Harvey Murray Glatman

When he arrived at her Sweetzer Avenue flat, early, he asked her if she would mind posing at his studio instead. The lighting was better. Surveying the floppy-eared, bespectacled wimp, she tossed off all caution and followed him to his car. He drove her to his "studio," actually his own apartment. Once inside, he explained that since the shots would accompany a story about bondage, he would have to illustrate by tying her up. If she had any doubts, the thought of $20 an hour overrode. She consented, throwing out her wrists as he bound them, sitting back in his armchair as he wrapped her ankles, and slinking back seductively this way and that way.

When she was fully strapped and muzzled, he drew a .32 Browning automatic from his pocket. "In 1957, California had no waiting period for firearms purchases," says author Michael Newton in Rope, "no background checks, no pesky licenses. You didn't even have to show ID. It was a cash and carry business..." Harvey had had the cash, and he carried.

Waving the steel-blue weapon under her chin, he untied her hands and ordered her to strip - slowly - as he snapped her in various poses, some bound, some free, all depicting her in control of someone off-screen. Like a movie director, he barked out, You're frightened! You're curious! Be scared, but be tempting! Lift a leg! Drop a strap! Snap snap whirr, snap, snap whirr. The poses varied and grew more erotic - more emphatic to Harvey's personal soul - as the shoot progressed..

In a chapter devoted to Glatman in his book, Signature Killers, Robert D. Keppel, Ph.D., explains how Harvey's photographs were his "personal signature of murder". Keppel finds Harvey's use of photography telling: "(His photos) were more than souvenirs because, in Glatman's mind, they actually carried the power of his need for bondage and control. They showed the women in various poses: sitting up or lying down, hands always bound behind their backs, innocent looks on their faces, but with eyes wide with terror because they had guessed what was to come."

When the pictures were taken, he had his way with Judy Dull. Oblige, he commanded, or die. Whimpering at her foolishness, the girl obeyed. As the outside world dimmed through Harvey's window shades, Johnny Glenn raped her several times, binding her limbs at the conclusion of each session. Relaxing, satisfied for the meantime, he made her sit beside him and nuzzle him on the sofa as he watched his favorite TV comedies. A few more shows, he promised, and he'd take her home.

But, Harvey had no intention of taking her anywhere except to a perfect little spot in the desert he had discovered one day while cruising near the vicinity of Indio. Way out, amongst the coyotes, and far, far away from the cops who could send him back behind bars for evermore. Really, he kept telling himself over and over again, he didn’t want to kill anyone, but, what else was there to do? He had to have her, had to possess her, had to glutton on her. Damn, it wasn't his fault! And damn it, nobody was going to send him to prison for something he couldn't help.

How else was he supposed to get a woman?

At 10:30 p.m., Harvey announced that he would let her go, but he would have to dump her off out of town for her to find her own way home. She probably reasoned that he wanted time to escape, and she did not argue. Tying her wrists once again, he led her to his car, his gun in one hand as he steered the vehicle down the freeway, south to San Bernardino, east to Mission Road, into the open flatland of Riverside County lit only by stars. He kept on driving, miles more to go, and didn't pause until he had passed Banning and Palm Springs, finally slowing down once he passed Thousand Palms. A hundred miles from Los Angeles, here in the middle of nowhere, he stopped the car. Around them was night and nature.

Pulling Dull from the car, he acted as if he was about to untie her. She sighed. Then, in a single move, he lassoed her neck, shoved her to her knees, twirled her on her belly and rung the other loop of the cord around her ankles. Pulling up, her body snapped below him. A single groan, she was dead.

But, Harvey needed a few more photos by flash, something to remember his conquest. He molded Dull like a clay figure; an arm here, an arm there, a leg spread, a knee turned this way. Dead no matter how she was shaped. He wanted it to appear that way.

Of the victim's death photos, Dr. Keppel adds, "They were even more horrifying to police (than the in-life ones) because they revealed Glatman's true nature. They showed the ways the killer had positioned his victims, and the psychological depravity they evidenced was deeply revolting. That a human being could so reveal the depths of his own weakness and feelings of insignificance through photographs was something investigators had not seen before."

Seven months later, Harvey met victim number two.

Shirley Bridgeford before her death

Shirley Ann Bridgeford, 24 years old, recently divorced and with two sons, joined the popular Patty Sullivan Lonely Hearts Club in L.A., hoping to meet the right man. All she knew is that she didn't want someone like her first husband. She wasn't picky, having given up on Prince Charming, so when fellow member George Williams asked her out for a date March 7, 1958, she accepted. Williams did not set her heart fluttering - his ears were so large and there was something, well, mousy about him - but she figured a date is a date and beat sitting home Saturday night. He promised to take her square dancing; at least it would be a night on the town and a free dinner.

