Free The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes by Robin Odell

observed some strange goings on. In June 1985 they had seen her with a man who appeared to be drunk. On the evening of 22 June they heard a noise that sounded like a vacuum cleaner or an electric motor of some kind. The next day they were surprised to see Weber carry down seventeen plastic refuse bags which she took away in her car.
    It was known that Weber had hired an electric saw but failed to return it, saying it had been stolen. Sensing a breakthrough in their enquiries, police recollected that in September 1985 a fisherman had reeled in a suitcase from the River Marne. The suitcase belonged to Bernard Hettier and contained a torso, minus head and limbs. Pathologists believed the dismemberment had been effected with an electric saw.
    It took Examining Magistrate Thiel four years to accumulate enough evidence to put Weber on trial for murder. Incredibly there were no traces of blood or tissue in Weber’s apartment although she had acquired guns, dynamite and a collection of official rubber stamps. Bernard Hettier’s car was found in a rented garage in Cannes. Weber had left a trail of deception including false documents, forged prescriptions and false names.
    Tried for the murders of Hettier and Fixart in March 1991, La Sorcière, as she had been dubbed by the press, was found guilty of killing Hettier and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. She was cleared of murdering Fixart due to lack of evidence.
    Fancy Knifework
    A father and son out scavenging along the banks of the river near Lynwood, California, in the US in April 1928, found the torso of a young woman floating in the water. This was the start of what became known as the “Lynwood Torso Mystery”.
    A post-mortem carried out on the torso determined that the limbs and head of the corpse had been detached by someone with dissection skills using surgical instruments. The immediate problem facing investigators was to identify the body. They began by checking reports on missing persons but, six weeks after the grim discovery of the torso, there was still no identification.
    The big question was, where was the missing head? This was dramatically resolved on 18 May when some boys were seen fooling around with a head on a pole. Horrified residents of Lynwood at first thought the head was some kind of mask but then came the grim reality that it was a human skull.
    Pathologists matched the head to the torso and were able to assess the age of the corpse as around forty to fifty years. Investigators continued to check out missing persons reports and sought help from the public to help identify the woman.
    The breakthrough came when a man reported that his former wife, Laura Bell Sutton, had been absent from her Los Angeles home since 17 May. Another man, describing himself as a friend, also came forward saying Laura Bell had been distressed by the recent death of her mother and might have left for that reason. The informant was Frank Westlake, a recently widowed businessman.
    Laura Bell was a forty-five-year-old divorcee who lived alone but was known to have an active social life and several men friends. Frank Westlake was one of these. Investigators talked to Laura’s family and friends and established that she was last seen alive on 29 March when she paid a visit to her attorney. When it was discovered that fresh flowers had been put on her mother’s grave, it led to speculation that Laura was still alive.
    The missing woman’s dentist was consulted and he was able to confirm that, without doubt, the remains retrieved from the river at Lynwood were those of Laura Bell. Investigators turned their attention to the dead woman’s male companions and, in particular, Frank Westlake.
    It seemed that while he may have been Laura’s lover, he was also her business manager. They shared a joint bank account and he was the beneficiary of her life assurance. When it turned out that Westlake had worked as a surgeon in Illinois, the police began to take a closer interest in