Quicklime corpse. Carmine Crocco - the last robber of Italy. Definition of the term "serial murder"

Instructions for the little ones.
Initial - there is a quiet corpse at home, fresh, a police visit in an hour - is not expected. The task is to dispose of the corpse without fawn.
You go to some store like "OBI" or "Leroy Merlin", you buy there (if you have your own, you don't need to buy):
20 meters of thick polyethylene
electric meat grinder
a couple of large plastic buckets
garbage bags
stretch film
canister of gasoline
lots of paper towels
wide board (place under the tool)
large wire cutters
hacksaw for wood and spare blades for it
a couple of good box cutter knives, three hundred rubles each
a hammer
wide chisel
work gloves
seedlings in pots
stop somewhere and pick up stones, broken bricks, etc. weights.

Approximately 3000 rubles for everything, maybe even less.
Everything bought will have to be thrown away, so it makes no sense to overpay for brands.
You take it all home.
You undress to your underpants - everything that you still have to throw away on you will get smeared on anyone.
Place in the apartment - next to the toilet, well lit. You cover the place and the toilet with polyethylene, everything except the toilet, so that not a drop of blood passes by. In place - a layer of polyethylene, on it - a layer of unnecessary rags, so that it absorbs, if anything, on it - a few more layers of polyethylene. From rags, you need to make rollers along the contour of the body to make a recess.
Open the windows in the house, open all the taps, put the body in the recess on the back.
Put on gloves, drink stopar. Undress the body - cut off clothes, into a bag.
Make an incision from the throat to the groin, with a chisel and a hammer, separate the ribs from the sternum, open. cut the organocomplex, into a bucket, for grinding and into the toilet. Raise the arms and legs near the body, drain the blood into the cavity, push it with your hands so that as much as possible flows out. Scoop out with a glass - into a bucket and into the toilet. Next, divide. Saw off the head (it is convenient to cut the spine with a chisel). Cut off everything that can be cut - in a meat grinder and a toilet bowl. Sawing the skull - remove everything that is being removed, and into the bath, for washing. Then everything else. Small bones such as finger phalanges (ribs partially) can be chopped with a chisel and also flushed down the toilet, the rest can be cleaned with a knife and put in the bath. The result will be a skeleton without hands and feet. Sawing limbs not at the joint.
Wash the bones, dry them, put them in garbage bags with stones and paper towels, wrap them with stretch film. Spread out in new bags from the supermarket to look like purchases. In the last add everything that was used. Four or five packages will turn out.
Clear all houses. Wash off. Burn some food in a pan so that it stinks, do not wash the pan. Take the bags to the car, decorate with seedlings on top.
Leave "to the country". Ideally, your grandmother should sit next to you, but it’s fine alone if you have seedlings. At least 50 kilometers from the city, leaving the bones in 4-5 different reservoirs, if there are marshy ones, is generally ideal. A bag with a tool and polyethylene - burn it. The car is dry-cleaned. Himself - to the church, put a candle to the deceased, and go home, drink, relax, relieve stress.

=================================

1. Fuck from the presence of a corpse
2. Take some time to get a grip on yourself.
3. Go to the store of construction-shit and buy there
a) Disposable chemical protection suit
b) Saw for metal
c) Scissors for cutting metal
d) Respirator
e) bags for construction debris (more dense, larger)
4. Go to the pharmacy. There you need to buy
a) Shoe covers
b) Valerian
5. Buy 3 pairs of galoshes
6. Buy 3-4 capacious bags with a zipper in a second-hand store.
7. Purchase 8 meters square film for greenhouses.
8. We undress at home. We put on a chemical protection suit, a respirator and drink valerian.
9. In the bathroom, we spread the film so that it covers the entire work surface.
10. Lay out the corpse.
10. Cut soft tissues from the skull with a knife. We knock out teeth with a hammer. Cut off fingerprints. We destroy all tattoos and piercings. Now your client is unrecognizable.
11. Sawing carefully so as not to damage the film. Right on the joints. We try not to open the abdominal cavity. It is too early. Later, before wrapping the torso, we will throw quicklime there. Or fragrance for dry closets.
12. We hide each sawn-off segment in a separate bag, which we tightly close and seal with adhesive tape.
13. As a result, we received 3 heavy bags, a film with blood, skin scraps, teeth.
14. At night (2-3 a.m.) we go in the direction of the nearest square IN GALOSHI with ONE bag. we leave it there. We bury. It is better to look after the pit (prepare in advance)
15. Again, another night in OTHER galoshes we go to ANOTHER square. We repeat.
16. To a completely third square in new galoshes again. We repeat the process.
17. At home, carefully pierce the film on which everything happened over the drain hole. For fidelity, mold then acid.
18. Dirty chemical protection suits, galoshes, film, a saw for metal, scissors, smash them into various trash cans in the city.
19. ???
20. PROFIT!
ps galoshes should be different sizes

