Charles Ray Hatcher (July 16, 1929 – December
7, 1984), was an American serial killer who confessed to murdering 16
people between 1969 and 1982.
Childhood and youth
Charles Ray Hatcher was born July 16, 1929 in Mound
City, Missouri, a small town 34 miles north of St. Joseph. He was the
youngest of Jesse and Lula Hatcher's four children. His father was an
ex-convict and an abusive alcoholic. Hatcher was teased in school, and
he would often inflict pain on his classmates.
In the spring of 1935, he and his older brothers were
flying a kite with copper wire they had found in an old Model T Ford.
His oldest brother, Arthur Allen, was about to hand the kite to him when
it hit a high-voltage power line and electrocuted him. Arthur was
pronounced dead at the scene. Soon afterward, his father left home and
divorced his mother. His mother remarried several times, and in 1945,
Hatcher moved with his mother and her third husband to St. Joseph.
Crimes
1947–1963
In 1947, Hatcher was convicted of auto theft in St.
Joseph after stealing a logging truck from Iowa-Missouri Walnut Company,
his employer of two weeks. He received a two-year suspended sentence. In
1948, he was convicted of auto theft a second time for stealing a 1937
Buick in St. Joseph. Hatcher was sentenced to two years in Missouri
State Penitentiary. On June 8, 1949, Hatcher was released from prison
after serving a little more than half of his time; however, he was back
in prison in just a few months, after being convicted of forging a $10
check at a gas station in Maryville. On March 18, 1951, Hatcher escaped
from prison and attempted a burglary, but was caught and received an
extra two years in prison.
After serving his additional time, Hatcher was
released from prison on July 14, 1954. He stole a 1951 Ford in Orrick
and was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison. Before he was
sentenced, Hatcher attempted to escape from the Ray County Jail in
Richmond and received an additional two years. On March 18, 1959,
Hatcher was released from prison after the sixth prison sentence of his
career.
On June 26, 1959, Hatcher attempted to abduct a 16-year-old
St. Joseph newspaper boy named Steven Pellham while threatening him with
a butcher knife. Pellham reported the crime, and Hatcher was arrested
when the police stopped him in a stolen vehicle.
Hatcher was sentenced to five years in the Missouri
State Penitentiary for the attempted abduction and auto theft under the
Habitual Criminal Act. While Hatcher was waiting to be transported to
prison, he unsuccessfully attempted to break out of the Buchanan County
Jail. When Hatcher arrived at the Missouri State Penitentiary, he
claimed to be the most notorious criminal in northwest Missouri since
Jesse James.
On July 2, 1961, inmate Jerry Tharrington was found
raped and stabbed to death on the prison’s kitchen loading dock. Hatcher
was the only one missing from the kitchen crew at the time of the murder.
He was sent to solitary confinement for Tharrington’s murder, but there
was not enough evidence to convict him in court. While in solitary
confinement for the murder, Hatcher wrote a note claiming that he needed
psychiatric treatment; however, the prison psychologist felt that it was
simply a scheme to get out of solitary and possibly out of prison early.
Treatment was refused, and Hatcher was returned to the general
population. His sentence was reduced to three quarters the original
time, and he was released on August 24, 1963.
1969–1977
On August 27, 1969, Hatcher confessed to abducting a
twelve year old boy named William Freeman in Antioch, California. He
claimed he had told the boy to come with him, taken him to a creek, and
strangled him.
On August 29, 1969, six-year-old Gilbert Martinez was
reported missing in San Francisco. According to the six-year-old girl
with whom he was playing, Martinez walked away with a man who offered
him ice cream. He was found by a man walking his dog as the boy was
being beaten and sexually assaulted. Police arrived and arrested the
assailant, who identified himself as Albert Ralph Price, although he
carried identification with the name Hobert Prater. Martinez survived
the assault, and Federal Bureau of Investigation records later
identified the man as Charles R. Hatcher.
Still going by the name Albert Price, Hatcher was
charged with assault with attempt to commit sodomy and kidnapping. He
was ordered to undergo competency evaluations to determine his
competence to stand trial. A complete Psychological evaluation was
ordered when Hatcher was unresponsive during the preliminary evaluations.
During this time, he claimed to hear voices, and faked delusions and
suicide attempts.
In December 1970, Hatcher was sent back and forth
between the courts and hospital multiple times. One psychiatrist
diagnosed him as having a passive-aggressive personality with paraphilia
and pedophilia. It was reported that the hospital staff felt Hatcher was
fabricating or exaggerating the symptoms of his mental disorders. He was
examined by two psychiatrists in January 1971. He was declared insane by
the first one, who recommended vigorous treatment in a secure hospital.
