Virginia Lee Griffin, age 25, bludgeoned, stabbed and mutilated in Los Angeles, CA on Nov. 14, 1945 by Otto Steven Wilson. While walking back to the Barclay Hotel where she would soon be slain, she said to Wilson "I got my horoscope told. Wednesday is my lucky day.". He was forced to flee the scene when the disposal unit he was using became clogged with cartilage and bone from her dismembered leg.
Lillian Johnson
Otto Steven Wilson
Number of victims: 2
Date of murders: November 1944
Date of birth: 1911
Victims profile: Virginia Lee Griffin / Lillian Johnson, 38 (prostitutes)
Method of murder: Stabbing with a razor-sharp carving knife
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Status: Executed by asphyxiation-gas at San Quentin Prison on September 20, 1946
On 15 November, 1944, in a seedy downtown area, in a run-down hotel at the corner of Fourth and Main streets, a maid discovered the mutilated body of a prostitute, Virginia Lee Griffin, sprawled on a bed.
The street girl had been slashed open from her throat to her vagina and her entrails pulled out of her body. Her breasts had been cut off and an arm and a leg partly severed. The murder weapon, a razor-sharp carving knife, lay near the body.
A second mutilation murder was reported in another downtown hotel only three blocks away. The victim was another prostitute, 38-year-old Lillian Johnson. Her mutilations were less severe, but she was slashed from throat to knees.
Witnesses from both hotels gave similar descriptions to the police. They took the information, creating a dragnet around a 20 block area. One officer spotted a man matching the description in a Fourth Street bar. He was in a booth in deep conversation with a brunette in a tight red dress. He lit his cigarette with a matchbook from the hotel where Griffin had been killed.
Police arrested the man, and found that his fingerprints matched those found at both crime scenes. He easily confessed to both killings, admitting his compulsion toward blood-lust.
He told police that his first wife had left him because he would creep up on her when she was naked and slash at her buttocks with a razor. His favorite pastime was kissing and licking the blood away while he apologized for his odd behavior. He stated that the fantasies had gotten out of control when he picked up the two prostitutes.
Steve Wilson was executed in the gas chamber of San Quentin Prison in September of 1946.
More at http://murderpedia.org/male.W/w/wilson-otto.htm
