He claimed his motive was compassion and declared ‘I wanted to put the old ones out of their misery. I wanted to give them peace’. The psychiatric report paints a different picture of Frans: ‘No one feels that he is fulfilling a calling of some sort. His only answer to trouble is to inject. People shouldn’t be annoying or a nuisance’. It was also determined that his IQ was 93, which seems too low to function well as a head nurse.

Before his murder trial, Frans retracted his confession, claiming to be only guilty of giving patients normal doses of medication without permission of a doctor. He rationalized this behaviour by claiming he only did so when there were no doctors present to help patients that were restless or in pain. Frans also claimed to be against euthanasia and that it was ‘never his intention to kill a patient’.

In 1977, Frans Hooijmaijers was found to be guilty of murder in 5 cases. However, prosecutors thought he could be responsible for as much as 259 deaths. Frans was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was released in 1987 and died from natural causes at age 70 in 2006.

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Hi! Welcome to the Archive!

It’s so nice to see you here. I originally started with an Instagram account, where I post short stories about true crime. On this website I plan to post my longer stories, that will not fit in a shorter Instagram post.

Why am I doing this?

First of all, I like to read, watch or listen to crime related stories. It intrigues me to see why people do such extreme things to other people. Human behavior is fascinating to me in all its forms.

Secondly, true crime is highly relevant in our lives today. It is everywhere and feels like a puzzle I need to solve. I like to research these stories and report the most truthful version on this website.

Good to know: I do not believe in glorifying the perpetrators of the crimes I talk about in my posts. I am not their fan and do no want to make them ‘famous’. My stories will focus on the victims of the crimes.

Okay! Down the rabbit hole we go…

The curious case of the Somerton Man (+ update september 2022!)

Someone walking along Somerton beach in Adelaide in December 1948 found a man slumped against a seawall. They first thought he must be asleep, but he was very still. Too still. The police were alerted and started an investigation. They found the man lying with his head resting against the wall, with his legs stretched out and his feet crossed. He looked like he was sleeping.

The man was dressed in a suit and tie. An unlit sigaret was found tucked behind his right ear and another half-smoked sigaret was lying on his coat. His pockets contained a used bus ticket from Adelaide to St. Leonards (Glenelg), an unused train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, a aluminum comb (thought to be American), a half-eaten pack of Juicy Fruit gum, a packet of Army Club filled with Kensiats brand sigarets and a Bryant & May matchbox. Nothing else was found that could point to the man’s identity.

The night before a couple saw a man in the same location moving an arm, and another couple didn’t see him move, but did think his positioning changed. Both couples assumed the man was asleep or very drunk.

The autopsy showed that the man was in great physical condition. The pathologist, John Burton Cleland, described the man as of ‘Britisher’ appearance and between 40-45 years old. His hands were not calloused and his toes were wedge shaped, like a dancer or when wearing boots with pointed toes. His calf muscles were highly developed, also like a ballet dancer. All the labels in his clothes were removed and he was not wearing a hat. His dental records did not match any in the system. The pathologist concluded after the autopsy ‘I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural … the poison I suggested was a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic‘. The body was embalmed on the 10th of December after they had failed to identify him and find his next of kin.

In January of 1949, staff found a brown suitcase in the station’s cloakroom that had not been picked up by it’s owner. It had been checked in on the 30th of November, which led the police to believe the Somerton man might be this lost owner. The case contained a red dressing gown, red pair of slippers, pajamas, underpants (4 pair), a shaving kit, brown pair of trousers, a screwdriver, a table knife altered to be short and sharp, scissors with sharpened points and a stenciling brush. A thread card with orange thread was also found, the brand Barbour wasn’t available in Australia at the time. Police had seen this thread before. It was used to repair a hole in the pocket of the trousers the dead man had been wearing. All the tags had been removed, again, but now the name T. Keane was found on a tie and a laundry bag. Police believed this name could have been left on purpose (to confuse the investigation) or by accident. No-one named T. Keane or Keane was found to be missing.

A inquest by the coroner Thomas Cleland concluded that seeing as the mans shoes were very clean, he was murdered elsewhere and the crime scene at Somerton had been staged. This also explained why no vomit had been found at the scene. However, this did not align with the sightings of the man moving around on the night of the 30th of November. Cleland suggested that the witnesses might have seen someone else. The witnesses denied this, claiming the dead man was the man they saw. Cleland, the coroner, stated ‘I would be prepared to find that he died from poison, that the poison was probably a glucoside and that it was not accidentally administered; but I cannot say whether it was administered by the deceased himself or by some other person‘. After this inquest a plaster cast was made of the man’s head and he was buried in Adelaide’s West Terrace Cemetery.

