Carl Panzram | Photos | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers

Carl PANZRAM

Carl Panzram as Jefferson Rhoades

Panzram as Jefferson Rhoades

Once killed six men in one day in Africa and
fed their bodies to hungry crocodiles.

Carl Panzram as “Jeff Davis” inmate # 3194
at Montana State Prison 1913

Carl Panzram in 1915 as Jeff Baldwin, inmate # 7390,
at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

Carl Panzram's cell at the Oregon State Penitentiary

Inmate # 75182
Carl Panzram at Sing Sing Prison 1923

Carl Panzram at Clinton State Prison
in Dannemora, NY 1923

Inmate # 93379
Washington D.C. jail in 1928

Inmate #31614
at Leavenworth in 1929

Carl Panzram at Leavenworth

Panzram's last cell at Leavenworth, nearest the window,
The place where Panzram wrote his story.

Carl Panzram
(photo courtesy of the Salem Police Department, Massachusetts.)

Henry Lesser, the prison guard who gave Panzram
the pencil and paper on which he wrote his autobiography

William Howard Taft: Twenty-Seventh
President of the United States

In the summer of 1920, Panzram broke into a house located at 113 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Inside a spacious den, Panzram found a large amount of jewelry, bonds and a .45 caliber automatic handgun. The name on the bonds was William H. Taft, the same man who he thought sentenced him to three years at Leavenworth in 1907.

At that time, Taft had been the secretary of war. In 1920, he was the former president of the United States (1909-1913) and current professor of law at Yale University in New Haven. Panzram later wrote that “out of this robbery I got about $3,000 in cash and kept some of the stuff including the .45 Colt automatic. With that money I bought a yacht, the Akista.” He registered the boat under the name John O’Leary, the alias he used while he was living in the New York area.