Carl Panzram, dated September, 2 1928

“In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenys, arsons, and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all of these things I am not the least bit sorry. […] I hate the whole damned human race including myself. [sic]” Carl Panzram

Carl Panzram is considered by many to be one of the most despicable human beings to ever walk this earth. In his autobiography, Panzram claims to have committed some of the most atrocious acts that a person can commit on another: rape, sodomy, and murder. However, according to his criminal record, the majority of his crimes were petty, and the only murder he was convicted of was committed in prison.

So who was Carl Panzram? Was he the cold blooded killer he made himself out to be? Or was he merely a con, conditioned to lie from an early age from constant physical, emotional, sexual, and religious abuse? Was Panzram born “bad,” as he put it, or was he the creation of his time period and environment?

Early Life 1892~1906

Carl Panzram was born to Prussian immigrants on June 28, 1892 in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. He was raised on his family farm with his six siblings. One of the boys died at an early age, but Panzram does not give details about them in his letters. The farm was not successful. The Panzram clan had come to America seeking the American Dream, but by the time they arrived the west had largely been settled. Vacant land available for homesteading was only still vacant for a reason. In this case, the area the Panzrams received was not fruitful, making sustenance farming difficult. Farming such an area would have been arduous work. The Panzrams would have been forced to put their children to work as soon as they were able bodied enough to work. This meant the children received education by day, then worked long hours on the farm into night.

The Panzram family kept a strict, religious household. Carl’s father was very short tempered and frequently drank. Beatings of the children and their mother were common. Rather than grow fearful. Carl grew angry. Every time he was hit, slapped, punched, or beaten he grew meaner and more vengeful. It is accepted in the psychology community that abuse in childhood, especially when done as a way to control a child’s behavior and emotions frequently leads to lying on the part of the child in order to avoid such treatment. This, if left unchecked, or if a child receives continued abuse to reinforce lying behaviors, can lead to chronic lying and other behavioral problems in the future. This can lead to a loss of one’s true self.

By the age of 8, his father had left the family, which put even more pressure on Carl’s mother to support a family of six on her own. The older brothers promptly left the farm. One of them died shortly thereafter. This left Carl, his mother, sister, and one older brother to attempt to survive on the family farm. The absence of a father figure did little to help Carl’s growing rage. That same year, he had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

At the age of nine, Panzram developed what he referred to in his writings as a “mastoid issue.” The mastoid is a portion of the temporal bone of the skull located behind the ear. Given his family’s limited financial resources, the operation was performed on the family dining room, without proper sanitation or anesthetic. This surgery led to an infection so severe that Carl had to be taken to the hospital and have a second operation. This infection very well could have spread to the brain, harming the delicate tissue. Specifically, the infection could have caused damage to the hypothalamus, the area of the brain responsible for anger, fear, and aggression. In his later writings, Panzram would wonder if this early physical trauma could have led to the overwhelming aggression he would exhibit going forward.

In 1903 at the age of 11, Panzram was once again arrested for being drunk and incorrigible. Undoubtedly, this lead to severe beatings at home.

“But right or wrong I used to get plenty of abuse. Everybody thought it was all right to deceive me, lie to me, kick me around whenever they felt like it, and they felt like it pretty regular. [sic]”

On the night of his departure, Panzram broke into the home of a wealthy neighbor. He stole what he felt was most valuable: cake and apples. He also stole a pistol, which he hid under his coat as he made his way to the train station. It was Panzram’s goal to head west where he would, “be a cowboy and shoot Indians.” He was quickly discovered on the train and returned home where he was beaten and arrested. He was then sent to the Minnesota State Training School, a youth penitentiary in Red Wing, Minnesota.

Minnesota State Training School 1903~1905

Right there and then I began to learn about man’s inhumanity towards man.

According to Panzram’s letters, when he first arrived at the Minnesota State Training School he was, “lively, healthy, and very mischievous, innocent, and ignorant.” This promptly changed upon meeting his manager, George Mann. Soon after arriving, Mann gave Panzram an “Oral and physical examination.” According to Panzram, he was forced to strip naked in order to check for fleas or other signs of disease or illness. Unfortunately, the examination did not stop there.

“He examined my penis and my rectum, asking me if I had ever committed fornication or sodomy or had ever had sodomy committed on me or if I had ever masturbated. He explained in detail and very thoroughly just what he meant by those things. That began my education. I have learned a little more since.”