Quarantine infections are characterized by extreme contagiousness and high susceptibility. Therefore, the autopsy of those who died from quarantine infections has its own peculiarities and must be subject to special rules. During the autopsy of such dead, the dissector has two tasks:

to prevent the spread of infection during the autopsy;

not get infected.
To avoid infection quarantine infection, the dissector puts on a special anti-plague suit that covers the face, arms, body and legs. Such a suit should be in every hospital where autopsies are performed. If there is no suit, then the dissector puts on two closed gowns, an apron, sleeves made of plastic or oilcloth, a cap, glasses, two pairs of rubber gloves, covers his face with a mask of 2-3 layers of gauze. Rubber boots or galoshes must be worn on the feet. After opening, all clothing is destroyed, and the dissector takes a shower. The dissector does not leave the source of infection until the end of the epidemic, since quarantine rules apply to it.

An autopsy of a person who died from a quarantine infection can be performed in a hospital, if it is located in the focus of the epidemic, or in the field. The autopsy is carried out in a special sectional room. If there is no such hall, then they use a common sectional room, previously shutting off the sewers to avoid the spread of infection through sewage. At the same time, a container is placed under the drain of the sectional table, where water, blood, secretions, pieces of tissue flow. Water should be consumed as little as possible. The internal organs are not removed from the corpse, opening the chest and abdominal cavity, the organs are opened in the same cavities. After the autopsy is completed, all organs in the corpse are covered with quicklime and poured with a disinfectant liquid such as Lysol. After that, the corpse is wrapped in several layers of sheets soaked in lysol, or placed in a coffin, pouring quicklime into it. From above, the corpse is also covered with lime and the lid is clogged. If the doctor is forced to perform an autopsy outside the hospital, it is necessary to find some kind of bright room.

It is possible to perform an autopsy in the open air, but at the same time it is necessary to take into account the wind rose and be located on the leeward side, fencing off an impromptu sectional table with sheets or a tarp. The opening procedure is the same. After the autopsy is completed, the corpse is covered with quicklime and wrapped in sheets soaked in lysol. The grave is dug with a depth of at least 3 m, a layer of quicklime is poured, a layer of earth is poured on it, and so on up to three layers. Liquid and pieces of tissue are poured into the grave after opening, and then the corpse is lowered, it is also covered with three layers of earth mixed with quicklime. After the autopsy, the clothes of those who open them are burned indoors so that the infection does not spread with smoke. The staff is thoroughly washed in the shower.

Current page: 11 (total book has 22 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 15 pages]

Quicklime

When, in April 1908, the Indiana police dug up the yard of the farm owned by Belle Gunness, more than a dozen corpses were found - a gruesome evidence of years of acquisitive crime. These were mostly the corpses of the husbands of the farm owner (see the article “Black Widows”). Most of them are already heavily decomposed. Gunness, a cold-blooded and practical woman, came up with a way to speed up the process of decomposition. She cut each corpse into six pieces and covered them with quicklime, a very caustic substance that corrodes organic matter. If the search in her yard had taken place later, the bodies would no longer be identified.

