Serial Killer #6: Harrison Graham AKA Marty

As I look through my book, I have been trying to find various ways of killing, different trials, genders, locations, etc., and I think I have found a person who is entirely different in almost all ways. His name is Harrison Graham, born in Philly on October 9, 1958, about the date some of you will be reading this!

Anyway, on to the background of our serial killer. Graham’s story states in a troubled home that drove him out onto the streets where he felt loved. He became a prostitute, and his pimp was also his lover. Graham used drugs and eventually started selling them to boost his finances. When Graham was a teenager, his mother had some “spiritual awakening” and dragged him back to the house away from the streets, telling him how immoral his lifestyle was.

Graham as an adult, was well-liked by his neighbors; they described him as easygoing. The women he was around in the building were not afraid of him at all, so much so, they asked him to do handy work for them.

Until the summer of 1987, no one knew what he was doing behind closed doors. Neighbors started to smell something foul in the complex and called the police. They responded and found what was causing the horrific smell behind a nailed shut door. They found the decomposing bodies of women behind this door.

One officer who responded to the call said they could smell death when he walked into the complex. He followed the smell up to a third-floor apartment. He found moldy newspapers, food containers, a high pile of filthy clothes, and dried feces when he went inside. He also stated that someone had drawn a naked woman on a wall, and words were written in what looked like blood.

When he reached the nailed shut room, he looked through the keyhole and could see a body. At first glance, he thought the person was alive, so he demanded they open the door, but there was no response. This led to him calling for backup. The door was pried open and on a mattress was the body of a decomposing African American woman. Besides the bed, there was another decomposing female body.

At first, these officers were not sure if these women had died due to drug overdose, but when they searched the rest of the apartment, a woman was so decomposed; she was only a skeleton. They realized that whatever was happening, it had been happening for a long time.

The fourth body found was wrapped in sheets; she was pretty much mummified. In between two mattresses were the fifth body that was so decomposed it was impossible to tell if they were male or female. And in the closet amongst the trash was the sixth body.

The search for that day was called off because of the extreme heat. The next day, August 10, investigators searched outside of the apartment and found a leg and a foot on top of the building. Five days later, the search broadened to another apartment complex down the street where a body found in the basement was wrapped similarly to the other victims.

Police quickly identified Graham as the number one suspect and were quick to get his photo out for everyone to be on the lookout for him. On August 17, Graham’smother received a call from him asking her to bring him foo. She convinced him to turn himself in, so he did. Police were notified of his location, and they met him on a street corner where he turned himself in.

Now onto the trial, when Graham was being interrogated, he wrote a ten-page long confession. His public defender, Joel Moldovsky, said that Graham was suffering from mental illness during the arraignment, so he wasn’t capable of making his confession. Also, despite Graham’s mother being in the interrogation, he claimed Graham wasn’t told he couldn’t have an attorney present.

Graham was assessed by a psychiatrist who said his I.Q. was only sixty-three, which usually indicates mental incompetence. On top of that, Graham’s drug use meant that he was incapable, according to the Philadelphia law. The psychiatrist said that Graham had psychosis, chromic paranoia, auditory hallucinations, and blackouts because of his drug abuse. A psychologist found that Graham was incompetent in basic academics, including telling the time.

Moldovsky continued to argue that Graham was mentally unwell and said he had multiple personality disorders. According to Moldovsky, Graham would regularly speak in a second and third personality. One of his personalities was “Marty,” the easygoing handyman, popular with neighbors, and was religious and heterosexual. “Junior,” another personality, was like a child and would be seen carrying around a Cookie Monster stuffed toy. His third personality, “Frank,” hated women. Frank was the personality that was killing the woman and engaging in necrophilia.

Before the judge ruled on the mental health claim, a witness named Paula was brought in who claimed she lived with Graham for three years. According to Paula, Graham often strangled her during sex. She said he had bragged to her about killing Robin DeShazor and having sex with her corpse. She said she was scared to leave him because he killed DeShazor because she threatened to leave him.

There were discrepancies between Paula’s claims and the facts of DeShazor’s murder. She wasn’t strangled like Paula said Graham said. Instead, she was beaten to death, and there was no history of Graham having any long-term relationships.

Graham told the judge that he wasn’t the killer on March 8 and that someone else had done it. He waived his right to a jury and put his fate in the hands of the judge. Graham was found guilty on all accounts of first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. Graham had no reaction when the verdict came back but asked to get his Cookie Monster back.

In May, the judge ruled that he would give Graham six death sentences, but Graham had to spend life in prison first, which meant he would not get executed. He was also sentenced to six sentences of seven to fourteen years to be served consecutively.

In 1994, the Supreme Court conducted a systematic review and decided Graham’s sentence was illegal and unethical. So, an execution date of December 7, 1998, was set, and ironically the judge who initially gave Graham’s verdict was in charge of seeing if his death sentence would stay or not; he said it should stay. A ruling was made that Graham’s life sentence is overturned, and his death sentence is implemented.

Appeal after appeal, the supreme court banned mentally disabled inmates from being executed after 2002. At first, Graham did not meet the mental retardation criteria because although his I.Q. was under 70, he was still a functioning adult. Finally, he was saved by the requirements created by the American Psychiatric Association (A.P.A.) that stated if mental illness was present before a person was eighteen years old, and execution could not occur.

Currently, Graham is in prison and will not be released. He is described as nonviolent, has attained a religious minister’s certification, and continues to practice his faith. Why is he in prison still is my question? He is not mentally well, and usually, criminals would go to a psychiatric facility when that is the case. His case was argued repeatedly by many people, so why hasn’t that question been brought up?

I thought this case was interesting because we always see M.P.D. It is brought up on T.V., but it is not a common condition, so seeing a real one is pretty interesting. Also, this is an interesting case because of all the different organizations involved and how the judge that made a wrong decision the first time was able to make a bad decision a second time. I am not trying to say that Graham should not have been charged at all, just in a different manner, with psychiatric help.

On to some “fun facts.”

Graham took his Cookie Monster toy with him everywhere pretty much; he would always be talking to it as well.

He was described as a loner and, after drinking alcohol, a little crazy.

After his conviction, Moldovsky was never really sure if Graham knew he was found guilty or not.

All information was found in “The Big Book of Serial Killers” by Jack Rosewood.