Part 22 (1/2)

Not far away, Ruth's father found his little girl.

She was lying nude in the forest, on her back, under a discarded section of floor covering. Her clothes were scattered around her.

One of her socks had been stuffed down Ruth's throat, causing her death by asphyxiation. The other sock was on her foot. There was a human bite mark on her left breast, and scratches on her thigh and right knee.

There were, however, no defensive wounds, and no evidence that the child had been bound. Nothing of value had been stolen, either.

Crime scene investigators retrieved a freshly broken branch nearby, and believed that the killer had inserted the limb in Ruth's v.a.g.i.n.a. He apparently had not done so violently. The girl had sustained some internal injury, including laceration to her bladder. But no seminal fluid was present, and her reproductive organs were intact and uninjured.

At the time of Ruth Steinmann's murder, Werner Ferrari lived about three miles from where she was found, a prima facie reason for suspecting he might have committed the homicide. He owned a jacket matching the description of the one the girl's parents saw the young man wearing that day. Ferrari also owned a moped identical to the one the Steinmanns described to police. He also had no alibi for his whereabouts on that Friday afternoon.

A week after the murder, Ferrari broke up with his girlfriend and moved.

The second suspected victim, eight-year-old Rebecca Bieri, lived in Niederbipp, about forty miles west of Zurich. Rebecca disappeared on her way home from school on Sat.u.r.day, March 20, 1982, approximately twenty-two months after the Steinmann homicide. Bieri also was slight and had brown hair.

Her skeletonized remains were recovered in August 1982, in a wooded area. One of her stockings was found around her neck. Although neither the cause nor the manner of her death could be established to a certainty, Rebecca Bieri was believed to have been strangled with her stocking.

About a month after her disappearance, Werner Ferrari changed residences.

Loredana Mancini was a seven-year-old, also short and slight with brown hair. She lived in Rumlang, just north of Zurich. Mancini vanished late April 18, 1983, after walking out her front door to go shopping nearby. Her skeleton was discovered about twelve miles away, in a foxhole in the woods.

Ferrari was familiar with the area where Mancini's remains were found.

The fourth case was also the earliest of the murders to which Ferrari later confessed. Like Loredana Mancini, ten-year-old Benjamin Egli of Regensberg, just west of Rumlang, had gone shopping unescorted late on a Thursday afternoon.

Ferrari told police that he'd lured the boy off the street with promises they'd play together with toys at his house. Once he had the child in his car, Ferrari drove Benjamin to a woods, where he killed him.

The boy was found, fully clothed, with no evidence that he'd been bound, beaten, or s.e.xually a.s.saulted. Cause of death was strangulation by ligature, which must have been done carefully, since Benjamin's hyoid bone was unharmed.

Ferrari said he murdered Egli after hearing people nearby. He said he feared being discovered with the youth.

He changed residences two weeks after the homicide.

Seven months later, on Mother's Day, Sat.u.r.day, May 12, 1984, eight-year-old Peter Roth of Mogelsberg, about thirty miles east of Zurich, vanished on his way home from school. No trace of the boy was ever found.

Daniel Suter was suspected victim number six. A blond seven-year-old, just over three feet tall, Daniel visited a fair in Rumlang with his parents on Sat.u.r.day night, September 7, 1985.

Ferrari later confessed that he found the boy alone at the fair and lured Daniel into his car. Witnesses told a slightly different story of seeing a child answering Daniel's description being forcibly abducted from the fairground.

Ferrari said that as they drove away together he tried to touch Daniel. The boy recoiled and tried to escape. That is when Ferrari strangled him with a curtain cord ligature-he emphasized that he did not want to touch Daniel's neck with his hands-and then bound the dead child neck-to-ankles with the cord.

He dumped Daniel Suter's body in a cornfield less than a mile from where he killed him, and drove away with a keepsake, a toy ball belonging to Daniel.

Significantly, Ferrari had once been inst.i.tutionalized in a juvenile home less than a half mile from where he disposed of Suter.

The boy's body was recovered where Ferrari had dumped him. Daniel was fully dressed save for his jacket, a shoe, and one sock, which were missing. Cause of death was ligature strangulation.

There was no evidence of s.e.xual a.s.sault, although Daniel's pants were unzipped. He had not been beaten, and apparently had not struggled with Ferrari to any extent. The Suter boy suffered no defensive wounds.