Other killers also used quicklime to destroy evidence. Dr. G. G. Holmes kept a barrel of quicklime in the dungeons of his Chicago "castle of horrors." Fifty years later, Marcel Pétier, who killed dozens of people who sought refuge during the occupation of Paris by the Nazis, used quicklime to destroy the corpses buried in his backyard (another, more effective method of disposing of corpses - cremation - Pétier turned later) . John Wayne Gacy periodically poured lime into the basement of his house to kill the fetid smell of rotting bodies.

In the mid-1980s, sixty-year-old Dorothea Puente rented out a room in her San Francisco country house to wealthy elderly clients who, shortly after their arrival, began to disappear without a trace. The police, suspecting something, launched an investigation. A search in the garden behind Puente's house resulted in the discovery of seven decapitated bodies. Although the killer, trying to destroy the traces of the crime, covered the corpses with quicklime, they did not decompose. Dorothea Puente was let down by his ignorance of chemical reactions. As long as the lime is mixed with water, it acts like a preservative, not speeding up, but slowing down the decomposition process. Pathologists easily discovered that the victims died from significant doses of poison. The landlady was sent to prison for life imprisonment.

Necrophilia

To each his own. For example, I love corpses.

Henry Blot

In the classic work on mental disorders, Sexual Psychopathy, Richard von Krafft-Ebing calls necrophilia the most monstrous of all perversions. Since the term "necrophilia" (the Greek word for "love of the dead") refers to sexual exercise with corpses, this is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that this repulsive addiction is very common among the most notorious criminals - serial killers.

Many famous psychopaths, from Earl Leonard Nelson to Ted Bundy, have periodically indulged in this vicious practice with the corpses of their victims. However, some experts in the field of criminal psychology distinguish between this type of behavior (the desire to gain complete and final power over the victim) and the behavior of a “real necrophile” - such a person is so attracted to death that he gets the greatest sexual pleasure from sexual intercourse with a corpse. Although this type of necrophilia is much less common among serial killers, some such cases should be told.

Jeffrey Dahmer's love games with corpses began as a child: he collected animals crushed by cars on the road and dismembered them. With age, this hobby turned into a disgusting passion. Dahmer subsequently told psychiatrists that he usually ripped open the stomachs of the victim he killed and masturbated using the insides for this. In addition, he admitted that he had performed anal sex with corpses. His British "colleague" Dennis Nielsen was also a necrophile, although he treated his victims more gently: he put the corpse to bed, cuddled up to him and masturbated.

The most disgusting of all American necrophiles was Ed Gein. As befits a true necrophile, Gein had absolutely no interest in living women. He found sex partners in rural cemeteries, regularly plundering graves for twelve years. It might seem that necrophiles are less dangerous than serial killers, because the victims they hunt are already dead. And yet it is far from harmless. When the surrounding cemeteries ran out of women's corpses, Gein began to hunt for a living woman he liked and turned her into a dead one.

“I took off her bra and panties and had sex with her. It has long been a part of my life - sexual intercourse with the dead, ”this is how Henry Lee Lucas spoke of his reaction to the death of his beloved, whom he had just stabbed to death during a quarrel.

Nelson Earl Leonard

Earl Leonard Nelson (a.k.a. Gorilla Man) was the first US sexual serial killer of the 20th century. In February 1926, his bloody odyssey across the country began - he crossed it from end to end and reached Canada - lasting a year and a half.

Orphaned in infancy (his father and mother died of syphilis), Nelson was brought up by relatives. He was a withdrawn, sullen child with strange habits: for example, going to school in a neat, freshly laundered suit, he constantly returned in dirty rags, as if exchanging clothes with some tramp. After a severe head injury (collided on a bicycle with a funicular cabin), the boy became even more uncontrollable and strange.