At the time of the inquest, a tiny piece of paper was found in the pocket that was sewn closed. The words ‘ Tamán Shud’ were printed on it. After investigation by police, it was found to mean end or finished and was printed on the last page of a book called ‘Rubaiyat’ by Omar Khayyam. A photo of this piece of paper was released to the public. Miraculously, a man came forward with an 1941 edition of a translation of the Rubaiyat. How this man, that remains unidentified, found this book is unclear. The most common story is that the man found the book in his unlocked parked car (which was parked in Glenelg, the town the used bus ticket was to). Tests showed that the piece of paper was ripped out of this copy of the Rubaiyat. The back of the book showed lines, as if someone had written on a piece of paper on top of it. Police thought these lines represented some kind of code. Code experts were asked to decipher it, but were unsuccesful.

The text in the back of the book ‘ Rubaiyat’

The back of the book also contained a phone number, belonging to Jessica Thomson, ‘Jo’. She lived in Moseley, Glenelg, about 400 meters (1300 ft) from where the Somerton man was found on the beach.

Jessica stated she did not know the man and why he would have her phone number. She then asked police to not record her name, as she was a nurse and it would be detrimental to her reputation to be associated with such a case. Jessica also made a statement that she once owned a copy of the ‘Rubaiyat’ book , and had given it to an Army lieutenant Alf Boxall during the Second World War in 1945. Jessica moved to Melbourne and married after that. She stated that she received one letter from Boxall to which she only replied that she was now married.

The police suspected that Boxall might be the Somerton man. However, when they found Boxall alive and well in Sydney in 1949, his copy of the ‘Rubaiyat’ was complete, including the last page. On the front page Jessica had signed her name and written out a verse.

The copy of the Rubaiyat Jessica gave to Boxall

During the years, people have thought the Somerton man to be a spy. He was found just after World War II ended, the circumstances of his death are very suspicious and he remained unidentified.

In 2009, Professor Derek Abbott and his team tried to solve the case through DNA and by attempting to crack the code in the back of the book. They found that the autopsy files of 1948-49 are missing and that most of the physical evidence, like the suitcase, has been destroyed. A professor of anatomy (of the University of Adelaide) looked at images of the Somerton man. He concluded that the man’s ears are of a rare genetic variant in Caucasian people (seen in only 1-2%). Also, dentists found that the Somerton man had hypodontia, a genetic disorder that leads to missing teeth.

Abbott suspected that Jessica did know the Somerton man. On a photo of Jessica’s children, it can be clearly seen that her oldest son, Robin, has the genetic disorders of both the ears and teeth. The chances that that is coincidental are very slim.

Jessica had died in 2007. Her daughter Kate told the tv-show ’60 minutes’ that her mother confessed to her that she did know the Somerton man. She suggested that her mother taught English to immigrants and spoke Russian, but would not tell Kate how she learned it. Kate thought both her mother and the Somerton man might have been spies. Robin Thomson, Jessica’s eldest son, was a ballet dancer… He unfortunately died in 2009 and was cremated.

Robin’s widow Roma and their daughter Rachel were also interviewed on ’60 minutes’. They believed the Somerton man was Robin’s father, as he shared some striking physical characteristics with him. Rachel and her mother wanted the remains of the Somerton man exhumed, so that they could test his DNA. In April 2021 it was confirmed by police that the Somerton man’s body will be exhumed so that DNA testing can be tried. Derek Abbott, the professor who started a reinvestigation of this case in 2009, said: ‘I knew it would happen one day. It’s an enduring mystery here in South Australia. The public wants to know who this man was. He also has a family somewhere missing him from their family tree and they have a right to know. There are so many weird twists and turns in this case — so many unlikely things keep happening.’

So many weird twist and turns indeed. When Derek Abbott finally met Rachel Egan, the woman who he thought was the Somerton man’s granddaughter, they fell in love. They married 4 months after they met, and since then have had three children. So his investigation into the Somerton’s man is now… a family affair?

I will update when there is news after the Somerton man is exhumed and DNA tests are done. What do you think, is Robin’s father the Somerton man?

Update sept 2022: The Somerton man has been identified by DNA analysis! Scientists used hairs caught in the death mask made before the burial of the unidentified body to make a DNA profile. This profile was then used to construct a family tree. After a lot of research, scientist found that the DNA from the death mask could only belong to Carl (Charles) Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne. And other evidence matched also. His sister was married to Thomas Keane, which connects to the clothing from the suitcase of the Somerton man that was labeled with T. Keane. One question has now been answered, but the rest remain: What was Carl Webb doing in Adelaide? What happened to him? Was he murdered? Maybe one day we will get answers to these questions too, what do you think?

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