The second psychiatrist declared him to be incompetent to stand trial
and sent him back to the hospital.
On May 24, 1971, Hatcher was sent to trial and
pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was sent to a different
hospital for more evaluations, where it was determined that he was unfit
to stand trial. On June 2, Hatcher escaped from the hospital. He was
caught a week later in Colusa and arrested for suspected auto theft
under the name Richard Lee Grady. Hatcher was returned to the California
State Hospital for a mental evaluation. In April 1972, hospital staff
determined that his treatment was unsuccessful and that he was a danger
to other patients, after which he was sent to the prison state hospital
in Vacaville.
In August 1972, Hatcher was transferred to San
Quentin State Prison to stand trial, three years after the crime. He was
ordered to undergo two final examinations: one declared him competent to
stand trial and the other determined him to be sane at the time of the
crime.
In December 1972, Hatcher was tried for and convicted
of the abduction and molestation of Martinez. In January 1972, he was
committed to the California State Hospital as a "mentally disordered
sexual offender".
On March 28, 1973, security guards found Hatcher
hiding in a cooler near the hospital's main courtyard with two sheets
stuffed into his pants, after which he admitted to an escape attempt. He
was sent back to court for sentencing after doctors determined he was
still a threat to society. In April, Hatcher was sentenced to one year
to life and sent to a medium security prison in Vacaville.
In May 1973, a psychologist found Hatcher to be a "manipulative
institutionalized sociopath". In June 1973, he attempted suicide by
slashing his wrists after it was recommended that he be transferred to a
maximum security prison. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with paranoid
schizophrenia, and he remained at Vacaville.
In August 1975, guards reported good behavior at
Hatcher's parole review. In June 1976, the California Parole Board found
that Hatcher had improved dramatically through his time in prison and
set a parole date of December 25, 1978. As a result of the passage of a
bill giving inmates credit for time spent in jails and mental hospitals,
Hatcher received a modified parole date in January 1977. He was released
to a halfway house in San Francisco on May 20, 1977.
1978–1982
On May 26, 1978, four-year-old Eric Christgen
disappeared in downtown Saint Joseph, Missouri. His body later turned up
along the Missouri River; he had been sexually abused and died of
suffocation. The police questioned more than 100 possible suspects,
including "every known pervert in town," to no avail.
One of them was Melvin Reynolds, a 25-year-old man of
limited intelligence who had been sexually abused himself as a child and
who had some homosexual episodes as an adolescent. Reynolds, although
extremely agitated by the investigation, cooperated through several
interrogations over a period of months, including two polygraph
examinations and one interrogation under hypnosis.
In December 1978, he was questioned under sodium
amytal ("truth serum") and made an ambiguous remark that intensified
police suspicion. Two months later, in February 1979, the police brought
the still cooperative Reynolds in for another round of interrogation --
14 hours of questions, promises, and threats. Finally, Reynolds gave in
and said, "I'll say so if you want me to."
In the weeks that followed, Reynolds embellished this
confession with details that were fed to him, deliberately or otherwise.
That was enough to convince the prosecutor to charge Reynolds, and to
convince a jury to convict him of second-degree murder. He was sentenced
to life imprisonment. Four years later, Reynolds was released when
Charles Hatcher confessed to three murders, including that of Eric
Christgen.
Death
On July 29, hikers found the nude, ravaged body of
11-year-old Michelle Steele, beaten and strangled to death on a bank of
the Missouri River near St. Joseph. Hatcher was arrested next day, as he
tried to check in at the St. Joseph State Hospital. While awaiting trial,
he confessed to fifteen other child-murders dating from 1969. The first
victim, 12-year-old William Freeman, had disappeared from Antioch,
California, in August of that year, one day before Hatcher was charged
with child molestation in nearby San Francisco.
In another case, Hatcher penned a crude map that led
searchers to the remains of James Churchill, buried on the grounds of
the Rock Island Army Arsenal, near Davenport, Iowa. It was then that he
also confessed to the murder of Eric Christgen. He was convicted of the
Christgen homicide in October 1983, and drew a term of life imprisonment
with no parole for at least 50 years.
Facing his second Missouri conviction a year later
for the murder of Michelle Steele, Hatcher requested a death sentence
but the jury refused, recommending life on December 3, 1984. Four days
later, Hatcher hanged himself in his cell, at the state prison in
Jefferson City.