As a teenager, he had already acquired the habit of walking around the bars and brothels of San Francisco. In addition, he traded in pickpocketing. In 1915 (shortly after he turned eighteen) Nelson was arrested for robbery and sentenced to two years in San Quentin. When he was released, America was just entering the First World War. Nelson enlisted in the Navy, but soon ended up in a psychiatric hospital, because he refused to obey orders and only lay on his bed and spoke all sorts of nonsense about the "great beast of the apocalypse." He spent the entire war within the walls of the clinic.

Released in 1919, 22-year-old Nelson married a 60-year-old spinster and made her life hell. Shortly after his wife left him, he attacked a twenty-year-old girl and again found himself in a lunatic asylum. Once again released in 1925, Nelson took up serial killings.

Started in San Francisco, then moved north along the Pacific coast to Seattle, then turned east. At first, the press called him the "black strangler", but later the nickname Gorilla Man was firmly entrenched in him. So he was nicknamed not so much because of his appearance (by the way, quite ordinary), but because of the wild, bestial cruelty of crimes. For the most part, his victims were middle-aged women and elderly ladies who wanted to rent a room through an ad in the newspaper ... Nelson, who knew how to be very charming if he wanted to, came to the unsuspecting mistress of the house and asked to show him the room. Once alone with the victim, he threw off the mask of charm ... And then his true "face" was revealed.

As a rule, the killer strangled the woman, had sexual intercourse with the corpse, after which he hid the body in some kind of shelter - wherever he could. He stuffed one corpse into a chest in the attic, and put a few more in the ovens in the cellars. His latest victim came to light when the husband of the victim knelt down for evening prayer and saw his wife's body under the bed.

Fleeing from police officers from various cities following his trail, Nelson headed for Canada. And there his deadly path was cut short. After killing two more women, he traveled to Manitoba, where he was captured. However, he soon managed to escape from prison. The hunt began for the fugitive, and twelve hours later he was behind bars again, this time securely.

A few months later, Earl Leonard Nelson was sent to the gallows. His last words are: "I forgive those who have harmed me."

Unsolved serial killers

Serial killers are the most feared of all criminals, and not only because of the severity of the atrocities. Despite the insane nature of their crimes, they are not crazy at all. In contrast, the typical serial killer has an above-average IQ, is extremely cunning, and skillfully wears the guise of an ordinary person. Apparently, this is why serial killers remain uncaught for a long time, and some managed to completely elude justice.

The classic example of this kind is, of course, the legendary Jack the Ripper. Many years later, the criminal, who accounted for sixty-six victims, the so-called "Green River" (drowned several people in the Green River in Washington state), disappeared without a trace. Still undiscovered serial killers include the "New Orleans Ax Murderer" (see article "The Ax Murders" and Zodiac.

Why do some serial killers go uncaught? It can be assumed that they simply decide to stop before they are captured. However, this is unlikely. After all, maniac killers get used to death, like alcoholics to alcohol, and it is highly doubtful that any of them would want to give up this deadly game of their own free will. It's more likely that the serial killer is somehow forced to stop. A maniac may be behind bars on another charge or end up in a psychiatric clinic. Or (like any other mortal) he can suddenly leave this world (it is possible that of his own free will).

Suicide is explained, for example, by the disappearance of Jack the Stripper, a serial killer of prostitutes who terrorized London in the mid-1960s. Although officially the case of this maniac remains unsolved, many believe that the killer was a certain guard who committed suicide by committing the final murder (see the article "Rippers"). In the case of the mysterious "Toledo Killer", another, also plausible, explanation was put forward. In 1925-1926, this maniac from Toledo (Ohio) raped and killed several women. In the heat of chasing the criminal, the police arrested all the "mentally handicapped" they could get to and sent them to psychiatric hospitals. Since the killings had stopped as a result of this massive roundup, it was decided that the police, among others, had managed to capture the perpetrator of serial crimes.

