Mr. Baker’s Murder Gland

The criminous career of James Baker does not satisfy the requirements of the good historical murder fancier; he violated all the rules for "good murders" set down by DeQuincey in 1827. For one thing, he murdered strangers. For another, there was no classic motive of love or avarice or vengeance -- only sudden whim. Baker's method, poisoning by cyanide, was not clever or interesting. The final straw: Baker confessed to nine murders when he was not even suspected of committing any.

And yet -- "there are murders which possess some fantastic detail -- a trifle perhaps but sufficient to give them value." So says Edmund Pearson. And that's why the case of James Baker can tastefully be resurrected for examination.

Baker was born in Warren, Ohio, shortly after the turn of the century and left home at age 16 to travel the globe as a sailor. When he came into the custody of the Detroit police in 1930, it was on suspicion of stealing twenty dollars from the safe of the Guggenheim Laboratory in New York where he was once employed. But our subject had an interest in poisons and indulged in the queer habit of carrying a phial on his person.

Upon his confinement, the 24-year-old -- described as talkative and an "outstanding genius" -- impulsively and affably confessed to poisoning eight men and shooting another. His remarkable confession to the Detroit police began with a description of his first-ever murder. At eighteen years of age, Baker, then a sailor, found himself in a sailor's cafe in Houston. He sat down next to a man who had a cup of coffee in front of him. Baker explained: "While he was looking away I had a sudden impulse to put some poison in his coffee. He died almost at once. I learned afterward that his name was Honeycut."

The bizarre murder of a total stranger -- committed just because the murderer wanted to see a man die -- gave Baker a "funny sort of mental satisfaction." Over the ensuing handful of years, Baker went on to murder a man in Hamburg, another in the Philippines, a Hindu in Bombay -- and to cap his career he poisoned the coffeepot of a crew on a vessel bound for Venezuela, killing three more men. When he was arrested on the theft charge the police found a revolver in his possession that had eight notches on it.

It was the murder of Henry S. Gaw, a night watchman at the Guggenheim Laboratory whom Baker killed to access the safe, that resulted in murder charges and eventually to life imprisonment in Sing Sing.

Needless to say, the authorities who prosecuted Baker in 1930 did not know what to make of him. They called him an "impulse criminal" and a "maniac."

But one criminologist offered a scientific explanation for the secret of Baker and his type. Baker, you see, had a gland hitherto unknown to medical men that led him to his violent acts.

So posited one Arthur Hoerl, an amateur criminologist and author of detective fiction. Hoerl's theory was well received, picked up by the wire services, and reprinted in newspapers across the country. "Science has proven that there are in the human body today certain organs and glands which are not used," said Hoerl. "With the development of civilization, they have outlived their usefulness, have ceased to function. The tonsils and the appendix are two instances of this. Is there some still undiscovered organ or gland which sends the impulse to kill to the human brain? There is something in our intricate makeup which controls our emotions and brings about love, hatred, and rage. When we sorrow a gland releases tears. In a moment of rage cannot some over-developed gland advance an emotion to the impulse to kill?"

Those inclined to laugh at Mr. Hoerl and his theory are challenged to come up with a better explanation.

Comments

[Lennie Briscoe]

Gland? Not so sure...
There seems to be alot made of the desensitization of children to violence through video games and Hollywood movies. I can completely understand this view. When you kill someone in a video game, you don't see the gore and are physically uneffected by the act (I'm guessing what would be the real effect). Our consience doesn't play with the morality and hence through repetition we start to believe its O.K. Perhaps that is why modern killers can kill without any motive or after thought... they are trained not to think. Add a little mental disorder to spice up the mix and you have Columbine etc..