At the school, strict Christian discipline was enforced. As was common for the American Justice System at the time, the children at Michigan State Training School were subjects to beatings, corporal punishment, emotional, and physical abuse. It was the belief at the time that such treatment would deter criminals, and those considering committing a crime from doing so. Further complicating issues, the school’s staff had little, if any, training, and would have had no experience in “fixing” the children. This made abuse all the more common. The most frequent punishment were beatings. These beatings often occurred in “The Paint House,” so called because inmates were taken there to be “painted black and blue. Panzram claimed that children were often strapped naked to a large block and beaten with paddles, whips, and all sorts of cruel instruments of torture. Such barbaric treatment in the name of Christianity only furthered Panzram’s rage.

“Naturally, I love Jesus very much. Yes, I love him so dam much that I would like to crucify him all over again. [sic].”

Panzram longer for revenge. He got his chance when he was given waiter duty for the staff. According to Panzram, he would frequently urinate in their beverages and masturbate into their desserts. He was not caught until one day when he tried slipping rat poison into Mann’s rice pudding. For that, he received a terrible beating, and he was removed from waiter duties.

With his revenge plot stymied, Panzram looked for new ways to hurt those who hurt him. It was then he committed his first documented arson. Under the cover or darkness, Panzram burnt down the Paint Shed.

Shortly thereafter, he learned the most important rule a criminal can learn: how to pretend to be a good person. He pretended to be a good boy and love Jesus. This act worked, and he was paroled. According to Panzram, “I had been taught by Christians how to be a hypocrite and I had learned more about stealing, lying, hating, burning, and killing.”

Panzram’s Hated Grows

Panzram’s writing shows the pure hatred towards society and Christianity he developed while held at the Minnesota State Training School. His own words sum it up best:

“I had learned that a boy’s penus could be used for something besides to urinate with and that a rectum could be used for other purposes than crepitating. Oh yes, I had learned a hell of a lot from my expert instructors furnished to me free of charge by society in general and the State of Minnesota in particular. From the treatment I received while there and the lessons I learned from it, I had fully decided when I left there just how I would live my life.I made up my mind that I would rob, burn, destroy, and kill everywhere I went and everybody I could as long as I lived. That’s the way I was reformed in the Minnesota State Training School. [sic]”

Upon returning home, Panzram put his new skills as a con to work on his own family. He told his family that he wanted to a preacher. This saved him from backbreaking work on the farm, and sent him to the German Lutheran School and Church in Grand Forks, where he would learn to be a priest.

However, Panzram’s anger quickly lead to trouble at the new school. His frequent fighting lead to beatings from the priest in charge. However, soon Panzram began to fight back. When he failed to overpower the man, he recalled an old piece of poetry he remembered: “be a man either great or small in size, Colonel Colt will equalize.”

Panzram managed to find a pistol and when he returned to school informed the priest he would be left alone. When the priest began to beat Panzram, the gun fell from his vest pocket. Panzram quickly picked up the gun, aimed at the priests head, and pulled the trigger two or three times. It did not go off.

Upon returning home, he was immediately assaulted by his oldest brother, demanding to know where the gun had been hidden. When his brother went to find it, Panzram ran away, looking for a gun to kill his brother. He quickly resumed his western journey of two years prior.

At this point, Panzram was around 13 years old, riding boxcars towards the west as a hobo. It was during this time that Panzram had two experiences that would cement his hatred of the human race, and his unstoppable urge to get revenge on the human race.

One evening while riding the rails, Panzram wanted someone to talk to. He searched the train until he came across a group of four other hobos. Upon learning his story, the men promptly raped him. This happened again shortly thereafter at a stable where he was taking shelter. A group of local men got young Panzram drunk and raped him violently. These instances are vital to understanding Panzram. These two times, he made himself vulnerable to strangers. He opened up to people when he was feeling the human need to talk to someone. Both times, he was sexually abused. What little humanity was left in Panzram died those days.

“These two experiences taught me several lessons. Lessons that I never forgot. I did not want to learn these lessons but I found out that it isn’t what one wants in this world that one gets. Force and might make right. Perhaps things shouldn’t be the way but that’s the way they are. I learned to look with suspicaion and hatred on everybody. As the years went on that idea persisted in my mind above all others. I figured that if I was strong enough and clever enough to impose my will on others, I was right. I still believe that to this day. [sic]”

A Victim of Circumstance?

By the age of 13, Carl Panzram had experienced more brutality and violence than most modern American’s experience in their lifetimes. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century America, his experiences were not all that uncommon. The Civil War was less than 40 years previous. The west had just been settled, the last of the Indian Wars were dying out as Native Americans were forcibly subdued and placed on reservations. Racial and cultural tensions were high. Several small economic panics in the 1890 saw many of America’s lower to middle class workers struggling to survive. Strict gender roles and a male dominated society ruled the day. The husband/father was to be the disciplinarian, the punisher, and the one to lay down the law.