However, some cases are still unclear. A maniac from Ohio - the so-called "Cleveland Tearbreaker" (aka "the mad butcher of Kingsbury Run") - dealt with a dozen people in four years, chopping their bodies to pieces and scattering parts of the bodies of their victims throughout the city. Despite the efforts of the law enforcement officers (led by the famous Eliot Ness, a former "untouchable" who at that time was the head of the Cleveland Public Safety Service), the "mad butcher" eluded justice. However, in the spring of 1938, his atrocities suddenly stopped. To this day, it is unknown who it was. Many fell under suspicion - from a mentally unstable medical student to an immigrant from Bohemia. Perhaps the most frightening version was put forward by a Cleveland detective: he suggested that the killings had stopped because the perpetrator had moved to California, where he received the nickname Black Dahlia. But even there he could not be caught.

Nielsen Dennis

Nielsen - the "British Jeffrey Dahmer" who killed fifteen young people - does not fit into the standard notion of a serial killer. As a child, he had no inclination to torture animals. Even bird hunting disgusted him. As an adult, Nielsen helped desperate people find work by participating in the activities of the British Labor Registration Commission. And even his murders were an expression not of psychopathic rage, but of a kind of love. According to writer Brian Masters, Nielsen "killed for the sake of fellowship".

From a young age, Nielsen's sexuality bore pronounced features of necrophilia. As a teenager, he liked to lie down in front of a mirror and masturbate, imagining that the reflection was a corpse. In the course of a brief love affair with an 18-year-old British Army private, Nielsen made an amateur film with him, asking his partner to pretend to be dead.

Nielsen spent eleven years in military service, from time to time moonlighting as a butcher (later, the skills of this craft were useful to him in committing terrible deeds).

After leaving the army in 1972, he worked for a year with the London Police. Then he began his career as a civil servant in the employment center. For some time he was quite happy in an affair with another homosexual partner, but then this relationship broke up, and the unsociable Nielsen found himself desperately lonely. He had to invent bizarre autoerotic rituals. With the help of powder and makeup, he gave his body the appearance of a shot corpse and masturbated in front of a mirror.

In early January 1978, Nielsen committed his first murder. Picking up a teenage boy from a pub, Nielsen brought him to his home in Cricklewood. Feeling extremely lonely, he did not want to part with the young man. While the teenager was sleeping, Nielsen strangled him with a tie, and then drowned him again, lowering the victim's head into a bucket of water. After that, Nielsen undressed the corpse, gently washed it in the bath and laid it in his bed. He kept the body in the apartment for several days, in every possible way caressing, bathing, masturbating on it. When the corpse began to visibly decompose, Nielsen hid it under the floorboards.

Over the next three years, this monstrous ritual was repeated in Nielsen's Cricklewood apartment eleven more times. The killer solved the problem with the corpses in different ways. At first, he stacked them in and around the house, tucking them into a kitchen cabinet, under the floorboards, or in a shed in the garden. But in the end, he had to dismember the rotting bodies and burn them, building a fire in the backyard. Nielsen threw old car tires into the fire so that the stench of burning rubber would override the smell of burning meat.

In 1981, Dennis moved to another apartment, where he killed three more young people. He cut the corpses into pieces and flushed them down the toilet. (To remove the meat from the skulls, he boiled the heads in a large soup pot.) However, it was this method of disposing of the corpse that betrayed him. When the toilets throughout the house became clogged, the residents called a plumber, who discovered that human bones and pieces of rotten meat were stuck in the pipes.

In the apartment of the maniac killer, the police found a monstrous collection of human remains: heads, arms and legs, body parts, bones and entrails. Nielsen, who voluntarily confessed to fifteen murders, was tried in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison. At the trial, the criminal declared in despair:

“I wanted to stop, but I couldn't. I had no other happiness in my life."

Bed-wetting

See article "Triad".

O

Objects of fetishism

See Trophies article.

grave robbery

See the article "Necrophilia".

Definition of the term "serial murder"

Like many other specific terms (for example, "cynicism"), the term "serial murder" is very difficult to give a precise definition. Part of the problem is that the definition given by the police differs from the generally accepted one. According to some experts, a serial killer is someone who commits this kind of crime at regular intervals. This point of view has the right to exist. For example, if Ted Bundy were caught after killing one or two people, he would not become a world-famous killer, but would remain just a deranged person capable of committing the most perverse acts of violence. Therefore, it is hardly possible to consider any criminal a serial killer, as long as he has one or two victims on his account.

