Cause of death Gas chamber Role Serial Killer Victims 3 Known + 1 suspected | Country USA Name Harvey Glatman | |
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Born December 10, 1927 The Bronx, New York Other names The Glamour Girl SlayerThe Lonely-Hearts Killer Span of killings August 1, 1957–July 13, 1958 Died September 18, 1959, San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California, United States | ||
Criminal penalty Capital punishment Date apprehended October 31, 1958 | ||
Harvey Murray Glatman (December 10, 1927 – September 18, 1959) was an American serial killer active during the late 1950s. He was known in the media as "The Lonely Hearts Killer" and "The Glamour Girl Slayer". He would use several pseudonyms, posing as a professional photographer to lure his victims with the promise of a modelling career.
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Early life
Born in the Bronx to a Jewish family and raised in Colorado, Glatman exhibited antisocial behavior and sadomasochistic sexual tendencies from an early age. At the age of 12, his parents noticed he had a red, swollen neck. He described being in the bathtub, placing a rope around his neck, running it through the tub drain, and pulling it tight against his neck, "achieving some kind of sexual pleasure from this act." His mother took him to the family physician and was told he "would grow out of it."
Murders
Glatman moved to Los Angeles, California in 1957 and started strolling around modeling agencies looking for potential victims. He would contact them with offers of work for pulp fiction magazines, take them back to his apartment, tie them up and sexually assault them, taking pictures all the while. He would then strangle them and dump the bodies in the desert. His two known model victims were Judith Dull and Ruth Mercado. A third victim, Shirley Ann Bridgeford, was met through a Lonely Hearts ad in the newspaper.
Glatman is also a suspect in the slaying of "Boulder Jane Doe", a victim whose corpse was discovered by hikers near Boulder, Colorado in 1954. Her identity remained a mystery for 55 years. In October 2009, the Sheriff’s Office was notified by Dr. Terry Melton, of Mitotyping Technologies in State College, Pennsylvania, that her lab had made a match between "Jane Doe's" DNA profile and that of a woman who thought the unidentified murder victim might be her long-lost sister. The positive identification of "Boulder Jane Doe" was an 18-year-old woman from Phoenix, Arizona, named Dorothy Gay Howard.
Media
Parts of Glatman's career were fictionalized by Jack Webb in 1966 for the two-hour television movie Dragnet, starring his character Sgt. Joe Friday. The film convinced NBC executives to relaunch Dragnet as a TV series in 1967 for a four-year run, although the movie itself was not aired until 1969. Some of the dialogue was reportedly drawn from Glatman's own statements to police, for example:
Suspect: "The reason I killed those girls was 'cause they asked me to. (pause) They did; all of them."Sgt. Friday: "They asked you to."Suspect: "Sure. They said they'd rather be dead than be with me."LAPD Captain Pierce Brooks, who was involved in Glatman's arrest and interrogation, served as a technical advisor for the film.