Panzram: A Journal of Murder — Thomas E. Gaddis & James O. Long

“Men made me what I am today, and if men don’t like what they have made of me, they must put the blame where it belongs.” - Carl Panzram

Read 08.27.17

Carl Panzram is man who claims to have committed 21 murders and over 1000 sodomies on boys and men. He was born on June 28th, 1891 and spent the majority of his life performing criminal activities or in imprisonment. Alive at a time well before digital record-keeping, Panzram was able to avoid capture with minimal effort, taking on various identities and moving around frequently (internationally, too). Thus, for a good period of time, he was able to continue his rampage against the world, leaving us to wonder exactly what was going on inside this madmen’s head.

“My whole mind was bent on figuring out different ways to annoy and punish my enemies, and everybody was my enemy. I had no friends… My intention was to rob, rape, and kill everybody I could, anybody and everybody.” (99)

In his letters, Panzram highlights his childhood experiences as a victim of violence, torture, and rape by the staff at Minnesota State Training School, to which he was sent for misbehaving (stealing from neighbors).

“Men made me what I am today, and if men don’t like what they have made of me, they must put the blame where it belongs.” (28)

The statement above is one that completely tore me in half. Am I willing and capable to empathize with Panzram’s upbringing that rationalizes his actions? Or is Panzram in the wrong, to believe that his actions are justifiable considering how society has treated him? I still don’t know.

“These two experiences taught me several lessons. Lessons that I never forgot. I did not want to learn these lessons but I found out that it isn’t what one wants in this world that one gets. Force and might make right. Perhaps things shouldn’t be that way but that’s the way they are. I learned to look with suspicion and hatred on everybody. As the years went on that idea persisted in my mind above all others. I figured that if I was strong enough and clever enough to impose my will on others, I was right. I still believe that to this day.” (28)

Of course, from a third person perspective, Panzram’s crimes cannot be justified. However, I am more interested in exploring Panzram’s thoughts through his own perspective. Before you discredit his capacity for rational reasoning, we have to agree that Carl Panzram was not stupid nor insane.

“I always believed, I do yet too, that I knew right from wrong. It looks to me as the others do not agree with me. There are some folks who actually believe I am just a little bit nutty. But I don’t worry about that because they don’t know me like I know myself. I know myself far better than anyone else knows me and I am firmly convinced that I am not crazy.” (161)

“I may not have accomplished much in a scholarly way while there but I learned to become a first-class liar and hypocrite and the beginnings of degeneracy. I also learned how to sing hymns, say prayers and read the Bible. I learned so much about the Christian religion that I finally came to detest, despise and hate anything and everybody connected with it. I still do.” (173)

Although the self-examination of a criminal can be far from convincing, these are not the words of an irrational person. These are the words of someone capable of self-reflection and understanding, even acceptance of self-perception relative to the world around him.

“I am not going to try to deceive you and neither am I going to kid myself. I know myself and my own state of mind far better than you or anyone else knows me and the more I look deep into my own self, the less good I can see. You seem to think that all that is necessary for a person to do when he wants to change his mode of living is to just change and that’s the end of it. All reformed up just like that. That’s how easy it is in theory. But the reality is far different when you take into consideration all of the facts. The real truth of the matter is that I haven’t the least desire to reform. Very much the reverse of that is the truth. I would not reform if the front gate was opened right now and if I was given a million dollars when I stepped out. I have no desire to do good or to be good. I am just as mean now as I can be, and the only reason I am no worse is because I lack the power and the proper opportunity for meanness. If I had the power and the opportunities, then I would soon show you what real meanness was. You overlook the fact that the law and a great many people have been trying their damnedest for 25 years to reform me. I am tired of having people try to reform me. What I want to do is reform them and I think the best way to reform ‘em is to put ‘em out of their misery. It took me 36 years to be like I am now; then how do you figure that I could, if I wanted to, change from black to white in the twinkling of an eye?” (175-176)

I cannot say for all readers, but I was absolutely immersed in Panzram’s rhetoric. His writing challenges you to consider his side of the story. The story of a subversive catholic upbringing and retaliation against the society that wronged him.