After how many victims can a criminal be called a serial killer? It's hard to define. The most famous serial killers - Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer and others - were found guilty of two dozen murders. However, most experts seem to list a criminal as a serial killer if he kills at least three people (in unrelated situations).

Between the crimes committed by serial killers, certain periods of "emotional rest" must follow. These interruptions, which can last from a few hours to many years, are what distinguishes serial killers from mass murderers - obsessed types who, in a fit of insane fit of rage, can massacre an entire group of people at the same time. Thus, the FBI defines serial murders as “three or more separate cases with periods of emotional rest between the crimes committed; while the killer operates in various places.

However, this is not all. Forensic professionals are sure to consider another key element. Before naming it, it is worth mentioning the question discussed by experts: are there female serial killers? No doubt there are many women whose crimes are quite consistent with the very meaning of the term, that is, those who committed not one, but several separate murders over certain periods of time. For example, there are so-called "black widows" who kill their husbands one by one. There are also killer nurses who, over the years, easily dispose of difficult patients. There are murderous housekeepers - they periodically change jobs, sending entire families to the next world. And yet, the crimes of these femme fatales lack that which makes the atrocities of Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy so unbearably nightmarish: ghoulish sexual sadism. According to many experts, a real serial murder is usually accompanied by severe violence and mutilation inflicted on the victim. From this perspective, serial murder can be seen as sexual murder.

In short, "serial killing" includes both the broadest (any offender, male or female, whoever kills after certain periods) characteristics, as well as very specific ones (three or more unrelated murders separated by periods of "emotional rest"). and accompanied by sadistic sexual abuse). Most people have this idea of ​​the phenomenon of "serial killer".

Weapon

Cinematic serial killers are true "masters of death", constantly looking for new, original ways to create violence. In their bloody hands, any thing becomes an instrument of murder - from a sickle to a rifle.

On the contrary, real serial killers are much more conservative in their choice of weapons, and most often they act “manually” - strangling, stabbing, beating with a stick. While most killers in America use firearms, serial killers like to kill the old fashioned way, which gives them a lot more satisfaction. True sadistic pleasure is to slowly plunge the knife into the body of the victim.

Of course, there are exceptions. For example, Ed Gein killed people with a headshot. And David Berkovich, a serial killer who terrorized New York City in the late 1970s, before he began sending letters signed “Son of Sam”, was called a “.44 killer” because of his preference for this weapon.

Postcards, comics and collectibles

A few years ago, Eclipse Enterprises began producing sets of playing cards with colorful portraits of the most notorious serial killers (along with other notorious criminals). As expected, the public was outraged. The guardians of morality said it was immoral. As a result, in one of the districts of New York - Nassau County on Long Island - it was forbidden to sell these cards to minors.

Of course, these well-meaning people did not realize that many American children were attracted and intrigued by all sorts of things related to violence and obscenity. Moreover, this is not a new phenomenon.

Back in the 1940s, postcards were issued with portraits of famous gangsters. The post-war generation fondly remembers the famous series of chewing gum wrappers, which depicted Civil War scenes of soldiers stabbing each other with bayonets and blasted limbs flying into the air. Everyone knows the classic children's postcards - the legendary "Martian Wars": they clearly show human bodies cut in half by alien laser weapons.

Unlike similar examples of kitsch, the set of cards from Eclipse is undoubtedly made with taste: only large portraits are beautifully depicted on them - that's all. Take my word for it: from the point of view of morality, a deck of cards with tramp children is much worse.

Why do small children (mostly boys) get so excited about vulgar commodities of all sorts—rubber vomit and sticky worms? This question should be asked of child psychologists (although we suspect that their hectic focus on the design of children's games is in no small part responsible for the formation of such tastes). And let me be certain that a three-by-five-inch portrait of Jeffrey Dahmer cannot “push children into crime and impair their moral development,” as some believe.

