In the summer of 1946, seventeen-year-old William George Heirens (dubbed the Lipstick Killer) was convicted of the Chicago murders of two women and a young girl. This case in particular has been a source of enormous controversy in unfair justice. If we forget about the fact that this man - made out by the press to be a monstrous serial killer - is known as Illinois’ most accomplished inmate, he was also forced by police into confessing to exaggerated crimes that he, in fact, did not commit. Violating several of Heirens’ Constitutional rights, officials subjected him to an interrogation under the influence of sodium pentathol, popularly known as "truth serum”. This drug - very popular during the first half of the twentieth century, used to seduce confessions from suspected criminals - was administered to Heirens by psychiatrists against his will. Anything he "admitted" to could not be proven true of untrue due to the influence of the barbiturate.
Having earned a college degree from the University of Chicago while incarcerated, learning to tailor, fix televisions and paint, he was also the clerk for the minister of Vienna prison for twenty-seven years. Heirens made himself a life as a prisoner. He was also a self-taught jailhouse lawyer and had used his legal knowledge to help himself and other inmates. The issues revolving around the case history of William G. Heirens are complex and many, full of legal play and counter-play; but due to all of the complications, a fully productive man lived for sixty-two years and died in prison, never having the chance to live as the upstanding citizen he proved that he could be.
Instances that compromise a life-sentence happen all the time. It is not fair to expect a person cannot recover from their mistakes and deserves to spend an entire lifetime in an institution. Change is able to be accomplished by those who want to accomplish it. And while this certainly doesn't stand true for all convicts, those that it does apply to should have the chance to be set freed.
Another instance of unfair justice is that of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, two ten-year-old boys from the UK who, in the winter of 1998, kidnapped and brutally murdered 2-year-old James Bulger of Merseyside, England. These two young boys were sentenced to only eight years in juvenile detention and as soon as they were eighteen, they were set free. As a result of public outrage and the belief that these two should have been kept in prison, each young man was given a new name and identity far away from Merseyside. Was it really fair to release incredibly foolhardy adolescents with no sense of remorse and a history of delinquency, but to keep a man who became a model subject of trumped-up charges locked away until the day he died? Serial killers, or suspected killers like Heirens, should not immediately face life in prison, because there is truly so much good they can do.
It is human nature to correct ourselves and change and recover, and the recovery will go to waste if we keep these rectified convicts away from the outside, unable to make any change in the world. If you think about it - these murderers have spent a copious amount of time paying for their mistakes, and a lot of them have turned their lives around and are ready to pay back society for their errors. They want to do good, and they are, in fact, more capable of doing good than most community members. Serial killers are always punished, and they seek redemption and forgiveness.
As it is to change, it is also human nature to forgive and to support, to nourish every member of the general public as long as they’re able to see what they have done, recognize right from wrong and have adequately paid for their transgression(s).
Wolfgang Lange of Germany, responsible for the death of 9 women and one victim’s infant son, had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison and was released for good conduct after only ten. He now lives where nobody knows him or what he has done and he now volunteers as Santa Claus at the charity house, giving gifts away to young children and putting on the appearance of a benevolent Saint. Lange says that he is “completely cured” and is not under any treatment. He says that the murders were a cry for help, and now that he is surrounded by a community that loves him he feels no negative impulses. No need to kill again. How is it possible for a serial killer to end up disguised as a Santa Claus and loved by local children? How is it that a convicted serial killer can be freed so easily? It may be hard to believe that people who can commit such heinous crimes can ever be actually set right and returned to a normal life, but it happens all the time. And, it needs to happen more.
Are they still dangerous? Wolfgang Lange says “no”. William Heirens says “no”. Can we believe them? Most would say we couldn’t, but those killers who have been released have not relapsed into slaying. It’s up to the free citizenry to release vindicated serial killers, for the benefit and goodness of the world.