“A child is very easily led. Any child, if properly taught, will live the way he is taught to live. All criminals are merely overgrown children. It is in your hands to make us or break us. We, by our own efforts, are failures in life, simply because we don’t know any better. We don’t know how to live decent upright lives. Heredity has very little to do with the shaping of our lives. The main causes of why we are what we are is because of our improper teaching, lack of knowledge and our environments. Everyman’s philosophy is colored by his environments. If you don’t want us to rob, rape and murder you, then it is your place to see that the mental and moral misfits are properly taught a sufficient amount of useful and sensible knowledge and put into the proper environment where they can be best fitted to exist in life. Otherwise, they will be misfits and failures and you are the actual cause because they don’t know any better, and you do. My own case is very similar to many thousands of others. I was born a normal human being. My parents were ignorant, and thru their improper teachings and improper environment, I was gradually led into the wrong way of living. Little by little from bad to worse. I was sent to a reform school at the age of 11 years. From that day to this, all of my life has been lived among moral and mental misfits. All of my associates, all of my surroundings, the atmosphere of deceit, treachery, brutality, degeneracy, hypocrisy, and everything that is bad and nothing that is good. Is it unnatural that I should have absorbed these things and have become what I am today, a treacherous, degenerate, brutal, human savage, devoid of all decent feeling, absolutely without conscience, morals, pity, sympathy, principle, or any single good trait? Why am I what I am? I’ll tell you why. I did not make myself what I am. Others had the making of me.” (120-121)

I usually don’t use long quotes, but I cannot summarize the effects of Panzram’s writing in words. It’s something you have to read yourself.

Panzram repeatedly brings up how the social environment affects thoughts and personalities, which is interesting because the argument of Nature vs. Nurture actually began in 1869, only a few years before Panzram’s birth (http://experimental-origins.weebly.com/nature-vs-nurture.html). Panzram was also an avid reader, known to read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. In the end, he wanted nothing else but death as punishment for his crimes.

“Hell, no. I’ve checked up on myself lately and know that I’m probably worse than the rest of you. I have no desire to live. If you would hang me my troubles would be over and I would be better off.” (209)

In court, he was sentence to death by hanging, and even fought off the [Society for the Abolishment of Capital Punishment], who tried to argue that Panzram was insane and did not deserve death:

“I have been informed that your organization, or at any rate some of the members of it, have made or are making an attempt to change my sentence to life imprisonment in solitary confinement in a prison or in an insane asylum. This you are doing without my consent and absolutely against my will. I shall never willingly grant you my permission to have this done for me… I choose to die here and now by being hanged by the neck until I am dead… One other thing I am going to tell you before I stop this letter, and that is this: the only thanks you or your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it. I would sure put you out of your misery, just the same as I have done with numbers of other people.” (221)

Panzram was a man of reason. In his eyes, his death would cast a light over something he has longed for all his life: justice.

“They gave me justice. This is the one and only case that I actually know of where law and justice were synonymous. I believe that I know what justice is, and justice is what I have been wanting and trying to get all of my life but what I have never got until now, and I don’t get that until the 5th of next September.” (214)

From his statement above, I believe Panzram was aware that his violent acts against humanity was not in the name of justice. I’m beginning to think that it was his desperate search for it. It almost seems like a test he schemed for society. In his early years, Panzram was betrayed by society. From his perspective, he was undeserving of torture and rape, yet they did not stop. He was never taught how to contribute to society yet they expected him to do so. He was betrayed by the term ‘justice’, the idea that the world is right and fair. And so, in an unjust society, Panzram sought after justice by becoming the worst he could be. Someone truly deserving of justice, if it exists. Panzram’s death, as he would see it, is confirmation that society can be just. It is his acknowledgement of doing wrong, and in a way, the final proof to resolve his moral conflict whether his individual definition of justice can be more powerful than the law, the manifestation of justice that has shaped and continues to shape the world Panzram was born into. With this interpretation, I can understand why Panzram was so vehemently disapproving of any other sentence than execution. The life of Carl Panzram begins as a hero wronged by society, and ends as a villain who accepts his role to obtain what should have been, but was never offered— justice.

“Although the indictment read United States v. Carl Panzram, the true relationship under the palimpsest of reality was the United States and Carl Panzram v. Panzram’s Continued Existence.” (200)