A federal magistrate agreed with our point of view and ruled that the ban on the sale of these cards in Nassau County was unconstitutional. However, by that time the issue had lost its relevance: Eclipse Enterprises had already ceased to produce them.

Luckily for collectors, two other companies have continued to release serial killer postcard sets. Shell-Town Publications distributed three series of killer postcards: Blood Fantasies I, II, and III. All selection, commentary, and illustration work was done by Michael X. Price, horror connoisseur and film critic at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Mather Productions offered two more sets for collections - "52 famous killers" and "Postcards for a cold-blooded killer." Like the Eclipse and Shell-Town series, these postcards do not feature naturalistic bloody murder scenes. They are skillfully depicted with expressive portraits of characters with a brief biography on the back.

Postcards are not the only controversial collectible. A few years ago, relatives of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims sued Bone Yard Press of Champagne in Illinois for publishing a comic book album about him. The same company released comics about Richard Speck and Ed Gein. But perhaps the most impressive comic about a serial killer is From Hell. The illustrations for it were created by Eddie Campbell, and the text was created by Alan Moore, one of the largest experts in this field. This comic book, the eight-part saga of Jack the Ripper, is published by Kitchen Sink Press of Northampton (Massachusetts); it can be found in many specialized stores.

The most comprehensive collection of information for collections of serial killers is the "Blood Catalog" produced by Fox Entertainment Enterprises. This is truly an invaluable guide for horror lovers.

The lord of the underworld himself would not have wished for a wider range of diabolical items to decorate his underworld. Whether you're looking for a confectionery bowl made from a real human skull, or realistically severed hands made from hand-painted latex, or cute Charles Manson T-shirts to wear to your next dinner party, check out this catalogue.

"At the beginning of the 19th century. Travelers in the Roman Campania usually described its landscapes as follows: a deserted malarial plain with occasional ruins, few cattle, sometimes a picturesque robber is found.

Hobsbawm. "Age of Revolutions"

Carmine Crocco was born in 1830 in the town of Rionero, which was then in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His father was a servant of the noble masters of Santangelo. It so happened that Crocco from childhood did not love the "better people." His brother was beaten by Don Vincenzo for killing a dog that ate Crocco's chickens. Crocco's pregnant mother tried to protect her son, but the don hit her too, resulting in a miscarriage. After this story, Crocco's father was accused of trying to kill Don Vincenzo, and although his guilt was not proven, Francesco Crocco was sent to prison.

Carmine Crocco moved to Puglia, where in 1845 he was able to save the life of a wealthy citizen who was drowning in a fast river. For this feat, he received 50 ducats of reward, which allowed him to return home. At the same time, the relatives of the man he saved, lobbied for the release of his father, Francesco Crocco, from prison. In 1848, Crocco was forced to enter the Sicilian army, but soon deserted from there after the murder of a colleague.

While Crocco was away, his sister, the beautiful Rosina, was raped by a certain nobleman, Don Peppino. When news of this disgrace reached Crocco, he went to meet Don Peppino. After a long emotional conversation in the Italian spirit, Crocco stabbed the offender and fled into the forest. There he gathered a gang of dashing fellows and began to trade in blackmail and robberies. In October 1855, he was arrested, but in December 1859 he managed to escape. The forest again became the home and refuge of Crocco.

If the matter were limited to these passions, the biographies of Crocco would be of interest only to lovers of adventurous stories. But then history intervened in his fate. The time has come for the Risorgemento - the unification of Italy.

Contrary to bourgeois myths, the unification of Italy, like the unification of Germany, came from above, and the term "iron and blood" here would be even more appropriate. The actions of the "Thousand" Garibaldi in Sicily resembled the "exploits" of the "iron-sided" Cromwell in Ireland. The liquidation of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was perceived by many as Piedmont's aggression to the south. The bourgeoisie of the North of Italy, interested in turning the South into its own inner colony, ruthlessly crushed all resistance. So in 1861, a death camp was established at Fort Fenestrelle, where 24,000 prisoners were imprisoned, mainly from Naples and Sicily. Most of them died of hunger and cold. The dead were thrown into ditches and covered with quicklime.