Harvey, as George Williams, showed up at the appointed time, 7:45 p.m., at her home on Tuxford Street, Sun Valley. Taken aback by a house-full of company to greet him, he kept his cool and played the hopeful boyfriend to the hilt, complementing the way Shirley looked and extending a "Nice to meet you all!" on his way out the door.

Once in the car, he asked Bridgeford if she would mind not going dancing; he had a headache and preferred to take a drive in the country instead, perhaps grab some dinner along the way. Sure, she replied, that sounded very nice. Driving south from Sun Valley, they stopped for dinner in Oceanside.

Afterwards, they returned to the car where Harvey resumed a southward direction.

"If we believe his later statements, he had not decided yet to rape and murder Shirley Bridgeford," Michael Newton reports in Rope. "He 'kept on thinking of her two children,' Harvey said, telling himself that Shirley was a 'different type' than Judy Dull. She didn't strip and show her body off to strangers. Shirley was a nice girl. Still...Her very presence in the car and the scent of her perfume incited Glatman...Harvey knew what he was missing if he did not follow through."

At last the car edged into the foothills of the looming Vallecito Mountains near Anza State Park. Harvey idled the car, letting it roll off the dirt road and several feet onto the dusty sand floor. Bridgeford looked at him quizzically. What omens she may have had crystallized sharp when she found the barrel of his .32 tucked between her breasts.

"Undress!" Harvey dictated.

She begged not to, but he insisted, and when she was naked, he ravaged her. The rapes, the humiliation, then he forced her onto the desert where he told her it was photo time. More pleas, more refusals from her abductor. He took photos of her dressed and he took photos of her nude. He took photos in many positions, his ritual orderly and timed... snap snap whirr. In the blackness the flashbulbs popped, one after another, crazy little explosions catching crazy little scenes. Snap snap whirr. To be sure he had useable products for all his trouble, he made her wait till the sun rose so he could take some photos in daylight.

When he thought he had enough to last him a while, he garroted his model and killed her.

Before he left the carcass in the dust, however, he did what he had done with Judy Dull: took some death shots in a number of wrenching positions.

Snap snap, whirr.

Then, as the maroon sun rose over the mountains behind him, Harvey went home to his darkroom for some real fun.

Four months later, he discovered Ruth Mercado (Angela Rojas) and repeated the process, by then refined, dumping her body not far from what was left of Shirley Bridgeford's.

In the meantime, three girls' families, friends and landlords were asking questions of the police...Where did they go and why can't you find them?. Dull's disappearance had been one thing - women ran off all the time to evade boyfriends and husbands and even families - but then came the evaporation of Bridgeford and Mercado, two models and one "nice" girl, each one gone after leaving their place with a single male. Was there a connection?

Harvey had so far been able to control women with a gun and a rope, especially a rope, his symbol of sexual power. He now believed he could go on doing it forever.

That is where he goofed.

In the summer of 1958 Glatman had discovered the Diane Studio, one of the higher-priced but better reputed modeling agencies on Sunset Boulevard. Its models were often chosen by legitimate cameramen for magazine ads and TV commercials; Diane, the owner, often posed herself. Of course, the studio attracted the shutterbugs, too, like Harvey Glatman willing to pay as high as $30 for an hour's striptease.

It was to Diane's that Harvey came late afternoon of October 27 wanting to rent a model's time. Actually, he wanted Diane herself, but the proprietor, who was familiar with the man she knew as Frank Johnson, was totally turned off by his unkempt hair and repugnant body odor. Pretending to be too busy to accommodate him, she nevertheless offered studio space and the use of one of her particular models if the girl would accept. "Frank" was game, so Diane phoned a woman who had, in fact, just signed on the previous week. Lorraine Vigil, eager for her first modeling gig, accepted. Diane made the arrangements: Harvey would pick her up at eight.

However, after the unfavorable client left, Diane ruminated. She called Lorraine back to warn her, "Be careful with this loser. He's not a professional and is, er, rather creepy - you know what I mean?" Vigil promised she would take care and thanked the agent for the advice.

With Diane's alert signal still ringing in her ears, it was with great reticence that Vigil got into Harvey's old Dodge that night; she watched his every move as he bent to release the clutch and silently head toward the Santa Ana Freeway.

"The studio's not this way," she instructed.

"Oh...didn't I tell you? I've been pre-empted by another client. We're going to my private studio instead."

No no, thought Lorraine to herself. The signal started to vibrate inside her head.

"Are you sure?"

"Cross my heart," he giggled, and did so. It was the first time that Lorraine really took a good look at his face. Even his grin was unsavory.