This time was ripe with conflict and strife, starting from the individual household, up through public society. Panzram was born into a Prussian immigrant family. This family would have to build a new life in a financial drought. This put exceptional stress on Carl’s father, the breadwinner, to provide for his growing family. Educational options for them were limited, forcing them to stay in agriculture with minimal chance for social or financial growth. This constant need to be the strong disciplinarian and provider was physically and emotionally beaten into young Carl from a very early age. He learned that being a man meant using force to achieve your ends. This twisted view was reinforced throughout his life through each beating he took. He learned that, to get what he wanted in this world, he could use force.

Further polluting his mind, the use of violence to reinforce religious viewpoints further contorted Panzram’s reality. He saw the hypocrisy of religion at an early age when, as Panzram later wrote, “the method that the good people used was to beat goodness into me and beat all the badness out of me.” At this time, operant conditioning was just being studied, and the mentally ill were locked away in asylums rather than treated. The people in charge of these facilities had minimal education on how to reform people, and this resulted in frequent abuse, and maltreatment of criminals. They were trying to reform violence with violence. This only set to reinforce the individual’s negative behavior.

Panzram, a career criminal from the age of 8, would have had this reinforcement applied to him constantly, validating his feelings on society. To him, the world was full of people who mistreated him. The only way to fix this feeling was to react against the world with violence; to take what he wanted when we wanted. This gave him a feeling of power and revenge over the world that, in his mind, had wronged him.

Homophobia and the Early 20th Century

Further complicating Panzram’s troubled mind, revolves around his sexual orientation and the internalization of homophobia. At the turn of the century, homosexuality would have been considered a crime. Many people suspected of homosexual acts became victims of violence, including murder. During that time period, men were expected to be men: big, strong, and the provider of the family. They were expected to marry, have children, and then spend their time financially supporting said children and wife. The concept of homosexuality was seen as an affront to all moral and religious views of the day. This caused homosexuals to often feel ashamed and hateful of who they were as people. This self-loathing can often lead to depression and self mutilation in individuals who don’t seek psychological help and support to come to grips with who they are as people.

In the case of Panzram, such hatred towards oneself was projected outward in the extreme: a lack of fear, and a hatred for a society who’s homophobia led to feelings of emasculation. These feelings would feed the flames of destruction, as well as provide a constant need to prove himself as a dominant, powerful male in the only ways he knew how: violence, rape, arson, and death.

Panzram’s autobiography certainly shows himself to be one of the most prolific criminals to ever live. His crimes were varied, brutal, and culminated in the deaths of 21 people across multiple continents. So, how could one man possibly commit so many crimes? It can be seen from Panzram’s past behaviors that he became an excellent liar in his time, so how do we know if he really murdered more than one person?

Truth Stranger Than Fiction?

Thanks to the efforts of historians, Panzram’s bold claims were put up against historical records. Even during his lifetime, police forces were able to match his descriptions of events to unsolved murders in their jurisdictions. While not everything can be verified, it would seem Panzram was brutally honest in his autobiography.

The End of Carl Panzram

When looking at Panzram’s psychology in his last months of life, it would seem a distinct possibility that he was telling the truth. In his final trial, Panzram tried to defend himself. When the judge denied this, Panzram is quoted as to telling his attorney that this was “his [the attorney’s] show,” and refused to help in his own defense. Physically, Panzram was crippled from a failed escape attempt a few years earlier. This caused him to lose a testicle, as well as forcing him to walk with a noticeable limp. He was getting slower and weaker after years of hard, violent living. He knew that, in the general population, he would be unable to fight as hard or as well as he had in his younger years. Long story short, Panzram knew it was the end of the line.

Given the fact Panzram had resigned himself to the gallows after committing the murder of the shop foreman and admitting to many others, there was very little for Panzram to gain from concocting an elaborate story to embellish his criminal career. Even he knew he was not the man he used to be. Panzram wanted to die.

Panzram at the Gallows

September 5, 1930

Panzram was hanged on September 5, 1930. He supposedly spit on the executioner, and his last words were on record as:

“Hurry up you Hoosier bastard! I could kill a dozen men while you’re screwing around.”

Panzram’s remains are located at the cemetery at Leavenworth, bearing only his inmate number, 31614.

Conclusion

Carl Panzram was truly a creation of his time. Strict gender roles, homophobia, and the use of torture and abuse in an attempt to “rehabilitate” the troubles of society all played key roles in transforming Panzram from a troubled child to a career criminal and murderer. From Panzram’s writings, we are able to infer that he felt that he was a victim of society. To him, society had wronged him, and he got revenge on the world every opportunity he had. Panzram was a one man crime wave, and his writings provided the first true glimpse into the criminal mind.