America’s most prolific serial killer almost got away with murder

Dean Cain as Detective James Wood and AlonZo Rachel as his partner, Stark

What if I told you that a woman born and raised in Colorado and Kemmerer, Wyoming played a key role in taking down one of America’s worst serial killers?

The Green River Killer

H.H. Holmes used to be considered America’s most prolific serial killer. He is said to have murdered 230 victims during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, is suspected of killing over 90 women between 1982 and the early 90s. Both are dwarfed by a killer whose victims began disappearing in the 1980s.

For years, the murders went largely unnoticed. Then, in 2010, the Philadelphia police combined with the DEA and the FBI to raid his place of business. They were looking for evidence of an illegal drug operation. What they found was an office filled with corpses—more than thirty of them. They also found evidence of hundreds, perhaps thousands, more.

For instance, an industrial-strength garbage disposal had been completely worn out. Evidently it was used to grind up bodies for disposal into the Philadelphia sewer system. A waste-disposal company unknowingly had hauled off countless more for incineration. Still others had been taken to his vacation home and used as bait in his crab cages.

The principle of habeus corpus requires that prosecutors have evidence of a body to prove murder. Because of his effective disposal of remains, we will never really know the final count. The sheer volume of his crimes was too physically taxing to perform alone. So, he hired assistants and trained them to help. They helped bring victims into the office and dispose of the evidence.

Some even performed murders on his behalf, but they were not prosecuted. Eyewitnesses could testify to what they had done but proving intent would be more difficult. The serial killer had trained girls as young as 15 years old in his own private medical school. There he taught as a legitimate medical procedure what anyone else would have recognized as murder in cold blood.

The name of America’s most prolific serial killer is Kermit Gosnell. He avoided the death penalty by waiving his right to appeal. He is currently serving life without parole. His story is told in the movie, Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. It opens nationwide this Friday, October 12.

It is a riveting story on several levels. Perhaps uppermost is the question: how was he able to perform so many murders without getting caught? He had numerous witnesses with evidence literally piled up in the hallways, stored in freezers and refrigerators. How could all of this go unnoticed for decades?

Answer: he was hiding his murders in plain sight. This was made possible because they took place in an abortion clinic, giving him an almost impenetrable layer of protection. Nobody wants to scrutinize abortion clinics or think too carefully about them. They have become sacrosanct, so that their very mention freezes us in place.

Consider your own reaction to the paragraph above. If you’re like most, the sudden appearance of the word “abortion” made you hesitate to consider whether you wanted to continue reading this story. Until it was mentioned, you might have suspected who I was talking about, but it was less emotionally conflicting.

Words do powerful things to us, but none greater than this one. It does powerful things to politicians, too. Because of the “A-word,” Philadelphia authorities were reluctant—unreasonably reluctant—to inspect Gosnell’s clinic or follow up on numerous complaints. While nail salons receive health department inspections every year, Gosnell’s clinic had not been inspected by Pennsylvania’s Department of Health for over 17 years—not once.

This is a bi-partisan problem. It’s not only Democrat politicians who will move heaven and earth to block abortion-reporting laws, pro-life judges and health standards for abortion clinics. Republican politicians also work to frustrate common-sense legislation and minimal enforcement of the laws. Most are afraid that if they look too closely at abortion practices their political ambitions will be destroyed by powerful lobbyists.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge

In the case of Gosnell, it was a Republican governor, Tom Ridge, (later named the first Secretary of Homeland Security by George W. Bush) who prevented discovery of the murders. Grand Jury testimony alleged that his office instructed the Pennsylvania Department of Health not to inspect Gosnell’s clinic unless it received a complaint. This permitted the practices and conditions of the clinic on Lancaster Street to be effectively unaccountable to anyone but Gosnell.

Opening statements in Gosnell’s trial were held on March 18, 2013. He was charged with over 200 counts of violating Pennsylvania’s law requiring a 24-hour waiting period and 24 counts of illegal abortions after the viability of the child. However, none of these illegal abortions counted toward his title as America’s biggest serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders because of his practice of having his nurses deliver alive-and-healthy babies who were later killed either directly or by neglect.

His defenders, both in the courtroom and in the press, sought to portray him as merely a sloppy practitioner of partial-birth abortion. That procedure kills the baby after it is mostly, but not quite completely, delivered. Gosnell couldn’t be bothered to observe that fine distinction. After all, if it is legal to kill a baby a few centimeters and a few seconds before birth, what magically makes it illegal a few feet and a few minutes after birth?

This defense cast a spotlight on a plainly indefensible idea: that humanity and the protection of law are bestowed on a person by his passage through space and time. This ridiculous logic inevitably leads to a blurring of all human decency. Those who are unable to see that a fetus is a baby have no reason to see a baby as a murder victim—for the very same reason.

Empty press seats, Photo: J.D. Mullane

America’s press corps went into vapor-lock. Gosnell’s actual practice was too sick to support. But there was no logical way to distinguish his practice from what they were already supporting. So, they just didn’t show up.

The most sensational trial of a serial killer in the history of America had virtually no reporters in the court room. The biggest crime since 1893 could not be covered because the reporters could not say why it was wrong.

One of those who noticed was Mollie Ziegler Hemingway who spent her earliest years in Kemmerer and later grew up in Colorado. As a reporter for GetReligion.org she watched local coverage on Gosnell’s trial for three weeks waiting for any coverage by the mainstream media. On April 7, 2013 she published a story about the blackout and followed up with six more, published between April 10 and April 16.

Meanwhile, J.D. Mullane, a reporter for Calkins Media, snapped a picture of rows of empty seats that had been reserved for the press. The photo went viral, prompting Kiersten Powers of USA Today to break the media silence. She published a column subtitled: “We’ve forgotten what belongs on Page One.”

Mollie Hemingway, Reporter at GetReligion.org

Once the dam broke, all the major networks and newspapers dispatched reporters to Philadelphia to cover the trial. This had a significant impact both on the strength of the prosecution and on American public opinion.

In the new Gosnell movie, the role of Mollie Hemingway and J.D. Mullane are woven together into a fictional character named Mollie Mullaney. In many ways she is the heroine of the story. She reminds us of the vital need for an unflinching press corps that will cover, and not cover up stories that challenge the media narrative. Only by exposing the darkness of our hidden inhumanities can the press help us regain humanity.