A curious episode in Crocco's career was his participation in the campaign of "Thousands" of Garibaldi. The latter generously distributed the most incredible promises, which were forgotten after the victory. Among them, there was an amnesty for all who join the "Red Shirts". Crocco joined the troops of Garibaldi, participated in the campaign against Naples, and even distinguished himself in the battle of Volturne. True, for his courage, not a reward was waiting for him, but an arrest for previous deeds. The new regime has demonstrated its perfidy.
Meanwhile, the people of southern Italy were indignant. The capitalist order turned out to be even worse than the former feudal laws. Tax oppression grew, communal lands were privatized, people died of hunger or were forced to emigrate.

The impetus for the uprising was the law on universal conscription, which did not exist under the Bourbons. Soon, the number of deserters hiding from the draft reached 25 thousand people. These people became the core of the resistance. Piedmont sent 120 thousand soldiers to suppress the popular movement

In conclusion, Crocco did not stay long. With the help of influential friends, he was able to go free. In the wild, the robber gathered an army of 2000 fellows, and began a war against the Piedmontese under the banner of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and King Francis II.

In ten days, the bandits of the robber captured vast areas of the province of Wiltura. The people welcomed Crocco as a liberator and supplied his troops. In the territories he controlled, the power of King Francis II was formally restored.
On April 7, 1861, Crocco captured Lagopesole, and the next day, Ripasandida, where he defeated the local National Guard garrison. On April 10, his troops entered Venosa. A significant part of Campania and Apui fell into the hands of the rebels.

The atrocities of the Piedmontese invaders against the "brothers from the south" only increased the number of "robbers" - brigantos. Soldiers from the north slaughtered entire villages, massively raped women, looted. The liberal regime forbade newspapers from publishing reports from the south without prior military censorship. Even members of the Italian Parliament could visit the south only with the permission of the military.

Impressed by his Crocco, the Bourbon government in exile sent the Spanish general (Catalan) José Borges to help Crocco to train and discipline the rebel bands. Borges and Crocco were then to capture Potenza, the main stronghold of the Italian government forces in the south. It should be noted that Crocco did not trust Borges, but agreed to a temporary collaboration.

At first, the attack on Potenza developed successfully. Many small villages were taken, new volunteers joined the rebel detachments. But Crocco and Borges could not take Potenza. Moreover, soon, they were forced to retreat under the onslaught of the Italian army.

Retreating to Moicchio, Crocco broke off his alliance with Borges, not wanting to serve under the command of foreigners. Frustrated, Borges went to Rome to inform King Francis II of the situation, but along the way he was captured by Piedmontese soldiers and killed.

Without the support of the Bourbons, Crocco found himself in a desperate situation. The Italian authorities offered him to surrender, but the robber chose to continue his vendetta against the Piedmontese soldiers.

It is not known how much longer this struggle would have continued, if not for the betrayal of Giuseppe Caruso, one of the lieutenants of the leader of the brigantos. A traitor gave the Italian authorities the location of Crocco's secret hideout. Detachments of the royal army under the command of General Palvicini caught the brigantos by surprise. Many robbers were killed, others were captured and shot. Crocco himself managed to escape. Hoping for salvation, he fled to the Papal States, hoping for the patronage of Pope Pius IX, who had previously helped the opposition in the south.

But Crocco was again betrayed. The robber was arrested at Veroli and taken to Rome. Then the papal administration extradited him to the Italian government. In 1872, the court sentenced Carmine Crocco to death, which was replaced by life imprisonment. In the prison, Crocco wrote his memoirs: "How I became a robber." But he never got free. On June 18, 1905, Carmine Crocco died in Portferreiro prison.

By the way, the Italian actor and director Michele Placido, well-known in the former USSR, claims that he is a descendant of Carmine Crocco in the male line.