Ferrari changed addresses within two months of the slaying.

Exactly three weeks later, on Sat.u.r.day, September 28, 1985, Sarah Oberson, aged six, disappeared at midday on her way home from school. Sarah, who was small for her age, lived about 120 miles southwest of Zurich in a little town not far from the French border. There were no witnesses, and she was never found.

On Mother's Day, Sat.u.r.day, May 3, 1986, in Wetzikon, about twenty-five miles southeast of Zurich, nine-year-old Edith Trittenba.s.s vanished on her way to school. The small, slender child was never found.

Another seventeen months pa.s.sed before it was Christian Widmer's turn.

Widmer vanished some time after 7:00 p.m. on Sat.u.r.day night, October 17,1987, in the town of Riniken, northwest of Zurich. Christian was last seen inside a Riniken gymnasium, where the ten-year-old was attending a Boy Scout fair. He was reported missing at midnight.

Ferrari in his confession to this killing said he was in the neighborhood because a girlfriend lived behind the gym.

He said he met Christian in a hallway and invited the boy to a comic book kiosk. From there, the two went to a cafe for a sandwich and a c.o.ke. Ferrari then walked the Widmer boy into a nearby woods, he said.

He insisted that all he wished to do with Christian was to lay his head on the boy's body.

But Christian resisted Ferrari's advances. Angered, the killer first tried to throttle the boy with his bare hands, he told police, but Christian began to cry. So Ferrari used his belt to strangle the youngster from behind.

He also inserted a stick in the dead boy's r.e.c.t.u.m, he said, because he was angry.

Christian Widmer was neither bound nor beaten, nor did he show any defensive wounds when found. No seminal fluids were found, and his hyoid bone was undamaged.

Ferrari quit his job and broke off with his girlfriend within two months of murdering Widmer.

His final known victim in the series was Fabienne Imhof.

On August 26, 1989, a Sat.u.r.day, nine-year-old Fabienne and an eight-year-old girlfriend attended a fair with Fabienne's parents in Hagendorf, about halfway between Zurich and Niederbipp, where Rebecca Bieri was killed more than seven years earlier.

The girls became separated from Fabienne's parents. While in search of them, Fabienne and her friend encountered Werner Ferrari.

He told the girls he knew where the adults were to be found, and offered to accompany Fabienne back to them, leaving her friend behind.

Ferrari led Imhof into a woods, where she began to cry, he later told police. After slapping Fabienne, he began to strangle her, but became frightened. He then pushed her face into the ground, and continued strangling her from behind.

Ferrari removed the child's panties and took them away with him, along with some of the little girl's candy. As was true with the earlier cases, there was no indication that he beat the child or penetrated her with his p.e.n.i.s. He did insert a stick into her v.a.g.i.n.a. Her hyoid bone was not damaged.

Ferrari later told the police he intended to quit his job following the crime. He also maintained that his motive was not s.e.xual. All he wished to do was gain warmth from Fabienne's body, he said.

After sorting and a.n.a.lyzing the pertinent details of the ten cases, Hazelwood turned his attention to Werner Ferrari's personal history.

He learned from the files that Werner's mother was a drunk who bore him at age eighteen. Ferrari never met his father. Between the ages of eight and seventeen, he lived in the juvenile facility near the cornfield where Daniel Suter's body was dumped. Records show that while in the youth home Ferrari would not play with other children, refused to obey adults, stole, and was a chronic liar.

Back in his mother's custody, he committed a series of burglaries, and was sent to a reformatory, from which he escaped. In 1965, at age nineteen, Ferrari attempted to derail a pa.s.senger train by placing several large stones on the railroad tracks. A psychiatrist who interviewed him in jail at the time diagnosed Ferrari as a pedophile, likely to commit s.e.x crimes against children once he was released.

The psychiatrist was correct. Five years later, Ferrari killed a small boy and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. He served nine years of the term, and was released in August, 1979, approximately nine months before Ruth Steinmann's asphyxiation murder.

Ferrari's various ex-girlfriends described him as a humorless, friendless loner who eschewed physical s.e.x with them, but enjoyed watching the women undress, and very much enjoyed resting his head on their unclothed chests or stomachs.