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shyscyberchamber.com
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FREAKS
:
The
Hunchback of Memphis |
Date
Added
JUN 2004 |
In January 1982, a strange, appallingly bowed intruder
snatched a teenage girl from the home of her wealthy parents - and, in
a macabre re-enactment of the story of Quasimodo, the Hunchback of
Notre Dame, took her to live with him in a filthy, secluded church
attic.
After Leslie Marie Gattas, aged 15, was finally set free by her
hideously stooping captor, police in America launched one of their
most incredible manhunts ever, for the 'Hunchback of Memphis'.
They have named their suspect, who is still at liberty, as a man
called Ernest Earle Stubblefield, a 270 pound giant whose back is
permanently bent by a terrible disfigurement.
Allegedly, the lonely, tormented hunchback treated young Leslie as an
adopted, though trapped, daughter throughout her terrifying ordeal.
By day, they slept in a tiny crawl space in the attic. By night,
the hunchback would take his treasured victim down into the church
itself, or even outside for walks. Memphis cops later revealed
that they played backgammon, watched a television which the hunchback
had installed in the attic and lived on food stolen from the church
refrigerator.
Says Leslie: 'He was a very lonely man. He treated me well, but
all the time he knew that my only thoughts were on how I could escape.
He didn't touch me or harm me physically in any way. In a sense
I feel great pity for him, because his mind must be incredibly mixed
up. He has the appearance of a monster, yet although what he did
to me was terrible, I am not sure that he is the evil ogre the world
now thinks he is.'
Carolyn Browder, a close friend of the Gattas family told an American
newspaper of the bizarre night that the twisted hunchback climbed
through a house window and got into the bedroom where Leslie was
sleeping.
He tied her up and drove her through Memphis to the Christ United
Church in the Gattas family car, which he had stolen. It was 12
hours before Leslie's family called the police, thinking that she had
simply wandered off with a girlfriend who was also missing from her
home at the time.
During the four month kidnap ordeal, Leslie tried desperately to
summon rescue by dropping concealed notes around the church whenever
she was taken out for moonlight walks by her hunchback captor.
But, ironically, the church pastor, Reverend Gerry Corlew, dismissed
the scribbled pleas for help as the work of cranks. At one
stage, police actually searched the attic, as they turned the city of
Memphis upside down in their hunt, but they failed to look in the
camouflaged crawl space where Leslie and the hunchback lay hidden.
Leslie was finally rescued in April by two maintenance men who were
armed with an axe-handle and a table leg, hoping to catch vandals or
youngsters trying to steal church possessions. They spotted
Leslie and her hunchback tormentor on one of their bizarre midnight
prowls. One of the men, 55 year old Milton Bennett, recalls: 'We
couldn't believe our eyes. But we knew instantly that it was
Leslie being held by the hunchback because there had been so many
pictures of her in the local newspapers while the police search was
being carried out.
'My partner and I immediately went for the hunchback. I managed
to get him with one blow on the back of his neck with the table leg I
was carrying. He was just like a wild animal. He never
said a word. But he was hurt, and when he saw that we were
prepared to use our weapons again, he just backed off and fled.
He was so fast, we didn't stand a chance of catching him.'
Leslie later identified the 42 year old Stubblefield as her strange,
almost pathetic kidnapper from police 'mug-shot' photos.
Fingerprints taken from the church matched-up - and the search is
still going on for the now identified 'Hunchback of Memphis', whose
ex-wife, Ann Clarke, of Haleyville, Alabama, says: 'He has always been
obsessed with violence and religion, possibly as some kind of
unaccountable result of his deformity. He had wanted to take our
daughter Patti, who was 17, to live with him in Memphis, but I would
not allow it. When I heard of the kidnapping I realised that in
his twisted mind Leslie had become a kind of surrogate replacement for
her.'
Hunchbacks are a much rarer sight nowadays than they once were, mainly
because most cases are not so severe that the bone disorder cannot be
treated.
One of the most incredible stories concerning these figures, now
immortalized by Hollywood horror films, unfolded on 13th July 1842,
when 60 hapless hunchbacks were thrown into jail in London as police
scoured the city for the misshapen wretch who had attempted to shoot
Queen Victoria as she rode in her carriage with King Leopold of
Belgium. The innocent freaks were eventually freed when
hunchback John William Bean was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in
jail - a light sentence because his gun had only been loaded with
pieces of clay pipe. |
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