The Gorilla Man Strangler Case: Serial Killer Earle Nelson

by Alvin A J Esau

Overview

The hitchhiker seemed harmless. He was dressed in a blue suit and a colorful sweater, accessorized with a grey cap and tan shoes. He carried nothing. It was the morning of June 8, 1927, when the Chandler family picked up the well-dressed man in Minnesota and dropped him at the Canadian border. They had unwittingly transported notorious serial killer, "The Gorilla Man," who had strangled more than twenty women from one end of the United States to the other. He would later murder Emily Patterson and 14-year-old Lola Cowan in Winnipeg. His identity was unknown.

Written by Alvin A. J. Esau, The Gorilla Man Strangler Case: Serial Killer Earle Nelson is a detailed historical account of the Canadian manhunt, capture, and identification of Earle Leonard Nelson, an escapee from a California mental institution. Drawing on archival sources, it's the first reliable biography of Nelson, who was hung in Manitoba on January 13, 1928.

This case study also deals with various political and professional issues that arose in the pretrial, trial, and post-trial periods and spotlights the clash between Nelson's court-appointed defence attorney James Stitt, and psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Mathers, along with the chilling role of Canada's so called official hangman "Arthur Ellis" - all information that has never been published before.

Esau also raises various enduring issues about the social construction of serial killers, debates about capital punishment, psychopathy, the scope of the insanity defence, the effect of pretrial publicity, and the trial as public entertainment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781039146297
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	06/15/2022
Pages:	492
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Alvin A. J. Esau is a graduate of Regent College, the University of Alberta, and Harvard Law School. He was a professor at University of Manitoba's Faculty of Law for more than three decades. Esau also held roles such as head of the University of Manitoba Legal Research Institute, Director of Graduate Legal Studies, Bencher of the Law Society of Manitoba, and Chancellor of the Diocese of Keewatin. His book, The Courts and the Colonies: The Litigation of Hutterite Church Disputes, was awarded the Margaret McWilliams Prize for best scholarly book on Manitoba history.

Alvin A. J. Esau lives in Victoria, British Columbia with his wife. They have four grown children.

Editorial Reviews

2022-07-22
A true-crime book focuses on an American serial killer’s murderous foray into Canada.

No one knows why Earle Nelson crossed from the United States into Canada in June 1927. But within a few days, he murdered 13-year-old Lola Cowan and 27-year-old Emily Patterson in Winnipeg, the last victims of the serial killer known as the “gorilla man strangler.” Esau chronicles Nelson’s Canadian journey—which ultimately resulted in his execution for the Patterson murder in January 1928—providing a microscopic level of detail that may satisfy true-crime devotees but suffocate general readers. True-crime specialist Harold Schechter covered the Nelson case in his 1998 book, Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster. But Esau, a former law professor at the University of Manitoba, concentrates on the two Canadian murders, his legal background making him an able guide through the prosecution of Nelson, whom one newspaper described as “the most vicious killer ever run to earth in the annals of Canadian criminal history.” Nelson found his 22 female victims at homes where he had responded to “room for rent” advertisements or “for sale” signs, strangling them and then sometimes sexually assaulting them after death. The bodies of Cowan and Patterson were both discovered under beds, with Nelson being captured in Killarney, Manitoba, after an intense manhunt as he appeared to be making his way back to the U.S. There was no scientific evidence linking Nelson to the murders, but the author deftly examines the circumstantial evidence. The testimony of a barber who noticed a sore with fresh blood on top of Nelson’s head supported the theory that Patterson had scratched him while fighting for her life. The only issue at the trial was whether Nelson, a “constitutional psychopath” who had spent time in a mental hospital in California, was legally insane at the time of the killings. The judge made it abundantly clear where he stood, telling the jury: “A man may be insane for a period at some time in his life and get over it.” Esau concludes: “The men on the jury may well have thought that Nelson was insane, but the ‘gorilla man strangler’ should hang anyway.”

While overly detailed, this homicide account skillfully guides readers through the legal thickets.

Kirkus Reviews