The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases Read Online Free

stealing the body from its coffin, and replaced it with an equal weight of tanner’s bark. A man familiar with the less respectable side of Edinburgh, Hare knew that Old Donald’s body would be of some value to the city’s schools of medicine. After dark, they recovered the body from its hiding place and carried it in a sack to an anatomy school at No. 10 Surgeons’ Square. There it was received by three assistants of Dr Robert Knox, one of the foremost professors of anatomy in Scotland. For their troubles, Burke and Hare received £7 10s, nearly three pounds below market value. Still, it was a significant sum, and the pair were elated to have made such a gain with so little effort.
    Not long after, another tenant, a miller named Joseph, developed a high fever and became delirious. Fearing news of Joseph’s illness would affect business, Hare grew concerned, but it wasn’t long before he’d turned the situation to his advantage. He summoned Burke to Joseph’s bedside. There the pair determined that the miller was most certainly going to die of fever. They plied Joseph with drink, after which Burke suffocated the man with his pillow. That evening, they took the body to Dr Knox’s lecture rooms.
    The winter passed, and with it the £10 Burke and Hare had been given for the body of Joseph the miller. By February 1828, the pair were again looking to supplement their incomes through the good graces of Dr Knox. However, despite Edinburgh’s dire problems with sanitation, and the miserable winter weather, all appeared healthy at the lodging house. The pair looked outside their door, figuring that no one was likely to miss those who considered the street their home. Their next victim was Abigail Simpson, an impoverished and elderly former employee of Sir John Hope, who had travelled by foot to Edinburgh in order to collect her pension – 18 pence and a can of broth. She was on her way back home when she met Hare, who invited her to the lodging house for a small drink. It is probable that Burke and Hare intended to kill Abigail that evening, but became too drunk to carry out the plan. She, too, was drunk, and ended up staying the night. Upon awakening the next morning she began a new round of drinking. Burke and Hare took pains to remain sober, and when Abigail fell asleep they smothered her.
    That evening, the occasion of their third visit to No. 10 Surgeons’ Square, the pair met Dr Knox for the first time. The professor was pleased with the corpse and authorized a payment of £10. As would become the routine, the profit was split three ways: £4 went to Burke, £5 went to Hare, and £1 was given to Margaret Logue as the owner of the lodging house that was proving so useful.
    Over the next six months, Dr Knox would see a lot of Burke and Hare, as the pair murdered with greater frequency. They charitably put an end to the life of a tenant suffering from poor health. They suffocated an old woman Margaret had encountered in the street and had brought back to the lodging house. In April, Burke brought two teenaged prostitutes to his brother’s modest home, one of whom he and Hare killed after the other had left the house. Afterwards, the two men dared to carry the body in a sack through the Edinburgh afternoon.
    A group of schoolboys followed them, chanting, ‘They’re carrying a corpse!’ But Burke and Hare were not apprehended.
    It seems that for the first time in their lives, Burke and Hare had money – and yet it wasn’t enough. They drank more, and spent freely. This new-found wealth did not go unnoticed by their neighbours, to whom Burke, Hare and their common-law wives offered a variety of explanations, including Helen’s rather improbable tale that her man served as a gigolo for a wealthy woman in the New Town.
    The close call they had experienced in transporting the prostitute’s corpse to Dr Knox did nothing to slow down the murderers. Indeed, it might be said that the pair had been emboldened by the