Story cont.
Panzram was sentenced to 25 years at United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth in Kansas. There, he crushed laundry foreman Robert Warnke’s skull with an iron bar, landing a spot on death row and refusing human rights groups’ efforts to spare him from the gallows. After years of abuse, “it was his form of suicide,” Borowski said. Panzram got the death he craved in September 1930. “Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard!” he seethed at the executioner — “rage personified,” as he referred to himself, until the end. “I could kill 10 men while you’re fooling around!”
Lesser kept Panzram’s writings, but publishers weren’t comfortable with the graphic manuscript until 1970, when it was published as Killer: A Journal of Murder. “The guy was really quite an amazing writer,” said Joe Coleman, who painted the cover art for the book, and who was “struck by the intelligence and the things [Panzram] could have been capable of.”
Beyond helping criminologists better understand the minds of killers like Panzram, Borowski said the autobiography serves as a lesson — one that still holds relevance amid recent reports of inmate abuse at Rikers Island and other prisons. “He tries to teach our future generations not to create more monsters like him,” he said, adding that Panzram, “above anybody else, should be listened to.”
Lesser kept Panzram’s writings, but publishers weren’t comfortable with the graphic manuscript until 1970, when it was published as Killer: A Journal of Murder. “The guy was really quite an amazing writer,” said Joe Coleman, who painted the cover art for the book, and who was “struck by the intelligence and the things [Panzram] could have been capable of.”
Beyond helping criminologists better understand the minds of killers like Panzram, Borowski said the autobiography serves as a lesson — one that still holds relevance amid recent reports of inmate abuse at Rikers Island and other prisons. “He tries to teach our future generations not to create more monsters like him,” he said, adding that Panzram, “above anybody else, should be listened to.”
